Operation Iraq

by Leo Kessler

  Sergeant Schulze, who had led the handful of Wotan survivors to the safety of this remote Eifel farmhouse, where the animals lived under the same straw roof as the humans, had, however, forgotten the war for a time. As he was wont to say to his cronies in the Sergeants' Mess of SS Assault Regiment Wotan, "Life don't hold much for yer poor common-or-garden stubble-hopper, comrades, a little bit of firewater to gargle with and a drop of good Munich suds to wash it down." Here his wicked blue eyes always sparkled, "and then if yer really in luck, dancing the two-assed mattress polka with a big fine wench with plenty o' meat on her so that yer don't fall off the pit." And, to emphasize his point, he would let loose with one of his musical farts, celebrated throughout the SS NCO Corps.

  Now Sergeant Schulze was engaged in that same delightful activity – the 'mattress polka' – while his survivors kept watch on the snowy wastes to the east, the way they would come, if they ever did come.

  For two days now they had been in this farmhouse, inhabited solely by women, for their menfolk had long fled or had been swallowed up in the bloody maws of the war in Russia. It had been an ideal location for their, perhaps hopeless vigil. The place overlooked the sole remaining road through the minefields down from the Belgian Ardennes into the German Eifel hills. If the prisoners were to cross into the Reich in the north, Schulze had reasoned it would be here and any crossing could be easily observed from the shell-pocked, red-brick, poverty-stricken Eifel farmhouse perched on the hilltop to the left of the snowbound road.

  But for the moment the prisoners who might be coming their way were forgotten as Sergeant Schulze levered himself carefully onto the bed just in case the wooden structure collapsed under his weight and that of Irmgard, the oldest of the women on the farm and unfortunately the ugliest. Irmgard was fat and had the suspicion of a moustache under her large, usually dripping nose, which she wiped constantly with her manure-stained, big hands. Indeed, she was so fat that Matz had hinted darkly when it had become clear that one of them would have to 'pleasure' her as well, if they were going to keep enjoying the other, young farm maidens, "That bit o' beaver seems to be bigger every day that dawns. I swear somebody frigging well pumps her up at night, Schulzi!"

  Now it had fallen to Schulze by lot to 'pump her up', "But not with a frigging bicycle pump," as Matz had chortled with relief when it was clear that he had not been given that task.

  "I'm a virgin," she simpered as she removed her home-knitted woollen knickers to reveal the massive brown thatch below. "I've been saving myself for the right man, Sergeant Schulze!"

  Under his breath, a somewhat desperate Sergeant Schulze sighed, "Ay, saving yersen for so frigging long that you're beginning to go off." He wrinkled his nose at the odour that her ample body gave off as she gazed up at him winningly.

  Schulze loosened his flies. His member was beginning to stiffen. Her mouth dropped open as if in awe. "That's better than Felix, our bull!" she exclaimed. She reached forward and grabbed hold of it as if lugging at Felix's halter and at the same time opened her fat thighs invitingly.

  Schulze gulped. "Oh God Almighty!" he said in wonder. "By the Great Whore of Buxtehude where the dogs piss through their ribs, I've never seen anything like it!"

  She smiled, as if pleased with herself. With her free hand she stroked her great hairy thatch. "I'm not surprised, Sergeant, that you are impressed. I'll have you know that I've been saving it for someone like you for these forty –" she corrected herself hastily – "thirty years. I wanted the first man to take my body to appreciate what he was getting." She leaned back in what she thought was a seductive manner, pulling Schulze with her as she hung determinedly on to his organ. The bed squeaked alarmingly as if it might collapse at any moment.

  Schulze looked in mute appeal at the flaking, dirty ceiling, as if half expecting some God to be sitting up there on the edge of a cloud, playing a harp as he prepared to rescue him from the awful fate soon to come. But if there was a God up there somewhere, at that particular moment he was looking the other way.

  "Be gentle with me, my beloved," she sighed in a dreamy sort of way, closing her eyes, as if it were all a little too much for her.

  Schulze gave one final curse against the fates which had condemned him to this horrible experience, perhaps the first time in his life since he had fingered 'Juicy Lucy' at his Hamburg Volksschüle that he felt he wasn't really going to enjoy the 'mattress polka', and prepared to take her.

  She gave a great sigh. "What an experience this will be, well worth waiting for twenty long years," she whispered as if to herself, as Sergeant Schulze started to insert what he fondly called his 'good piece of prime German salami.'

  But this long-awaited answer to Irmgard's maidenly prayers was not going to be answered on this icy winter's day. For outside, some hundred metres down the slope next to the road, there came the shrill blast of the warning whistle – three blasts, to be exact.

  "Saved," Sergeant Schulze exclaimed happily. He sat up urgently, as Irmgard opened her eyes and cried, "What is it, my beloved? Am I too much for you?"

  Schulze refrained from giving her an honest answer. Instead he hissed, reaching for his dice-beakers, which she had insisted he take off for this 'solemn occasion'. "It's the signal from Corporal Matz," he explained hurriedly, tugging the cold boots on. "He's seen what we've been waiting for all this time." He sat up and buckled on his pistol.

  She blew him a kiss as he headed gratefully for the door, with the smelly pigs in the barn below rooting and snorting at the sudden alarm. "You will return?" she queried, tears in her cow-like eyes.

  "Of course, my beloved," he replied with a courtly bow, now at his most gallant. "Who would be foolish enough to miss your great charms." To himself he said, as he fled through the door, "with knockers like that, a man could he suffocated to death if he didn't watch out." And with that he was clattering down the wooden ladder, heading for Matz's wayside post.

  Matz lounged against the snow-heavy, rickety fence. He had taken off his wooden leg. Now he was supported by a crude crutch made from an old rake from the farm and dressed in the rough clothing of one of the middle-aged men who had fled the advancing Amis. In his mouth he held a piece of dried straw from the barn. All in all he looked – well, he hoped he did – like a harmless village yokel who was too dotty to do a bunk before the Amis came looting and shooting in their usual fashion when they had drunk the local firewater, fruit schnapps.

  Idly, mouth slack and dribbling, he watched the long column stagger down the road, banked on both sides by piles of frozen snow, as if he couldn't quite understand what all these strange creatures, who paused all the time to lower their filthy pants to squirt yellow faeces into the mud, were doing here. In fact, his eyes were searching their miserable ranks for the first sight of the man they had been waiting here for days to rescue.

  Involuntarily, Matz wrinkled up his nose as the first of the thousands of German POWs started to file by him, urged on by their guards who looked well-fed and warm in their thick parkas. Matz surveyed their miserable faces through half-lowered eyelids and wondered why the Amis hadn't moved their captives by truck. After all, they were suffering from that long march, too. But after a few moments he reasoned that the prisoners were for exhibition to the local civilians. They were there to show the Germans on the other side of the border just how thoroughly the Wehrmacht had been beaten this December in the Ardennes. Still one thing puzzled him. There was a high percentage of SS men among the POWs from all other branches of the service. He wondered why for a few moments. Then he gave up and concentrated on viewing the miserable, emaciated, unshaven faces passing by, Germany's final defeat written all too clearly on the captives' features.

  A big, red-faced Ami NCO, who seemed to be in charge, came level with him. Somewhere or other he had picked up an arm-thick bull's pizzle and was using that joyfully now instead of the pick-handles which the others wielded. He waved the obscene article at what he took to be a one-legged peasant and one of his men yelled, "If you're
gonna use that bull's cock on him, sarge, you'll need a jar full of Vaseline to do the job."

  The NCO yelled something back, but Matz, who could only understand the Amis' gestures and not their words, was no longer listening. He had spotted him! There he was, tottering through the frozen mud, blood still staining his dirty bandages, looking as if he might collapse and die at any moment.

  Tears flooded the little SS man's eyes. He wasn't an emotional man, but he had never seen the CO like this before. He was dying on his feet and if he, Schulze and the rest didn't do something soon, he knew that Von Dodenburg wouldn't last the week, perhaps even the day. They had to rescue their CO soon – damned soon!

  Crouched behind the cover of one of the farmhouse's windows, trying to fight off Irmgard's importuning hands, which kept slipping into his pockets to seize his now flaccid organ, a worried Sergeant Schulze felt the same as Matz, lounging by the snowbound road below.

  His mind raced as he tried to outguess the Americans. Where would they spend the night, for it would be then that they would have to make their attempt to rescue the CO? He flashed a look at the hard, blue sky. Already the sun was beginning to slip behind the horizon. It would be dark in another hour at this time of the year and he knew just how fearful the Amis were of the dark in enemy territory. By then they'd want to be under cover and their guards posted.

  Greedily Irmgard nipped his organ once more and, sticking her wet tongue in his ear, whispered, "Beloved Sergeant, if you've got time I'd like to lose" – she hesitated for a moment – "my virginity before Christmas. It would be like a Christmas present to myself, you know."

  Schulze sighed like a man sorely tried. All the same he pulled himself together – after all, they needed the farmhouse a little longer – and said sweetly, "Irmgard, my little cabbage, in due course you shall have the full benefit of Sergeant Schulze's undoubtedly very special love machine." He touched his flies briefly to make his meaning quite clear. "And I feel I must tell you this in advance. After Mrs Schulze's handsome son has worked his charm on a – er – a lady, she never wants another man." He winked knowingly.

  Irmgard gave a shiver of delight...

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