Comrades of War (15 page)

The
Hauptsturmführer
requested an investigation of the dog affair. If there hadn’t been a hullabaloo beforehand over ‘Hoopla hop,’ nothing would ever have come of it. ‘Hoopla hop’ was maybe a bit rough. He was prepared to admit that, even if it was used only against rotten traitors. The
Oberscharführer
from Block 7, Steinmüller, had started it. More and more things were invented that could be used for ‘Hoopla hop.’ A couple of prisoners were placed in the large square behind the old sheep-cotes. Cans were placed on top of their heads and the prisoners were threatened with flogging if they fell off. Then the SS guards would shoot the empty cans from their heads.

Naturally, some prisoners got a bullet in the brain, or were wounded. But it made great target practice, and it was fun.

The prisoners picked out for ‘Hoopla hop’ were also forced to run races across the latrine pits, only to have the board pulled from under them when they were at the midpoint of the pit. It looked so funny when the striped ones were thrashing about down there in the dung. It also happened that a couple of them choked. But then they were only traitors and deserved no better.

How they had amused themselves in the battalion! Without mentioning the boxing matches that were arranged between the human skeletons, there were many, many other things in ‘Hoopla hop.’ But unfortunately Steinmüller went off the rails. He tied three prisoners naked to the radiators in the detention bunker. He wanted to see if they were real men.

That stupid swine Streicher found out about it. If they only had found the person who squealed. God, what a riot there was! But they fixed Streicher, that brute. He was arraigned before an SS court martial, charged with having defended traitors and enemies to the Reich. He was thrown out of the SS and transferred to the Air Force. There were rumors he’d been shot in Poland.

From Gross Rosen he came to Ravensbrück. Nothing but broads. Those were the days! A
Stabsscharführer
in camp with the Order of Blood from ’23 was completely crazy about sex shows. What he didn’t think of doing with those girls! You were completely out of it after a show like that.

The commandant in Ravensbrück ordered no investigations. He knew how that kind of riffraff should be treated.

What fun to flog those women! At times you had pains all over from thrashing away at them. But though the commandant was nice enough, he still had a narrow escape. One of those spitfires tried to inform on him because he’d played a slight prank on her and made her pregnant. But before things could come to light he took measures to put her out of the way. Thanks to his good relations with the orderly in the medical center, the cause of her death could be hushed up.

How incredibly difficult it was to strangle a creature like that! Even when you used thin twine, which was supposed to be specially effective—so Ernst had said. Ernst had tried it a couple of times. Nah, give him the benzine syringe any time. It was much better. He’d had occasion to prove this repeatedly after he came to Birkenau. Though Höss was commandant there, it was Lorentz who made the decisions. He was a tough one. Three times dismissed as commandant because of cruelty.

For three months he had been in the liquidation section. In the beginning, it’s true, he got to feel slightly woozy when a thousand or so Jews were herded in to get a dose of Zyklon B. But you can get used to anything. He completely lost count of all the Jew women he had to plug with a low-caliber gun behind the wall. They were the ones who refused to take their children along to the gas chambers.

The darkest day in his life, at any rate till a couple of minutes ago, was the day he was thrown out of the Kz-guard service. It was SS
Untersturmführer
Rochner who did it.

It was called fraternization. He had taken part in the rape of a woman from Bucharest. It was their damn bad luck that he and his four chums were caught with their pants down.

First he was sent to the SS field training unit in Cracow, but here he managed to get to the infirmary with an inflamed foot. That inflammation had cost him a thousand marks. He thought then that the war was over for him, but he had bad luck. From the infirmary he went straight to Klagenfurt, where he was to join the SS regiment
Der Führer
, a collection of imbeciles whose highest wish was to die like heroes.

Months of sweat, despair, and fear – right up to his escape in Kharkov on his first day in the firing line.

Then came the SS court-martial. Demotion. The clink and Torgau. Afterwards he shivered at the mere thought of the months spent in Torgau, in the filthy Armed Forces prison. What a terrible thing to be expelled from the glorious SS, the Guards!

And since then the days spent with the worst kinds of criminals in this disgusting Wehrmacht penal regiment.

Now, inferiors like that wanted to interrogate him, the Führer’s soldier, a veteran
Kz-guard
. He puffed himself up, but when he looked at Porta, Tiny, and the Legionnaire his courage escaped like the air from a punctured balloon.

You never knew what such psychopaths could take into their heads. They got such a horrible feeling of inferiority when they came face to face with someone from the upper class. They were animals. They could hit upon anything.

He remembered Captain Meier,
Obersturmführer
Gratwohl. And what didn’t that gang do to
Sonderführer
Hansen!

Icy beads of perspiration stood out on his forehead. Should he cry for help? Maybe some of his friends from the SS were nearby and would hear him. Ah, if they only were a few steps nearer. Then those swine over there would dance, penal-battalion swine! He would tell the SS soldiers everything they intended to do and everything they’d said. Some neck-shots would be fired. He cheered up at the mere thought.

But what the hell was this? Porta was getting up and starting to walk toward him: he came on very slowly. He seemed to be playing the game of jumping from flagstone to flagstone without hitting the line.

‘Don’t touch me, you,’ he wanted to shout. But not a sound came from his lips. He wasn’t capable any more of breaking a silence which meant death. DEATH! He felt his tongue becoming thick, dry and swollen. He felt very warm.

The Legionnaire, Moroccan monster, that little, disgusting, scarred, inhuman thing, was coming toward him with a grin on his face.

Still this paralyzing silence. God, how vile silence can be! And then Tiny, the gorilla, and Julius Heide, the rowdy. They walked slightly stooped, as if they were about to butt someone. That common thief Brandt pulled out his battle knife.

But they couldn’t possibly kill him. Oh, yes, easily. Very easily. No, no, they couldn’t. The Old Man said it was murder.

And yet! They slowly killed
Sonderführer
Hansen. It was murder. And they hanged Gratwohl. That was murder. And they shot Captain Meier. That was murder.

Devilish brutes! Traitors! He would fight. Fire with his storm rifle.

A clattering sound. He looked down and didn’t understand at once. Christ! Porta had struck the rifle out of his hand. Now he would be defenseless against their knives and automatic storm weapons.

They were grinning noiselessly. With bared teeth and snarling sounds. Would he really die now? He didn’t want to die. Ah, how wonderful to live! He’d only done his duty to his country. Nothing more. But did those criminals understand anything of that?

The Old Man looked at him in silence. The Old Man’s eyes were dark. It was no longer the Old Man. He was his enemy. The Old Man didn’t say:
It’s murder!

The circle became narrower. They stood close around him. He stood in the middle like a bull’s eye in a target.

They struck. They jabbed. A searing pain tore through his body from head to foot. He screamed as Gerhard had screamed.

‘Jesus Christ, help me! Help me! Holy Virgin, help me!’ He fell down. ‘Oh, Holy Virgin,’ he cried, but only a gasp came out. ‘I’ll be a priest for the rest of my life! Good God, I’ll serve you and never deny you any more. Oh, help me against these devils!’

The mountains tipped over. The sky split open.

They tied him up with biting straps. They let him lie and suffer while they smoked in silent indifference.

Then the birch tree slowly slid to the earth like a catapult. He knew what was coming. He let out a savage rattling shriek. Could he be going insane?

God didn’t hear him. Only the devil heard him and rejoiced.

He died with every limb, every bone, torn out of joint.

He screamed for ten full minutes before he died. Porta thought it wasn’t long enough.

The Old Man said, ‘Swine!’

The little Legionnaire spat at him before we rolled him down a narrow deep ravine.

He was forgotten.

The patrol trudged on. By a sooty ruin, still smoking, we ran into a body of SS men. We didn’t shoot. The long battle cry of the little Legionnaire, ‘Allah el Akbar,’ was no longer heard amid the mountains.

Our blood lust had been satisfied on an unknown SS man.

Gisela was sleeping. I kissed her. She woke up and stretched. She threw her sleep-drugged arms about me and kissed me passionately. She had slept long.

‘That Jew you met, did he die?’

I kissed her again. Couldn’t bother answering.

Number 12 rattled down the street. The panzer soldier and the girl in the lilac slip again came together in the old four-poster, while Gerhard Stief kept rotting in his grave.

The brothel had been tidied up. There was no more dust on the rafters. Fresh girls had arrived. The big fish suspended over Madame’s table had disappeared. In its stead a bull’s head had been hung on the wall. Someone had hung a sheer stocking and a pair of light blue panties on one of the borns. They were left hanging there like a sort of trade mark.

The Legionnaire, of course, couldn’t take part in the game. When the rest of us went off with the girls, he settled down at a table with five bottles of wine and a bowl of Pein-Pein from the Chinese saloon in the cellar.

Two girls who’d been to Africa stayed behind to entertain him. You could almost smell the camels. You could veritably feel the Kabilah.

A stark naked woman was dancing on a row of tables. She twisted and turned during the dance, pushed her abdomen forward and revolved like a wheel. Colored spotlights played over her body, and the red beam always stopped at the most intimate spots.

Tiny could hardly be held back.

Finally the Legionnaire had to knock him out with a bottle.

VII

Tiny Gets Engaged

I got back to the hospital after my nightly excursion just before inspection.

My comrades had covered for me, but as usual ‘the Battleship’ was where she shouldn’t have been. She saw me come in. I got a murderous look, while her mannish voice trumpeted through the cloistral corridors. ‘Get to your ward in a jiffy, you little pig!’

‘Certainly, matron,’ I mumbled softly.

The expressions which rumbled behind me like dying thunder when I reached the ward were anything but maternal.

‘Was it nice?’ Tiny asked curiously. Without waiting for an answer he grinned. ‘I just came from a tumble myself. Three at once. Did you ever try that, boys? It’s like flying straight into heaven – the heaven that Czech swine Mouritz talks about – to be greeted by harp music and songs of young girl angels in lilac ass-cases and ribbon-like tit cups with red bows in the valley.’

He smacked his tongue and licked his well-fleshed lips. He was about to embroider on the night’s experiences in more detail when interrupted by inspection.

Dr Mahler stopped at Mouritz’s bed, glancing at the case sheet which the Battleship handed him. As usual he was humming. Humming with his lips. He read a little and hummed again in a deep tone of voice, looking intensely at Mouritz, the volunteer from Sudetenland.

‘How is our adventurer today?’

‘Not so good,
Herr Oberstabsarzt
,’ Mouritz shouted, just as the sergeant had taught him to do when he was in training.

On Dr Mahler’s humming lips appeared a subtle smile.

‘Really? My dear friend, you are far from being as sick as you think you are.’

He turned around and looked at Tiny, who lay at attention in his bed, his arms extended along his side. He looked marvelously stupid.

‘The patient feels better!’

Tiny uttered a frightened gasp, but Dr Mahler didn’t hear it. He smiled and again hummed with his lips.

‘The patient’s general condition is excellent under the circumstances. The patient requests a discharge to the convalescence field battalion of his division.’

Tiny got up on one elbow and stared at Dr Mahler in utter astonishment. The doctor looked at the big hooligan and smiled.

‘Since it is possible to grant the patient’s wish, he will be discharged on . . .’ Dr Mahler counted on his fingers . . .

‘Tuesday the 7th,’ the Battleship helped him out.

Dr Mahler smiled his delicate pale smile and gave her a friendly nod. ‘Fine, matron, Tuesday the 7th!’

Tiny gaped. Terror was written in his eyes. He understood just as little as the rest of us what Dr Mahler was up to.

The Battleship took down the dictation with a fountain pen which scratched in protest. Her round cheeks glistened.

Tiny gave her a heart-rending, imploring look.

Dr Mahler turned quickly to Mouritz’s bed. He took the hand of the Sudeten lad and said to our relief: ‘Live well! I hope you’ve had a good rest with us.’

Relieved, Tiny fell back on his pillow.

‘The patient looks pale,’ Dr Mahler said, looking at Tiny.

The Battleship snorted and handed the head surgeon Tiny’s bulky case sheet, which said more of disciplinary penalties than sickness. He tapped Tiny’s big scar and listened to his heart. Then he put the stethoscope to Tiny’s pulmonary region.

‘The patient has pronounced difficulty in breathing. Bronchial tubes inflamed,’ he dictated.

The Battleship recorded this reluctantly with her scratching fountain pen.

Tiny’s face assumed an expression of boundless suffering.