by Sven Hassel
‘Herr Oberst, I . . .’ von Pader stammers.
‘Has No. 5 Company a commander? Yes or no?’ snarls the oberst, rapping on his artificial arm.
‘My Hauptfeldwebel knows I have left the company to prefer charges of mutiny, sir!’
‘You must be mad,’ shouts Hinka, in a rage. ‘Have you left your company to an NCO? What about Leutnant Pötz commanding No. i Section?’
The adjutant laughs to himself, picks up the telephone and asks for No. 5 Company.
‘Get Leutnant Pötz to the telephone,’ he orders, when the connection is made. ‘Leutnant Pötz! Where is your commander? At the Command Post, you think? Go and see please!’ The adjutant whistles softly through his teeth whilst he is waiting for Leutnant Pötz to return to the telephone. ‘Hello, Pötz! The OC is not there? And nobody knows where he is! Yes we know!’ laughs the adjutant. ‘A bad business! The regimental commander orders you to take over as acting commander of No. 5 Company. That’s all!’ With a quiet smile he replaces the receiver on the hook.
For a moment there is dead silence in the hut.
Hinka is looking out of the window and filling his pipe. The adjutant plays with a riding whip. Hauptmann von Pader shuffles his feet uneasily. He realizes that he has got himself into a dangerous position. A position not even his friends in Berlin can extricate him from. If the CO lets it go to a court-martial he will be more than lucky to get away with being broken to the ranks and posted to a field punishment regiment.
‘Get out!’ snarls Oberst Hinka. ‘Get off back to No. 5, and God help you if you ruin that company. You’ll hear from me later!’
‘Herr Oberst . . .’
‘Shut up and get out,’ screams Hinka, furiously. ‘Do you still not understand that you have been guilty of dereliction of duty of the gravest possible kind?’
Hauptmann von Pader backs out of the door. The adjutant bangs it after him, almost giving him a bloody nose.
He staggers back to the company with the gait of a drunken man. He is a whole hour crawling over the open ground. When a shell crashes above his head he thinks, for a moment, that he has been hit, and that his trousers are filled with blood. They are filled with something quite different. He gets his underpants off and throws them away. He is just pulling his trousers up again when Porta and the bear appear.
‘Beg to report, Herr Hauptmann, sir!’ roars Porta stupidly. ‘Obergefreiter Porta and Bear Rasputin en route to HQ by CO’s orders, sir!’
‘Get away from me!’ whispers Hauptmann von Pader, unhappily.
‘Beg to ask, Herr Hauptmann, sir!’ crows Porta, clicking his heels. ‘Has something happened, sir, to your arse, sir, since you have had to dispose of your pants, sir? Beg to state, Herr Hauptmann, sir, a shot in the arse, sir, can be dangerous thing, sir! Shall I send an orderly, sir, to dress it, sir?’
‘Nothing has happened,’ his OC brushes him off shortly. ‘Be off with you!’
Porta falls out in a tornado of saluting, trouser-slapping and heel-clicking. The bear growls warningly. It does not like von Pader’s self-made khaki uniform. They disappear down the narrow path.
‘Believe it or not, Rasputin me old brown brother, but he’s shit his pants,’ Porta confides to the bear in a voice loud enough for von Pader not to be able to avoid hearing it.
2. See Wheels of Terror.
3. HJ (Hitler Jugend): Hitler Youth Organization.
4. Panzerfaust: German bazooka.
5. Victory passed us by;
Burnt our fingers on its way.
At the death-feast vodka flows,
But not a man gets drunk.
6. The first toast is Farewell!
And then the second follows.
The fifth – the tenth – and then
The bitter stirrup cup . . .
7. Alik: Russian slang for the male sexual organ.
8. Khrúpkij djávol: (Russian): Crazy devil.
9. Djádja (Russian): Uncle.
10. Durák (Russian): Dummy.
The strongest are the best, and the best will survive. This is nature’s law. We are the strongest We, the German people.
Adolf Hitler, 4th August, 1940.
There is a heavy knocking on SD-Obersturmbannführer Sojka’s office door in the RSHA. Quickly he flicks a por-nographic magazine under some documents relating to executions carried out at Plôtzensee.
‘Come in!’ he cries, in his musical Viennese dialect
‘Heil Hitler, Obersturmbannführer!’ Hauptsturmführer Tölle greets him, swinging his arm nonchalantly towards the ceiling in the approved RSHA style.
‘Well, Tölle, what brings you here? You haven’t come to tell me the war is finally over and we’ve won it, have you? What’s new from the great wide world outside?’
‘Our troops are withdrawing to concentrate for a massive attack on our enemies. The iron fist of National Socialism will crush them with one all-destroying blow.’
Tölle lays a pink folder on the desk in front of Sojka. ‘Urgent,’ he smiles, and raises his arm in the salute.’
Sojka opens the folder and reads:
GEHEIME STAATSPOLIZEI1
From: Staatspolibeistelle Hamburg
Hamburg 36,
Stadthousbrücke 8.
Geheim2 Sofort3 23. Nov. 1943.
To: Reichssicherheitshauptamt,
Berlin SW 11.
Prinz-Albert-Strasse 8.
In the Zhitormir battle area, Oberleutnant Albert Wunderlich and Feldwebel Kurt Weith have deserted from the 6th Mounted Rifle Regiment There is proof that they have voluntarily gone over to the 48th Russian Army Corps. In accordance with paragraph 99 and 91b StGB4, all close relations are to be arrested, and closely interrogated in order to discover whether any of them have prior knowledge of this treacherous act. In the event that any of them have such knowledge, the person concerned is to be turned over to the Criminal Courts and punished in accordance with paragraphs 98c and 91a, StGB.
Such relatives as cannot be convicted of guilt are to be confined as hostages in one of the main concentration camps as a warning to others.
Obergruppenführer Dr Müller
Der Chef der Sicherheitspolizei und des SD5
Sojka laughs with pleasure. His finger whirls the telephone dial happily.
‘I need all personal papers concerning Oberleutnant Albert Wunderlich and Feldwebel Kurt Weith of the 6th Mounted Rifle Regt., Home Garrison: Krefeld. All first degree relatives to be arrested and escorted here. They are to be imprisoned under paragraph 91a. Get to it smartly, gentlemen, repeat smartly!’ Sojka bangs down the receiver.
Five hours later twelve innocent people are on their way to Berlin. None of them has any knowledge of the fact that a close relative has deserted.
It is late that night when the heavy doors of the Moabitt detention house clang shut behind them., None of them knows what a hell on earth awaits them.
1. Geheime Staatspolizei: Secret State Police.
2. Geheim: Confidential.
3. Sofort: Urgent.
4. StGB: (Strafgesetzbuch): Penal Code.
5. Chief of Security Police and Security Services.
THE COMMISSAR
A RUSSIAN kidnap patrol picked up three of ours one night, Oberleutnant Strick, the orderly officer, was one of them.
Early one morning the Russians show a white flag. A sergeant leads a man in field-grey out into no-man’s-land, and leaves him there. It is a German officer.
A party brings him in. It is Oberleutnant Strick and he has been treated terribly. Where his eyes should be are two swollen, running sores.
Strick tries to speak but can only make weird gulping noises. His mouth is a blood-caked hole from which the tongue has been torn.
‘Mon Dieu, mon Dieu!’ mutters the Legionnaire, and leaves the dugout.
‘Do you understand what I am saying? asks Oberst Hinka, laying his hand on Strick’s shoulder. ‘I must ask you a few questions. Shake your head or nod in reply. Are the other two men alive?’
/>
Strick shakes his head.
‘Were they tortured too?’ Hinka’s hand whitens on his pistol holster. His face is like granite.
Strick nods.
‘Was it Russians who tortured you?’
Strick shakes his head.
‘Was it a commissar?’
Strick nods tiredly, sways and would have fallen from the stool but the adjutant catches him.
The Medical Officer gives him an injection and a little later Oberst Hinka can continue questioning him.
‘Did the commissar speak German?’
Strick nods.
‘Did you get the impression that he was German?’
Strick nods.
‘Did you hear his name spoken?’ Hinka stops abruptly, realizing that he has asked a question which cannot be answered. Oberleutnant Strick cannot write. The bones of both his hands have been crushed.
Dr Repp stops the questioning and orders the oberleutnant to be taken back for emergency treatment. He commits suicide in hospital shortly after admission. A nurse forgets a knife on his table. He slashes his arteries and the bed is swimming with blood before a doctor can get there.
‘We’ll get that pig of a commissar even if he’s hiding in the Kremlin itself,’ says Oberst Hinka in a hard voice. ‘We need prisoners now, to find out who he is.’
Only two hours later a combat-patrol brings in an elderly Russian captain.
The Divisional Intelligence Officer, who speaks fluent Russian, comes out personally to interrogate the captain. In the beginning the Russian is stubbornly silent, but when he sees the fierce faces around him, and the intelligence officer threatens to turn him over to the men, he becomes a little more co-operative.
‘It was the Vojenkom6 from the 89th Division who was responsible for the torturing,’ explains the captain, with nervous gestures.
‘What is his name?’ asks the intelligence officer. ‘We believe him to be a German.’
‘He is a former German officer, who came to Russia with a military mission,’ says the captain. ‘He was sent to us a short while ago to tighten up discipline. He started by executing two regimental commanders and putting very many officers and other ranks on court-martial.’
‘What is his name?’ asks the interrogating officer.
‘It used to be Josef Geis, but he does not call himself that any more,’ adds the captain, with a smile. ‘Now he is Vojenkom Josef Oltyn. He has made a standing order that all German officers captured by our division are to be shot immediately after they have been interrogated.’
‘Where is he now?’
‘Hidden away safely,’ answers the officer, with a shrug of his shoulders. ‘Right back at Beresina in Olszany in a castle together with his special staff.’
‘Thank you, that is all,’ says his interrogator, closing his file.
‘Are you thinking of going after him?’ asks the captain in amazement, emptying the glass of vodka the intelligence officer pushes over to him.
‘Not thinking! We are going to do it!’
‘Forget it!’ says the captain, with a short laugh. ‘The good commissar is very well protected. After a few miles your commando will run into security units, and should they, which isn’t to be expected, get past those fellows, they’ll never get back again. You’ve got a distance of over eighty miles to cover and, if you don’t follow the roads, you have to go through terrible stretches of swamp and impenetrable forests, which can only be negotiated with special equipment.’
‘Will you help us?’ asks the intelligence officer. ‘You won’t regret it if you do.’ He offers the captain a cigar and lights it for him. ‘As soon as our commando has picked up Herr Oltyn, you can return to your unit.’
‘What guarantee do I have of that?’ asks the captain doubt-fulty.
‘My word as an officer!’
The captain appears to be turning the offer over in his mind. He continues to smoke his cigar in silence. Stubs it out. The regimental clerk brings in coffee. The interrogator signals, and cognac is brought.
‘I will help you catch that scoundrel,’ the captain says suddenly. ‘One of the officers he executed was my best friend.’
He marks out the route on a chart and warns against the dangers of the Jasiolda marshes.
‘You must go round them, even though it means a detour of forty miles. You must go by Grolow and then in the direction of Ufda and it is absolutely necessary to have a rubber boat with you. Otherwise you will never be able to get over the Sna, not to speak of the Slutsch where you will have to hide the boat. Luckily an inflatable rubber boat is easily concealed,’ he adds with a wave of his hand.
‘What about the other rivers?’ asks the intelligence officer. They are quite deep and the current is rapid.’
The captain bends over the map again and marks several positions.
‘Here there are fords. They are guarded, but not very strongly. Usually a single sentry.- Your commando must wear Russian uniforms and carry Russian weapons and equipment. I would not advise you to send a commando larger than a section. The road back will be the worst. As soon as the Vojenkom has been taken the whole area will be put on the alert.’
We stand in the trench ready to crawl over into no-man’s-land. The Russian captain is inspecting our equipment together with the intelligence officer. He points to the big French water-bottle Porta has at his belt.
‘Get rid of that! That’s madness!’
‘I’ll die of thirst,’ protests Porta, angrily. Those tiny Russian things don’t hold enough to keep a sparrow alive!’
Despite his grumbling the French waterbottle is exchanged for a regulation Russian one.
Our artillery hammers at the Russian lines, to keep them occupied. Engineers pilot us through the minefields. Like lightning we are down into the enemy trenches and finish off the few sentries, who are taking cover under the forward trench wall, in no time.
Porta has trouble holding Rasputin in check. The bear can smell Russians and Machorka, and cannot understand why we are not killing them as usual.
The artillery fire follows our advance. It drops in front of us, sweeping a path clear which we can follow.
The first fifteen miles are taken at a blazing speed. The collapsible boat is heavy and unwieldy, and we change bearers continually.
The Old Man gives us only short rests. We must get over the Sna before daylight.
My lungs pump and heave. I feel the stab of my old wound. The only one of us who seems untouched by the pace is the bear. It has time to play games, climb trees and fall out of them, roll itself into a ball and bite its own tail.
We cross the Sna quickly and enter the woods east of Lutszczak. Suddenly Rasputin stops and stands sniffing the air. He growls and moves carefully forward.
‘Heathen about! Close!’ warns Porta, in a whisper.
Cautiously we follow the bear, but still without seeing or hearing a sign of the enemy.
With a grunt Rasputin disappears into the woods as if the devil were after him.
Something dark can just be seen between the fir-trees.
‘A wolf or a dog,’ thinks Porta.
‘Bloody foolishness!’ scolds the Old Man. ‘We haven’t time to waste while that bloody bear goes chasing dogs! Aren’t you ever going to grow out of keeping pets, you childish sod? Cats, dogs, pigs, and now a bear! What’ll it be next? A sodding elephant, I wouldn’t wonder!’
‘They used to go to war on elephants in the old days, so you oughtn’t to moan about one of them,’ laughs Porta. ‘The ones with the most and biggest elephants were the ones who won!’
‘What the ’ell did they do with them bleeders?’ asks Tiny, surprised. ‘Eat’em?’
‘They were a kind of tank,’ explains Heide, and goes into a long, muddled description of the uses of war elephants.
‘Must’ve been somethin’ lovely to ’ear a ’erd o’ them bleeders come gallopin’,’ considers Tiny. ‘Where’d you learn all that, anyway?’
‘Read it,’ answers Heide,
importantly.
‘In the Vôlkischer Beobachter7, I suppose?’ sniggers Tiny. ‘If it was there forget it, then. You can’t believe a bleedin’ word of it.’
There is a sound of cries and growls from amongst the trees. Branches snap loudly.
‘What the devil’s that?’ says the Old Man, startled.
Rasputin has killed a Russian sergeant of signals. He is bloody meat when we break through the brush.
‘The question now,’ says the Old Man, thoughtfully, ’is whether this signaller met our bear by accident or whether he’s been keeping an eye on us all the time and signalling our whereabouts.’
Impossible,’ answers Porta. ‘If he’d been near us Rasputin would have warned us. The smell of a heathen within a mile of him turns his stomach over.’
‘Well, we’ll find out soon enough, I reckon,’ says the Old Man, pessimistically, lighting his silver-lidded pipe.
We reach the Slutsch late in the afternoon, but wait to make the crossing until midnight. We hide the rubber boat on the opposite side and go into hiding in the brush, which is very thick here. We roll ourselves up in our groundsheets and fall quickly into unconsciousness.
Immediately after dawn we continue moving in single file. We make a wide circle around Nowojeinia and come out on a wide plain where the grass is as tall as a man. A company of Russian infantry passes us a short way off. They wave to us and we wave happily back. A mounted officer examines us through his binoculars.
Rasputin lets out a warning growl.
‘For God’s sake keep a tight hold on that sodding bear!’ says the Old Man, nervously.
We turn into the forest again. Just past the top of a hill the bear goes down flat on its belly, its incisors showing, gleaming whitely.
