Claws of Steel

by Leo Kessler

  Schwarz belched and nodded his crazy head. ‘Beer … pleasures,’ he mumbled.

  Schmeer waited till his daughter had caught up with the other officer and thrust her arm under his, steadying him somewhat as he blundered his way through a crocodile of giggling young chaplains, before turning back to Schwarz again.

  ‘All right, Lieutenant, now we’ve got rid of her, I think we can go.’

  Obediently Schwarz allowed himself to be led into the dark cobbled, grass-overgrown streets, which smelled of ancient lecheries and unwashed bodies while the heavy frowning facade of the great Gothic cathedral stared down at them in silent reproach.

  Her firm arms ringed his neck and she thrust her tongue between his open lips. He smelled of beer, but she didn’t care. Her whole body was trembling with desire, and she could feel her nipples growing erect. Savagely she thrust her soft stomach into his. But there was no stirring there as yet.

  ‘Shit – shit on the Christmas Tree,’ she cursed.

  But he didn’t seem to hear. He just stood there swaying, as if he was concentrating his whole energy on remaining erect. Swiftly she released her hold and when she was sure he would not fall back onto her bed, surveyed by the Führer’s scowling face, she pulled the buttons of her skirt and let it fall. Impatiently she ripped off her blouse, watching him all the time. But her sudden nakedness did not seem to affect him.

  For a moment she hesitated. Almost unconsciously she ran her hands over her big breasts and gently squeezed the now erect nipples. Then she tugged at her pants, white, simple and the kind schoolgirls wore. Provocatively she thrust out the black thatch at his belly. But still he did not react.

  ‘Come on you big, handsome, aristocratic bastard,’ she hissed, ‘get it up. I want it!’

  She placed the elegant hands she had so admired the first time she had met the young officer onto her breasts, hard and swollen with desire now.

  ‘But you’re only sixteen,’ he said thickly, speaking for the first time since she had sneaked him up the stairs to her own bedroom.

  She laughed cynically. ‘What difference does it make?’ She thrust her belly against him and ran her hot little tongue into his ear momentarily. ‘Sixteen or sixty – it’s just the same, save it’s tighter.’

  With a practised hand she ripped open his flies like a factory worker pulling a lever and thrust her hands into the dark cave of his field-grey breeches and ran her greedy fingers over what she found there.

  Suddenly, as if a dam had burst, it worked. She could feel it grow by the instant. Unable to control the trembling of her legs, she drew him carefully to the bed, still greedily holding on to it. She lowered herself and spread her legs.

  ‘It’ll hurt,’ he said thickly, but it was desire not drink which was distorting his speech now.

  ‘What?’

  ‘This.’ He touched the delightful thing with his elegant hand. ‘If you’re a virgin.’

  She nearly laughed in his handsome face. But she did not want to hurt him. ‘Yes, of course,’ she said and then sotto voce. ‘But not this year, Captain von Dodenburg, sir.’

  Swiftly she raised her long slim brown legs high in the air to make a cradle for his hard young muscular body. ‘I think it’s time to climb aboard, Captain von Dodenburg,’ she whispered hoarsely, her lips suddenly very dry and her heart pounding almost unbearably.

  As he descended upon her eagerly, the last thing she caught sight of was the Führer’s face staring down at her in black disapproval of such un-Maidenly conduct. Then she gasped with pleasure and forgot everything else.

  The whores were dark, flashy, exotic and somehow un-German. But their accents were pure harsh East West-phalian. And they were afraid of his uniform with its silver SS runes, even Schwarz’s befuddled drunken brain could recognise that.

  But the pot-bellied County Leader was well known there. He clapped the tired-looking Madam across her fat, black-silk buttocks and cried joyfully. ‘No beer tonight, Rachel. In honour of my young friend here, I think we’ll have champus!’

  ‘Champus!’ the dark-eyed whores cried in faked enthusiasm.

  ‘You’re in for five hundred marks already this month, County Leader,’ the middle-aged Madam with dyed hair said wearily, as if she had made the same statement many times before and knew she were wasting her breath.

  ‘I know my beautiful Rachel,’ Schmeer chortled. ‘But if the worst comes to the worst, the Reichsführer SS will solve that problem for me, won’t he?’ He looked at her cunningly for a moment with his small piggish eyes and made a strange spiralling gesture with his fat forefinger like smoke going up a chimney. The Madam blanched.

  ‘All right, County Leader, champus it’ll be.’ Hastily she waddled away to fetch the champagne.

  Schmeer beamed and nudged Schwarz. ‘That’s the way to treat ’em. Sugar and the whip as the Führer used to say in the old days – that gets ’em working.’

  Schwarze nodded blindly and slumped down in the nearest armchair. Immediately one of the dark-haired whores, her sallow cheeks heavy with rouge, her heavy body covered in a black silk petticoat plumped herself on his lap and began to run her hands over his body in routine passion.

  The cheap sweet French champagne began to flow. The girls relaxed. As the alcohol started to have its effect, they became more and more abandoned. Giggling hysterically a couple of them dipped a befuddled Schwarz’s middle finger into a glass of champagne and maintained loudly that the distorted reflection would indicate the size of his organ.

  A red-faced Schmeer joined in the fun. He allowed the Madam and another whore – a skinny girl clad only in a black corset and silk stockings – to take off his brown boots and breeches, laughing uproariously as they tugged hard at the tight breeches and nearly fell over when they slipped back abruptly.

  As two of the others danced obscenely, cheek to cheek, their hands clasped round each other’s buttocks like apache dancers, the Madam and the skinny whore occupied themselves with Schmeer’s flaccid organ dangling below an enormous white hairless belly, while the County Leader laughed with uncontrollable laughter at the antics of the other two girls.

  The room in the cheap brothel began to revolve around Schwarz. The girls’ drunken giggles and the pleasure grunts made by a red-faced County Leader grew and receded like the ebb and flow of waves. Vaguely he was aware of the dark whore on his lap nuzzling her wet sensual lips against his face. The grunts grew ever louder; the giggles more shrill; the waves receded ever further. Then suddenly he was gone and a great darkness descended before his eyes.

  He came to in a dirty rumpled bed with the whore who had sat on his lap bending over him, her face strained and tired, yet somehow concerned, as she wiped his face with cold water in almost a motherly fashion.

  ‘You all right, Lieutenant?’ she asked.

  His black eyes stared up at her blankly and then swept around the grubby little bedroom with the red marks of squashed bedbugs on the unpainted walls and patched tears in the blackout curtains made of dyed blankets. His eyes came to an abrupt halt. A coat was hanging from a bent nail behind the door. It was shabby and worn, just like the room. But it wasn’t its shabbiness which caught Schwarz’s attention. It was the yellow emblem sewn prominently on its left breast.

  Her weary eyes followed the direction of his gaze. ‘Yours?’ he breathed, the sight shocking a reaction even out of his befuddled crazy brain.

  She nodded slowly.

  ‘But it’s the Jewish Star!’

  ‘I know – the Star of David … I’m Jewish, Lieutenant.’

  ‘Jewish?’ he echoed in horror. ‘Half?’

  ‘No,’ she shook her head firmly. ‘Full. Both my parents were orthodox.’ She shrugged carelessly. ‘Not me, though. And then this—’ she left the sentence unfinished and stared down at him unconcerned, as if there were nothing strange about a full Jewess confessing her crime to an SS officer in the year 1943.

  ‘But … how … ?’ He stuttered horrified, trying to find words to express his
outrage.

  ‘How?’ she laughed cynically. ‘Easy. There are many who come here especially, like County Leader Schmeer. We’re all Jewish here, and they know it. It has a particular sexual appeal for them. Party officials, SS men, officers like you. They can insult us. They can beat us. They can try out their little perversions – like Schmeer – and there is an extra pleasure in it for them because we are Jewish. And after all, it’s better than the camps, you know?’ She raised her tired voice and repeated the fixed tenet of the Party: ‘Jews are the cancer of society and must be removed with surgical ruthlessness!’ She grinned bitterly and slumped down on the sagging bug-ridden bed next to him.

  He recoiled. ‘Don’t touch me Jewess,’ he cried. ‘Don’t!’ – Her hands caressed his body and he could feel the horror of her dirty Jewish fingers fumbling with his clothes.

  ‘Why not, my little SS man?’ she whispered. ‘Men are men, aren’t they – whether they’re Aryan or Jewish?’ Now she had opened his flies and was fondling him. ‘Don’t fight me, let me love you,’ she urged with professional hoarseness. ‘Let me show you we are no different. We have hearts and bodies and c—’

  He summoned up all his strength, and pushed. ‘Let me go,’ he screamed in a broken voice. ‘For God’s sake, let me go – please Jewess. Please!’

  As she fell to one side in surprise, he sprang drunkenly from the bed and ran to the door in a blind panic. Flinging it open, he slipped and fell down the narrow dark stairs. But he didn’t seem to feel the pain in his haste to get away from the Jewish whore. He blundered into the dusky-red reception room, nearly knocking over the skinny whore in black stockings who was bent busily over Schmeer’s hairless pot-belly.

  ‘Jesus, Mary, Joseph!’ he cursed angrily, starting up out of his ecstasy, ‘what in the hell’s name has got into you, Schwarz?’

  But the SS officer was already fumbling frantically with the outside door. He could not get it open. In his haste he kicked it savagely. It flew open and he blundered out into the night. Seconds later he was leaning against the wall in the back alley, which stank of cabbage and cat’s piss, retching miserably, as if he would never stop again. At his side, a worried Schmeer, a tablecloth hurriedly wrapped around his naked belly, and the Jewish whore, the tell-tale coat slung over her bare shoulders, stared at him in awed bewilderment.

  Finally they managed to persuade him to come inside again, after the whore had used Schmeer’s tablecloth to clean his lips of the vomit. His thin shoulders heaving as if he were sobbing violently, though his crazy face was blank of tears or any other expression of emotion, he allowed himself to be led into the brothel. The door closed behind the strange little group once more.

  As it did so, Metzger got up unsteadily from behind the ashcans where he had hidden as soon as he had recognised Lieutenant Schwarz. He wiped the rotting vegetables off his knees and swayed once more with the load of schnapps and beer he had taken aboard at the Ratskeller that evening. His eyes gleamed with triumph, for in spite of his drunkenness he had not failed to spot that yellow star the whore had worn. She was a Yid and she had been with County Leader shitty Schmeer who had been slipping his Lore a link while he had been away at the front fighting for Folk, Fatherland and Führer.

  ‘Now you fat bastard of a golden pheasant,’3 he breathed triumphantly at the closed door, ‘I’ve got you, got you right by your bloody eggs!’ He tried to adjust his cap to the correct military angle and failed miserably. But he didn’t care. As he emerged from the stinking alley into the blacked-out square, he thrust out his big chest and marched towards his flat, as if he were in charge of the guard at the Führer’s Headquarters itself, his little red eyes gleaming vindicatively. County Leader Schmeer was as good as dead already.

  Notes

  1. Roughly ‘regular tables’, a feature of German pubs which are reserved for the same regular guests by means of the Stammtisch sign (transl.)

  2. Army MPs, named after the silver chain plates they wore round their necks while on duty (transl.)

  3. Contemptuous army name for the rear line Party officials, due to their habit of wearing a lot of gold braid (transl.)

  SIX

  ‘You’re a lot of wet tails – soft wet tails, full of piss and fried potatoes!’ the Vulture rasped in his high-pitched Prussian voice, staring down at them from the deck of the new Tiger, the sweat streaming down his monstrous nose.

  The 800 odd young men of Wotan, the elite of the National Socialist state, stared up at him wordlessly, their open sun-burned faces serious and worried.

  ‘You’ve been too long in the Homeland,’ the Vulture continued. ‘Been too busy filling your guts. Too busy pushing an easy ball. You forget that we are fighting a war of survival and that at this very moment, good men – better men than you – are dying by their hundreds in the East so that you parasites can live an easy life here in Westphalia. But it’s going to stop, I can tell you that. Great crap on the Christmas Tree, it’s going to stop!’ He brought his riding cane down hard against the side of his boot and one or two of the young men in the front rank jumped startled. ‘Even if I have to kill every single one of you greenbeaks in the process!’

  The Vulture swung his angry burning eyes around their faces as they stood there in the white hot June afternoon, grouped around the first squadron of Tigers which had been delivered from the railhead that very morning.

  ‘You men must learn that we do not play games in SS Assault Battalion Wotan. We are the Führer’s elite – the Führer’s Fire Brigade, I believe, is the term that is used in headquarters. But at the moment you men – thin streaks of piss that you are – couldn’t put out a grassfire.’ He looked down at them scornfully. ‘Because you’re soft. Soft, do you understand? Soft as shit! Today the kid gloves are finally off, I can promise you that. Today you are going to learn what it means to have the honour of serving in the Führer’s Fire Brigade.’

  He drew a deep breath and made a visible effort to control himself, though as an admiring von Dodenburg, watching his CO’s tremendous performance, knew the Vulture was in complete charge of his faculties. His rage was deliberate and artificial, meant to sting the young recruits to the Battalion into a reaction – any reaction.

  ‘Behind me,’ he snapped, ‘you will be able to see a thirty seven millimetre anti-tank gun. Not a very powerful weapon admittedly, but one which can give you a nice little headache at close range if it hits you.’ He smiled thinly at his own humour, but there was no answering gleam in his cold eyes.

  ‘Under me, there is a metal steed that can be stopped by no known anti-tank canon, if it is handled correctly.’ He kicked the Tiger’s great turret with his gleaming spurred riding boot which he always wore although he had left the cavalry in 1937. ‘The glacis plate1 of the Tiger cannot be penetrated by a thirty-seven millimetre shell even at a range of two hundred metres. Of course it’s unpleasant to hear the shells knocking at your front door at such short range,’ he grinned down at their earnest young faces cynically. ‘But then there are those who cream their drawers when a window rattles on a dark night.’

  He raised his voice. ‘Now today it is my intention to start making men out of you greenbeaks. Every tank crew in the battalion will drive down the course which has been staked out behind you at a speed of twenty kilometres an hour. As soon as your vehicle reaches the green marker, Lieutenant Schwarz and Captain von Dodenburg manning the 37 mm will open fire.’ He paused for the expected gasp of surprise and got it.

  The Vulture grinned thinly and continued. ‘The 37 will fire three shells. When your vehicle reaches the white marker here – at two hundred metres range – the tank commander will break right and drive off the range. One word of warning, however. If any one of you decides to break off before he reaches that white marker, I shall order Lieutenant Schwarz and Captain von Dodenburg to open fire at the vehicle’s flank. And let there be no doubt about it – at that range a 37 mm can penetrate even the Tiger. Someone will get more than creamed skivvies – he’ll get a very
bloody nose.’

  He let his words sink in for a moment; then he blew his whistle. At the far end of the range, Schulze’s driver started up his engine with a roar. The monstrous sixty ton Tiger with its great hooded overhanging 88 mm cannon lumbered forward. The men of the Wotan scattered, while Schwarz and von Dodenburg ran towards the anti-tank gun.

  ‘Fire!’ the Vulture yelled, as Schulze’s tank crossed the start-line.

  At that range Schwarz could not miss. The white tracer hissed flatly across the range, striking the centre of the Tiger’s glacis plate. Momentarily the metal glowed a dull red. Then the shell went soaring upwards into the deep blue sky like a cheap penny rocket. Hastily von Dodenburg reloaded, the sweat pouring down his face. Schwarz snatched the firing lever again. A blast of hot air hit von Dodenburg in the face like a flabby fist. He gasped, automatically opening his mouth to prevent his eardrums from being burst, and stared over the shield.

  The shell smacked home with a great hollow clang of metal striking metal. The Tiger rocked slightly. But again the 37 mm shell went soaring off like a golfball, leaving a bright new silver scar on the glacis plate.

  Just before Schulze’s Tiger reached the white marker, Schwarz fired for the last time. Sparks flew from the front of the tank and it reared up on its hind sprockets like a bucking horse; then Schulze’s Tiger was swivelling round crazily, throwing up a huge cloud of dust.

  ‘Three direct hits,’ the Vulture rasped through his megaphone, staring down at the awed, round-eyed troopers, ‘and not one penetration. That, as even your thick heads can undoubtedly perceive, makes the Tiger a war-winning weapon. Now—’

  ‘But, sir,’ Horten, Schwarz’s second-in-command, broke in. ‘Can we afford to allow our new vehicles to be damaged in an exercise like this? Surely the demonstration we have just seen should suffice to convince us of the value of this weapon made by our folk-comrades?’