by Sven Hassel
‘In Kolyma!’ grins Gregor, hitting the cat squarely with a well-aimed steel helmet.
‘That bleedin’ cat’s a bleedin’ Yid cat,’ considers Tiny. ‘It might even ’ve been thinkin’ of ’avin’ a shit on that poor German body.’
‘What we have to go through,’ sniffs Heide, angrily.
‘The army’s finished,’ says Tiny, lighting a cigar. ‘Even the Goring fly-boys shit on us!’
‘Grab it an’ get moving,’ orders the Old Man, rising to his feet.
‘The human body was not created to march with,’ protests Porta, working his stiff muscles and shouting at the pain.
The mountains are depressing. Each time we reach the top of what we think is the last rise, we find another one, even higher, awaiting us.
The section has not gone far when the Old Man remembers that water-bottles have not been filled. Without water the Cactus Forest is certain death.
‘Back to the well!’ he orders roughly.
‘Have I ever told you of the time my general an’ me marched across the Danube?’ asks Gregor.
‘Can it, we’ve heard that one at least twenty times,’ Barcelona cuts him off irritably.
‘Did you eat with your general?’ asks Tango, interestedly. He has a decided weakness for higher ranks.
‘Of course,’ says Gregor, condescendingly. ‘Sometimes we even slept in the same bed with our monocle between us.’
‘Was your general a fairy?’ asks Porta, disrespectfully.
‘A question like that could put you in front of a field-court of honour,’ mumbles Gregor, insulted.
‘Bloody ’ell,’ shouts Tiny, in surprise. ‘Is there really such a bleedin’ court?’
‘Did you sometimes touch your general?’ asks Tango, with awe.
‘I had to undress him every bloody evening, when he rested up to be ready for the next day’s war,’ answers Gregor, proudly.
‘’Bout time we shifted our baggy bleedin’ arses under cover, ain’t it?’ asks Tiny, looking towards the mountains, from which machine-gun fire can be heard.
‘How many jerricans have we got?’ asks the Old Man, cocking his grease-gun8.
‘Only five,’ laughs Barcelona, mirthlessly.
‘They’ll soon be finished,’ grins Skull. It sounds like a bag of dried bones rattling.
‘Water’d bleedin’ run out o’ you, fast as it went in,’ says Tiny. ‘’Ow the bleedin’ ’ell can a man be that bleedin’ thin? I can’t understand it.’
‘Skull ought to go to America. He’d make a fortune showin’ himself as a victim of the horrors of the concentration camps,’ suggests Porta.
‘Cut the talk a minute,’ snarls the Old Man, ’and listen. We’ve got to go over the mountains with or without water. It’s our only chance.’
‘Holy Christ!’ breaks out Unteroffizier Krüger from the PR’s. ‘You don’t know what you’re saying! There’s a forest of cactus with prickles the size of bayonets. We’ll have to chop our way through with machetes and we’ve only got two. They won’t last long. And there’s not a drop of water anywhere up there.’
‘What the hell do you suggest, then?’ shouts the Old Man, desperately.
‘The tracks and out on the road,’ answers Krüger, looking around him for support.
‘Mad as a bloody hatter,’ the Old Man dismisses his suggest tion contemptuously.!
‘The rightful owners of the country are lined up along the roads with the firm intention of knocking us off.’
‘Let’s kick ’em in the balls,’ suggests Tiny, turning his cigar butt between his lips and champing on it. ‘It’s about time this Black Sea shower found out who it is as is visitin’ ’em.’
‘Brave little man, ain’t you?’ grins Porta, holding out his hand for a cigar. Tiny hands one over without a murmur.
Heide has to supply him with a chunk of liver sausage. Nobody dares to refuse Porta when he asks for something. If you want to stay alive the wisest thing is to keep friendly with him. He has that strange sort of sixth sense, otherwise only found amongst Jews, of being able to sniff out supplies at a distance of miles. Turn him out naked in the middle of the Gobi Desert and he’d find his way straight to something drinkable. Not an ice-cold beer perhaps, but at any rate water.
The Legionnaire kicks at the remnants of a bread-bag, and shouts bitterly:
‘On les emmerde! The battalion must be somewhere behind those mountains!’
‘Maybe,’ answers the Old Man, laconically. ‘That’s the way we’re going anyway. Now then. No firing at random. Fire only at proper targets. Don’t forget shooting draws the enemy and we don’t want that!’
‘Plop, plop!’ sounds from the north.
‘50mm’s,’ decides Buffalo sagely, blowing his nose with his fingers.
‘Crack, crack and crack again!’
‘50mm’s,’ says Porta, hurling an empty bread-bag away disappointedly.
‘Who gives ’em all that shit?’ asks Gregor, worriedly.
‘Italian and German traitors sell it to them,’ answers Julius Heide coldly.
‘They ought to be strung up. There ought to be only one form of punishment. Death! We’re too soft. Womanish thinking.’
‘You’n Adolf’d soon be the only two left in Germany,’ Porta laughs noisily.
‘God will help us,’ mumbles the padre, looking over at us.
‘Listen to the prayer-wheel goin’,’ jeers Skull, throwing a stick at the padre. ‘God don’t help us coolies. Kick us in the bleedin’ arse more like!’
‘Christ helps all who pray to Him,’ answers the padre, quietly, and stares over the sun-blistered desert, where ruined buildings still smoke after the air attack.
‘You an’ your ’eavenly bleedin’ ’ost,’ shouts Tiny furiously. ‘Them as kicked it at the bleedin’ Morellenschlucht9 babbled bleedin’ prayers till they got it an’ God didn’ bleedin’ ‘elp the poor bastards!’
‘I’m in touch,’ screams Heide, spinning feverishly at the dials of the pack radio.
‘Who the hell are you, you crazy shit?’ he howls into the set.
‘Flattery will get you nowhere! This is the People’s Army. We’ll be scraping you German shit off the road pretty soon now.’
‘Get fucked, apeman!’ rages Heide.
‘You’ve had it, sausage-eater! Fifteen minutes from now you’ll be ready for the grinder!’
‘Bighead!’ Heide spits furiously at the radio. ‘You’re nuts!’
‘You’ve had it, Nazi porker!’
What a bleedin’ barmy bastard,’ shouts Tiny, incensed. ‘Let’s get up there after ’im!’
A long howl shrills from the radio. Contact is broken.
‘Think they can see us?’ asks Skull, nervously.
‘’Course they can’t,’ says Tiny, scornfully. ‘If they could they’d ’ve done us by now.’
‘They aren’t ordinary partisans,’ says the Old Man thoughtfully.
‘Communist bastards. Red as a monkey’s arse’ole,’ shouts Tiny angrily, shaking his fist at the mountain peaks.
‘Would anyone think now might be a good time to point one’s penis in the right direction and follow it?’ says Porta, pulling his equipment together.
‘Exercise is good for you,’ laughs Tango, taking a few dance-steps across the open square.
Buffalo stretches himself in the warm sand, and unfolds a large document.
‘Me ’n’ all my family’ve got to appear before a racial purity commission,’ he said. ‘It’s because I’ve become me own grandfather!’
‘That’s impossible,’ says the Old Man in amazement, and puts down his Mpi.
‘Nothin’ ain’t impossible in the Third Goddam Reich. Before I know what’s goin’ on, I’ll be me own great-grandfather. Wait’ll those racial purity boys get goin’ with me. It’s my wife’s fault, the crazy bitch. She’s got a grown-up daughter me daddy got hot pants for an’ went an’ got hitched up with.’
‘Your wife’s daughter’s got to be your daughter,�
�� says the Old Man with a no-nonsense look on his face.
‘Sure, sure, but still not sure. She had this daughter before we tied the knot. An’ that just means my daddy he’s become my son-in-law and my daughter’s my mammy!’
‘Understandable enough,’ laughs Porta. ‘Your daughter is your father’s wife.’
‘What a mess,’ says Gregor despairingly, ‘just because a man marries a woman who brings a prefabricated kid with her.’
‘That, son, is only the beginning,’ sighs Buffalo. ‘I understand the Jews better now, those clever bastards. They don’t marry nothin’ but virgins. Two of the Vice Squad’ve lost their marbles over this case so far, an’ more probably to come. They jus’ couldn’t stand comin’ to the conclusion that me an’ my little or lady’d got a son who was my daddy’s brother-in-law.’
‘That’s obvious,’ says the Old Man. ‘He’s your father’s wife’s brother.’
‘Yeah, an’ he ain’t only my son, he’s my uncle too,’ groans Buffalo sadly, ‘cause he’s my mother’s brother.’
‘Yes, because your father’s wife is your wife’s daughter,’ grins Barcelona heartily.
‘Things got real complicated,’ moans Buffalo unhappily, ‘when my daughter, my father’s wife an’ my mother, had a son. He’s my brother, cause he’s my daddy’s son, but he’s the son of me daughter too, which makes me his gran’daddy.’
‘Then your wife has suddenly become your grandmother,’ roars Porta joyfully.
‘Yeah, crazy situation ain’t it?’ mumbles Buffalo with a lost look at the heavens. ‘I’m my wife’s husband, but I’m her grandson too ’cause I’m the brother of her daughter’s son, an’ since your grand’mammy’s husband’s got to be your gran’daddy,’ he throws out his arms despairingly, ‘then it’s piss-plain logical I’m my own gran’daddy and that ol racial purity commission can’t make out how that can possibly be done legitimate. An’ that’s why I’m accused of miscegenation – which is a kind of incest.’
‘They’ll put you inside, son,’ prophesies Tiny, threateningly. ‘Just ’ope Adolf never gets to ’ear about you.’
A heavy burst of shelling breaks into this strange family history. Muzzle reports and bursts roll, echoing deeply, across the mountains.
We move. A nervous unease catches at us.
‘Let’s stay where we are,’ urges feldwebel Schmidt. ‘It’s madness to go up into that cactus. Even animals keep away from it.’
‘C’est le bordel,’ snarls the Legionnaire, fierily. ‘It’s madness to stay here. They’ll have cut our throats before we even know it. The cactus is our only chance!’
‘I know way. Very bad way,’ says Stojko from the Bulgarian Guards Regiment. He is the only man left alive from a Field Surgery taken by the partisans. He saved himself by hiding in a bin of amputated limbs until the guerillas had left.
‘March time?’ asks the Old Man hopefully.
‘T’ree maybe four day,’ answers Stojko uncertainly, ‘but we go very quick. No think ’bout water.’
‘Water’s the biggest problem,’ sighs the Old Man, lighting his silver-lidded pipe.
‘I’ve heard tell camels eat cactus cos of the juice in ’em,’ says Buffalo.
‘Impossible, mon ami,’ answers the Legionnaire, ‘they taste worse than boiled monkey-piss.’
‘Couldn’t you get used to the taste?’ asks Porta, interestedly. ‘I’d rather drink monkey-piss than die of thirst!’
The entire day dribbles away, without our being able to arrive at a decision. The corpses emit a powerful stench. The Old Man has several times told us to bury them but we pretend not to have heard him.
He gives up temporarily and sits down on a stone between Barcelona and the Legionnaire.
‘We must put our trust in Stojko,’ he says quietly, eyeing the Bulgarian in his filthy, blue-grey Guards uniform with its red piping and patches.
‘He knows the bush,’ says the Legionnaire, lighting a Cap-oral thoughtfully. ‘These mountain peasants are masters at forcing their way through a cactus forest. And where they can go we can go too. I would like to see the peasant who is better than we regular soldiers.’
‘You ever been in this kind of bush?’ asks Barcelona with a mocking smile.
‘Non, mon ami,’ answers the Legionnaire. ‘But I have heard quite a lot about it, and I know that it is worse than a trip barefoot across the cauldron of hell.’
‘I’ve been there,’ answers Barcelona sombrely, rubbing away at his Mpi. ‘It’s hell upon hell. The devil himself wouldn’t dare go in there. It’s a place God’s forgotten existed. After a few hours you feel convinced that life is over. The whole place breathes death. The only living things are poisonous reptiles, which attack you on sight. Scratch yourself on one of those wicked thorns and you’re finished.’
‘What a look-out. What a look-out!’ shouts Porta, swallowing a sardine whole.
We’ll soon fix them bleedin’ serpents and the bleedin’ cactus,’ growls Tiny, with conviction in his voice. ‘We’re Germans, ain’t we? Conquerors, ain’t we?’
Late in the afternoon a mud-spattered Kübel roars into the village. A major in camouflage dress with a sub-machinegun in the crook of his arm jumps down and starts shouting.
‘It’s about time you people pulled yourselves together and got a road-block set up, isn’t it?’ He stamps on the ground. ‘Closing-time is it? Putting the shutters up, are you? Reinforcements will arrive from Division latest tomorrow morning. And you, feldwebel,’ he turns towards the Old Man, ‘will answer for it with your head if this village isn’t held!’
‘We’ve not much ammo’, sir. Can’t hold this hole more than an hour!’
‘Don’t try to teach your grandmother to suck eggs,’ screams the major, going purple in the face. ‘You’ll hold it, or you’ll swing for it!’
He spins on his heel and climbs back into the Kübel which disappears down the road at a terrific speed.
‘Moves like a mule with a cactus up his jacksey,’ grins Porta: ‘Does he really think we’re going to do battle with the neighbours for this place.’
‘He was moving fast,’ says Tango. ‘Wouldn’t have believed a Kübel could make that speed.’
‘Babby-shitters with a bad bleedin’ conscience,’ declares Tiny angrily, and kicks viciously at a torn-off foot.
‘Goddam typical! Them shined-up bastards. Don’t they just love orderin’ other people out where it stinks of Valhalla an’ a hero’s goddam death!’ remarks Buffalo despondently.
We sit down again. Skull snatches at flies. He eats them. Says they taste like shrimps. He’s even got us to try them. We don’t agree with him. Was he a bird in a former incarnation?
‘Allons-y!’ says the Legionnaire. ‘To stay here is camel-dung.’
‘What about holding the village?’ says the Old Man thoughtfully. ‘You heard the major’s orders!’
‘That bleedin’ mother-fucker,’ shouts Tiny. ‘’E’s no bleedin’ idea who we bleedin’ are, even! That’s the only bleedin’ good thing about this bleedin’ army. We all look the bleedin’ same in bleedin’ uniform.’
In a welter of foam-flecks, dust and glittering sabres, a unit of Vlassov Cossacks trots into the village.
A wachtmeister reins his horse in. It rears and whinnies nervously.
‘What unit, you?’ asks the Russian in bad German.
‘The ’Oly Trinity unit,’ answers Tiny, grinning broadly.
‘You no cheeky, you obergefreiter!’ snarls the Cossack wachtmeister, slashing out wickedly with his sabre in Tiny’s direction. ‘You stand attention, you talk me!’
‘Why, you son of a bleedin’ Caucasian goat!’ shouts Tiny contemptuously.
‘Think a citizen of bleedin’ ’Amburg’s gonna click ’is ’eels for shit like you? Your own lot’ll string you up one of these days. Count on it, son!’
‘Feldwebel, you make charge-sheet that man,’ screams the wachtmeister, raging.
‘Shut it!’ hisses the Old Man, turning on h
is heel. ‘Find another playground!’
The wachtmeister reins his horse so that it rears up on to its hindlegs.
Tiny jumps to one side to avoid being struck by its forelegs. He draws a deep breath of astonishment.
‘What the bleedin’ ’ell? Why you son of a syphilitic sow an’ a ’or’s bleedin’ cunt-barber! I’ll bleedin’ teach you,’ he shouts, giving the horse a straight left to the muzzle. He catches it round the neck and attempts to throw it to the ground.
The horse goes to its knees and screams in fright.
The wachtmeister slashes out at Tiny with his sabre.
‘Murderous bleedin’ monkey,’ roars Tiny plucking the Cossack from his horse and punching away at him. ‘’Oreson bastard!’
‘Stop it, now!’ shouts the Old Man, lifting his Mpi.
‘D’you think I’m gonna let this shrivelled-up bit of renegade shit, do me bleedin’ in?’
An obergefreiter on a heavy BMW motorcycle brakes in the square and skids sideways to a halt.
‘God! I thought you lot was guerillas. Everything’s gone for a burton. I’m 12 Grenadier staff-DR! They cut our bloody arses orf. The guerillas is on route 286, an’ all ’ell’s broke loose round Karnobat!’
‘Where you making for, then?’ asks Porta inquisitively.
‘I’m pissin’ orf to Malko Sarkovo,’ he tells us secretively, ’and from there on to Vayasal.’
‘That’s in Turkey!’ Heide breaks in astonishedly.
‘Too bloody right, it is!’ grins the obergefreiter, his face aglow. I’ve ’ad enough of this man’s bloody war. In three days time I’ll be ’avin’ it orf with a ’arem on the beach at Tekirdag, an’ you boys can conquer yourselves to fuckin’ death, far as I’m concerned. But without me, see!’
‘That’s desertion. It’ll cost you your nut!’ shouts Heide, outraged.
‘Too bloody true, mate!’ laughs the DR. ‘Extension of life’s what I call it. I wants to die in me bed, like the fuckin’ generals do. That’s democracy.’
‘You’re a traitor!’ confirms Heide. ‘Don’t you know that the Constitution states that it is every man’s duty, and right, to defend the Fatherland with his life?’
‘I ain’t never signed me name under that law, son,’ says the obergefreiter, grinning. ‘Them as ’as, can do the bloody fightin’!’