by Sven Hassel
The seven elegant officers raised their glasses. Lt. Ohlsen turned abruptly and left the room. As he made his way back to the Company through the dangerous darkness, he prayed aloud to the Russians to drop a few shells in a few selected places.
‘Just a few . . . just a few very little ones . . . just enough to blow that load of po-faced nincompoops sky-high off their great fat arses . . . dear Ivan, that’s all I ask!’
But the night remained dark and the silence unbroken. Ivan was evidently not listening to his prayers.
Lt. Ohlsen regained the Fifth Company and jumped down into the trenches, where he sat a moment with clenched fists, trembling with rage against the Colonel.
‘What’s up?’ asked Spät, looking sagely at his brother officer over the empty pipe he was sucking.
‘That bloody man . . . that bloody man!’
For a moment it seemed that this was all he could say. He spat it out viciously between his teeth, while we watched him sympathetically and at the same time waited hopefully for more. And at last it came, in language that we could understand and appreciate. The invective rolled out of him in a fine unbroken flow of obscenity, and the Old Man shook his head and regarded the Lieutenant with an air of grave paternal anxiety.
‘What’s he done now?’ he said, when at last he could get a word in.
Lt. Ohlsen looked at him wildly.
‘I’ll tell you what he’s done! He’s arranged an inspection for 10 o’clock tomorrow morning! Make sure we’re all neat and clean and polished in accordance with Regulations! Take time off to polish our rifles and sew on our buttons!’
‘You what?’ said Porta, startled.
The lieutenant turned on him.
‘You heard!’ he snapped irritably.
Porta gave a great cackle of delighted laughter. He turned and shouted into the darkness.
‘Hey, Tiny! You catch that? We got to change our ways, you and me. Got to wash our faces and brush our uniforms. Got to get our holes swept out by ten o’clock tomorrow morning, make sure we’re living nice and clean and tidy, like, without no crumbs on the floor!’
The answer came roaring back down the trench.
‘What holes you on about? Arseholes?’
Our laughter must have been heard for miles around.
‘For Christ’s sake,’ implored Lt. Ohlsen, who had had a trying enough time already, poor man, ‘don’t make so much bloody noise.’
‘Sh!’ hissed Porta, laying a great grimy finger on his lips. ‘We’ll wake the Ruskies up!’
‘Yes, and that won’t be as damned funny as it sounds!’ snarled Ohlsen.
We subsided into silence. The tops of the mountains were lost in swirling cloud, and the moon had disappeared behind a thick blanket. The night was black but peaceful.
Lt. Ohlsen settled down in the trench between Spät and the Old Man and beckoned them to come closer to him. He began speaking in low, urgent tones.
‘Look, I’m in a bit of a jam,’ he said, frankly. ‘If you’ve any suggestions, I shall be only too glad to hear them . . . That stupid cunt of a colonel up there insists that we dispose of our prisoners by ten o’clock tomorrow morning. He’s coming round for a personal inspection to make sure the job’s been done properly . . . So what I want to know is, what the hell are we going to do about it? How do we arrange it so that they keep their heads on their shoulders and that blimp’s satisfied we’ve done the job?’
There was a silence, while Spät frowned into the darkness and the Old Man pulled deeply on his pipe.
‘That’s a pretty tall order,’ he said, at length. ‘Means hiding the six prisoners and finding six dead bodies to show the Colonel . . . not so easy.’
‘Suppose,’ suggested Spät, ‘we just closed our eyes and let them escape?’
‘You heared what Boris said,’ objected Ohlsen. ‘They’d be shot the minute they got back to their own lines.’
‘What – just for having been taken prisoner?’ Spät shook his head. ‘He must be exaggerating. I find that very difficult to believe.’
‘Well, all right, let’s ask him. See if he’s got any ideas. Damn it all, it’s his head I’m trying to save.’
Spät sent off for the prisoner, and a few moments later the young Russian lieutenant jumped down into the trench. Ohlsen briefly explained the position to him.
‘So that’s how things stand,’ he ended up. ‘And frankly there’s not a damn thing I can do about it unless you’ve got any bright ideas.’
The Russian smiled rather grimly and shook his head.
‘I only wish I had . . . Unfortunately, they’re no more civilized on our side of the line than yours. We’ve only got to show our faces back there and we’d be shot immediately as traitors.’ He caught the sceptical expression on Spät’s face and nodded sadly at him. ‘Oh, yes. It’s quite true, my friend, I can assure youof that. A soldier in the Red Army is supposed to the for his country sooner than let himself be taken prisoner . . . words of Uncle Joe!’
‘How about the partisans on our side of the line?’ the Old Man wanted to know. ‘Couldn’t they be any help?’
‘It is a possibility,’ allowed the Russian, but he didn’t sound too enthusiastic. ‘Only trouble is, each group of partisans is in direct communication with headquarters, and while a local group might not see any discrepancy in our story, you can bet your sweet life that the boys at H.Q. would know bloody well that our detachment is nowhere near this section of the front. Obviously we can’t tell them we’re escaped prisoners, they wouldn’t take at all kindly to it . . . All we could hope to do is string them a line about having been cut off during an attack and say we’ve been in hiding every since, and frankly I doubt if they’d wear it. Probably wouldn’t even bother to hear us out. Shoot first and see who you’ve shot afterwards, that’s their motto . . . and believe you me, they stick to it. I’ve never known such a trigger-happy mob.’
Lt. Spät lit a cigarette, crouching over it and shielding the glow with a cupped hand.
‘If the worst comes to the worst,’ he suggested, ‘I suppose we could always organize a sort of perpetual hide and seek . . . Get hold of some German uniforms for you and push you in amongst the men. Sooner or later you’d presumably get your chance to push off somewhere—’
‘If we hadn’t already been shot as spies first!’ retorted the Russian. ‘My men can’t speak German, remember? I know you’re doing your best to be helpful, and don’t for God’s sake think I’m not grateful, but frankly I don’t fancy the idea of dressing up in enemy uniform and sitting back to wait for the axe to fall.’
Spät shrugged his shoulders.
‘I can’t say I blame you.’
There was a long, troubled silence, broken eventually by Lt. Ohlsen.
‘We don’t seem to be getting anywhere, do we?’ He turned to the Russian. ‘Have you no ideas at all?’
‘Not so much as a single germ,’ confessed the prisoner, with a faints fatalistic smile. ‘And considering you’re putting your own lives in danger, I’m only surprised that you’re bothering your heads over us . . . it’s really only a question, when it comes down to it, of which side hangs us, yours or ours.’
‘Why don’t we try asking Porta?’ said the Old Man, suddenly.
Lt. Ohlsen looked at him a moment, then laughed.
‘Three officers and a Feldwebel and we can’t produce a single sound idea amongst us! We have to turn round and ask a semi-literate rogue of an Obergefreiter!’
Spät smiled, and the Old Man hunched a shoulder.
‘It’s a totally ludicrous suggestion, and well you know it -but it’s certainly far and away the best we’ve had yet,’ conceded Ohlsen, with a grin. ‘Call the bugger over here and let’s see what he’s got to say. Knowing Porta, it wouldn’t surprise me in the slightest if he came up with something!’
Porta wriggled into the trench on his stomach, heaved himself into a comfortable position and leered round at the assembled company.
‘What’s up,
then?’ he demanded, cheerfully. ‘Dirty work at the crossroads, I know, or you wouldn’t want me here!’ Spät offered him a cigarette, and he clawed one out of the packet and stuck it behind his ear. ‘Ta. Don’t mind if I do. Never refuse a fag, that’s the only motto worth having round this dump.’
He glanced expectantly at Lt. Ohlsen, who came straight to the point.
‘Porta, we need your help. We’ve got to do something to keep our prisoners’ heads on their shoulders, and we’ve got to do it pretty fast. Any smart ideas?’
‘Ah, now you’re asking,’ said Porta, maddeningly. ‘The boys have all been discussing it, ever since you come back from seeing the Colonel.’
‘How did they know about it?’ demanded Lt. Ohlsen, indignantly.
Porta laid a finger along the side of his nose.
‘We got ways of knowing these things, don’t you worry.’
‘So what conclusions have you come to?’
‘Well, Heide, for a start: he don’t want nothing to do with any of it. Letting ’em go, I mean. He swears blind that you let ’em go and he’ll shoot the lot of ’em as they’re crossing the line. Could be that’s probably the best idea. Save you a lot of trouble, any rate.’
The Old Man took his pipe from his mouth and clicked his tongue impatiently.
‘Come on, Porta, wake your ideas up! You can do better than that, don’t let me down . . . If that was the way the Lieutenant felt about it, he’d go ahead and shoot the prisoners himself. We’re trying to find a way of saving them, not of murdering them . . . and we haven’t got all night to do it in, either!’
‘O.K., O.K., keep your wig on and have a bit of patience . . . as the spinster remarked when she tried it out on herself with an overripe banana . . .’
‘Christ almighty!’ said Spät, swallowing a burst of laughter and half choking himself as a result.
‘Never mind the funny business, people’s lives are at stake!’ snapped the Old Man.
‘Get you!’ said Porta, scornfully.
Lt. Ohlsen reached across and tapped him on the shoulder.
‘Porta, please . . . I’ve told you, we desperately need your help. I know you’re a resourceful chap, so if you’ve any useful ideas don’t hesitate to trot them out.’
Porta looked at him reflectively.
‘Well, I did have a sort of idea . . . dunno whether you’ll go for it, though.’
‘Let’s hear it.’
‘It’s kind of complicated to explain, but what I thought was, if we could get hold of six bodies – well, we’ve got three already, we picked off some of their snipers, and we can easy get another three from somewhere, that’s no problem—’
‘So?’
‘So, well, then – me and Tiny and one of the lad’s, the Legionnaire, perhaps, we go up and we have a butcher’s at the enemy, right? Make sure they’re all kipped down for the night, then a few quick bursts of the old machine gun fire up and down the trenches—’ Porta demonstrated what he meant, spraying the three officers with imaginary bullets – ‘They’ll soon get the wind up. Make ’em think a whole bloody battalion’s about to burst in on ’em. Soon as we’ve woken ’em up, we get the hell out of it and head back home again. Like this . . . right?’
With the point of his bayonet, Porta sketched out the proposed movements. The Old Man and the three officers nodded, doubtful but vaguely beginning to follow the tortuous drift of his thoughts.
‘So then, of course, everything starts up for real,’ continued Porta. ‘We get Barcelona standing by with a flame thrower, and as soon as I give the go ahead he lets ’em have it good and proper in the outposts. Then you come in with the big shells. And by that time, nobody but us knows what the hell’s going on – but it’s a safe bet those silly buggers over there on the rocket battery’ll start shitting themselves. Only a matter of seconds before they join in the fun, and once that happens the enemy’s bound to think that a whole flaming Army’s attacking them, and they’ll throw in everything they’ve got. And that’ll wake up the Colonel and his glory boys over there—’ He jerked a contemptuous thumb in the direction of Colonel von Vergil’s troops on our flank. ‘Soon as they know what’s going on, you can bet your sweet life they’ll do a bunk. They won’t stick around to see what’s going to happen next, not that load of queens. I reckon we’ll be shot of the whole damn lot of them before you can say knife.’
Lt. Ohlsen made a faint noise of approval.
‘And how about our Russian friends here?’
‘Yeah, well – soon as the balloon goes up, they hop it, don’t they? They scarper back to their own lines . . . Mind you—’ Porta turned to the Russian officer. ‘I’m afraid we’ll have to rough you up a bit,’ he said, none too regretfully. ‘Make it look like you’ve been in the wars and all that. . . still, Tiny can see to that side of things. I’ve got it all worked out, see? Your story is, you was cut off in your own sector and fell in with some partisans, what took you off to a farm with ’em – same one we flushed out farther back, right? Tell you about it later. So anyway, one of the partisans got killed, the other escaped. Just like actually happened. You and your men managed to get out, didn’t know where you were, but in the end you arrived here, at this particular spot, see? Behind the enemy lines, couldn’t think how to get back to your own side, so you do the only thing possible and open fire on us – you with me?’
The Russian officer grinned.
‘You mean, it’s us that’s supposed to have started the whole thing off and forced your troops over there to abandon their trenches?’
‘Well, why not?’ said Porta, reasonably. ‘Wouldn’t take more than one man with a couple of hand grenades to send that lot running off.’
‘But what about your own Company?’ asked the Russian. ‘The minute we get back to our own side and tell them the position, they’ll be well aware of the fact that some of your troops have pulled out. They’re not going to sit around twiddling their thumbs. They’ll start moving in to occupy the abandoned trenches.’
‘Tell you something.’ Porta leaned forward. ‘That lot over there—’ He nodded his head contemptuously towards the Russian lines – ‘are just about as bleeding useless as that lot over there—’ again, contemptuously, his thumb jerked in the direction of the Colonel’s troops. ‘You think Tiny and me could’ve gone out and picked up three corpses just like that? Not on your nelly! Not if they’d been soldiers worth their salt, we couldn’t. I tell you, the way they carry on over there you’d think they was out for a Sunday afternoon walk in Moscow, not fighting a bleeding war!’
‘May I ask,’ said Lt. Ohlsen, ‘when you and Tiny were thinking of seting the ball rolling?’
‘Say, three o’clock?’ suggested Porta. ‘Seems like a good sort of time. What I pictured was, me and Tiny and the Legionnaire, say, we’d set off about two-thirty, and at three o’clock sharp the balloon would go up.’
‘Why three o’clock?’ Spät wanted to know.
‘Well, for one thing, nobody expects an attack to come at three o’clock in the morning. I mean, you wouldn’t yourself, would you? Because it’s a bleeding stupid sort of time to get into a fight, if you know what I mean . . . Most of the silly sods’ll be asleep, anyway. Theirs and ours. Won’t even know what hit ’em. Even so—’ He turned to the Russian – ‘you’ll have to move pretty fast when the time comes. I’ll show you the best way to go.’
The Russian nodded, gravely.
‘Thank you. I must say—’
‘One other thing,’ interrupted Porta. ‘Keep out of Tiny’s way. He’s a big chap with a bit of steel wire what he’s sort of got into the habit of knotting round people’s necks when they’re not looking. He’s kind of over-enthusiastic about it just at the moment. You bump into him and I won’t answer for the consequences. He tends to get a bit excited, if you know what I mean . . . Then there’s Heide. He’s just a murdering bastard, pure and simple. If he can pick you off, he will, but there’s nothing I can do about that. As for the new boys, I dunno w
hat they’re like but I don’t reckon they’re much cop. Anyway—’ He jerked his head at the Russian – ‘you come with me and I’ll show you the way you’ll have to go. And keep your head down if you don’t want it to get blown off. Your little red brothers have a lot of snipers in this part of the world.’
They pulled themselves out of the trench and crept towards the barbed wire, on the other side of which lay no-man’s land. They were soon swallowed up in the darkness.
They returned fifteen minutes later. Judging from the continued silence of the night, they had not been spotted.
‘O.K.,’ said Porta. ‘That’s settled, then.’
‘It would seem so,’ murmured Lt. Ohlsen, with a somewhat rueful smile.
They synchronized their watches. The time was then 22.05. Porta crept back to his own dug-out, which he shared with Tiny. We heard a muffled conversation between them, then a great shout of laughter from Tiny. The Legionnaire swore at them, a stray bullet passed overhead, and then all was silent again.
Shortly after midnight, the two officers left the trenches for a tour of inspection.
‘I wonder why silence is always so damned unnerving?’ muttered Lt. Spät, staring up at the dark, cloud-covered sky.
They moved slowly up the hill, placing their feet with care, making as much use as possible of trees and bushes, melting from one shadow to another. They had gone only a few yards when a disturbing sound came softly to their ears. It was deep and regular, like a cross between the growling of a dog and the grunting of a pig. They stood still and listened, guns at the ready.
‘What the devil is it?’ hissed Ohlsen.
They went on listening, then an incredulous grin spread over Spät’s face.
‘It’s some silly bugger snoring!’
Cautiously they moved forward, walking across the wet spongy grass, and almost fell into a deep hole, at the bottom of which, curled up nose to tail, was an N.C.O. His sub machine gun was lying carelessly by his side and he was snoring fit to wake the dead.