Authors: Sven Hassel
‘Last chance,’ says Wolf, preferring to ignore the insult. ‘I’m your
only
chance!’
Porta laughs loud and long.
‘If a man only had one chance in this bloody campaign of love and liberation, I’d have died and risen again more than a few times.’
‘You a cousin of Rothschild, or something?’ smiles Wolf, with a superior air. ‘You’re itching to know what I’ve got.’
‘Fuck off,’ growls Porta, spitting carelessly into the wind.
‘Let’s stop playing games, Porta, and get to business. I’m willing to admit getting your Zims is my big problem.’
‘Too right, son,’ says Porta, slitting his eyes. ‘
You’ve
got a problem.
I
ain’t. That makes a big difference. Why should I give you my Zims? We both know the big shots’re getting homesick, and the price of tracks and half-tracks
with
petrol is rocketing. I’ve still got
my
Zims because I know prices ain’t
topped yet. But since I’m a good-hearted sort of chap I’ll let you have a five ton, three-axle job with
out
tracks, if you like?’
‘What’d I like about that kind of shit?’ asks Wolf, hurt. ‘It wouldn’t move an inch in all this bloody Commie snow. For the last time: One ready-to-move tracked Zim with forty-five gallons in the tank. I’m an honest man, Porta, I treat my friends the way they deserve.’
‘You sound like somebody chatting-up a bint who’s ready to believe any kind of shit long as you’ve got stars on your shoulders,’ says Porta, with some dignity.
‘Let’s operate on ’im with a Bolshie bleedin’ bayonet,’ suggests Tiny, loudly and undiplomatically.
‘That Hamburg boy of yours’ll never grow up,’ confides Wolf to Stege. ‘The son of a proletarian thinks everything can be worked out with fists.’
‘Don’t insult
me
, Mr Chief bleedin’ Mechanic, or I’ll dig your bleedin’ gut out,’ warns Tiny, letting a finger run along the sharpened edge of his spade.
‘Shut it, dryshitter!’ is all Wolf condescends to remark. After a long and secretive palaver Porta and Wolf come to an agreement and Porta brings up the Zims. Wolf goes over them carefully. He’s looking for time-bombs. Satisfied, he offers schnapps all round.
‘You don’t really deserve it,’ he turns to Tiny, ‘but since you’ll soon be leaving this vale of tears, well here’s one for the road, sonny! You’ll be happy to know that you’re going to the Brandenburg Regiment,’ he adds, maliciously.
‘Sounds like some SS mob,’ considers Barcelona.
‘Dope,’ grins Wolf, tolerantly. ‘The SS wouldn’t touch you shower with a shithouse broom. If you went down on your bended knees to ’em they wouldn’t have you lot. The Brandenburg Regiment, friends, is the arsehole of the main sewer. A regiment of suicide squads where only five percent speak German. The rest are deserters and enemy traitors. When I heard the good news I opened a bottle of champagne, I can tell you. I really intended to save it for Victory Day, but—’
‘Oberst Inka won’t stand for it,’ shouts Porta indignantly. ‘He’ll go right to the bloody top!’
‘He
has
done, and they spit in his eye,’ laughs Wolf, noisily and long. ‘The good God of Germany has destined you to turn up your toes on the banks of the Moscow River.’
‘What the hell do they want
us
to do with the Brandenburgers?’ asks Porta, doubtfully.
‘They’ve suffered a hell of a lot of losses lately,’ explains Wolf, with fitting sorrow in his voice. ‘The holes are being filled up with the scum of the Army and Navy. That’s why your little friendly society’s going to ’em. You’re going to Moscow to send up a couple of factories.’
‘The Luftwaffe can do that easier,’ says Porta. ‘They can pulverize the whole bloody lot without losing a drop of valuable German blood.’
‘They won’t lose a drop of that anyway,’ Wolf grins, satanically. ‘You and the other white niggers don’t count for as much as a cup of Jew piss. They’ll give you plenty of plastic demolition charges and a yellow monkey to show you the way. A half-human shit-eater more treacherous than any of those bastards you read about in the Bible.’
The telephone rattles long and angrily. Wolf takes it and hands it gracefully to the Old Man.
‘The shithouse is on fire, I reckon, boys!’ he says, in a fatherly tone, patting Porta on the shoulder with false friendliness. ‘Your section commander’s being called in for his last communion! I’d be a lying son-of-a-bitch if I said I was sorry. I’ve been looking forward, ever since we first met, back in ’36, to seeing you off on a real death or glory job, but I’m not really a wicked chap, just a cool calculating business man. You gotta be if you want to stay alive. Inside here,’ he thumps his breast theatrically, ‘there’s a big heart beating, and in it there’s a little membrane throbbing for you too, Porta. So I wish you a quick death without too much suffering, even though you deserve a slow and painful one, and a candle will burn for you in the cathedral of my heart when you have passed on. You should be proud, man! You
are going to fall in defence of the Fatherland on ground soaked in historical traditions!’
‘You’re not a human being, Wolf. You’re a non-com soaked in primitive bloody Army traditions, and a typical Wehrmacht product,’ shouts Porta viciously, to hide his growing fear.
‘I haven’t got the time, Obergefreiter Porta,’ states Wolf, coldly. ‘What about the rest of your tractors, and your guns? I’ll take them off your hands, if you like, for old times’ sake!’
‘I can use your services,’ Porta smiles a superior smile, ‘but they can’t pay for my vehicles. Let’s do it a different way. I’ll buy your supplies – on bills of exchange!’
Wolf falls off the gun, laughing madly.
‘You’ve missed your vocation. You should’ve been a clown in a Goddamn circus, you should. People’d die laughing. Bills of
exchange! Yours!
Five miles from the Kremlin!
And
when you’re on your way up the steps of the scaffold for your last shave! Think I’ve got softening of the brain? Me, who’s never had an iron pot on it in my whole career! I didn’t go into the bloody Army to fight for Führer, Family and Fatherland. I came in to do
business
. Bills! Not this boy! A mortgage maybe, if I’m pushed, and then only for officers from Oberst upwards and against security in land or property.’
‘Anybody ever tell you what a giant-sized shitbag you are?’ asks Porta, sarcastically.
‘Plenty,’ grins Wolf self-satisfied. ‘I’ve got it in writing too, but I’m like the Yids, I don’t give a fuck long as the money drops on time. So, Porta, what about those tractors and guns?’
The field telephone breaks in. Porta lifts the receiver as nonchalantly as the president of a world-famous bank. He listens for a moment with closed face. Then replaces the receiver on the hook with an elegant turn of the wrist.
‘The market’s closed,’ he grins with much satisfaction. ‘No more deals,
tovaritsch
Wolf! Back to your hole in Libau, son! Your continued presence here is turning my stomach. You are a stinking skunk!’
‘What’d they say on the blower?’ asks Wolf, inquisitively, his face slowly reddening.
‘GEKADOS,’
3
smiles Porta, slyly. ‘You’d have a stroke if I told you!’
‘If you believe everything you hear through that crazy bloody ear-trumpet, you’re stupider than I’d thought,’ shouts Wolf, angrily.
‘Sail off to your Royal Swedish Democracy,’ jeers Porta. ‘Your presence bores me! Buy a mirror and take a good look at yourself, my son. You’ll never go for a shit with the lights on anymore.’ Wolf rises threateningly. He looks like a dangerous carnivore whose prey has slipped away right under its nose.
‘If you’re planning anything clever just let me put you straight! Wherever you go I’ll have you by the balls, boy!’
‘Careful, even if you do belong to the
Herronvolk
you can burst if you blow yourself up too big,’ says Porta, chortling with merriment. He pulls out a pack of cards and begins to deal.
‘Feed ‘im a dose of rat poison,’ suggests Tiny, confidentially.
‘You may be big and strong as an ox, but you’re dumber’n a stillborn calf,’ roars Wolf, losing control of himself. ‘I could crush you like a sick nit when and where I felt like it!’
‘Wicked bastard, ain’t ’e?’ says Tiny casually, playing a king.
A squad of Brandenburgers wearing Russian ski-trooper uniforms reports to the Old Man. A little later a small slant-eyed Mongol arrives, his face split in a white-toothed grin. He is wearing an NKVD captain’s uniform, short black leather caps, a leather belt with two cross-straps, and a large Nagan on his left hip. Under his arm he is hugging a
kalashnikov
like a happy mother holding her infant child.
‘Vasilij,’ he introduces himself, shaking hands all round. ‘By
Kunfu
,
4
here stink good of schnapps,’ he cries, sniffing loudly. ‘Vasilij like schnapps too! Bad pinic no schnapps!’ He
empties Porta’s bottle rapidly, and rolls himself in a groundsheet. ‘We no go through Communist position until all dark. Best at Starodanil where weak-minds from Karabats lying. They shit pants when dark comes. We come say: “Dam big NKVD check!” They frightened. People from Karabats always on wrong side. Deal with traitors and sell grifas.’
‘Sounds interesting,’ says Porta, expectanly.
‘Now I sleep!’ decides Vasilij, pulling his camouflage jacket up over his head. ‘Two o’clock you wake up. I lead you dangerous action. Big boom Moscow. Then you fuck me all ways, on foot, on ’orseback!’
Thirty seconds later he is snoring loudly.
‘Where the hell did that odd-ball come from?’ asks Barcelona wonderingly.
‘He ought to be liquidated,’ considers Heide, not troubling to conceal his disgust.
The Old Man unfolds a town plan of Moscow and begins to discuss our task with a Brandenburger Feldwebel.
‘
Hals und Beinbruch!
’
5
says Oberst Hinka. He has come out to see us off.
‘Get back in one piece.
Don’t
let yourselves get captured in those Russian uniforms. You all know what they do to agents and raiders.’
‘When I was with 35 Panzer Regiment at Bamberg I had the job of carrying water to the married officers’ quarters,’ Porta is telling a story as we lie in the pre-action area. ‘We had a strict CO insisted that all officers parade with their companies for inspection, at 7 o’clock every morning. At 7:30 I started to deliver water to the first of the quarters, Leutnant Pütz, 3 Company. I’d usually finished shagging his wife by 8 o’clock, and moved on, with my water to Feldwebel Ernst’s quarters.
His
wife’d had as much as she could take by a little after 8.30. By 10.30 I’d had so much high-grade officer cunt I was near turning homo at the thought of more. But at 2 o’clock me and my little friend had to start our rounds again.
That was when I had to beat the sofa for Major Linkowsky’s wife, who was a very religious woman. She and her husband were a temporary posting to us from 1 Cavalry at Königsberg. She told me every day that she never got anything at Königsberg but she was making up for it at Bamberg. It was in Bamberg I started to collect panties and this caused trouble when the Secret Police turned up looking for some larcenist or other. The snap-brim and leather coat boys ordered a general search, and turned up my collection, all with names on. The wives, of course, didn’t recognize any of them as theirs. But one of the snap-brims was an Obergefreiter who hated officers. They sent the whole collection to the Police Central Laboratories in Berlin and after the Alex-boys had had a long strong sniff at them the good ladies had had it. When our CO, Oberst Hackmeister, had spelled his way through the Reischkriminalpolizei report they say he shot straight up out of his boots and swallowed his monocle on the way. It ended up as a window-pane in his arse, and it required the attention of an Army glazier to get it out. All the officers who’d been cuck’d were given punishment postings to distant border regiments. Some wanted a divorce but Army Personnel forbade it. Officers should be able to maintain discipline in their own homes. If necessary, chastity belts could be supplied from QM stores.’
‘What about you?’ asks Barcelona inquisitively. ‘You couldn’t stay at Bamberg after all that!’
‘No, they sent me to Westphalia to 11 Panzer at Paderborn but I was never a water carrier again. I was turned into a machine-gunner in an experimental battalion. That wasn’t so bad, either, I oiled locks. We had a Hauptfeldwebel in 9 Company who collected pubic hair. He used to keep it in small boxes, with a photo of the scalped lady inside the lid.’
‘Shut it,’ orders the Old Man crossly. ‘We want to sleep. To hell with you and your Bamberg bitches!’
Three hours later an infantryman wakes us.
‘Whassa time?’ ask the Old Man sleepily.
‘Two-thirty, Herr Feldwebel,’ stammers the unhappy man.
‘You were supposed to call us at 2 o’clock,’ shouts the Old Man sharply, pulling on his boots.
‘You’ve been asleep on guard, soldier,’ states Heide, with the look of an avenging angel. ‘I’m booking you for neglect of duty. It can cost you your head!’ Heide loves executions.
Barcelona gets up slowly and stretches himself, so that his bones crack. The Brandenburger Feldwebel’s submachine-gun falls to the ground. Immediately a row starts.
We slip through the lines and march straight down into a Russian trench.