The Commissar (6 page)

‘Sit down then,’ says the Old Man, indifferently. ‘There’s a lot of things
I
won’t stand for. Come on,
Panzer Marsch!
And keep your traps shut, too! I can’t stand the sound of your voices. And you, Porta, stop insulting Adolf!’

The night is dark. Snow and rain fall at the same time. It is cold on the way to Nikolajev.

We stop in the middle of a huge factory. It is Porta, of course, who discovers it to be a vodka distillery. Half an hour later we are stoned out of our minds. We reel around, falling over one another, pour vodka over our own heads and lick it into our mouths like cats lapping up cream. We dip our bread in vodka, and become more drunk than ever.

A Feldwebel dies of alcohol shock. A Gefreiter sets fire to himself, to convince a friend that vodka can be ignited just as easily as petrol. We try to put it out by throwing more vodka on him, and laugh foolishly at his screams of pain.

Some of 3 Section come along, dragging four women with them. They throw them across a packing table.

An infantry Feldwebel threatens them with a court-martial. Even in the madness of war there has to be some order and discipline. The punishment for rape is hanging. This is the case in every reasonably civilized army. Nobody listens to him. He is pushed to one side, and drunken soldiers threaten to cut his throat.

‘Pricks at the ready!’ orders an Obergefreiter with a bloodstained bandage round his head. He throws himself lustfully on top of a half-naked screaming woman, old enough to be his great-grandmother. ‘
Cunt
!’ he roars, and collapses, helplessly drunk, between her thrashing legs. Others pull him away from her and fight to take his place.

We wake up next morning depressed, and with the most horrible, hangovers. Soon the military police arrive with
their shiny helmets, and the crescent emblem dangling on their chests.

The court-martial is over in four and a half minutes. Eight soldiers dangle, each at the end of his rope. The whole battalion is paraded to see the show. The dead men hang there, with strangely elongated necks, wearing only their uniform trousers. Greatcoats and boots have been taken from them. There is a shortage of such things. They hang there still, turning and swinging on the end of their ropes, as we rattle past, mud churning up from our clattering tracks, on the way to Nikolajev.

‘
C’est la guerre
! Come death, come sweet death,’ hums the Legionnaire, sardonically, from the turret of his vehicle.

‘A dear fuck that was,’ sighs Porta. ‘Better to pay for it in coin of the realm, if they won’t do it for love.’

‘There’s more’n you’d think get it for takin’ cunt what ain’t theirs,’ growls Tiny, looking thoughtfully at the hanged men.

Raindrops spatter on the armoured sides of the tanks. It is a cold and miserable day. The air reeks with death, and stinks of wet clothing and leather. The clouds are dirty grey. They seem to be rushing towards the west, away from the melancholy Russian day. It is no longer really day. More a kind of twilight.

The little Colonel-general is standing on a thrown-up mound of earth, observing his 4th Tank Army. As usual he is wearing his battered silk field-cap, with its short peak pulled well down on his forehead. Beneath it his eagle nose juts out like a beak from the middle of his narrow skull of a face. His boots seem unbelievably long on his short legs. He stands, stiff as a statue, with his map-case under his arm. A hugh pair of binoculars dangle from his neck, partly covering the red tabs on his cloak. To look at this tiny man, with the oversized binoculars and the almost comically high-topped riding boots, you would never dream that he is the greatest tank general who has ever lived.

The Old Man gives the Army Commander a regimental eyes right.

‘If only the neighbours’d send a 150 mm down on his napper,’ Porta wishes, with an abrupt laugh, ‘an’ send him up to give the angels a big smackin’ kiss on the arse.’

‘We’d only get another of the same sort,’ says the Old Man, tiredly, ‘
and
most likely one worse’n little short-arse there!’

‘He’s standing right on top of a busted shithouse,’ laughs Gregor Martin, who is now back with us. He is turret-gunner on Barcelona’s Puma.

‘Wish ’e’d drop down through the top an’ fall into it,’ growls Tiny, ‘so ’im an’ ’is fancy silk cap’d get drowned together in Russian shit.’

Barcelona both salutes and gives the eyes right at the same time. The sight of the Army Commander has made him nervous.

Colonel-general Hoth lifts his hand an inch or two.

‘Who’s that fool?’ he asks his Adjutant, who is standing to attention at his elbow as usual.

‘I will find out, sir,’ barks the Adjutant, smartly.

‘Don’t you know your men?’ asks the General, irritably. ‘My Adjutant ought to know every man in my army.’

‘Mad bastard,’ thinks the Adjutant. ‘There’s 80,000 men in 4th
Panzer
. I don’t know every silly sod on the staff, even.’ He is, however, an old hand. He barks out the first name to come into his head.

‘Oberfeldwebel Stollmann, sir!’

‘Charge him,’ snarls the General. ‘He can be punished for unregimental saluting. I’ve never seen anything like it! Saluting! As if the fool was on parade. I want you to look after that man. Properly, understand!’

‘Very good, sir!’ replies the Adjutant, scribbling in his notebook.

As Barcelona’s Puma swings round at the entrance to the long connecting road, the General catches sight of Albert’s black face in the open driving hatch.

‘Why’s that man’s face black?’ he asks the Adjutant.

‘
Black
, sir?’ mumbles the Adjutant, in surprise. He puts
his glasses to his eyes, to get a closer look at Albert. ‘Looks like a negro, sir!’ he says, doubtfully.

The entire staff put up their binoculars. For a moment 4th
Panzer
is forgotten, and all interest is concentrated on Albert in the clean-up waggon’s driving-seat.

‘A
negro
?’ snarls the General, irritably. ‘What nonsense! Germany’s had no colonies for the last twenty years.’

‘Twenty-five, sir,’ the Chief-of-Staff corrects him, ‘and the last of the colonial troops were retired years ago.’

‘Charge that man for having blackened his face without orders,’ snaps the General, brusquely. ‘I don’t want my army turned into a lot of circus clowns!’

The Adjutant writes feverishly: Driver in Puma 524 to be punished for blackening face. He adds, on his own initiative: and for laughing.

In the course of the day we push on through stretched-out villages lining the sides of the roads. White sheets hang from every window as a sign of capitulation.

The inhabitants stand pressed up against the walls of their houses, unsmilingly, faces marked by the fear of the future.

Late in the afternoon we make a halt. We refuel, ammunition is issued, and benzedrine tablets are handed out to each man. There is still no time to waste on sleeping.

Porta and Tiny are long since inside the houses, ransacking boxes and cupboards. They do not really know what they are looking for, but are just sniffing around like inquisitive dogs.

‘Funny things they drink out of in this country,’ says Tiny, gazing in astonishment at a large pink irrigator and holding it up. ‘Couldn’t empty that bleeder very often ’fore your bleedin’ brains blew out through yourear’oles. What’s the tube in it for though?’

‘Anybody can see
that
,’ answers Porta. ‘Ivan’s a practical feller. He lies on his back when he drinks, so he doesn’t hurt himself when he falls down. We Germans can learn a lot here in Russia.’

‘I gotta try that,’ says Tiny, enthusiastically, hanging the irrigator from his belt like a second gasmask pouch. ‘Think o’ lyin’ flat on your bleedin’ back an’ gettin’ the biggest drunk on the world’s ever ’eard of! Maybe a bloke ought to turn Russki an’ forget all about old Germany?’

‘Holy Virgin Mary’s Mother,’ cries Porta, in surprise. ‘Here’s a dead woman, and she’s wearing a hunting cap with a feather in it. Going travellin’ perhaps when she died. Did go too, only a bit longer trip than she’d reckoned on.’

‘Smells like murder,’ he murmurs, after taking a closer look at the body. ‘Took one in the guts, she did. Can’t have been an execution, or she’d have got the pill in her neck. That’s how they do it in this country.’

‘’Ow dreadful!’ says Tiny, turning up his eyes. ‘Such wicked bleeders ought to be put in jail!’

‘Here’s her handbag, ‘Porta goes on. He picks up a lady’s bag made of reindeer skin. He shoves his nose right into it, and rummages round.

‘Out of here immediately! That’s an order!’ yells Heide in his best NCO’s voice. He positions himself in the doorway with his hands on his hips and bobs up and down on his toes.

‘Up you, Moses,’ says Tiny, unimpressed.

The blood flashes up into Heide’s arrogant Teutonic face.

‘I’m warning you, Obergefreiter Creutzfeldt, call me Moses one more time and I’ll shoot you! It’s dishonouring!’

‘Dis’onourin’? Gettin’ shot?’ laughs Tiny, swinging his
Nagan
.

‘
Moses
! You look like the feller as falls on ’is arse at the village fair.’

Heide fumbles furiously for his pistol, but luckily for Tiny it sticks in its holster and he has to use both hands to get it out.

‘
Moses
! You’ll never get to be a big cowboy star in the pictures, ’Tiny screams with laughter. ‘The bleedin’ rustlers’d’ve shot you fulla ’oles ’fore you knew what was goin’ on!’

A salvo of howling rockets from a Stalin organ drops in the next street, and sends a wall crashing down across the roadway.

‘Jesus’n Mary,’ cries Tiny, throwing himself down into cover close by the wall. ‘Ain’t them barmy bleedin’ neighbours
ever
goin’ to get tired of shootin’ at us?’

A German SMG begins to bark in wild, hysterical bursts.

‘Hell man, stop that!’ the Old Man’s voice rings through the noise. ‘The tracer’ll tell ’em our position!’

‘Julius ’as ’ad it,’ shouts Tiny, pointing with the muzzle of his mpi at Heide’s body stretched out on the floor.

‘The Führer lost a faithful soldier there,’ says Porta, sadly.

‘Hold his forehead while I take his three gold teeth. I’ve had my eye on ’em for a long time now!’

‘You gonna do that?’ E
is
a kind of a mate when all’s said an’ done!’ says Tiny, suddenly turning moralist.

‘How’s he to know what’s happening? Dead isn’t he?’ answers Porta, bending over Heide. He is just about to take a grip on one of the teeth with his forceps when Heide comes to with a shout. ‘Damnation!’ cries Porta, in astonishment, ‘I thought you were dead!’

‘Corpse robber,’ screams Heide, gazing with open disgust at Porta’s rusty dental forceps.

‘Corpse robber?’ says Porta, blankly. ‘Couldn’t
be
! Not dead yet, are you?’

‘I’m going to charge you,’ snarls Heide, furiously. He dabs at his neck, where a shell-splinter has dug a deep furrow.

‘Outside!’ shouts the Old Man. ‘Get this area cleaned up and quick about it. It’s full of aspiring heroes looking forward to dyin’ for the great Stalin!’

‘I’m on my way,’ shouts Porta. He runs off along the houses with the LMG in his hand, supporting grip out.

A clumsy Russian hand-grenade comes flying through the air and falls, smoking, at Tiny’s feet. With a resolute kick, worthy of a soccer international, he sends it flying back. Not for nothing is he the regiment’s top goal-scorer.

Porta sends a couple of short bursts up at some gaping window-openings, and jumps to cover behind a burnt-out transport vehicle.

‘Either them shits’re down in the cellars,’ yells Tiny, falling full-length in a shower of mud and half-melted snow, ‘or else they’re upstairs.’

‘Where?’ howls Porta, crossing in long jumps to the opposite side of the street. He goes down, like lightning, flat in the gutter as he hears the feared mooing of a ‘cow’ on the way. A row of cobblestones flies into the air.

‘Get down, damn you,’ shouts the Old Man to the section, signalling with his arms.

Albert is behind a pushcart lying on its side, firing away with an MG-34 as if he were aiming at breaking the world war record for disposal of most ammunition in the shortest time.

Barcelona drops down beside him, panting. ‘What the hell are you shootin’ at, you black ape? We got to
account
for that ammunition!’

‘Shit on that, man!’ wheezes Albert, grey-faced with terror. ‘No fucking Commie bastard’s gonna pull the carpet out from under
my
fallen, fuckin’ arches!’

‘Stop it, you mad sod,’ shouts Barcelona, giving the LMG a kick which sends it flying out of Albert’s hands. Shaking his head from side to side, Albert leans up against the wet wall of a house and stares with a lost look at his LMG, which lies hissing in a drift of filthy snow.

‘What’re you sitting here moping for?’ asks Porta, emerging from a house behind two prisoners with hands raised above their heads. ‘You look like Frankenstein playin’ the part of the Mummy.’

‘Now I’m not supposed to shoot any more,’ grumbles Albert. ‘This is the shittiest war that ever was, you know that, man!’

‘’Course you can shoot,’ answers Porta. ‘Bang away at ’em, son. That’s what the army’s paying you for.’ With a broad grin on his freckled face he disappears round the
corner with his two prisoners. He will sell them to a prisoner collection squad, out looking for medals.