Monte Cassino (6 page)

I swung the turret slightly. Tiny used his forehead to undo the safety catch. The sweat was pouring down his bare back. Shell after shell left the muzzle.

The horses in the muck cart bolted. One of the men clung to the reins and was swept along with the clattering, jolting cart. The heifers burst in panic through their fence and ran straight into the field of fire.

Every tank in the road was in flames.

"Use the high explosives," Major Mike ordered.

Then, shells started bursting among the screaming, desperate men. Those already killed were tossed up into the air and smashed all over again. Finally, we fixed S-shells and the road was transformed into an all-consuming sea of flames.

"Start motors," ordered the Major. "Tanks forward."

Then it was the turn of our machine-guns and flamethrowers. We drove along that blazing hell, turrets revolving, machine guns barking, while dead and wounded were lashed by our bullets. One man reared up out of a pile of bodies, crazily stretched out his hands as though to ward us off, his mouth wide open, eyes staring wildly. A flamethrower licked him with its tongue of yellow flame and he was transformed into a shrivelled black something.

Mike signalled to cease fire, "Form column of march. Destination: Regiment!"

Wireless contact was reopened. We laughed to each other. They had not fired a shot. We had not even had our paint scratched and we had destroyed a whole regiment, thanks to an American sergeant.

Major Mike called up regimental HQ. We could hear the delight and pride in his voice:

"Rhinoceros calling Sow. Over."

"Sow here. Come in Rhinoceros. Over."

"Rhinoceros, commander, enemy tank regiment liquidated. No prisoners. No own losses. Consumption 1500 armour-piercing shells, 800 high explosives, 300 S-shells. For air observation: Map 3, road 6, Point A2. Over. End."

"Sow to Rhinoceros. Congratulations. Report back. Commander. End."

"
I prefer withdrawal to advancing," Barcelona said. "Here we can drink fresa, but if we go forward, we should have to dip our snouts in puddles of filthy water. When we go forward, they give us anything. And I'm tired of Ida's tarts."

"Tomorrow," Porta said, eyes beaming as he held up two marrow balls for us to admire,
"7
should like to sleep in the imperial bed and rape the queen and all the princesses."

"Perhaps they would be glad to do it," Gregor Martin said dreamily. "Perhaps they would like being pawed by fists that smell of corpses."

"We are just a phenomenon of the times," said the Old Man. "One day all this will be over, and we shall have to wash."

"If there's time when I get to Rome," Heide said, "and if they aren't too close on our heels, I shall first fling myself into a great big four-poster bed with silk curtains. Keep all my rags on. Make a mess of it all. Then I'll sleep my fill, then go out and find myself some fine lady, with very superior underclothes, and I'll roger her again and again. Then I'll drink myself silly and carry on retreating."

"More fresa," called Porta, "we'll carry on like this all the way; drink all they have, whore with all their women, mess up their beds. Rome, Milan, Innsbruck and end up in Berlin with the party to end all parties."

A whistle recalled us to reality.

"Take your arms, fall in in front of your tanks!" ordered Major Michael Braun.

"I'm a bit too sleepy," growled Porta.

We staggered up to the front of the No. 5; we were all exhausted for we hadn't slept for four days.

"I'll fall asleep as we go along," Porta threatened.

Mike swore at him. His own eyes were swollen and red-rimmed from lack of sleep.

We moved off.

Two tanks went over the edge, because their crews had fallen asleep.

Swarms of Jabos had appeared and swept the roads clear. As soon as a tank showed itself, there were two or three Jabos attacking it.

Our entire 2nd Battalion was torn to pieces in a two hour Jabo attack; our squadron lost all its Panthers and half its crews. Porta had to roll down a hillside to put out his burning uniform. Now, we were in quarters in the mountains waiting for crew replacements. We had already got our new tanks--68 ton Tigers with the very effective 8.8 cm gun. The new crews did not come all together, but in driblets as usual. They were all old hands, many of them still in their winter kit, after coming straight from the Eastern front. They were received by Hauptfeldwebel Hoffman, the greatest crook of all the hauptfeldwebels who loved the sound of his own voice and frequently treated himself to it. Sometimes, he would be sarcastically friendly and called his subordinates by biblical names; other times, he would be brutal and then he would use the terms of the latrine. When he was normal, that is to say medium-malicious, he used mysterious semi-zoological terms such as: cog-cow, garbage-pig, midden-bull, rabbit-crane, umbrella-rat.

Although as an NCO, Hauptfeldwebel Hoffman was not entitled to a batman, he had, in fact, two. One of them acted as his valet. Before an evil fate had delivered him into the hauptfeldwebel's clutches, he had been
maitre d'hotel
in one of the best hotels in Berlin. The other's functions were those of bottle-washer and cupbearer. He had to provide perfect service, when Hoffman took his meals, as he did, in solitary state.

The only one who enjoyed the hauptfeldwebel's favours was Eagle, the former Stabsfeldwebel of the military gaol in Hamburg-Altona. He became the squadron's head clerk. We tried to get Eagle into the bad books of Mike and Leutnant Frick, but got nowhere. Eagle sat as snug as a bug and just laughed and jeered at us. One night some of the lads played a grim joke on him. They fell upon him, while he lay in bed sweetly dreaming, tied him to a tree, blind-folded him and draped a cloth round his neck. Finally, they set an Italian machine gun in front of him. When he was untied in the morning, he was a quivering wreck of terror.

Hoffman thought it a good joke and called the perpetrators witty dogs, but when a hand grenade minus fuse happened to land on his table, the witty dogs became a bloody pack of communist saboteurs and he sent for the secret military police. They arrived in the guise of a lame Kriminalobersekretar, who spent three days drinking Hoffman's private hoard of liquor, then departed without unravelling anything, though not forgetting to take four cartons of Camel cigarettes and two smoked mutton hams with him. As he left, he assured Hoffman that he would be back again soon to go more thoroughly into the matter, whereupon Hoffman uttered some most peculiar noises. When our hauptfeldwebel poured out his woes to his pals at regimental HQ, they comforted him by reminding him that he had sent for the police himself; and he swore that henceforth he would take the advice of those with greater experience than he: never rouse the authorities, but let them sleep. They are difficult to lull to sleep again.

We were standing outside the office waiting and freezing. The hauptfeldwebel always kept you waiting; it increased your nervous tension, he thought. We were wearing old, dark blue dungarees on top of our uniforms and felt sure of being selected for maintenance fatigue, the only job in which what you did was not always being watched and inspected. Porta had a brace and four screwdrivers in his hand. A sparking plug tin protruded from a pocket. Tiny had a petrol pump under his arm. He had been going about with it for the last week, but Hoffman had not yet tumbled to the trick.

The newcomers were lined up on our left, their packs and greatcoats piled in front of them. They were wearing jackets and had brand new gasmasks over their shoulders. Their steel helmets dangled from hooks on their belts.

Hoffman came out from the office, followed closely by Eagle carrying the board with the day's allocation of duties and the six coloured pencils. He kept exactly three paces behind the hauptfeldwebel, halting and moving at exactly the same second. You could almost have thought they worked off the same differential. Hoffman took up position, legs straddled, in front of the squadron, opened his mouth till it was like a large red steaming hole, then, from the depths, came a savage roar of command: "Squadron: right dress. Eyes front!" He waited a couple of minutes to see if anyone would venture to move, then gave a grin of satisfaction and ordered: "Stand at ease. You pink zebra-stallions imagine you can pull off the maintenance trick with me, do you? Well, today's the last time, you stinking scrotums. Mechanics to the right."

Two-thirds of the squadron moved to the right, while the rest stood gazing vacantly into the air.

Hoffman strode up to them, followed by Eagle.

"You there," he called, pointing to an obergefreiter. "Where did you get that pistol you've got on your broad bum?"

The
obergefreiter
had to hand over his pistol.

Hoffman grinned delightedly. He loved that sort of thing. He knew how much a pistol meant to an ordinary soldier. To deprive him of one was like stealing his soul.

Three times Hoffman hounded them through the bog, on the pretext of bad carriage and undisciplined behavior.

When the group had fallen in again in front of him, now covered with mud and duck pond, he gloated: "Well, you lice, you will perhaps have realised that you have joined a proper Prussian company, where there is discipline. You will see that you are less than the rump of a castrated hippo. Here I am the one who says what is what, and only I. If I feel I would like to knock your bloody heads off, I shall do it; if, contrary to all probability, I should discover among you swamp-fish a desert cow with a tiny bit of grey matter, I'll make him an NCO."

When we had fallen out and Hoffman had disappeared Eagle came and hovered about for a while before he told us: "The major wants a word with you all and to have a look at the newcomers. He's crazy today. He's hounded the clerks through the office window five times already."

"Do you know what I'm going to do," Porta said with a crafty grin. "I'm going to take you up to the front line one day and send you across to the Gurkhas or the Moroccans with a couple of severed ring fingers in your pocket.
Come trista la vita!"

Eagle disappeared hurriedly.

Rudolph Kleber, our minstrel, who had been with the SS, sounded a tattoo on his bugle.

"Mille diables!
He won't become much older," said the Legionnaire with a laugh.

We fell in as we were, dipping our hands into the waste oil first. We were supposed to be on maintenance and Hoffman might take it into his head to look at our hands.

Major Michael Braun was there already, waiting for us. He was leaning up against a wall, playing with the large cigar in his mouth. We had heard the strangest rumours about Major Mike. Some people said that he wasn't a German at all, but an American. Julius Heide, who was always well-informed, said he had been a corporal in the American Marines. He had been born in Berlin, and been taken to America just after the first world war with his grandparents and seven brothers and sisters. There his mother had married an American business man, who thought of nothing but business and women. He dealt in textiles and didn't give a damn for race or politics. For him the U.S.A. was the entire world and its surrounding planets. Anybody who didn't subscribe to this was a damned nigger.

When Michael Braun returned from a tour of duty in Hawaii with some rather peculiar notions, he was discharged and told that he was a blot on the escutcheon of the United States. He lived off his discharge gratuity until he became gigolo to an actress in Los Angeles. One day in a drug store in Lincoln Road he let his tongue run away with him and said a good deal too much about her. When he returned to her bower, he found her very het up by nine whiskies, two gins, three genevers and an account of what he had said relayed to her over the telephone. Between them they managed to smash most of the furniture before Michael was dismissed.

Then he tried his luck as shoeblack at the end of the long Pier. Unfortunately he had not yet learned caution. He went to bed with a guardman's wife, a blackhaired Mexican nympho. The guardman, an Irishman, could not live up to her requirements and paid two Japs fromYoko-hama to keep her happy. One of these had a laundry in Little Street. The other worked in a bakery, where an immigrant from Vienna made Wienerbrod such as no Viennese would have recognized.

Michael got involved in a sex orgy that ended in an almighty rumpus. There was a lot of talk of hidden cameras and it was quite a scandal. The guardman became a sergeant and the two Japs started their own laundry, which is still there in Little Street. They make a lot of money. They have a way with old shirts.

Things did not go well for Michael. He was put in clink accused of responsibility for the photographs. Yet he was lucky in a way. He could have got ten years, but as the judge had lunched well that day and was in a good humour, he got let off. Also the judge liked the photographs which were attached to the evidence. A great many prints were made of these which were handed out to judges, counsel and the police.

Having got out of prison, Michael Braun jumped a goods train to New York. When he reached rock bottom in Millwall Dock, he went to the army recruiting office in Washington Road. He swaggered in rather arrogantly; after all, he was an old marine and, what is more, one from Shuffield Barracks, but a lousy sergeant with three rainbows on his breast pocket--he had been on the Somme and still boasted of it--asked for his certificate of conduct. Braun tried to talk round his year in Los Angeles jail. Grinning, they invited him into a bedroom, where he was given the best thrashing he had ever had and made to understand that he was a criminal swine that the army wanted nothing to do with.

He then went back to Millwall Dock, sneaked aboard the HAPAG line's ship,
Bremen,
and was discovered 375 miles east of Halifax. He then learned to his immense surprise exactly how many plates a man can wash in the course of a day. Every time he dropped one, the head waiter hit him on the head with a larding board. When the ship reached Hamburg he was handed over to the security officer. The beating-up he had had from the three recruiting sergeants in New York was nothing compared to that meted out to him in 8 Stadthausbrucke.