Wheels of Terror (7 page)

'Shut up, Porta,' Moller said.

'Since when were you promoted to the class-conscious ranks of bastards with stars and cords and the right to order me about?' Porta wanted to know.

'You're a swine,' Moller said with finality.

'That's your opinion. Just wait till the musketry practices have finished, then I'll tell you something, you mongrel.' Porta smiled his evil smile and Moller carefully moved to the other side of the table.

The prison staff nervously made way for him. They seemed afraid to touch us.

The rattling of keys came from the office next door. A woman cried out.

Pluto lit an opium-cigarette and sucked voraciously. Stege kept looking down at his feet in their clumsy but unbelievably shiny ammunition boots. An infantryman sat at the table doodling nervously. The whole atmosphere was electric.

The 'phone rang. The senior NCO answered and stone-like he sat to attention in his chair:

'Standorts prison, infantry barracks, Obergefreiter Breit here. Yes, sir, yes, the detail is here. Everything is ready. Certainly, sir, the family will be informed as usual. Nothing else to report.'

He replaced the receiver.

'They are waiting for you at 'Senne', ' he said over his shoulder.

'By God, this is like a registry-office wedding, everyone is waiting,' said Pluto. 'I wish they'd hurry, then we'd get it over with before we get the jitters.'

No sooner had he spoken than the door opened. A girl from the army telephone service came in with a grey-haired NCO. They were both dressed in the denims used for barracks duty. They were condemned prisoners. Behind them came a cavalry sergeant-major and Paust with some papers under his arm. He tried to look unconcerned but his watery blue eyes blinked nervously.

The cavalryman looked up the register and asked:

'If you have any complaints, speak up now.'

The prisoners said nothing, but stared wildly at the five of us standing with our steel helmets and rifles.

Without apparently understanding what they did, they signed the register.

Paust and the cavalryman shook hands as they said goodbye. We almost expected them to say '
au revoir
' and thank you.

We filed out with the prisoners in the middle and got into the lorry.

The soldiers in the truck helped the girl politely inside although the old NCO was more in need of help.

'Ready,' cried Paust, and we started with a jerk. The guards at the gates stared frightenedly after the big diesel lorry as it swung with exploding exhaust out on the road towards Sennelager.

The first part of the journey we travelled in silence staring shyly and with curiosity at the two prisoners. Pluto broke the silence first. He offered them the packet of opium-cigarettes.

'Have a fag, it helps.'

Both grabbed their cigarettes and smoked greedily.

Porta leant forward.

'Why are you getting it?'

The girl let drop her cigarette and started sobbing.

'Never mind, I didn't mean to upset you,' consoled Porta. 'I only wanted to know how we stand.'

'You are a stupid swine,' shouted Moller and hit out at Porta. 'What's it got to do with you? You'll get to know soon enough at 'Senne'. '

He put his arm round the girl's shoulders.

'Take it easy, sister. He's a stupid lout who's always poking his nose into affairs that don't concern him.'

The girl wept silently. The engine droned. The lorry was climbing a steep hill. Paust looked at us from the cab window. We all sat smoking. The Old Un pointed to a heap of gravel at the roadside. Beside it stood a few prisoners-of-war and home-guards.

'At last they're mending the road. High time too. We always bump like hell on this stretch.'

Bauer wanted to know if Porta was coming to the 'Red Cat' that evening.

'Both Lieschen and Barbara are coming. There'll be fun and games all right.'

'Of course I'm coming,' said Porta. 'But only till ten. Then I'm off to take part in the opening of a new whore-house in Munchener Gasse.'

An ambulance streaked howling past our slow lorry.

'God's sake, what's happened now?' The Old Un said.

'There's always something sinister about the siren of an ambulance,' Bauer said uneasily.

'Maybe a birth with complications,' said Moller. 'My wife had a haemorrhage when she had the second one. They rushed her into hospital. It was touch and go for her and the baby.'

'Have you seen the new girl who's arrived in No. 2 Company's canteen?' asked Pluto. 'She's quite a girl.'

At that moment the lorry drove into a deep rut in the road and we were all thrown in a heap. Furiously Porta shouted at the driver:

'Can't you see where you are going, you dim clot?'

The driver's answer was drowned in the roar from the engine.

The sun had come out from behind threatening clouds.

'The weather is clearing,' said Stege. 'It'll be fine this afternoon. I'm off with a sweetie I met the other evening.'

Porta started laughing.

'Why the hell do you always take your tarts out rowing? You must get damp seats. All the boats the old bastard hires out are half-full of water. You'd do better coming with me to Munchener Gasse. Bring the girl.'

'Your heads are always full of girls,' snapped Moller irritated.

'Now listen here, your reverence,' Porta's voice sounded threatening. 'Lately you've been bellyaching too much. We don't interfere with your crossword puzzles or your cosy meetings with the chaplain behind closed doors. Have your fun and we'll have ours. Soon we'll be back at the front and then we'll see what's in you, you Schleswig bible-puncher.'

Moller shot up and furiously lashed out again at the tall, thin Porta. But Porta ducked and Moller's hefty fist just missed him. Neatly, the Berliner hit Moller in the throat with the edge of his hand and Moller fell in a heap.

Stege pushed him away to make room for our feet.

'It's his own fault,' said The Old Un. 'Even if we must allow for his age. He could easily be the father of most of us. I'll talk to him when we get back.'

'I'll grind his sour face one day,' said Porta with a ferocious grin.

Pluto said he had heard we were to be transferred to a big tank factory where we should try out the new Mark VI tanks called 'King Tigers'.

'Your friend 'Backside and Boots' no doubt told you that,' jeered Stege.

'What the hell are you needling for all the time?' Flaming with anger Pluto turned on Stege.

'And you ask that, you fat Hamburger slob!' exclaimed The Old Un. 'Is this an ordinary firing-practice? Have you no feelings, man?'

To our astonishment the old NCO interrupted The Old Un.

'Wouldn't it be nicer if you all were quiet.'

The lorry turned off along a secondary road rutted by heavy lorries and tanks.

Moller stood up and withdrew as far from the rest of us as possible. He looked more sour than ever.

It was the young girl who broke the silence.

'Has any of you a cigarette or an aspirin?'

We stared at her for a few seconds as she sat there in the old denim dress.

Stege handed her a cigarette. His hand shook as he lit it with the lighter he had bought in France three years ago.

Furiously we all searched our pockets.

Porta shouted forward to the driver:

'Any of you got an aspirin?'

Paust pushed the sliding window open and mockingly growled. We could see all his strong white teeth:

'The only tablet I have is in the magazine of my .38. That's a sure cure. Who's got a headache?'

'The girl.'

Long silence. Then an embarrassed:

'Oh.'

The windowpane was slammed. He chose to ignore Porta's 'Dirty dog!'

'It doesn't matter about the aspirin,' said the girl apathetically. 'It'll soon go away.'

'Will one of you do something for me?' asked the old NCO. Without waiting for an answer, he went on: 'I come from the 76th Artillery Regiment. Will you go and see Sergeant Brandt of No. 4 Battery? Tell him to make sure my wife gets my money. She lives with the wife of my eldest son in Dortmund. Will
you
do this for me?' He turned to Stege:

Stege stammered:

'Yes, yes, of course. What do you--?' Pluto interrupted:

'He'll only make a mess of it, old chum. I have a pal in the 76th, Paul Groth, staff-sergeant. Do you know him?'

'Yes, Staff-Sergeant Groth, I know him well. He's in No. 2 Battery. Lost a leg at Brest-Litovsk. Remember me to him - the 'gas-meter man'. That's what I was before the war,' he added.

The girl looked up with interest, life returned to her dead features.

'Will you do something for me, too?' she asked breathlessly of Pluto. 'Give me a piece of paper, please.'

At least ten pencils and notebooks were handed to her. The Old Un pushed his way to her and gave her an army letter-card.

She wrote quickly and nervously, read the card through, sealed it and gave it to Pluto.

'Will you send it for me?'

'I'll do that,' he said shortly and put the letter in the pocket of his greatcoat.

'You'll get a bottle of Sekt if you deliver it personally,' she said, nervously stammering, taking stock of the large docker in his oil-spotted tank battledress. He stood with his rifle in his hand, his steel helmet pushed back on his head, his legs splayed in their short shiny infantry boots. His black trouser-legs bulged like a pair of wide plus-fours. His short tunic, with the silver skull-badges on the lapels, was dragged down by the weight of his carelessly slung black leather bandolier heavy with the weight of the bullets peeping eagerly out of it.

'I don't want anything.' It came with a stammer from the usually quick-witted fellow. 'The letter is safe with me. I'm the best postman in the country.'

'Thank you, soldier, I'll never forget it.'

'It's nothing,' said Pluto.

We drove on in silence. The sun had come out really strongly now. There was warmth in it.

Someone started whistling.

'
Fruk morgens, wenn die hahne krahen
'.'

Some of us began humming. Suddenly we all stopped, and looked at each other confused. It was as if we had committed blasphemy in a cathedral full of praying people.

The lorry stopped. Paust shouted to the sentry:

'Special detail from the guard company. One Feldwebel, one Unteroffizier, twenty men and two prisoners.'

The sentry looked into the lorry. A sergeant-major hanging out of the window of the guard-house shouted:

'You are going to Area 9. Where the hell have you been? They've been waiting a long time for you there.'

'You're a joke, you are,' said Paust.

Without waiting for an answer, we drove on along a sandy road which led past the barracks. Soldiers lived in this large training camp during their service. Houses and barns, empty now, stared despondently at the uniformed men who day in and day out were being trained to kill.

'I hope they don't eat up all the peas before we get back!' complained Schwartz. 'It isn't every day we get something we like. Of course it had to be to-day we get detailed for this lot.'

Nobody answered.

'My God, there's a hare,' shouted Porta excitedly and pointed at something in the shabby-looking heather.

We all stretched to look at the hare leaping away.

'God help us! Real food under our eyes and we can't get at it.' Porta groaned.

'Last time we had hare was in Rumania, in the barracks by the Dubovila river,' said Pluto.

'Oh, yes, that was the time I took that Rumanian baron for everything he'd got,' grinned Porta.

The lorry stopped. Swearing, Paust jumped down:

'Where is Area 9? This dope here has lost his way. This is the sports ground.'

Nobody answered. He unfolded a map and turned it round and round before he got his bearing. The lorry backed and stuck in the soft grass verge. Everybody had to get out and push. Only the prisoners stayed in the truck.

Indifferently, we flung our rifles to them.

'You ought to get out to Russia, you,' said Pluto into thin air. Nobody understood what he meant. 'Then you'd learn to know something else apart from this rotten training-camp.'

'We've had the peas,' said Schwartz angrily.

'I'll spit on your peas,' shouted Stege. 'Eat your own gristle if you're so hungry.'

'Nobody asked your opinion, you bastard!' Schwartz gave him back furiously.

It would have ended in a fight, but the lorry was now free and we had to jump in quickly.

Soon we stopped again. We were at Area 9. Paust shouted:

'Detail, fall in!'

Nervously we jumped out and fell in before Paust. We had forgotten the prisoners. They sat in the lorry, half-hidden in the corner by the driver's cab. A lieutenant from the military police had appeared and was swearing at them. Paust seemed in momentary confusion. Then he roared with a voice which echoed through the huge spruce trees in the background:

'Prisoners, fall in, get a move on!'

The two prisoners all but fell out of the lorry and took their places as if apologetically at the end of the file we had formed, the girl behind the old NCO. The lieutenant's face was red. He unnecessarily adjusted his broad officer's belt and his pistol-butt.

'Your word of command! What are you waiting for?'

Paust became more nervous, and with saliva at the corners of his mouth, he croaked:

'Attention, eyes right!'

He turned round, heels clicking and reported all correct to the fat and beery MP officer.

The lieutenant saluted with a flourish. Then he turned about and withdrew with the onlookers into the background.

A military prosecutor in colonel's uniform came across. He was followed by a staff-surgeon and others.

Paust leapt forward, clicked his heels and rattled off his report at the same time handing over some papers he had carried in a red cover.

'The prisoners in the middle, two men behind,' ordered the lieutenant.

With the minimum of movement the order was carried out.

Half-hidden by some bushes stood two long wooden boxes. We turned our eyes away from them.

The sun shone. Some of those with stars on their shoulders smoked. The rifles felt hot in sweaty hands. Stege played unconsciously with his sling.