Authors: Sven Hassel
In the north, in the south, in the east and in the west, German soldiers were dying the deaths of heroes; and back home in the Fatherland, German mothers were thanking God with tears in their eyes and going into mourning with heads held high and a proud smile on their lips... At least, that's what the 'Volkischer Beobachter' said they were doing.
History was repeating itself. It seemed that the youth of Germany was fated always to be in the throes of sacrificing its life for some cause or other, and that it never died without some patriotic jingle coming from its lips. Long live the Emperor, long live the Fatherland, or simply Heil Hitler. Men were falling thick and fast on all four quarters of the globe, and the sound of drums and trumpets sped them on their way; and no mother, no wife, nor sister or fiancee would have disgraced herself by sitting down to weep over her lost hero. The womenfolk of Germany were proud to have given such sons to their country in the hour of her need.
Such were the trappings of war. No one ever spoke of the hard realities. The womenfolk of Germany must never hear tell of the men that screamed in agony with their legs blown off, or hung in lumps of charred and stinking flesh out of the turrets of their burning tanks, or crawled blindly over the battlefield with skulls split open and their brains exposed. No one ever spoke of these things save traitors or madmen. All German soldiers died a hero's death, and no hero ever died like that, repulsive to behold and stripped of all human dignity.
The German heroes of the history books were men in shining uniforms their chests ablaze with medals; they sang as they marched, to the blood-stirring sounds of the trumpet and the drum, and the flags waved bravely as they went off to war and a million German mothers dressed up in black with their heads held high.
Heroes never lived in the mud and the filth of the trenches; heroes never spoke of defeat or cursed those men at the top who had engineered the war; heroes never died while sobbing like babies for their mothers and trying to shove their spilt guts back into their bellies... Yet that was war as most of us knew it, and I suppose I knew it as well as anyone.
DISCOVERY OF AN AMERICAN DEPOT
All along the road, for a kilometre or more, the crowd were throwing themselves panic-stricken into the ditches or pressing themselves in terror against the hedgerows. It was as if an unseen hand had suddenly unzipped them, straight down the middle, leaving a gaping hole where once there had been people. The irony was that they were Germans fleeing for their lives from other Germans. The oncoming column of trucks and cars were moving at a dangerously high speed, impatiently sounding, their horns and making it dear that they intended to stop for no one, friend or foe.
'Someone's in a bleeding hurry to get home!' grumbled Porta, falling into the ditch at my side.
'AH the brave heroes getting the hell out of it while there's still time,' I sneered.
Two large Mercedes limousines approached us, accompanied by outriders of the Feldgendarmerie on motorcycles, clearing a passage by means of brute force and sheer speed. From the windows of the Mercedes well-groomed officers with long noses and thin lips and plenty of gold braid regarded us with an air of slightly disgusted condescension. By their side sat mistresses or whores, or what you will, plump and sleek and staring proudly straight ahead. One was foolish enough to glance in our direction. Porta promptly made an obscene gesture and she turned in confusion, scarlet to the roots of her hair. We gave a great jeer of delight, as if we had scored a personal victory over the class that we hated. Seconds later we were covered in dust as a couple of heavy transports flashed past us, gleaming pennants fluttering defiantly.
'Sod the lot of them,' snarled Heide, in agony with an eye full of dust. 'Bloody backroom heroes sitting on their bleeding arses while we do all the fighting for them! They're the first to pull out when danger threatens, and shit to everyone else!'
'That's nothing new,' said Porta, sourly.
We dragged ourselves out of the ditch and trailed resentfully in the wake of the disappearing column of motors. We began to catch up on those who were ahead of us, and slowly we realized how it was that their progress was so erratic and uncertain: they were all either lame or blind, some of them very seriously wounded. It appeared that an entire ambulance crew had suddenly panicked and dashed off without them, leaving them to fend for themselves. The poor devils were now moving along the road like a pack of sheep, so certain of death that they had passed into a state of deep, unshakeable apathy. Two men with bandages over their eyes were carrying a companion who could see but not walk; a column of six blind men stumbled hand to shoulder behind their leader, who hobbled on crutches; three men with no sight and a man with one arm carried a litter on which lay a still, mummified figure, bandaged from head to foot. They had no idea how far they had walked. Several kilometres, according to one of them, and judging from the pitiful state they were in he was probably correct. Many dozens of vehicles had passed them, full not of fighting troops but officers and their ladies. One and all they had ignored the column of wounded. When he heard this Lt. Lowe went quite mad. I thought I had seen him in all his varying stages of anger, from heavy sarcasm to screaming fury, but this was evidently at the top end of his range and I think it took us all by surprise. He shot out into the middle of the road and waved his arms furiously at an oncoming convoy of vehicles. To my surprise, they actually squealed to a bad-tempered halt. A bristling colonel stuck his head out of the leading car and shook a fist in Lowe's direction.
'What the devil's going on here? Get out of the way before I put you on a charge! '
A major of the Feldgendarmerie jumped off his motorcycle and ran up to Lowe, jerking his revolver out of its holster.
'Clear the road, you filthy scum! We're in a hurry!'
He waved an arm above his head, jabbing his finger in the air as a sign to the driver of the first vehicle to start up again. Lowe had barely the time to spring back into the ditch before the convoy shot forward. One of the wounded men was not so agile. He was struck a glancing blow on the head and must have died almost instantaneously. Lowe pursed his lips in a thin, determined line and turned to the Old Man.
'Feldwebel Beier, get your men stationed on either side of the road with the S.M.G. a few metres further up. Sergeant Kalb, take charge of the bazookas. Feldwebel Blom, wave down the first vehicle that comes along. If it refuses to stop'--he looked round at us, meaningly--'it's up to you to make it.'
Porta gave a great shout of joy and spat on his hands. I think we all shared his sentiments.
We took up our allotted positions. The group of wounded crouched down in the safety of the ditch, Barcelona made his stand in the middle of the road. The Legionnaire thoughtfully cleared away the corpse. We had only a few minutes to wait before a grey Horsch appeared in the distance, going like a bat out of hell as if the entire British Army were at its heels. Barcelona waved his arms. The Horsch screamed to a full stop when it was almost on top of him and a lieutenant-colonel jumped out.
'What do you think you're playing at, Feldwebel? What the devil do you mean by standing out there practising semaphore in the middle of the road?'
Lieutenant Lowe scrambled out of the ditch and walked up to the colonel, his machine-gun pointed directly at the man's beribboned chest.
'I have orders to requisition the transport that I need for conveying my wounded to the nearest first-aid post or hospital. As you can see, I have no transport of my own or I should obviously have put it to use. I must therefore ask you to hand over your vehicle to me.'
The Colonel swelled up like a balloon and went
on
swelling, until I thought he must surely burst out of
his
uniform.
'Are you aware of my rank, Lieutenant?'
'Perfectly, sir. But I think you'll agree that seriously wounded men must take priority over mere rank.' Lowe ran his eyes over the Colonel's vehicle. 'If you'd be good; enough to ask the three ladies to get down--they can continue their journey on foot, they look young enough and healthy enough. They'd better bring their gear with them, we shall need all the room we can get. Some of my men need to lie down flat.'
'Have you gone mad?' roared the Colonel. 'I have an important engagement to keep!'
'In deference to your rank, sir,' said Lowe, heavily polite, 'I shall hot insist that you join us on the road. I assume that you are capable of driving the vehicle? If so, you can tell your chauffeur to get down and you can take his place, just make sure that my men are taken good care of and then you're perfectly free to keep your important engagement.'
Lowe smiled slightly and jerked his head towards our two most belligerent members, Little John and Porta.
'Get everyone out of there and see how many of the wounded it'll take.'
Little John and Porta went joyously about their task, covered by the rest of us. The driver and the three women stepped down on to the road with sullen faces but no resistance, and ten of the wounded were installed in the back of the vehicle. Only the Colonel continued his futile protestations.
'I'll have you up on a charge for this, Lieutenant! You can't get away with this sort of thing, you know!'
He made a move towards his revolver, but quick as a flash Barcelona had stepped forward and snatched it out of his hand. Lowe shook his head, regretfully.
'I'm sorry you're taking it like this, sir. I didn't know the spirit of the Army had deteriorated so badly. Of course'--he smiled at the Colonel--'one does get a bit out of touch being in the front line all the time. However, I do know there's one thing that hasn't changed, and perhaps you'd care to be reminded of it: according to the orders of the Fuhrer himself, the commanding officer of a fighting unit is the man who says what goes in his own sector. I think you'll find that's still current policy... I should be quite within my rights to have you shot, if you attempted to threaten me.'
'We shall see about that, sir!' said the Colonel.
He placed himself in silent sulkiness behind the steering wheel. Lowe nodded.
'One last word of warning, just for the record: I shall send a signal to my commanding officer explaining the situation. I have also taken a note of your number and I shall personally check on the safe arrival of my men.'
The Horsch lurched forward up the road. The grateful shouts of the wounded men were still ringing in our ears when we heard the roar of approaching motor-cycles and saw a Mercedes hurling itself towards us with the usual accompanying outriders roaring ahead and shouting at us to give way.
'Stop that car! ' shouted Lowe.
Barcelona positioned himself gallantly in the centre of the road, but this time the driver continued straight for him and he had to spring to safety at the last moment.
'Stop that car! ' screamed Lowe, in a frenzy.
There was a burst of machine-gun fire from further up the road. The large Mercedes skidded, slewed round in a semicircle and came to a halt. We stared in gloating triumph at the occupant of the rear seat: a major-general in all his glory, gold braid, red silk tassels, shining, silver buttons and decorations in all colours of the rainbow.
'We've bagged a good 'un this time,' hissed Porta in my ear.
Very slowly, very imposingly, the Major-General stepped from the car, aided by two obsequious Feldwebels. His leather boots glittered and creaked. From the way they hugged his shapely calves I guessed they had been made to measure. He walked arrogantly up to Lt. Lowe, and then, to our intense delight, screwed a monocle into his left eye.
'Well, Lieutenant! '
His voice was low and deceptively gentle. He paused some distance off from Lowe and he spoke with authority.
'I have to presume, in your own defence, that at the moment of committing this outrage you were unaware of the person with whom you would have to deal?'
Lowe walked smartly up to him and saluted with two fingers.
'I very much regret the inconvenience, sir. Naturally if your man had stopped the car in the first instance we should not have found it necessary to shoot.'
'I imagine you have a good reason for this piece of insolence?'
'Yes, sir, I think you'll find it a good enough reason when I've explained the situation to you. I have a number of seriously wounded men back there and not enough transport to take care of them all. They're quite unfit to walk and some of them are almost certain to die if they don't get medical aid pretty quickly.'
'That's hardly any concern of mine, Lieutenant.'
'Excuse me, sir, but that vehicle of yours is large enough to accommodate several of my men quite comfortably.'
The Major-General readjusted his monocle.
'You must be out of your right mind, Lieutenant. I shall be charitable enough to put it down to a nervous condition, but it occurs to me that you are yourself in urgent need of medical attention. Think yourself very lucky that I'm prepared to forget the incident.'
He made to turn away, but Lowe at once moved up to him.
'Sir! I repeat that some of these men are sure to die if they don't get help quickly.' .
'This is wartime, Lieutenant. Many thousands of men are dying every day. I really cannot afford to have my vehicle cluttered up with blood-stained bodies. The provision of transport for the wounded does not fall within my sphere of duties. In any case, I happen to be
en route
to join my division. I have far more pressing affairs on my hands than giving free lifts to relatively unimportant soldiers.' He cleared his throat. 'Unimportant in the overall scheme, that is.'
'May I inquire which is your division, sir?'
'No, you may not! Kindly get out of my way before I'm forced to give my men orders to shoot!'
I saw Lowe turn very pale. I prayed that he would not back down at this point. I think if he had, Little John and Porta would have taken matters into their own hands, but Lowe could be very stubborn when a matter of principle was involved.