The Bloody Road To Death (Cassell Military Paperbacks)

by Sven Hassel

  A tram rattles through the streets. Two Messerschmitts whine overhead.

  Sula wobbles towards the door, throwing a jug of water over the sobbing cuckold in passing. At the door she turns and throws half a sausage to Tiny on the bed.

  ‘’Ere Fido!’ she says condescendingly.

  Before she can turn the doorknob they have reached her and thrown her back on to the bed. Her clothes come off faster than she’d ever have thought possible.

  It is almost dark again before they leave. The bald man and all three girls wave to them from the balcony.

  They walk backwards down the street waving for as long as they can see them.

  ‘It will be boring when the Germans leave Greece,’ says Sula with a deep sigh.

  ‘Then the English come,’ smiles Thea. ‘They can also be fun. The uniform is different, the rest the same.’

  For the sake of appearances they put the handcuffs on Carl as they approach the station. He is, after all, a prisoner on his way to jail.

  ‘It makes a better impression,’ says Porta apologetically as he snaps the cuffs together. ‘Here’s the extra key,’ he adds putting it in Carl’s pocket. ‘Then you can always get ’em off if we escorts get knocked off or the war’s suddenly over and we forget to release you in our rejoicing.’

  ‘Couldn’t you put something over ’em so everybody can’t see I’ve been pinched?’ grumbles Carl, holding the shiny handcuffs up in front of him.

  ‘No, no, man!’ declares Porta. ‘If people can’t see them you might as well not have them on. Liven up now and look downhearted. Somebody might give you something we could split afterwards out of pity.’

  ‘If we’re asked, we’ll say you’ve knocked an oberst’s ’ead in,’ says Tiny craftily. ‘People like that, they do!’

  ‘Oh Lord!’ sighs Carl sadly.

  ‘Now don’t get angry with us when we hit you across the back with our truncheons,’ continues Porta. ‘We have to show people what socialistic discipline is in the Prussian Army. Get that gruff look on your face,’ he says, nudging Tiny as they tramp into the station building with plenty of heel-banging.

  The escort and prisoner arouse satisfactory notice. Most send Carl pitying looks whilst the two cigar-smoking escorts are regarded with hate-filled eyes.

  ‘They’d bleedin’ kill us, if they dared,’ whispers Tiny happily, blowing a cloud of smoke into the face of a little man in a bowler hat.

  An old woman with pigs on a lead-rope pats Carl on the cheek and runs her hand pityingly over the handcuffs.

  ‘He’s in for a rough time, the poor little soldier!’

  Carl gives her a nod of agreement.

  ‘Don’t worry my lad. Life down here’s not worth much anyway, and if you’ve shot an officer or robbed the rich there’ll be a place in heaven for you.’

  She digs Porta angrily in the ribs.

  ‘But your kind’ll end up in hell! Running the big men’s errands for them and taking poor boys to the gallows!’ She pats Carl again on the cheek.

  ‘Go with God, little soldier. They, can’t hang you but once. Here’s a piece of cheese for your long trip.’ She pushes a large round goatsmilk cheese under Carl’s arm.

  ‘Cocksuckers!’ snarl two gefreiters, sitting on a bench and rolling dice.

  ‘Obergefreiter Joseph Porta,’ Porta bows in acknowledgement.

  ‘The train, the train!’ people scream and rush like an avalanche along the platform.

  Civil and military police try to maintain order but it is hopeless.

  The pig woman comes rushing along the train like a battering-ram. The pigs are squealing like mad things.

  ‘Think this is one o’ them trips they calls Kraft durch Freude?’ asks Tiny wonderingly, and swings his arms like a windmill to make room in the crowd.

  Sweating conductors run along the train banging doors shut. Baggage is thrown through windows. The owners crawl after it.

  The train is off. Everyone caught it but the buffers are packed. Everybody but two fat MP’s, that is.

  ‘We’ve got to get on board!’ they shout. They try to jump on but nobody will make room for them. One of them falls on his face on the platform, his steel helmet rattling in under the train.

  At Lamia the Red Cross bring round pork and beans and Turkish coffee. Porta, of course, gets three helpings.

  A prison car is coupled on to the train. A long goods waggon with heavily-barred doors and ventilation openings.

  ‘Dachau, Buchenwald,’ says Porta, licking his mess-tin clean. ‘Wonder if they get beans, too?’

  ‘A kick in the arse is what they get,’ growls an infantryman, sourly. A Red Cross sister has reported him for trying to get an extra helping. It will cost him a year without leave and three times three days confinement.

  ‘Sister o’ fuckin’ mercy. She’s one all right,’ sighs a Pioneer. ‘Make you die o’ laughin’ wouldn’t it?’

  At Salonica the train has to wait for hours and is checked continuously. Late in the afternoon they announce that it will not leave until the following day. The line has been blown up. Troops can go to the barracks for meals. The civilians light fires on the platform to prepare their food.

  After a pleasant night in the town the three arrive at the station only to be told that it will be three days before the line can be repaired.

  A sour-looking freckled MP stamps their papers.

  ‘Escort and prisoner,’ he reads out, and stares happily at Carl’s handcuffs. ‘What’s this monkey been up to?’

  Porta feels that the real crime – refusal to obey orders – will not make enough of an impression on the freckled MP and launches into a gory story in his best style.

  ‘Monster – a real monster – that’s what this one is,’ he says pushing at Carl. ‘This boy shot his oberst, slashed his Company Commander’s gut open and ate his liver and lights. He’d got on to his hauptfeldwebel when they caught him with the man’s prick and balls in his hand. A religious maniac!’ Porta turns his eyes upwards and twiddles his finger at his temple. The madman thought he could save the world by stopping the German people from reproducing.’

  ‘Madness,’ says the headhunter in wonder. ‘It’s not that easy to stop us Germans.’

  ‘No,’ Porta nods, ‘but he was an honorary member of the society “No More War” so for him perhaps it was logical to try.’

  ‘Where you escorting him to?’ asks the MP, who seems unable to take his eyes off Carl.

  ‘Germersheim,’ smiles Porta friendily. ‘They’ll blow the life out of him, there.’

  ‘He bloody deserves it,’ decides the MP hoarsely. ‘My father’s a hauptfeldwebel in an infantry mob.’

  ‘Ain’t lost ’is prick yet, ’as ’e?’ grins Tiny, smashing his fist down on the table gleefully and making all the rubber stamps dance.

  A little way into the town they are stopped by a leutnant for not saluting properly. They have to manacle Carl to a lamppost while they march past the leutnant four times saluting correctly. After this they salute everyone in uniform they meet, even postmen and park-keepers.

  They have to go into the ‘Proud Eagle’ after a while to rest their arms – and to drink beer.

  ‘Now you won’t run away and get us into trouble with the military prison service, will you?’ remarks Porta, as he removes Carl’s handcuffs.

  ‘’E’d be off like a shot if ’e got the chance,’ states Tiny, banging his tankard on the counter.

  ‘Stop that bloody noise,’ snarls the proprietor, a Volks-deutscher with the party emblem in his buttonhole.

  Tiny’s giant fist catches him by the tie.

  ‘What gives a wizened-up prick of a Volksdeutscher the right to give us orders?’

  ‘Piss an’ wind!’ shouts the publican angrily, tearing himself loose. ‘I can soon ’ave the MPs here!’

  ‘MPs?’ cackles Porta banging his Mpi on the counter and slapping an MP arm-brassard down alongside it. ‘MPs! Who the hell do you think you’re talking to? Were the bloody
MP’s, man! Shut your flapping face, or you’ll be the one arrested and it’ll be for the first and last time. Want to get executed in your own shithouse, do you?’

  ‘Let’s get out of ’ere,’ says Tiny spitting in the host’s face, ‘’onest bleedin’ coppers can’t drink beer in this ’ole.’

  ‘Thanks for the drinks,’ nods Porta, as he leaves without paying.

  They go into the ‘Welcoming Breast’, a little further down the street, where women do the serving.

  ‘We are the police,’ boasts Tiny, leaning over the counter so that everyone can see his MP-brassard.

  ‘What would the gentlemen like?’ asks the barmaid, lifting Tiny’s elbow to wipe the bar.

  ‘Three mixed,’ orders Porta, laying his Mpi on the bar.

  ‘Shift that grease-gun!’ snarls the barmaid.

  ‘Don’t you cotton to ironmongery?’ asks Tiny. ‘You can cancel debts with this kind, you know.’

  Porta removes his Mpi without a word.

  The girl fills three large tankards half-full of beer, mixes Slivovitz and tomato-juice into them and stirs with a glass rod.

  They wish one another good health and empty the tankards in one long slobbering draught.

  ‘It tastes like hell,’ wheezes Carl, ‘but it does the job fast.’

  ‘Until this minute, I’ve ’ad me doubts as to whether the bleedin’ world did really spin round an’ round,’ says Tiny in wonder, ‘but now I can feel it bleedin’ well doin’ it. ’Old tight on to the bleedin’ bar, boys or you’ll bleedin’ fall off!’

  Die Zeit kennt keine Wiederkehr, they sing, as they reel along Metropolis Street towards the brothel the ‘Green Turkey’. In some unexplainable way they land in the police station on Nicodemeus Street where they shake hands all round with the amazed Greek policemen and say that they have been asked to bring regards from mutual friends.

  ‘When you’re goin’ to get ’ung you ’ave the right to spiritual solace,’ says Tiny as they sit on the edge of a fountain around midnight catching goldfish which he swallows alive.

  ‘The military manual covers all eventualities,’ hiccups Porta in agreement.

  Tiny falls into the fountain trying to prove that he can stand on one leg on the edge with his other leg straight up his back.

  ‘Much ado about nothing,’ Porta explains to an invisible audience.

  ‘Now don’t you think you can get away from us,’ says Tiny threateningly, grabbing Carl by the collar and pulling him into the fountain. ‘Don’t get to thinkin’ we’re just a couple o’ peasants with our brains in our bleedin’ bollocks!’

  ‘We, and the army with us, do not take escort duty lightly,’ shouts Porta with lifted finger.

  They wobble down the street, saluting a cat which they call ‘Herr General!’

  ‘Ha, there you are,’ screams Porta, falling on the neck of a passing gentleman on his way home from his mistress. ‘You’ll have to take a turn at the infantry school at Hammelsburg and learn to eat old army boots for breakfast.’

  ‘It is very ’elpful to everybody in later life,’ hiccups Tiny.

  ‘Cavalry’s the thing,’ drools Carl happily, trying to mount an iron fence and falling off repeatedly on the other side.

  The civilian wrenches away and continues rapidly down the street.

  ‘Give my love to our mother,’ screams Porta after him, ‘only you and I know she was German.’

  ‘We must make an example of somebody,’ says Tiny as they find themselves at dawn in the vegetable market. All the waggons are beginning to come in from the country. He presses his P-38 against the forehead of a street-cleaner who is leaning on his broom, fast asleep. ‘What would you say if I was to shoot you? Do you think you would like it?’

  ‘Heil Hitler! Heil Hitler!’ shouts the sweeper. It is the only German he knows. He has discovered it to work well with most German soldiers.

  Tiny drops his pistol as he embraces him, and falls into a man-hole from which it takes several people to extricate him.

  ‘In Brussels we caught a group disguised in Salvation Army uniforms,’ says Porta to a greengrocer.

  ‘Salvationists!’ cries Tiny. ‘I love ’earin’ about them. They’re that nice. When you ’ang ’em they go to the bleedin’ gallows without a yip.’

  The train stops at Stoby. Partisans have blown up the tracks.: Croatian police units hang three civilians from telegraph poles. Somebody has to take the rap for the partisans who got away.

  Machine-guns can be heard in the distance.

  ‘They’re knocking off another train,’ says the RTO, slapping the train commander on the shoulder. ‘You were lucky, major, getting delayed at Salonica.’

  A woman runs screaming from a waggon. At her heels is a drunken soldier, coatless and with his flies gaping.

  An infantryman, leaning against a lamp-post chewing at a piece of bread, sticks out his foot casually. The soldier cartwheels along the platform.

  Two men from the station guard throw themselves on him like hungry wolves.

  ‘Would you let me have his papers, major, so that we can notify his unit when we hang him?’ asks the RTO.

  ‘Will you hang him?’ asks the train commander in surprise.

  ‘Yes, of course, we’re in the field here. A quiet little summary court-martial. One officer and two soldiers to judge the case. The soldiers are told what the verdict is to be. We’ve knocked up a gallows over in the quarry. Nothing much, just a log over a couple of posts. We can hang ten men at a time. Our executioner, a civilian, gets 5 marks a man, and is quite satisfied with the rate.’

  ‘Good Lord!’ says the train commander, and wipes the sweat from his brow.

  ‘Don’t you expect trouble over this, someday?’

  ‘Why ever should I?’ asks the RTO wonderingly. ‘Our courts-martial are all according to regulations and all judgements are recorded. The executed persons are buried in consecrated ground. All in good order. We’re not like the SD. The worst of the worst get proper legal treatment here, and, I might add, spiritual solace.’

  Towards evening goods waggons mounting automatic cannon are coupled on to the train.

  Two flat-cars filled with sand are coupled on in front of the engine as protection against mines. The prisoners are placed on the flats. If the track is mined they will be killed.

  Well into the night the train moves off. Speed is not increased until it enters the Struma Valley. This is considered the most dangerous part of the route.

  The prisoners in the open waggons are illuminated strongly, as a warning to the partisans. Slowly the passengers are rocked to sleep.

  Porta and a marine-obermaat are shooting dice. He has two years arrears of pay to get through and he succeeds.

  On the final throw the train is shaken by the roar of an explosion. There is a horrible sound of bucking metal and splintering wood. The synchronized quad-guns start up a raging return fire. Cascades of flares illuminate the mountain slopes. The heavy flicker of explosions lights up the terrain right over to the cliffs on the far side of the Struma. Machine-guns bark irritably, sending strings of phosphorescent tracer towards a wave of dark figures which pours down the slopes and out into the foaming river.

  ‘See you in the community grave!’ shouts Porta, jumping through the smashed window followed by Tiny and Carl.

  A scimitar-like shard of glass has nearly removed the head of the marine-obermaat.

  The whole compartment is dripping with blood.

  Porta and Tiny crawl in under the half-overturned waggon. Carl runs forward to a mound where a discarded LMG is lying. He loads quickly and fires short bursts at the partisans. They are now over on the near side of the river.

  A couple of mortars spit out grenades. For a moment the attack is held up, but new waves come flocking from the ravines and slopes of the mountains. They seem inexhaustible. Incessantly, dark figures storm forward.

  The mortar section gets the range and stops the attack. Shrill screams hang in the night, which shields the b
loody business along the railway track from sight.

  The attackers withdraw as suddenly as they came; tracer streams glittering after them. Hand-grenades fly through the air, and the blue glare of explosions light up cliffs and earthworks. There is a photographic glimpse of a human body suspended in the air. Then a falling death-scream.

  Close to the track is an old fortification where a group of partisans have taken cover. A bundle of hand-grenades tears the steel door from its hinges. A couple of Molotov cocktails disappear into the dark. A hollow muffled explosion follows and flame flashes from the firing slits. The survivors stagger out with clothes on fire. The machine-guns take care of them.

  Porta wipes the sweat from his face and crawls from under the waggon together with Tiny. Carl’s cheek has been torn open by a piece of shrapnel. A medical orderly fixes it up with two large pieces of tape.

  ‘Shit!’ he cries. ‘Here we are on escort duty and according to the manual the prisoner must arrive at destination unhurt. These partisans don’t seem to have read the manual though.’

  A deafening explosion shatters the silence and blue flame fountains upwards. It seems as if the whole mountain has gone up. Great rocks come tumbling down the slope carrying partisans and German soldiers with them into the depths. With a long rolling roar the avalanche rolls over the train taking several carriages with it into the river.

  ‘Gawd Almighty!’ gasps Tiny, ‘if we ’adn’t the luck of the bleedin’ devil ’imself we wouldn’t ’ave lived to be this old.’

  In the course of an hour it is all over. The partisans disappear into the darkness. Only the dead are left.

  The heavy engine is unharmed. Its pumps tick away quietly. A thin plume of steam jets from the side.

  The engine-driver and his mate are dead. The body of one hangs in the door opening. The head dangles loosely downwards. The other is lying across the coal with his throat slashed open. They were Serbians, killed by Serbians. They were aiding the enemy.

  The civilian personnel of the train are gone without trace. The partisans have taken them with them. Before evening their mutilated bodies will be found in the streets of the nearest town. A warning.