Comrades of War

by Sven Hassel

was killed in action on June 19, 1944,

  fighting bravely for the Führer.

  Gudrun and Hans Müller.’

  Evening after evening the lights were not turned on at the Müllers’. They were proud in the dark.

  Three weeks later arrived an oblong letter. Personnel Office, Army High Command, Berlin. It was a money order for 147 marks and 25 pfennigs. The Army’s thanks for the sacrifice.

  Müller got furious and said a whole lot about bloodmoney. Forgot to be proud. An air-raid warden picked up a little of it. On the following evening two well-dressed gentlemen appeared.

  They came from Central Security.

  People’s Court followed. Indictment for making hostile statements. Sabotage of the will for defense. Un-German conduct. Insulting the Führer and instigation to revolt.

  Next, transfer to Plötzensee. On a November morning with drizzling rain, the top assistant to the executioneer of the Reich cut off proud Müller’s head.

  Mrs Müller, who had lived with anti-social Hans Müller, was sent to Ravensbrück for re-education.

  A pandemonium of shouts and screams from thousands of throats choking with terror.

  Bombs dropped like hail. People swarming along the street were burnt to crisps.

  They called upon God, but God was silent.

  St Nicholas’ Church was a roaring sea of flames. The parish priest wanted to save the altar relics. A big stone crucifix fell down and broke his back.

  Everything was ablaze.

  Hamburg was going under.

  We sat drinking in the basement of the army hospital.

  In an underground restaurant by Baumwall, the upper class and the Party bosses of Hamburg were celebrating.

  Paul Bielert was looking for a murderer.

  It was a good night for corpse robbers, and the crop was abundant.

  IX

  Bombs in the Night

  A few stray bombs had come down by the army hospital. Blockbusters. The youth hostel facing Landungsbrücke had been blown away. A screech, a deafening crash, followed by a sky-high dust cloud – the hostel had vanished. With its eagles, its Hitler Youth decorations and all the boys in the basement. The nine twelve-year-old boys who worked the 20 mm flak guns shared the same fate.

  All of it had vanished, as if a skillful sorcerer had turned his wand: Hey presto, turn to dust and dung! Only, no one applauded.

  One wing of the army hospital, the one facing Bernhard Nocht-Strasse, had been destroyed. Scraps from iron bedsteads were lying around. They looked like twisted pipes. There was a naked leg. It had been torn off at the knee, cut clean. A swarm of buzzing and hissing blue-black flies were feeding on it. The flies were fat, well-fed.

  A hand was lying in the roadway, a coarse worker’s hand with black nails. On one of the crooked fingers there was a worn plain ring.

  ‘Some fellow has lost his paw,’ Tiny said and gave the hand a kick. Two lean dogs set off after it.

  ‘Merde, mon camarade,’ the Legionnaire said. ‘A war’s going on. The end is approaching. The Reich has become the front.’

  A woman sat crying in the gutter outside the Sankt Pauli brewery. She was sprinkled all over with chalk dust. She was in a slip, bare-legged, and with half a blanket wrapped about her shoulders. Once it had been a beautiful red blanket. Tiny was telling a joke as we walked past. We laughed noisily.

  The woman doubled up and burst into frantic sobbing. She cried. She cried alone. There were many who cried alone. We laughed at Tiny’s juicy story and remained indifferent to her.

  Out of Hamburg a huge mass procession was moving north. Foreign contract workers. No one attempted to stop them. The police force had collapsed. Under their arms they carried parcels tied up with string, on their shoulders bundled-up blankets. They trudged through Neumünster, across the bridge at Rendsburg and approached the border. They’d had enough of Germany’s war.

  They crossed the border without control. They just walked on. An endless terror-stricken snake.

  The SS sentries stood as if drugged, just staring.

  Germany was on fire. Hamburg trembled. Hosts of rats were streaming north, thousands of them. Away from it all, away. From a hell of flames.

  For some mysterious reason or other our departure from the army hospital was postponed.

  Tiny threw himself flat on the landing where the rest of us were sitting.

  ‘It looks to me pretty much like some sort of life insurance. I wouldn’t be surprised if the Eastern Front ends up by coming to us instead of we to it. What a great day for Ivan. The girls will begin learning Russian and making love in Russian.’ He lifted a leg and blew one of his special trumpet calls. It sounded like the Day of Judgment.

  He grabbed lustfully after a nurse’s aide who came running up the stairs.

  ‘How about the two of us fornicating tonight, carbolic auntie?’

  ‘Stupid pig,’ she hissed, trying to kick his face. ‘I’m engaged to be married.’

  ‘So much the better,’ Tiny grinned. ‘Once you’ve tasted blood you’re more bloodthirsty.’

  She kicked again. Tiny roared with laughter.

  ‘I’ll give you the whole works, you hypodermic whore. Tiny is always ready for turn-out. Just you come along! Ask Emma and you’ll find out what Tiny can do.’

  He let her go. She dashed off.

  We were ordered to help clearing away debris, but the person in charge had no experience handling veteran soldiers. She was a recently arrived head nurse with a big bun on her head the color of an old Parker pen. A lean smug Teuton. The golden Party emblem on her gray dress glared scornfully down at the less gaudy, but more genuine nurse’s pin. She spoke like a camel with a cold.

  ‘Get started, you four lazy bums! Get a shovel and clear away the rubble on Station 3!’

  ‘Just one shovel?’ Tiny asked.

  ‘Snotty fellow!’ the thin woman barked, rapping the floor with the black tip of her toe.

  The Legionnaire nonchalantly got up and strolled down the corridor.

  ‘Voilà, come along, fellows!’

  ‘We speak German here!’ she yelled after him.

  ‘Up yours,’ Tiny grinned shamelessly, getting up to follow the rest of us.

  Cursing and swearing, she disappeared up the stairs.

  A little nurse who had witnessed the incident whispered a warning: ‘Look out for Mathilde! She has a brother in the Gestapo. Her father was killed in ’23. A word from her and you’re in for it!’

  The Legionnaire turned to Tiny, bulging big and imposing behind him.

  ‘Remind me to put Mathilde’s name down on Porta’s list.’

  ‘You said it,’ Tiny grinned.

  ‘Why’re you doing that?’ the little nurse asked, surprised.

  The Legionnaire put his hand under her chin and looked into her eyes: ‘Merde. The day the accounts are going to be settled there won’t be time to make too many investigations. So, every time we meet them, we put them down.’

  ‘Heavens,’ the little nurse exclaimed. ‘Are you anti-social revolutionaries?’

  Willy Bauer, the big truck driver, burst into a peal of laughter. Tiny neighed and pawed the ground with his foot.

  She shook her head and stared after us. Shortly afterward she said to a friend, ‘Watch out what you say, Grethe, the revolutionaries are collecting names. It’s about time to jump off the bus. We’re getting close to the end station.’

  Sister Grethe laughed loudly. ‘I’ve never been on that bus, my dear. My old man has been in a concentration camp for more than four years. The sucker belonged to the German National People’s Party and couldn’t keep his trap shut. SS Heinrich looks upon them as upper-class socialists. So you see, I’ll be all right – thanks to the stupidity of the esteemed head of my family.’

  ‘If only I could say the same. But unfortunately my old man is a major in the SA division “Feldherrenhalle”, and two of my dear brothers are with the SS division “Das Reich.” ’

  They went on cleaning hypod
ermic needles and syringes in silence.

  Then the little nurse said thoughtfully: ‘Maybe I’d better report to my boss. That’s one duty, you know, when coming in contact with anti-social elements or overhearing subversive remarks.’

  Buxom sister Grethe gave her a long look before she answered: ‘Don’t do it, Margaret. That would mean certain death for you the day Adolf retires to Hell. That sort of duty it’s best to forget about. Don’t look, don’t listen, don’t talk,’ She turned on her heels and left. Parting, she remarked casually, ‘If you remember this, you’ll always have a chance of landing on your feet. Eat, sleep, fornicate, and keep your mouth shut. The last is the most important.’

  Sister Grethe is still in the army hospital. For four years she nursed wounded Wehrmacht soldiers. Closed their glazed eyes, filled them with morphine when insanity hit them and caused them to howl savagely, slept with them when she felt like it, drank when her nerves rebelled. For a time she even used morphine. It gave relief.

  For two years she nursed English soldiers. She shot hypodermic needle into them, bawled them out and otherwise carried on with them as she’d previously done with German soldiers.

  Dr Mahler, the head surgeon, traveled for a while. Reportedly, at least. The truth was the rulers wanted to crush him because he was a brave physician. He returned and is still flapping his arms along those long corridors.

  The soldiers were followed by civilians. Strange and unheard-of illnesses got to this hospital.

  Red Cross sister Grethe became Krankenschwester. She wasn’t interested in getting a ward. She gave her shots, emptied bedpans and changed sheets as usual. Once in a while she would meet an old patient – German, Norwegian, Danish, English; a Negro from the Congo, an Arab from Algiers; a Legionnaire from Indo-China shaking with fever. She would laugh on meeting them again. Drink with them in small cosy dives. More than once she had also hospitably shared her bed with them.

  ‘We’re human, after all,’ she said. ‘And it’s later than you think.’

  Sister Grethe was a great nurse. Many looked down on her and jeered: ‘Immoral.’ But there were more who said: ‘A splendid girl.’

  If some day you go to the city on the Elbe, walk down to Landungsbrücke. Looking up toward Reeperbahn, you’ll notice a well-hidden hospital to the left of Hafenkrankenhause. It’s a special hospital. There you can find sister Grethe. If you’re of the right sort, have a drink with her and greet her from the thousands of unknown men in green and khaki.

  Little Margaret hanged herself on a mild May day in 1945. She died as stupid as ever. She was very moral. She reported to her superior far too often and forgot Grethe’s words: Don’t look, don’t listen, don’t talk. But where could she have learned to know the East’s symbol of wisdom, the three sacred monkeys?

  May she rest in peace! She has many fellow-sufferers.

  Instead of cleaning up we went down to the basement, to MC Corporal Peters, and played blackjack. We played for several hours, while that shrew Mathilde led the clearing operations. As the Legionnaire said, if we helped cleaning up we would help those we didn’t like.

  Laughing, Peters raked in the winnings for the fourth time. He picked up a big sausage from a wastebasket and cut it into five equals parts. With the sausage we drank 90 per cent ethyl alcohol diluted with water. We were content. We were alive, and that was the main thing in Hamburg in 1944.

  ‘They’ll be coming back tonight,’ Peters said and swallowed a hunk of sausage.

  ‘You think so?’ Tiny asked. He looked out of the window toward the Elbe, where the smashed Stülckenwerft rose tortuously in the air.

  Peters nodded with conviction. ‘They’ll be coming. They’ve too much gasoline, too many bombs and far too many young men who like flying.’

  ‘But we also have plenty of idiots who like flying,’ Tiny said, ‘so that they can get some silly magnet stuck on their collar. The old women are simply nuts about wings.’

  ‘You’re right,’ Peter said. ‘The difference is that we have no planes for those who go ape for flying. The others do.’

  ‘Soon there won’t be a city any more,’ the Legionnaire said.

  ‘That’s right,’ Peters said. ‘Then they’ll start bombing the ruins, and when they’re gone, they’ll bomb all that isn’t there any more, till every lousy cat and rat is burnt up. And first then the paratroopers will come.’

  ‘To hell with that,’ the Legionnaire said, playing a king.

  Bauer laughed, slammed an ace on the table and called: ‘Twenty-one.’

  Tiny pointed at a bowl in which a nondescript object was floating around. ‘What’s in there?’ he asked, craning his neck.

  Peters cocked his head. ‘An appendix. An inflamed appendix.’

  Tiny got up and gazed with deep interest at the little bit of gut. He whistled for the dog lying under the X-ray apparatus with only the tip of his yellow nose sticking out.

  ‘You pig,’ the Legionnaire said, seeing the dog swallow the appendix.

  ‘That will be too much for him,’ Peters said. ‘He’ll throw it up.’

  ‘Why?’ Tiny asked.

  ‘Would you care to bet he won’t make it? A quart of your schnapps against three of my sausages,’ Peters challenged.

  ‘Gladly,’ Tiny answered, confident of victory. ‘Since you’re so keen on getting rid of your sausages.’

  They bet, and when at the end of five minutes the dog hadn’t yet delivered the gut, Tiny demanded his sausages. He got them.

  He immediately rammed his teeth into them and swallowed big hunks of each one as if afraid he wouldn’t be allowed to keep them.

  ‘Damn dog,’ Peters cursed and made threatening gestures at the yellow mongrel in the corner which followed Tiny’s guzzling with greedy eyes.

  Suddenly the dog stood up. Its body was shaken by a violent spasm – there was the appendix.

  ‘Hand over the sausages,’ Peters yelled joyfully and lunged at what was still left of them. ‘He couldn’t stand looking at you stuffing yourself.’

  Tiny’s face flushed deep red. He spat after the dog.

  ‘You yellow bastard! You son of a bitch! I’m going to stuff it down your throat again.’

  Before Peters had succeeded in snatching the last sausage away from him. Tiny had taken a big bite from it. He grabbed the dog by the scruff of the neck and ground its nose in the vomit. The dog put up a fierce struggle, scratching the floor with its claws.

  The Legionnaire cursed and asked him to stop it right away.

  In a fit of magnanimity, Peters let Tiny have one of the sausages. He told as in confidence that in Ward Number 7 there was an artilleryman who could eat all sorts of vermin.

  ‘Phew! I’d like to see him,’ Bauer said.

  ‘Let’s go up there and take a closer look at that worm of an artilleryman,’ Tiny proposed.

  ‘Can he eat frogs?’ I asked. ‘I once saw a Russian doing that for schnapps.’

  ‘As if that was anything,’ the Legionnaire cut in. He never let himself be impressed by anything. ‘I saw someone swallowing glass and tubes till his throat was on fire.’

  ‘Good it wasn’t his ass,’ Tiny said. ‘But let’s take a look at that gunner and put him to the test. He’s going to eat two frogs and a razor blade, and if he doesn’t we’ll give him a beating.’

  ‘I just hope you won’t meet a fellow some day who’ll give you a beating,’ the little Legionnaire warned.

  ‘Such a fellow doesn’t exist,’ Tiny decided confidently.

  On our way through the garden to Ward 7, Tiny found a frog. Much to his annoyance he could find only one. He found an earthworm also.

  ‘You pig,’ the Legionnaire said.

  The artilleryman turned out to be a short, stocky, muscular miner with shovels for fists. His thick eyebrows were grown together on his stupid low forehead. His small black eyes stared dumbly at us. He grinned proudly when Peters asked him if he could eat a frog.

  ‘I can eat anything, but not for nothing.’
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  ‘I’ll give you one on the jaw if you don’t do it,’ Tiny said, shaking one of his large fists at him.

  ‘You’d better shut up,’ the artilleryman answered. ‘I can lick anyone, you too, you big hulk.’

  Tiny brought his fists together with a resounding smack.

  ‘Did you hear that? Did you hear what that crud said? By everything that’s good and sacred, I’ll kill him! I’ll grind him to sausage meat and let that yellow dog lap him up.’

  ‘You’re free to try,’ the artilleryman grinned, quite untouched by Tiny’s excitement.

  Tiny was going to rush him, but the Legionnaire held him back.

  ‘Merde, leave him alone. No ruckus here!’

  Tiny looked around, eager for a fight.

  ‘I won’t stand for that! I must kill him, or I’ll bust! Holy Virgin, I swear I have to strangle him.’

  ‘Shut up, Tiny,’ the Legionnaire ruled. ‘You can take care of him when you meet him in town.’

  The artilleryman guffawed and turned to his comrades. ‘Tell them about me, fellows, and bring that lame ox back to earth.’

  A mountain chasseur got up and came over to us. In almost unintelligible dialect, he said: ‘Emil over there can break a table leg with his bare fists. He can knock down a cow.’ He swung his arm and felled an imaginary cow. ‘He goes like this – and next, the cow groans in her sleep. He can lift an artillery horse off the ground with saddle and all.’

  Snorting contemptuously, Tiny walked over to the large three-light window. He took hold of the frame and gave a couple of tentative tugs at it. Then he pulled with all his strength. The room rang with loud creaking and cracking noises and Tiny was showered by plaster and bricks. Then he stood there with the large window frame in his hands. He looked around triumphantly, then dropped it. It crashed against the flagstones in the garden, where shouts and curses could be heard.

  The inmates of the ward protested loudly.

  The artilleryman nodded and heaved himself to his feet. He grabbed hold of the large table in the middle of the floor, tore off a leg and broke it on the edge of a bed.

  Tiny shrugged his shoulders. He seized a bed occupied by a patient and lifted it above his head, making the occupant scream with terror. Then he hurled the bed and everything in it straight through the room. It ended up in the artilleryman’s bed, which got totally crushed. Then he walked over to the only washbowl in the room, broke it loose with such force that bolts went flying around his ears, and pitched it at the still grinning artilleryman.