by Sven Hassel
‘A prize stunt,’ the Legionnaire remarked. ‘If only I could get into the Quartermaster Corps and sell raincoats to those officer thieves! Should this befall me, Allah would indeed be wise and good.’
‘What about that broad you were telling us about?’ Tiny cried. He’d forgotten about the QMC officers.
‘Mind your own business,’ the little Legionnaire snarled. A little later he spoke to himself: ‘Mohammed and all true prophets, how I loved her! Twice after she dismissed me I tried to break into Allah’s garden.’
‘But you said you threw her out,’ Tiny guffawed.
‘So what?’ the Legionnaire shouted. ‘I don’t give a damn about the bitches, those short-legged, wide-hipped, jabbering creatures! And to think a man should be stupid enough to chase after something like that. Take a look at her in the morning, eyes swollen and her whole face puffed up and smeared with lipstick.’
‘Thank you,’ said a voice from the interior of the car. ‘That’s what I call a compliment to the fair sex!’
‘He’s right,’ came from somewhere else in the darkness. ‘You lose your appetite when you face one of those with metal curlers in her hair and down-at-heel slippers, and stockings dangling about her shanks.’
Through the noise of the train we could make out the drone of an airplane. We hushed up and listened, like wild animals when they scent the death song of the beaters.
‘Yabos,’3 someone whispered loudly.
‘Yabos,’ repeated several others.
We shivered, not because of the cold, but because death was there in the car with us. Yabos . . .
‘Come now death, come!’ the Legionnaire hummed.
The plane swerved and roared in a steadily growing crescendo. With a zooming roar it swept along the train. The blood-red star glared coldly at the numerous cattle cars with the cross of mercy on their roofs. The plane wheeled skyward, then swooped back down like a hawk upon a young hare.
Tiny got up, supported himself on his muscular arms and roared at the doors: ‘Come on then, you red devil, grind us to hash! But get it over with!’
As if the pilot had heard and wished to do his best to fulfill the request, the bullets pealed through the walls of the car and rapped against the other side. Scores of little peepholes appeared at the top of one wall in neat rows.
Some screamed. Others let out a rattle. Then they died.
The locomotive blew its whistle. We drove into a forest. The pilot returned home for tea and eggs, sunny side up.
It was such a nice morning, with clear frost. The pilot must have enjoyed the beautiful landscape from up there.
The Legionnaire said, ‘I could fancy having a sausage. Not just an ordinary sausage, but a sausage made of pork meat with a tang of smoke and strong as black pepper. It must have a whiff of acorn. This it gets from the pig running loose in the woods.’
‘You can get typhoid from eating raw clams,’ announced an infantry color guard with a smashed kneecap. ‘If I could only have a whole basket of typhoid-infected clams when I go back to the front again. Every time I go back to the front.’
The wheels rumbled along the rails. The cold was relentless. It burst in through the holes left by the Yabos bullets.
‘Alfred,’ I called. I hadn’t spoken the name of the little Legionnaire for a long time, if I’d ever done so.
He didn’t answer.
‘Alfred!’
It sounded silly. ‘Alfred, did you ever yearn for a home? Furniture and that sort of thing?’
‘No, Sven, I’m past the time for that,’ he answered with eyes closed. His mouth was set in a sneer.
How fond I was of his drawn face.
‘Now I’m past thirty,’ he went on. ‘At sixteen I went to La Légion Etrangère. I lied that I was two years older. I’ve been a swine for too many years. The dunghill’s my home. My hut down there in Sidi-bel-Abbès, smelling sour from the thick coat of sweat thousands of men have left behind and no fumigation can remove, that hut will be my last.’
‘Do you regret it?’
‘You should never regret anything,’ the Legionnaire answered. ‘Life’s good. The weather’s good.’
‘It’s damn cold, Alfred.’
‘Cold weather is good, too. All weather is good as long as you breathe. Even a prison is good as long as you’re alive and forget about how well off you could be if . . . It’s this “if” that drives people mad. Forget this “if” and live!’
‘Aren’t you sorry you’re wounded in the neck?’ asked the man with gangrene. ‘You may get a stiff neck and have to wear a steel collar to support your head.’
‘No, I’m not sorry about it. I can live even with a steel collar. When this is all over I’ll take a depot job in La Légion Etrangère with a twenty-year contract. I’ll be able to drink a bottle of Valpolicella every night and carry on some small trading on the black market with unclaimed depot things. Forget about tomorrow. Kick a priest in the pants when I’m drunk. Visit the mosque twice a day and say to hell with everything else.’
‘I’m going to live in Venice when Adolf’s been laid out,’ the infantry color guard cut in. ‘Saw it with the old man at twelve. First-class city. Has anyone here been to Venice?’
‘I have,’ came softly from the straw in the corner.
We were horrified when we discovered it was the dying airman. He didn’t have a face any more. Burning oil.
The infantryman piped down. Without looking at the dying man, he said, ‘So, you’ve been to Venice?’ He said it in Italian to please the airman.
Long silence. Everyone felt the rest of us should keep quiet. To hear a man so near death talking about a city was a rare privilege.
‘Canale Grande is most beautiful by night. Then the gondolas look like diamonds playing with pearls,’ the airman whispered.
‘St Mark’s Place is fun when the water rises and floods it,’ the color guard said.
‘Venice is the best city in the world. I’d like to go there,’ said the dying soldier, knowing full well he’d die in a cattle car east of Brest-Litovsk.
‘An old soldier is always gay,’ the Legionnaire said, apropos of nothing. ‘He’s gay because he’s alive and understands what this means.’ Glancing at me, he went on. ‘But there aren’t so very many old soldiers. Many call themselves soldiers, but only because they have their stripes on. You’re not a soldier till the Man with the Scythe has shook hands with you.’
‘When I’m settled in Venice,’ the infantryman mused, ‘I’m going to eat cannelloni every day. I’ll have crab served on the shell. And I’ll be damn sure to have sole, too.’
‘Merde! Clams are also good,’ the Legionnaire said.
‘But they give you typhoid,’ a voice warned from the other end of the car.
‘I don’t give a damn about typhoid. When Adolf has been strangled, we’ll all be immune,’ the infantry color guard said confidently.
‘I forbid you to speak like this about our divine Führer,’ the artillery sergeant shrieked. ‘You’re a bunch of traitors and you’ll swing!’
‘Oh, shut up!’
The brakes squeaked. The train moved in short spurts. Then it accelerated slightly and braked again. It went slower and slower till finally it came to a halt with a long wail. The locomotive blew off steam and drove off to get water and the other things a locomotive needs.
From the noise outside we could tell we were standing on a station. Trampling of boots, shouts, screams. Some people were laughing loudly and defiantly. We noted one person’s laughter in particular. We lay there getting furious at him. Only a Nazi pile of shit could have a laugh like that. No honest beat-up guy would laugh that way.
‘Where are we?’ the engineer Pfc asked.
‘In Russia,’ came the Legionnaire’s laconic answer.
‘I don’t need to be told that, damn you!’
‘Why the hell do you ask then, you fool?’
‘I want to know in what city.’
‘What’s that to you?’
‘Heil, comrades,’ he whinnied.
‘Piss me in the eye,’ Tiny yelled aggressively and spat in the direction of the Aesculapian hero.
‘Water,’ a voice moaned from the filthy straw.
‘Have a little patience,’ the NCO answered, ‘and you’ll get water and soup. Is anyone here especially sick?’
‘Are you crazy, of course not – we are as healthy as newborn babes! We’ve come to play soccer with you,’ the infantry color guard remarked dryly.
The NCO took off as fast as his legs could carry him.
An endless time passed. Then a couple of POWs turned up with a militiaman. They lugged along a pail of soup and began to scoop it into our greasy and incredibly filthy mess tins. One scoop for each. The soup was lukewarm.
We drank and became even more hungry. The militiaman promised to bring more, but he didn’t come back. Instead there came a new batch of POWs. Under the supervision of a sergeant they started hauling out corpses. Fourteen corpses. Nine of them were the work of the fighter-bomber. They wanted to take the airman along too, but he managed to convince them he was still alive. The sergeant got peeved and muttered something, but left him behind.
Late in the afternoon a reserve doctor came, accompanied by a couple of MC noncoms. They glanced quickly here and there. To everybody they said the same thing: ‘It’ll be all right, it isn’t really bad.’
After repeating the same formula to the airman, they came up to Tiny. The fun started. Before they had a chance to open their mouths, he flared up: ‘You dirty finks! Look how they’ve messed me up! But that’s not really bad, is it? Just lie down, you quack, and I’ll tear off one of your buttocks. Then you can tell me if it’s bad!’
He grabbed hold of the doctor’s ankle and toppled him over in the stinking straw.
‘Attention! Attention!’ the Legionnaire yelled.
‘Good, old Tiny, that’s the way,’ rejoiced the man with the bleeding arm and flew at the doctor. The rest of us followed suit and in a moment we’d given the doctor a coating of blood. After his two NCOs had managed to extricate him, he looked menacing.
‘Not so bad,’ we sneered in chorus.
‘You’ll pay for this,’ the shocked doctor threatened.
‘If you dare, come on once more,’ Tiny laughed.
The doctor and his two attendants jumped down from the car and slammed the door.
The train didn’t take off again till next morning. But they forgot to bring us breakfast. We cursed.
The airman was still alive the next morning, but someone else had died during the night. Two guys were fighting over his boots. No wonder, they were a fine soft pair of boots. No doubt a pair he’d had custom-made before the war. They were too long by regulations. They were lined with light fur. A sergeant from the railroad artillery got them. He gave his rival, a chasseur NCO, a smack on the jaw that made him forget about the boots for a while.
‘A damn fine pair of boots,’ the sergeant cried jubilantly, holding them up so all of us could enjoy the sight of them. He moistened them with his breath and rubbed them down with his sleeve. ‘Christ, how I’ll march in these!’ he beamed, caressing the good boots.
‘You’d better slip your own on the dead guy,’ someone warned. ‘Otherwise you might run the risk of losing them in a hurry.’
‘What d’you mean by that?’ the sergeant gaped, hiding the boots under the straw. ‘I’d like to see the fellow who dares!’ He resembled a dog guarding his bone.
‘Well, in that case just forget about putting the boots on the dead man and you’ll find out there are some who dare,’ the same man laughed. ‘The head-hunters4 will pull off that fine pair of boots for you and then string you up for looting. For that’s what it is, looting. It’s even been called corpse robbery. You see, I’ve been with the flying drumhead court-martials. I know the score.’
‘Oh, damn it all!’ the sergeant protested. ‘He won’t need those boots any more.’
‘You wont either, brother,’ came soberly from the drumhead man. ‘You have a pair from the Army.’
‘That’s just crap. Those rotten dice boxes aren’t fit to walk in.’
‘Tell that to the head-hunters,’ the other laughed. His face was pale, with bloodless lips and cold eyes. ‘They’ll beat you till you admit in writing you’ve received from Adolf the finest pair of boots in the world.’
The sergeant didn’t say any more. He had come to his senses. Cursing, he slipped the old dice boxes on the dead man.
An hour later the dead man wouldn’t have been able to recognize his outfit. It had been replaced with all sorts of unfamiliar things.
Huhn, the NCO with the abdominal wound, again asked for water. The Legionnaire shoved a lump of ice toward him. He sucked it greedily.
My feet had begun to burn. Pains were shooting through my whole body. It felt as if flames were gnawing my bones. The second stage of frostbite. I knew. First, the pains. Then the pains recede a little, and a bit later your feet start burning and go on burning till they’re numb. This numbness is the sign that it’s all over. Gangrene is in full swing and your feet die. The pains move up. In the hospital a stump will steam under the surgeon’s knife. Terror gripped me. Amputation. God, anything but that! I whispered my fear to the Legionnaire. He glanced at me. ‘Then the war will be over for you. Better the feet than the head.’
Yes, then the war will be over. I tried to console myself, but the chilling terror stuck in my throat. I tried to imagine I’d been lucky with my feet. It would’ve been worse had it been my hands; but terror didn’t loosen its grip on me. I saw myself on crutches. No, I didn’t want to be a ‘pegleg.’
‘What’s the matter with you?’ the Legionnaire asked, surprised. Without knowing I had cried out ‘peg-leg.’
I fell asleep. The pains woke me up, but I was happy with my pains. My feet hurt, but there was life in them. I still had my good, wonderful feet.
The train stopped twice. Both times a medic looked at my feet. Each time the same: ‘Not too-bad.’
‘By Mohammed, what’s really bad then?’ the Legionnaire fumed. He pointed at the maimed airman, who had just died. ‘Isn’t that bad either?’
No one bothered to answer him. The emergency auxiliary hospital train continued west.
On arriving at Cracow sixty-two per cent of the wounded were unloaded as cadavers after a twelve-day transport.
1 Garnisonsverwendungsfähig Heimat (fit only for garrison duty).
2 Kriegsverwendungsfähig (fully fit for active service).
3 Fighter-bombers.
4 Military Police.
‘You’re a flock of blubbering old women,’ roared the army chaplain, Colonel von Zlavik, when we moaned. He was greatly annoyed that we betrayed our pain. ‘You implore the Holy Father to help you, but the Lord will have nothing to do with a pack of good-for-nothings like you.’
He ordered us to stop our wailing. He threatened to lock us up till we’d rot. God was exceedingly merciful, he told us in confidence, but only to decent people and good soldiers, not to a gang like us, the most hideous dregs of society. He raised the crucifix to a kind of Nazi salute, then commanded the orderlies to remove two corpses wrapped up in sheets. A little later, the sheets were brought back and prepared for the next.
The Colonel-Chaplain spat and left us.
The same afternoon he fell down the stairs and broke his arm. He broke it in three places.
‘He whined like all of you put together,’ grinned the nurse, sister Monica, who needed a man twice a day to keep her spirits up.
‘Well, there are all kinds,’ the little Legionnaire said. He turned on his other side and praised Allah. In a low murmur he told us about the holy man who climbed up into the barren stony wastes of the Rif Mountains, alone.
II
Death’s Depot
In the 3rd Reserve Field Hospital, located in a former Polish theological seminary i
n Cracow, mute physicians and their aides were playing around with the wounded. The operating room had once been the president’s office. The good parson could hardly have foreseen that so many were to die in his office. In peacetime, the deaths in this one room alone would have kept several homicide squads busy.
I was lying on a low stretcher which felt like corrugated iron. Someone with a head wound was under the knife. He died. A fire-team leader with an abdominal wound was put on the table. He died. Three died. Two came out alive. Then it was my turn.
‘Save my feet,’ was the last I remembered saying before going under the anesthetic. The surgeon said nothing.
My feet were still with me when I woke up later in some ward. The first hours were pleasant and quiet. Then pain set in. Unbelievable pain. Others were no better off. When darkness had mercifully fallen upon the ward, which gave off a heavy stench of carbolic acid, a vague murmur filled the night. It was the wailing of the tortured, the unending song of the damned.
A nurse bent over me, felt my pulse and vanished. My temperature rose. Fear of death came slithering over me. It crawled like a snake, winding its coils around my body. I couldn’t clearly make out anything. There was nothing but a haze and disconnected images. Most distinctly I could see the Man with the Scythe over in the corner. He was swinging his leg impatiently. The gray man with the black cape and the scythe seemed to be very busy.
‘You’ve had good hunting, haven’t you? Damn good hunting. You pile of shit, you stinking pile of shit! D’you think I’m afraid of you? I’ve seen more-dangerous things than you. Far more dangerous. Should I be afraid of you? Hah!’
Of course I’m afraid. Hell, I’m scared stiff.
Again the nurse was there.
‘Scram, carbolic bitch. Leave me alone. Just you wait till the Muscovites are coming, then you’ll get busy, you Nazi pot-swinger. Then you’ll see something.’
‘No, come back, please come! God, how scared I am.’ But she’d gone. The Man with the Scythe grinned. Through the moaning of the others I could distinctly make out a hoarse gurgle. He swung his leg a bit faster. His patience was nearly exhausted.