by Sven Hassel
The stone desert seems endless. Rocks on the left, rocks on the right. As far as we can see in front of us an endless sea of stone hot as the hob of hell. The sun bakes the stones, which give off heat like a breath from the mouth of a furnace. At night it is freezingly cold. Our teeth chatter. No birds fly here. We see their bodies lying spread-winged, dried out by the sun. Dead bodies of birds are everywhere.
‘Wonder what it is kills ’em?’ asks Porta, pushing cautiously at the body of a large black bird with the barrel of his Mpi.
‘Plague! Bird pest,’ says Heide, who, as always, is annoy-ingly well-informed. ‘Keep your grabbers away from ’em. Humans can catch it!’
Hastily Porta rubs the barrel of his Mpi with the red dust.
‘Plague? Jesus that’s a wicked bleedin’ thing!’ says Tiny, hoarsely, looking around at the army of dead birds. ‘War an’ pestilence. That’s what the biggest part of the ’uman race kicks off from.’
‘You can live through both war and plague, if you can get a bit of the old lucky shit rubbed off on you,’ laughs Porta wearily, fanning himself with his tall yellow hat.
We fall into a deathlike sleep. A 500 kills himself with a hand-grenade. It is a terrible sight. Entrails splashed everywhere. It interests us. Gives us something to talk about for a while.
Tiny is sure we are going to find water. He swears he can smell it and rubs the air between thumb and forefinger.
‘There’s damp in the air!’ he states with conviction.
We come close to fighting over his statement.
Porta finds a handful of half-dead, yellow-brown snails. They taste fairly good. You just have to get them down your throat quickly. The whole unit crawls round looking for snails, until Tiny ruins it by suddenly asking Heide if snails can carry bird-pest.
We throw up. Only Porta is indifferent.
He collects the snails from those who cannot eat them.
Throwing them into the air he catches them in his mouth and swallows them like a stork swallowing frogs. You can see them moving down his long thin neck.
I can only manage five. The sixth starts to move in my mouth and I have to spit it out.
Strangely the snails seem to assuage our thirst. We feel a little easier, as we march on.
Stojko leads us down through a passage between cliffs. The granite sides tower above us on both sides. The clear blue sky with its merciless blazing sun is no more than a slit high above our heads.
‘God, we’re marching into a grave,’ groans Gregor in despair. He is in the depths of despondency.
It doesn’t even help when Porta starts up a conversation on Ferrari cars.
‘How was that long Mercedes Benz high-compression sports job?’ I ask. ‘Did you and your general have one of those to run round the front with?’
Gregor merely stares at me with dull eyes. He has completely lost interest in sports cars. Even when we ask him to describe his general’s mobile thunder-box of Meissen porcelain, we can’t get him to liven up, and that is usually the magic key.
In the course of the day we emerge from the cleft and are out on the stony plain again. We are happy to have left its grim shadow.
Heide sees them first. Skeletons. Hundreds of them. Bones gleam whitely amongst the green of the cactus. They are not all human bones. There are also the bones of mules. Equipment lies scattered all around. Some of the skeletons are still wearing steel helmets. Most of them are Bulgarian, but we see also a few Italian Bersaglieri. We can see it by the helmet channelled for plumes.
‘Holy Mafia, what’s happened?’ asks Barcelona uneasily.
‘God only knows,’ answers the Old Man. ‘Partisans probably, and it mayn’t even have been very long ago. The sun, wind and drought soon make a skeleton of a dead ’un here.’
‘And the ants,’ adds Porta.
Our diet becomes strange and various. The Legionnaire finds some beetles running around on the skeletons. They are big and fat and taste wonderful.
‘We used to eat them in the desert,’ he explains, breaking one apart.
Late in the afternoon we drag ourselves into a village where there are also skeletons everywhere, but here there are signs of fighting. On the square a whole row of skeletons hang. Their clothing keeps them whole.
Porta disappears with Tiny on a search of the ruins. We can hardly believe our own eyes when they come back with a goatskin filled with water.
The Old Man has to hold us back with his Mpi. We are like wild animals, and only quiet down when he is forced to shoot an ex-leutnant who refuses to obey his orders.
The bloody corpse stops us dead. Has the Old Man gone mad? He can usually maintain discipline without having to resort to arms. He swings the Mpi in a semicircle.
‘Get into line you lousy bastards. Anybody else looking for a ticket to heaven?’
Pushing and snarling like mad dogs we fall into line.
Porta hands the Old Man the goatskin. One by one we fill our canteens, and the goatskin is empty.
Despite the Old Man’s warning we drink the whole of our ration immediately. It tastes terrible. Tiny thinks it is most probably donkey-piss, but we couldn’t have cared less. It slakes our thirst for a while.
Porta is so happy he pulls his piccolo from his boot-top and plays.
In the shadow of the gallows with its swinging, rattling burden of skeletons we get together and sing:
Germany you noble house
Hang the bloodstained banners out.
Let them ever wave and strain
God is with us in storm and rain.
We all become very sick from the water. Men squat everywhere with their trousers down around their heels.
‘Dysentery,’ comments the medic.
Six men die before it is over. We lie dozing for several days while fever rages in our bodies. The medic gives us what he has available. Slowly we recover.
Porta has found water again. This time the medic insists on it being boiled. There is not much of it but it helps.
‘See! What did I say? Didn’t we find water,’ grins Tiny in triumph.
It is Buffalo who first sees the two men in front of us. We had almost caught up with them. Strangely enough they do not see us. Silently we follow them. They are moving fast. It is as if they had some important errand.
We march all night. The moon casts her pale light over the stony wasteland. A dog howls far away. Where there are dogs there is water and usually human beings.
The house is an adobe hut plastered up against a slope and looking as if it might at any moment disappear down into the depths below it. The two hurrying men disappear behind the house.
Porta and I steal after them. The unit fans out. The SMG is positioned behind a rock. The night quivers with tension. Not a sound can be heard. It is as if the cliffs had swallowed the two men up. Porta and I stop and take cover behind a stack of straw which should give some protection against bullets.
We hear heavy knocking on a door, and a harsh voice cuts through the night.
‘Delco! 0lja! You’ve got visitors! Come out and greet us!’
There is no reply. Only that night wind whistling faintly. There is the sound of wood splintering under the blow of a rifle-butt.
‘Come out, you bitches’ afterbirth! You cannot hide yourselves from our justice.’
‘Justice by night! ’ whispers Porta half-laughingly.
The two men stamp into the hut. Nailed boots ring ominously. The tramp of executioners.
‘Delco and Olja! Come out and defend yourselves, you filthy traitors! Your German friends can’t protect you now!’
‘How wrong can you get?’ whispers Porta patting his Mpi tenderly. ‘Death comes, more often than not, as the result of an error!’
Light flares behind the small windows. It flickers and throws long shadows. We see the man holding the light quite clearly.
‘What a perfect target he does make,’ says Porta lifting his Mpi.
‘Think I can win the cigar?’
�
�Get him!’ I whisper breathlessly.
‘Njet!’ grins Porta. ‘Let’s find out what these two high waymen are up to before we let their brains out. Couple of limp pricks, that’s what they are. Nothing else!’
A long thin candle has begun to burn sleepily. On a low bed in the corner sit three people pressed up against the wall. A young woman, a man, and a child about five years of age.
‘There we have Olja and Delco,’ whispers Porta. Traitors, but of course depending on which side you see their case from. I know a lot of quite nice traitors, who are far more honest than these “five minutes after midnight” nationalists.’ He puts a cigarette in his mouth.
‘You’re not going to show a light?’ I ask, terrified. Porta looks at me contemptuously, knocks a spark from the razor-blade, blows on the charred cloth and lights his cigarette from the glow. The Russian ‘lighter’ is made for night smoking in wartime. Primitive as the people who invented it, but there is no betraying flame.
He expels smoke, holding the cigarette in the cup of his hand so that the burning tip cannot be seen.
‘A good play calls for a smoke,’ he whispers.
The man inside the room laughs aloud with satisfaction.
‘Why didn’t you open the door? Why should we have to break it down? Come here Ljuco! All the family together and quite speechless with happiness at the sight of us.’ He laughs long and loud.
Ljuco, the comrade who has been standing by a narrow door at the end of the hut, comes stamping in. A cigarette holder moves jerkily between his teeth. He laughs. A strange dry crackling noise. Executioners laugh like that when they tell the story of some interesting execution.
‘Got any schnapps?’ he asks, opening cupboard doors and throwing tins and bowls to the floor. Poorly-made kitchen utensils smash to pieces on the stones.
‘Wh-what do you want?’ asks the man on the bed in a trembling voice. The whole room smells of fear.
‘To have a little talk with you, my dear Delco. Shall we speak in German, or would you prefer our own language? Let us speak German. You have surely forgotten your mother tongue after all the years you have spent with your German friends.’
‘I have nothing to do with the Germans,’ Delco defends himself. ‘Do you think if I had I would be living here?’
‘Delco, dear little Delco, what nonsense! We know all about you. Have you had a knock on the head for your memory to be affected so? Have you no memory of Peter? Of Pone? Of Illijeco? Of my brother!’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about. I know what happened to your brother but I had nothing to do with it!’
‘Loss of memory! Remarkable case,’ jerks out the man with the cigarette-holder and the strange desiccated laughter. He has found a bottle of Slivovitz and drinks almost half of it, before handing the bottle on to his comrade.
‘It seems to be contagious. Nobody remembers anything any more. The disease seems to be particularly virulent in wartime. What about you, Olja, have you also become infected with this loss of memory?’
The woman does not answer him. Fear stares from her large terrified eyes. She hugs the boy tightly to her.
‘The dry air out here makes thoughts so light, perhaps, that in the end they fly right away,’ laughs the cigarette-holder man. He belches loudly.
‘Why do you come here in the middle of the night and break your way in? Why do you not come in daylight like honest men?’
‘Delco, Delco, we missed your company so much that we simply couldn’t wait when we finally heard where you were. Your German friends were kind enough to help us with a lift. We do a little work for them ourselves, you know. Or perhaps you don’t know? They are very pleased with you and Olja. SD-Obersturmführer Scharndt asked us specially to visit you and to look after you! And now we are here and we do intend really to look after you.’ He looks round the poor room. ‘Your place in Sofia was much nicer.’ The cigarette-holder man laughs, a weird, toneless crackle. It reminds one of a gallows creaking in the wind.
His comrade sings softly:
Wenn was nicht klappt, dann sag ich unverhohlen,
wie man so sagt ‘Die Heimat hat’s befohlen!’
Es ist so schôn, gar keine Schuld zu kennen
und sich nur einfach ein Soldat zu nennen.15
They hoist themselves noisily up onto the table. They swing their legs. Their highly-polished riding boots gleam in the candlelight. The boots seem somehow threatening. These two are soldiers though still seeming to be partly civilian.
‘Do you find it boring here in the mountains?’ asks the cigarette-holder man, mockingly. With only scorpions, snakes and the little red body-snatchers to keep you company?’
With shaking fingers the young woman buttons her nightdress up to the throat. The little boy presses himself closer to his mother. He cannot understand German, but can feel the dangerous tension in the air.
The cigarette-holder man takes down a guitar from the wall, climbs up on the table again, and begins to experiment with the instrument.
‘You hold musical evenings here?’ He strikes a few harsh, dissonant phrases from the strings.
The little family presses tighter against the wall as if hoping it will swallow them up. Their faces are pale blots. The crickets sing loudly, almost drowning out the sound of the wild, mad guitar.
I look uncertainly at Porta and lift my Mpi.
‘Not yet,’ he whispers, shaking his head. ‘Not our business yet. This is between the Greeks and the Bulgars. If anything illegal happens, we interfere. We are taking care of things on behalf of the police, who are not with us at this time.’
I smile tiredly and wish myself anywhere but here.
The hunters are triumphant inside the hut. Their prey is cornered. The boy pushes his tousled head into his father’s chest.
‘Why did you go over to those brown devils?’ asks the leader.
‘Because they thought it was to their advantage, of course,’ laughs the cigarette-holder man. He takes the carbine slowly from his shoulder, snaps the lock noisily and extracts a clip of bullets from his pocket. He holds it up to the light. The six bullets gleam like gold. ‘Pretty, eh?’ he almost whispers. ‘German bullets!’ He removes one from the clip and studies it carefully. ‘Very new too. Made in Bamberg in 1943, and I do believe they have your numbers on them!’
Olja is weeping silently.
‘We have been looking for you for a long time,’ says the leader coldly. ‘It was not until we asked your German friends about you that we got a lead. Now we are here!’
‘And you certainly don’t seem overjoyed to see us,’ laughs the cigarette-holder man, pressing the clip into the magazine of his carbine.
‘Delco and Olja,’ says the leader, as if he were enjoying the very taste of the words. ‘You have been sentenced to death! You have betrayed your people, and we have come to carry out the sentence passed upon you!’
‘We’ve betrayed nobody,’ shouts Delco wildly, putting his arm around his wife. ‘Our country is allied to Germany. ‘Our Army is fighting in the Soviet. I am a Bulgarian policeman.’
‘Delco, you understand so little! You were a policeman, the poor tool of the Royalists. The Bulgarian people does not wish to fight for the King and his Fascist vassals against the great Soviet brotherland.’
‘The King ordered us to fight the Soviets,’ screams Delco, desperately. The two carbine muzzles move slowly until they are pointing directly at him.
The cigarette-holder man laughs a laugh without a trace of amusement in it.
‘How stupid people are,’ he sighs. ‘They simply will not understand.’
Olja screams plangently, and hides her face in her hands.
Delco makes a movement to get to his feet, but slumps down again despairingly. He is facing the inevitable. The boy seems to make himself smaller, pressing in between his terrified parents. Wide-eyed he stares at these terrible guests who have appeared so suddenly from the night.
The stillness of death reigns in the humble ro
om.
The cigarette-holder man strums dreamily on the guitar. Suddenly he throws it from him. Strings jangle and snap. He laughs noisily.
Two shots crash out almost together.
Olja slides down from the bed. Her hands are still pressed to her face. Delco lifts himself half up, then falls sideways across the bed clutching at the pillow. His body jerks and is still.
Immediately after the shots there is a strange quiet in the room. The two executioners remain sitting stiffly on the table for several minutes.
A long, piercing bird call comes from the unit.
Porta answers with the call of a raven. This tells them that we are all right.
‘Why didn’t you call them up here?’ I ask in a whisper.
‘Njet, the Old Man’d ruin the last act, and I don’t think our good German God would like that,’ Porta laughs ominously.
‘Shall we go in?’ I ask.
‘No, no. Let them enjoy themselves a little longer. The pair of shits!’
The two executioners are still sitting on the bed watching the little boy. He strokes his father’s hair lovingly.
‘Will you shoot me, too? I am all alone now.’
The executioners look questioningly at one another. The cigarette-holder man lifts his carbine.
‘No!’ snarls the leader, knocking it down.
‘Why not?’ asks the cigarette-holder man in surprise. ‘Best thing to do with the little traitor.’
I arm a hand-grenade. If they kill the boy I’ll throw it. I am so furious I am shaking all over.
‘Daddy, mummy, I’m all alone! Where am I to go?’ The boy’s voice trembles. It is easy to hear that he is close to tears. This ‘great’ war has hardened children in an unnatural way. The brutal face of death has become an everyday sight to them.
The executioners jump lightly down from the table. The cigarette-holder man laughs and looks through the cupboards again, to see if there is anything he can use. He pokes at the bodies with the barrel of his carbine.
