The Commissar (27 page)

‘“Amen!” thundered the padre.

‘“Coffin
lift
!” the Chief-of-Staff ordered, and six Leut-nants spit on their hands, hoisted the goodbye-box up on their shoulders, an’ staggered off out of church.

‘It was snowing. There is no doubt that the German God wanted to remind my general of wicked Russia where his first Army Corps got a couple of good beatin’-ups. The gun-carriage rolled off with my general, but it couldn’t drive him all the way to the hole. The garrison churchyard was on the top of some hills, you see. Up there was all the top ten, an’ a few more too, of the German leaders. Some of ’em had marshals’ batons with ’em in their wooden suits. But the six horses weren’t enough to pull the gun-carriage up the steep hills. Magda was the only one who could manage it. She struggled up, but only with a whole lot of puffing and panting. Now an’ again she’d blow a fart, and soon the whole funeral procession stank of horse-shit. A couple of
times she slid down on her haunches and covered all the pretty uniforms with slush. Bushes and weeping willows bent under the wet snow, and the steep churchyard paths were slippery. The Leutnants carrying the vampire-box had the greatest difficulty in getting up.

‘“Couldn’t that fucking sabre-swinging bastard have arranged to get himself buried on a sunny day?” snarled an infantry Leutnant, angrily.

‘“He always was a shit, a creeping Jesus,” whispered the officer behind him, a Leutnant of the motorcycle corps. “He never let us alone when he was alive, and now, even when he’s dead, he keeps us at it!”

‘“The bad fellow down in Hell’ll make it hot for him,” promised an artillery Leutnant on the other side of the coffin.

‘The pock-marked marble eagles stared blankly at the procession, and the angels with Prussian profiles looked around them proudly. Here in the garrison churchyard there could be no doubt of who was somebody and who was only a coolie. The last-named had only a miserable tin or wooden cross. Some had the honour of a steel helmet perched on top of the crazy cross. A company commander had a stone pillar with an Iron Cross engraved on it, while staff officers were awarded a granite stone with the bird on it, and a short note of the places in which they had played hero for the greedy Fatherland. Generals had tons of marble on their graves and cornerpieces decorated with lions or eagles with the wickedest faces a man could imagine. But the Field-Marshals broke all records. Granite was rolled over them in huge blocks, with batons chiselled out of marble and piled on top of a giant Iron Cross. What a trip we did have up that cemetery hill! Snow slashed’across our faces, and melted snow trickled down our uniform collars, and played Ice Age games down our spines.

‘On the first stop in the side of the hill I suddenly remembered that my general had ordered me to sing before they let him down into the hole. To get into the right frame
of mind I took a couple of good swigs of some
Slivovitz
I’d brought along in a hip-flask.

‘An Oberst from Führer HQfell on his bum and slid back down the hill. When he finally got back on his feet again and had untangled his spurs, he got his sabre caught between his legs and went down again.

‘I was walking a long way back in the procession. The Adjutant had ordered that. He said the higher officers would suffer from shortage of breath if they had to breathe the same air as me. On the seventh swig
slivovitz
, a belch a bit
too
loud came back. An Oberstleutnant turned round and looked at me in surprise. It was one of these Staff shits with red stripes down his pants. He said somethin’ or other to a shaky old Major-general who was tip-toein’ along as if his boots were full of shit. Now they both stared at me, with court-martials in their eyes. But by the time they’d got the paper in the machine an’ started to dictate I’d have been a long time back in Russia, and who the hell can find
anybody
in Russia.

‘The civvy top hats had all put up their umbrellas. God. how it did snow! My general and our monocle had certainly picked an ugly day for the last sleigh-ride. Under the snow-laden birches some leather-coated chaps in trilby hats were slinkin’ about, lookin’ as if they didn’t belong. A blind loony could’ve seen they were keeping an eye on things. Even my general’s Mazda could see that “the Devil and the Gestapo were listenin’”. Nobody said a word so long as the melancholy birches and the leather-coats were still in sight. A smell of corpses hung around us long after we’d passed ’em.

‘Part way up the steep path, where we could see the birches from above and only just catch a glimpse of the leather-coats, a high-born lady in black and wearin’ a veil, fell on her arse. She went all the way down like a bobsleigh out after a new world record, and straight in under the birches where the leather-coats were waiting, just longin’ to make an arrest. The black-clothed lady with the veil didn’t
come back to the procession any more. When we staggered past the war memorial for 1870-71, I happened to give another belch. It was quite painful, really. I should never’ve ate
Eisbein mit Sauerkraut
before going on the Valhalla march.

‘It was when we started up a very narrow path, more like a sort of staircase, made of logs and slippery as all hell, things really began to go wrong. A cavalry Leutnant amongst the bearers got into trouble with his spurs, and let out a screech. Then he went down, with the result than an engineer Leutnant doin’ the dead march just behind him went on his arse too. The whole procession halted wondering what was going to happen next, and I can tell you a lot
did
happen, an’ in a hell of a quick time. The bearer officers tried desperately to hang on to the wooden box, but it got away from ’em and off it went thunderin’ down the path with the six Leutnants after it.

‘“Stop him! Stop him!” they were all shoutin’. You’d have thought my general was a shoplifter spurtin’ off with his loot out of a supermarket.

‘A Lieutenant-general, a mummy from 1914, who was standin’ there rubbin’ his toothless gums together, got knocked over. He gave out a shrill howl, as if the whole of Verdun, and the Siegfried Line after it, had been dropped on top of him. His
pickelhauber
went up in the air, and was never seen again. It probably ended up danglin’ by the point from St Peter’s backside. The prehistoric sabre with its silk tassels flew off to one side as the general-box steamrollered over the uniformed mummy. The whole procession, with veils and top-hats and dress swords under their arms, went running offat top speed in front of my late general, to avoid getting their bones broken by the coffin coming rushing down from the heights. Magda was in the lead, spooked to death by the runaway coffin. Right to the end my general showed everybody he was a tanks officer who fully realized the value of a surprise attack. It was only when he got over on the other side of the tree-lined alley that he
dropped down through the gears. It was lucky the gate with the helmets on the pillars was open, or God knows what mightn’t have happened.

‘Down there the devil got into the six black artillery horses, who had been standin’ thinking over what Magda had told ’em about my general. Off they went with the gun-carriage, and the two postillions who were sitting slumped half-asleep on the backs of the two lead-horses went flyin’ off into the ditch. Where the hell the six blacks and the gun-carriage wound up I’ve no idea, but they made a nice thunderin’ noise away in the distance.

‘The Padre General and the Staff Padres sent up a quiet prayer, while the Adjutant wobbled his menur scars, and the Chief-of-Staff talked to the bearer officers in a manner which left them in no doubt that they were on their way to a front-line battalion. It isn’t
done
to throw a general around, on his way to the hero’s table in Valhalla, like
than
!

‘“They were holdin’ that wooden jacket like a nun holdin’ a seaman’s.” I said to an infantry Feldwebel, who was standing there alongside me chuckling with laughter.

‘The Adjutant gave us a shellackin’ and promised us we’d get to know him. A reserve bearer from tanks took the place of the artillery nance. He’d broke his foot, and was still lyin’ up there in a privet hedge groaning.

‘“Coffin, lift” commanded the Chief-of-Staff. “Funeral
party
! Slo-o-ow march!” And off the procession started again with the regulation sad faces in place. The drummers from the Infantry Band rattled out that thing “
Argonner Wald um Millernachi
”
*
. You could literally hear all the chalky military skeletons rattlin’ to attention in their graves!

‘Even in death my general showed his sense of style. He’d planned the whole burial himself, and it was certainly a funeral that’d be remembered. I’ve only heard of one that was better. That was an admiral’s funeral where a bridge broke in two and the whole procession, box. sailors an’ all, fell into the Kiel Canal. Fifteen of ’em drowned an’ the admiral sailed off out into Kiel Bay. There he run into a surfacin’ submarine. The sub’s crew was that frightened they fired on the admiral, thinking he was some new kind of secret weapon they’d collided with. The admiral went down with his coffin.

‘“Call this a funeral?” groused the Divisional Chief Clerk, an overweight Staff Feldwebel. “It’s more like a battle course with all the trimmings!”

‘The procession had thought that my general would have selected a grave plot on the first hill, but they were wrong. After a short rest and an inspection of a view of snow-covered misery we struggled down the first hill, and up the next. Two of the mummy warriors had strokes on the way.

‘The Pioneers from the
Landesschiitzen
stood to attention with shouldered spades and drawn faces. The hole they’d dug for my general was enormous. A special detachment had decorated the grave with oak branches and flowers in the national colours. The wreaths were enormous too; the biggest of them from
Grofaz
. The red scarf on it said: “The Führer thanks you!” It seemed a bit funny somehow, when you think it was the Führer that’d sent him suicidin’ off to Valhalla by his own hand.

‘The funeral procession ordered off according to regulations. Top hats to the left, and uniforms to the right.

‘Up came the Padre General again. He waved his fingers at us, and made a kind of a salute. Then he ranged a firm, both military and religious eye, in on the dark clouds.

‘“Our God in the highest,” he began, folding his thievin’ fingers on the hilt of the sabre, “receive this. . .” He didn’t get any further. By then he’d begun to slide down into my general’s hole.

‘The Orderly Officer, a creeping Jesus, who we suspected of bein’ a brownie, tried to stop the servant of God. Instead the perfumed officer went down into the hole with him. “Bang!” went the oak coffin. My general probably thought the artillery was usin’ him to sight in on.

‘The Pioneer soldiers began to laugh, but their laughter died away quick when the Adjutant booked the lot of ’em for front-line service.

‘“So long mate!” I whispered to the bloke standin’ nearest me. “You’ve lived most of your life! Enjoy what you’ve got left of it!”

‘He whined a bit, and said it was all a load of shit. I wouldn’t deny it.

‘The Padre General’d got his balance again, and the Orderly Officer had been fished up. So the bishop started off on his sermon again. My general had been a very great soldier, he said. An example to us all. He had always been ready to pile up a heap of bodies on the altar of the Fatherland, and the bullet-riddled heroes were all waiting to receive their great leader at the gates of Valhalla. “I bet they’ve got their hands full of some hefty clubs, ready to welcome him with,” I thought, kindly. But, of course, I didn’t say it out loud.

‘“This German warrior,” bawled the Padre General, sanctimoniously, in a voice which frightened all the churchyard pigeons to flight, “was a truly believing person, who followed the words of the Gospel. He was an officer of the Kaiser as he was of the Führer! Oh, Jesus Christ!” he went jabbering on, saluting, “here we bring to You a soldier, a man of steel, who without thought of self carried out the heavy orders which were laid upon him by the Supreme Warlord. Oh God, receive, him as the hero that he is!”

‘All the generals nodded in satisfaction. The Chief-of-Staff rattled his sabre applaudingly, and the Adjutant showed all his teeth in a grin, and ordered his
mensur
scars by the right.

‘The God of the Germans’ll open his peepers all right when he meets my general, I thought. It won’t be long before the whole of Paradise is made over into a tank manoeuvre area with all the trimmin’s. God and His Son’ll be hauling targets an’ acting as markers; St Peter’ll be on the cardboard clock and St Paul keeping check of the
ammo, so’s none of the angels get away with a couple of live’uns. Well, anyway, now I know how I’ll be spending my time in the Heavenly Halls!’

‘How?’ asks the Old Man, without understanding.

‘It’s obvious,’ grins Gregor. ‘I’ll be my general’s chauffeur again, of course, and get promoted to Feldwebel, soon as I kick it. I pinched the Divisional flag by the way, before I took off for the front. My general’ll be really glad when I turn up with it as a dead’un. I’m sure he’ll forgive me, even, for once having washed an’ ironed it.

‘“On your knees in prayer,” commanded the Padre General, and off we went praying, the lot of us. The Adjutant still managed to catch a couple of the bicycle fellers who weren’t prayin’. They were amusing themselves talking about a game the Finns play called “the grenade game”. A lot of Finns stand round in a ring and one of them pulls the pin of a grenade. Then they throw it from hand to hand. The bloke whose hand it explodes in has lost. It’s a most exciting game, but you have to be a Finn to really get bit by it.