The Bloody Road To Death (Cassell Military Paperbacks)

by Sven Hassel

‘I’ve asked him, but he don’t say! Want to see him drink beer?’

  Without waiting for an answer Wolf places four bottles of Schlosspilz on the table and beckons to the bear.

  ‘Aren’t you going to open them first?’ asks Porta, wonderingly.

  ‘No, no, no, no! He does that himself!’

  The bear waddles over to the table, takes a bottle and bites the cap off with his teeth. Then he empties the contents down his throat with the speed of a thirsty docker, throws the empty bottle at the wolfhounds and picks up the next.

  ‘Holy Mother of Kazan!’ cries Porta, in amazement. ‘Well I’m damned! D’you think he could be taught to fire a kalashnikov?’

  ‘Sure, sure! says Wolf. ‘Teach that bear anything, you can! A very clever animal. He was with a special unit in Moscow before he came to the circus.’

  The bear waddles over to Porta, lays a huge paw on his shoulder, and gives him a great wet kiss in the middle of his face.

  ‘He likes me!’ shouts Porta enthusiastically. ‘There ain’t many who do, you know!’

  Coffee is served to Porta and Wolf. They agree to pick up the tractors in the middle of the night. Preferably between 02.00 and 04.00 hrs. That is the time of night when the guards are at their sleepiest.

  Wolf’s big white tom-cat comes strolling arrogantly from the neighbouring storeroom.

  Porta calls to it. He loves cats. He has never really got over the loss of Stalin2. Wolf’s cat ignores him completely. It swishes its tail angrily when he calls to it again and offers it a piece of pâté.

  ‘He’s a French cat,’ boasts Wolf, on behalf of his cat. ‘From Paris!’

  ‘That’s obvious. A strong sense of patriotism.’

  ‘Too right,’ says Wolf. ‘My French prisoners are the only ones he’ll let touch him and give him food.’

  ‘Won’t he let you touch him?’ asks Porta.

  ‘Non, monsieur! Don’t reckon he’s ever got over us stealin’ Alsace-Lorraine in 1870.’

  ‘That was a typical German thing to do to good neighbours,’ admits Porta, solemnly. He watches the cat admiringly, as it passes the wolf-hounds with tail up and an air of the deepest contempt for all dogs in general and those two in particular.

  When Hauptmann von Pader hears about the bear, he gets straight on to Regimental HQ.

  ‘Porta and a bear, eh!’ laughs Oberst Hinka. ‘Take it on strength. There’s nothing in the manual that forbids keeping bears.’

  ‘Do you want it to parade?’ asks von Pader, crestfallen.

  ‘Your business! You’re the OC!’ Oberst Hinka cuts him off, uninterestedly.

  The bear parades with the company. After a while everybody gets used to it. The only thing that enrages it is the sight of khaki uniforms. These change it from a good-natured giant to a snarling beast of prey. Its eyes get smaller and glint dangerously.

  We hold a gigantic christening party for it and name it Rasputin. There is something about the bear which reminds us of the Russian monk. Especially when it drinks beer.

  Wolf arrives at the party with his private choir.

  Between the songs speeches are made. Heide becomes so drunk that he lets himself be converted to Communism. Later that night he gets qualms of conscience, becomes a Catholic and is given absolution by Porta who was once with the Padre Corps3.

  The Old Man rises with difficulty. Stubbornly he tries to seat himself in a wheelchair and finally succeeds. The result is wonderful. Off goes the chair across the storeroom. Tiny opens the double doors politely and he rolls swiftly down the narrow path and straight into the river. A rescue chain is quickly arranged.

  ‘Honoured singers,’ he babbles when they get him back on shore. ‘That man there,’ he hiccups and points waveringly at Gregor. ‘That man . . . That man there! He sings like a pig! Just like a pig!’ He looks at Gregor again. ‘And he has three heads!’

  Gregor gets on his feet with great difficulty. Schnapps has reached the level of his tonsils. Uncertainly he supports himself against a 20mm cannon.

  ‘I must tell you, sir!’ he hiccups, and tries to spit in the Old Man’s direction. ‘I must tell you that you are the dumbest dummy I have ever met! You are a real shit, sir!’

  The Old Man falls across the table face downwards into the floral decoration.

  ‘German soldiers! Cannot sing! Be shot at dawn! Not worthy live!’ he mumbles, his voice stifled by petals. He is eating the table decoration.

  ‘Sing, you bastards!’ screams Gregor. He has crawled up on to the little seat behind the 20mm. ‘One, two, three, sing! No more 0’ this idlin’,’ he snuffles. ‘If we can’t sing there’s nothin’ left. Song is the, the, the bloody, bleedin’ backbone of the Army!’ He carries out the loading drill on the gun.

  ‘Sh-sh-sh-sh-shoot me at last!’ stutters Porta, sitting by the side of Rasputin and stinking drunk.

  ‘I’ll shoot who I like an’ when I like I’ll shoot who I like,’ stammers Gregor, and suddenly throws up all over the gun.

  ‘You’ll clean that gun,’ roars Heide in a rage. ‘If you’re a thousand times an unteroffizier, you’ll clean it, boy!’

  The gun goes off, sending a whole clip of 20mm shells through the roof. Luckily they are armour-piercing and not HE.

  ‘Stop your nonsense, now,’ Wolf admonishes them in a fatherly tone.

  One of the shells took his cap off. ‘We are a sober choir engaged in honouring a christening and not a war-mad shooting club on militia exercises in the local park on a Sunday morning.’

  ‘Feldwebel Beier will sing the next song,’ drools Gregor, in a thick voice, falling off the gun.

  ‘I’ll have you picked up by the MP’s!’ shouts the Old Man. He is trying to swallow the long stem of a carnation. He thinks he is eating asparagus.

  ‘Unteroffizier Gregor Martin!’ shouts Heide. ‘You are a disgrace to the German unteroffizier corps. The men laugh at you! Unteroffizier Martin, you are a blot on the corps!’

  ‘Members of the corps who do not understand that the troops must be kept down by the exercise of strict discipline should never have been made unteroffiziers,’ roars Wolf, solemnly. He attempts to get up from his chair, but fails completely. Instead he falls under the table where the Legionnaire has arrived before him and is sitting giving orders to a camel squadron. He thinks he is somewhere in the Sahara.

  ‘Mille diables, can you smell the date palms, mon ami?’ They are in bloom at this time of year. Allah el Akbar, on your knees in prayer!’ he yells, knocking his forehead piously on the floor.

  Wolf pulls himself up again into his chair, falls on Heide’s neck and tells the world how happy he is to have found his eldest sister, whose husband has left her, again.

  ‘We’ll break those fuckin dogfaces!’ roars Heide.

  ‘It’s us he means,’ says Porta, insulted. He puts his arm in comradely fashion round Tiny’s shoulders. ‘He doesn’t understand the true military rank classifications, the brown turd.’

  The bear lifts its head and growls threateningly at the word ‘brown’.

  ‘Unteroffizier Julius Heide,’ says Porta, condescendingly. ‘You have shit where your brains ought to be. I came close to saying you were dumb as a German, but I rarely shit on my own doorstep.’

  ‘’E’s a stupid quim,’ drools Tiny. His eyes go glassy and he falls on to the dogs who bite him in the leg. Fortunately he is too drunk to feel it. ‘Julius,’ he hiccups, ‘Don’t you know that us obergefreiters in some ways rank equal to staff officers. You don’t always find an unteroffizier or a feldwebel with the General Staff, maybe not even a leutnant. What you do find is ’alf a score o’ us obergefreiters runnin’ round keepin’ the bleedin’ morale o’ the place ’igh.’

  ‘Tiny knows what he’s talking about,’ Porta praises him. ‘We carry with dignity and pride the two tapes that are only handed out to soldiers with grey matter inside their skulls. Listen you shits of unteroffiziers,’ he continues in a voice which cuts through the hellish din. ‘In some beds obergefreiters outr
ank bloody generals!’

  ‘Just you lot don’t forget as the German Supreme Commander ain’t no more’n a gefreiter,’ grins Tiny, glassily. ‘An’ ’e never did get the other bleedin’ tape!’

  ‘As I say,’ drawls Porta, ‘it takes grey cells to get to be obergefreiter.’

  ‘Let ’im watch ’imself,’ warns Tiny, belching resoundingly.

  ‘Brüder, zur Freiheit, zur Sonne . . .’ sings Porta in a shrill voice.

  ‘High treason!’ howls Heide, enraged. ‘I ought to have you arrested.’

  ‘Die Strasse frei. SA marchiert . . .’ he screams, trying to drown out Porta’s Communist hymn.

  ‘Arrest ’em,’ grins Wolf foolishly, scrabbling on the floor for his belt and holster.

  His wolfhound, Satan, brings it to him in its mouth.

  Wolf salutes the dog and thanks it. With difficulty he draws the 08 from its holster. He holds the pistol in front of him with both hands and attempts to take aim at Heide. The muzzle swings to and fro, covering first one then another.

  ‘Unteroffizier Julius Heide, you drunken twit, you are under arrest. If you attempt to escape I shall fire on you,’ He falls over the table, and his gun goes off. A bullet whines past Heide’s face and bores itself into the wall behind him.

  Heide looks about him in terror.

  ‘Partisans,’ he whispers, rigid and shaking with fear.

  ‘Nix partisanski,’ grins Porta, and sings:

  ‘Heute sind wir roten

  Morgen sind sir toten.’

  ‘What the hell?’ babbles Wolf, swaying dangerously, and describing circles in the air with the muzzle of his pistol. ‘Didn’t I get you, Julius? Let’s have another go! If at first you don’t succeed. . .’

  ‘Fire!’ commands the Old Man, who is by now half-asleep.

  Heide emits a shrill scream of terror, and dives under the table. Two shots whine past him.

  ‘I’m wounded, I’m dead, orderlies!’

  ‘Are you balls!’ chatters Wolf, leaning on his Russian bodyguard. ‘Just you wait though, Julius, we’ll get you. If we’re allowed to liquidate Communists then why not bloody Nazis?’

  ‘Prove you’re Chief Mechanic and also responsible for ordnance,’ Barcelona encourages him in happy drunkenness.

  ‘Straight in front, brown target, fire!’ roars the Old Man energetically.

  Wolf picks up an Mpi turns it at the table and lets off a burst. Glass, wine and beer rain about our ears.

  ‘I’ll shoot your prick off,’ promises Wolf, changing clips. ‘You’re as hard to hit as that bloody Russian chum’s cat4.’

  ‘I’m dying,’ howls Heide from under the table, waving a white flag of truce.

  Wolf pulls himself up and salutes the Russian bodyguard.

  ‘Sergeant Igor, get on your bicycle, ride to Moscow and report that we have beaten a Nazi battalion!’

  ‘My bicycle is punctured, sir,’ replies Igor, helping Wolf to an armchair, in which he immediately falls asleep. He just manages to order Igor to repair the puncture.

  The medical orderly puts a dressing on Heide, The top of his left ear has been shot off.

  Shortly after, Wolf wakes up and wants to throw us all out. He is about to set the wolf-hounds on us, when the telephone begins to ring angrily and impatiently. One of the guards takes it.

  ‘Herr Stabfeldwebel and Chief Mechanic not here,’ he answers brusquely. Then he suddenly seems to shrink, clicks his heels together and stands to attention. Even though he is from the Russian army, he has been a prisoner-of-war for so long that he can recognize vocal nuances and can judge if they are dangerous or not.

  ‘What shit’s that?’ roars Wolf from the depths of the armchair.

  ‘Inspector of Military Police Zufall,’ the Russian says, with doom and disaster in his voice. Anything which smells in the slightest of police is deadly dangerous to his mind, particularly when they turn up between two and four o’clock in the morning. The death hours.

  ‘Ask that bloody copper what he thinks he’s doin’ ringing at this time of night?’ roars Wolf, making the rafters echo. ‘The bastard can ring tomorrow between ten and eleven.’

  ‘Gaspodin, Inspector Zufall says it is important,’ reports the Russian, saluting with the telephone.

  Wolf roars with laughter.

  ‘Make that dobermann-pinscher of a cop understand that it may be important to him but it’s not to this Greater German Chief Mechanic!’

  The Russian gabbles Wolf’s message off at such a rate that the man at the other end cannot manage to interrupt, bangs the receiver back on the hook and rushes out of the store-room to hide himself until the whole matter has been cleared up.

  A little later the telephone rings again,;

  ‘Let me take it,’ says Porta self-confidently. ‘We professional soldiers don’t have to take any shit from these half-assed beetles.’ He rips up the telephone with the assurance of a Rockefeller about to accept an offer for a dried-up oil well. ‘Listen bighead!’ he roars into the telephone. ‘Ring tomorrow between ten and eleven, if you’re so mad keen to talk to us. We’re having a christening party, so you can stuff your important business crossways, friend! Sure, come on over if you want to, we’ll christen you too if you like. Who you’re speaking to? Me, you dumb twit! Who else? I couldn’t be less interested in getting to know you, so if that’s what you’re in need of you might as well not come. I don’t give a fuck for you or your court-martial, chum. I’ve told you. Come if you want to. You don’t seem able to remember what you say yourself. That’s the third time you’ve told me you’re comin’. Well then for Jesus Christ’s sake get your finger out an’ get over here. If you can sing, so much the better! End of message!’ Porta bangs down the telephone decisively. He gives the rest of us a superior nod. ‘These nonentities from the police have to be given the rough side of your tongue straight off. Then you’ve soon got them licking your hand. Now he knows it’s us an’ the Army who give the orders round here.’

  ‘Hear, hear!’ drools Wolf from the armchair. He has a big bouquet of beer-sodden carnations in his lap. ‘We hold all power firmly in our hands and when we win the final victory out go the goddam bluebottles. They’re an unnecessary drain on the exchequer.’

  ‘New song,’ orders Heide, who has collected the choir in a ring around him.

  With beer-soaked voices they sing:

  Geht auch der Tod uns dauemd zur Seit’,

  geht es auch driiber und drunter,

  braust auch der Wind durch finstere Heid’,

  uns geht die Sonne nicht unter5.

  ‘Caps off! Let us pray!’ commands Porta.

  We kneel down in spilled beer and remnants of food. Solemnly we press our helmets against our chests.

  Porta prays for protection, and that our souls may be allowed to enter the eternal home when the time comes . . .

  ‘But first we’ll finish up this war,’ thunders Wolf, ‘then we’ll have a word with God, afterwards.’

  ‘When I’m well be’ind the bleedin’ lines in peace an’ quiet, an’ out o’ danger, I don’t give a shit for all that God stuff,’ Tiny explains to the wolf-hounds and the bear, ‘but you understand, mates, soon as I’m out ’ere again where they throw red-’ot bleedin’ lumps o’ iron at your ’ead an’ you run the risk of fallin’ out any old time at all, I keeps meself close to God, an’ I’m that religious you wouldn’t believe. Everythin’ ’as its time an’ place.’

  ‘We’re gonna do that cop bastard,’ promises Wolf, in a thick voice.

  ‘We’ll show him what tough guys really are,’ says Gregor, striving to put on a villainous expression.

  ‘Look tough. It’s a good thing,’ drools Julius, fanning me with the sorry remnants of a bouquet of roses.

  Gregor brings his fist down decisively in a large pool of schnapps.

  ‘Drink, that’s something! You know where you are. Know what’s gonna happen to you. Women’re much more dangerous. You never know what’s goin’ to happen next! Did I ever te
ll you ’bout when I got between the sheets with my general’s bint? That wicked bitch near got me shot, she did!’

  The door crashes open. A little fat man in a greatcoat much too large for him rolls into the storeroom. His head is round as a cannonball and reminiscent of an aged pig’s head. His ears stick out like braking flaps and are all that stop his oversized cap falling down over his face. He marches straight over to Wolf and shines a large torch directly in his face, despite the fact that the room is brightly lit.

  ‘Chief Mechanic Wolf,’ he confirms in a piercing voice, snapping the torch off.

  ‘And Stabsfeldwebel,’ corrects Wolf, pouring some drops of beer over his guest’s head.

  ‘You deal in tea,’ states the fat little man.

  Porta is suddenly in a hurry. He sees trouble coming over the horizon. Two huge gorillas in slate-grey police uniform stop him at the door.

  ‘Goin’ somewhere, obergefreiter?’ grins one of them, throwing Porta back so hard he falls across the table. ‘Don’t. We’re gonna see some fun soon! You ain’t ever seen nothin’ like it, I’d reckon!’

  ‘Who the devil are you?’ asks Wolf, condescendingly, slapping the little man on the shoulder.

  ‘Zufall, Inspector Zufall.’

  ‘You look it,’ says Wolf, breaking out into a roar of laughter.

  ‘You are a real comedian,’ says the Inspector. ‘You’re going to need all that wonderful sense of humour soon.’ He takes off his enormous cap, passes his hand over his completely hairless skull, and claps the cap on his head again. ‘D’you know what the punishment is for those who sabotage the work of the General Staff?’

  ‘They put ’em up against a wall an’ shoot ’em,’ declares Wolf without a moment’s thought.

  ‘We are completely in agreement,’ smiles Inspector Zufall, happily. ‘I am here to investigate a case of such a nature.’ He points a thick finger at Wolf, in the gesture of a public prosecutor. ‘And you are the saboteur!’

  ‘I don’t understand what you mean,’ mumbles Wolf, beginning to see dark clouds coming up over the horizon.

  ‘Of course not,’ smiles Zufall, making a heroic effort to appear friendly, and failing completely. He pulls a fat black notebook from his pocket. ‘You have sold some tea to QM officer Zümfe of the 4th Panzer Army. You guaranteed it to be Darjeeling tea with an addition of green tea.’