Comrades of War (14 page)

The little Legionnaire got up, seemingly dead tired.

‘As always, you’re right, Old Man. You’re right.’

Suddenly, in a fit of frenzy, he flung aside the heavy tank of the flame-thrower, kicked it, thumped it fiercely with both fists and cried in despair: ‘To hell with it all! Our freedom’s gone and our courage is useless. Any use of arms, even by us stupid, rotten swine, is dead sure to play into the hands of the big bastards!’

He flopped down, kicked off his boots, pulled out his prayer rug, bowed toward the east and mumbled a long prayer to his Oriental prophet.

Silently, we watched the man-wolf from the mountains of Morocco, who could only snap at the knife that was to butcher him.

One by one we got up. The Old Man started walking down the mountain. Hesitantly we followed. From the corner of our eyes we sent back venomous glances at the positions we’d dug. Porta spat, gathered up his top hat, slammed it angrily on his head, slung his heavy weapon over his shoulder and strode after the short and broad-shouldered Old Man, who was heading for the valley without once looking back.

The SS men sang:

Grethe und der Hans

gehen am Sonntag gern zum Tanz
,

weil das Tanzen Freude macht
,

und das Herz im Leibe lacbt
.

We clenched our fists impotently. Heide hissed between his teeth: ‘We could’ve laid them out – every one of ’em!’

‘And it only would’ve taken five minutes,’ Brandt grumbled.

Porta shifted the heavy MG over to his other shoulder: ‘I looked forward to plugging ’em so much.’

‘Damn it, soon my knife will get rusty,’ growled Tiny.

The Old Man trotted faster. We followed him sluggishly.

Not till we’d reached the bottom of the valley did we notice the black sickly smoke rising up over the forest. Surprised, we stopped to gaze at the tell-tale smoke.

‘What kind of a fire can that be?’ the Old Man asked thoughtfully.

‘It must be a forest fire,’ Porta suggested. ‘But it’s further off,’ he went on after a moment. He shoved back his top hat. ‘I shouldn’t be surprised if it was Katovi. But why the hell should it be burning?’

Stege took out his map and got the bearing of the place. ‘It’s Tekolovice that’s burning,’ he announced briefly.

Sweating, we struggled across rocks and mountain pastures. Like the savages the war had made of us, we naturally took a short cut.

The Legionnaire cried out, pointing southeast. Fresh smoke puffed heavy and suffocating against the blue sky.

Stege nodded meaningfully and consulted his map. ‘This time it’s Branovice. Do you know what this means?’

‘Reprisal action,’ the Old Man answered. ‘But for what?’

Brandt slung the stovepipe across his shoulder. ‘Let’s get going so we can take a look at it. Maybe we can put a spoke in their wheel.’

Porta burst into a sneering laugh. ‘Yeah, call up the Travel Bureau and order a third class ticket for Berlin! Or a sleeper with nookie if that suits you better. And all you have to do in Berlin is to go up and arrest SS Heinrich.’

‘Now, don’t be snooty, you fanny with ears,’ Brandt cried, throwing down the stovepipe to go for Porta. But Tiny, who’d been standing behind Porta, raised his free hand and let it fall like a hammer, on Brandt’s head, causing him to collapse without a sound.

Porta spat at the unconscious Brandt, kicked him in the back and glanced across at Tiny.

‘Pretty good. See to it that discipline is maintained, my boy. You’ll get a piece of candy when I go to the store.’

The rest of us hardly even noticed this everyday intermezzo. We’d discovered a new fire, this time to the south.

‘I wonder what’s happened. They’re taking such strong measures!’ Heide said.

‘Just what I said before,’ the Old Man said. ‘Some bunch of desperadoes has plugged some of Heini Himmler’s bandits, and now half the region has to pay for the affair.’

A dog came tearing down the mountainside. Porta caught it. It was part wolf, the sort of dog kept on most farms in these mountains. The broken ring of the leash showed it had been chained. His fur was completely burnt off in several places. The dog was wild with fear and pain. That dog must’ve gone through something monstrous.

While Porta tried to quiet the dog by murmuring to it in a low intimate voice, the Old Man looked at it, sucking thoughtfully on his pipe. Removing his pipe, he pointed it at the dog, which was now lying whining and whimpering.

‘That dog is from one of the mountain farms. Not from any of the three burning villages.’ The Old Man said it so confidently that no one thought of asking how he knew.

The Legionnaire scratched the dog behind the ear. ‘In other words, it means that they’re liquidating the farms, too. What the . . . Then something big must’ve happened.’

He opened the lock of his light MG, looked through the barrel and started an almost uncannily meticulous examination of his weapon.

The rest of us, who’d settled down on the grass, followed the maneuvers of the little desert soldier with increasing interest. What was taking place in the brain of that little scarred killer?

The Old Man rose and wanted to continue the march, but the Legionnaire asked him to wait a little. He carefully laid aside the light MG, bowed his head facing east, sat down cross-legged in the middle of the group and asked Porta for a cigarette. He hawked and spat because of the bad tobacco. At the time Porta only had makhorka.

‘The Old Man has given us a long sermon, boys,’ he said finally. ‘We listened to it, we were sensible, because there were good reasons why we should be. But now it’s blazing all around us. The reason no doubt is that some friends on the other side haven’t been as sensible as we were. So I don’t see any reason why we should go on being sensible.’

‘Shut your trap,’ the Old Man shouted furiously. ‘Pick up all your weapons. We have to get going!’

‘Half a sec! Let’s hear what the Desert Rambler has to say,’ Porta proposed. He kicked at a large fir cone.

The Legionnaire grinned maliciously. His eyes shone with hatred. ‘By Allah, let’s spread out those SS sons of bitches!’

‘No,’ the Old Man cried. ‘We won’t behave like common murderers.’

‘Mad dogs are shot,’ the little Legionnaire yelled, ‘and SS Heinrich’s curs are nothing more. Who’s coming? Raise your hands.’

Porta, Tiny, Heide and Brandt immediately put up their hands. Reluctantly, the rest of us followed. Stege was the last. He looked apologetically at the Old Man as he did it.

Only the Old Man didn’t raise his hand.

‘By Allah, what a feast it’ll be,’ the Legionnaire hissed, getting up. He put his hand on the Old Man’s shoulder. ‘We understand you, Old Man, but you have to understand us, too. The SS can’t take any further reprisals. They’re burning the towns already. Will you lead us as you always did at the front?’

The Old Man shook his head: ‘I’ll go with you because I have to, but I refuse to be in charge of murder!’

The Legionnaire shrugged his shoulders. ‘Good, boys, follow me!’

We worked our way up through the wood lots and climbed countless obstructions. Many of them would have made
chasseurs alpins
fall back, but we had revenge to spur us on.

Hour after hour we pushed on. Cut a path through hawthorn thickets with our sharp-edged entrenching spades and pickaxes. By tying together ropes and leather things we pulled ourselves across perilous rocky ledges. We cursed, fumed, fought each other and quarreled. Sweat poured down our faces. Our hands were bloody shreds, but the Legionnaire kept driving us forward more fanatically than ever. We threatened him with our guns, but he grinned derisively and uttered his Moroccan battle cry against the blue mountain peaks.

Then we stood at the first farm. A smoking ruin with three charred bodies. Two women and one child. We said nothing. We just looked. The Old Man slit his eyes. His face was chalky white.

We weren’t God’s best children. We were combat swine and had knocked about a good deal. Our fists clenched tighter around our lethal weapons. Once again we rushed ahead, following the cursing and swearing Legionnaire.

An hour later we found two more bodies. Two men killed by neck-shots. The Legionnaire turned them over.

‘A .38,’ decided Porta, probing with his finger round the point of impact. No papers were found on the bodies. Everything had been removed.

‘Don’t you think the partisans may have done it?’ asked the SS man who was with us on account of cowardice.

‘Certainly,’ Bauer guffawed. All of us grinned at this fantastic naiveté.

The Old Man glanced ironically at the SS man while he took some powerful puffs from his lidded pipe. He removed his pipe and pointed at the SS man. ‘I can tell you almost verbatim what the newspapers will say tomorrow or after tomorrow: Peaceful peasants, women and children have been murdered by bandits. In a bestial manner these terrorists have burnt down three villages and several farms. Reprisal measures will follow at the earliest possible date. And this whole pack of lies will be signed: SS
Reichsführer
Heinrich Himmler. Subsequently, SS
Standartenführer
Blobel will receive orders from his superior,
SS und Polizeiführer
Brach, to carry out a few executions of hostages. As a matter of precaution, the readers will also be apprised that the bandits were dressed in German uniforms. Oh yes, oh yes, they’re sophisticated at Central Security.’

Porta probed the edges of the wound of one of the murdered. Tiny looked at him with interest. Porta sniffed his slightly blood-stained finger.

‘What does it smell of?’ Tiny asked, bending over the corpse.

‘Sort of strangely sweetish, sort of rotten,’ Porta answered and sniffed once more. ‘Something like gangrene in its first stage.’

‘You mean like those yellow corpses at Dobrovina?’ the Legionnaire cut in. Porta nodded and again sniffed his finger.

‘The other one has shit in his pants,’ Tiny said, nudging the second body with the butt of his sub-machine gun.

‘When we gassed them at Birkenau, in Auschwitz, they always did,’ came from the SS man.

The effect was like a dynamite explosion. We’d completely forgotten about the two bodies. Something new, something devilishly interesting, had crashed down among us. As if ready to spring on him, we glared at the big broad SS man, a man who’d been expelled from the ranks of his like-minded fellows and degraded to dishonorable service in one of the Army’s hundreds of penal regiments.

‘What else happened when you gassed them at Auschwitz?’ Porta asked foxily.

The SS man turned pale, almost blue. What he’d kept a secret for three long years had escaped him by a fluke. He’d lived through anxious nights afraid that someone or other would give him away. Someone from the office, like
Unteroffizier
Julius Heide, who by this time had been with the platoon for a year. What a shock he’d had when Heide was kicked out of the company office and ended up here in 2nd Platoon. A couple of times he’d come close to asking Heide not to talk. He would pay him anything for secrecy. But maybe Heide hadn’t read his papers. Heide couldn’t possibly have kept shut for so long if he knew about it. He had tried to get away from the company, but Captain von Barring had shrugged his shoulders, with the remark: ‘Out of the question!’ Barring was a stupid pig. Just as everyone in this lousy platoon was a stupid pig. They were traitors and should be liquidated.

Then the unbelievable happened. No one had given him away. He gave himself away. He made a silent prayer to the God he’d forsworn in 1936 when he entered the SS
Totenkopfsverband
. Eicke’s cruel
Kz
-guard troops. How proud he’d been at being able to stroll down the street at home dressed in his green SS uniform with the embroidered silver death’s head on the left lapel instead of the SS runes. How lovingly he’d sewn the black silk ribbon with the silver letters
TOTENKOPFSVERBAND
around the left sleeve. He had laughed heartily at his mother’s scare the first time he showed up at home in the feared SS skull-and-bones uniform. When his father blabbed about God’s punishment because he, Ingerd, had reported to SS
Gruppenführer
Eicke’s concentration camp guard, he had threatened him with confinement and flogging. How wonderful he’d felt when the street urchins at home sent fearful glances after him. All those who’d been insolent before now wanted to be his friends. When the tavern-keeper had refused him credit, he’d gotten up and flung the marks on the table. When he called out to the host: ‘You’ll soon come and dance for me!’ there was silence in the overcrowded room.

The next day he had slipped a note into the camp mailbox, the box which was emptied by Eicke personally. He had written the tavern-keeper’s name and address and, in red,
TRAITOR
.

He observed the Stapo picking him up from the front door at his neighbor’s. Three weeks later the tavern-keeper arrived in camp. The same day he was hanging over the buck as he received his first ten strokes.

True, Commandant Eicke had raised quite a stink over his failure to hand in a report, as he should have, before having a prisoner thrashed.

But that tavern-keeper was a turd. He ran into the wire one day in January 1938. He was buried together with fifty Jews who’d been hanged behind the stables.

The day he came to Gross Rosen as
Unterscharführer
had been one of the greatest in his whole life, and he often recalled it with nostalgia. He became leader of the dog team. He just loved those dogs. But SS
Hauptsturmführer
Streicher, who kept the records, was an ass, putting on a big show just because one of those traitors had been lightly bitten by the dogs. It’s true that one of them conked out, but, damn it, the fellow would’ve done so anyway. He’d been a minister in the Weimar period, it was told. An old worm who fell over each time he was hit over the head with a stick.