Comrades of War

by Sven Hassel

  Lieutenant Ohlsen stared at the name. He saw his arrogant parents-in-law and his gossip-mongering sister-in-law in his mind.

  He drew a couple of deep breaths before he pressed the button. Far off he could hear the bell ring. He rang again. Not a sound. He knocked, first softly, then more strongly.

  Silence.

  No one home? he thought. Odd. He drummed with his fingers on the carved oaken door. Then he slumped down on the stairs. Stared forlorn at the door. Far away he heard a clock strike twelve. It was midnight.

  Inge just had to be home. Gunni was always afraid to be alone. He listened. What was that? Something moved. It was only a slight noise, like the rustle of silk. He was dead sure he heard it. There was someone behind the door.

  He stared at the double doors, which seemed to grin at him in mockery. Someone was walking stealthily about. Someone who didn’t want to be heard. He jumped up and hammered away at the door.

  Not a sound.

  He tried to peek through the letter slit, but something hung in front of it so he could only catch a glimpse of a red runner.

  Open up, damn it, he thought. He started pounding on the door with both fists, but everything remained quiet.

  He thought he could hear a whisper of a man’s voice. He knew there was someone inside. His Inge? Impossible. She had always written she would wait. The last thing she said the day they parted on Anhalter Bahnhof was that she would wait.

  With heavy steps he walked down the stairs. He slammed the door behind him so loudly it could be heard upstairs. Then quite softly he stole up to the landing from where he could keep an eye on the door of his parents-in-law.

  He was breathing heavily and with difficulty. He clenched his fists about the handles of his two bags. He glanced up at the angels. They also seemed to grin at him. He spat after them.

  Again, shivering, he thought of the little Legionnaire: We’re swine, superfluous swine. Allah is wise. He knows why. Come with me to La Légion Etrangère and die by a true believer’s knife. Allah will rejoice!

  He grimaced.

  An elegant couple, a lady and a gentleman, came up the stairs. They stopped. They kissed. They laughed. The lady hit out at her partner’s exploring hand.

  ‘No, Otto, wait till we’re upstairs,’ she whispered. Silence and heavy breathing.

  She uttered a little scream.

  ‘No, not here. Are you crazy, what if someone came!’

  They began walking up the stairs. Noticing him, they became nervous and scrutinized him with timid glances. Even Germans could confuse the black panzer uniform with the SS. The big hussar death’s-heads on his lapel recalled death excursions in black cars at night.

  They hurried past. Glanced over the banister from the fourth floor. Whispered briefly together.

  Ohlsen caught the words: Raid. Gestapo. A door clicked.

  Now their night is spoiled, he thought, lighting his forty-third cigarette. He glanced at his watch. Almost three!

  Finally he heard the door being opened. A big powerful man in well-fitting clothes. He heard them kissing.

  ‘Good-bye, sweetheart,’ he whispered.

  ‘See you again,’ she said.

  ‘Yes, on Thursday,’ he whispered. ‘I’ll send the youngster a package.’

  Then he ran down the stairs. He didn’t notice Lieutenant Ohlsen hiding in the niche. He seemed to feel very self-confident.

  Red spots danced before the eyes of Lieutenant Ohlsen. There was a buzzing in his ears. Desperately he pounded on the wall with clenched fists. His body was shaken by uncontrolled sobbing. A weeping that made his stomach muscles contract in convulsions.

  ‘What can I do?’ he whispered. ‘Inge, why?’ Suddenly a terrible thought took hold of him: Gunni, what about Gunni? Was it he the man had meant with ‘youngster’? Gunni was his! He would go to the Gestapo. To the SS. He would shun no recourse to keep his boy. He knew that his comrades would despise him if they found out he had gone to the Gestapo. The gang, his gang, would turn their backs on him. The Legionnaire might murder him. But he didn’t care. Better take the contempt and mockery of his comrades than losing his boy.

  He walked up the stairs slowly, step by step. Stood for a moment in front of the ostentatious door. Then he rang and knocked.

  On the fourth floor he heard a door being opened. Whispering voices.

  ‘It is at von Lander’s,’ he heard a woman whisper.

  Behind the closed door a deep woman’s voice asked: ‘Who is it?’

  Some time passed before he could pull himself sufficiently together to answer. He had to draw several deep breaths to quiet his upset nerves. When he answered he couldn’t recognize his own voice:

  ‘It’s Bernt, Inge.’

  The woman behind the door seemed to need some time to collect herself.

  Then she stood in the open door. Slim, dark. Her brown eyes laughed. Her mouth smiled:

  ‘Bernt,’ she whispered. ‘Oh, you!’ She threw herself into his arms. He hugged her. For a moment he believed that everything connected with the strange man was only a dream.

  They kissed. They kissed savagely.

  He slammed the door with his foot. They walked into the room. The large room with the costly rugs he had been afraid to walk on at first. She had been amused at that.

  She jabbered away. He picked up only half of it: Bombs. Everything gone. Rescued. Father inducted. On the QMG’s staff in Leipzig. Mother taking a cure in Karlsbad. Anni with Aunt Ingeborg. She talked, talked, talked.

  A bottle of wine popped up. Tall rummers appeared on the table.

  She had on a tight-fitting Japanese kimono. Verdigris green and black. She crossed her legs.

  He noticed she was naked under the heavy silk.

  She smiled. Her eyes glittered.

  You bitch! he thought. You disgusting, dirty bitch!

  He nonchalantly swung one of his booted legs. His boots were dusty. Russian dust. Again he saw the Legionnaire’s sneering face when they had pipe-dreamed about the time after the war.

  Suddenly she realized he hadn’t said a single word since he stepped inside.

  Again she poured out two full glasses. He flushed down his in one gulp.

  She raised one of her well-shaped eyebrows, curled her mouth in a faint smile, and again filled up his glass.

  ‘Would you like to take a bath?’

  He shook his head.

  ‘Are you hungry? I have some cold turkey. Father sent one.’

  Hungry? He probably was, but he shook his head.

  ‘Are you tired? Do you want to go to bed?’

  He was dead tired, but he shook his head.

  She looked closely at him and asked sharply: ‘What’s the matter with you?’

  He forced a smile. ‘It’s only that we are at war, my friend. Our home is gone. We have lost everything!’ He held the word ‘everything’ on his tongue for a moment, to taste it, then repeated it.

  She laughed, relieved.

  ‘Is that all? That, you know, you shouldn’t take to heart. Father will get what we need, and more. He has the best connections in the Party and the SS.’

  ‘Where is Gunni?’ he asked.

  She glanced up at the large crystal chandelier in the ceiling and slowly lit a cigarette before she answered.

  ‘He is at the National Socialist home in Bergen by Lüneburg.’

  He slammed down his glass and gave her a squinting look. In a low, menacing voice he asked: ‘Why, if I may ask?’

  She was blowing smoke rings. Staring fixedly at the crystals, she answered: ‘Because I thought it was the best thing we could do. Father and Mother thought so, too.’

  ‘So that’s what you thought? You and your family don’t seem to realize that as Gunni’s father my advice should also be asked! Do you realize what it means to send him to a Nazi home? You have sold your own son to the Party in cold blood!’

  She bowed her head. ‘I knew that.’

  ‘What did you know?’ he jeered. He was boiling with
rage.

  His temples were throbbing. He opened and clenched his fists while he whispered to himself: ‘Easy, easy, for God’s sake don’t do anything rash!’

  ‘I knew you wouldn’t understand anything at all,’ she almost snarled. Her eyes flashed. ‘You’re as stiff-necked and conceited as ever. One can clearly see where you’re from.’

  He gave a tired laugh. ‘Yes, one can see where I come from, Inge. I’m a little office louse picked up from the gutter to lick the dust before the distinguished Lander, von Lander!’ The last words came out as a sneer.

  Restlessly he began pacing the floor. He kicked the leg of a sofa. ‘You still haven’t told me why you sent Gunni to the Nazi home.’

  ‘That boy is impossible,’ she yelled, losing her self-control. ‘He’s like you. He’s disgusting. Sulky. Stubborn. When you asked him to do something he threatened he’d tell you all. He’s a liar.’ She checked herself.

  He stopped pacing. ‘Tell me all? What in the world can he tell me that I shouldn’t know? That your family runs me down, that I know. Your ravishing sister, as you know, loves to put her nose into everything that doesn’t concern her. The stupid bitch,’ he added.

  ‘Be kind enough to control your language here in my house,’ she warned, drawing herself up.

  He leaned back laughing, went into convulsions of laughter.

  She gaped in astonishment. ‘Have you gone mad?’

  All at once he stopped his hysterical laughter. He looked at her. His eyes were dark. He blew out waves of smoke.

  ‘Is “bitch” improper? What then do you think of “pig,” “slut,” or “whore”?’

  She got up and bent forward a little. Her voice was quite steady. ‘That will do, Bernt. Go. Get out!’ On the finger with which she showed him the door gleamed a diamond ring. ‘This is my father’s house. Not yours. You’ve no business here. I’ve been given shelter here. Not you.’

  He threw down his glass. It broke.

  She looked reproachfully at him. ‘Why didn’t you open when I rang and knocked last night?’ he asked, pushing his angry distorted face at her.

  She looked quietly at him. Suddenly she discovered she despised him the way he sat there in his filthy uniform.

  ‘Well, I suppose because it didn’t suit me to open for you. That should have gotten through to you long ago.’

  He gasped for breath. His stomach contracted. Their roles had been exchanged. No longer was she the mouse. He was.

  Not let me in, he thought, his face distorted with mental pain. His Inge, whom he loved, quite calmly said she wouldn’t let him in. She didn’t apologize for anything. Didn’t explain anything. Everything can be forgiven, even infidelity, but here no forgiveness was asked. Was it over? By God or Allah, it mustn’t happen! He could endure the war, even if it were to last for ages yet. He could endure everything, but if Inge left him . . . that he couldn’t bear. And his boy? He swallowed a lump in his throat and looked into her dark velvety eyes.

  She returned his glance firmly. She didn’t falter a bit. She passed a slender well-kept hand over her glossy black hair.

  ‘But why wouldn’t you let me in, Inge?’ His rage was gone. Only sorrow, deep, unbearable sorrow remained. ‘I have three weeks’ leave.’

  She raised an eyebrow, pursed her lips. She walked over to the photograph and put on a record.

  ‘Because I had company, my friend.’

  ‘Company?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes, as I’m sure you know very well. I assume you were hiding somewhere near by and saw Willy leave.’ She smiled.

  He nodded.

  ‘Yes, you’re right. I was standing on the landing below.’ He slumped down into the chair. ‘Do you want a divorce?’

  She swayed her hips, walked a moment back and forth humming Zarah Leander’s song: ‘Davon gebt die Welt nicht unter.’

  ‘Divorce?’ she answered, pouring out a glass of cognac for herself. ‘That didn’t occur to me till you mentioned it. Might be a good idea.’ She sipped her cognac. Lit another cigarette. She was smoking from a long gold cigarette holder, ornamented with five small diamonds. ‘I’m tired of waiting, at any rate. Right now I’m in love with Willy, but I suppose you, with your soldier’s morals, won’t believe that a woman can’t live only on letters. Our relationship has been a misunderstanding from the beginning.’

  ‘You said you loved me, Inge, and then we had Gunni.’

  She smoked feverishly. Emptied her cognac glass. A vein stood out sharply on her forehead.

  ‘One says so many things. How many couples, do you think, really love each other? It becomes a habit. If you had been magnanimous instead of picking at trifles, we could have lived nicely together and this whole stupid scene could have been avoided.’ She looked at him. Her eyes became mean. Her mouth jeered. ‘I could have gone to bed with whomever I wanted and you with anyone you liked. We could have been friends. Friends with a wedding ring.’

  ‘But that just can’t be done, Inge!’

  ‘No?’ she laughed hoarsely. ‘As if you had the foggiest idea of what can be done!’

  Again he felt a lump in his throat. What had happened? His Inge couldn’t talk like that. He adjusted his belt, noticed the pistol and rested his hand pensively on it.

  She noticed it and curled up her mouth in a wry smile.

  ‘For God’s sake don’t turn this into a classical drama, where the unfaithful wife gets shot. It would make both of us look awfully ridiculous.’

  He dropped his hand and shrugged his shoulders.

  ‘Would you like me to go, Inge?’

  She nodded.

  ‘It’s the best thing to do. In any case, you are too old-fashioned to go on the way I’d like to. If you want a divorce, Bernt, you can always write to me about it.’

  Her kimono had come apart. He saw her long legs, slender pretty legs. Those legs he had so often caressed. He couldn’t grasp it was all over. It was too absurd. Too unreal. Almost ridiculous. She stood there smiling prettily. Though alive, she was still dead. At any rate to him.

  Again he felt for his pistol. He opened the holster and passed his fingers quickly over the cold steel. Then he thought of the boy. He could see the Legionnaire’s mocking glance. He dropped his hand.

  ‘Won’t you have a drink before you go?’ she asked.

  He nodded. Imagine her asking me, her husband whom she has just thrown out, if I would like a drink before I go.

  He wanted to ask her about something, but they had already become strangers to each other.

  They drank together. She said something about his dusty boots and soiled uniform. Mentioned something about a hotel where he could sleep. Then he suddenly burst out with:

  ‘Are you in love with Willy?’

  ‘I told you so, didn’t I? I love him.’

  ‘Have you slept together?’

  She flung back her head and laughed. Her laughter was provocative. He felt a desire to strike her. Once more his hand strayed down to his pistol. Once more the boy’s face popped up before him. Tomorrow he would go to the Nazi camp where Gunni was.

  When he left she raised her hand to wave good-bye. He noticed she wore a bracelet he had given her long ago. The one with the blue stone he had bought in Rumania. She had kissed him savagely and lifted her legs from the floor. Afterward they had had a wild and reckless night of love. That was five years ago.

  When she closed the door he was on the verge of tears.

  He slept in the guardmen’s barracks in Potsdam.

  Next day he went to Bergen to see his boy.

  The camp, a camp of huts, was situated far out on the moor, remote from inquisitive glances. One had, after all, enough sense of shame not to want everyone to know how the boys’ minds were being systematically destroyed and perverted.

  An SS Obersturmführer who had lost an arm in 1941 took him out to the camp in his car. Every time this officer, who wore the emblem of murder in his black-edged cap, called him ‘Herr Kollege,’ Lieutenant Ohlsen startled. He
told Lieutenant Ohlsen that he was responsible for the boys’ military education.

  Lieutenant Ohlsen pumped him about life in the camp.

  ‘They’re slackers when they get here,’ the SS officer shouted to make himself heard above the roar of the Kübel car. ‘But before we’ve had them for very long they’re real demons.’ He waved his half-empty sleeve in rapture. ‘They would even slit the throats of their own mothers.’

  They halted about a mile from camp. The SS officer pointed at a unit of brown-clad boys worming themselves ahead across the field.

  ‘There’s our sabotage detail, Herr Kollege. This puts the finishing touch to our education.’ He laughed as he said ‘education.’ ‘Once in a while we also give them a Jew to play with. Watching the boys knock off a Jew like that is better fun than either dog races or cockfights. Afterwards they’ll learn to do it to real people.’

  Real people! Lieutenant Ohlsen looked with revulsion at the face of the officer, handsome in picture postcard fashion.

  The camp commandant, Hitler Youth Bannerführer Grau, had a surprise in store for him.

  With a smile he was informed that he no longer had a son. His son belonged to the Führer. There could be no question of his seeing or talking to Gunni. He could send him a package, which the boy would receive as if sent by the Movement.

  ‘After all the Movement is all of us,’ Grau said, smiling.

  There was a smile here for everything. Even for pronouncing a death sentence.

  Lieutenant Ohlsen protested against the State having adopted his son. He hadn’t signed the papers.

  ‘It’s of no consequence,’ the Bannerführer smiled, ‘Your wife and your father-in-law are warrant enough, and you can hardly have any objections to your son being educated as a true disciple of the Movement. The home is not the right place for our youth. With us, on the other hand, they become tempered, tempered like Krupp steel.’

  They drove him in to Bergen, not to do him a courtesy, but to prevent him from communicating with his little boy through illegal channels.

  In front of the villa sat a man without legs, without arms. He sat on the undercarriage of a perambulator.