The Commissar (15 page)

‘You’re to report to the OC,’ says the Old Man, tiredly. ‘That means now!’

‘Who says you’ve laid eyes on me?’ asks Porta, casually. ‘Löwe’s only a sodding officer. That lot can wait till I’ve got time for ’em, and time’s what I haven’t got enough of just now!’

‘You’re to report to company,’ sighs the Old Man, ‘whether you’ve got time or not! Call company,’ he orders Gregor, who has communications duty.

‘Connection broken, ‘Porta shakes with laughter, as he wrenches the telephone cable loose. ‘Come on Tiny, we got to get food on!’

We eat and eat – for four hours together. Grease runs down from our mouths on to our chests. In between we take a trip outside to make room for more. We are so ravenously hungry that we are unable to stop eating.

Gregor almost chokes himself. Porta recommends that we hang him up by his heels. He coughs up a large chunk of pork.

We do not stop eating until only the gnawed bones remain. Gasping and belching, we sprawl on the floor, totally gorged with food.

War is a disease
.

Soen Hassel

The train was struck by a bomb only a few yards away from the shelter of the tunnel. The railwaymen and the tom-off boiler of the locomotive were thrown 400 yards away into the ripe corn
.

The leading carriage stood up vertically in the air. The next in line had been squeezed into the semblance of a closed concertina
.

The Jabos came back. The leading machine dropped phosphorus bombs. Incendiary sticks skipped across the Red Cross cars. In seconds they had become a roaring sea of flame. Most of the patients burned to death in their beds
.

The Jabos turned and swept the cornfield with their machine-guns. Before leaving they dropped the last of their incendiaries. The corn blazed up
.

The black smoke of the conflagration was visible all day, even from many miles away. Mot a single man or woman on the hospital train escaped alive
.

*
Ssvaeoda:
Russian for freedom.

*
Very freely:

We’re from many a distant homeland.

But we feel no loss in our hearts.

For we have not lost our homeland

It is here before Madrid . . .

*
The Blood Order: An early
SA
decoration

*
Panjemajo, grabit
. Russian: Understand arsehole?

*
Stovepipe: Bazooka

‘I don’t
like
this joint,’ grumbles Porta, pulling the cork from a bottle of vodka with his teeth. He takes a long swig of the fiery spirit and wipes his mouth on his sleeve. ‘Is this a billet to give
us
? Not even a rotten stove! It’s cold as an Eskimo’s arsehole! An’ they call us the
herrenvolk
! Don’t make me die laughing!’

‘Section leaders to OC,’ sings out the clerk, Gefreiter Voss, sticking his pointy nose in to us through a broken window.

‘The devil,’ growls the Old Man, sourly, buttoning up his long winter cloak, and slinging his machine-pistol over his shoulder, muzzle down. ‘Look after the shop while I’m gone,’ he turns to Barcelona, ‘and I want that SMG in position. Those wicked sods could be on us again before we knew it!’

His breath clouds out around him, as he wheels away on his clumsy bow-legs through the deep sludge. His hands, contrary to all regulations, are pushed down deeply into his pockets. Anyone seeing him rolling along with his cap pulled down on his head, round-shouldered, bow-legged and wearing clumsy infantry boots, would think him no more than a stupid yokel. But they would be terribly wrong. In reality he is a deadly dangerous, battle-trained soldier, with a quite superhuman faculty of calmness, despite his frayed nerves. His face resembles a squashed orange, but still, somehow, engenders confidence. He is an old trenchrat, who doesn’t trust many people; and that is one of the most important reasons for his having got us out of the dirtiest corners imaginable. And with amazingly few losses.

A little grey cat follows him, meowing, part of the way.

He kicks the door of the company office open disrespectfully. Here Hauptfeldwebel Hoffmann reigns, fat and vain as a South American dictator. He is wearing a tankman’s black uniform, despite the fact that it is reserved for line troops and is not for echelon.

‘You’re supposed to knock three times before you come in here,’ says Hoffmann angrily, swinging half-round and then back again in his American swivel chair. ‘This isn’t a brothel, man, it’s Company HQ. This is where the brains live!’

‘Brains?’ grins the Old Man, in an insulting tone. ‘You’re sitting on ’em! Don’t get too blown up, will you! Just remember we’re short of men up the line. I might just ask for you down there with me, so you’d get busted to an ordinary Feldwebel an’ lose your two silver stripes!’

‘
You
get
me
out in your lousy section?’ jeers Hoffmann. ‘No Beier, I’m this company’s Hauptfeldwebel, and I’m gonna stay being that as long as there
is
a 5 Company. They need an empty-headed key-swinger to look after the prisoners at Germersheim. Fancy the job?’

‘Shit!’ growls the Old Man, tramping on in to Oberleutnant Löwe without knocking.

‘
Grüss Gott
,’ Löwe greets him, leaning back in his rickety, creaking chair. ‘Like a “little black” to warm you up?’

‘Yes,
please
,’ answers the Old Man, filling a mug half-full with coffee and topping it off with vodka. He throws his helmet down on the trampled earth of the floor, sits down on a hand-grenade box, and stretches out his legs and his filthy boots in front of him. He leans his machine-pistol up against a table leg.

‘You look tired, Beier,’ says Löwe. ‘Been rough the last couple of months, hasn’t it?’

‘We’ve had our hands full,’ says the Old Man, blowing on his coffee. ‘That bloody 2 Section’ll soon have me climbin’ up the wall. No sooner we’ve got away from the blasted war than I’m standin’ there with me mpi at the ready keepin’ the rotten lot away from the temptations of the soddin’ flesh.
Sometimes I can’t hardly understand what’s going on. About a week ago Unteroffizier Julius Heide goes raving, an’ mows down a couple of hundred civvies with his machine-gun. Even if I was to charge him for it nothing’d happen, except me gettin’ a bawling-out from the NSFO. That spit an’ polish follower o’ the book, Unteroffizier Julius Heide’s a valued member of the party, so why shouldn’t he get his funnies murdering a few women and children! They’re only
untermensch
, anyway. Soon as we’re finished with the murdering an’ killing, Porta and Tiny enjoys themselves with a couple of willing Russian girls. What happens? They get punished for fraternizing! The laws in this war are really
strange
!’

‘I didn’t hear what you just said, Beier,’ smiles Oberleutnant Löwe. ‘Neither of us wants a court-martial, do we?’

The four other section commanders enter, and bark out short reports.

‘More than half the company’s gone up in smoke, ‘Löwe says, looking at the casualty lists in front of him. ‘So! Until further notice we remain inactive. There’s fresh supplies and replacements on the way to us. But don’t take that inactive business too seriously. There’s strict orders from regiment to keep the men constantly on the move. Otherwise they’ll get up to all sorts of monkey-tricks. Herr Oberst Hinka wants no complaints, either civil or military.’ Löwe throws a glance at the Old Man, who is still sitting on the grenade box. warming his hands on his coffee. ‘And I’m thinking of 2 Section in particular. Feldwebel Beier, and also in particular of those two madmen Obergefreiter Josef Porta and Obergefreiter Wolfgang Creutzfeldt. And. while we are on the subject of 2 Section, we’ve received a long message from Army HQ.’ Löwe throws three closely-written folio sheets over to the Old Man.

‘That’s to do with Gefreiter Albert. They want us to wash him white!’

The four other section leaders double up with laughter.
Only the Old Man and Löwe remain serious and straight-faced.

‘There’s nothing to laugh at, ‘Löwe tells them, buttoning his greatcoat. ‘This is a very annoying business. Answer it Beier, in a manner which can bring them to understand that a negro cannot be washed white. Before I forget it, there’s another annoying matter between the NSFO and Joseph Porta. I thought I’d be able to stop it, but, unfortunately, it’s already gone to regiment. Division’s heard about it too. If the worst happens it could cost Porta his head. A bitch of a case. You
must
keep your people in order, Beier. I’m punishing your section by giving them burial duty. Don’t forget, now, Germans and Russians are not to be buried in the same grave, and civilians are to be buried on their own.
Don’t
make the same mess of it as you did last time, when they mixed officers and other ranks together. Officers get their own individual graves, and such graves are specially decorated. The men go into a common grave, and may be buried in three layers, as long as there is a 30 cm layer of earth between them.’

‘Lord help us!’ mumbles the Old Man. grinding his teeth. He fills up his mug again with hot coffee.

Almost an hour later, his pipe billowing smoke, he tramps back down the muddy, tracked-up road.

The cat meets him again, and stand up on its back legs, pawing at his trousers.

‘All right for
you
,’ he says, scratching his neck. ‘You haven’t got 2 Section! You’ve only got yourself. Shit, that’s what it is. pussy!’ He becomes more and more angry with the section, the closer he gets to the billet. ‘I’ll
bury
’em!’ he promises himself. ‘God damn it, if I don’t. I’ll make ’em crawl round the world three times, an’ it’ll be over the North Pole an’ the South Pole.
That
ought to cool ’em down a bit!’

Fuming inside, he kicks open the door, throws his machine-pistol down in a corner, and looks angrily around. He sees immediately the almost unbelievable disorder in the great hall.

Untermensch
Albert is having a furious verbal battle with
Herrenvolk
Heide. ‘You’re always after me, Julius, but now I want to know the reason why,’ snorts Albert. ‘Even if I am black I’m just as much a German as you are, and I’ve got all the rights of a German. So if you’re after me for bein’ a Reich-nigger then I’m gonna report you for it!’

‘If
you’re
a German, then
I’m
a Chinaman,’ rages Julius, contemptuously. ‘I’ll tell you what you are, you black ape! You’re a charcoal cartoon of a human being, a trained, performing man-eater, who chews bones for dinner like a hound-dog!’

‘’E’s more’n that!’ trumpets Tiny. ‘’Is gran’dad was a French Yid from Senegal, with a bleedin’ great ‘ook of a snitch, an’ the skin of’is cock cut off. ‘E used to clean up in the synagogue every Thursday!’

‘It’s a lie,’ howls Albert, insultedly. ‘It was my
great-
grandpappy was a French Jew, and he
married
a girl from Senegal!’

‘Now I’ve heard everything,’ gasps Heide. He is on his feet and over by Albert in three long strides. He stands over him with legs straddled and fists planted on his hips, stinking of Unteroffizier.

‘
Are
you a Yid? Answer, you black mongrel, or I’ll crack your skull wide open, as I have the right to do!’

Albert creeps further down into his ginger furs, in terror.

‘My
great
-grandpappy was a French Jew. I’m a German,’ he whines, fumbling for his machine-pistol. Before he can get hold of it Heide kicks it clattering out of his reach.

‘
French
Jew!’ sneers Heide. ‘There are no
French
Jews. Either you’re a Jew or you’re not a Jew. You’ve sneaked your way into the German
Wehrmacht
under false premises. God knows what the Racial Commission’ll say when I report this.’

‘They’ll kick you out,’ grins Albert, assuredly. ‘an’ they’ll tell you, man, to go wipe your Naziarse on your report! I’ve
been
in front of ’em, an’ they’ve looked down my throat an’ up my arsehole, an’ measured my face, an’ held me by the bollocks an’ pulled my prick for me. And they declared me
80% German when they’d finished. I was close to gettin’ put in the SS, where I might’ve ended up an officer!’

‘What
is
all this piss you’re talkin’,’ shouts the Old Man, irritably, pushing Heide angrily to one side. ‘I don’t want any trouble with you lot, whether you’re Jews or whether you’re Germans. You keep yourself to yourself and go polish your machine-pistol, Julius! You’re nothing but trouble to me. And you, Albert, go out and wash your face and make sure you rinse it several times! That’s an order from Corps HQ, and you come back in here to me after and prove your black colour’s
real
! You, Barcelona, you’re guard commander for the next three days!’

‘Why?’ asks Barcelona, his mouth dropping open. ‘What’ve
I
done?’

‘Saluted the General when you shouldn’t have, you sloppy fool! Do it again and they’ll put you inside! Porta! Where the hell’s that madman got to?’

‘Cookin’ food.’ answers Tiny. ‘Pork chops à l’Alba!’

‘I don’t
care
where his blasted pork chops’re from,’ rages the Old Man, flinging his steel helmet down on the floor. ‘He’s halfway inside Germersheim, an’ they’ll hang him there! Nobody goes anywhere, you hear! Everybody stays here! In an hour from now you parade for grave duty, and in the meantime you clean this place up. Nails in the walls for uniforms an’ equipment an’ regimentally hung up. Beds made up out from the wall at equal distances. Helmets on gasmask pouches accordin’ to regulations. No missing nails in your boots!’