Monte Cassino (5 page)

Major Mike gave the body a contemptuous poke with the toe of his boot.

"War's a bloody thing," the Old Man muttered.

The Major scribbled down a message for the radio NCO to send back:

"Rhinoceros to Sow. Chief. 36 tanks liquidated, 10 trucks, 17 cars. Unknown number of killed. Own losses: killed--one private; wounded--one Feldwebel and one NCO. Awaiting contact with enemy. Continuing on own responsibility. Breaking off link. End."

We grinned understandingly, knowing that Major Mike wanted to deal with the enemy regiment on his own. Having risen from NCO to major, he was determined to shine and to do that the red tabs had to be shown that they were not the only ones who could do things. It was pretty ingenious, breaking off radio communication. For the next three or four hours nobody would be able to get hold of us. It was playing for high stakes, but if Major Mike could bring it off, he would be a big man. If things went wrong and he returned alive, he would land in Torgau. That was the hard law of the Army.

"Mount," ordered Mike. "Tanks--fo-r-ward."

We leaned out of our opened hatches as we drove through a belt of young trees and then down to a river bed with stinking water and mud, where some swollen bodies of dead cattle made the air putrid.

Leutnant Herbert's tank stuck. It just shoved the mud in front of it, till it got itself well and truly stuck.

Major Mike swore furiously, leaping from his tank and wading across up to his knees in mud. When he had kicked at a dead rat and glared evilly at Leutnant Herbert in his turret, he asked "What the hell do you think you're doing, man?"

Leutnant Herbert muttered something about it being an accident that might have happened to anybody.

"There's no such thing in my squadron," bellowed Major Mike. "You aren't pissing about the Kurfurstedamn now. You're in a war and in charge of a tank costing a million Reichmark. I don't care about the million, but I need your bloody tank. What bloody fool promoted you Leutnant. Pull him out, Beier!"

Tiny and the gunner of the unfortunate tank together fastened the towing wires to the tank's hooks.

The thick steel wires sang, taut as violin strings. They could break any moment, and if they hit you, you would be killed on the spot. We'd seen it happen.

The loader became so nervous that he let go his grip on the hooks and took cover behind the tank. Tiny threw a handful of mud, for want of better, at him.

"Wait till I get hold of you, you cunt-thief!" Then he leaped up onto the wires and hung on to the hooks for all he was worth.

"If they part," the Old Man muttered, "they'll mash him."

"Un bon soldat,"
said the Legionnaire with an approving nod.

"But as dumb as the hole in a cow's arse," Porta said with a grin.

"Don't go too far," Heide threatened. "I'm not so bloody dumb. No NCO has passed out with higher marks than I in the last twenty years. Who of you pissers can floor me on tactics?"

"March, march!" shouted Major Mike.

Slowly the stranded tank moved up out of the mud. Tiny lay on his belly across the wires, and the major helped him keep them firmly on the towing-hooks, cursing and swearing at Leutnant Herbert, who stood gazing forlornly from his turret. As soon as the tank was on firm ground again, Leutnant Herbert had to leave the turret, where Unteroffizier Lehnert took his place. No one exulted over the unfortunate. We had seen a hauptman fired as company commander and his place taken by a feldwebel in the middle of an attack.

We took up position behind a long dyke and at once set about camouflaging the tanks, removing the broad marks of the tracks with little rakes and by sticking grasses in them and laying twigs and branches over them. This was essential in case planes came over. It was the Russians taught us the art of camouflage. Three Jabos came screaming out of the clouds, just as Porta and I were out checking that all was as it should be. We pressed ourselves flat. The next moment they began firing. It was like an invisible grass-cutter sweeping across the ground. Hundreds of little fountains of earth spurted up. We were lucky, because they were using armour-piercing, not explosive shells. One of the pilots showed himself to be bloodthirsty by rising up almost vertically and diving back at us, his cannon spitting murderously.

The other two Jabos circled round. The first one passed over us so low that we thought he would rip up the belly of his machine. Then with a thunderous bang he disappeared over the hill after his companions.

Major Mike called the crews to him and we squatted among the bushes with him in the middle.

"In front of you," he said, "are two miles of visible road. When those buggers come, the first is to get as far as the curve where the road disappears into the wood. That will be your tank, Beier. You are on the left wing. Frick, you're on the right wing. You will plaster the last tank in the column the moment it emerges from the curve round the hill, but I warn you: no shot is to be fired before I give the word. I personally will shoot any gunner who presses his trigger too soon." He almost swallowed his big cigar in his vehemence, then he went on in a more kindly tone: "All sixteen guns are to fart off simultaneously. Every shell must hit. After the first salvo, the sector will be divided into fields of fire. Each tank is to weed out its own field." He spat a long jet at a feeding bird, hit it and grinned broadly. He bit a piece off his length of twist and, as usual, handed it to the Old Man. "And I would advise any gunner who sends a shell into space to follow it, before I reach him. Keep cool heads, lads. Let them come to the scaffold. They have no idea we are here. They can't possibly see us. The three Jabos are proof of that. We'll stay here quietly and wait for them."

We eased ourselves into our seats. We tested our radios, checked the electric firing mechanism. Heide conversed in low tones with the radio-operators in the other tanks. Feldwebel Slavek had just married by proxy and we congratulated him and made him describe in detail what he had done with his fiancee, whom he had only known for a week.

As we waited, we passed the time dicing. All at once Tiny said, a crafty expression on his great face:

"Who's your heir, Porta? I mean, if you get killed? You're mine, you know," he hurried to add. "All the gold in the green bag round my neck is yours, if one day they make a stiff of me."

Porta smiled wryly, shaking the dice over his head, and said: "Smart, aren't you? Am I to have your gold? I know what you're thinking. Did you really work that out all alone?"

"You can't possibly know what I'm thinking," Tiny protested indignantly. "Word of honour, you're to get my gold. I've made a will on a bit of paper, like that woman in the book we were reading the other day."

"Shut up," growled Porta. "No need to worry about me. When I was in Roumania, I had my fortune told by a respectable chap herding a lot of old nags out on the puszta. By night he stole from the big houses. One still evening, when he and I were enjoying a cup of slivovits, he offered to read my fortune in coffee grounds. It was quite uncanny. After staring into the stuff for ten minutes, while I was thinking about a pretty little piece of cunt I'd discovered in Bucharest, he suddenly uttered a ghastly howl.

" 'Porta, I can see your glowing face surrounded by a shining halo. Sorry, that was a mistake, it's neon lights. Tremendous. Your name shining out over all Berlin. You're going to be a big business man. You understand the good things of life. You'd never cheat a poor whore. You give the pawnbroker his due and the brothel-keeper what is hers. You will steal without letting yourself get caught. A nasty war's coming. Both enemy and friends will be after your scalp, but you'll come through. You'll survive the lot of them, go to many of their funerals, but your own is so far in the future, that I haven't yet seen it in the grounds. You'll live to over a hundred. I can't see death here, though normally you can see it a hundred years ahead.'"

"Do you think I ought to have my fortune told some time?" Tiny asked, interested, lovingly rubbing the green bag of gold teeth that hung from his neck.

"Never does any harm," Porta said. "If the chap tries to hand you out a lot of shit, you give him one on the nut. If it's good, you give him a coin or two and swallow it all. But I do recommend, Tiny, that you keep away from wills. Those are dangerous things, especially if your heirs have any idea how rich you are."

Tiny became so deep in thought that he forgot to shake the dice and when he threw, it was a hopeless one. He looked up at the opening of the ventilator, wiped his thumb over the control lamp on the loading mechanism, then his eyes began to twitch nervously and he exploded: "You lousy devil! You damned great bullock! Would you murder a friend for the sake of a tiny bit of gold?"

Porta shrugged: "I'm only human and the devil is a difficult chap to stand up to. He can put the craziest ideas into people's brainboxes, but as I said: Wills and testaments--that's all a load of shit."

Tiny flung the dice from him in a rage, dealt a kick at a shell and shouted excitedly: "You can't make a fool of me. I've got grey matter too, you know. I'll get the better of you, bet your life."

Porta laughed and withdrew to safety behind the driver's seat. He said with a grin: "The really important thing when you make a will, is to make yourself safe against the men of darkness. You say that I'm your sole heir. I'm a business man and for all their white collars and polished nails, business men are a lot of ugly devils. If one of them gives you a cigar, you can be sure he's counting on getting a full box of them in return. All business people are in direct liaison with the devil. The world of business is a blacked-out jungle. Remember, Obergefreiter Wolfgang Creutsfeldt, only the toughest can float on the surface. Countless people have tried the game, but only a few are chosen. Those who don't know how to secure themselves on all sides, soon end in the gutter. There are competitors everywhere just waiting to strip you of your last rags, but if you know how to play the game, the money will flow into your pocket, and, even if no one can stand you, they will all vie for your company and kiss your arse if you ask them. The bigger and more hated you are, the more bowing and scraping you'll get. Spit on the parquet in your enemy's house, and he'll think it a great joke. You can ring up a judge in the middle of the night and he won't mind. Everything you do is right. Wave a sheaf of ducats and they all come running, from kings to pimps. You mustn't be particular about your methods. You must know a few thugs, who can arrange the occasional street accident. And a sawn-through front axle on your competitor's Jaguar can be a great help at times."

"But that's being a gangster," Tiny objected.

"Which is what every big business man is. Otherwise he would have gone under. You have to have lots of cunt out spying for you. Put 'em in your competitor's beds and they'll have lots of interesting things to tell you in the morning; dolls're the army scouts of the business world."

Tiny's face lit up. "You've just to build it all on a military basis?"

"Correct, and that's why I always pay attention when we are lectured on tactics. Your sales managers are the armoured troops; your thugs the paratroops."

"What about the infantry?" Tiny asked, athirst for knowledge.

"That's all the poor fools who labour away for tiny wages. The pen-pushers and typewriter-hammerers in the offices. When a skirt's done you a really big service, you wrap her in Persian lamb."

"Never seen that," Tiny exclaimed. "What's it look like?"

"Black and curly."

"Like One-Eye has on his hat?"

"Not on your life," Porta snorted contemptuously. "What One-Eye has is the remains of a moth-eaten poodle some Jew palmed off on him as Persian lamb."

The radio whistled.

"Enemy tanks in sight. Action stations. Break off radio contact."

I edged in behind the periscope; Porta started up the dynamo; Tiny checked the fuses and shoved an armour-piercing shell into the chamber. The heavy breach block closed with a smack.

"Loaded, safety catch released," he reported automatically, already with a new armour-piercer in his arms. The long shells stood there in rows, glinting at each other, looking so innocent; but in a few minutes they would spread death and horror, start blazing bonfires, make men scream in torment and terror. Through our open hatches we stared intently at the enemy tanks rolling along in close column down the sunlit asphalt road.

I depressed the pedal slightly. The electric motor hummed. The turret revolved quietly. My target was to be exactly between two trees.

Major Mike was peering over the edge of the turret. His glasses were lying in front of him, camouflaged under a turf. We were to fire, when he tore his beret off.

There was a whole regiment of them. The sort of sight a tank commander dreams of.

"You could hardly believe it," whispered the Old Man. "If they don't discover us, it'll be all over in ten minutes."

A lark was pouring out its trills in the blue sky, a herd of heifers stood on the fringe of the trees staring inquisitively at the tanks, and two farmhands were sitting on a muck cart drinking chianti, taking a rest with no idea of what was lurking the other side of the dyke. In a few seconds, they would be right in the middle of it. They waved gaily to the Americans, who called back witticisms. We were so tense that we did not even dare speak aloud. My eyes were glued to the rubber surround of the periscope.

A dog came gambolling up to the farm cart. One of the men threw a stick for it. A couple of bees buzzed about the flowers that camouflaged the guns. A lizard darted across the turret. A magpie was belabouring a big snail. The Americans were singing.

Then the first tank came in to view in my rangefinder. Apart from the driver, the entire crew was sitting perched on the outside.

Mike's beret went sailing through the air.

"Fire," ordered the Old Man.

Sixteen heavy tank guns thundered simultaneously, the blast bending the bushes horizontal. Every shell went home. Bodies went flying through the air. There were flames everywhere.

A second salvo thundered out, smashing more tanks.