Comrades of War (31 page)

Looting

Corpse robbery

Treason

‘I know what this means,’ the Legionnaire said, ‘the Army’s beginning to break up. Most wars end this way.’

XII

The Roller Conveyor

We sat in the train for twelve days and twelve nights, and now we were standing on the roller conveyor Pinsk-Gomel a little to the southwest of David Gorodok. Judging from the announcement of the front Army post-office, the regiment was lying in Piotrków or Skrigalów.

A person who has been on a roller conveyor will never forget it. This particular one extended in a dead-straight line from east to west, from south to north. From 130 to 200 feet wide. A road that is no road, pressed and trampled to firmness by thousands of wheels and millions of feet. And nevertheless this roller conveyor is an important life nerve for the existence of the armies, in the same way as the main artery is essential to the heart: if an organism is to live, this artery has to throb uninterruptedly. Day and night thousands of engines rumble on the roller conveyor. A continuous wave. If it were to be broken, the front would collapse.

In one direction rolled long columns of munitions, provisioning, guns, armored cars, reserves with fresh troops, the field mail with bags of fateful letters. All of this was a necessity if the war was to proceed according to plan. In the opposite direction went destroyed artillery, smashed motor vehicles, gutted wrecks of tanks, twisted tin affairs that up to quite recently had been silvery airplanes, and endless columns of Red Cross ambulances with mutilated human wrecks. Also a necessity of war.

This roller conveyor was always a path of suffering for the soldiers. In the winter a roller-coaster; in the summer an indescribable sand waste; in periods of rain and thaw a bottomless, sucking swamp reminiscent of flypaper on which everything got stuck.

We sat coughing and spitting on the river slope, waiting for a truck to take us along.

With this communications paradise along the front, Tiny had rambled off as usual.

‘Here my achievement begins,’ he’d said and vanished among some bushes. His motto was that a soldier who doesn’t ‘organize’ hasn’t finished his education.

He stayed away for three hours. Then he came back, hauling a big bag stuffed with canteen goods.

‘Have you gone insane?’ the East Prussian asked. ‘Don’t you know this is looting?’

‘Hell it is,’ Tiny answered blithely and took a bite of onion.

‘What do you call it then?’ Bauer asked.

‘Self-preservation,’ Tiny answered coolly. He stuffed a sausage in his mouth.

‘If they nab you they’ll make you swing for it,’ Bauer warned.

‘Chickenheart!’ Tiny dismissed him. ‘What d’you think happens when we retreat? And, you know, once we’ve gotten used to straightening out the front we’ll go on retreating. Those jackasses will blow up the whole sausage supply!’ He looked at Bauer and the East Prussian. ‘You probably think some QMC colonel will drop over and invite you in so you can get stuffed first?’ He held a banana above his head and shouted with conviction. ‘Naw, they put up guards, oh, yes, so you can’t get hold of as much as a dry cracker or a rotten egg. The order says that the whole caboodle should be blown up. That’s that. The whole works are blown sky-high. Do you recall what they did in Kuban, how they dispatched two thousand tons of provisions? An engineer charge. Boom, they were gone!’ He parted his bag and smiled slyly. ‘Look, here I have extra rations for two weeks. Vitamins for victory!’ He laughed rapturously and stuffed two bananas in his mouth, both at once. He tossed the peels on the roller conveyor.

‘You shouldn’t do that,’ the Legionnaire said. ‘Someone might come along and slip on them.’

‘That’s the reason I do it,’ Tiny answered. ‘Maybe Adolf will come walking past and break his neck on my banana peel. Then I’ll become history and children will learn about me in school.’

‘Every time I see the roller conveyor again,’ Bauer said, flicking a cigarette butt into the river in a long arc, ‘my bottom itches as if tapeworms were bustling around in it.’

‘They probably are,’ Tiny grumbled, looking defiantly at him.

Tiny had started getting bored and was out to pick a fight. His notion of entertainment.

Anything could have happened if a big gasoline truck hadn’t stopped.

A sergeant leaned out of the driver’s cab and yelled: ‘Where are you going, you lazy bums?’

‘Twenty-seventh Panzer Regiment,’ I answered. Since I was the one with the longest service I stood at attention.

‘You’ll never get there at this rate,’ he barked harshly. Communications was written all over him. A tailor-made uniform. An elegant cap with high crown. A belt with an officer’s pistol, against regulations. Although he belonged to the supply troops, he had taken the liberty of decking himself out with yellow cavalry ribbons instead of the blue ones worn by the commissariat troops and universally despised by fighting men.

I was the only one to get up. The others kept lying nonchalantly in the grass, staring at the bawling sergeant, who in the meantime had jumped out of the truck. Splay-legged, fists on hips, he cried: ‘Get up, you duds, will you, and march, march, with your noses turned eastward, where a hero’s death is waiting for you.’

They were infuriatingly slow getting up. Tiny slung his bag over his shoulder like a peddler and trudged off without bothering even to look at the sergeant.

‘I say, you, Corporal,’ he neighed after Tiny, ‘what kind of bag is that?’

‘A jute bag.’

The Sergeant gasped with rage: ‘Don’t get fresh. The makeup of the bag doesn’t interest me. What’s in it?’

‘Mail and grub for our commander, Lieutenant Colonel Hinka,’ Tiny answered carelessly.

‘Let me see!’ the elegant sergeant requested.

‘Out of the question,’ Tiny answered, locking the mouth of the bag with his clenched fists.

‘What do you mean?’ the Sergeant yapped.

‘
Gekados
,’ Tiny breathed, winking.

‘
Bon
,’ the Legionnaire burst out in admiration.

‘What does
Gekados
mean?’ the Sergeant roared.

Tiny leaned his head sideways. ‘Lieutenant Colonel Hinka told me: “Tiny, don’t let anybody get at that bag! It’s strictly
Gekados
. Top secret.” This is what the Commander said, Herr Sergeant, and he gave me these knuckles’ – he hit out with his hand – ‘to guard the bag.’

Squinting at us in bewilderment, the Sergeant observed us forming a narrower circle around Tiny. He jumped on the truck and cried: ‘Off with you, march, march! I’ll call you to the attention of the Military Police!’

The truck vanished in a cloud of dust.

Tiny pulled a couple of boxes of chocolate out of his bag and divided the contents among us like a brother.

Like a band of vagabonds who have all the time in the world we started moving along the roller conveyor. After tramping about six miles we were tired, flopped down and went to sleep.

In the middle of the night we were awakened by engine noise. The whole roller conveyor was crammed with vehicles: trucks, passenger cars, artillery, trench mortar batteries, rocket batteries, troop transport trucks, long engineers’ trucks, armored cars, storming guns and a host of other things an army treks around with.

‘It looks like the whole army is on the move,’ Bauer exclaimed.

‘Yes, and it’s moving west, away from the front,’ Stein said.

‘Mac, is the war over?’ Tiny shouted at an old staff corporal behind the wheel of a munitions truck.

‘Guess again, you lunkhead,’ the staff corporal shouted back. He stuck out his tongue at Tiny, who would have rushed straight at him if a mechanized artillery unit hadn’t come in between us and the munitions truck.

‘I wonder what the hell is going on,’ Bauer said, looking around.

‘We’re straightening out the battle lines,’ Stein laughed. ‘But we’d better get away before Ivan starts blazing away at the roller conveyor!’

A major walking at the head of a long column leapt into the middle of the road and started brandishing a pistol above his head. ‘Make room for my regiment,’ he yelled. ‘Make room! I command, or I’ll shoot you like dogs!’

But no one bothered to notice him.

The never-ending line of vehicles crawled onward as before. The major’s regiment had to stay where it was.

A large gray Horch with a square tin plate on its fender was slowly winding ahead. Inside we had a glimpse of some disguised staff officers.

An MP lieutenant colonel appeared with a unit of head-hunters. He cried: ‘Make room for the Army Commander!’

But the long line didn’t move an inch. The cavalry general in the Horch had to be good enough to wait.

The MPs ordered that the vehicles standing in the way of the General should be tipped down the bank. The vehicles rolled over one after another.

‘That’s a bit thick!’ Bauer growled. ‘Wrecking a whole lot of vehicles for a fellow like that. I don’t get it!’

The little Legionnaire laughed. ‘
Voilà
, you have been in our club only four years. Wait till you have been a member for as long as we have, then even you will understand.’

Bauer shook his head in puzzlement. ‘I’ve always been told the generals are taking the lead in this war. Why is this one in such a hurry to clear out?’

The Legionnaire merely shrugged his shoulders.

A colonel riding at the head of a horse-drawn artillery regiment got very excited and started raving when the MPs made ready to tip his vehicles down the steep slope. When an MP lieutenant colonel grabbed the reins of the colonel’s horse, the colonel struck him in the face several times with his riding whip, shouting:

‘Hands off my horse!’ He wrenched the horse back. The horse reared, neighed and beat the air with his forelegs. The colonel galloped beside the road to where the General was halting, jumped off his horse and confronted the little man.

Before he even could say a word the cavalry general yelped: ‘Who do you think you are, Herr Colonel? How dare you keep my orders from being executed by my military police? Do you think I have time to stay in this gutter longer than necessary?’

‘Herr General,’ the Colonel answered icily, ‘I can’t get off the road with my batteries. My horses are worn out and won’t be able to pull a single one of my vehicles on to the road again.’

‘What’s that to me?’ the General snorted. ‘I have to get on, and this minute!’

‘I refuse to carry out your orders! My vehicles will stay on the road!’

The General measured him up with cold, appraising eyes. ‘If you don’t immediately clear the road of all the vehicles belonging to your regiment, I’ll . . .’

The Colonel drew himself up a little. He was a whole head taller than the General. The Knights Cross hung from his neck. ‘What will you do, Herr General?’

The General’s eyes were like slits in his face. ‘I’ll make use of my authority and have you court-martialed for insubordination. The German Army has no use for officers like you.’

The Colonel turned deathly pale. ‘Is that your final word, Herr General?’

The General didn’t answer, but turned to the MP officer standing a little behind him.

‘Lieutenant Colonel Scholl!’

The Colonel shot his hand to his belt, pulled out his pistol and cocked it in a split second.

The General jumped a step back. His face turned completely white.

The MP officer stood paralyzed. For a few seconds everything seemed to come to a standstill on the roller conveyor.

The Colonel’s pale lips formed a thin smile.

‘Don’t be afraid, Herr General. You’re too small and vile for an honest officer to want to shoot at. But I won’t serve in an army like Greater Germany’s today.’

‘Seize him!’ the General rapped.

But even before the lieutenant colonel and his head-hunters were able to move, the Colonel put the pistol in his mouth and pressed the trigger.

A sharp brief bang. The pistol fell to the ground.

For a brief moment the Colonel stood stiffly at attention. Then he swayed a little back and forth, doubled up like a jackknife and lay flat before the General’s feet.

The General about-faced and took a seat in his car, where an adjutant wrapped his thin, booted legs in a red woollen blanket.

Those who were nearby heard him say to his First Officer, a colonel: ‘What ridiculous fools one runs into in one’s time!’

They began tipping the dead colonel’s vehicles down the slope. Screeching horses whirled round with the vehicles.

The dead colonel was thrown on a truck, and soon after the Horch with the cavalry general disappeared down the roller conveyor.

‘My God,’ the East Prussian exclaimed. ‘That colonel sure knew how to resign!’

Tiny sprang up and roared: ‘There’s a truck from our division!’

Quite right. A large truck with a fly sheet and with our emblem painted on the backboard and the front mudguard – two crosses on the blue ground.

‘Hi, Mac,’ Bauer cried, ‘where are you heading? Could you take us along with you?’

‘I’m heading for Cologne, you stupid pig.’

‘What did you say?’ the Legionnaire cried, astonished.

‘Are your ear flaps dirty? I said Cologne.’ He spelled: C-O-L-O-G-N-E.

On all sides soldiers started craning their necks. The name Cologne had the effect of a bomb of laughing gas.

‘Did you hear that? This ass wants to go to Cologne.’

‘Make sure you don’t forget to transfer, because this train doesn’t go further than Breslau!’

Ringing laughter. They crowed with malicious glee.

‘Did you remember to buy a ticket at the gate?’ an NCO whinnied, slapping his thighs.

‘If you want to go to Cologne you’d be better off using a shoemaker’s crate, because you’ll never reach Cologne in that box!’

An artilleryman jumped on the footboard of the truck and squealed, ‘I’d better give you a pass so you can take a short cut!’ He handed him one of the dropped leaflets every German soldier on the Eastern Front had in his pockets, despite the heavy penalties involved. The leaflets were printed like a kind of pass. Crates of them were dropped by Russian pilots.