Comrades of War

by Sven Hassel

  ‘What’s the matter?’ Lieutenant Ohlsen asked, following the Old Man’s glance.

  ‘That’s what I’m not so sure of,’ the Old Man answered.

  The Legionnaire came strolling up to them. He was cleaning his nails with his long Moorish battle knife.

  ‘What’s up?’ he asked. A cigarette dangled between his narrow lips.

  ‘Were you up last night?’ the Old Man asked.

  ‘Naturally,’ the Legionnaire answered. ‘I’m up every night to play pranks.’

  ‘You didn’t notice anything?’

  ‘Nah, not really, I was too drowsy,’ the Legionnaire laughed.

  ‘Was Maria near you?’

  ‘Yes, she was lying between Porta and me.’ A faint threat was audible in his voice. ‘But what the hell do you mean playing Gestapo like this?’

  ‘I’ve found the prisoners,’ the Old Man answered.

  ‘What did you say?’ Lieutenant Ohlsen gaped.

  ‘But that’s great,’ the Legionnaire grinned, tossing his knife in the air and catching it again. ‘I guess we’d better hang them then.’

  ‘It can’t be done,’ came softly from the Old Man. ‘They have already been hanged.’

  Lieutenant Ohlsen turned dark red. ‘Show me the bodies and God help those who’ve done it!’

  All of us except Fatty went into the forest.

  We found the three bodies a good distance within. Ants crawled over their dark blue faces. A blowfly sat rubbing its wings on one of the First Lieutenant’s glazed eyes. The bodies were a horrible sight.

  Porta bent over the First Lieutenant’s mauled abdomen.

  ‘The partisans must’ve done it,’ he said.

  The Old Man gave him a knowing look.

  ‘I had the same idea, but when I noticed what the two corpses had in their mouths I thought of Maria’s story, and an uncanny suspicion came to me.’ He turned his eyes on the Legionnaire, and stressing every word separately he went on: ‘Wasn’t this what the women did in the Rif Mountains?’

  The Legionnaire put up a broad grin. ‘Yes, the Russian partisans seem to have learned something.’

  Lieutenant Ohlsen took a deep breath and placed his arm around the Old Man’s shoulder. ‘Let’s think it was the partisans. The three of them succeeded in escaping and then ran straight into the arms of the partisans.’

  The Old Man nodded and whispered: ‘Men can be such swine!’

  Tiny yelled, loud enough to be heard for miles: ‘Those partisans are some dirty fellows!’

  The Old Man ran up to him and caught him by the collar. ‘If you open your mouth once more I’ll shoot you on the spot!’

  Tiny gaped but said nothing.

  The Legionnaire stood throwing his knife into the air, while squinting at the Old Man and Tiny. Then he whispered through the corner of his mouth: ‘Those three didn’t deserve any better. There’s a war going on!’

  The Old Man turned around and looked at him. ‘Do you really think so?’

  The Legionnaire nodded: ‘I do, and I also think you should go to a nerve clinic when we get back to our lines.’

  The Old Man gave a tired laugh and glanced at Lieutenant Ohlsen, who stood beside him.

  ‘Not such a bad idea at that! Normal people will get locked up while murderous sadists are honored!’

  The Legionnaire’s knife sank into the wood right above the Old Man’s and Lieutenant Ohlsen’s heads.

  ‘I thought I saw a squirrel behind you,’ he said smiling.

  ‘I’m glad your hand didn’t shake,’ came dryly from the Old Man, ‘or your conscience might have made things awkward for you.’

  We sauntered back to the truck and went on packing in silence. When we halted later in the day Tiny threw away his steel sling. He hurled it into a deep creek. Porta thought this was the best thing to do.

  The Old Man noticed. He spat, but said nothing.

  The Legionnaire grinned. He consoled Tiny saying he would get a new one soon.

  Fatty sat on a tree stump. He had a headache and cursed savagely. He was somewhat dazed. He couldn’t understand how three prisoners tied up like pigs could get loose and knock him, an active first sergeant, over the head.

  ‘I just don’t get it,’ he muttered. ‘I sat there staring at those three stinkers, and all of a sudden my skull exploded!’

  ‘It must’ve been a partisan,’ Tiny proposed, feeling a bump the size of an egg.

  ‘That partisan had tried it before,’ Porta grinned, passing his hand over Fatty’s head.

  The next morning we made it to the river. We took cover, waiting till night to cross.

  Only two of us didn’t know how to swim. Fatty and Trepka.

  ‘You can stay with me,’ Tiny offered Trepka, ‘and I’ll float you across.’

  ‘Who’ll help me?’ Fatty asked miserably.

  Everybody grinned when Porta suggested he could stay on the side where he was.

  Just before nightfall we heard a shot. The sharp report of a carbine ’98.

  A little deeper within the forest we found Maria. Her head was shattered. She had put the muzzle of the gun into her mouth and pulled the trigger with her toe.

  ‘What a gyp!’ Tiny called. He felt terribly cheated. ‘Since she’d decided to kick the bucket anyway she might just as well have let us take a crack at her first.’

  ‘You rotten pig!’ the Old Man fumed.

  Tiny pouted and kicked at a big branch his feet had gotten entangled with. It put him in a perfect rage.

  When we walked back to camp Tiny lifted up Maria’s dress, shook his head and said to Porta in surprise:

  ‘Cripes, she too has shit in her pants. All do when they die. I wonder why? Do you think they’re afraid?’

  Porta pushed his topper over his forehead and scratched the nape of his neck.

  ‘Nah, Tiny, it isn’t from fear, but you see they bungle the whole thing when they get into a tizzy like that. It is just like when you want to sneak out a secret fart after stuffing yourself with split peas and pork from a diseased sow. Then there are surprises!’

  Lieutenant Ohlsen heard the tail end of their conversation and told them off, calling them brutes and bastards. They looked at him in reproach and felt deeply hurt.

  At midnight we swam across the river. In the middle of the rapid current Trepka panicked, but Tiny brought him safely to shore.

  The report had been forgotten. Trepka had grown up.

  Heide and Porta swam with Fatty, who snorted like a seal from terror and exertion.

  We pushed the Russian armored car into a swamp next to the river.

  In it lay Maria.

  The whole gang went with him to the train. The little open four-seater Volkswagen almost broke down under the ten of us.

  On the hood in front lay Heide and Tiny. We lost Tiny twice and had to stop to pick him up again.

  In honor of the event we all addressed Lieutenant Ohlsen familiarly.

  The train took off.

  We stood there waving till the last wisp of smoke had vanished.

  Lieutenant Ohlsen sat musing by the window. He didn’t see the scorched trees, the ruins, the burnt-out car wrecks and the smashed locomotives which had grown tired and now rested on the sloping railway embankment.

  He saw only Inge and Gunni. His stomach was in knots from expectant joy.

  Inge, Gunni, Inge, Gunni, the wheels were singing.

  He saw Inge’s warm smile and laughing eyes. He heard little Gunni’s voice while he looked at a dissolving cloud in wonder.

  ‘Now the cloud is going away, Father. Is it going home to the Lord?’

  XVI

  The Reunion

  Lieutenant Ohlsen had gone on leave. The first one in three years. He was wild with joy as he said good-bye to us.

  When the train stopped in Breslau a friend stepped into the compartment. A rousing reunion after all those years. The friend whispered some things in his ear, and they were tempting.

  ‘When we get to Berlin come
with me out to Darlem. I’m in charge of a sort of theatrical troupe. A service theatrical troupe’ he added, laughing boisterously. ‘We have the greatest times. Lots of girls.’ He clicked his tongue, rolled his eyes to the ceiling and made a motion of embrace with his arms. ‘Oceans of booze. Torrents of champagne. Shovelfuls of caviar. Anything you could want. The boss is an SS Obergruppenführer.’ Again he laughed noisily.

  Lieutenant Ohlsen laughed quietly.

  ‘I only want one thing, Heinrich: to get home to Inge and my little boy as quickly as possible!’ He clapped his hands from sheer joy of anticipation. ‘I feel like getting off the train and sprinting ahead.’

  Heinrich laughed. ‘I understand you, but pay us a visit anyway, some day. We have a black-haired witch who can do it thirty-three different ways. Afterwards you feel like a castrated stallion. And you should see some of the boys we have, even if they are SS men. They are game for anything. If someone grumbles, hey, presto! – he’s gone. No one asks any questions. It’s just as easy as pulling the plunger in the can.’

  Lieutenant Ohlsen shook his head. ‘I had no idea you were in the Party or the SS.’

  ‘Nor am I, damn it, but so what, Bernt? I prefer to cooperate with those on the bridge to rotting in a trench. And even if I resisted, do you think the system would be overthrown?’

  ‘Wasn’t your brother hanged on Buchenwald?’ Lieutenant Ohlsen asked in surprise.’

  ‘Yes, and my father, too,’ came blithely from Heinrich, ‘but that’s not my fault, after all. They were foolish, wanted to be heroes, but were forgotten. They floated to heaven through a chimney because they didn’t get off the old shaky wagon in time. Liselotte and I were wiser. We sniffed Adolf’s star and made sure to become good citizens at the right moment.’

  ‘Then be sure you remember to step down before Adolf’s wagon tips over at the turning,’ Lieutenant Ohlsen warned.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ Heinrich laughed. ‘Today the SS. Tomorrow the NKVD or the FBI. As long as I sit on top I don’t give a hoot what they are called. Never in my life have I been a fool enough to swim against the current. When it’s customary to shout ‘Heil,’ fine, I shout ‘Heil,’ and if tomorrow I have to swing a pig over my head and shout ‘Green front,’ I’ll do that too. If you’ll take my advice, Bernt, and come with me, you’ll never see the front again!’

  Lieutenant Ohlsen shook his head.

  ‘I’m afraid I’m not clever enough to pull back my nose at the right moment.’

  It was evening when they reached Berlin. They separated on Schlesischer Bahnhof. But first Heinrich had given his address to Lieutenant Ohlsen. Then he ran laughing down the platform and disappeared.

  Lieutenant Ohlsen took the trolley to Friedrichsstrasse. He felt a bit uneasy and lost as he stepped off at the familiar station. He was overwhelmed by sudden terror. A terror that took his breath away.

  An old militiaman saluted stiffly, but Lieutenant Ohlsen couldn’t bother raising his arm for the salute. He nodded chummily as usual.

  A cavalry captain came up to him. He saluted in a friendly way. The captain’s mouth smiled, but his eyes were a piercing blue, like the dragoon facings on his cap and collar.

  ‘Herr Comrade,’ he lisped, ‘allow me to bring to your attention that discipline requires an officer to salute his subordinates in a military manner, under no circumstances like a friend. It verges on sabotage, Herr Comrade.’ The captain of dragoons saluted and nodded. ‘Have a nice leave! Greetings to the heroes in the trenches!’ Then, spurs, clinking, he danced along the platform, saluting cheerfully to all sides.

  That was his way of waging war.

  Lieutenant Ohlsen wiped the sweatband in his little field cap and followed the captain with his eyes. A bit further down the platform he had stopped a sergeant. Lieutenant Ohlsen shook his head, hitched up his two bags and trudged down the stairs to Friedrichsstrasse.

  He was tired, terribly tired. Something told him that he didn’t quite fit in here any more. He had become a combat swine.

  Fear surged up in him. Fear that the little Legionnaire was right after all. He glanced down his dusty, faded black uniform, his worn-out boots with the heels worn down on one side, and his rank-and-file belt with the holster – a black .38 holster, not the dashing brown Mauser holster worn by officers in the hinterland. He was a peculiar mixture of private and officer. Only the silver shoulder straps were an officer’s.

  He drew a deep breath, passed his hand over his eyes and whispered: ‘Berlin, my Berlin!’

  He saw Tiny’s brutal face before him. He saw him kick the MP. He saw the long knife of the Legionnaire swish into the tree behind himself and the Old Man, a sharp warning not to continue the questioning about the execution of the MPs. He shivered, as if he felt cold at the thought of the three mauled bodies. He saw Maria lying dead by the river in a pool of blood. He brushed off his thoughts and looked about him. In the dark, everything looked hopeless. Gutted ruins everywhere. When he walked, there was a scrunching of broken glass. On the walls were announcements in chalk: ‘Mother at Aunt Anna’s in Bergenwalde.’ ‘Müllers on third floor is alive. Inquire at Uncle Theo’s.’

  He hurried off so as not to waste a single minute of the three short weeks he was privileged to be a human being. One week for each year at the front. In his mind he saw an announcement from Inge: ‘Gunni dead. Inquire at Father’s.’ He began sobbing in sheer fright. He started running.

  No one turned around to look at him. Seeing a man run weeping through Berlin was nothing unusual. Here even the rocks and the walls wept.

  There was no announcement. He stiffened. The house was gone. Erased. Simply razed to the ground.

  He slumped down on one of his bags and covered his face with his hands. He groaned, sobbed, cursed. He wished the gang had been there. His gang. Big, bellowing Tiny. The fatherly Old Man, jabbering Porta. Captious Julius Heide. The hard brutal Legionnaire. All of them, The death-gang.

  A hand was placed on his shoulder. The grimy, chapped fist of a worker. He raised his head and looked into a weather-beaten, wrinkled face with a day-old stubble peering out.

  ‘Herr Graup!’ he exclaimed surprised, taking the old man’s hand.

  ‘You’ve come back, Bernt,’ the man grumbled, ‘and you’ve become a lieutenant. Your wife and boy are safe. It took three days to dig them out. We rescued nineteen. A heavy blanket of bombs fell Saturday two weeks ago and cleared the street. Didn’t your wife write you about it?’

  Lieutenant Ohlsen shook his head.

  ‘Inge doesn’t write very often. She has so much to do.’

  ‘I guess she does,’ the old man said, spitting out a plug. His words seemed to have some hidden meaning.

  ‘Where are they?’ Lieutenant Ohlsen stammered.

  ‘At her father’s, or more correctly in her father’s house. Your father-in-law is supposed to have been inducted. Call up before you go there. It’s better that way,’ the man called, but Lieutenant Ohlsen didn’t hear. He rushed off.

  ‘Inge, Inge,’ came a whisper from inside him as he was running. ‘You are alive, thank heaven! You’re alive!’

  The old man again spat out a stump of tobacco.

  ‘What a pity,’ he muttered, ‘but, that first sergeant day before yesterday had it tougher. Wife and five children killed, and now he’s locked up in Plötzensee for making disparaging remarks about the Reich.’ A cat rubbed up against his leg. He scratched it behind the ear. ‘You’re lucky. You’re chased only by dogs!’

  Lieutenant Ohlsen rushed back to Friedrichsstrasse and took the train to Hallensee. He was on the point of getting into a scrape because he didn’t notice a general on Kurfürstendamn. He straightened up stiffly and let the abuse pour off him while he whispered to himself:

  ‘They’re alive, Inge and Gunni are alive. You can’t understand that, you ass. They’re alive.’

  ‘Certainly, Herr General, no discipline at the front.’ They are at Father-in-law’s. ‘Certainly, Herr General, compulsory salute is
the basis of victory and the successful course of military operations.’ Father in heaven, thanks for letting them get away. ‘Certainly, Herr General, the incompetence of an officer shows itself through his failure to salute in accordance with army regulations.’ You red-striped shit, I wish a Tommy-bomb would send you to the top of Brandenburg Tor. ‘Certainly, Herr General, won’t happen again. Thanks, Herr General, that Herr General will overlook it.’ You old sclerotic nitwit, I wish you’d lose your war soon so Ivan can chase you around. ‘No, Herr General, I don’t want to have my leave cancelled. Certainly, Herr General, I’m not worthy of wearing an officer’s uniform.’

  The General put three fingers in deerskin gloves to the peak of his cap. Then he wobbled down the street on his knock-kneed old man’s legs. He bleated like a goat over the incident.

  Lieutenant Ohlsen brought together his slanted heels with a bang and rushed off. In passing he just managed to tip a regulation salute to a major with the red stripes of the General Staff on his light gray trousers.

  Berlin, lovely, stinking Berlin, rotten to the core! If only the Revolution would soon come so that all the gangs from out there could sweep you clean. What a lovely sight: Porta and Tiny behind a machine gun on Brandenburger Tor. Seeing all those hick-town heroes run for their lives! Thank God, they’re alive.

  He turned down Joachim-Friedrichsstrasse. He lost one of his bags, stopped, swung it over his shoulder and continued at breakneck pace.

  A girl called after him. He didn’t hear. She laughed and hissed: ‘Stupid pig!’

  She had been dead certain of a pound of butter and a bottle of vodka when she saw that lieutenant.

  But he probably had battle fatigue. Stupid pig.

  Then he stood in front of the house. A large stately building with polished granite steps before the ornamented portal. A marble staircase with gold-ornamented mirrors on every landing and trumpet-blowing angels all the way up. He had kind of grinned at those angels the first time he came to the house. The whole thing was wide, vast, ostentatious.

  On the second floor was a tall oak door with a bright brass plate, inscribed in Gothic letters: ‘Von Lander,’ and under the name in somewhat smaller letters the lovely title ‘Regierungsrat.’