Wheels of Terror (11 page)

He remained at the bar and drained his glass in one swallow. He moved to the little legionnaire, put his hand out and said:

'Sorry, chum, all my fault.'

The legionnaire gave him his hand.

'Good, good, all right. Forget it.'

He had hardly finished when he was pulled like a comet against the big bully who smashed his knee into the face of the surprised legionnaire. At the same time killing blows rained at his neck. He was half unconscious. Tiny kicked him in the face, broke his nose, stood up and brushed his hands together and surveyed the crowd in the packed canteen.

Pluto took a swig of his beer and said calmly:

'They didn't know that trick in the 2nd Regiment of the Foreign Legion, but take care, Tiny, one day you'll be with the transport to the Eastern Front. I know three thousand men who'd want to put a filed bullet in your mug.'

'You're welcome to try!' snarled Tiny. 'But I'll return from hell to kill him.'

To the growl of our cursing he left the canteen.

'That character will meet a violent death,' observed The Old Un. 'And nobody will mourn him.'

A week later we were standing with the little legionnaire, who had had part of his nose cut out due to Tiny's kick, looking at a big metal drum being riveted. One end of the drum rested against the wall. Tiny happened to pass by and the legionnaire called cheekily to him:

'You're strong, come and hold on to the rivets, they keep jumping out. We haven't got the strength to hold them.'

Tiny like all bullies was stupid and full of brag. He proudly shot out his chest and jeered as he climbed into the drum:

'Weaklings! I'll show you how to rivet.'

No sooner had he entered the drum than we pushed a cement-loaded tip-wagon across the opening. We put wedges under the wheels to make it immovable. Tiny was caught like a rat in a trap.

Hell was let loose. Ten-fifteen pneumatic hammers and large mallets performed a hellish concert on the steel drum.

The little legionnaire pressed a steam-hose against a rivet hole and let the scalding, whistling steam off. It would have killed anybody except Tiny.

He spent three weeks in hospital, and when he turned up again, bandaged from head to foot, he at once got himself into more wild fights.

One day, Kalb powdered a glass and put it in Tiny's soup. We waited gleefully for his inside to burst, but he only seemed to have more
joie de vivre
.

A little later Porta saved the little legionnaire's life when he noticed Tiny pouring a dose of pure nicotine into his pint. Without a word Porta knocked the glass out of the legionnaire's hand. The little man had been accepted.

7

It started by chance with something as boring as coffee and sweet cakes - it ended with an air raid and marching orders.

War is war, morals disappear and love is short and unsure.

Fudge if you dare! It is only old women and men who have never known love who cannot understand those who seek, find it, and have to experience it.

Love Scene

High-heeled female shoes hit the wet pavement with firm taps.

In the sleepy light from the blue black-out bulb swinging on a rusty bracket from the wall where I stood hidden I was sure it was she: Ilse, my girl.

I remained in the dark so that she would not see me. I enjoyed seeing and not being seen. She stood, walked up and down, stood again and stared up the street leading to the poplar avenue. She looked at her watch, then tidied her green scarf.

An infantry soldier walked by, slowed down, stopped and asked:

'Come with me, I'll give you compensation.'

She turned down the street away from the love-hungry soldier. He laughed a little and went on his way.

She came back to the light. I started humming:

'
Unsere beiden Schatten sahen wir einer aus,
dass wir so lieb uns hatten, dass sah man gleich daraus,
Und alle Leute sollen es sehen, wenn wir bei der

Lanterne stehen
...'

She whirled round, stared into the darkness, and I went slowly forward. She was about to scold when she saw me but burst out into a ringing laugh.

Arm in arm, dead against military regulations, we turned and walked through the ruins. The war and the waiting were forgotten. We were together.

'Where to, Ilse?'

'I don't know, Sven. Where can we get away from soldiers and the smell of beer?'

'Let's go to your house, Ilse. I'd like to see it. We've known each other five weeks and spent them in pubs, grease-stinking coffee bars or in the dirty ruins.'

We walked on a bit before she answered:

'Yes, let's go to my house, but you must be quiet. Nobody must hear you.'

Our transport was a rumbling, shaking tram-car. Sad grey people were our fellow-travellers. We got off in a suburb. I kissed her and stroked her soft cheeks.

She pressed my arm and laughed quietly. We walked slowly on. There were no ruins here; only private houses and terraces where the wealthy lived. It didn't pay to drop bombs here; not enough would be killed.

The air-raid sirens sounded. We pretended not to hear them.

'Have you a night-pass, Sven?'

'Yes, till 8 to-morrow morning. Pluto organized it. The Old Un has gone to Berlin on three days' leave.'

'Has everybody got leave?'

'Yes.'

She stopped and pressed my arm. Her face was white. The eyes shone wetly in the light from the black-out lamp.

'Sven, oh Sven, does it mean you're going?'

I did not answer but nervously pulled her along and was silent. Soon she said in a whisper as if she had read the irrefutable fact in my silence:

'Sven, then it'll be all over. You are going. Even if my husband returns one day you have given me something he couldn't Sven, I can't do without you. Promise you'll come back.'

'How can I when I'm not my own master? The Ruskies and others decide. I'm not asked. I love you. It started as an adventure. You being married only added to the attraction. But it became more. Maybe it's just as well marching orders will part us.'

Silence again! She stopped by a garden gate and we tiptoed to the house. Away to the east we could see tracer-bullets from anti-aircraft guns soar into the sky.

Carefully she unlocked the door, and made sure the black-out curtains fitted before she put on the light. Just a small lamp with a yellow-shade, it seemed to radiate warmth.

I put my arms round her and kissed her violently, almost brutally. Passion started burning in her. She wildly answered my kisses and bored her slim body into mine. Heavily we fell on the sofa without our lips parting.

My hands followed the seam in her stocking, searching her lithe body. Her skin was cool, smooth, dry and smelling of woman. I forgot the depot, the gloomy armoury, reeking oil, beer and damp uniforms, sweating men, old socks - the ruined city with its barracks, hobnailed boots, bawdy songs, brothels, huge graves filled with corpses. I was with an expensively dressed woman, a woman fragrant with the perfume from the slopes of Southern France, with female legs, slim with one shoe on, the other off, black suede shoes with high heels, and round, dimpling knees in light grey silk stockings. The skirt was so narrow it had to be pushed up over firm thighs to make it comfortable. A fur coat on the floor, Persian lamb, beaver or calf? Women would have known it was Persian lamb, black as night, a symbol of wealth and luxury.

Buttons in the pink blouse have burst open under the soldier's battle-clumsy grip. A breast is made prisoner and examined, not roughly by the soldier but by the eternal lover's tender hand. The nipple smiles into love-hungered blue eyes which have wept and laughed, stared across the snowy wastes of Russian Steppes, searched for a mother, a woman, a lover like her.

She detached herself gently from my embrace.

'Shall I tell you what I think?' I asked.

She lit a cigarette and answered as she put another into my mouth:

'I know what you are thinking, my friend. You wish you were far away in a country behind the blue hills, a Shangri-La without barracks and shouts of command, away from a society of rubber-stamping civil servants, a place without the smell of leather and printing-ink, a land of wine, women and green trees.'

'That's what I'm thinking.'

I picked up a photograph from a table beside the sofa. A man in uniform. A handsome man with fine features. A man wearing the insignia of a staff-officer. In one corner he had written 'Your Horst, 1942.'

'Your husband?' I asked.

She took the photograph, put it carefully on the shelf behind the sofa and pressed her mouth against mine. I kissed her pulsating temples, let my lips brush over her firm breasts, bit her cleft chin, and pulled her head backwards by her dark hair.

She groaned with pain, passion and need.

'Oh, Sven, let us find our Shangri-La!'

From the wall a painting of a woman looked forbiddingly down on us. She was wearing a blouse with a high-necked lace collar. Her grey eyes had never dreamed of Shangri-La, but then she had never seen a city in ruins and women with their souls torn to shreds by screeching bombs.

To hell with morals. To-morrow you are dead.

Our half-open mouths were pressed together. Our tongues met like snakes in their mating-dance. We stiffened and relaxed in endless desire. Every frustration was sublimated. The cup of love overflowed. Our lips found themselves again and again in hungry longing. Her breasts were bare. Her turquoise coloured brassiere and slip lay on the floor. She was both an overwhelming need and a shining fulfilment as she lay naked, yet clothed. A completely naked woman disappoints a man. He always wishes for a tiny, fluffy fragment to remove.

A button became a frustration. She lifted her fevered hands to help. Her fingers played over my back, warm, soft, yet hard and wildly demanding.

The sirens hooted, but we were far away from war. We had crossed the last threshold. We gave ourselves to the age-old love's contest, the embrace which calls for eternity. We were insatiable. Heavy sleep overcame us. The sofa seemed too small. We slept on the thick carpet.

When we woke, we were tired but content. We had had a night which would have to last a long time. She dressed and kissed me as only a woman in love can kiss.

'Stay, Sven, stay. Nobody will look for you here. Oh, stay.'

She burst into tears.

'The war will soon be over, it's madness to go back!'

I freed myself from her clinging embrace.

'No, that sort of thing is done only once. Don't forget him in France. He too will be back. And then where do I go? Torgau - Fagen - Buchenwald - Gross Rosen - Lengries? No, call me a coward, I dare not.'

'Sven, if you stay, I'll divorce him. I'll get you false papers!'

I shook my head and wrote my field postal number on a piece of paper: 23645. She pressed the scrap of paper against her breast. Dumbly her stare followed me as I left. Quickly, without turning, I disappeared from her eyes into the morning mist.

8

We stopped at many stations. We stood for many hours queueing to get a little thin soup, made of nettles.

Many times we sat crouched by the railway trucks in rain and snow to ease our bowels.

The journey was slow. For twenty-six days we trundled along, and were far into Russia when we left our cattle-trucks.

Return to the Eastern Front

For fourteen days we limped along in a troop-transport train of thirty or so cattle-trucks for the troops and two old-fashioned third-class passenger carriages for the officers. In front of the engine we pushed an open goods-truck filled with sand in case the partisans had laid mines on the track.

Our troops could easily have been trailed by the excrement we left between the rails at the stations where we stopped.

On the long journey between Poland and the Ukraine many peculiar events befell us before we were unloaded on the dilapidated station at Roslavl.

We were marched along dusty, sandy roads rutted by thousands of heavy vehicles to reach the 27th (Penal) Panzer Regiment's positions at Branovaskaja. Here we were received like long-lost friends by Captain von Barring. He looked deathly pale and exhausted. Rumours had it he suffered from an incurable stomach disease. He had spent a short time in hospital, but they had quickly bundled him off to the front again cured, at any rate on paper. Then followed jaundice and that did not improve matters.

It cut us to the quick to see our beloved company commander in such a state.

If it hadn't been for Porta and Pluto and the former Foreign Legionnaire who had joined us, we would still have been sitting safely back at the depot. As it was, these three had made life impossible for one and all in a mile's radius.

It had started really with the fight between Tiny and the legionnaire in the canteen. The former landed in our mixed marching company, a fact which did not please him. But it was Porta who tipped the balance by going to town illegally in civilian clothes. He, of course, became drunk, and all but raped a girl he had stumbled on in the back-room of the 'Red Cat'. We could hear him bawl:

'Now, my fine miss, you'll see who has arrived here!'

The girl cried with fear and drink. When we hurried in, Porta had peeled off most of her clothes and she lay in a most inviting position. Porta had only his shirt on.

Pluto christened them by pouring a bottle of beer over them:

'I tell thee, thou art created to increase!'

Then we withdrew satisfied, but next day when the girl had sobered up she wondered what had happened. It seemed to her that some private soldiers had been present at the love-making. So it was rape and everything belonging to it. She told her story to her father, a reservist and, to make matters worse, a quartermaster in the auxiliary battalion. He hurried to Colonel von Weisshagen, and, even if Von Weisshagen did not exactly love reservist quartermasters, the mill started to grind. Pluto was recognized, Porta, too, when the girl innocently marched past the paraded company. So the glasshouse again opened its hospitable gates.