Authors: Sven Hassel
'
Such
a pity old Nuts had to miss it all,' I murmured, thinking of the wounded Barcelona and absently pouring champagne down my ear instead of my mouth.
'I'm warning you,' said the Old Man, seriously. 'I disclaim all responsibility for this debauch. You have openly opposed me with guns in your hands.' He belched and tried to pretend that he hadn't. 'I'm warning you,' he repeated. 'I've written it all down in my notebook.'
'That's easily settled,' said Porta. He seized the notebook and promptly dunked it in the stewpot. 'Have another glass of champagne, it'll take your mind off things.'
Little John beamed happily at everyone. His face was shining with grease and goodwill.
'Adolf never gave anyone a spread like this,' he said. 'I'm going to write to Mr. Eisenhower and ask to join his gang.'
The revels continued. The Old Man joined in willy nilly. Heide discovered a barrel of cognac and we drank our way stolidly through it. After that we began to play games. Silly, childish games accompanied by much hysterical laughter and horse play. I clambered up a tree pretending--and doubtless thinking--that I was a monkey. The only nuts I could find were hand grenades, so I sprinkled them at will over the ground below. By some miracle, no one was killed. Little John and Porta set light to a drum of petrol and began leaping in and out of the flames, until Little John sat down in the middle of it and was nearly burnt to a cinder. We rushed at him with the extinguisher and sprayed him liberally, by which time he looked like a giant snowman. The Legionnaire, in his solitary way, was gravely mixing together every possible combination of drink, rum and cognac and whisky, brandy and vodka and creme de menthe, and Gregor ran about barking like a dog and tripping people up.
Suddenly, out of the trees, came a well-known voice. In an exceedingly bad temper.
'This time you've really gone too far! Where's Feldwebel Beier?'
We stopped our revels and stood gaping, as Lt. Lowe appeared like a black cloud in our midst, with the rest of the Company agog behind him.
'Where is he?' he repeated, grimly.
A long search revealed the Old Man flat on his back, snoring like a pig, with a grenade clutched in either hand.
'He tried to stop us,' I said, with a vague, befuddled feeling of loyalty towards the Old Man. 'We opposed hint--we openly opposed him--with guns in our hands.'
'He wrote it all down in his notebook,' added Heide, helpfully,
'His notebook's in the stewpot!'
Gregor screamed with laughter and once again began barking like a dog. Lieutenant Lowe roared. Just opened his mouth and roared. No words were necessary.
'Sh!' cautioned the Old Man, opening his eyes at last. 'You'll bring the enemy down on us.'
'Have a Foreign Legion special,' offered Little John.
He held out a glass containing God knows what mixture of drinks. The Lieutenant slapped it ungraciously from his hand and the liquid splattered itself over his uniform.
'Now look what you've done,' said Little John.
Out of his pocket he dragged a filthy piece of rag. He leaned forward to wipe down the Lieutenant's uniform, gave a drunken lurch and put out both hands to steady himself. He and Lowe crashed to the ground, locked in a far from loving embrace. Lowe, being sober, was the first to reinstate himself. Little John clutched anxiously at one of his legs, trying to pull his vast bulk upright, and Lowe kicked out and sent him flying.
'Got his knickers twisted,' observed Gregor to me, very solemnly. 'In a bad mood.'
'Filthy temper, more like.'
Little John staggered to his feet, fell into the Lieutenant once again, and once again they disappeared earthwards in a flying tangle of arms and legs.
'Look at that!' said Heide, reprovingly. 'An officer lowering himself to brawl with one of his own men. I'd like to hear what a court martial would have to say about that.'
While the Lieutenant and Little John were rolling about the ground in each other's arms, the rest of the company, with loud whoops of delight, had flung them? selves upon the debris that we had left behind. We heard the familiar and beloved sound of champagne corks popping; we heard bottles being smashed, we heard the clatter of knives and forks. Clearly our companions had no intention of missing out on the feast. I saw one of them firing his revolver into a barrel of rum and gulping the stuff down as fast as it spurted out. A tin of corned beef came flying out of a window, followed by an empty vodka bottle. The third section was pelting the fourth with eggs. I felt moved almost to pity as I contemplated Lt. Lowe, standing helpless in the midst of it all. I didn't hold it against him, getting mad at us.
'I don't hold it against you, sir,' I said, kindly. 'Getting mad at us, I mean. I understand how you feel.'
The look he turned upon me was one of pure hatred. I was a bit taken aback, I admit, but nevertheless I persisted.
'If you just had a little drink yourself, sir, it might make you feel a bit better.'
Lowe raised both fists high above his head.
'You'll swing for this! 'he said. 'The whole damn lot of you, you'll swing for this!'
Gregor at once rushed to the nearest tree and began hanging from a branch, throwing his legs up and down and chattering like a monkey. Little John promptly began pelting him with stones, and I, feeling slightly jealous, because after all it was me that had played the monkey game first, took a rugger dive at his legs and tried to dislodge him. We were soon all three in a fierce rough and tumble on the ground and had forgotten Lt. Lowe's very existence.
It was probably Porta who brought the final and annihilating blow down on our heads. It was certainly Porta who ran berserk with a bulldozer and caused the entire prefabricated hut to collapse. I heard Lt. Lowe screaming his head off somewhere and caught the words 'loot and pillage', and I heard Porta braying like a donkey and declaring that he was now a member of the U.S. Army and had reason to believe there were Krauts in the camp. After that, I got my face in the way of someone's boot and didn't know any more until I was jerked awake by an earth-shaking explosion and discovered the whole camp in flames about my ears.
Considering that at least 99 per cent of the Company were almost totally insensible with drink, it doubtless says something for army training that not a single life was lost nor a single man injured, apart from the black eyes and broken teeth that are the inevitable aftermath of any debauch.
'Not a bad binge, that,' said Little John, as we marched back to base. 'We'll do it again some day.'
In the offices of the Gestapo on the Avenue Foch, Commissar Helmuth Bernhard, section I
V/2
A, was interrogating the journalist Pierre Brossolette. Brossolette had been picked up on a beach in Normandy, attempting to make his, way to England and there reveal the plans for the insurrection of Paris. Helmuth Bernhard was merely the latest in a long line of interrogators.
The Gestapo were well aware of Brossolette's intentions on reaching England. What they required to know was the names of his collaborators, and they worked towards this end with all their usual diligent brutality.
Bernhard himself was more subtle in method than his predecessors, and in any case, by the time Brossolette came into his care it was fairly obvious that any more physical torture would probably kill the man before he could be of any use to them. Already they had smashed both his legs in several places, so that now he could only drag himself painfully along the ground on his hands and elbows. Bernhard, viewing him with a practised eye, decided that the moment was ripe for a more refined form of persuasion. Given the right treatment, the man would soon break.
Unfortunately for Bernhard, Brossolette himself was equally well aware that he was nearing the end of his resources. In a final burst of defiance, therefore, he succeeded in hurling himself from a top-floor window during a moment of inattention by his guards. His fall was broken half-way by a stone balcony. The Gestapo rushed outside in time to see him bouncing off the balcony on to the ground below. He was dead before they reached him.
That night, eight hostages were shot
by by way of
reprisal.
GENERAL VON CHOLTITZ VISITS HIMMLER
S.S. Reichsfuhrer Heinrich Himmler had installed himself and his staff in a castle not far from Salburg. Tall, grim S.S. men mounted a rigid guard day and night all round the perimeter. They were the men of Himmler's own special S.S. company, the fanatical 3rd Panzers of the Totenkopf Division--the only S.S. division to wear the silk-embroidered death's heads on their collars.
They had been in existence now for ten years, and during that time four commanding officers, having fallen foul of the Reichsfuhrer, had disappeared without trace. The 'T' Division received all its orders direct from Himmler, and from Himmler alone, and they owed allegiance to none other. Hitler both hated and mistrusted them.
Three large staff vehicles were drawn up before the entrance to the castle. A general of an infantry division was slowly and ponderously climbing the steps, to be met at the top by an S.S. Sturmbannfuhrer and promptly relieved of his briefcase.
'Sorry about that, sir,' said the S.S. man, officiously. 'New orders, as from the twentieth of July... The Reichsmarschall himself would even have to submit!'
'Perhaps you'd care to take my revolver, as well?' suggested the General, sourly.
'No, you can keep that, sir... If you'd care to follow me?'
The visitor was ushered into the palatial office of the Reichsfuhrer, and the two men saluted each other in accordance also with the new regulation of 20th July,
'General Dietrich von Choltitz, sir,' announced the Sturmbannfuhrer. 'Here to make his report.'
'Ah yes.' Himmler rose from his chair and held out a hand. 'Consider yourself welcome, General. I'm pleased to make your acquaintance... May I congratulate you on your promotion? From lieutenant-colonel to general in three years! That's not bad going..Not bad going at all.
Even our own S.S. officers don't usually progress at that rate!'
General von Choltitz smiled faintly in recognition of the Reichsfuhrer's praise. Himmler took him confidentially by the arm.
'Well, tell me, how are you finding things in Paris? You're managing to keep the French in their place all right?'
'I'm managing,' said von Choltitz, grimly.
'It's a tough job.' Himmler nodded his encouragement, then flipped a finger towards the cross that von Choltitz wore at his neck. 'A souvenir of Rotterdam, I take it?'
'A souvenir of Rotterdam ... yes.'
Himmler laughed.
'Eighteenth of May 1940!'
'You have an outstanding memory, Reichsfuhrer.'
'Just so. One needs it, in my job.' Himmler disengaged himself from the General and walked up to his desk, which was covered beneath piles of papers and folders and trays full of documents. 'As you will see, I receive plenty of mental exercise! The work piles up day by day. It's been the same ever since I began to occupy myself with matters of the Interior... We are surrounded by enemies and traitors! Enemies and traitors! What do you make of this one?'
He thrust a document at von Choltitz, who calmly accepted it and read it through with no indication of any kind as to his feelings.
'In the name of the German people, Mme Elfriede Scholtz
nee
Remarque, is accused as follows:
'That she did over a period of months hold defeatist views, demanding the removal of the Fuhrer, declaring that our soldiers were no longer anything but cannon fodder, etc. That she had conducted a fanatical propaganda campaign against the Third Reich. The person who denounced her, and who is, in fact, her late landlady, adds the information that Mme Scholtz had never believed in ultimate victory and had on many occasions said so. Madame Scholtz is said to have been much influenced by the famous novel written by her brother, Erich Maria Remarque,
All Quiet on the Western Front
. This can hardly be taken into account as a mitigating circumstance, however, since by her own admission the accused had not seen her brother for thirteen years.'
General von Choltitz silently, with no comment offered or even implied, handed the document back to the Reichsfuhrer. Himmler tossed it furiously on to his desk.
'Death is almost too good for people like that!'
He searched among his papers for another example to show the General but his eye was caught by a document labelled 'top secret', and he picked it up, frowning, and glanced through it. It was a detailed list of all the watches, bracelets, fountain pens, spectacles, rings, chronometers, etc., that had been 'collected' from the deportation camps. Himmler cleared his throat, folded the document carefully into three and hid it away from the glances of the curious. This was one piece of information he would not show von Choltitz, no matter how meteoric had been his rise from the rank of lieutenant-colonel.
'General'--he swung suddenly round on him--'as the Fuhrer has already told you at Wolfsschanze, he wishes Paris to be razed to the ground. I have called you here to inquire why you have not, as yet, put this order into execution... My agents tell me that life is pursuing its normal course in Paris, apart from one or two little--episodes, shall I call them?--that can be laid at the doors of the so-called Resistance Movement.'
Von Choltitz gave an almost imperceptible shrug of the shoulders.
'Reichsfuhrer, I have neither sufficient men nor sufficient arms. The heavy guns have failed to arrive, nobody even knows where they are... And not only that, I've never yet received the new units I was promised.'
'You shall have whatever you need,' said Himmler, magnificently. 'I am at this moment in the course of reconstituting two regiments armed with rocket batteries.
'Tor and Gamma are
en route
, and I've already given
orders to
Model to send you a regiment of ZBV tanks-- they're hard nuts, I can promise you! They'll do anything you like, go anywhere you wish... I'm relying on you, Choltitz, one hundred per cent, and there are very few other officers I could say that to. I hope soon I shall be seeing you in the uniform of an S.S. Obergruppenfuhrer!'