by Sven Hassel
‘Prisoners latrine,’ answers the OGPU man, with a crooked smile. ‘We can’t manage one any better. We have our regulations, and we follow them. The prisoners are pigs. They are allowed to go to the latrine at certain specified times. This is not a luxury hotel. But they cannot wait for the proper defecation time. They shit in their cells. Then when they sit on the plank they fall asleep and fall down into the latrine. There they drown. It is not the fault of the jailers. We follow orders like other soldiers.’
‘Let’s drop him in the shit!’ suggests Porta, with a wicked smile.
‘Take him away,’ answers Oberleutnant Löwe, turning on his heel. ‘Let’s get out of here! We have no more to do here. We are a fighting unit, not jailers, either for one side or the other!’
Over at the great wings of the prison fighting is still going on fiercely.
‘Just like our lot,’ says Porta, pointing at a huge pale-blue sign which can be seen from all the prison buildings.
FOR OUR FATHERLAND, FOR STALIN
it says in large red letters. In slightly smaller black letters:
WE LIQUIDATE WITHOUT HESITATION
ALL ENEMIES OF THE PEOPLE
ALL IDLERS, ALL TRAITORS
On the wall of the great machine workshop, in yard-high letters, is written:
WORK IS THE GREATEST
PRIVILEGE AND BENEFIT
OF THE SOCIALIST STATE
‘Come! Forward! Over here!’ shouts the Old Man, signalling 2. Section to collect on him.
We throw outselves into cover under a long ramp.
‘We’re going through here,’ explains the Old Man. ‘Prepare the charges! These swine have barricaded themselves inside, and are using the prisoners for cover!’
A long, gurgling scream cuts him short. It is a woman. She is screaming with a horrible intensity, as if in her death agony, under terrible torture.
‘God preserve us,’ cries Barcelona, aghast. ‘What can they be doing to her?’
‘Pinching her with hot irons. That’s what the priests used to do in the old days,’ says Porta, drily, snapping his fingers.
The scream is cut off sharply, as if the woman had suddenly been gagged.
‘Let’s get it over with,’ orders the Old Man, his face hard. With an agile spring he is up on the ramps. Stooping he runs along it, followed by Gregor and the Legionnaire with the ammunition box full of explosives.
Tiny slings three or four of the heavy boxes up on to the ramp.
‘You too, teacher,’ he says, throwing him up after the boxes. ‘God ’elp you, you scraggy bleeder, if I catch you skulkin’! I’ll use you to pack the charges with, an’ send you straight into the arms o’ baggy-arsed Ivan!’
‘Why are you always chasing me?’ whines the schoolteacher. He tugs at one of the boxes, but cannot budge it.
‘Keep your mouth shut! Both when I’m talkin’ an’ when I’m thinkin’,’ Tiny cuts him short. ‘Take this pickaxe. Go an’ make a ’ole for the powder, you walkin’ son of a’ inkwell you. When I’m finished with you you’ll either be a corpse, or the best soldier in the German army an’ll goosemarch all the way back to that village school o’ yourn!’
‘Get on with it,’ shouts the Old Man, impatiently. ‘Five yards between charges. Heide, you connect up the cables!’
‘I’ll blow ’em!’ shouts Tiny, eagerly. He loves setting off explosions.
We work at feverish speed for the next half-hour.
‘Do you realise how thick these walls are?’ asks Barcelona. ‘They’re thicker than the walls of the fortress at Brest-Litovsk, and you wouldn’t call them stage decorations exactly!’
‘Can that crap!’ scolds the Old Man, irritably.
He pushes Tiny’s shoulder. The big fellow is intently pushing a triple charge into one of the holes.
‘There’s plenty of it,’ Tiny defends himself, pointing at the filled ammunition boxes. ‘Besides, what we use we don’t ’ave to carry back with us.’
‘You want to go up with it, seems,’ growls the Old Man, viciously. ‘We’re not packing toffees in there, you know. This is dangerous as hell!’
‘Ready,’ shouts Heide, strutting proudly back to the Old Man.
‘Let me!’ shouts Tiny, rushing to the pump, to which Gregor is connecting the last cables. ‘ ’Old on to your ’ats an’ your arse’oles, my sons. We’re gonna make bang-bang,’ he laughs gaily. He grasps the handle firmly with both hands and leaning all his weight on it presses it home.
The explosion clears the ramp. We feel the pressure of the mighty blast-wave all over our bodies. The crushing power of it knocks all the air out of our lungs. A 20 foot high wall crumbles in a shower of crushed stones and mortar. A few seconds later the entire outer wall goes down. The whole building seems to sway for a moment, and then collapses in upon itself. Two tall chimneys by the boiler house fall in over the women’s wing. The crashing seems to go on for ever; the dust cloud over the buildings to grow and grow.
There is a moment of complete silence. Flames shoot up from all sides, spreading with terrible speed. They look like a carpet being rolled out by a madman.
Walls fall. Great chunks of building material rain down.
‘You silly sods!’ curses a Feldwebel of engineers, wiping blood from his face. ‘In hell’s name! You haven’t left a rat alive in there. I’d shove off if I were you. That’d worry me!’
‘Jesus’n Mary,’ cries Tiny, getting up on to his knees. ‘That’s what I call a bang! The ’ole bleedin’ cage ’as gone for a burton! Be a bit ’fore they can ’ave it ready for the next lot o’ slaves, wunnit? The Prisoners Aid Association’ll give us a medal for this lot, in gratitude! Lord save us, what a loverly bang that was!’
Albert gets to his feet quite grey in the face, and lifts clenched fists above his head.
‘Red Front!’ he screams, idiotically.
‘Get on,’ orders the Old Man, rising to his feet. His Mpi is ready in his hands.
The flamethrower sections take the lead. Wherever there are fire-openings they send in a jet of flame.
I spring down, together with Porta, into the nearest defence post, and send the beam of my flashlight round the inside.
Everywhere charred bodies stretch fleshless hands out protectively in front of them. Many are nothing but shrunken mummies. The flamethrower has killed them in one fiery blast. Those who have not been hit directly look unnaturally large beside all the small mummies who have.
‘Cruel war’s quick war. Says so on the propaganda posters, anyway,’ says Porta. ‘But it’s a lie, like everything else in this war. This one’s the cruellest of the lot and it looks like being a hell of a long one.’
In a long, narrow yard, between two tall soot-blackened prison buildings, bodies lie in heaps.
‘Neck-shot, the lot,’ confirms Barcelona, turning a few of the bodies over with his Mpi.
‘It’s not true,’ cries Gregor, unbelievingly, bending down to look more closely at a body in tattered rags.
‘Too true it’s true,’ sighs Porta. ‘The OGPU boys have been busy getting rid of the unbelievers, with us liberators knocking on the door. Don’t need to have gone to detective school with the KRIPO’s to see what’s happened here. One in the neck! Little hole at the back and whole face blown off.’
Shots crack wickedly over on the other side of the building.
‘Our lot,’ explains the little Legionnaire, with an indifferent shrug. ‘SD Special Troops. They are blowing away all the commissars!’
We stop for a moment, and stare from between two burnt-out lorries. The long, chattering burst seems to last an eternity but it is really over in a few seconds. The lanky commissar’s body jumps about in the rain of bullets. First up into the air, then back down to the ground. His body still jerks spasmodically, even when all life has been shot out of it.
A boyish Untersturmführer, his cap, with the skull badge, rakishly over one eye, goes over to the body and points a P-38 at the head. Three shots and the face is smashed t
o an unrecognisable pulp.
The prisoners, who are hanging out of the windows of the laundry, cheer and clap, mad with enthusiasm.
The next one is pushed out from a narrow doorway. He is an elderly, white haired man in khaki with the green OGPU shoulder straps. With fear in his eyes he stands against the wall. A chattering salvo knocks him to the ground.
The prisoners cheer and whistle, as a party of uniformed and half-uniformed men and women is pushed out of the laundry.
‘Come on! Come on!’ rages the young SD-officer, impatiently. ‘Let’s get this over with quickly!’
With butt-strokes and kicks they are chased over to the wall. They stare, apathetically, at the killers with the death’s-head emblem on their caps.
‘Fire!’ screams the SD-officer, mouth agape. The Mpi’s rattle their death-song. The sound echoes back and forth between the buildings.
A long, vicious burst of MG fire comes from a window on the top floor.
The Untersturmführer sinks down. The execution squad is thrown backwards, writhing in the slowly reddening snow. The machine-gun traverses, ploughing furrows in the laundry walls. Glass smashes. Prisoners are blown away from the windows, faces smashed in.
We get down behind cover, and crawl hurriedly away. None of our business.
The flames make crazy patterns on the sooty prison buildings.
As we move round the long store houses, we are stopped by the sound of concentrated fire from automatic weapons. Shrill screams of terror come from the isolated bathhouse.
‘Let’s take a look in there,’ orders the Old Man. ‘You and Sven first,’ he says to Porta, throwing a bag of grenades over to us.
Between the remains of broken-off trees we run towards the bathhouse. A figure rises up in front of me. Automatically I press the trigger, and a burst from my Mpi shatters his spine. He rolls over and over, arms and legs jerking.
Porta kicks the door, which flies open with a crash. A fat, little officer stares at us in amazement and fumbles confusedly for his Kalashnikov, which is lying on a table in front of him. A pistol bullet ploughs through his throat, sending his whole neck splashing back against the wall. His cap with its blue band rolls like a wheel across the floor, and settles softly alongside a heap of empty bottles.
I empty my gun in one long, concentrated burst, down a passage along which I more sense than see dark forms coming at us. The first shot from the Schmeisser hits the leader in the mouth. He falls without a sound. Our Mpi’s seem to run amok.
Two soldiers in ankle-length greatcoats are lifted into the air and thrown against the wall. They slide down it, and collapse into sobbing, bloody ragheaps.
Grenades whirl into a dark room. We take cover against the wall and sweep it with Mpi bursts.
The screams subside slowly to a hoarse rattle.
‘Get on,’ commands the Old Man, taking a Kalashnikov from one of the dead.
A long snarling salvo of machine-pistol bullets whips at us. Albert jumps high in the air, gives out a shrill war-whoop and throws a potato-masher grenade. A thunderous crack comes from the far end of the corridor, a blinding flash, and three twisted bodies lie on the floor.
‘Hell, man,’ he groans, holding his hands to his ears. ‘Was I shit-scared, man?’ He looks about him, with a lost expression, and lets himself go down slowly to the floor, which is covered with torn human remains and broken glass. ‘To hell with the whole rotten German Army,’ he moans.
‘Yes, one must admit you do seem to have got yourself into the wrong army, don’t you?’ laughs Porta, taking over the hand-grenades.
The fire, which no-one is fighting, has almost consumed the north wing of the women’s prison.
We approach the glowing ruin carefully. It looks ready to fall on our heads, at any minute.
Whole rows of bodies hang around the women’s wing, festooning it like horrible garlands, swinging and rotating in the air currents.
‘Business as usual despite all difficulties,’ says Porta. ‘Executed five minutes before closing time!’ He spits against the wind.
‘They should have kept in step and held their silly, bloody traps,’ says Gregor. ‘There they are, now. Swinging. What good were all their protests. No. Better to go with the current and let them think and talk who have been given the job. You live longer that way, and life’s short enough as it is.’
The fighting has almost ceased. From the main block the sound of automatic weapons and the sharp crack of grenades can be heard, sometimes broken by the thump of a mortar. But that’s not our job. That’s infantry and engineers’ work.
We sit on the floor in the kitchen block, together with a party of prisoners, and talk about methods of interrogation.
A sixteen year old boy, arrested straight from school and accused of counter-revolutionary propaganda, had lost an eye during interrogation. He describes his experience in a few words.
We look silently at his face. It is far too old for his years. His eyes seep pus. There are no doctors in transit prisons.
An elderly man shows us his crushed toes, sadly.
‘There’s, worse things,’ cries a woman, who has been shot through the knee-caps. She will never walk properly again.
‘We ought to shoot them jailers. The lot of ’em,’ says Tiny, decisively, playing with his triple-barrelled shotgun.
‘That’s what they’re doing,’ says Porta, pointing with his thumb towards the yard, from which Mpi bursts, and unintelligible screams, come continuously.
The schnapps which Porta has liberated from the Commandant’s cupboard is sweet and warms us beautifully.
A fat prison jailer, who was called ‘Hell’s Angel’ because he was a friend of the prisoners, is sitting back to front on a chair and singing:
A snowstorm is sweeping over the plain.
Behind it wanders my heart’s true swain. . . .
‘Soon as we got in that bathhouse, man, she was breathing down my neck and gnawin’ away at it,’ Albert tells us, with a happy grin. ‘Black men give me butterflies in the stomach, she says, an’ then she starts playin’ around with my balls!’
‘Jesus on the Cross!’ groans Tiny, his eyes wide, and scratching at his crotch. ‘Go on then! Keep talkin’!’
‘She takes off my summer tunic, then,’ Albert continues, ‘opens up my flies, an’ pulls the old boy out. He was standing up there, right on the tips of his toes.’
‘Don’t you let go of him, now, I says. You drop him, an’ I’ll get all my toes broken! Well, she was down there in no time, suckin’ away like a little ol’ filly-foal goin’ at its mammy’s teats. Then I swung her up on the bench, and climbed her. In that steamy old bathhouse, man! The bells were ringing so hard in our ears, we thought it was Sunday. There ain’t nothing like a Blitzmädel4, who don’t give a shit for the Führer and the final victory, but just wants to get fucked. When she fell asleep, off I went naked up to the convalescent huts. I met another of’em on the way, an’ man, we had it off up against a tree! Ice-cold birch tree, it was. It must’ve thought it was spring already ’cos it started buddin’ two months too soon. After that I thought I’d take a little rest, but dropped right off to sleep. Well, what woke me was somebody feelin’ me up, very gentle like. I opens my eyes an’ it’s two nurses from surgery. We made us up a nice little triangular tournament right on the spot. We done it German, French and Swedish, and we was just going on to Japanese when a staff doctor, with swastikas where his eyes ought to be broke up the party. I don’t know what they did to the two nurses but they declared me fit for duty on the spot. Then they threw me in the clink, charged with racial defilement an’ rape. They usually shoot a man for that! But that ol’ Kriegsgerichtsrat, an’ his two military judges, who sat on my case, they had a bit of difficulty when it comes to sayin’ “Heil Hitler!”. So, ’stead of shootin’ me full of holes, they gives me three months in Germersheim.’ Albert throws himself over backwards, roaring with laughter.
‘When I left Germersheim to go to Paderborn, I spent th
e night at a soldier resthouse, where I got talkin’ to two Navy girls. I was red an’ blue all over by the time those kids’d finished with me! They knew about massage, an’ they massaged me just ’bout everywhere a man can get massaged. One of ’em had her breasts hanging down over my face, swinging backwards’n forwards till I was near out of my mind. The other one chewed away at my balls till my ol’ man was that big he could’ve been used as a lighthouse any place on this earth. An’ just every time I was gonna come they’d stop me comin’ one way or the other. They was real professionals, them girls! When I finally did come it was if the sun and the stars and heaven’n hell an’ the whole fuckin’ earth fell down on my head!’
Stop it! Bleedin’ stop it!’ pants Tiny. ‘You’ll ’ave me out there takin’ the maiden’eads o’ the dead fuckin’ ’orses if you don’t!’
Porta pours boiling water on some coffee he has also found in the Commandant’s office. In the desk.
‘Coffee,’ mumbles a prisoner in a Lithuanian uniform, ‘where’d you get it?’
‘I have an uncle in Brazil,’ whispers Porta, confidentially. ‘He sends me a sack now and then.’
‘If only we’d got ’ere a bit earlier,’ says Tiny, glumly, looking through the smashed window.
On the far side of the broad yard a row of women are climbing up into lorries, for which a road has been cleared.
‘We could’ve had a good fuck, if we’d been quicker off the mark,’ grins Albert, salaciously, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.
‘You crazy or something? They’d’ve screamed and resisted us,’ says Gregor, with pretended horror.
‘Only makes it better,’ says Tiny, licking his frost-cracked lips.
‘The penalty for rape is death!’ snarls Heide, harshly. He straightens his belt and pistol holster.
‘Rape?’ Tiny laughs, noisily. ‘Nobody’s talkin’ about rape? We fuck ’em first, then we knock ’em off afterwards. That’s what you do in wartime.’
‘When they had me cuttin’ out paper dolls in Germersheim,’ puts in Albert, ‘I did hear about some of these war-stallions who’d fixed some women without asking. When they’d finished with ’em they put ’em all in a hut and fixed up some H.E. charges to give the girls a good send-off. That story got out an’ the watchdogs came and got them. Well, man!’ He throws out his hands expressively. ‘The next we saw of them was one morning when they got driven over to the Engineer Parade Ground to get the final kick in the arse. One-way!