by James Rouch
A salvo of heavy mortar bombs blasted buildings away to their right, starting a fire among the upper floors of two. Molten metal and glass dripped in cascades down their facades as the evening breezes fanned the flames.
Caught by the draught a spark flew and landed on Revell’s cheek. The ember bleached a blister into his sunburnt skin, and reality was restored with a vengeance.
THE OTHER SIEGES.
WEST BERLIN
With the defection of General Shpagin, who was Commandant KGB Forces East Germany at the outbreak of war, a more accurate picture is emerging of the last days of the NATO troops in the city. Until now the only complete version of events has been the official Soviet account and that has conflicted on many points with information gained from radio intercepts at the time. The Soviet line has always been that mopping up was completed on the third day. General Shpagin states that elements of the American 3/6th Infantry, with a self-propelled howitzer of C Battery, 94th Artillery, and an M60 tank of the HQ platoon, 40th Armoured, were still tying down large numbers of Russian troops on the twenty-second day. In the British Sector men from 247 Provost Company and 229 Signals Company held out in the Olympic stadium until the afternoon of the twenty-eighth, after the British HQ nearby, in which they’d previously barricaded themselves, had been set on fire by an air attack. General Shpagin has told his British interrogators that all Allied prisoners, including wounded, were executed on the direct orders of the Soviet President. Also that Allied civilians who were rounded up after the city fell were not sent to camps on the Black Sea, as the Soviet press announced, but to the closed city of Gorky where many have died of disease and malnutrition while working as slave labour. Large numbers were killed during, and executed after, an abortive rebellion in the camps, made in protest at the harsh treatment. At present General Shpagin is helping compile a list of Soviet officers, officials and Communist Party members who will later be tried for war crimes. It now appears that the stubborn resistance by the NATO forces in West Berlin was a major contributory factor in the breakdown of the Warsaw Pact advance into Western Europe at the outbreak of war. Outnumbered ten to one, the NATO garrison prevented the Russians from redeploying over 90,000 troops, with armour, who could have been used to fill the gaps left by mutinies among the front-line East German and Polish units. Only the abandonment of their neutrality by the French, allowing Russian troops to pass through their sector and attack the lightly defended British flank, prevented the NATO Berlin Field Force from holding out much longer and possibly changing the whole course of the war. Attempts by the French government to suppress, and by the French press to discredit, the general’s statements, have failed to stem the rising tide of anger in that country, and across the world, at the betrayal. Allegations that the decision was made by the French commander in Berlin have been strenuously denied by the officer concerned, and cabinet papers that have been ‘leaked’ strongly suggest that in fact the course was decided on at the very highest level.
FIVE
‘Fucking students are a pain in the arse.’ Burke unslung his rifle and took a pick-handle in its place. ‘Naive lot of silly sods. Like bloody sponges they are, soak ‘em in a silly idea like Marxism and they suck it in without thinking, then they keep dribbling it over everyone else.’
‘You finished?’ Revell gave his assault shotgun into the care of a civilian police officer, but declined to take one of the clubs. ‘Right, they’ve planted the flag on the roof. The police want it down before it gets light and the city wakes up and thinks it’s been taken.’
‘Are any of the shits still up there?’ Ripper twirled the pick-handle like a baton.
‘Could be. We’ll know soon enough.’
As they walked towards the entrance Revell noticed a tall blonde standing half in the shadows across the street. She wore a light-meter slung from a cord around her neck and held a complex long-lensed camera. Revell swore to himself as an electronic flash ruined the night vision he’d been so careful to preserve. Everywhere he looked all he could see was a milky echo of that searing white light.
The main door was barricaded, and the major led the squad round the side of the building to an emergency exit. It was locked, but two ounces of plastic explosive dealt with that and it swung open at a touch when Revell tried it.
A service stairway took them up two floors before they came upon the obstruction. Filling the whole of a landing were Formica-covered dining-room tables and metal-framed chairs. Tight packed together they were a more complete barrier than a tangle of barbed wire.
‘It would be easier to find another way.’ Giving a chair leg an exploratory tug, Boris succeeded only in wedging the whole mass more firmly together.
‘He’s right.’ Clarence had already come to that conclusion. ‘Use a small charge and the heap will settle back pretty much as it is. Tackle it with sufficient to tear the stuff apart and there’s a fair chance we’ll bring down this whole wing.’
Ripper made his contribution while the major was making his own inspection. ‘I guess what we really need is a bulldozer.’ ‘Or a dozy bull.’ Revell beckoned Dooley forward. ‘Get at it.’
Without pausing to survey the jam of canteen furniture, Dooley swung his pick-handle and brought it down on a green-flecked white table top. Shards of laminate struck the walls of the stairway and at that single pounding blow the table folded almost in half. A dozen more attacks of similar ferocity and whole chairs and broken pieces of enamelled steel tubing were clattering back down on the others.
He didn’t stop until he had smashed a track through the debris to the next flight of stairs, then, using the pick-handle like a stick, leant on it while he regained his breath. ‘What you waiting for?’
They had reached the fourth floor without further problem when they encountered the first resistance. A bottle fell from above and, missing them, went on to shatter on a lower flight. Fluid that burst and splattered from it gave off clouds of fumes as it ate into the concrete.
‘Here we go again, playing by the bloody rules while Commie-loving shit breaks them and then screams brutality at us.’ Burke was beginning to lose his temper. It was bad enough to make it to Hamburg and not get a word of thanks, but this was adding bloody insult to injury.
‘You fancy doing something about it?’ Hyde was taking his gas mask out.
‘Too fucking true. I had enough of fucking acid bombs in the Bogside without being able to do a ruddy thing about it. I’m not bloody standing for it here.’
‘Just two of us can clear the stairs, Major, so long as we can count on back-up the second we hit the roof or wherever the buggers are going to make their last stand.’
‘You’ve got it.’ Revell had too much respect for the British sergeant’s ability to even consider rejecting his plan. The NCO had been chomping at the bit for some time now. This slice of independent action might settle him for a while.
‘We’ll come when you call.’
‘Right, stay a flight behind us.’
It felt good to be running his own show again, even if it was only for a few minutes and against nothing more than a bunch of ignorant, arrogant students. Hyde pulled on his mask and fastened the straps tightly. He nudged Burke.
‘Gloves.’ His voice was muffled and came back at him inside the rubberised micro-particle-proof respirator. Again he nudged the driver, and this time just jerked his hefty club upwards.
Side by side they started up, and immediately came under a deluge of missiles and devices. With his hand Burke warded off another of the acid containers to send it tumbling all the way to the ground floor.
Chairs, table legs, drawers from filing cabinets crashed about them and still they kept going. A plastic bag filled with a white powder burst and smothered them with its contents. They didn’t even break step as they wiped the quicklime from their eyepieces. A whole desk landed immediately in front of them showering pencils and pens and paper as its locks burst. Short ramming blows from the clubs and it was left behind them, a splintered wr
eck hung half over the railings.
A crowd of youths blocked the top of the last flight, all competing with each other to hurl the biggest item with most force. Hyde edged ahead and as he did a wild kick was aimed at his face. It was the chance he’d been hoping for.
With all the strength he could muster he thrust the blunt end of the club forward as far as he could, and rammed it into the student’s crotch. The others had to grab hold of the victim as he collapsed clutching himself, and the disruption of the defence line gave the sergeant his opportunity.
Two sweeping blows he delivered swept the legs from a pair of defenders trying to push a complete filing cabinet over the top, and they went down with it on top of them.
Burke used his pick-handle like a quarterstaff and propelled another against the wall, bringing his knee up into the pinned student’s groin.
Surviving members of the group had Hyde surrounded in a corner and were cautiously closing in, avoiding the savage jabs he made at them with the razor sharp end of a metal chair back. The circle of figures could only be seen in outline in the darkness, and grew larger and more menacing as they drew nearer. Something hit him a sharp blow on the shoulder, and then his attackers were gone, borne down and buried under a furious attack from behind as the rest of the squad arrived. It was over in seconds.
‘This what you wanted?’ Revell handed the roll of red cloth to the German colonel.
‘Ja, danke schon.’
He unfolded it and examined the crudely stencilled hammer and sickle in one corner.
‘Have we passed the test? That was a test, wasn’t it?’ Keeping the irritation from his voice demanded a considerable effort from Revell. ‘It had to be, why else give a combat group a task that could have been handled by the civilian police.’
‘You are mistaken, Major. It was not a test, not in the sense you mean. Around you are my men, look at diem.’ The colonel indicated the thirty or forty variously armed soldiers and civilians sleeping or resting in the alleyway. ‘We formed this unit at Christmas. If all the men who had joined it had survived then I would have a battalion by now. Instead I have one depleted platoon. Tomorrow it may not even be that. Together we have been through hell many times. It was they who needed to see your men in action. Now they are satisfied, and will be happy to eat and fight with you.’
‘I was hoping someone was going to say something about eating. Lead me to it.’ Appreciative lip-smacking noises came from Dooley.
Among the weapon-and ammunition-draped recumbent forms someone laughed. Revell couldn’t see who, but he recognised it as a woman’s laugh, though it was brief and held more of sarcasm than humour.
Herding the students before them they crossed a wide street that had once been lined with trees: now only stumps or shrapnel-slashed branchless trunks remained. Here and there showed the burned-out skeletal frame of a truck or tram and walking was made difficult by chunks of brick and pieces of bomb casing that turned under their feet.
Ahead of them loomed a forest of apartment blocks, and they climbed a ramp-like pile of rubble to enter one by a second-floor window. As the last of them did so, a desultory artillery fire began to register on the area.
A long time ago Clarence had turned off his mind from the physical discomforts and privations of the war, and now he drank the thin greasy soup without noticing its taste and ate the stale bread without noticing that it had none, save for a markedly bitter flavour to its thin crust. He ignored what went on around him. Having found a comparatively quiet corner he’d settled down with his meal and now warded off any attempted conversation with a scowl.
‘Here, Clarence.’ Dooley noticed the sniper eating alone. ‘You afraid somebody is going to nick your chow? Forget it. The way this stuff tastes nobody in his right mind would want it.’
‘You’re wrong there, mate.’ With his spoon Burke indicated the students, who having been bound hand and foot had been dumped close to the trestle from which the meagre rations were being doled out. ‘I been told those blokes didn’t have any ration cards on them. In dodging the draft they also missed out on the nosh. Look at ‘em.’
The youths were watching every ladleful of soup, every morsel of bread as it was dispensed. Some of them were drooling, and a pair of them bumped and wriggled against each other, even tried to use their teeth as weapons in a fight to reach a fragment of crust that fell to the floor.
It was stiflingly hot, with the steam from the cooking adding to the humidity of the night. As the last dregs were licked from bowls the members of the unit drifted from the apartment to find cooler, less crowded places to sleep. Most of them still nibbled at the small hunks of coarse bread, making it last.
Many floors above them a shell landed on the roof, reducing the height of the block by a few more feet and sending a shudder through the whole structure. Revell heard it, and seconds after noted the slight falls of dust it brought from the cracked plaster of the ceiling. From outside came grating and thumping as debris fell down the side of the building, bouncing from the window ledges. Popping the last chunk of bread into his mouth, he punched his pack into a more comfortable shape and lay down.
He was too tired to find anywhere else, and the hiss from the gas burner beneath the bubbling soup was soporific. As his eyes closed, by the faint illumination from the cooker he saw the blonde again. She had stopped, and was looking into the room from the corridor. In the instant before he fell asleep Revell felt she was looking at him.
The students had gone, dragged noisily away at first light, when the shelling had stopped.
‘Where have they gone?’ There was a pain in his neck, and only that told Revell that he really had been asleep for a full four hours, not the ten seconds it felt like.
Having to look up from his map to see who was meant, the colonel just shrugged. ‘Not to a firing squad, if that’s what you were thinking. Most likely they’ll be de-loused, fed, and put to work under close supervision on a burial detail. A week of that and they will be begging to join a fire-brigade.’ He pointed to an area to the south of the city. ‘This is what interests us now, Kirchdorf. There is open ground there, the Russians might think it possible to use tanks. We are to persuade them otherwise.’
Masses of pencilled alterations did not make the map easy to read, but the underlying markings and configurations of the suburb were unmistakable. Revell said so.
‘Yes, the map does say it is a built-up area, Major, but you have much to discover about our poor city yet. We leave immediately.’
‘Another flag to be pulled down? Another group of schoolboys to be spanked?’ Andrea had not bothered, as some of the others had, to inch sufficiently close to eavesdrop on the briefing.
‘Fancy spanking some schoolboys do you?’ A leer spread across Dooley’s broad features.
She ignored him, but seeing the major was watching, allowed herself a small tight smile in his direction.
It was enough to make him turn away and seek distraction in some petty task. Revell felt himself break out into a sweat and prayed that he wasn’t blushing. Those words, and that smile had triggered something inside of him. Leaning against the table he tried to subdue the iron-hard erection that he felt sure must be bulging visibly, for everyone to see.
Stupid; he was being stupid. The smile meant nothing, malice had ^prompted it, it was no more than a taunt. But still, it was the first time she’d made any sign of even acknowledging his existence. And the thought of her, wearing just that smile, that cruel, beautiful smile, and spanking… Digging his ragged nails into his palms he willed the thought to go, and his huge erection with it, and was only partially successful at both.
He was the last to leave, and as he went out into the dust-filtered sunlight he saw the blonde.
The hair that escaped from beneath the American steel helmet she wore looked clean, shiny even. He could see little of her face behind the camera she aimed at him, but the hands that held it were smooth, and the long nails were painted a pale pink. There was time only to
notice that the one-piece suit she wore was pinched in tight at the waist above a flat belly and slim thighs, and then the precarious path down the rubble ramp took all his attention. When he reached level ground and turned to look back, she was gone.
Kirchdorf was only a name on out-of-date maps. A few stretches of road between swathes of churned ground indicated that there had once been something there, but the scattered heaps of rubble gave no clue as to what.
A few distorted electricity pylons, a handful of fire-scorched telegraph poles; those were virtually the only reference points in a landscape as devoid of them as any desert. Only one cluster of shell and bomb damaged structures retained any semblance of their former condition, gave any clue as to their original purpose. The half-spans of bridges, pockmarked columns and precariously supported broken sections of elevated^ roadway marked where an autobahn interchange had stood.
They took up positions in trenches and weapons’ pits that others had dug and fought and died in. The evidence was everywhere. Not all of the burial squads had been thorough. Lumps of putrefying flesh, fragments of bone, hanks of hair, even an eye attached by the shrivelled cord of its retinal nerve to a quarter of a skull, littered the bottom of the excavations.
All of the earthworks looked to have been abandoned long ago. Most had partially caved in and the floor of each was thick with powdered dust and ash. To Hyde, the gun pit he was working to rebuild had a familiar appearance. On another battlefield he had seen something strikingly similar, the way the collapse was all on one side, the scorching on the other, and the patterns in the dust, as though it had been swirled round and round by miniature tornadoes. Nearby heaps of rubble reinforced the feeling as he saw glitter from beads of shining material, as if the very stone and steel had for an instant begun to melt and drip at the moment of the building’s collapse and had refrozen to their solid state with the swift passing of the incredible forces that had done it.
