Court Martial (6 page)

A few minutes later he is passing the buck to a Hauptmann.

'I want a clear picture of what is happening! Understand me, Herr Hauptmann? There's some devilry going on. Some damned devilry!'

The Hauptmann disappears behind a clump of trees, where he runs into a Leutnant.

'There's some devilry going on. You understand me?' he roars at the Leutnant. 'I want your report here in ten minutes time. Somebody is annoying the enemy!'

The
Jager
-Leutnant jogs off down the narrow track where he runs into No. 2 Section. He points at the Old Man with his Mpi.

'On your feet, Oberfeldwebel! What a pigsty this is! The enemy's worked up and I want to know why. Understand me? I want to
know
. Even if you have to get it from the Russian CO in person!'

'Very good, sir,' the Old Man replies, moving around as if he were preparing to go.

The Leutnant disappears between the trees and decides to find a hiding-place where the Hauptmann will never think of looking for him.

The Old Man sits down quietly, and puffs his pipe.

During the next hour we hear dispersed firing, first from one direction then from another.

'They're dead long ago,' says Barcelona, blackly, listening to the sound of a long, vicious Mpi salvo.

The depressed gun roars, and several handgrenades explode. Through all the noise we hear the sound of a great roar of happy laughter.

'That was Porta,' mumbles the Old Man, fiddling nervously with the silver lid of his pipe.

Dawn is near and the storm has slackened off almost completely. Only occasionally icy gusts whirl the snow up around us.

'I doubt if we'll see them again, now,' states Heide. 'Nobody can hang about in the middle of an enemy retirement as long as they have without getting scalped.'

'I'm afraid you're right,' says the Old Man quietly. 'If only I'd forbidden them to go.'

'
Par Allah
, you couldn't have kept them back,' the Legionnaire comforts him.

A well-known sound brings us to our feet with our weapons at the ready.

'Ski-troops,' whispers Heide, tensely, taking cover behind a tree.

I am down in a hole with the butt of the MG pressed into my shoulder. The snow squeaks and crackles. There is a strange kind of grunting noise. Again a sound like the hiss of skis sliding through frozen snow. I crook my finger on the trigger. There is a shadow moving amongst the trees.

'Don't fire,' shouts Barcelona, jumping to his feet. He has seen Porta's cylindrical yellow topper, which seems to be bobbing about strangely high up amongst the trees.

'What the hell?' cries the Westphalian, astoundedly.

Half fearfully we stare at the floating hat as it comes bobbing towards us. If Porta is wearing that hat he must have grown at least six feet. Then the riddle is answered. A reindeer comes snuffling out of the snow. It looks as if it has been rolling in cotton wool. It is pulling an
akja
12
behind it, fully loaded with boxes and sacks. On top of the load Porta and Tiny sit majestically.

Was it you doing the shooting?' shouts the Old Man.

'Sometimes it was,' answers Tiny, with an air of superiority. But the neighbours' lads got shot of quite a pile of Uncle Joe Stalin's shit, too.'

We ran into a crazy sod of a
politruk
,
+
with a face that thin he could've kissed a
kz
++
goat between the horns with no trouble,' explains Porta, waving his arms about. 'We had to take aim twice before we could hit him. Then some bungled-up arsehole starts nattering at us out of the dark, and then he begins shooting at us. We aimed at his muzzle-flash and that soon cured
him
.'

But we went the wrong road,' Tiny breaks in. 'It was black as the backside of a nigger's bollocks. We blunders into some staff quarters where a load o' military geniuses was discussin' 'ow to win the fuckin' war. There was some
vajemkom
13
pushin' out a load o' pig-latin. I pointed me old rock-a-bye 'ere at 'is fat gut, an' 'e stopped talking quite sudden-like! "
Germanski
!" 'e screams, and didn't 'ave time to say any more 'fore 'e was a goner. Porta swept the rest of 'em under the carpet!'

'You brought their charts back, I hope?' asks Heide, professionally. He thinks of nothing else but military objectives.

'What the 'ell'd we want with them?' asks Tiny, blankly. 'They wasn't what we'd gone out to get. And, any road, we knew the way back!'

Heide can only shake his head despairingly.

'What a row there was then, both south and north,' explains Porta. 'When we got outside we got tumbled head-over-heels by a whole shower of 'em, and some cunt of an officer gave us a real shellacking. He was that mixed up he never even noticed when Tiny answers him: "
Jaawohl, Herr Leutnant
!"'

'Almost more'n a bloke's life was worth to be out in the open there,' Tiny goes on, lighting up a cigar.

'Well we kept walking about a bit and watching the confusion,' laughs Porta, heartily. 'A major, red in the face as a boiled lobster, gives us another bollocking and orders us to help get a PAK-gun
+
into position. An order's an order in any man's army, so we got on with helping the anti-tank boys to get their pea-shooter set up where Major Ivan wanted it.'

'All 'ell'd broke loose up the other end of the camp,' grins Tiny. 'Up 'ad gone an ammo stores an' there was an awful din goin' on. We thought for a bit it was you lot come to give us a 'and. Somebody blows the alarm whistle an' all the stinkin' Russians dashes over to where the bullets are fiyin'.'

'Now we had some elbow-room,' says Porta, loftily. 'We pushed our nuts into the various companies just to say hello, and suddenly there we are with the catering boys.'

'I doubt if any German soldier 'as ever seen so much perishin' grub at one time in all 'is born life,' interjects Tiny, rolling his eyes ecstatically heavenwards. 'They'd got every-thin'. Wobblin' pork, smoked reindeer, pickled gherkins, the
lot
!'

'Yes, a comparison of Russian army catering with German ditto,' remarks Porta, drily, 'makes one realise that belief in the Final Victory can only be supported by faith alone!'

'There was a fat sod of a cook-sergeant, lyin' there 'avin' a wank at a picture o'
Marlene
Dietrich,' Tiny gives a dirty chuckle. 'Biggest load 'e shot in 'is life was the last, when rock-a-bye-baby 'ere pushed forty-two tracers right up 'is bleedin' jacksey!'

We had to move fast, now,' says Porta, with a short laugh. We grabbed everything we could get our hands on. When we found out we couldn't carry the half of it we went out to try and liberate a sledge. That's how we met this Commie reindeer, who did
not
conceal from us that he was a critic of the system, and since he also had an
akja
with him, well, we enlisted him on the spot.'

'I 'ad to promise 'im some Finnish, capitalist reindeer cunt,' grins Tiny, 'and 'e's goin' to get it too, if I 'ave to bend over an' supply German arsehole to 'im, personally!'

'Don't tell me this unit's going to be cluttered up with a reindeer, now?' shouts the Old Man, furiously.

'We can discuss that later,' answers Porta, off-handedly. While the neighbours were shadow-boxing and banging away at one another, we popped in on the QM. There was only one man on guard and he was asleep, so he didn't even notice it when we shot him.'

'Asleep on guard,' shouts Heide, indignantly. 'He
deserved
to lose his life!'

'Well, I'm quite happy to find that the majority of soldiers are bad soldiers,' replied Porta.

'
Beseff
14
that is because most soldiers are poor people,' says the Legionnaire. 'Life has taught them that however hard they work they will still continue to be poor.'

'Ah! But poor soldiers make good killers,' says Tiny, 'an' they've got sharp eyes an 'ears. That's because they've 'ad to keep 'em open for the bailiff an' the bleedin' coppers since they was nippers!'

'When we dropped in on the butchers' store,' continued Porta, 'Tiny came near to killing us. He dropped a hand-grenade into a box of flares. They fizzed about all over the place and a couple of Ivans got hit and were rendered down in two shakes. But our visit was remunerative. There was coffee, pure coffee all the way from Brazil. I don't think Adolf, even, can get it any more. It was as easy as walking into the grocer's and asking for a pound!'

'Easier,' grins Tiny, euphorically. 'You didn't even 'ave to queue up and slip your coppers to some bint behind a cash-box.'

For the next couple of hours we eat as if we were preparing ourselves for three years of famine.

'Shouldn't we give some to the wounded,' feels Heide, the humanitarian.

Tiny almost chokes on a huge mouthful of pickled herring.

'What sick soddin' monkey's been bitin' on your arse? They're goin' to kick the bucket any bloody road.'

'They are our comrades,' Heide instructs him, angrily.

'Maybe they're yours, I don't know any of 'em,' replies Tiny, carelessly, pushing another pickled herring into his mouth.

Tiny's right, you know,' says Porta. 'If we give the wounded anything we'll have old Monocle-Charlie, the Oberst, on our backs. He'll want it shared out to the whole of the company. It's better, in my opinion, that a few of us get enough, than that everybody shares and still gets too little to do him any good.'

Suddenly the Old Man goes red in the face. He tries to hit himself on the back. His face goes slowly purple. Gurgling, he rolls over on his side. He is choking. We roll him on to his face and hammer with our fists on his back.

'He's dying,' says Porta, with conviction. '
People!
Why can't they chew their food properly?'

''E ain't gonna die,' says Tiny and gripping the Old Man by the ankles he bangs his head against the ground repeatedly whilst the Legionnaire hammers him on the back.

Half a block of liver paste flies out of his mouth.

'God save us,' stammers the Old Man, straining to get back his breath. 'Think, to die in action choked by enemy liver paste!'

'It's all one,' says Gregor, with a lop-sided smile, 'whether you get choked by liver paste, or get your guts blown apart by explosives!'

We take a break from eating, but after ten minutes we start in again.

We are no longer eating to still our hunger, but from mere gluttony.

'
Santa Maria del Mar
,' groans Barcelona, with a long drawn out belch. 'I'm dreaming. Pinch me, somebody, am I still here?'

'You're still here,' I answer, cutting myself a large slice from a haunch of reindeer.

'Hell's bells,' he cries, toppling a shivering goatsmilk cheese into his widely gaping mouth.

'What the devil's that?' cries Porta, in terror, throwing himself head-over-heels into covers behind a snowdrift.

We scatter like chaff before the wind. In a moment we are lying in wait for the unknown who has given us warning of his coming. The automatic weapons are at the ready. Fingers curl round triggers.

We lie like this for some time, waiting, tense.

'Gas shells,' says Porta, fearfully, fumbling for the gasmask he has long since jettisoned.

Then the Legionnaire laughs hysterically and points up into the sky.

'
Sacre nom e Dieu
, there are your gas shells!'

We gape at the heavens and cannot believe our own eyes. V after V of wild ducks flap noisily past above our heads.

'Holy Mother of Kazan!' cries Porta, getting up on one knee.

'There goes a whole supply depot and we're doing nothing about it!'

'What in the world are they doing here?' asks the Westphalian, thoughtfully. 'Ducks fly to the warm regions in wintertime.'

'Maybe then they're Eskimo ducks, on their way to cool off their arses on the damned icebergs,' says Tiny, licking his lips, hungrily. The sight has made him forget completely the fact that he is no longer hungry.

'I can't imagine what they can live off up here,' continues the Westphalian, stubbornly. 'There's nothing here for ducks to fill up on.'

'Maybe the travel agency they bought their tickets from has gone broke,' suggests Porta, staring after the ducks which have disappeared across the Lange Lake.

'Wild duck is wonderful,' says the Old Man, dreamily 'If only we could have potted a few of 'em down!'

'I've never tried it,' says Heide. 'Is it as good as ordinary duck?'

'Better,' Porta assures him. 'Kings and dictators serve it at great banquets to which they invite the highest in the land. I have the English king's recipe for wild duck. I got it from a cook in the English Life Guards whom I met in France.'

Was he an Englishman you had taken prisoner?' asks Heide, interestedly.

'No, he was a chap I said good-bye to on the beach at Dunkirk, when Churchill's army went off back to London to patch up their uniforms.'

'You allowed a prisoner to escape?' asks Heide, in amazement.

'Hell no. That's what I'm trying to tell you. He just went off home!'

'They're coming back,' screams Tiny, excitedly, pointing out over the lake.

'Devil take me if they're not,' shouts Porta, throwing a stone up in the air in the vain hope of hitting a duck.

The Old Man catches up a carbine and shoots into the flock. Tiny and Porta stand watching like a pair of bird-dogs.

The rest of us pick up our carbines and Mpi's. Shots hail up at the quacking flock, but not a single bird is hit. They disappear behind the hills.

'Oh
shit
!' says Porta, in disappointment, dropping down on the snow.

'It'd have been the first sensible shot fired in the whole bloody war!'

'If a bloke'd been a fighter pilot it'd've been easy to fly under 'em an' pick'em up on the wing,' says Tiny, swallowing involuntarily.

Long after the wild ducks have flown past we are still talking about them.