The Commissar (25 page)

‘A bit later a Major and three Leutnants got themselves removed from division’s protectin’ arms, for goin’ the wrong way with the enemy’s tanks.

‘My general got more and more annoyed, and his eyes were shooting out wicked ice-blue flashes!

‘I could see what way things were going. Before these simulated games were over the division’d have a noticeable shortage of officers. It was lucky though, I thought, that they weren’t
real
officers but only reserves – war surplus shit so to speak. But our German God had kept the best to wind up with. Every bit of our concentrated anger fell on the Adjutant, the rotten swine. He got himself that infiltrated in Ivan’s infantry that he lost a whole battery of SPs. My general shot his scraggy neck half a yard up out of his collar, like a submarine commander who was tryin’ to sink a battleship. The adjutant feller got a fit of the Andalusian shakes, and started his AA batteries shooting down our own air support. They came down over the whole simulator area like a shower of confetti.

‘I was grinnin’ like mad up there alongside my cardboard clock. It was a lovely sight to see that lousy Adjutant in trouble. He looked like a constipated rat. My general told him a lot of things in a voice that nearly cut the boots away from under him, and he slunk off looking like a half-drowned
suicide candidate.

‘Then my general stopped the war game before the incompetent officers ruined our army completely. He made a long speech to those remaining, in which he told them what his feelings were with regard to civilians in uniform. He wound up by telling them that Attila had been much better off than the general of today. He wasn’t encumbered with reserve officers, but had born warriors around him who knew how to swing a club and split the skulls of other tribesmen.

‘Off we went then, and banged the door after us. I left the cardboard clock at five minutes past twelve. Just to give the clever fellers something to think about.

‘Then we changed uniform, and put on our battle kit with our hand-artillery on our hip.

‘“To work,” ordered my general, and out he goes through flocks of cacklin’ geese and poultry that thought they owned the road.

‘“Hell’s bells,” I thought. Time to pray. I knew my general, and had a pretty good idea of what he might get up to when he was in one of his black moods.

‘Just after the birds’ tattoo we get up in our staff car, and drive down through the darkened villages with our divisional standard on the front mudguard and blue slits on the headlamps, so’s nobody’d be in doubt of who was coming. My general muttered away darkly during the whole of the trip. “Honour be to God in the highest and peace on earth,” I thought.

‘My general had decided to inspect the coolies stationed round about in the civilian quarter. We dropped down on the divisional gaol like delayed action lightning on the Day of Wrath. The guards were sitting around playing cards with the prisoners and their weapons were hanging on the coal-racks out in the latrines. You should’ve heard my general, and seen those guards and prisoners jump around like cockroaches on a red-hot fryin’ pan. In the end when they’d all been ordered into the cells. I was commanded to
lock the doors an’ bolt ’em. When I handed the keys over to my general, he threw ’em as far as he could over on the other side of a muckheap.

‘Finally we dismantled their machine-pistols and spread the parts all over Westphalia, so they’d be
really
busy when they got the order to parade for inspection with mpis. Yes, my general knew how to turn civilians into reasonable imitations of soldiers.

‘The next place we rolled up at, the officer in charge appeared on the doorstep in pyjamas and slippers. My general made a terrible noise.

‘“The enemy is in the outskirts of the town,” he roared, pushing his beaky nose almost into the sleepy major’s face. “The enemy is on its way into the town!” he repeated.

‘“That’s not so good,” mumbled the major, and offered my general cognac for an eye-opener.

‘“My dear man, have you not just heard that the enemy is here with his armoured spearhead almost standing on your toes?” said my general, with shattering calm.

“Well I suppose there’s only one thing left for us to do.” The major smiled, and pulled his pyjama trousers up around his waist. “And that’s to get off out of here, before we get the shop all smashed up! But what the devil’s the enemy want here?”

‘Now we practically jumped out of our riding boots. We dropped our field-monocle, which got smashed, but thank God we always had an extra one in our breast-pocket.

‘“You give the alarm!” roared my general, in a rage.

‘“Very good, Herr General, sir!” answered the major, and he shuffled out an’ put on his tin helmet. Then he put his head out of the door, and shouted “Alarm!” three times into the night-still village street.

‘Nothing happened for a while, and then the telephone rang, very angrily. My general picked it up.

‘An angry voice asked what kind of idiot it was who shouted “Alarm!” here in the middle of the night.

‘“It’s me.” shouted my general, in a voice which made
the telephone mouthpiece shrink in on itself. “An alarm has been ordered, because paratroopers have surrounded us!”

‘“You must have eaten an old boot an’ it’s disagreed with you.” laughs the voice at the other end of the line. “Go in and get some sleep, you war-crazy idiot, and wait with all that shit till daylight. No paratrooper in his right mind’d dream of landing here with us! We’re not doing anybody any harm!”

‘My general threw the telephone from him in disgust, and sent the major a destroying general’s glance.

‘“You’ll hear from me,” he promised him, darkly.

‘“Very good, Herr General, sir,” piped the major, saluting with the wrong hand to his steel helmet. He had only now realized who his guest was.

‘“What a spineless individual,” snarled my general, as we crashed through a new village,” he’ll end up wishing that it
had
been enemy paratroopers who visited him rather than us!”

‘We came down like two emissaries from outer space on some quarters where a rifle regiment had found protection from the night damp, and were lolling in broad peasant beds.

‘A tall, thin beanpole of a Feldwebel, with his steel helmet turned round backwards on his head, coughed out a kind of report. When he had finished and was standing and wondering what else he could find to report, he realized that he had forgotten to call the room to attention. The coolies were lying around with their heads on the tables, snoring, an’ not givin’ a damn for standing guard.

‘“Sound the alarm, man,” screamed my general. “The enemy is on its way into town!”

‘“What?” grunted the Feldwebel, fearfully, breathing cheap schnapps straight into my general’s face. “What?” repeated this sketch of a soldier, scratching himself violently on the backside.

‘“Sound the alarm, for hell’s sake,” screamed my general again, nearly frightening the life out of the company cat,
which was lying fast asleep alongside the stove. It sprang straight up in the air, and came down standing stiffly on all four legs.

‘“
Servus
, Herr General, sir!” it meowed.

‘The tin-hatted beanpole began thinking so hard, dents appeared in his helmet. He reached for his belt and pistol, which were hanging on a hook. Then he pissed off over to one of the sleepin’ beauties an’ began to shake him awake.

‘“Herbert,” he yelled. “Wake up, damn your eyes!”

‘“Sod off!” answered Herbert, throwing a sleepy punch at him.

‘“It’s important, Herbert! Come on! Get up!” the beanpole implored him.

‘“Go over’n wake up the OC, and tell him the enemy’s here with tanks an’ all sorts of ironware!”

‘You should have seen my general! He looked as if his favourite football team’d lost an’ he was goin’ to have a Greater German stroke any minute. Then he went green, an’ finally blue in the face. He simply couldn’t get a word out for several minutes, something which only happened infrequently. But then he got his voice back, with a vengeance.

‘“We’re at war, man.” he screamed. They must’ve been able to hear him down in the south of France. “Any minute now the enemy’s tanks will roll in and tear the flesh from our bones. Sound the alarm.
Stuff 3
*
man, damn your eyes!”

‘“Very good, Herr General, sir,” mumbled the Feld-wrbel. scratching his head, thoughtfully, under his steel helmet.

‘“Get your fingers out, Herbert! Sound the alarm
Stuff 3
! Wake up the section commanders. Tell ’em the British are here with their tanks. They’d betterget their gear together, loo. so’s we can get off out of it before we get took prisoner. Jump to it. Herbert. Ain’t von found out there’s a war on yet?”

‘“British tanks, Herr Oberleutnant, sir,” grinned “Beanpole”, hitching up his pistol belt which had slid down round his backside over the hips he hadn’t got any of.

‘“God have mercy on us,” cried the fat man, in terror, and shifted his weight from one leg to the other.

‘“I’m sure he will have,” barked my general. “But you had better help yourself a little first, my good man.”

‘A leutnant came sailing along just then, dressed in riding breeches, slippers and a pyjama jacket with red stripes.

‘“The CO requests to know what the devil’s going on, and why all this shooting in the middle of the night?”

‘My general stared in amazement at this strangely-clad officer.

‘“Tell me now, my good man. Is this a messenger service or a Prussian infantry regiment?” and I can tell you he gave that Leutnant in slippers and pyjama jacket a goin’ over it was a treat to listen to! Oh, but it
was
a lovely rocket.

‘When he ran out of curses and threats he went spur-jinglin’ over to an anti-tank gun that was standing, getting bored to death, in between some bushes. Without glancing either right or left, and without a thought for the consequences, he released the firing mechanism and pulled the lanvard.

‘“BOOM!” thundered the 75 mm.

‘“There goes auntie’s rock cakes off of the plate,” I thought, as the shell went screamin’ off into the night, waking up all the German birds in their cosy nests. Germany is used to gettin’ into wars, but it’s still not all that often they fire guns off back home. The shell went through three houses in a row. causing quite a bit of rearrangement of the furniture. It finished up inside a
Panzer Spähivagen
*
inside the ammunition locker. Lord what a row the ammunition made goin’ off. That scout car got itself spread out over half of Westphalia! Some bits went into the Rhine, and some splashed into the Weser. But what else happened was that the life came back into that sleepy regiment. How they did mill about. Most of ’em ran for their lives, but a few war-mad sods wanted to fight back. What a sight the German sun did see when it finally came up. It came close to goin’ back down again, I can tell you! An armoured company battled bravely for two hours, an’ only gave in when the house they were defending was reduced to ruins. Then they discovered, to their horror, that the enemy was their own motorcycle battalion.

‘My general’s alarm exercise cost 88 wounded an’ 9 dead. Two committed suicide an’ three were reported missing. That three caused a lot of scratching of heads, until it was. realized that they just couldn’t have been taken prisoner by the British, because there wasn’t any British. That was something my general was just playin’ there was.

‘“Those men have, devil take me, deserted,” growled my general. He called the MP boss to him, a big, brutal Haupt-mann with eyes that wicked the Devil himself’ have envied him ’em. “I demand, my good man,” he began, looking daggers at the chief headhunter, “that deserters from the flag and shirkers be treated ruthlessly! No slightest consideration is to be shown to dirt like that. Out with it!”

‘The dummies got caught of course. They landed up in Germersheim, where a firing squad of Pioneers shot the cowardly lives out of them.

‘“Can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs,” said my general, satisfied, as we drove back home to breakfast.

‘My general used to like that kind o’ service. Make ’em shiver all over! Get a move on! That was his proper element. Nobody ever could do it as good as he could, my general.

‘In the afternoon we took a look at the Engineers. They threw bridges over streams, an’ then they took ’em down again. My general timed ’em on his three watches. A few eggs got broken here, too, to my general’s great satisfaction. A dope of an Unteroffizier got his legs crushed. He was too heavy in the arsepart when a crane we’d pinched from the Frenchies broke up. Two other fellers got drowned, caught
between the pontoons. Not regulars, thank God, only compulsory service blokes. But my general got browned-off about it anyway, and had the rest of ’em, and their NCOs, crawlin’ on their guts with rifles at full stretch an’ noses down on the ground. They got their teeth cleaned good enough to last ’em the rest of their lives. It was a pleasure to see how he made soldiers out of that lot of monkeys. People who’d soldiered with us never, ever forgot the experience.

‘When we’d worked our way through the evenin’ trough – we used to call it “dinner” ’cos my general liked using stylish foreign expressions, specially English. It came of his having been on detachment with the 11th Hussars, the lot that’ve got “Moses in Egypt” as their regimental song – we took off our evening uniform an’ pulled our white gloves down again on the glove form we had for the purpose. Then we put on our garrison uniform and went to church so’s Field-Marshal God’d get what he had comin’ to him in that direction. But when we got back again there was a nasty surprise waitin’ for us. The staff was rushing about all over the place. They were due East every man of ’em, and the reason wasn’t to station them closer to where the sun rises.