Comrades of War (34 page)

‘Corporal Alfred Kalb, Herr First Sergeant, reports back after being hospitalized in Reserve Army Hospital 19, Hamburg.’

Barth glanced at him, walked around him twice and took his stand behind him, waiting to see if he’d move as much as a finger.

Nothing happened. The Legionnaire held himself rigid as only a soldier of many years’ service can.

Bath removed the Legionnaire’s cap and noted briefly: ‘Hair too long, in violation of regulations. Lie down, African son of a bitch!’

‘And what do we have here?’ he growled, touching my shoulder with his finger.

‘Color Guard Sven Hassel, Herr First Sergeant, reports back from Reserve Army Hospital 19, Hamburg.’

He pulled at my belt and concluded: ‘Too loose. Not dressed according to regulations. Lie down!’

The same thing happened to Stein. A bawling-out and ‘Lie down!’ The last words sounded like a detonation.

Finally he puffed himself up before Tiny, who was just as big and broad as he. But what was fat and mere flesh on Barth was swelling muscles on Tiny. At his slightest movement, an intense play of muscle became visible under his skin. His broad chest arched tautly over his flattened belly. His face was a caricature, low-browed and with two small quick eyes emitting a foxy gleam. His nose was flat and lumpy, ruined by countless fights, his mouth crooked and conforming to no known laws of anatomy.

Fatty glowered at him as if he couldn’t believe his eyes.

‘Great God, what face is this? Could anything be that revolting? I can’t fathom it!’

‘It amazes me too,’ Tiny answered, tilting his head and smiling blithely. ‘By the way, they call me Tiny, but that’s not my real name. My mother, that pig, decided my name should be Wolfgang, after that piano-pounder Mozart, in case I should turn out to have a mind for music. And then she called me Leo after a Russian liar of a writer, if I should take that path. But since all the signs said I’d become a rowdy, Mother thought – the devil take her! – I’d also better be named for one of that sort, and so finally I got the name Helmuth, for Herr Field-Marshal von Hindenburg. But no-body could remember all these names, and so the whole thing was reduced to “Tiny.” From my old man, that sop, I’m called Creutzfeldt, which is plain sailing, “C” as in cow.

‘For the rest, I’ve piles and sweaty feet and occasionally bad breath. And you’re First Sergeant Barth, and in a moment I’ll get down beside the other guys, so don’t trouble giving the command. You might get hoarse from all that shouting. It happened to a prison guard in Fuhlsbüttel, where I did three months for an honest burglary at a greengrocer’s in “Grosse Freiheit.” When I got out I gave that oaf such a going over that he thought he’d turned into a squashed tomato.’

Tiny slowly made ready to lie down beside the rest of us.

Heaven knows what Fatty was thinking at this moment. His brain showed all the symptoms of paralysis. In his long service he had never yet experienced the like of it. He had broken many stubborn characters, tamed more snotty fellows than he could keep count of. Pompous asses with college educations, showing off their puffed-up souls and rimless glasses, had had their noses rubbed in the dirt so thoroughly that they never quite recovered from it. Fatty’s reputation for toughness was known far beyond the limits of his division. No one had dared answer First Sergeant Barth in this manner, not even in his sleep.

He snorted.

‘What the hell! Sweaty feet, piles, bad breath! What a flat-headed fool!’ He shook his head, not knowing quite what to do. Then he started shouting and cursing, the normal way of finding release for an NCO when his rage threatens to break him up. You could always think of something to do while shouting.

Fatty shouted and cursed for a very long time.

Tiny observed him with interest. He seemed to be laying a bet how long he could keep it up.

Fatty chased Tiny down the filthy village street.

‘Down in the dirt, you son of a bitch!’ he yelled. ‘Double time march, march, march! In place jump, jump! Thunder and lightning, I’ll make you squeak, you miserable rat! Before I’m through with you, your ear canals will be sweating. Lie down! Forward crawl! In place jump, feet together! Double time march, march! Lie down! Fifty push-ups! Faster, you lazy bum.’ He yelled savagely. Every little nook in the village rang with his animal howl.

Tiny grinned, fell down and grinned. Tiny ran, but the outline of his grin never left his face. When he stood at attention, the grin was there as before. When he crawled on his belly across a creek and clambered out like a seal on the other side, he was grinning all the time.

Fatty ran out of breath before the grin vanished from Tiny’s face.

‘When I see your service rank,’ Fatty hissed, spitting, ‘cold shivers run down my spine. In my opinion, every person who gets to be a corporal has already lived too long.’

He spat again and grimaced.

For a moment things were quiet. Chewing loudly on his cud, Fatty looked at Tiny, who stood severely at attention in front of him, all smeared with mud.

They looked at each other. What each of them thought is hard to say, but their thoughts were definitely not kindly.

Tiny was the one who broke the silence.

‘Corporal Ti—’ He hastened to correct himself. ‘Wolfgang Creutzfeldt requests leave, Herr First Sergeant.’ Smiling at Fatty, he continued. ‘Three weeks’ wedding leave. I’m to be spliced with a husky gal called Emma. She’s my fiancée, Herr First Sergeant. She’s a hot one.’

Fatty simply lost his breath. His whole body stiffened. His lower jaw dropped like a shutter fallen off its hinges.

‘What do you request?’ he stammered.

‘Leave,’ Tiny smiled. ‘I’m to be spliced, Herr First Sergeant.’

Fatty’s face turned completely white. His whole figure was transformed. He swayed. His squinting eyes opened wide and became round and large. He pushed back his cap and stared. This was the limit. He was convinced that the world would end in a few seconds. This was simply impossible. It simply couldn’t be true that a man he’d been chasing around so zealously for the last thirty minutes could stand up in front of him and, with complete composure and a stupid grin on his face, request leave. A fellow who for the last four months had been screwing around in an army hospital. An oaf who’d barely escaped being court-martialed. No, he must be dreaming. Something like that simply didn’t happen. It was unmilitary. Undisciplined. If such a thing could happen, you might as well throw all army regulations into the fire right now. But – no, it
was
true, by God. There the man stood before him large as life making his request! And the big stupid ox was smiling into the bargain. A vile stupid grin which could drive you mad. Besides, he had the guts to take up an impossibly slovenly posture right in front of his eyes, the eyes of First Sergeant Herbert Barth, nicknamed ‘Iron Herbert’ in the school for non-commissioned officers in Berlin. The toughest first sergeant on the whole 4th Panzer Army.

He stood there gaping. A tremor shot through his whole body. The blood came and went in his puffed-up cheeks.

Then he planted his feet firmly on the ground. He resembled a tank road block which could be removed only with explosives. His mouth opened to a steaming chasm. From the depths of this chasm came a noise which was not a scream, not even a roar. It was a purely animal noise, insensate and prolonged.

The Cimbrians must have howled this way as they streamed across the Danube into the province Noricum to rob, burn and rape.

But the ending was as lame as the beginning had been violent.

In the middle of his fury, Fatty had noticed that Tiny was smiling. He just stood there smiling. Like all veteran first sergeants he knew an old corporal could be chased around indefinitely. But never beyond the point where the corporal started smiling. Once this happened he was dangerous. The smile was the symptom of incipient insanity, a boiling and foaming madness that could only be put out by a well-directed burst from a sub-machine gun. And long before this could be done, Fatty would have been torn to bits and scattered across the village like mincemeat.

He sent Tiny an angry look and said quite low: ‘Get out, get out all of you! And let me see you only as names on the list of the missing!’ He pointed at Tiny. ‘And you’ll never wish to see me again!’ He about-faced and almost ran into the office.

With the provision crew we marched out to the position, where the 1st and 3rd Battalions fought as infantry.

As always the regiment was short of tanks.

Joseph Porta went into hysterics of laughter when he saw Tiny.

‘Oh, you gracious young maiden,’ he broke out jubilantly. – ‘have you come back to the country again, you big cow?’

Tiny grumbled something about a ‘punch in the face’ and a ‘cardboard soldier,’ but Porta didn’t care. He crowed gloatingly.

‘To see you here is the best thing that has happened to me for a long time. The only thing that can beat this is for you to get one through your head this time instead of in your ass, like last time. On that day I’ll dress up in my Sunday uniform and get potted.’

Tiny began swinging his arms ominously, but Porta prudently managed to keep some distance between them.

‘Did your ass shrink after the operation, Tiny?’ he called. ‘I hear you’ve only half an ass now. Is it true?’

‘When I get my hands on you,’ Tiny growled, ‘you won’t have any!’ Ducking, he hurled an empty shell case after the roaring Porta, who barely escaped getting hit by the heavy hunk of steel which would have smashed his skull.

The Old Man came walking up to us, swaying his body like a sailor.

‘Back to the muck again,’ he said, greeting us in his curt but warm manner, while pulling vehemently on his old lidded pipe. ‘Müller is dead. Ivan picked him up during an attack. We found him three days afterwards – so now you know that.’

The East Prussian raised his eyebrows. ‘Stretched between two birch trees?’

‘Naturally,’ the Old Man nodded. ‘Hugo Stege is on leave. He’s in Berlin, though actually he was going to Dortmund. It’s something about a girl, he wrote in his last letter.’

‘What sort of a whore is he sweet on?’ Tiny asked. He cleaned his nose on his fingers and wiped them off on the seat of his trousers.

Nobody took the trouble to answer. To discuss women with Tiny was useless.

Doubled up we walked through the communication trench to the bunker of Number One Platoon.

There was the whistle of a bullet. An NCO gave out a brief scream and collapsed. The point of impact was visible just under the helmet, straight between the eyes.

‘Siberian sniper,’ Porta said.

The Legionnaire poked the dead man with his foot. ‘
Voilà
, he didn’t feel as much as a rap.’

Together we shoved the corpse up to the edge of the trench and rolled it down the slope. Some dust flew up.

‘Amen,’ Porta said. We went on to the bunker.

As we were sitting in the bunker playing blackjack late in the evening, Lieutenant Ohlsen came in to us. He had taken over the company after Lieutenant Harder, who’d been killed a few days ago. He sat down on a gas mask container and looked at each of us in turn.

Porta handed him a canteen with cognac. He stuck his thumb into the neck of the canteen, flipped it around and drank, just like the rest of us. He cleared his throat and wiped his mouth with the flat of his hand.

‘Beier,’ he turned to the Old Man. ‘You and your Number One Squad are taking an excursion tonight. If you like to, you may appoint someone else to head the squad. The regiment has ordered prisoners to be picked up.’

‘Holy Mother of Kazan!’ Tiny snapped angrily, throwing his cards on the table. ‘Let the front quiet down for a brief moment, and the brass asses behind it start itching right away.’

Lieutenant Ohlsen laughed loudly. ‘Whoever said that you’re going along, Tiny?’

‘Hell Lieutenant, I have to. My job is to be nurse for the tired heroes. Just look at Julius Heide. He’s stupid as an ox and spoils everything if Tiny isn’t around to give him a slap on the jaw.’

The Old Man started putting on his belt. The little Legionnaire got up.

‘Old Man, stay here. I’ll head the squad. You have a wife and children, and it’s people like you that’ll be needed after the war’s over.’ He waved his arm at the rest of us. ‘Tiny, Porta and the rest are good only for the garbage can. It doesn’t matter so very much if we’re blown sky-high.’

The Old Man stubbornly shook his head.

‘You’re wrong, Desert Rambler. I’m coming along, and it won’t be One Squad as Lieutenant Ohlsen requests, but Number Two and I’ll be the one to head it. Color Guard Paust will take over the platoon in the meantime.’

‘Holy Moses,’ the East Prussian groaned, tearing off his leather things. ‘What a club of heroes! Here one can never retire!’

‘Shut your filthy Königsberg mouth, or I’ll smack you in the kisser,’ Porta threatened.

At eleven o’clock we stood in the trench ready to go. The regimental commander, Lieutenant Colonel Hinka, had come out to the position personally to keep an eye on us.

Tiny was scolding.

‘Dr Mahler said I should look out because I’m a little backward, but evidently no one pays any attention to that here. Who has to take the lead when there’s trouble? Tiny? My good Holy Mother of Kazan, what a crappy war this is!’

‘Cut it out, Tiny!’ Colonel Hinka laughed. ‘Some day your gabbing mouth will get you a rope around your neck!’

The watches were synchronized.

‘Eleven-o-nine on the dot,’ Hinka said, adjusting his watch.

From the sector to the right of us came the sound of artillery fire. A light harassing fire.

‘That’s in the sector of the 104th Rifle Regiment,’ the Legionnaire said, following the long comet’s tail of a rocket shell with his eyes.

Tiny sat up on the edge of the trench stuffing himself with biscuits and black pudding.

Fatty, who had arrived together with the provisions crew, caught sight of him. He stood for a moment contemplating his guzzling. Then he exploded.

‘May God help you, you clownish ape, if a report comes in about the tiniest bit of stolen biscuit. Then you’ll lose your cabbage head for looting.’ He took a deep breath. ‘It’ll be the most wonderful day in my life when I can bring you up before a court-martial which only deals out death sentences.’