March Battalion (28 page)

The shots rapped out, one after another, in quick and accurate succession. The frogs stopped croaking and leaped silently away into the heart of the marshlands. One of the German prisoners suddenly stood up and began waving his arms in the air.

'Tovaritch! Tovaritch! I am your friend - do not shootl'

Little John stared down at him in amazement.

'Look at that turd down there--'

'What an exhibition!' Barcelona spat disgustedly. 'Look at 'em, cuddling up together like a flock of bleeding sheep... It's a wonder Ivan didn't shoot 'em outright. I would, in his place. What'd they want with a bunch like that in Moscow?'

'What'll we do with'em?'

'Dunno... Take 'em back with us, I suppose.'

Barcelona raised himself on one knee and waved down to the German prisoners. Slowly and apprehensively they began climbing down from the tank and making their way up towards the thicket, follow-my-leader along a narrow path of twigs and brushwood that had been laid across the marshes. They found themselves met by a couple of common soldiers, both filthy dirty and unpleasant to look upon.

'What the devil--' began the Colonel, as Barcelona unceremoniously seized him by the arm and dragged him under cover.

'Not so loud!' hissed Barcelona, rather irritably. 'We're at war, in case you didn't know it. You want your head shot off?'

The Colonel drew himself up straight.

'I must advise you--'

'Put a sock in it!' snarled Little John, placing a vast grimy paw over the Colonel's mouth.

At that moment a salvo of shots was fired from somewhere behind them.

What's that?' demanded Major Blank, slipping into the marshy ground in his sudden haste to reach cover. 'Who's firing on us?'

'Who do you think?' said Barcelona, watching with a sneer as the immaculate Major paddled on to dry land with mud right up to his crutch.

'The Russians? Where are they?'

Barcelona jerked his head indifferently.

'Somewhere over there ... I suggest we get going while there's still time. Just follow me and keep your mouths buttoned up.'

'May I ask'

'No.' Little John prodded the Colonel in the behind with the butt of his M.G. 'Get going and keep your mouth buttoned up like he said. First man who talks gets a round of this straight through his belly.'

They carried on, through the thicket, across another area of marshland, into the shelter of a thickly wooded hillside. Barcelona called a halt and conferred with Little John.

'What d'you reckon? Do we press right on or lie up here until it gets dark?'

Little John scowled.

'We didn't have all this trouble on the way out. Ivan left us pretty well alone then. It's only because we've carted this load of shit along with us--'

'We'll lie up for a bit.'

'Suits me.'

Little John threw his M.G. to the ground and himself after it. Barcelona waved a hand towards his small band of followers, who were huddled together in the middle of a clearing.

'O.K., you lot, you can take it easy. We're going to rest up here for a while.'

The Colonel scraped his throat. He made another effort to assert his authority.

'I consider it would be better policy to push ahead without any delay.'

'Certainly. Why not?'

Barcelona dropped down beside Little John, pulled out a battered tin of tobacco and began rolling a couple of cigarettes.

'I'm not stopping you. Go right ahead.'

Major Blank drew in a sharp breath. He waited for the Colonel to say something, to do something. The two common soldiers, seated side by side on the damp ground at the foot of a tree, stared insolently up, their eyes gleaming out of unshaven faces encrusted with the dirt of several days. A new salvo of shots made the ground shake beneath their feet. The Colonel flung himself down on to the wet earth and covered his head.

'No need to carry on like that,' said Barcelona, kindly. 'You'll get used to it. They don't mean any harm, they're just letting us know that they're here.'

'Well, I don't like it!' snapped Major Blank, helping the Colonel to his feet. 'I grant you,' he said, as a face saver, 'that you are more aware of local conditions than I am, but it seems to me pure folly to hang about here in range of their guns--'

'Look,' said Barcelona, with the air of one trying to speak reasonably to a retarded child, 'if you want to get yourself killed, you just go walking off for another ten metres or so and you'll find it dead easy. Dead being the operative word... There's a ridge of high ground over that way. It's littered with the bodies of men who thought they could go over the top in daylight and get away with it. The only chance of getting back to the whorehouse in one piece is to wait a couple of hours until it's dusk.'

The Major opened his mouth, then closed it again. It was the Colonel who finally asked the question.

'Back to the - back to where, did you say?'

'The whorehouse.'

'You mean - your base?'

'That's right'

'Why do you - why is it--'

The Colonel waved a hand, and Little John came kindly to his rescue.

'It's your actual pukka brothel,' he informed the outraged officer. 'Tarts and all. We're just as anxious to get there as you are, but the way I see it there's no point in risking your neck. Not even for a whore. We're safe in here. Out there--' He jerked a thumb behind him - 'the fighting's still going on. Get your head blown off in a couple of shakes. Just not worth it.'

Barcelona handed him a cigarette. The two common soldiers leaned back against their tree trunk in a cloud of evil-smelling smoke. The Colonel shuddered and withdrew some distance.

'Filthy swine,' he muttered.

For about half an hour there was comparative peace in the little wood. And then, somewhere to the south-west, the conductor raised his baton and the full orchestra came crashing in with the opening bars of war. The little wood trembled and shook as the sounds reverberated through the hills and lifted high across the marshes. And this time Little John and Barcelona were the first to fling themselves headlong to the ground. This was no ordinary skirmish. It sounded as if the entire front were exploding. The immaculate Major grovelled in the mud, digging and shovelling with his hands as if trying to tunnel his way in to safety. The Colonel was lifted bodily in to the air by the first blast. He came to rest on top of Little John, and he lay clutching him for the remainder of the bombardment, not noticing the undeniable stench of unwashed feet and armpits that clung to Little John like a second skin. Little John, on the other hand, twitched his nostrils at the faint perfume that came from the Colonel's well-groomed head of white hair. He raised his head, about to remark on the smell, but his eyes met the Colonel's, and they were the faded blue eyes of an old man, an old man terrified half out of his wits, and for once in his life Little John found the strength to remain silent.

The hills and marshes were blazing infernos for miles around. Men, horses, vehicles, heavy guns spouted like geysers high into air, propelled by the force of the explosions. An entire infantry battalion was wiped out in less than ten minutes. An ammunition dump went upwards in a roaring mass of flames and smoke. The sky was bright red with a thousand fires and filled with a whirling mass of shrapnel.

They saw none of this in the wood. They lay flat on their stomachs with their faces pressed hard into the ground, covered in mud from head to foot. Barcelona was the first to rise.

'So much for bloody Goebbels and his tales about Ivan being out of the bloody war,' he remarked, sourly.

Little John pushed the Colonel away from him, sat up and spat out a mouthful of mud and leaves. He looked about him at the members of the court martial still on all fours. Two of them were dead. The other three lay trembling.

'Good dogs!' he shouted, encouragingly. 'Seek him out, seek him out!'

Major Blank raised a cautious head.

'Come on, you bleeding heroes!' roared Barcelona, prodding the nearest body. 'The war's still on!'

The Major rose with tattered dignity to his feet. He removed a wet leaf from the end of his nose, smoothed the lapels of his sodden uniform. He fixed Barcelona with an icy eye.

'As soon as we reach your unit I shall speak to your C.O. about you.'

Barcelona hunched a careless shoulder.

'If you think he'll really be interested.'

'I shall make sure that he's interested.' The Major shot out a quivering finger and pointed it dramatically at Barcelona and Little John. 'I'm having you both put on a charge the minute we get back! I'll have you court martialled, I'll have you up before the firing squad!'

'Just as you like,' said Barcelona, smoothly.

Major Blank turned apoplectic purple. He reached for his

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danger. Dusk had come and gone by the time they arrived back at base, and the sky was pitch black apart from one persistent rosy glow away to the south-west. With the help of vodka and hot sausages they made their report. Alte listened gravely to their story.

'There's no doubt about it,' he said, when they came to an end, 'we're surrounded ... Cut off. Julius and Sven report heavy troop movement behind us, you report Russian tanks and infantry in front of us.' He turned to Porta. 'How about the beach? Any signs of life down there?'

'Plenty. The place is lousy with snipers.'

'Mm.'

Alte drew deeply on his pipe. He placed the thumb and index finger of his left hand high on the bridge of his nose and gently kneaded the skin up and down.

'Now how the hell are we going to get out of this mess?'

'Get out?' screamed one of the girls, who was dressed up in bright green pants and bra and playing at dice with a Rumanian corporal. 'Why do you want to get out? Are the Russians coming?'

The Old Man ignored her. He spread out a map and beckoned to the Legionnaire to join him.

'What do you reckon?'

The Legionnaire pored over the map for a while, and after much studying and much frowning he stabbed a finger on to it and traced the path of a long green line that wavered across the page.

'Here. We might just be able to get through that way.'

'Marshland,' commented Alte.

'It's all bloody marshland round here.'

'Marshland and dense forest... Sixty kilometres of it.'

'It's either that or stay here and be shot. I can't see any other way out.'

'True enough.'

'Hey!' shouted Little John, suddenly surfacing from his bottle of vodka. 'Let's have a tune ... Where's the pianist gone?'

'Yeah, fetch the pianist!' agreed Barcelona, waving a half eaten sausage in the air. 'Why don't we have some music?'

'Because the pianist is bleeding dead, that's why not,' said Heide, in his usual pleasant way.

'Dead? How?'

'Shot himself through the head, didn't he?'

Little John leaped to his feet.

'Where's the body?'

'Sit down and save yourself the bother,' said Porta, pushing Little John back again. 'I've already been there.'

He held up one gleaming gold tooth. Little John made a jealous dive for it, but at that moment Alte came to a decision.

'Get ready to leave immediately. Ivan could arrive at any second. I'd just as soon take my chance out in the open as be butchered indoors... Heide, have a scout round and see if you can pick up enough revolvers to give the girls one each.'

'Right-oh.'

The girl in the green pants turned round and screamed again. 'Revolvers? I couldn't! I don't know how to use them!'

'You'll soon learn,' said Alte, dryly.

We were out of the house within fifteen minutes and making for the marshes, with Little John and Porta at the head of the column. We moved at a pretty good speed and were under cover of the trees before we heard the first sounds of a bombardment.

'That's Ivan,' said Porta. 'Looks like we just got out in time.'

'Let's not stop to gloat,' suggested Alte. 'Just keep going.'

We moved in single file through the trees. We must have been a curious sight. There was Little John at the head - well, Little John was a curiosity in himself - followed by two of the girls wearing an odd mixture of female civilian and male military garments and holding revolvers at a decidedly awkward angle, followed by Porta, followed by four Rumanians, whose khaki uniforms could easily have been taken for Russian, followed by a gaggle of girls followed by the rest of us. At one point we had to cross a bridge guarded by three Russians. We dealt with them easily: I think they were too stunned by the sight of us to fire immediately, and by then it was too late, we were upon them. Three of the girls at once appropriated the Russian greatcoats and peacocked over the bridge in them.

'Bleeding women,' muttered the Legionnaire. 'If we get caught with them dressed up like that we'll be shot as spies before you can so much as blink.' 'Probably be shot anyway,' I said, morosely.

When the Russian tanks entered the little Rumanian village that we had so hastily vacated, the first sight to meet their eyes was the body of Olga hanging from the flagstaff, with the large notice containing the one word, TRAITOR, slung round her neck. For almost twenty minutes the Russians directed their shells at the deserted villa, and then came to the conclusion that perhaps there was no one at home. There was a long discussion on the possible identity of the hanged woman, and the conclusion was reached that she must have been a partisan, a heroine, killed by a band of fascist pigs. Her body - or what was left of it after the intensive shelling of the villa - was first of all photographed hanging from the flagstaff then cut down and buried with full military honours.

Her grave may be seen today. On the headstone are the words:

'Here lies Olga Geiss. She fell in the cause of liberty.'

It must have been round about the same time as the funeral was taking place that Porta and Little John, crouching side by side on the ground to fulfil the requirements of nature, had a rather basic discussion on life and death and things in general.

'Hitler,' remarked Little John, regarding a photograph on the page he was busy ripping from a newspaper.