Court Martial (5 page)

'Let's get out of this as quick as we can,' says Barcelona, pushing a fresh magazine into his Mpi.
10
'This lot stinks of heroes and Valhalla!'

'Where the hell's Ivan got to?' asks Porta, wonderingly, peeping over a great wall of snow.

In the course of the night we dig in and build machine-gun posts out of blocks of snow. We make a fire and heat flat stones. These are tied round the locks of the machine-guns with woollen underclothing. Life in the Arctic has taught us a lot of things they didn't think to teach us in training.

Before we are finished building up the position we have to withdraw again. We have over three hundred wounded with us. We have nothing to help them with. All our first-aid packs are long since used up, and we use filthy rags of uniforms as bandages. A stench of rot rises from these living corpses. They stretch out skeleton arms to us and plead for help. Some ask for a weapon to end their hell of pain. Others lie quietly and look at us with eyes that beg for mercy.

'Don't leave us, comrade,' whispers a dying Feldwebel, as I pass him with the MG on my shoulder.

'Don't leave us to the Russians,' groans another.

I look straight in front of me, won't look at them. Luckily the orderlies come and lift them up on to the heaps of branches which serve them as a bed. We take them with us as the Oberst has ordered. Nobody is to be left behind.

We make sledges of thin tree trunks, and lay the wounded on them. When they die we throw them off and go on.

Four days later we reach two odd-looking hills, shaped like sugar-loaves. It has grown so cold that our noses become plugged with ice, and tears harden into icicles. Metal shatters like glass, and trees split with a loud crack.

Gregor looks at his nose. It is lying in his hand. He feels at the hole in his face. Looks at the nose in his hand, perplexedly.

'What the hell,' he cries and starts to scream. He throws the nose and his Mpi from him. Only Heide, the super-soldier, keeps his head. Like lightning he has Gregor on his back. The Legionnaire has picked up the nose.

'Hold him,' snarls Heide. 'We've got to sew it on again!'

'Is it worth it?' grins Porta. 'It wasn't a very handsome nose, anyway!'

Taking no notice of Gregor's babbling, Heide sews the nose on again, takes a bloody bandage from a body and binds it tightly round his face.

'Wouldn't it be better to sew it double, so 'e can't pull it off again?' suggests Tiny, holding out a reel of heavy thread.

Gregor whines and moans. Despite the anaesthetic effect of the cold it is still terribly painful.

Heide is not exactly a cosmetic surgeon. The needle he uses was given him by a veterinary surgeon who used it to patch up horses.

'Slacker,' he scolds, and pulls at the nose to make sure it is firmly attached.

'Can a bloke's prick drop off from frost?' asks Tiny, worriedly.

'Can happen,' smiles Porta. 'The Army Institute of Science at Leipzig has compiled statistics on the subject, and these tell us that thirty-two per cent of all soldiers exposed to arctic conditions come home without a joy-stick!'

'Jesus Christ almighty, son of the German God,' groans Tiny. 'What'd you be able to tell the 'ores if you went back to the Reeperbahn with no prick?'

'You'd have no future as a pimp, at any rate, if the polar bears had made a meal of your old John Thomas,' smiles Barcelona.

A tall, thin Pioneer feldwebel gets up suddenly from the bed of branches, tears the blood-soaked bandages from his body and, before anybody realises what is happening, rushes out across the frozen lake.

A couple of orderlies chase after him, but he disappears in the mist. His madness is infectious, and shortly after, two more of the wounded follow him.

The Oberst is furious. He orders a guard mounted over the wounded. Things really begin to go wrong when a guard falls asleep with an Mpi across his knees.

A wounded SS-Unterscharfuhrer creeps silently across the floor and gets hold of the Schmeisser. A rain of bullets sprays the wounded who roll about desperately on their bed of branches. His eyes burn madly and froth rims his gaping mouth. When the magazine is empty he crushes the guard's skull and attacks the wounded nearest to him with the butt of the weapon.

The Legionnaire is the first to arrive on the scene. He throws his Moorish dagger and it bores into the madman's throat.

With a gurgling death-rattle the SS-Unterscharfuhrer collapses.

All hell is loose in the blood-bespattered igloo. The wounded run amok. An infantry Leutnant commits
hara-kiri
by thrusting his bayonet into his stomach and cutting upwards. His entrails pour out over his hands. An artilleryman gets Porta by the throat and tries to strangle him.

A shot cracks. The artilleryman falls backwards.

Shortly after this we have other things to worry about. The Russians start an attack under cover of heavy mortar fire. The attack lasts only a couple of hours. Then the snow envelops them again and they disappear into it like ghosts.

Death is so close to us that we feel it already has us in its grip.

Schnapps is issued. A water-bottle cap full to everyone. No. 2 Section gets half a cap more.

'You know what that means,' grins Porta, ominously. 'They don't give you a schnapps ration because they like the colour of your eyes. Famous last drink this is!' He throws the schnapps down in one go.

''Eroes' piss,' grins Tiny, 'couple o' pints o' giggle water an' I'll go out an' get me a Knight's Cross with vegetables an' a table knife.'
11

'
Nom de Dieu
, it's more likely to be a wooden cross,' smiles the Legionnaire, handing Tiny his schnapps ration. He is a Mohammedan and does not touch spirituous liquors.

'Out of 'taters, into 'taters, then piss it up the wall!' grunts the Old Man, trying to get his silver-lidded pipe going.

'
C'est la guerre
,'
+
sighs the Legionnaire rolling a little machorka in a piece of Bible paper, and getting a kind of cigarette out of it.

'Give us a puff,' begs Tiny.

The Legionnaire hands him the bent-up cigarette in silence.

All through the night we battle our way on against a howling arctic storm. The snow whirls about us so thickly that we can only just see the man in front of us. Which is an advantage. It means the Russians will have a job finding us. Now and then we hear them behind us.

'They're so certain of us, those yellow monkeys, that they can't be bothered to conceal themselves,' says Porta, downheartedly.

'Anybody 'ere still believe in the Final Victory?' asks Tiny with a broad grin.

'Only Adolf and his faithful unteroffizier, Julius Heide, Porta gives out a typical Berlin laugh.

'Why
did
we go to war, anyway?' asks Tiny wonderingly What they got in Russia anybody'd
want
?'

'So that Adolf can be a really great warrior,' answers Porta. 'All those shits who've crept up on top of the heap have to have a war so they won't be forgotten again.'

'Hear me now!' Heide's voice is heard from behind the snow curtain. 'They hang defeatists!'

'And twisted-up bleedin' abortions like you, they put in cages,' shouts Tiny harshly.

Late on the following day the Oberst orders a halt. The battle group is simply unable to continue. Many of the group have been left behind in the snow to freeze to death.

Our rations have run out. Only a few, like Porta, have some crumbs left. He is chewing on a frozen crust, the remnants of a Finnish army loaf.

'Are you hungry?' he asks, putting the last bite into his mouth.

'Rotten swine,' snarls the Old Man.

'Anybody got any vodka?' begs Gregor. His face is dark blue in colour and has swollen up enormously after Heide's surgery.

'Lost your bleedin' mind, 'ave you, well as your snout?' shouts Tiny, jeeringly.

'Vodka!' says Porta. 'It's so long since we've had a drop of that Russian piss I can't recall the taste of it.'

'I could eat a pensioned-off whore from Valencia,' asserts Barcelona. 'I haven't been so hungry since I was inside a Spanish prison camp.'

Porta and the Legionnaire begin to debate just how many juniper berries one should put into a venison dressing.

'Six, I feel,' says Porta, knowledgeably.

'
Impossible
,' the Legionnaire rejects the suggestion, 'but do as you wish. If you include six berries I would not even have to bother to taste the dressing. It would stink to heaven. It is also of importance that the correct kind of pot is used,' he continues. 'If you wish to achieve a true venison dressing you cannot use
any
ordinary kind of pot.'

'True, an antique pot should be used,' agrees Porta. 'And the best of these are made of copper. When I was in Naples, I got hold of one which Julius Caesar's chief cook used to make
bouillabaisse
for the spaghettis' kaiser.'

'Take a trip to Marseilles, and taste the queen of all soups:
Germiny
a
I'Oseille
,' suggests the Legionnaire. 'After this I would suggest
Pigeon
a
la Moscovite
with
Champignons Polonaise
and
Salade Beatrice
.'

'I once dined with a chap who, God save us all, forgot to put truffles in his
Perigourdin
,' says Porta. 'He lived on Gendarmenmarkt and was celebrating his release from Moabitt prison. We had actually expected to see the wreck of a man. He'd been in the cage for five years, so you could hardly expect anything else, could you? Some people are completely crushed for ever and ever after a short turn in 'the dark', but this fellow was as chipper as could be, and so healthy it seemed almost indecent. But the worst thing anybody can do, in my opinion, is to be late for a meal. It ruins a meal when you have to rush through the soup and fish to catch the other shits up.'

'Have you tried blue fish baked in the oven with
Sauce Bearnaise
?' Gregor interrupts. 'It's simply heavenly. Me and the general loved it. It was our favourite after an especially bloody battle.'

'I do hope we're in the neighbourhood of this lake, when the herring roe season starts,' says Porta, expectantly.

'When we get 'ome,' says Tiny, by home he means the German lines, 'I'm gain' to organise a goose, fill it up with prunes an' apples, an' eat the lot myself.'

'I'd rather have a turkey,' says Barcelona. 'It's bigger!'

'I can't bloody
stand
it any more,' shouts Porta, desperately, jumping to his feet. 'Come on, Tiny, get hold of your rocker and fill your pockets with grenades'

'Where we goin'?' asks Tiny, readying his Mpi noisily.

We're going over to read the neighbour's menu,' answers Porta, swinging the
Kalashnikov
over his shoulder.

'Want me to take a sack?' asks Tiny optimistically.

'No, Ivan's got sacks,' considers Porta.

'Anybody who won't take a risk to get grub's a bleedin' idiot,' Tiny belly-chuckles.

'You'll get shot,' the Old Man warns.

'You're nuts,' answers Tiny, unconcernedly. '
We're
the ones who do the shooting!'

'We're looking forward to some of that real Russian hospitality they're so famous for,' adds Porta as he disappears into the snow with a short laugh.

'One of these days they're not going to come back,' mumbles the Old Man pessimistically.

Several hours go by with no sound but the howling of the arctic storm. A long vicious Mpi salvo breaks the stillness.

'A Schmeisser,' says the Old Man, looking up.

Shortly after there is the sound of three handgrenade explosions, and a series of flares send a brilliantly white light out over the terrain.

'They've met the neighbours,' whispers Gregor, in terror.

'If they get through all right,' says the Old Man, worriedly, 'the devil take those two maniacs!'

'You ought to report them,' says Heide, officiously. 'It's a serious breach of discipline. The enemy will be able to use it as propaganda. I can just see the headlines in Pravda:

GERMAN ARMIES STARVING
Suicide missions sent out to
steal bread from the Red Army!'

We sense, more than anything, the muzzle-flame from a heavy gun depressed to ground level. Loud screams and a long series of explosions follow. A couple of Maxims bark angrily.

A long silence falls across the snow desert. Even the icy storm quietens. It feels as if the whole of the Arctic is taking a deep breath, and readying itself for something quite special.

A colossal explosion which seems as if it will never stop rends the stillness of the night.

'God save us all,' pants Barcelona, shocked. 'They must have mistaken the ammunition store for the kitchen!'

'Alarm, alarm,' our sentries scream hysterically, certain that an attack is on the way.

A gigantic column of flame goes up to the north-east of us, and the earth shakes to a long rolling explosion.

A group of officers with the Oberst in the lead come rushing out of an igloo.

'What in the world are the Russians doing?' asks the Oberst, nervously. 'Can they be fighting amongst themselves?' He turns to an infantry major: 'Have we anybody out there?'

'No, Herr Oberst, this battle group has no contact whatever with the enemy.'

Oberst Frick jams his monocle tighter into his eye and looks sharply at the major.

'Do you
know
this to be true or do you merely
think
it to be so?'

The major is obviously uneasy and has to admit that he really knows very little about what is happening within the group. He is a signals officer and has never before been with a battle unit.

A long series of explosions and a snarling MG salvo bring his eyes round to the north-east, where sharp tongues of flame can be seen against reddening clouds.

'There's some devilry going on,' mumbles the Oberst. 'Find out what it is.'

'Yes, Herr Oberst,' replies the major, unhappily, and with no idea of what it is he has to find out about.