The Bloody Road To Death (Cassell Military Paperbacks)

by Sven Hassel

  ‘Not bad, not bad,’ answers Porta. ‘Wolf’s got a few numbers going, I know, with the spaghetti boys, so it wouldn’t look funny if a macaroni-eater turns up with a little present for him.’

  ‘I’d rather serve life in a Chinese prison ’n open that little present,’ shouts Barcelona, slapping his hands delightedly on his thighs.

  A little later Tiny comes back with the Italian corporal of police. His nickname of ‘Apeface’ fits him well. None of us has ever seen so brutal and untrustworthy a set of features before. We cannot doubt that he has been sent on a punishment posting to Greece for brutality.

  Porta presses his hand with pretended heartiness.

  ‘When you have delivered these two boxes of cigars, there’s five cartons of cigarettes and three bottles of schnapps waiting for you here.’

  Corporal Mario Frodone shows them a set of gleamingly white teeth in a smile. He feels certain this is the easiest piece of business that has ever come his way.

  ‘Don’t let him turn you away,’ warns Porta. ‘The gentleman who is to receive the gift is a very suspicious man!’

  Whistling happily, Mario goes off with the package under his arm.

  Porta stands at the window with his finger resting lightly on the firing button of the detonator.

  ‘Let me push it!’ begs Tiny. ‘You know ’ow I love anythin’ as makes a bang!’

  ‘NO!’ Porta cuts him off, brusquely. ‘I want to have the pleasure of doing this myself. You go out and keep an eye on the spaghetti-eater, and give the signal when he’s handed over the cigars.’

  Tiny rushes off and moving from house-corner to house-corner follows the happily whistling assassin.

  Mario walks smartly across the wide square, at the far end of which Wolf’s transport company is housed. Every way in to it is tightly closed, bolted and barred, and the guard lurking behind the sandbags has been doubled.

  ‘Halt, who goes there?’ roars Wolf from behind a steel sheet, when he catches sight of the whistling Italian.

  ‘Royal Italian Corporal of Police, Mario Frodone. Good friend bearing gift from other good friends!’ He holds the two cigar boxes up above his head.

  ‘What kind of gift?’ asks Wolf, pushing his head up inquisitively over the steel sheet.

  ‘Cigar,’ Mario roars back. ‘Cigar from Brazil!’

  ‘Who the hell’d be sendin’ me cigars?’ asks Wolf, suspiciously.

  ‘Royal Italian Captain of Bersaglieri,’ lies Mario.

  ‘Approach slowly,’ orders Wolf, sharply. ‘Keep my present in front of you. No tricks, now, or you’ll get your spaghetti-eatin’ head blown off!’

  Mario can clearly see five or six ‘grease-guns’ trained on him.

  ‘Gesu, Gesuy kill these wicked people with slow cancer if anything bad should happen to Corporal Mario Frodone,’ he prays silently, with his eyes turned upwards.

  Tiny shivers in delighted expectation and moves closer so as not to miss anything.

  A short way away one of the company Pumas is testing its signalling apparatus.

  Corporal Mario Frodone is half-way across the square when Gefreiter Schmidt presses his sending button. There is a scream in his radio, followed by a long rolling explosion.

  ‘What the hell was that?’ asks Gefreiter Schmidt, putting his head out of the open turret cover.

  A column of flame shoots up towards the sky and the entire square appears to sink into the ground. The houses round it crumble. Hundreds of white hens flap out of the poultry farm, which is pulverized into a cloud of mortar and brick dust.

  Royal Italian Corporal Mario Frodone, disappears without trace in a colossal black mushroom of smoke which rises like an umbrella above the village.

  Chief Mechanic Wolf, his gang, the wolfdogs, the two Chinese guards and five tractors are blown through the opposite wall of the house and land in the ruins of the market-gardener’s establishment, five hundred yards away.

  Wolf is weeping and the Chinese bodyguards swear to desert back to a quieter life with the NKVD liquidation squads. They both agree that the Germans have strange ways of sending presents.

  ‘Jesus, what a bang!’ gasps Tiny. Then he is lifted and carried up and away in a gigantic dust cloud, and flies, lying horizontally in the air, together with two lorries and an antitank gun, past the hut where Porta is still standing, staring wonderingly at the button of the electric detonator which he still has not managed to press.

  Then the blast wave reaches the hut and it is whirled away up into the air together with the rest of the street.

  Rescue squads are rushed from Athens. The partisans get the blame, as always when nobody knows what has really happened.

  We are admitted to No. 9 Support Hospital in Athens. Wolf with both legs in traction. Tiny bandaged until he looks like an Egyptian mummy. The rest of us with more or less serious wounds.

  A month later the following appears in the ‘Deaths’ section of the Italian newspaper IL GIORNO, Naples edition.

  Our dearly beloved son, brother, brother-in-law,

  cousin, uncle and friend

  Corporal in the Royal Italian Corps of

  Military Police, attached to the

  4th Alpine Regiment

  Mario Guiseppe Frodone

  decorated with the Ordine militare d’ltalia

  and with the Croce di guerra al valore militaria

  for services, beyond the call of duty,

  in the war which has been forced upon our

  beloved Fatherland, has been called very,

  very suddenly from us, murdered in frightful

  fashion by wicked and evil persons.

  May sickness and death strike them down!

  The murdered soldier was the son of

  Guiseppe and Catarina, the beloved brother of

  Vittoria Maria, Fabio and Roberto.

  The family will receive mourners on Sunday

  at 12 o’clock at Bombolini’s on the Corso

  Mussolini.

  Shortly before we are discharged, two Russian infantrymen are the cause of a terrific fight at the hospital. They state that the 250,000 Vlassiv Cossacks in German service are worth twice as much as the rest of the German Army, who only know how to goose-step, put together. That, they say, is why Germany loses all her wars.

  ‘Hip, Hip!’ howls a Bulgarian corporal of Jaegers throwing a full urine glass at the ward nurse who comes in to see what all the noise is about.

  The nurse, who has officer rank, grabs him by the ears and bangs his head against the wall. He kicks her between the legs and she rolls screaming under the bed.

  Porta hammers away at Wolf’s leg in its plaster cast. The two Chinese rush to his help with raised truncheons, but Porta ducks and the blows fall instead on their plaster-encased boss.

  Tiny roars like a wild bull and, swinging his arms like windmill sails, hits out at anything within reach, friend or enemy. He gets hold of two Russians and throws them out into the corridor, down which Buffalo is chasing a bald-headed Italian lance-corporal who is wearing nothing but his mountaineering boots. Screaming and yelling they fall over the two Russians and slide straight along the highly-polished corridor and into the operation room where a Leutnant is being prepared for an appendectomy.

  The operating table with the leutnant on it disappears out on to the terrace leading to the gardens.

  The leutnant scrambles away, as fast as he can on all fours, thinking the Russians have reached Athens.

  A Rumanian sergeant with a face which looks like a cartoon of suppressed rage, throws his lighted pipe into the air and spreads both arms out, as if drowning in a turbulent current, before collapsing with a gurgle on the staircase.

  An old supplies soldier, who has been out buying things on the black market, comes limping on crutches with a large shopping bag hanging around his neck. The orderly sergeant comes thundering up the stairs, with his pistol in his hand, at the same moment, and the old soldier, thinking he is for it, swings the packed shopping-bag round hi
s head and lets the orderly sergeant have it straight in the face. Eggs, sausage, jam, hot macaroni, mustard and an enormous amount of tomato ketchup, spray to all sides, as the bag breaks open on the NCO’s head.

  A tall thin Italian comes hopping with a folding chair in one outstretched hand and a sausage, with ketchup dripping from it, in his mouth. He sees one of the Vlassovs, believes the Russians have arrived, and bangs down the chair on the Cossack’s head. He goes down as if he had been hit by a bomb.

  Doctors, nurses, orderlies and patients come streaming down the stairs and along the corridors. Chairs, tables, crutches and medicine bottles fly through the air.

  In the twinkling of an eye the hospital looks as if it has been on the receiving end of a massive artillery bombardment. All the windows are out and not a piece of furniture is left whole. Even the two most stubborn malingerers in Ward 19 can now be counted with the seriously wounded cases.

  Tiny runs for his life with Wolf’s Chinese at his heels. One of them is swinging a short-handled chopper and there is no doubt what he will use it for if he ever catches Tiny. Everything in their path is ruthlessly smashed aside.

  They turn in to the great covered bicycle track which the local inhabitants claim to be the largest in the world. It is certainly large, at any rate.

  With a roar like a gorilla Tiny swings himself onto a brand new bicycle and charges at his pursuers. They jump for safety, over the barrier and into the spectators’ seats.

  Tiny pushes the pedals down with all his might and spurts towards the big curve. His feet are going like the pistons of an engine at full speed.

  ‘Great Buddha!’ cries Wu, admiringly. ‘That man and bike, they good together!’

  At a dizzying speed Tiny goes into the curve and out again on to the straight with the rush and rumble of an express train.

  His pursuers forget their anger at the sight of Tiny’s spurt. Tiny, himself, is in ecstasy. He has always longed to be one of the great track cyclists with his name and picture in all the papers. That is why, when he started in the Army, he chose to join a cyclist unit, become a pedal dragoon.

  He treads even more powerfully on the pedals, lying well over the handlebars and takes, at full speed, the curve just before the figure eight, which he enters at a pace which no professional could emulate.

  As he swings into the straight on the far side, he sees, with a shock, that the track is blocked by a large barrel-shaped construction of planking. Repairs are in progress. He fumbles for the brakes, but there are no brakes on a racing bike. He pushes backwards on the pedals but they turn freely without reducing his headlong pace.

  At breakneck speed he shoots up over the rounded barricade and hangs momentarily in the air. Then he seems to fly up and on towards the joists of the roof, turns a somersault in the air and falls to the track, striking it with a splintering crash.

  ‘By Holy temples of China!’ cries Wang, in admiration, ‘that gorilla waste time in Army!’

  The day after we leave hospital Porta runs into a staff quartermaster who is looking for a birthday present for his general. Through Wolf the QM officer has heard of Porta’s three furs and is anxious to get hold of them, convinced that they would be the perfect gift for his general’s birthday. Wolf has got it all worked out. This way he gets Porta a long term in military prison. What general is going to stand for getting bitten nearly to death by fleas? And on his birthday too!

  They soon agree a price and the QM goes off beaming happily with the three furs.

  Two days later the furs and the fleas are back with Porta as usual.

  The general telephones Oberst Hinka and demands that Porta be severely punished.

  Porta is again on orders, and this time Oberst Hinka orders him to remove the furs from the regimental area.

  Sorrowfully he goes down to the naval base, where he meets an old friend, an Oberbootsmann, who is not himself particularly interested in the furs. He always sleeps by the boilers on board the cruiser. A Kapitänleutnant from the minelayer flotilla buys them, however, immediately, without much haggling over price.

  An hour later his minelayer and all the fleas leave the Piraeus.

  ‘Hope the poor little fellows don’t get seasick,’ says Porta, worriedly, waving after them with a miniature Greek flag.

  Several days later he hears, from the Oberbootsmann, that the minelayer has been captured by the British and the entire crew are prisoners in England.

  Porta can hardly hold back a tear to think he has lost the furs and the happy little fleas for ever. There is no doubt that the first British officer who sees them will confiscate them.

  When Hinka asks him, some time later, what has happened to the furs and the fleas, Porta can answer truthfully.

  ‘Herr Oberst, sir, regret to state, sir, the fleas have gone over to the British, sir!’

  Hitler has proclaimed himself the supreme judicial authority of the Reich. From this moment he alone decides what is right and what is wrong. And none may dispute his decision.

  Dr Goebbels, 30th January, 1934

  Fortress Germersheim, 24th December 1944

  On the 25th of December, 1944, Major Bruno Schau, who was sentenced to death on the 2nd of July, 1944, in Paris, will be executed by a firing squad.

  The execution will take place at Fortress Germersheim on 25.12.44, at 11.00 hours:

  Officer in command: Major Klein

  Commander firing squad: Leutnant Schwarz

  Legal officer: Auditör Brandt

  Medical officer: Stabsarzt Dr. Koch

  Padre: Oberfeldkapelan Almann

  The firing squad will consist of ten men, good marksmen only, detailed from No. 2 Company.

  A deterrent company consisting of fifty prisoners. Ten men detailed from each company.

  A party to tie the condemned man to the post. One feldwebel and two unteroffiziers to be detailed.

  Dress:

  Other Ranks: Service uniform, infantry boots, steel helmet, leather equipment, two cartridge pouches, bayonet, carbine K.98.

  Officers: Sabre, service pistol, and steel helmet.

  Other personnel on duties connected with the execution: Service uniform and field service cap, belt and bayonet.

  Unteroffizier Faber will be responsible for the erection of the execution post. This will be collected from the Quartermaster’s Store at 09.00 hours.

  Major Schau will be informed of the time of execution at 09.00 hours. His wishes as to form of burial and advice to next-of-kin will be requested. He will then be taken, manacled hand and foot, to the padre for spiritual solace. The manacles must not be slackened or removed either during spiritual solace or during medical examination. The condemned will be at all times strictly guarded by two unteroffiziers armed with machine pistols.

  The Adjutant will give the order to tie the condemned man to the post. Stabsfeldwebel Albert will be responsible for six pieces of rope of length five feet being fastened to the rings of the post He will also provide a sighting cloth.

  The firing squad will parade in front of No. 2 Company cell block at 10.30 hours.

  The commander of the firing squad, Leutnant Schwarz, is responsible for movement to the execution square being carried out with strictest military order and discipline. Any kind of demonstration whatsoever will be suppressed immediately by the most severe means. Firearms may be used if the first warning is not obeyed.

  Whistling, mumbling and ocular signals are to be regarded as demonstrations.

  After the execution four men will remove the body, strip it, and place it unclothed in the coffin. The equipment of the executed man will be handed in to the Quartermaster, who will be responsible for repair of the uniform.

  Unteroffizier Buchner will be responsible for placing the coffin behind the protective wall at 10.4s hours. He will also be responsible for delivery of the coffin, after the execution, to the burial authorities at the cemetery, and will obtain a receipt The necessary documents will be obtained from the adjutant.

  Major
Schau will be tied to the post by two ropes crossing the chest, two around the waist and two just below the knees. The ropes will be pulled taut.

  The padre will accompany the prisoner to the execution post and will recite an Our Father. He will then move four paces to the side and the commander of the firing squad will give the order:

  ‘Take aim!’

  The command: ‘Stand at ease!’ will not be given until the Medical Officer has declared the executed man dead. The firing squad will not march away until the body has been untied from the execution post and laid in the coffin. Two men from No. I Company will be detailed to remove all bloodstains. They will be equipped with cloths and shovels for this purpose.

  Feldwebel Reincke will be responsible for the cleaning of the execution post, and for returning it to store.

  From one hour before the time of execution and until the coffin has been removed and cleaning operations are completed, the execution square will be out of bounds to all personnel not employed on duties connected with the execution.

  Signed: Heinicke

  Oberst and Commandant

  Fortress Germersheim

  1. See March Battalion.

  2. Kalashnikov: Russian Mpi.

  3. Nagajka: Russian whip.

  4. HDV: Army Service Regulations.

  5. LMG: Light Machine-gun.

  6. GEFEPO: (Geheime Feldpolizei) Secret Field Police.