Comrades of War (30 page)

‘Dear God. You don’t often hear anything from Emma Kloters, but now I’m here, you see. Let my big, stupid cub come back home to me. I don’t mind if you make a hamburger out of him as long as he is alive! I pray you, God, with all my heart, let my big, stupid, ugly cub come home alive!’

It had started raining. A dense drizzle. The platform slowly emptied. Sirens began wailing. People started running. Far away the first bombs were falling.

At the entrance to the platform a young girl was standing, as if petrified. She was biting her handkerchief, tearing the material to pieces with her teeth.

‘Otto,’ she whispered hoarsely. ‘Oh, no, Otto!’ Suddenly she set up a piercing scream: ‘Otto, don’t let them murder you!’ She pulled her hair frantically. ‘Hitler, you murderer,’ she shrieked, loud enough to echo along the platform. ‘You’re a murderer, Hitler!’

As if conjured up, a couple of young civilians in black leather coats stood beside her. A silver badge glittered in the hand of one of them. Those who were closest heard him hiss:

‘Stapo!’

She resisted frantically and continued screaming as she was hauled away. She vanished into the mysterious darkness of the Police Station.

Otto, an infantry Pfc, sat in the departed leave train, whispering: ‘My own Lotte, we’ll soon see each other again!’ To a buddy he said: ‘My wife’s going to have a child.’

But his Lotte was never to give birth. She had spoken the truth in a country where truth was dead.

The train rumbled through Germany. It halted shortly at an overcrowded depot. New droves of tired soldiers boarded the train. They clambered over suitcases, rucksacks, haversacks, knapsacks, gas masks, rifles, tommy guns, steel helmets, rolled-up coats, and cursing soldiers in gray, green, blue, black and brown. All services. Sixteen- to twenty-year-old seamen in dark blue with U-boat badges on their sleeves. Fanatic SS men in field gray with vacant, glassy-eyed Teutonic expressions – they were educated in the so-called Order Castles, to the abysmal intellectual impoverishment of the dictatorship. Oldish policemen in uniforms of poisonous green on their way to an MP division. They were to be slaughtered by the enemy’s savage partisan units lying in wait for them like hungry beasts of prey.

There were black tank gunners, their filthy uniforms giving off a stench of gasoline and diesel oil. Broad peasant-like cavalrymen with loud yellow shoulder straps. Sedate mountain chasseurs with a tin edelweiss on their sleeves. Artillerymen with sparse decorations on the grayish-green breasts of their uniforms. Engineers with faces as sad as their black shoulder straps, dead tired from endless toil. Stout and contented naval gunners happy to belong to the guard units on a stretch of coast far behind the front. Intelligence soldiers with bright faces who generously sprinkled their speech with foreign words to show they were proficient in languages. But the majority were infantrymen in tattered uniforms, a living loud protest against the designation ‘the queen of all the services.’

In every nook there was card-playing or drinking. One group of men was having a whispered confab as they huddled around an MC noncom.

‘Jaundice is crap,’ he told the listening soldiers, ‘with that, it won’t last long till you’re out of the rest-home again. Syph or the clap isn’t any good, either. Holy Mother, they practically cut off your tail if you turn up with something like that.’ He cautiously looked about him, but seeing no dangerous-looking persons nosing around he ducked into the group again. The conversation became a muttered whisper.

‘No, fellows, typhoid, real first-class typhoid, that’s the stuff. A temperature that almost splits your asshole. When you’re about half dead, they just can’t resist any more. They stroke your hair and pat you like a little boy. They’re so kind to you you think it’s all a dream, because they’re certain you’re going to pop off. And it’s a long sickness.’

‘How do you get typhoid?’ a short thin infantryman wanted to know.

‘In the dairy, you baby ass,’ an engineer Pfc grinned.

The little infantryman looked offended.

A number of small packages changed owners. The MC noncom put away big bundles of bills in his pockets. He smiled mysteriously and again looked around.

‘You just take the stuff in those packages and dissolve it in coffee, and on top of it you take a nice swig of vodka. After two weeks the latest you’ll be farting in a lovely bed, and the war will be over for half a year at least.’

‘Can you die from it?’ a cavalryman asked suspiciously.

‘Have you ever gotten something without taking a risk, you horse’s ass?’ asked an airman in an elegant gray-blue uniform with his breast studded with decorations. He was at most twenty years old, but the war in the clouds had aged him ten years. It looked as if Herman Göring’s aerial Teutons had had enough of heroic battle.

We passed through Berlin in the dark of night. An air-raid alarm was on.

On the overcrowded train there was a fight to get to the toilets. Cursing remarks flew back and forth in the heavy fetid air.

In a compartment in the middle of the car the little Legionnaire sat squeezed between Tiny and me. On the opposite seat Ewald, pale as a sheet, was reduced to invisibility between Bauer and Stein.

The East Prussian hung on a rack telling jokes.

‘What’s the news from the Führer?’ Bauer called to the little East Prussian, who was an expert at imitating voices.

‘Yes, let’s hear what the Führer has to say about the momentary situation,’ Stein expectantly grinned.

The East Prussian put his gas mask up to his mouth for a microphone, pulled the hair down over his forehead, and thrust out his lower lip. He looked like a horrible caricature of Hitler, but his voice was an amazingly skillful imitation.

‘German women, German men, German children, my dear racial brothers! We have never been closer to final victory than we are right now. I have given my Army commanders orders to straighten out our strongly winding front lines, which made our operations difficult and demanded too great sacrifices, so that now our operations can proceed everywhere as planned! Many enemies of the people and pernicious elements have claimed that these adjustments of the front are a kind of retreat. But I tell you, my dear racial brothers, that my heroic soldiers will remain where they have taken their stand. The Soviet masses are bleeding to death, Stalin, that arch-criminal’ – here the voice of the East Prussian rose to a roar of rage that would have made Hitler turn-pale with envy – ‘has lost all chances for winning this war which he forced upon us. My German engineers are working at high pressure to design new weapons, miraculous and epoch-making, for crushing our barbarous enemies. German men, German women, my brave Army, my heroic Air Force, my proficient Navy – one more tiny exertion and final victory will be ours! Rest assured that a hero’s death will be yours!’

As he wanted to raise his arm for ‘
Heil
,’ he rolled out of the rack and landed on top of those who were sitting underneath. Then he rolled onto the floor.

‘The Führer has fallen!’ Bauer called.

Tiny rolled a cigarette for himself. He did it very painstakingly, taking extreme care not to lose the minutest speck of tobacco. He wetted it, closed it and handed it to the Legionnaire. He rolled another which he handed to me. Only then did he start rolling one for himself. Before he’d finished he discovered that mine didn’t quite stick together in the gluing. He cautiously put away his own half-finished cigarette, picked up mine, licked it and pinched it firmly together.

‘Now it’s better,’ he said, handing it to me again.

During the four months’ stay in the army hospital Tiny had collected every single butt, not only his own but also others’. He had cleaned the tobacco conscientiously and was now the owner of a large bag of it. He would go on preserving the butts from the cigarettes he was now smoking and so on, forever, so that every grain of tobacco would be utilized. His poverty in the past had taught him never to waste anything. Everything can be used. Everything can become new.

‘Do you think they’ll give me leave if I get spliced with Emma?’ he asked, passing his tongue along the adhesive edge of the cigarette paper.

The Legionnaire laughed. ‘Decidedly, no! When you ask, First Sergeant Edel will answer: “Tiny, you’re a notorious fool. Fools shouldn’t get married, and why should you turn the sweet girl into a war widow?”’

‘Oh, shut up,’ Tiny said. ‘Emma isn’t a sweet girl. She’s an armored car in the shape of a woman and could give Edel such a slap on his snout that he wouldn’t wake up.’

The Legionnaire went on: ‘And Edel will tell you this besides when you apply for leave: “Tiny, hurry up and get yourself shot. A hero’s death is your only hope. Because, after the war you’re going to be sent to a liquidation camp anyway, as a danger to the national health.”’

We grimaced at the thought of the familiar tone we would have to put up with soon again.

‘First Sergeant Edel can kiss my ass,’ Tiny muttered peevishly.

‘He definitely won’t do that,’ the Legionnaire laughed.

Soon after, in the middle of a conversation about politics, Tiny said: ‘Actually, I don’t understand very much about it.’

‘We can believe that quite easily,’ Bauer laughed.

With a meditative expression in his face Tiny went on. ‘After all I’m only a swine from a reform school. My mother didn’t care a damn about us nine children. And I only remember my old man when he was drunk. I never saw him sober. In reform school they thrashed us, and if they didn’t, we thrashed each other. Does anyone of you know what a holy reform school is like?’

When no one answered, he went on, all the while sketching imaginary patterns with his rifle butt.

‘Nah, that’s just what I thought. Look, these mission people are real devils when they get power. We really had no school. You won’t have any use for that anyway, the principal said. Many years ago he’d been a pastor in Thüringen. He was said to have run around with the organ-pounder’s wife. Because of that he was thrown out of his Thüringen church. And it’s true, we didn’t really need to know how to read and write to haul iron girders or dig ditches. So that when I became a member of our club, I said to myself’ – he looked about him – ‘Don’t forget you’re in active service, you’re not a reservist. Those who hold the stick must be right.

‘And so I marched off, clean to the horizon. A good many tried to checkmate Tiny. But even a hundred push-ups didn’t put Tiny out of breath – before I got tired, the shits who commanded lost their voices. They told me to shoot well. An order is an order: I shot well and got a rifle ribbon. Then we went to war and they told me: Tiny, everything that moves in front of your muzzle is an enemy and you should shoot at it. Fine! I blazed away with my rod. They told me: Your bayonet, Tiny, is to stab with. And, believe me, I’ve cut and stabbed on every side. They told me: You go to war to defend the Fatherland.

‘For twenty seconds I asked myself why I really should defend the Fatherland, because it has never done anything for me. But, then, they weren’t fighting the war for my sake. So I began defending the Fatherland. You’re fighting against a ruthless enemy, against subhumans, they told us. All right, I said to myself, you’re fighting against a ruthless enemy, against subhumans. Those up there ought to know. They’ve more on the ball than you, Tiny. Not a single one of them has been to reform school, not one has dug ditches. They’ve gone to a fine school and have learned to eat nicely with a knife and fork. They’ve scars on their cheeks as proof that they’re learned. Therefore, Tiny, you should listen to what they tell you. You’re only a piece of beef cattle.

‘I’ve thrown myself in the mud when I was told to. Fired at everything they ordered me to fire at. When they said “Attention!” I stood stiff. When they said “Beat it!” I took off. For six years this has been going on, with me running around gingerly, afraid of doing something wrong.’

He looked about him slyly.

‘But now something has happened. Things are beginning to hum in my top. You see, I’ve gotten engaged and I’m going to have twenty-three kids. I’m going to be hitched up with the loveliest whopper of a wench in the whole world!’

He looked up again, wiping his head clumsily with a calloused hand.

‘Something doesn’t mesh,’ he went on. ‘I’m thinking of the fellow from the other club, the muzhik from Kharkov, Kiev, Elbruz, Sebastopol and all the other places where we have been defending the Fatherland. If you say to him: Listen, Ivan Ivanovich, why do you really shoot at me? he’ll blink his eyes once and say: Tovarich Fritz, I’ve no idea, but Papa Stalin tells me to. Bang, and there’s a hole in your head!’ Tiny spread out his hands. ‘Crazy, isn’t it?’

The Legionnaire looked around nervously, hastily slammed the door to the corridor and said brutally: ‘Shut up, you stupid pig! Or else they’re going to throw you out and string you up, regardless whether you or Ivan understands it or not.’

‘But that’s just what I’m saying!’ Tiny cried, throwing his head from side to side. ‘All other places in the world you get things explained to you when something is to be done, but here they just tell you: “Shut up, you brute, and do as I say, or we’ll string you up!” I don’t understand it.’

‘It doesn’t matter a damn whether you do or not,’ the Legionnaire answered rudely. ‘Just do as you’re told. That’s healthiest for you and us both. You’ll only get sick from pondering. You didn’t get your noodle for that. It was made only to carry a steel helmet, and you’ll have to be satisfied with that.’

Tiny shrugged his shoulders and answered, ‘Well, I guess I must!’

‘I know what this means,’ the Legionnaire said. We stood looking at the hanged soldiers swaying like pendulums in the wind.

The head-hunters were busy at the moment. The new order of the Führer was forcefully executed. Up to now it had been called drumhead court-martial. Now the big word was drumhead warrant decree, which was applied to the following offenses:

Defeatist utterances

Desertion

Sabotage

Insult to the Führer’s name