by Sven Hassel
‘I like a woman with a bit of spirit,’ he said, and he laughed as she struggled against him. The more she scratched and bit and swore, the more Uule enjoyed himself. ‘Mitri, mitri!’ he said. ‘Do your worst, you venomous old bitch! I’m not letting you go till I’ve finished with you!’
The girls stood flapping and clucking like a row of broody hens. One of them caught my eye and giggled. The parrot under its tablecloth began screaming for air.
‘This is something!’ said Gregor, bounding forward.
Tiny had thrown his prize across the top of the grand piano and was knocking her like a man who’s been tied down in a strait-jacket for the past six months. The girl gave no signs whatsoever of disliking such treatment.
Madame sunk her teeth into Uule’s neck and was hanging on grimly like a bulldog. Heide was wiping his nose clean on the tablecloth, preparatory to going into action. The girl who was giggling took a fresh look at Madame and went off into paroxysms. I was just about to go across and claim her as my own personal property when heavy footsteps resounded in the passage outside. A couple of military police appeared in the doorway.
‘What’s going on in here? Who was it shouted out the window at us?’
The orgiastic scene froze to a standstill. Madame removed her teeth from Uule’s throat. Heide stood gaping, with the tablecloth wrapped about him like a toga. The parrot, uncovered, seemed too surprised to speak. The giggling girl clapped a hand to her mouth. Only Tiny, unperturbed, continued with his activities.
One of the MPs stepped forward into the room.
‘Someone called the police,’ he said, doggedly. ‘I want to know who it was.’
‘It wasn’t anyone,’ said Madame. She glided like an overweight sylph across the carpet. ‘I’m afraid you must be mistaken, Officer. This is a private room in a private house. I and some of my friends are having a party. I resent this unwarranted intrusion.’
The man narrowed his eyes. His hand went at once to his holster, but before he could draw his revolver, Uule had advanced upon him.
‘You heard what the lady said. This is a private party and she resents your intrusion . . . Now get out!’
I thought for a moment there was going to be trouble, but in the end they thought the better of it. They looked at Uule, with his broad chest covered in ribbons and medals. They looked at his six Finnish partisans grouped menacingly behind him, and they wisely contented themselves with a few threatening gestures and a warning that we should think twice in future before trifling with the police. They then went clattering back down the stairs and we heard the front door slam behind them. Madame turned towards us and flung out her arms in an expansive gesture.
‘Make yourselves comfortable, gentlemen. The establishment is at your disposal.’ She took Uule by the hand, smiling coquettishly. ‘Come,’ she said. ‘I will show you the way.’
The bedrooms on the next floor were like self-contained palaces. We raced from one to another, shouting and laughing and dragging the girls with us on our tour of inspection. The Potsdam room had a marble floor and a bed which floated on a lake of water. Gregor tried it out, but complained of feeling seasick and soon transferred next door to the Turkish room, which was hung with deep scarlet draperies and smelt sweetly of incense. Porta ended up in the Room of the Seven Gardens, where every wall contained a maze of split-level aquaria with brightly coloured fish darting in and out from one pool to another.
At the far end of the passage, in a place fitted out like a vast marquee, we found a couple of SD officers and their whores. We chased them all the way down the stairs and sent them naked into the street, only consenting to drop them their uniforms out of the window. This was, of course, after we had been through their pockets, and divided their money and other possessions among us.
One of their abandoned whores, after having surveyed each of us in turn, came up to me and wound herself sinuously about my neck.
‘Why did you treat those men like that?’ she said, reproachfully.
I shrugged a careless shoulder.
‘Because they were officers – because they belonged to the SD – because we didn’t like the look of them – because we were drunk—’ I pulled her along the passage and back into the marquee room. ‘Take your choice,’ I said.
She smiled seductively at me.
‘By all means,’ she murmured.
She spoke German with a strong Russian accent. She seemed more intelligent than the rest, and I was pretty sure she was a spy. Undoubtedly she had picked me out as being the youngest and greenest and the most likely to talk, but for the moment I couldn’t have cared less. And for the first half hour, in any case, we neither of us had very much opportunity for speech. There were far more important matters to attend to . . .
It was only afterwards, when temporarily exhausted we lay side by side in the middle of the vast circular bed, smoking cigarettes and drinking vodka, that she remembered her mission. She propped herself on one elbow and smiled down at me, her long hair falling over her shoulders and tickling my throat.
‘It’s funny,’ she said, ‘but it seems to me that we’ve met before somewhere . . . Don’t you have that feeling?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘I can’t say that I do. Perhaps I haven’t read my script properly?’
‘Your script?’
I hunched a shoulder.
‘I don’t seem to know my lines too well.’
‘Oh . . .’ She smiled again and ran a hand along my thigh. ‘I feel so sure we have met. Where have you been lately? Where were you before Poland?’
‘Where wasn’t I?’ I said. ‘Practically everywhere save the South Pole.’
‘Russia?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I’ve been to Russia.’
‘You like it there?’
‘Lovely,’ I said. ‘The trenches were some of the nicest I’ve ever known. I can thoroughly recommend it.’
She grinned at that, and took a sip of vodka in an effort to cover it up.
‘Where do you live?’
‘Live? I don’t live anywhere. I live with the Army. You could hardly call that living.’
‘But where were you born?’
I stubbed out my cigarette and felt round for another.
‘I wasn’t born,’ I said. ‘I was invented. Put together bit by bit like Frankenstein’s monster. I’m not a man, I’m a machine.’
‘Some machine!’ she said. She lit two cigarettes and put one into my mouth for me. ‘Are you with a tank regiment?’
‘A tank regiment?’ I said, horrified. ‘We don’t have tank regiments in the Salvation Army!’
We stayed together all night on the big circular bed under its snow-white canopy. At dawn we woke up and bathed in a scented bath. The carnage of war seemed very far away and long ago. The shrieks of men in agony no longer pierced my eardrums, and the blood of the dying seemed not so red as once it had been.
‘I should like to stay in this room for ever,’ I said.
The girl stepped, dripping from the bath. She stretched out on top of me on the bed, winding her arms round my neck and twisting her legs in mine.
‘But don’t you have to attack Warsaw?’ she said.
‘How should I know?’ I murmured. ‘I’m only a machine, remember? I don’t make decisions. I have to wait until I’m programmed.’
She ran her tongue over her teeth and pressed herself against me.
‘I’ll programme you,’ she said.
Five minutes later, an explosion shook the building. The canopy collapsed on top of us. The bed was flung across the room. We heard the roar of falling masonry and the staccato crackle of flames.
We fought our way out of the all-enveloping folds of the canopy. The girl raced for the door, which was hanging lopsided off its hinges. I snatched up my clothes from the side of the bath and bounded after her. As we reached the passage, the ceiling caved in. Great chunks of plaster came crashing down, followed by a wooden beam, which was on fire at both ends. The bedclothes caught
fire almost at once, but we didn’t stay behind to put the flames out. The passage was full of naked girls and half-dressed men. I saw Porta galloping along wearing nothing but his socks.
It was Madame herself, resplendent in a cherry satin negligée which successfully revealed all, who led the stampede down the stairs. The next floor was not too badly damaged, as the fire had not yet caught hold. We saved what we could from the wreckage, tossing armfuls of clothing out of the windows, and snatching the Persian rugs off the floor. Everyone carried as much as he was able to manage down the stairs to safety. Tiny and Uule managed the grand piano between them. Porta went scavenging in the kitchen. I rescued the parrot. Madame stood outside on the pavement checking everything as it arrived, watching with hawklike eye lest anyone should attempt to run off with the silver.
‘Mean old goat,’ said Porta. ‘Here—’ He dug a hand into his pocket and pulled out a packet of new-minted roubles. ‘A little parting gift. You might find ’em useful when the Russians arrive.’ He winked at her. ‘Just one thing,’ he said. ‘Make sure you rough ’em up a bit before you try using ’em. Looks better that way. Not quite so obvious . . . Know what I mean?’
Madame eagerly snatched her bundle of illegal tender. Then she caught Porta into the folds of her cascading bosoms and cried over him like a mother.
‘How sad that you have to leave us so soon! If you could only have stayed another night – what a time we should have had!’
‘We didn’t do so badly this time,’ I muttered, with a wink at the parrot in its cage.
‘I am an advocate of the very severest forms of punishment. It is essential that strict discipline be maintained in all our schools. Faults must be corrected, weaknesses eliminated, and under my régime the youth of Germany will rise and conquer the world . . .’
Hitler. In a talk at the SS Officers’ Training School, Tölz,
18th February 1937.
General Zygmunt Berling was the Commander-in-Chief of the two Polish divisions fighting with the Russian Army on the eastern frontier of his unhappy country. After the failure of the Colonel’s mission to Rokossovski, General Zygmunt in his turn approached the Marshal with the plea that he and his men be allowed to cross over the Vistula and return into Poland to help defeat the invading Germans. And he in his turn received no for an answer.
‘Niet,’ said Rokossovski, in uncompromising tones.
He knocked the ash off his cigar and returned to his contemplation of a map of Europe hanging on the wall. General Berling hesitated a moment, then crossed impulsively to his side.
‘Konstantin, for God’s sake!’ he said. ‘We’ve known each other a long time, you and I. You can surely grant me this one favour? How would you feel if it were your country that was at stake? Give me a free hand,’ he urged. ‘If things go wrong, I’ll accept full responsibility.’
Rokossovski picked up a pin and stuck it in the map.
‘Niet,’ he said, without even troubling to look round.
The General turned abruptly and left the room. He went back to his two divisions and to the anxious inquiries of Colonel Lisevka, his Chief of Staff.
‘The answer,’ said Berling, ‘is niet.’
Colonel Lisevka frowned.
‘And the reason?’ he said.
‘No reason,’ said Berling. ‘Just niet . . .’
At one o’clock that morning, the two Polish divisions crossed over the Vistula and marched back into Poland. They were accompanied by a Russian regiment composed of Ukranians from Kharkov, under the command of Colonel Rilski. All three men, Berling, Lisevka and Rilski, knew that if the attempt failed they would have signed their own death warrants. Nevertheless, they believed that what they were doing was right, and they went ahead and took the risk.
Luck was not with them. After two hours of fierce street fighting, the Polish partisans and Rilski’s Ukranians had been decimated by Theodor Eicke and his SS division. Eicke’s men were experts in the close combat of the streets. The Poles were used to rolling plains that stretched to the horizon and beyond. They never stood a chance. They died by the thousands on the west bank of the Vistula. They lay in the gutters, drowning in rivers of their own blood. Poland could not now hope to be free.
The Cemetery of Wola
We had been fighting non-stop for three days, with spades and bayonets and even bare fists, in the streets surrounding the cemetery at Wola. Countless numbers of men had died for that cemetery. We had just snatched it back for perhaps the twentieth time from the partisans of Armija Krajowa, and now it was their turn to launch an attack and regain possession. It changed hands with a regularity that was becoming monotonous, and with every attack and counter-attack the corpses lay piled high in the streets. Yet another batch of graves had to be dug. But the cemetery was in a strategic position, dominating Praga, and no matter if every partisan and every German soldier gave up his life for it, the battle must be fought to the bitter, futile end.
A burnt-out chapel littered with the bodies of the dead served as our shelter. Gregor had been hit in the head by a bullet and was now wrapped up like a mummy in dirty bloodstained bandages. All of us had been injured in some degree or another, but Gregor had come very near to death. Another centimetre lower, and he would not now have been sprawled on the floor simply complaining of a headache.
A major from the General Staff appeared in the entrance of the chapel and began barking out a series of totally nonsensical orders. We stared at him with glazed eyes. The man was obviously a maniac, but he was also a major. Sullenly, resentfully, we hauled ourselves to our feet and followed him out into the inferno of the streets. Happily for us, before we had gone very far, he set eyes upon a group of SS sharpshooters of the Reich Division and decided they would serve his purpose better than a rabble of bleary-eyed and apathetic soldiers from a tank regiment. He marched them off with him towards the river, and we shot back like rabbits into the shelter of our ruined chapel with its rampart of corpses.
For a while they left us in peace and we took the opportunity to snatch a little sleep. It was the first respite we had had for seventy-two hours. We had not eaten for the past two days, and it was over a week since we had been able to remove our boots. Even Heide was beginning to stink.
At midnight we were dragged off to the Rue Wola, with instructions to set up the machine-gun in the basement of a bombed house and keep the road covered.
Shortly after dawn the first of a long column of civilians turned into the road. They were of both sexes, all ages, old men and children, invalids and pregnant women, cripples pushed in wheelchairs. Many had obviously been dragged straight from their beds, for they were shivering in their night clothes. Some had had time to pack suitcases or trunks, which they carried on their backs or dragged along behind them. Others had net bags and brown paper parcels containing what few precious possessions they had been able to snatch up as they rushed out of their homes.
‘Where are they going?’ I said. ‘The road only leads to the cemetery.’
‘Then that,’ said the Old Man, dryly, ‘is obviously where they are going.’
There was a pause. I looked again at the pitiful column of people. I saw one man being carried along on a makeshift stretcher. It seemed to me that he was dying.
‘Why should they be going to the cemetery?’ I said.
The Old Man shrugged.
‘What do people usually go to cemeteries for?’
The group was being chivvied along by Dirlewanger’s SS men. A police car turned in from a side road and took its place at the head of the convoy. I leaned out of the window to listen as the loudspeakers began to crackle.
‘Attention! Attention everybody! For military reasons, this area is being cleared. You have five minutes in which to vacate your houses. I repeat, five minutes. We regret the necessity for this, but Communist Polish traitors leave us no alternative. This area is now a military zone and your lives will be endangered if you stay. SS Obergruppenführer von dem Bach Zalewski gives you his person
al assurance that you will be well cared for until such time as you can be rehoused. You will be under the full protection of the German Army. You have permission to bring with you whatever personal possessions you are able to carry, but it is essential that the evacuation is completed within five minutes . . . Attention, attention! For military reasons, this area is being cleared . . .’
The car turned off down another side street, and the strident tones of the loudspeaker faded gradually into the distance. All up and down the Rue Wola, windows and doors were flying open and distraught citizens were pouring out to join the passing column. Dirlewanger’s men shouted directions and offered reassurance and condolences. I saw one of them stoop to pick up a toy dropped by a small child. I saw another give a helping hand to an old woman. I saw a third smiling, and at that point I shivered and turned away. There was something very disturbing, something peculiarly sinister, in the sight of SS men behaving like normal human beings. I knew then that something must be very wrong.
The feet went on shuffling past. Hundred upon hundred of them, some in shoes, some in slippers, some in rags. Many of the children were barefoot. And now, lining the route, appeared the menacing grey shapes of Kaminski’s SS. They stood like statues, unsmiling, unmoving. Just stood there and watched as the people marched by.
The police car returned, its loudspeaker still blaring.
‘Attention, attention! This area is about to be shelled. I repeat, this area is about to be shelled. You have half a minute in which to get out. Anyone failing to do so will be regarded as an enemy of the German people and will be shot. This is your last warning . . .’
