Reign of Hell (22 page)

I wondered how many of his pupils he had beaten into submission in the good old days before the war, when any child who flinched from pain was accused of cowardice, when boys were taught that suffering would make men of them, when tears were punished by ten regulation strokes of the cane. I wondered how many of Abt’s former pupils were now coming to manhood on the battlefields of Europe, while Abt lay on the wet ground and slobbered and snivelled with a bullet hole in his leg. It was easy enough to rear and train cannon fodder for the Führer, but not nearly so easy when you yourself were being fed into the mouths of the Russian guns.

Tiny, who had been sitting next to Abt, suddenly walked across to the Colonel and stood to attention before him. The Colonel looked up, mildly amazed.

‘Yes, Corporal? What is it?’ It was some time since anyone had taken any notice of the Colonel. He seemed both surprised and gratified. ‘Speak out, man! I shan’t bite you!’

‘Well, sir,’ said Tiny, ‘it’s not for myself, you understand, but for him over there—’

He gestured towards Private Abt, who was still histrionically clutching at his leg and writhing on the ground.

‘Yes, yes?’ said the Colonel, eagerly. ‘What is wrong with him?’

‘Well, he reckons as he’s dying, sir, and he keeps on nagging at me to come and ask you if you don’t think it’d be a good idea if we – er—’ Tiny glanced across towards Abt, who anxiously nodded his head and made unmistakable gestures of encouragement. Tiny shrugged a contemptuous shoulder. ‘Well, all right, then,’ he said, turning back to the Colonel. ‘He reckons as we ought to surrender, sir. Give ourselves up, like. Call it a day and go over to the other side . . . on account of he thinks he’s dying, sir. He says he’s made a study of the Reds and they’re not nearly as bad as what everyone says they are. He says they’re civilised people same as us and they—’

‘Oh, he does, does he?’ The Old Man leapt to his feet and strode angrily across to Private Abt. ‘Snivelling little rat! Haven’t you been in the Army long enough to know by now that if you’ve any suggestions to make you make them to me, you don’t go bothering senior officers!’

He picked the man up by the collar and shook him, while the Colonel watched with wide eyes and said nothing. I had never seen the Old Man lose his temper like that before. I think perhaps he didn’t place too much importance on the Colonel’s strength of mind. It only needed some yellow-bellied punk like Private Abt to go putting ideas into his head and before we knew it we might all be handed over to the tender mercies of the civilised Russians. The Colonel meant well, but he was old and he was frightened, and he
should have been pensioned off some time before the First World War.

The Old Man flung Abt away from him, slinging him towards Tiny, who received him with wide open arms.

‘All right, Corporal Creuzfeldt, he’s all yours. From now on, he’s under your command. He does whatever you say, and if you catch him trying to escape, shoot the bastard in the back.’

‘You bet!’ said Tiny, enthusiastically.

We set off again, single file behind the Colonel and the Old Man, skirting the edge of the marshes. Thanks to his persistent whining, Private Abt was now far worse off than he had been before: Tiny had loaded him up with half his own gear plus the machine-gun tripod into the bargain, and the man was bent double beneath his burden. Lutz, finding himself temporarily forgotten, had slunk off to the tail end of the column, as far away from Tiny as he could possibly get, and was keeping very silent.

Half-way down the column, Porta and Heide were exchanging obscenities and threatening to punch each other’s heads in. Heide had accused Porta of deliberately pushing him into the bog in order to mess up his newly polished boots. It was more than likely true. Porta certainly wasn’t bothering to deny it. He was merely jeering and sneering and generally goading Heide into one of his states of manic wrath, and they were on the point of flying at each other’s throats when the Old Man held up a hand and brought the column to a sudden halt.

‘What is it, what is it?’ demanded the Colonel. ‘Why have we stopped? What have you heard? Where is it coming from? What are we—’

‘For God’s sake, shut up!’ said the Old Man, tersely and without ceremony. It at least startled the Colonel into a temporary silence. The Old Man beckoned Tiny to the head of the column, and the two of them stood listening.

‘Sounds like dogs,’ said Tiny, after a while. ‘I reckon they must be out looking for us.’

‘With dogs?’ said the Colonel. ‘What utter rubbish! Stuff and nonsense!’

He was, as usual, ignored. The Old Man began giving orders.

‘The rest of you had better stay put. I’ll take my section up ahead and find out what’s going on.’

‘Us
again
?’ said Gregor.

We crept silently forward through the forest. I could hear now for myself the occasional whimpering and whining of dogs, and as the trees began to thin out we could see that we were approaching a small village. The Old Man waved us to another halt, and we crouched in the undergrowth while he surveyed the scene through field-glasses. I could make out four large trucks with American markings, and a group of men wearing the green uniform of the NKVD, the dreaded equivalent of the German SS. At the head of the group, tugging at their chains and obviously eager to be off, were half a dozen dogs, fierce-looking creatures rather similar to Alsatians but larger and heavier. Probably some Siberian breed, judging from the thickness of their coats.

‘Well, they’re obviously not just out for a Sunday afternoon stroll,’ observed the Old Man, drily. ‘I reckon it must be us they’re after.’

‘If they’d offer us a good square meal and a bed for the night,’ muttered Gregor, ‘we’d be theirs for the asking, without all this stupid fuss and bother.’

Private Abt limped up, eagerly.

‘Why don’t we try it, now that we’re here?’ he said. ‘If we gave ourselves up voluntarily, as an act of good—’

He was cut short by a savage blow on the head from Tiny.

‘Any more of that and I’ll throw you to the dogs myself! Get that machine-gun set up and be quick about it.’

‘OK.’ The Old Man turned and motioned to us to take up our positions. ‘Porta, your group stays here with me. Gregor, you take your men and spread out on the left. The rest of you, be ready to fire the minute I give the signal.’

We crouched among the trees, waiting for the unsuspecting
Russians to come within range. The dogs were whining and straining to go, having evidently picked up our scent.

Porta was eating again. He had opened his last tin and was greedily licking his lips.

‘Bully beef,’ he said, as he saw me looking at it. ‘You want some?’

‘Not right now,’ I said. ‘I don’t much care for the smell of it just at this moment.’

Porta buried his nose in the tin and inhaled ecstatically. It smelt to me like a million city dustbins. No wonder the dogs were so anxious to be off. Half the animals in Poland were probably twitching their nostrils and turning their heads into the wind.

Private Abt was sitting on the damp grass complaining again about his leg. The bullet holes had now turned blue at the edges and his thigh had swollen up like a sausage, but by now we had reached the stage where we didn’t care if his entire leg dropped off. It would, in a way, have been a relief. At least he’d have had nothing left to moan about.

‘You know what you want for that, don’t you?’ said Barcelona, solemnly.

‘No, what?’ Abt looked up at him with a gleam of hope in his piggy schoolmaster eyes. ‘What do I want?’

‘Sheep piss,’ said Barcelona. ‘Old country remedy. Works wonders. Find yourself a castrated ram and get it to piss all over you . . . Cure it in no time.’

He strolled nonchalantly away, with a happy smile playing on his lips, and Abt struggled wildly to his feet.

‘Bastard!’ he yelled. ‘Bloody bastards, the whole goddamned lot of you!’

‘All right, all right,’ growled Tiny, pushing him down again. ‘Keep it for the Russians. Don’t waste it on us.’

Away to my left, Gregor was in the middle of telling Lenzing some long and garbled story of how he had once moved a grand piano from the fifth floor of a house down a spiral staircase without getting so much as a scratch on it. Somehow a brothel and a naked Swedish whore with breasts like pumpkins came into the story as well, but for the life of me I
couldn’t make out quite how, and neither, from the look on his face, could Lenzing. In fact, I’m not at all sure that Lenzing was even listening. He was staring through the trees in the direction of the approaching enemy, and perhaps he was wondering how many of his blood brothers he would be able to kill before they killed him.

Heide, stern and silent, had brought out one of his cleaning rags and was obsessively polishing his machine-gun. It already shone like a beacon and probably advertised our presence to every Russian soldier in Poland, but Heide never could leave well enough alone.

The Legionnaire was watching the approach of the men and dogs, and indicating their distance to the machine-gunners. They were advancing with bayonets fixed, the dogs still tugging on their chains, heads down and noses to the ground. At the head marched an officer, his nagajka in his hand.

‘Five hundred yards,’ said the Legionnaire.

The Old Man shouldered his rifle and slipped back the safety catch.

‘Range two hundred.’

Barcelona turned towards me.

‘You ready?’

I nodded, and indicated the pile of grenades which were laid out before me.

‘OK. After the second salvo.’

‘Three hundred yards,’ said the Legionnaire.

Private Abt gave a low moan, and was clouted over the head by Tiny. Porta reluctantly jettisoned his empty corned beef tin, and then picked up his rifle. The dogs were really going mad by this time, and the handlers bent down to set them loose.

‘Two hundred and fifty,’ droned the Legionnaire. ‘Two twenty-five . . . two hundred—’

‘Fire!’

The four MGs crashed in unison. The officer with the nagajka was riddled from head to foot with bullets. Tiny laughed, exultantly.

‘It’s like a game of darts!’ he said.

‘With a human dartboard,’ muttered Lenzing.

The Russians hesitated. Some of them tried to turn back, but they were caught between two fires and they had no choice but to go on. Before them lay the German guns and behind them the Russian. One of their own officers had opened up with an automatic rifle and was firing warning shots over their heads. The dogs needed no such encouragement. They came bounding towards us, snarling and showing all their teeth, and Private Abt gave a terrified scream and turned to run. Fortunately for himself, he tripped over a tree trunk and was kicked back into line by the Legionnaire while Tiny was occupied with his machine-gun, otherwise it would have been a bullet in the back and farewell Private Abt.

A second salvo was fired, and all but one of the dogs fell. The one remaining was a great black brute which hurled itself in a frenzy upon the Old Man, teeth bared and mouth flecked with saliva. The Old Man calmly took aim and shot it as it came towards him. He never was one to panic. I don’t think I ever saw him lose his head in any situation. The dog sprang sideways, howling in agony, and the Legionnaire dispassionately took out his revolver and put a bullet through its brain.

There was scarcely any need for my grenades. The battle was over almost before it had begun, and the Old Man gave the signal for us to pull out.

‘If war were always as much fun as that,’ declared Tiny, very happy with himself, ‘it wouldn’t be half bad.’

‘Strange sort of fun,’ muttered Lenzing, gloomily. ‘What happens when it’s all over, that’s what I’d like to know?’

‘When what’s all over?’

‘The war – the fun – the fighting—’

‘Well, when it’s all over, it’s all over, ain’t it?’

‘As simple as that?’ said Lenzing.

‘I rather fancy not,’ murmured the Legionnaire. ‘Ten to one, when they’ve got rid of Adolf, they’ll start off all over again trying to get rid of each other.’

‘And then where shall we be?’ demanded Lenzing.

The Legionnaire smiled.

‘Well, we know where you’ll be, don’t we? Out on the barricades waving your little red flag and crying death to the Yankee capitalists!’

‘I don’t know,’ said Lenzing. He sighed. ‘I don’t know . . . I sometimes think I’ve seen enough to last me the rest of my life.’

Shortly before sunset, we recovered the Colonel and the rest of the Company. The Colonel was so relieved to see us that he almost burst into tears of joy. I wondered what would have happened if we hadn’t come back. I wondered who would have taken charge, and whether they would have given themselves up to the enemy.

‘Sergeant, I’ve been thinking,’ said the Colonel. He clapped a hand on the Old Man’s shoulder. ‘I’ve been thinking,’ he said, ‘and I’m damned if I can see how we’re going to get down to that river.’

There was a pause. The Old Man waited respectfully to hear what the result of all this thinking might be, but it appeared, in the end, that there wasn’t one.

‘I see,’ said the Old Man.

‘Well, there you have it,’ said the Colonel. ‘There you have it, in a nutshell. That is my opinion.’