Claws of Steel

by Leo Kessler

  But Metzger had pushed him roughly to one side. ‘No, you shitty spaghetti-eater,’ he had growled, ‘those blacks don’t even know what’s for – and even if they did, it’d be the five-fingered widow for them in case they went to hell for doing the other. That’s why all the blacks have hair on their palms – too much of the five-fingered widow.’ And with that he had staggered on upstairs.

  But in the same week that the first of the new Tigers had started arriving at the Sennelager railhead from the Stuttgart factories, Sergeant Metzger had, what seemed to him, the first real indication that his suspicions about Lore were justified. As usual Mario received him in the dark hallway and made his report.

  ‘Nothing, signor,’ he said with an expressive shrug of his shoulders. ‘Nobody come.’

  Metzger pointed to his open flies. ‘You come perhaps,’ he said, mimicking the macaroni’s broken German. ‘Been visiting the five-fingered widow, Mario, eh?’

  The Italian boy coloured hotly and fumbled with his flies, as Metzger passed on his way up the stairs, a broad grin on his red, stupid face. But the grin vanished immediately as Lore called out – even before he had opened the door.

  ‘And wipe those shitty boots of yours on the carpet before you come in! … And none of your casual licks, either, do you hear?’

  Metzger growled to himself and he gave the door that look which had made many a recruit ‘cream his drawers’, as he was wont to boast to his drinking cronies; but he did as he was told before entering the little flat.

  Lore, plump and blonde, and for some reason highly flushed, sprawled on the sofa in her black artificial silk slip in a manner which showed him she wasn’t wearing her pants again – probably, he told himself, because of the heat.

  ‘Well, did you wipe them?’ she asked, not looking at him.

  ‘Yes,’ he growled. ‘I rubbed both my shitty soles off.’

  ‘You don’t need to shout – I’m not deaf.’ She swung her legs off the back of sofa very carelessly. He caught a glimpse of something very black and hairy against the plump white softness of her thighs.

  ‘Must you always sit around like that?’ he snapped, pulling off his pistol belt with a sigh of relief.

  ‘Like what?’ she looked at him challengingly.

  ‘Like a five mark whore in a Reeperbahn3 knocking shop,’ he answered, tugging at his collar. He poked a sausage-like finger at his tunic with its glittering decorations. ‘I’m a senior NCO in the Bodyguard you know, a man who had shed his blood for his Fatherland, for his Folk and Führer – I’ve got a position to live up to.’

  ‘The only position you can live up to is on yer belly,’ she answered contemptuously, ‘sticking yer meat in me. That’s all you’ve got in your thick head.’

  ‘Be careful,’ he warned threateningly, half raising his hand. He would dearly have liked to have slapped her, but he fancied Lore after supper – and besides it was too hot to quarrel. So he contented himself with dropping into a chair and thrusting out his right leg. ‘Dice-beakers,’4 he ordered.

  With a sigh, she straddled her legs over the boot, her plump backside towards him, the damp outline of her cheeks presented to his view in what he considered was a very inviting manner. Momentarily he was tempted to let her have a good clap across the arse, but decided against the impulse. Instead he placed his left foot against her buttocks and pushed. With a grunt she pulled off the big boot and dropped it to the carpet. ‘The next one,’ she said, ‘and don’t stick your foot so far up my crotch. It hurts.’

  He considered letting her have the old Army retort that they wouldn’t have found him up there if he hadn’t been wearing his size eleven boots, but decided against it.

  ‘Perhaps next time then you’ll wear your drawers if it hurts. What if Mario ever came in and saw yer like that just now on the sofa. You know what those shitty spaghetti-eaters are like – one sniff at it and they’re walking round stiff-legged.’ He sniffed and considered for a moment. ‘Well, perhaps not Mario, he’s a good lad and he’s too young anyway. Too busy with his five against one, more than likely. But his father now, he’s different—’

  ‘You’re disgusting,’ Lore said, and with a grunt tugged off the other boot. ‘All you ever think about is that.’ She turned round and stared down at him angrily, busily stuffing back one of her ample breasts which had escaped from the confines of her black slip. ‘God knows how you ever have time to carry out your duties, when all you’ve got in your big head is piggeries like that. Mario indeed!’ She flung back her long blonde hair. ‘Why, he’s barely sixteen.’

  Metzger pouted. ‘Well, when a man’s been fighting for his country and away from it for over twelve months, he expects a bit more than—’ He never finished his usual complaint, there was the noisy jangle of the flat’s bell.

  Metzger started up, ‘Who in heaven’s name is calling at this time of the evening,’ he cried angrily. ‘What is this place – a fucking transit camp or—’

  He broke off suddenly as the door swung open to reveal the pot-bellied, brown-shirted bulk of County Leader Schmeer himself, collecting box in his fat beringed hand, his sweating face puffed out like the fat backside of the West-phalian pigs he had bred before he become County Leader in 1933.

  ‘Winter Help,’ he chortled cheerfully, rattling the box. ‘A few pfennigs for the lads at the front!’ Then he saw Metzger. ‘Oh, it’s you Metzger! Didn’t know you were home.’

  Hastily Lore fled into the bedroom to find a gown while Schmeer’s small red eyes followed the swing of her well-rounded buttocks greedily.

  ‘Wouldn’t like to have to buy that by the kilo, Metzger, eh?’ he commented with a huge knowing wink. ‘Christ on a crutch, it’s hot isn’t it for June!’

  Without waiting for an invitation to do so, he dropped into the nearest chair, its ancient springs squeaking in protest at the weight, and pulling out a large brown silk handkerchief wiped the sweat off his gleaming fat face.

  ‘I must have walked at least ten shitty kilometres, rattling this sodding box. Why all those healthy Hitler Youth lads can’t do the collecting, I’ll never know.’ He shrugged good humouredly. ‘But I suppose it’s up to us Old Fighters5 to keep the banner flying, what?’ He licked his lips significantly. ‘Makes you dry though!’

  ‘Would you like a nice cool blond?’ Lore said, coming into the room again, tying up her gown which did little to cover those tremendous breasts of hers.

  ‘At my age?’ Schmeer said, giving Metzger another of his knowing winks. ‘I’m a bit on the old side for that. Leave it to the young uns like Metzger, but I wouldn’t mind a beer.’6

  ‘Well, you heard the County Leader,’ Lore snapped to a bemused Metzger, who was still trying to recover from the surprise of having the area’s most important Party Leader suddenly appear in their shabby rented flat.

  ‘Of course … of course,’ he stuttered and headed for the kitchen.

  ‘And a little Korn wouldn’t do any harm, in spite of the heat,’ Schmeer called after him. ‘A man can’t stand on one leg, you know.’

  When Metzger came back, he was just in time to see County Leader Schmeer take his big hand off Lore’s plump knee. ‘The bastard,’ he fumed to himself, nearly upsetting the glasses of gin he bore on the tray next to the beer.

  Schmeer did not even bat an eyelid. He picked up a bottle of beer, without being asked, flipped open the snap top and raised it in salute to Lore. ‘To the ladies – bless ’em,’ he chortled. And then to the red-faced fuming Metzger. ‘To you comrade, the night’s going to be cold!’ He took a long draught of the ice-cold beer and belched contentedly. ‘Now that’s what I call a cultivated glass of beer, Metzger.’ He gave a quick sip of his gin to follow it. ‘But that’s what I expect at the household of Mrs. Sergeant Metzger, isn’t it, dear.’ He pressed Lore’s plump knee once more.

  Metzger fought to control his temper. ‘How do you mean, County Leader?’

  ‘Well,’ Schmeer said expansively, ‘I always like to see that the wives of ou
r folk-comrades doing their duty for Folk, Fatherland and Führer at the front are being looked after. You might say I’m like one of those blacks visiting his parishioners. Every week I did my round while you were in Russia, Metzger, and Mrs Sergeant here always had something waiting for me, didn’t you, Lore.’

  ‘Yes, County Leader,’ Lore simpered, flattered by so much attention from such an important person.

  ‘I’ll give you – always had something waiting for me, you fat pig-breeding bastard!’ Metzger cursed to himself. So that was it. It had been the County Leader after all! He’d been the one who had been slipping Lore the link, while he had been slogging it out at the front risking his life for the Greater German Reich!

  As he poured the fat County Leader yet another gin, a fake smile covering his broad stupid face, Sergeant Metzger swore undying hatred to the County Leader Adolf Schmeer,

  Crimson in the face, County Leader Schmeer was engrossed in slipping the money he had collected from the houses around the great Gothic cathedral into his pocket when he almost bumped into Lieutenant Schwarz, CO of the Wotan’s Second Company. Although it was nearly dark now and his head was not too clear after the gins he had drunk at Metzger’s flat, he recognised the small SS officer at once.

  ‘Schwarz,’ he cried joyfully and stuck out his hand. ‘Lieutenant Schwarz of the Bodyguard!’

  Schwarz, his hand held protectively on his walking-out dagger, which had been presented to him personally by Reichsführer Himmler, looked at him with his crazy dark eyes, as if the fat Party official might well be some Ivan in disguise.

  ‘Who are you?’ he asked in a toneless voice. ‘How do you know my name?’

  ‘Schwarz, the nephew of the late General Heydrich.7 All of us in the Party know about you, Lieutenant. We’re not altogether the arsehole of the world here in Paderborn, you know.’ He smiled pleasurably, as he saw the young SS officer relax his grip on his dagger. ‘The local head of the Gestapo Commissar Gerkin always keeps me informed of any distinguished Party member among our midst – among other things. Besides I knew your late uncle. He was down here in 1938 when we sorted them out. You remember the Crystal Night, don’t you? While all those blacks over there in the Cathedral were wringing their hands and wetting their flannel knickers, we really gave the Yids a good working over.’

  Slowly Schwarz nodded his head, his face like a crazy death’s head in the rays of the blood-red setting sun. He remembered the tremendous revenge the Party had taken on the Jews that night after it had been learned in Britain that the seventeen year old Jew Grynszpan had murdered a German consular official in Paris. Indeed he had taken part in the glorious massacre of Berlin’s surviving Yids himself, although he had still worn the short black pants of a Hitler Youth Leader. What a tremendous night that had been – the crash of the stones through the synagogue’s windows, the harsh stamp of their boots as they rushed inside and dragged out the screaming fat rabbi to lynch him from the lamppost outside! It had been the turning point in his life – a great purifying experience – which had convinced him he must dedicate himself to the eradication of the Jews and the liquidation of the international Jewish-Bolshevik conspiracy against National Socialist Germany.

  But then after he had devoted himself one hundred per cent to that great cause for two years, his uncle – Heydrich – had confessed to him in a moment of drunken rage and self-hatred that his own grandmother was a Jewess, whose first name had been Sarah. What an overwhelming shock that terrible revelation had been! It had ruined his life. He, an SS officer and a member of the Führer’s own elite division – the Bodyguard – with a Yid forefather, some greasy hook-nosed Issy, with lice-ridden dirty locks hanging down the side of his evil face—

  He broke off his train of thought hurriedly, horrified yet once again at the knowledge that he was living a tremendous lie; for it was a thought that his cracked brain could not tolerate. ‘Yes,’ Schmeer was chatting away merrily. ‘I remember how we got the old Rabbi out – big old fat Hirschbaum. We took his pants off and stood him in a barrel so that everyone could see his little docked Yiddish tail and made him sing the Horst Wessel Lied8—’

  He broke off suddenly and bowed to a black-coated elderly priest who was passing on his way to the Cathedral. ‘Good evening, your reverence,’ he said, like some town grocer who knows that without the approval of the church, no local would buy his vegetables and he would be broke within the month. ‘Very pleasant weather, isn’t it, your reverence?’

  The elderly priest muttered something inaudible and passed on his way. When he was out of earshot, Schmeer wiped his big fist across his mouth and said apologetically, ‘We need the black bastards for a while still, Lieutenant, but when the war’s won, there’ll be a reckoning with them, believe you me.’ His voice rose again. ‘I must be off, Schwarz, but I’d be honoured if the nephew of the late General Heydrich would care to come out with me one of these nights when my wife’s busy with those ugly sows of the Belief and Beauty group.’9 He nudged the silent Schwarz and leered at him. ‘Even in holy Paderborn, I think I can promise you a bit of something which will make your eyes pop … What about next Saturday night?’

  Without waiting for the young officer to answer, he said heartily: ‘All right then, that’s it. Let’s make it next Saturday and you’d better eat your celery salad beforehand, Lieutenant Schwarz, if you know what I mean?’10

  He leered at Schwarz once more and then he was gone, leaving the crazy young SS officer alone in the centre of the darkening square, a taut little figure his fists clenched in an almost unbearable rage against the dirty trick fate had played him.

  But Lieutenant Schwarz was not yet to sample the interesting sexual pleasures that the most catholic bishopric of Paderborn had to offer to the knowledgeable. For with Saturday came also the Royal Air Force in the greatest strength it had ever flown in its thirty year history; Hamburg was burning and SS Assault Battalion was needed.

  Notes

  1. Army slang for a contraceptive (transl.)

  2. Metzger=‘butcher’ in German (transl.)

  3. Red-light district in Hamburg (transl.)

  4. Army slang for the official issue jackboots (transl.)

  5. Party term for members of the National Socialist Party prior to 1933 (transl.)

  6. A pun on the word ‘blond’, which can stand for a blonde woman and a light beer in German (transl.)

  7. Reinhard Heydrich, head of the Reich Main Security Office and Deputy Protector of the Occupied Czech state who was assassinated by two Czech para-agents dropped by the British in the summer of 1942.

  8. The anthem of the National Socialist Party (transl.)

  9. The adult woman organisation of the Nationalist Socialist Party. (transl.)

  10. It is commonly thought in Germany that celery acts as a sexual stimulant.

  FOUR

  Hamburg was dying. Rapidly, inexorably, it was being eaten up by the greedy, angry flames spreading from the thousands of phosphorous bombs. Even as the Wotan’s trucks started to roll across the Elbe bridges they could smell the sweet stench of burning flesh. And before them the whole other bank was aflame. In the cab of the leading truck, his hand shielding his eyes against the orange glare, von Dodenburg could see the 18th century house fronts swaying to and fro like pieces of blazing scenery on a stage. He squirmed round and shouted to Schulze in the back with the men:

  ‘Tell ’em to put their gasmasks on, Sergeant!’

  ‘Sir,’ Schulze bellowed over the roar of the flames. ‘You heard what the officer said and as soon as we get out, piss on your handkerchiefs and wrap ’em round yer necks. And don’t fucking well forget – or when yer shake yer heads, the turnips might well fall off!’ But for once the humour was absent from his voice, as he watched his home town vanish before his horrified eyes.

  Slowly the convoy of trucks worked its way through the burning streets, the sweat pouring off their drivers’ faces as they fought the buildings collapsing on all sides. Twice they came to an abrupt, bon
e-jarring halt as five hundred pounders hit the earth just in front of the lead truck, exploding in a short thundering roar, followed by a long drawn-out hissing. A moment later the acrid blast swept over them and seemed to drag the air out of their lungs so that they were coughing and choking like old asthmatic men. Finally, however, they reached their destination, the forecourt of the main station, the burning houses on all sides, flooding the cobbled square with a yellowish, white-hot lake as their walls collapsed one after one.

  ‘Everybody out,’ von Dodenburg yelled, crunching over the glass-littered cobbles, tripping neatly past the ever-spreading white-hot lake like a ballet dancer. ‘Come on, haul ass!’

  Hastily the men jumped out of the company’s trucks, knowing that if the vehicles remained motionless for more than a couple of minutes their gas tanks would start exploding. Shouting at the top of his voice against the greedy crackle of the flames and the steady crump of the 88 mm flak located in a flak tower some two hundred metres away, von Dodenburg broke his men into details.

  A group of panic-stricken amputees in the blue-and-white striped smocks burst into their midst, hopping along on one leg or dragging those by the arms who had lost both legs. Von Dodenburg swallowed hard and fought back the horror which threatened to overcome him, as he saw that some of them were also blind, crawling along on their stumps, screaming for someone to come to their aid.

  ‘Dehn,’ he yelled at the corporal standing behind Schulze. ‘For God’s sake, man, get your detail and help those men into the station’s shelter!’

  ‘Sir!’

  A woman ran through them screaming in agony, little flames burning on both her naked breasts where phosphorous had buried itself into her skin. Schulze dived for her, but missed. She ran on panic-stricken, the little flames streaming along behind her.