Comrades of War (38 page)

Tiny was chewing on a sappy twig, trying this way to quench his flaming thirst.

Lieutenant Ohlsen had aged ten years in one night. His deep-set eyes were bloodshot and fixed in a glassy stare.

‘Twelve men,’ he groaned. ‘All that’s left of 225! What in the world are we going to do?’ He looked despairingly from one to the other.

‘Herr Lieutenant!’ Fatty rapped out. ‘Allow me to make a suggestion.’

Lieutenant Ohlsen waved his hand in a tired gesture. ‘Let’s hear, First Sergeant.’

‘I propose we walk over to the Russians all together!’

Tiny guffawed. He called to the Legionnaire, who was sitting on a windfall: ‘The command NCO has got war fatigue. He thinks he can go to Ivan for a rest cure!’

Fatty flared up. ‘Be kind enough to shut your mouth, Corporal!’

Tiny openly grinned at him. ‘You fat pig, by the proposal you made a moment ago you lost every right to command either me or anyone else in this gang.’

Fatty swallowed. He turned to Lieutenant Ohlsen.

‘Herr Lieutenant, I request that this man be immediately court-martialed for open mutiny!’

‘Come down to earth,’ Julius Heide said, cutting into the conversation. ‘You can’t be quite sane, Fatty. If it suits us, Tiny and I can set up a court-martial right now and hang you from the nearest tree.’

‘Herr Lieutenant, this is mutiny!’ Fatty bawled.

‘No, First Sergeant,’ came sharply from Lieutenant Ohlsen. ‘As a matter of fact, by your proposal to run over to the enemy you’ve made yourself guilty on three counts, for which a court of the whole crew may send you to the gallows.’

Fatty gaped in astonishment.

Tiny grinned and tickled him behind the ear. ‘You fat clod, how I’ll make you blow when I hang you.’

‘Leave him alone, Tiny,’ the Old Man said. ‘He’s always been a swine. Now besides he’s a cowardly swine. We’ll settle with him when we get back – if we do get back.’

He glanced across at the roller conveyor, where the Russians were pouring west, in the direction Lvov-Brest-Litovsk and Tolochino. To us it sounded like an ominous storm. Thundering tanks, rumbling engines, rattling chains, neighing horses, and then the artillery following behind, with the boom of its long-range guns quickly drawing nearer.

Porta and Tiny had found a commissariat store, but very little had been left behind: fourteen cans of beef, nine packages of hardtack, a few soggy crackers, and a cat. Except for Tiny and Porta, everybody was disgusted with the cat, but Tiny pushed back his bowler and sneered.

‘Some day you’ll be wiser, you pampered soldiers.’ He waved his hand at the forest. ‘That copse over there is about sixty miles deep and cock-full of partisans. In a couple of days you’ll be ravenously hungry. Your mouths will be one big gaping hole, and you’ll just be dying to sink you teeth into pussy.’

‘You stinking pig,’ Trepka exclaimed, disgust written on every feature of his refined face. ‘That a fellow like you should be allowed to wear a uniform and carry arms at all is a riddle to me.’

Tiny whirled around. ‘Just say one word more, my boy, and I’ll snap your spine.
Ponimayu
, you super shit?’

Trepka turned pale. He gave Tiny a hateful look and mumbled something that couldn’t be made out. He felt for his pistol, but noticing Heide’s eyes upon him, gave it up.

‘Herr Lieutenant,’ Tiny said and chucked the bag of provisions over to Lieutenant Ohlsen. He held the cat in his hand like a killed rabbit. ‘Would you divide the provisions?’

The Lieutenant nodded. He divided the provisions into twelve portions of exactly the same size, so exactly that at the end everyone received a fourth of a cracker.

When the provisions had been distributed, Tiny looked at each of us in turn. He swung the cat above his head.

‘So none of you would like to have any part of pussy?’

No one answered.

‘Very well, you monks,’ he went on, ‘you’d better make sure not to come to me afterwards and ask for a leg of it.’ He pulled his tobacco pouch out of his pocket. ‘Here I have tobacco. Every morning I’ll roll twelve weeds and each of you may come and get his when he wants to. But it’s no present. It’s a loan, and I want to have it back. The interest will be a quarter for each whole one!’ He threatened with a large fist. ‘And for your information, this fist is my lawyer and the other the bailiff, and you bet distresses are levied promptly.
Ponimayu?
’

‘Just how much ammunition do we have?’ Lieutenant Ohlsen asked glancing up.

‘Damn little, Herr Lieutenant,’ Porta answered, shying a rock into the little lake. It skipped five to six times over the tranquil surface. ‘But I guess there is enough for a bullet through the skull of each of us.’

‘Shut up, Porta, with all your tiresome twaddle,’ Lieutenant Ohlsen flared up. He shoved three ammunition boxes over to the Old Man. ‘These ones are full. How is the MG? Is it okay?’

‘Yes,’ the Old Man answered curtly and kicked the toe of his boot with the other as if miserably bored.

‘I say!’ Porta bawled. ‘Three boxes of gunpowder and a real machine gun! If we don’t win this war, we are simply not worthy to be called Teutons, sons of the Nibelungs.’

Lieutenant Ohlsen pretended not to hear Porta’s mockery. He turned to the Old Man: ‘What other arms do we have?’

The Old Man was tapping an anthill with a twig. He answered indifferently:

‘Three sub-machine guns – one Russian. Seventeen hand grenades. A flame-thrower, and a stovepipe without ammunition.’

‘Holy Mary of Sankt Pauli!’ Porta rejoiced. He doubled up with laughter. ‘I’ll be damned if it isn’t enough to hold one’s own against a whole army. Let’s just hope it won’t get through to our colleagues what a dangerous bunch we are, because then they might run again!’

‘Shut your damn mouth!’ flashed Lieutenant Ohlsen. ‘Your endless twaddle doesn’t help us a bit. Why don’t you instead give us some hint how we can steer through the partisan territory and get back to the German lines. There must be a new front line somewhere.’

‘Pardon me for interfering,’ Tiny cut in, ‘but I believe the new front line is being set up in the vicinity of Berlin.’

‘This is disloyal talk!’ Trepka cried. ‘I request court-martial in accordance with the Führer’s Order Number 8!’

‘Trepka, you can’t be quite sane. Do you imagine we’ve time to lose over that kind of nonsense here behind the Russian lines?’

Trepka clicked his heels and looked at Lieutenant Ohlsen with a fanatic gleam in his eye. He crowed like a bantam cock.

‘Herr Lieutenant, every German soldier regardless of rank may request court-martial proceedings against defeatists and traitors!’ He handed Lieutenant Ohlsen his written denunciation of Tiny.

Lieutenant Ohlsen read it through in silence and then tore it up. He looked sharply at Trepka, who stood before him straight as a ramrod, completely sure of himself.

‘In your place I would forget about that denunciation. The idea of court-martial seems to have gotten stuck in your throat.’

Tiny, who sat on a tree stump between Porta and the Legionnaire, let out a shout which rang through the forest. ‘Let’s see how eager our budding colonel will be to court-martial poor Tiny after Ivan has picked us up. Julius Jewhater has told me all about that dirty report.’

‘Cut out the clamor, will you!’ Lieutenant Ohlsen admonished him, ‘or we’ll be on our way to Kolyma before we know it.’

‘
Saperlotte!
’ the Legionnaire grumbled. ‘I definitely prefer the Sahara to Siberia.’

‘I say, to hell both with your Sahara and Siberia if only Joseph Porta can get to Bornholmerstrasse, Moabitt, Berlin.’

‘And how does Joseph Porta propose to get there?’ Lieutenant Ohlsen jeered.

‘We lift a truck from Ivan. It’s better than to walk,’ Porta answered nonchalantly.

Lieutenant Ohlsen looked at the Old Man and shook his head. The Old Man shrugged his shoulders.

‘A crazy idea,’ he muttered.

Porta got up, slung his machine gun over his shoulder and trudged off into the forest.

Like a faithful dog Tiny followed in his tracks, lugging along the the ammunition boxes.

Lieutenant Ohlsen shook his head once again. He commanded: ‘In single file after me!’

For hours we pushed our way through the jungle-like evergreen forest. We cried. We cursed. We fought. But the drive for self-preservation and the fear of what we had to expect from the Russians if we fell into their hands compelled us to keep moving.

With the unerring instinct of wolves of the wild, Porta and Tiny led us through brush and swamp until, after four days of intolerable exertions, we saw the glare from some fires.

In our fright we hid among the pine trees. Except for Porta and Tiny we were all agreed that we must get away from those fires, but in the end Lieutenant Ohlsen surrendered unconditionally to Porta and Tiny, though deep down he looked upon both as insane.

‘If there are fires, there are Ivans, too,’ Porta said with conviction, ‘and where there are Ivans there are trucks, and we are going to use a truck. Tiny, come, let’s look into it.’

They vanished in the darkness. The Old Man and Lieutenant Ohlsen cursed savagely.

Returning two hours later they squatted down beside us as we lay in the tall grass.

Tiny pushed back his bowler. He was gurgling with laughter.

‘We ought to have met a long time ago, Joseph Porta. Think of all the things we could have fixed on Reeperbahn. You’d have conned the dudes and Tiny would have socked ’em.’

‘A gem of a truck,’ Porta mumbled.

‘What do you mean?’ Lieutenant Ohlsen asked impatiently.

‘A cross-country armored vehicle for tank gunners, crammed with gasoline cans, enough to take us to Bornholmerstrasse!’

‘And the crew?’ Lieutenant Ohlsen asked, staring at the dark crowns of the trees.

‘Nothing to speak of,’ Tiny answered, jabbing at some mosquitoes. ‘Just eight yellow monkeys sitting around a coal-basin getting soaked.
Ponimayu
?’

‘They have at least three quarts of vodka,’ Porta said, ‘which they have pinched from one of their QMC officers, with guarantee.’

Tiny laughed softly. ‘And now those two Tartar baboons are sitting there lapping it up as if the war would soon be over. I can bet they sit there thinking: The Germans, that Nazi riff-raff, have almost been chased back to Poland.’

Porta laughed loudly. ‘And suddenly there we are pinching their armored truck. They’ll have a fit!’

We lay for a little while in silence. You could feel everyone pondering that truck.

Porta rolled a
papirosu
for himself.

After a moment Lieutenant Ohlsen stood up. ‘Very well, let’s pick it up.’

And now one of those countless dramas never reported in communiqués took place behind enemy lines. The only consequence of such incidents is that a few names are struck from the muster roll.

Corporal Vasily Rostov and tank gunner Ivan Skolyenski of the 34th Panzer Brigade had just walked over to their wonderful new troop transport truck to pick up a couple of pieces of smoked mutton, when they felt a pair of steel fingers around their throats.

Slowly everything went black before their eyes. The new truck seemed to float in the air. Vasily just managed to put his hand to his throat and touch the strangling fingers. Then he died.

Ivan saw his two children before him. He got only a brief glimpse of them. He wanted to call them, but not a sound passed his lips. His legs twitched a bit. The Legionnaire slightly tightened his grip. Then he died too.

Porta and Tiny quickly pulled the dead men’s blouses over their black panzer coats and put on the Russian helmets. They had a brief whispered exchange with the rest of the squad. Then all of us sneaked up to the fires, where a few Russians, the rest of the truck’s crew, could be made out.

‘
Yob tvoyemat
’,’ Porta cursed loudly.

The Russians by the fire laughed. One of them called: ‘Hurry up now. We’re waiting.’

‘Right away, my boy, right away,’ the Legionnaire whispered. ‘You’ll soon be home in the garden of Allah!’

We approached from the smoking side of the coal-basin, noiselessly, like snakes. Julius Heide readied his steel sling. The Legionnaire massaged his wrist and tightened his grip on his Moorish dagger. The Old Man tested his short entrenching spade, turning it in his fist. Each and every one tried out the feel of his special weapon.

Spades and knives flashed in the glare from the small fire. A sickening gurgle came from a couple of the surprised tank gunners as knives and spades cut into quivering flesh.

Julius Heide lunged at a sergeant. He pressed his face into the glowing embers of the fire, which went out with a fizz. He released his victim only when he didn’t move any more.

Lieutenant Ohlsen vomited.

The whole incident happened so incredibly fast – without noise, without heroism – that we looked in astonishment at the corpses of the Russian tank gunners. One of them had a piece of bread in his hand. Another held an overturned messtin. The
kapusta
had poured over his breast.

‘Not one eye will be dry when the message of the heroes’ deaths gets to the village,’ Stein grinned. He poked the corpse of the sergeant with the toe of his boot.

The Old Man sat rocking, head in hands. He was deathly pale. He had thrown the bloodstained spade some distance away from him. Lieutenant Ohlsen went on vomiting bile.

Those two could never get used to it.

Tiny and Porta had forgotten the dead. They had jumped into the brand-new armored truck. Porta behind the wheel. Tiny behind the machine gun.

When they discovered how many weapons it contained, Julius and Stein stood up in the back of the truck and uttered one joyous exclamation after another. It was crammed with ammunition: two machine guns and one of those peerless Russian trench mortars.

Porta screamed with joy. He revved up the engine and let it roar till the air quivered.

‘This is quite a coach, isn’t it?’ he gushed. ‘You won’t find it’s match in the whole German army!’

Lieutenant Ohlsen and the Old Man jumped in when the engine started roaring.

‘Have you gone completely out of your mind?’ Lieutenant Ohlsen rapped. ‘That roar can be heard as far as the roller conveyor. Make it run more quietly.’