Wheels of Terror (15 page)

'Not a bit,' answered Porta. 'But you'll have to pay ten per cent of the cost.'

'Any objection if I come?' asked Tiny.

'All right,' Porta and the Little Legionnaire answered grandly.

The Old Un went across to the office to see what he could do.

One hour later we were on our way in a truck. Porta had brought twenty to thirty pornographic magazines which he studied in order to be well prepared.

A field-gendarme with the head-hunter crescent on a chain round his neck stood outside the brothel to show the way. Just inside the entrance sat another field-gendarme to inspect our pay-books. Then we were turned over to a medical sergeant who checked us for venereal disease.

Porta went wild with joy when he was let through.

'Oh, Daddy's going to work. Who knows when we'll get another chance.'

Tiny was radiant. He announced what he was going to try before he was dragged away.

'A mattress-polka and a bullet in the skull, then you'd die a happy man,' he sang.

Porta had two quarts of vodka with him.

'That's for disinfectant,' he said. 'You never know what's been going on before you!'

A soldier was thrown out by the chain-dog who shouted with a schoolmaster's voice after him:

'Disappear, you baby, before I put you in the can. We don't allow children under eighteen in here.'

Comically enough, soldiers under eighteen were not allowed to have anything to do with women, smoke or drink: infringements were heavily punished. But they were allowed to kill or be killed. Mark you, only when it happened in battle against so-called enemies. The Fatherland is often peculiarly fastidious.

Pluto and Tiny stormed in. They brushed away the other soldiers in the waiting-rooms and passages. One artillery sergeant started to grumble. Tiny landed him one on the skull, and the fellow fell to the floor with a grunt.

'Make way for the 27th Murder and Arson Regiment,' shouted Porta. 'Hand over the girls. Let us see the goods!'

A chain-dog bawled:

'Quiet, or you'll be out!'

Tiny gave him a threatening glance. The gendarme wisely drew back from the seven-foot giant.

With a bang the doors to the living-room, or as the chaperones called it the reception-salon, flew open. Here sat a dozen females between twenty and fifty, dressed in the most provoking clothes, from deeply decollette party dresses to transparent pants and brassieres. They were ready to receive the love-starved invasion in its noisy infantry boots.

Porta literally fell into the lap of a black-haired beauty in pale-blue underwear. He forced the vodka bottle between her lips and asked beguilingly:

'Hey, my treasure, shall we shake ourselves warm?'

Two minutes afterwards they had disappeared.

Pluto threw himself enthusiastically at a heavy-weight - she was his ideal, he said.

Tiny was left standing in the middle of the room staring from one girl to another. He could not choose! The result was that there were no girls left. Then he bellowed:

'Thieves, robbers, bastards! Get me one. By Satan I want a bed-artist!'

A chaperone tried to calm the huge bandit. He grabbed the impressive lady and cried:

'Are you a whore? Get a move on, then, Tiny has arrived. This is a pleasure-house, not a mission-house!'

The chaperone shouted for help as Tiny started to tear off her party dress. Another chaperone arrived, but Tiny had gone mad. After half-tearing the dress off the first one, he grabbed one under each arm and made for the door where the others had disappeared. With kicks and cries the two women tried to get away, but they were caught like two harpooned whales.

'Don't try cheating Tiny for what he came for. Have I bought you or not? I only ask!'

He banged up the stairs with the two shouting women.

'Shut up, girls! I only want my rights!'

He kicked open the door of the first room he saw, but Porta was lying there with his black-haired beauty. In the next room Pluto and Stege were acting out an insane play with two loud-voiced girls.

Tiny swore and tried his luck farther down the passage. Every room was engaged! He charged up to the second floor. The first room he burst into was used by a flak-gunner.

'Out of my way, stupid swine,' ordered Tiny. 'A drawing-room soldier like you had better be off when decent people come to town.'

The flak-gunner protested, but Tiny made short work of him. He flung the two kicking girls on to the broad bed, grabbed the gunner and sent him flying out of the door. His girl sat up in bed stark naked, staring at the two chaperones and Tiny who stood menacingly in the middle of the room. Then she curled over backwards with howls of laughter. That a customer had been torn away from her in the middle of love's act was funny enough, but even funnier was the plight of the two chaperones.

'Off with the rags,' neighed Tiny gleefully and peeled off his trousers. He kept on his cap, tunic and boots.

'What are you thinking of?' one of the women began shouting. 'I'll--'

The rest of the sentence disappeared in an angry terror-stricken cry. Tiny had peeled off her dress and slip and grabbed her by the ankle. Her mauve pants flew in an arc over his head. He threw himself at her and held on to the other two with his petrol-reeking iron fists. But love's pleasures relaxed. Tiny's attention and the flak-gunner's girl managed to get away, but not very far before she was caught by a half-naked soldier and borne off in triumph to his room.

On the floor underneath Porta and Pluto enthusiastically changed girls. When they were fed up with that they started playing dice for the girls.

An infernal noise came from the reception-room where the waiting customers were making difficulties because there were only twelve girls for over a hundred soldiers.

Hell was let loose that night. The worst off were the two chaperones subjected to the pleasure-drunk Tiny. He grunted and roared with satisfaction. At length, when he found them a little monotonous, he burst into another room which was being used by an infantry soldier and his two girls. Without explanations he ordered them to change partners. They protested but everything turned out to Tiny's satisfaction.

In between his wild excesses he drank vodka. Porta and Pluto who had heard the noise came to his room with their girls. They competed in insane perversions. Porta's pornographic magazines were left sadly behind.

Porta dressed himself back to front in a black brassiere. Apart from that all he had on were his boots and top-hat.

Tiny, more modest had removed only his trousers. He was dressed in his cap, tunic, belt with pistol and clumsy boots.

Pluto tore around as he was born, apart from the black regimental sweat-rag round his neck.

All the girls were stark naked. A few tried in terror to get away, but Tiny, roaring with laughter, caught them deftly and flung them on the sofa.

Porta found a louse on his red-haired chicken breast. Proudly he displayed it before he generously let it drop on the stomach of a shrieking girl.

Tramping boots thundered up and down the stairs and passages. Steel-helmeted field-gendarmes trooped into the room and, bellowing, ordered us to leave the establishment.

'Do you mean us?' Porta asked good-humouredly.

The head-hunter sergeant who led the other two chain-dogs became red in the face and answered in a voice choking with fury.

'Out! At once, or you'll be charged with indecent behaviour in public buildings!'

Pluto opened the window and relieved himself in a big arch. His big naked bottom smiled at the stiff Prussian field-gendarmes. They took themselves and their duties very seriously.

The sergeant groped for his revolver-holster. As usual it was hung much too far back for him to reach without curling himself round like an acrobat.

The Little Legionnaire popped up behind them and at once grasped the situation. He started intoning:

'
Allah-akbar! Vive la legion!
'

The next minute he was hanging like a panther round the neck of the field-gendarme, who fell heavily forward, taken completely by surprise.

The other two were overcome, disarmed and sent flying down the stairs.

Porta suggested it would be a good thing to get away. The girls immediately rallied round and helped to bundle the uniforms together.

Porta, Pluto and the Little Legionnaire quickly made their getaway out of the window, and with the help of the girls got across the roofs to disappear among the neighbouring houses. Only Tiny refused to leave the battlefield. He preened himself like Napoleon after a big victory.

'Let the whole Nazi army come,' he cried and spat on the floor. 'I'll deal with the lot! I'm here to have tarts, all I can manage, and I'm having them in a quiet and decent manner!'

Growling happily, he flung himself at one of the girls.

The field-gendarme returned with reinforcements. Five men strong they clattered into the room and tackled Tiny in the broad bed. A fierce fight started and even the girls did not escape unmolested. One got such a big black eye she quite forgot she was a chaperone in the establishment. Getting hold of a chair she swung it into the face of one of the field-gendarmes. He immediately gave up the fight.

With the girls on his side Tiny fought like a grizzly bear. The chain-dogs were flung down the stairs and greeted with jeering bravos from the spectators downstairs.

Tiny now had what was in effect an attack of rabies which came out in a form of persecution-mania. He was convinced that even the naked girls were against him, so he bundled them down the stairs after the field-gendarmes.

Then he started to barricade the door, using the smashed furniture.

An officer from the chain-dogs asked what was going on. One of the naked chaperones sobbed:

'Herr Wachtmeister, this is a disgrace to the establishment. We are respectable ladies, doing our duty for the ultimate victory, and now we are exposed to such treatment!'

The other one, crouching in a coma at the bottom of the stairs, sniffled:

'What will all the others think when this gets around? This immoral evening has shocked me deeply. But my friend who is Stabszahlmeister knows the Fuhrer. I'll see that he complains to him. My membership card is in good order too. I must ask you to deal properly with these fellows, Herr Wachtmeister.'

'Who is up there?' asked the Wachtmeister impatiently and adjusted the chin-strap on his steel-helmet.

'The wild animal from St John's Revelation,' stuttered a very upset girl who sat rocking on the bottom step of the staircase with the remains of a pair of military underpants covering her knees.

'Fetch the brute down,' the Wachtmeister ordered his head-hunters. He stepped aside to get out of their way as they attacked Tiny's fortress.

A sergeant took courage and ordered the door to be broken down. He motioned with his pistol as if prepared to shoot his three colleagues. They heaved at the closed door, but it withstood their first assault.

A savage growling came from Tiny behind the door. One of the field-gendarmes asked:

'Is a human being in there?'

'I don't know,' answered his colleague, 'but I curse the day I joined the police!'

The three strong men then put their shoulders to the door and it collapsed into Tiny's boudoir.

He was over them like a lion. 'What the hell d'you mean by this?' he roared. 'Breaking in without knocking. Attack me when my trousers are down? I'll see you get your desserts, you lousy mongrels!'

There followed horrible bangs and crashes. Animal roars sounded through the whole brothel.

One of the chaperones in despair cried:

'Throw him out of the window! Shoot him. Our reputation! Our reputation!'

In the end Tiny had to give in to superior force, but even when he was unconscious the head-hunters furiously beat him with their truncheons. They chucked him down the stairs. The Wachtmeister gave him an expert kick.

Three weeks passed before we saw Tiny again. Despite numerous beatings he had not given away the names of his companions. They only knew the men came from the 27th (Penal) Panzer Regiment. So the whole regiment was forbidden to visit any field-brothel for six months.

Tiny's sentence was three months mine-detection in noman's-land. He took part in what we called the 'ascension party' for five days. After that nobody remembered to send him out again. Our battalion commander Colonel Hinka knew better than any court-martial how to tame a wild fellow like Tiny. He also understood the art of evading the clumsy, man-destroying edicts of the higher command.

No. 5 Company taciturnly agreed to make a human being out of the monster that was Tiny. He really was a great big naive child to whom fickle fate had given great strength in a too large body but had forgotten to add the brain.

11

The soldier in war is like a grain of sand on the beach. The waves wash over it - suck it out - throw it back to suck it out again - it disappears without anyone noticing it or caring about it.

Close Combat in Tanks

It started snowing, a porridgy ice-cold snow. Everything was turned into a bottomless mess.

It was shortly before midnight. We were sitting half-asleep in our tanks. We had not had one moment's peace for five days. Many of the regiment's vehicles lay scattered - burnt out wrecks - across the enormous area where the fighting had taken place. But we kept getting new reserves of men and material in a steady stream so somewhere behind the lines we knew there must be a great concentration of supplies ...

We are getting unbelievably dirty with gun-powder, mud, oil and slime. Our eyes are red with lack of sleep. We have not seen any water apart from what we collect in muddy ditches. Food supplies have broken down and that bombastic nonsense - the iron-ration - is long since eaten. Porta is famished. The Little Legionnaire several times goes out in search of something to eat, but where we advance seems to be vacuum-cleaned of edibles. The only supplies behind the lines are ammunition, tanks and crews. As The Old Un says:

'They seem to have found out they can earn money by trading the rations of the coolies.'