SS General (16 page)

"That is quite correct." The colonel looked at him, more than a little stunned. "You certainly wouldn't."

"I guess it's my duty to call in the MPs," said Porta. "They'll soon have the matter sorted out."

"You just do that," agreed the pilot with a broad grin. "I'd be interested to see their reaction."

I noticed that the colonel's agitation had perceptibly increased. He suddenly caught Porta by the shoulder, leaned forward and whispered urgently to him and the pilot. "No need to go to the Military Police, you know. No need at all. I don't want to get anyone into trouble. There is a war on, this is a time of stress . . ."

"But orders from the Fuhrer!" hissed Porta.

"Never mind the Fuhrer, what about twenty thousand Reichsmark? Twenty thousand for a seat on the plane. How about it?"

"Scram!" The pilot stretched out a hand and gave the colonel a shove. He fell back into the arms of Porta, who jerked him away, stuck out a foot and tripped him into a snowdrift.

"Go and get your head blown off!" shouted the pilot. "Then come back and try again! You might stand a better chance next time!"

At that point a couple of MPs arrived. They at once clapped heavy hands on Porta.

"All right," one of them said, "you've cooked your goose, soldier! Attacking an officer?"

The two of them slowly shook their heads, savoring the situation.

Porta glared at them. "Attacking a deserter, more like! That bastard's just offered us twenty thousand marks for a place on the plane--and not a scratch on him!"

The colonel picked himself out of the snowdrift and gestured arrogantly toward Porta. "Arrest that man! He used violence on an officer of the Reich!"

"Shove it," said Porta, imperturbable as ever. He held out his piece of paper. "Take a gander at that. He tried to tell us it was an order from the Fuhrer. We was only doing our duty."

The two men took one look at the paper and turned scarlet with rage.

"An order from the Fuhrer?" screamed one of them. "Three days out of date and you're still trying to use it? When you're not even wounded?" He turned to his companion. "Arrest this officer on a charge of attempted desertion!"

The colonel was led away, gray-faced and stumbling. I shook my head as I watched.

"I don't know that I blame him," I muttered. "Who wouldn't give it a try if they thought they stood a chance? He might have got away with it."

"He might, but he didn't."

"But at least it was a possibility," I argued. "That's more than we've got, stuck here in this hellhole." I looked solemnly at Porta. "We'll never get out alive. You know that, don't you?"

Porta shrugged his shoulders. "Live for today, kid. Screw tomorrow. We'll make it yet, if we keep our heads."

"Like hell!" I said.

The first plane was preparing to take off. A horde of wounded men were milling around it, begging, crying, screaming, some on crutches, some supported by friends, some crawling through the deep snow on hands and knees. It was like some infernal Lourdes, all the sick and the lame praying for help, but God the airplane was going off without them. They swarmed around the cockpit, flung themselves at the doors, beat with their fists on the side of the fuselage. A place on the plane meant a chance of survival; to be left behind, a wounded man on the Russian front, meant almost certain death. The MPs beat them back with the pitiless butts of their revolvers. There was nothing else they could do. All three planes were filled to overflowing with the torn and bleeding bodies of the most seriously injured. I had seen men mummified in bandages, men with mutilated stumps where their hands and feet should have been, men with no features, men with no arms or legs. There was no room for anyone who still had sufficient strength to drag himself weeping across the airfield. Radio equipment, dressings, ammunition--all had been jettisoned to make room for a few extra bodies. Any more weight and the planes would be in jeopardy.

The first one was moving ponderously forward along the runway. Porta and I stood watching, praying that it would be able to get off the ground. It gathered speed, reached the end of the path and rose heavily into the air in a cloud of snow. It skimmed low over the hangar, then flew in a wide arc and disappeared into the gray skies.

"They've got no radio," I said. "What do they do if they run into trouble?"

"Jesus," said Porta, "doesn't anything good ever happen in your dreams?"

The second plane moved along the runway. We watched it rise into the air. Just as it seemed to have taken off successfully, it suddenly bucked and reared, dropped like a stone onto its belly and exploded. It was all over within seconds.

I looked at Porta. "I'm not a pessimist," I said. "I'm just a realist."

He turned and walked away without another word. I stayed to watch the third plane just miss crashing into the barbed wire enclosure and then followed him.

He was waiting by the side of the amphicar in which we had transported the colonel. As he saw me coming, he pointed silently at an inert gray mass in the snow. I stopped to examine it. It was the lieutenant colonel who had tried to buy a place on the plane.

"My God," I said, shaken. "They got rid of him quickly."

"justice is pretty swift in this part of the world," said Porta wisely.

"So is injustice!" I retorted. I pushed the dead figure out of the way with my boot. "I wonder exactly how many men they've executed in this zone?"

"Oh, hundreds," said Porta casually. "If not thousands; a guy I was talking to the other day told me they'd done away with eight hundred and fifty in his company alone."

"He must have been exaggerating," I protested.

Porta cocked an eyebrow at me. "Sez you!"

We got in the car and drove slowly down Litvinov Street toward Red Square, where some cellars had been turned into a temporary hospital. After seeing the colonel safely onto an airplane, our orders were to collect a crate of dressings for the regiment. In the makeshift hospital there was a repellent stench of blood and excreta, vomit and dirt and rotting human flesh. Men lay in rows on the floor for lack of beds, the dying and the dead cheek by jowl. The only lights were from candle stubs. I had hardly moved two paces forward before I tripped over a corpse and fell on top of a wounded man, who shrieked in agony.

"Get the hell out of here!" roared a Feldwebel, who was lying at my feet with a bandage over one eye. "We're full up, there's no room for any more."

"What's the matter? Where are you wounded?" I picked myself up and saw a doctor staring at us hostilely from beneath his mask.

"Nowhere," I said, and I felt guilty that I was still in one piece. "We've come to pick up some dressings."

"Fourth door to the left. Watch where you put your feet."

"Yes, sir."

"And stand to attention when you talk to an officer! We're still at war, you know!" "Yes, sir."

Porta and I saluted and hurried along to the fourth door on the left. There were bodies even in the dank stone corridors, it was impossible not to tread on them as you pushed your way past. The medical orderly to whom we handed our requisition order read it through with a stony face. "Bandages?" he said at last. "Dressings?" he said. He shrugged his shoulders. "I can give you a bundle of newsprint, if you like. We don't use dressings any more." We looked at him wonderingly.

"Morphine?" He tapped a finger on our list. "You're sure you wouldn't like an entire operating theater while you're about it?"

"Not unless it says so--" began Porta dubiously. The man gave a short scream and thrust the requisition at us. "Take it and go, and don't come pestering me with any more damn fool demands! Bandages! Morphine! What do you think I am, a goddamn magician? Santa Claus? Christ almighty, you people make me sick! Go back to your regiment and remind them, with my compliments, that we're at Stalingrad. Nobody sends us any dressings or bandages any more. Nobody sends us anything any more. We're on our own from now on."

"But look here--" said Porta.

"Look my ass! Can't you get it into your great thick skull that as an army we don't exist any more? It's no damn good coming whining to me for help; I can't give you what I haven't got, can I?"

We knew he was speaking the truth. We had seen those effigies of men lying on the ground, we had smelled the blood and the foulness. We knew there was nothing he could do for us.

We left the hospital and drove empty-handed away from the town. About half a mile out we were stopped by an idiot wearing a white fur coat and waving a rifle. We pulled up and a lieutenant demanded to see our papers.

"We're on our way back to our regiment," said Porta. "Just taken our colonel to Gumrak."

"OK." He handed back the papers. "Sorry, but we need you here for the moment. Hide your car under those trees over there and grab yourself some grenades."

We were scarcely in a position to argue. We did as he said and tagged onto the end of a section commanded by a Feldwebel.

I turned to a lance corporal by my side. "What's going on here?" I demanded.

"Court-martial commando," he grimaced. "Take a look at that pit behind you."

I did so; it was full of bodies. I remembered what Porta had said about the eight hundred and fifty executions in one company alone, and I began to wonder if it had been an exaggeration after all.

"Grisly business," said the lance corporal disparagingly. "And that's only one morning's work. It's no picnic."

"I believe you," I muttered.

Minutes later an infantry battalion arrived, full-steam ahead, magnificently equipped and very sure of themselves. The maniac with the rifle and the white fur coat stepped into the middle of the road and waved them down, and again the lieutenant moved forward to ask his standard question. "Where are you going?"

"We've got orders to reassemble farther on along the Don."

A major stuck his head out of one of the leading cars and spoke impatiently. The lieutenant shook his head. "Sorry. All orders canceled. No one to move out of the area. You'll have to stay here with us for the time being."

"We'll do no such thing!" barked the major. "How do I know the orders are canceled? No one told me about it."

"I'm telling you now." The lieutenant took out his revolver and leveled it at the major. "You either do as I say or I have you shot as a deserter. The choice is yours."

The major bit his lip. He climbed slowly from his car, and the lieutenant beckoned to one of his men. "Helmer, show the major where to go."

"Yes, sir."

"Look, I don't know what all this is about," began the major, "but I can . . ."

"It's about desertion." The lieutenant stared at him coldly. "I've already told you, the choice is yours. If you want to stay and argue, by all means do so. If not, I advise you to get out of the road before the Russians come through in their T-34s."

For six hours Porta and I stayed at our posts. During that time there was a steady flow of would-be deserters, all of them held up by the fur-coated gentleman, interrogated by the lieutenant and either persuaded to stay or sent to the firing squad. Rank was no protection and neither were papers nor orders. There was to be no taking the easy road out of the horrors of Stalingrad.

At the end of six hours we were relieved of our duties and allowed to proceed on our way--not through any special favors, but simply because it was discovered that we were carrying orders marked with the stamp of the High Command, and even the fanatical lieutenant had come to the conclusion that they must be genuine.

Porta, uncaring as ever, whistled inappropriate songs as the amphicar bounced along the road to Kuperossnoye. I sat by his side trying to sleep but so cold that I kept shivering and waking myself up. It was pouring with snow, and on two occasions the vehicle came to a full stop and we had to dig ourselves out. On either side of the road the drifts were piled higher than the telegraph poles.

When we were still some way off from Kuperossnoye, we overtook a cavalry column. The horses were slipping and dancing on the ice, and Porta and I looked at them in astonishment.

"Where the hell did they come from?" demanded Porta. "Walking steaks! What I wouldn't give for a nice bit of horse's ass!"

It did seem rather incredible that some men were starving, while others rode around on food supplies. The horses skidded and whinnied, their breath billowing out into the cold air. We heard the creaking of saddles and the tinkling of bits, and we smelled the hot horsy smell of hay and damp leather.

We moved on past the cavalry and drew level with the artillery, coming toward us with the cannons of their field guns pointing skyward into the falling snow. After the artillery it was the engineers, with their bulldozers and mechanical shovels.

Porta and I exchanged puzzled glances.

"Reinforcements?" I said. "All that lovely new equipment?"

"Don't seem possible," said Porta.

There was a silence.

"Rumanians?" I said.

"Could be."

"Well, what else?"

Porta simply shrugged.

For two hours we drove past the oncoming columns. There must have been at least one division, if not more. We waved amiably to them, and sometimes they waved back. Quite suddenly Porta pulled the amphicar to a screaming halt.

"What the hell are you doing?" I cried, clutching at the dashboard with both hands.

In the middle of the road, directly ahead of us, stood an officer. He was holding up a placard on which was written the one word: STOP. Porta wrenched the wheel round and we went spinning off into some woods at the side of the road.

"What the hell ..." I began.

"Russians!" he yelled.

And now I heard them howling behind us.

"Stoi! Stoi!"

Shots cracked all around us as Porta took the amphicar bouncing in a crazy slalom through the pine trees. A couple of miles farther on, he pulled up and turned to the back seat.

"Here!" He tossed a Russian helmet at me, a furry object with a red star on the front. "Put this on your head and hope for the best. Good thing I spotted that bastard was a Russian, eh?"

I crammed the helmet on and gestured frenziedly at Porta. "Let's get out of here, for God's sake!"