by Sven Hassel
‘Can you not see,’ roared Krug, ‘that I am Oberscharführer?’
‘I’m not blind,’ said Porta, arrogantly. ‘But so long as you’re my prisoner I don’t care if you’re a flaming general, I’ll treat you like the shit you are.’
Krug grew mottled and crimson.
‘I shall make a report of this! I demand that you treat me with respect, according to the Regulations—’
‘Respect!’ jeered Porta. ‘You’re not even fit to wipe my arse on! And the sooner you realize that you’re no longer in a very healthy position, the better for you.’ He held out his hand again. ‘I’ll tell you who’d like that ring,’ he said, to the rest of us. ‘Old Hot Knickers down at “The Hurricane”. She’s given me good service, that girl. It’s only fair she gets a little something to remember me by. And if you’re a good boy,’ he informed Krug, ‘I’ll tell her it was a present you give me, and whenever we’re having it away together we’ll spare a thought for you in the Dirlewanger Brigade.’
I saw a nervous tic rippling down the side of Krug’s forehead at the mention of the Dirlewanger Brigade. It was supposed to be top secret, but we knew very well, and Krug and his compardons knew very well, that it was an SS disciplinary brigade whose unique mission in life was to hunt down and to kill, by any means available, the partisans which swarmed in the thick forests round Minsk. The Brigade was led by SS Brigadenführer Dirlewanger. He had been handpicked for the position from his prison cell, where he had been serving a sentence for crimes of violence, and he had an almost psychopathic streak of sadism in him. In fact, on one occasion he had so overstepped the mark that even Himmler and Heydrich had called for him to be court-martialled and condemned to death. There was a long list of indictments against him, starting with the least brutal, the rape of several Polish prisoners, but the murderer was under the powerful protection of SS Obergruppenführer Berger, who, after more than one hour’s talking, was able to persuade Heydrich and Himmler that for the sake of the Fatherland and for the sake of survival it was necessary to tolerate Dirlewanger and his coarse methods of warfare. Heydrich, particularly, was impressed by his argument, since it coincided very largely with his own precept of opposing terror with worse terror and violence with worse violence.
Dirlewanger ultimately met the death he deserved, though unfortunately not until 21st January, 1945. It was he himself who had originally introduced the barbaric form of torture of roasting men slowly over an open fire, and one day in Poland he had a chance to be on the receiving end. A party of German soldiers discovered him hanging by his feet from a tree, his head, dangling a few inches above some smouldering ashes, done to a turn like a piece of roast pork. According to some Polish partisans, the operation had been carried out by eight of his own men, who had circled about him singing joyously as he suffered and died.
He had screamed for four and a half hours. Today, in the War Museum at Warsaw, there is a picture recalling the event, with Dirlewanger’s hated face plainly discernible amidst the leaping flames of the fire.
Krug glared up at Porta from beneath lowered brows. He had no illusions about his probable fate, he could guess only too well what was in store for him. He had seen a great many men, old comrades, some of them, sent off to the Dirlewanger Brigade, but it was a fact that he had never seen a single one of them come back again. Rumour had it that not only the men themselves vanished for ever, but that all traces of their identity, their papers, their possessions, their very names in the records, were expunged at the same time.
Krug had but one chance, and that was a slender one, being totally dependent upon the whim of the Governor of Torgau military prison – and that one-armed bastard, reflected Krug, grimly, was known to have no love for the Gestapo. Only one thing for it, and that was to be on his best behaviour as a prisoner and to take every possible opportunity to declare his own loathing of the SS. The Governor was bound to have his spies everywhere, and sooner or later word would be sure to reach him regarding the prisoner Krug’s behaviour. Perhaps, with any luck, he would then be able to avoid the Dirlewanger Brigade . . .
‘Well?’ said Porta.
Krug shook his head free of forebodings and looked defiantly at Porta. With two swift, soft steps Tiny was at his side, standing mountainous and threatening by his elbow. In the circumstances it doubtless seemed a trifle futile to continue his protests. Krug took off the ring and sullenly handed it over.
‘That’s better,’ said Tiny, giving him a shove through the door, out into the passage and towards the cells. ‘Let’s go and lock you up for the night. You’ll be nice and cosy here until your pals come to pick you up tomorrow morning.’
‘God help him,’ said Porta, cheerfully. ‘Doesn’t stand a chance, poor bastard. Good as dead already.’
Tiny opened a door and they pushed Krug into the bare cell. Tiny stood swinging a bunch of keys, while Porta was lost in admiration of his ill-gotten ring.
‘How’s it feel,’ asked Tiny, curiously, ‘to be a living corpse?’
Krug found himself starting to sweat. He mopped at his brow with a dirty handkerchief, in the corner of which could be seen a set of initials that certainly did not belong to him.
‘P.L.,’ read out Porta, slowly. He was referring to another set of initials-those engraved on the inside of the ring. ‘Who’s P.L., Krug?’
A hectic rash of sweat broke out on Krug’s forehead.
‘Paula Landau . . . she died at Neuengamme.’
‘And she gave you the ring for looking after her so nicely?’ suggested Porta, with a sneer.
Krug waved the handkerchief helplessly to and fro, his entire face now drenched in a dew of perspiration. Paula Landau . . . The fear of discovery had been with him ever since he had taken the ring from the dead girl’s finger . . . the almost dead girl’s finger . . . It was not his fault that she had died. She had been more corpse than living human being from the very day they had brought her to Neuengamme. There was nothing Krug could have done to save her, and no one would have thanked him if he had. It was not death he had on his conscience, it was the ring. He had stolen that ring, and that in itself was considered an act of treachery punishable by death. Of course, if he hadn’t purloined it someone higher up in the hierarchy would certainly have done so, but it seemed unlikely that any tribunal would accept this as a valid argument in his defence.
Krug flashed a furtive glance at Porta, then swiftly bent and unscrewed the heel of his boot. With flushed face he stood up and thrust two fifty-dollar bills at his tormentors.
‘It’s all I’ve got . . . you’re welcome to it, it doesn’t look as if I shall be needing it any more.’
It was a tacit plea for the subject of Paula Landau to be dropped, and Porta accordingly dropped it; not from any motives of sympathy, but simply because it seemed that there was nothing of any particular advantage to himself to be gained from pursuing the matter.
‘What they got you for, anyway?’ asked Tiny. ‘Whatever it was, I hope you didn’t admit to it?’
Silently, Krug bowed his head. Tiny looked at him incredulously.
‘Jesus!’ he said. ‘They make ’em thick in the Gestapo, don’t they?’
Krug shrugged his shoulders.
‘There wasn’t any point in denying it. They’d set a trap for me, they had all the evidence they needed. There was nothing I could have said.’
‘Always deny everything,’ chanted Tiny, as if reciting a lesson he had learnt by heart. ‘So what they pinch you for, then? Caught you nicking things, did they?’
‘No. I was just trying a bit of – er – well – blackmail, I suppose. I guess I went too far. Overstepped the mark.’
‘There’s always some silly bugger that has to get himself nabbed,’ said Tiny, philosophically. ‘It’s a question of knowing when to stop. Like me, for instance, if I could lay my hands on ten pipes of opium, I’d only take eight of ’em . . . Pays off in the long run.’
‘That’s all very well,’ protested Krug, feebly, but as far
as I’m concerned here and now you’ve taken every damn thing you can lay hands on.’
‘Ah, well now, you’re different,’ said Tiny, comfortably. ‘Dead men can’t talk, see? And you’re as good as dead, mate . . . I know, because I’ve had a gander at your papers. And I may not be able to read, but I’m not colourblind, and I know as well as the next man what a dirty great red mark means . . . It means Dirlewanger, and Dirlewanger means death . . .’ He leaned forward and spoke confidentially to Krug. ‘You ever seen what happens to blokes when Uncle Jo’s partisans get hold of ’em?’ Krug shook his head, mesmerized by horror, and Tiny turned triumphantly to Porta. ‘Tell him . . . Go on, tell him what we seen! Tell him about that chap what had been eaten alive by ants—’
‘That’s nothing,’ said Porta, scornfully. ‘They know all about that trick in the Gestapo . . . But what about that one where they string you up from a couple of trees and leave the birds to peck your eyes out?’ He turned to Krug and addressed him in conversational tones. ‘You heard of that one, have you? Tie you up by the legs, each leg to a different tree, and just leave you there to rot . . .’
‘Nasty,’ said Tiny. ‘Very nasty . . . I only remember one person ever surviving. That was that bird, Nadasja de Mogilef. You remember her?’
‘I remember the mess she was when they cut her down afterwards,’ said Porta. ‘They’d carved two bloody great swastikas into the cheeks of her arse and strung her up stark bollock naked and the birds had had a go at her face.’
‘Mind you, she asked for it,’ said Tiny. ‘She was selling information to our side and shopping her own people right and left.’
‘Threw herself under a train in the end,’ mused Porta. ‘But what about that SS bloke they done in? What was his name? Ginge?’
‘That’s right! They stuck him on a pole and roasted him like a pig!’ cried Tiny, enthusiastically.
‘And he wasn’t even in the Dirlewanger bunch. Just an ordinary Waffen SS officer . . .’ Porta looked kindly towards Krug. ‘You want a piece of advice?’ he asked. Krug nodded, his face pale and clammy. ‘First chance you get there, down there at Fuhlsbüttel, climb into a noose and hang yourself . . . It’s no good hoping they’ll let you off the hook, because you don’t stand a cat in hell’s chance. And don’t start imagining they’ll send you to an FGA10. The only SS men we ever get are the ones what’ve done something pretty small, like nicking the office blotting paper or pissing on the CO’s pot plants, but you’ve really gone and shit your copybook, you have. Far better do away with yourself while you’ve still got the chance . . .’
Porta and Tiny left the room. The heavy door clanged shut behind them. Tiny’s key grated in the lock and their footsteps crashed back along the corridor. Krug stood a moment where they had left him, then slowly collapsed to the ground and lay there, staring at the concrete in blank desperation. All his life he had been told he would come to a sticky end, and now it seemed as if he had. He felt that Porta’s advice had probably been good, but he knew he could never follow it. Even now, he could not quite bring himself to believe in his own misfortune. And yet, as he stared round the cell, the nightmare grew clearer, closer, more realistic. The room was bare and clinical and quite incredibly clean. There was an abundance of cold air, yet no bed, no blankets, no stool. And if this was the Army for you, how much worse would the Dirlewanger Brigade be!
Krug fell at last into a troubled half-sleep, but was woken every twenty minutes or so by someone tramping up the passage in heavy boots, or by the banging of cell doors. The cells were all full, and from the amount of activity throughout the night it appeared that Bielert was continuing his frenzied purge through the ranks. Not that that was any comfort to Krug, shivering on the bare floor of his cheerless cell. He found the prospect of dying in the company of his former SD comrades scarcely any more inviting than the prospect of putting his head in a noose.
Back in the guard room work had slackened off and Heide and Porta had settled down to a game of cards. Inevitably, the peace was soon shattered by loud oaths and venomous shouts of accusation and counter-accusation flung back and forth across the table. On this occasion, it seemed proven beyond any reasonable doubt that Porta was the culprit: he had been holding the Ace of Spades up his sleeve and had somewhat mal-adroitly introduced it into his hand at a point when the kitty had assumed worthwhile proportions.
Heide jammed his knife hard into the table, only centimetres away from Porta’s arm.
‘You’re cheating again!’
‘So what?’ said Porta, brazenly.
Cheating was, after all, an accepted hazard of card-playing.
‘You had the Ace of Spades!’ screamed Heide. ‘I saw it!’
‘Well, one of us has to have it,’ retorted Porta. ‘What makes you think you’ve got sole claim to it?’
Heide grew stiff and pale. While Porta unconcernedly laid out his hand, for all to see the incriminating card, Heide pulled his knife out of the table and brought it crashing down into Porta’s shoulder. Porta moved just in time. Quick as a flash, his hand shot out in a sharp chop across Heide’s throat. Heide, too, just avoided the blow. When it came to a fight, they were well matched.
Porta snatched up a bottle, smashed it against the wall and hurled what was left of it into Heide’s face. Heide saw it coming and had time to duck. He gave a shriek of triumphant laughter and rushed in with his knife. I saw it poised to strike, and then there was a scream of pain from Heide as Porta jammed a knee hard into his crutch. The knife clattered to the floor. Heide rocketed backwards, propelled by Porta’s hands closed tight round his throat. We watched, with interest, as Porta got Heide up against the wall and began bashing his head to and fro, Heide crumpled slowly to the ground and Porta followed him, plainly out for blood.
‘That’s enough!’ The Old Man’s voice cut sharply into the sudden silence. ‘Give it a rest, for God’s sake!’
‘I’d like to kick his ugly face in!’ panted Porta.
We looked at Heide’s face. Far from being ugly, it was, in fact, the only presentable, respectable, unmarked face amongst the lot of us. We could all, except Heide, boast more or less permanent disfigurements. Tiny had lost an ear, I had a broken nose, Barcelona a glass eye, the Legionnaire a puckered scar, and so on, but Heide’s face was fresh and clean and carefully shaven, and I could suddenly understand how Porta felt about it, and why he had this urge to kick it in. Why, after all, should not Heide too have a few reminders of the war to carry him through the rest of his life?
‘Kick him to death!’ urged Tiny, recklessly.
‘Hold your mouth!’ snapped the Old Man. ‘How many more times do I have to tell you that it’s me that gives the orders round here?’
He took up his sub-machine gun and perched on the edge of the table with it, swinging a leg and watching us. We eyed him uncertainly. We felt pretty sure he would never use it, the Old Man just wasn’t that sort of person, but nevertheless when he was really serious we always took good care to humour him.
Heide came slowly to his senses. He held his aching head in both hands and looked up at Porta with the light of hatred still in his eyes.
‘Bloody cheat,’ he hissed, between his nice white teeth.
And then he spat out a mouthful of blood and gingerly felt his throat, which was bruised and purple with the marks of Porta’s fingers still standing out clearly.
‘Think yourself lucky you’ve still got a head on your shoulders,’ sneered Porta. ‘One of these days I’m going to really go to town on that lovely face of yours. When you’ve lost an ear and an eye and a mouthful of teeth you won’t have quite so high an opinion of yourself.’
Heide slowly got to his feet, dragging himself up by the wall.
‘Just because you’re as ugly as sin,’ he said, haughtily, ‘it doesn’t mean to say you have to. be jealous of other people’s good looks . . . You ought to try washing and shaving once in a while, it would do wonders for you.’
He had a point there; he really did have
a point. But before Porta could make one of his usual obscene rejoinders we were interrupted by the arrival of two SD men and the old woman we had seen earlier on in the day. She had aged by several years in the few intervening hours. From an upright and fairly well preserved elderly lady she had turned into a bent and wrinkled old crone, with black hollows beneath the eyes and a mouth wrinkled up like a prune. They stood her in a corner and handed over the usual sheaf of papers to the Old Man.
‘For you. Just fill ’em in in the normal way.’
‘Hang on a minute, don’t be in such a hurry.’ The Old Man looked at the prisoner, looked back at the papers and then up at the SD men. ‘You’ve come to the wrong place. We don’t have any dealings with civilians. We belong to the Army, not the Gestapo.’
One of the men bent down and spoke a few words into the Old Man’s ear. The Old Man frowned, looked again at the prisoner.
‘I see . . . Well, in that case—’
The man shrugged a careless shoulder.
‘Please yourself, of course. I just thought she’d be better off with you . . . Not that I give a damn either way. It’s all in a day’s work as far as I’m concerned. Mind you—’ He passed a weary hand across his brow, as if he had the cares of the world upon his shoulders – ‘it’s not an easy job. It takes it out of you more than you always care to admit. There are moments when I find myself wishing I could do something slightly less taxing, but-’
He shrugged again, eloquently. Porta at once hooted and Tiny made a loud farting noise.
‘Bring on the violins!’ jeered the Legionnaire. ‘Nobody obliged you to be a copper, did they? The Army’s crying out for men, in case you’re interested—’
‘What, him?’ said Porta. ‘Him in the Army? Don’t make me laugh!’
Before the object of their scorn could retaliate, they were interrupted by an unexpected voice from a forgotten quarter.
‘Children, children, don’t fall out with each other! Harsh words can never be taken back and you’ll only regret it later.’