Comrades of War

by Sven Hassel

  The Sergeant snarled at the defeated NCO: ‘The two of us will settle this later. The court-martial is itching to teach you a lesson, you skinny bastard. I’ll soon have you locked up.’

  He shouted ‘locked up’ so loud that Dr Mahler turned around at the other end of the corridor, asking, ‘Did you say something, First Sergeant?’

  A booming barracks roar: ‘No, Herr Oberstabsarzt.’

  As soon as we got to the whorehouse, Tiny began, true to form, to turn the whole place topsy-turvy by refusing two airmen admission to the anteroom. To ease control we had to show our papers and register in this room.

  Naturally, the airmen couldn’t be turned away from the lovely birdcage just like that. They were combat fliers and had long ago learned that if you wanted to get even with hoodlums you had to be a hoodlum yourself. The entire Third Reich consisted of hoodlums. The roughnecks of the Thirty Years War were like Sunday School children by comparison.

  They slit their eyes and thrust out their jaws. They punched Tiny in the throat and gave him a kick in the belly at the same time. A hollow grunt escaped Tiny. Then he got up steam and went for the pilots ruthlessly, air brakes released. With a murderous stroke he broke the jaw of one and knocked out the other with his bayonet.

  With a roar of laughter he rushed as fast as his legs could carry him into the anteroom, where an ugly fat woman sat behind a counter awaiting customers for her girls. On the wall behind her hung a yellow sign which said in large Gothic letters that the MPs and the flying squad could be reached at 0001, but in an emergency the number to call was 0060.

  The sight of Tiny’s criminal face seemed to make the flabby woman immediately decide in favor of 0060.

  Tiny bent intimidatingly across the tall counter. He drummed on the registration record with both fists, leaving two large greasy spots.

  ‘Do you speak German?’ he addressed the woman.

  ‘Of course,’ she answered amazed, since German was the only language she knew and she had never dreamed of learning any other.

  ‘Fine, then listen to me, you swag-belly pig.’

  ‘Who’re you calling pig?’ the lady yelled.

  ‘You, you old triple whore,’ came promptly from Tiny. ‘Pull your thighs together and perk up your ears!’ His voice swelled to unprecedented power. ‘Get your goods together, have them line up for parade, and order them to throw off their rags. And lose no time about it, for Tiny is ready for a great bunk battle. That peasant bitch Emma has cheated me and your pack will have to bear the brunt.’

  He grinned, drew himself up to his full giant height, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, cleaned his nose on his fingers and blinked expectantly.

  Huge and fat, the madam got up. Her bosom struggled frantically to escape over the edge of the heavy bassière she was harnessed in. Her pale blue eyes flashed deep in the rolls of fat in her face. Three or four single bristling hairs on her chin quivered ominously like the whiskers of a mad cat.

  ‘Out of my house, you damn swine, or I’ll call the MPs! Head Officer Radajschak will smash your drunken face and make you cough blood. You’ll curse the day you got to know me!’

  In the course of her mad torrent of words she spat at all five of us. From a hiding place under the counter she pulled out a long police truncheon and struck Tiny straight across the face.

  Tiny gave out a roar, and the next thing we knew, all that was left of Madam was her shoes. The rest was floating around strangely at random in the reception room, where a flock of half-dressed and naked girls huddled in the corners. They seemed to think a V-2 bomb had gone off its course for London and had crashed into the middle of the Hamburg brothel.

  Beaming with joy, Tiny stepped over the unconscious lady and greeted the girls. ‘Hello, girls, here I am again. Hot as hell. My balls are boiling. I love you. My friends love you. We’re completely gone on you. Let’s get something to drink in a hurry, and then we’ll go to the bunks according to good custom when decent people meet.’

  ‘We can’t get anything to drink,’ Elfriede answered. ‘Madam has the keys.’

  ‘She does?’ Tiny said and bent over the mountain of fat on the floor. He found the bunch of keys between her huge breasts.

  Elfriede shrieked ecstatically and rushed out for drinks.

  We drank for a long time. The Legionnaire then wanted to teach the girls to do a Moroccan belly dance. The girls, too, were drunk. At the start they had tried to pour out the juice, but we were too smart for them. Tiny held them, one after the other, while we poured the drink down their throats straight from the bottle.

  Tiny also tried to pour it in other places. The protests were clearly visible in the long nail marks across his face.

  Stein daubed ‘For our mutual joy’ in ink on the behind of one of the girls.

  Bauer was lying on top of the grand piano playing with fat Trude. She never tired of telling us that her father had owned an estate in Lithuania. By her description this estate was the size of Pomerania with half of Mecklenburg. We understood that Lithuania must have had a land mass roughly corresponding to that of China.

  ‘Did you have pigs, too, on your estate?’ Tiny asked.

  Trude gave a mournful nod. She was lying with one leg across Bauer’s shoulder.

  ‘And chickens and ducks?’ Tiny asked.

  Trude nodded. She was on the verge of tears at the thought of all the chickens, ducks and geese they’d lost.

  ‘But the only whore in your castle was you.’ Tiny smiled blissfully and smacked her bottom.

  As time went on we became quite drunk. Several girls were hunched up over the small tables, which were floating with glasses, bottles and vomit. Tiny had gone to work on Ilse. They were too tired to go upstairs. A little later he was playing blackjack with a couple of others, with nothing but his shirt on. ‘Because,’ he said to Birte, one of the girls, ‘we’ll soon be at it again.’

  As time went on a good many new guests poured in, both soldiers and civilians.

  For the sake of propriety rather than anything else, we’d placed Madam on a chair in the corner. She muttered something about the MPs, which made Tiny shout ‘pig,’ quickly corrected to ‘bitch.’

  The lady, gone completely soft and with slobbering mouth, lay flopped over the broad arm rests of the chair. As Tiny passed her on his way to another girl he gave her three smacks in the face with a pink swansdown slipper.

  As we turned the corner on leaving the brothel the MPs came rushing along. They had long sticks and drawn pistols and looked very energetic.

  ‘There’ll be some walloping in there now,’ Stein said, looking back over his shoulder. At the corner of Davidstrasse and Taubenstrasse we could hear screams and shouts mingled with high-pitched hysterical shrieks from the women.

  ‘Now the whores are getting a shellacking,’ Tiny slobbered. He had gotten quite drunk. For no reason whatever he stopped, put his hands to his mouth and called: ‘Stoy! Halt!’

  The city seemed to die for a few seconds, and then woke up to even livelier activity.

  The three MPs on guard by the car probed the street with their searchlight and caught us in their cone of light. Tiny was standing in the middle of the roadway, waving his arms. He was eager for a fight, no matter with whom.

  Boots stamped, weapons rattled. A big engine started and the differential squealed happily. The MPs had given the personnel and the guests of the brothel a thorough thrashing. Now, thanks to Tiny’s ‘Stoy!’ they sniffed bigger game.

  ‘Come on, you lice, and I’ll slaughter you,’ he yelled to the bloodthirsty head-hunters, whose job was to manhandle their own country’s soldiers.

  No military establishment in the world, however wretched, has a field or military police which can match the sadists of the German Wehrmacht, with their head-hunter crescents on the breasts of their uniforms. They just loved to break the arm of some little insignificant infantryman. They were adepts at doing it at different speeds. They could flog away at a soldier for hours without causing
the soldier to lose consciousness. He would lose his mind first. They were professionals. Many soldiers had gone from the steel cells of the MPs to the rubber cells of the loony-bin, which they left only in a coffin.

  ‘Allah is wise,’ the Legionnaire whispered. He felt for his brass knuckles and pushed them forward on his fingers. They were Spanish ones with steel points.

  Tiny stood splay-legged on the trolley track. Nice bait for the head-hunters, hungry for torture.

  Stein cursed savagely and muttered something about ‘smashed skulls.’ Bauer laughed hoarsely while twisting one end of his belt about his wrist, making the bayonet sheath hang at the other end by the steel belt-plate. A murderous weapon for someone who could and dared use it. And Bauer did.

  Sergeant Major Braun, of the MP, was a human bull who loved hitting in the groin till the whole thing was a lump of bloody meat. He was now slowly coming down Davidstrasse at the head of his bandits. His steel helmet looked small on his large head. Sergeant Major Braun in the Military Police of the 3rd Army Corps was tops among the bandits who up to then had worn police uniform. He was a brown-nose to any superior and a dirty bastard to all his subordinates.

  He served his apprenticeship on the emergency detail of the Hamburg Police Force. He had beaten a good many sailors to jelly. When there were strikes in the ’20s a sizeable number of workers received permanent injuries from Braun’s treatment. After being subjected to special treatment in the 7th Police Precinct at the corner of Davidstrasse and Reeperbahn, many of the girls on Sankt Pauli had sworn to take revenge on Hans Braun, who was then First Sergeant of Police. Eventually the asphalt in the streets of Hamburg got too hot for him so he had to agree to being transferred to Berlin.

  At the outbreak of the war he entered the Military Police and again ended up in Hamburg, this time as the leader of a special detail. For a short period he was active in Paris, but became scared of the French maquis and got himself transferred to Hamburg again.

  Now, coming toward Tiny at the head of his head-hunters, he looked like the Devil incarnate. His face was set in a lustful, evil grin. He tapped his boots with his long black truncheon. It was said that he’d twice killed soldiers with this truncheon, with one stroke. Among the soldiers he was called ‘Monkey Face,’ a name he hated. The sound of it could throw him into a savage fury.

  Tiny now bawled out the detested name right in front of him. It boomed like thunder through the hushed night and street, only faintly illuminated from the blue emergency lighting.

  ‘Monkey Face, you fat slob, come over here and I’ll give you an overhauling.’

  The command of Sergeant Major Braun sounded like the crack of a whip: ‘Get him! But catch him alive!’

  Seven MPs rushed toward the huge Tiny, towering like a rock in the middle of the roadway. Truncheons whistled, and hollow thumps resounded in the night. An MP let out a rattle and Tiny bellowed like an elk at mating time. The thunder of Braun’s commands rumbled through the streets.

  After no more than five minutes, Tiny was lying in their car, which slowly had come driving up behind the MPs.

  ‘Allah el akbar!’ the Legionnaire yelled and stormed forward, hacking his murderous brass knuckles into the nape of a close-cropped MP. Belts whizzed through the air, a knife-blade gleamed, a shot rang out. There were hints of shadows along the houses, but no one came to the aid of the detested head-hunters. The Legionnaire jumped on the back of a six foot-seven inch MP and clamped his steel fingers around his throat till he collapsed with a gurgling sound. Breaking into insane laughter, with a sidestroke of his hand Stein nearly broke the neck of an MP who’d drawn his pistol.

  Police whistles shrieked. Loud cries for help bounded back and forth between the dark walls. A woman called a warning: ‘The raiding squad is coming! Clear out, boys!’

  From Reeperbahn came the piercing horns of the alarm. Green lanterns glared around the corner. Iron-studded boots tramped down the street in a heavy trot.

  We cleared out, dragging unconscious Tiny with us. A sub-machine gun barked viciously.

  A night watchman from the Sankt Pauli Brewery pulled us into a gateway, where darkness swallowed us up.

  We were washed. Tiny was most damaged. The two big gashes across his face were bleeding badly. A medic was brought from the army hospital and with very little fuss Tiny was sewed up. Each time MC Corporal Peters drove the needle through his flesh he threatened and howled with pain, but his handcuffs prevented him from resisting.

  By a strange, circuitous route Peters was able to pilot us into the hospital.

  They picked up Tiny three days later. There were ten of them, equipped with steel helmets and head-hunter badges. Sergeant Major Braun was in command. He clapped his gloved hands in an eloquent gesture when he recognized Tiny. They never found the rest of us.

  After two days Tiny was released again. But only because the Battleship managed to swing into action a general she knew.

  On the day she took the field she amazed everybody by leaving the hospital at 11:15, right at the busiest time, a completely unheard-of thing. She was dressed in a yellow coat and red hat and had a green umbrella under her arm. She resembled the Brazilian flag flying from a battle cruiser, ready to engage the enemy.

  People were hanging out of the windows and following the battlecruiser with their eyes as she shaped her course up Zirkusweg with all engines ahead full. She disappeared down the stairs to the Sankt Pauli subway station. At 5:08 she returned, leading Tiny by the hand. Naturally we could only guess at what actually happened. But an MP who was on our side had a fantastic story to tell us.

  The Battleship had rumbled into the Precinct like a Stalin tank at peak performance, followed by an artillery general, three staff officers and an SA Gruppenführer. The Gruppenführer’s answer to anything he was asked was simply, ‘Well, yes.’

  Immediately on entering the somewhat surprised MP Precinct, the General trumpeted: ‘Attention, you scoundrels! The discipline is a bit lax here! The Eastern Front is dying for you, you bulls!’

  He repeated this twice, at exactly thirty-second intervals.

  Herbert Freiherr von Senne, Lieutenant-Colonel from the General Staff and an artilleryman like the General, expressed the wish to see Sergeant Major Braun, Hans.

  He prolonged the Christian name ‘Hans’ like a judge pronouncing a death sentence who corrects ‘firing squad’ to ‘beheading’ because he has become tired of saying ‘firing squad.’ The two remaining staff officers, both majors, tapped their holsters in pleased expectancy. Against regulations they shifted their holsters to center. One of them, in rimless glasses, hissed between his teeth: ‘Pack of rats!’ while with cold gray eyes he fixed the perplexed MPs, who had come to attention in grand Prussian style.

  The other major was sucking his lips like a monkey eating an overripe banana.

  The General adjusted his monocle and kicked at a Bible lying forlorn on the floor.

  The Battleship rapped the counter with her green umbrella, sending dust and a pile of documents flying about their ears.

  A police sergeant squeaked: ‘Precinct 7, nothing particular to report!’

  ‘Bastard,’ the Battleship answered, poking his beer-filled belly with her umbrella.

  ‘Certainly, Madam,’ the sergeant agreed. He clicked his heels once more for good measure. It was the first time he’d been within such close range of a real general, an artillery general into the bargain. It completely confused him.

  Sergeant Major Braun came rumbling from his cage behind the cell corridor, puffed himself up in Prussian manner, and rattled off a meaningless report which he didn’t have a chance to finish before the Major hissed: ‘Lie down, Sergeant Major!’

  Braun, unable to understand, shook his bull’s head. That order couldn’t possibly have anything to do with him. It was at least ten years since he had drilled ‘lie down’ and ‘advance by rushes.’

  The Major crinkled his nose, adjusted his artillery cap with the fiery red braids, and rapped his riding
whip against the legs of his shiny black boots.

  ‘Really, this fellow refuses to obey orders!’

  The General nodded and stared hard at Braun through his monocle. What else could be expected from a lousy infantryman? His artilleryman’s soul was filled with contempt.

  The Battleship nodded, narrowed her eyes to a slit, ominously thrust out her double chins, and yelled through the whole Precinct: ‘Lie down, you pig’s ear!’

  Braun threw himself on the floor like a mountain caving in after a dynamite explosion.

  ‘Forward crawl!’ the Major commanded.

  Edging along on his elbows, Sergeant Major Braun crawled around on the floor. He had to run through the entire drill-book before the Major was satisfied.

  Squatting, he bumped into a swivel chair. He rolled in week-old filth. He whined like a cat with its back bitten by a bulldog. He hopped like a magpie and made absurd attempts to do handstands. In the process he smashed three chairs, knocked down a typewriter, kicked his sergeant’s knees, and hit his own nose till it bled.

  ‘Exercise is what this bunch needs,’ the artillery general boomed and spat at a photograph of the famous commander of infantry, General Ludendorff. With unflagging energy he chased the entire personnel of the Precinct round the room till their lungs were close to bursting. He threatened the whole pack with court-martial, the Eastern Front and the inescapable hero’s death.

  The last words he shouted before he demanded Tiny’s release were perfectly chosen for instilling terror into a member of the SS: ‘This mess will be brought to the Führer! I’ll immediately dispatch your imminent transfer to a battle unit!’

  A feeble ‘Certainly, Herr General’ came from the deeply shocked MPs.

  To Tiny he thundered: ‘We’ll talk with you later!’

  Noticing the penal regiment band, he blushed and piped down. He adjusted his broad belt with the little Mauser, brushed some motes of dust from his blood-red lapel and drew a deep breath: ‘You’ll be taking a trip by sled, just wait and see! The Eastern Front is waiting!’ He winked at the Battleship and hit out at Tiny standing there looking stupid. ‘In case of an attempt to escape, this lady will not hesitate to use her weapon!’