by John King
What could you do but walk into the flashing amusement arcade and stand in front of the first machine that took your fancy, in among the pale boys and girls and old prowling perverts who didn’t take any notice of the new arrival, Harry wondering if he was faceless, just like Balti, the poor cunt, both of them fucked. But they’d had some good times and that was all you could hope for in life, pulling out the change he needed to play the game, looking for the slot but turning his head when two teenage girls came up next to him and started yelling at a flashing red-orange-blue screen, teenage girls sucked into the chase, blonde runaways in a nicked Porsche accelerating away from the old bill cutting through East German side streets looking for the alley that was just wide enough to squeeze through, escaping through a gap in the wall, because speed was everything on the autobahns, no limit to expansion, they all needed living space, racing all the way to West Berlin.
Everything was easy these days and the English could march right in, when Europe was at peace, it was all so fucking easy, because if you had the cash you could do whatever the fuck you wanted, like that cunt in the corner eyeing the boys and girls and licking his lips. Harry could feel the anger rising because the Gulf Boy had sharpened his senses and the bloke was a fucking nonce, the scum of Europe, the boys had been talking about it in Amsterdam, pulling everyone together with the Cross of St George in the window, all the London geezers and Liverpool scallies and Pompey, Mancs and stray dogs from right across the country, and Harry was trying to pull his thoughts back, telling himself the bloke was probably alright, just wanted to play a game and get away from Berlin and its history, the fucking Berlin Wall and Cold War. Like Harry he wanted to sit pretty and take everything out on someone else, pay an easy target back for all the other bollocks coming his way in life. It was the safe option, picking a soft target and unloading your hatred.
Harry pulled himself straight and looked at the message on the screen, fluorescent green words on a black background, Harry sharp now, feeling his confidence return as he started reading, having trouble, brain ticking, looking sideways at the blondes, not bad really, but young, legal but young, fucking right, too young for a fat cunt like him, looking now at the screen and banging his fist on the control panel because it was ALL IN FUCKING GERMAN.
Fucking cunts. How was he supposed to read that? He breathed in deep and felt his confidence return, because he’d played this game in The Unity back home in London. It was Smart Bomb Parade, flavour of the month, year, decade. It was a piece of piss and he knew the rules, his coin going in the slot, Harry off on a run as the bells chimed and a soft robot voice told him to climb into the cockpit, and he did as he was told looking through the eyes of a fighter bomber pilot, a hero figure, Smart Bomb the biggest seller in Europe, looking through the eyes of Big Bob West the Gulf War veteran from the pub, the original Gulf Boy, but they said he was fucked up on chemicals, illegal substances rotting his brain and breaking down his defences. Harry laughed out loud and the girls looked at him nervously.
It was Flash Harry inside the cockpit preparing for take-off, part of the New Economic Order assault force, Christian idealists ready to take on the might of the wicked General Mahmet in the East, the mighty Mahmet and his conscript farmhands in their vintage killing machines, an evil empire far away over the horizon in a world of medieval cruelty, feudalist perversion, beyond the Slav slave-states, far away on the wisp of a cloud, with a Stone Island bull’s-eye in front of his face chiselled into Harry’s helmet because he’d paid his euros, feeling the button under his finger and hearing the girls next door, the sound of music and rockets all around the amusement arcade, Harry on a roll forgetting about the football. He was fighting for the NEO, for extended drinking, legalised drugs and cheaper sex. He was ready for take-off, knob red raw, mind wired into the circuits of the European machine.
—I’m scared suddenly in this dead village. I’ve walked in on Mangler and a crying woman. I ask him what he’s doing. He tells me to fuck off and I back out of the room confused and bitter. Bullets explode against the concrete above me so I crouch down behind a broken wall. There’s a child’s body nearby and I brush maggots from her blonde hair. A small girl, I think, killed by Allied bombers. It’s a necessary evil in the struggle for peace. All this evil is necessary if good is to prevail. I have to get the job finished and go home. I try not to think of Mangler and the woman because it is a mistake, my mind turned rotten by the constant destruction. There’s a thud on the bricks in front of me, a sniper hidden further along the street. I hear one of the lads firing a mortar and shouting that the fucking flame-thrower isn’t working right. I can hear a man shouting something in German. They won’t surrender these Germans. They’re fighting to the death. We start running forward but I’m not sure where we’re going. I’m caught in the panic as a hand grenade blows a hole in the street. I peel away and charge along a small path, catching my head on some wire and ducking down. There’s blood coming from my ear but nothing worth worrying about. I turn through the arch of a door and there’s a boy in a grey uniform facing me. There’s no time to think as I fire into his guts and see the tunic turn black. He stumbles and there’s a second of silence as he tries to fight the shock and pain. My heart is pumping and I don’t care about this German bastard because all I see is the gun in his hand. I fire again. I don’t know how many bullets I drill into his body and I don’t hear him scream or even cry. I fire into his head and it explodes. There’s blood and brain everywhere and he twitches a lot, struggling in the mud. I stand over him and my mind is frozen. I don’t know if it’s hate, fear, confusion. His scared expression, shock and then pain are frozen inside me. I know I’ll never escape the image, a horror film sitting in the cupboard. I roll him over and there’s not much left of his face. I’ve killed this conscript forced to fight the mad English tommy with the bulging eyes and bloodstained boots. I hear more shouting and firing and run across what was once someone’s front room looking for cover. I glance back at the corpse briefly and move forward with the rest of the unit.
We’re strolling now. Waiting for the Germans to make their move. The krauts are coming down from a shopping area. It’s a bit mixed up in the road, and one or two of the boys must be thinking about the Germans last night, how they had a good laugh. I’m wondering whether it’s going to tone things down, and the right-wing lot are going to have their own thing lined up, whether it’s political or not, but if it’s football then this mob here is ready to go, because the thing is, despite what you read, most of us are just normal everyday patriots out for a punch-up, and while we love the Queen and support the Loyalists in Northern Ireland, we’re not political. We just have our views. Because politics is shit. Lines of manky old cunts shouting at each other while they’re on the box then it’s straight down the bar for a cosy drink. We’re English and that’s it. And the German crew mobbing up by the railings are starting to look a bit tasty. England are moving and I look at Facelift and almost next to him is Derby and there’s no recognition from either of them. Bright is fired up and Harris is straining like a mad man, Mark and Carter, all the boys. Kevin, Crewe and Bolton, Millwall on the left and Pompey on the right next to West Ham, Leeds in the middle, Chelsea everywhere. Strolling towards the Germans. Silent and picking up momentum.
Because it’s two World Wars and one World Cup, and the first bottle comes over thrown by someone hiding at the back of their firm, and there’s a right old mixture of Germans with smart skinheads and shabby old soulboy-meets-boot-boys with those silly short-at-the-side/long-at-the-back Deutschland hair-cuts, dodgy tashes and naff trainers. There’s even a few scarves, the daft cunts, and I look and see Harris and Bright moving across the street and the rest of the boys follow, a small crew of scousers and a mixture of Midlanders behind, Yorkshiremen through the middle with some Geordies, all moving in together because now it’s tightening up and the Germans are pushing forward as they chuck more bottles, the English moving aside to let them land on the ground, glass shattering in among
the Deutschland chants, and I catch Facelift’s face and the bloke’s got a flare gun, the fucking Hayes sniper, moving on from glassing his brother-in-law to firing rockets at Germans.
We’re off now fancying ourselves as a fucking commando unit, regiments from every corner of England, steaming straight into the heart of Germany, the English-design Hamburg and Berlin skins coming to meet us and I see the flare flash and that scatters the cunts, better than a fucking fire bomb, this is the fucking war right here with Harris piling in like he’s old Bomber himself burning Dresden to a cinder teaching the German scum not to fuck about with the English, and there’s waves of English steaming into small mobs of Germans, don’t need any orders for this one, and I go full into some bloke and punch him in the head and kick him in the balls and kick him in the head as he goes down with Mark and Carter kicking him again, moving to the next German coming through and hitting him in the head and pulling the cunt forward by his shirt, head down, bringing my knee up and Harris slicing his back, and I get a fist in the face and bounce back, swinging at the German, a massive bloke this one, and it takes five or six English to push him back, head-to-head in the middle of the street with a mass of arms and legs, Facelift’s flare sending red-white-and-blue smoke spewing through the air. There’s no music now, no soundtrack playing or bands beating up a rhythm for the rows of men getting gunned down, because we’re smarter than that, leaving the music behind with DJ Bright lashing out and some of the Germans have started running and we’re after them quick as a flash. They’ve broken into different mobs and there must be a hundred of us going to this wasteland where a German takes out a knife and stabs an Englishman in the face. We circle round and try and do the cunt, his eyes mental flashing murder, knows he’s gone further now and if we get him he’s dead, but suddenly this little firm think better of it and close round the knife merchant and you can smell the shit as they leg it, moving faster than Schumacher. The bloke with the cut face keeps going and we move back to where there’s the main mob of Germans, and they’re lobbing bottles and singing this shit song about something or other none of us understands, and the English get together and go into them again.
My head is fucking roaring like a machine tapping into the size of the English mob that’s turned out and the fact that we’re so far from home in the heart of the fatherland and this is a big one and we’re doing the business. Mark’s with me, and Carter, Harris, Facelift, Brighty, Biggs, Ken and Davison’s mob and all the other blokes we’ve been travelling through Europe with, and it hits me that the Germans have their own club differences but that doesn’t matter because there’s West Ham further along doing some Germans and there’s no sign of the old bill. We’re fighting smaller mobs of Germans and the English keep together and move in some sort of casual order. The Germans have lost it and we start following their main crew to another square where there’s bigger numbers determined to make a stand and I reckon they’ve been trying to suck us in here, looking to the right and there’s a big skinhead mob who are obviously the top boys, some cunt in one of a hundred or so black combat jackets lobbing tear gas, so we back off and let it burn out, milling around as the rest of the English catch up, a nice little breather, chance for a cup of tea maybe. There’s a bit of a lull with everyone buzzing, fucking speeding better than that shit last night, better than designer narcotics, a pure fucking natural high this one, an England special.
These skins are the ones we’re really going to have to sort out and all of them look the business. They start coming down this grass slope and we fan out still watching the other mob of Germans, all these blokes from both sides of the Channel going to war again and this is a fucking serious row with some of the Germans carrying baseball bats, but you have to keep going and the further in you get the darker it gets and we know there’s going to be murders because this is the SS contingent, but the mob to the side have already been run once so we know we can do them easy enough, and when the skinheads come through it goes off with English getting kicked and Germans getting kicked and Mark getting a baseball bat across his arm, sounds like bone cracking, and I see Harris stab the German who did it deep and hard and I fucking hope his heart’s not there, more like his gut with his shirt soaked looking shocked dropping the baseball bat, watching the German stagger away glad to see he’s alive but hurt and when you lose your concentration you get a slap and that’s what happens to me, a fist in the side of the head, except it doesn’t hurt much and I do the cunt with the help of a couple of others, but the Germans aren’t bottling out, the fighting continuing with both sides standing firm.
A gap appears and this has been going on for a while now without a result and the other Germans have got behind the skins making it more or less equal numbers which is something in itself because fucking hell, lads, this is Germany, fucking Berlin, and we’re on their manor and we pile in again like the old boys did in the war going fucking mental tearing up and this time they don’t fancy it so much and some start running, the younger element shitting it as the Chelsea and West Ham and Leeds and Millwall and Stoke and Pompey and all the big Northern geezers who are the fucking business when it really comes down to serious street-fighting, the sort of no-nonsense heavy-duty industry nutters who usually hate Southerners but when it’s England are united and hard as fucking nails, everyone piles in and thumps the Germans – on their own fucking manor – getting the result – winning the war – living up to reputations – doing our dads and granddads proud – following their example – and it’s not over yet because different mobs filter different ways and there’s smaller battles now as we go through a row of shops, windows breaking.
The Germans have moved further off so the English start doing cars and buildings, glass made for smashing. The ordinary people are hiding in packs and nobody bothers with them apart from some shouted insults about the war and Hitler and how they killed our women and kids, but it’s a coach and these shops that really take a battering, the cars get their roofs dented and the coach its window wrecked, no-one bothering to turn the VWs over and burn them because the colours won’t look so good in the light and we’ve got better things to do. A bit of looting fills in the time and the discipline has gone now. The younger lads are into the vandalism, the spoils of war or whatever you want to call it, and these blokes move forward through the ranks when things get easier and when I look at Mark and the others travelling with me none of us are really bothered about the shops, though it adds to the spectacle and it’s something that’s going to happen one way or the other, another way of grinding your foot into the Germans because this is part of what they’re defending, I suppose, their property and territory.
It’s up to the vandals to do what they want. Personally, it’s the German mob that counts, but I watch the windows cave in one after the other, racks of vegetables turned over, café chairs and tables broken, moving aside from this old dear who must be eighty if she’s a day, a granny who doesn’t know any better coming after the hooligans wrecking her cornershop. She’s tooled-up with this gnarled walking stick and she catches this scrawny little bloke on the back of the head. He yells and runs away and everyone’s laughing because Granny’s no bottle merchant, clearing a gap through the English as she marches along lashing out, smacking Harris on the arm hard so he moves out of the way sharpish, grinning with embarrassment as he’s put in his place, Granny hobbling after us shouting in German, but the windows have all gone now and she keeps going, chasing a big Northerner who’s trying to calm her down and he jogs off giving up saying she’s a nutter, and Granny doesn’t care, doesn’t give a fuck, because she’s got the scent and we move away from the shops and onto another big street, milling around on the corner trying to work out where we are.
We look back and Granny’s standing there screaming at us saying we’re nothing but hooligans, nothing but English hooligans, and she’s got a point, and there’s some cheering and we’re looking round trying to work out which way to go, spotting the Germans up al ead, throwing bricks, Harris sa
ying we’re on the right way to the ground where we can have a drink because there’s still a few hours till kick-off and there’ll be more Germans there, more English as well, but first we’re going to have to fight these krauts some more because it looks like they’re coming back to have another go, making the most of their big day out, been building up to it ever since the fixture was suggested by the politicians as a show of unity between the two nations and their banking institutions, a sporting event to help promote the new economic order, laying firm foundations for a united Europe.
There’s the sound of sirens and a column of flashing lights ahead, so we hang back to see what’s going to happen next, enjoying the show. The lights are behind the German mob and there’s the slamming of doors and the barking of dogs, a minute of silence as the English stragglers catch up, a few blokes with trays of jewellery shifting towards some flats looking to hide their haul. We wait and see what the old bill are going to do and suddenly they just steam straight into the German mob with their truncheons and that’s something you wouldn’t get in Spain or Italy, coppers attacking their own kind, and the Germans come running towards us and then realise they’re getting chased into another kicking. They shift off to the side moving into the flats and we see the riot police coming at us again and this time they look like they mean business because there’s tear gas popping off and it does your fucking eyes in like nothing else. We move back and this gives the old bill the advantage and when I look through the smoke the German mob have seen their chance and are following the coppers through like they’re getting a Panzer escort. We’ve seen it before, where the local hooligans and old bill almost work together because they’re all racist against the English, but usually it’s the Latins, because Latins and Anglo-Saxons don’t mix. They all want to do us and the only difference is the uniform and the fact that the police are legally tooled-up. This lot are just grabbing their chance, though, because the German old bill are like the English old bill and don’t play the Latin game. A lot of English get battered by the riot police, but again we don’t run and they can’t fucking handle this because they don’t spend years training in crowd control tactics just to get fronted by a load of hooligans and sheer weight of numbers forces them back along the road.