by Sven Hassel
‘Do you know who your great-grandmother was?’ Porta continues the inquisition. ‘Her name was not, by any chance – Rachel?’
‘No her name was Ruth,’ comes quickly from Brumme.
He once had a golden-haired sweety called Ruth, and thinks it must be a good Aryan name.
‘That sounds interesting,’ smiles Porta with an explosion of merriment.
‘It is the duty of every good German to report to the Racial Purity Commission the existence of Jewish seed in the Greater German Wehrmacht. It was in this way that General-Leutnant Hosenfelder was uncovered. He had adopted an Aryan nose but an Obergefreiter observed that the General never ate pork. He made a duty report, and one morning a pair of SS racial specialists arrived and took the Aryan-nosed General-Leutnant away with them. A traitor like that in a General’s uniform could have contaminated the entire German Army, so that we would never have got to Moscow. The proud German flag would never have flown above the Kremlin, and the proud German infantry never have had the chance to parade in Trafalgar Square, nor the Führer have achieved his wish to receive the toothless British lion in front of Buckingham Palace. Herr Stabsfeldwebel, would not such happenings be insupportable to we true Germans?’
‘Sieg, Heil!’ roars Stabsfeldwebel Brumme in his beery bass and in his excitement he raises both arms in the Nazi salute.
‘Our brave men in field-grey shall take their part in the greatest of all Crusades of Liberation,’ proclaims Porta patriotically. ‘The goal of National Socialism is the destruction of the swamp-men and so to create lebensraum for the enslaved German people. Where the brown storm troopers of culture tread all other cultures are crushed. We Germans will decide what the others must think. They shall not think! the Führer will think for them!’
‘This is one of the real Party nuts,’ thinks Brumme despairingly. ‘This kind of fanatic is deadly dangerous. He’s ready to shout Heil at a sheep with its head cut off if only he thinks it just might be the Bohemian Corporal in disguise.’
‘Ein Volk, ein reich, ein Führer!’ roars Tiny in apparent enthusiasm.
He can’t keep his mouth shut any longer.
There is a short moment of absolute stillness in the office. All three stare stiffly at one another. In the distance the thunder of the guns can be heard. Tiny brings his heels together with a bang and raises his right arm.
Die Fahne hoch,
die Reihen fest geschlossen,
SA marchiert . . .3
He is screamingly off-key.
Standing to attention with hands stiffly raised, all three sing the song right through to the end. To an observer it would seem a solemn and patriotic sight.
‘What do you think would happen, Herr Stabsfeldwebel, if you were to offer me a drink?’ asks Porta in a buttery voice. ‘Do you think I would refuse?’
Silently Brumme takes a healthy-sized jar from a shelf and, with a sour smile, pours the liquor into two large mugs which Tiny has helpfully placed on the table. Brumme promises himself that he will flatten those mugs later.
With a deep-felt ‘A-a-a-ah!’ Porta and Tiny empty them.
‘What about another of those?’ asks Porta. ‘In a great age like this we should not limit ourselves!’
Glaring darkly Brumme pours again. If he had his way he would bang the cork back in and throw these two highwaymen out the door.
‘Herr Stabsfeldwebel, you are in charge of the meat depot,’ Porta confirms between satisfied belches. With impulsive suddenness he bangs his fist down the black ledgers which lie on the table. Stabsfeldwebel Brumme starts back in fright as if someone had said: ‘Drag that swindler in front of a court-martial!’
‘Leadership of a military meat depot is no easy job,’ Porta continues gruffly. ‘A job like that is not given to just anybody. In reality it should be regarded as a kind of holy mission on a par with the Padre Corps from General Staff 6.’
‘Sex?’ mumbles Brumme confusedly.
‘I understand you, Stabsfeldwebel,’ nods Porta in agreement. ‘When I hear of G. 6, I myself do not connect it with the Padres, but with the field brothels. Have you, by the way, well-trained cutters on your staff? To succeed in war, experts are needed in every branch.’
‘All my other ranks are first-class tradesmen from the School of Butchery at Dresden,’ Brumme assures them eagerly.
‘To cut meat is a profession which entails an equal responsibility to that of an Army cartographer,’ continues Porta in a schoolmasterish voice. ‘It requires men with grey matter under their scalps who have an understanding of mathematics.’
‘Mathematics?’ stammers Brumme nervously and feels the sweat running down his spine. ‘This is an Army Meat Depot I’m running, not an Artillery Mathematician’s Section where they work out to a fraction of an inch where to drop shells and bombs on the enemy. I know all about meat and fuck-all about mathematics and that kind of shit. I can add and subtract, weigh in kilos and grammes; know a company needs 175 rations, half of which must be lean meat. You don’t need to know any more than that in the Supply Corps. Ask Albert Speer. He’s done two years with the Supply Corps Building Commission where they sent him that crazy he didn’t know whether he was coming or going after he’d learnt too much mathematics. I’ve got my counting frame: 175 red balls over on the right and a company’s got what its supposed to have according to the book.’
‘How bloody wrong you are!’ Porta ejaculates, with a grating peal of laughter. ‘A military meat depot is a place where there is every necessity for mathematical ability. Before one begins to cut, waste must be calculated exactly. There is a lot of water in animals, as well as in soldiers. You receive, for example, 400 kgs of sow-meat into your stores. A pretty large percentage of it is water and bone to which a hungry soldier does not take kindly when it is handed out to him as meat, but you yourself have checked the weighing-in. You have taken 400 kgs in and you believe, too, that you have sent 400 kgs out at the other end of the depot. But when the auditors come and go through your books they find a criminal loss of thirty-five percent. And you are left holding the baby because you have not reckoned with this natural shrinkage.
‘Carcasses are wicked things to have to do with. I learned this when I had the job of dismembering bodies in the cellars of the Charité Hospital. A murdered pig of a beer-swiller takes up a fair amount of room when he arrives feet first, but he has shrunk quite a bit after a few days. When we’d finished chopping at him and had burnt him he could go into a cigar-box. I never accepted them by weight.
‘I gave a receipt for “one body” only. My predecessor, who signed for them by weight, got himself into a nice peck of trouble because of shrinkage. They thought he was hand-in-glove with the owner of a delicatessen in Spitalen-market whose extremely tasty sausages were found on analysis to contain human flesh.’
‘I’ve never looked at cutting meat up in quite that light,’ stammers Stabsfeldwebel Brumme, shifting his weight uneasily from one foot to the other. ‘I’ve always weighted out the rations on regulation army decimal scales, and had a checker standing beside me. In my depot we use double entry bookkeeping,’ he adds proudly, as if he himself were the inventor of that complicated system. ‘So much lean meat, so much salvaged bone, so much by weight of severed sinews and uneatable offal. You can’t go wrong!’
‘But you can!’ shouts Porta triumphantly. ‘You receive 50 tons just before knocking-off time. You’re busy, and you sign for 50 tons. Am I right!’
‘Yes, of course,’ answers Brumme and thinks of all the times they have fixed the scales and in reality received almost double the weight.
‘The weight notes don’t lie,’ he adds after a short pause.
‘And there we have it,’ Porta laughs long and loud. ‘The weighing-in document reveals the truth. Irrefutable proof to any court-martial. Not long ago I helped to shoot a poor unfortunate Stabsfeldwebel from 4 Army’s Meat Depot. I can assure you, Herr Stabsfeldwebel, we really believed him when he screamed: “I am innocent. I’m an honest . . . !”
Our twelve bullets struck his poor innocent Stabsfeldwebel body just as he got to the word – honest!’
‘Have you served on a liquidation commando?’ asks Brumme with a shiver of inward fear.
‘Haven’t I just!’ boasts Porta with a superior grin. ‘I’ve sent a good few Supplies people to a better world in my time. Ever seen a military execution, Herr Stabsfeldwebel? It’s a nasty experience. You need a drink afterwards and even that doesn’t wash away the memory immediately. But why think about these heavy punishments? They exist. Let us go back to the 50 tons of meat you’ve signed for so casually. You come to the depot the following morning, fresh and relaxed after a good honest cut. Result – 45 tons! You send for weight control to check your weights, but the Army weights function perfectly.
‘You have signed for 50 tons of meat, but the poor hungry German soldier at the front is only going to get 45 tons. Whilst you have been asleep, dreaming perhaps of good business deals, your meat has lost 5 tons of moisture and since neither you nor your personnel know anything about this mysterious chemical process, you get into terrible trouble when the auditors arrive, without prior warning, to check on your little games. You are a careful and clever man, and you have found out, long before the commission arrives, that you are short of these five mysterious tons. From bitter experience you have discovered that all normal soldiers are thieves and you descend like a delayed whirlwind on your slaves.
‘If you are fortunate enough to have a couple of decidedly feeble-minded persons amongst them you are saved. Fools like these are easily convinced that they have in fact stolen five tons of meat in the night. If you cannot make them confess then Iron Gustav can. He is a specialist at driving people into confessing. We once had a Wachtmeister from the Army Ammunition and Explosives Factory at Bamberg. He had been a lay-preacher before he was called to the service of the Fatherland. He insulted the Catholic Field Bishop with a number of hair-raising religious statements which could not be stomached without reprisal. He landed in Torgau and here it took Iron Gustav 9 minutes and 21 seconds by the clock to convince him that he was a blasphemer who deserved to swing at the end of a good German rope. I once saw Iron Gustav work-over a Quartermaster from 5 P.D. The fool hadn’t admitted his guilt at the court-martial, even though Herr Stabsauditeur Vjebaba, who was famed for his persuasiveness, had done all he could to explain to him that a confession would be in his own interests. What the Stabsauditeur could not do Iron Gustav did in no time. The Quartermaster confessed that he himself had eaten the missing five tons of meat in the course of one night. They riddled him in Yard 4 fourteen days later. By God, Herr Stabsfeldwebel, the man who gets out of Iron Gustav’s claws with a whole skin could piss his trousers without wetting himself. Pray you’ll never make his acquaintance. He even sleeps in his tin-hat.’
‘Lord preserve us,’ sweats Brumme rolling his eyes.
Prussian eagles look to the west,
Tall, tall, stand our banners.
hums Tiny patriotically in the background. Long enforced silence bores him. He feels that a quiet interjection such as this can do no harm.
‘But let us get back to our five tons of mysterious shrinkage,’ continues Porta, serious as a judge about to pass the death sentence on a beautiful woman.
‘Five tons of shrinkage!’ Brumme attempts to bawl but it comes out in a hoarse whisper. His brain races like a runaway adding-machine. It doesn’t take him long to arrive at the unpleasant result that there is a considerable shrinkage loss in his section. It flashes through his mind that he could kill both these iron headed bastards, put them through his new mincing-machine, and feed them to the hungry troops in small portions as sausage meat. It would be the perfect murder. The bodies would never be found. Brumme quite livens up at the thought and throws a sidelong glance at the great meat chopper lying not three yards from him.
Tiny follows his eyes and, with an understanding smile, takes possession of the chopper.
Brumme’s nervousness visibly increases.
‘Who are you gentlemen, actually? And where are you from?’ he asks with painful interest and wipes the sweat from his forehead with a piece of meat.
‘Obergefreiter Joseph Porta, Berlin-Moabitt,’ Porta presents himself with excessive politeness. ‘And my assistant, Obergefreiter Wolfgang Creutzfeldt, Königin Allee, Hamburg.’
‘He’s dropped the mask, the wicked swine,’ thinks Brumme, feeling for the club fastened under the table. ‘Königin Alleé! Geheime Feldpolizei!4 Berlin-Moabitt: The Quartermaster General’s auditing service. A nasty pair of lice to have on your back.’ He regrets bitterly that he did not follow his original thought this morning and go sick, together with a bottle of cognac. Then Stalle would have had command. And if any ape in uniform deserved to end in Germersheim it was Feldwebel Stalle.
‘Herr Stabsfeldwebel, how many other ranks have you on strength as cutters?’ enquires Porta coldly.
‘Forty NCOs and men,’ barks Brumme eager to be of service.
‘Are they fully trained?’ asks Porta, slitting his eyes.
‘Best crew in the service,’ assures Brumme eagerly. ‘Every one of my men has been on the QM slaughtering and butchery course at Stettin. They work like well-oiled robots.’
‘Here we have the typical bad example,’ shouts Porta with satisfaction. ‘A gang of Moses Dragoons5 who work like robots. These Goddam imitation soldiers chop and hack away at good meat wherever it’s easiest. The Holy Mother of Kazan would cross herself at the quality of the works carried out by these know-nothing gut-scrapers. Robots, in the Devil’s name! That kind should be punished.’
‘Squashed, like a frog under a tank,’ comes in a friendly voice from Tiny in the background. ‘Kicked up the arse, too!’
‘These tie-wearing bastards have joined the Supply Services merely to hide away from the front line,’ shouts Porta indignantly, as he points a cutting knife accusingly at Brumme. ‘Here there are no bullets. The greatest risk is getting smothered under a carcase. But they’re wrong these funny little blubber dicers. There is more to it in the Army than these clowns realize. Cutting up meat is not funny! They need brains under their lousy wigs! Any imbecile from a madhouse can cut and chop away with bones and sinews flying about his ears, but to cut properly so that fine hams and cutlets can come out of a lousy, streaky sow. That’s the art! Sausage isn’t just sausage even when it is! Herr Stabsfeldwebel! When you mix black pudding do you stir it to the right or to the left?’
‘Stir?’ groans Brumme, his whole body a living expression of complete confusion.
‘No German idiot with the weakest glimmerings of intelligence would stir to the left. Only the English could bring themselves to do that,’ shouts Porta convincingly. ‘It reduces the rotational speed and the blood will clot. These robots of yours, Herr Stabsfeldwebel, you have the responsibility for them. You are in charge of the work. Am I right or am I wrong?’
‘Right,’ mumbles Brumme weakly, his brain almost boiling with the effort of trying to follow what this mysterious Obergefreiter is leading up to with all his strange hints.
‘I have no doubt that the work you were studying when we entered was Mein Kampf,’ Porta states in a voice not to be gainsaid.
‘Naturally,’ lies Brumme self-consciously, pushing that interesting work “The Woman Taxi-driver” under a piece of suet. The author’s name was Levi! Reading books like that could put you in front of a Racial Purity Commission and those boys there could turn a full-blooded Eskimo with blubber oozing out of his ears into a hook-nosed Israelite dehydrating of thirst in the Sinai Desert in the twinkling of an eye. Any German with the slightest trace of grey matter kept well away from the Racial Purity Commission.
‘Let us see some of your men at work,’ says Porta obligingly, and sets a course towards the butchering unit. ‘I shall prove to you, Herr Stabsfeldwebel, that intelligence is required to lead such a unit. How many drivelling idiots do you find who decide to change their trade and buy a butcher’s shop. Think, if a cobbler, who h
ad never sold anything but leather boots, suddenly began to perform behind the counter of a butcher’s shop! Some hams the fool would cut for us! He might even supply to your own favourite establishment where you and other eisbein6 enthusiasts meet every Thursday. You’d look funny when you found your eisbein to be the snout of a Polish wild pig, thanks to your cobbler/butcher. But you are perhaps a good-hearted person who prefers to think the best of his fellow-men, so you try just a little of this strange caricature of eisbein lying on your plate. If you are not a very well-disciplined Prussian gentlemen you will then throw the whole mess in the face of the waiter and empty the French mustard over the fat North German hausfrau sitting nearby who has been lucky enough to get proper eisbein. Imagine the trouble that can come of such a former cobbler’s change of profession. If the restaurant is one where true German culture predominates then the menu will consist of nothing but eisbein mit sauerkraut every Thursday evening, and you will not be the only disappointed guest. One of the most dangerous things on this earth is a disappointed eisbein-fan.
‘What is this?’ roars Porta with simulated rage, bringing his fist down on a piece of meat with a bang which makes Brumme’s butchers jump.
‘A hindquarter,’ answers Brumme dejectedly. It was a cut which had been set aside for the Oberstabsintendant who always shut his eyes during the army check.
‘Now! I’ve heard everything!’ screams Porta in outrage. ‘I’m sickened! Any tradesman can see that this is a ruined hindquarter! Herr Stabsfeldwebel, I shall soon be forced to state my straightforward opinion of the unmilitary conditions obtaining here. If the Führer demands a juicy roast, you’ll be in trouble if you let one of your Moses Dragoons cut it for him. An insult to Germany’s leader – who has no liking for Jews.’
‘There are no Jews in my section,’ Brumme defends himself sullenly, making a great attempt to hide his rage behind an impeccable military front.
‘You cannot be certain of that,’ answers Porta coldly. ‘But now, say one of your pork satellites cuts a Führer roast and does not know that Adolf hates shreds and sinews.’
