by Sven Hassel
In the guard room, no one spoke and we avoided looking at each other. We were ashamed of ourselves and the uniforms we wore.
After a while, Tiny left the room. Still without a word. We returned half-heartedly to our cards, but before we could deal out another hand Tiny was back again.
‘Krug’s still in his cell!’ he panted, excitedly. ‘Hanged himself with his braces!’
The tension was now broken. We crowded out of the room and along the passage to witness the scene. Krug swung from the ceiling like a misshapen rag doll. His face was blue and bloated, and his protruding eyes looked glassily upon us. His neck seemed quite incredibly long. Beneath him, on the floor, lay his kepi.
‘Best thing he could have done, really,’ said Barcelona.
We looked up dispassionately at the swaying body.
‘No need to feel sorry for that rat,’ declared Tiny.
I don’t think any of us did. Not even Stege attempted to speak up in his defence.
‘We’ll have to put it in the report,’ said the Old Man. ‘There’ll only be repercussions if we don’t.’
We trooped back up the passage to the guard room. While the Old Man seated himself at his desk and took up a pen, the rest of us now quite happily returned to our interrupted game of cards.
‘Pity he couldn’t have had the decency to wait till he got to Fuhlsbüttel!,’ said Porta, rapidly shuffling the pack while the rest of us watched him like hawks. ‘Still, some people just naturally have bad taste . . .’
9See WHEELS OF TERROR
10 FGA-Feldgefangenabteilung (Disciplinary Company)
They were black marketeers, the pair of them. Born to get themselves constantly into trouble and always to get themselves out of it again, respecting each other’s treachery and cunning even as they sought to outdo one another. They stole everything they could lay hands on, sold everything that came their may, from women to spent cartridges.
The SS driver weighed the cigarette in the palm of his hand a moment, regarding it thoughtfully. He then raised to to his nostrils and gave a suspicious sniff.
‘I think you’re a filthy liar,’ he declared, at last. ‘Take it to pieces and let me see for myself.’
‘Do you doubt my word?’ demanded Porta, arrogantly. ‘If I tell you there’s opium in each fag, then there is opium in each fag.’
He spat contemptuously at the SS pennant flying from the big grey Mercedes. The driver at once returned the compliment of those soldiers who had given their lives in the first world war.
With these exchanges of formalities complete, they returned to business.
‘I’ve got a nice little haul of car tyres’ offered the SS man. ‘Just do you . . . Only trouble is, they’re a bit hot at the moment.’
‘You’ll be a bit hot,’ said Porta, ‘if ever they lay their hands on you . . . Bet you a pound to a pinch of pig shit you’ll end up with us one of these fine days!’
The SS man hunched an indifferent shoulder.
‘Chance you take,’he said, laconically. ‘If you’re interested, I can let you have the address of a good strip show.’
‘I know plenty of strip shows.’
‘Not like this one. Not round here. Not with stark naked lovelies in it.’
Porta licked his lips. A hot splash of colour fell across his cheek bones.
‘Completely naked?’
‘Near as damn it. Shoes, stockings, suspender belts . . . just enough to titillate. Can’t complain of that, can you?’
Porta scraped his throat a few times.
‘Can you hire ’em out for an evening, like?’
Why not?’
They put their heads close together and began to discuss terms.
CHAPTER FIVE
Porta and the SS
ONE day, quite suddenly and with no warning, Lt. Ohlsen was arrested. He was accused of having associated with a group of officers who had come under suspicion and of having himself uttered defamatory words against the Führer. We later discovered it was his wife who had denounced him.
They came for him one morning, two military police and a lieutenant, slinking silently into camp in a manner so furtive that they at once drew attention to themselves. Doubtless their aim was to pick him up with the minimum of fuss and smuggle him out before too many questions could be asked, but fortunately we had wind of their presence and were able to alert Colonel Hinka. Not that there was much anyone could do, but at least we could put up a good fight. Some officers we should gladly have seen arrested, but Lt. Ohlsen was not one of them. He had been two years with the Company and had served with the Regiment since 1938, and we had no mind to stand by and watch as they marched him off.
On hearing the news, Colonel Hinka at once sent his Adjutant to arrest the two MPs as they left Company Headquarters. The guards were alerted and all exits closed. No one was to leave the building.
The Adjutant smiled suavely upon the officer who was with the police.
‘Colonel Hinka would like to have a few words with you, Lieutenant . . . If you’d care to come with me, ‘I’ll take you to his office.’
The Lieutenant and the two policemen followed him, stubbornly dragging Ohlsen along with them. He was the prey that they had been sent to fetch, and they had no intention of letting him go at this stage of the proceedings.
In Hinka’s office, the storm burst. Hinka, furious that any upstart policemen should try arresting one of his officers without first asking his permission, swore that no one should leave the premises until the matter had been sorted out to his own satisfaction. He picked up the telephone and rang through to the Kommandantur in Hamburg. They swiftly denied all responsibility. He tried Hanover, with no success. He tried the Abwehr (Counter Espionnage), who wanted nothing to do with it. Finally, in desperation, he got through to the Army Personnel Bureau in Berlin and demanded to speak with General Rudolph Schmudt.
Needless to say, such an abnormal amount of activity on what should have been a morning like any other morning did not escape the ever-watchful eyes of the Gestapo.
It was not long before a familiar grey Mercedes drew up with two SS-Unterscharführer and a small dapper civilian, dressed all in black. The civilian looked at one and the same time seedy and sinister. Like a bank clerk going off to his grandmother’s funeral, with his shiny black bowler, his big black overcoat, his gloves, his scarf, his umbrella and his cramped rounded shoulders and shuffling footsteps; like a weasel after a rabbit, with his small close-set eyes shifting furtively from side to siden bright as diamonds and as hard, missing nothing and ceaselessly on the alert . . .
Captain Brockmann could hardly believe his eyes when he passed this curiously clad creature creeping up the stairs. He stood a moment, staring after him, then hurried across to the sergeant in charge.
‘Who the hell was that clown?’
‘I dunno, sir. I asked him for his pass, but he just walked right on up the stairs like he never heard me. Like he was a ghost or something.’
‘A ghost!’ The Captain gave a short bark of laughter. ‘An escaped lunatic, more like. No one who was even remotely normal could walk round in that ludicrous get-up.’ He snatched the telephone from its hook and dialled a number. ‘Klaus, there’s a chap dressed in black from head to foot wandering about the place if he owns it. Have him picked up and brought straight to me under escort.’
He laughed and rubbed his hands together as he replaced the receiver. Whoever this little black maniac was, they were going to have some fun with him. Captain Brockmann had something of a reputation in the Regiment as a wit and a wag, though he occasionally went too far for everyone’s liking. Only a month earlier he had succeeded in pushing Lt. Köhler to suicide. But nobody was likely to care what happened to this funereal nonentity creeping round the building with his rolled umbrella and his stooped shoulders.
Borckmann rang up one or two of his particular friends amongst his fellow officers and invited them along to the party.
The intruder was stopped in the
corridor by a Feldwebel and taken down to Brockmann’s office. He went without a murmur, only a twisted smile on his lips and a gleam of anticipation in his diamond-bright eyes.
Brockmann was waiting for him, legs straddled, hands on hips, while his friends lolled about in easy chairs and smoked and prepared to watch the fun.
‘Well?’ bawled Brockmann, swaying forward slightly on the balls of his feet so that his boot leather creaked. ‘What the devil do you think you’re doing, wandering about the barracks as if they’re a public amusement park? Civilians aren’t allowed on the premises without a special pass . . . and even if they’ve got a special pass they’re expected to show it to the sergeant on duty and not just stroll in without so much as a by your leave.’ He swayed a bit more, until he was creaking all over like a sail boat at sea. ‘Are you deaf and dumb or something? Why didn’t you reply when the sergeant asked to see your papers?’
The civilian stood with bowed head, looking down with interest at the floor. Brockmann took his riding crop from the desk and brought it lashing down against the side of a boot. He then held it behind his back, rocking back and forth on his heels and swishing the crop gently to and fro so that his spurs jingled. As he did so, he sucked industriously at a hollow tooth and rolled a comical eye at his fellow officers. They grinned encouragingly as they smoked their cigarettes.
‘Do you realize I could have you locked up and left to rot – and no questions asked? An old black crow like you, you could be dangerous. For all I know you’ve got your pockets stuffed full of time bombs, eh? Planning to blow up the whole barracks . . .’
The civilian looked up. He stared mildly into Brockmann’s face, and his expression was far-away and calculating, as if this present moment were of no concern whatsoever and he was deliberating upon more important matters.
Brockmann jerked his riding crop at the big black umbrella.
‘Have you got a licence for that thing?’
‘Of course not, the chap’s a saboteur!’ declared Lt. Berni, stubbing out his cigarette and coming across to have a closer look. ‘Sticks out a mile. Traditional saboteur’s outfit, that.’
Everyone laughed. They began circling round the man, examining him from all angles, noting the greenish sheen of his bowler, the sunken neck and the rounded shoulders, the ridiculously long overcoat and the enormous gloves that hung puppetlike from the sleeves.
‘Do him good to be in the Army,’ declared Lt. Reichelt. ‘See a bit of action, get some of that tension out of him.’
Not that Reichelt had ever seen any action. Before the war he had been a wine and spirit merchant, and now he bought his safety with cognac and champagne. Reichelt was having a good war. He had built up a reputation as a ladies’ man, and he never ran less than three mistresses at a time, discarding them all after a few weeks and finding himself three new delights.
‘Brockmann, I think you ought to examine his papers,’ said Schmidt, who was the Commissary General and whose war was going as smoothly as Reichelt’s.
Instead of women, Schmidt had food. He lived for food. He not only ate it, he also stole it and sold it to a butcher in Lübeckerstrasse. The butcher in Lübeckerstrasse traded almost exclusively in food stolen from the barracks. Schmidt was not his only supplier.
‘You’ll probably find,’ added Schmidt, ‘that he’s lied his way out of military service. He ought at least to be in the Territorials. You’d like that,’ he told the impassive civilian. ‘Do you no end of good.’
The man remained silent. Schmidt wrinkled his brow in perplexity.
‘You don’t think the chap’s touched in the head, do you?’
There was a rap on the door and before anyone could say ‘come in’ it had been opened and an SS Unterscharführer had entered the room. He was big and brutish and well over six feet tall. On his sleeve were the letters SD: on his kepi, pushed carelessly to the back of his head, gleamed a silver death’s head. He ignored Brockmann and walked straight up to the civilian. He saluted smartly.
‘Heil Hitler, Standartenführer! We’ve just had a message from the RSHA over the car radio. Said to pass it on to you immediately, sir . . . Number 7 command has just completed operations successfully.’
The Standartenführer nodded his head, as if well satisfied. His eyes glittered behind his spectacles.
‘Very well, Müller. Tell them that I want the prisoners to be held in the strictest secrecy. No one is to interrogate them before I arrive. I’ll be with you in a moment.’
Müller saluted again and left the room. The civilian turned to the assembled officers.
‘I thank you, gentlemen, for the entertainment. It has been most enlightening . . . I have to be going now, but I feel sure we shall meet again . . . Heil Hitler!’
He followed Müller from the room. The officers looked at one another apprehensively, no longer so sure of their own omniscience.
‘What the hell was all that about?’ demanded Brockmann. He strode across to the door, opened it and shouted. ‘Sergeant!’
‘Yes, sir?’
‘Find out who that man was and let me have the answer within five minutes if you don’t want to end up in trouble.’
‘Yes, sir.’
Brockmann came back into the room and laid down his riding crop with a hand that was not quite so assured as it had previously been. Schmidt licked his lips.
‘Gestapo?’ he suggested, nervously.
From the silence, he knew that he was right. It had to be the Gestapo. Schmidt wiped a plump pink hand over his brow and felt a sudden constriction across the chest. There were some sausages and some cases of ham, Italian haricot beans and one or two other little bits and pieces that he had been hoarding up, ready for the butcher in Lübeckerstrasse . . . and with the Gestapo on the premises, one never knew . . . one never felt quite safe . . .
Muttering his excuses beneath his breath, Schmidt left the room and hurried on trembling fat legs to his own department. Within a matter of moments the whole depot had been turned upside down, as Schmidt’s staff dropped whatever they had been doing and rushed to carry out new orders. Twenty minutes later, two trucks left the barracks full to overflowing with ham and haricot beans. They were deposited in a safe place with Schmidt’s opposite number in an artillery regiment, and the whole operation cost Schmidt several pounds in weight and nineteen cases of champagne. The nineteen cases of champagne cancelled out all the profit he would make on the ham.
Not everyone in the barracks knew that the Gestapo had been there. And even amongst those who had heard rumours, not everyone flew into a blind panic. A certain Obergefreiter, supposed to be on guard duty at the time, was even chatting quite amiably with the driver of the Mercedes. They were discussing business together, and had been doing so ever since the Standartenführer had entered the building.
‘Well, come on!’ urged the SS driver. ‘Out with it! How much do you want for the—’ He glanced round suspiciously and lowered his voice. ‘For them?’ he substituted.
On his right sleeve he wore a white armlet with the letters RSHA.
‘They’re worth quite a bit,’ said Porta. ‘How much are you prepared to offer, that’s more to the point?’
The man hesitated. A crafty expression appeared in his eyes.
‘A thousand?’
He plunged a hand deep into his pocket and came out with a bundle of notes. Porta laughed in his face.
‘You lost your marbles?’ he jeered. ‘What do you think this place is, a bleeding charity home? A thousand! You must be joking!’ He pushed back his helmet, settled his rifle more comfortably and pushed both hands into his pockets. ‘You know, nobody ain’t forcing you to buy the goods,’ he said, kindly. ‘I mean, you don’t HAVE to have them if you don’t want ’em . . . I only offered ’em to you on account of I thought you might be smart enough to handle ’em. No good letting an amateur get his mits on them, he wouldn’t know how to get rid of ’em and like as not he’d land us all in trouble. But being as you’re obviously a chap what kno
ws his way around . . .’
‘Look, I could get the bleeding things for free if I really wanted ’em that bad!’
The driver turned and spat contemptuously upon the memorial for the glorious dead of the first world war.
‘How do you reckon that?’ sneered Porta. ‘I wasn’t born yesterday, mate, it’s no good thinking you can take me for a ride!’
And by way of retaliation he took a hand from his pocket, bent over the Mercedes and vigorously blew his nose on the SS flag which fluttered from the bonnet of the car.
The SS man pretended not to have seen. He simply turned and spat for the second time on the glorious dead of the 76th Infantry Regiment.
‘Seems to me,’ he said, ‘seems to me you don’t know who I am or who I work for.’ His chest swelled out as he spoke. His face glowed with simple pride. ‘That’s my boss that’s gone in there just now. Gone to speak to your CO, he has.’
‘So what?’ said Porta, coldly.
‘So you’ll change your tune a bit when I tell you who he is. I reckon you’ll be so shit scared you’ll give me your precious fags for free.’ The SS man smiled unpleasantly and held out his right arm, displaying the letters RSHA for Porta to see. ‘I can be bought – at a price,’ he admitted. ‘Say, twelve pipes of opium?’
‘Bought?’ Porta leaned forward and spat on the SS flag. ‘Why the hell should I want to buy a creep like you?’
‘Silence, pal. You don’t buy me, you buy my silence.’
‘Sod that for a laugh!’ Again Porta spat. The swastika pennant, flying so bravely a few moments ago, was beginning to sag under the weight of so much moisture. ‘You can keep your flaming silence! You think I care two hoots for an idiot like you?’
The SS man curled up his top lip in a self-satisfied sneer. He felt very sure of himself. He leaned out through the window of the Mercedes.
‘You’d better care, that’s all I can say . . . Because if you don’t watch your step you’re liable to land yourself in real hot water . . . My chief is none other than Standartenführer Paul Bielert!’
A note of triumphant reverence entered his voice as he pronounced the name. His eyes blazed with the devout fervour of a missionary telling a bunch of habitual drunkards about Jesus Christ.