The Bloody Road to Death
Read The Bloody Road to Death Online
Authors: Sven Hassel
The Russian officer falls forward and I sink my teeth into his throat. Blood runs down over my face but I don’t notice it. I am fighting for my life. He struggles desperately to tear himself loose, but I clamp my teeth together like a mad bulldog. My mouth fills with his blood. He makes a long rattling noise and a terrible shiver goes through his body. I have bitten his throat out . . . I wriggle under his body and get hold of his Mpi. I turn it towards the others but the magazine is empty. With all my strength I hammer the muzzle into the face of the foremost of them. With a shrill scream he collapses. His face is a bloody ruin.
By Sven Hassel
The Commissar
OGPU Prison
Court Martial
The Bloody Road to Death
Blitzfreeze
Reign of Hell
SS General
March Battalion
Liquidate Paris
Monte Cassino
Assignment Gestapo
Comrades of War
Wheels of Terror
The Legion of the Damned
ROAD TO DEATH
First published by in Great Britain in 1977 by Corgi
This ebook first published in 2010 by Orion Books
Copyright © Sven Hassel 1977
Translation copyright Transworld Publishers Ltd. 1977
Translated from the Danish by Tim Bowie
The right of Sven Hassel to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic or mechanical including photocopying, recording or any information storage and retrieval system without permission in writing from the publisher.
All characters and events in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN: 978 0 2978 5732 7
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Born in 1917 in Fredensborg, Denmark, Sven Hassel joined the merchant navy at the age of 14. He did his compulsory year’s military service in the Danish forces in 1936 and then, facing unemployment, joined the German army. He served throughout World War II on all fronts except North Africa. Wounded eight times, he ended the war in a Russian prison camp. He wrote LEGION OF THE DAMNED while being transferred between American, British and Danish prisons before making a new life for himself in Spain. His world war
books have sold over 53 million copies worldwide.
‘Because of the magnitude of our losses at Stalingrad and the catastrophic shortage of reserve troops, our Führer has decreed that the period of pregnancy shall with immediate effect be reduced from nine to six months.’
Obergefreiter Joseph Porta speaking to Obergefreiter Wolfgang Creutzfeldt, Salonica, spring 1943.
Dedicated to my battalion commander and friend, now a General in the West German Armoured Corps, Horst Scheibert.
If I am not very careful, that damned man Himmler will soon have all my friends inside his concentration camps
.
Göring to Generalfeldmarschall Milch,
22nd September, 1943
.
Singing at the top of his voice Torpedomaat Claus Pohl leaves the brothel ‘The Sign of the Shaking Bed’ in Pyrgos. In the distance can be heard the noise of a free-for-all between a group of German sailors and some Italian Alpine troops
.
Claus Pohl grins happily and decides to take a hand, but changes his mind quickly as his eye falls on a pretty girl whom he has noticed earlier that evening
.
‘
Hey
, Liebling!’
he shouts, his voice echoing in the night quiet of the street. Wait for the Navy! It’s dangerous to drop out of convoy!’ He puts his fingers to his mouth and lets out a piercing whistle, putting the local cats to flight
.
The girl looks back and smiles provocatively
.
Claus increases his pace. He has been disappointed at the brothel. There were more customers than the ladies could cope with. He whistles again, and is so engrossed in the girl, that he does not notice the figures of men who have emerged from a side-street and are following him
.
The girl turns down a little alley. When he reaches it she seems to have vanished into thin air
.
Four men make a ring around him
.
‘
What the hell!’ he shouts, snatching for his P-38
.
A noose, thrown expertly from behind, loops tightly around his throat. He chokes and falls to his knees, his arms thrashing wildly. His round sailor’s hat rolls down the street like a runaway wheel
.
A boot sinks into his crotch, a pistol butt crashes down on the back of his neck
.
Next day Torpedomaat Claus Pohl is found by some Greek civilians, who alert the police. His naked body is lying in the
gutter, only a few yards from German HQ. Identification is very difficult, and the identity of the corpse is first revealed when his flotilla reports Claus Pohl missing
.
The case is treated as an unimportant routine investigation. Naked corpses of German soldiers are turning up in Greek gutters every day
.
Two hours later three Greek prisoners are hanged publicly as a reprisal
.
T
HE
section stands looking at the corpses, which have bloated grotesquely in the hot sun. The body of a Leutnant sprawls across the stonework of the well. His tongue has been torn out and his mouth is one great clot of blood.
‘Must’ve hurt like hell, that,’ nods Porta, pointing at the dead officer. ‘Been a quiet chap – if he’d lived through it,’ says Buffalo, passing his tongue over his sun-cracked lips.
‘Over in the bleedin’ orchard, they’ve tied some on ’em to a coupla pulled-down trees an’ let the trees go.
Rippin
’ idea ain’t it?’ says Tiny, slapping at the flies with the sleeve of a Greek uniform.
‘I’ll cut their fucking joy-sticks off,’ promises Skull and draws a parachute knife from his boot-top.
‘And you a bloody NCO,’ jeers Porta. ‘Trouble with you is you haven’t seen enough dead uns yet.’
‘The bleedin’ partisans’ve got to be let ’ave their bit o’ fun,’ considers Tiny. ‘Us bleedin’ Germans could’ve stayed at ’ome, couldn’ we?’
Porta prizes the dead Stabszahlmeister’s rigid jaws apart. His forceps glitter in the sun and Porta is two gold teeth richer.
Tiny acquires a full cigar-case. With a heavily put-on city director air he lights a fat Brazilian cigar, and moves into the shade cast by an overturned Kübel,
1
first pushing the bloody corpse of the driver to one side.
‘Even the dead have a use during a war,’ says Porta. ‘They take up the attention of the flies and keep ’em away from us who’re still alive.’
‘So
many
flies,’ says Gregor wonderingly, as a heavy swarm rises buzzing from the body of the dead driver.
Porta opens a tin of tuna and shovels the contents into his
mouth with a bayonet. ‘Tuna is
good
for you!’ It says on the outside of the tin.
Behind the long building we find ten
Blitzmädel
2
. They are dead, and laid out neatly in a row. They have not been dead for more than one or two days. The smell isn’t very bad yet, and the birds have only pecked out the eyes of two of them.
‘They’ve ’ad some fun with ’em first,’ says Tiny lecherously, lifting up a blue-grey military skirt. ‘This tart ’as lost ’er frillies!’
‘Shut it, pig!’ the Old Man rages at him. ‘Haven’t you any pity at all for these poor bitches?’
‘Jesus wept,
I
don’t
know
any of ’em,’ protests Tiny. ‘Want me to cry me rotten eyeballs out for every dead ’ore I runs across when there’s a bleedin’ war on?
Do
you?’
‘If
I’d
been with them partisan boys,’ laughs Buffalo, his whole fat body wobbling, ‘I’d’ve took the arse with me an’ fixed up some real
Kraft durch Freude
3
a couple of times a day. Sex is healthy, they say in the States.’