Court Martial (19 page)

'What the devil will we need the Army and manoeuvres for, then?' asks the Old Man in wonder.

'Because the Army is as natural a necessity as prisons and policemen,' says Heide, with an airy gesture.

'There's something in that,' Gregor agrees, stroking his chin thoughtfully. 'A country without an army's like a man with no balls!'

'Here, want some?' the Old Man says to the JAG clerk who has sat down by us.

'No thanks, I've no appetite,' says the clerk, an elderly man.

'
Tu m'emmerdes
,' says the Legionnaire, with a short laugh. 'The chap's frightened at seeing people get shot!'

'It isn't a pleasant sight, either,' the Old Man admits, quietly.

'Everybody who shouts and screams about the death penalty ought to be made to see what it's like knocking a man off,' says Gregor, blowing on his cold-reddened hands.

'In Madrid we did not make so much fuss about it,' Barcelona explains. 'We put them up in a row against a long wall and let them have it with an SMG. Always from left to right. It was like a mower going through a cornfield. Afterwards they hosed away the blood, so it was all clean for the next lot. Witnesses and all that, we didn't bother with. Some of 'em we didn't even try.'

'Let's have a cup of milk o' madness, to drive away our uncontrollable fear,' says Porta, with a little laugh, filling up our mugs.

'Have you got schnapps?' asks the clerk, in surprise.

'I can hear this is your first outing,' laughs Barcelona. 'There's always firewater at these parties!'

Porta pushes forward his mess-tin for a new helping. His stomach seems to expand visibly. He takes a big bite of pork, chews, swallows and washes it down with beer and schnapps.

'God, the way you can
eat
,' says the Old Man, wonderingly. 'Where d'you
put
it all?'

Porta licks his spoon clean and pushes it down into his jack-boot, where he can get at it quickly if he becomes hungry again.

He falls on to his back in the heather using his steel helmet as a pillow.

'Pass the pork,' he orders Tiny. 'Soon as I see it I get hunger pains again,' he sighs. 'I've
always
been like that.' He lifts up his backside and blows a thunderous fart which echoes over to the hut where the witnesses stand freezing.

'Have you ever really eaten your fill?' asks the Old Man, with an indulgent smile.

'Never! No, never
really
,' Porta admits, without having even to consider his answer. 'There's always been room for a little bit more. At old Mr Porta's place in Bornholmerstrasse there were two huge padlocks on the pantry to keep his best son from taking it over completely. My appetite got me into trouble too, at the greengrocer's where I worked. He found out I used to take a sample of all his delicacies.' He pulls his piccolo from his jackboot, Tiny's deep bass joins him:

'Sie ging von Hamburg bis nach Bremen
34

bis dass der Zuz aus Flensburg kam.

Holahi-holaho-holahi-holaho!

Sie wollte sich das Leben nehmen

und legt sich auf de Schienen dann.

Holahi-holaho-holahi-holaho.

Jedoch der Schaffner hat's gesehen,

er bremste mit gewaltiger Hand.

Holahi-holaho-holahi-holaho.

Allein der Zug, der blieb nicht stehen,

ein junges haupt rollt in den Sand . . .

The staff-chaplain came raging over towards us.

'I forbid you to sing that filthy song,' he screamed in a voice which cracked several times. 'Can't you keep order here, Feldwebel?'

'Yes,' says the Old Man, remaining seated on the heather.

'Such horrible filth,' splutters the padre. 'You are carrying on like street-boys!'

'Just what we are,' grins Porta, shamelessly. 'Bornholmerstrasse, Moabitt.'

'
Heyn Hoyer
Strasse, Sankt Pauli,' echoes Tiny, cheekily.

'Request the padre to tell us please,' smiles Porta, putting his heels together in the attention position whilst remaining seated. 'Has the padre ever been in "The Crooked Dog" in Gendarmenmarkt? Best bunch of crumpet in the whole of Berlin, sir.'

'Impertinent man,' spits the staff-chaplain, disgustedly, with-drawing to the other witnesses over by the hut.

'The new CO's wife's a nice bit of stuff,' says Porta, pursing his lips.

'Something queer about her,' says Gregor, thoughtfully. 'She's got prick in both her eyes, and she's always showing everythin' she's got!'

'She's a war widow,' states Barcelona.

'She's married to the CO,' the Old Man gapes at him un-comprehendingly, 'and he was alive this morning when we left!'

'Nevertheless she's the widow of a Kapitanleutnant who's at the bottom of the Atlantic with his VII B U-boat,' Barcelona enlightens them.

'Maybe she's interested in science and is studying prickology,' laughs Porta noisily. 'First the Navy, then the Army and when our Oberst flies off to Valhalla she'll move on to the Luftwaffe or the SS!'

'She's still an eyeful,' says Gregor, his own shining. 'Long-legged, round-arsed and high-titted! She wouldn't need to ask me more'n once. Me and my old man'd be into that like a knife into a pound o' butter!'

'I'm afraid you'd be disappointed,' Porta considers knowledgeably. 'She smells a mile off of the Party and the BDM.
35
Shouldn't wonder if she'd got a swastika up her cunt rotating the wrong way, and no prick outside the Party'd fancy running into that!'

'Swastika bints ain't the worst to get down on their backs,' Gregor corrects him. 'They're trained at the bridal schools, so they can fix up the happy warrior husband when he gets back from the wars with a tattered swastika banner and a deep-frozen prick!'

'Bridal schools?' asks the Old Man, rolling the words round his mouth. 'Are there really such places? I thought it was only a joke.'

'Jesus on the Cross, man,' shouts Gregor, indignantly. 'They teach these BDM bints all the tricks of the bloody trade,
and
they don't get taken on if they aren't well prepared in advance. For example they put a piece o' chalk up their arses and get taught how to write with it while they're swinging 'em in time to:
Ein Reich! Ein Volk! Ein Fuhrer
! That exercise makes 'em that supple they can make a Party member ninety years old remember he's still got a set o' rattlers danglin' between his creaky old legs.'

'I once knew a countess who was so high-bred she could only come on if you bit her in the arse and filled her cunt up with champagne,' says the Westphalian in a quiet, confidential tone of voice.

'Them kind also get into
Cafe Keese
,' says Tiny, importantly. 'Met a real Duchess there once, 'Ohenzollem of the blood, she was. On the Reeperbahn she used to go incognito and called 'erself Ina von Weinberg. She'd got opera on the brain. Every time a John Thomas with a roll-collar got into 'er she used to start screamin' out Wagner. Everybody in the 'ouse knew when she was gettin' it in 'er old box-office.'

'There are far more exotic ways than getting bit in the arse and singing Wagner,' grins Porta lasciviously. 'After we'd liberated Paris we ran into a couple of bits of stuff sitting, on the lookout for occupation prick, outside the
Cafe de la Paix
. One of 'em had to have a champagne cork with a violin string attached stuck up her arsehole. When she began to pant, you had to pull the cork out slowly. You can't imagine the way that arse of hers could go on thrumming and twanging. It was nothing more nor less than the Marseillaise at full pressure.'

'Couldn't be more complicated, I should think,' considers the Old Man, lighting up his silver-lidded pipe.

'I
have
heard,' continues Porta, 'that it's even better with a nail in the champagne cork. It should be one of the square kind with ridges on it, but it can only be done of course with bints who have
not
got piles.'

'An arsehole can be used for a lot of things,' grins Tiny, blissfully. The Jew furriers boy, David in 'Ein 'Oyer Strasse could, usin' a tinwhistle, play the opening of
Deutschland, Deutschland, uber alles
with his arsehole. But it '
ad
to be just after we'd filled up with pea soup.'

'With his
arse
?' asks Heide, doubtfully.

'Course,' says Tiny, proudly. 'That Yid boy David could 'ang on to 'is wind long as 'e wanted. Once 'e drove the coppers down at David's Station 'arf barmy by goin' round with a police whistle up 'is arse. They arrested all the ventriloquists in the Reeperbahn, thinkin' it was them as was imitatin' police whistles. Some way or other we'd got into an exhibition of paintings and goin' down a narrow corridor the Yid lets off a rip-snorter of a fart so all the paint fell off the paintings an' made 'em into valuable functionalistic works of bleedin' art!'

'My wife's made a terrible fool of herself,' says the Westphalian, pulling out a letter. 'She's pregnant and doesn't know who she's got the prize from.'

'She must bloody know,' says Heide in disgust. 'All German women know who the father of their children is.'

'You must have been born in a gasworks and mixed in a bucket with a hole in it,' the Westphalian says, irritably. 'Try pushing your arse up against a circular saw and pointing out afterwards which of the teeth it was that tore the cheeks open.'

'Is your wife one of that kind?' sniffs Heide, contemptuously.

'Of course she is,' says the Westphalian, proudly. 'Think I'd marry a homebody who could only have it off with a broom-handle?'

'Soon be Christmas again,' says the Old Man, thoughtfully, and lights his pipe again. He is having difficulty in keeping it going. 'It seems more than a century since I spent Christmas at home with Liselotte and the nippers.'

'Maybe we'll have as crazy a Christmas as we had last year,' says Porta, expectantly. 'Somebody or other's sure to hit on something quite mad.'

'Yes, something always happens at Christmas,' laughs Gregor, heartily. 'I'll never forget once when I was with my General. I didn't spend it
with
him, of course. I was sent over to the
Unteroffizier
mess. It wasn't boring by any means. In the middle of the meat course Feldwebel Berg, the Divisional Chief Clerk, pulled out his P-38 and pointed it straight between his eyes so that everybody could see he really meant to be on his way for ever and ever. We who were close to him could see he'd taken the magazine out. He was a great man for a joke, that Chief Clerk was.

'"Good-bye, comrades," he shouted, and pressed a couple of beery tears out of his eyes. "Give my regards to the Fuhrer," were his last words. Then we heard a bang and half his face flew over and landed in the lap of our Chief Mechanic, looking like a used carnival mask. Feldwebel Berg was well-known for his carelessness. He'd taken the magazine out all right but forgotten there was one up the spout and that was too bad for
him
. The cartridge case landed in my pudding. I'll never forget the silly look on his face, just before he slipped under the table.'

'New Year usually costs a few lives, too,' puts in Tiny. 'I was in Bamberg last year. What a new Year's Eve we fixed up! We'd a bloke with us was dumb as the droppin's of a cow, and 'im they'd set to look after the explosives store. Pokin' about there 'e'd turned up some of them old signal bombs as looked just like Brazilian cigars. You lit 'em same road, with a match or a live coal. The first of 'em 'e threw out the window just before dinner. It wasn't that easy to light 'em so the Kitchen Feldwebel'd give 'im a cigar. 'E got it goin' an' lights the next bomb all right. After a bit 'e went amok an' was throwin' bombs out of the windows for dear life. Then things went wrong for 'im, drunk as 'e was by now. Out of the window went the cigar an' into 'is mouth went the bomb. The whole bleedin' mess was covered in blood an' bits o' flesh. The explosives dope stood there a bit swayin' without a 'ead. Then somebody shouted "'Appy New Year" an' 'e laid down on the floor.'

'Smoked his last cigar then, hadn't he?' remarks Porta drily and pours himself an extra large schnapps.

In a loud voice he begins to sing:

'Liebe Leute, wont' Ihr wissen,
36

was einem Fahnrich einst geburte,

ja, fur die Nacht ein schones Madel

oder funf and zwanzig Flaschen Bier ...'

The witnesses by the hut stretch their necks like hens who have caught sight of a hawk.

The padre is on his way over to us, but when he has got halfway he gives up and turns back.

It is almost completely dark when a Kubel, followed by a lorry and a closed troop-carrier, rumbles down the hill.

Three MPs in a motorcycle and sidecar follow in the rear.

'Here they are,' says Porta, stretching his neck like a goose who gets a sight of the farmer's girl coming to feed him.

'Devil take 'em,' grumbles the Old Man, viciously, pulling at his equipment. 'lip on your feet. Helmets on! Get hold of your rifles! Into threes! Get a move on now! That goddamned Major might chase us all the way down the Morellenschlucht! Look at your bloody self, Tiny!'

'Look?' asks Tiny, in surprise, with his steel helmet on the back of his neck. 'I know I ain't
pretty
, but I never
'ave
been!'

'Get your equipment and your helmet on straight,' shouts the Old Man, angrily.

The talk between the witnesses over by the but stops. Everybody stares at the vehicles which have stopped a little way into the heather.

'Party, atten-tion!' orders the Old Man and salutes the Major.

'Everything in order, Feldwebel?'

'All in order, sir!'

'Have the propaganda people and the rubbemeckers arrived?' asks the Major, looking over towards the hut.

'No, Herr Major, I've not see them.'

'Bastards,' snarls the Major, spitting angrily. 'The condemned men are here now. They'll drop dead of fear if we keep them sitting alongside their own coffins, waiting! What a bloody day!' He shivers in the cold rain, and points at the lorry. 'The lights are in there. Get 'em set up, on the double, Feldwebel! We've got three of them to turn off!'