by Sven Hassel
When quite ordinary young soldiers begin killing,
it is very difficult to stop them.
Killing had become an everyday occurrence to us. There was no weapon we were not experts in the use of. From the garrotting wire, to heavy machine-guns and cannon. Most of us could also kill with our hands alone. A sharp blow with the edge of the hand. Two stiff fingers. At the age of twenty we were already older than our seventy-year old grandfathers. We knew more about life and death than they had learnt in all their years of life. We never passed a body without putting a bullet into its head. A grenade always went through the door before we entered a house. We were bereft of every illusion for always and forever. Nothing could surprise us. We had experienced far too many psychic shocks. Our normal emotional life had been shattered by hundreds of treacherous ambushes, by sudden artillery attacks. Rape amused us. Particularly if we were a whole company with only one woman. We took what we could get. We hadn’t much time, and death was always close beside us.
1Panzerfaust: Bazooka.
2See ‘March Battalion’.
3Wenn alle etc.: When all others are unfaithful,
4Pallkóvnik: Colonel.
5Morgenrot etc. Rosy morn, rosy morn, light me to an early death.
6Zu mir etc: (freely):
7Berlin etc Berlin, Berlin, now we meet again. . . .
6
Eighty Per Cent
‘Sally’s in Berlin’, shouts Porta, happily, ‘and he’s at GHQ!’
‘The War Ministry,’ the Sanitäts-Feldwebel corrects him.
‘Even better!’ Porta grins like a Cheshire cat. ‘It’s what I’ve always said. If God loves you, the sun is always shining! Sally in Berlin! Sally at the War House! This is the kind of thing that strengthens a man in his faith!’ He laughs, loud and long. The Chief Medical Officer, an Oberst, enters the ward, at the head of his staff, at that precise moment.
‘You seem to be recovering at a most wonderful rate,’ comments the CMO, rapping Porta’s chest with his stethoscope. ‘Yesterday you were totally paralysed, with a burning fever! I’d like you to tell me more about this lightning cure you seem to have achieved in the course of one night. It might be of use to me in the future, when treating other hopeless cases!’
‘Sir, Oberst, sir!’ smiles Porta, happily. ‘It seems to have happened to me, sir, like it says in the Bible, sir! With the fellow in Palestine, sir. And Jesus said, sir, “take up thy bed and sod off”. And off went the crippled chap with his fartin’ bag on his shoulder!’
‘It does seem as if it must have been some occurrence of that nature,’ says the CMO, drily. ‘We’d better discharge you, straight away, to the convalescent battalion. Let you get a bit of healthy exercise.’
‘Beg to report, sir! Obergefreiter Creutzfeldt there, sir! He’s also become cured in the course of one night. All the pains in his back have disappeared.’
Tiny shakes his head furiously behind the CMO’s back, and throws up his arms in bewilderment. He doesn’t understand a word of it. The plan was to drop anchor in the Berlin Hospital until the end of the war.
‘It’s good to hear that Creutzfeldt has also been struck by this case of acute health!’ smiles the CMO, sarcastically. ‘Then we’d better let him go as well! We’ll discharge you both to convalescent battalion!’
‘Beg to report, sir,’ crows Porta. ‘We are soon to be posted to special duty at the War Ministry, sir!’
‘I’ll believe it when I see it,’ answers the CMO, with a short laugh. ‘In any event you both go to the convalescent shop.’ He points to the crutches leaning against the bed. ‘Hand those in to the stores. Anybody can see you won’t be needing them anymore.’
‘Dummy,’ whispers the orderly to Porta, as he checks them out.
‘Think so?’ laughs Porta, slily. ‘In a couple of days time you’d give your arse to swop with us! We’ll be lying back in the War Minister’s chair despatching Generals and coolies hither an’ yon, as we feel the urge!’
It is a noisy reunion, when Porta and Tiny, after negotiating countless check-points, reach Oberfeldwebel Sally’s office in War Ministry Department A.W.A.1
‘This is nice,’ cries Tiny, overwhelmed, hopping up and down on a springy sofa.
Porta lounges in a deep armchair with a large cigar in the corner of his mouth. He opens his uniform at the throat and pulls his cap down over his left eyebrow. This is the way he likes to sit. Makes a man look as if he was somebody, he believes.
‘What about a drop of something to wash the hospital bacteria out of your throats?’ suggests Sally, taking a bottle from a cupboard marked GEHEIME KOMMANDOSACHEN.2
‘With the greatest of pleasure,’ answers Porta, puffing out a great cloud of smoke. ‘Might just as well fill the glass right up while you’re about it. Don’t want you over-exerting yourself having to fill ’em up all the time!’
They toast one another, bowing arrogantly from the hips in officer fashion. They are, after all, at the War Ministry.
Porta takes the whole glass down in one, and licks out the glass afterwards.
‘I hear you had a lot of fun with that wildcat I sent you3’ laughs Sally, heartily. ‘What about another one? I’ve got two vicious bastards in stock, and you can take ’em over anytime, if you want to teach a “friend” a lesson!’
‘No more wildcats,’ protests Tiny, in horror, showing the scars of his meeting with the first one.
‘You must post us immediately to special service,’ says Porta, seriously, pushing forward his glass for a refill. ‘We’ve got one leg in Russia, already.’
‘Can do,’ considers Sally, confidently. ‘What branch would you like?’
‘Sittin’ plannin’ somethin’ or other with you, an’ drinkin’ Slivovitz,’ suggests Tiny. He breaks out into a great roar of laughter.
‘What about HDv,’ asks Sally, ‘nice and comfy there. No dangerous Valhalla aspirants, longing for the thunder of warfare.’
‘What’s HDv?’ asks Porta, suspicious as always.
‘Heeresdruckvorsckriftenverwialtung4’, explains Sally, with a superior air.
‘One of those places where they eat regulations raw, and send ’em out again fast as a turn ’o the shits after Christmas,’ nods Porta, understandingly. ‘Sounds just right for us. Put us on the payroll quick as you can, so we can start fucking up the plans soonest. I am greatly worried,’ he goes on, leaning forward confidentially across the desk, which is about the size of a helicopter landing space. ‘There are some people here in Berlin who think they can piss on me. Just because I have been engaged for a while in Russia looking after the progress of this bloody war. I’ve been sniffing about a bit, and have discovered, to my great sorrow, that nobody gives a shit for me anymore. They laugh at me, and spit on my boots. Even in “Greedy Minna’s” knocking shop they pretended not to know me. Minna got a pain in her gut laughing when I reminded her I had 80% due. She was fresh enough to demand payment in advance if I wanted to get across one of her skull-faced whores. So now I’ve reached the stage where a man can only drink and fuck, and get depressed in between times. Until I heard you were back in Berlin and that brought my pecker up again. Before then I was already standing on a chair with the noose round my neck.’
‘You made the biggest mistake of your life, when you turned down my offer of the job of keeper of the files at Paderborn Command,’ says Sally. ‘You’d rather drive a tank. More fun it was, you said.’
‘I didn’t know then that Grofaz was going to get me mixed up in a war,’ Porta excuses himself.
‘But he did,’ smiles Sally, ‘and off you went, together with all the other dopes, into the fiery rain of shells. Those few of us who kept our heads cool remained behind to weather the much less dangerous rain of documents and typewriters. We’re keeping business going as usual until one day peace breaks out and a new sun shines down on us.’
‘I was foolish,’ admits Porta, sadly, taking a critical look at himself in the mirror behind the desk. ‘Get yourself sorted
out, Porta!’ he barks at his mirror image. He twists his head, so that with an effort he can see himself in profile. ‘You look clever enough,’ he nods to his mirror image, with an air of satisfaction. ‘Those limp pricks’ll find out all right that taking the arse of an 80% man don’t go unpunished.’
Oberfeldwebel Sally leans back smilingly in his swivel chair.
‘Did you know, by the way that “Egon the Poof’s” pinched your pitch? He’s going round telling the world you’re nothing but a cleaned-out rabbit’s head, stuffed with sauerkraut, and if you’re lucky enough to get back from the front he’s going to see to it you get deported to a cowshit-stinking hole in South Bavaria, where the entire population consists of village idiots.’
‘Jesus,’ exclaims Tiny, with pretended fear. He claps his hands over his head, which is quite difficult since he is lying flat on his belly on the carpet. ‘It was time we left Adolf to look after ’is war ’imself, so we could straighten up on the home front!’
‘Well hell,’ cries Porta, indignantly. ‘That’s a pretty coarse kind of joke coming from that poof, a pretty coarse joke. Unless it was an attempt to commit suicide, or something very personal of that kind.’
‘Let’s go out now an’ do ’im up with a sandbag,’ suggests Tiny.
‘Don’t rush things, now, and you won’t risk doing something you might regret,’ warns Sally, filling up their glasses again. ‘Take a leaf out of my book. You can see it pays dividends. Always proceed according to a well-thought out plan of action.’
Porta looks thoughtfully out of the window. His eyes follow a loaded barge sailing slowly up the Landwehr Kanal with a fat woman at the rudder and a thin one on watch at the bow.
‘Egon’s a dirty bastard,’ he declares, viciously, banging his fist on the window ledge. ‘I’ll shoot the sod straight through the heart and blow it to pieces. He’ll be dead before he knows it.’
‘I know some people, who now and again like to dress up as parsons,’ says Sally, mysteriously. He lights a large Brazilian cigar, and blows a cloud of smoke across the desk.
‘In vestments?’ asks Porta, not understanding. He sinks into the armchair. ‘Some of that holy clobber they climb into when they want to have an intimate chat with Jesus and God?’
‘Parsons’ walking clothes,’ says Sally, pleasedly, puffing strongly at his cigar, ‘Those fellows know what they want. They carry the Book of Moses in their left hand, and look holy when they come out into the light. Jesus knows all about you, they say when you meet them, and then they pull a “soul-remover” out of their holy uniform, and everything’s over in under a minute. Their fee’s 33⅓% of everything they collect!’
‘How does a fellow meet those boys?’ asks Porta, interestedly.
‘They’re not any of these spaghetti-eating Eyetie sods, are they? Never see any chips they collect!’
‘Absolutely not,’ laughs Sally, heartily. ‘They’re tougher. Wicked men from Berlin/Moabitt. Good friends of mine!’
‘How good friends?’ asks Porta, filled with healthy suspicion.
‘Good enough to meet you, if I ask ’em to,’ smiles Sally, slily, showing a row of beautifully white teeth with gold edges.
‘You’ve a good dentist,’ sighs Porta, enviously, sucking at his only remaining tooth. Which is, also, black.
‘I do,’ answers Sally. ‘Lives just round the corner in Prinz Albrecht Strasse.’
‘I suppose he’s S.S. Heini’s dentist too?’ asks Porta, with a lop-sided smile.
‘You’re right,’ answers Sally, with a happy laugh. ‘I found a couple of blots on his family escutcheon, while I was running through some old documents from the Weimar days. So I never have to make an appointment, and I never get a bill either!’
‘Watch out they don’t hang you one day,’ warns Porta, darkly. ‘I wouldn’t let an SS-man fix my teeth! When all this world war piss’s over, it could be they found out the gold in your teeth came out of a Jew’s jaw’n the bloke who owned it before had gone up the chimney in smoke!’
Sally laughs, loudly and heartily, and passes a hand down over his elegant tailor-made uniform. ‘You two’ll have been knocked off by the liberators and your bodies pecked to bits by the crows, before anybody even thinks about me. And by then I’ll have become irreplaceable. They’ll need some “clean” Germans to kick last year’s heroes in the backside!’
‘And you think they’ll use you for that?’ smiles Porta, with an air of overbearance. ‘They’re not that silly!’
‘I don’t just think so, I know so,’ boasts Sally, with self-confidence, pushing a button under his desk. ‘But let’s get down to your business, so that we can tear the heads off the villains who’re bustling about on your territory.’
There is a cautious knock on the door. A dry-looking Gefreiter, wearing an unhappy expression on a face decorated with gold-rimmed, schoolmasterish spectacles, edges nervously into the large office. He makes a hopeless attempt at clicking his heels in military fashion. It sounds more like a sick hen tap-dancing in a bowl of lukewarm water than a German soldier coming to attention.
Sally leans back in his chair, and regards the Gefreiter commandingly. The man stands stiffly in front of the desk, with doggily devoted eyes, awaiting orders.
‘Listen to me closely, Lange. I am making you responsible for ensuring that Unteroffizier Hartnacke is present in “The Three-legged Goose” at 18.00 hrs., and that he has with him his special equipment. Two Obergefreiters from the panzer arm will contact him.’
‘Very good, sir!’ pipes Gefreiter Lange, again attempting to click his heels.
‘Oh hell, man,’ groans Sally, resignedly. ‘You’ll never learn it! Look at your arms, how they flop around! Get those thieving fingers along the seams of your trousers! Elbows forward, and tighten the cheeks of your arse! Your arms hang down as if you were getting into position to scratch your backside! I think I’ll do it, after all. I’ll send you off to brother Ivan. Perhaps he can teach you how a soldier stands to attention. You’re a nothing, a cow of a man. What are you then, Lange?’
‘Beg to report, sir, Gefreiter Lange is a nothing, and a cow of a man, sir!’
‘Get out of here,’ commands Sally, flicking his hand at him as if he were knocking a fly off a piece of bread and jam!
Gefreiter Lange backs away, and, of course, falls over the threshhold. Sweating profusely he gets to his feet, bows in a civilian, unmilitary manner, and closes the door cautiously behind him.
‘Jesus’n Mary, what a circus clown,’ sighs Tiny from down on the floor. He hands up his tumbler for a refill. ‘What we sorely-tried Prussians have to put up with in these times of war.’
‘He was a professor at some university or other down south, before we got him,’ explains Sally, in a pleased voice. ‘After he’d nearly wiped out a whole company on the firing range they sent him to me. He’s completely useless as a soldier, but he’s good with erasers and pencils and things like that.’
‘It’s nice to have people like that around, sometimes,’ admits Porta. ‘A couple of words removed, in the right place, from a black document, can soon turn it into a welcome communication.’
Shortly after six o’clock in the evening Porta and Tiny sneak into ‘The Three-legged Goose’, where Unteroffizier Hartnacke is already enthroned at the bar with a large bowl of mixed salad and garlic sauce in front of him.
Tiny takes two bar-stools, as usual.
‘One for each cheek,’ he says to the sour-faced barmaid, laughing noisily. She looks plump, but only because she is wearing a dress which is too small for her.
They pour a shot of Slivovitz into their beer.
‘Good for the humour nerve, this is,’ grins Porta, emptying his glass in one long, gurgling draught.
‘Another?’ asks the barmaid, in an insulted tone. She pokes about in her hair with a fork, then rolls it up, together with a knife, in a paper serviette, and lays it by the side of a guest’s plate.
‘If you ask every time, you’ll soon get ‘
oarse,’ remarks Tiny, in friendly fashion.
Porta turns and winks at the large man. ‘I hear, you can do a quick job without making a lot of noise about it,’ he says.
‘They call me “Happy Release”,’ answers Hartnacke, laconically, shovelling garlic sauce into his mouth, as if he were pitching hay.
‘And nothing ever goes wrong?’ asks Porta, with healthy suspicion.
They go off quickly, the people you look after? Like, very quickly, without even having time to say toodle-oo?’
‘I was born in Chicago,’ says Hartnacke, proudly. ‘My mother’s from Palermo. My father was sent back again to Greece. You can guess the rest.’
‘Jesus’n Mary!’ cries Tiny, enthusiastically. ‘That sounds really promising.’
‘What’s your M.O.?’ asks Porta, professionally. ‘I’ve heard something about dressing up like a parson. Hallelujah! The Lord be with you! All that kind of thing?’
‘You buyin’?’ asks Hartnacke, pushing forward his empty glass.
Porta gives the barmaid the international ‘fill-em-up-again’ sign.
‘See here,’ whispers Hartnacke, in a conspiratory voice, slapping a large parcel which lies beside him on the bar. ‘When one of God’s chosen walks in people are usually friendly and just a little bit uncomfortable. Even the worst villains don’t go for a parson straight away. Another big advantage, when the job’s over, is that the bulls from Alex5 are runnin’ round lookin’ for a Holy Joe and not a plain German Unteroffizier.’
‘Do these Kripo creeps do much about the kind of small jobs people like us do?’ asks Porta, looking searchingly at the mottled picture of Hitler hanging behind the bar.
‘Not really,’ Hartnacke admits, wiping up the last of his garlic sauce with a piece of bread. ‘They chase about a bit for the sake of appearances, but they’re too busy with saboteurs, an’ political criminals who’re against Austria takin’ over dear old Germany, to bother much with us. An’ if some zealous bastard does stick his long nose out too far, then War Minister Sally pushes one of his row of buttons, an’ before the bloke knows where he is he’s findin’ a new use for his energy chasin’ dangerous guerillas in the Polish forests. We’re all right long as we keep away from politics. If, now, you should want a Gauleiter sent to heaven with a stick of gelignite up his jacksey, don’t come to me! It creates problems. The Alex boys just come burstin’ out. from every openin’ in the buildin’ and they do not desist from their efforts until they find somebody they can persuade to confess.’