Otto's Phoney War

by Leo Kessler

  Otto was forced to smile at the little tramp’s indignation. ‘Do you mean to say then, that you’re a …’ he hesitated a fraction of a second over the word ‘… a spy?’

  ‘I mean I’m no Mata Hari or anything like that. But it’s a living. You should know, comrade. You’re in the same game yourself, aren’t you?’

  Otto did not answer and the little man shrugged good-humouredly. ‘Have it your own way. But I’ll tell you this.’ He waited, and Otto was forced in the end to ask, ‘What?’

  ‘Nice of you to ask, mister Manners. All this last week I’ve been as sharp as a cut-throat razor. A couple of times I’ve even thought of doing harm to one of those sheep out there.’ He licked his cracked lips. ‘For the price of a jump with the girls in that fancy Catholic brothel they’ve got up there in St Vith, I’ll find out anything you want to know about this frontier.’

  He looked hard at Otto, and the latter heard himself saying, ‘I’ll sleep on it.’

  But there was no time for sleep. They crossed over the Luxembourg-Belgian border in grand style: in the back of the taxi that Ami had called to fetch them from the border village of Burg-Reuland. The little tramp held the back of the driver’s seat rigidly, his one eye glassy, as if willing the driver to get them to this so-called brothel more quickly. For his part Otto slumped in the upholstery, eyes closed, wondering whether all his future life might well be like this: a crazy race through the night in foreign places, conducted against his will by fools and idiots, heading for the inevitable purposelessness, signifying nothing, profligate, wasteful, meaningless... He drifted off into an unpleasant dream where Walburga Forz, naked save for the Commandant's garters, chased him round and round the dinner table at the Abwehr country house.

  The bolt was finally drawn after they had hammered at the door of the ‘Catholic establishment’ as the Ami called it, for what seemed like a couple of years. The Madame stood there sternly, dressed in a gown of sequins that made her look like a fat mermaid. Scales right up to her raddled neck, thought Otto.

  ‘Money?’ she demanded in a voice like that of a sergeant-major.

  ‘Show her ladyship,’ Ami said through toothless gums. ‘Quick. I’m limping already!’

  Otto opened his wallet and let her look inside with her beak-eyed gaze.

  ‘Bon,’ she said, ‘thought you might be trying to palm some of those worthless marks off'n me. Wouldn’t wipe my arse with those. Numbers five and three are free.’ She glared at the little tramp. ‘And remember, Ami, I know your dirty little tricks. None of your titty-rolls, for a start. My girls are nice clean persons. I don’t want them to be spoilt.’

  ‘Of course, Madame,’ Ami answered devoutly. ‘Mister Manners here has taught me how one can get by in life by being polite. This is an art that I had thought lost to me.’

  They passed in and before they parted to go their separate ways to the girls’ cubicles, he whispered, ‘Never fear, comrade, you’ll get your information tomorrow.’

  ‘I’d better,’ Otto said, quickly putting on a threatening face.

  Ami was unimpressed. ‘I’ll keep my boots on, then you’ll be able to recognise me in the morning!’ These were his last words and then he was tripping up the steps to Cubicle Five like an eager teenager following a girl up her bedroom steps for the first time.

  They threw Ami out of the St Vith establishment in the middle of the night. The bouncers’ methods were not very gentle and decidedly un-Christian. Without much ado, they pushed him out of a first floor window. The racket Ami made breaking through the plate-glass awning of the bookshop below awoke Otto well enough. Seizing his clothes, knowing instinctively that it was his new acquaintance who had caused the noise, Otto hurried outside to find Ami alternately cursing and picking glass splinters from his skinny naked rump.

  ‘What in three devils’ name happened?’ Otto demanded, hurrying into his own trousers.

  ‘Not much,’ Ami said with a yelp of pain. ‘Dat was de twoubwe. Shittin' high-cwass, hygienic Cathowic bwothew. I jus' fewt howny again, wid de owd wove-juwce wight up to hewe, and she sez, as if it’s impowtant, “you cawn’t because it’s past midniwte. Now go back to sweep.” And I sez to hew, “What d’you want – shittin' doubwe-time?” And she sez, I should mind my wangwage, cos she was a decent girw. And I sez she shudwn’t tawk so much because it was making me mowe and mowe exciwted – ’

  ‘And then they gave you the old heave-ho.’ Otto said without sympathy. He started gathering Ami's clothes where they lay strewn about him. ‘Come on, get your duds on. It’s freezing out here!’

  Grumbling moodily to himself, the little tramp succeeded in finding his dark brown false teeth, while Otto waited impatiently, stamping his feet in the freezing night air.

  In silence they set off again, heading north towards the new dawn and the Our bridges, leaving a sleeping St Vith down below in the valley.

  ‘Merde!’ Ami said, as they stood at the end of the lilted gravelled country road and stared at the concrete bridge crossing the River Our at Andler, ‘I could spit across that without even trying. Don’t seem very important to me.’

  Otto was forced to agree. The river couldn’t have been more than ten metres’ wide. Still the planners of the Wehrmacht thought it important enough. ‘What now?’ he asked, savouring the first warm rays of the winter sun, which filtered through the tall pines.

  ‘Leave it to me,’ Ami said confidently. These Belgies are used to us gents-of-the-road. Just you keep out of sight up there among the trees. I’ll be back in a brace of shakes.’ And with that, he was off, trudging down the road at a suitably slow pace for a tramp, whistling as if he hadn’t a care in the world this cold winter’s morning.

  Ten tense minutes passed leadenly and a worried Otto, hidden in the trees above the little road, was just telling himself once again that he hadn’t the right kind of nerve for this spy business, when Ami came out of the little wooden hut to the right of the river bridge, munching a huge sandwich and cheerfully waving to someone unseen inside.

  Five minutes later he was up in the firs, hastily swallowing the rest of his bacon sandwich and gasping, ‘Paper and pencil! Quick! Before I forget!’

  Laboriously, with his head twisted to one side and his face screwed up, obviously not used to writing, the little tramp put down the details Otto needed on the scrap of paper, still muddy from Otto's altercation with the bicycle.

  ‘A sergeant and twenty flat-footed soldiers,’ he explained, pencilling in the number. He drew a shaky line for the bridge and circles to left and right of it. ‘They’ve got a machine-gun post here and another one – here.’ He marked a cross to the left-centre of the line which represented the bridge. ‘That’s where they’ve got the explosive chamber, but whether it’s full of TNT or not, I couldn’t tell you.’ He gave Otto the paper back with a grin of toothless triumph. ‘Not bad, eh, even if I do say so myself.’

  ‘But how did you do it?’ Otto demanded. ‘You weren’t within fifty metres of the bridge. You were in the hut. I watched you the whole time!’

  ‘Of course. But you know flat-footed soldiers? They’ve got no brains and they like to have things nice and tidy on charts and diagrams so that they can impress their generals when they come to inspect. I suppose it justifies all the money the tax-payers waste on the Army, like. So while I kept them busy, I ran my glassy orbit around the hut to see what they could see. Looki-looki, you know.’

  ‘But how did you keep them busy, you little fart?’ Otto demanded, ‘and get a free sandwich as well?’

  ‘With these.’

  Like a magician producing one of his little surprises to his admiring audience, he pulled six or seven much-worn photographs out of his ragged sleeve.

  Otto gasped.

  They were pictures of two portly, middle-aged matrons with Eton crops, naked save for high-heeled shoes, performing several seemingly impossible acts with the aid of what looked like a large policeman’s rubber truncheon, their faces set and concentrated, as if it we
re a very serious business indeed and demanded full concentration.

  ‘Now Ami,’ Otto started. ‘These aren't the kind of images a gentleman should be carrying around.’ He laughed.

  ‘That’s right,’ Ami said easily, shoving them back up his sleeve once more. ‘But you're the real gent here, not me. Nothing your average soldier likes better than a good dirty picture. Takes their minds off the monotony of their existence, I shouldn’t wonder.’ He wiped his hand across his lips. ‘Come on, comrade, let’s be off to Losheim. With a bit of luck, I’ll be there before they dish out the midday soup, and I’ll say one thing for these Belgian Catholics, in spite of that business back there at St Vith, they do turn out a good drop of pea soup.’

  But obtaining the information they required at Losheim Bridge turned out to be more difficult than at Andler. The little tramp repeated the performance, the casual walk to the guard hut, a few words with the sentry outside. While Otto watched from his new hiding-place, he disappeared inside, presumably to display his dirty pictures once more. Less tense now, Otto waited, watching a sour-looking man in the black uniform of the border-police, rifle slung over his big shoulder, as he walked up to the guard hut and entered.

  Another few minutes passed. Otto stamped his feet in the cold.

  Suddenly and startlingly, things began to go wrong. The door of the hut flew open. Even at that distance, Otto could hear the exchange of heated, angry words, followed a moment later by Ami being ejected, propelled by the border guard’s big gleaming boot.

  As he crouched there, momentarily dazed, the border guard, crimson with anger, bellowed at the little tramp, unslinging his rifle as he did so, while behind the enraged guard, laughing soldiers looked at each other and pointed their fingers to their temples, as if to indicate to Ami that they knew the border guard was completely mad.

  The laughter seemed to enrage the policeman even more. He levelled his rifle at Ami and bellowed some kind of order at him in Flemish.

  ‘Lat op,’ Otto could just make out Ami’s reply. Presumably the words meant the border guard should stop whatever he was about to do.

  But the enraged man was too far gone to be stopped now. Again he bellowed an order at the little tramp, whose confident look had vanished now, jerking his rifle forward threateningly.

  Otto instinctively knew that there was going to be trouble and that he couldn’t leave his new acquaintance in the lurch. He had to help him. He rose from his cover, frantically fumbling with the little pistol he kept taped to the inside of his right thigh. A casual observer might have thought, as he groped inside his open flies that the handsome young man stumbling down the road was about to commit an act of gross indecency. In reality he was in a lot of pain: the tape, having remained in place for a good 24 hours now, had fused to his leg hair. He let out little yelps of pain as he pulled at it.

  Now the tramp was on his feet, gaze fixed warily on the muzzle of the border guard’s rifle, which was only a metre away from his skinny chest, while the cop continued to bellow at him. Suddenly he acted. He kicked hard. The gravel at his feet shot up into the man’s crimson face and momentarily blinded him. The next instant Ami had turned and was pelting down the road towards Otto, who had now finally freed the little pistol.

  Behind him the border guard shook his head like an enraged bull and lifted the rifle to his shoulder, ignoring the protests of the soldiers, their grins gone now.

  ‘Halt!" he cried thickly. ‘Halt!’

  Otto swallowed hard. Would the flying tramp stop? But Ami had no intention of obeying the cop’s command. He tucked his head into his skinny shoulders, as if ducking beneath heavy rain, and kept on running.

  Otto flung a last glance at the cop’s face. He recognised that hardening of the jaw and the whitening of the hand grasping the rifle instantly. They were the same actions he had seen the three policemen do from his place on the escaping farm cart in Verviers. The man was going to fire, and at that range he couldn’t miss. He groaned. There was nothing for it. Verviers all over again! He raised the pistol and aimed at the cop’s big knee, just above the shining leather of the man’s boot. I hope this peashooter doesn’t aim high, he said to himself through gritted teeth, otherwise your missus is going to have good grounds for divorce. Next instant he pulled the trigger.

  The pistol jerked in his hand.

  ‘Owie!’ The big cop dropped his rifle to the gravel with a yelp of agony and started hopping on one leg, hands clasped tightly to his shattered knee comically, a hurt look on his face like someone at a football match, appealing to the referee and crowd that he had been unfairly kicked, while behind him the soldiers scattered for cover or ran for their positions, crying in sudden panic. ‘C’est la guerre … on attaque … aux armes, camrades …!’

  Next instant Otto and Ami were running for their lives back into the trees, slugs cutting the air all around them, as the big cop continued to hop on one foot, miserable moaning sounds escaping his mouth.

  ‘A big shitting Calvinist cop,’ Ami said after handing back the paper with the information about the Losheim Bridge pencilled upon it, ‘Unreformed church, of course. They’re the worst. They don’t even drink coffee 'cos they think it’s sinful. Religious maniac,’ he continued bitterly, as they moved off again, steadily progressing ever deeper into the Ardennes forest. ‘The big shit wanted the sergeant of the guard to put me in the cooler on account of I was corrupting the young soldiers with my dirty photos.’ He sniffed scornfully. ‘Corrupt, the lot of hairy-arsed wankers! Biggest bunch of brothel-bashers I’ve ever seen – and that’s saying a lot! … I hope he gets his dick caught in the wringer next wash-day!’

  ‘Next wash-day he’ll be having real matrons looking after his leg, I shouldn't wonder,’ Otto remarked, and changing the subject, added, ‘How far to the frontier now, Ami?’

  ‘Not more than a kilometre, comrade. Don’t worry, old Ami won’t let you down. Thirty minutes at the most and I’ll have you safely back in your Fatherland.’

  Otto grinned. ‘You’re a little odd, Ami.’ He winced: his right thigh was still sore and missing half its hair.

  ‘So they tell me.’

  ‘But listen, what about you? Will you be safe? I mean that cop won’t forget your face.’

  ‘Don’t you worry about me, comrade,’ Ami said confidently. ‘I’ve got one of those faces about which you can say – once seen, forgotten for ever.’ He grinned up at Otto, whose face glistened with sweat at the effort demanded by the long uphill climb through the thick

  Firs. ‘Worry about yourself because you know what all this lark’s about, don’t you, the details of the bridges and that?’

  Otto feigned stupidity. ‘Not really,’ he answered.

  ‘Come off it, comrade. You and me weren’t born yesterday. There’s gonna be fighting here, lots of it: the frontier’ll run with blood.’

  ‘Sounds a bit far-fetched,’ Otto said, purposefully non-committal.

  ‘Don’t!’ Ami said stubbornly. ‘In my mind’s eye I can see the stiffs stretched out on every metre of ground we’re stepping on now.’ He shuddered violently, his wizened little face suddenly very pale, and at his side, Otto did the same. At that moment he believed the tramp. The frontier would run with blood.

  ‘Don’t say things like that,’ he said thickly.

  Ami said nothing and in silence they marched on.

  In years to come Otto would think of his companion’s words that November day in 1939, for Ami had been both wrong and right. In 1940 when the German Army did finally move across it, they did so with hardly a casualty, mainly thanks to the little tramp’s efforts. Four years later, after the disastrous Ardennes offensive, Ami’s prediction was vindicated, and a ragged, starving Otto raced across that frontier, running through a full-scale theatre of war.

  ‘D,’ Ami explained, cleaning the green moss off the little border stone, ‘stands for Deuischianu … and here, B for Belgique,’ He straightened up and smiled at Otto. ‘Told you Ami’d be able to do it, didn’t
I?’

  ‘Do you mean this is the frontier?’

  Ami nodded.

  ‘Don’t look much, does it?’ Otto commented, staring across the field into the Reich.

  Ami laughed a little hollowly. ‘Across there is as far away as the moon from the earth, really.’

  ‘And what’s that supposed to mean?’

  Ami didn’t answer directly. Instead he said, ‘Listen, comrade, why don’t you just stay over here and become a gent-of-the-road before it’s too late? I’ll see you all right. You’re a decent sort of a bloke for – well you know what I mean? That Calvinist cop would have croaked me for good, if it hadn’t been for you and that pop-gun of yours.’

  Otto did not answer for a moment, as if he were seriously considering the little tramp’s offer. What would be safer, a mad life with the Abwehr, or an even madder life with little Ami upstaging him at every turn? Finally he shook his head. ‘Thanks Ami,’ he said and he meant it. ‘But I’m a German. For better or for worse, I’ll have to stick with my own folk.’

  Ami nodded his understanding and stuck out his hand. ‘Have it your way, and remember when you’re Gauleiter of Paris, think of old Ami, child of the frontier. I could do a good chicken-dinner with stolen potatoes.’

  They shook hands solemnly and then Otto stretched out his right leg beyond the little stone with its B and D and stepped into Germany. Ami turned and stumped off without another word. Thirty seconds later he had vanished into the forest. Otto never saw the child of the frontier again.

  CHAPTER 8

  For the new Sonderführer Otto Stahl, the winter of 1939-40 passed uneventfully enough in that remote spy-school near the little town of Düren. Otto was getting used to his new title – non-military of course, but created for civilians who served the Army in certain ‘special’ ways. The only incidents that disturbed the slightly loony peace of the Abwehr training school were the heavy snows of December and January, the worst for twenty years in the Eifel. The snows were so bad that they blocked the winding hilly road to Düren for over two weeks and the Count now took to visiting the school by means of a snow-white Fieseler Storch aeroplane, which he had somehow organised in that mysterious manner of his.