Assignment Gestapo (12 page)

As we came in sight of the chalet we could see, as well as hear, evidence of Russian occupation. The windows were open, and through them came snatches of drunken song and a continuous hail of paper, boxes, crockery and German uniforms.

‘Look at ’em,’ said Porta, half jealous, half contemptuous. ‘Call that war? Looks more like a bleeding debauch to me.’

Heide ran a hand caressingly along his rifle.

‘You wait till we get stuck in there amongst ’em . . . won’t know what’s hit ’em til it’s all over!’

‘Particularly,’ added the little Legionnaire, with a grin, ‘when they discover we’re not the same papier-mâché soldiers as the last lot they had to deal with . . .’

Lt. Ohlsen gave the order to fix bayonets, and we charged. I found myself hurtling up the hill towards the chalet with the Old Man and the Legionnaire by my side, the Lieutenant just ahead of us, Porta and Tiny screaming like savages just behind. I saw one or two round Russian faces staring open-mouthed in horror as we launched ourselves upon them. They didn’t stand a chance, that first lot. We cut straight through them and surged onwards to engage in a vicious hand-to-hand combat which soon became a tangled nightmare of interlocked men, slashing and cutting amongst the corpses of their companions, slipping and squelching in pools of spilt blood, crushing underfoot the writhing bodies of the wounded.

I looked up suddenly to find an enormous Russian lieutenant bearing down upon me. He was wielding his machine gun like a club, and I was able to sidestep the lethal blow just in time. As a purely reflex action, I brought up my bayonet and thrust it blindly at my enemy. There was a moment of resistance, then the blade slid smoothly into the soft flesh of his groin. He fell backwards with a scream, taking my rifle with him. In my terror and my haste to retrieve the weapon, I leaped forward with both feet planted squarely in the face of a wounded man. Whether he was one of ours or one of theirs, I didn’t stop to see. I snatched up my rifle and plunged onwards, with his agonized shrieks ringing in my ears.

Now and again, in the hideous confusion, I caught a brief glimpse of one of my own companions. At one point I was dimly aware that Porta was by my side, but then he was swallowed up in the vicious scrum of bodies and disappeared. I fought my way out into the courtyard and saw Tiny. He had lost his gun and a couple of Russians were heading straight for him. I gave a loud yell, but Tiny had already swung round to meet them. With two enormous fists he caught them each by the throat and their heads went crashing together. As they fell, he snatched up one of their guns and began spraying bullets in all directions. We had reached that stage of desperation where it was every man for himself and if you mowed down some of your own side then it was just their hard luck.

I saw a Russian crouching behind a pillar, taking aim with a pistol. Before he had time to fire it, I had blown off half his head, and I watched dispassionately as he crumpled up in a bloody heap.

I turned and saw Porta charging with his bayonet, plunging it deep into the back of a young Russian who was attempting to run away.

I saw Heide trampling savagely upon the face of a dying man, who even in his last moments of agony was still clutching his gun to his chest.

How many men had been killed, and how long the slaughter had continued, I had no idea. Was it minutes or was it hours before we reassembled, victorious, in the courtyard behind the chalet? At that point we neither knew nor cared. For the moment, it was enough that we had survived.

We threw ourselves to the ground, panting, exhausted, covered in mud and blood, our uniforms torn, our helmets and our weapons tossed wearily to one side. Some of the youngest of the new recruits had tears rolling down their cheeks and making channels in the grime. For the rest of us, once the first shock of being still alive had worn off, we began searching with bloodshot eyes for our companions. Were they still with us? Or were they lying inside in the charnel house with their guts ripped out or their heads blown off?

I saw Barcelona a few yards away, stretched out full length, his uniform in ribbons. The Old Man was leaning against a tree trunk, smoking his inevitable pipe. Tiny and Heide were still there, Heide with his eyes closed, Tiny in a quite indescribable mess, looking as if he had dipped his head in a bucket of blood. My gaze roamed further afield and I saw Stege, lying on his back and staring bleakly up at the clouds overhead. And there was the Legionnaire, sitting on some steps smoking a cigarette and already hard at work stripping down his gun ready for the next action. The Legionnaire was a professional soldier. He had been fighting for fifteen years and his first thought was always for his weapons. Further off were Porta and Steiner, sharing a bottle of spirits they had found somewhere. Steiner looked to be already half drunk.

They were all there. All the old hands, the ones who had lived through it before and were still here to tell the tale. But over a third of the new recruits had gone. Their bodies lay where they had fallen, sad islands of death amongst the survivors. Someone hesitantly suggested that we might bury them, but we took no notice. Why tax our strength any further, digging holes for corpses? We were alive and exhausted, while they were dead and could feel no more.

Lt. Ohlsen came out of the chalet. He had lost his helmet and had a deep gash running from the corner of his eye to his mouth. He sank to the ground, and we looked at him expectantly. He hunched a shoulder.

‘They were all dead before we got here.’

Porta gave him a cigarette.

‘How about the Colonel, Sir?’

‘Him as well . . . his throat was slit from ear to ear.’

There was a silence, then a malicious grin spread itself across Porta’s lips.

‘Maybe there is a God after all,’ he muttered.

The Lieutenant frowned and turned to Heide.

‘Take two or three men and go and collect all the identification discs.’

‘What, Russians as well?’ demanded Heide.

‘Of course. You ought to know that without being told.’

As soon as Heide had completed his task, we set fire to the chalet and made our way back to the road, losing more men as we did so, thanks to the Russians waking up again and pounding us with mortars.

‘Always us,’ grumbled Porta, running for cover. ‘Anything goes wrong, and it’s always us that gets caught up in it.’

Tiny and the Legionnaire were already setting up the heavy machine gun. Lieutenant Ohlsen turned back to wave an impatient hand at the new recruits, who were lagging behind, uncertain whether to follow the rest of us up the road or dive into the nearest shell hole.

‘Stop dithering and get a move on, for God’s sake! This is no time to hang about admiring the bloody scenery!’

They shambled forward like a load of terrified sheep. One suddenly gave a shrill howl of pain and began running in circles, both hands pressed to his abdomen. Sanilätsgefreiter Berg at once turned back for him. He dragged the boy to the side of the road and tore open his uniform, but he was too late, he was already dead.

We watched as Berg slung his Red Cross bag over his shoulder and ran forward to rejoin us. Shells landed before and behind him. His helmet was blown off his head and he staggered from the blast, but somehow he made it. A loud cheer went up. Berg was deservedly popular. We had watched on many occasions as he risked his life to help an injured man, caught in enemy fire as he lay wounded in the middle of a mine field or tangled on the barbed wire. I remembered at Sebasto-pol, when Berg had deliberately gone back into a burning building and staggered through the inferno with an unconscious Lieutenant Hinka slung over his shoulders. He had been offered the Iron Cross for that particular exploit, but had politely refused it, saying that he had no interest in collecting scrap iron. Two years later, his uniform was still bare of any form of decoration save his Red Cross medal.

The Company eventually staggered to relative safety in a thickly forested area which projected beyond the mountains like a wooded fjord. We were on our own once again: the battalion from Breslau had been completely wiped out.

We had been on the same train for several days, ever since leaving the front, and we had stopped at many stations. Frequently we had been shunted into sidings and left there for hours on end, to make way for trains carrying more important cargoes
–
arms or ammunitions, perhaps. We were only soldiers returning home, and therefore fairly far down on the list of priorities
.

Now, on the seventh day of our journey, we had come to yet another stop. The train shuddered to a halt and for several minutes we stayed where we were, sitting on the straw in our cattle truck, too lethargic even to open our eyes. After a while, Porta stirred himself sufficiently to pull open the sliding door and have a look outside
.

‘Hamburg!’ He turned back to the rest of us. ‘We’re in Hamburg
!’

‘
Hamburg
?

We cheered up slightly. The Legionnaire stretched luxuriously and the Old Man was moved to pull out his pipe and stick it in his mouth
.

‘It’s Whitsun,’ he told us, suddenly
.

We all looked at him
.

‘So what?’ said Heide. ‘What’s Whitsun got to do with anything
?’

The Old Man shrugged his shoulders
.

‘I don’t know . . . it just occurred to me
. . .’

‘This time last year,’ said Porta, ‘we were at Demnanks
.’

‘And the year before that,’ added Tiny, ‘it was Brest-Lit-ovsk. Do you remember Brest-Litovsk? Do you remember
—’

‘Put a sock in it!’ said the Legionnaire, irritably. ‘I wish you wouldn’t keep looking backwards all the time, it’s morbid and unnecessary. Why can’t you try looking forward for a change
?’

‘All right, if that’s what you want . . .’ Porta closed his eyes a moment, and a smile of beatific lechery appeared on his lips. ‘First thing I do tonight, when they let us out of here, is find me a brothel . . . How about that? That appeal to you
?’

From the cheers, that went up from the assembled company, it seemed that it did
!

CHAPTER THREE

Hamburg

W
E
were sitting in the canteen, waiting for Barcelona. We had been sitting in there for some time, and one or two of us –notably Porta and Tiny – were well on the way to becoming exceedingly, gloriously drunk.

The place smelt of stale beer and frying, and the air was thick and heavy with cigarette smoke. The serving women, rushed off their feet and in no very good mood, were deliberately making as much noise as possible, throwing piles of knives and forks into the sink and clattering the crockery on the draining board. They grumbled incessantly as they worked.

Porta, prompted by God knows what drunken whim, suddenly leaned across the table and pointed an accusing finger at a Dutch SS man, who had been sitting in a peaceful coma, minding his own business, ever since we had been there.

‘Look at the ugly great swine,’ he said, his voice slightly blurred by drink. He turned to the rest of us, and with a gesture invited us to inspect the unfortunate man. ‘Look at his sodding great ears! If there’s one thing I can’t stand, it’s ears that look as if they’re about to take off.’

I stared with interest at the man’s ears. They certainly had a tendency to stand out at right angles from his head, but perhaps I hadn’t yet drunk enough to see this as sufficient reason for pitching into him.

A girl came up with a tray of beer mugs. She slapped them down before us, and the beer frothed over the edge and made a great stinking lake over the table. Porta planted both elbows in it and turned his attentions to more likely prey, a young soldier wearing the silver insignia of the SD
⁷
on his collar. The Dutch SS man had remained totally unmoved by the reference to his ears, and was probably even more drunk than Porta, but the young soldier was already looking nervous.

‘Listen, you bastard—’ Porta blew his nose loudly between finger and thumb and wiped it across his sleeve – ‘I got a knife here. We all got knives. Me and my friends, we all got knives . . . You know what for? You know what we use ’em for?’

The SD man turned away and wisely kept his mouth shut, but Porta was out to annoy someone and he dragged the man round to face him again.

‘You want me to show you?’ he asked, with a revolting leer. ‘We use ’em for cutting things off . . . You want me to show you what it is we cut off?’

He made an obscene gesture in the air, and Tiny obligingly guffawed.

‘Really, I’m not in the least interested in your wretched knives,’ said the man, and he yawned and turned away again.

His attempt to assume an air of lofty disdainmerely provoked Porta into a drunken fury. He brought his fist crashing down on to the table. All the beer mugs jumped and rattled and a fresh wave of beer came slopping over the edge.

‘Why don’t you bugger off and leave us alone?’ shouted Porta. ‘What right have you got to sit here at our table, you filthy swine? Get out of it before I throw you out!’

I picked up my half empty beer mug and watched the scene unfold with a fuddled, and consequently somewhat dispassionate, interest. The Legionnaire leaned back and crossed his legs at the ankle, sliding half out of his chair. The Old Man was staring mournfully into his beer mug. Tiny seemed the only other person to be really very much interested.

The SD man voiced what seemed to me, in the circumstances, a mild and reasonable objection to Porta’s rude hectoring.

‘I was here first, you know . . . And I really don’t think it’s up to you to give the orders.’

Porta snorted and spat.

‘So what if you’ve been here since the beginning of the bleeding war? I’m telling you, now, to get the hell out of it!’

‘And I’m telling you,’ retorted the SD man, growing pardonably exasperated, ‘that I shall do no such thing!’

Porta looked round wildly at Tiny for support.