Otto's Phoney War

by Leo Kessler

‘Yes,’ he had said eagerly. ‘It’s Spanish for wolf.’

  ‘I don’t feel like a wolf. Besides it seems a damn silly name to me. I mean who would go around calling himself wolf, I ask you?’ Otto had sneered.

  ‘Damn silly name, you think?’ the Count had said mildly. ‘Hmm, funny that. You know, the Führer has used the code-name “wolf” for the last twenty-odd years.’

  Outside the smoke from the burning foundations of the Abwehr's training school started to rise in a thick black cloud.

  Now Madame Lejeune wiped the tears from her broad ruddy country face and gave him a toothless smile, obviously delighted to have a man in the house again and one who did justice to her humble food. Not wishing to disappoint her, Otto took another bit of the enormous doorstep she had prepared for him, politely averting his gaze from the cup of coffee.

  ‘Something worrying you?’ she asked. ‘You haven’t deserted from the Prussians, have you, Otto?’

  He smiled again at her use of the word ‘Prussian’.

  ‘Not really Madame, I’m not even a soldier. But I have been sent over by our authorities to make some – err – purchases over here in Belgium.’

  ‘Coffee … cigarettes?’

  ‘No, not exactly… ’ He put down his sandwich. ‘Uniforms to be exact.’

  ‘Uniforms, that’s strange. I always thought you Prussians had uniforms enough of your own.’ She reached forward and with her forefinger spooned out yet another dead fly from Otto’s cup. They kept falling from the flypaper suspended directly above the battered kitchen-table at which the two of them sat.

  The flypaper, a fading photograph of Emil and Madame on their wedding day, and a wooden crucifix were the poor little place’s sole decorations. ‘You can have poor Emil’s for nothing,’ she said. ‘And his medals for bowling too, if you want, Otto. The Belgians wouldn’t allow him to wear the Iron Cross the Prussians gave him in the First World War, so he always wore his bowling medals at official functions.’

  Inwardly Otto groaned. What a country Belgium was! Aloud he said. ‘That’s very kind, Madame. I’ll pay you for it, of course. But I need more. I mean where do you get official uniforms around here – St Vith?’

  She shook her head firmly. ‘Oh, no, those pigs of Walloons in Old Belgium like to keep their dirty paws on as much business as they can. No, we of the East Cantons have to buy our uniforms in Venders, from the Walloons.’

  ‘They don’t speak German down there?’ He had heard Emil speak of the Walloons once or twice in their brief but profitable acquaintance. It seemed as though they were French-speaking ethnic Belgies. Otto couldn't help but smirk at their name.

  ‘No, just their own version of French.’

  ‘I see,’ Otto said gloomily. His original plan had been simplicity itself. Give Emil the five thousand marks in expense money and let him organise the uniforms by legitimate means, pocketing what was left over for himself. But that was impossible now.

  Suddenly Otto’s gaze fell on the dead Emil’s revolver in its big black holster, hanging from a nail beside the crucifix. In their typically sloppy way, the Belgian authorities had obviously forgotten to come and collect it.

  As if by magic, the whole plan presented itself in his head. Dressed in Emil’s uniform, he could walk into the shop in Verviers where they produced the uniforms, draw the revolver and demand the uniforms. Desperate times made Otto think desperately – a dangerous character trait. Then his face dropped. He couldn’t even speak enough French to say ‘hands up’, not to mention state his demands.

  For a long time the two of them sat at the battered kitchen-table, listening to the wind in the big poplars outside the house and the soft crackle of the wood burning stove in a corner. Otto worried through his problem, and Madame Lejeune occupied herself once more with her knitting.

  ‘Madame, do you speak French?’ Otto broke the heavy silence at last.

  Madame Lejeune put down her knitting – it was for a male sock. Even though Emil was dead, she still seemed to be knitting them. ‘Yes, I speak the pigs’ language. I worked in Verviers General Hospital as a scrub-maid for three years before I married Emil.’

  ‘So,’ Otto said thoughtfully, absorbing the information, telling himself that the new plan forming in his fertile mind was crazy, but that these days everything seemed crazy to him, and because of that it might just work. He licked his dry lips and wished that he had had a good glass of cold Berlin Kindi beer in front of him at this moment instead of the cup of fly-filled coffee.

  Gingerly he picked out a fly and left it to die on the table, kicking its legs valiantly to the very last. He took his time, wondering if the big-bosomed farm-woman opposite him wouldn’t break out into mad laughter when he made his mad proposal. Then it came out, abruptly in one quick burst of words. ‘Madame Lejeune, would you like to earn five thousand marks?’

  CHAPTER 3

  At first everything went perfectly.

  They arrived in Verviers on the farm cart, exactly as planned, just as the provincial town was beginning to wake up from its midday sleep, and the storekeepers were starting to take down the shutters that barred their doors. But the Madame told Otto the streets were relatively empty. The grey drizzle seemed to be keeping the locals indoors and reducing the number of cyclists. Those few pedestrians who were about walked slowly and with their heads bent deep into the upturned collars of their coats, as if weighed down by the weather and the times.

  They clattered along the cobbled road that led by the gaudy nineteenth century main station at a smart pace, she in her best black, with a sack around her shoulders to keep off the rain, and apparently composed; he dressed in Emil’s uniform, with one of his shabby raincoats over the top to conceal it, and definitely not composed, though he did not show his companion on the cart that. In his short criminal life after he had run away from both his grandfather and his childhood in Stralsund, Otto had committed quite a number of petty crimes, but he had never yet taken part in armed robbery, let alone one in a foreign country.

  Now the Fleming’s pace began to slacken as the cobbled road grew steeper beyond the Gare and they began to ascend to the upper half of the Walloon city. Otto allowed himself a quizzical smile: all this for a few uniforms. What insane mission had this Father Christmas dreamed up?

  Minutes passed, while she guided him effortlessly through the maze of nineteenth century cobbled streets, heavy with the smell of the raw beef tartare that the Walloons loved, and the stench of urine from the city’s poorly functioning drainage system. In years to come Otto would have long forgotten the details of his first robbery, but he would always be able to recall that smell.

  ‘There,’ she whispered and pointed to a store to their right. Its windows were filled with old-fashioned legless and headless dummies, clad in a varied selection of official uniforms. At their feet lay waxed, moustachioed heads in military-style caps, which made them look as if they had just been beheaded. ‘That’s it.’

  He nodded his understanding and urged the Fleming further up the road, before doing a U-turn and then tying the horse’s reins to a convenient lamp-post.’ ‘Easier this way,’ he whispered.

  She smiled at him with toothless gums, her eyes sparkling with excitement. ‘I know,’ she said eagerly. ‘Downhill for a quick get-away, eh? Oh yes, me and Emil were great ones for the thrillers. Once a year regular we went to the cinema in St Vith to see the gangsters.’ She closed one eye and swung an imaginary machine-gun from her fat hip, making ratatatat sounds.

  ‘Oh, no!’ Otto groaned, while she beamed at him. ‘Come on.’

  ‘This is going to be fun,’ she said and let herself be escorted to the uniform store.

  They had gone over the plan a dozen times. She, naturally, would do the talking, in this case, reading, for however much she tried, she could not memorise the list of uniforms and so in the end he had been forced to write them for her on a piece of paper. Once inside the store, she would read them to the, hopefully, patient storekeeper.

 
Of course, he would then demand her authority for collecting official uniforms. Otto would open his raincoat to reveal Emil’s uniform, which hopefully would do the trick. If that didn’t work, another thousand-franc note placed on the top of the pile she would already have put on the counter, should clinch matters. At least that was Madame Lejeune’s opinion. As she had remarked contemptuously several times on the long drive to Venders, ‘Your average Walloon pig would sell his own mother for a five-franc piece.’

  Otto hesitated only a fraction of a second at the entrance to the dingy little store, then he pushed his courage in front of him with both hands and opened the door to the clatter of the bell above them.

  Almost instantly a small, bespectacled figure emerged from behind the thick felt curtain at the back of the place, tailor’s measure around his neck, thread hanging out of the corner of his mouth, body stooped with years of bending over his sewing. ‘Bonjour,’ he croaked.

  'Bonjour,’ they replied and Otto waited awkwardly, as Madame Lejeune started to pile the franc notes up in front of her on the dusty counter, while the little tailor stared at her, obviously bewildered.

  With due ceremony, the farm-woman now drew out her list, tilting it slightly to the left to get the best of the light and after duly clearing her throat in the fashion of a child about to recite a poem for its teacher, she started to read off the list, while the tailor listened in silence, his bewilderment growing by the instant.

  ‘Pas possible,’ he croaked when she was finished and the manner in which he shook his head told Otto that it was his turn now. Feeling like some exhibitionist in one of Berlin’s parks, he ripped open the shabby raincoat to reveal Emil’s uniform below. 'Voila,’ he said too loudly, using the word she had coached him to use.

  The tailor was surprised, but not impressed. Again he shook his head and said, ‘Pas possible! Sans authorisation, pas des uniforms. C’est la loi.’

  Madame Lejeune was unimpressed by his refusal. She held up a massive paw to stop the flow of words, as if she were a traffic cop at rush hour, and then when the tailor grew silent, she produced another one-thousand-franc note and laid it on the pile in front of her with a huge conspiratorial wink.

  The tailor was impressed and Otto could see the conflicting emotions battling with each other inside him, but in the end his skinny yellow face hardened. Once more he shook his head firmly, scattering dandruff like snow onto his bent shoulders.

  For what seemed an age, the three of them stood there in the dark shop: the big bluff woman, the handsome young policeman, and the stooped tailor. They might well have been characters at the end of the first act of some nineteenth century German farce, preparing the audience for the surprise, funny or otherwise.

  Abruptly the surprise came from Madame Lejeune – and it wasn’t funny, at least not for the tailor.

  With surprising speed for such a big woman, she did two things. One hand grabbed at Otto’s waist. Instinctively, in the fashion of all young men, he doubled up, hands covering his genitals. But it wasn’t his eggs she was after, but his revolver. The other shot out and clutched the tailor’s throat so hard that his yellow face went an abrupt purple and his eyes threatened to pop out of their sockets at any moment. ‘Uniforms,’ she growled in best American gangster fashion, flourishing her husband’s revolver beneath the terrified man’s nose. ‘Allez, vite … les uniforms, sale cochon?’

  ‘Oui, oui,’ he hissed in a strangled voice, knees giving away beneath him with fear so that she was holding him there suspended in mid-air.

  But Otto didn't have the time to marvel at her superhuman strength. Talking out of the corner of her mouth, Madame Lejeune, her eyes gleaming with excitement – obviously enjoying every minute of this little drama – snapped, ‘All right, Jo, Jo, take him inside. I’ll cover the door.’

  ‘Jo Jo?’ Otto croaked helplessly, as Madame Lejeune let go of the tailor. He staggered against the counter, eyes whirling wildly. Blindly he followed the trembling tailor to the back, where the latter started piling brand-new uniforms over Otto’s outstretched arm, as if his very life depended upon it.

  It was just as they were about to leave the scene of the crime that things started to go wrong. With the uniforms piled high across his outstretched arm, Otto waited impatiently, his other hand on the door handle. He was eager to be off, whereas Madame Lejeune, in complete charge of the situation, gave the ashen-faced little tailor her last instructions, emphasising her points with the big revolver. ‘Cinq minutes, compris? … cinq minutes.’ She was ordering him to stay there, her broad face glowing with pleasure at this great adventure – better even than the films at St Vith’s Koenigliches Lichtspiel-theater – when the weapon exploded with a huge detonation.

  Otto ducked hurriedly. Behind him the plate-glass window crumpled into a crazy gleaming spider’s web of shattered glass. Slowly and dramatically, one of the dummies, sawdust pouring from a sudden hole in its stuffed chest, started to keel over. And then abruptly the little tailor was screaming, screaming, screaming, eyes white, wild and wide with shock behind his glasses.

  ‘Oh, Christ,’ Otto gasped. ‘Give me that damned shooting-iron!’ He grabbed the big black revolver out of her suddenly nerveless fingers and then they were off, pelting for the cart, the Fleming rearing up on his hind legs, flailing the air with alarm, Otto’s ears already taking in the shrilling of police whistles and the cries of alarm growing louder on all sides in the narrow stone chasms of the dingy apartment houses.

  For nearly six months now, ever since it had become obvious in the early summer of 1939 that there was going to be another war, the Walloon citizens of Verviers had been living on their nerves.

  Every day they awaited the invasion from their mighty neighbour only twenty kilometres to the East, complicated by the fact that there were some seventy thousand former German citizens right on their own doorstep in Belgium’s eastern cantons. As if that weren’t bad enough there were new and frightening rumours that the local Flemings were going to rise against the ruling Walloons, supported by the perfidious English just across the border in France, who were only too eager to incorporate the Province of Liege into the Empire upon which the sun never set.

  It was not surprising, therefore, that the accidental shot fired in the little military tailor’s shop set off an immediate and total panic in the provincial township. The rumours fled from street to street with the speed of light. ‘A policeman has been shot up at the tailor's … a couple of dozen people had seen his dead body among the shattered glass … Somehow the Boche were involved … someone had heard the killers call out in German as they had escaped on horseback … They were using cavalry too … There was no denying that … Many citizens had seen or heard their horses galloping furiously from the scene of the murder … ’

  ‘The Uhlans … The Uhlans are here!’ that dreaded word went up everywhere; and even the little children, born decades after the Uhlan cavalry had first cantered into Verviers in 1914, knew what that meant.

  Refugees threw their most treasured possessions into the traditional dog-carts and started to flee the doomed city at once. Up on the heights on the road to Liege, a green anti-aircraft crew, panicked by the news, narrowly missed shooting down the scheduled 14.00 hours Sabena flight from Cologne to Brussels. Down in the old town, long-haired, excited youths started to loot the Jewish quarter. But that was nothing new. In Verviers they always looted the Jewish quarter in moments of panic and danger.

  Madly Madame Lejeune lashed the sweating Fleming as the swaying cart rattled through the crazy streets, while Otto hung on for dear life, the precious uniforms clutched to his chest, big revolver held tightly in his free hand. He was determined that she would not get her fingers on it again, muttering to himself in wide-eyed amazement. ‘But we only robbed a few uniforms … only a few uniforms!’

  In a wild kaleidoscope of screaming, crazy people, pistol shots, the flames of burning buildings, twisting, turning streets, they bolted for freedom the way they had come, down the hil
l into the lower town, past the nineteenth century station, where already the mob was fighting to escape by ‘the last train out’, as the panic-stricken rumour had it (it was only going as far as the next goods station), into the maze of mean working-class streets that led out of the town.

  As the minutes flew by, Otto’s heart started to resume its normal beat. They were going to do it; they were going to make their escape without any further trouble. And then it happened. Like a slow uncontrollable nightmare.

  A hundred metres further up the road, a black Citroen stopped and as the cart rattled towards it, three heavy-set men, with felt hats pulled down well over their foreheads, got out of it, their hands reaching into their inside pockets automatically. Otto did not need Madame Lejeune’s excited ‘Polizei!’ to tell him who they were. He would have recognised them as bulls a kilometre away. Oh no, not again, he thought.

  ‘Get out of the way!’ he cried in German. ‘Get out!’

  The three men didn’t move. Instead they planted themselves firmly in the path of the flying cart, pistols appearing in their hands as if by magic.

  Otto fired instinctively, just as gartered Gertie the Commandant had taught him to. The first man’s knees gave way suddenly beneath him. Abruptly a blood-red flower exploded dramatically at his chest. His face took on the expression that Otto would get to know so well in the explosive years to come: one of surprise, even indignation as he realised he had been cheated of life. Next instant the Walloon policeman slammed to the dirty cobbles and the cart was through, followed by stabs of scarlet flame, which grew wilder and more ineffective by the instant. A moment later they were careering around the next corner on one crazy wheel, with the green hills of the Ardennes looming up in front of them at a tremendous rate. They had done it!

  CHAPTER 4

  ‘Gratuliere,’ the Count said impulsively, his plump affected face wreathed in smiles. ‘I knew you’d do it. You have carried out your first assignment as we had expected you would. Just like the professional you are.’ Otto let his hand be shaken, but said nothing, his face sombre and brooding.