Reign of Hell (14 page)

‘It’s bleeding,’ I said, and my voice was shrill with horror. ‘Look at it, it’s bleeding! My foot’s bleeding—’ I ripped off the remnants of boot and gingerly picked out the pieces of sock that were embedded in my flesh. ‘I can’t go about like this,’ I said. ‘How can I be expected to go about barefooted over this sort of country? How can I be expected to—’

Tiny thrust his face pugnaciously close to mine.

‘Shut up bleeding moaning!’ he snarled. ‘Just fucking shut up or I’ll fucking belt you one!’

I sat whimpering to myself in the mud and cradling my injured foot in my hands. Tiny gave me a look of mingled hatred and disgust. He suddenly leapt out of the shell hole and cantered away, and I thought he was deserting me, but within seconds he had returned.

‘Here,’ he said. ‘Try those on for size.’ He thrust a pair of boots at me. Boots such as I had never seen before. Pale lemon leather, soft and supple and almost brand new. I gazed at them in wonderment and awe. ‘I got ’em off a dead Russian officer,’ said Tiny, carelessly. ‘I reckon they’ll do you all right.’

I discarded my own one remaining boot, all beat up and battered as it was, and slipped my feet into the new pair. A smile of infantile delight spread itself over my face. I turned
up my toes in ecstasy. It was like wearing a couple of swans-down muffs on your feet. Amazing to think that only a few years ago, back in the palmy days of the beginning of it all, we had been fighting an army of rags and tatters; and now it was we who were in rags, it was our uniform which was in tatters, and in order to equip oneself with a decent pair of boots a German soldier must resort to pillaging from a dead Russian officer. The end of the war must surely be in sight.

There was a sudden resurgence of enemy tanks and infantry. Tiny and I sank lower in our shell hole and were forced to lie for minutes at a time holding our breath and our heads submerged beneath the filthy water.

It was late in the evening before we could make our way back to our own lines. The Russian attack had failed, but it had cost both sides dear. The ground was littered with dead and dying bodies, and already the lewd green marsh flies were bloating themselves on human flesh and blood. The flies and the rats were the only ones to multiply and prosper in times of war.

We sat watching them, unmoved by a sight we had seen too often before. Porta handed round a great stone flagon full of rather repulsive-looking liquid. Barcelona was the first to sample it, and he instantly fell back, gasping, with his fingers tearing desperately at his throat. We observed him with interest, wondering if he would recover. Porta himself had already imbibed freely of the concoction, but it was well known that Porta had a stomach of cast-iron and a digestive system that could attack and demolish even prussic acid or cyanide as if they were slices of bread and butter.

‘Sod that for a laugh!’ gasped Barcelona, with the tears streaming down his cheeks. ‘What the bloody hell is it? Someone’s lousy stinking piss?’

Porta smiled, evilly.

‘Spuds,’ he said. ‘Rotting spuds. That’s all.’

He raised the flagon to his lips and took a long draught. Barcelona tore open his collar and began to massage his throat.

‘More like rotting corpses,’ he said, sourly.

‘That,’ agreed Porta, wiping a contented hand across his mouth, ‘is more than likely . . . Anyone else want a swig?’

During the night, reinforcements arrived. They were an SS rifle brigade, and the flash on their collars was the Union Jack. We studied them with undisguised curiosity, and when we heard them speaking English among themselves we could scarcely believe our ears. British soldiers in the SS? Had Churchill and Hitler come to terms at last? Had we formed a new alliance? To present, perhaps, a united front against the Russians?

‘You must be bleeding joking!’ A British Oberscharführer with a mass of flaming red hair turned and spat contemptuously. ‘Those stupid sods in London still think they can work hand in glove with the Communists and get away with it. They still think everything in the garden’s bright red and rosy.’ He spat again. ‘They’ll find out, when it’s too late.’

We listened in silent wonderment to his accent. A real live Englishman in SS uniform . . .

‘You got any objections?’ he said, coldly.

‘None whatsoever,’ the Legionnaire assured him. ‘It’s all one to us whether you’re blood brother to the King of England or a yellow-arsed git from Outer Mongolia. We were merely interested,’ he said, ‘to know what brought you here.’

The man scowled.

‘We’re volunteers. We’re all volunteers.’

He plainly had no wish to talk about it, but a little Unterscharführer at his side spoke up readily enough.

‘They went round the camps recruiting people. I was in Stalag VIII. I was captured after Dunkirk.’

‘And you volunteered for this lot?’ I said, incredulously.

‘Well—’ The man shrugged. ‘I reckoned the way things were going, I might just as well. It seemed better than sitting on my arse doing sweet bugger all for the rest of the war.’

He looked at us, defiantly, and the Legionnaire shook his head, more in pity than reproof.

‘What about afterwards?’ he said.

The man hesitated.

‘Afterwards?’

‘That’s right,’ said the Legionnaire. ‘Afterwards . . . When the war comes to an end. When one lot of shooting stops and the next lot starts up . . . When they’re raking in the war criminals and the traitors, and the collaborators and the black-marketeers . . . What happens then?’

The man licked his lips. The rest of his companions looked nervously in the other direction. Only the red-haired Oberscharführer seemed to have the answer.

‘Nothing happens,’ he said, curtly. ‘They’ll still need all the fighting men they can get. Only it won’t be Nazis they’re having a go at, it’ll be the Communists . . . A year or two in the nick’s the worst that can happen to us. After that I reckon we’ll be going at it hammer and tongs with the Reds and they won’t be able to let us out fast enough.’

The Old Man raised an eyebrow.

‘There speaks an optimist,’ he murmured. ‘Suppose it’s the Russians that lay hands on you first?’

‘Well? So what if it is? So what if we tell them that the Jerries forced us into fighting for them? Who’s to know otherwise?’

The Old Man smiled rather sadly. It was almost incredible that after five years of war anyone could still be so naïve.

‘You’ll find out,’ he said. ‘You’ll find out . . .’

With the approach of dawn we picked up our arms and took leave of the British volunteers, returning once again to our positions in the trenches. The Old Man cocked an ear in the direction of the Russian lines and turned down the corners of his mouth.

‘There’s going to be trouble,’ he said. ‘They’re up to no good over there.’

We stood listening to the sounds of activity in the Russian trenches, and we knew the Old Man was right. He could always sense when a storm was brewing. It was something he felt in his bones, and we accepted his word without question.

‘Won’t be for a while yet,’ he said. ‘Let’s get the cards out and have a game or two.’

Porta produced a pack, and we settled down to the inevitable pontoon. Lenzing, the Communist, was with us. He had
managed to survive the various hells through which he had been dragged since Sennelager, and he had toughened up considerably in the process. He wasn’t yet a soldier, but at least he was a man. There could no longer be any mistaking him for a boy of sixteen. He was now the loader on Porta’s machine-gun.

‘So,’ said the Old Man, as he handed round a packet of cigarettes, ‘you were a medical student, were you?’

Lenzing inclined his head in silent acknowledgment. Porta leaned towards him, interested as always to learn the exact details.

‘Ever get around to cutting people open and messing about inside ’em?’ he asked.

Lenzing smiled slightly.

‘No, I never got that far. They arrested me before I’d finished the course.’

‘More fool you,’ said Gregor, shortly. ‘That’s the trouble with you student types. Always bloody shooting your mouth off about something or other. Where’s the point of it? Eh? Where’s the point of it? Why can’t you just shut up and get on with the job like the rest of us?’

Lenzing hunched an indifferent shoulder.

‘You’re probably right,’ he said.

‘Never speak unless you’re spoke to,’ said Porta, who was a fine one to talk. ‘That’s my advice, mush.’

‘Yeah, but there’s more to it than that,’ said Tiny, earnestly. ‘There’s a damn sight more to it than that. You want to keep your head on your shoulders, you got to learn how to play the game. It ain’t just a question of saying yessir and no sir all the time. It’s more a question of not letting on you’ve got anything up here. Know what I mean?’ He tapped a finger to the side of his head. ‘Whatever you do,’ he said, ‘don’t let ’em suspect that you got anything more than a load of old sawdust in there. Take me, for example.’ He picked up his two cards and slowly added the pip value on his fingers. ‘Take me,’ he said. ‘How do you reckon I’ve got away with it all this time?’

‘I’ve really no idea,’ said Lenzing.

‘No?’ said Tiny. ‘Well, look, I’ll tell you. I play dumb, see? Make like I’m an idiot . . . Like I don’t know what’s going on. Right?’

‘Right,’ said Lenzing, very solemnly.

Tiny bought a third card from the dealer and did another simple addition on his fingers. He smiled complacently at Lenzing.

‘You know what?’ he said. ‘A trick cyclist once told one of my officers I was only one step removed from a moron: Meaning,’ he said, ‘that I was dead stupid. Meaning I didn’t have no brain . . . Well, a student type like you, studying to be a doctor and all, chances are you wouldn’t be too happy if they told you you was a moron. Chances are you’d get your knickers in a twist. Try and show ’em different. Go round shooting your mouth off. Get yourself into trouble . . . Now me,’ said Tiny, blandly, ‘I just played right up to ’em. And I been playing up to ’em ever since. You ask anyone what knows me. They’ll all say the same. And the result is,’ said Tiny, laying down a winning hand, ‘no one never troubles me. I say what I like and I do what I like and no one takes no notice on account of I’m supposed to be stupid.’

‘All very well,’ said Porta. ‘But it’s not so easy for some of us. Some of us don’t have your great natural advantage.’

‘What’s that, then?’ said Tiny, looking interested.

‘Having a dirty great space where your brain’s supposed to be,’ said Porta.

The next day, the rain started again. It came down in ropes and there was no escaping it. Arms began to rust, leathers began to grow stiff, boots began to rub and pinch. Even one’s skin began to wrinkle and look waterlogged. To make matters worse, orders came through that we were to change positions. Cursing and swearing, we collected up our gear and went squelching off in the heavy mud, single file behind Lieutenant Löwe. Leather straps as hard as iron cut into our shoulders. Bare feet in leaking boots began to grow sore and blister. At the head of the column, Löwe was wearing a fur-lined jacket which had been removed from the body of a dead Russian major. It still had the enemy
dressings on it. No one seemed to care about such minor details any more.

Tiny was carrying the machine-gun tripod across his shoulders and was marching through the clinging mud with easy strides. Behind him, Helmuth was struggling with four boxes of ammunition. He was cursing everything indiscriminately as he walked. The rain, the mud, the Russians; Himmler, Hitler, Goering, Goebbels; the bloody British, the bloody Yanks; the rain, the mud, the Russians; Himmler, Hitler—

‘What’s the date?’ demanded Heide, suddenly.

There was a momentary pause of surprise in Helmuth’s catalogue of hatred; and then he started up again:

‘Bloody Russians. Stupid bloody bastards. Stupid bloody sodding bastards. Stupid bloody—’

‘I said what’s the date?’ screamed Heide.

‘Second of September,’ said Helmuth. ‘Bastard bloody Russians. Bastard bloody Yanks. Bastard bloody—’

‘Why?’ I said, cutting straight across him. ‘What the hell difference does it make if it’s the second of September or the second of any other flaming month?’

‘It makes a great deal of difference,’ said Heide, coldly. ‘It’s a pity you don’t take a bit more notice of what the Führer has to say.’

Helmuth stopped abruptly in the middle of his droning.

‘Why? What does he have to say?’

‘Only that in three months’ time,’ Heide informed us, ‘the war will be over. The Führer promised that all troops would be back home by Christmas.’

There were loud shouts of derision from all sides.

‘If that turns out to be true,’ jeered Porta, ‘then my prick’s a bloater!’

A gloomy silence gradually descended upon us as the march continued and the rain went on falling. Even Helmuth ran out of epithets. Even Porta faded into speechlessness. My new yellow boots were caked with mud and all my clothing was sticking to me. The ground shook periodically beneath our feet as shells exploded in the distance. No one
seemed to know where we were going or why we were going there. It was the general opinion that we were marching purely for the sake of marching, because they could find no better way of employing us.