Assignment Gestapo (7 page)

‘I’ve been hit!’ he yelled, at the top of his voice.

Two of his comrades came after him. They took him up between them and ran off with him, back behind the lines, away from danger. Barcelona pulled a face as he watched them.

‘Don’t you worry, mate . . . they’ll get you out of here just as fast as their legs can carry ’em . . . perishing miles away, to the farthest hospital they can find . . .’

‘Beginners’ luck,’ muttered Heide, sourly. ‘Not an earthly of what to do with a machine gun, but give ’em a wounded man to carry and they’re off like greased lightning. Didn’t take ’em long to learn that, did it?’

At the bottom of a dug-out we had installed our stewpot, well covered with the lid held tight by a pile of stones, so that nothing short of a direct hit could possibly upset our precious liquid.

By now it was almost night. The moon was hidden by a carpet of cloud and the sky was a thick velvety black.

‘God, it’s so quiet,’ murmured the Old Man. ‘If I hadn’t been at the game so long I’d almost feel tempted to go for a stroll up top and see what’s happening.’

In the distance, we heard a dog bark.

‘Where the hell
are
the Russians, anyway?’ demanded Barcelona.

The Old Man pointed towards the pine trees, standing stiff and straight like sentinels.

‘Out there in their dug-outs . . . wondering why it’s so quiet and what the hell we’re up to.’

‘Well, wish they’d bloody come out and fight,’ grumbled Heide. There’s nothing like silence for driving you crazy.’

A spine-chilling laugh suddenly cut through the night, but it was only Porta, cheating at dice with Tiny a few dug-outs away. Somewhere on the other side a machine gun began barking. One of ours replied with a few melancholy salvos. As we watched, over beyond the pine trees, an ocean of flames rolled forward, leaping skywards wave upon wave, and each wave preceded by a gigantic explosion. It seemed as if the very mountains were trembling with fear.

‘Rocket batteries,’ observed the Old Man. ‘So long as they don’t come any closer. . .’

Again, we heard the guard-dog barking at the machine guns. In the dark night, somewhere to the north, a series of luminous flashes tore open the sky.

In the midst of it all, a messenger arrived from the Colonel. He was going at top speed, red in the face and screaming aloud like a madman.

‘Message for the Fifth Company! Message for the Fifth Company!’

Lt. Ohlsen strode up to him in a fury.

‘Keep your voice, down, you lunatic! The whole front’s liable to go up in a sheet of flame if you carry on like that!’

‘Yes, sir. Sorry, sir. But it’s a very important message, sir. The Colonel wants to see you immediately to have your report and give you some new orders.’

‘For crying out loud . . .!’

The Lieutenant turned away, muttering. The messenger stood a moment, bewildered. He had a smooth, scrubbed face, a spotless uniform and an air of curious innocence. Porta looked him up and down a few times.

‘Where do you lot come from, then?’

‘Breslau,’ was the proud reply. ‘Forty-Ninth Infantry.’

And the pink face looked down wonderingly at Porta in his dug-out. Porta gave one of his satanic laughs.

‘You’re another of the medal boys, eh? Well, run off and get your Iron Cross, you’re welcome to it . . . you’ll find it lying in a pile of shit somewhere!’ Startled-as well he might be, not knowing Porta – the messenger turned and ran back to the Colonel.

The mountains trembled again, as if shaken by some deep internal agony. Streaks of red and blue fire shot across the sky. The countryside for miles around seemed bathed in a sea of perpetual fire, and we screwed up our eyes against the glare and cowered deep into our dug-outs. For the moment it was the Russians who were bearing the brunt of it, but we ourselves were in no very happy position.

‘Jesus Christ!’ whined Heide, wiping the back of a trembling hand across his brow. ‘I don’t know what those flaming Do batteries do to the Russians, but they put the shits up me all right. Half the time the silly sods don’t seem to know which way they’re aiming the pissing things—’

‘Watch out!’ yelled Steiner. ‘The Ruskies are joining in!’

Almost before he had finished speaking the ground began to heave and shake as the heavy Russian guns joined in the bombardment. We curled up in our holes, nose to tail like dogs left out on a winter’s night, our hands clasped protectively over our helmets. Through half-open eyes I saw the wall of fire rise up behind us as the 12 cm. shells landed from the Russian lines, and I felt the hot blast of air wash over me.

Then suddenly so suddenly that I knew a sense of shock, there came a lull. The barrage stopped and not a sound could be heard.

Those of us who had been through it all before stayed crouched in our holes, but several of the newcomers incautiously raised their heads to see what was going on, Lt. Spät shouted from his dug-out.

‘Keep your heads down, you damn fools!’

It was too late for some of them, for as suddenly as the silence had fallen there now rained down upon us a new series of explosions. Disconcertingly closer than the previous lot –right outside our front door, as you might say.

Third time lucky,’ I heard Barcelona mutter. ‘It’ll be smack on the button next time.’

I felt he was probably right. They couldn’t go on just missing us for ever. The luck was bound to change.

‘They’ve got a sniper up in those pine trees somewhere,’ said Steiner.

During a second lull, he risked sticking his head out a few inches and yelling to Porta.

‘Hey, Porta! Pick that chap off, can’t you, and then perhaps we’ll get a bit of peace.’

‘I’ll have a bash,’ said Porta. ‘Anything for a quiet life . . . if only I can spot the bastard.’

He crawled out of his hole and wriggled forward, lying full length on the ground and scanning the pine forest with the infra-red sights on his rifle.

‘I could have a go at him,’ suggested Tiny, pulling his length of steel wire from his pocket and starting out of his dug-out. ‘I could reach him, I bet. Just let me get this round his neck and we’ll—’

‘Get back!’ hissed Lt. Spät, waving an angry hand.

Just in time. As Tiny dropped back into his hole a new salvo was fired. It landed amongst the trenches, and from farther along the line we heard the usual cacophany of shrieks and screams coming from hideously injured men.

‘That’s it,’ said Barcelona. ‘Some poor sods have copped a packet . . . maybe now they’ll leave us alone for a bit.’

‘Sure, until we start up again with that flaming Do!’ rejoined Heide, bitterly.

The Legionnaire had wriggled out to join Porta. With his sharp eyes he had spotted a movement amongst the pine trees, and he reached across and jabbed Porta in the ribs.

‘There he is – just on his way down . . . do you see him? To the right of that bloody great tree over there . . . Look sharp or you’ll miss him!’

Porta settled his rifle into his shoulder and glared despairingly through the sights.

‘Where, for Christ’s sake? I can’t see him—’

‘Look – you got that big tree over there? Head and shoulders above all the other trees? Three fingers away to the right . . .’

‘Got him!’ Porta jubilantly stuck up a thumb. ‘Yeah, I can see the bastard all right now . . . just working his way down . . . not suspecting a thing . . . the poor sod’s got the Order of Stalin pinned on his chest! Would you believe that? The Order of bleeding Stalin . . .’

‘For fuck’s sake, stop babbling and get on with the job!’ hissed the Legionnaire, between his teeth.

‘All right, all right, don’t panic,’ said Porta, equably. ‘Plenty of time yet. No need to get your knickers twisted . . .’

As he spoke, he curled his finger round the trigger. There was one short, sharp crack and the unsuspecting sniper crashed down into the forest with half his head blown away. The Legionnaire nodded.

‘Good. Let’s have your book and I’ll mark it up.’

Porta handed over one of the little yellow notebooks that were carried by all the crack shots in the Army for the purpose of recording their scores. The Legionnaire marked up his latest success and flipped back through the preceding pages.

‘Not doing so badly,’ he commented.

‘I’ve got just as many with my steel wire,’ said Tiny, jealously. ‘And that takes a helluva sight more guts, let me tell you . . . no sitting about on your arse with your eye glued to field glasses – you got to be right out there in the thick of it, right up close . . .’ He nodded aggressively at the Legionnaire, and then, struck by a sudden thought, turned back to Porta. ‘Hey, what about his choppers?’

‘Never saw ’em,’ said Porta, regretfully. ‘The bastard never smiled . . . Why don’t we go take a look at him? Fifty-fifty?’

Tiny needed no second invitation. They went crawling off into the pine woods, risking their necks for the chance of some gold fillings.

Lieutenant Ohlsen was also taking the opportunity to stretch his legs.

‘Take over for a bit, will you?’ he said to Spät. ‘I’d better go and see what that old woman of a Colonel wants. Shan’t be away long.’

He leapt out of his hole and set off at a run away from the trenches, making for the comparative safety of the wooded area where the Colonel had set up his headquarters. A machine gun began spitting out a steady stream of luminous projectiles, but the man was obviously no expert and they fell short, landing harmlessly some way off.

Lt. Ohlsen arrived panting at the chalet and asked to see Colonel von Vergil. The Colonel showed some reluctance to be disturbed, but eventually, and with an air of indifferent boredom, condescended to hear Ohlsen’s report – which he himself had been demanding as a matter of urgency only a short time since. The seven officers with him listened with an equal lack of interest.

They were seated round a table, laid with a thick cloth and supporting a rich spread of food and wine. Ohlsen, feeling himself to be in some kind of wonderland, took in all the details as he talked: cut glass vases full of flowers; a shining crystal chandelier; blue porcelain crockery; batmen in white coats hovering respectfully at every elbow . . . For a moment his voice faltered, as he felt he must surely be talking in his sleep. It seemed hardly possible that vicious slaughter and luxurious dinner party could be taking place simultaneously, only yards away from each other.

As he faltered, Colonel von Vergil screwed in his monocle and took stock of this insolent lieutenant who had come hot foot from the fighting to interrupt his meal. He looked first at the thick crust of mud on his boots, then let his gaze move slowly up the filthy black uniform, creased and torn, and stiff with the accumulated dirt of several months’ hard wear in the front line. The death’s head insignia of the Hussars, yellowing and rusted, grinned mockingly at him; proclaiming without shame that it was a long, long time since it had been polished to the looking-glass shine laid down in Regulations. The soiled red ribbon of the Iron Cross ended not in a medal but in a fraying tattered fringe. The Iron Cross itself had been lost some time back when the Lieutenant’s tank had gone up in a sheet of flame. The left sleeve of his greatcoat was hanging by a few threads. The leather flap on his holster had been wrenched off. In place of an officer’s belt, he was wearing one that should have belonged to an ordinary common soldier. His right hand was black with congealed blood.

The Colonel let fall his monocle and turned away with his top lip curling in distaste. It was as he had always suspected: these officers one found at the front had no sense of style, no sense of rank. They were not the type of people one would care to know socially – obviously, or they would not have been at the front in the first place. The Colonel himself was there only through the grossest of mistakes and the most ludicrous bungling by some cretin in the Bendlerstrasse.

His regiment, the 49th Infantry, was both rich and aristocratic, and until now it had seen no front line action except for the occupation of Denmark and two days in France before the armistice. Life was easy, and life was opulent.

And then came the fatal day when the blundering idiot in the Bendlerstrasse had chosen to promote the Regiment’s commanding officer, Colonel von der Graz, to the rank of brigade general, and had sent him off with an infantry division to the Balkans. That was only the start of it. The full tragedy of the situation had not at once come home to the bereaved 49th, then happily installed at Breslau. For some time they had lived in the belief and hope that the Colonel’s successor would be chosen from amongst their own qlite. They had two lieutenant colonels who were due for promotion to full colonel, and the more venerable of these, whose connections were unimpeachable, had even gone so far as to announce in advance the changes he intended to make when he was in charge of the Regiment.:

The dream had been shattered one unforgettable Friday morning, at twenty minutes to nine – a time and date that were imprinted on the memory of every officer in the Regiment, for at twenty minutes to nine their new Colonel had arrived to take over. A Colonel whom nobody knew and whom nobody wanted. He had come straight from active service in Demjamsk. There was none of the dilettante about him: he was tall and craggy, and tough and outspoken, and he wore a patch over one eye.

Throughout that fateful Friday he roamed about the barracks with a black frown of displeasure gathered on his lined forehead, and his nose to the ground like a dog on the scent of trouble. One of the orderly room officers, seeking to ingratiate himself, struck on the bright idea of introducing the new Colonel to the Regiment’s wine cellar, which was famed for miles around, and which was stocked with sufficient delights to gladden the heart of any connoisseur. Perhaps the Colonel was not a connoisseur. At any rate, he merely picked up one or two of the dusty bottles, read the labels, raised a cold eyebrow at the officer and marched out without a word. It was that eyebrow, together with the total lack of comment, which really rattled the officer. An hour later he packed his bags and departed, anticipating what he felt to be a certainty.

It was late in the day before the Colonel ceased his wanderings and seated himself in his predecessor’s chair, behind the large acajou desk. The majority of the officers were already in the Casino, bravely attempting to carry on as usual, but the champagne tasted somehow different and the charms of gambling seemed suddenly to have vanished. The stormclouds were gathering about their heads, and they felt menace in the air.