by Sven Hassel
‘He’s right on top form,’ says Porta, with satisfaction. ‘You’d almost think he knew who he was going to visit!’
An aged, slow-moving, medical Gefreiter shows us the way to Emil Sieg’s ward.
A little way down the corridor we are stopped by a forbidding matron, who has caught sight of Dynamite.
‘What is that?’ she asks, pointing indignantly at the cage.
‘Matron!’ answers Porta, clicking his heels smartly. ‘That is a cage!’ She ranks as an officer.
‘I mean what is inside it?’ she snarls, irritably.
‘A pussy-cat, which is longing to visit its sick friend,’ Porta smiles, sycophantically.
‘Cats are not allowed in the wards! It must be left outside!’
Tiny pretends to go outside, but as soon as the sour matron has disappeared he runs down the corridor with the cage rocking after him.
‘You’re a hard man to get rid of,’ says Porta, extending his hand to Sieg. ‘But we’ve got rid of eight million Russians and we’ll get rid of you too! You’ll see!’
‘Get out!’ whispers Sieg, fumbling for the bell, but Porta is quicker and pulls it out of the wall.
‘Why ring?’ asks Porta with false friendliness. ‘Let’s enjoy ourselves. We’ve got a friend with us you’ll be interested to meet. He’ll help you to pass the time!’
‘A wildcat,’ whispers Sieg, in terror, staring with frightened eyes at the snarling animal.
‘As you no doubt are aware, cats have nine lives,’ explains Porta, ‘and, after what’s happened so far, you seem to be almost as immortal! We have decided to carry out a scientific experiment: Cat against man! If you are as lucky as you have been the other two times then you should be able to fix Dynamite too. Scratch him under the left ear and he’ll purr like a house-cat lying under the stove!’
‘Listen now,’ whispers Sieg, beside himself with fear, and pulling the blankets up under his chin. ‘I only wanted to have some fun with you and see how you’d react.’
‘You’ve seen how we react,’ grins Porta. ‘What we’re doing now is only in fun!’
‘I swear I’ve never even heard of your Jewish Germans,’ whispers Sieg, hoarsely, ‘and you will never again have any trouble with me!’
‘I know all about that,’ grins Porta. ‘But now I’d like you to meet Dynamite and after that we’ll bury the whole thing.’
‘Bury?’ whispers Sieg, hoarsely, struggling to get out of bed. Tiny catches him by the hair and pushes him back.
‘Stay where you are,’ he orders gruffly. ‘The poor animal might suffer loss of breath if ’e ’ad to chase after you!’
Sieg opens his mouth to scream, but only a weak rattle leaves it.
Tiny starts the acoustic machine, and the wildcat goes mad.
His movements knock the cage over and the door opens. Like a furry rocket he shoots from the cage and springs to the table in the middle of the ward, where he crouches ready to attack. Warning sounds comes from his throat.
‘No, no!’ shouts Tiny, his eyes glaring wildly, as Dynamite flies through the air towards him. He has forgotten he still has the acoustic apparatus in his hand. ‘It’s not me!’ he screams, as he falls to the floor with the wildcat on top of him. He feels as if his skin is being pulled, in one long movement, up over his head. In some strange way he lands on Sieg’s bed, with the apparatus clutched in his hand.
Fear has given Sieg his voice back. A long, guttural roar comes from his wide-open mouth.
The beds fly round in the room. The table is smashed to bits. Cupboards fall with a deafening crash. Glass tinkles. Feathers from ripped eiderdowns float in the air in clouds.
Tiny rushes towards the door with blood streaming down over his face and his uniform in tatters. He is in such a hurry to get away from the wildcat that he takes the frame of the door with him.
‘The sound machine,’ shouts Porta, warningly, as Tiny comes running, with the wildcat at his heels.
Tiny stops for a second. The wildcat catches up with him.
‘The machine!’ shouts Porta, desperately. ‘Throw it away for God’s sake!’
At last Tiny understands him and sends the apparatus rattling down the corridor. The hospital superintendent, with his assistants at his heels, turns the corner at the same moment.
Dynamite whirls around on his own axis a few times to discover where the hated sound is coming from now. He crouches, and turns his bloodthirsty eyes on the matron, who has picked up the sound machine.
‘What is that thing?’ asks the hospital superintendent, interestedly.
There is no time for him to receive an answer. The wildcat is on top of them. Never in her life has the matron been un-dressed so quickly. The superintendent goes head over heels down the staircase, and the party with him fly to all sides.
‘Let’s get out of here,’ shouts Porta. ‘This is getting hot!’
But we have only got a little way down the corridor when the machine comes flying after us.
‘No!’ Porta manages to scream. Then the wildcat has caught up with them.
Nobody knows how we get away, but one of us must have kicked the apparatus back to Sieg’s ward because all hell is loose there.
Bloody, shaking and shocked we crawl back into the Kübel, where Wolf sits waiting for us impatiently.
‘What the hell’s happened to you?’ he asks open-eyed. ‘You look as if you’ve been in a fight with a whole panzer division!’
‘No more wildcats for me!’ moans Tiny, who is practically unrecognisable.
‘My arse, what a sight you are!’ says Wolf. ‘What about Dynamite? Aren’t you going to take him home with us?’
‘Forget him,’ groans Porta, trying to get a torn-off tunic arm to stay in position. ‘That bastard’s going to empty the whole hospital before he’s done!’
As we turn out of the grounds we hear the tingling sound of broken glass. Sieg sails through the window, followed by two medical orderlies. Before they land, the wildcat is on top of them. They are hidden in a cloud of snow.
‘Holy Mother of Kazan,’ mumbles Porta, through swollen lips, ‘what energy there is in an animal like that!’
‘Did you fail again?’ asks Hofmann, despairingly, when he sees us.
‘Take it easy. It’s only just begun,’ Porta comforts him.
The following day Hofmann brings us the happy news that Sieg has been declared unsuited for any kind of service and has been transferred, a shaking wreck, to the Army Psychiatric Hospital at Giessen. Nobody takes any notice of his disconnected babbling of murder, racial falsification and wildcats. They merely laugh at his crazy accusations.
‘He’ll never get out of Giessen,’ grins Porta, well-satisfied. ‘He’ll be seeing wildcats everywhere.’
Hofmann snatches up the jangling telephone. It is Wachtmeister Sally from Paderborn.
‘You can sleep easy, lads,’ he laughs, jovially. ‘Bierfreund-Müller’s papers’ve disappeared for ever and ever! It’ll cost another case of whisky though!’ he adds. ‘If anybody, in the future, catches sight of his half-naked prick, he can say some bloody Jews cut it off of him and it won’t even be a lie!’
With a sigh of relief Hofmann puts the receiver back on its hook.
‘For safety’s sake we’d better leave here for a time,’ says Hofmann. ‘Actually it’s Number Four’s turn to go up front, but maybe we’d better take their turn for them. Section leaders and group leaders to me in an hour’s time!’ he orders, and he is the Hauptfeldwebel again.
The same night we sneak through the front line.
I never dreamt that I would ever have to lead such a mèlange of ill-equipped troops as No. 5 Panzer Army.
Generaloberst Balck in a letter to Generaloberst
Jodl, September 1944.
Without thinking I bring my right hand back over my shoulder. The edge of it is stiff, from the little finger to the wrist.
I throw my hand forward, straight at his Adam’s apple.
Gregor has alre
ady killed the other one by hitting him with the edge of his hand from behind between the shoulder and the neck. I heard the crackling sound of bones breaking quite clearly.
Porta jumps neatly to one side to avoid the long bayonet and, like lightning, thrusts the tips of his fingers into the Russian sergeant’s throat with such force that the blow knocks him backwards, and the head breaks away from the spine with a cracking sound.
My stroke was perfect. Our Japanese instructor would have been pleased. I crushed his throat and perforated his windpipe. The blow was so powerful that my hand cut into the throat and did not stop until it struck the vertebra which connects the head with the backbone. I made one bad mistake. I looked into the face, saw the twisted mouth and bloodshot eyes.
It was a woman!
I remained sitting in the snow for a long time, vomiting. Our instructor was right: Never look at them! Kill them and move on!
It took me a long time to forget her distorted face.
47 See ‘Wheels of Terror’.
48 SS-Heini = Heinrich Himmler.
49 Gefepo (Geheime Feldpolizei) = Secret Field Security Police.
50 Denn wir etc. (Freely translated)
Since we know that after all our pain,
The sunrise will shine clear again!
NOVA PETROVSK
‘Get your arse off the ground, you red bastard,’ shouts Feldwebel Schrüder, with a hard look on his face. ‘Run, you louse, run!’
‘Nix Bolsjevik,’ shouts the prisoner, with fear in his voice. With a quick movement he pulls off his fur cap and bows. ‘Nix Bolsjevik,’ he repeats, throwing both hands up. ‘Heil Hitler!’ he screams, confusedly.
‘Must be one of their clowns we’ve got hold of,’ grins Unteroffizier Stolp, prodding the prisoner brutally with his Mpi.
‘Sod off, you lazy bastard,’ hisses Schrider, with a murderous gleam in his eyes.
‘Nix Bolsjevik,’ cries the prisoner, beginning to run clumsily through the deep snow.
‘He looks like a wet hen,’ says Stolp, laughing loudly.
‘Jew bastard,’ snarls Feldwebel Schriider, lifting his Mpi.
Stolp laughs wickedly and throws a snowball after the prisoner, who has got a good way down the hill. Then the Mpi rattles and the prisoner turns a series of somersaults.
Schröder moves towards the body with the sure steps of a hunter going to pick up a pheasant he has shot down. He prods the dead man, tentatively, with the muzzle of his Mpi.
‘Dead as a nit,’ he grins back, proudly.
‘If the Old Man gets to know about this,’ says Gregor, coldly, ‘I wouldn’t be in your boots!’
‘The Old Man can kiss my arse,’ says Schrider, with assurance. ‘I’m following the Führer’s orders. Liquidate the Untermensch wherever you find them!’
‘Your Fihrer didn’t tell you to murder prisoners of war though, did he?’ comments Porta, turning the muzzle of his Mpi towards him.
‘You can report me if you want,’ grins Schrider, superciliously. ‘I’ll manage all right!’
‘I hope so, for your own sake,’ answers Gregor, contemptuously, going into the woods where the remainder of the section is resting.
The Old Man is grumpy and irritable. The section has been saddled with two guests. A Finn, Captain Kariluoto and a German, Leutnant Schnelle, who are to observe us on these long trips up towards the White Sea. There are also some new men who have taken the interpreter examination in Russian. Comically enough they do not understand a word of the language spoken up here at the Arctic Circle. Both Porta and Barcelona get along much better with the local language.
The officers are shocked by what they have seen already, and there have been several clashes between them and the Old Man. But they can do nothing about it. Oberst Hinka has told them, in no uncertain fashion, that the Old Man is in command and that Barcelona Blom is next after him, irrespective of what happens.
Grumpily we collect our equipment. Porta is ready to fight Unteroffizier Stolp over the murdered prisoner and the Old Man has to speak plainly to Leutnant Schnelle. For no apparent reason Tiny knocks Feldwebel Scluider down.
‘Don’t follow the road,’ shouts the Old Man to Tiny, who is marching in the lead.
‘Why not?’ shouts Tiny, in a voice which raises echoes in the forest.
‘Because we’ll run straight into the enemy if we follow the road,’ hisses the Old Man, irritably.
‘Ain’t that what we’re lookin’ for?’ grins Tiny, pleased. ‘If we keep on avoidin’ one another the bleedin’ war’ll never be over!’
‘Do as I say!’ shouts the Old Man, gruffly.
‘I’d court-martial that man,’ cries Leutnant Schnelle, angrily, and has notebook and pencil out already.
‘Leave that to me,’ says the Old Man, passing the Leutnant quickly.
‘The whole of the neighbour’s fucking army’s on its way towards us!’ shouts Gregor, rushing out of the forest in a cloud of snow.
‘I thought as much,’ sighs Leutnant Schnelle, resignedly. ‘Here it goes! That’s what happens when they give a Feldwebel too much authority!’
The Old Man looks at him for a moment with stony eyes.
‘You can report me, when we get back, Herr Leutnant, but until then I must ask you to refrain from criticising my orders. To put it quite bluntly, I am in command here!’
Leutnant Schnelle exchanges a glance with the Finnish captain, who merely shrugs his shoulders and wishes he was back in Helsinki and had never got himself mixed up with these operations behind the enemy lines.
Tiny is lying in the snow with his ear pressed to the ground, listening intently.
‘How many?’ asks the Old Man, brusquely, throwing himself down alongside him.
‘By the noise the sods are makin’ they could be a battalion at least! But if you ask me I don’t think there’s more’n a lousy company! They’re probably out lookin’ for snowdrops!’
‘How far away?’ hisses the Old Man.
”Ard to say,’ answers Tiny, trying to look wise. ‘These Commie forests can play tricks on you!’
‘On your feet,’ orders the Old Man, ‘out of the marsh and down along the slope! At the double and no firing without my express orders! If we have to fight it’ll be with knives and spades!’
Leumant Schnelle has already his pistol in his hand and is looking very warlike.
‘Put that iron away!’ snarls the Old Man, irritably. ‘If it goes off they’ll hear it in Moscow!’
Looking insulted the Leutnant puts his pistol back in the holster, and assumes the look of a boy who has been sent to bed early.
We can hear them a long time before they come into sight. Arguing noisily, they turn the corner by the group of firs. Two lieutenants, with Mpis slung across their chests in the Russian manner, are in the lead. Behind them the company follows in a disorderly mob.
We lie silently in the snow and watch them over our sights. It would be an easy matter to knock them over, but they are not important. We are not interested in killing them. Our mission is of much greater importance.
The enemy,’ whispers Fähnrich Tamm, excitedly. ‘Why do we not shoot them?’
‘Violence is not always the best way,’ Porta rejects the suggestion, scoffingly.
But it’s the enemy,’ whispers Tamm, loudly, pressing the butt of the LMG into his shoulder.
‘Mind you don’t bend that finger too far,’ Porta warns him, jovially, ‘or you’ll be a dead hero!’
Tamm loosens his grip on the LMG, and looks around in a lost manner.
‘The Führer has ordered it that the enemy is to be destroyed wherever he is met with!’
‘Why don’t you report to Fihrer HQ, and spit an’ polish his boots a bit for him,’ suggests Gregor, with a broad grin. ‘Just be the thing for you! You might even get some of Adolf’s foot-sweat up under your nails!’
The noise from the departing Russian company dies away gradually. A long, grating peal of laughter is the last we hear of them.
The steely clouds hang low and move faster and faster. A storm is on its way. One of the feared polar storms which can blow an elk along over the snow as if it were a snowflake.
Jesus’n Mary, but it’s piss cold,’ moans Tiny, knocking his hands together. ‘What the hell’s Adolf want in this bleedin’ country? We’re only doin’ the neighbours a favour by pinchin’ it from ’em!’
Just before dawn the Old Man allows them a short break for a cold meal.
‘Why the pace?’ groans Leutnant Schnelle, worn out and throwing himself flat on the snow.
‘Because we have to get to the lakes before the supply planes,’ answers the Old Man, grouchily. ‘We have a very tight time schedule. If you are not able to keep up, Herr Leutnant, you can stay here! You are not assigned to my section, but only with us as an observer!’
‘Ready to move,’ shouts the Old Man and turns his back contemptuously on the Leutnant.
From the top of the heights they can see out across the White Sea where great waves lift towards the gloomy heavens. On the horizon they can just make out a dark line, resembling a distant coastline.
‘Think it’s America?’ asks Tiny, interestedly.
An animated discussion commences immediately. Only the two observer officers keep out of it.
‘Holy Agnes,’ cries Gregor, hoarsely, ‘it’s no further off’n we could piss over there, an’ if that’s America I’d say let’s shit on Adolf and move on out of his shitty war!’
We lie on our stomachs in the snow, and stare dreamily at the dark shadows, while we try to outdo one another in fantasy. Tiny imagines he has met the furrier’s boy, David, in New York, where he is passing the time waiting for Hitler’s defeat.
On the fourth day, late in the afternoon, we reach the lakes, and have only just stretched out the long red cloth marker for the planes when the first JU 52 roars through the clouds. It swoops low over the snow and we almost think for a moment that it is going to land.
