Liquidate Paris (2 page)

Major Hinka suddenly rose to his feet and dashed out into the open, yelling at us to follow him. We surged along in his wake, Little John and the Legionnaire at the head of us. I was dragging the gun with me, hanging round my neck by the strap. With my free hand I yanked grenades from my belt and hurled them into the mass of the enemy. All around us men were screaming, shouting, shooting, entangled in barbed wire, dying silently in the oil-sodden sand. Directly before me, a soldier in khaki. He had lost his helmet. I crashed my knee into his stomach, knocked him cold with the butt of the gun, left him lying there and ran on. I suddenly became aware that Barcelona was at my side. We ploughed on together, our heavy boots squelching in a sea of blood and bodies.

And now the enemy were retreating. Slowly at first, then speeding up by degrees until at length it was a mad dash to the sea, jettisoning arms, gas masks, helmets as they ran. Our turn had come, and we had triumphed. But how and why, for whom and for what reason? For the Fatherland? For the Fuhrer? For honour, for glory, for medals and promotion? Not at all. Not a bit of it. We fought through instinct. To preserve our precious lives at all costs. And every minute a nightmare. One moment fighting side by side with a friend; the next moment, chancing to turn your head to see that what was once a human being is now no more than a bloodied mass of pulped flesh and crushed bone. And for a few minutes it breaks you up, you feel the tears choking you, you bang your head with the butt of your rifle, you feel that you're going mad, you can't stand it any longer. And then, seconds later, you're back in the thick of the battle, fighting again in deadly earnest; hating everyone and everything; fighting to kill and killing for pleasure.

As soon as the lull came, Porta's thoughts turned once more to food. I never knew anyone eat as much and as often as that man. And while he was sitting stuffing himself, Little John set about his usual macabre task of inspecting the mouths of corpses for gold teeth, which he carefully extracted and dropped into a little bag which never left his side. The Old Man used to create hell and mutter about hauling him up before a court-martial, but no threat yet devised had ever had the least effect on Little John.

Most of us stretched out on the ground behind the concrete shelter and watched Porta opening the booty of tins which he had purloined from somewhere or other. The first tin turned out to be full of gun grease. So did the second. And the third, and the fourth. The idiot had evidently pillaged an arms depot. He was the only one who seemed not to find it amusing, and, indeed, began threatening to knock people's heads off until the Legionnaire caught his interest by suggesting we should attach the tins to a hand-grenade, tie the whole lot to a stick of phosphorus and hurl it into the enemy ranks. Had it not been for the Old Man putting his foot down, Porta would doubtless have tried out the new weapon there and then.

The attack started up again. The machine-guns grew white-hot. Barcelona operated the large mortar, his steel gloves hanging in shreds. There was no respite, no breathing space, no pause for thought. It was kill or be killed, and both we and the enemy were splashing about ankle-deep in blood. The stretch of sand that separated us, once so smooth and silvery, was now churned up into a sticky, rusty-brown mess.

In the distance, the sea had grown a veritable forest of masts. Between the sea and the beach, a multitude of landing-craft were disgorging more khaki-clad figures. Many of them fell before they could reach dry land. Many more staggered only a few yards up the beach before collapsing. But still the assault continued. An entire army was being thrown into the attack on the Normandy coast. If the attempt failed, it must surely be a question of years before they could gather their forces to try again.

We were all of us, by now, half crazed with thirst, and were not so particular as we had previously been in following Porta's example and gorging ourselves on the water used for cooling the machine-guns. It was warm and oily and it stank to high heaven, but champagne itself could not have been more welcome. And we ourselves smelt none too sweet, if it came to that.

Indifferently, a group of us stood watching as an unknown soldier burnt to a cinder in a sheet of flame that was clear blue. It was a new type of grenade being used by the enemy. It contained phosphorus and it burnt fiercely on contact with the air.

Imperative blasts on a whistle sent us once more into action. We surged forward, impatiently brushing aside the dying and the wounded, many of whom clutched at our feet, came crawling towards us over the sodden sand. This was the counter-offensive; there was neither time nor room for pity. We rushed on, with grenades whizzing past our ears, exploding to right and to left. We ran unthinkingly, blindly like robots. A man who paused for reflection was a man who was lost.

More ships, more boats, more landing-craft. There seemed no end to the khaki figures that emerged from the water and launched themselves up the beach. But most of them were no more than kids. All that they knew had been learnt at home, on the barrack square, on manoeuvres, in the lecture room. This was their baptism of fire and they ran like crazed innocents into the mouths of our guns.

Slowly, we fell back. The English pursued us. We led them on, until at last they were there, where we wanted them, directly beneath us and in range of our flame-throwers. They threw themselves flat to the ground, seeking cover behind the chalky slopes that rose from the beaches. For our part, we took shelter amidst the concrete ruins of the blockhouse, wriggling our bodies into craters and shell holes. We were filthy, we were exhausted, and we stank. No doubt about it. I found myself irrelevantly wishing that we might be compared, in our present state, with the brave warriors of Nuremberg, loyal Party men all, who marched and counter-marched like clockwork toys on their everlasting parades, with all their glittering pomp and their oppressively scrubbed faces, banging on their drums and blowing on their trumpets and waving their pretty little flags in the air. We lay grimed and bleeding and louse-ridden in our dug-outs, but somehow I felt we could manage to make those puppets of Nuremberg look pretty stupid.

I glanced casually at my companion on the left. He bared his teeth at me in what passed for a smile, and it struck me that he was no longer a human being, he was a wild beast. We were all wild beasts, all of us who were fighting in this lousy war. A sob of rage and fear rose up And choked me, set my whole body shaking and my teeth rattling. I bit hard on to the butt of my rifle, I yelled and I screamed, I shouted out for my mother as men always do when their nerve suddenly deserts them. It was a common affliction of the front line. Sooner or later it happened to us all. And when it did, there was but one thought uppermost in your mind: get the hell out of it! Get up and run! The devil with their courts-martial, the devil with their prisons, their Torgaus, the devil with the whole shit-ridden lot of 'em...

I was jerked to a bone-jarring halt by a knee thrust into the small of my back. A large hand caught hold of my hair. A second large hand jammed my helmet back on my head. I looked up and saw Little John.

'Just take a good deep breath and pull yourself together,' he said, quite sensibly for him. 'It'll pass, me old fruit, it'll pass... No need to panic, so long as your head's still on your shoulders.'

He grinned encouragingly at me, but it was no use: my nerve had gone, and all self-control with it. I had seen it happen to others in the past; I should see it happen to many more in the future. Porta, perhaps; Little John himself. The Old Man had been near to it, the Legionnaire had been through it several times, and he was a veteran of fourteen years' experience. But for the moment it was my turn to suffer, and I stood shivering in Little John's bearlike grasp. He wiped the sweat off my face with a piece of dirty rag, pushed me further back into the remains of the blockhouse, stuck a cigarette between my lips. Vaguely, I was aware of the Old Man crawling towards us.

'What's up? Not feeling too good? Take a deep breath and try to relax. Just hole up here for a while until it passes. No need for panic, things aren't going to start up again for a bit.'

Calmly, he pulled out a roll of sticking plaster, hacked off a length and covered up a long gash in my forehead. How or when I'd received it, I couldn't recall. My sobs continued, but the cigarette had a soothing effect. And, over and above all else, I was no longer alone. I Was in the company of friends; friends who cared, friends who understood. I knew for a certainty that they would risk their lives for me and would share their last crust of bread with me. It is, perhaps, the one solace of war, this extraordinary and selfless friendship that exists among men who are forced to live and fight together day after day, week after week, for an indefinite period of time.

Gradually, I became calmer. The crisis passed, and I knew that for the moment, at least, I could carry on. There would be other attacks, that was almost certain. And they would came upon me suddenly, with no warning. But it-was useless to dwell upon it, for that way lay madness.

The Old Man suggested a game of cards and we settled back in our concrete fissure and they let me win, and I knew that they let me, and they knew that I knew, but what the hell, we were friends. And quite suddenly, for no reason, we began to laugh, and while life was not exactly rosy it was not quite such hell as it had been.

D-Day plus 1. The day after... Contact with the enemy had been broken. Losses on both sides were hideous. Hardly one surrounding village that had remained intact. Most were razed to the ground. Porta just went on eating. I do believe he could have consumed a whole cow and suffered no visible after-effects. Long, thin and bony, with hollow cheeks and sunken eyes, he ate, belched, farted, ate again, belched again, always seemed to be in a state of near starvation. And yet remained the picture of rude health. The war machine had evidently played havoc with his metabolism.

On this occasion, he had a bean-feast. No more tins of gun grease, he had uncovered a cache of real Argentinian corned beef. We made it into a hash and heated it up in our helmets over spirit stoves. Porta stirred it gently with the point of a bayonet, Little John added a tot of rum that he had picked up from somewhere. Even Major Hinka consented to join in the meal. It was the best we had had for many a day.

I was on guard near the machine-gun. An unpleasant task, because a thick fog seemed to rise from every crater
and
smothered the earth like a shroud. Occasionally a rocket or a stream of tracer pierced a way through the mist. My companions were asleep, lying curled up on the ground, nose to tail like dogs. A light rain was falling, the wind was whipping itself up somewhere above the fog. I was alone, and it was bloody freezing. I huddled deeper into my great coat, pulled down my helmet over my ears, and still the rain found a way in and trickled in cold rivers down my back.

Check the machine-gun. Check the firing mechanism, check the shell-ejector, check the belt-feed. It was tedious, but our lives could depend upon it.

From somewhere beyond the point I judged the enemy to be there came a slight clicking noise. Ominous and steely. What were they preparing now? Listen hard for several minutes, but nothing happens.

Away to my right is a dandelion, bright yellow and all alone in the wilderness. The only flower that grows for miles around. What was this country like before the war came and destroyed it? Trees and fields and cows. Buttercups and daisies. Juicy green grass, rich earth, heat hedges and winding lanes. What is it now? Disfigured and bloody. I wonder where the people have gone, whether they still live, whether they will ever return.

Away to the north, the rumble of heavy artillery. The sky suddenly glows deep crimson. That must be Omaha, where the Americans are landing. I turn to the south and follow the pattern of the flaming rockets that are cutting through the night, extinguishing all forms of life wherever they come to earth.

Porta talks to himself in his sleep. You listen at first, in case he says something interesting, but after a while you get sick of it. His nocturnal soliloquies are always, predictably, on the same subject: food. Quietly, the Legionnaire curls out of his sleeping position and wanders away to a dark corner. Makes a noise like a waterfall. Hard to understand how anyone could sleep through such. a racket, but surprisingly they do. The Legionnaire stumbles back and collapses with a grunt between Little John and Gregor. Little John kicks out in his sleep. Gregor gets on to his back and starts, snoring.

The night drags on. After a bit I find I'm dreaming, and the dream is so vivid it seems it's actually happening. I'm fifteen years old again. Back in Copenhagen. I can see the streets, wet and slippy with the rain. It was a night like that when they nabbed Alex. We were just hanging about aimlessly, like all the out-of-work kids did in Copenhagen, when they jumped us; four of them against two of us. But we put up a bit of a fight and we got away, didn't stop running till we reached the Havnegade. I'd kicked one of them in the belly. I was pretty pleased about that. We hated the cops, Alex and I. It was a point of pride to give as good as you got.

But then, next evening, I waited in vain outside the Wivel Restaurant, near the station, and Alex never turned up. We'd agreed to meet there so we could hang about near the kitchens. Sometimes a toffee-nosed chef would open the back door and sling out the leavings from the plates of the rich into the eager hands of the down-and-outs and unemployed. But Alex never came. I never saw him again. I found out later they'd picked him up during the course of one of their periodical 'clean sweeps', along with a young Swede (what the hell was he doing in Copenhagen? Should have had more sense) and sent them both off to a remand home in Jutland. Alex escaped several times but was always picked up again. One day I saw his picture in the papers. He'd stowed away on board a steamer, the Odin, and had been drowned when she'd gone to the bottom. I'm not altogether sure, it was a long time ago, but I rather think I cried when I read that. Alex had been my friend. My only friend. After he was dead I never quite got over the feeling of being totally alone in the world.