by Sven Hassel
A street-sweeper looks at him in amazement. SS men don’t usually scavenge for butts. He waves violently to a Schupo45 who saunters over to him. The arms of the Reich glitter menacingly from his helmet.
Menckel notices the street-sweeper pointing after him and talking to the policeman. Quickly he turns down the first side street and runs for all he is worth. Panting he reaches the street where Wisling awaits him.
A grey Kübel is parked outside the house. An SS soldier in slate-grey uniform leans up against one of the fenders.
‘God in Heaven,’ he groans. ‘What’s up now?’ In terror he presses his body into a niche in the wall. Is it the two in the cellar or somebody else from the house?
The sirens begin to howl. Air-raid. Almost immediately bombs begin to fall. But the SS man leaning against the Kübel seems not to notice them. Carelessly he lights a cigarette and puffs out a cloud of smoke. He does not even look at the heavens from which bombs are raining down. He is accustomed to it.
Four slate-grey uniformed figures with black collar-dags come from the gateway. Laughing, they throw a bundle into the back of the Kübel. An arm dangles over the side. The four soldiers jump aboard and it disappears with a roar into the darkness.
As soon as they are gone Menckel dashes headlong into the yard and down into the cellar.
‘Wisling,’ he shouts, fearfully. ‘Where are you?’
The cat comes miaowing from the darkness, and rubs itself lovingly against his leg. He picks it up and strokes its soft grey fur. It purrs happily, and sniffs his face in recognition.
‘What’s happened?’ he asks, scratching behind its ears. ‘You’ve seen it, but you don’t understand it. You still think all human beings are good.’
He goes on searching along the dark cellar corridor, falls over a plank, finds the stub of a candle on the floor and lights it cautiously. The sacks are spread about all over the cellar. A dented blue enamel pot, containing some remnants of food, stands in a corner. The old woman is lying over by the wall. Her face has been kicked out of recognition and one arm is broken. The bone sticks out, sharp as a needle.
Further down the corridor is an SS side-cap. Wisling must have thrown it there without them seeing him. Now he knows what has happened. The thought paralyses him. It seems as if this whole devilish world has fallen in on him. He hopes Wisling is dead. It is impossible to imagine what the SS men will do to him. An escaped prisoner in their uniform! An unforgiveable crime! And they will certainly find out to whom the uniform belonged.
He puts the cat down on the ground. It follows him all the way to the door. Then it miaows and disappears into the cellar and creeps close to the old woman’s body.
The brilliant white light of a flare breaks out like a Christmas tree straight up above the half-timbered house. He looks up and shudders. Slowly the marker approaches the ground swaying slightly with the wind. Bombs fall where there are Christmas trees. He hears the piercing howl of stabilisers and throws himself back into the cellar, falls, and crawls desperately further inside. The cat jumps, spitting, out of the way.
The explosions thunder and roar incessantly. A beam breaks and splinters spray the room. Half the ceiling falls in in a cloud of dust. The yard door flies inwards like a piece of paper in a storm. He coughs and feels as if he is suffocating. There is smoke and dust everywhere. He listens fearfully. Through the noise of the bombs a strange, hollow roaring sound can be heard.
He knows what it is. It is the heat, the all-destroying heat which precedes the flames of the phosphorus bombs.
The house sways like a ship in a hurricane. The cat is crushed under a beam, and its blood spurts over his face. The old woman’s body is buried under a heap of bricks. A cloud of brickdust rushes at him like a clenched fist. The fire-wall between this and the neighbouring house has been blown away. He looks inside. A number of bodies lie in a twisted heap. There is blood everywhere. Flames come licking through the cracks in the walls. Then comes a wave of heat, roaring like a giant vacuum-cleaner. He is sucked up and thrown straight through a board wall into the flat next door. He goes unconscious for a moment and then slowly comes to.
He looks around him confusedly, wipes his hand across his forehead and finds it full of blood. The steel helmet is gone but he still holds Wislin’s side-cap in his hand. Dizzily he gets up and goes into the kitchen. He pushes his head under the tap and drinks like a thirsty animal.
Hot air, searingly hot air, throws him to the floor. A hellish noise roars all around him. There is no fire, only an awful heat.
What has happened now has happened often before. Another bomb has blown away the fire started by the first.
He stumbles over a dead Hauptmann. The body seems to move, but it is the heat. He looks down at himself. An SS greatcoat without a belt. He has lost the Mpi. In the stifling heat and hellish noise he pulls the uniform from the dead man. He is an elderly man with a belly and the uniform is far too large. The cap falls down over his ears. He pushes some half burnt cloth under the sweat-band. In the left tunic pocket are the dead man’s papers. Hauptmann Alois Ahlfeldt, 5 Geheime Feldpolizei-Bataillon. He cannot help smiling despite his fear and agitation. Everywhere he runs into policemen. He buckles the yellow officer’s belt and the pistol round his waist. Anybody can see the uniform is not his but it is still better than the SS uniform. It is an officer’s uniform. All Germans respect an officer. Most patrols were commanded by an Unteroffizier who would think twice before stopping him.
Quickly he jumps down to the next landing where a wall of flame rages at him. Doors and walls are already blackening, the paint blistering and burning with small oily flames. He rushes headlong down a long corridor. The flames follow him hungrily up the stairwell enclosing him in a furnace of fire, but a colossal vacuum sucks him out of the house.
Bodies burn with blue and yellow flames. The street is an inferno. The curious scraping sound of the incendiaries raining down from the skies can be heard continually. The heat comes up through the soles of his boots. Asphalt boils like lava.
He dashes past Nadolny, where the dead lie in rows waiting to be trucked away to their last great bonfire. The victims of the air-raids are no longer buried. There are far too many of them.
Nobody takes any notice of him as he crosses Blücher Platz: A dust-covered Hauptmann with a wild look in his eyes. What does it matter? Who isn’t sooty? Who isn’t more or less crazy?
A tramcar is thrown from its tracks. The seats burn with small dancing flames. The tramdriver hangs half out of a smashed window. His head has disappeared. The inside of the tramcar is filled with mutilated bodies.
A new rain of bombs falls on the city. Houses collapse in great clouds of dust. After the explosives come the incendiaries. Splashing and smacking against the ground. Hell rages in the streets.
Two old men in the uniform of air-raid wardens catch at his arms.
‘Herr Hauptmann, help us,’ they plead. ‘It’s fallen in our cellar. We can’t get them out!’
‘Get away from me, you fools,’ he shouts, furiously, pushing them away from him. ‘Get them out yourselves! That’s why you’re wardens!’
He runs on, taking long strides and moving from house to house. His burns are hurting, every step he takes pains him dreadfully. He feels as if he is running on red-hot steel sheets. He has lost his cap. One of his silver shoulder-straps is dangling loose. He looks like anything but a Prussian officer. He jumps quickly to one side to avoid a rattling column of fire-engines coming noisily up from Blücher Platz.
The firemen are hanging from the engines. Faces black with smoke and dirt. One of them falls off as the engine corners and the next drives over him. They continue without stopping. What is a dead man more or less? What does it matter?
At Burgstrasse an MP patrol shouts at him to halt but he merely puts on pace and runs on towards the Landewehr canal. One of the ’watchdogs’ aims an Mpi after him but the patrol commander, an Oberfeldwebel, knocks up the barrel.
‘Let the fool run,�
�� he growls. ‘It’s an officer and bomb-happy like as not!’
All three of them watch him running, laugh loudly and go on their way with heavy, confident policeman’s steps.
At last he reaches the patrician house which is his destination, looks both ways quickly, and as a car appears round the corner throws himself headlong through the gateway. In a few rapid strides he is up the stairs. Desperately he presses the bell. When the door is not opened immediately he keeps his finger on the button.
‘Have you gone mad?’ asks Frau Peters, as she opens the door and pulls him into the flat. ‘Where is your friend?’
‘The SS have taken him!’
‘And you come here!’ she cries, going white as a corpse. ‘Get out! I’ll scream if you don’t leave immediately!’
‘Don’t worry,’ he calms her. ‘Nobody has seen me!’
‘How can you know that,’ she says, in a shaking voice. ‘For God’s sake go! I can feel something terrible is going to happen! They’ll be here soon! I pray you, go!’
He goes slowly towards the door.
‘What’s that uniform you’re wearing?’ she asks, as his hands are on the chains.
‘Taken from a dead man,’ he says quietly, looking down at himself.
‘That too,’ she groans, looking at him with terrified eyes. ‘Did you kill him?’
He shakes his head.
‘Come here,’ she says, with decision in her voice. ‘I’ll give you some civilian clothes!’
He changes rapidly.
The filthy Hauptmann uniform is thrown under a kitchen cupboard.
She almost pushes him out of the door.
‘Good-bye,’ he says, but by then the door has been slammed and the chains are on.
Carefully he tiptoes down the stairs. Two steps more and he will be in safety on the street.
In the gateway he runs into a Staff-Feldwebel. As if through a mist he sees the half-moon hanging from a heavy chain around the Feldwebel’s neck. Three other headhunters stand a few paces behind him.
The portress leans against the wall with a triumphant smile playing around her mouth. Her small rat-like eyes seem to glow with pleasure. In spite of air-raids, fire and death she has got in touch with the MPs, who move fast when they are hunting humans.
The muscular Staff-Feldwebel, with the headhunter badge, takes his hand to the brim of his helmet in a polite salute.
‘Papers,’ he smiles, coldly, holding out a demanding policeman’s hand.
Menckel shrugs his shoulders carelessly.
‘I have no papers,’ he says quietly, fumbling in his pocket for the pistol. To his horror he finds he has forgotten it.
The Staff-Feldwebel smiles unworriedly. It is not the first time he has met a person without papers.
‘When he went up there, he was wearing an officer’s uniform,’ babbles the portress, excitedly.
‘Up where?’ asks the Staff-Feldwebel, without looking at her. He would like to have kicked her. Hard. Not because he feels any pity for Menckel, but because she disgusts him.
‘Peters, second floor,’ she pipes up, anxious to be of service. ‘There’s been something funny going on up there for a long time. She’s a stuck-up bourgeoise bitch she is. Never gives you the time of day like a proper National Socialist ought to do!’
‘Second floor, Peters,’ says the Staff-Feldwebel, and begins to ascend the stairs heavily.
‘No!’ Menckel protests in a piercing voice. ‘She’s lying! I haven’t visited anybody! Nor was I here in uniform!’
‘Oh wasn’t you, you sneaky traitor to the people, you?’ screams the portress, furiously.
‘Come along,’ says the Staff-Feldwebel, pleasantly, drawing Menckel along with him.
The iron-tipped boots echo on the stairs. Treads creak. Fearful ears listen behind closed doors. Everyone knows what those steps mean.
‘It was the second floor,’ boasts the portress in a triumphant voice. ‘I saw it on the board when he rang the bell.’
The Staff-Feldwebel knocks on the door, a hard, commanding knock which only the police of a dictatorship are able to produce.
‘Open, in the name of the Führer!’
He knocks again. Harder this time.
‘Who is it?’ asks Frau Peters from behind the closed door.
‘Military Police! Open up immediately!’
Chains jangle. The door is opened a little.
‘Frau Peters?’ asks the Staff-Feldwebel with his hand at the brim of his hat. He is polite and formal, but icily cold. Arresting people has become a matter of course to him.
She nods, realising that all is over.
‘You know this gentleman?’
She nods again.
‘Where is the uniform?’ he asks and pushes her away from the door.
‘In the kitchen cupboard,’ she answers, hoarsely.
He jerks his head to one of his men, and soon after the uniform is found.
The Staff-Feldwebel emits a prolonged whistle of understanding when he sees the officer’s uniform and the yellow holster. With a wolfish grin he looks at Menckel.
‘Was this the uniform you were wearing?’
‘Yes.’
‘Is it yours?’
‘No.’
‘Where did you obtain it?’
‘From a dead Hauptmann.’
‘I can see it wasn’t from an Oberst!’ He takes the pistol, removes the clip, and counts the bullets. There are five. Two missing. He sniffs the muzzle and looks again at Menckel with raised eyebrows. ‘Not so long since this iron was used! You shot the Hauptmann, didn’t you?’
Handcuffs close on Menckel’s wrists. The steel cuts into the flesh.
‘And you look such a nice, pleasant sort of chap,’ grins one of the ‘watchdogs’, ‘still you don’t have to look like Frankenstein to be a murderer!’
‘Murder an officer!’ says another. ‘That’s rough stuff! And pinch his holster! Jesus, man! They’ll have your nut for this! You can count on that!’
‘You’re wrong, I didn’t murder anybody,’ protests Menckel, in horror. ‘He’d been killed by an aerial bomb when I found him.’
‘See that now,’ grins the Staff-Feldwebel. ‘Killed by a bomb! Don’t leave much of a man, as a rule, those things don’t. But, of course, strange things can happen! The uniform, now, was lying folded neatly alongside the shattered body, I suppose, and the Herr Hauptmann had been practising pistol shooting just before the bomb dropped on his head? That would explain the two expended bullets. Now tell me plainly, do you think we are simple-minded? What are you? Jew, Communist, deserter? Out with it! Sing a little song, please do! You’ll sing before long anyway, so why not save us all trouble? Your head’ll roll anyway! You might as well get used to the idea!’
‘Stabsarzt46 Albert Menckel, 126 Infantry Division’
‘Well, well,’ answers the Staff-Feldwebel, with heavy irony, ‘why not Generalarzt? You are a funny chap! German M.O.s in their right mind don’t go running around in stolen uniforms. Why should they when they’ve got one of their own? What is the uniform of a Stabsarzt, anyway?’
‘I have escaped from a prisoners’ transport column,’ confesses Menckel, looking past the Staff-Feldwebel. ‘But I give you my word that Frau Peters knew nothing about that. I told her that I was on leave.’
‘There now,’ grins the Staff-Feldwebel. ‘It seems as if you still think we are simple-minded.’ He turns to Frau Peters. ‘I would be interested to know if officers on leave usually come here and throw their uniforms into the kitchen cupboard? No, you’ll never get anybody to believe that one. You are also under arrest and it is my duty to inform you that if you attempt to escape we shall make use of our firearms.’
‘My children,’ whispers Frau Peters, horror-stricken.
‘You should have thought of them sooner,’ answers the Staff-Feldwebel, taking a pair of handcuffs from his pocket. ‘Your bracelets, Madame, to avoid any foolishness on the way. Now we must be going!’
‘Ther
e’s one born every minute,’ says one of the MPs, as he takes Frau Peters by the arm and leads her down the stairs.
‘Heil Hider!’ screams the portress, loudly, and raises her arm.
They drive down to the Spree, their way lighted by countless fires. They swing into the great, grey building on Prinz Albrecht Strasse and the cellars swallow them up.
At exactly the same moment in time, our newly reorganised unit goes on board JU-52 transport carriers, at Tempelhof airport, to be carried back to Finland.
The feeling amongst many officers is that they have quite definitely said good-bye to life and now wish to sell it as dearly as possible.
Political officer to Hider, April 1944,
Through the dirty windows of Heino’s Bar, Porta sees a Finnish corporal rush from the bank with a pistol in one hand and a grey box in the other. Close on his heels two other soldiers emerge from the revolving doors. They run down the street as fast as they can.
‘Rubber cheque, d’you think?’ asks Tiny, interestedly.
‘Something like that,’ says Porta, thoughtfully. ‘It’s not the usual way of leaving a bank, with a pistol in your hand!’
‘Jesus, a bank-robbery,’ cries Gregor, happily, putting his head out of the door to see where the three soldiers with the pistol and the grey box have got to.
‘I know where they are,’ says Tiny, with a sly grin. ‘Come on, let’s go down and ask ’em what they made out of it.’
They find them in the illegal speakeasy.
‘What did we get out of it?’ asks Porta, in a fatherly tone, touching the nearest man lightly on the forehead with his P-38.
The corporal, a huge man with a wicked cast of countenance, spits on the floor and asks Porta if he is tired of life.
‘I said how much?’ repeats Porta contemptuously, releasing his safety catch.
‘We haven’t counted ’em yet,’ answers a sergeant who closely resembles a fieldmouse.
‘Then let’s do that,’ grins Tiny, pleased, reaching for the box. ‘It ain’t no fun ’avin’ coppers if you don’t know ’ow many of ’em you’ve got!’
