The Commissar (2 page)

Our long gun roars, violently.

With a certain feeling of pleasure I see two uniformed figures whirl down from the third-floor windows. They catch for a moment on the overhead wires of the tramlines, then fall to the cobblestones, landing with a soggy thump.

I send three more rounds of HE into the building. Flames commence to roar up from the roof. Tiles fall in the street like enormous hailstones. They splinter on the cobblestones.

The fire runs quickly along the houses. In the twinkling of an eye the whole row becomes a sea of roaring flame. Terrified men spring from the windows, preferring death on the cobblestones to burning alive.

‘Who ordered you to open fire?’ rages the Old Man, hitting out at me with a stick-grenade. ‘Fire when you’re ordered to, an’ not before, you powder-mad sod, you!’

‘They’d have done us up for sure, if I hadn’t fired,’ I defend myself, hurt. ‘The gun’s to shoot with, isn’t it?’

‘That building you’ve just disposed of so thoroughly was I Battalion’s billet. Get
that
through your thick skull!
You
just shot it all to hell!’ shouts the Old Man, despairingly.

‘Sabotage, that’s what it is,’ says Heide, triumphantly, ’or I don’t know what sabotage is! Kick him in front of a court-martial so we won’t have to look at
him
any more!’

‘Must ’ave rotten eggs where ’is brains ought to be,’ barks Tiny, jeeringly. ‘Shit on ’is own doorstep when’e could’ve done it in the snow’n only shit icicles. Let’s blow’is’ead off!’

‘Shut up!’ snarls the Old Man. He puffs fiercely on his pipe.

‘See that sky-pilot over there,’ grins Porta. ‘Runnin’ like mad with a bible under his arm, and a crucifix banging on his navel. The speed he’s going you’d think the devil had his pitchfork up his arse!’

‘I cannot ever understand why chaplains is just as scared of gettin’ knocked off as all us ordinary shits,’ Tiny wonders. ‘Them lot’as got
connections
to the’igher regions!’

‘The holy and righteous are just as scared of blowin’ their last fart as we heathens are, my son,’ philosophizes Porta. ‘In reality only very good people indeed can permit themselves to become religious.’

‘
Panzer, Marsch
.’ orders the Old Man, pulling his headphones down over his ears, and settling his throat microphone in place. ‘2 Section follow me!’ From old habit he lifts his clenched fist over his head. The signal to move forward. Maybach engines howl up into whining upper registers. Broad tracks churn forward over the dead and wounded lying in the street.

A Panther tank stops over a foxhole, where two Russian soldiers have taken cover with an LMG. The tank waggles on its axis, like a hen settling on to her eggs. There are screams, sharply cut off. The Russians have been crushed to a bloody pulp.

The noise of the tanks is deafening. The guns and automatic weapons drown out every other noise.

‘
Anna
here! Here
Anna
,’ the Old Man says to the radio. ‘
Bertha
and
Caesar
make safe on flanks. Fire only at clear targets! I repeat: fire only at clear targets. And I’ll want an exact ammo’ count from all of you. Now, fingers out, an’ get
moving, you sad sacks!’

Flames lick at the houses. Bullets rattle and clang on the sides of the tanks. Machine-gunners fire at them, in the wasteful hope that they can do the steel giants some damage. Poisonous yellow smoke penetrates the tanks, making the crewmen’s tired eyes burn and sting!

A burning roof crashes down on top of a P-III. Flames shoot up, and in a few seconds it becomes an exploding ball of fire. Reserve petrol drums lashed to its rear shield turn the tank into a travelling bomb.

The cold, damp jiight air stinks of explosion fumes, blood and dead bodies.

‘Here Hinka, here Hinka,’ comes from the scratchy loudspeaker. The steely voice of the regimental commander cuts through the racket in the tank. ‘5 Company will do clean-up. Prisoners will be sent back to grenadier battalion. I warn you! No looting of any kind! Breach of this order will be punished most severely!’

‘Always
us
,’ grumbles Porta sourly, speeding up his motor. ‘It’s bloody wonderful! They chase us poor bloody coolies, till even our soddin’ socks are sick of it. Why am I so rotten
healthy
, and why do all them lovely Commie bullets go
round me
? I’m never,
ever
goin’ to get away from this shitty war, and into a lovely, clean hospital with lovely clean, antiseptic nurse’s cunt all round me just longin’ to get across a wounded, bloody Ayrab like me!’

‘’Ot shit!’ growls Tiny, bitterly. ‘Risk your bleedin’ life, every day in every way, for a fucked-up mark a day.’

‘It’s the rotten German army,’ snarls Porta, angrily. ‘Why, oh why, was I ever born in a war-crazy country like Germany!’

I feel dog-tired, but a rage of energy still courses through my weary body. They’ve filled us up with benzedrine. For the last six days we have been unable to snatch more than a few minutes of sleep at a time, and we walk around in a queer sort of haze. The worst of all is that every time we have almost fallen asleep we wake up with a start, and the
bitter taste of fear is in our mouths.

Tiny hangs over the guard rails. His eyes are wide open, but see nothing. From one loosely hanging hand dangles a P-38. He’s like the rest of us. He dare not fall asleep. Now we are close to the danger point. The point where we can no longer be bothered to keep a watch for approaching death. It’s waiting out there for us somewhere; perhaps in the form of an explosion; perhaps in a hysterical hail of machine-gun bullets.

Shells come whistling over the town in great arcs, despatched from invisible batteries to strike at distant targets far behind us.

Tiny jerks awake and cracks his head against the roof of the tank. He swears bitterly and long. Dark blood runs down beside his left ear. He dabs at it, irritably, with an oily cloth.

‘’Oly Mother of Kazan, what a bleedin’ dream,’ he mumbles. ‘I was walkin’ around in a wood tryin’ to find the Red bleedin’ Army. Up comes a commissar an’ shoots the shit out o’ me.’ He looks around at us, quite out of touch. ‘Stone the crows,’ he says, feebly, ‘now I
know
I don’t like gettin’ shot up.’

The tank stops. Mud and remnants of bodies drip from the tracks Its white camouflage paintwork is a dirty grey from powdermarks and filth.

We stretch ourselves in our steel seats, and throw open the shutters to let in some fresh air. But all we get is poison-yellow smoke and the stink of death.

Tank grenadiers sneak along the house walls. They have the dirtiest job of all. Not a bit of glory. Their reward is more often than not a bellyfull of machine-gun bullets. They start in cleaning out the cellars for fanatics, crazy fools who fight to the last man and the last bullet. Their reward is a throat slashed open. Brainwashed idiots filled with Ilya Ehrenburg propaganda. The same kind of people as ours. The ones who die whispering ‘Heil Hitler’ from between crushed lips.

From where we are lying in ambush, we can see a long
way out over the steppe. It is like a whitish-grey sea, fading away into the distant horizon. Far, far behind us, towns and villages, set on fire by shell-fire during our savage attack, burn fiercely.

Wherever we look, fiery red and yellow flashes split the darkness of the night, marking clearly the deadly path of the armoured attack.

Halfway down some cellar steps hangs a US Willy’s jeep with five headless bodies in it. They sit to attention as if on parade. It seems as if a huge knife has slashed the heads from the four Russian officers and their driver in one enormous sweep. There is something strange about the headless bodies. They are not wearing battle khaki but dark green dress uniforms, with broad shoulder distinctions which glitter in the flames from a burning distillery nearby.

‘See now. Sights like that,’ says Porta, spitting accurately out of an observation slit, ‘make a man glad to be alive, even when life is monotonous and weary.’

‘Where you think that lot was off to, togged up in them uniforms an’ all the cunt magnets they c’d get their ’ands on?’ asks Tiny, interestedly. He leans out of the turret opening. ‘They must’ve lost their way to end up’ere where there’s a war goin’ on.’

‘My guess is they were on their way to a party with some field mattresses,’ says Porta. He licks his lips at the thought.

‘Let’s give ’em a goin’ over,’ suggests Tiny, jumping down from the tank. ‘They’re goin’ to a ’ores’ party, they’ll ’ave some pretties on ’em. Count on it!’

Porta inches up through the turret opening, eagerly, and bends over a headless first lieutenant with a row of ribbons on his chest.

‘A hero,’ he laughs, putting the ribbons in his pocket. Buyers for them are easy to find behind the lines. His quick fingers go through the officer’s pockets, regardless of congealed blood and crushed bones.

‘Not a lot o’ gold teeth in
this
lot,’ remarks Tiny disappointedly,
nosing around in the blood-spattered vehicle.

‘Perfumed officers’ cigarettes with paper mouthpieces,’ says Porta, putting some blue packets into his specially-made poacher’s pockets.

‘Any
seegars
?’ asks Tiny, turning over a body, with an unpleasant squelching sound.

‘Are you out of your mind, man?’ answers Porta. ‘Stalin’s officers don’t smoke cigars. That’s capitalistic!’

‘Lucky for us then we’re bleedin’ capitalists, ‘Tiny laughs noisily, picking up a bottle of vodka, one of the finest kind with the old Russian czarist eagle on a royal blue label. A vodka which only the top party leaders get supplied with.

Two grimy panzer grenadiers come along, dragging a screaming, half-naked woman with them. She tries desperately to tear herself loose, but they only tighten their grip on her.

‘You’re goin’ with us, you little cat, whether you want to or not,’ grins one of them, lasciviously. ‘You’re gonna get the chance to enjoy the war in our company. We’re gonna ’ave an orgy, with sighs’n everythin’ else as belongs with it.’

But the terrified girl obviously does not want to take part in an orgy. She kicks one of the grenadiers on the knee. He lets out a chain of shocking oaths, and grips her roughly by the throat with one filthy, wet fist.

‘Listen to me, you little wildcat,’ he snarls, wickedly. ‘Get civilized or I’ll smash your pretty little face in.
Panjemajo
*
, you Bolshevik bitch? It’s a longtime since me’n my mate’ve had any fresh goods.
Panjemajo
, Bolshy? You’re goin’ to an orgy, an’ you’re gonna be the main attraction.
Panjemajo
?’

‘
Da
,’ she whispers, in terror, and seems to give up all attempt at resistance.

‘The party’s over,’ snarls the Old Man, swinging his mpi muzzle round to cover the three. ‘Let ’er go! Now! Or would you rather we had a fast little court-martial?’

‘Now I’ve heard it all,’ shouts the biggest of the two panzer grenadiers, pushing his helmet to the back of his head. ‘Been chewin’ on wood, ’ave you? Belt up, you puffed-up excuse for a dragoon, you!’

They have let go of the girl and fumble for the machine-pistols hanging across their chests. They have not seen Tiny and Porta standing behind them.

‘Get ’em up! Let’s see you try to tickle the angels’ footsoles, my sons,’ trumpets Porta, grinning happily.

Both panzer grenadiers swing round with mpis at the ready. Bullets snarl angrily past Porta’s face.

Reflexively, Tiny cuts the grenadiers almost in two with a scythe-like burst from his
Kalashnikov
.

One goes down, internal organs flopping from his open gut. The other is thrown onto his back, and tries to crawl under the tracks . of the tank.

‘Bye-bye, then,’ grins Tiny. ‘See what ’appens to little boys as gets caught tryin’ to pinch a piece o’ cunt!’

‘
Was
that necessary?’ asks the Old Man, fretfully, pushing his helmet up from his face.

‘What you bleedin’ want us to do, then? Them two blue-bollocked bastards was gonna shoot us to death,’ protests Tiny, outraged.

‘The way of the world,’ sighs Porta. He pushes at the nearest body with the toe of his boot. ‘Him as shoots first lives longest!’

The Old Man takes a deep breath. As he crawls back down through the turret opening he breaks into a mad burst of laughter. He knows very well that this war is eating us all up. To protest against the cruelty of death is completely useless.

‘Where’d the bint get to,’ asks Porta, looking searchingly around him.

‘There she goes, runnin’ like mad,’ laughs Tiny, pointing. ‘’Ad enough of us Germans, seems like.’

Bullets from an MG whip along the fronts of the houses, throwing earth and mortar over the jeep. The big, soft lump
of fear is back in our throats.

‘Come on,’ says the Old Man. ‘Let’s move!’

‘Can I borrow that big feller’s uniform?’ asks Tiny.

‘What the devil do you want with that?’ asks the Old Man, wonderingly. ‘Haven’t you got uniform enough in the one Adolfs lent you?’

‘You ain’t forward-lookin’ enough,’ grins Tiny, cunningly. ‘When “
Grofaz
”
*
’as lost ’is war, and we get enrolled in the other FPO’s lot, it’ll be a good thing to ’ave a uniform of your own to start off with.’

‘You’re lookin’ for a miracle, son,’ laughs Porta.