SS General (6 page)

Porta was singing a song, apparently indifferent to all the obvious dangers. We had survived the hairpin bend, but we were now running down into the village and the track was full of twists and turns. Just the spot for a few well-placed mines; we had already passed a couple of burned-out lorries.

The heavy sled went bucking and rearing on its way. It needed only one small hidden obstruction and we should all be blown sky-high. Everyone except Tiny--nursing his machine gun in the front seat--curled into a protective ball, head between knees, arms hugging legs, prepared for a crash landing.

The last bend brought us into the village. A sudden movement caught Tiny's attention. A fugitive figure in white had slipped out of one of the ruined huts. It raised its arm in a throwing action--and in the same moment Tiny's machine gun opened up. The figure was tossed, legs flying and arms waving, into the air. The grenade intended for us missed its mark and exploded harmlessly by the side of the track. Porta took his foot off the brake and the sled bounded forward again. Gregor and I exchanged haggard glances, and I wiped the perspiration from my forehead.

"Jesus, it's cold," whined Gregor. "It's enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey. I've never been so cold in my life. I don't know how they can expect . . ."

"Aw, quit moaning!" snapped Tiny. "What fool invented these goddamn coffins on skates anyway?"

"A German colonel," said Heide, always very well informed on such matters.

"Yeah, it would be," said Tiny in disgust. "Trust a nincompoop colonel!"

"I bet he's never had to travel in one," added Gregor vindictively. "Not in the freezing perishing cold without so much as a . . ."

"Mine!" roared Porta.

We spun around, eyes wide and staring. There it was, some way ahead of us, an innocent white hump in the middle of the track, the size and shape of an inverted meat pie. Some way ahead, but we were gaining on it fast. Porta slammed on the brakes and the sled reared up and almost did a backward somersault. It crashed down to earth, veered sideways and shot back into the path of the mine. It should have stopped by now, but instead, it raced straight on; the hydraulics had evidently given way, and we were tearing toward the mine at insane speed.

"God almighty!" The Old Man stared ahead at approaching death, his hands tightly clutching the guard rail. Gregor and I clung to the MG as if it were a life raft. Behind us, the new recruits sat white-faced and uncomprehending. We knew what these mines could do, we had seen them rip the bottom of a sixty-ton Tiger, but what did the partisans and their constant booby traps mean to new troops, fresh out from Germany? They had not yet seen the twisted, broken bodies of men who had been blown up.

"Jump!" yelled Porta over his shoulder.

We flexed our muscles, preparing for the last moment, when we should have to take the plunge. Better to risk multiple fractures than sit tight and wait for the world to explode.

I stared hypnotically at the inverted meat pie as we rushed down on it. It was a favorite trick of the partisans to steal out at night, dig a hole in the ice, deposit a mine and pour in some water, which soon froze over, leaving scarcely any trace of what lay beneath. To anyone else, it might have been a stone; only a cunning old fox like Porta was able to spot it in time and know it for the death trap it was.

"Jump!" he now screamed again, and without taking his eyes off the track, he reached out with one hand and gave a tremendous push at the nearest recruit, who fell overboard with a shrill yell of fear. Heide dived headfirst into a snowdrift. Tiny turned around, picked up two terrified boys by the scruff of their necks and hurled them bodily into space, then threw himself after them. The rest of the recruits clung anxiously to the handrail, not fully understanding the danger that was now only seconds away from them, but understanding only too well the kind of accident that could befall anyone fool enough to jump off a vehicle moving along at sixty miles an hour.

"Enemy aircraft!" shouted the Old Man, as he hurtled over the side.

By some miracle, it worked. It seemed that they could understand enemy aircraft. Probably it had been part of their training. At any rate, they jumped!

Gregor and I abandoned our precious MG and disappeared together into the snow. I landed like a bullet only inches away from a telegraph pole. I sat up, feeling nauseous. Another fraction to the right and my head would have been crushed like an eggshell. A helmet would have saved me, but we had largely given up wearing them, finding that the advantage of having a protective layer of steel on top of one's head was more than outweighed by the disadvantage of impaired sight and hearing.

Porta made one final attempt to brake by using the clutch, but it had no perceptible effect. The sled was now almost on top of the mine. At the very last second Porta gave a despairing wrench at the wheel and the sled slewed away in the opposite direction, but we had no time to sit back and applaud, nor to mop our brows with relief, nor to check our casualties, for the second sled was approaching fast. We rushed into the road, waving our arms and screaming at Barcelona, who was driving.

"Mine! There's a mine!"

Too late. They were too close on our tail and hadn't a chance of pulling up. Barcelona applied the brakes with all his force, but the sled merely upended and burst into flames as the mine exploded beneath it.

The third sled, the one carrying the ammunition, was taking desperate evasive action, but it was out of control and the wreckage of the second sled was scattered in its path. It went plowing through it, through the flames and across the writhing, screaming bodies, turned two clumsy somersaults and then itself exploded. Lieutenant Wenck was propelled up into the air like a human torch. We ran to the spot, but the body that fell back into the snow was a twisted, grinning parody of a human being, and it died before we could reach it.

Slowly the noise of the explosions died away; slowly the whirling debris came to rest. Pieces of broken machinery and torn chunks of human flesh sank down into the melting snow. We found Barcelona lying some way off, where he had been thrown by the first explosion. He was alive but unconscious, with his uniform in ribbons and a huge hole in the side of his chest. We patched him up as best we could and carried him carefully back to the road, where a medical orderly had already set up a first aid post. As we laid Barcelona gently in the snow, our eyes were drawn to a sight that was almost too horrible to contemplate. And yet it compelled you to look; you looked until you felt sick with disgust and torn apart with horror, and still your eyes refused to turn away from the mangled mess that lay trapped beneath an overturned sled. A young soldier, half crushed, half destroyed, yet incredibly and horribly still breathing.

"Oh, my God," muttered the Old Man, putting a hand over his eyes. "Oh, God, let him die."

Appalled as I had never been before, I stood with the rest staring down at the infinitely pathetic, infinitely repulsive thing that only seconds before had been a human being. It lay with its lower half beneath the sled, the crashed remnants of its chest still heaving as some sort of life struggled on within it. Where the face had been was now only a patchwork of blood and skin and black, gaping holes. Empty eye sockets, and a cavity for a nose; mouth and chin both blown away; tongue torn out, one eye hanging from a strip of loose flesh ...

To turn one's head away and vomit seemed an act of disloyalty to a fallen comrade. To walk away and forget seemed a desertion. So I remained staring at my post, willing the man's heart to stop its senseless beating and thus relieve me from my self-imposed task of watching over another's agony.

I became slowly aware that Gregor had pulled out his revolver. I wished I had pulled mine first and that we had finished the job.

"Don't," said the Old Man. "Don't do it." He shook his head and gently removed the gun from Gregor's hand.

"But we can't let him go on in that state--he'll die anyway--and even if he lives," babbled Gregor, clutching at the Old Man's arm, "he won't look like a human being again."

"Never say that," said the orderly, bending down by the man's side and beginning patiently on the task of reassembling all the scattered components. "Everyone has a right to live. He'll pull through, if he's got the will."

"But his face--" whispered Gregor.

The orderly took out his syringe. "They'll patch it up. There's a special hospital near Baden-Baden--just outside the town. Plastic surgery, they call it. They can put him together again."

Gregor looked disbelievingly at the pitiful mess that had been a human face.

The orderly bit his lip as he gave the injection. "Well-- perhaps not quite the same as before," he admitted. "But at least they're alive--and they keep them all together, see? Don't let them go out of the grounds or anything like that. It's better for morale."

There was a silence.

"Whose morale?" I said. I jerked my head at the mutilated man. "His? Or everyone else's?"

"Don't ask me," muttered the orderly. "It's a top secret establishment, that's all I know."

The Old Man glanced across at some of the recruits, who were huddled in a terrified bunch, watching.

"Go on, take a good look," he told them bitterly. "That was a man, lying down there. Did they ever tell you that was how it was going to be? Did they ever tell you that was the sort of sacrifice they expected of you? Not a good quick death but something you have to suffer for the rest of your life So if any of you survive the slaughter, you just make damn sure you tell your sons, when you have any, that that's what war is all about--human beings like lumps of raw flesh on the butcher's shelf."

We piled the wounded onto the remaining sleds and set off once more toward the front line. Barcelona had regained consciousness and was muttering feverishly and occasionally crying out as he lay at the bottom of the sled. We did our best for him but the blood had already soaked through the bandages.

We had only just pulled out of the village when the Russian artillery started up. The Legionnaire glanced at his watch. "Eleven o'clock. Just like always. What should we do without them?"

As soon as we arrived, we carried Barcelona to the field hospital and bribed one of the doctors to take particular care of him. We visited him the next day. He was lying in bed with a face grayer than the coarse gray sheets, he had a drain in his chest and he was feeling pretty sorry for himself. By his bed lay his food rations, which he had not the strength to eat: an egg, some sausage, and an orange. Tiny's eyes went back time and again to the plate, until finally he could contain himself no longer.

"Aren't you hungry?" he asked.

Barcelona shook his head weakly from side to side.

"Well, in that case--" Tiny stretched out a great greedy claw and snatched up the food. "It's silly to leave it for some other bastard to pinch."

"That's all right," whispered Barcelona, as the sausage disappeared into Tiny's mouth. "You can have it--and the orange," he added, as Tiny began ripping off the skin with his teeth.

"What about your reefer coat?" Tiny wanted to know cramming bits of orange into his mouth.

He looked at it longingly. He himself had only his thin camouflage jacket over his regular tunic, and we all knew that if Barcelona should die, one of the medical orderlies would certainly appropriate his coat. A good thick reefer like that was worth more than its weight in gold.

"What about it?" said Tiny. "You don't need it while you're in here. Why can't I just borrow it?"

"No!"

Barcelona was far too weak to shout, but the intended vehemence of his protest was obvious. He turned his eyes on us so imploringly that the Old Man gave Tiny a sharp kick in the leg and told him to shut up.

As we left, we had a quick whip round and made Barcelona a present of all our opium cigarettes and two liters of vodka. If he was going to pull through, he would need something to sustain him. We pushed them safely under his pillow when no one else was looking and waved him goodbye.

When we' went back the following day, we were told that Barcelona had been transferred to a hospital in Stalingrad.

"Son of a bitch!" shouted Tiny. "Now they've both gone --him and his jacket! What a couple of shits!"

All that we have hoped for, all that we have worked for, has now become reality. We have not only a well-ordered state, but also, in Adolf Hitler, a leader we will follow to the very end.

Pastor Steinemann, August 5, 1933

SS Reichsfuhrer Heinrich Himmler, seated behind his desk, stared thoughtfully across at Standartenfuhrer Theodor Eicke, who was sprawled in an armchair, seemingly unaware of his gaze.

After a moment Himmler pushed back his chair and stood up. Shoes creaking, he walked across to the window and looked out at the white wastes of Prinz Albrecht Strasse, where the first snow of the winter was still untrodden. He frowned, cleared his throat, placed his hands behind his back and turned to face Eicke.

"I hope for your own sake, my dear fellow--" He paused, and gave a grim, warning smile. "I hope for your own sake that what you've just told me is true."

"Reichsfuhrer!" Eicke's exclamation of protest rang out almost mockingly. He seemed very sure of himself. "The old bitch quite definitely had Jewish blood in her--and more than a few drops, too. At least a quarter Yid, I should say. I've suspected it for a long time, I just never Had the proof until now. But in any case, you've only got to look at the family schnozzle, it sticks out a mile!"

He flung back his head in a great burst of laughter. Himmler, nostrils pinched and eyes closed, took a dee breath and counted to ten. This man Eicke irritated him every time he opened his mouth. His language was coarse and his sense of humor bordered on the moronic.

"Very well. I shall have to take your word for it. You have nothing else to report? In that case, I shall wish you a very good day. Heil Hitler!"

The minute Eicke had left the room, Himmler seated himself once more at his desk and picked up the telephone. He drummed his fingers impatiently on the papers Eicke had left with him, "Send Obergruppenfuhrer Heydrich to me--at once!"