Monte Cassino (7 page)

He spent nine months in Fulsbuttel under Marabu, the most hated of all high-booted SS-Obersturmbannfuhrers. Intuitively, Braun realised that if he was to get out alive, he must kneel before the twisted Nazi cross and swear loyalty. His old soldier's flair told him who was the stool pigeon in the cell. Very carefully he began telling them about the US Marines and Shuffield Barracks, describing prisoners' work in the quarries, the inhuman marches under a blazing sun, and also let fall a phrase or two about the new semi-automatic MI carbine. He also let it be thought that he was familiar with Pedersen's Garand rifle.

The Marabu became interested. For two hours Mike stood at attention, as only a marine could. The Marabu nodded approval and subjected him to various tests. In the first, he disarmed three tough SS men with just his hands.

The Marabu was amazed. He had been standing behind a curtained window on the first floor, watching. Then Mike had to walk the two-mile long outdoor track after starving for six days. They put him in an ice cellar, and he was all but dead when they released him. Then they tied him to a radiator and chucked a bucket of water over him every quarter of an hour. He began longing for the garrison prison at Shuffield, where Scar-face, the worst of all evil staff sergeants, held sway.

The Marabu spat on Mike, but at the back of Mike's brain he could hear the familiar trumpet call from Shuffield. Marabu had made the mistake of giving an old sweat treatment devised for political fanatics. Mike stood at attention and saw the Marabu through a veil of mist. The Marabu struck him in the face four times with his hippo-whip.

Seventy-three days later Mike was transferred to a labour camp near Eisenach. By devious ways he managed to acquire connections in the Party. He became friends with a gauleiter and the two of them discovered a flair for deals, especially shady ones. So in record time, Mike became company commander in an Allgemeine SS Company. One day a good friend whispered in his ear that a police investigation was in the offing. Somewhere in the higher echelons someone had begun wondering why so many rationed goods were disappearing without trace in Eisenach. Mike realised that the time had come for a change of scene and he let fall a few pompous remarks to the effect that he felt it his duty to serve with the army, if the army would have him. His regional commander SS Gruppenfuhrer Nichols, swallowed the bait and so, one cold rainy day in April, he reported to the 121st Frontier Infantry at Tibor Camp. However, the Commander of No. 2 Company there, Hauptmann Tilger, could not stand this peculiar semi-German, so he was sent to Tapiau on the Polish frontier, just about as far away as they could get him. He spent six months there in the 31st Machine-gun Battalion, where he attracted a certain amount of attention by his skill in shooting. He got the army championship for his battalion. When his commander asked him what his rank had been in the US Marines the former corporal impudently replied:

"First lieutenant, Herr Major."

A report was sent to Berlin about Michael Braun and eight days later he was a feldwebel with a reserve officer cadet's braid on his shoulder straps. Three months later he was Fahnenjunker and at the end of a year Oberfahnrich. By chance he discovered that they were thinking of sending him to the Military Academy at Potsdam. There it would not have taken more than an hour or two to show him up for the gigantic liar he was, so he contacted his connections in the Party and went on his travels again.

For a time he was with the 2nd Engineer Battalion at Stettin, where he learned with much swearing and sweating to make pontoon bridges. So, each time there was any talk of the Military Academy he managed to get himself transferred. There were few German garrisons that had not had the honour of his company by the time war broke out in 1939. He ended the Polish campaign at Lemberg as leutnant in command of a company. There he was a welcome guest on the other side of the demarcation line, where he drank many a good glass of vodka with the Russian officers.

He fell out with his CO. who insisted that the time had come for Michael Braun to attend the Military Academy and as a result he left the 79th with this eloquent description in his soldier's book: "Undisciplined, insubordinate, quarrelsome. Unfitted for independent command."

Obviously, such an entry did not make for an easy start in his new units. For six months he went about Germany commanding the transport company of a Service Unit, and one fine day he and his laden lorries drove into Eisenach, where half the loads disappeared into the roomy warehouses of his friend, the gauleiter.

That was the end of Leutnant Michael Braun's service with the transport company. He became a hauptmann in record time and was promoted major five months later, all thanks to the gauleiter. The astounding thing was that Major Michael Braun had never been within a hundred miles of an officer training school. He was always given the dirty jobs and the insoluble tasks, and somehow or other, he managed to accomplish them, while others got the credit. His last commander added yet another uncomplimentary opinion to those already recorded in his soldier's book, and he was sent to a Special Duties regiment, all because when drunk, he had flung a mug of beer at Hitler's portrait and said 'Prosit!'

But now, he no longer had a gauleiter friend to help him, for the latter was then breaking stones for a new autobahn and the mere fact of having known him was dangerous. Mike hastened to forget him.

That was how Major Michael Braun found himself standing in front of our company introducing himself to the newcomers. He could swear for an hour and a half at a stretch and never repeat himself.

"Well, you arseholes," he bellowed, "I'm your commander. I will not stand for any form of funny stuff. If any of you should get the crazy idea that he would like to bump me off from behind, let him write his will and testament before he tries. I have eyes in the back of my head." He pointed to Tiny and said: "Creutzfeldt, who's the toughest company commander you have ever had?"

"You, Mike."

The major grinned broadly. Then he pointed to the Legionnaire. "On the right wing there you see NCO Kalb. Listen to him and you have a chance to save your lives. He has been with the Moroccans and knows every dirty trick there is. That long lout with the yellow necksquare on the left of No. 1 platoon has been one of the field-marshal's paratroopers, but he was too good with his knife and they kicked him out. You can learn close combat from him. From NCO Julius Heide there you can learn order and discipline; from Feldwebel Willie Beier, the Old Man, learn knowledge of people and humanity, though you won't have much use for the latter. Obergefreiter Porta can teach you to steal, and, if you are in need of spiritual comfort, go to our padre, Father Emanuel. Don't make a mistake with him. He can knock a bull unconscious with his left fist." He drew his heavy P. 38 from its yellow holster. "As you no doubt have noticed, I have a service pistol and not one of those arse-ticklers most pansy boys trick themselves out with, and the dirty swine who shows the least sign of cowardice when the skull-crackers appear will have a bullet from it sent through his dome by me. Don't think you have come here to get an Iron Cross. With the SS you have to be recommended twice before you get one, here it is six times. You are the scum of humanity, but you are going to be the world's best soldiers." He drew a deep breath and restored his pistol to its yellow holster. "Take lessons from the men I've just recommended." Then he turned to Hauptfeldwebel Hoffman. "Two hours special drill in the river. Anyone who kills a comrade gets three weeks leave. Every tenth cartridge and every twentieth grenade will be live. I want to see at least one broken arm. Otherwise, four hours extra drill."

Then began one of Mike's usual exercises. We hated him because of them, but they made us hard and inhuman. If you are to be a good soldier, you have to be able to hate. You have to be able to kill a man as you would a louse. We had had many CO's, but the German-American Major Michael Braun, who had never been to an officers' school, taught us all this in a way none of the others had been able to do. He would jeer and spit at you at eleven o'clock, hound you into death at twelve and drink whisky and dice with you at one.

He made super soldiers out of gutter snipes. He introduced goose-stepping in a bog, where we were up to our eyes in squelch, headed by a band: ten trumpets, ten flutes and ten drums. He had even got permission for our minstrels to have bearskins round their helmets.

Quite a number of cartridges had been filed, in readiness for the back of his head, but even so Porta and the Legionnaire had twice humped him back from No-man's land, and he never even said thank you. When there was anything particularly tough to be done: rolling-up the enemy line, blowing up a special objective, covering a withdrawal, mine-clearing, swimming a river under water with the engineers, capturing an enemy general, Mike nearly always took part, dressed as a private. Once he brought three wounded back, and the next morning he went back for a fourth who was lying out on the wire.

Another time our own artillery was firing short and Mike crawled out to the forward observation post, arrested the observer for dereliction of duty, and for the next two hours directed the guns' fire so that we were able to take the enemy positions almost without a casualty. On another occasion he waited ten minutes beyond the time laid down by the Staff for an attack, with the result that it was successful beyond all expectations, but only thanks to Major Mike.

He could make us stand up to our necks in icy water at night doing rifle drill, but he always saw that we had dry straw to come back to, when we came out of the line. And, woe betide the cook who did not bring his grub right up to the line, even if a barrage was being laid down two miles behind the front. Old sweats appreciate that sort of thing.

Mike was a swine, but a decent swine. He never did anything out of spite or malice; what he did was always necessary--and he never spared himself. Mike was the only major I have ever known who didn't have a batman. He could clean a pair of iron-hard boots and make them as soft as butter in record time. He knew how to clear a trench with a bunch of hand grenades; he knew how to fire the short bursts that gave a flamethrower the greatest effect. When Mike headed an attack, we knew that we were half safe. Mike, like the rest of us, was a guttersnipe who had landed in the army for want of anything better, in a regiment without battle honours. His greatest pleasure was at roll call to single one of us out and ask:

"Who are the world's best soldiers?"

We knew the answer he wanted: "The United States Marines," but it amused us to give him a different one. The Legionnaire, of course, replied:

"La Legion Etrangere."

To which Mike's comment was always: "Scum from Europe's sewers," which always made the Legionnaire go white in the face with rage.

If 'Barcelona' Blom was asked, he replied:

"Ingeniero del ejercito espanol,
the bravest of the brave."

At which Mike laughed scornfully and said: "I've heard that you dream about a bunch of orange trees. How actually did you get into the civil war?"

"I was one of the crew of one of those big barges, on which the rich men's tarts sprawl under an awning and try to forget their impotent keepers."

"Did you get a go with them, Feldwebel?"

"Now and again, Herr Major. I was in Barcelona the day the General popped up in the south. At first people laughed at him and thought it all a joke, but that time it was in earnest."

The Major nodded understandingly.

"But how did you get into the Spanish army, Feldwebel?"

"I was in Barcelona with one of the big pots and before I knew what was happening, I was clinging on to a lorry with a lot of others. They sent us to Madrid, after we had learned by heart a lot about Marx and Engels, but I never found that much help in the trenches. So, one day, a chum and I raised our lids to them. That was during the fighting in the university quarter."

"Were you at the Ebro, Feldwebel? You should have had just one battalion of our marines. They would have got things going."

Barcelona could not be bothered to protest. You could not explain to that sort of fanatic how gruesome the civil war was.

"What was the cost of the Spanish civil war?" Major Mike asked.

"A million dead, Herr Major."

Major Mike asked no more questions. A million dead is a lot, even for a big country. He stood in front of the squadron, legs wide apart.

"None of your regiments is a match for the United States Marines," he boasted. Proudly, he banged his fist on his muscular chest. "I, your commander, am proud of having served in the US Marines."

When we were back working on our tanks the Old Man snorted angrily: "Mike is a dangerous chap."

We seated ourselves comfortably. Porta had a surprise for us. A butter-keg full of brown beans. We pulled our folding spoons and forks from the legs of our boots. The keg was placed in such a position that we could all reach it from where we sat. The beans were cold, but that did not matter much.

Barcelona produced a cigarette and broke it in three. The pieces went the round.

Porta dealt.

"Is there anything nicer," said the Old Man with a smile, "than sitting up on a hill on a good bog with a barrel of beans in front of you and a good game of cards, knowing you're more or less safe from shells?"

We agreed that there wasn't. If we could go on sitting there in our private bog, the war could last a hundred years as far as we were concerned. Most of us were not yet twenty-five. We had long since forgotten what civilian life was like. Our greatest luxury was a decent latrine on some mound under the open sky.

Two squadrons of tanks were standing in readiness in Via di Porta Labicana.

From out of the darkness came hoarse cries:
"Sbrigatevi, per Bacco!"
and terrified people leaped out from the covered wagons. The place swarmed with SD-men and their fascist henchmen; fierce dogs barked; children cried; a little girl dropped her doll; an old woman stumbled; hob-nailed boots dealt kicks right and left; heavy doors were pushed shut and fastened with chains; a locomotive let off steam.