Blitzfreeze (42 page)

‘That’s up to the doctors,’ answers the OC, shortly.

During the next twenty-four hours we are only able to
move in short marches. Continually we are forced to rest. Eight bodies lie behind us in the snow. During a rest Feldwebel Loew pushes his bayonet quietly into his stomach. A short gurgling scream and he is dead.

Stege has fever and screams in delirium. The bandage around his head is a bloody sheet of ice. We roll him in two Russian greatcoats but he still shakes with cold.

‘Water,’ he begs in a weak voice.

The Old Man pushes a little snow between his ruined lips. He swallows it thirstily.

‘Think we’ll get him through?’ asks Barcelona, worriedly, putting a piece of frozen bread into his mouth.

‘
Naturellement
,’ snaps the Legionnaire.

‘Hear me now,’ shouts Moser standing up. ‘You
must
pull yourselves together! If we stay here much longer we’ll freeze to death. Come along now, up on your feet! Pick up your weapons and follow me! March! Left, right, left, right!’

With the utmost difficulty we get to our feet. Some fall again immediately. The forest seems to spin around us like a merry-go-round. Tiny grins foolishly:

‘
Auf der Reeperbahn nachts um halb eins
. . .’ he starts to sing meaninglessly.

‘Just let me get back,’ he whispers viciously, ‘so I can give Otto the bleedin’ bull somethin’ to remember Tiny by.’

‘I don’t think you and Inspector Nass can really do without one another,’ considers the Legionnaire.

‘It
would
be a bit borin’ on the Reeperbahn without Otto roarin’ out o’ the Davids Wacht every so often and livenin’ things up,’ says Tiny. ‘You ought to see the fun when there’s been a real good Sankt Pauli murder. The Davids Wacht Station lights up like a Christmas tree. The ’ole crew’s on deck an’ Otto flyin’ around like a fart in a colindar. ’E almost always ’as to give up an’ to go on ’is knees to the big boys at Stadthausbrücke fur ’elp, an’ when
that
happens all us wide boys make straight for the wide open spaces until the case is closed one way or the other. Otto always starts off with a parade of the known villains from the Reeperbahn.’

‘“Now you’re for it,” he roars out in welcome, spittin’ out the window. “This time you’ll be leavin’ your ’ead in Fuhlsbüttel!”

‘When ’e ’as to let us go again, ’e always gets into the throes of a deep depression an’ threatens to retire. That’s just ’is gas, though. Otto’d kick the bucket right off if ’e ’adn’t got Davids Wacht to play with.’

The Old Man and Moser help the Signals Feldwebel to his feet and hand him the heavy poles he uses as crutches.

‘Come on, mate,’ says the Old Man, sending a long brown stream of spittle out into the snow.

The Signals Feldwebel nods and hobbles forward, half supporting himself on the Old Man’s shoulder.

Slowly the company gets moving. The OC is in the lead with his Mpi at the ready.

Almost every minute one of us falls forward like a log, face down in the snow. We get him to his feet, shout at him, hit him until he livens up enough to stagger on. Some are dead though even before they reach the ground.

Towards evening a fat little infantry Obergefreiter runs amok. He is the only man left of a party that joined us a few days ago. He’s kept us all awake with his jokes and funny stories. Suddenly he’s out in the brush like lightning and opening up on us with his Mpi. The company scatters to cover.

‘Come out you spawn of hell,’ screams the fat little soldier, shooting away for all he’s worth.

Two Engineers get behind him and snatch his weapon away from him, but he grabs up a Russian
kalashnikov
and runs off at full speed into the forest. His voice can be heard more and more faintly in the distance until the forest swallows it up altogether.

It’s no use going after him. It would be a useless waste of invaluable energy.

‘Company, follow me! March!’ commands Oberleutnant Moser harhsly. We go on for two hours more. Then we can go no further.

‘A short rest,’ orders Moser, unwillingly. ‘Nobody to lie down! Lean against a tree! Support one another! You can rest standing. Horses can do it, so can you!’

‘They’ve got four legs,’ protests Porta, leaning tiredly against a large fir.

‘If you lie down you’ll be dead within minutes,’ continues Moser, unperturbedly.

With hanging arms we lean against trees, press up close to one another for support. Slowly the deathly weariness eases, and we fall into an unquiet sleep standing up. Fatigue and cold stiffen our limbs.

I take out a piece of frozen bread I’ve found on a corpse. I’m about to put it into my mouth but decide to save it and take a mouthful of snow instead. It may be a long time before I find anything eatable again. Just knowing I have a piece of bread in my pocket stiffens my spine and deadens the pangs of hunger. In the course of the night two of us freeze to death standing. We leave them propped against the tree just as they died. A pair of frozen caricatures of humanity. The Old Man breaks off their identity discs and puts them away in his pocket along with all the others.

Not one of us but doesn’t have the thought that it would be easier to drop into the snow and finish it once and for all. No more of this hell we’ve been thrown into in the name of the Fatherland.

‘Come on in the name of Satan!’ screams Moser furiously. ‘Get your fingers out you lazy dogs!’ He lifts the stubby-nosed
kalashnikov
.

‘March or I’ll shoot you down where you stand!’ he threatens. ‘I’ll
gut
-shoot you,’ he adds when we stay down and ignore him. He pushes his gun into Barcelona, whom he considers the weakest link in the Old Man’s section. ‘Get going,’ he says quietly but coldly.

‘Get fucked!’ says Barcelona. ‘Win your own war! Count me out!’

‘I’ll give you a count of three,’ snarls Moser, icily, ‘and then I’ll give it to you!’

Barcelona leans apathetically against a tree and begins to clean his nails with a bayonet.

‘I’ll shoot!’ repeats Moser threateningly. His whole body is trembling with rage.

‘You don’t dare,’ grins Barcelona. ‘I’m going to wait here for Ivan. I’m tired of Adolf’s marathon race. If you’re clever, Herr Oberleutnant, you’ll keep me company!’

‘Take him!’ recommends Heide excitedly. ‘Liquidate that traitor to the Fatherland.’

‘Shut it, you brown-arsed bastard!’ shouts Porta, knocking him flat on his back in the snow.

A threatening mumble comes from the company. Most of them are on Barcelona’s side.

‘I shall forget all this nonsense if you take up your arms immediately and follow my orders,’ promises Moser in a comradely tone.

‘You can piddle up and down your back,’ says Barcelona, jeeringly. ‘And when you get tired of doing that you can take a trip to the Führer’s HQ and piss all over Adolf with very best regards from me.’

‘One,’ Moser begins to count.

‘You bloody great German hero, you,’ cries Barcelona, uncertainly. ‘You can’t do it to an unarmed man.’

‘Two,’ hisses Moser desperately, his finger whitening on the trigger.

Porta swings his Mpi into position. The muzzle is pointed straight at Oberleutnant Moser.

If Barcelona doesn’t give way a massacre will take place here in a few seconds. There is no doubt at all that the Oberleutnant will shoot, but it’s just as certain that he himself will be dead before his magazine is empty.

‘Made up your mind, Feldwebel?’

‘If it amuses you then turn on your Goddam lullaby-maker,’ says Barcelona, apparently indifferent.

‘You asked for it,’ hisses Moser and crooks his finger on the trigger.

There is the sound of a shot and a bullet chops a neat furrow in Oberleutnant Moser’s fur cap.

‘Come death, come . . .’ hums the Legionnaire, playing smilingly with the sling of his Mpi. ‘
Vive la mort!
’

Without another word Barcelona swings his equipment up onto his shoulder and grins sheepishly.

Moser breathes in deeply in relief. He clicks the safety catch on his weapon to ‘safe’.

‘Come along! Let’s improve the pace,’ he shouts with an effort, avoiding Barcelona’s eyes.

Slowly and creakingly the company gets on the move.

Tiny staggers forward on his rotting feet. ‘Gawd! Oh Gawd! That bleedin’ ’urts! I’ll be glad when they chop the bleedin’ things off!’

‘Then you won’t be able to run any more,’ states Porta cheerily.

‘To ’ell with that! I never did like runnin’ anyway!’

‘But you won’t be able to go dancing when you get back to the Reeperbahn!’

‘Never learned ’ow!’ answers Tiny complacently. ‘Only thing I ever used ’em for seriously was to march on, and that I can do without any time. So you see I really ’ave no use for ’em at all. Don’t like runnin’, can’t dance, an’ simply ’ate marchin’. It’d be the best thing ever ’appened to me if I was to get rid o’ them bleeders.’

‘Think the birds’ll still crawl into bed with you when you’re short of a pair of trotters?’ asks Porta, doubtfully.

‘I’ll give ’em such a yarn about the ’eroic deed I lost ’em doin’ as their mouths’ll water that much with admiration they won’t ’ave bleedin’ time to notice what I’m up to with ’em. It ain’t the feet as counts when you’re rowin’ along in the old sleepin’ canoe, y’know.’

‘You’re not so crazy, maybe!’ says Porta, thinking aloud.

It takes us almost two hours to cover a miserable two miles. Even Moser seems to be getting to the end of his resources. He drops to the ground like an empty sack just like the rest of us.

I take out my little frozen piece of bread. Everybody is watching me closely. I look at it, take a bite, and pass it on to Porta. It goes all round the group. A bite for each of us. Should I have eaten it when no one was looking? On the march, perhaps? I couldn’t have done it. Not and stay with the company when we got back. To eat when they have nothing would have meant I could never have looked them in the face again. This comradeship is all we have left. It can make the difference between dying and getting through alive.

‘What would you do, Porta, if the war were to end right this minute?’ asks the Professor.

‘It won’t,’ states Porta categorically. ‘It’ll last a thousand years and a summer.’

‘Not on your life,’ protests the Professor. ‘The end of this war’ll come suddenly. Just like a railway accident. What
would
you do now, Porta, if they came up to you and said the war was over?’

‘Son, I’d find myself a demobilized Russian lady of like mind, and I’d do my level best to make her think that hostilities had broken out all over again.’

‘Is that really all you’d do?’ asks the Professor, wonderingly.

‘Don’t you think it’d be nice?’ grins Porta. ‘It’s more than enough for most of us. Even the biggest buck nigger in existence!’

‘And you?’ the Professor turns to Tiny.

‘Same as Porta,’ replies Tiny, sucking on a lump of ice. ‘Crumpet’s the most important thing in this world. If they supplied us with it when we was out in the field I just wouldn’t care if the war was to last a ’undred years. Comin’ back to your question there’s just a possibility I might take time out before I got on the job to bash a bleedin’ general!’

‘They send you to jail for that,’ says Barcelona.

‘Thirty days for disturbin’ of the peace,’ answers Tiny, optimistically. ‘That I’d do with pleasure just to ’ave the fun of kickin’ one o’ them red-tabbed bastards in the crutch.’

‘I’d take the Royal Suite at the “Vier Jahreszeiten” and then I’d die laughing at the sight of their faces when I couldn’t pay the bill,’ announces Barcelona, his face lightning up at the thought.

‘I would enroll immediately as a student at the War Academy,’ says Heide, with decision.

‘You must have a University Entrance Examination before you can get those red stripes up,
mon ami
,’ says the Legionnaire.

‘I want those red stripes and I mean to have them!’ shouts Heide, bitterly. ‘My father was a drunkard who spent most of his life in one or the other Prussian jail. My mother was forced to wash other people’s dirty clothes, and scrub floors for the fine folk. I have sworn to reach the very highest rank and then I will revenge myself on those swine!’

‘Where are you going to get the money you’ll need to live on while you’re getting your exam?’ asks the practical Porta.

‘They hold back seventy-five percent of my pay. That’s in War Bonds at twenty percent. I’ve been doing it ever since 1937.’

‘There weren’t any War Bonds in 1937,’ says Porta, protestingly.

‘No, there weren’t,’ says Heide, ‘but we had the five year plan. When they’re paid out I’ll have a nice little nest-egg.’ He pulls his blue State Bankbook proudly from his pocket and lets it go round. It contains nothing but entries in black ink.

‘By Heaven!’ shouts Porta in amazement. ‘No red figures. When you open mine you have to put on your sunglasses to protect your eyes from the glare!’

‘’Ow d’you know you’re suited for it?’ asks Tiny naively.

‘I’m suited,’ states Julius, categorically. ‘I’ll be Chief-of-Staff of a division when you’re called up again in ten years time.’