The Bloody Road To Death (Cassell Military Paperbacks)

by Sven Hassel

  ‘Sir,’ screams Porta, ‘wish to state, sir, I am looking for Workshops Chief Mechanic Lammert, sir!’ Porta had seen the name of the glassed-in office below.

  ‘What do you want with the Chief?’

  ‘Sir, I have a message for him from a friend, sir!’

  ‘He has no time to waste on friendly messages. He is engaged in winning the war,’ grunts Pigface crossly. ‘What are you doing in my office?’ He makes a lightning inventory of loose items.

  ‘Sir, I would like permission to use the telephone, sir!’

  ‘What do you think this is? A telephone booth?’ screams Pigface. ‘Get out of here, you idle man, and quickly! If I see you here again in my workshops I’ll have you arrested!’

  Behind a wall they paint the black Mercedes with Army camouflage paint. For verisimilitude Porta gives it a couple of dents with a sledgehammer. The Eastern front finish, he calls it.

  ‘It’s a pity. It was such a nice car,’ says Tiny.

  They drive slowly through the town.

  ‘Let’s have a cup of coffee,’ says Porta, pointing at a large pompous building which resembles a luxury hotel. All it needs is the pavement tables and sun-shades.

  He swings elegantly in to the entrance.

  ‘Don’t stop!’ shouts Carl. ‘Look at those sentries!’

  ‘Jesus,’ mumbles Porta. ‘This doesn’t look like our kind of place at all.’

  ‘SD!’ moans Tiny fearfully. ‘If anybody asks I’m not with you.’

  Porta guns the motor and the car shoots forward, letting off a couple of colossal backfires which cause the SD sentries to duck and take cover.

  They pass several police patrols and road blocks, but as soon as the police catch sight of the triangular command flag they wave the car on through and soon they are out of town.

  The following day they swing into Kukes where they meet an Italian A jutante di Battaglia6 who is chief cook to a high-ranking staff unit.

  To their surprise they discover from him that they are in Albania.

  ‘We are on our way to Germersheim via Vienna,’ says Carl sadly.

  ‘So you are a leettle off your road,’ smiles the Italian. ‘But now you here you take a leettle food wiz me?’

  Two kitchen orderlies lay a table on the pavement under a large sunshade in Italy’s green, red, and white colours.

  The first course is turkey with a green sauce.

  ‘Thees was for my divisional commander,’ says the Italian whose name, he tells them, is Luigi Trantino. ‘I geev heem other food. Luigi’s guests have right to good food.’

  They wash the turkey down with mountain wine served in an enormous jug.

  ‘I am brave soldier,’ states Luigi, pointing at a row of brilliantly-coloured ribbons on his chest. ‘These I get in Abyssinia.’

  ‘What, were you down there teachin’ the blacks the true Roman faith?’ asks Tiny. Luigi nods, his mouth stuffed to speechlessness with turkey.

  They understand quick. Only one God!’

  ‘Of course,’ Porta agrees, leaning back and dropping a piece of turkey into his wide-open mouth.

  ‘What’re they like there?’ asks Tiny inquisitively. ‘Do they bite?’

  They nice people,’ says Luigi waving his fork about. ‘They not smell, like American say. This with race big nonsense.’

  ‘Doesn’t worry me, either,’ shouts Porta, dipping his bread in the green sauce.

  ‘Before war I have first-class hotel,’ boasts Luigi. ‘All big men they come eat wiz me. Musso eat two times. Big ’arem! All kind of cunt. All! Then Fascist pigs make peaceful Italian go fight war!’ he sighs. ‘Soldiers take my hotel. Make me wear uniform. All sheet-bad! Africa terreeble! For many month no see zuppa de cdamaro. No culture there. Bad as German. Italian die body and soul if there long time.’

  The orderlies bring in the next course.

  ‘Pasta con le sarde,’ proclaims Luigi, proudly. ‘This Mafia eat when big man plan big job.’

  Porta clicks his tongue.

  ‘You Romans certainly know how to enjoy life.’

  ‘We no do bad,’ admits Luigi.

  ‘Have you got spaghetti?’ asks Porta. ‘You know with brown sauce and cheese over it.’

  ‘We ’ave, of course!’ The order is passed on to the kitchen immediately.

  ‘I start bordello I never take girl who not brought up on Spaghetti alia Carbonata,’ shouts Luigi, delightedly. ‘It grease works good inside.’

  Tiny takes a huge helping of spaghetti from the dish in the middle of the table. He chews, swallows and battles with it bravely. It seems as if the spaghetti will never disappear down his throat. Slowly his face begins to turn blue.

  ‘You must ’ave cheese wiz this,’ says Luigi, with a professional air.

  Tiny nods, his mouth stuffed full. He shakes cheese on to what seems to be mile-long strips of spaghetti.

  ‘He’s going to die,’ says Porta, watching Tiny’s purpling face with interest.

  In desperation Tiny grips the spaghetti in both hands and rips it apart.

  ‘Jesus Christ, ’ow do you Italians live through a meal of spaghetti?’ he groans.

  ‘You must learn eat,’ explains Luigi. ‘See like so!’ Like lightning he rolls the spaghetti around his fork. ‘See now,’ he says again with self-assurance, and repeats the trick several times.

  Porta and Carl give it up immediately. But Tiny in his stubbornness gets himself tied up in it. At last he gives up and eats the remnants with his fingers.

  ‘Thees place a real sheet place,’ declares Luigi darkly, when they have gorged in silence for a while. ‘The officer ees a lot of sheet I get pain soon in belly. They greedy all time. The wine she ees too cold or she ees too young. Roast duck they weel ’ave, venison, lobster. They no seem know they in middle of thirty-year-long war, with ’unger and misery everywhere. Me I get angry so could peess.’

  ‘You eat and drink well,’ says a voice suddenly to one side of the table.

  ‘What een ’ell?’ cries Luigi, and can hardly believe his own eyes.

  A coal-black Negro with a red fez on his head, wearing a double-breasted greyblue Jugoslavian uniform coat, stands in the gutter grinning broadly. On his left foot he is wearing an Italian mountaineering boot. On the right foot a German officer’s long riding boot.

  ‘You eat well,’ he repeats, pointing at the food on the table. ‘Give me!’

  ‘Manners maketh man, me old black son,’ says Porta with dignity. ‘You are in white company.’

  ‘Get stuffed, German. Want your teeth knocked out?’

  ‘Well blow me bleedin’ brainless,’ shouts Tiny, indignantly.

  ‘The bleedin’ Colonials’ve learned to talk! On your way ’ome to the bleedin’ Reich are you, mate?’

  ‘If he is he’ll get a shock,’ sighs Porta. ‘Socialism isn’t what they say it is!’

  ‘Where you come from, neegger?’ asks Luigi inquisitively.

  ‘Fuck you too, spaghetti. I didn’t ask you where you crawled in from, did I? Let’s have some food!’ He pulls out a chair and sits down at the table without waiting for an invitation, pushing Carl’s plate to one side to make room.

  ‘Beppo!’ shouts Luigi to the kitchen. ‘Breeng a lobster. You like strong sauce?’ he addresses the Negro with a sly grin.

  ‘I can eat fire if I want to.’

  ‘Christ I’d like to see that,’ shouts Tiny. ‘I’ve seen one on the Reeperbahn but she was a ’ore.’

  ‘Red devil extra No. I!’ orders Luigi, with an expectant look on his face.

  Porta gets up and goes out into the kitchen to help Beppo.

  ‘Chili,’ he orders, emptying a whole tin of powder into the sauce. A spoonful or two of Cayenne pepper and a dash of black curry. He remembers red peppers just in time.

  ‘Paprika she full of vitamin C,’ says Beppo, handing him a large tin of the condiment.

  ‘Lovely grub,’ grins Porta winding up with a big helping of powdered garlic.

  Beppo is laughin
g so much he almost drops the five lobsters on the way to the table.

  ‘Slow service!’ shouts the Albanian Negro.

  ‘Here is the special sauce,’ says Porta, ‘but I feel sure it will be far too strong for you. Only white men can stand it.’

  ‘Nothing is too strong for me,’ barks the Negro, conceitedly, and catching hold of a lobster he tears the meat from it, cracks the claws with his teeth and drops the contents into the Red Devil Sauce.

  Porta watches him with wide eyes like a man watching an attempt at suicide.

  ‘We reeng for fire-engines, no?’ asks Beppo staring hard at their victim.

  The Negro pushes the lobster into his mouth and swallows. His face turns suddenly grey, stiffens, his mouth falls open and terrible grimaces move across his features. For a moment he appears as if already dead. He tries to speak. Not a word passes his lips.

  Politely Porta offers him some wine.

  He grabs it and swallows half the contents of the jug. Now the sauce really begins to work. Like a rocket he flies into the air panting for breath, runs in circles, then out through the kitchen where he jumps through an open window. He emits a long shrill howl and stops for a moment by the table.

  Automatically Porta offers him the wine jug. Down goes the rest of the wine and the sauce burns a thousand times worse than before.

  ‘A-a-a-a-a-ah!’ he screams like a gut-shot wolf. One hand grips his stomach and the other his throat. He rolls over onto his back and kicks his legs in the air. The Italian mountaineering boot flies off. He arches his body and moves down the road wriggling like a snake on his back. Then he is on his feet again. He, springs into the river and drinks as if he were trying to empty it.

  Shortly after he comes out of the water and goes up an almost vertical cliff wall like a mountain goat.

  ‘’Mazin’ what these bleedin’ cannibals can do when they want to, ain’t it?’ cries Tiny.

  ‘What devil you put in devil sauce?’ asks Luigi.

  ‘Some tranquillizers that’ll make a good boy of him,’ grins Porta.

  Shortly after, the Negro comes back. He looks like a man who has crossed the Gobi Desert on foot. He offers them his hand politely.

  ‘You’re leaving already?’ asks Porta.

  ‘I am going back to Libya!’

  ‘Whatever for?’ asks Tiny.

  ‘The food here does not agree with me!’

  Beppo’s lobsters exceed their wildest expectations. Porta praises them lavishly.

  Luigi holds up a claw as if it were a marshal’s baton.

  ‘They soon shut up shop here. I am pack and weel not go back to Italy a poor man!’ he whispers confidentially.

  ‘True for you,’ Porta smacks his lips. ‘Only fools leave a war poorer than they got into it.’

  ‘The most are eediots,’ states Luigi, dipping a piece of lobster into the garlic mayonnaise.

  ‘God be praised,’ smiles Porta happily. ‘It is His work.’

  ‘It weel be good to again be in Italy,’ says Luigi. ‘War I not interest in. I ’ave what I need for me in Italy.’

  ‘That’s the way I see it, too,’ agrees Porta. ‘All they get out of it is us Germans and you Italians getting the shit knocked out of us.’

  ‘Give ’em our love in Italy,’ says Tiny, through a mouthful of lobster. ‘Maybe we won’t be far be’ind you.’

  ‘Gesú, Gesûy cries Luigi in horror, almost choking on his own lobster. ‘Madre di Christi forbid thees!’ He crosses himself and rolls his eyes heavenwards.

  ‘I hope and I pray that the last of the Germans ’as left Italy before I come ’ome to ’er!’

  ‘What, don’t you like us then?’ asks Porta in surprise. ‘We’re allies and are fighting shoulder to shoulder in a war which has been forced on us.’

  ‘I no say Italian love German,’ says Luigi, shaking his head. ‘When like now very nice fellows, but when many together make too much noise, take up much room.’

  ‘Somethin’ in that,’ admits Tiny, licking the bowl of garlic mayonnaise clean.

  ‘you allatime shoot,’ insists Luigi, ‘no understand thees dangerous. You shoot at man, he shoot back most time.’

  ‘True enough,’ sighs Porta.

  ‘We take coffee, cognac, ’ere?’ asks Luigi, standing up.

  ‘I’ve eaten that much I can’t move,’ laughs Porta, unbuttoning his trousers. ‘I love food. I could live merely to eat!’

  ‘You’ve fixed yourself up here very nicely,’ Carl praises Luigi, as he tastes his cognac with the air of a connoisseur.

  ‘’Ere ees good,’ Luigi admits, stretching his legs comfortably. ‘I want only freedom. Maybe Tommy come soon and ’it us so ’ard we no want shoot back.’

  ‘Any left?’ asks Porta, pushing his empty cognac glass towards Luigi. ‘God only knows when we’ll see this stuff again.’

  Smiling, Luigi fills his glass to the brim so that Porta has to bend down to it to drink. He sucks it up like a cow drinking water.

  They’re gettin’ a bleedin’ beltin’ just now,’ says Tiny, spitting in the direction of an idealized SS-man on a recruiting poster.

  ‘A general I see go through, with much leeberated loot in truck following, only yesterday,’ says Luigi. ‘That good sign.’

  ‘There’s summary court-martials on everywhere,’ says Porta, slipping a cracking fart. There’ll soon be more watchdogs out here than soldiers. Even the ammunition shortage doesn’t stop ’em. There’s always a beam and a rope. Spare the rope, spoil the child as the pedagogues say.’

  The Greater German Wehrmacht is on its bleedin’ arse, as you might say,’ sighs Tiny, throwing a piece of apple-pie over his head to the great happiness of a dog behind him which wolfs it down.

  ‘I’ll wind up this famous campaign in Germersheim, and make hay when I get home as a politically persecuted person,’ laughs Carl with satisfaction. That could lead to a lot. Yesterday’s villains are tomorrow’s heroes.’

  ‘Don’t laugh too soon,’ warns Porta ominously. ‘It won’t be long before the dopes get over the shock of having lost a war.’

  ‘They say the ’ole of the 9th bleedin’ Army’s deserted to the enemy,’ confides Tiny secretively.

  ‘9th Army? That was wiped out long ago,’ Carl says wonder-ingly.

  ‘Generalfeldmarschall von Mannstein’s sitting on a rock in Poland crying his eyes out,’ says Porta confidentially.

  ‘’E ain’t no von Mannstein,’ shouts Tiny, the all-knowing. ‘’E was born Levinski, a name Adolf ain’t too ’appy about. Say what you bleedin’ like, but it’s a very surprisin’ thing!’

  ‘Eet funny theeng. Good news never come in army news-sheet,’ philosophizes Luigi.

  The Führer has said that there is no more need for tactical operational geniuses,’ explains Porta. ‘Now we are to have army commanders of the boneheaded type who will lead us with a happy shout into battle, and stand on the line.’

  Then that is the bleedin’ end,’ confirms Tiny importantly. ‘An army 0’ bleedin’ cattle as just stands still our good neighbour’s armour’ll fix up in two shakes of a ’ore’s arsehole.’

  ‘What a shower of soddin’ lies they’ve filled us up with the last few years,’ says Carl despondently.

  ‘Apart from a few of us everybody believed ’em,’ Porta smiles a superior smile.

  ‘And eet ees the worst that many steel believe them,’ whispers Luigi.

  ‘Ought to be bleedin’ shot,’ says Tiny.

  ‘Our war leaders have lost their grip on the reins,’ decides Porta. ‘Bottoms up, mates!’

  ‘They once ’ave grip?’ asks Luigi in surprise. ‘I think always Germans fonny people. Square een head!’

  ‘Gröfaz7 ’11 soon be frizzlin’ in ’is own fat,’ says Tiny, optimistically.

  ‘We are moving towards difficult times,’ says Porta. ‘We won’t be able to turn round soon without being called deserters.’

  ‘They must all be mad at the Führer’s HQ,’ considers Garl.


  ‘Who God will let get fucked, he first strikes with blindness,’ explains Porta, with pathos in his voice.

  A company of recruits comes singing down the winding mountain path. Their boots and equipment are clean and polished and their helmets shiny and new with the eagle on the side.

  Porta scratches his back with his bayonet, and looks at the singing recruits thoughtfully.

  ‘When you see a bunch of well-groomed German heroes like that, all spit and polish, you could almost begin to think the myth of German heroism still existed.’

  ‘Three day from now partisans weel ’ave wiped these boys out,’ states Luigi shortly.

  ‘Thank God we were in at the start,’ says Porta, ‘Otherwise we wouldn’t be alive now.’

  ‘old soldiers never die,’ exhales Carl, stretching so that the wicker chair he is sitting in comes close to breaking apart.

  Tiny lets out a long rolling belch, which stops the company feldwebel in his tracks.

  ‘Are you able to salute?’ he asks angrily.

  All four salute silently, but without rising from their wicker chairs.

  A thunderous noise starts up away to the east and rolls nearer like a rapidly approaching storm. A salvo of shells falls with a roar into the town. Earth and fire cascade skywards. A long row of houses disappears in a great chalky cloud. The school across the road is lifted into the air and collapses into pieces quite slowly. The roof falls down intact on top of the pulverized walls.

  The company feldwebel is cut in two and the pieces thrown high up on to the mountain side. The company of recruits melts away in a sea of flame.

  Luigi disappears with amazing celerity into a slit-trench, closely followed by Porta and Tiny. Carl picks up a wicker chair and holds it above his head in the weird hope of protecting himself from the shrapnel which is raining down all around him.

  The blast from an exploding shell throws him into a depression in the ground.

  A shell scores a direct hit on the house in which the divisional kitchen has established itself. Black clouds of smoke rise as the house falls slowly in upon itself. Only the chimney and a huge shining copper boiler are left undamaged.

  The large green, red and white sunshade comes sailing through the air and settles gently down on the slit-trench.