Legion of the Damned (12 page)

"Good! So you've not gone altogether mad. I was getting quite afraid that I was lying here savoring the joys of bathing with a mental defective who wanted to convert me to the Church and religion. But swindle--that depends how you look at it. In any case, don't waste your energy despising religion. It's not worth it. Let people believe in it if they like. As long as they don't embarrass me with their belief it doesn't concern me; and if they can find comfort in it, well, good luck to them. Personally, I prefer to confine my attention to communion wine and nuns. I can assure you that if you've once broached a well-assorted nunnery you won't be disappointed with religion."

Porta, of course, had also been gardener's boy at a nunnery. I listened dully to a juicy account of his exploits while my thoughts occupied themselves further with the question of an almighty, omniscient and supremely good Creator.

"You're not listening, boy," said Porta, and came to a sudden stop. Our situation was not really conducive to improvising on the theme of the deeper joys of life in a nunnery. He saw that. But then his face brightened again.

"There's one thing, though, that the Church has given me that isn't humbug."

"What's that?"

"The organ. If only we had one here I don't believe I'd mind lying here getting my feet wet and catching my death of cold. I knew an organist once, and he taught me to play the organ. Yes, give the devil his due, even though all that about prayers and how the poor ought to be glad because they'll get into heaven, it's just eyewash and nothing at all for Daddy here, it's a darned fine sight when they put on a proper Jesus feast with Christmas tree and what have you. And when they sing and make church music, I can tell you--you want to blub quietly from sheer lousy emotion. When you hear their music the water fairly pours down your mug."

Thirst was racking us and we fell silent.

Just after daybreak of the second day an Italian plane flew low over us and dropped a rubber boat that landed only twenty yards away. We laughed and wept, and Porta shouted up at the plane

"Thanks, old spaghetti eaters! So there's some good in you after all."

It proved more difficult than we thought, both to paddle the twenty yards to the boat and to get ourselves into it. We went one to either side. I was to try first, and I struggled and jumped up and down in the water and slid under and nearly drowned myself, because I started laughing from sheer tiredness and could not stop. But in the end we both got in and shook hands.

"Now we only want a pack of cards."

We could not find one, but the watertight locker contained some tins of milk, dried meat, biscuits and four bottles of schnapps. We ate and drank, then we stretched out under a sail in the stern and slept. Cold woke us in the middle of the night. We started pummeling each other, and that and a couple of good swigs of schnapps soon made us warm again, so we settled down once more and slept on. About noon the next day we made a further investigation of the boat's lockers and this time we found a box of rockets and a tin of some yellow fluid. This latter was to pour on the water, which we did, and the next moment the oily stuff had spread and made a huge, bright yellow patch that must have been easy to see from the air. We let off a couple of rockets and cheered, as if it were a garden party. Then we sang one German, one English and one French song, sampled the remaining provisions, taking great delight in cheating each other, but toward the end we shared like true brothers, and in our hunger we ate up everything that was left except for a few biscuits.

We began talking about the others, most of whom were presumably dead.

"We'll be kept busy writing letters when we get ashore," said Porta, "to all those mothers and sweethearts and wives."

Ursula.

The next morning we drank the last of the schnapps and ate the last biscuit.

"The next treat will be our boots. How would you like yours done, with truffles or vanilla sauce?"

Shortly afterward we came across a body floating in a life belt. With great difficulty we managed to heave it in. He was an unteroffizier, badly burned about the legs and abdomen. In his pocket was a notebook full of jottings and addresses, and we also found his Soldier's Book and a wallet. From this we learned that his name was Alfred Konig and that he was unteroffizier in the 161st Artillery Regiment; that he had been a soldier for three years, was twenty-two and married to twenty-year-old Irma Bartels from Berlin. His wallet contained a number of snapshots of himself with a young, fair-haired girl.

We kept his things and sent him overboard again.

"Greetings to all the others in the aquarium, there," said Porta. "I'll write a nice letter to Irma and tell her that you died like a hero; erect and alone, you kept a superior attacking force at bay for four days, till you dropped with a bullet in your heart, killed outright. Yes, I know what's needed, so that your little Irma can proudly tell her girl friends that her Alfred popped off in regulation fashion, fighting for his filthy, great fatherland. Nothing about his first having been roasted like a goose and then soaked in the sea. Your Irma is perhaps lying at home in Berlin now, thinking of nothing, but just longing for her Alfred. She'll reread your last letter in which you wrote that you were well and faithful to her and thinking of her a lot, and that consequently you would not dream of sticking your nose or anything else into the temptations of Naples. Then she'll wipe away a tear and let the gas man go without having done anything but read the meter. And that's life for Irma. Each day she doesn't get what she ought to have because the Fuhrer has taken it from her and sent it down to the bottom of the sea. And one day she'll get a post card from the army, simple, brief and military:

Unteroffizier Alfred Kanig, of 161st Artillery Regiment, fell on 30th September 1941 fighting heroically for Fuhrer and Fatherland
and underneath the elaborate flourish of some filthy officer's illegible signature. And beneath that in fine, Gothic lettering, as though a quotation from the Bible:

The Fuhrer thanks you--Heil Hitler!

Porta broke wind loudly and surveyed the gray uniformity around us.

"For a couple of days or so little Irma will go about with red eyes and that card in her handbag, and some people will be sorry for her, but not many, for she isn't the only one, and if one were to be sorry for them all it would be more than one could manage; no, where can I scrounge half a pound of butter? And the next time the gas man calls he will be allowed to do more than read the meter, and in that way the loss of Alfred will turn out a good thing, for Alfred came only once a year, while the gas man comes every quarter, and he can't fall for the Fuhrer and fatherland, for he has a wooden leg.... God knows, perhaps we'll end up in Spain. Now, a nice little black-haired thing with a carnation behind her ear, you. . ."

I was tormented by thirst and found that Porta's everlasting bawdiness was becoming irritating. "Shut up, you great swine," said I peevishly. "How can you think of wenching when we're lying here on the point of turning up our toes from hunger and thirst?"

"Turn up our toes? Are you mad? You don't think that the Royal Italian Air Force has presented us with this fine rubber dinghy, in which we shall paddle ourselves to Spain, for us to turn up our toes in it? Pop off in the middle of the Royal Italian Mediterranean--you're crackers, man! It would almost be an insuit to the king of Italy to lie down and die here. Wonder if kings have gold aunts with plush seats?"

He pulled his trousers down and sat with his behind over the dinghy's stern. Now and again a wave rose up and gave his bare bottom a smack.

"Ugh! How that tickles! But it's hygienic. You should try it. It's a healthier way than the king of Italy's."

"Porta, you're no longer amusing."

His vitality stupefied me and exhausted me; it was like a white wall in the midday sun. Yet each time that I felt like seizing him by the throat his eyes stopped me. I could see from them that, for all his galgenhumor, we were in the same state.

But then even that began to get on my nerves, and if we had not spotted a ship in the distance just before darkness fell I believe that I should have gone for him during the night in blind, crazy hatred. We called and waved and fired off rockets, and so we were picked up by an Italian destroyer. We washed the oil from the sinking ship out of our hair under a hot shower; we were put into dry, warm bunks and fed with a mountain of spaghetti, which we washed down with two liters of red wine; and then we slept like logs. The next morning the sailors told us that quite a number from the two troopships had been rescued and that they had all been taken to Naples, to which we too were to put in. The ship's doctor came and looked at us, asked how we felt, and left without doing anything. We began talking about the others. Porta sighed gloomily.

"It won't be pleasant writing to The Old Un's wife. I went out to see them when I was on leave, and she and The Old Un and his old father and I agreed that we would be home again in six months, for the war would be over then and we would have got through the revolution. Hell! I hope the spaghetti eaters' Royal Pirate Club fished him up and that he's lying in some Neapolitan inn or other, sullying his fair name and reputation in the company of sots, gamblers and loose women.... But what the hell are we lying here blubbing for? Of course they've fished The Old Un up. What would Rommel do in North Africa otherwise? He could never manage without The Old Un, even with us helping."

When we got to Naples we dug our heels in and made a scene.

"I don't care a damn if you are a major. There'll be no army for us till we've found out where The Old Un is. It wasn't for our pleasure that we let ourselves be torpedoed and then lay there kissing Mediterranean sharks for days on end, nor was it so that we should stand here getting flat feet for the sake of your rotten ration lists and clothing receipts. The Old Un's our pal, and until we know about him you aren't a major or anything else as far as we are concerned. We sit here and we're not budging; so just shoot us or shove us in clink, or what you damn well like."

To put it mildly, we were not quite right in the head. It was reaction. We could take no more. Fortunately they could see the state we were in and luckily the major was a sensible man. He gave us as good as he got and when we discovered that he had been in the other troopship and had been through it all too, we became more amenable.

When the Feldwebel in the clothing depot saw us he gave Porta his hand with a great grin, and when we had told him about our rescue and asked him if he had heard anything about The Old Un, he told us to pick out our own things while he went and saw what he could do. He disappeared into his little office and after a short while he came out again and told us to go in there and wait. He would have news in ten minutes. He gave us schnapps and cigarettes and asked us various details about the loss of the ships, but we just told him anything, for we were anxious and thought the ten minutes were taking a very long time to pass. It was as though The Old Un were there but not allowed to join us. Each time the telephone rang he leaped out of it, as it were.

"Halo.... Yes.... Where?... Thanks."

The Feldwebel turned to us. I can still remember his smile.

"He's in one of the naval barracks down by the port."

I hope that Feldwebel understood that it was not ingratitude or rudeness that sent Porta and me rushing out of his office without thanking him. But in the field a friend is a very special being. At first you live in noisy solitude, in violent loneliness; then you find a friend and you know the whole time that he may be gone the next second, leaving you alone again in the din and solitude, with nothing.

We spent the next four or five days drifting about doing nothing. Of course, we had paid a visit to Pompeii and went up Vesuvius, whose crater naturally was an obvious victim for Porta's rhetoric.

Then one morning we were loaded into transport planes, socalled Auntie Juszes, and off we flew, twelve planes in V formation, protected by fighters. The Mediterranean disappeared behind and there were black mountains far beneath us. Now and again we saw a lake or a town. Twice we landed before we reached our destination, the Westphalian town of Wuppertal. We marched through the town to barracks in the suburb of Elberfeldt. There we were to be re-formed into three companies, that being all there was enough for, and after that we were to be sent to the Eastern Front and incorporated in the 27th Tank Regiment.

The Old Un shook his head and said contemptuously:

"Now don't be naive, Hans. As long as there is one single officer who sticks to discipline we will keep silence, step and direction. Just look how it went in 1918. In 1918 it wasn't till the whole thing collapsed that the lads in field gray revolted. But God preserve us from a revolution. Pointless, aimless stupidity. No, my lad, the little German sausage eater is so frightened of everything that he doesn't dare think, and you don't make revolutions with frightened men whose stomachs turn at anything strong. It ended as it had to: the clever ones ran off with the swag. The bloodhounds were allowed to go scot-free, and today there they are, cracking their whips over us again. I have no doubt that the whole thing is going to collapse again, but you may call me Adolf if that leads to revolution. It will be the same story again. The clever ones will find their like and take care of Number One, and when a suitable time has passed they will help the bloodhounds up again and shove nice new whips into their paws, and then we will have to put our backs into it all over again. Until my highly esteemed fellow countrymen begin to discover what it's all about, I have no confidence in them. Hitler and his dregs will be slaughtered, of course, and the sooner the better, but what are they but filthy puppets? And it's not making a revolution if you just smash the puppets and let the director run off with the takings."

Thus, The Old Un in 1941.

Among the many new men who came to fill up our company I found a new friend, Hans Breuer. He had been a police lieutenant in Dusseldorf and had come to our dear little outfit because he refused to volunteer for the SS, as Hitler had ordered that all policemen should. He was convinced that Germany would soon lose the war for he knew from his brother, who worked in Goebbels' propaganda ministry, that Nazism was on the verge of bankruptcy.