Legion of the Damned (13 page)

The Nazis could rely on no more than a fraction of the armed forces, and it was only a question of time before the generals settled accounts with Hitler and his crazy gang. Hans and I several times talked of deserting again, but The Old Un advised us not to try.

"Not one in a thousand gets away with it, and if they catch you you've had it. You're for the wall. It's much better to get wounded--only for heaven's sake don't do it yourself, for they examine you pretty thoroughly to see if it could have been self-inflicted. Remember there is always a little fouling left in the wound if you put a pistol to an arm or leg, and if you're caught with that, my lad, then you're for it. Typhus or cholera are the best; they can't prove anything with those. Syphilis is no good. They chuck you into hospital and shove you out again a fortnight later, after giving you such treatment as you'll never forget. Keep off VD, for they'll impale you alive if you come in with it bad. Some people drink the gas we use for the tanks and that's quite good; it gives you bubonic plague that you can keep going for four or five months, if you know the dodge. Or you could pull a cigarette through an exhaust pipe and eat that; that's pretty good too, gives quite a nice fever, but it doesn't last so long and you have to smuggle a bottle of gas and a bag of lump sugar into hospital with you and eat a lump soaked in gas every day; that keeps your temperature up at 39degC., but don't let them catch you or they'll have you for 'lowering the will to fight.' If you can give a hospital orderly a couple of hundred cigarettes he can arrange a gangrened leg for you; then you lose a leg and the war is over, as far as you are concerned. You can also get typhus-infected water. But there is always a snag about these tricks and most other wangles; either they don't act with you--Porta has tried them all; he has even eaten some dead dog full of maggots, but on Porta that sort of thing acts more like a health cure--or you become paralyzed, or you end in the cemetery. Many have done that."

On Sunday, October 12th, our train crossed the Polish frontier at Breslau. While we were standing in the freight yard at Czcstochowa we were issued emergency rations. Each ration consisted of a tin of goulash, some biscuits and half a bottle of rum. There were strict orders that we were not to touch these rations until we were told that we might; and, above all, the rum was not to be drunk before the time.

With its usual taste for bombastic nonsense, the army called this an "iron ration."

The first thing Porta did, of course, was to drink his rum. The bottle never left his lips until it was empty. Then he sent it flying over his shoulder with an elegant swing, smacked his lips and let himself subside onto the straw that covered the floor of the boxcar. Before he fell asleep he broke wind and said: "Take a sniff, dear children. There're vitamins in the air."

A couple of hours later Porta woke, belched, stretched and then, to our amazement, produced yet another bottle of rum from his haversack and polished that off with a blissful expression. Then he called for cards and made us play vingt-et-un with him. Things went nicely until someone outside called:

"Obergefreiter Porta, come out here!"

Porta remained where he was, unconcerned.

"Porta! Will you come out here at once!"

Porta never even looked at the door as he roared back:

"Shut your mouth, you flat-footed swineherd. If you want me, you maundering numskull, come in here, but remember to wipe your muddy feet first, and next time you call me you call 'Herr Obergefreiter Porta,' remember that. You're not at home in the barracks, you lousy lout!"

A deathly silence followed that salute. Then the whole boxcar burst into a great guffaw. When the laughter had died away there was a roar from outside:

"Porta, if you don't come out here this moment I'll have you court-martialed!"

Porta stared at us. "Dear me, I believe that's Hauptmann Meier," he whispered. "Now Porta'll get a spanking."

He jumped down from the car and smacked his heels together before our bully Meier, who stood with legs straddled and arms akimbo, his face purple with fury.

"So you've deigned to come,
Herr
Obergefreiter! I'll teach a dirty skunk like you to obey orders. And how the hell dare you call me a swineherd and a lousy lout? What? Stand to attention, man, or I'll smash your face. Have you gone crazy? What possessed you to insult an officer? What the hell's this? You stink of rum, man! You're drunk. Now I understand. You've taken from your iron ration, have you? Do you know what that is? That's insubordination! And, by God, I'll have you punished for it!"

Porta did not reply, but just stood to attention looking incredibly dim-witted. In the end Meier lost the last vestiges of his selfcontrol.

"Answer, you muckrake! Have you been drinking rum?"

"Yes, Herr Hauptmann, but it was only a little dash that I poured into our otherwise so savory National-Socialist ersatz tea. But it was rum that Herr Kucheunteroffizier owed me from the time we were fighting over in France. I can thoroughly recommend Herr Hauptmann to try it. It makes the splendid ersatz tea our beloved Fuhrer gives us even more splendid."

"What the hell, man! Are you trying to make a fool of me? Let me see the rum you were issued with your iron rations."

At that Porta produced yet another bottle of rum from one of his many homemade and roomy pockets, and with a smile held it up to the light so that the astonished Hauptmann could see that it was full.

Some squealer must have told Meier that Porta had drunk his rum. We did, in fact, discover later that Meier had promised a gefreiter an extra fortnight's leave if he could provide proof that would enable him to run Porta in.

"I understand," said Porta, all meek and mild, "that Herr Hauptmann thought it was Herr Hauptmann I meant with all the things I called out just now, but it could never enter my head to say anything like that to my Herr Hauptmann and admired company commander. I thought it was Unteroffizier Fleischmann I was shouting at. His father has had lice, you see, and he got them from him."

Meier, as usual, made a fool of himself by sending for Fleischmann, who told him grave-faced that he and Porta had a bet on which could curse best. And it was also true, he said, that he had had lice. The whole family had got them from his father. The lice originated in the 1914--18 war, when his father had fought at Verdun.

"Children," said Porta one afternoon when we were in a siding between Kilsu and Czestochowa, "we have lived in this royal suite for several weeks now, and we still have no idea what is behind this door here."

This was the sliding door on the left-hand side of our boxcar. So far we had only opened that on the other side.

"We know that outside that door," Porta went on, pointing to the right-hand door, which was open, "we have Poland. We know that. But what great mysteries are hidden here," pointing to the other, closed door, "we do not know. Perhaps we shall find behind it"--here he laid hold of the door--"
Victory
itself, which must be somewhere or other, for has not the Fuhrer said that it is ours? Or perhaps something even better--perhaps behind this mysterious, never opened door"--here his voice sank to a whisper--"there stands a whole crowd of lovely..."

With the extravagant gesture of a tout he pulled the door open. He was as taken aback as the rest of us, for there in actual fact were three young women. They stood looking at the train and smiled uncertainly at us. To the soldier a woman is a remarkable, complicated being. She is a romantic, remote and lofty goal for aching unsatisfied longings conjured up in lonely dreams of a lost, normal, civilian existence so distant as to have become unreal, scared off by the swagger and bluster of army life; and at the same time she is an objective for womanless man's accumulated salacity. A soldier is a being in uniform, one of a herd, among his own, and therefore he dares give expression to sexual fantasies, things that, when living an ordinary life among people, he never utters. His uniform is a protection against identification; he allows himself to play freebooter in his poor little way. He is a whole company, and that gives him backing.

We jumped out, the whole lot of us, and began delivering ourselves of the most hair-raising indecencies. We meant no harm by that, had no desire to wound the girls, and I have noticed that women do not take the remarks of a lot of soldiers very much to heart. When even Porta's stock was exhausted, most climbed back into the car, for it was bitterly cold; but Porta, Pluto, Hans and I could not tear ourselves away. We looked at the girls and they at us, and only then did we realize the unusual aspect of the situation. We had, of course, been aware of it the whole time, but the overwhelming surprise of seeing women there where we least expected them had driven any other thoughts from our minds.

The three women were in striped prisoners' clothes and there was a nine-foot fence of barbed wire between us and them.

They were prisoners in a concentration camp. All three, they told us, came from France and they had been a good fourteen months in the camp. One of them was Jewish. When they heard that we were going to Russia they asked us to take them with us. Naturally, that was meant as a joke.

"Can't be done, little girls," Hans answered. "The Gestapo would shoot us."

One of them, a tall, fair-haired girl with intelligent eyes, said teasingly:

"Are you afraid? Show us that you're men!"

And suddenly, without any of us really wishing it, we all felt that we were taking the thing seriously.

"We'd better go," said Hans nervously. "If the SS see the girls standing talking with us they'll beat them till they're crippled. I know that from being in the police."

"We'll stay till it suits us to go," said Porta.

"Yes, but we shan't get it in the neck nearly as much as they," said Hans, and looked anxiously to right and left in case he could see a guard.

There was something in what he said. By standing there we were exposing the girls to the possibility of being maltreated in the most appalling fashion. We looked at them irresolutely. They looked at us resignedly.

"Hell and damnation! We ought to take them with us," said Pluto. "The poor kids. Look how thin they are."

"And sweet, nevertheless," said I.

There was no resisting their friendly smiles. We threw cigarettes over to them. Then we just stood there, helpless and filled with hatred of those who had imprisoned the three women.

"There's no point in dithering," said The Old Un, who, for some reason or other, came crawling out from under the boxcar with Asmus.

"Are they coming with us, or aren't they? If they are, then it must be now."

The Old Un was self-possessed and as quick as lightning. Before we knew what we were doing we had formed a pyramid by one of the posts and The Old Un was standing on the shoulders of Pluto and Asmus. Our belts were joined together and lowered down to the girls, who were hauled up one by one, helped over with a heave from The Old Un and caught by Hans, Porta and me as they fell. Then Asmus, Hans and Pluto climbed back into the boxcar and turned out all who did not belong there and shut the door on the far side; in this way no one saw the girls get up into the car.

We looked at the three wretched girls with pounding hearts. What had we let ourselves in for? Almost the most dangerous thing we could have thought up. Something had taken us by surprise. Could we use a big word and call it life? At all events, mortally afraid of this adventure into which we had dived headlong, we were also proud and glad; we felt that swelling joy that comes when you find that you are capable of excelling yourself, doing far, far more than you had thought yourself capable of. I wish I could express this really well, without making it sound boastful as it so easily can, but the fact is that when there is talk of heroic deeds I always use this situation as a touchstone of what is a truly heroic action and what not, and by that criterion there are many vaunted feats for which I cannot, with the best will in the world, feel any great admiration.

This was an occasion when fellowship had gained a great victory over loneliness.

"But to get down to things practical," said The Old Un, once we had recovered from our first breathless, conspiratorial delight. "They can't go around in prison stripes. We'll have to get them rigged out in something else. Produce what you have, boys, and no holding back!"

In a moment forty packs had been tipped up and socks, pants, sweaters, shirts, drills, caps, boots were offered for the girls to choose from.

When the girls calmly drew their dresses off their otherwise naked bodies forty filthy soldiers turned their heads and silently looked the other way. God knows we were a collection of pretty putrid stinkers. I suppose that it was civilization that had made us what we were, so here you have an example of why we should not be too pessimistic over the veneer of civilization being so thin, since the fact that it is so still gives natural breeding a chance to make itself felt. It was not merely embarrassment that made us let the girls change their clothes in peace; it was at the same time a demonstration against the guards who, for fourteen months, had mocked at and trampled on all that is called human decency. We wanted to show those sweet girls that consideration, modesty and humanity still existed, even though we were just a lot of filthy soldiers.

We hid them behind a pile of kit bags; then The Old Un, Porta and I went out to see if the alarm had been given in the camp while the others sat in the open doorway to deny access to those with no business in our car.

Our train left before the escape was discovered.

We stuffed those three little girls with the best we had. The eldest, Rosita, was a music teacher. Porta was her particular protector. She would not say anything about why she had been sent to the camp.

Jeanne, just twenty-one and the youngest, had been at the Sorbonne. Her two brothers had been lieutenants in the army and were now pow's. Her father was wanted by the Germans and the Gestapo had taken Jeanne as a hostage.

Maria, the Jewess, had been arrested in the street one evening and sent to the camp in Poland without comment or examination. She was married to a businessman in Lyons and had a son of two and a half. Three months after arriving in the concentration camp she had given birth to another boy, but he died a fortnight later.