The Bloody Road To Death (Cassell Military Paperbacks)

by Sven Hassel

  15. Blitzmädel: Female telegraphists.

  DARJEELING TEA

  As soon as we get the order to fall out, we drag ourselves into the huts and drop down half-dead. The company was supposed to have held Deadman’s Heights for another three days, but the company has gone out of existence. The greater part of us lie in mass graves. The lucky ones are in the field hospital. Dead-man’s Heights are just what the name implies, A hell on earth for the living.

  None of us has the energy to go for rations. One thought only possesses us. Sleep! Forget the ten days you have just been through. We stumble into the mouldering billet and fall at once into a deathlike sleep.

  The Army’s harsh demands pull us back to reality. Our new Spiess1, Hauptfeldwebel Blatz, wants a roll-call. He still thinks he is at Neuruppin NCO’s School, together with Hauptmann von Pader, our temporary OC.

  Grumbling and with murder in our hearts we fall in on the square.

  ‘Where are the rest of you?’ shouts Blatz, irritably.

  ‘They’ll be a long time coming,’ grins Oberfeldwebel Berner, disrespectfully. ‘They’re pushin’ up the daisies!’

  ‘Call the roll!’ orders Blatz, sharply. He has it called several times over before he is satisfied.

  ‘Tally the dead! Tally the wounded!’

  ‘125 fallen, 19 missing, 42 wounded, sir!’ barks the Old Man, stiffly to attention.

  Blatz goes white, but quickly pulls himself together. Not for nothing was he recognized as the terror of the NCO’s school. He doubles us across country; to get some life back into us, he says. He is not satisfied until two men drop unconscious.

  ‘I’m gonna get that bastard!’ promises Gregor, grinding his teeth.

  ‘No, son, it’ll be my pleasure,’ laughs Porta, wickedly.

  ‘I’ll drive the bleeder mad first, the bleedin’ psycho twatt,’ says Tiny. He pulls himself up to his full height and screams, to everybody’s surprise:

  ‘C-o-o-ompany halt!

  ‘Who said that?’ roars Blatz, his neck reddening.

  ‘The fai-ai-ai-ries,’ comes like an echo from Tiny’s direction.

  Blatz explodes in foaming rage and chases across the field after the company.

  ‘You! What’s your name?’ snarls Blatz, sticking his face close to Tiny’s.

  ‘Me?’ asks Tiny putting on an idiotic expression, and pointing a finger at his own chest.

  ‘Are you crazy?’ asks Blatz, softly.

  ‘Sir, ’Err ’auptfeldwebel, sir, I be backward they do say them army doctors do, sir,’ says Tiny, putting on a yokel’s accent.

  ‘I asked you your name!’

  ‘I did think as ’ow the ’auptfeldwebel ’e wanted to know if I was a idiot like, now I did, sir.’

  ‘You’ll get to know me, man!’ snarls Blatz, threateningly.

  ‘An’ ’appy to know the ’err ’auptfeldwebel I’ll be. Them doctors do say as ’ow it be good for I to get to know many as I can.’

  ‘To the woods! At the double, man!’ roars Blatz, beside himself.

  Tiny jogs off towards the woods with a broad, stupid grin on his face.

  ‘Run, man, run!’ screams Blatz desperately. Tiny stops and holds his hand to his ear, as if he were deaf.

  ‘Run, man, run!’repeats Blatz.

  Tiny trots back to the company.

  ‘About-turn!’ howls Blatz. ‘Forward march! Into the woods!’

  Tiny continues to approach the company.

  ‘Halt!’ orders Blatz. ‘Down on your face! Twenty push-ups! ’Shun! Knees bend! Port arms!’

  In the end he gets mixed up in his own orders. Sweat pours down his face. He looks like a sandstone monument eroded by rain.

  Tiny has stayed lying down as if that was the last order he has understood. He puts one hand under his chin and looks up good-naturedly at the desperate Hauptfeldwebel.

  ‘I do reckon, ’err ’auptfeldwebel, sir, as ’ow I can’t get all them orders like to go into my ’ead quick enough. They says to me now, when I was in trainin’ like, as ’ow an order ’ad to be clear. That was in the manual, they said. Now I can’t folly all them orders all at once, like, an’ I must ask the ’auptfeldwebel as if ’e’ll ’ave the goodness to say now what ’e wants me to do for ’im, like!’

  Without a word Blatz turns on his heel and marches with assured steps into the Company Office. Shortly after, he returns in the wake of Hauptmann von Pader, who looks extremely energetic.

  ‘What are you doing lying down there playing the fool?’ he sniffs at Tiny.

  ‘’Err ’auptmann, sir, I be obeyin’ orders like, I be,’ answers Tiny.

  ‘Get up, man!’

  Tiny gets up like an old, old man, using his carbine to help him.

  Hauptmann von Pader goes purple in the face.

  ‘You’re confined to quarters indefinitely!’ he says, shortly.

  ‘What’s that for, now, sir?’ asks Tiny, wonderingly.

  ‘You swine!’ shouts von Pader, losing control of himself. He regrets the outburst as soon as the word leaves his lips. A Prussian officer should be able to control his anger.

  ‘’Ow’s this then, ’err ’auptman, sir, ’ow’s this? Arrestin’ a swine for bein’ what ’e be? Why then the ’ole German army’ll soon be in the ’ole then for there ain’t none as ain’t swine in ’er, now is there?’

  ‘Have you lost your mind, man?’ screams von Pader, his voice cracking. ‘Are you saying that all German soldiers are swine?’

  ‘Well sir the Quartermaster, ’Err Sauer ’e do say as ’ow we’re all on us a lot o’ Jew wart ’ogs ’e do, an’ Doctor Miiller ’e says as ’ow we’re a lot o’ malingerin’ swine.’

  ‘Attention!’ whines Hauptmann von Pader, dark blue in the face. ‘Forward march! At the double! To the woods!’

  Tiny moves off like a man shot from a gun. Nobody can say he is not carrying out orders. Reaching the woods he runs into a tree and continues running on the spot up against it with high-lifted knees.

  ‘Go round the tree!’ screams von Pader, stamping the ground hysterically. ‘Double march! Quick march! Go round all trees!’

  The devil takes hold of Tiny. He runs straight up over the brow of a hill, disappears into the valley beyond, appears on top of another hill, zig-zags through the trees, whinnies happily and rears up like a horse.

  ‘Halt, halt!’ screams von Pader, his voice breaking several times over, but Tiny, who is a long way off, pretends not to hear him and continues to run, prance and whinny.

  He disappears over a hill but long after he has gone from sight we can hear him whinnying.

  ‘The moment that man returns,’ pants von Pader, ’he is to be manacled and kept locked in a cellar until the military police can remove him!’

  The company falls out. We see nothing of Tiny. The woods and hills have swallowed him up. Porta says he has deserted to Berlin and at the speed he is moving he’ll have got there before long.

  Hauptmann von Pader writes several pages of a report on No. 5 Company in general and Tiny in particular. Oberst Hinka is expecting it. He has heard about Tiny’s one-man rodeo show from other sources.

  The Hauptmann’s monocle falls from his eye in astonishment when he hears the CO’s snarl on the telephone.

  ‘What the hell are you up to von Pader? Pack drill with your company during a special rest period which I ordered. When the men get back from the line they’re to rest! Rest! D’you understand me?’ The oberst bangs down the receiver so hard that von Pader is nearly deafened.

  ‘They don’t know me yet, those wicked men,’ boasts von Pader, ’but they’re going to!’

  ‘Shall we send the charge sheet to regiment, sir?’ asks Blatz, innocently.

  ‘I never, ever again want to see a charge sheet concerning that horrible man,’ screams von Pader furiously, tearing the charge sheet into a thousand pieces. ‘He doesn’t exist any more. Never speak his name in my presence again!’

  Hauptfeldwebel Blatz steamrollers through the company,
breaking up card games, confiscating supplies acquired illegally, demanding accounts of ammunition expended from section-leaders, and handing out fatigues right, left and centre. When, late in the afternoon, he has bawled himself into a state of exhaustion, he feels convinced that he has No. 5 Company by the short hairs.

  ‘Soft as shit, they are!’ he says to the company clerk. ‘I’ll soon teach ’em who they’ve got for a Hauptfeldwebel now. Those check lists come from Chief Mechanic Wolf yet?’

  The clerk swallows. He knows Wolf and can see trouble approaching.

  ‘Check lists! Have they come yet?’ repeats Blatz.

  ‘No, Herr Hauptfeldwebel, and I’m afraid they won’t! Wolf asked me to, – er! Well! To fuck him crossways, sir!’

  ‘Is the man mad?’ almost whispers Blatz. He cannot believe his own ears.

  The clerk shrugs his shoulders. He does not want to make an enemy of Wolf.

  Blatz goes to Wolf. This is a matter of discipline.

  Wolf welcomes him sitting in his own personal rocking-chair with his feet on the desk. He lights a big cigar carelessly without offering one to Blatz.

  White with rage Blatz advances on him, but stops short when both wolfhounds show their fangs and begin to growl ominously.

  ‘What do you think you’re up to?’ he asks, trembling with indignation. ‘Where are the check lists I ordered you to prepare? Don’t you know who’s Hauptfeldwebel in this company?’

  Wolf laughs noisily, and points at Blatz with a cossack sabre.

  ‘Fuck off and keep your nose out of my business!’

  ‘You’ll regret this!’ hisses Blatz.

  ‘Beat it, before I set the dogs on you,’ grins Wolf, pointing to the door.

  Blatz leaves him, cursing and swearing revenge. He marches confidently down the dusty village road. Passing the GO’s quarters he hears noisy singing from behind the house. Cautiously he looks round the corner and sees Tiny, lying alongside a turnip trench and singing with lusty voice:

  My darling, my sweet, my dove,

  I’m bleeding, I’m dying for love.

  Come here and we’ll never more rove,

  From this silent and solitary cove.

  Where I lie in the cold and the snow . . .

  Blatz is about to draw back round the corner and disappear, when Hauptmann von Pader knocks on the pane and waves to him.

  No help for it, he’ll have to go in however little he wishes it.

  ‘Blatz, remove that singing idiot!’ hisses the Hauptmann, furiously. ‘Shoot him, if you like!’

  Blatz shuffles his feet like a laying hen.

  ‘Herr Hauptmann,’ he stammers, confusedly.

  ‘That’s an order! Get that clown out of here!’ screams von Pader, beside himself. Blatz sighs like a condemned man. With uncertain steps he goes out to move Tiny on.

  From behind the curtain von Pader keeps an eye on developments, in company with a bottle of cognac. To break and crush a soldier has been as easy for him, up to now, as swatting a fly. He takes a long swig at the bottle. With any luck he’ll soon be back in Berlin, and then these half-human front soldiers will really get to know him. He peers cautiously out of the window and sees to his satisfaction that Blatz is talking to Tiny. If anybody can break that yokel it will be Hauptfeldwebel Blatz, the terror of every NCO’s school, Bonecrusher Blatz!

  Von Pader laughs croakingly to himself, takes another swig at the cognac bottle, and starts to walk to and fro in the low-ceilinged cottage; he has quartered himself in the style to which a German officer with blue blood in his veins is entitled. The owner of the cottage has, of course, been ejected and has taken up residence in a hole in the ground. Baron von Pader would not condescend to live in the same house as a Russian un-termensch They might give him some filthy disease or other. He had fired at the Russian woman when she had made trouble about some pots and pans she wanted to take with her. What the devil good were pots and pans to her? He was told one of the shots had hit her, but would not let the medical feldwebel look at her. German medics should not have to touch un-termensch. They had not been given their expensive training to look after them. Never be nice to a Russian. It made them cheeky, like the niggers. The whip was what they needed. And an execution now and then wasn’t a bad thing. Hauptmann von Pader liked hanging people. Oberst Hinka, now, was against that sort of thing. He required the untermensch to be treated like Germans. Well, that puffed-up oberst would soon get the wind taken out of his sails when they got him down to Admiral Schröder Strasse. Defeatist, racial saboteur!

  Tiny is singing even more loudly from out by the turnip trench. Hauptfeldwebel Blatz has disappeared.

  Baron von Pader tightens his lips, snatches up the Mpi from the table and pushes the curtains to one side. At the same moment a pane of glass splinters behind him. A hand-grenade rolls across the floor. He screams in fear and throws himself flat.

  Tiny rushes in, with his Mpi at the ready, stops in the middle of the room, looks from the OC on the floor to the spluttering hand-grenade. He bends down, picks up the grenade and throws it neatly out through the open doorway.

  Von Pader crawls to his feet, brushes off his slate-grey uniform and turns his back demonstratively on Tiny. Tiny does not, of course, exist.

  Tiny couldn’t care less. He chatters gaily about training grenades, partisans and many other things which are part of life behind the lines.

  ‘’Err ’auptmann, sir, I do be sure as ’ow it’s some of these ’ere officers as are tryin’ to make game o’ ’ee! Now if I was to get ’old of a dead rat, as stinks a bit, like, then we could throw ’er into the middle of they. Why ’tain’t no joke ’avin’ trainin’ grenades thrown at ’ee, now is it? An’ you a new man at the job, as you might say!’

  Hauptmann von Pader clenches and unclenches his hands in an effort to contain his rage. He fingers his holster. Should he shoot this man and say he had attacked him? He decides not to.

  Porta is sitting across from Chief Mechanic Wolf, at Wolf’s long, broad desk, discussing four lorries and several cases of canteen supplies. Wolf is working away at half a pig’s head. Porta is building himself a sandwich in the way he feels a sandwich should be built. First a piece of coarse bread with a layer of goose fat. Thereafter a sizeable piece of smoked ham, covered with slices of hunt sausage and a little of anything else to hand. The whole finally covered with a layer of gooseberry jam!

  He opens his jaws wide and manoeuvres the enormous sandwich into his mouth. He finds it difficult to get his teeth through it but finally manages to do so.

  ‘I hope you choke!’ says Wolf, cheerfully.

  Porta gets the last bit down and picks up a chicken over which he pours a whole jar of jam.

  ‘Don’t hope too much, Wolf,’ he says filling his mouth with chicken. ‘I could swallow a fair-sized pig whole, listen to it grunt inside me all day, and wind up shitting it out again in the form of a whole litter of live sucking pigs!’

  ‘I wouldn’t wonder if you could,’ mumbles Wolf, crossly, shovelling sauerkraut over pig’s feet. ‘Just remember, though, it’s my grub you’re surroundin’ and to the best of my knowledge you weren’t invited to either.’

  Porta laughs noisily, resting his jaws.

  ‘You’re forgiven, son Wolf, but I ought to say I never am invited. It’s unnecessary! I come uninvited but am always dressed for dinner!’

  They eat silently for a while, looking at one another calculatingly. The only sounds are of bones cracking and wine swilling food down.

  Wolf, who has been well brought up, drinks from a glass, Porta takes it straight from the bottle. Wolf has his own private dinner service. Porta is willing to guzzle his food straight from the pot. The main thing, as far as he is concerned, is that there is enough of it.

  ‘Shall we share the pig’s head?’ he asks, bringing a long kitchen knife down accurately between the animal’s eyes as it dominates the table with a tomato in its mouth.

  Wolf growls something unintelligible ending in ‘shit’!<
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  Porta cuts the pig’s head in two, taking the larger part for himself. He empties it with a long slobbering, sucking sound unsuitable for queasy stomachs.

  Wolf looks at him with loathing.

  Tell me, son! Don’t you ever eat in the mess-hall?’

  ‘Of course I do,’ smiles Porta. ‘There’s food there isn’t there?’

  They lean back in their chairs. Two long, satisfied belches make themselves heard. Porta takes off his boots and socks and lays them on the table. An acrid aroma rises from them. He looks sharply at Wolf, who has started on a dish of steaming black pudding, and pushes one of the socks closer to him, with a big toe which is not notable for cleanliness. He wriggles his toes luxuriously.

  Without turning a hair Wolf pours apple sauce over his black pudding.

  Porta starts to cut his toenails. Slips of nail fly past Wolf’s ears.

  The wolf-hounds snuffle with displeasure and move further away from the desk. Porta’s socks they find a bit too much for sensitive noses.

  ‘What’s that bloody stink?’ asks Wolf, suddenly, looking up from his sausage.

  ‘Stink?’ asks Porta, innocently. ‘To be expected isn’t it, in your company?’

  ‘Don’t get familiar, son,’ growls Wolf, warningly. ‘Don’t forget who’s Chief Mechanic and Stabsfeldwebel here. And don’t forget who’s the holder of the German Cross in silver. Move those bloody socks, man! Who ever heard of socks on a dining-room table?’ With his fork he flips them on to the floor. They land in front of the dogs which back off whining and howling.

  ‘I know where there’s three tractors,’ says Porta, after an extended silence. ‘Chain-drive, like the heavy artillery play about with.’

  ‘What tractors?’ asks Wolf, with apparent disinterest.

  ‘First class jobs. Not ruined by bad oil and petrol. They’ve come straight from the States, addressed to Ivan.’

  ‘What make?’ asks Wolf, soaking up grease with a piece of Ukranian peasant bread. ‘If they’re Fords, I couldn’t be less interested. Tito began to hate the capitalists in earnest when they sent him some of them. They’re America’s revenge on Europe for us sending them all our unwanted black sheep.’