Guns At Cassino (14 page)

He
felt no pleasure, just rage at the injustice of it all. Heidi had experienced a kind of frenzy. Screaming and biting she had writhed back and forth frighteningly, as if she were now riding him and not the other way around, her mouth open, her lips gleaming, uttering obscenities - learned God knows where. And then suddenly she had arched her spine, stopping in the middle of a wild movement, digging her nails into his buttocks so that it hurt and had screamed through gritted teeth,

`
Oh
,
shit
…
shit
...
shit
…’

Now
as the clock struck midnight somewhere, he watched her exhausted face in the silver darkness of the moonlight pouring through the unblacked-out window, silence everywhere save for the persistent squeak of bedsprings somewhere else in the brothel, and felt his rage change slowly to sadness. For this immature girl, who had sacrificed herself to him because he was one of 'our brave soldiers'; for himself, because he knew now that he, too, had been betrayed; for all the honest people in Germany who were still working, sacrificing, fighting and dying in vain for a once great cause that had already sold out behind their backs. The hours passed leadenly. At about two a siren began to sound in the far-off suburbs. A couple of searchlight beams sliced into the night sky and began to probe the silver darkness. But the Tommy raiders they expected did not appear and they flicked off again after a while. And still he could not solve his problem.

He
tossed and turned and tried to get to sleep, attempting to force the issue out of his mind. But the problem simply would not go away. He could not betray his father, that he knew. But he could not also betray his Führer and Fatherland. What in heaven's name was he going to do?

Dawn
came, harsh, grey and wintery, a typical Berlin morning. But even its cold greyness could not impair the guilelessness of the girl's sleeping face. Her lips were opening and closing now, as if she were thirsty. He bent down and pressed a kiss on them softly. Her breath was sweet. She stirred slightly, but did not wake. He put his hand gently on her breast and massaged the nipple gently. It began to grow erect under his touch.

Slowly
her legs arched and began to part. The covers slipped away from her stomach and he could see the smooth white curve of her thighs, decorated by the dark pubic puff. Cautiously he placed his other hand on her stomach. She did not stir. He let it glide down the white slope. He hesitated. She looked so childishly innocent that he felt himself choke. But there is no more innocence he told himself harshly. His fingers slipped into the dark hair. Her breath began to come more rapidly. Rhythmically her buttocks commenced moving up and down, slowly at first, but growing ever quicker as he increased his fondling.

Suddenly
her eyes flickered open. For a moment he could see that she did not understand what was happening to her, who he was and where they were. Then her thin arms groped round his neck and her mouth opened for him to kiss her. As he bent to do so, she parted her legs expectantly. He raised himself and pressed his hands under her firm buttocks.

`Wider,'
he gasped, feeling lust overcome him now.

He
lowered himself carefully between the white cradle of her legs. She grunted as his weight descended upon her, the grunt turning into a gasp, whether of pain or pleasure, von Dodenburg neither knew nor cared in his excitement. Brutally and pleasurably he thrust himself inside her. Her loins writhed up to meet him, as if her body could not receive enough of him.

`
Good
...
oh
,
good
,' she quavered, and let it happen once again.

Two
hours later, Wagner was hammering on the door, naked save for his polished jackboots and the revolver belt around his waist. One arm was clasped around the other girl, who was swaying drunkenly, long hair dangling over her face. In his other hand, he held a bottle of champagne and four glasses.

`Ah,
ah, Major von Dodenburg,' he chortled, as von Dodenburg opened up for him and he saw the girl stretched naked and exhausted on the rumpled bed, 'frolicking with little girls, eh? Don't you know, sir, that that is a punishable offence in our brave new National Socialist Germany?' He grinned. 'Come on Kuno, Madame Kitty is going to give us a champagne breakfast – real French champus too. None of your Saar muck - '

It
was then that von Dodenburg punched him very neatly on the jaw. As the glasses fell to the floor and the big adjutant swayed backwards, taken off his guard completely, the Wotan officer followed up his punch with a swift kick to Wagner's genitals which sent him smashing to the wall. Ignoring the screaming girls and the big naked SD man with the vomit trickling from his wildly gasping mouth, slowly sliding down the wall, von Dodenburg picked up his clothes and equipment. His mind was made up at last.

Eleven

`All right,' Big Erna hissed, as they crouched together in the little copse of pines overlooking the suburban station of Reinbek, 'now pin back your big ears and listen to what I'm going to say because I'm only going to say it once. Right?'

`Right?'
Schulze whispered, half amused, half impressed by this monstrous woman who was risking her life to get him back to Berlin.

`The
hospital train gets in from the front punctually at midnight. Then the head-hunters will seal of the platform down there and the barriers to the street, in case any civvie who might be about still sees the wounded being unloaded. The powers-that-be naturally do not want their folk comrades to see the mess they are making of the fighting on the Russian front. But I don't need to tell you that, Schulze, you've been there, haven't you?'

`That
I have, missus. I've been there twice and I've had a noseful.'

`More
fool you,' she grunted. 'It's thick-headed fools like you with their brains between their legs who keep the imperialists in power. But no matter now. The train will leave for Hamburg, take on leave men returning to the front and a new hospital crew. Of course there'll be a check at Hamburg, but no one will suspect that we will be aboard. So', she took a hasty glance at the luminous dial of her watch, raising it up to the moon's beams: 'as soon as we're aboard, head for the other rank latrines at the far end and stay in there till we've left Hamburg Main Station. Clear?'

`Clear.
Just one thing, though.'

`Yes?'
she said impatiently.

From
up the line there came the faint steady puffing of a heavily laden train. On the platform, the blue lamps were beginning to light up and there was the sound of heavy military boots.

`How
are we going to get off when the train stops again in Berlin? There must be a check there.'

Big
Erna laughed softly this time with genuine mirth.

`Sister
Klara has got an answer for that one, soldier. Never fear. Look.'

With
considerable speed for such an enormous woman, she flipped up the back of her loose white nurse's skirt to reveal a brief glimpse of great buttocks, covered by tightly stretched sheer black panties.

`That'll
be all the documents you'll need, take it from me,' she said mysteriously. 'Now shut up, here comes the hospital train.'

Well,
all I can say is that I wouldn't like to buy all that by the kilo,' Schulze whispered, his eyes fixed on the white-painted train which was now beginning to pull into the little station.

With
a rusty squeal of brakes and emitting a great cloud of steam, the white-painted locomotive came to rest at the end of the platform. For a moment nothing happened. Then the stretcher-bearers started to file on the platform, pushing their way through the MPs armed with sub-machine guns who were watching the streets. The young Red Cross nurses hurried out of the blue-lit waiting-room, shivering in the night cold, their knives and scissors held ready in their hands. The doors of the train were flung open everywhere and now the two watchers could identify the strange sound which had puzzled them ever since the locomotive had stopped.

`I
t’s the wounded,' Fat Erna hissed. 'They've been locked up in that train for three days, ever since it left the front. You can imagine the state of the poor bastards, can't you?'

Schulze
did not need to; he could see their state with his own eyes, as the ragged, lice-ridden soldiers were laid out in long rows on the freezing platform while the nurses went down their moaning ranks slicing their lousy, blood-stained clothes with professional speed. They were followed by elderly soldiers with masks over their mouths, pumping great clouds of lice-powder over their naked, broken bodies.

`Against
typhus,' Fat Erna explained. 'There was a typhus epidemic out here last year, but the authorities hushed it up - as always.' She gave a last quick look at the platform and nudged Schulze. 'All right, soldier boy, let's go!'

Schulze
needed no urging. Together they scrambled down the steep wooded slope, Fat Erna showed surprising energy and agility for such a big woman and, crouching low, clambered over the gleaming rails towards the train.

`Towards
the rear,' she hissed. 'It's darker there - behind that flak wagon.'

Hurriedly,
but taking care not to make too much noise, they worked their way past the stark outline of the Luftwaffe anti-aircraft car, its four 20mm cannon pointing mutely to a silver night sky. Erna stopped suddenly, so that he nearly bumped into her.

`This
is it - the dysentery latrines.'

`Yeah,
I can smell them! Christ on a crutch! That pong certainly makes yer hair curl, doesn't it?'

`By
the time you get out of them, soldier,' Big Erna said grimly, 'your hair will probably have started to fall out. All right, once you're in them, stay there until we cross the bridge over the Elbe at Lauenburg. Got it?'

`Got
it.'

`Good,
now give me a leg up to the carriage - and no trying to get your big hand up my skirt when you do, do you hear?'

`A
gentleman never takes advantage of a lady in a tricky situation, madam, especially when she's as big as you.'

Big
Erna mouthed an obscenity and reached upwards.

`I
shall have to speak first with my chaplain before I can answer that,' Schulz said and took the strain, pushing at her enormous buttocks, as if he were back in the Hamburg docks heaving up hundredweight sacks of flour.

The
corridor leading to the dysentery latrines, marked by the big official sign 'ATTENTION DYSENTERY PATIENTS ONLY, was empty, but the bloody mixture of faeces and dirty linen which littered the floor showed clearly that the latrines had been in full use in the hospital train's long journey from the front. Further up, an orderly was sluicing down the floor with a stirrup pump attached to a pail of water.

Big
Erna coughed thickly.

`All
right, soldier. Now you're on your own. Sister Klara must get some rest for the long journey back to the front.'

`Lucky
you,' Schulze grumbled, then he turned and began to make his way towards the latrine area, already beginning to gag at the nauseating odour which rose to meet him.

Big
Erna faced him on the rattling, swaying connection between the two carriages. The noise was so loud that the frozen-faced air-raid sentry in the little wooden tower above their heads could not hear a word they spoke. Outside it was snowing hard - thick white flakes coming down in solid sheets as if God had decided to blot out the miserable war-torn world below for good. Big Erna handed him the little bottle of
Kron
.

`Clean
your mouth out with that,' she ordered gruffly. Gratefully he took a deep drink of the fiery, clear schnapps.

`Man,
that tastes good,' he gasped, wiping his cracked lips with the back of his hand. 'I thought I was going to lose my ring in that bog for good - I puked that much.'

`Better
than losing your turnip' (1) she commented laconically and watched the flat white Mecklenburg countryside flash by.

Feeling
better now, Schulze looked at the big woman in the Red Cross uniform curiously. 'You been inside?' he asked. She nodded and took a bite of the sandwich she had pulled out of her pocket.

`Is
that why you're working with that lad in Hamburg?'

She
swallowed a big chunk of the black bread and salami.

`I
suppose so. I'm not in the movement because of the ideology, that's for sure. The Party's philosophy is still bourgeois, you know. Not much better than the old anti-feminist business of children, kitchen and cooking. Our leaders haven't much time for the kind of - er - weakness I'm addicted to.'

She
lowered her eyes with unusual shyness. Schulze did not ask what her 'weakness' was. He knew Fat Erna well enough now to realize that she would only tell him what she wanted to tell him.