Comrades of War (3 page)

From the noise outside we could tell we were standing on a station. Trampling of boots, shouts, screams. Some people were laughing loudly and defiantly. We noted one person’s laughter in particular. We lay there getting furious at him. Only a Nazi pile of shit could have a laugh like that. No honest beat-up guy would laugh that way.

‘Where are we?’ the engineer Pfc asked.

‘In Russia,’ came the Legionnaire’s laconic answer.

‘I don’t need to be told that, damn you!’

‘Why the hell do you ask then, you fool?’

‘I want to know in what city.’

‘What’s that to you?’

The sliding door was ripped open. An MC noncom fixed us in a dim-witted stare.

‘
Heil
, comrades,’ he whinnied.

‘Piss me in the eye,’ Tiny yelled aggressively and spat in the direction of the Aesculapian hero.

‘Water,’ a voice moaned from the filthy straw.

‘Have a little patience,’ the NCO answered, ‘and you’ll get water and soup. Is anyone here especially sick?’

‘Are you crazy, of course not – we are as healthy as newborn babes! We’ve come to play soccer with you,’ the infantry color guard remarked dryly.

The NCO took off as fast as his legs could carry him.

An endless time passed. Then a couple of POWs turned up with a militiaman. They lugged along a pail of soup and began to scoop it into our greasy and incredibly filthy mess tins. One scoop for each. The soup was lukewarm.

We drank and became even more hungry. The militiaman promised to bring more, but he didn’t come back. Instead there came a new batch of POWs. Under the supervision of a sergeant they started hauling out corpses. Fourteen corpses. Nine of them were the work of the fighter-bomber. They wanted to take the airman along too, but he managed to convince them he was still alive. The sergeant got peeved and muttered something, but left him behind.

Late in the afternoon a reserve doctor came, accompanied by a couple of MC noncoms. They glanced quickly here and there. To everybody they said the same thing: ‘It’ll be all right, it isn’t really bad.’

After repeating the same formula to the airman, they came up to Tiny. The fun started. Before they had a chance to open their mouths, he flared up: ‘You dirty finks! Look how they’ve messed me up! But that’s not really bad, is it? Just lie down, you quack, and I’ll tear off one of your buttocks. Then you can tell me if it’s bad!’

He grabbed hold of the doctor’s ankle and toppled him over in the stinking straw.

‘
Attention! Attention!
’ the Legionnaire yelled.

‘Good, old Tiny, that’s the way,’ rejoiced the man with the bleeding arm and flew at the doctor. The rest of us followed suit and in a moment we’d given the doctor a coating of blood. After his two NCOs had managed to extricate him, he looked menacing.

‘Not so bad,’ we sneered in chorus.

‘You’ll pay for this,’ the shocked doctor threatened.

‘If you dare, come on once more,’ Tiny laughed.

The doctor and his two attendants jumped down from the car and slammed the door.

The train didn’t take off again till next morning. But they forgot to bring us breakfast. We cursed.

The airman was still alive the next morning, but someone else had died during the night. Two guys were fighting over his boots. No wonder, they were a fine soft pair of boots. No doubt a pair he’d had custom-made before the war. They were too long by regulations. They were lined with light fur. A sergeant from the railroad artillery got them. He gave his rival, a chasseur NCO, a smack on the jaw that made him forget about the boots for a while.

‘A damn fine pair of boots,’ the sergeant cried jubilantly, holding them up so all of us could enjoy the sight of them. He moistened them with his breath and rubbed them down with his sleeve. ‘Christ, how I’ll march in these!’ he beamed, caressing the good boots.

‘You’d better slip your own on the dead guy,’ someone warned. ‘Otherwise you might run the risk of losing them in a hurry.’

‘What d’you mean by that?’ the sergeant gaped, hiding the boots under the straw. ‘I’d like to see the fellow who dares!’ He resembled a dog guarding his bone.

‘Well, in that case just forget about putting the boots on the dead man and you’ll find out there are some who dare,’ the same man laughed. ‘The head-hunters
⁴
will pull off that fine pair of boots for you and then string you up for looting. For that’s what it is, looting. It’s even been called corpse robbery. You see, I’ve been with the flying drumhead court-martials. I know the score.’

‘Oh, damn it all!’ the sergeant protested. ‘He won’t need those boots any more.’

‘You wont either, brother,’ came soberly from the drumhead man. ‘You have a pair from the Army.’

‘That’s just crap. Those rotten dice boxes aren’t fit to walk in.’

‘Tell that to the head-hunters,’ the other laughed. His face was pale, with bloodless lips and cold eyes. ‘They’ll beat you till you admit in writing you’ve received from Adolf the finest pair of boots in the world.’

The sergeant didn’t say any more. He had come to his senses. Cursing, he slipped the old dice boxes on the dead man.

An hour later the dead man wouldn’t have been able to recognize his outfit. It had been replaced with all sorts of unfamiliar things.

Huhn, the NCO with the abdominal wound, again asked for water. The Legionnaire shoved a lump of ice toward him. He sucked it greedily.

My feet had begun to burn. Pains were shooting through my whole body. It felt as if flames were gnawing my bones. The second stage of frostbite. I knew. First, the pains. Then the pains recede a little, and a bit later your feet start burning and go on burning till they’re numb. This numbness is the sign that it’s all over. Gangrene is in full swing and your feet die. The pains move up. In the hospital a stump will steam under the surgeon’s knife. Terror gripped me. Amputation. God, anything but that! I whispered my fear to the Legionnaire. He glanced at me. ‘Then the war will be over for you. Better the feet than the head.’

Yes, then the war will be over. I tried to console myself, but the chilling terror stuck in my throat. I tried to imagine I’d been lucky with my feet. It would’ve been worse had it been my hands; but terror didn’t loosen its grip on me. I saw myself on crutches. No, I didn’t want to be a ‘pegleg.’

‘What’s the matter with you?’ the Legionnaire asked, surprised. Without knowing I had cried out ‘peg-leg.’

I fell asleep. The pains woke me up, but I was happy with my pains. My feet hurt, but there was life in them. I still had my good, wonderful feet.

The train stopped twice. Both times a medic looked at my feet. Each time the same: ‘Not too-bad.’

‘By Mohammed, what’s really bad then?’ the Legionnaire fumed. He pointed at the maimed airman, who had just died. ‘Isn’t that bad either?’

No one bothered to answer him. The emergency auxiliary hospital train continued west.

On arriving at Cracow sixty-two per cent of the wounded were unloaded as cadavers after a twelve-day transport.

1
Garnisonsverwendungsfähig Heimat
(fit only for garrison duty).

2
Kriegsverwendungsfähig
(fully fit for active service).

3
Fighter-bombers.

4
Military Police.

‘You’re a flock of blubbering old women,’ roared the army chaplain, Colonel von Zlavik, when we moaned. He was greatly annoyed that we betrayed our pain. ‘You implore the Holy Father to help you, but the Lord will have nothing to do with a pack of good-for-nothings like you.’

He ordered us to stop our wailing. He threatened to lock us up till we’d rot. God was exceedingly merciful, he told us in confidence, but only to decent people and good soldiers, not to a gang like us, the most hideous dregs of society. He raised the crucifix to a kind of Nazi salute, then commanded the orderlies to remove two corpses wrapped up in sheets. A little later, the sheets were brought back and prepared for the next.

The Colonel-Chaplain spat and left us.

The same afternoon he fell down the stairs and broke his arm. He broke it in three places.

‘He whined like all of you put together,’ grinned the nurse, sister Monica, who needed a man twice a day to keep her spirits up.

‘Well, there are all kinds,’ the little Legionnaire said. He turned on his other side and praised Allah. In a low murmur he told us about the holy man who climbed up into the barren stony wastes of the Rif Mountains, alone.

II

Death’s Depot

In the 3rd Reserve Field Hospital, located in a former Polish theological seminary in Cracow, mute physicians and their aides were playing around with the wounded. The operating room had once been the president’s office. The good parson could hardly have foreseen that so many were to die in his office. In peacetime, the deaths in this one room alone would have kept several homicide squads busy.

I was lying on a low stretcher which felt like corrugated iron. Someone with a head wound was under the knife. He died. A fire-team leader with an abdominal wound was put on the table. He died. Three died. Two came out alive. Then it was my turn.

‘Save my feet,’ was the last I remembered saying before going under the anesthetic. The surgeon said nothing.

My feet were still with me when I woke up later in some ward. The first hours were pleasant and quiet. Then pain set in. Unbelievable pain. Others were no better off. When darkness had mercifully fallen upon the ward, which gave off a heavy stench of carbolic acid, a vague murmur filled the night. It was the wailing of the tortured, the unending song of the damned.

A nurse bent over me, felt my pulse and vanished. My temperature rose. Fear of death came slithering over me. It crawled like a snake, winding its coils around my body. I couldn’t clearly make out anything. There was nothing but a haze and disconnected images. Most distinctly I could see the Man with the Scythe over in the corner. He was swinging his leg impatiently. The gray man with the black cape and the scythe seemed to be very busy.

‘You’ve had good hunting, haven’t you? Damn good hunting. You pile of shit, you stinking pile of shit! D’you think I’m afraid of you? I’ve seen more-dangerous things than you. Far more dangerous. Should I be afraid of you? Hah!’

Of course I’m afraid. Hell, I’m scared stiff.

Again the nurse was there.

‘Scram, carbolic bitch. Leave me alone. Just you wait till the Muscovites are coming, then you’ll get busy, you Nazi pot-swinger. Then you’ll see something.’

‘No, come back, please come! God, how scared I am.’ But she’d gone. The Man with the Scythe grinned. Through the moaning of the others I could distinctly make out a hoarse gurgle. He swung his leg a bit faster. His patience was nearly exhausted.

The Legionnaire hummed, ‘Come now, Death, come.’ I stopped my ears, I didn’t want to listen to the damned song; but thousands joined in: ‘Come now, Death, come!’ Again gurgling laughter from over in the corner.

The gray man passed his finger probingly along the edge of the scythe, the bright glittering scythe. He nodded with satisfaction. It was sharp. Sharp like the large guillotines in Plötzensee and Lengries. Like the knife that sliced Ursula’s head from her slender neck I wonder, are there guillotines in Kolyma? What’s wrong with you, you stupid pig? I thought you’d said good-bye to that love you had once in Berlin, the Jewish girl who slept with the SS because she had a sense of humor! A lovely girl. A gorgeous piece. Don’t blubber, you sissy! Once you wanted to be an officer. You wanted to be a soldier, you blockhead. And what are you now? A little shit in the reserves scared of the Man with the Scythe. What do you have to worry about? Close up your bellows and stand down. Whom do you have to worry about but yourself, you dimwit? Isn’t it strange! Not a single soul will think of you when you’ve pulled over to the side. Come on, then, you ox, take me with you across the Styx. D’you imagine I’m afraid of you?

The gray man got up and wrapped the cape about him. With measured steps he came toward my bed. I let out a loud piercing scream.

The nurse came once more. She wiped my forehead with something which felt deliciously cool. It was raining. A monotonous soothing patter. The Man with the Scythe had gone. He’d taken along two from the ward.

Seven days later I was transferred to the ward where Tiny and the Legionnaire were lying. Tiny had saved up two weeks in the can for himself, which he’d serve as soon as he’d recovered. As the head nurse and three other nurses trooped in the door, he’d shouted: ‘Hurrah, here come the broads! To the bunks, boys!’

A terrific uproar followed. It ended an hour later with the medical officer giving him two weeks. Tiny just couldn’t understand why. He couldn’t be made to see that the army hospital wasn’t a brothel. Wherever he saw women, Tiny saw brothels.

‘All sorts of things are happening here,’ the Legionnaire grinned. ‘Some of the nurses are dying for someone to sleep with who has brass on his chest. Staff Corporal Hansen over there has been here for seventeen months and has the dope on everything. He says sister Lise had taken it into her head to have a boy as long as there’s still time. She’s tried a whole pack of men, but so far no boy. But she hasn’t given up hope yet. She’s going as strong as ever. She sees it as a national duty.’

One day the Legionnaire and I were bundled up in some blankets and carried off to a spot from which we had a view of the glittering waters of the Elbe and could observe the tugboats working their way upstream. Sportly we were joined by Tiny, who was also placed in a chair. For a whole hour we sat there, listening to the boom of the riveting hammers at Stülckenwerft.

A nurse taught me to walk. My legs were paralyzed. The last grenade splinter had struck the spinal column as we clambered up the cliff. Gradually I learned how to walk. It cost me torrents of sweat. That nurse was exceedingly patient. Though old and ugly, she was devoted.