Comrades of War (44 page)

‘Definitely not,’ came with conviction from Lieutenant Ohlsen.

‘And yet there’s nothing I’d rather do than stand in a pulpit in a black frock and drill with the congregation. Christ, how I’d make them jump,
Herr Kollege
! And what did the whole thing come to?’ He spat his contempt on the floor, nearly hitting his lady. ‘Ugh, to have become an officer in the Guards. But I have a good idea,
Herr Kollege
. When the war’s over I’m going to take an accelerated course in theology. In that way I hope to end up as archbishop of Cologne. Then the whole thing will have shape to it.

‘When the distinguished ladies present have had a sufficient amount of bubbly,’ he continued, ‘we extend the front to the second floor.’ He grinned omnisciently and winked vehemently at Lieutenant Ohlsen. ‘There we stage a French pastoral!’ He stopped talking and thought hard. He passed an exploring glance round the room. Then he pointed at a slender brunette in a low-necked dress of silver lamé. ‘The one over there with the tinsel work,
Herr Kollege
, is a thigh-swinger stinking with dough.’

Looking in the direction indicated, Lieutenant Ohlsen noticed a popular movie actress from UFA.

‘Will all the ladies be taking part in that pastoral play?’ he inquired dubiously, scrutinizing the well-known movie actress who was flirting quite openly with a general of the police.

‘Not all,’ Busch conceded, ‘but the prim ones will be asked to resign, and they are then left out in the cold. The tinsel girl over there—’ he clicked his tongue – ‘is one of the right sort. In her films she lisps like a Gretchen from the YWCA, but here . . . ooh, la, la.
Meine Ruh’ ist hin
. . . Here she turns into a Clymestra, or what the hell the name of that Greek mare was.’

‘Do you mean Clytemnestra?’ Lieutenant Ohlsen smiled, hoping he pronounced the name correctly.

He was eager to annoy the drunk SS officer.

‘Don’t put on airs, you clown from Circus von Kleist!’ Busch flared up.

Lieutenant Ohlsen laughed and shrugged his shoulders. He had accomplished what he wanted.

Busch sulked and muttered something about liquidating the whole Army, which was comprised of traitors and other outcasts. Suddenly his face lit up.

‘Do you know what the letters on the license plates of the Army mean? WH?’

‘
Wehrmacht Herr
,’ Lieutenant Ohlsen answered promptly.

‘You missed!’ Busch cried in rapture and pointed accusingly at Lieutenant Ohlsen. ‘They mean
Weg nach Hinten
, the way back.’ He slapped his thighs in rapture and brutally poked his lady dinner companion with his elbow.

Lieutenant Ohlsen leaned back in his chair.

‘Do you know what the Army calls the SS?’

‘Nah,’ Busch answered, his curiosity roused.

‘
Arsch, Arsch
,’ Lieutenant Ohlsen said. ‘Ass, ass.’

The ensuing silence around Lieutenant Ohlsen was oppressive. He laughed, raised his glass and called out: ‘To the Army!’

But when the glasses were raised somewhat slowly, he added with malicious pleasure: ‘To Adolf Hitler’s Army!’

However reluctant they were to do so, they now had to drink to the Army and then break the glasses afterward, because Adolf Hitler could be toasted only once from the same glass.

Looking at the large pile of broken crystal on the floor, Lieutenant Ohlsen vowed to drink to Adolf several more times before he left.

After dinner the guests scattered about the large villa.

‘What’s the mood at the front at the moment?’ a police officer wanted to know.

‘I’m on leave and have no knowledge of the momentary situation and mood.’

‘Leave?’ cried Busch. ‘What’s that? To us in the SS it is an entirely unknown concept. What it comes to at most is an official trip to pick up traitors and such vermin. Nah, you at the front are well off. Much better than we. Just hearing the name of the
Wehrmacht
nauseates me.’

His glassy eyes had started to get watery. ‘Look at those stinking generals strutting about with corset boots on their spindle legs! Lice, I tell you.’ He was getting warmed up. ‘If I was the Führer . . .’ he slit his eyes and knit his brows, ‘I would have them impaled. By God, I would.’ He turned to some SS officers standing by. ‘Isn’t that right, boys? The Army is a flock of cantankerous billy-goats who only know how to bleat.’

They nodded agreement. One of them muttered something about a ‘cowardly bunch.’

‘And those red-braided gentlemen have the guts to show off in front of us, the SS guard of the Führer! They look down on us, think we’re nothing.’ He spat at the Persian carpet. ‘Those squirts completely forget that it is through us they’ve become what they are today. What would they have been without us?’

Lieutenant Ohlsen indifferently shrugged his shoulders. He glanced at a lady sitting on a sofa with her dress pulled high above her knees. An SS officer was measuring her thighs with a piece of string.

‘What were those dogs before?’ Busch asked obstinately, nudging Lieutenant Ohlsen. ‘They were shits, small stinking shits without red stripes and they had to appear for inspection to get their stamps just as in the Weimar time.’ He again spat on the carpet, then rubbed it in conscientiously with his foot. ‘You
Wehrmacht
studs get orders and medallions by the sackful for the bit of fighting you do!’

Someone tried to quiet down Busch, who by now was extremely stirred up. But he didn’t listen and went on:

‘What about us? . . . You don’t answer me. I ask you, Herr Lieutenant Hero-face: What about us?’

‘Really, Rudi, cut it out,’ someone said. ‘It isn’t the panzer lieutenant’s fault that you don’t have any combat ribbons.’

‘Let me finish what I’ve got to say, you oaf!’ Busch protested, catching Lieutenant Ohlsen by the lapel. ‘Our war is much harder than yours. Just look at my hands, how they tremble!’ He shook his hands violently in front of Lieutenant Ohlsen’s face. ‘Executions by the hundreds,
Herr Kollege
, mass executions. You should just try commanding firing squads hour after hour, day after day. True, those we plug are just inferiors, but still they scream because they’re afraid to die.’

He licked his full lips. ‘Sometimes we bury them before they’re really dead. Not because we are inhuman. Remember, I wanted to be a pastor,
Herr Kollege
.’ He puffed, emptied his glass, had it refilled, emptied it again and had it filled once more. ‘We’re busy,
Herr Kollege
, busy like hell. All Jews must be liquidated before the war’s over, the Polish and Russian intelligentsia come next – so you can imagine, Herr Lieutenant, what a regular dunghill we have to get through. We gas them, shoot them, hang them and guillotine them. On the whole we do a lot to clear the air.’

Lieutenant Ohlsen felt nauseated and turned away from Busch.

The mood became more abandoned. On the stairs they drank champagne out of ladies’ shoes.

In a little room they were spinning the bottle and stripping off their clothes. In a small niche two high-ranking officers were pulling the panties off a squealing lady. A girl in a blue dress danced on a table. She kicked her shoes to the ceiling. She hit the crystal chandelier, making a bulb blow out with a bang.

An SS
Haupsturmführer
pulled his pistol and shot down two more bulbs.

‘It was necessary,’ he explained. ‘The bulb struck me. I followed the Führer’s order: two for one.’ He inserted two fresh cartridges in his Mauser and put it back in his pocket. He noted with satisfaction that most of the ladies present had noticed his pistol. There was something very manly about carrying a gun.

Lieutenant Ohlsen stood looking at one of the costly paintings. An SS
Standartenführer
placed himself beside him. He pointed at the painting. ‘Beautiful, isn’t it?’

Lieutenant Ohlsen nodded.

‘This is an absurd house, don’t you think, Lieutenant?’ Without waiting for an answer, he went on. ‘All of this used to belong to some Jews.’ He made a sweeping gesture with his arm. ‘These Talmud pigs have held their disgusting orgies here.’ His face twisted with nausea at the thought of the immoral goings-on in the house he called ‘absurd.’ ‘It was about time we got this Augean stable cleaned out.’ He laughed and tapped Lieutenant Ohlsen’s shoulder with his white gloves. ‘I took part in it myself.’ He tilted back his head. ‘It was glorious,
Herr Kollege
.’

‘What became of the owner?’ Lieutenant Ohlsen asked.

The SS officer almost lost his voice at this naive question. He simply couldn’t understand that a normal person in uniform could ask something so foolish.

‘In a camp, naturally. What else? But first we had this Talmud brood thoroughly
gestäupt
.’

Lieutenant Ohlsen looked dumbly at him. ‘
Gestäupt
?’

‘Yes, of course,
gestäupt
,’ nodded the SS officer. ‘Manhandled. From what I hear you do the same thing with the partisans.’ He danced laughing up to a lady and ran his hands up her thighs, tearing her dress in the process. Jubilant at this, he tied the two pieces together in a bow in such a way that the lady’s legs were exposed behind. It looked comic. She was very knock-kneed.

‘Aren’t we soon going to bed?’ yelled an SS
Sturmbannführer
from the
Kz
-guard of the extermination division.

‘That’s the second in command in Oranienburg,’ a police lieutenant explained. He offered Lieutenant Ohlsen a glass of wine. ‘A genuine Veuve Cliquot, can be had only with us in the entire Reich.’ He kept the bottle in his pocket and liberally refilled the glasses. ‘Have you found a heifer for yourself, Herr Lieutenant?’

‘A what?’ Lieutenant Ohlsen asked, surprised.

The police officer laughed. ‘Well, you see, a heifer is one of the fresh ones. A cow is the run-of-the-mill lady. Mares are acrobats who perform in public.’

‘I guess that would make the men bulls and stallions?’ Lieutenant Ohlsen couldn’t help saying.

The police officer laughed uproariously and ran off to join a couple of ladies.

Lieutenant Ohlsen again ended up over in the corner, where Busch stood explaining to a tall gentleman in dark civilian dress what the SS were doing while the others enjoyed life at the front.

‘We’re nothing but refuse collectors,’ he explained to the dumbly attentive gentleman, on whose lapel gleamed a microscopic Party emblem in gold.

Slowly the civilian gentleman lit a cigar. He was obviously a connoisseur. He was one of those mysterious Germans who had lived in South America in the time between the wars. Once he had been consultant to the secret police of Bolivia. Later he sold Krupp arms to Paraguay, Bolivia’s opponent in the protracted war between the two states. At present he was one of the big wheels in Berlin, with an office on the top floor in Prinz Albrecht-Strasse.

‘We liquidate everyone,’ Busch shouted in a thick voice, swaying ominously. He spilled cognac on his uniform. ‘First we’ll knock off the Jews, every damn one of them.’ The gentleman with the black cigar nodded in silence. ‘Then comes the turn for the gypsies.’ The gentleman with the black cigar nodded once more. Busch slurped from a bottle of cognac which one of his comrades had filled half with vodka, half with Danish akvavit. He belched. ‘Then we plug the Polacks. You see, we boys are creating
Lebensraum, Lebensraum
for the victorious German people. They’ll gape in amazement when our Special Action Groups get rolling. Whole nations will vanish from the surface of the earth. There’s room only for us Germans. Forward, comrades, long live the SS!’ He slammed his heels together, raised his arm and bellowed: ‘
Sieg, Heil!
’

All those present joined in, roaring rapturously. Someone started singing the Jew song. Others joined in at the line:
Jewish blood shall flow
.

An SS
Hauptsturmführer
from Eicke’s extermination division jumped on a chair and screamed frantically: ‘The last Jew will be hanged on Brandenburger Tor!’

‘We’re the greatest nation in the world,’ Busch bawled. ‘We’ll liquidate all the others.’

He was interrupted by a girl who tore screaming through the room. Her hair was disheveled and she had no dress on. She was hotly pursued by an officer in shirtsleeves, with wide peasant braces flapping behind him.

An officer with the black badges of an SS general on his lapel commanded: ‘Ready, to the beds!’

A yell of enthusiasm almost blew off the ceiling of the villa.

This was the signal for a wild woman hunt. A refractory lady was taken by force in a window niche. Another stood on her hands, exposing her elegant black lace panties, which revealed more than they concealed. An officer poured red wine from the Rhône valley over her. He did it very slowly and with feeling. That much one owed the good wine, thought SS
Obersturmführer
Stenthal. He formerly had a wine cellar in Bonn. Now he was director of interrogations in the police unit at Buchenwald.

He pulled the panties off the acrobatic girl and carried his jest further, with no one apparently taking offence at it. Meanwhile three of his comrades sang:

Röslein, Röslein, Röslein rot
,

Röslein auf der Heide
.

They outdid one another in insane erotic whims. They bellowed like royal stags at rutting time.

Lieutenant Ohlsen had gotten drunk. He straddled a chair as if astride a horse. Before him on the floor lay a naked woman. The only thing she had on was stockings. Long stockings, held up by wide black garters with red roses. An SS officer lay half across a chair. He was dressed only in jacket and long underwear. Underwear with a patch, poorly sewed on at that.

Lieutenant Ohlsen grinned at the patch on the long underwear.

‘Super Teutons in long patched underwear.’ He spat out what he had in his mouth and succeeded in hitting the patch on the SS officer’s underpants. ‘Slime,’ he said in a tone of complete conviction. ‘Tomorrow I’m going over to Prinz Albrecht-Strasse to find that acquaintance of Heinrich on the fifth floor. I’ll tell that dog some things about the whore I’m married to.’ He grinned again.