Guns At Cassino

by Leo Kessler

  `I have a nice little blonde,' she said carefully. 'Only fourteen – hardly been touched. Or a dark-haired one? You Tedeschi like them dark - '

  `I want all of 'em,' the red-faced Schulze bellowed. 'Capisce – all of 'em!' He leaned forward and thrust an experimental hand up the Madame's skirt.

  Pushing him aside irritably, the Madame clapped her plump, beringed hands.

  ‘Ragazzi,' she called, 'customers.'

  They came in swaying and simpering on their high heels, clad in their multi-coloured transparent crêpe de chine lingerie. The Madame's vast bosom seemed about to burst out of its tight black silk cage with pride.

  `My girls,' she announced proudly, as they lined up in front of Schulze.

  `Well, I'll go and piss up my sleeve,' Schulze breathed. 'All that meat and no potatoes! Now they're really something. All right, Mother, I'll have her,' he indicated a ripe blonde in black lace cami-knickers, 'and the one with the tits under her chin. Give me that box of Parisians there.' He picked up the box of contraceptives. 'We Prussians like to keep our powder dry, you know?' He patted the blonde on her plump, black-lace bottom. `All right, you and your friend get yourselves upstairs and in between the sheets, ready for Daddy. But don't waste any of it before I come up.

  He turned to the Madame.

  `And now, madame, your high-class establishment is going to have the honour of an unofficial visit from the new NCO Corps of the Wotan Battle Group.' Before the fat Italian brothel-owner could react, he had pulled out his NCO's whistle and blown a shrill blast, the signal for the drunken, unkempt men waiting outside. The noise of their heavy, nailed dice-beakers, as they stampeded up the stone stairs, thundered like a herd of wild bulls.

  A drunken corporal, his tunic torn open, his cap missing, his face covered in two days' growth of beard, dived in through a window. Ignoring the shower of smashed glass and Madame's shrieks, he inquired anxiously:

  `Got it all laid on, Sergeant?’

  `Yes!' yelled Schulze, as they came smashing through the door, sending a flower vase flying, ripping down the heavy velvet curtains of the entrance, stumbling over the chairs, `there's cunt for everybody.'

  `But you didn't pay for this lot!' the Madame screamed.

  `What's good enough for one Wotan man is good enough for them all.'

  `Those men are not fit enough to fuck a pig - never mind my girls,' bellowed Madame Rosa furiously.

  Without another word Schulze rammed his big docker's hand between her plump legs and lifted her on to his shoulder.

  `Those lads, Rosa, are the best in the world - they deserve the best.' He heaved her to a more comfortable position. 'Come on, your old bones are going to be rattled this afternoon. Be happy you're going to get a bit of something that other women pray for at night at their bedside. And if you're good, I won't put a bag over your head after all.'

  With the screaming, struggling Madame bouncing up and down on his shoulder, he ran up the stairs to the waiting whores, tears of laughter streaming down his cheeks.

  They paraded at the goods station just before midnight. The Führer's special train was already there, steam rising in a thin trail from its gleaming locomotive in the yellow light of the blacked-out lamps. The chain-dogs were everywhere, their silver plates around their necks, carbines slung over their shoulders, their eyes wary and hard as they watched the veterans form up. A couple of them bore the black eyes they had received in the confused fighting at Madame Rosa's when they had tried to get Schulze's party out by force. But there was no further need for their services. The steam had gone out of the Wotan men. Now they waited, exhausted, for their commander and the order to board the special train which the Führer had sent to bring back the survivors of his premier SS regiment.

  The chocolate-coloured pre-war Rolls-Royce of their CO's mistress drew up slowly at the exit. The black-suited chauffeur sprang out and opened the door for von Dodenburg. He turned to the woman nestled in the luxurious upholstery and they saw him touch his cap in farewell. Then he turned and marched stiffly to the waiting line of men. Schwarz clicked his heels together.

  `Parade - parade shun!'

  One hundred pairs of boots hit the concrete as one. They froze into rigid immobility. Schwarz swung round, strode five paces to where von Dodenburg was waiting. He halted and snapped to attention. His gloved hand touched his cap.

  `Beg to report respectfully - one officer, five NCOs and one hundred and two men of Battle Group Wotan on parade, Colonel!'

  `Thank you, Schwarz. Please tell the men to stand at ease.'

  `At your command, Colonel!'

  The dice-beakers smashed on to the concrete again. Von Dodenburg faced them in an echoing silence, broken only by the hiss of escaping steam. For a long moment, his blue eyes ran the length of their ranks. Their uniforms were shabby and stained with battle, but their chests were heavy with tin. Yet it wasn't the bronze and steel of their decorations which told him with a thrill of recognition and pride - that these men were the best National Socialists Germany could produce: the elite of the elite. It was their gaunt, fanatical faces. And they were his - to mould into a formation which would be invincible, whatever the odds.

  `Soldiers of Battle Group Wotan! Germans! Comrades!' he began, 'tonight we return to the Reich. Tomorrow we begin to train a new Wotan. Already the barracks are filling with our new recruits - the cream of the Hitler Youth, young and idealistic, volunteers to a man. You and I will train them in the glorious, heroic battle tradition of our formation, for which so many brave men have died.'

  He raised his voice. 'But the new Wotan will be different from the old one. It will be our regiment, an elite regiment run by and for us. Its only loyalty will be to Germany, the Führer and itself.' He paused to let his words take effect. 'When we return to Berlin, each and every one of you will become an NCO - my NCOs. All of you have fought and bled at my side. I know you all like a brother - you know me in the same way. We are comrades!'

  At the exit the chocolate-coloured Rolls had still not driven away. A chain-dog had tried to move it on. But a thousand Liri note hastily thrust into his fist by the pale hand through the rear window convinced him his effort was unnecessary. Lisa stayed.

  `Standard-bearer!' von Dodenburg rapped.

  The young corporal carrying the Wotan black silk Death's Head banner marched forward smartly.

  `Lower the standard!'

  Von Dodenburg turned his burning gaze on his men again. `Comrades, I want you - my non-commissioned officers corps - to swear this oath after me.'

  He took the black silk of the banner in his left hand and raised the first two fingers of his right aloft.

  `Repeat after me ... In the name of the Führer, in the name of the Third Reich, and in the name of Wotan.'

  The response came in a steady regular bass, sending the pigeons in the roof flapping wildly in alarm.

  `I swear that I shall fight to the death ... to keep our enemies from the Fatherland ... I swear to carry out every order I am given ... no matter what it may be.'

  Von Dodenburg waited, straight and proud, for the reply to die away. 'And if I betray this oath, I shall be executed as a traitor to my Fatherland, my Führer, my comrades and the Wotan.'

  `... my comrades and the Wotan,' a hundred harsh young voices repeated, while the watching chain-dogs stared at the haggard veterans, whom they had turfed out of Milan's red light district only a short hour ago.

  Von Dodenburg nodded to the young standard-bearer. He swung round, the skull fluttering in the faint breeze.

  `Captain Schwarz,' he called, 'mount up.'

  Behind him the impatient hiss of escaping steam grew louder. The driver had finished his last inspection. He swung himself into the cab. Slowly the chain-dogs began to drift back to their billets. There would be no more trouble from the Wotan this night. Up in the roof, the loudspeakers burst into metallic life:

  `Special train for Innsbruck, Munich, Dresden ...’

  One by one the survivors began to climb aboar
d.

  `Kuno!'

  Colonel von Dodenburg, watching his men embark, spun round. It was Lisa, her dark Italian eyes misted with tears, a bunch of wilting white narcissi in her hand.

  `Stay,' she said brokenly.

  He shook his head numbly. Behind him Schulze shouted at a big South Tyrolean farm boy who was trying to lug a looted parrot in a great gilt cage aboard.

  `Come on - haul ass! And what the hell do you want that vulture for anyway? Can't you see that it's a shitting Yid - with that curved conk?'

  `Screw you,' the parrot croaked.

  Slowly Lisa handed von Dodenburg the drooping white flowers.

  `Eh, la guerra. Quando finira?'

  `The war - when will it be over?' he repeated slowly. ‘For us of Wotan,' he said, 'it will be over when we are dead.' Gently he pressed the flowers back into her hand.

  The driver sounded his whistle. It echoed mournfully through the midnight station. Slowly the special train began to draw away from the platform. Without another word, Colonel von Dodenburg turned and doubled swiftly for his compartment. A door slammed. The steam wreathed the Italian girl. She stood there, frozen like a sad grey ghost as the train gathered speed. Window after window rattled by her. A pair of red rearlights. The lights vanished in the darkness. And she was alone on the platform. The men of Wotan were on their way north to fight a new battle. It was June 6th, 1944. They would never return to Italy.

  Chapter Notes

  One: Cassino

  1. The SS Regiment which bore the title of Bodyguard (transl.)

  2. East Mark, Nazi terminology for Austria. (transl.)

  Two

  1. Popular Germany Army card game (transl.)

  Chapter Three

  1. Soldiers' slang for money (transl.)

  Chapter Four

  1. Army slang for the Tedeschi, i.e. 'Germans' (transl.)

  Chapter Five

  1. SS slang for the Russian multiple mortar (transl.)

  2. The usual midday soup in the Wehrmacht, supposedly made from horsemeat (transl.)

  3. Kriecher is the German word for 'creeper' (transl. note)

  Chapter Six

  1. German Army slang for the jackboot (transl.)

  2. A castle in Westphalia, housing the tombs of several Saxon kings, which Himmler had restored because he believed he was descended from one of them.

  Chapter Seven

  1. The Hamburg red-light district (transl.)

  2. The reference is to Frederick the Great, the great Prussian king of the eighteenth century, who was Himmler's idol (transl.)

  Chapter Eight

  1. German Army slang term for a sailor (transl.)

  2. Parisian: Army slang for a contraceptive (transl.)

  3. Youths, mainly from the Hitler Youth, conscripted into the anti-. aircraft defences of most big German cities during the war (transl.)

  4. The feared Germany Army military prison (transl.)

  Chapter Nine

  1. Head of the Prussian Secret Police in the nineteenth century.

  2. The Prussian ruling house until 1918.

  Chapter Ten

  1. Rail Transport Office (transl.)

  2. Regular compulsory meetings for members of the Union of German Maidens which took place after school or work (transl.)

  3. Tough, working-class area (transl.)

  Eleven

  1. Concentration camp slang for the head (transl.)

  2. German Army slang for the three-engined Junkers 52 transport plane (transl.)

  Chapter Twelve

  1. Leo Kessler: Claws of Steel for further details.

  Thirteen

  1. German Army slang for a hopeless mission (transl.)

  Fourteen

  1. Gen. Clark's Chief-of-Staff (transl.)

  2. Contemptuous SS name for a Catholic priest (transl.)

  Fifteen

  1. A modified bren-gun carrier (transl.)

  Seventeen

  1. In the SS, NCOs were saluted (transl.)

  Eighteen

  1. SS slang for jackboot (transl.)

  2. See Leo Kessler: SS Panzer Battalion for further details.

  3. A thick, long burning candle, first invented in World War II and named after FM Hindenburg (transl.)

  Nineteen

  1. Yiddish for 'crazy', commonly used in the SS (transl.)

  2. Typical SS defensive position (transl.)

  Twenty

  1. Forward Observation Post (transl.)

  If you enjoyed Guns at Cassino you might be interested in Schirmer’s Headhunters by Leo Kessler, also published by Endeavour Press.

  Extract from Schirmer’s Headhunters by Leo Kessler

  Introduction

  They were the survivors of the SS Assault Regiment Wotan. Together they had survived the savagery of the Russian front. Now they have to face death again in the jungles of Indo-China, fighting a bitter war for France in the Foreign Legion.

  Ex-SS Colonel Schirmer and his battle-scarred crew of “Headhunters” are pitched into vicious combat as the Foreign Legion is ordered into Massacre Valley. Their mission: to seek and destroy Ho Chi Minh’s dreaded kamikaze elite, the Death Volunteers. But as the carnage mounts, Schirmer’s Headhunters begin to fear they are the hunted — not the hunters.

  Part One: Massacre Valley

  Chapter One

  Colonel Schirmer thrust his camouflaged kepi to the back of his big, scarred, shaven head and stared down at the terrain below. In the fading light there wasn’t much to see.

  Two bare ridge-lines, almost parallel, were sticking up barren and brown through the usual lush-green canopy of Indo-Chinese tropical jungle. Running north to south, a little closer together at the northern end, they marked the boundaries of the twenty-kilometre-long valley in which his Headhunters — of the Foreign Legion’s Special Para Battalion — would soon commence their march into the unknown.

  Involuntarily, the big ex-SS colonel with the bold scarred face, tanned a deep leathery-brown by the tropical sun, shivered despite the wet heat. In the last eight years since he and his bunch of renegade SS paras had been forced into fighting France’s dirty war in Indo-China for her, he had flown over thousands of similar canopies but he had never been able to throw off the ominous feeling of dread whenever they approached a new one.

  There were always the same old questions to which there were no answers, save those written in hot blood. What did the jungle hide? How many unfriendly brown Slant-eyes were watching the fleet of choppers pass at this very moment? Who or what was responsible for those faint wisps of grey smoke at the far end of the long, narrow valley? And what was waiting for them down there in what the awed, frightened, Frog stubble-hoppers were now beginning to call “Massacre Valley”?

  “Massacre Valley,” Schirmer licked his suddenly dry lips and mouthed the name silently to himself as the fleet of choppers began to come down, their radios already crackling noisily. The name was appropriate enough. Twice in the last month, battalion-strength strike forces of the French Army had crossed the Red River and had marched north into the valley below, heading for the war-torn country’s frontier with China. Their objective had been to find out what the Chinese-supported Viet Minh rebels were up to. Uncle Ho had not staged a single major action against the Frogs since Christmas, 1953. Now it was February, 1954, and the monsoon season was only three months away, when all ops would have to cease. And twice the Frog stubble-hoppers had disappeared somewhere down there without trace.

  “Merde, alors!” one-armed Colonel Mercier, the Legion’s political adviser and France’s secret strong-man in Indo-China, had cursed at his last briefing for the mission. “Nearly two thousand men cannot disappear without trace, Schirmer! Impossible!”

  The plump, red-faced, cunning-eyed Frenchman had glared at the big, bronzed German whose camouflaged blouse bore no decoration or badge of rank save the cloth wings of a Legion para and the tarnished silver runes of the SS and spluttered, “The legs” — he used the Legion’s
contemptuous term for the Infantry — “are shitting their drawers in fear. Massacre Valley they call the place.” He blew out his lips under the trim military moustache in Gallic disgust. “They’d rather shoot their officers in the back than go up there. But no matter, Schirmer, they won’t have to. Instead you’ll take your bunch of Boche cut-throats into the valley and find out what’s going on. What I — and the High Command pansies — want to know is what is so important about that damned bit of jungle that makes Uncle Ho want to take on two battalions of regular French troops while the whole of the delta, full of tempting targets, is left in peace. There is something going on up there in the north, Schirmer, mark my words — something shittingly well unpleasant.”

  “Schirmer!”

  The German colonel took his eyes off the jungle looming up ever larger and turned round.

  It was White Lightning, his American second-in command. Nature had played an evil trick on Washington Lee Lincoln Lightning, formerly of the US 101st Airborne Division before he had killed a superior officer and been forced to desert. His face, despite the lidless eyes, was straight from an Army recruiting poster — keen and hard, with a finely chiselled nose and a lean, tough jaw — perfect, save for one thing: from birth he had not had one single hair on his body. Lacking eyebrows, facial or body hair, he was completely and utterly bald — hence his nickname.

  “What is it, Major?” Schirmer snapped, forgetting Massacre Valley and Colonel Mercier abruptly.

  “Point ship just radioed no sign of enemy activity,” the American answered in his cool efficient manner. “If there are any gooks down there, they’re pretty well hidden.”

  “They always are, Major. Take the usual precautions. We go in at an angle to the smoke flare. No landing. All troopers to drop out at five metres, and warn everyone to look out for those damned punji sticks.”