Authors: Sven Hassel
'I haven't any, either,' I said. 'I'll get dressed and go out and find some. You can always pick them up on the black market if you know where to look.'
'All right, but be careful.' She jumped out of bed and hopped naked into the kitchen. 'I'll get some coffee ready. Don't be long, will you?'
I wasn't long. I knew roughly where to look and I had returned with the cigarettes inside quarter of an hour. As I entered the building I passed two youths, who glanced in some consternation at my black uniform and pushed past me without a word. I watched them hurrying off down the street, wondered vaguely what they were doing out at that time of night and dismissed the matter from my mind. I climbed the stairs four at a time, anxious to get back to Jacqueline, to lie in bed with her, drinking coffee and smoking. She had left the front door of the apartment ajar. I guessed she was probably already in bed, waiting for me to come to her. I had a forty-eight-hour pass, we could spend one entire, glorious night together, and by the next day, or the day after, the war was almost certain to be over.
I called out to her as I entered the salon.
'I'm back! I managed to pick up five packets of twenty from a young kid just round the corner!'
There was no reply.
'Hey, I'm back!' I yelled.
Still no reply. The smell of burning came to my nostrils. By now thoroughly ill at ease I went through to the kitchen. The coffee had boiled over on to the stove, the gas was still burning. Jacqueline was lying spread-eagled across the floor. I knew at once that she was dead. For a moment I found myself unable to move, I just stood, staring down at her, saying her name dementedly over and over to myself.
When at last I found the courage to look at her, I saw that her throat had been brutally ripped open. It was now nothing but a gaping red hole with the blood still pumping out of it. Her face was already cold and waxen, her cheeks sunk. On her naked breast a note, was placed. It said, in crude lettering: COLLABORATOR.
Half an hour later, with a whole bottle of whisky inside me, I stubbed out my tenth cigarette and gently closed the door of the apartment behind me. I tightened my belt, checked the two heavy army revolvers, walked slowly downstairs to knock up the concierge. She appeared reluctantly, with a scared face, and I seized her by the throat and dragged her towards me.
'Who were those two boys that came here about forty-five minutes ago?'
'No one, Monsieur le soldat!'
'What do you mean, no one? Talk sense, women! I've just told you that a couple of boys were here!'
'But I don't know--I didn't see them--I can't spend all my time watching the people that come in and out----'
She was ashen-faced and shaking with terror. It was plain even to me that she was telling the truth. I tossed her into a heap in the corner and strode out into the Avenue Kleber. For the first time in my life I knew how it felt to want to kill and kill and kill again, for the sheer satisfaction of killing.
That same evening saw the start of the Liberation.
A child returned home after a visit to the cinema. He was late, and he ran most of the way in his case his father should be worried. But he laughed as he ran, the film had been so funny that his ribs still ached and his belly was still tied in knots.
'Papa!' The child went running up the steps, through the door and into the room where his father sat reading. 'I know I'm late, but it was so funny, I saw some of it again and I've run all the way home!'
The father smiled, put away his book and began quietly preparing the supper, while the child chattered like a magpie, following him about and too excited even to lay the table.
'Two eggs and a little milk,' said the father, at last, when he could slip in a word or two. 'A special treat for you. And there's a couple of slices of German bread, and a small piece of pudding. Will that fill you up, do you think?'
'You bet! ' declared the child, stoutly. 'I don't feel half so hungry now as I used to. You know Jean, whose father is in the Resistance? He was telling me, when you feel hungry you should keep drinking lots of water and chewing bits of paper and soon you won't feel hungry any more. I tried it this afternoon and it works, my stomach doesn't rumble now.'
The father sat silently watching the child as he ate. He himself had had no food for two days now. It was more important to feed the child, and meanwhile it could surely not be long before the liberators arrived? There were rumours in Paris that two armoured divisions were
en route
for the city.
The child went on prattling.
'They killed an informer yesterday on the Boul' Mich. Did you hear about that? Raoul told me about it. Two boys came up on bicycles and shot him down right in the middle of the street, with people all about. Raoul said they were just boys like us, the same age and all. Jean wanted us to go out this evening and do the same, but one of the teachers gave us a whole long lecture about it today. He said we'd got to make sure and come straight home at night and not get mixed up in anything. All the teachers are scared stiff of the Boches, you know that?'
He pushed aside the empty egg shells and started on the milk. The bread had already vanished, pushed down an avid young throat into a stomach that was still more than half empty.
'I say, did you know, I'm the only boy in the whole class Whose father's got the Croix de Guerre with three palms! The others are all awfully jealous... Did you know the Americans are coming Papa? All those Boches in their black uniforms, they're going to be killed pretty soon. A bistro was blown up yesterday. It was full of Boches. Afterwards, Raoul said, you could see blood running out into the gutters. Boche blood... Gosh, I wish I could have seen it! Tomorrow I'm going to brush your uniform for you. Papa. You've got to put it on when the Americans get here. Did you know they've got thousands of tanks? Do you think they'll go all round Paris in them? Do you think----'
His father stood up.
'Time for bed... Yes, yes, I know the Americans are coming, but they won't be here yet awhile. They've been a long time getting here, we can wait a bit longer.'
'When will they be here? Do you think they'll come in the night?'
'They might,' said the father. 'We'll have to see when we wake up tomorrow morning.'
The heat of the August night was heavy and oppressive. Tossing and turning in his bed, the child heard his father turn down the lamp and retire to his own room. He heard the door close. And immediately afterwards, the explosion came. The child was hurled out of his bed and across the room, ending up against the wall. Dust and bricks rained down upon him. He smelt smoke, and he saw the flames already licking round the edge of the door.
They pulled the child out first. He was bruised and shocked, but otherwise unharmed. It took them a while to find his father. They had to move piles of rubble, bricks and charred timber and broken glass. The man was laid gently on the pavement, but even the child could see that he was dead. There was nothing left of his face but a crushed and bloody mess.
The child was led away, sobbing, in the care of some nuns from a nearby convent. They gave him a tranquillizer and put him to bed, and before he fell into a troubled sleep there were men who came and questioned him whether he had heard anything, seen anything, before the explosion happened. He had seen nothing. A neighbour claimed that a motor-car had driven past, that it had slowed down before the building and a man had tossed something through the front window of the apartment. Someone else claimed that a couple of men had run out of the shadows. Some said they had been men in uniform, others that they were civilians.
The child was left alone in the world. His beloved Americans had arrived, but too late to save him from personal tragedy. It was never discovered who had killed the boy's father, whether Germans or Frenchmen, nor why they had killed him. Was the man a traitor, who had been summarily dealt with by his own countrymen? Or was he, like so many others, an innocent victim of terrorists?
No one ever knew. And he was typical of hundreds.
Bruno Witt had many friends in Paris--or at least, he thought he had. Where they were on this particular August day he had no means of knowing, but certain it was they were failing in their duties as friends.
With a hysterically raging mob close on his heels, he plunged down the rue du Faubourg-du-Temple. Leading the pursuit was a young girl, Yvonne Dubois, who had been a loyal member of the Resistance for the past twenty-four hours. Prior to that, she had been one of a select group of women who had had the entree to the private rooms of the S.D. in the Hotel Majestic. Today she prudently turned her back upon such privileges. Her duty lay clear before her and she would devote all her energies to the cause of the Resistance.
In his panic, Bruno Witt tripped and fell. The crowd were upon him in an instant. His faded grey tunic was soon torn to shreds, while two wild housewives fought each other for possession of his cap. Yvonne Dubois slashed open his throat with a pair of dressmaking shears and plunged her hands joyously into the hot, pumping blood.
'I killed a Gestapo agent!' she screamed, and she waved a pair of scarlet hands towards a crowd of people on the opposite side of the street. 'I killed a Gestapo agent!'
The newcomers took no notice. They were too concerned with their own patriotic deeds. In their midst were two naked girls, each with a swastika daubed on her chest. The crowd stopped, sat their victims upon a couple of low stools in the middle of the road, and amidst cheers and handclaps began shaving their heads.
They were all being dragged out into the open, now that the Liberators had arrived. Mothers of young children who had solved some of the problems of wartime by taking a German soldier as a lover; mild-looking shopkeepers and office workers who had denounced loyal Frenchmen to the Gestapo; harmless old concierges who had brought about the death of many a Resistance worker by poking their noses in where they were not wanted. They were all dragged out of their hiding-places and displayed in the streets, to the cheering and jeering of the hysterical crowds.
Seated in a wheelbarrow, a naked man was being -paraded up and down one of the main streets with a placard hung round his neck. On it was printed the one familiar word: COLLABORATOR. A woman leaned out of an upstairs window and emptied the contents of her chamber-pot over the naked man. Unfortunately her aim was poor. The naked man was merely splashed a little, while one of the country's newly emergent heroes received the full force of it upon his head and shoulders.
'Liberte!' howled the mob.
Each man and woman was now suddenly only too anxious to prove his patriotism, to outdo his neighbours in acts of valour in the face of the enemy. Not a single person but had killed at least one German. Many people had apparently killed several Germans. The roads should by rights have been filled to overflowing with the bodies of the hated Boche, who had so foolishly crossed swords with the good and gallant Russians.
Accordions were played at every street corner. Banjos and penny whistles joined in. All the world was happy again. Democracy had returned to France.
'I was personally responsible for the preservation of Paris,' declared von Choltitz to the American general who was interrogating him. 'My orders were to destroy the town, but naturally, as soon as I realized the Fuhrer had lost his mind, I had to make my own decisions.'
'I saved three Jews from the gas chambers,' said an officer of the Gestapo. 'I personally saved them. I have proof, I have witnesses!'
'I knew one of the colonels who took part in the attempt on the Fuhrer's life on the twentieth of July,' claimed Lt. Schmaltz, of the N.S.F. 'I knew what was going on, yet I didn't denounce him to the authorities. I could have done. I should have done! It was my duty to do so. But I risked my own neck and kept my silence.'
Suddenly, all the French were patriots, all the Germans had been forced into carrying out orders that were distasteful to them. But Paris had been liberated!
REFUSAL TO OBEY ORDERS
It was gone midnight. In General Mercedes' room, the officers were taking counsel. They were all in combat uniform and each held a sub-machine-gun. Mercedes was leaning over a map.
We were to leave Paris that day, crossing the frontier at Strasbourg, with the Second Battalion at our head.
'I think we'll have to reckon on attacks from Resistance groups,' warned Mercedes. "They're all out in the open now and hell-bent on taking their revenge. Our orders are to regroup as quickly as possible. Nothing, repeat nothing, must be allowed to stand in our way. Any attacks must be repelled by whatever means are available to you... We have to get through! Do I make myself dear, gentlemen?'
The officers nodded, gravely. Mercedes straightened up, readjusting the black patch that he wore over his empty right eye socket. At that moment the telephone rang. The General's aide-de-camp took the call, listened for a moment and then held out the receiver.
'For you, sir. General von Choltitz. It seems to be pretty urgent.
Mercedes pulled a face.
'Hallo? Major General Mercedes speaking.'
'Ah, Mercedes! Choltitz here. What the devil are you doing, man? I've heard rumours that you're packing your bags and getting out. I hope it's not true?'
'I'm afraid it is, sir. In approximately two hours from now we shall have left Paris and be on our way to Strasbourg.'
There was a loud explosion at the other end of the line. Mercedes held the receiver well away from his ear, and the assembled officers grinned.
'I forbid you to do any such thing! I am still your superior officer and I believe my authority is still good. I order you to remain where you are until such time as I decide you shall withdraw.'
'I'm sorry about this, sir, but as it happens I'm no longer under your command. I received the order to pull out direct from General Model. My instructions are that we should set off a couple of hours from now, taking all equipment with us.'
The sound of the General's heavy breathing could be heard all over the room.