Court Martial (17 page)

Chilled to the bone we jump down. An icy wind carries a cloud of tiny snow crystals into our faces and makes us all pull up the collars of our damp greatcoats.

'We could've passed all that crazy polishing up,' says Porta, crossly. 'Look at my boots! Muddied up already. Hell, now I'll have to polish 'em again before I go down to meet the bints in "the Crooked Dog"'

Grumbling we move along the hard-packed path along which thousands of soldiers have tramped before us.

The Old Man rolls along in front of us, shoulders hunched and far from regimental in appearance. The heavy P-38 dangles from his belt. It contains eight cartridges. Mercy shots.

A bony, wicked-looking MP Major is waiting for us. Silently he inspects our equipment. He is particularly interested
in
our rifles. He rates us and calls us bad names -- a herd of filthy swine not worthy of the honour of wearing the German uniform. He does not try to hide the fact that he is sick at the very sight of us. Only Julius Heide gets praised.

'Stand at ease and pay attention to me,' shouts the Major into the sleet. 'We are using target cloths even if they aren't necessary. And the reason we're using them now is that I've had trouble with some squads who didn't use 'em. Now pay attention: I want to see all twelve bullets in that target. God help you if I find holes anywhere else! The other day two fools hit the man's sexual organs. That's sheer laziness! Clean misses will cost you something. Target practice night and day for three weeks.' He bobs up and down from the knees and looks at us with wicked eyes. 'I want you men on your toes today,' he continues in a shrill voice. 'There will be witnesses present! Not the usual after-birth from the court-martial authority, no, higher-ups from the party, the press and the civil administration. They have asked permission to be present. They want to see blood, the perverse bastards! The section will detail two security squads and nobody, not even the Reichsmarschall himself, is to be allowed inside the safety lines. I don't want any more corpses lying about than necessary. You, Oberfeldwebel,' he barks, pointing at the Old Man, 'are responsible to me that only people who have been sentenced to death are executed. Once I've gone and am no longer responsible for what happens here, you can mow 'em all down as far as I'm concerned! They're no loss. But just let one observer get hit while I'm responsible, by God I'll have your guts for bootlaces, the
lot
of you! We are here to carry out an order and we are going to do it, and do it properly. I hope there are no weaklings amongst you who might faint. Should one of you go weak at the knees, I will look after him personally when the job is over and I'll kick his backbone straight up through the top of his head! What the hell are you doing with your helmet?' he shouts viciously at Tiny, who has pushed it down on to the back of his neck so that it resembles a Jewish skullcap. 'What's your name?'

'Creutzfeldt,' answers Tiny, blinking the snow from his eyes.

'
General
Creutzfeldt, perhaps?' roars the Major, irately.

'Not yet, sir,' replies Tiny, wiping a blob of half-melted snow from his face.

'Are you mad, soldier? Keep your filthy paws away from your face, when you're standing to attention! Charge that man!'

The Old Man rolls over to Tiny and makes the motions.

'The PK
31
people will want photos of the bodies,' the Major continues, irritably, 'but I don't want to see anybody breaking through the cordon before the echo has died away. It's happened before. Some silly bastard lets go after the rest of the squad and shoots some fool of a spectator. I'd get a laugh out of it if I wasn't responsible.'

Heide and I get the job of tying the victim, the worst job of the lot at an execution. We look at one another unhappily, weighing the short pieces of rope in our hands. We move towards the execution posts. Two of them will be in use, the Major has told us.

The ropes go through holes in the posts, which are old railway sleepers. The holes where the rails were attached can easily be seen. There are twelve of them standing in a row and it is obvious that a great number of executions can be carried out quickly when necessary.

We stand, freezing with cold, in front of the execution posts, then we are given permission to fall out but to stay close by in readiness.

None of the special observers have arrived yet. There is plenty of time. The condemned men always arrive at least half an hour late. The witnesses are here already.

We are pleased to see that they too are shivering with cold. A crow watches us sadly from a crooked tree. The wind sends rain and snow along the length of the earthworks. The ropes on the poles flutter as if beckoning to the condemned.

'What weather to die in,' sighs the Old Man, depressedly, putting up his coat collar, against all regulations.

'Better'n sunshine,' considers Gregor. 'It's that cold here the thought of a nice warm grave's comforting.'

'Why the 'ell don't they bleedin' well get a move on, then, so we can get 'ome an' get at them bints,' says Tiny, slapping the slush from his body. He throws a rotten apple at Heide who ducks like lightning so that the soft fruit sails past him through the air and hits the MP Major right between the eyes.

Everyone watches the Major in expectant silence as he scrapes the remains of the rotten apple from his face. He takes the highly-polished personally-owned helmet from his head and looks at it for a moment with narrowed eyes. It, too, is covered with pieces of rotten apple. Life comes back into him. Wild-eyed and with his close-cropped hair bristling like the ruff on a mad dog, he goes at Tiny with a torrent of oaths and threats.

'I'll pull your guts out through your arse, you miserable swine! What the hell do you think you're playing at?' He is aglow with rage and looks as if he were ready to eat Tiny, who stands stiffly at attention and stares out towards the horizon with an empty look in his eyes. 'Swine, madman, how dare you throw rotten apples at a Major? Are you out of your mind? I'd like to tie you to one of those posts in place of one of the condemned men.' Curses rain on Tiny for a full quarter of an hour.

The crow in the crooked tree croaks vociferously. It sounds just as if it were laughing. The Major seems to think so too. He throws a stone at it, but it merely lifts into the air a few inches and drops back on to the branch, where it begins to preen its feathers in order to conform to regulations, when the execution takes place.

Muttering curses the Major moves over to a but where a telephone is ringing irritably. It will take him some time to forget No. 2 Section, 5 Company.

A dispatch rider splashes along the road and asks for the Major.

The soldiers straighten up. Something is about to happen.

The Major comes out of the hut.

'Execution postponed three hours,' he barks.

We receive the order to pile arms, in the way waiting soldiers have always done since firearms were first invented.

The rain is heavier and the howling wind colder.

'Keep yourselves neat,' orders the Major, before driving away in the Kubel. 'I'll be back soon!'

The compulsory witnesses stand shivering by the hut. For some reason nobody is aware of, it is not permitted to enter the hut.

The chaplain is blue in the face. He is the only one present without a greatcoat.

This is our ninth execution since we came together in 5 Company. Formerly it was the Pioneers who supplied personnel for the firing squads but now it is often the condemned man's own unit.

The wind turns our spines to ice. Freezing, we blow on our red, swollen hands.

The Major returns and gives the orders for food to be distributed. Some fool has neglected to close the lid of the container properly, and the food is only lukewarm.

'Damn it,' swears Porta, 'we've a
right
to hot food. This shit,' he bangs his spoon viciously into the mess-tin, 'is cold as a monkey's bollocks in the rainy season!'

The dispatch rider comes back again. The execution has been postponed for a further two hours.

'Means it'll be twilight when we have to knock 'em off,' decides Porta, sourly. 'Hope to Christ we don't have to do it in artificial light. I've tried that before. Not pleasant. They had to carry the candidate to the post and when they put the lights on we could see it was a Blitzmadel.
32
That did it. Two of the squad threw down their rifles. The Leutnant went starkers. He snapped his sword over his knees and threw the pieces at the JAG officer. They dragged him away, of course, and an MP officer took over the squad, so we finished the girl off but not till another of us had keeled over flat on his face. Rifle, helmet, the lot rattled right up to the girl's feet, and she screamed so that we were close to getting put behind bars, the rest of us. The Leutnant wound up in Torgau and came back to us a rifleman. A year later they knocked him off in Sennelager as a deserter. I don't look forward to shooting in artificial light!'

'I took part in the execution of a girl once myself,' Gregor tells us, 'but it came off in brilliant sunshine. It was when I was with 1 Reiterregiment at Konigsberg. We'd been told in advance it was a wench.'

'They filled us up with schnapps so we were half-cut when they brought her on. She was that white in the face we thought she was dead already. When we loaded she spewed up so hard it spattered on us. I lifted my sights so the muzzle pointed well above her head. Shoot a bint, I couldn't
do
it! Seemed to me she sagged a bit before we fired and she hung funny on the ropes, not like the way they usually do when they've had the wind knocked out of 'em. The MP officer went over, looking a bit pale, to give her the mercy shot. Three times his Walther bangs. We stood at ease and watched the medical orderlies cut her down. Along comes the M.O. and starts to bawl and shout, as if he'd gone round the bend. Not one bullet-hole in the lady! My eleven buddy-buddies had had the same idea as me and shot to miss. The MP officer, who was new to the game, had shot into the ground.

'The JAG fellow, the chaplain and everybody else, were all shouting at the same time. What a caper, and not even
planned
. The Blitzmiidel had pissed on 'em too. She'd dropped dead of a heart-attack.'

'They gave
us
a trip all right. With the MP officer in the lead we wound up in a 500 battalion at Heuberg. Later on we were split up all over the place. Far as I know I'm the only one left alive out of that squad. I'd have been dead too and long ago if I hadn't overtaken my General in a ten-tonner. I didn't know it was a General's car I was passing. Found it out when I'd got by him and two MPs on BMWs come racing after me. I speeded the ten-tonner up and braked so suddenly that both the MPs took a mud-bath in the ditch, but the General had a telephone in his Horch so that when I got to the crossroads at Kehl there was a whole army of MPs waiting to greet me and the ten-tonner.

'With his horsey service grin, the General asked me if I could drive a car as well as I drove a lorry. I couldn't deny it. He wriggled inside his General's uniform so that his oakleaves shot light-beams right over to France.

'After he'd felt me out a bit, he got the idea I'd been born on an engine block and conceived by a couple of valves. Two days after that I was a General's driver and if it hadn't been for Oberst Warthog I'd've been one still. And that'd have meant I'd have been certain of living through the war. Being a General's driver is pure life insurance. You never go anywhere where you can risk getting even a scratch.'

'But how did you get all that tin to hang on you?' the Old Man wonders.

'Staff work,' answers Gregor, proudly. 'When they hung something on my General there was always a little thing for me too. When he got the Knight's Cross with vegetables they gave me the Iron Cross. Later on I got the Fried Egg in silver,
33
so I could flash messages too.'

The Major drives back to town again.

We begin quietly hoping that the whole thing has been called off.

When the Major's back is turned, Porta lifts his arm and slaps the inside of his elbow to show what he thinks of him.

'Can't you wait with that sort of thing till I've given "stand easy"?' snarls the Old Man, sourly.

'No fun in that,' grins Porta, disrespectfully, 'the shit'd be gone by then!'

'There goes our afternoon off,' sighs Tiny, despondently. 'The others'll 'ave been in town long ago, an' all the cunt'll 'ave been took.'

'I remember once when I was doorkeeper at the "Tomcat",' laughs Porta. 'One afternoon, late, a crazy sod comes in looking for somewhere to strain his 'taters. He was a traveller in pots and pans and looked it. He disappeared into the green room with Birgitte the Cock-Swallower from Hochster. "Pots an' pans" started off biting her ear. She punched him and told him to stop that. A little later he bit her in the left breast.

'"Stop that bitin'," she shouted, nervously. "If you're hungry I'll get you a bag o' nuts. This is a knockin' shop you've come to not a bloody sausage bar, an' I ain't on the menu. I'm here to be fucked not to get chewed on!"

'"Now it better be a nice, good little girl," says "Pots an' pans", with a weak-minded expression on his face, "or Daddy'll have to smack it, won't he?"

'He threw his arms round her and this time he bit her in the other breast. She went bonkers and tried to kick his balls up into his throat, but the strength he had developed from carrying all those pots and pans around with him stood him in good stead, and he turned her over his knee and gave her a few hard slaps on her bare buttocks.

'Jesus, you should've heard her scream and howl. But the more she fought the happier grew "Pots an' pans". Her arse was red as a well-stoked stove before she managed to twist herself free. She hissed and spat, and when she saw her ill-used backside in the big mirror she started in swearing like a docker on a cold morning after a night on the booze. She showed him her breasts, which carried the imprints of his teeth.

'"You bloody, bastarding cannibal you," she raged, beside herself. "You've fucked this night up for me all right. Who'd want a girl with goddam shark-bites all over her tits? I'll introduce you to 'Big Willy,' I will! He weighs twenty-two stone an' he ain't too heavy for his height. He'll nip your goolies the way they nip suckin' pigs!"