Legion of the Damned (6 page)

A buzz of voices rang out across the silent square:

"I swear by God--our Holy Father--the sacred oath--that I in everything--will fight dutifully and faithfully--and will give up my life--if that be required--for the Fuhrer, people and fatherland--he who swears this oath--must know--that it is branded on his heart--and if he breaks his sacred oath--may God the Almighty have mercy on his soul--for he will then have forfeited--his right to live--and he will be tormented--for all eternity-- in hell-fire--Amen."

Then we sang "Deutschland, Deutschland, uber alles!"

Thus were we confirmed, but we were given no confirmation present.

The next day we were split up into small groups of from five to fifteen men and issued new field equipment. I and a few others were given the black uniform and beret of the tank troops, and the following morning we went under command of a Feldwebel to the barracks in Bielefeldt, where we were at once thrust into a Company on the point of leaving for the front and loaded into a troop train.

"Is this company to be burdened with more of you bloody criminals? Disgusting! Don't let me catch you committing the least irregularity or I'll have you sent back to the prison where you ought to have had the decency to die long ago, devil take me if I don't. Prison's the place for your sort."

Such was the greeting with which I was welcomed by the commander of No. 5 Company, obese Hauptmann Meier, tormentor of recruits. But one was so used to that sort of thing.

I was assigned to No. 2 Squadron under Leutnant von Barring, and then things began to happen to which I was not accustomed.

Our First Meeting

Von Barring held out his hand and took mine in a strong, friendly clasp. That is the sort of thing an officer in the German Army simply cannot do, yet he did it; and when he had done it he said, "Welcome, lad, welcome to No. 5 Company. You've come to a hellish awful regiment, but we have to stick together and make a go of it. Go across there to truck No. 24 and report to Unteroffizier Beier, he is leader of No. 1 Section." And then he smiled--a big, open, bright smile, the smile of a nice, friendly young man.

I was completely bewildered.

I soon found truck No. 24 and Unteroffizier Beier was pointed out to me. He was sitting beside a large barrel playing cards with three others--a short, powerfully built man of about thirty-five. I halted the regulation three paces from him, brought my heels together with a bang and in a loud, clear voice began my report:

"Herr Unteroffizier, I beg--"

But I got no further. Two of the four leaped off the buckets on which they were sitting and stood as stiff as ramrods, with their fingers down the seams of their trousers. The unteroffizier and the fourth fell over backward, sending the cards flying like dead leaves in an autumn storm. For a moment all four stared at me. Then a tall, red-haired obergefreiter said:

"What the hell, man! You scared the life out of us. Hitler's got into you, I do believe. What can have possessed a flat-footed dung beetle like you to come and interrupt peace-loving burghers at their innocent occupations? Tell us, who and what are you?"

"Report, Herr Obergefreiter, that I come from Leutnant von Barring and am to report to No. 1 Section to Unteroffizier Beier," I replied.

Beier and the fourth man, who was still on his back, stood up, and all four stared at me in horror, looking as though they would run shrieking in all directions if I took one step toward them. Then all at once they burst into a roar of laughter.

"Did you hear him! Herr Obergefreiter. Ha, ha, ha! Herr Unteroffizier Beier, ha, ha, ha!" exclaimed the red-headed obergefreiter, who then turned to the unteroffizier, bowed low and said, "Honorable Excellency! Your Worshiped Grace, your Captivating Magnificence, Herr Unteroffizier Beier, I beg to report . .

I looked in bewilderment from one to the other, quite unable to see what was so superbly funny. When they had recovered from the paroxysm the unteroffizier asked me where I had come from. I told them, and they looked at me sympathetically.

"Off with your wooden legs," said the redhead. "Penal battalion in Hanover. Now we understand why you behave as you do. We thought you were trying to make fools of us when you clashed your heels together like that; but I suppose it's a God's miracle you still have them to clash. Well, here you are!"

With those words I was received into No. 1 Section, and an hour later we were rolling along toward Freiburg, where we were to be formed into a fighting unit and sent to one place or another in crazy Europe for special training. As we rattled along, my four companions introduced themselves, and it was with these four that I went through the war.

Willie Beier was ten years older than the rest of us, and because of that he was called The Old Un. He was married and had two children. By trade he was a joiner, and his home was in Berlin. His politics had earned him eighteen months in a concentration camp, after which he had been "pardoned" and sent to a penal battalion. The Old Un smiled quietly to himself:

"And here I will certainly remain till, one fine day, I run too fast into a bullet."

The Old Un was a stout companion. He was always calm and quiet. Never once during those four frightful years that we spent together did I see him nervous or afraid. He was one of those strange beings who radiate calm, the calm that the rest of us so badly needed in a tight corner. He was almost like a father to us, although there was only ten years' difference in our ages, and many was the time I rejoiced at my good fortune in being put in The Old Un's tank.

Obergefreiter Joseph Porta was one of those incorrigible wags who can never be bested. He did not care a fig about the war, and I believe that both God and the devil were slightly afraid of haying anything to do with him in case they made fools of themselves. At any rate, he was feared by all the officers in the company, whom he could put off their stride, sometimes for good and all, just by looking innocently at them.

He never omitted to tell all whom he came across that he was a Red. He had been a year in Oranienburg and Moabit charged with Communist activities. What had happened was that in 1932 he had helped some friends to hang a couple of Social-Democrat flags on the tower of Michaelis Church. He was caught by the police and given fourteen days, after which the matter was forgotten until, in 1938, he was suddenly arrested by the Gestapo, who made great efforts to persuade him that he knew the mysterious hiding place of the fat but ever invisible Wollweber, leader of the Communists. Having starved and bullied him for a couple of months, he was hauled before a court and accused of Communist activities. A huge enlargement of a photograph was placed before the judges, on which you could see Porta complete with enormous flag on his way to Michaelis Church. Twelve years' hard labor for Communist activities and profanation of God's house. Shortly before the war broke out, like so many other prisoners, he was pardoned in the usual way, by being flung into a penal battalion. It's the same with soldiers as with money--it does not matter where it comes from.

Porta was a Berliner and had all the, Berliner's raffish humor, ready tongue and fantastic cheek. He only had to open his mouth to make all round him collapse with laughter, especially when he gave his voice an affected drawl and assumed so arrogant and insolent a manner as you would otherwise only encounter in the valet of a German count.

Porta was also highly musical and the possessor of a real, natural talent. He played equally bewitchingly on jew's-harp and church organ, and wherever he went he took his flute, on which he made magic, his shrewd piggy eyes staring rigidly in front of him and his red hair bristling like a haystack in a storm. The notes seemed to come dancing out of the instrument, whether he was crooning a popular tune or improvising on classical themes. A score was double Dutch to Porta, but if we happened to come across some music it only needed The Old Un to whistle the melody for him and Porta would play it as though it were he who had composed it.

Porta also had the true gift of the storyteller. He could make a story last for several days, lies and invention though it was from beginning to end.

Like all self-respecting Berliners, Porta could always tell where there was something to eat, how you could get hold of it and if there was a choice which was the best. Perhaps they had a Porta during the wandering through the wilderness.

Porta maintained that he had great success with women, but his appearance made you doubt his word. He was endlessly tall and correspondingly thin. His neck was like a stork's neck protruding from his uniform collar, and in it was a huge Adam's apple which made you giddy every time he talked, because you could not help watching it jump up and down. His head was a triangular affair at which a fistful of freckles had been flung haphazard. His eyes were small, green and piggy, with long white lashes, that twinkled craftily at the person to whom he was speaking. His hair was fiery red and stood out in all directions like thatch. His nose was his pride, the Lord knows why. When he opened his mouth you saw one tooth, alone in the middle of his upper jaw. He insisted that he had two others, only they were molars and well hidden. Where the quartermaster found boots for him was a mystery; he must have taken size fourteen.

The third of the quartet, Pluto, was a mountain of muscle. He was a Stabsgefreiter and his real name was Gustav Eicken. He had thrice been in a concentration camp, and with him it was not politics but good honest crime that had sent him there. He had been a docker in Hamburg, but he and some of his companions had done quite well for themselves by purloining a little of this and a bit of that from warehouses and ships. Then they were caught, and that cost them six months. Two days after his release the police came for him again. This time it was his brother, who had faked a passport, for which they chopped off his head. Pluto himself was kept in prison for nine months without being interrogated and was then thrown out without explanation, after being thoroughly beaten up. Three months later he had something worth calling a theft foisted upon him, that of a whole truckload of flour. Pluto knew nothing whatever about it, but they beat him up just the same and then confronted him with a man who swore that Pluto was the accomplice with whom he had stolen a flour truck. The trial lasted exactly twelve minutes and earned Pluto six years. He was in a
Fuhsbuttel
for two of them, then he was sent to the usual penal battalion, and in 1939 he rattled into Poland along with the rest of the 27th (Penal) Regiment. If you wanted to get Pluto really wild you only had to pronounce a sentence in which the words truck and flour occurred.

The fourth, Obergefreiter Anton Steyer, was never called anything but Titch. He was four feet eleven and a half inches. He came from Cologne, where he had worked in the perfume industry. A rather noisy altercation in a
Bierstube
had earned him and two companions three years in a concentration camp. The other two had gone long since, one falling in Poland, while the other had deserted, been caught and executed.

For six days our troop train rattled round Germany before we feached our destination, the picturesque south German town of Freiburg. We did not expect we would be allowed to stay there long. The rear is not the normal place for penal regiments, whose duty it is to be ever to the fore and to write the gory pages of history. There were wild rumors that we were to be sent to Italy and from there to Libya, but no one knew anything for certain. The first day was taken up being classified, with driving instruction and other pleasant duties. Our free time we spent pleasantly enough in the restaurant
Zum Goldenen Hirsch
, whose genial host was naturally called Schultze and, equally naturally, proved to be an old friend of Porta.

The wine was good, the girls willing and our voices were at any rate strong.

It was so long since I had taken part in that kind of activity, and such ghastly things lay close behind me, that I had considerable beginner's difficulties in burying the past, or rather in suspend ing it for a night, when the occasion offered. If I succeeded now and again, it was thanks to Porta, The Old Un, Pluto and Titch. They had been through the whole gamut of it, just as I had, and it had made toughs of them, and when there were wine, girls and song in the offing they gave not a damn for anything else.

At first, the railwayman refused. A good National-Socialist did not run errands for convict soldiers. But when Porta breathed something about a whole bottle of rum the railwayman forgot for a while that he was a superior being. He went across to the platform and our fat restaurateur Schultze, and shortly afterward returned with a bulky parcel, which he duly handed over. Porta gave him a look of infinite geniality.

"
You are a Party member, aren't you?" said Porta, with his most innocent expression
.

"Of course," the railwayman replied, and pointed to the large Party badge that graced the pocket of his uniform. "Why do you ask?"

Porta narrowed his gray, piggy eyes. "I shall tell you, dear fellow. If you are a Party member you will obey the Fuhrer's commandment that the good o/the whole comes before that of the individual. And therefore you will say something like this: 'Brave warriors of the 27th Fire-and-Sword Regiment! To help you to fight still better for Fuhrer and people, I, in my gratitude, will make you a gift of the bottle of rum that Herr Joseph Porta, by God's grace obergefreiter, in his infinite goodness wished to give to my unworthy person.' Wasn't it just that you were wanting to say? Weren't those very words trembling on the tip of your tongue? Dear fellow, we thank you from the bottom of our hearts, and now you may go."

Porta flung out his hand with a magnificent flourish, raised his cap and shouted, "Gruss Gott!"

As soon as the wretched Nazi railwayman had gone, furiously gnashing his teeth, we opened the parcel.

There were five bottles of wine; there was a whole roast of pork; there were two roast chickens, and there was
...