Court Martial (2 page)

Our nostrils begin to quiver. Soon the whole section is sitting down, sharing Porta's coffee. Even the Old Man sullenly accepts the mug which Tiny graciously offers him.

'To the devil with the lot of you,' snarls the Old Man, blowing into his mug. 'The rottenest section in the whole army and I had to get it! A shower of arseholes is what you lot are!'

''E's no gentleman, is 'e?' remarks Tiny to Porta.

'A proletarian prick I'd say he was,' declares Porta. 'About as useful as a hole in the head!'

Tiny crows with laughter. He thinks Porta's remark is the joke of the year.

'You take that?' asks Guri, the Laplander, his face splitting in a typical Lapp grin.

'Damned if I do,' shouts the Old Man, vehemently. 'You heard me. I gave a direct order: Section, march!'

'Don't shout so loud,' warns Porta. 'The neighbours might hear all that German piss. It's dangerous to talk German in these parts!'

'That does it,' roars the Old Man, wrathfully, taking his Mpi from his shoulder.

'Shoot and you're dead,' threatens Tiny, swinging the muzzle of his
Kalashnikov
towards the Old Man.

'Let a man have his coffee in peace,' says Porta pettishly 'There'll
be
no war till I've swilled my tonsils clean!'

'Up my arse,' the Old Man gives in, and slings his Russian fur-cap far away amongst the trees.

'Mind you 'air don't freeze,' says Tiny, in a kindly voice. 'They didn't issue us them 'ead-cosies for parade purposes only, y'know!'

Porta is quietly making a new pot of coffee. His breakfast ration is five cups, as a rule.

'Tell me,' says the Old Man in a dangerously quiet voice, 'just how long do you reckon this coffee party is going to go on?'

'Only idiots expect people to chase around all over the map before they've had their coffee,' says Porta, calmly, filling up the mugs again.

The Old Man accepts his with a shake of the head, but jumps when Tiny starts to make toast.

'I'm reporting you for refusing to obey orders, when we get back,' he threatens, shaking with rage.

'Tell me,' Porta turns to the Legionnaire, 'you're the oldest member of this shootin' club, did they ever send you foreign legion lot out to get your throats cut by the Muslims without a cup of coffee under your belts?'

'
Non, mon ami
, I never remember it happening,' answers the Legionnaire, well aware that it would not be diplomatically wise, and productive of incalculable problems, to do anything but agree with Porta on the subject of breakfast coffee.

The Old Man loses his patience, throws his mug from him and kicks the toast out of Tiny's hands,

'Up on your feet! Up! Now!'

'Don't treat good food like that,' Porta scolds. 'How d'you know how soon
you'll
be hungry!'

'I've said it before an' I'll say it again. 'E's no gentleman,' sighs Tiny, patiently collecting the toast from the ground.

'Watch your blood pressure, old 'un,' advises Porta. 'You'll shorten your life, going off like that!'

Shortly after this episode we are moving on our way, slipping and sliding down the steep slopes. By dinner time we have reached the road leading to the ice-free port, a long way to the north. A little to the east runs a notorious railway, built at the cost of the lives of thousands upon thousands of prisoners. Rumour has it that it is built on human bones.

We lie in the snow and watch endless transport columns roll past our position.

'Up on the road,' orders the Old Man. 'Follow me in single file! If we're challenged nobody answers but those of you who speak fluent Russian. The rest of you are just deaf and dumb.'

Merde aux veux
! Let's hope Ivan doesn't smell a rat,' mutters the Legionnaire uneasily. He seems to become smaller.

'Jesus wept!' hisses the Westphalian, sourly. 'This is the last time I go on a trip behind the neighbours' lines. Soon as we're back I'm going to put a bullet through me foot.'

'Cost you your old turnip if they find out,' says Porta with a sarcastic smile.

Slightly north-east of Glenegorsk we find the first of the hidden bridges.

Four long goods trains are held up, on camouflaged tracks, waiting for the green light, and a couple of kilometres further back a fifth train is waiting.

We prepare the explosives inside the fringe of the woods. We have five sledges loaded with the new Lewis bombs, which we have just begun to be supplied with.

Porta and I get the first guard. We couldn't care less. We can't sleep anyway. We're full of pervitin pills. The Russians call them
pryshok porokh
2
. One pervitin can keep a man awake for a week, and they can be a lifesaver for men working behind the enemy lines.

'You're off your head, man,' I protest, when Porta lights up a cigarette. 'They can see you from here to Murmansk!'

'Don't piss your drawers, son,' mumbles Porta. 'The Red Army sparkles all night! Why shouldn't I?'

'It'll be your fault if we get knocked off!'

'You'll never feel it!' says Porta, callously, taking a long draw at his cigarette so that it glows brightly.

Early next morning we are listening to Heide, our explosives expert. He is standing up on a windfall to get a good view of us all.

'Listen to me, and listen good, you arseholes,' he shouts. 'As you can all see, what I have in my hand looks like a lump of rubber, and you can do almost anything you like with it without anything happening. Throw it in the fire and what you get is a thick, sticky mass. It looks like chewed-up gum, but it isn't. This shit consists of a quarter thermite, mixed with metallic oxide, and three-quarters plastic explosive.'

'What's plastic?' asks Tiny, blankly.

'No bloody business of yours. All
you
need to know is it's called plastic.' Heide holds up a copper tube.

'This is a copper and aluminium tube, which contains a detonator.'

'What's a detonator?' asks Tiny, lifting his hand like a schoolboy.

'No bloody business of yours, either,' Heide rebuffs him. 'All
you
need to know is it's called a detonator. And don't keep interrupting me with stupid questions! I'll tell you all you need to know an' that's enough. As you can see there are eight bends on this tube and these represent eight different time intervals, so that we can decide when she goes bang-bang. The lowest is two minutes, and I wouldn't advise using it. The highest is two hours. The tube itself' - he holds it up proudly, as if he himself had invented it - 'contains a mercury compound. You bite through this little glass chap here, the acid inside runs down and dissolves the seal holding the striker in position. The striker shoots forward and primes the bomb. The process has commenced.'

'An' then it goes bleedin' BANG!' shouts Tiny, with a big grin.

'Idiot,' snarls Heide, irritably. 'Cut those interruptions out! Don't you realise I'm an
Unteroffizier
, and your superior?

'If you'd been in the cavalry you'd 'ave been a
Unterwachtmoister
, and if you'd been in a Alpine Regiment, you'd 'ave been a
Oberjager
. You could also've been - if, that is to say, you'd been in the paratroops, like Gregor 'ere . . . '

'When the detonating process has commenced,' continues Heide, with a superior air, 'enormous heat is generated, and it is this which ignites the plastic explosive mass.'

'An' it goes BANG!' says Tiny, jubilantly.

Heide sends him a killing look.

'All known metals, even the heaviest steel, melt in seconds. Without this clever little device called the detonator you can play about as you like with the plastic. Nothing will happen, except you'll get your fingers sticky. You can jump into a fire with your pockets full of it. It won't go off! Put it under a steamhammer. No bother! But once the detonator's blown, watch out for it! Run for your lives. Once you've bitten through the glass, get moving! Put sixty yards, at least, between you and the explosion centre. Inside that distance your lungs'll be hanging out of your arse and throat. I'd prefer seventy yards myself. When they were demonstrating it for us at the Army Ammunition Depot at Bamberg, they lost two ammunition experts. They thought they could play games with Lewis bombs.'

'Bamberg! I know that place,' shouts Tiny, happily. We used to blow up trains an' lorries with some bleedin' stuff they called TNT. There was a couple o' them ammo bleeders went up there too. One on 'em was in 'is bed at the time. It turned out as 'ow some wicked bleeder of a Gefreiter 'ad shoved a load under 'is bed an' sent 'im to kingdom come that road.'

'Squad leaders on me,' orders the Old Man, brusquely.

'Peace in our time,' says Tiny, laconically, fishing a huge cigar out of his gas-mask container. He always smokes cigars. He considers them high-class.

Our squad has the job of looking after the bridge to the north of Pulosero. Trees have been planted to camouflage it and the work has been so well done that we are only a few yards away when we discover it. It is an enormous railway bridge. The steel supports stretch right into Lapland. We have been detailed to blow up bridges and dams all the way down to Pitkul. A stretch of around 150 kilometres. This should put the railways and the most important road communications out of commission for a considerable time.

'Wonder if we'll get leave after this, so we can get 'ome an' 'aye a gander at the
Reeperbahn
?' dreams Tiny, his eyes swimming at the thought.

'They'll piss on us and send us on a new outing, without even giving us the chance of a sauna,' reckons Barcelona, pessimistically.

'Should've been a Finn,' says Porta, decisively. 'They get treated like people'

'Don't look on the dark side,' shouts Gregor, optimistically. 'They're sure to pin a few medals on us for this.' He loves fruit salad, just as Heide does.

'
Par Allah
, all I want is a
Heimatschuss
3
and a good sleep in a clean hospital bed,' sighs the Legionnaire, tiredly.

'Be satisfied if you get home alive,' advises the Old Man, drily.

'Can it,' shouts Tiny. 'Let's get these bridges blown away, so's we can get a bit o' fun out of this bleedin' war.'

The explosives are shared between us. Our special packs are full. We say good-bye to one another before we disperse silently into the white desert and are swallowed up by the forest on the far side of the frozen lakes.

Our squad goes round the river bed and continues along the road leading north. We are challenged several times by drivers and guards who, because of our uniforms, take us to be security troops.

Tiny brings us close to catastrophe when he shouts '
Arschloch
'
4
after
a Russian truck, which splashes snow over us.

At the road bridge south of Lapland we say good-bye to the Legionnaire's party.

'Do it proper, now,' Tiny exhorts them, paternally. 'Make it go off in one long bang, my sons, or else nothing'll 'appen to the bleedin' bridge. If I was you I'd've asked me to do it for you!'

'
Merde
, you are not the only one who knows how to blow things up,' answers the Legionnaire, and disappears at the head of his party.

'Bridges are 'bout the 'ardest thing there is to blow up,' Tiny tells Porta. 'If the charges ain't right even a million o' them Lewis bombs won't do it.'

'Watch out you don't make a balls of it some day,' says Gregor, grumpily. He has a neurotic aversion to anything that can be called an explosive.

'It'll never 'appen,' boasts Tiny. 'When a bridge 'as a run-in with me, it's the bridge what falls on its bleedin' arse!'

A few hours later we arrive
at
our bridge. Tiny goes round patting its huge steel girders appreciatively.

'Lord love us, ain't she a lovely bridge?' he grins.

A goods train a kilometre long thunders across it. A fur-clad soldier waves to us from a brake-van.

'That boy doesn't know how lucky he was catching that train,' says Porta, thoughtfully, 'the next one'll get blown all to hell!'

The bridge is tougher than we'd expected. It is unbelievably difficult to clamber up on the ice-slick concrete, and there is nothing to get a grip on. Only ice, and rough concrete that rips our hands to shreds.

Tiny raves like a madman each time he slips down and slides comically along on the ice of the river.

'Who the hell's the idiot, who didn't think we'd need climbing irons?' Porta curses viciously, as he slips back down for the twentieth time.

When we finally get up there, after several hours of exertion, we run into a new obstacle which comes close to discouraging us.

We sit down silently and stare at the coils of wicked-looking barbed wire with which the immediate under-pinning of the bridge is thickly entangled to prevent access to its most vulnerable parts.

'Jesus, Jewish son of the German God,' exclaims Porta, 'all we need now is for the lot of us to be booby-trapped, and them and our Lewis bombs'll get us out of uniform quicker than Hitler got us in!'

'Piss'n porridge, there wouldn't be a button left,' mutters Tiny, peering under the barbed wire.

'Oh well, with the Blessed Virgin and good German knowhow on our side we'll probably get by,' says Porta, philosophically.

'If we should 'appen unexpectedly to touch something or other off,' says Tiny, 'it'll be us as gets blown up for a change!'

'Some nerve,' sniffs Gregor.

'Hold on to your hats!' warns Porta, and begins to cut the wire.

The first rusty strands whip past our faces. Porta tires quickly, and hands the wire-cutters over to Tiny who goes at the wire like a bulldozer.

'Hell, watch out you fool,' warns Gregor, terrified. 'You cut just one wrong wire and we've all had it!'

''Ere's a fuckin' mine,' shouts Tiny in amazement, bending forward. Carefully he pulls the T-mine towards him. 'Wires are 'ere,' he goes on, pointing to a row of grey cables running under the mine.

'Careful, careful,' shouts Porta, nervously. 'Leave it where it is and screw off the cap! We'll climb down while you're fixing her. No need for the lot of us to get killed!'