The Devil's Shield (Dogs of War)

by Leo Kessler

  The cellar began to rock under the barrage. Letting out her pent-up breath, she drew the gleaming blade across her left wrist. The pain was virtually non-existent. For a moment nothing happened. She gazed disappointedly down at her blue-veined wrist. Then there was a faint reddening of the cut. She licked her parched lips. Blood started to well up all along the line, slowly but surely. Thick bright red blood. She watched it fascinated. Suddenly the hollow of her hand was full of blood. She wiped it on the stained blanket and quickly slashed the other wrist. This time she whimpered with the pain. The blood spurted out, showering her bruised knees a bright red.

  With a sigh of luxurious relief she sank back on the couch and closed her eyes. As the blood drained out of her, filled the couch and began to drip on the soaked Hershey bar beneath it, she felt happy. It was all over at long last.

  Matz crunched his way across the broken glass of the hospital and flung open the door of Schulze’s room. In the same instant, he lifted up his wooden leg and let loose an enormous fart of welcome.

  ‘Hello, old horse,’ he bellowed, ignoring the other two patients, crowded into the former broom cupboard, ‘are you glad to see me?’

  Schulze, his face pale and his wounded arm suspended above his head, made a mock gesture of choking. ‘Great crap on the Christmas Tree, what do you want to do – gas me as well, you perverted banana-sucker?’

  Matz ignored the comment. He plumped himself down on the cot. ‘Where’s the whores?’ he asked, thrusting back his helmet, ‘I fancy a bit of the other tonight. It’s all right for you wounded blokes, lying here like broad-arsed sows, having a go at the five-fingered widow beneath the blankets, while us lot are fighting for you at the front.’ He paused for breath and nodded at the two still figures crowded into the other cots in the tiny, airless room. ‘Who’re they?’

  Schulze shrugged. ‘Don’t know. Lung and gut, I call ’em. The one on the right is lung-shot – the one on the left gut-shot. The bone-menders say they’ll croak within the next twenty-four hours.’

  ‘Tough tittie,’ Matz sniffed and took his eyes off the still bandaged figures. ‘What about you? Are they going to pension you off, or when do you start looking at the potatoes from below?’

  ‘No such luck,’ Schulze grumbled. ‘That butcher Diedenhof said I’ll be fit for light duties again in a couple of weeks. You ought to have done a better job with that shitty sabre of yours. I might have ended up as a one-armed doorman in the Herbertstrasse.’1

  ‘Yeah,’ Matz drawled, ‘and you’d be more upstairs dancing the mattress polka than downstairs doing your duty.’

  Lung moaned. ‘Aw shut up, you stupid bastard,’ Schulze cried unsympathetically. ‘Hey, Matz, where’s the sauce? Don’t tell me you came to visit me without any sauce?’

  ‘The sister told me you weren’t to have any booze.’

  Schulze stuck up a thick thumb. ‘The sister can sit her fat arse on that for all I care – where’s the sauce?’

  Matz reached in his battle-stained black tunic, heavy with the decorations of five years of war, and pulled out a little medicine bottle of clear liquid. ‘Potato schnapps, cost a can of Old Man from one of those arseholes of kitchen bulls at the Quellenhof. It’s a good gargle though. They say it’ll blow the back of yer head off.’

  ‘Give it here,’ Schulze said greedily, reaching out a big paw. ‘I haven’t wet my tonsils for months.’ He pulled the cork out with his teeth, spat it on to Gut’s bed and took a great swallow of the home-brewed spirit. ‘Christ on a crutch!’ he breathed, gasping for breath, ‘that stuff’ll take the lining off’n lead coffin! But it’s good.’

  He took another tremendous pull at the little bottle, before Matz pulled it way from him, crying: ‘Go easy, Schulze. Don’t down it all by yourself. That’s the last bottle of shitting schnapps in the whole shitting Wotan!’

  Schulze wiped the back of his free hand across his big generous mouth and looked hard at Matz. ‘Things are bad, eh?’ he queried. Matz nodded. ‘Watch in the pisspot, syphilis in the heart,’ he said gloomily, using the old soldiers’ despondent phrase. ‘Shitting awful, if you ask me. The line won’t last another forty-eight hours.’

  ‘Wotan? … The Old Man?’

  ‘We’re down to about one hundred and fifty effectives who can hold a weapon, and most of them are in a pisspoor state. The CO – he’s all right. But he’s like the rest of us, out on his sodding feet.’

  Matz breathed out wearily and Schulze could see, despite the banter, just how worn the one-legged NCO was. ‘Thank God, old Devil Donner has pulled us out of the line as his last reserve. Otherwise we’d have had the chop yesterday.’ He passed the bottle back to Schulze. ‘Go on, mate, you’d better have the rest of the sauce – it’s probably the last of the stuff that either of us will see.’

  ‘You are a happy little ray of sunshine,’ Schulze growled and took the bottle. He finished it in a gulp and flung the empty bottle on Lung’s unprotesting lap.

  ‘All right,’ he said, ‘get out that damn sabre of yours!’

  ‘Eh?’ Matz said incredulously.

  ‘You heard! Or have you been eating big beans again. Get it out and cut me free.’

  ‘Cut you free?’

  ‘What’s up with you, Matz? Getting long in the tooth or something? Cut me out of this shitting gadget before the nurses come in. I’m going back to the Wotan …’

  ‘All right,’ Schwarz cried, his voice cracked with exhaustion, ‘this is the panzerfaust. All of you take it in your right hand and place it on your right shoulder.’

  Obediently the Hitler Youth boys took up their bazookas, their childish faces set and determined.

  ‘God in flaming heaven!’ Schulze breathed as they passed through the Quellenhof’s battle-littered courtyard, ‘they’re nothing else but shitting kids, still wet behind the ears.’

  ‘That’s all we’ve got left,’ Matz explained, keeping pace with him, as Schwarz showed the handful of boys how to load the single-shot anti-tank weapon. ‘There’s a whole company of them holding the line in our place. Fifty casualties they had yesterday alone.’

  Schulze shook his head, but said nothing. Together they trudged up the stairs, passed a group of clerks man-handling the pieces of a 20-mm flak cannon to the second floor. ‘Mind you don’t rupture yourselves,’ Schulze said, contemptuous of the office workers confronted with the prospect of action at last. ‘Hate to see you pen-pushers hurt yourselves.’

  The frightened clerks, their shabby grey uniform jackets black with sweat under the armpits, did not answer.

  ‘Unsociable buggers,’ Schulze growled, biting his lip suddenly with the pain of his shoulder.

  ‘You’ve got to excuse them, Schulze,’ Matz explained. ‘They’re already creaming their knickers – and they’ve not even had a sniff of gunpowder yet.’

  They marched the length of the second floor. Everywhere Donner’s staff – officers and men – were preparing the place for the coming siege, smashing what glass was left in the windows, lugging sandbags back and forth, setting up machine-gun posts, placing fire-buckets of sand at strategic places, spraying the ceiling with water from stirrup pumps to lower the danger of fire and the choking dust, once the artillery bombardment started hitting the place from the newly captured hills.

  Schulze pointed to a red-faced, gross paymaster in his shirtsleeves, hauling cases of 20-mm ammunition into position. ‘Does my heart good to see rear-line stallions like that working, especially those broad-arsed paymasters. Owe me a packet those bastards do.’

  ‘Well, don’t worry about trying to collect it now, Schulze,’ Matz grunted. ‘Because where we’re going, once the balloon goes up, we won’t be needing any Marie2 – just bits of wood to keep the shitty fire going.’

  Schulze laughed grimly. Together they limped on.

  ‘Well, as I live and breathe,’ Colonel von Dodenburg breathed, as they entered the weapon-littered room and snapped to attention as if they were back at Sennelager and not in the middle of a bat
tlefield, ‘Sergeant-Major Schulze!’ His tired face broke into smile. ‘Stand at ease, both of you.’ He stretched out his hand. ‘Good to see you again, you waterfront rascal!’ They shook hands. ‘How’s the arm?’

  Schulze shrugged then wished he hadn’t. ‘The wing, sir? A little fish. No problem whatsoever. But I doubt if I’ll ever lift two hundredweight of flour at the docks again.’

  ‘You probably never did anyway. But you’ll get a pension from a grateful Fatherland in due course, never fear.’

  ‘I’d rather have a one-way ticket to South America, sir, especially at this moment.’

  Von Dodenburg sat down heavily and indicated they should seat themselves on the case of Schmeisser ammunition. ‘I know what you mean, Schulze. I think we’d all like one of those tickets at the moment.’

  ‘How is the situation, sir?’ Schulze asked, examining the CO’s pale, exhausted face.

  ‘In a word, Schulze – shitty.’

  ‘And the drill?’

  ‘That’s a question only the Gods can answer – and naturally, the supreme god of all – SS Police General Donner …’

  On the afternoon of October 20th, Devil Donner answered that particular question. A runner, gasping with the strain of covering the terrible, shell-swept three hundred metres that now separated the Quellenhof from the front line, stumbled into von Dodenburg’s CP in the cellar of a wrecked store and panted: ‘Sir, you’re wanted immediately at General Donner’s HQ.’ He sat down abruptly on the nearest ammunition crate and gasped: ‘Watch how you go, sir – there’s all hell loose up there.’

  When von Dodenburg, followed by Matz and a red-faced gasping Schulze, had safely crossed the main road leading to the Quellenhof and were out of the direct fire of the Ami cannon located on the three heights, he saw what the young runner meant. A hysterical mob of dirty civilians and what were obviously deserters from the line filled the streets, screaming and gesticulating. Roughly they pushed their way through them and the mob gave way reluctantly. They turned a corner. Another crowd was dragging a fat naked man along on a wheelbarrow. His hands were tied behind his back and there was a large placard hung round his neck. On it, in crude black letters, was written: ‘NAZI SWINE.’ A fat-breasted woman in a dirty flowered apron came up from one of the cellars and threw the contents of a chamber pot in the former official’s face.

  ‘Fat brown bastard!’3 the woman cried. ‘Now we’ll settle with you lot at last!’

  Matz raised his machine-pistol angrily, but von Dodenburg knocked down the muzzle, and shook his head. A little farther on two ragged men with the yellow letters EAST painted on the backs of their jackets, indicating they were slave labourers recruited in the territories once occupied by the Germans there, were busy burrowing into the basement of a wrecked house, obviously looking for something to loot. Again Matz looked at the CO inquiringly, and again von Dodenburg shook his head.

  He simply said, ‘Too late now.’

  And Schulze, bringing up the rear, knew what he meant. The defence of Aachen had virtually collapsed: Now it was every man for himself. As they turned into the entrance to the Quellenhof, avoiding the huge new shell-craters everywhere, the mob had begun burning swastika flags behind them.

  Donner was standing looking out of the glassless window in exactly the same position as when von Dodenburg had first met him, in what seemed another age. Slowly, he turned, a cynical smile on his ruined face. ‘I believe they call it rats leaving the sinking ship, eh, von Dodenburg,’ he said wearily and slumped in his chair, indicating that the young officer should sit too.

  ‘You mean—’

  ‘Yes, that mob out there.’ He took out his eye and cleaned it. ‘I’ve seen it all before. In 1918 when the civilians stabbed the fighting army in the back. Suddenly they were all democrats, had never wanted war, had been forced to fight.’ He put back his eye absently. ‘Canaille!’

  There was a sudden silence, broken only by the persistent thunder of the Ami guns and the rattle of the horse-drawn ambulances, bringing ever new casualties to the eleven surgeons working in the hotel’s cellar, their rubber aprons and boots awash with blood.

  Donner was finished, von Dodenburg could see that. His one eye was sunk deep in his skull, which was not unlike the silver death’s head badge adorning his collar, and a nerve twitched uncontrollably on the good side of his ruined face. The seconds passed leadenly. Then suddenly, Donner pushed a piece of paper lying on his dust-covered desk towards von Dodenburg.

  ‘A blitz,’4 he said tonelessly. ‘Came in from the Führer’s Headquarters thirty minutes ago.’

  ‘Should I read it, sir?’ von Dodenburg asked. A blitz was usually reserved for general officers only.

  Donner nodded wearily. ‘Yes, it concerns Wotan.’

  Von Dodenburg picked it up and read:

  ‘Immediate and urgent.

  ‘By officer only!

  To SS and Police General Degenhardt Donner.

  Order immediate withdrawal of Battle Group SS Wotan, commander Col. von Dodenburg, from Aachen front. Rejoin 1st SS Division Adolf Hitler Bodyguard in Führer Reserve at once.

  Signed Jodl (Col. General).’

  Von Dodenburg felt a sudden surge of hope at this opportunity to get out of the Aachen death trap, yet also an unpleasant sensation of running out on Donner, whom he had come to like and admire over these last terrible weeks.

  He put the blitz down carefully and asked: ‘What does it mean, sir?’

  ‘I don’t think one needs a lawyer to interpret it, von Dodenburg. Your ruffians of the Wotan are probably going to escape the Aachen débâcle with a whole skin. That sly bastard of a Colonel General Jodl obviously wants you for some glorious new venture – and Jodl is impatient of delay. You are to go – and go at once.’

  ‘And Aachen, sir?’

  Donner did not answer at once. Below, some boy or other – perhaps one of the Hitler Youth – was screaming for his mother as they carried him into the operating theatre. He shrugged. ‘Aachen is a matter of history now. It will last a few hours at the most. Your Wotan won’t make any difference.’

  Vainly von Dodenburg tried to find the words to express his emotions. ‘But we can’t go just like that, General – why, I’ve lost nearly a thousand men from my Wotan here. I can’t …’ His voice trailed away, as he saw that the man opposite was not really listening to him any more.

  Donner nodded, as if the young officer had just made some casual remark about the state of the weather. ‘I shall be glad to stay here and die,’ he said. ‘All these years – the struggle for power in the twenties, the rebirth of Germany in the thirties, the war—’ he flung out his blackened claw of a hand wearily – ‘all to end like this, with the mob fighting in the streets of Germany’s most holy city – a German mob.’ He looked directly at von Dodenburg. ‘It was all for nothing – all that effort, all that sacrifice, all that blood!’

  ‘But we can’t give up, sir!’ von Dodenburg protested with what energy he had left.

  ‘One can – one can,’ Donner said, rising stiffly to his feet and walking over to the shattered window once more. With his back to von Dodenburg, his face hollowed out even more by the ruddy light of the flames below, he said slowly: ‘There was an Austrian – a Jew to boot, if I am not mistaken – who wrote a long time ago, “In the time of the sinking sun, dwarfs cast shadows like giants.” The sun is going down, von Dodenburg, and I do not want to live in the time of the dwarfs.’ He turned and thrust out his good hand. ‘My dear von Dodenburg, as one war criminal,’ he chuckled throatily, ‘to another, may I wish you the best of luck.’

  Stiffly von Dodenburg took the hand. It was icy cold, as if its owner were already dead. ‘Thank you, sir.’ He hesitated. ‘And what will you do, General?’

  Donner clapped his crippled claw of a hand on his pistol holster. ‘The soldier’s way out, von Dodenburg.’ He straightened up into the position of attention. ‘Colonel von Dodenburg, goodbye and Heil Hitler!’

  Von Dodenburg clicked
his heels together and flung up his right arm in salute. ‘Thank you, sir. Heil Hitler!’

  Devil Donner’s eye gleamed. Then he bent his head in his hands; von Dodenburg was forgotten already. It was all over now.

  Notes

  1. Hamburg’s famous red-light district. See Guns at Cassino for details of Schulze’s adventures there.

  2. SS slang for money.

  3. Brown here means ‘Nazi’, because of the brownshirts worn by the first National Socialists.

  4. An army signal roughly equivalent to the British ‘top priority’.

  SEVEN

  ‘There’s no way out, sir,’ the young officer said hopelessly and slumped on the ration case, his face and uniform white with dust from the rubble. With a sigh of relief, he let his machine-pistol clatter to the floor. Von Dodenburg could see he was exhausted from the reconnaissance mission.

  ‘Bring him a cup of nigger sweat, Schulze,’ he ordered.

  The big NCO nodded and with his good hand poured the officer out a cup of ersatz coffee from the big enamel bucket kept permanently boiling in the corner. Lieutenant Kleinbier, who had carried out a personal recce to try to find an escape route to the north or east, cradled the red-hot canteen cup gratefully between his two hands and sipped at the bitter black fluid.

  Von Dodenburg gave him a few minutes. Outside, only a hundred metres away from their cellar, an Ami 3-inch mortar opened up. The cellar shuddered. Plaster started to drift from the ceiling like snow. ‘All right, Kleinbier,’ von Dodenburg said firmly above the roar, ‘let me have your report, please.’

  The young officer pulled himself together. ‘Naturally sir, the OPs1 on the three heights have got the whole area to our front covered, except when the gunsmoke gives us some protection. During daylight hours, we haven’t got a hope in hell of getting out unobserved. In addition, they’re massing between the Wingertsberg and the Salvatorberg. I couldn’t get too close, but I could hear the rattle of tracked vehicles and they’re laying down a smoke screen. So it’s pretty clear what they’re up to there.’