Comrades of War (23 page)

The encounter had been brief and violent. Shortly afterward, the postman would bring a nice card to the bereaved: ‘First Sergeant Schulze or Meyer has been killed in action fighting for the Führer and for Greater Germany. The Führer thanks you.’

Many would have liked to write in the newspaper, ‘With profound sorrow,’ but that was prohibited by the Party. A German woman must be proud when her husband is killed for the Führer. Likewise, the children have to be proud when their fathers are killed. A German isn’t merely husband, father, son, or brother, but first of all a soldier and a hero. That’s what he was born for. That’s what he lived for.

Heil Hitler!

To show sorrow was un-German. It could easily be interpreted as sabotage of the will for defense. Reading the death notice of one of the fallen, you couldn’t help blinking your eyes:

‘With pride we have received notice

that our son, Lieutenant in the Reserves

Heinz Müller

born on May 3, 1925,

of 44th Regiment of the Panzer Grenadiers,

was killed in action on June 19, 1944,

fighting bravely for the Führer.

Gudrun and Hans Müller.’

Evening after evening the lights were not turned on at the Müllers’. They were proud in the dark.

Three weeks later arrived an oblong letter. Personnel Office, Army High Command, Berlin. It was a money order for 147 marks and 25 pfennigs. The Army’s thanks for the sacrifice.

Müller got furious and said a whole lot about bloodmoney. Forgot to be proud. An air-raid warden picked up a little of it. On the following evening two well-dressed gentlemen appeared.

They came from Central Security.

People’s Court followed. Indictment for making hostile statements. Sabotage of the will for defense. Un-German conduct. Insulting the Führer and instigation to revolt.

Next, transfer to Plötzensee. On a November morning with drizzling rain, the top assistant to the executioneer of the Reich cut off proud Müller’s head.

Mrs Müller, who had lived with anti-social Hans Müller, was sent to Ravensbrück for re-education.

A pandemonium of shouts and screams from thousands of throats choking with terror.

Bombs dropped like hail. People swarming along the street were burnt to crisps.

They called upon God, but God was silent.

St Nicholas’ Church was a roaring sea of flames. The parish priest wanted to save the altar relics. A big stone crucifix fell down and broke his back.

Everything was ablaze.

Hamburg was going under.

We sat drinking in the basement of the army hospital.

In an underground restaurant by Baumwall, the upper class and the Party bosses of Hamburg were celebrating.

Paul Bielert was looking for a murderer.

It was a good night for corpse robbers, and the crop was abundant.

IX

Bombs in the Night

A few stray bombs had come down by the army hospital. Blockbusters. The youth hostel facing Landungsbrücke had been blown away. A screech, a deafening crash, followed by a sky-high dust cloud – the hostel had vanished. With its eagles, its Hitler Youth decorations and all the boys in the basement. The nine twelve-year-old boys who worked the 20 mm flak guns shared the same fate.

All of it had vanished, as if a skillful sorcerer had turned his wand: Hey presto, turn to dust and dung! Only, no one applauded.

One wing of the army hospital, the one facing Bernhard Nocht-Strasse, had been destroyed. Scraps from iron bedsteads were lying around. They looked like twisted pipes. There was a naked leg. It had been torn off at the knee, cut clean. A swarm of buzzing and hissing blue-black flies were feeding on it. The flies were fat, well-fed.

A hand was lying in the roadway, a coarse worker’s hand with black nails. On one of the crooked fingers there was a worn plain ring.

‘Some fellow has lost his paw,’ Tiny said and gave the hand a kick. Two lean dogs set off after it.

‘
Merde, mon camarade
,’ the Legionnaire said. ‘A war’s going on. The end is approaching. The Reich has become the front.’

A woman sat crying in the gutter outside the Sankt Pauli brewery. She was sprinkled all over with chalk dust. She was in a slip, bare-legged, and with half a blanket wrapped about her shoulders. Once it had been a beautiful red blanket. Tiny was telling a joke as we walked past. We laughed noisily.

The woman doubled up and burst into frantic sobbing. She cried. She cried alone. There were many who cried alone. We laughed at Tiny’s juicy story and remained indifferent to her.

Out of Hamburg a huge mass procession was moving north. Foreign contract workers. No one attempted to stop them. The police force had collapsed. Under their arms they carried parcels tied up with string, on their shoulders bundled-up blankets. They trudged through Neumünster, across the bridge at Rendsburg and approached the border. They’d had enough of Germany’s war.

They crossed the border without control. They just walked on. An endless terror-stricken snake.

The SS sentries stood as if drugged, just staring.

Germany was on fire. Hamburg trembled. Hosts of rats were streaming north, thousands of them. Away from it all, away. From a hell of flames.

For some mysterious reason or other our departure from the army hospital was postponed.

Tiny threw himself flat on the landing where the rest of us were sitting.

‘It looks to me pretty much like some sort of life insurance. I wouldn’t be surprised if the Eastern Front ends up by coming to us instead of we to it. What a great day for Ivan. The girls will begin learning Russian and making love in Russian.’ He lifted a leg and blew one of his special trumpet calls. It sounded like the Day of Judgment.

He grabbed lustfully after a nurse’s aide who came running up the stairs.

‘How about the two of us fornicating tonight, carbolic auntie?’

‘Stupid pig,’ she hissed, trying to kick his face. ‘I’m engaged to be married.’

‘So much the better,’ Tiny grinned. ‘Once you’ve tasted blood you’re more bloodthirsty.’

She kicked again. Tiny roared with laughter.

‘I’ll give you the whole works, you hypodermic whore. Tiny is always ready for turn-out. Just you come along! Ask Emma and you’ll find out what Tiny can do.’

He let her go. She dashed off.

We were ordered to help clearing away debris, but the person in charge had no experience handling veteran soldiers. She was a recently arrived head nurse with a big bun on her head the color of an old Parker pen. A lean smug Teuton. The golden Party emblem on her gray dress glared scornfully down at the less gaudy, but more genuine nurse’s pin. She spoke like a camel with a cold.

‘Get started, you four lazy bums! Get a shovel and clear away the rubble on Station 3!’

‘Just one shovel?’ Tiny asked.

‘Snotty fellow!’ the thin woman barked, rapping the floor with the black tip of her toe.

The Legionnaire nonchalantly got up and strolled down the corridor.

‘
Voilà
, come along, fellows!’

‘We speak German here!’ she yelled after him.

‘Up yours,’ Tiny grinned shamelessly, getting up to follow the rest of us.

Cursing and swearing, she disappeared up the stairs.

A little nurse who had witnessed the incident whispered a warning: ‘Look out for Mathilde! She has a brother in the Gestapo. Her father was killed in ’23. A word from her and you’re in for it!’

The Legionnaire turned to Tiny, bulging big and imposing behind him.

‘Remind me to put Mathilde’s name down on Porta’s list.’

‘You said it,’ Tiny grinned.

‘Why’re you doing that?’ the little nurse asked, surprised.

The Legionnaire put his hand under her chin and looked into her eyes: ‘
Merde
. The day the accounts are going to be settled there won’t be time to make too many investigations. So, every time we meet them, we put them down.’

‘Heavens,’ the little nurse exclaimed. ‘Are you anti-social revolutionaries?’

Willy Bauer, the big truck driver, burst into a peal of laughter. Tiny neighed and pawed the ground with his foot.

She shook her head and stared after us. Shortly afterward she said to a friend, ‘Watch out what you say, Grethe, the revolutionaries are collecting names. It’s about time to jump off the bus. We’re getting close to the end station.’

Sister Grethe laughed loudly. ‘I’ve never been on that bus, my dear. My old man has been in a concentration camp for more than four years. The sucker belonged to the German National People’s Party and couldn’t keep his trap shut. SS Heinrich looks upon them as upper-class socialists. So you see, I’ll be all right – thanks to the stupidity of the esteemed head of my family.’

‘If only I could say the same. But unfortunately my old man is a major in the SA division “Feldherrenhalle”, and two of my dear brothers are with the SS division “Das Reich.” ’

They went on cleaning hypodermic needles and syringes in silence.

Then the little nurse said thoughtfully: ‘Maybe I’d better report to my boss. That’s one duty, you know, when coming in contact with anti-social elements or overhearing subversive remarks.’

Buxom sister Grethe gave her a long look before she answered: ‘Don’t do it, Margaret. That would mean certain death for you the day Adolf retires to Hell. That sort of duty it’s best to forget about. Don’t look, don’t listen, don’t talk,’ She turned on her heels and left. Parting, she remarked casually, ‘If you remember this, you’ll always have a chance of landing on your feet. Eat, sleep, fornicate, and keep your mouth shut. The last is the most important.’

Sister Grethe is still in the army hospital. For four years she nursed wounded Wehrmacht soldiers. Closed their glazed eyes, filled them with morphine when insanity hit them and caused them to howl savagely, slept with them when she felt like it, drank when her nerves rebelled. For a time she even used morphine. It gave relief.

For two years she nursed English soldiers. She shot hypodermic needle into them, bawled them out and otherwise carried on with them as she’d previously done with German soldiers.

Dr Mahler, the head surgeon, traveled for a while. Reportedly, at least. The truth was the rulers wanted to crush him because he was a brave physician. He returned and is still flapping his arms along those long corridors.

The soldiers were followed by civilians. Strange and unheard-of illnesses got to this hospital.

Red Cross sister Grethe became
Krankenschwester
. She wasn’t interested in getting a ward. She gave her shots, emptied bedpans and changed sheets as usual. Once in a while she would meet an old patient – German, Norwegian, Danish, English; a Negro from the Congo, an Arab from Algiers; a Legionnaire from Indo-China shaking with fever. She would laugh on meeting them again. Drink with them in small cosy dives. More than once she had also hospitably shared her bed with them.

‘We’re human, after all,’ she said. ‘And it’s later than you think.’

Sister Grethe was a great nurse. Many looked down on her and jeered: ‘Immoral.’ But there were more who said: ‘A splendid girl.’

If some day you go to the city on the Elbe, walk down to Landungsbrücke. Looking up toward Reeperbahn, you’ll notice a well-hidden hospital to the left of Hafenkrankenhause. It’s a special hospital. There you can find sister Grethe. If you’re of the right sort, have a drink with her and greet her from the thousands of unknown men in green and khaki.

Little Margaret hanged herself on a mild May day in 1945. She died as stupid as ever. She was very moral. She reported to her superior far too often and forgot Grethe’s words: Don’t look, don’t listen, don’t talk. But where could she have learned to know the East’s symbol of wisdom, the three sacred monkeys?

May she rest in peace! She has many fellow-sufferers.

Instead of cleaning up we went down to the basement, to MC Corporal Peters, and played blackjack. We played for several hours, while that shrew Mathilde led the clearing operations. As the Legionnaire said, if we helped cleaning up we would help those we didn’t like.

Laughing, Peters raked in the winnings for the fourth time. He picked up a big sausage from a wastebasket and cut it into five equals parts. With the sausage we drank 90 per cent ethyl alcohol diluted with water. We were content. We were alive, and that was the main thing in Hamburg in 1944.

‘They’ll be coming back tonight,’ Peters said and swallowed a hunk of sausage.

‘You think so?’ Tiny asked. He looked out of the window toward the Elbe, where the smashed Stülckenwerft rose tortuously in the air.

Peters nodded with conviction. ‘They’ll be coming. They’ve too much gasoline, too many bombs and far too many young men who like flying.’

‘But we also have plenty of idiots who like flying,’ Tiny said, ‘so that they can get some silly magnet stuck on their collar. The old women are simply nuts about wings.’

‘You’re right,’ Peter said. ‘The difference is that we have no planes for those who go ape for flying. The others do.’

‘Soon there won’t be a city any more,’ the Legionnaire said.

‘That’s right,’ Peters said. ‘Then they’ll start bombing the ruins, and when they’re gone, they’ll bomb all that isn’t there any more, till every lousy cat and rat is burnt up. And first then the paratroopers will come.’

‘To hell with that,’ the Legionnaire said, playing a king.

Bauer laughed, slammed an ace on the table and called: ‘Twenty-one.’

Tiny pointed at a bowl in which a nondescript object was floating around. ‘What’s in there?’ he asked, craning his neck.

Peters cocked his head. ‘An appendix. An inflamed appendix.’

Tiny got up and gazed with deep interest at the little bit of gut. He whistled for the dog lying under the X-ray apparatus with only the tip of his yellow nose sticking out.

‘You pig,’ the Legionnaire said, seeing the dog swallow the appendix.

‘That will be too much for him,’ Peters said. ‘He’ll throw it up.’

‘Why?’ Tiny asked.

‘Would you care to bet he won’t make it? A quart of your schnapps against three of my sausages,’ Peters challenged.