by Sven Hassel
‘Very good!’ mumbled the Chief of Personnel, General der Infanterie von Burgerdorf, making a note in a pocket diary.
‘Have I not ordered the troops to hold on and to fight fanatically to the last bullet?’ screamed Hitler. ‘And what happens? No sooner do these untermensch begin to fire back at them my miserable soldiers flee like frightened hares! I blush for the German people. If I did not feel myself called to lead them I would resign immediately!’ He kicked viciously at a chair sending it flying across the ankles of General Fellgiebel, who could not restrain a half-smothered exclamation of pain.
Hitler sent the Liaison Chief a deadly look.
‘Fieldmarschall von Bock is to be removed from his command, and I forbid him ever again to show himself in uniform. Halder has informed me that we have lost one million and one hundred thousand fallen and seriously wounded, but it is no more than they have deserved! Catastrophe I hear? No, a weeding-out! Only cowardly swine let themselves be annihilated by these untermensch. I forbid that any man from the middle echelon be decorated or promoted until such time as he has rehabilitated himself by service on other sections of the front!’
Hitler ordered thirty-eight more generals removed, twelve to be executed.
Ruthlessly he raged on, demanding the blood of others in payment for the failure of his own reckless plans.
Panzer General Model came close to losing his life when he explained that Napoleon’s armies had also attacked Russia on 22 June and were in Moscow by 14 September, 86 days later. And this was done on foot whilst, by 14 September 1941, Hitler’s Panzer Troops were still 220 miles from Moscow.
For fully five minutes Hitler stood like a stone statue staring at the little general. Then he exploded into a long wailing scream and threw a bundle of documents at his head.
‘Do you dare to say that the Führer of Greater Germany is inferior to that comical little Corsican gangster? A person who only became an officer by reason of the times he lived in! Only the degenerate French could be proud of such an individual. Model, you are dismissed! Never show yourself before me again! You have insulted Germany!’
A week later Hitler was forced to order Model to take command of the retreat. Six other generals had refused it. Hitler had almost to go on his knees to his army leaders. Two of them were sent to concentration camps, but did not give in.
Hitler stuck at nothing to demonstrate his power and cruelty. Troops sent to the front were given orders to fire on the traitors who had opened the line of battle to the enemy. Countless soldiers who had fought desperately to break the Russian bear-hug were executed by their own side. Without trial they were lined up against a wall and butchered. Those without weapons were lost. If they protested a rifle-butt smashed their mouths shut before they fell to the whipping bullets of a firing-squad.
8 | The Mongol Captain
Chief Mechanic Wolf1 has ventured out to the front line. Puffing badly, he seats himself on a gun carriage and thoughtfully ignites one of the special cigars which only he and the generals at HQ smoke. He has the largest private haulage company in the German Army. You can buy anything from him – especially if you can pay in hard currency.
Two fierce wolfhounds lie down watchfully in front of him. Their yellow eyes inspect us hungrily. A snap of their master’s fingers and they’d tear us to pieces. An expensive officer’s fur-coat gives him the look of an operetta general playing in a theatre in some Vienna side-street. His buttons and badges are pure silver. He is, of course, wearing a tall fur cap, and a sabre which couldn’t cut a radish in two. Anybody else would be punished for being so irregularly dressed.
Nobody but Porta dares to cross swords with Chief Mechanic Wolf. For anyone else it would mean a painful death – by starvation!
‘What the devil do you want, me old Sprocket Dragoon?’ asks Porta suspiciously.
Wolf grins condescendingly, flashing all his gold teeth at once. It’s not that his teeth are bad. Quite the opposite; but he thinks a mouthful of gold teeth a mark of position. When we captured a Russian Mobile Dentistry Unit complete with personnel Wolf had all his teeth covered with gold. Before then he’d been sparing with his smiles.
Now he’s always grinning.
‘I’ve come to say goodbye,’ he smiles, falsely.
‘You leaving?’ enthuses Porta.
‘Njet, not me. You!’ he smiles cunningly.
‘How’d you criminals get the word?’ asks Porta suspiciously, gripped by a sinister foreboding.
If Wolf dares the perils of the front line to bring the message it can’t be just to please Porta.
‘None of your business where it came from but, as you ought to know, a chief Mech. has his network,’ answers Wolf, superciliously. ‘What about those three Zim tractors you’ve stolen? You won’t need ’em where you’re going. So what about a quick little deal? I can offer you a first class battle pack for every man in No. 2 Section, plus a kalashnikov and double ammunition. A 150 kilo ration sack extra for yourself. You’ll need it badly in the near future. But it’s up to yourself if you’d rather move off with three days coolie rations and not a bacon rind more. You’ll get that hungry they’ll be able to hear your belly screaming back in Berlin.’
‘Spit it out, you wicked, wicked man,’ says Porta growing suspicious. ‘Where am I going?’
Thoughtfully, Wolf cuts himself a slice of salami. He doesn’t attempt to hide how much he is enjoying Porta’s anxiety.
‘A Zim 5-tonner for it!’ he says, after having swallowed the sausage and picked his teeth clean with the point of his knife.
‘Kiss my arse, chum!’ replies Porta, in a careless tone, spinning his pistol dangerously. ‘That Zim’s my return ticket to Berlin.’
‘Thanks for the information,’ says Wolf, showing all his teeth in a triumphant grin. ‘I wasn’t sure. You got a 150 mm howitzer battery stowed away’s the rumour!’
‘There’s plenty of shithouse rumours going the rounds,’ answers Porta slowly. ‘What the hell’d I want with howitzers? Am I a gunner?’
‘You know what it’s all about,’ says Wolf in a rough but almost friendly tone. ‘The German Wehrmacht’s got its arse dangling gently but firmly in the snow. There’s gonna be more’n a shortage of guns. You can get what you ask for an SP-battery soon as you feel like showing your hand, son.’
‘They’d commandeer it soon as I made the offer,’ declares Porta, trying, as hard as he can, to look naive.
Wolf screams with laughter and takes a swig from a silver hip-flask without offering it round.
‘Balls, my good son! You know how to turn that one.’
‘Mind you don’t choke on it,’ answers Porta sourly. ‘The German skeet-club’ll be moving smartly backwards p.d.q., and Ivan don’t give a French fuck for your wagon park. The day they march you off to Kolyma I’ll go with you as a volunteer just to enjoy watching you kick it slowly in the lead mines! They’ll cut the tails off your bloody wolves and stick’em up your arse so far you’ll never get ’em down again and can get a job as crossing-sweeper when the war’s over!’
‘Shit, son!’ replies Wolf, easily. ‘All my wagons are in a nice safe place already, you’ll be glad to know! All I need your Zim for is to haul the last of them out. I’ve got a nice place fixed up at Libau, son. Good harbour. If it should happen our victorious army advances too far backwards I can always take a boat to Sweden. They’ve got a Socialist government there and feel it their duty to take in us boys from the cruel world outside and look after us.’
‘How the hell did you manage it?’ asks Porta with open admiration.
‘Easy for a Chief Mechanic in Transport. Movement in Russia ain’t difficult if you’ve been through the Army Hauptfeldwebel School, and know what it’s all about,’ explains Wolf looking down his nose slyly.
‘Someday they’ll hang you,’ says Porta in friendly admiration, without attempting to conceal that it wouldn’t worry him when it happened.
‘Never,’ says Wolf, grinning, ‘but I’m convinced you’ll end your dirty little
life on the end of a rope. If I’m there I’ll do you a service. I’ll cut you down before the crows get at you, son!’
‘Know what you are, you fucked-up son of a mangey wolf and a clapped-out dingo, you’re due to die for Führer, family, if you could get one, and Fatherland,’ comes from Porta with bitter emphasis. ‘You’re the wickedest bastard I’ve ever met in all my life.’
‘Basura,’2 shouts Barcelona, happily.
‘Can it, bastard!’ snarls Wolf, turning his snapping green eyes on Barcelona. ‘How’d you like a case of Spanish oranges jacked up your arse, son? How’d you like to shit orange-juice the next twelve months?’
‘You’re a sick cat, brother!’ says Barcelona in a dry tone. ‘Keep on shitting in your straw till it smells as bad as you do!’
‘It’s on the record, Feldwebel Blom,’ Wolf smiles villainously. ‘This war ain’t nothing to what’s coming when it’s all over! Porta, we gonna do a deal or ain’t we?’ he continues, without changing his tone. ‘The little Zim for what I can tell you!’
‘I’ll fuck your mother if you like, Wolf!’ says Porta in a condescending voice.
‘She wouldn’t get anything out of it, son!’ says Wolf proudly, patting himself with a heavily perfumed handkerchief. ‘She’s a lady.’
‘You stink like a bucket of slops from a Chinese knocker,’ says Porta, holding his nose and grimacing.
‘’E couldn’t earn a sausage draggin’ ’is brownie on the town even with tight-arsed pants an’ a red ribbon round his charlie,’ shouts Tiny, slapping his thighs and roaring with laughter.
‘Last chance,’ says Wolf, preferring to ignore the insult. ‘I’m your only chance!’
Porta laughs loud and long.
‘If a man only had one chance in this bloody campaign of love and liberation, I’d have died and risen again more than a few times.’
‘You a cousin of Rothschild, or something?’ smiles Wolf, with a superior air. ‘You’re itching to know what I’ve got.’
‘Fuck off,’ growls Porta, spitting carelessly into the wind.
‘Let’s stop playing games, Porta, and get to business. I’m willing to admit getting your Zims is my big problem.’
‘Too right, son,’ says Porta, slitting his eyes. ‘You’ve got a problem. I ain’t. That makes a big difference. Why should I give you my Zims? We both know the big shots’re getting homesick, and the price of tracks and half-tracks with petrol is rocketing. I’ve still got my Zims because I know prices ain’t topped yet. But since I’m a good-hearted sort of chap I’ll let you have a five ton, three-axle job without tracks, if you like?’
‘What’d I like about that kind of shit?’ asks Wolf, hurt. ‘It wouldn’t move an inch in all this bloody Commie snow. For the last time: One ready-to-move tracked Zim with forty-five gallons in the tank. I’m an honest man, Porta, I treat my friends the way they deserve.’
‘You sound like somebody chatting-up a bint who’s ready to believe any kind of shit long as you’ve got stars on your shoulders,’ says Porta, with some dignity.
‘Let’s operate on ’im with a Bolshie bleedin’ bayonet,’ suggests Tiny, loudly and undiplomatically.
‘That Hamburg boy of yours’ll never grow up,’ confides Wolf to Stege. ‘The son of a proletarian thinks everything can be worked out with fists.’
‘Don’t insult me, Mr Chief bleedin’ Mechanic, or I’ll dig your bleedin’ gut out,’ warns Tiny, letting a finger run along the sharpened edge of his spade.
‘Shut it, dryshitter!’ is all Wolf condescends to remark. After a long and secretive palaver Porta and Wolf come to an agreement and Porta brings up the Zims. Wolf goes over them carefully. He’s looking for time-bombs. Satisfied, he offers schnapps all round.
‘You don’t really deserve it,’ he turns to Tiny, ‘but since you’ll soon be leaving this vale of tears, well here’s one for the road, sonny! You’ll be happy to know that you’re going to the Brandenburg Regiment,’ he adds, maliciously.
‘Sounds like some SS mob,’ considers Barcelona.
‘Dope,’ grins Wolf, tolerantly. ‘The SS wouldn’t touch you shower with a shithouse broom. If you went down on your bended knees to ’em they wouldn’t have you lot. The Brandenburg Regiment, friends, is the arsehole of the main sewer. A regiment of suicide squads where only five percent speak German. The rest are deserters and enemy traitors. When I heard the good news I opened a bottle of champagne, I can tell you. I really intended to save it for Victory Day, but—’
‘Oberst Inka won’t stand for it,’ shouts Porta indignantly. ‘He’ll go right to the bloody top!’
‘He has done, and they spit in his eye,’ laughs Wolf, noisily and long. ‘The good God of Germany has destined you to turn up your toes on the banks of the Moscow River.’
‘What the hell do they want us to do with the Brandenburgers?’ asks Porta, doubtfully.
‘They’ve suffered a hell of a lot of losses lately,’ explains Wolf, with fitting sorrow in his voice. ‘The holes are being filled up with the scum of the Army and Navy. That’s why your little friendly society’s going to ’em. You’re going to Moscow to send up a couple of factories.’
‘The Luftwaffe can do that easier,’ says Porta. ‘They can pulverize the whole bloody lot without losing a drop of valuable German blood.’
‘They won’t lose a drop of that anyway,’ Wolf grins, satanically. ‘You and the other white niggers don’t count for as much as a cup of Jew piss. They’ll give you plenty of plastic demolition charges and a yellow monkey to show you the way. A half-human shit-eater more treacherous than any of those bastards you read about in the Bible.’
The telephone rattles long and angrily. Wolf takes it and hands it gracefully to the Old Man.
‘The shithouse is on fire, I reckon, boys!’ he says, in a fatherly tone, patting Porta on the shoulder with false friendliness. ‘Your section commander’s being called in for his last communion! I’d be a lying son-of-a-bitch if I said I was sorry. I’ve been looking forward, ever since we first met, back in ’36, to seeing you off on a real death or glory job, but I’m not really a wicked chap, just a cool calculating business man. You gotta be if you want to stay alive. Inside here,’ he thumps his breast theatrically, ‘there’s a big heart beating, and in it there’s a little membrane throbbing for you too, Porta. So I wish you a quick death without too much suffering, even though you deserve a slow and painful one, and a candle will burn for you in the cathedral of my heart when you have passed on. You should be proud, man! You are going to fall in defence of the Fatherland on ground soaked in historical traditions!’
‘You’re not a human being, Wolf. You’re a non-com soaked in primitive bloody Army traditions, and a typical Wehrmacht product,’ shouts Porta viciously, to hide his growing fear.
‘I haven’t got the time, Obergefreiter Porta,’ states Wolf, coldly. ‘What about the rest of your tractors, and your guns? I’ll take them off your hands, if you like, for old times’ sake!’
‘I can use your services,’ Porta smiles a superior smile, ‘but they can’t pay for my vehicles. Let’s do it a different way. I’ll buy your supplies – on bills of exchange!’
Wolf falls off the gun, laughing madly.
‘You’ve missed your vocation. You should’ve been a clown in a Goddamn circus, you should. People’d die laughing. Bills of exchange! Yours! Five miles from the Kremlin! And when you’re on your way up the steps of the scaffold for your last shave! Think I’ve got softening of the brain? Me, who’s never had an iron pot on it in my whole career! I didn’t go into the bloody Army to fight for Führer, Family and Fatherland. I came in to do business. Bills! Not this boy! A mortgage maybe, if I’m pushed, and then only for officers from Oberst upwards and against security in land or property.’
‘Anybody ever tell you what a giant-sized shitbag you are?’ asks Porta, sarcastically.
‘Plenty,’ grins Wolf self-satisfied. ‘I’ve got it in writing too, but I’m like the Yids, I don’t give a fuck long
as the money drops on time. So, Porta, what about those tractors and guns?’
The field telephone breaks in. Porta lifts the receiver as nonchalantly as the president of a world-famous bank. He listens for a moment with closed face. Then replaces the receiver on the hook with an elegant turn of the wrist.
‘The market’s closed,’ he grins with much satisfaction. ‘No more deals, tovaritsch Wolf! Back to your hole in Libau, son! Your continued presence here is turning my stomach. You are a stinking skunk!’
‘What’d they say on the blower?’ asks Wolf, inquisitively, his face slowly reddening.
‘GEKADOS,’3 smiles Porta, slyly. ‘You’d have a stroke if I told you!’
‘If you believe everything you hear through that crazy bloody ear-trumpet, you’re stupider than I’d thought,’ shouts Wolf, angrily.
‘Sail off to your Royal Swedish Democracy,’ jeers Porta. ‘Your presence bores me! Buy a mirror and take a good look at yourself, my son. You’ll never go for a shit with the lights on anymore.’ Wolf rises threateningly. He looks like a dangerous carnivore whose prey has slipped away right under its nose.
‘If you’re planning anything clever just let me put you straight! Wherever you go I’ll have you by the balls, boy!’
‘Careful, even if you do belong to the Herronvolk you can burst if you blow yourself up too big,’ says Porta, chortling with merriment. He pulls out a pack of cards and begins to deal.
‘Feed ‘im a dose of rat poison,’ suggests Tiny, confidentially.
‘You may be big and strong as an ox, but you’re dumber’n a stillborn calf,’ roars Wolf, losing control of himself. ‘I could crush you like a sick nit when and where I felt like it!’
‘Wicked bastard, ain’t ’e?’ says Tiny casually, playing a king.
A squad of Brandenburgers wearing Russian ski-trooper uniforms reports to the Old Man. A little later a small slant-eyed Mongol arrives, his face split in a white-toothed grin. He is wearing an NKVD captain’s uniform, short black leather caps, a leather belt with two cross-straps, and a large Nagan on his left hip. Under his arm he is hugging a kalashnikov like a happy mother holding her infant child.
