Guns At Cassino (15 page)

`I'm
in this,' she said slowly, taking another bite of her sandwich, as if her very life depended upon her swallowing it, 'because I hate the Nazis, oh God, how I hate the bastards! I'd give my very life to bring them down.'

Still
Schulze did not speak. Up above them the anti-aircraft guard removed his leather face mask and wiped the sweat off his brow. His face was young and pale; more cannon fodder to feed the Russian front's insatiable appetite, Schulze thought. The boy smiled down at them and then replaced the leather mask hastily as the full force of the icy, snow-laden wind struck him.

`They
took me in in 1934' She stuffed the rest of her sandwich into her mouth. 'I'm a pervert you know.' She laughed bitterly. 'What else could I be – the way I'm built? No man would ever look at me.'

Schulze
looked at her in amazement.

`Do
you mean?' he stuttered. She grinned at him cynically. 'I do! All my life I've never let one of you male pigs up my drawers. At first I hated you because you men despised me for my size. Later I began to look at you in contempt. After all,' she pulled another black bread sandwich out of her pocket and began stuffing it into her mouth, as if Schulze might take it from her, 'I can do things to women with these hands that you could never hope to do with that dirty little thing you've got hanging in your trousers.'

`Don't
say that, Erna,' Schulze protested, 'what do you think I've got these round shoulders for!'

But
he could see his humour was out of place. Big Erna's mind was on other times and other places; he was just a sounding board for her memories.

`Funnily
enough, the Nazis did me a favour when they sent me to Dachau. I met Elli there – the one great love of my life. And they killed her when they found out. Those Nazi pigs killed her. No gas chamber, no firing squad, no executioner's axe – no, nothing as clean and simple as that for my poor beautiful Elli.' She looked at Schulze, her eyes blazing with sudden hate. `Do you know what the bastards said? If a man's tail couldn't satisfy her – that was after six of them had been through her - then they'd see what a - ' She broke off suddenly.

When
she spoke again, she was the old Fat Erna again, completely assured and in control of herself.

`They
stuck something up her. I could hear her screams right on the other side of the homo block. Then they left her to bleed to death -
slowly
.'

She
said the words without any emotion, fumbling in her pocket for yet another black bread sandwich.

`She
was the only person I ever really loved. Now can you understand why I hate them?'

The
big SS man nodded silently and looked at the driving snowflakes, burying the winter countryside under their white cruel mantle.

`What
a rotten world, it is,' he told himself bitterly, 'what a rotten shitty world.'

Slowly
the big hospital train started to steam into the platform, crowded with morose pale-faced soldiers returning to the front and their sobbing wives, watched everywhere by helmeted chain-dogs ready to stamp out any sign of trouble.

The
train came to a halt and the wives and girl-friends sobbed into their handkerchiefs with renewed energy, while their menfolk made embarrassed 'tut-tutting' noises. High above them in the shattered glass roof, the loudspeakers came to life:

`Special
troop train for Koenigsberg, with connections to Warsaw, Brest-Litovsk, Smolensk, will be leaving Platform Four. Planned departure fifteen hours, forty-five.' The soldiers started to pick up their rucksacks, engulfed in steam and smoke. 'Good luck', the women cried with mounting hysteria. `Good luck, Willi ... Good luck, Karl! Now don't forget to look after yourself like I said ...’

`All
right,' Big Erna whispered as the soldiers began to enter the train, pushing their kit and weapons in front of them. ‘Now's the time. Walk behind me. When I drop this (she indicated her shabby briefcase) jump the barrier, head into the crowd and run like hell!'

`And
you, Erna?'

`Don't
worry about me, soldier,' she said gruffly, 'I've got papers. I've nothing to fear.'

He
held out his big hand.

`All
right, if you say so ... Thanks for everything you done for me.'

She
took it in a fist that was as hard and firm as his own.

`Don't
mention it, soldier. At least, you didn't try to put your hand up my skirt - which is more than I can say for the rest of them.'

Schulze
simpered.

`Well,
you see I don't really like girls.'

She
gave him a playful push that nearly sent him through the open door.

`Get
on with you. All right now, let’s go. Time's running out.' Hastily she pushed her way through the soldiers crowding around the door.

`Make
way there,' she commanded imperiously. 'I've got a seriously wounded man with me. Sauerbruch himself is going to operate on him.'

The
name of Germany's greatest surgeon worked like magic. They fell back on both sides to let her emerge, followed by Schulze trying to look seriously wounded. A fat housewife sobbing into a damp handkerchief did not get out of Erna's way quickly enough and the big woman gave her a hefty shove.

`Get
out of the road, will you,' she growled, 'you silly sow, or I'll really give you something to cry about.'

The
barrier, guarded by two chain-dogs and a civilian who was obviously a member of the Gestapo or Secret Field Police, was only fifteen metres away now. Fat Erna walked towards it purposefully, as if she hadn't a care in the world, fumbling in her briefcase, apparently looking for her pass to show to the guards. Schulze followed at five metres distance, holding his hand to the side of his bandaged face. Suddenly big Erna dropped her briefcase on to the platform, scattering the contents everywhere.

`
Holy
shit!
' she cursed loudly so that everyone turned to look at her, 'the sodding thing has come open again!'

With
a theatrical grunt she bent down slowly to pick up the contents. Her nurse's skirt rode up her huge flanks to reveal the full glory of her black-silk clad buttocks. At the barrier the chain-dogs' eyes bulged out of their heads at the spectacle. Somewhere close by, a soldier groaned in awe:

`Oh,
holy strawsack, get a load of that! All that meat and no potatoes!'

The
civilian pulled his dark felt hat down more firmly on his head, as if he were afraid it might be blown off by the shock of the sight being revealed to him and stepped forward.

`Let
me give you a hand, sister,' he said hastily, 'before you split your knickers altogether!'

`
Now
,' Big Erna hissed, not looking up. 'And the best of luck, you lump!'

Schulze
waited no longer. With one jump he was over the barrier and in the midst of the surprised crowd of shabby civilians waiting for their trains.

`Hey,
what's this,' an officious-looking man with a battered case shouted, 'what you think you're up to?'

Schulze
gave him a shove in the face, ripping at his bandages with the other hand. The man sprawled full length on the platform. His case burst open. Eggs cascaded on to the ground.

`Black
market,' someone shouted. 'Black market eggs!'

The
crowd surged forward greedily, attracted by the promise of this luxury. A fat woman slipped on a yolk and careened forward into Schulze, still occupied with his bandage. He jabbed his elbow into her middle and she went down gasping, like a punctured barrage balloon. Schulze pushed on through the chaos.

Behind
him the chain-dogs' whistles began to shrill. A red, steel-helmeted face loomed up in front of him. Schulze stopped momentarily and drove his knee into the officer's stomach. The man's knees gave way beneath him like those of a newborn foal. Schulze gave a great guffaw and giving him the slightest of pushes with his right hand, watched him fall on his back.

A
severe-looking woman in the grey-green uniform of the `Belief and Beauty' organization shouted something at him and swung her briefcase. Schulze ducked. The woman overbalanced and Schulze caught her instinctively, his big hands squeezing her breasts.

`Let
go,' she gasped in a high-pitched spinster's voice. 'Let go of me!'

`Gladly!'
he roared. 'But I bet it'll be the last time somebody'll feel your tits in 1944!' He pushed her to one side. `Count yourself lucky, missus.'

He
ran on, leaving her gasping and protesting in the confused mess of his wake. And then he was outside, the shrill sound of the MPs' whistles and the yells of the crowd getting ever fainter. He flung the bandage into the snow and adjusting his cap, forced himself to walk more slowly towards the front of the station, knowing that if von Dodenburg was not there, he would be sunk.

But
Major von Dodenburg was there, standing next to a pale, pretty blonde in Maiden uniform, who hardly came up to his shoulder. He hurried forward, trying to contain his hectic breathing and flung von Dodenburg a tremendous salute.

Von
Dodenburg looked at him, his face unshaven, his jacket torn and covered in something which looked like egg-yolk, his Knight's Cross hanging over his shoulder instead of round his neck.

`Heaven,
arse, and twine, Schulze,' he roared, 'where the hell have you been? You look as if someone has dragged you through a hedge - backwards!'

And
it feels like it too, Schulze told himself, but he did not tell von Dodenburg that. His eyes curiously sizing up the Maiden, he said:

`I
was in a hurry to get back, sir.'

`Back
to the front?'

Schulze
sighed and relaxed.

`Sir,
the front will be a rest cure after what has happened to me in the last forty-eight hours.'

Von
Dodenburg's grin faded.

`You
might be right there, Schulze. The front is preferable to this mess. All right, park your big rear in the car. We're off in a minute.'

He
indicated Wagner's Volkswagen jeep which he had simply driven away from Madame Kitty's without the big adjutant's permission, consumed as he had been with a burning rage at the whole miserable state of the Reich and the traitors working so industriously behind the scenes to bring about its downfall. He turned to the girl, who was shivering a little in the cold, and extended his hand formally.

`Well,
it's goodbye, Heidi,' he said softly, while Schulze's eyes swept curiously from the oddly matched pair to the exit from the station to check whether the MPs were still after him.

The
girl accepted it with the same formality.

`I
suppose it is, Mr Major,' she hesitated, opened her mouth as if to say something, then closed it again.

He
stroked her straight blonde hair, as if he were patting a small child, not the woman whom he had taken so violently and cruelly that night.

`Look
after yourself, Heidi,' he said gently, the rage gone from his voice, now that his mind was made up. 'And don't go back there again - you know what I mean - even if they do tell you that it is your duty to do so. It isn't, you know.'

She
nodded mutely. For a moment the two of them stood there in the falling snow, no sound save the soft hiss of the car tyres and somewhere far off the rattle of a tram bell.

`Shall
I see you again, Mr Major?' she asked finally, not daring to look at him.

`No,
Heidi, you won't see me again. I shall never come back here now.'

`Then
goodbye and happy landings,' she said, raising her face to show that her eyes were full of tears. 'Thank you, Mr Major.'

Major
von Dodenburg did not speak all the way to Tempelhof, driving numbly through the winter streets, crowded with pinched scared people hurrying to the shelters because a fresh air-raid warning had sounded. At the airport, he confined himself to a few tense questions to the young pilot of the 'Auntie Ju' (2) which was going to fly them, complete with recoilless rifles, back to Rome Airport.

It
was only when they were airborne and the first of the 8 mm flak started to pepper the grey December sky with black bursts that he ripped open his tunic, slumped deeper in the bucket seat opposite Schulze and uttered a great sigh of relief.

`Thank
God, that's the last of Berlin!'

`Thank
God, that's the last of Germany!' Schulze added feelingly. 'The front's simpler for dumb arseholes like me. Down there you've got to have your head screwed on the right way to know who's your friend and who's your foe.'