The Commissar (3 page)

‘Are we to understand then,’ asks Julius Heide, his eyes narrowing to slits, ‘that you’re turning your back on the Führer and the Reich, and no longer believe wholeheartedly in the Final Victory? I wonder what the NSFO’ll
†
have to say to
that
when I hand in my report.’

‘What a shit that Julius
is
,’ Tiny bellows with laughter. ‘The turd o’ the world, an’ never goin’ to get no cleverer.’

‘He’s what he is,’ Porta takes it up. ‘A real man o’ the new times. A well-trained German soldier who shits an’ eats by numbers, an’ turns his toes in an’ feels happy as a sodding lark long as he’s in company with patriotic nuts’n close-cropped generals with a window in one eye. Heil Hitler!’

‘I’ve got all that written down, mark my words, Ober-gefreiter Porta,’ snarls Heide, affrontedly. ‘You’ll have to repeat every word of it at your court-martial. The day you dangle’ll be the happiest day of my life!’

‘Better get crackin’ then, my boy, ’fore the
untermensch
turn up. Or it’ll be me, Obergefreiter by the grace of God Joseph Porta, who’ll be puttin’ his weight on the
other
end of the rope,’ answers Porta, blowing down the barrel of his mpi.

‘Up, you lazy men!’ the Old Man scolds them. ‘Here comes Löwe. Get your thieving fingers off them Russian
bodies! It’s a court for you, else! You know what
that
means?’

‘Bye, bye napper,’ says Tiny, patting his own cheek lovingly.

Porta has just time to lift the Russians’ identification papers.

‘Also saleable,’ he grins as he sidles down through the tank turret opening.

‘When this German world war’s all over, there’ll be coppers in personal documents. Everybody’n his brother’ll be standing in line to get a new start in life.’ He chuckles away to himself at the idea.

‘Jesus, but I’m
tired
,’ groans Barcelona, when the section makes a halt, a couple of hours later, in an open square. They are all hoping the halt means a rest period for them.

Suddenly the square is swarming with Russian soldiers. Some are armed to the teeth, others only half-dressed under their long khaki cloaks, which stream out in the wind. They have one thing in common. Their hands are stretched up above their heads and they are shouting: ‘
Tovaritsch
*
’, the universal appeal for permission to remain alive. Strangely enough life seems only to begin to be really valuable to us when we have given up all hope and all ambition.

The Old Man swings down wearily from his turret onto the slush-covered cobblestones.

Hordes of Russian infantrymen, with grey, hopeless faces, push and shove their way past him. Only with difficulty can he keep himself from being carried along with them.

‘Think they were rushin’ to get in an’ see the latest porno movie wouldn’t you?’ crows Porta. ‘Mind
you
don’t get taken prisoner along with them, Old Un. We don’t want to lose you like that!’

Tiny’s huge body blocks the side hatch of the tank. Mouth agape, he stares at the khaki-clad flood of humanity streaming around the vehicle. It fills the whole street from side to
side. There is the burnt-out wreck of a tramcar in its path. The stream goes over, not round, it.

‘’Oly Russian mum o’ Kazan,’ cries Tiny, in amazement. ‘It’s the ’ole bleedin’ Red Army, it is. Never ’ave I ever laid eyes on that many Russians at one time in all me German bleedin’ life!’

‘Hold on to your maidenheads, my sons,’ says Porta, dropping back down into the tank. ‘If that lot o’ tired heroes gets to thinkin’ how many
they
are an’ how few
we
are, then our heroic participation in this fucked-up war’ll be over ’fore we know it.’

‘Stone the crows,’ howls Tiny fearfully. He slides rapidly back into the tank and clangs the shutters to. ‘Let’s get
out
of ’ere!’

Barcelona’s eight-wheeled Puma armoured clean-up waggon slides to a crashing halt. Its long, 75 mm gun juts threateningly from the low turret. It sideswipes the burnt-out tramcar with a screech of metal. Some Russians are caught under the heavy wheels. They scream heart-renderingly. Other soldiers pull them free and help them away. We hardly notice. This is everyday fare for us. There are too many prisoners anyway. Who cares about a few more or less?

Barcelona leans from the turret, pushes his huge dust-goggles up onto his helmet, and shouts something indistinguishable.

Albert’s black African face bobs up out of the driver’s aperture.

‘Bow-wow!’ he barks, with a flash of shiny, white teeth at the Russian prisoners. They jump back in alarm at the sight of a German negro.

‘They think he’s goin’ to eat them,’ grins Porta in Berlin gamin style. ‘It’ll all be in
Pravda
in a few days’ time. Capitalist foes using cannibal troops!’

‘Stop that cursed motor,’ the Old Man boils up, irritably. ‘You can’t hear yourself think!’

‘You
are
in a bad mood,’ says Barcelona, with a broad
smile. ‘Liven up! This war’s only the start of something much, much worse. I’ve got a little message of greetings with me from Staff HQ. Get your arses in gear, boys, an’ fast. Up front you go, and knock off some of the godless heathen, so those who’re left alive can sneak off back where they came from. This is what we’re getting paid for, you know. I’m to follow on as number three.’

‘Who’s two?’ shouts Porta from his driving-slit.

‘The “Desert Wanderer” in his P-IV,’ giggles Barcelona, happily. ‘He’s used to lookin’ out for camels, from his apprenticeship in the Sahara.’

‘
Camels?
’ asks the Old Man, blankly. ‘There’s no blasted camels in this war?
Are
there?’

‘You’ll see,’ answers Barcelona. ‘Before you know it you’ll have a camel’s nose up your jacksey, my friend. Ivan’s sent over a whole camel division from the Kalmuk steppe.’

‘Holy Mary, mother of Jesus,’ shouts Porta, delightedly, ‘then I can do us camel steaks. I’ve got a wonderful recipe for them that was given to me by a Bedouin, in grateful appreciation of my not running him over when we invaded France. Listen . . .’

‘Not a blasted word will I hear out of you about food,’ states the Old Man.

‘What shiny-arsed bastard’s found out it ’as to be
us
again?’ asks Tiny, peeping cautiously over the edge of the hatch. The pure number of Russian prisoners going past us is still making his blood run cold.

‘The Divisional Commander,’ answers Barcelona, with a look on his face so haughty you’d think that he himself was the Chief of Staff. ‘Herr General Arse-an’-Pockets wants some new silver to hang round his neck, an’ we’re the boys who’re goin’ to put it there. By the way, I hear Gregor got four threes in the black hole for smashin’ up Arse-an’ -Pockets Kübel. The general ended up in a tree, boots, cap an’ all, an’ frightened the black ravens half to death. Gregor’s got the boot, and‘ll soon be back with us.’

The Legionnaire’s P-IV can be heard starting up behind
the tram terminus. The Maybach motors stall again and again. Ignitions whine time after time. Then thunderous explosions crash down the narrow side street. The horsepower of the mighty engines begins to take hold. The roar of exhausts splits the air and fills the whole street.

Our motor catches immediately. A stench of petrol and hot oil spreads on the slush-damp air. The steel giants rattle up the steep alley, the earth shaking under their treads. Barcelona waves happily from the turret of his clean-up waggon, then disappears down inside and clangs the hatch shut behind him.

With a swing, graceful as a skater’s figure-of-eight, the heavy eight-wheeled armoured vehicle disappears down the alley, slush spurting up from under its wheels.

We roll recklessly on, behind us the Legionnaire in his P-IV. Cobblestones and earth fly up from our tracks. They tear grey wounds in the poorly-paved road surfacing.

‘Jesus, Jesus!’ cries Tiny, banging his fist down on a shell. ‘What a bleedin’ bill we’ll get if we ever’as to pay for all the damage we’re doin’ in this country. Reckon it’ll be clever to keep out o’ sight for a bit, when we’ve lost the final bleedin’ victory!’

‘What a lot of
shit
you talk,’ hisses Heide. He hammers viciously on the communicator, which has gone on strike again.

‘Listen to it,’ Porta laughs, jeeringly. ‘The Führer’s soldier’s goin’ sane. He’s calling
Grofaz
’s radio programmes a lot of shit.’

‘It’s no fault of the Führer’s,’ Heide corrects him. He shakes the radio. ‘It’s sabotage to install a pre-war radio in a brand-new Panther tank!’

‘Complain to Speer, then,’ Tiny suggests, grinning broadly. ‘It’s ’im as is doin’ the sabotage! Bleedin’ barmy to give a soddin’’od-carrier the job o’ runnin’ the ’ole war-industry, any road!’

‘Idiot,’ snarls Heide, beginning to dismantle the radio with quick, sure fingers. It begins to splutter, suddenly, and
a babble of excited voices fills the tank. The whole network is overloaded with the voices of hysterical tank-commanders. They have all sighted the enemy positions at the same time, and guns begin to go off unordered. A 75 mm siege gun is hit by a German shell and goes up. Red-hot metal rains down.

All at once we are wide awake. Tiredness disappears from our bodies. In a tank battle the fastest crew wins.

I pump the foot-pedal and ready the gun. Then I see Barcelona’s Puma come roaring back toward us. Heide’s MG rattles nastily, sending a rain of tracer bullets across the river, which is covered with a heavy gruel of thick broken ice.

‘Get your finger out,’ shouts the Old Man, impatiently, banging his fist on my shoulder.

‘You’ve got your target! Fire at the muzzle-flash. Get
on
with it, man,
if
you don’t mind! Or do you
want
to get roasted alive?’

Nervously, I rotate the turret a few degrees, but can still see nothing. Nothing but darkness and whirling snowflakes. Snow lies on the edges of the viewing-slits like wet cottonwool.

‘Fire then, you blasted idiot,’ shouts the Old Man, angrily. ‘D’you want to get the lot of us killed?’

The brutal hammering of the two MGs fills the tank. Tracer tracks fumble about, with long silvery fingers, searching for enemy flesh.

Barcelona’s Puma zig-zags back down the wide avenue, now cleared completely of Russian prisoners.

Its three MGs spit out a heavy, rapid rain of tracer towards the grey-white river banks. The Russian infantry over there send back a storm of fire at us.

‘Give ’em three HEs,’ orders the Old Man, brusquely. ‘That’ll give the gun-crazy bastards something to think about!’

A huge spout of mud, blood and snow goes up, as the HEs land between a couple of machine-gun nests. Tracer comes back at us, ricocheting in a mad dance between the trees lining the avenue.

Two P-IIIs and a P-IV go up in a roaring sheet of petrol-explosion flame. The crews hang from their turrets, bodies crackling and bubbling like torches dipped in fat.

A new sound mingles with the cacophony of this devil’s concert. The hollow, whining howl of Stalin organs.

Forty-eight rocket shells come sailing through the air towards us. Long comet-tails of flame stretch behind them. Then, like clowns in a circus, their tails tip forward, and they drop vertically to the earth. They give us no feeling of being dangerous, but seem more like some strange kind of firework device. When they strike the earth our impression changes. The holes they make are tremendous, and the blast from them presses the air from our lungs.

Cutting through the roar of the Stalin organs comes the shrill scream of an armour-piercing shell on its way towards us. With a deafening crack it strikes, boring through the front shield of Feldwebel Weber’s P-IV. It goes through it at an angle, and up into, and through, the turret, taking Weber with it. He lands, with a soggy splash, out in the road. The lower part of his body is completely crushed. Blood pours from his shattered face.

Two blood-spattered crewmen scramble from the P-IV, which has burst into flames. The driver has his hands over his face. He runs in circles, screaming like a madman, then collapses into the slushy snow.

A P-III comes rumbling along at top speed. It passes over the driver, leaving nothing but shreds of flesh and bloody rags of uniform.

‘Come death, come sweet death,’ croons the voice of the Legionnaire from the radio speaker.

The other crewman goes down across a heap of twisted metal rods, pierced through and through by a burst of tracer which seems to last for an eternity.

Roars and howls fill the air like mad organ notes. The long tram terminus collapses in on itself like a house of cards. Nothing remains of it but twisted girders and an enormous cloud of brickdust and pulverized mortar. In the middle of the desolation a tramcar stands comically on end. I stare
fiercely through the optical sight, but can still not find the target. I feel like tearing open the turret hatch and running, running as fast and as far as my legs can carry me.

‘Let’s take ’em,’ rages the Old Man, impatiently. ‘Can’t you see they’re rangin’ in on us? If you’re tired of life, then for Christ’s sake
die
an’ get it over with!’

‘I only wish the devil had that rotten swine who invented smokeless powder,’ I curse, furiously, and rotate the turret a further couple of degrees. ‘You used to be able to
see
when they fired their shit at you.’