Court Martial (7 page)

'They're best with apple sauce and a special kind of gravy,' says Porta. 'And, most important thing of all, the skin must be crisp. It should crackle slightly between your teeth.'

'They don't understand that in Spain,' says Barcelona. 'They stuff them with oranges and boil them till its like chewing on a limp prick.'

'People who do that ought to be shot,' decides Porta. 'It's blasphemy to ruin a duck like that.'

We are on the march again, and pass through a narrow cleft still talking about ducks. High walls of snow and ice enclose us on both sides. An acrid smell of death fills our nostrils.

Wonderingly we look around us for the bodies. Much later we realise it is we who are carrying that horrible, sickly-sweet stench about with us.

'We'll stink of corpses the rest of our lives,' says the Old Man, quietly.

He's right. After four years at the front the death smell has penetrated us so deeply that it will be hard for any of us ever to get rid of it.

On the march we talk of peace. Some of us have been in uniform since '36 and simply cannot realise what it will be like to wear civilian clothing again, and to be able to go to the loo without clicking our heels together and asking permission first. We don't really believe in peace any more. Porta thinks it will be a hundred years' war. He has worked out a complicated equation which he says demonstrates how it can be done. Every year some youngsters become old enough to be called up and get themselves slaughtered on the altar of the Fatherland. The subject is so interesting that we call a halt to discuss it in more detail.

Officers of the battle group, which we have joined up with again, strangers to us, begin to shout at us and chase us forward. They are scared and nervous, unused to being inside enemy territory the way we are. A special kind of man is needed to carry out this kind of task.

A good guerrilla fighter should not, first and foremost, be a sporting fool, nor a product of the usual kind of military academy. He should have a good bit of the villain in him and have the mentality of a sixteen-year-old boy, so that he has no real understanding of the fact that he himself is just as easy to kill as the other fellows he mows down with his machine-pistol.

Shadowy forms jump at us from the darkness. Bayonets flash and machine-pistols sing of death. It takes only a few minutes. A few bodies in the snow mark the episode.

The battle group marches on in a long column of route. The officers are irritable, shouting and screeching at the men to conceal their own fear.

No. 2 Section pulls away from the group a little. If the neighbours come back we'll do better on our own, and we know he
will
be back. Siberian units like to make a lightning swoop and then to disappear like ghosts into the snow.

'Think if it was going to be all over tomorrow,' says Gregor, his face taking on a strange expression, 'and you got your nut caved in today! Make you look, wouldn't it?'

'
C'est vrai
,
mon ami
, it can happen like that if your luck's out,' says the Legionnaire. 'I had a comrade in the Second Regiment of the Legion. He had been with us everywhere where we had seen hard and dirty fighting, without having received a scratch. On his chest they had hung every decoration it was possible for an NCO in the French Army to win. After eighteen years he decided to leave the service. His papers were clean and he had a job to go to in Customs and Excise. He had been up to say good-bye to the Colonel and had taken a glass with our O.C. Coming downstairs from handing in his arms to the armoury, he jumped happily from one landing to the next and came down with his foot in a bucket of soapy water. He went head first down the rest of the way, and smashed his head into a rifle-rack at the foot of the stairs. Dead on the spot. Both neck and back broken!'

'You can choke on a chunk of meat while you're sitting having a shit,' says Porta, who often lunches in the latrines.

'Think I'll keep a better eye out in the future,' says Tiny, thoughtfully. 'Think o' breakin' your neck in a bucket! Wicked to bleedin' think on ain't it?'

We are tired and pessimistic on the march back. Only Porta is happy as a lark. He is selling part of the Russian supplies. But suddenly his growing business effort comes to a stop. The sledge disappears in the course of the night. The following day the reindeer comes back, but with an empty sledge. Porta cries with rage.

For a moment he suspects Chief Mechanic Wolf, but puts that right out of his head. Wolf would never get anywhere near the front, not even when one took his psychotic greed into consideration.

'Let me just get hold of that rotten crook,' he howls, punching the snow helplessly, 'and I'll wind these well-manicured fingers round the bastard's neck and squeeze an' squeeze till there's no more life left in the son of a whore. Oh, he's
got
to be some wicked old pervert. It
can't
be Chief Mechanic Wolf. He's a thieving, money-grabbing pig like the rest of the top lot, but he's not filthy enough for this. In some ways he's like me. If some wicked sod's got to be relieved of the burden his life must be to him then we help him off with it in a pleasant, civilised manner. I know Wolf like I know myself. No sneaky crookednesses, 'less they're agreed on in advance. No, he'd never pinch what I've had to labour for in the sweat of me brow. Well, at any rate, he'd leave half of it behind, if he did. If it can't be Wolf, though, then who
can
it be? It's
got
to be somebody who doesn't know me.' He looks up at the driving clouds and folds his hands. 'Dear God, help me get hold of that dirty viper, that cursed snake, so I can whip his arse to shreds with red-hot barbed-wire!'

'The devil take this horrible weather,' groans Gregor stopping for a moment to scrape the snow from his face.

'We'll never get through,' whines the Westphalian, resignedly. 'Let's sit down and wait for them, and get it over with!'

'You're out of your mind,' shouts Porta, contemptuously. 'Don't shit yourself before it gets dark even!'

'I can't go on,' weeps the HJ
15
leader, heartrendingly, throwing himself down in the snow.

''Itler's boy's capitulatin',' grins Tiny, pleased, swinging the SMG over his shoulder as if it were a spade.

'Get him on his feet,' orders the Old Man, roughly.

'Come on up,' snarls Heide, ready for action. A born bully, recruit-chaser, this is what he really loves doing.

'Let me be,' howls the HJ leader, kicking out at Heide.

'You've got ten seconds, you yellow-gutted cur,' hisses Heide, pushing the muzzle of his Mpi into the boy's stomach.

'You wouldn't dare,' screams the HJ lad, in terror. 'It's murder!'

'Wouldn't I, though?' Heide grins like a devil, and sends the snow alongside the boy spurting up with a burst of bullets.

Shakily the boy gets to his feet, and reels after the section which is already some way ahead.

'March to attention,' rages Heide. 'Straighten your legs, stretch your feet out! Pull your rifle-sling taut, you quivering jelly-bag, or I'll blow your arse from under you!'

'You're raving mad,' protests the HJ boy.

Heide steps to one side, lifts his Mpi like a club and smashes it with brutal force into the boy's face.

'This time you get away with it,' he snarls with satanic glee, 'but next time you lie down without an order, I'm gonna pluck you! March, you sad sack! At the double, if you please!'

With blood streaming down his face the HJ boy doubles along with Heide at his heels. He has got so much speed up that he almost runs past the section.

'Ho! Where you goin', Son of 'Itler?' shouts Tiny, in amazement. 'If it's the leave train you're chasin' it went off long ago!'

'Why is he bleeding?' asks the Old Man, threateningly.

'He fell down,' grins Heide, 'and hit his face on his carbine, which he was carrying in an unregimental manner. Right?' he questions the HJ boy, with a wicked expression on his face.

'Yes, Herr Unteroffizier,' shouts the boy. 'I fell down.'

'Let's see your Mpi,' demands the Old Man, holding out his hand for Heide's weapon. He examines the barrel briefly. 'Another time I'd be very careful, Unteroffizier Heide, that people don't fall down and hit their faces, when they're standing near you! Hear me, you'll fly straight in one long arc into Torgau, if I catch you laying a finger on a subordinate. And I don't care
how
tight you hold on to the Fuhrer's arse!'

Heide goes chalk-white in the face, and stares at the Old Man furiously for an instant.

'You could have left out the last remark. You might come to repent it bitterly some day!'

'You can leave it to me to sort out what I'll repent and won't repent,' smiles the Old Man, condescendingly, 'but I'd watch myself if I were you! You want to stay on in the Army after the war. You're no fool, so watch your mouth or it may be the Army won't have you when they're putting the pieces together again after this lot's over!'

'You think we're going to lose this war?' asks Heide, with a hint of a threat in his voice.

'Don't you?' asks the Old Man, turning on his heel and moving off.

To the north-west the reflection of a huge fire lights up the sky.

'Petsamo's burning,' confirms Oberleutnant Wisling.

We all stare towards the north. Petsamo. It seems like a hundred years since we were there.

'
Merde, alors
, how people can live in this cursed land,' remarks the Legionnaire, tired and freezing. 'I am sick with longing for the Sahara and the hot sand!'

'One thing's for sure. I'm cured of winter sports for the rest of my life,' smiles Barcelona, bitterly, clapping his hands together. His face hidden behind a mask of ice.

'What in the hell does Adolf
want
with this country?' asks Porta, in a voice which sounds as if it came from the grave.

'
Im Osten, da leuchtet eine heiliges Licht
. . .' sings Gregor, jeeringly.

Far out in the neighbourhood of Motowski Bay the battle-group halts. That night fifteen men are shot in the head. We are nervous and irritable. Our nervousness shows in the fact that our sentries shoot three of our own men.

'They're getting cheekier and cheekier,' says Porta, examining with interest, the bullet-hole in one of the bodies. 'Right between the eyes!'

'
C'est la guerre!
But why don't we show them we're still here?' suggests the Legionnaire.

'Ye-e-ah! Let's go make us some Russian corpses,' grins Tiny, murderously, swinging his Mpi round in an arc.

An attack group is formed under the command of a Finnish forest-runner, one of those tough Commie-eaters who consider every live Bolshevik to be an insult to God and to Finland.

Silently we sneak through the snow and lie in ambush a kilometre on the opposite side of the bay.

They arrive a couple of hours later on squeaking skis in single-file, without the least suspicion. We pull back on our triggers until the magazines are empty.

They fall forward and sideways like corn going down before a sharp scythe.

We go over them quickly and take what is usable. A few are still alive. The forest runner looks after them. With a wicked grin of hate he places the muzzle of his weapon between their eyes and fires. Their skulls break up like eggshells. They are Siberian troops and have plenty of fine-cut machorka in their pockets. Smoke soon scents the air around us. Their water-bottles are filled with vodka.

Porta guesses they have just been issued their weekly ration. We discover it to be Thursday, Ivan's vodka day. Perhaps they were half-drunk when they got here. It could explain the absence of scouts and the way they went headlong to meet their deaths.

They have photographs of their families in their wallets. We sit on the bodies, soon frozen stiff, and discuss the photographs. The ones we don't like we flip away on the arctic wind, but the young sweethearts and wives we keep. We cut the men away. They only disturb our fantasies about the women.

Shortly after midnight all hell breaks loose. Automatic weapons spit death from every angle. In long snow-capes and on short skis they come rushing at us. Even their faces are covered by white snow-masks. It is like being attacked by an army of ghosts. As suddenly as it started it is over. In many places the snow is blotched red with Finnish and German blood. Wounded men babble heart-rendingly, but we are too worn out to bring them in, and it is not long before the icy cold puts an end to them. Death comes quickly north of the Arctic Circle.

The battle group is shrinking. Far more than half the number are the wounded we are dragging along with us. Our strength ebbs away hour by hour. We begin to drop the wounded and let them lie. They only hold us back. The spirit of comradeship of which we sing is not worth much to a dying battle-group in the Arctic.

Many put an end to their lives with a bullet.

The Oberst bends over his adjutant, a young Leutnant, lying in the snow. Both his eyes have been blasted by explosives. He closes the lids of the dead man's eyes and walks silently, his face impassive, along the rows of groaning soldiers.

Sanitaltsgefreiter Krone, the former chaplain, kneels by the side of Leutnant Kraus. In a clear voice he prays to God for mercy.

The Oberst stops for a moment and looks at Leutnant Kraus, whose skin is already the parchment colour of death. His teeth seem to project strangely from between his purple lips, which are pulled back in a canine snarl. The hero's death is not a particularly beautiful one, thinks the Oberst, bitterly. It hardly resembles the fantasies of the war-correspondents.

Shortly after, he collects the officers of the battle-group around him. They arrive one by one. Leutnant Linz from No. 1 Company, Hauptmann Bernstein from No. 2, Leutnant Paulus from No. 3, Oberleutnant Wisling from No. 4, Major Pihl from No. 5, Leutnant Hansen from No. 6. Last to arrive is Leutnant Schultz.

'Let us sit down, gentlemen,' says the Oberst, with a gloomy expression. He throws a brief glance at their faces. He knows which of them he can count on, and which of them would prefer to spit in his face. 'Gentlemen,' he begins, tiredly, 'I have ordered you to come here to discuss the future of this group. I can, of course, order whatever I feel to be the proper action. That is why I am in command, and you must obey my orders. Protests are considered as mutiny and in the situation we find ourselves that means a drumhead court martial and immediate execution. This is the case, not only in our own army, but in all others.'