The Bloody Road to Death (40 page)

We stand in the trench ready to crawl over into no-man’s-land. The Russian captain is inspecting our equipment together with the intelligence officer. He points to the big French water-bottle Porta has at his belt.

‘Get rid of that! That’s madness!’

‘I’ll die of thirst,’ protests Porta, angrily. Those tiny Russian things don’t hold enough to keep a sparrow alive!’

Despite his grumbling the French waterbottle is exchanged for a regulation Russian one.

Our artillery hammers at the Russian lines, to keep them occupied. Engineers pilot us through the minefields. Like lightning we are down into the enemy trenches and finish off the few sentries, who are taking cover under the forward trench wall, in no time.

Porta has trouble holding Rasputin in check. The bear can smell Russians and
Machorka
, and cannot understand why we are not killing them as usual.

The artillery fire follows our advance. It drops in front of us, sweeping a path clear which we can follow.

The first fifteen miles are taken at a blazing speed. The collapsible boat is heavy and unwieldy, and we change bearers continually.

The Old Man gives us only short rests. We must get over the Sna before daylight.

My lungs pump and heave. I feel the stab of my old wound. The only one of us who seems untouched by the pace is the bear. It has time to play games, climb trees and fall out of them, roll itself into a ball and bite its own tail.

We cross the Sna quickly and enter the woods east of
Lutszczak. Suddenly Rasputin stops and stands sniffing the air. He growls and moves carefully forward.

‘Heathen about! Close!’ warns Porta, in a whisper.

Cautiously we follow the bear, but still without seeing or hearing a sign of the enemy.

With a grunt Rasputin disappears into the woods as if the devil were after him.

Something dark can just be seen between the fir-trees.

‘A wolf or a dog,’ thinks Porta.

‘Bloody foolishness!’ scolds the Old Man. ‘We haven’t time to waste while that bloody bear goes chasing dogs! Aren’t you ever going to grow out of keeping pets, you childish sod? Cats, dogs, pigs, and now a bear! What’ll it be next? A sodding elephant, I wouldn’t wonder!’

‘They used to go to war on elephants in the old days, so you oughtn’t to moan about one of them,’ laughs Porta. ‘The ones with the most and biggest elephants were the ones who won!’

‘What the ’ell did they
do
with them bleeders?’ asks Tiny, surprised. ‘
Eat
’em?’

‘They were a kind of tank,’ explains Heide, and goes into a long, muddled description of the uses of war elephants.

‘Must’ve been somethin’ lovely to ’ear a ’erd o’ them bleeders come gallopin’,’ considers Tiny. ‘Where’d you learn all that, anyway?’

‘Read it,’ answers Heide, importantly.

‘In the
Vôlkischer Beobachter
⁷
, I suppose?’ sniggers Tiny. ‘If it was there forget it, then. You can’t believe a bleedin’ word of it.’

There is a sound of cries and growls from amongst the trees. Branches snap loudly.

‘What the devil’s that?’ says the Old Man, startled.

Rasputin has killed a Russian sergeant of signals. He is bloody meat when we break through the brush.

‘The question now,’ says the Old Man, thoughtfully, ’is whether this signaller met our bear by accident or whether he’s been keeping an eye on us all the time and signalling our whereabouts.’

Impossible,’ answers Porta. ‘If he’d been near us Rasputin would have warned us. The smell of a heathen within a mile of him turns his stomach over.’

‘Well, we’ll find out soon enough, I reckon,’ says the Old Man, pessimistically, lighting his silver-lidded pipe.

We reach the Slutsch late in the afternoon, but wait to make the crossing until midnight. We hide the rubber boat on the opposite side and go into hiding in the brush, which is very thick here. We roll ourselves up in our groundsheets and fall quickly into unconsciousness.

Immediately after dawn we continue moving in single file. We make a wide circle around Nowojeinia and come out on a wide plain where the grass is as tall as a man. A company of Russian infantry passes us a short way off. They wave to us and we wave happily back. A mounted officer examines us through his binoculars.

Rasputin lets out a warning growl.

‘For God’s sake keep a tight hold on that sodding bear!’ says the Old Man, nervously.

We turn into the forest again. Just past the top of a hill the bear goes down flat on its belly, its incisors showing, gleaming whitely.

‘What the hell’s wrong with that big shit?’ whispers Gregor, in alarm.

I pull a hand-grenade from my boot and arm it.

‘Watch it with that banger, then,’ warns Barcelona.

Rasputin creeps slowly forward with Porta just behind him, but suddenly he refuses to continue. Growling softly, he stares up into the leafy canopy of a great tree.

‘Bloody neighbours,’ whispers Porta.

Three Russians are sitting up in the tree-top with a heavy machine-gun. A first-class position has been built up there and beautifully camouflaged. Thanks to the bear we have seen them first.

‘Get them down out of there,’ whispers the Old Man to Porta, ‘but without noise.’

Porta rises and walks jauntily forward down the narrow path. Tiny holds on to the bear which protests, growling, against Porta leaving it.

‘Hi,
tovarítsch
,’ yells Porta, pushing the green cap to the back of his head in NKVD lower-rank fashion.

‘Who are you?’ comes a screaming voice from the tree. ‘Give the password!’

‘
Job tvojemadj!
’ shouts Porta back, pointing his
kalashnikov
playfully up to them. ‘Up you’s the password, you yellow monkey, you! Know what this is?’ He pats the green hat on the back of his head.

A broad Mongolian face comes into view from the thick foliage. ‘Up you, too, Moscow peasant,’ screams the Mongol. ‘Go home and learn good Chita Russian, so proper Russians can understand what you say!’

‘Come down here, you woodpecker,’ shouts Porta, his voice echoing through the woods. ‘I’ll pull your liver up through your tonsils, I will!’

‘What do you want?’ shouts a sergeant, showing his face alongside the Mongol’s.

‘Come down!’ answers Porta, with an air of authority. ‘I have an important message for you!’

‘Can’t you do it from down there?’ asks the sergeant, arrogantly.

‘
I disodar
,’ roars Porta, harshly, in the tone people use when they feel they have authority behind them. ‘
Dawai, dawcd!
The Sampolit wants to tell you something.’

‘What’s he want to talk to me about?’

‘How the hell do I know,
djadja
⁸
?
All he said to me was: “Corporal Joseph, get your arse out of here and tell those three
duraks
⁹
up in the tree I want them.” I think you’re going to be given special treatment.’ Porta laughs noisily. ‘Have you begun to believe in God?’

‘Are you alone?’ comes doubtfully from the tree.

‘
Djadja, djadja
, did you knock your head crawling up in that tree? Can you see anybody besides me? Now I can stay no longer talking to fools. I will go back to the
Sampolit
and tell him you refuse to obey his orders.
Dassvadanj
¹⁰
, little
duraks
!’

‘Take it easy, comrade,’ shouts the sergeant, nervously,
beginning to climb down the tree, closely followed by the two others.

The sergeant’s feet have no sooner touched the ground than the bear has him and kills him with one bite. Frightened, the Mongol loses his grip and falls out of the tree. The third soldier manages to draw his
Tokarew
pistol but the Legionnaire is faster with two well-aimed shots from his Mpi.

The Mongol has broken his back and blood trickles from the corners of his mouth. He is not much longer for this world.

‘We are going to visit a Herr Oltyn,’ explains Porta, with wide swings of his arms. ‘We have an invitation for him. Can you tell us the quickest way?’

The Mongol spits blood.

‘Do you mean the
Vajenkom?
’ he asks weakly.

‘Clever lad. Ten out of ten,’ smiles Porta. ‘That’s the very
gaspodin
we’re looking for!’

‘When you enter Olszany, it is the third house from the end of the broad street. A red house with blue windows.’ The Mongol coughs, and a stream of blood jets from his mouth.

‘
Germanski?
’ asks, weakly.

‘You must be clairvoyant,’ laughs Porta. The Mongol’s body jerks convulsively and he dies.

‘It must be a bleedin’ surprise to a bloke to get eaten by a bear in the middle of a war,’ says Tiny, stirring the bodies with the muzzle of his Mpi.

‘Lots of funny things happen in wartime,’ proclaims Porta, solemnly. ‘you go along enjoying life to the full and suddenly there you are, gone!’

‘I don’t like the sound of that commissar in the red house,’ says the Old Man reflectively.

‘Why not?’ asks Porta. ‘If a Soviet commissar isn’t to be found in a red house, who the hell
can
be?’

‘That’s not what I mean, you fool,’ growls the Old Man, irritably. ‘That captain said he lived in a white château and now we’re told he’s dossing down in a red house. If you’ve got a château available it’s unlikely you’ll move into a house, however red it is.’

‘You don’t understand politics!’ shouts Porta, knocking the dust out of his NKVD cap. ‘A communist commissar with any
respect for himself can’t go farting about in a white bloody chìteau when there’s a nice red proletarian hut close by just waiting to be taken over.’

At a narrow bridge two sentries stand leaning over a half-rotten, wooden fence. They take turns spitting into the water out of sheer boredom. They have been so careless as to leave their weapons leaning against a post. They cannot dream of anything unpleasant happening here. Everything breathes quiet and peace. The frogs are the only things making a noise.

‘Sacha, I’ve made up my mind to rape Tanja tonight,’ says one of them. ‘I’ll tell you what it was like tomorrow.’

‘It’ll cost you your life,’ murmurs the other. He gets no further. His throat has been cut. His comrade suffers the same fate. Neither of them saw or heard Barcelona and the Legionnaire behind them.

‘Come death, come . . .’ hums the Legionnaire, sadly, through his nose. ‘This is what happens to part-time soldiers who do not realize that every minute of a soldier’s life is dangerous.’

‘They got a good quick death,’ considers Barcelona, ‘They never had time to get frightened, even!’

Cautiously we move through Olszany and soon find the red house in which the
Vojenkom
is supposed to be living. There is only one man on guard. A corporal of Jaegers, who is sitting on a stone at the corner of the house, cutting strips from a piece of smoked pork. He stretches himself lazily and yawns audibly. The yawn is cut off abruptly by the Legionnaire’s garroting wire.

Porta and Tiny sneak over to the window and peer through a hole where the black-out material has broken away. They see a low-ceilinged room. A man lies asleep on a wooden bench. The commissar. The cloak and cap lying across the table are unmistakable.

‘There ’e is, that bleedin’ ex-German, layin’ there ’avin’ a snooze in a Ivan uniform!’ whispers Tiny, angrily, spitting on the window.

‘We’ll get him easy as the devil gets a nun’s maidenhead at Whitsuntide,’ says Porta, resolutely, pulling the heavy
Toka-rew
from its yellow holster.

Don’t fuck it up, now!’ warns the Old Man. He’s not to make a sound!’

‘Just ’ave a seat ’ere and get quietly on with your knittin’,’ Tiny calms him. ‘One little tap ’tween the eyes with this ’out!’

‘Jesus Christ, slow
down
, man!’ snarls the Old Man. ‘Throw a blanket over his head, but don’t knock him out or we’ll have to carry him!’

‘We’ll treat him gentle as a young virgin the white slavers are gonna make a packet out of in Hong Kong,’ says Porta, grinning.

‘Why don’t we knock ’im orf?’ suggests Tiny. ’Why go to all this trouble with a bleedin’ torturer who’s in with the ’eathens! They’ll do ’im in when we get ’im ’ome, anyroad. Let’s just cut ’im in bits and ’ang ’em on the bleedin’ walls. ’Is prick’d just fit that bleedin’ flower-vase over there with the bluebirds on it. They ain’t never seen a flower like
that
before!’

‘You’ll go in front of a court-martial if anything happens to him,’ threatens the Old Man, furiously. ‘This picnic’s been laid on to bring that bastard back alive. An order’s an order! Understood?’

‘Couldn’t we even scratch ’is bollocks a bit for ’im with our little German knives from Solingen?’ asks Tiny disappointedly.

‘Do as I order!’ the Old Man closes the discussion.

‘Why not send him a written invitation, with swastikas and those bloody birds and everything?’ suggests Porta.

‘’E’d only wipe ’is arse on it!’ decides Tiny.