Comrades of War

by Sven Hassel

  ‘Will you take us to Berlin?’ the Legionnaire asked dryly. ‘Just let us off close to a subway station and we’ll be satisfied.’

  The Corporal, who didn’t allow his serenity to be disturbed, answered: ‘Gladly as far as I’m concerned, just climb aboard!’

  We tossed in our equipment and climbed up.

  Through the smashed rear window the East Prussian asked the driver: ‘Mac, are you really serious about going to Cologne?’

  ‘Damn it, yes. I’m going to pick up some important stuff for our commander.’

  He handed us his marching papers, and in amazement we read that as a special assignment he had been dispatched with truck WH 381 556 through Lemberg, Warsaw and Breslau to Berlin, Dortmund, and Cologne.

  ‘Holy Mary, Mother of God, I must have gone crazy,’ Bauer cried. ‘If this isn’t the most idiotic thing I’ve yet seen in this war. Sending an old truck thousands of miles to pick up something!’

  ‘Is it something important?’ Tiny asked. ‘Are you going to pick up some laundry for the gang?’

  ‘Yes, my commander wants to have his love socks brought out to his position.’

  More soldiers clambered on the truck.

  ‘The war will soon be over,’ a dirty NCO remarked and squirted a stream of tobacco juice over the side.

  ‘How do you know?’ asked a staff corporal in panzer uniform.

  ‘Talked to Adolf over the ’phone yesterday,’ the NCO answered. He looked around cautiously as if to make sure that no outsider was listening.

  ‘Adolf said it was “Gekados” that the war was over!’

  ‘So that’s why we go on with it?’ asked a little pale infantry Pfc.

  ‘By the way, do you know why Adolf never shows up at the front any more?’ asked the staff corporal.

  ‘Naw?’

  ‘He’s afraid we’ll shout: Führer, we’ll follow you!’

  ‘But we always shouted that,’ Bauer said.

  The staff corporal looked closely at him. ‘You must be from the country?’

  ‘Shut up, you turd,’ Bauer growled.

  But the staff corporal didn’t let himself be frightened by Bauer’s threatening voice and went on.

  ‘Adolf is afraid we’ll take him up on it and follow him to Berlin!’

  An eighteen-year-old infantryman in a brand-new uniform and a Hitler Youth badge on his breast stood up. His face was completely white.

  ‘I forbid you to talk like this! It is defeatism, favoring the enemy. I demand that all present in this vehicle give me their names and service ranks. As a National-Socialist I am duty bound to report their treacherous talk.’

  Stein caught the boy by his chest and hurled him against the bottom of the truck.

  ‘Won’t you please shut up, you puppet! What a dud! Don’t worry, we’ll settle your hash for you!’

  The boy cried for help from the bottom of the truck. To drown out the noise we started singing:

  Ja, das Temperament,

  Ja, das Temperament,

  Das lieght mir

  so im Blut!

  ‘God, we’re lost,’ the staff corporal shouted. ‘Before us the Russians, behind us the Party. Help! We’re surrounded.’

  Tiny let out a howl, jumped over the side of the truck, scooted some distance into the plain and dived down for cover.

  ‘Mille diables!’ the Legionnaire exclaimed, and was off.

  All over the roller conveyor soldiers were running away from the vehicles.

  ‘Rattas,’ the East Prussian yelled, plunging head over heels out of the truck.

  Three Russian fighters zoomed down on us. They swept the road clean with their quick-firing guns. We hunched our shoulders in terror and pressed tight to the ground.

  We felt the cold air hit us as the low-flying planes boomed across the plain. The red stars twinkled on their wings. They seemed to be laughing derisively at us.

  ‘Jesus Christ!’ a corporal cursed beside us. ‘I’ve 1600 gallons of gas in my truck. If our colleagues hit it, good night, my dear! We’ll have a funeral with fireworks and Bengal light!’

  The three planes turned around and came crashing back over the roller conveyor. Bodies were blown into the air by the exploding shells.

  Some young infantrymen naively started to shoot at the shrieking Rattas with rifles and light MGs.

  ‘This is getting precarious,’ the East Prussian mumbled and pressed still closer to the ground.

  The little Legionnaire started getting to his feet. He raised himself to a half-kneeling position and stared toward the road, where a host of vehicles were burning.

  From all sides there were cries of ‘Medics!’ But they hardly got through to our brains. We had become deaf to that cry.

  The East Prussian pulled the Legionnaire into the hole. He just had time to shout ‘Butcher!’ before six fighter planes crashed out of the sky, one after another. They made a nosedive, which made their wings look like straight lines.

  ‘They have us in their sights!’ As I slid down to the bottom of the hole, this thought flashed through my mind.

  One group of soldiers on the roller conveyor had failed to notice the danger popping out of the blue sky. An engineer lieutenant was giving them hell. He wanted them to fall in.

  Malignant blue flames flashed from the wings of the fighter planes – the muzzle flare from their guns. At the same moment the dirt on the road was whipped up as if a couple of sacks of rocks had been dropped from a high altitude.

  Loud screams. Savage curses.

  With both hands the Lieutenant made menacing gestures at the low-flying planes as they roared over us. They swerved some distance into the plain and then came zooming back.

  The Lieutenant doubled up. A stream of blood spurted from his neck. His head rolled down the road like a melon. His eyes were wide open. His cap lay forlorn a little way off.

  An eighteen-year-old infantryman shrieked as he ran on his leg stumps. Both his legs had been cut just above the ankles. The blood formed a steaming streak after him.

  General panic broke out among the soldiers, who got up and did the worst thing possible under the circumstances: They started running on the roller conveyor.

  The fighters made a regular slaughter, driving volley after volley into quivering bodies.

  A lieutenant in the black uniform of the armored troops came flying into our hole in one long leap.

  ‘Ohlsen,’ he puffed. He was a typical field officer, with a sub-machine gun over his shoulder and his breast covered with decorations.

  The Legionnaire raised his head and fixed his eyes. ‘Bon, Kalb.’

  The earth was being lashed up around us. Everything was ablaze. It was raining fire.

  Once more the planes came to the attack.

  We pressed up against each other and flattened our bodies to the ground.

  An ear-splitting explosion lifted us out of the hole. Waves of burning hot air rolled against us. A sea of fire welled from the road as from a volcano.

  ‘My 1600 gallons of gas,’ the Corporal groaned.

  To top off the fireworks the planes dropped a series of bombs. Parts of vehicles flew through the air. Then it was over. The planes disappeared eastward.

  The sunlight was reflected on their silvery fuselages.

  We slowly stood up and walked toward the road, where a profusion of charred corpses were scattered.

  An Air Force colonel took command. We were ordered to clear the road of corpses and wrecked matériel.

  The corporal bound for Cologne stood looking dejectedly at his burnt-up truck.

  ‘This is mad,’ he said. ‘And my papers burnt up with the truck.’

  Those soldiers who didn’t belong to any definite unit were put together in a ‘pick-up’ battalion.

  Tiny still dragged his bag with him. He gave each of us a banana. A flak artillery Pfc asked if he could have one too. He said ‘comrade’ to Tiny.

  ‘I’m no comrade to an oaf from the Air Force, and when you talk to me you shou
ld address me as Herr Corporal! You bet I’ll make you see eye to eye with me on that.’

  The company comprised all kinds of services, from seamen to front-line fliers. All of the Axis nations were represented in it: Rumanians, Hungarians, Bulgarians, a Finnish corporal, Yugoslavs, and an Italian Bersagliere corporal with a cock’s feather in his cap.

  Tiny was unable to hold himself. He hit a Polish MP over the head with his helmet and yelled provocatively: ‘Get out of rank, traitor!’

  This caused a big uproar in the company, twenty-five percent of which were volunteers from occupied countries like the Ukraine, Poland, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia.

  Lieutenant Ohlsen tried to soothe the roused tempers and quiet the loud voices of those who had been offended by Tiny’s clamor about ‘traitors.’ A Cossack from Tiflis swung his knife at Tiny and set up a cry in broken German. Tiny guffawed and called to the Legionnaire, who walked beside Lieutenant Ohlsen at the head of the company.

  ‘Desert Rambler, they want to cut me to bits because I tell them the truth. Should I kill them?’

  ‘You should behave yourself,’ the Legionnaire crowed back.

  Lieutenant Ohlsen laughed. He tried to put awe into Tiny, who towered above all others as he walked with his bag across his shoulder in the middle of the rank.

  The Cossack made ready to move behind Tiny; but Tiny grabbed him by his wide stiff cravat and pulled him in front of him.

  ‘Better come to the front, you muzzle cover. Then I can see you and help you in case you should slip in your own snot!’

  A Pole in the uniform of the Polish auxiliary police protested on behalf of the Cossack.

  ‘Leave him alone. He’s a volunteer and is fighting for National Socialism just like you and me!’

  Tiny gaped, bent down and peered into the face of the Polish policeman. He scrutinized it as if he wanted to make sure whether he was walking beside a real person or not.

  ‘You must have crab-louse on the liver! I’m not fighting for anything like what you’re talking about, oh no! I’m fighting to save my neck and nothing else! Haven’t you ever heard of Kolyma, you clod? If you haven’t, just wait and see and you’ll get there. There you’ll get rotten fish every day while Tiny sits in Bremen stuffing himself with English beefsteak!’

  ‘Shut your trap, you swine!’ the Pole yelled, making a movement with his sub-machine gun.

  With the palm of his hand Tiny smacked him on the throat with such force that he toppled over. A rattling noise came from his throat.

  ‘Self-defense, according to Regulations,’ Tiny grinned.

  A menacing mutter rose from the company.

  Tiny drew himself up to his full stature. ‘If someone would like to commit suicide, all he has to do is to come here and Tiny will be glad to help him out.’

  A rock hit his shoulder. He just managed to see that the culprit was a Czech in the green uniform of the sabotage police.

  With a snarling grin Tiny slowly moved down upon the man, who pulled back in terror. But Tiny caught him.

  As if it were a state secret he whispered to him: ‘Are you quite sane? Do you want your ass to be knocked cold? Or what do you mean by throwing rocks at an honorary corporal of the “Disarmed Forces” of Greater Germany?’ Suddenly he set up a staggering roar: ‘What a crud!’

  He caught the terror-stricken, almost paralyzed man by the throat, swung him above his head and hurled him into the plain.

  Then he shuffled indifferently to his place in the ranks between the East Prussian and me.

  ‘What a crazy bunch,’ he said, shaking his head resignedly. ‘We’d better clear out as soon as it’s dark on Joseph’s plains. This bunch beats everything. Pure scabs!’

  He started singing:

  Yesterday on silky cushions,

  Today a bullet in the breast,

  Tomorrow in the chilling g-r-a-v-e.

  He held his voice on the last word interminably. Then he spat and hit the Polish policeman directly in the hollow of his neck.

  Three days later we reached Proskurov, where the mixed battalion was dissolved and everybody had to look out for himself.

  In Proskurov we saw the first sign of a new and harsher policy. Two old infantrymen had been hanged, from separate telephone poles. On their breasts were signs, with these words written in red letters:

  Too cowardly

  to defend the Fatherland!

  We stopped for a moment to look at the two of them. They were hanging there in the middle of the market-place, swinging like pendulums in the wind.

  ‘For them the war’s over,’ the East Prussian remarked philosophically.

  ‘It’s better to stay with the gang,’ Stein decided. ‘Then you have at least a slight chance of escaping with your life.’

  ‘Voilà,’ the Legionnaire said, scratching his nose. ‘I know what this means. Good signs. The same thing happened in the Rif Mountains when the Legion was about to give up the game. It is a sure sign of the end.’

  We roused ourselves and continued through town.

  We sought quarter for the night in a building that looked rather like a barn. A stench of rotten potatoes and musty straw welled against us as we stepped in.

  ‘The hell with that,’ the East Prussian said, ‘we’ll stay here and snooze.’

  ‘Everything taken!’ a voice growled from the dark.

  ‘That’s too bad for you,’ Tiny thundered, ‘because we must have room, you know. You’ll be the first to take off as not wanted.’

  ‘Shut up, you rotten swine!’ the invisible owner of the voice retorted.

  Tiny crashed into the darkness like a locomotive. Shortly the darkness rang with crying and screaming, oaths and curses.

  Then the first two came flying through the air. In the course of a few minutes there was room for all seven of us.

  Lieutenant Ohlsen laughed softly. ‘I’d call that being consistent!’

  From the inner darkness someone asked: ‘Tiny, is that you?’

  The Legionnaire lit a field lantern, which to his surprise disclosed Ewald, Aunt Dora’s Ewald.

  Tiny stood up. ‘Holy Mary, Mother of God, you also in town?’ He turned to the Legionnaire, who still held Ewald in the cone of light from the field lantern. ‘It’s not that I’m lazy, Desert Rambler, but I’m a bit tired after trudging around with that traitor bunch. As soon as I’ve had some sleep I’m going to give Ewald the thrashing that’s coming to him.’

  The Legionnaire nodded and passed the cone of light further over the many sleeping people.

  Letting out a roar of rapture, Tiny dashed across the sleeping figures in the musty straw. He chanced to hit the lantern out of the Legionnaire’s hand so the light went out.

  From the darkness we heard him grunt and shout with joy: ‘Hell’s blazes, what luscious tomatoes!’

  We could hear him romping around between cursing soldiers and stepping on them. Then, a piercing shriek from a woman and a moment later. Tiny’s ecstatic yell:

  ‘I’ve a roast on my fork. Ah, what sweets!’

  Several women started protesting.

  ‘Hurry up and get here, boys. A traveling whorehouse has settled here!’

  A lantern was lit. It was a captain, we saw. He gave Tiny a regular dressing-down.

  What Tiny had taken for a traveling brothel was a unit of Red Cross nurses and telephone operators from the Air Force. Tiny was inconsolable. We almost had to use force to keep him down. Lieutenant Ohlsen was able to quiet the captain, who swore he would report Tiny for attempted rape.

  Shortly after midnight we were waked up by a trampling of officious boots. Field lanterns flashed, Brutal voices called for service records and marching orders.

  The heavily armed head-hunters stood before us like rocks. Their crescent badges gleamed ominously in the dark. An enemy machine-gun post wasn’t as dangerous as this badge.

  Terror spread. An Ivan could be reasoned with, not a German head-hunter. He was the incarnation of all evil and brutality.


  After a short while they had their first victim. An artillery NCO. He put up a violent resistance, screaming:

  ‘Leave me alone. Let me go! Comrades, why don’t you let me go! You aren’t going to kill me, are you?’ He was silent for a moment, then moaned softly: ‘Comrades, you must try to understand me! I’ve children, I’ve three children. My wife was killed in an air attack. I have to get home to the children. I’ll be sure to come back!’

  ‘Shut up, you swine,’ marked a head-hunter sergeant. His crescent badge emitted twinkling Morse sparks. The signal for death.

  The artillery NCO suddenly went crazy. He ran completely wild.

  ‘Let me go, you dirty bastards, you filthy comrade-killers!’ He kicked and laid about him savagely. ‘I don’t want to die! I’ve three children. With no mother. I don’t want to die!’

  But this sort of thing was an everyday occurrence to the head-hunters. Without comment they started beating him. One of them gave the NCO a kick in the groin that made him double up with a hoarse roar. For a moment he was lying on the ground like a bundle of rags. Suddenly he jumped up and rushed at the nearest head-hunter, who was pushed over by the unexpected attack.

  Fear of death lent the artillery NCO the strength of a wild beast. He bit the head-hunter in the face and bellowed like an animal.

  Other head-hunters rushed to the aid of their comrade in distress. With the butts of their sub-machine guns they pounded away at the artillery NCO. His face was a mushy, bloody mass of tears and groans.

  They threw him on a truck which stood outside the barn, then calmly continued their patrol.

  A sergeant major examined our papers with painstaking thoroughness. ‘Panzer Regiment of the Army to be used for special assignments,’ he muttered. He looked at the Legionnaire and gave Tiny a crushing glance. His eyes roved to me and the East Prussian, then fixed Stein watchfully.

  ‘H’m, so you have made a slight detour, you tired heroes, eh? Looks like illegal departure from a battle unit!’

  Cold shivers ran down our spines. We knew that a drumhead court-martial wouldn’t listen to excuses. They were very busy, at the flying court-martials. After a ten-minute hearing you were dragged before a firing squad or hanged from a tree.