Wheels of Terror (10 page)

'Let's talk about something else,' said Stege with a deep sigh.

'Amen,' said Porta and belched.

'What about those trees at Tuapse?' asked Bauer curiously.

The Old Un took a long time to answer. Carefully he scraped out his old pipe with his bayonet and filled it calmly and thoughtfully from Porta's abundant tobacco-purse.

'You want to hear about the trees at Tuapse? We belonged then to Von Kleist's army, and had travelled for weeks in the Caucasus. We had come from Rostov and fought along the Black Sea coast. We were to get into Persia or Syria, or whatever they're called, but it proved a lie. Mr. Timoshenko, Stalin's sabre-swallower, saw to that. Our jager troops had climbed the 17,000 feet high Elbruz mountains to plant the standard and enjoy the view, but Father Stalin's mountain-boys soon got it down again.

'As our whole circus reached Tuapse there was a lovely surprise in store for us. Ivan had covered the only road in existence with a sea of one and a half meter-thick mahogany and acacia trees. We were surrounded by bog and jungle. They had been cutting and sawing the whole lot down for weeks, and when we came round the corner they started, God help us, to burn them down too. Our pioneers from the 94th and 74th fought like tigers to clear the road. The biggest bulldozers were helpless. We had little petrol but we tried to burn a clearing, and very nearly roasted ourselves like Christmas turkeys. Ivan sat in the thick jungle and picked us off. Panic broke out. We started to run. Soon it was an avalanche. But, lucky for us, Ivan had cut so many trees they stopped him from chasing us. When the army corps after a few days got under control we dragged ourselves along to the Caspian. We were after oil. Do you remember how Goebbels bragged about all that oil we had in our tanks? At that time we were on the Georgian dirt road and hundreds of miles were between us and the nearest oil wells.'

'Oh, God, yes,' said Pluto, 'the Georgian "military road"! Nobody could forget it. A gutter of mud. All our carts stuck.'

Stege started to laugh.

'Do you remember how our "623" slid on its tracks, broke telephone posts like matchsticks and knocked a couple of our motor-cycles with sidecars in the mud so they were squashed flat like pancakes? The damned military road! The whole circus stuck like a bung in a barrel.'

Darkness fell over the armoury. We could hear the recruits singing as they returned from their latest field-exercise.

6

'Would you like a bath in beer?' Porta cried enthusiastically and poured the large jug of beer over the head of the blonde waitress. He did it slowly and carefully and then threw the jug in the air. It fell bang on the counter and the last of the beer splashed all over the place.

We jumped up and swore. Porta rubbed the beer off his hands and slapped the behind of the blonde, well-known under the title of 'The Cab Tart'.

Everything was wet. Tiny wanted to fight. The canteen had a great day.

Tiny and the Legionnaire

No. 2 Troop had been sent to the big tank and motor factory where we, with many other experienced front-line soldiers, were to try out new tanks and their guns. It was a lovely gentlemanly life, even if we often had to work fifteen or sixteen hours a day. Monotony in the depot was comfortably distant. Here we were able to hide among hundreds of civilian labourers of all nationalities.

Porta romped like an elk in heat. There were about two thousand female employees there, and he regarded them more or less as his private possessions. The foremen were nearly always willing to give us a pass to go outside the wired perimeter.

One day, though, Pluto went too far. He stole a lorry and drove from pub to pub, becoming more and more drunk. In the end he ran the truck into a wall three yards from the police station. It cost him fourteen days in the glasshouse. He could thank one of the foremen that it wasn't worse. The fellow swore he had given his permission for the vehicle to go out, and that Pluto was indispensable at the factory. But Colonel von Weisshagen gave him a full-scale dressing down in the presence of the whole depot and fourteen days. While the noble defenders of the Fatherland listened piously, he told the big, stiff-standing Pluto whose turn-out was made up of German uniformed splendour from four different decades:

'You are a stain on the military honours roll; a piece of stinking rottenness! God knows who smuggled you into your clean and disciplined training unit!'

As the military prison was over-filled, fate decreed that Pluto should share bread, bed and cell with ex-Sergeant Reinhardt, who had earlier fallen from grace and been forgotten by everyone, including God and the military judges. As it turned out, he stayed under arrest until the Americans liberated him in 1945. They made him a prison-inspector. Somebody had to be one, so why not Reinhardt? He knew the prison well. A good and conscientious warder, he followed the new regime well, so well that three years later he was in clink himself. A great shame, he confided to his cellmate: the uniform had become him so well!

In the beginning our platoon commander, Lieutenant Harder, often swore at us for un-military behaviour. At last he gave up, and in silent resignation sat in the employees' canteen drinking away his nineteen-year-old's idealism.

Unfortunately, during the war there were precious few people like that. They first appeared after the war. Then they had all been enemies of Adolf Hitler, even Himmler's closest colleague. Work that out, if you can!

Our lives were a noisy mixture of joy and misery. Live today, to-morrow you'll be dead. We lived wildly and violently. Not to think, only to forget. We were ruffians with the noose round our necks and it only needed the hangman to tighten it. Many would call us bullies and criminals. About seven million Germans did so. Don't forget we were C-class people. Our experience had taught us to take everybody for scoundrels till the opposite was proved. The proof we wanted was often a hard test for the ones we tried. Those not belonging to our little circle were looked upon as enemies. We tolerated them, but never lifted a finger to help them. We were quite indifferent whether they lived or died. We drank everything alcoholic we could lay hands on. We deadened our misery with opium-cigarettes. We went to bed with any female we got hold of. The bed was often a sentry box or a ditch. Even a lavatory was not scorned.

We had seen people die in their thousands; friends executed in front of our eyes. People dressed in the same uniform as ourselves had been shot, butchered and hanged. We had acted as military executioners, seen German men and women kick the sand, stain it red with blood. We had seen countless numbers fall on the Russian steppes, in the mountains of Caucasia or choke in the bogs of the Ukraine. Sometimes we wept, but only if we were drunk enough not to know what we did. We carried the stamp of the Man with the Scythe. We were already dead, but never talked about it.

Now, hanging about in the canteen, we ribbed the three waitresses.

'Here you,' Porta said to the blonde. 'What about taking some free exercises with me?'

No answer. Just a hurt toss of the plump neck.

'You try it with Daddy, then you'll want to run away from all this and come to the front with me.'

'Are you off to the front?' she asked curiously.

'Nobody said a word about that, but you never know what "Backside and Boots" will do,' grinned Porta. 'I am just inviting you to take a trip with me to the hammock. It won't cost you a dime. It'll be the experience of your life.'

'Doesn't interest me, smart guy,' she said to the shelves of bottles.

'Good God,' roared Porta, 'are you a Lesbian, my soiled lamb! That won't part us, my experiences are manyfold. Meet me outside "The Merry Cow" at seven. Give me a pint of Munchener Hofbrau - the light one - that's all I ask.'

She hit out for Porta and hissed, copper-red in the face:

'I'll report you!'

'Do that. I collect reports.'

Tiny elbowed his way between us and shouted:

'Here! Beer! Five glasses at once.'

He turned to a little scarred fellow who stood by the counter and drank alone.

'You'll pay for my beer, or I'll knock your block off!'

'By Thor and Odin, you don't mean me, sir?' the small chap asked, and pointed to himself with such a ridiculous expression on his badly cut face that we burst into laughter.

Tiny, who was the biggest fighting-cock and bandit in the whole of the command district, stared at the little one and answered, savouring each word:

'Just you, rabbit's scut.'

Carrying five large glasses he turned to the waitress and said casually:

'That piece of turd has promised to pay for this lot.'

Complete silence reigned while the small scarred man drank his pint, licked his mouth and dried it with the back of his hand.

'Are you Tiny?' he asked the seven-foot tall gorilla-like ruffian, who hadn't yet reached his table.

'Pay up and shut up,' answered Tiny.

'I'll pay for my own, but I'm no swineherd. I don't provide the swill for pigs. Fancy letting a pig like that come here,' went on the scarred little man. 'You belong in the pigsty, but you only get there to mate, I suppose. Funny, though, the last litter, looked like you.'

Tiny stopped dead. He let go of the five glasses. They crashed to the floor. In a couple of big smooth jumps he was at the counter, where the little chap stood quietly unconcerned, just reaching to Tiny's lower ribs.

With saliva foaming round his mouth, Tiny roared:

'What the hell did you say, you louse! Just say it again!'

The small man measured him from top to toe:

'Are you deaf? I didn't know pigs had poor ears.'

Tiny became white-faced and drew back his fist.

'Take it easy, great pig. Let's go outside and fight. We don't want to ruin the fine furniture.' The small man smiled disarmingly. 'That would be a great shame!'

He pushed his glass away and started for the door.

Tiny waved his gorilla-arms wildly and roared, almost inarticulate in his fury:

'I'll thrash you, you whelp, make mincemeat of you.'

The little chap laughed:

'Such a lot to do in your sty, little boar. Mind you don't tire yourself.'

Deathly silence fell on the crowded canteen. We could not believe our ears. The tyrant, the big killer of the factory, was being challenged and mocked by a shrimp of a man, barely five feet. The white armband with the word 'Sondersection', framed by two skull-bones indicating a penal regiment shone on his new grey uniform.

No sooner were the two outside, than the three hundred men in the canteen ran out to see the massacre of the small chap.

Tiny was shouting and roaring and swinging his arms. The other chuckled:

'Take it easy, pig. You'll exhaust yourself and be so useless in the sty, even the little ones will disown you!'

Then the impossible happened. The little fellow suddenly shot in the air, kicked Tiny in the face with his hobnailed boots, and the huge fellow fell down like a skittle.

The small man was on top of him quick as lightning, turned him face down, planted himself splay-legged on top and grabbed his red-blond mass of hair: then he ground his face in the sharp gravel and kicked him in the kidneys, spat contemptuously at him and went indifferently back to the canteen. The three hundred spectators stared open-mouthed at the fallen tyrant.

Ordering a pint of light beer, he drank it with great content. We went back to our places and stared curiously at the solitary drinker who had beaten the invincible bully. We were dumbfounded.

Pluto offered him a cigarette.

'Can you take an opium-cigarette?'

A short 'thanks' and he lit it. Another pint was put in front of him.

'With the compliments of Corporal Stern,' said the waitress.

He pushed the glass away and said:

'Return the compliments, but Corporal Alfred Kalb from the 2nd Regiment of the Foreign Legion never accepts drinks from people he doesn't know.'

'Have you been in the French Foreign Legion?' asked Pluto.

'You heard, or have
you
poor hearing too, perhaps all big fellows have?'

Pluto turned his back and pretended he did not exist.

Tiny came back and sat in his corner by the window and muttered the most hair-raising threats. His face looked like mincemeat. He stood up and went across to the sink and put his face under the tap, rinsing off the blood and gravel. He was snorting like a seal.

Without drying his face he fetched himself three pints of beer and shut himself off in his corner.

Porta had jumped over the counter to be nearer the blonde Eve. In a manner worthy of a high-spot in a comical film he tried to kiss her.

'Has anybody told you, Eve, you have smart fetlocks? Are your thighs up to standard?'

He shot back over the counter, and turned like lightning to the former legionnaire:

'I overheard your remarks to my friend Pluto. You can perhaps get along with your Legion methods in the whore-shops of Morocco, but that doesn't mean to say you can stand up to Joseph Porta from Moabitt, Berlin. Or in good German: answer properly when asked or else shut up.'

The legionnaire slowly rose and bowed politely to Porta, at the same time swinging his service cap off in an old-fashioned aristocratic fashion, while his eyes widened comically.

'Thanks for the tip. Alfred Kalb from the 2nd Regiment of the Foreign Legion will remember Herr Joseph Porta from Moabitt, Berlin. My cradle also stood there. I don't want to fight, but if I have to, I can cope. That's not a warning, only an announcement.'

'What regiment do you belong to, chum?' asked The Old Un, peacefully.

'27th Tank, Ist Battalion, 3rd Company from 11 a.m. today.'

'What the hell, that's us!' burst out Porta. 'How many years did they give you?'

'Twenty,' said Kalb. 'Been locked up three for a "social attitude", that is, being politically unstable and having illegal service in a foreign army. Last resort Fagen Camp, Bremen.'

Tiny approached the counter, threw a mark down and ordered:

'One light Dortmunder.'