Assignment Gestapo (11 page)

‘Only you won’t be here to see it!’ hissed Heide.

It was almost daylight when we arrived back at our own lines. Everything was quiet, and we settled down comfortably in the trenches and prepared for a rest. We kept an eye open for surprise attacks by the Russians, who were fond of that sort of thing, but they showed no signs of aggression.

‘If you’re all sitting comfortably,’ said Lt. Ohlsen, in a friendly ‘once-upon-a-time’ sort of voice, ‘I’ll tell you a story.’ We looked at him suspiciously. ‘I’ve kept it until now as a nice surprise for you . . . You’ll be pleased to hear that the Colonel has overcome his stagefright and has renewed his invitation to the Company to present itself for inspection tomorrow morning . . .’ Our faces fell. We looked down at our black hands and our filthy uniforms, and Lt. Ohlsen beamed round upon us. ‘There. I knew you’d be over-joyed. I said to Lt. Spät at the time, I can hardly wait to tell them. I can hardly wait to see their little faces light up and the tears of gratitude come into their eyes—’

‘Like fuck!’ said Porta. He spat out a mouthful of sunflower seeds that he was chewing. ‘Jesus Christ almighty, where do they dig up these cretins, for God’s sake?’

Lt. Ohlsen shook his head, looking suddenly weary. He pursed his lips together and there was a hard streak in his eyes and bitter lines round his mouth. Despite the bantering tone he had used to break the news to us, you could tell that the Colonel and his autocratic stupidity had brought him almost to breaking point.

Porta, meanwhile, went raving on. He was a great talker when once he got started, and although his choice of adjectives tended to be limited he delivered them with such vehemence that we never tired of hearing them. Having told us all very forcibly exactly what he thought of the Colonel, and of the Colonel’s parents and the Colonel’s grandparents, and having gone on to suggest in graphic detail several alternative courses of action open to the Colonel (suggestions which ranged from the mildly indecent to the grossly obscene) he then switched abruptly to a better humour and fell to hectoring Tiny, always the butt of Porta’s heavy-handed wit.

‘Look at you!’ he roared. ‘Call yourself a soldier! You’re nothing but a bleeding disgrace! Look at that uniform – that was in good nick when you first had it. Look at it now – knackered! Completely bloody knackered! Half the buttons off of it, covered in shit, all tattered and torn – how the hell have you got it in that state, anyway? You been fighting again, have you? You ought to be ashamed of yourself, getting into that horrible state . . . And what about your tin hat, eh? Where’s that gone? And what about that nice gas mask they give you? You’ve gone and lost it, haven’t you?’ He made a gesture of disgust. ‘What’s the use, eh? I ask you, what IS the use of giving people like him lovely new uniforms, when all they do is go and mess ’em up? Is it any wonder the poor bleeding Colonel has to go and disturb himself giving us the once-over when we got people like you stinking the place out?’

He leaned forward to the startled Tiny.

‘When did you last wash your bum, that’s what I’d like to know . . . it’s bleeding horrible! I bet if you took your knickers down and had a look you’d find it full of bloody great clinkers . . . and we have to live with it! Us, what’s managed to keep ourselves clean and decent and not ponging like a million arseholes!’

He stared round at the rest of us; stinking, louse-ridden and dirt-encrusted.

‘We’re decent enough blokes,’ he said, virtuously. “We’re used to certain standards of hygiene. Like the Colonel. That’s why he has to call inspections in the middle of the war and make sure we’ve not got ingrowing toenails nor fungus in our belly buttons.’ He stared very hard at Tiny. ‘These things are important, you know. You might think it’s more important to stay down here in the trenches and keep an eye on them Russkies over there. In case they take advantage of our absence, like. But that’s where you’d be wrong, see. ’Cos unless you’re a nice clean soldier what brushes out his pubic hairs now and again and stops to polish up his perishing buttons before he goes into an attack, you won’t be FIT to fight the bleeding Russkies! How do you think a Russian’s going to feel if he sees a scarecrow like you coming at him with a bayonet? He won’t be able to take you serious, will he? I mean, he can’t be expected to, can he? I mean, let’s be reasonable about it. A perishing dirty great lout like you, what can be smelt stinking for bleeding miles around . . . he’d laugh his bleeding bollocks off!’

‘No, he wouldn’t,’ objected Tiny, who as usual had followed the whole of Porta’s argument with the utmost seriousness.

‘What you mean, he wouldn’t? Course he would! Anyone would!’

‘Well, they bloody wouldn’t, so that’s just where you’re wrong!’ Tiny pointed triumphantly at Porta. ‘’Cos I’d have stack the bayonet in ’em before they had a chance, wouldn’t I?’

Porta turned to the rest of us with a wide gesture of despair, and we looked at Tiny’s face, puckered with bewilderment, even now not too sure whether he had scored a point, and we fell about laughing. Even Lt. Spät was grinning. Lt. Ohlsen was the only one to keep a straight face. I was not even sure that he had been listening. He was staring along the lines, watching men who were dog tired, who had been under constant pressure and without sleep for days on end, painfully scrubbing themselves with icy water. There were no towels for drying. There was no soap, there were no razors. Uniforms that were beyond all hope of cleaning or repair were being sponged down in pathetic attempts to make them fit for the Colonel’s inspection. Equipment was being polished on pieces of filthy rag.

As our laughter died away, we followed Lt. Ohlsen’s gaze, reflecting in sombre bitterness that soon we ourselves should have to put our protesting bodies to work and begin on our own spit and polish. I looked across at the Lieutenant and saw a muscle twitch in his face.

‘Great screaming queen,’ he suddenly muttered, through clenched teeth. ‘Stupid sodding pig-headed bird-brained bastard!’

A sudden shocked silence came upon us. We stared at the Lieutenant, stunned by the vehemence in his voice. It was not so much what he said that startled us – God knows, compared with Porta’s more choice expressions his language was mild indeed – but more the way he said it. We had known the Lieutenant in his moments of anger and exasperation, we had known him impatient, we had known him sarcastic, but this was the cold, grim, almost desperate bitterness of a man who has taken just about as much as he can stand, and even Porta was moved to silence.

Ohlsen turned slowly to look at us. He shrugged his shoulders apologetically and rubbed a hand across his brow.

‘Sorry,’ he said, abruptly. ‘It gets you down at times.’

‘What can one do?’ muttered Spät. ‘They treat you like machines, only you’re not machines, you’re human beings, and now and again something happens that reminds you of it, and then you feel so damned sick at the things you have to do . . .’

The inspection took place the following morning as planned. We lined up like a load of renovated scarecrows. Any officer who had been at the front as long as we had would have been agreeably surprised by our appearance. We had indeed wrought miracles. At the risk of catching pneumonia, we had bathed in pools of icy water. A certain amount of dirt was still engrimed, but the top layer at least had been removed. Our uniforms were still damp and creased, but the few buttons that remained were highly polished and gleamed quite indecently bright in the pale morning sunshine. Altogether it was a brave show, and we felt that we deserved commendation.

Unfortunately, Colonel von Vergil, being fresh out from a home billet, set far higher standards than any fighting officer. He raged over torn uniforms, he fumed over missing buttons, and he became almost apoplectic over the state of our boots. His own were shining like any looking glass, but when Lt. Ohlsen asked him whether we were supposed to carry tins of polish into the trenches with us, in preference to boxes of ammunition, he dismissed the question as being both irrelevant and insubordinate.

Another inspection was called for the following day, and when that also failed to satisfy him we were hauled back the next day, and the next day, and the next. It was a wearisome farce that exhausted everyone to no purpose and cost the life of at least one man, who collapsed with a haemorrhage as his section was being forced to crawl five miles on their stomachs, dragging gas masks and full equipment with them. Lt. Ohlsen was almost out of his mind, but the Colonel had the immovable obsession of the insane and there was nothing to be done. We tried on several occasions to contact our Regiment, but without success: the entire front was in a state of confusion and most of the lines of communication had been cut.

When the idea of constant inspections began to lose its appeal, the Colonel hit on the fresh notion of sending us out on endless and increasingly pointless patrols. And never a day passed but Lt. Ohlsen had to make the hazardous journey from the trenches to the Colonel’s headquarters to answer a string of meaningless questions.

It was fortunate, during this period, that the Russians were apathetic and for the most part left us alone. We had regular exchanges of sniper fire, but these, I think, were conducted on both sides more for show than anything else. Further away towards the north we knew that there must be very heavy fighting. We heard the sounds of gunfire and explosions both by day and night, and the sky was almost always a blaze of fire on the horizon.

‘It’s got to come our way soon,’ muttered Heide, pessimistically. ‘We’ve had it easy long enough.’

‘Easy?’ Porta gave a derisive laugh. ‘You call it easy, living with that nut breathing down your neck the whole time? I’d rather have a skirmish with the Russians and be done with it!’

‘Don’t worry,’ said Tiny, confidently. ‘I reckon the war’ll be over pretty soon. You and me’ll be back home within a couple of months.’

The little Legionnaire opened one eye and raised a sardonic eyebrow.

‘Don’t you kid yourself . . . this war’s going on a lot longer than a couple of months.’

There was a wild shout, as Barcelona came running up.

‘They’ve broken through on the left flank! It’s started up again!’

The Old Man sighed. He calmly knocked out his pipe and stood up.

‘Ah, well, we knew it had to happen. Silence is only made to be broken.’

Already Lt. Ohlsen was shouting orders. Already the scene was breaking up into that confusion which leads eventually to a strict order where every man has his place and knows what he must do. We picked up our weapons, began checking them, cramming our helmets on our heads, preparing once more for action. Those sections which had been resting were brutally woken and came up at a run, stumbling and yawning and still not too sure what was about to happen. Behind us, we could hear the crack of rifles and the explosions of mines and hand grenades. Lt. Ohlsen turned to Spät.

‘Stay here with the first section and keep the road clear. Well need you to cover us on the way back. The rest of the Company, come with me.’

We fell in behind him, single file. As we moved forward, we stumbled on two men of the Colonel’s battalion, hiding behind some rocks and half dead with terror.

‘Come on, come on, buck your ideas up!’ Lt. Ohlsen nagged them to their feet and pushed impatiently at them with the butt of his PM as they stood shivering and incoherent before him. ‘What happened? Where are the rest of your section?’

‘Gone—’

They shook their heads, still dumb with fright.

‘Gone where? You mean they’re dead or they’ve run off or what?’

‘The Russians came at us – suddenly – out of nowhere . . .’

They babbled to a halt. Only by dint of much coaxing and bullying did Lieutenant Ohlsen prise the story out of them.

It appeared that despite persistent warnings from one or two front line veterans, Colonel von Vergil had seen no necessity for having more than a couple of men on guard. The experienced soldiers had been contemptuously dismissed as cowards and old women, and the Colonel had given it as his opinion that the Russians were on the point of packing up and going home after their last abortive attack and the comparative silence of the past few days. Only yesterday he had been overheard telling the Adjutant that in fact there was far more danger back home in Germany, from R.A.F. bombing raids, than he had yet to meet at the front. The result was that when the Russians ultimately launched the attack that we (but not the Colonel) had been expecting, they met with virtually no resistance. The two men on guard had apparently been taken by surprise, since they had not sounded the alarm, and according to the two babbling survivors – who frankly confessed they were still alive only because they had taken to their heels – the whole attack had been incredibly rapid and incredibly silent. No guns or grenades had been used, only bayonets and kandras.

‘So in other words, it was a massacre?’ demanded Lt. Ohlsen, grimly.

‘Yes, yes!’ they cried, eager to impress upon us the ghast-liness of the experience.

And one, perhaps wishing to show that they had not given in without a struggle, however, did add that Lt. Kalb had managed to throw one hand grenade before being run through with a bayonet.

‘I see.’ Lt. Ohlsen stared up the path that led to the Colonel’s chalet. He turned back to the survivors. ‘And – ah – how about the Colonel?’ he asked, casually.

They didn’t know: they hadn’t seen the Colonel.

‘Let’s hope they stuck a bayonet up his backside,’ muttered Porta.

‘Perhaps,’ suggested Tiny, ‘we ought to hang about down here until they’ve finished the job? Make bleeding sure of it?’

‘Creutzfeldt, keep your voice down!’ snapped the Lieutenant. He waved his arm at the column of men and pointed up towards the chalet. ‘Follow me, we’re going up there.’

We heard the Russians long before we reached the chalet. The sounds they made were familiar to us. They were the joyous sounds of men carousing.

‘Pissed to the eyeballs,’ murmured Barcelona, with a smile. ‘They’ll have found the Colonel’s wine store.’

‘Jesus Christ!’ said Tiny, nervously. ‘Let’s get up there quick before the bastards drink it all!’