Otto's Phoney War

by Leo Kessler

  It had been as easy as falling off a log.

  As soon as he had received the dread summons to attend for his medical, he had made his decision to find some way out. As he had told his mother, known locally in Berlin-Kreuzberg as the ‘Witch’, on account of her beard, cat and the big pustule that balanced precariously on the end of her hooked nose, ‘Mama, old Hitler isn’t going to get me as cheap cannon-fodder.’ To which she had replied with a shrill cackle, revealing the long solitary yellow tooth that graced her gums, ‘I’ll lend you my broom and you can just fly away my son!’

  But Otto Stahl had had no intention of taking a dive. Sooner or later, he knew, the authorities would find him and he had no wish to spend the rest of his days in the dreaded military prison at Torgau. Instead he had soon found out who led the medical committee responsible for the mustering in his district. A little discreet shadowing of the ancient doctor with his preposterous dragging sabre and over-large riding boots had led him straight to Fraulein Krause’s modest little house in the-working-class suburb of Berlin-Wedding, and he had not needed the Witch’s crystal-ball to know what Oberstabsarzt Kieler was doing with the thirty something ample breasted gushing typist. As he remarked to his mother, ‘You can’t tell me, Mama, he’s holding her hand and taking her temperature down there.’

  ‘It ain’t her hand he’s holding, of course not, Otto.’ The Witch had made an explicit gesture with her dirty middle finger and cackled so that he had been forced to shake his head in mock wonder.

  ‘I don’t know you old bag, ever since you’ve stopped pounding the pavement, I declare you’ve got worse. Your sexual imagination is running away with you.’ The Witch had blown him a toothless kiss.

  One day later he had knocked at Fraulein Krause’s door, a bunch of cheap red roses in his hand, dressed in his best suit, stuttering apologies that he had obviously knocked at the wrong one, spinning the old tale that the beautiful woman he had met the night before at Tempelhof – ‘Of course, Fraulein, not as beautiful as you by far,’ – had given him this address.

  It was clear now, naturally, that she had stood him up. ‘So’ – he had given the confused typist the roses and that winning, if sad smile of his – ‘why don’t you accept them, meine Fraulein? I have no use for them – now.’ And he had turned to go.

  It had worked like a charm; it always did.

  ‘But I couldn’t accept such beautiful flowers just like that,’ she had protested. ‘Couldn’t I offer you a little drink at least?’

  ‘Well, just one,’ he had replied and followed her inside.

  Five minutes later they were wrestling on the couch together under the forbidding look of the Führer who hung on the wall, posing as a medieval knight, complete with flag and horse. Another five and he had her bra off and was toying with her massive breasts while she lolled there, head thrown back, eyes closed, mouth opened like a stranded, dying cod. Her knickers followed too in due course, carelessly flung over the Führer’s portrait. Within thirty minutes of having entered her apartment, Fraulein Krause was writhing on the carpet, gasping she would surely die if he took “it” out now.

  Two hours later he had departed, swearing undying love, taking with him all the information he needed to know about the head of the medical committee, including a rather peculiar story of one of the ancient doctor’s nastier habits in bed, plus Fraulein Krause’s pearls, which had fetched a cool two thousand Reichsmarks from a fence he knew in Kreutzberg.

  As he had said to his mother, ‘I’ve got him! The shitting bone mender better let me go now, or it’ll be the worse for him.’

  ‘Yes, Otto,’ she had replied, looking at him as if she were seeing him for the first time. ‘You’re a smart lad. You’ll go far. You see you inherited my brain, not your father’s.’

  ‘What father?’ had been Otto Stahl’s reply …

  ‘…Well, Herr Oberstabsarzt?’ Otto demanded.

  ‘What if I don’t do as you wish?’ the doctor quavered, with an attempt at defiance.

  Smiling winningly, Stahl bent forward and whispered something in the other man’s hairy ear.

  The doctor’s bottom lip dropped stupidly and for a moment Otto thought he might cry. ‘But you wouldn’t tell anybody that?’ he exclaimed. ‘I’m an old man … I have to do such things … to get it … Well, you understand?’

  ‘Of course, Herr Oberstabsarzt. We all have our little peculiarities. But you must admit it is a little…strange, not to say fancy, eh?’

  ‘All right, damn your impudent eyes,’ Kieler snarled, and reaching up, ripped off the plaster from Otto’s arm, hastily concealing the bundle of notes, ‘I’ll certify you unfit for military service, you cunning devil. But I’m warning you, Stahl, you’d better get as far away from Berlin as possible. One day you’ll be re-mustered and you might find that the head of the medical commission is not as humane and understanding as good old Kieler.’

  ‘Thank you for the advice, dear Doctor,’ a happy Otto said, holding up his sheet for the Oberstabsarzt's signature. ‘Stahl, Otto, will be seen in the capital of the Greater German Reich no more. Forthwith I shall leave my native stamping grounds to seek my fortune in the wide, wide world.’

  Kieler sniffed but said nothing, his mind suddenly filled with his problem. Perhaps one of Sebastian Kneipp's water-cures might help him; the old cures were often the best ones.

  Naked as he was, Otto clicked to attention and raised the paper to his forehead in mock salute. ‘Goodbye, Little Doctor, and do try to improve your performance with Fraulein Krause. She is so grateful for even the smallest of pleasures, if you follow me?’

  And with that he was gone, leaving a glowering Oberstabsarzt Kieler staring at his broad back, as if he might be tempted to draw his sabre and run him through at any moment, sauntering through the big room without a care in the world, waving a fond farewell to the downtrodden young men who were now officially members of the Grossdeutsche Wehrmacht. ‘Have a good war, fellers,’ he said and disappeared into the changing-rooms.

  Otto had commenced his adventures.

  CHAPTER 2

  Engineer Sergeant Georg Forz, nicknamed ‘The Fart-Cannon’, was pleased with himself as he stood there on the hillock, watching the new day start in the Eifel hills.

  It had been a good night. Walburga, his plump wife, had been drunkenly affectionate after the NCOs’ party. For once she had not refused him on account of her ‘migraine’, as she always called it. Afterwards he had fallen into a deep sleep in which he had dreamed his favourite dream: the surprise visit of the Führer to his section of the new fortified line. During it, the Führer had been so impressed by his work that he had spontaneously awarded him the Service Cross, Third Class. Engineer Sergeant Georg Forz, nicknamed ‘The Fart-Cannon’, was a very patriotic man.

  Now as the red ball of the sun rose over the wooded hills, he could already hear the bold marching song of his favourite bunch of workers, the young men of the Arbeitsdienst. They were setting off for a new day of work on the secret fortifications that were now beginning to stretch over valley and hill from Aachen on the Dutch frontier to Schaffenhausen on the Swiss. And then there they were, stamping by in perfect formation, hard muscular bodies naked to the waist, their polished spades carried over their shoulders like rifles, gleaming in the first rays of the sun, column after column of them, hoarse young voices bellowing out their proud patriot song.

  ‘Unsere Fahne flatten uns voran

  In die Zukunft ziehn wir Mann fur Mann

  Wir marschieren fur Hitler durch Nacht und durch Not

  Mit der Fahne derjugend fur Freiheit und Brot.’

  In Nazi German, all men and women between the ages of seventeen and eighteen had to spend six months in public service, mostly in labour camps.

  ‘Great God,’ an admiring Forz whispered to himself, as he watched the handsome, half-naked young men disappear into the forests, ‘if I weren’t straight as a die, I could take the vaseline to some of them. They’re beautiful!’

&nbs
p; ‘Sergeant Forz,’ a weak hesitant voice broke into the bull-like NCO’s morning reveries. ‘Have you a minute, Sergeant?’

  Forz turned round. It was Wurm, his hunchbacked, bespectacled civvies clerk. Wurm did most of the work in the engineering office while Forz spent the day drinking beer and schnapps with his other NCO cronies at the building sites and camps scattered all over the remote Eifel border-country.

  For a long moment he looked down his big nose at the hunchback, blood-shot eyes full of contempt for what he saw there. ‘Well, Wurm, what you pissing your pants about now, eh?’

  Wurm rubbed his skinny yellow hands together, as if they were dirty. It was a common gesture of his when he was nervous – and he was always nervous in the early morning: at such a time Engineer Sergeant Forz was highly unpredictable, especially when Frau Forz had had one of her unfortunate ‘migraines’ again. Sometimes he was tempted to buy Forz a regular supply of aspirins to give her; it would make his life easier. ‘It’s the new civvy workers, sir,’ he quavered. ‘They’ve just reported for duty and I thought – ’

  ‘You know what thought did, Wurm?’ Forz said heartily in high good humour. ‘He thought he’d shat himself – and he had!’ Forz bellowed with laughter at his own comic genius and walloped Wurm such a blow on his hump that he almost fell into the foundations of one of the new bunkers. ‘All right, Wurm, lead on. Let’s have a look at the idle shits.’

  The civilians, recruited from all parts of Germany for the massive building project, lounged against the wooden walls of the engineers’ shack, enjoying the warming rays of the early sun, chatting quietly to one another, savouring the first cigarette of the new day.

  At the sight of them, Forz’s big red face darkened. He halted abruptly so that Wurm ran into his broad back and planted himself, legs astride, big barrel-chest thrown out, and glowered at the motley crew of middle-aged navvies and pimply youths who made up his new gang.

  ‘What do you think this is – a Yiddish knocking shop or something?’ he bellowed suddenly, making one of the young men swallow his cigarette with fright. He doubled over immediately, a hacking cough trying to force out the little white roll of smouldering paper. His companions stared on, wide-eyed. Forz waited, feigning patience. The coughing youth looked up at the NCO, a note of pleading in his eyes. Forz moved forwards, pushing through the bemused recruits.

  ‘Oh get on with it, you idiot,’ he said exasperatedly, and slapped his hand down hard on the youth's back. No result. The coughing continued, interspersed now with wheezing breaths. ‘Get... on... with... it!’ demanded Forz, emphasising each word with a slap on the back. His final slap had the desired effect. The cigarette fired out of the youth's mouth straight onto the NCO's shiny right boot, stuck there by a glue of green and yellow phlegm. Almost immediately the young recruit started scrubbing away at the boot, trying to remove the hitherto contents of his throat.

  ‘S- s- sorry,’ he was stammering, as Forz pushed him away, trying to hide his furious anger with a sheen of professionalism.

  ‘Now. Snap those brittle bones together, suck in those arse-cheeks, haul in those beer tumours, raise them turnips – and dowse those lung torpedoes! At the double now!’

  Startled by the stream of commands pouring out of the infuriated giant’s mouth, the motley crew of civilians shuffled into the position of attention; all save one – a bold-faced, young man with clear, winning eyes, who continued to lounge against the wall, quietly puffing away at his Juno-Eckstein, as if he had not heard one word.

  Forz swallowed his spit and then strode forward slowly, taking his time, allowing the purple vein at his temple to tick, as if he might explode with anger at any moment, putting on the same act that had scared the pants off two generations of green recruits and earned him a fearsome reputation among the young soldiers who had had the misfortune to fall into his big beefy paws.

  He paused, only half a metre away from the young man smoking, and puffed up his barrel-chest to its most impressive dimensions. ‘Perhaps the gentleman is a little hard of hearing?’ he said with deceptive softness, pig like eyes glittering, using the old-fashioned, third-person form of address reserved for the upper classes.

  ‘Not at all,’ the young man answered easily in a thick fast manner which Forz identified as that of Berlin. ‘In fact, I’ve got perfect hearing.’ He dropped his cigarette and made a business of stubbing it out with his elegant, highly polished shoe. ‘I heard every word you said, Sergeant.’

  Behind Forz’s broad back, the clerk’s skinny hand flew to his mouth in alarm. Didn’t the Berliner realise to whom he was talking? In one second, Forz would explode and then the shit would begin to fly.

  ‘I see,’ Forz said quietly. ‘You heard everything I said?’

  ‘That is correct, Sergeant.’ The Berliner yawned, as if the whole business were beginning to bore him.

  ‘You heard me order you fellows to assume the position of attention?’

  The Berliner nodded and looked down at his nails.

  ‘THEN WHY THE FUCK DIDN’T YOU?’ Forz exploded, his face even more crimson with rage.

  The Berliner was unmoved by the outburst. Instead he calmly wiped Forz’s spittle from his handsome face and said quietly: ‘Because Sergeant, we are civilians and we are not subject to military discipline. Standing to attention is meant for toy soldiers, and not for civilians like us.’

  Someone giggled and Wurm blanched, arm half-raised, as if he anticipated being struck forcibly at any moment. The Berliner must be completely mad!

  ‘What did … did you say?’ Forz stuttered.

  ‘Perhaps it’s you who should see a doctor about his ears, Sergeant?’ the Berliner suggested easily. ‘I thought I spoke clearly enough?’

  ‘You … you …’ Forz quivered with impotent rage, unable to vent his anger on this insolent swine who had had the audacity to insult him like this. ‘… By the Great God and all His Triangles, I’m going to learn you! I’ll have you up to your hooter in shit every damn minute of the day! You’re gonna wish you had never encountered Engineer-Sergeant Forz.’ He ripped the note book from the cuff of his tunic and flapped it open with an infuriated gesture. ‘Now then what’s your name? … Come on, out with it, man. Snap to!’

  ‘Stahl … Stahl, Otto,’ the Berliner answered, his face revealing no fear at the big NCO’s angry outburst. ‘You can call me, Otto, if you like, seeing we’re getting off to such a friendly start.’

  Forz gasped and he almost dropped his pencil with rage. ‘Gott im Himmel,’ he cursed in a strangled voice, big head twisted to one side, as if he were having the greatest of difficulty in breathing. ‘That’s enough … As soon as I dismiss you, you’re gonna get a shovel from the shed and you’re gonna clean out every damn shit-house from here to Aachen, if it takes you the rest of your life. You're gonna eat shit, drink shit, live shit and dream shit! … ’ He swallowed hard, telling himself that if he didn’t control himself in a moment, he’d have a heart attack.

  The Berliner remained unmoved. ‘Although I’d very much like to help you out with the thunder-boxes, Sergeant, it can’t be done.’

  ‘Can’t be done?’ a purple-faced Forz breathed.

  ‘Yes, can’t be done,’ the other man answered calmly, reaching in his jacket and bringing out a piece of paper. ‘This is the result of my Army-medical signed by Oberstabsarzt Kieler of Berlin’s Third Military District. He attests that I am Grade-C Medical Category. You can read it here, if you wish, Sergeant.’

  Blindly Forz stared at the paper, totally unable to comprehend it or to speak.

  ‘So that means, Sergeant, I am only fit for light duties.’ Otto smiled winningly at the dumbstruck NCO. ‘I thought I might work in the office or perhaps, seeing an outdoor life might do my state of health some good, I could drive the company truck bringing up supplies from Aachen or the like. Yes,’ he said happily, apparently warming to the idea. ‘That would be nice. A fellow can see a lot of the countryside that way, can’t he?’

  Big paw c
lutching his side, Forz staggered to the office, unable to speak, kicking away the youth who had darted forward to commence cleaning of his right boot. ‘Piss off!’ he managed to hiss.

  Otto watched him go and said mildly, ‘Did I say something to offend him, fellows?’

  Now it was midday. Behind the shed, the civilians, faces glazed with sweat from a morning’s digging, spooned their thick pea soup up out of their metal mess tins, washing it down with cold tea out of bottles, saying little; they were too tired to talk.

  Otto was as clean and as immaculate as he had been at dawn, for Sergeant Forz had been too angry to attempt to set him to work and Otto had spent most of the morning hanging around the company office, chatting with the little clerk Wurm whenever Sergeant Forz was not in sight.

  Now the two of them stood on the hillock behind the shed, while Wurm pointed out the area to his companion. ‘That’s Holland over there – the Maastricht appendix, the officers call it, because that part of the cheese heads’ country is hanging into the Reich. And there, where the hills begin, that’s Belgium.’

  Otto searched the area for a few moments before announcing: ‘But they don’t seem to have any fortifications on their side of the frontier, Wurm.’

  ‘They haven’t, save for a few wooden bunkers and a couple of trench lines,’ Wurm agreed.

  ‘Then what’s all this in aid of?’ He indicated the great metal gun turret coming slowly out of the earth, followed an instant later by the cannon sliding its length from the cupola. ‘What do we need that mole with an erection for, eh?’

  Wurm gave the ‘German look’, a glance to left and right to find out whether anyone was listening to him. Satisfied that they were not being overheard, he whispered nervously, ‘I think we’re gonna use this new West Wall, what those Tommies call the Siegfried Line, to have a crack at the Polacks, while the soldiers hold off the Tommies and the French up here.’