Comrades of War

by Sven Hassel

  ‘Last unit, you tramps?’ he growled, glaring at us.

  ‘Reserve Army Hospital 19, Hamburg,’ the Legionnaire rapped out.

  ‘And now you’re here, you corpse-robbers! So you’ve been on a little pleasure trip on the Russian lakes? You probably assumed that the war was about to end, eh?’ He pointed at the door and called to an NCO standing with his sub-machine gun at the ready: ‘Here, look after this pack of swine. Suspected of desertion! Get out, on the double!’

  The thought, It’s all over, flashed through my mind. From the corner of my eye I looked at Tiny and the Legionnaire. They were pale, but seemed indifferent as they trotted out of the building, prodded by a brutal head-hunter NCO.

  They ordered us into a truck. Its tarp had just been daubed with fresh camouflage paint.

  Right behind us stumbled two telephone operators.

  ‘Make room for the ladies,’ a head-hunter grinned. He aimed a jet of tobacco juice at the face of one of them.

  When she wanted to turn her head, he roared frantically: ‘Keep your neck straight, you bitch! There are others who will turn it for you, take my word for it!’

  Four nurses came running out. One of them fell as a sergeant tripped her. Another MP kicked her in the back. She screamed loudly.

  A murmur rose from the truck.

  ‘Shut up, you deserter swine,’ yelled a lieutenant with the head-hunter badge twinkling gaily on his breast.

  Aunt Dora’s Ewald howled as he was dragged to the truck by two large MPs.

  The Legionnaire whispered: ‘Bon. The whole German Army seems to have decamped. It can’t take long now before it’s over and Ivan comes to pick us up. Then I’ll immediately join the Russian Army in order to be permitted to shoot head-hunters.’

  An NCO with tin badge flashing from his breast peered into the truck but couldn’t see anything. He contented himself with yapping: ‘Shut your traps, you sons of bitches!’

  Three trucks crammed with the catch of the head-hunters were driven to the former GPU prison in the center of town. Here we were received with blows and kicks.

  All cells were filled. Curses and prayers ricocheted from the gray, damp walls.

  A little tank gunner was shouting his hatred of Hitler, Himmler, the war, and Stalin. He promised a huge MP in the corridor that he’d break his neck if he dared come in to him.

  One of the army’s telephone operators tore off every stitch of clothing and offered herself to the head-hunter in the corridor.

  ‘Come in here and I’ll give you everything you want if you’ll only let me go afterward,’ she whispered confidentially.

  A Russian peasant girl who had to count on getting shot because she had sheltered two deserters yelled fanatically: ‘Long live Stalin! Long live the Soviet Union! Death to Hitler!’

  ‘And to you, you bitch,’ the MP answered.

  On the opposite side of the corridor knelt a captain, praying silently.

  I don’t know in how many places God is invoked, but His name was cried out everywhere in the last war. In hundreds of prisons the prisoners implored Him for mercy. I’ve heard a divisional general pray to God for help against the panzer columns of the Russians when his anti-tank regiments gave up.

  Adolf Hitler shouted God’s name in his speeches and prayed for His protection of the Pan-German Reich, at the same time as his SS units were hanging priests in the liquidation camps. These priests, in their turn, called out God’s name, making it reverberate among the desolate, lice-infested barracks till their cries were stifled by the rope.

  SS men who were found with robbed gold teeth in their pockets and were sentenced to death by one of the many court-martials blubbered to God for help. They meant of course that He should help them get into the SS uniform again.

  But God was deaf. He didn’t hear the condemned in the GPU prison. He didn’t hear the priests under the gallows in the liquidation camp. He didn’t help the general against the T-34s. He didn’t relieve the pains of the amputee case in an army hospital.

  God was deaf.

  There was a good deal of truth in what the little Legionnaire said: ‘A loaded tommy gun and a brace of hand grenades is better than a couple of Bibles and a chaplain.’

  One by one they were hauled before the court-martial, which sat in the office of the former GPU boss.

  Everybody was showered with the same words: name, age, detachment. A brief whisper among the three judges and a rustle of papers. Exactly sixty seconds. Then the little judge in flashing rimless glasses rapped out the next question.

  ‘Do you have anything to say in your defense?’

  But before the accused had managed to get properly started, the judge would interrupt.

  ‘Rubbish, we know all about that.’

  Again some whispering between the three of them. A stamp was slammed down on some papers. Then the presiding judge banged his rubber-stamp signature to the whole thing.

  ‘In the name of the Führer and the German people: Sentenced to death by firing squad. Next!’

  Again and again. Hour after hour. The leaders of the Third Reich thought they could thus win a war.

  At the other end of the corridor, where the stairs ascended, was heard a hoarse whisper: ‘In single file after me!’

  The firing squad had arrived.

  With lightning speed they tore open a cell door, chosen at random. The prisoners could never guess whose turn it would now be.

  A nurse past fifty had to be carried out into the yard. She threw herself down and refused to get up. Then they tied her to a clothes post, hands raised high above her head. Three short commands. Twelve shots crashed.

  The next one was brought out to the little yard.

  The same routine, with short pauses, the whole day and night. Every other hour the firing squad was replaced with a new crew.

  They dragged out the Captain by his legs. He seized hold of every iron bar, every railing. Each time they kicked his hands, till finally they were a pair of bloody stumps of meat.

  He bellowed like a wounded bull. They shot him lying down.

  Ewald shrieked insanely when they came for him. Somehow he slipped away from them and ran a race through the different floors. Finally he leapt over the railing on the fourth floor and fractured both legs as he landed at the bottom of the shaft.

  They lashed him to the clothes post and shot him.

  The truck driver who was to go to Cologne, but had lost all his papers when his vehicle burnt, walked out to the twelve shots under the clothes post as if drugged.

  Two days later he was reported missing by his regiment, but then it was too late.

  Before the five of us came before the court-martial, the head-hunters, to their great chagrin, had to let us go. Lieutenant Ohlsen had appeared with papers from the regiment which proved that we were under his command and were not deserters.

  We were marched off toward Drubny, where the regiment stood.

  Without taking aim, the strange sergeant fired a volley at the invisible opponent by the forest.

  The answer was a shower of bullets. They whipped up the dust round the hole we were lying in.

  Again the sergeant pressed home the trigger and emptied his magazine into the brush.

  ‘Ass,’ the Legionnaire growled. He tore the sub-machine gun out of the nervous infantry sergeant’s hands. ‘You don’t shoot like that!’

  The Legionnaire crawled out of the hole, pressing to the ground like a partridge. He raised the sub-machine gun and blazed concentrated fire against every single bush.

  A couple of figures in the brush stood up and tried to run off, but the Legionnaire’s well-directed bullets got them. He changed the magazine and fired again.

  XIII

  Back at the Front

  In number 5 Company we were received by First Sergeant Barth, nicknamed ‘Fatty.’ Tiny later altered it to ‘Fatso.’

  He examined us carefully with his small spiteful eyes under the large irregular cavalry cap with which he adorned himself
like an officer. His eyes moved from left to right and back again from right to left.

  What he saw apparently worried him. Sulky wrinkles appeared on his round pig’s face. He resembled a spoiled child just before he starts bawling and smacks his fist into his bowl of gruel. He thrust out his fleshy lower lip and played with a notebook peering out between the third and fourth button of his coat.

  He nodded as if his worst suspicions had been confirmed. He huffed himself up before the East Prussian and asked gruffly: ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘Otto Bülow.’

  ‘Ah, really? Maybe you’re an admiral in the U-boat fleet of Lichtenstein?’

  ‘Nah,’ the East Prussian answered good-humoredly, ‘I’m a corporal.’

  ‘For Christ’s sake, really?’ Fatty whispered. ‘And I suppose, my honorable Herr Corporal that I am only a pailful of trench dirt?’ Fatty pushed his big head right up to the East Prussian’s face and waited for an answer.

  ‘Nah, you are first sergeant.’

  ‘You bet I’m first sergeant, you caveman. Your bad luck, you bag of monkey puke. What are you? What’s your name?’ He bellowed the last words into the face of the short stocky East Prussian. His voice rang against the dismal peasant huts and ripped at the gray depressing fog.

  ‘Herr First Sergeant, Corporal Otto Bülow reports as ordered to Number 5 Company of 27th Regiment after being discharged from Reserve Army Hospital 19, Hamburg.’

  ‘Lie down!’ Fatty snarled. He fired the words at the East Prussian, who lightning-quick threw himself in the mire and went into regular guard position, with both heels pressed against the ground.

  Fatty examined him carefully, stepped on his rear and yelled: ‘Down into the dirt, all the way, you flat-footed water rat!’

  Then he towered up before the little Legionnaire, but even before he could say anything the Legionnaire clicked his heels and crowed in the manner typical of veteran soldiers:

  ‘Corporal Alfred Kalb, Herr First Sergeant, reports back after being hospitalized in Reserve Army Hospital 19, Hamburg.’

  Barth glanced at him, walked around him twice and took his stand behind him, waiting to see if he’d move as much as a finger.

  Nothing happened. The Legionnaire held himself rigid as only a soldier of many years’ service can.

  Bath removed the Legionnaire’s cap and noted briefly: ‘Hair too long, in violation of regulations. Lie down, African son of a bitch!’

  ‘And what do we have here?’ he growled, touching my shoulder with his finger.

  ‘Color Guard Sven Hassel, Herr First Sergeant, reports back from Reserve Army Hospital 19, Hamburg.’

  He pulled at my belt and concluded: ‘Too loose. Not dressed according to regulations. Lie down!’

  The same thing happened to Stein. A bawling-out and ‘Lie down!’ The last words sounded like a detonation.

  Finally he puffed himself up before Tiny, who was just as big and broad as he. But what was fat and mere flesh on Barth was swelling muscles on Tiny. At his slightest movement, an intense play of muscle became visible under his skin. His broad chest arched tautly over his flattened belly. His face was a caricature, low-browed and with two small quick eyes emitting a foxy gleam. His nose was flat and lumpy, ruined by countless fights, his mouth crooked and conforming to no known laws of anatomy.

  Fatty glowered at him as if he couldn’t believe his eyes.

  ‘Great God, what face is this? Could anything be that revolting? I can’t fathom it!’

  ‘It amazes me too,’ Tiny answered, tilting his head and smiling blithely. ‘By the way, they call me Tiny, but that’s not my real name. My mother, that pig, decided my name should be Wolfgang, after that piano-pounder Mozart, in case I should turn out to have a mind for music. And then she called me Leo after a Russian liar of a writer, if I should take that path. But since all the signs said I’d become a rowdy, Mother thought – the devil take her! – I’d also better be named for one of that sort, and so finally I got the name Helmuth, for Herr Field-Marshal von Hindenburg. But no-body could remember all these names, and so the whole thing was reduced to “Tiny.” From my old man, that sop, I’m called Creutzfeldt, which is plain sailing, “C” as in cow.

  ‘For the rest, I’ve piles and sweaty feet and occasionally bad breath. And you’re First Sergeant Barth, and in a moment I’ll get down beside the other guys, so don’t trouble giving the command. You might get hoarse from all that shouting. It happened to a prison guard in Fuhlsbüttel, where I did three months for an honest burglary at a greengrocer’s in “Grosse Freiheit.” When I got out I gave that oaf such a going over that he thought he’d turned into a squashed tomato.’

  Tiny slowly made ready to lie down beside the rest of us.

  Heaven knows what Fatty was thinking at this moment. His brain showed all the symptoms of paralysis. In his long service he had never yet experienced the like of it. He had broken many stubborn characters, tamed more snotty fellows than he could keep count of. Pompous asses with college educations, showing off their puffed-up souls and rimless glasses, had had their noses rubbed in the dirt so thoroughly that they never quite recovered from it. Fatty’s reputation for toughness was known far beyond the limits of his division. No one had dared answer First Sergeant Barth in this manner, not even in his sleep.

  He snorted.

  ‘What the hell! Sweaty feet, piles, bad breath! What a flat-headed fool!’ He shook his head, not knowing quite what to do. Then he started shouting and cursing, the normal way of finding release for an NCO when his rage threatens to break him up. You could always think of something to do while shouting.

  Fatty shouted and cursed for a very long time.

  Tiny observed him with interest. He seemed to be laying a bet how long he could keep it up.

  Fatty chased Tiny down the filthy village street.

  ‘Down in the dirt, you son of a bitch!’ he yelled. ‘Double time march, march, march! In place jump, jump! Thunder and lightning, I’ll make you squeak, you miserable rat! Before I’m through with you, your ear canals will be sweating. Lie down! Forward crawl! In place jump, feet together! Double time march, march! Lie down! Fifty push-ups! Faster, you lazy bum.’ He yelled savagely. Every little nook in the village rang with his animal howl.

  Tiny grinned, fell down and grinned. Tiny ran, but the outline of his grin never left his face. When he stood at attention, the grin was there as before. When he crawled on his belly across a creek and clambered out like a seal on the other side, he was grinning all the time.

  Fatty ran out of breath before the grin vanished from Tiny’s face.

  ‘When I see your service rank,’ Fatty hissed, spitting, ‘cold shivers run down my spine. In my opinion, every person who gets to be a corporal has already lived too long.’

  He spat again and grimaced.

  For a moment things were quiet. Chewing loudly on his cud, Fatty looked at Tiny, who stood severely at attention in front of him, all smeared with mud.

  They looked at each other. What each of them thought is hard to say, but their thoughts were definitely not kindly.

  Tiny was the one who broke the silence.

  ‘Corporal Ti—’ He hastened to correct himself. ‘Wolfgang Creutzfeldt requests leave, Herr First Sergeant.’ Smiling at Fatty, he continued. ‘Three weeks’ wedding leave. I’m to be spliced with a husky gal called Emma. She’s my fiancée, Herr First Sergeant. She’s a hot one.’

  Fatty simply lost his breath. His whole body stiffened. His lower jaw dropped like a shutter fallen off its hinges.

  ‘What do you request?’ he stammered.

  ‘Leave,’ Tiny smiled. ‘I’m to be spliced, Herr First Sergeant.’

  Fatty’s face turned completely white. His whole figure was transformed. He swayed. His squinting eyes opened wide and became round and large. He pushed back his cap and stared. This was the limit. He was convinced that the world would end in a few seconds. This was simply impossible. It simply couldn’t be true that a man he’d been chas
ing around so zealously for the last thirty minutes could stand up in front of him and, with complete composure and a stupid grin on his face, request leave. A fellow who for the last four months had been screwing around in an army hospital. An oaf who’d barely escaped being court-martialed. No, he must be dreaming. Something like that simply didn’t happen. It was unmilitary. Undisciplined. If such a thing could happen, you might as well throw all army regulations into the fire right now. But – no, it was true, by God. There the man stood before him large as life making his request! And the big stupid ox was smiling into the bargain. A vile stupid grin which could drive you mad. Besides, he had the guts to take up an impossibly slovenly posture right in front of his eyes, the eyes of First Sergeant Herbert Barth, nicknamed ‘Iron Herbert’ in the school for non-commissioned officers in Berlin. The toughest first sergeant on the whole 4th Panzer Army.

  He stood there gaping. A tremor shot through his whole body. The blood came and went in his puffed-up cheeks.

  Then he planted his feet firmly on the ground. He resembled a tank road block which could be removed only with explosives. His mouth opened to a steaming chasm. From the depths of this chasm came a noise which was not a scream, not even a roar. It was a purely animal noise, insensate and prolonged.

  The Cimbrians must have howled this way as they streamed across the Danube into the province Noricum to rob, burn and rape.

  But the ending was as lame as the beginning had been violent.

  In the middle of his fury, Fatty had noticed that Tiny was smiling. He just stood there smiling. Like all veteran first sergeants he knew an old corporal could be chased around indefinitely. But never beyond the point where the corporal started smiling. Once this happened he was dangerous. The smile was the symptom of incipient insanity, a boiling and foaming madness that could only be put out by a well-directed burst from a sub-machine gun. And long before this could be done, Fatty would have been torn to bits and scattered across the village like mincemeat.

  He sent Tiny an angry look and said quite low: ‘Get out, get out all of you! And let me see you only as names on the list of the missing!’ He pointed at Tiny. ‘And you’ll never wish to see me again!’ He about-faced and almost ran into the office.