by Sven Hassel
‘Aren’t you grateful to your country?’ asks Heide indignantly.
‘Am I fuck? I never asked for no Fatherland, an’ the clothes I’ve ’ad to wear since the Fatherland took over responsibility for my bloody wardrobe ain’t what I’m accustomed to, by no manner o’ means!’ He kicks the BMW’s heavy motor into life, adjusts himself in the saddle, positions his Mpi, and pulls the helmet down over his forehead.
‘Want me to give your love to the Turkish bints, an’ the rest 0’ the fuckin’ Muslims, boys?’
‘You do that,’ laughs Porta joyfully. ‘Tell ’em to leave the gates on the jar, I’m on my way.’
‘What about if they send you back again?’asks Gregor sceptically. ‘The Swedes do. What makes you think the Turks aren’t the same kind of shits?’
‘That’d be Allah’s bloody will, as they say where I’m orf to, wouldn’t it, now?’shrugs the obergefreiter. ‘If you come bearin’no gifts, that is. I’m with the G-staff, mate, and I got a bit of interestin’Gekados10 readin’material for the followers of the Prophet. Any of you sons want to ride along? There’s room on the ‘ore’s cushion behind yours truly?’
‘Anybody who can’t march?’asks the Old Man, looking around him.
‘Sir, sir!’groans Porta, limping about using his LMG as a crutch. ‘Sir, I’ve got no feet left at all. I’m having to roll along on my bollocks!’
‘Piss off, Porta!’says the Old Man.
With a thunderous howl the BMW disappears down the dusty road.
‘Think he’ll make it?’Gregor is still sceptical.
‘His kind of German obergefreiter always makes it,’ states Porta categorically.
‘Understand a compass?’the Old Man has turned back to Stojko. ‘I suggest compass figure 46. That still the way you know?’
‘Feldwebel I say yes. Compass good thing,’ answers Stojko, examining the instrument with interest as it lies on the map. ‘We go Stojko way and compass way. In front bad soldier no shoulderstrap. Them cut road, chase snake.’
‘Mo-o-o-ve!’shouts the Old Man, swinging his grease gun up over his shoulder.
For a time we follow the road towards Gulumanovo. Then we swing up into the hills and the road becomes no more than a set of wheel-tracks.
A machine-gun barks close by. The column halts for a moment, listening. We peer up towards the bush in dismay. None of us likes the idea of having to march through that maze of thorns and dry, tightly intermeshed, ghost vegetation.
The moon looks sallow and throws long spectral shadows.
‘Swish, swish!’ The machetes sing their song as two 500’s cut a way through the cactus.
We are taut and expectant. We smell danger and death. We hold our weapons at the ready.
‘Goddam wicked place,’ whispers Buffalo, fearfully. ‘Gimme Ivan. We know him!’
‘C’est un bordel!’ says the Legionnaire. ‘But it will get worse!’
Tiny stops so suddenly that I run into him.
‘There’s somebody watchin’us,’ he whispers, hoarsely. ‘Some sons o’bitches. Murderin’ bleeders.’
‘Sure?’asks the Old Man, anxiously. He knows and respects Tiny’s animal instincts.
‘I’m never wrong,’ rumbles Tiny. ‘Let’s find ’em an’tear their bleedin’balls off.’
‘Count me out,’ mumbles Porta, nervously. ‘It’s black as the inside of a nigger whore’s cunt in there.’
‘Nigger ‘ore, eh,’ says Tiny. ‘I could find one o’them in a black-out.’
Silendy they disappear between the shadowy stems of cactus.
‘Beseff,’ whispers the Legionnaire, pressing the butt of the LMG into his shoulder.
Time drags slowly by. Almost four hours have passed. A death-cry splits the stillness.
‘What the hell was that?’whispers Gregor, frightenedly.
Just before dawn they return carrying a large wild pig between them.
‘This bleeder’s the only partisan we run into,’ grins Tiny. ‘’E was nearly as piss-frightened as us.’
‘It was love at first sight,’ shouts Porta, patting the dead wild pig’s buttocks.
‘What was the scream?’asks the Old Man.
‘Our friend here,’ smiles Porta. ‘He didn’t fancy getting his throat cut.’
‘What about the partisans?’asks the Old Man.
‘They’re in there somewhere,’ confirms Porta, staring uneasily at the tight mass of cactus. ‘I don’t understand though, how they can move through that stuff without cutting a path.’
Artillery thunders in the distance. The air shivers at the explosions.
They’re knockin’ on, all right!’ says the Old Man, uneasily ‘’Fore we know where we are, they’ll be blowing the lot of us to kingdom come.’
An ex-leutnant from the 500’s spraddles in front of the Old Man.
‘Well, feldwebel! What now? Giving up? Then Vll take command. Even though they have stripped me of rank, you’ll agree I have more experience than you in leading troops.’
The Old Man lights his silver-lidded pipe slowly, and regards the ex-officer, standing bobbing in front of him and looking important, with a dangerous stare.
‘Soldier! Anybody ever tell you, you put your heels together and stand straight when you’re talking to a superior.’
The ex-leutnant becomes slightly nervous, but he is stubborn.
‘Feldwebel, stop that nonsense. I’ll take over command and lead this unit. That’s enough!’
Tiny goes over to him.
‘Listen ’ere; sonny,’ he roars, catching him by the collar. ‘You ain’t takin’command 0’fuck-all! Get in your bleedin’basket an’lie down till you’re called for.’
‘Crack his nut an’let the shit out,’ suggests Buffalo, licking his lips.
Tiny knocks the ex-leutnant backwards on to the newly-flayed pig skin.
The padre kneels and prays in a thin, priestly whine. He swings a home-made crucifix of twigs in front of him.
‘Jesus there’s gone bonkers,’ laughs Skull.
Tiny lifts himself on one elbow and stares into the cactus.:
‘Those bastards are watchin’us again!’
Buffalo jumps to his feet, and before anyone can stop him he empties a whole magazine into the bush in one long crackling roar.
‘Are you mad, man?’scolds the Old Man, raging, ‘You’ll bring a whole battalion of ’em down on us.’
‘They drive you mad, them goddam cactus plants. There was eyes watchin ‘us,’ whines Buffalo, the pouches of fat on his cheeks wobbling.
‘Oberst “Wildboar” ought never to have posted me from that job as chauffeur to my general,’ sighs Gregor disconsolately.
‘He never would’ve got it through if my general and our monocle hadn’t been on a duty trip to Berlin. It was a tactical error splitting us three up.’
‘You might even’ve won the bloody war, eh?’grins the Old Man. ‘You and your general and your monocle?’
‘Not impossible. We belonged together. You should’ve seen it when our monocle winked out at a Chief-of-Staff and we snarled, “Come here, sir, and take a glance at the battle chart . . .” That was enough to start the shit trickling down their legs. When we took off our cap their teeth began to chatter. We hadn’t a trace of fluff even on our cranium. A real Prussian general’s nut, we had. The QM officer was a twit who never should’ve made oberstleutnant. To get the DAGMAR support point removed he had to drive through enemy artillery fire several times with his waggons, and how he didn’t like it.
‘“Herr General,” he’d say, timidly. “How am I to get my motorized units through the enemy shelling? I can only use route 77.” And the fool would point it out on the chart. As if we didn’t all know where 77 bloody well was.
‘My general’d run a finger round his high uniform collar, and draw a deep breath. With his eyebrows lifted almost right up on top of his head he would look at this supplies officer.
‘“If you feel it best you can have your troops carried over the
terrain in palanquins by Kaffir bearers, or do you perhaps wish me to solve your problems for you? If you are in doubt of what to do I suggest you ask your drivers for advice.” Monocle out, monocle in again.
‘That oberstleutnant sobbed something that sounded like: “Very good Herr General!” The angels sang that day. Half the staff’d found a hero’s death by afternoon already.
‘“Cattle!” said my general, as we banged the doors shut and shot off, knocking down a couple of innocent orderly officers.
‘“It is good psychologically to go off in a cloud of dust,” my general explained.
‘And we’d put our hand into our uniform, for all the world like the pictures of Napoleon.
‘“Now these fools will perhaps remember for a while who it is who makes the decisions,” said my general, taking a good gulp from his glass. We always drank cognac out of beer glasses. The usual ones held too little for us.
‘“Yes, sir, Herr General!” I’d scream.
‘I’d get one glass, but no more. My general didn’t like his driver getting too much to drink. It was a great responsibility driving a general around, but I usually managed to sink a couple or three when he’d gone to bed. A bit after this we got our fourth star and took over an Army Group, but wicked as they are in bloody Personnel HQ they sent oak-leaves and red tabs to Oberst “Wildboar”. If he was a horror as an oberst he was worse’n you could imagine as general-major. I went around there a couple of days just hoping they’d give him a division he could lead to death and destruction. But they didn’t. Instead they made him Chief-of-Staff in my division. That was my bad luck. My general flew to Berlin to thank them for his new star and get new uniforms made now he was a general-oberst. The “Boar” met me in the ops. room when I came back from the airfield without my general and our monocle. He was smiling like the devil watching parsons roasting on the coals of hell. He gives me the choice of leaving immediately for the other end of the front line, or taking a summary with him chairing the court. The sentence was decided in advance. I could see the bloody gallows there all right in his wicked yellow eyes.’
‘Whatever had you done?’asks Barcelona, wonderingly.
‘When you’re driving for a general it’s easy to get mixed up in things which can get you into trouble. I’d never dreamed the bloody “Boar” had been saving it up for me. He hits me across the face with the documents and, with a horrid smile, he adds in his most fatherly way:
‘“Unteroffizier Martin, if you had been born twenty years earlier, and lived in Chicago, Al Capone would have found a good right hand man in you. Even now, any court in the world would, without hesitation, sentence you to life imprisonment for the things you have done.”
‘For the next fifteen minutes he slandered me shamelessly. As an unteroffizier you have to take that sort of thing when it’s the Chief-of-Staff who’s dishing it out. All those primitive military feelings ran away with him. He walked up and down, and every time he stood still he’d go up and down at the knees and make his boots creak. He had the creakiest boots. Specially made for it, like as not. His nose was one of the kind that has trouble with swing-doors and reminds you of Rome’s bloody history. His glasses were like the headlamps on a Horch. I took a deep breath and held onto my guts and asked if I might wait till my general and our monocle returned so that I could congratulate him on the fourth star. It’s not every Prussian who makes that. Generaloberst rank is only for the crème de la crème. My general had often told me it was easier for a murderer to get into heaven than for man born of woman to become a Prussian general.
‘I had to ask twice before the “Boar” seemed to realize what I was asking for. He pushed his chin down into his collar and blew through his nose like a rhinoceros getting ready to attacks.
‘“Do you think me to be an idiot?” he screamed, enraged.
‘I did, but I thought it might lengthen my life a bit if I kept that to myself. He knew what he was doing all right, that bastard. If he’d let me wait to say goodbye to my general and our monocle, it’d never’ve come to anything. It’d’ve been the same as the time I laughed at the generals shooting across the ice on their backsides11. My general has tried to get me back several times, but the bloody “Boar” stops it every time through the old boy net in Berlin. Ain’t life terrible?’He looks up at the heavens as if some help can be expected from there.
‘Have you ever realized how seldom you ever get what you wish for? Just when you’re having it good, suddenly down the kitchen stairs you go. Look at these hands.’He displays a pair of filthy, torn, calloused hands. ‘Before they were white and soft as a nun’s. Look at my boots. All the shit of the Balkans hanging on ’em. When I was with my general they were polished like mirrors.’He sighs and wipes away a quiet tear as he thinks of past grandeurs.
‘I wasn’t made for all this farting about with the infantry.’ He sighs again. ‘In the temple of my heart a great candle is burning for my general and our monocle, and I know he thinks of me when he kneels in his night uniform beside his hard cot and entrusts himself to the Supreme War Leader and prays Him to bless our war.’
We have been marching for perhaps an hour when a machine-gun rattles at us from the cactus.
‘Run, run!’screams Skull, hysterically, running back along the narrow path.
‘Shut up you silly bastard!’scolds Porta, irritatedly, throwing a hand-grenade in the direction of the machine-gun fire. A hard, flat explosion and the gun goes silent. Almost immediately another begins to hammer behind us.
Panic breaks out. A hand-grenade explodes in the middle of us, blowing off the legs of a 500.
Tiny holds on to a cactus. Bullets shred the fleshy leaves around him.
I am down, pressed flat behind an anthill. Buffalo, some three hundred pounds of flesh, a steel-helmet and an Mpi, comes thundering down the path. His Mpi spits fire. There is a hellish row from the cactus. Buffalo’s wild roarings are part of it.
‘He’s gone off it,’ decides Porta, pressing himself closer to the ground.;
A little later Buffalo appears from the cactus, dragging two blood-soaked bodies behind him.
‘What the hell set you off?’asks Porta, watching Buffalo in astonishment as he wipes his battle-knife on one of the bodies.
‘I got mad. That mad I could’ve cracked coconuts with me goddam arse,’ he shouts angrily. ‘Those partisan bastards’ve pissed on us long enough. They needed a couple of good German clouts alongside the ear.’
We drink the coolant from one of the guns, a Maxim. It tastes terrible but it is water.
The sun appears from behind the mountains, as we continue our march. Everything takes on a beautiful rose-red tint. We shiver. The nights are cold, but we still enjoy them. In an hour’s time it will be hot as an oven. We begin to snarl at one another. By noon we hate one another. The padre we hate most of all with his eternal telling of beads and praying:
‘God is with us! God will help us!’
‘Shut your face!’roars Heide, enraged. ‘God has forgotten us!’
‘God’s with the goddam Reds,’ puffs Buffalo, using a cactus leaf as a fan. He sweats twice as much as anybody else. Twice as much as anybody else. Twice he has tried to leave the grenade-thrower behind but the Old Man notices every time and sends him back for it.
Two 5oo’s lead the way with machetes. They are relieved every half-hour. It is hard work cutting a path through the cactus.
At midday the Old Man orders a halt. The unit is completely worn out. One of the 500’s dies in terrible convulsions. They find a tiny green snake in his boot. Porta kills it and throws it at Heide who is so shocked he falls in a faint. They think at first he has died of a heart attack but when he comes to himself there is more life in him than Porta fancies. Two men have to hold him whilst a third ties his hands.
After an hour the Old Man orders us up, but progress is slow now. We cover no more than a few miles before sundown. Without a thought of eating we throw ourselves to the ground and drop into unconsciousness. W
e stay where we are for the whole of the following day. Darkness has fallen before we awake.
‘Let’s have some coffee and try to sort ourselves out a bit,’ suggests Porta, removing the top from one of his five canteens.
Tiny sits in the middle of the path with his ludicrous bowler on his head. He is rolling a big cigar from one side of his mouth to the other.
‘Make the best of everythin’,’ he proclaims. ‘This cactus shit we’re pissin’ around in ain’t near as bad as bein’ frizzled to death, like a piece o’bleedin’ bacon, in some bleedin ’ fox ’ole by one o’ the soddin’ ’eathen’s flame-throwers. You scream at the ’eat ’ere, but ’ave you lot forgot when we was in Kilyma where if you went outside to ’ave a piss your bleedin ’prick fell orf? An ’what the bleedin’ ’ell’s ants compared to Siberian soddin’wolves what’s favourite food is Germans? When I think o’that lot, this lot’s a bleedin’picnic by the side of it.’
‘You’re too damn stupid to understand how godawful this place is,’ says Buffalo, who is sweating as if he were in a sauna.
Tiny continues smoking, with his nose in the air. He knocks the ash from his cigar with an elegant gesture he has seen American businessmen use on the films.
‘Stupid? Maybe I am, maybe I ain’t! Military service, my friend, ’as taught me that’a ‘ealthy body is needed if you’re gonna live through it. Brains grow on their own, son. If you’ve got too much of the old grey stuff when you go in at the start, you go bleedin’barmy ‘fore you know where you are. The brainy bleeders can’t take it.’
A scorpion runs across the path. Skull crushes it with his rifle-butt.
The heavy rumble of artillery continues ceaselessly.
A swarm of Ju 87’s – Stukas – appears over the mountains. Their bombload is clearly visible under the wings of the planes.
‘Wherever they drop that load it’ll cause a bit of dedi-gitation,’ says feldwebel Schmidt, filling up the magazine of his Mpi.
The Old Man bawls out an ex-leutnant who has thrown two spare gun-barrels away.
‘The next man caught abandoning arms’ll get shot,’ shouts the Old Man, in a rage.