Liquidate Paris (37 page)

'Equipment? What precisely do you mean by that? Arms, ammunition, tanks?'

'Yes, sir. All arms, all ammunition--and all nine of my tanks.' Mercedes smiled rather grimly. 'You may remember, sir, that I command a tank division with virtually no tanks.'

Von Choltitz snorted down the line.

'What is the object of this futile exercise, may I ask?'

'My orders are to cross the frontier at Strasbourg, where we shall re-group and take delivery of four hundred tanks that are straight out of the factory. The Generalfeldmarschall has allowed me a whole fortnight in which to get the men accustomed to the new machines.' Mercedes laughed again, and the assembled officers shook their heads and began muttering among themselves. 'He's not over-generous with his training period, but we shall do the best we can. You can expect to see us back in Paris by the end of a month.'

'General Mercedes, I repeat, I absolutely forbid you to leave France! I'm countermanding the orders of Feld-marschall Model, do you understand me? You can ignore them! I accept full responsibility for it. I shall be in touch with G.H.Q. immediately, informing them of my action. But I insist that you and your men remain here until I give further: orders!'

'I'm sorry,' repeated Mercedes, with a heavy sigh. Unless I receive a direct counter-order from General Model himself we shall be leaving in two hours' time.'

'You seem to forget, General, that it's I and not Model who is in command! Your division was sent to me specially by the Reichsfuhrer himself! If you dare to go against my orders, I'll have you up before a court martial, I swear to God I will!'

There was a silence over the line; broken only by an occasional gasp from the outraged von Choltitz.

'Are you still there, Mercedes?'

'Yes, sir.'

'I trust I've made myself clear?'

'Perfectly clear.'

'You take your men out of Paris before I give you the O.K. and I'll have you up for sabotaging the orders of the Fuhrer himself! God help me, so I will!'

'I believe you,' said Mercedes, smoothly.

A pause. Von Choltitz took a grip on himself and tried a more reasoning line of approach.

'The thing is, man, that without your troops I'm in no position to hold out for even a day against these damned Resistance people. They're killing my soldiers in broad daylight now! They've even shot one of my own ordnance officers! I tell you, Mercedes, that the situation is desperate.'

'I appreciate that, General. However, I repeat that I can only obey the orders I've been given by General Model.'

'You'll face the firing squad for this, Mercedes! I shall send in my report, never fear! To General Heitz, no less!'

'You must of course do whatever seems proper, sir. And now, if you'll excuse me, I have to start organizing our departure.'

Mercedes slowly replaced the receiver. He turned with a pensive expression towards his officers.

'We're still going?' asked one.

'Of course.' Mercedes smiled. 'I think I've said all that's necessary. You'd best be on your way now. The sooner we get out of here the better. And just remember--no one, repeat no one, must be allowed to stop us!'

The barracks looked like an ant hill under threat of attack. Men ran to and fro carrying clothes, arms, files of papers. There was the constant sound of vehicles starting up, other vehicles grinding to a halt. A reconnaissance company were sent out to find the nine tanks. Little John and Porta disappeared in the midst of the hubbub and paid an unexpected and thoroughly unwelcome visit on the Sergeant-Major.

'What the blazes do you two want?' he roared as soon as he caught sight of them.

'Sir,' said Porta, in his best military manner. 'Obergefreiter Porta and Obergefreiter Creutzfeld of the 5th Company, sir----'

'I know who you are, for Christ's sake! What have you come to bother me for? Can't you see I'm up to my neck in work?'

'We've come to offer our services, sir.'

'And what the hell good would you be to anyone?' sneered the Sergeant-Major.

'We're willing to help the revictualling party, sir.'

'Christ almighty! '

The Sergeant-Major's oaths rose to the ceiling, bounced off the walls, filled the entire room with sound. The cigar that he had been smoking was chewed to shreds.

'God help me, I wouldn't let you two clowns anywhere near a bloody revictualling party!'

'If that's the way you feel about it----' began Porta, very much offended.

'It is the way I feel about it! It's the way anybody but a complete moron would feel about it! If I had my way you'd be left behind in Paris and handed over to the French! A more incompetent, useless----'

Porta and Little John, with a great show of dignity, removed themselves from the Sergeant-Major's presence. They took their wounded pride to seek shelter with a friend of Porta's, the medical orderly Obergefreiter Ludwig, who was installed in splendid solitude in the isolation wing of the infirmary. They stood with longing eyes at the window, watching other, more fortunate, men loading food supplies on to the back of a lorry.

'Look at that lot!' Little John lowered his voice to an awed whisper.

Crates of tinned meat, of bacon, of chocolate----

'Coffee!' said Ludwig, gloatingly.

'Cognac!' yelped Little John.

'Take a look at that fat idiot down there.' Ludwig pointed towards a perspiring soldier bent sideways beneath the weight of a heavy packing case. 'What
do
you suppose he's got in there?'

'Don't know, but I've a bleeding good mind to find out!' Porta scratched thoughtfully between the cheeks of his bottom. 'Whatever it is, you can bet your sweet life
it's
eatable! And anything that's eatable is worth nicking...'

'They catch you knocking off any of that lot, it'll cost you your head,' said Ludwig, gravely. 'Only last week they shot a couple of artillery chaps for pinching a case of tobacco.'

'The way I do it,' said Porta, 'they never even know the stuff's gone. That's the trouble with some soldiers today: they don't know how to do a job and get away with it. When I first joined the Army, a soldier wasn't a soldier if he didn't do a bit of nicking now and then. You picked up the technique quick enough. Nowadays they're so lily-livered, some of 'em, they could spend a whole day locked up alone in the food stores and not even lift a couple of packets of fags.'

'There's a difference,' objected Ludwig, 'between a couple of packets of fags and a bloody great crate full of God knows what.'

'You want to watch how I do it?' challenged Porta. 'Want me to teach you a trick or two?'

From his pocket he took a hand-grenade. Slowly he made his way out into the courtyard, stood idly for a moment or two, awaited his opportunity and slipped unnoticed behind a large pile of crates. On the far side of the courtyard were drums of petrol, waiting to be loaded on to one of the lorries. They made, an excellent target for Porta's hand-grenade. The whole lot roared upwards in a solid wall of flame and the men of the loading party scattered for their lives in all directions. Next second, Porta had swung himself on to the tail board of a lorry and was hefting crates towards Little John and Ludwig, who, with their qualms overcome by cupidity, had rushed out to lend a helping hand. Five cases they managed to secrete in the infirmary before the courtyard became, quite literally, too hot to hold them. They shut themselves up with their booty and watched out of the window the leaping flames and thick black smoke.

Meanwhile, the entire barracks was in an uproar of terror and speculation. Groups of men turned and fought each other through sheer panic. A nervous sentry fired on one of his own side and killed him. Everywhere men believed that the F.F.I, were attacking in force. The final death roll amounted to four, with seventeen men wounded, some badly.

In the midst of the upheaval, Porta and Little John had carried away four of the crates to 5th Company quarters.

'For God's sake!' exclaimed the Old Man, at once putting two and two together. 'You're nothing but common criminals, the pair of you! It's all very well nicking a few extra rations now and then, but chucking hand-grenades about the place and then looting all this amount of stuff is carrying things altogether too far. I'm sick to death of both of you.'

The Old Man turned away in disgust.

'The trouble with you,' said Porta, amiably, 'you're too damned honest. The way I see it, the State stole the best years of our youth from us and we're entitled to steal it back in kind. Stealing from friends is different. Stealing from the State's what anybody's got a right to do. Leastways,' he added, 'that's how it seems to me.'

'There's no call to go chucking bloody hand-grenades about,' grumbled the Old Man.

'Couldn't have got the grub otherwise,' said Porta, cheerfully.

Little John had already opened a tin of sardines. He speared one of them with a penknife and took it across to the Old Man.

'Here,' he said, 'have a sardine. Fit for heroes, these are, and I reckon you're a hero all right.'

We moved across Paris in a tight-knit column, from the barracks to the Porte d'Orleans. The city was in a state of ferment. Now that we were retreating, everyone wanted to have a go at us and the snipers were out in force. A shot fired from an attic window seriously wounded one of our N.C.O.s. A small party at once detached itself and invaded the house in question. It was empty, apart from two very small boys caught hiding in the attic with an old German rifle. Shaking with terror, they were pulled up into our lorry to await the decision of General Mercedes. He took only a few minutes to make up his mind: in spite of their extreme youth, the boys were to be shot. They were reprieved only to the extent that the execution was not to take place until we were well out of Paris. To shoot them in full view of the enraged crowds of people would be to ask for trouble. And besides, it would be unwise to stop the entire column in the centre of the town.

Half an hour later, under the horrified gaze of the two boys, the wounded man died.

'You see?' Porta forced them to take note of the fact 'Perhaps that'll teach you to play around with guns. Eh?'

He slapped them both very soundly across the cheeks and made them sit looking at the dead man for the rest of the journey.

By the time we had put a reasonable amount of distance between ourselves and Paris it was growing dusk and we camped down for the night. The execution was postponed until morning. There was great fury on the part of Major Hinka when it was subsequently discovered that the two boys had vanished from the scene. Porta, as usual, was at once cast as the guilty party. Heide claimed that he had woken in the night to see Porta returning alone to the wood that we were camped in. It was almost certain that he had led the boys off into the darkness and told them to run for their lives. Both Gregor and Gunther, on the other hand, swore that the boys had still been there at least a couple of hours after this incident: The matter was dropped for lack of time and lack of evidence, but I think none of us had any doubt that Heide's story was the true version.

Barcelona had somewhere dug up a radio set. He had at last managed to pick up an English-speaking voice, and we eagerly made a note of the wavelength. Thanks to some indefatigable knob-twiddling, he had come upon the command post of the U.S. 3rd Armoured Division. We at once put ourselves in communication with them.

'Hallo Yankees!' yelled Barcelona excitedly. 'Can you hear me? How are things at your end? You getting on O.K.?'

'Hallo Fritz! We're fine, how's yourselves?' rejoined a voice in fairly good German.

'Not so bad,' said Barcelona. 'Hey, tell me, Yank, you got anyone at your end who could answer a rather burning question for us?'

'What's that, Fritz?'

'We've been trying ever since the bloody war began to find out the name of Odin's pig.'

'Odin's
pig
?'

'That's right.'

There was a pause.

'You did say, Odin's pig?'

'That's it,' confirmed Barcelona.

Another pause.

'Hell, is this some kind of a trick question?' asked the American-German voice, suspiciously.

'Not at all!' retorted Barcelona. 'It's a genuine thirst for knowledge!'

'Well, hang on, I'll ask the other guys.'

We hung on, and it was not many minutes before the Yank was back again.

'Hi, you still there, Fritz? As it happens, you're in luck. One of our boys is a Norwegian.'

'You mean you've got the answer?'

'I surely have, but I got one condition to make----'

'What's that, Yank?'

'Just simply this: I give you the name of your pig, you surrender straight away and put an end to this damn war. O.K.?'

'O.K. by me,' agreed Barcelona. 'Matter of fact, we're on our way to Adolf right now, trying to talk a bit of sense into him... What's the name of this pig, then?'

' "Golden Brush", he was called, and he belonged to Freya, not Odin. Least, that's what our expert tells me.'

A great cheer went up at this. We at once began contacting the other units to tell them the glad news.

'Hallo, Dietrich! We've got the name of Odin's pig! '

'Hallo, Heinz? You know that pig we were on about----'

'Hallo, Wolf! We've found out the name of Odin's pig. Only it's not Odin's, it belongs to Freya, and it's called "Golden Brush".'

'Like hell!' said Wolf. 'I've remembered it myself, and it's nothing like "Golden Brush". Matter of fact it's called Saerimner. And it belongs to Odin all right.'

There followed a passionate disputation. The U
.S
. 3rd Armoured Division clung stubbornly to the name Golden Brush. They didn't care for Saerimner and claimed that it had Nazi overtones. Wolf, on the other hand, accused them of making up Golden Brush and trying to con us into believing them. The matter never was resolved.

The column moved on. We crossed the Rhine in a sudden cloudburst, with grey skies and heavily falling rain. All along the route were ruined buildings, heaps of rubble, charred remains; entire townships razed to the ground, the inhabitants living in holes like rats. Sometimes we were accompanied by throngs of starving children, stretching out matchstick arms and calling up to us for bread. Everywhere there was the stench of war.