Liquidate Paris (6 page)

'A nice spell in hospital----'

'You're not going to die, it's the end of the war----'

'You'll be O.K. when we get you back to base----'

'Can you hear the bells? It's the end of the war!'

The end of the war, and very soon the end of life itself for our Lieutenant. He died within seconds, and we retraced our steps through the minefield, between the white markers that he had helped set up, carrying him shoulder high; a funeral procession with the triumphant bells as our accompaniment. Little John walked at the head. Porta brought up the rear, playing a melancholy tune on his flute. 'The journey of the wild swans', it was; one of the melodies that Claus had loved best.

The Russian, Lieutenant Koranin of the 439th East Battalion, together with his company of Tartars, had made an astonishing discovery: in an American landing-craft, lying by the side of three dead officers, was a document case crammed full of papers. Koranin instantly took possession of the document case and hurried off with it to his company commander, who with equal promptitude decided that it was a matter for General Marcks, commander of the 84th Army, to deal with. Accordingly the two men went off together with the precious document case.

The General at once appreciated the value of Koranin's discovery, and he lost no time in passing on the news to the Eighth Army. The Eighth Army, to his surprise and indignation, laughed in his face and gratuitously informed him that he was talking nonsense. For a while General Marcks was too stunned with anger to do more than sit and fume, while his aide-de-camp stood tactfully to one side and himself read through the contents of the wretched document case. Both men were firmly of the opinion that the papers were genuine.

'Do you think, perhaps, sir, the Secret Service...?'

The General did. The Secret Service should be informed immediately. No doubt about it, the papers were of the utmost importance. The next step was to contact Generalfeldmarschall von Rundstedt and tell him that he, General Marcks, had in his possession the Allies' top secret plans relating to the Normandy invasion. The plans clearly demonstrated the truth of what until now had been purely a matter for conjecture: that the recent landings were only a prelude to the full-scale invasion which everyone had been anticipating for the past four years.

'Rubbish!' screamed von Rundstedt, and slammed down the telephone.

He remained adamant. The plans were fakes. A deliberate trap. Had been planted there to catch just such gullible fools as General Marcks. Come to that, the landings themselves were intended to mislead. Von Rundstedt had his own ideas on the subject. Certainly the Allies were planning an invasion, any idiot knew that, but the Normandy landings were not the prelude to it. They had been laid on as an elaborate red herring.

'Relieve General Marcks of his command! ' ordered von Rundstedt, irritably. 'The man's an idiot and a dreamer and has no right to be in charge of an army. Get rid of him.'

THE HILL OF GOLGOTHA

It was night. We were making our way back along the main road, three columns of us, to position 112. A damp North Sea mist hung in the air and worked
its
way under our clothes and our skin, down our throats and into our very bones. We were marching towards the rear of one of the columns. The vanguard had long ago disappeared into the mist. It was some time since we had last seen them and we took their continued presence at the head of the column merely on trust.

Porta, for once, was not talking of food. He had fallen back on his second subject of conversation and was relating one of his interminable tales about whores. The Old Man was bringing up the rear, marching stolidly onwards with his head sunk between his shoulders, the inevitable pipe protruding from the corner of his mouth, his helmet hanging by its strap from his rifle. We always called him, always had called him, the Old Man. Right from the start. In fact he was Feldwebel Willy Beier, our section leader. He hardly looked the Army's idea of the perfect soldier, crashing along in a pair of big black boots several sizes too large for him, with his shabby uniform and his week's growth of beard, but he was the best section leader I'd ever known.

We turned off the road and marched through what had presumably, a few days back, been a fairly extensive wood. But now the trees were flattened, the earth churned up by a succession of tank chains; the remains of burnt-out wrecks, abandoned jeeps, overturned trucks, lay scattered thickly over the whole area. No less thick were the piles of human debris.

'Jesus, this lot copped a
packet! ' muttered Little John
, for
once in his
life sounding almost awestruck.

Porta paused for one merciful second in his tale of drama and whoredom.

'Heavy shells,' he said.

'It's a new type of mortar grenade,' contradicted Heide, always up to date with the latest information. 'They evaporate on your uniform and burn you.'

'Oh, lovely, lovely!' said Porta, clapping his hands. 'I can't wait to try one!'

Charred bodies were certainly thick underfoot. And there were other sights, too, to give you a thrill. Propped against the trunk of a tree was a naked body minus its legs. Stray limbs abounded. Little John came across a severed head, still encased in its helmet, and took a hefty swing at it as if it had been a football. The Legionnaire, not usually the most impressionable of men, put a hand over his mouth and turned the other way.

'There are some things,' he told us, 'that just turn my stomach. And the sight of human heads bouncing along on their own like that happens to be one of them.'

'It's like a butcher's shop in here,' remarked Gregor, with a rare flight of imagination, 'joints of meat hanging everywhere.'

'More like hell's kitchen if you ask me,' said Porta. 'I bet you there's enough roasted meat lying about here to feed half the German Army for a week.'

'Shut your filthy mouths!' snapped the Old Man, suddenly.

We fell uncomfortably silent. Porta was just beginning to inquire whether he had 'ever told us that one about----' when the earth rumbled and shook beneath our feet and there was the shattering sound of an explosion. Instinctively, we fell as a body on to our knees.

'Fags out! Company scatter! '

Hastily, we scattered. A spout of flame shot brilliantly into the sky over our heads. It must be coming from the Dora batteries, the batteries of rockets with twelve cannons.

In single file, bent double, we crept along in the shelter of one of the drystone walls that abounded in that part of the country. The enemy were making life more difficult than was strictly necessary by changing their position after each fresh salvo, laboriously towing the guns to a new spot and blasting off at us from some unexpected vantage point.

'Get a move on, can't you?' hissed the Old Man. 'They're still coming closer. They'll be on us any moment.'

There was every justification for his remark: immediately behind us rose a cloud of dense smoke, shot through with leaping crimson flames. Judging from-the ghastly howls and shrieks that came to us from the other side of the cloud, it seemed that many poor devils had copped it.

We scuttled along by the side of the wall. The protection it gave was more psychological than actual, but fortunately one didn't stop to think about that at the time. A front-line observer, an artillery lieutenant, suddenly emerged from a shell hole and angrily confronted us. He was covered in mud and blood and had a raw open wound on his forehead.

'What the devil's going on here?' he demanded. 'Who's in charge of this load of cretins?'

Oberleutnant Lowe, who had replaced our late Lieutenant Brandt, shook with anger in his shoes.

'Who are you calling a load of cretins?'

The Lieutenant raised both hands in a gesture of despair.

'Your bloody company, of course! Can't you get the hell out of here, you're drawing the enemy fire on us!'

Crouched down behind our drystone wall, we followed the discussion with our usual interest.

'He wants a good kick up the arse,' declared Porta, in loud tones. 'What's he think we're doing here? Playing bleeding tiddlywinks?'

The rocket battery was in position a few hundred metres away, over on the far side of the road. The missiles were coming across thick and fast, and the umbrella of fire lit up the misty air for kilometres around.

We remained in the illusory shelter of the wall, huddled together, each man pressed close to his companions. The flames were not far off us, now. They were gathering force on the opposite side of the road and would doubtless soon be swooping across and engulfing us. Lieutenant Lowe passed the word along that we were moving again, single file; by which he stressed that he meant one by one and not an undisciplined scramble for front-line places.

Obediently we moved off. We had gone only a short distance when, glancing back, I saw the billows of flame rolling across the road and settling themselves down to heat against the wall that had been our shelter. For a moment the figure of a man was outlined against the glare; then slowly it threw up its arms and fell back into the blaze. It was the arrogant lieutenant of artillery. Had he not wasted so much time attempting to put Lt. Lowe in his place, he might yet have been alive. But that's the way it went, as Porta cheerfully reminded me.

I recalled another occasion when things had gone well for us and badly for someone else, through the purest chance, and Porta had made the same remark. Our group had been sheltering in a wood in company with some men from one of the engineering corps. It was pouring with rain and after a bit we were as wet as we should have been out in the open. And Little John, as usual, grew impatient with prolonged inactivity.

I've had enough of this! ' he declared. 'Can't we get a move on?'

And so we had got a move on, and before we had gone fifty metres there had been a loud explosion and both trees and engineers had been blown to fragments.

And another time, I remembered, we had installed ourselves in an abandoned house in some village or other, I forget where it was, and were playing a round of cards with a group of anti-tank boys. It was sheer luck that had caused Porta's eye to wander to that particular corner of the room where two wires could be seen running along the skirting board.

'Hang on,' he said. 'What's that over there?'

Being both by nature and experience a suspicious-minded lot, we at once downed cards and began tracing the path of the wires. The anti-tank lads remained in their seats, cursing us for interrupting the game. Seconds later we were following the wires out of the back door; and seconds after that, before we had traced them to their source, the house went up in a sheet of flame.

But that's the Way it goes.

We reached position 112 at last and duly took over from the company we had been detailed to relieve. They were S.S. men, belonging to the division of Hitler Jugend, l2th Panzergrenadieren Division. None of them, apart from the officers, was more than seventeen years old, but in the last three days these silent, stiff-backed boys had become old, old men, their faces shrunken, their shoulders hunched round their ears, their eyes glazed and withdrawn. Over half their company had fallen in battle.

At our arrival, without a word they packed' up their belongings and stood waiting for the signal to depart. They had even cleared up their spent cartridges. They were a model of perfection, and it was the saddest sight in the world. We watched them as they went, and wonderingly shook our heads. Only Heide was favourably impressed.

'There's discipline for you! ' he said, admiringly. 'What soldiers those kids are! Mind you, they should be with the officers they've got... Did you see? They all had the Iron Cross, 1st Class, every man jack of them... God, what I wouldn't give to be a section leader with that lot! '

'You're welcome,' said Porta, laconically. 'It's downright uncanny, if you ask me.'

'To hell with bloody heroes,' added Little John, for good measure.

We stood staring after them as the column of old men stepped out, two by two, over the hill and out of sight. Their uniforms were immaculate, their bearing was military, their equipment glistened and gleamed through the mist--all this, after three days of hard fighting! To all of us except Heide the sight was almost unbearably pathetic. To Heide, it seemed perfection itself. His eyes shone with fervour and he seemed unable to grasp how the rest of us were feeling. .

'Oh, go and tag on behind them, if that's what you want,' growled Porta. 'Who the hell's stopping you, you bloody warmonger?'

Heide remained unmoved by Porta's words. In all probability, he never even heard them. He was lost in his own private dreams of glory. In his imagination he already was an officer with a crack regiment. I saw his hand wander up to his throat, doubtless feeling for the Croix de Chevalier that should one day adorn it. Little John shook his head in disgust. Impatiently he snatched up a couple of twigs and bound them together into the shape of a cross.

'Here! Try this for size! '

Heide stared at him with vacant eyes and gave him a rather beautiful, if totally vacuous, smile. Little John turned and spat.

It began to rain and the cold drops trickled forlornly off our helmets and dribbled down our backs. What a bloody awful climate it was, in this part of the country I Fog, rain, wind, mud--mud in particular. You couldn't move without getting covered in the stuff. It was a thick, sticky, red clay and it clung stubbornly to uniforms and equipment and left a crimson pall over everything.

Shortly before dawn, the enemy attacked. They were unaware that the S.S. troops that had held the position for the past three days had been relieved and we didn't let them come near enough to find out. We had our own obstinate discipline when under fire, bitterly learnt on the Russian front.

The opposition seemed to consist mainly of a Canadian regiment. We had an especial loathing for the Canadians and their sadistic ways. We had heard tell that they used to tie up their prisoners with barbed wire and attach them to tanks, and we knew for a fact that if you fell into their hands the very best you could hope for was a bullet through the back of the neck.