Bloody Road to Death

Book 0: Sven Hassel War Classics

by Sven Hassel

Genres: General Fiction

Synopsis

Bloody partisan fights rage in the Balkans. Grenades rain down over the streets. From the rooftops, a heavy machinegun fire strikes down on the hunting battalion. Moaning, the injured soldiers crawl for cover. Molotov cocktails explode with hollow roars, and the burning liquid splash up on humans and materiel. - Partisan, the major stutters terrified and jumps off the vehicle. Porta salutes him with an idiotic smile. - Reporting to the Major that they will probably make it hot for us!

"THIS NOVEL HOLDS A DRAMATIC BEAUTY IN ALL ITS BRUTALITY" LA NOTTE, ITALY

Sven Hassel was sent to a penal battalion as a private in the German forces. Intensely and with brutal realism, he portrays the cruelty of the war, the Nazi crimes and the crude and cynical humor of the soldiers. With more than 50 million sold copies, this is one of the world's best selling war novels.

Release date: July 22, 2010

Publisher: Orion Publishing Group

Print pages: 320

Sample

If I am not very careful, that damned man Himmler will soon have all my friends inside his concentration camps.

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.

THE 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 Blitzmädel2. 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 Freude3 a couple of times a day. Sex is healthy, they say in the States.’

A shrill scream makes us jump and grab for our weapons. Down the hill a woman comes racing, stumbling, followed by a fat little man waving an axe above his head.

The Legionnaire’s Moorish knife flashes like lightning through the air and sinks into the man’s chest. He continues running for a few strides then falls like a log.

To our amazement the woman throws herself sobbing across his body, and screams Bulgarian oaths at the Legionnaire.

‘She says you’re a goddam murderer,’ explains Buffalo, who understands a little Bulgarian. ‘They were just havin’ their daily bit of fuss, and the axe was part of it.’

‘Holy Allah!’ groans the Legionnaire wiping his Moorish knife on his sleeve. ‘Who in the world could have guessed it?’

A chattering Krupp-Diesel rumbles into the sun-baked village. A party of excited ‘500’s’4 jump down from it.

‘They’ve slaughtered the whole bloody battalion. We’re all that’s left,’ shouts a feldwebel, sweating with dirt all over his face.

‘Who has?’ asks the Old Man expressionlessly.

These bloody heathens,’ the feldwebel screams, raging. ‘Our battalion got here from Heuberg only a few days ago, and in the very first engagement we fell into an ambush. I dropped behind with my section and got away.’

‘You ran for it, in other words,’ grins Porta, sarcastically. ‘Our Adolf wouldn’t like that. If,’ he was to hear of it, that is.’

‘Can we join you lot?’ asks the feldwebel, ignoring the jibe.

‘Have you got weapons?’ asks the Old Man, brusquely.

‘Only carbines with twenty rounds a man,’ answers the feldwebel. ‘The Prussians aren’t too generous with 500’s.’

‘Juice in it?’ asks the Old Man, nodding his head at the Diesel.

‘No, it’ll only go downhill.’

‘Then we’re all right,’ laughs Porta happily. ‘The Greater German Wehrmacht is used to things movin’ in that direction.’

‘Stay if you like,’ shrugs the Old Man, ‘but remember I’m in charge!’

‘Shall we turn in our pay-books?’ asks a young 500, offering his.

‘Wipe your bleedin’ arse on it, son,’ suggests Tiny, assuming a lofty air.

‘We’re hung up by the balls,’ the Old Man tells the feldwebel. ‘Our battlewagon’s a burnt-out wreck, so it’s foot-slogging for us, and a walk over the mountains.’

‘Know ’em?’ asks the feldwebel, with a sour smile.

‘No!’ the Old Man is laconic.

‘They say it’s the arsehole of the universe up there, and two days is a long lifetime,’ says the feldwebel, looking worriedly at the black mass of the mountains. ‘Snakes, scorpions, giant ants and God knows what else. Cactus with enough poison in ’em to stock a chemist’s bloody shop!’

‘Got a better idea?’ asks the Old Man, biting off a chunk of chewing tobacco.

‘No, I’m workin’ for you now!’

‘All your lot got battle experience?’

‘Only a few,’ the feldwebel laughs tiredly. ‘The rest of ’em are swindlers an’ thieves. There’s a cunt-stealer among ’em, even!’

The Old Man sighs and sends a brown stream of tobacco juice at the well. He shrugs his Mpi5 to a more comfortable position on his shoulder.

‘Tell your coolies, we’re on drumhead!’

‘Drumhead court-martial, eh?’ the feldwebel rolls it round his tongue.

‘No misunderstandings?’ asks the Old Man, sneeringly.

‘You wouldn’t think it,’ laughs the feldwebel, wickedly.

‘Glad we understand one another.’

‘What about a couple of Mpi’s or an LMG6’ asks the feldwebel, offering a packet of Junos7.

‘Think you’re in a damned arsenal?’ growls the Old Man, turning on his heel and kicking at a helmet which flies through the air and drops on a corpse. ‘You drop your equipment anywhere,’ he scolds. ‘No discipline any more! How the hell can an army fight a war with its bloody equipment spread all over the map of sodding Europe?’

‘God, but you’re in a bad mood today,’ remarks Porta, opening his third tin of tuna.

The Old Man does not answer, but swings his Mpi over his shoulder, lights his old silver-lidded pipe and wheels over to the ammunition-trailer where the feldwebel has seated himself, together with some of his unit.

‘What’s your name?’ asks the Old Man, grumpily.

‘Schmidt,’ a short pause, and, ‘line regiment,’ he adds.

The Old Man takes his pipe slowly out of his mouth, and spurts a tobacco-darkened stream of spittle to one side.

‘What’s that mean?’

‘I thought you’d be interested.’

‘I don’t give a sod if you’re a feldmarschall!’

The Old Man stalks over and sits down with the rest of us, demanding his share of Porta’s tin of tuna.

‘Hell I’m tired,’ groans Gregor despairingly, wiping his sleeve across his dust-masked face. ‘Here we go, the flower of Germany, lettin’ the untermensch piss all over us. My general and me, we wouldn’t ever have let that come about. If we’d had him an’ our monocle with us the missing links’d really have had something to worry about!’

‘If things go on as they are Greater Goddam Germany’s gonna get wiped off the map,’ says Buffalo, darkly, ’an’ us Germans ’re gonna drop back into bein’ the background characters in Grimm’s Fairy Tales.’

‘We’ll be the wicked ogres they frighten the nippers with after dark,’ nods Porta.

‘Pissy bleedin’ outlook, ain’t it?’ sighs Tiny despondently, packing banderoles of cartridges glumly into the ammunition boxes.

From the mountains to the north artillery fire is audible.

‘The neighbours are a’knockin’,’ sings Porta, turning a body over on its back to look for gold fillings.

‘You take the heavy mortar,’ roars Barcelona to one of the 500’s. Barcelona is a feldwebel but doesn’t get much of a chance to pull rank when he’s with us.

‘What about the blackbird there?’ asks Heine, pointing with his Mpi at the padre who is sitting drawing circles in the dust of the road.

‘He can go when we go, or he can stay where he is,’ says the Old Man indifferently.

‘Chase the black bastard out of it,’ suggests Tango, a Rumanian-born German, who has been a teacher of dancing in Bucharest. Whenever he gets a break he dances tango steps to an internal orchestra of his own.

‘Let’s liquidate the bleeder,’ shouts Tiny. ‘The ’eavenly bleedin’ reps down ’ere on earth always bring bad luck!’

‘Yeah, let’s turn him off. I never see a blackbird get a ticket for the one-way trip,’ chuckles Buffalo, his rolls of fat wobbling in wicked glee.

Til tell you when I want anybody liquidated,’ the Old Man decides, coldly.

‘I’m going to keep an eye on him anyway. Soul and body don’t always keep in step,’ says Tango, circling in a few dance steps. ‘The 44th sorted out a sky-pilot once who had no more connection with the heavenly host than the devil himself has!’

Everybody stares at the padre.

‘Let me open the bleeder’s throttle for ’im!’ says Tiny, touching the edge of his combat knife.

A squadron of He III’s roars over us. One of them circles and returns.

‘That’s all we need, for them to take us for some of the heathen,’ says the Old Man, looking nervously up at the fighters.

‘Jesus, they’re droppin’ their shit!’ howls Buffalo, dashing between the houses.

‘Shrink!’ warns the Old Man, creeping into shelter behind the coping of the well.

I follow Porta down into the well itself. The water is icy. I almost drown before he gets hold of me. We hang on to the bucket.

There is a crashing and rumbling above our heads. Machine-guns chatter. The whole squadron is attacking us. It seems like the end of the world.

The planes do not leave until the entire village is gone.

Strangely, not one of us is even wounded. Air attacks are nerve-racking but not really effective. Imprecise.

‘Long as you’re not where the bombs drop, there’s no worry,’ grins Porta, sitting down on the sand in the very same place he sat before the attack started.

‘What about stopping here?’ suggests feldwebel Schmidt. ‘The Division’ll pick us up.’

‘Will the Division fuck?’ cries Porta scoffingly.

‘Merde dors! They have more than enough to do,’ sighs the Legionnaire. ‘What is a section to them?’

‘We ain’t worth as much as a lump o’ dried cat-shit,’ states Tiny, throwing a stone at a cat which is sitting, washing itself, on the corpse of a German soldier.

‘Jesus!’ shouts Porta angrily. ‘Even the cats down here round the Black Sea have lost all respect for the German Army! Where’s it all going to end?’

‘In Kolyma!’ grins Gregor, hitting the cat squarely with a well-aimed steel helmet.

‘That bleedin’ cat’s a bleedin’ Yid cat,’ considers Tiny. ‘It might even ’ve been thinkin’ of ’avin’ a shit on that poor German body.’

‘What we have to go through,’ sniffs Heide, angrily.

‘The army’s finished,’ says Tiny, lighting a cigar. ‘Even the Goring fly-boys shit on us!’

‘Grab it an’ get moving,’ orders the Old Man, rising to his feet.

‘The human body was not created to march with,’ protests Porta, working his stiff muscles and shouting at the pain.

The mountains are depressing. Each time we reach the top of what we think is the last rise, we find another one, even higher, awaiting us.

The section has not gone far when the Old Man remembers that water-bottles have not been filled. Without water the Cactus Forest is certain death.

‘Back to the well!’ he orders roughly.

‘Have I ever told you of the time my general an’ me marched across the Danube?’ asks Gregor.

‘Can it, we’ve heard that one at least twenty times,’ Barcelona cuts him off irritably.

‘Did you eat with your general?’ asks Tango, interestedly. He has a decided weakness for higher ranks.

‘Of course,’ says Gregor, condescendingly. ‘Sometimes we even slept in the same bed with our monocle between us.’

‘Was your general a fairy?’ asks Porta, disrespectfully.

‘A question like that could put you in front of a field-court of honour,’ mumbles Gregor, insulted.

‘Bloody ’ell,’ shouts Tiny, in surprise. ‘Is there really such a bleedin’ court?’

‘Did you sometimes touch your general?’ asks Tango, with awe.

‘I had to undress him every bloody evening, when he rested up to be ready for the next day’s war,’ answers Gregor, proudly.

‘’Bout time we shifted our baggy bleedin’ arses under cover, ain’t it?’ asks Tiny, looking towards the mountains, from which machine-gun fire can be heard.

‘How many jerricans have we got?’ asks the Old Man, cocking his grease-gun8.

‘Only five,’ laughs Barcelona, mirthlessly.

‘They’ll soon be finished,’ grins Skull. It sounds like a bag of dried bones rattling.

‘Water’d bleedin’ run out o’ you, fast as it went in,’ says Tiny. ‘’Ow the bleedin’ ’ell can a man be that bleedin’ thin? I can’t understand it.’

‘Skull ought to go to America. He’d make a fortune showin’ himself as a victim of the horrors of the concentration camps,’ suggests Porta.

‘Cut the talk a minute,’ snarls the Old Man, ’and listen. We’ve got to go over the mountains with or without water. It’s our only chance.’

‘Holy Christ!’ breaks out Unteroffizier Krüger from the PR’s. ‘You don’t know what you’re saying! There’s a forest of cactus with prickles the size of bayonets. We’ll have to chop our way through with machetes and we’ve only got two. They won’t last long. And there’s not a drop of water anywhere up there.’

‘What the hell do you suggest, then?’ shouts the Old Man, desperately.

‘The tracks and out on the road,’ answers Krüger, looking around him for support.

‘Mad as a bloody hatter,’ the Old Man dismisses his suggest tion contemptuously.!

‘The rightful owners of the country are lined up along the roads with the firm intention of knocking us off.’

‘Let’s kick ’em in the balls,’ suggests Tiny, turning his cigar butt between his lips and champing on it. ‘It’s about time this Black Sea shower found out who it is as is visitin’ ’em.’

‘Brave little man, ain’t you?’ grins Porta, holding out his hand for a cigar. Tiny hands one over without a murmur.

Heide has to supply him with a chunk of liver sausage. Nobody dares to refuse Porta when he asks for something. If you want to stay alive the wisest thing is to keep friendly with him. He has that strange sort of sixth sense, otherwise only found amongst Jews, of being able to sniff out supplies at a distance of miles. Turn him out naked in the middle of the Gobi Desert and he’d find his way straight to something drinkable. Not an ice-cold beer perhaps, but at any rate water.

The Legionnaire kicks at the remnants of a bread-bag, and shouts bitterly:

‘On les emmerde! The battalion must be somewhere behind those mountains!’

‘Maybe,’ answers the Old Man, laconically. ‘That’s the way we’re going anyway. Now then. No firing at random. Fire only at proper targets. Don’t forget shooting draws the enemy and we don’t want that!’

‘Plop, plop!’ sounds from the north.

‘50mm’s,’ decides Buffalo sagely, blowing his nose with his fingers.

‘Crack, crack and crack again!’

‘50mm’s,’ says Porta, hurling an empty bread-bag away disappointedly.

‘Who gives ’em all that shit?’ asks Gregor, worriedly.

‘Italian and German traitors sell it to them,’ answers Julius Heide coldly.

‘They ought to be strung up. There ought to be only one form of punishment. Death! We’re too soft. Womanish thinking.’

‘You’n Adolf’d soon be the only two left in Germany,’ Porta laughs noisily.

‘God will help us,’ mumbles the padre, looking over at us.

‘Listen to the prayer-wheel goin’,’ jeers Skull, throwing a stick at the padre. ‘God don’t help us coolies. Kick us in the bleedin’ arse more like!’

‘Christ helps all who pray to Him,’ answers the padre, quietly, and stares over the sun-blistered desert, where ruined buildings still smoke after the air attack.

‘You an’ your ’eavenly bleedin’ ’ost,’ shouts Tiny furiously. ‘Them as kicked it at the bleedin’ Morellenschlucht9 babbled bleedin’ prayers till they got it an’ God didn’ bleedin’ ‘elp the poor bastards!’

‘I’m in touch,’ screams Heide, spinning feverishly at the dials of the pack radio.

‘Who the hell are you, you crazy shit?’ he howls into the set.

‘Flattery will get you nowhere! This is the People’s Army. We’ll be scraping you German shit off the road pretty soon now.’

‘Get fucked, apeman!’ rages Heide.

‘You’ve had it, sausage-eater! Fifteen minutes from now you’ll be ready for the grinder!’

‘Bighead!’ Heide spits furiously at the radio. ‘You’re nuts!’

‘You’ve had it, Nazi porker!’

What a bleedin’ barmy bastard,’ shouts Tiny, incensed. ‘Let’s get up there after ’im!’

A long howl shrills from the radio. Contact is broken.

‘Think they can see us?’ asks Skull, nervously.

‘’Course they can’t,’ says Tiny, scornfully. ‘If they could they’d ’ve done us by now.’

‘They aren’t ordinary partisans,’ says the Old Man thoughtfully.

‘Communist bastards. Red as a monkey’s arse’ole,’ shouts Tiny angrily, shaking his fist at the mountain peaks.

‘Would anyone think now might be a good time to point one’s penis in the right direction and follow it?’ says Porta, pulling his equipment together.

‘Exercise is good for you,’ laughs Tango, taking a few dance-steps across the open square.

Buffalo stretches himself in the warm sand, and unfolds a large document.

‘Me ’n’ all my family’ve got to appear before a racial purity commission,’ he said. ‘It’s because I’ve become me own grandfather!’

‘That’s impossible,’ says the Old Man in amazement, and puts down his Mpi.

‘Nothin’ ain’t impossible in the Third Goddam Reich. Before I know what’s goin’ on, I’ll be me own great-grandfather. Wait’ll those racial purity boys get goin’ with me. It’s my wife’s fault, the crazy bitch. She’s got a grown-up daughter me daddy got hot pants for an’ went an’ got hitched up with.’

‘Your wife’s daughter’s got to be your daughter,’ says the Old Man with a no-nonsense look on his face.

‘Sure, sure, but still not sure. She had this daughter before we tied the knot. An’ that just means my daddy he’s become my son-in-law and my daughter’s my mammy!’

‘Understandable enough,’ laughs Porta. ‘Your daughter is your father’s wife.’

‘What a mess,’ says Gregor despairingly, ‘just because a man marries a woman who brings a prefabricated kid with her.’

‘That, son, is only the beginning,’ sighs Buffalo. ‘I understand the Jews better now, those clever bastards. They don’t marry nothin’ but virgins. Two of the Vice Squad’ve lost their marbles over this case so far, an’ more probably to come. They jus’ couldn’t stand comin’ to the conclusion that me an’ my little or lady’d got a son who was my daddy’s brother-in-law.’

‘That’s obvious,’ says the Old Man. ‘He’s your father’s wife’s brother.’

‘Yeah, an’ he ain’t only my son, he’s my uncle too,’ groans Buffalo sadly, ‘cause he’s my mother’s brother.’

‘Yes, because your father’s wife is your wife’s daughter,’ grins Barcelona heartily.

‘Things got real complicated,’ moans Buffalo unhappily, ‘when my daughter, my father’s wife an’ my mother, had a son. He’s my brother, cause he’s my daddy’s son, but he’s the son of me daughter too, which makes me his gran’daddy.’

‘Then your wife has suddenly become your grandmother,’ roars Porta joyfully.

‘Yeah, crazy situation ain’t it?’ mumbles Buffalo with a lost look at the heavens. ‘I’m my wife’s husband, but I’m her grandson too ’cause I’m the brother of her daughter’s son, an’ since your grand’mammy’s husband’s got to be your gran’daddy,’ he throws out his arms despairingly, ‘then it’s piss-plain logical I’m my own gran’daddy and that ol racial purity commission can’t make out how that can possibly be done legitimate. An’ that’s why I’m accused of miscegenation – which is a kind of incest.’

‘They’ll put you inside, son,’ prophesies Tiny, threateningly. ‘Just ’ope Adolf never gets to ’ear about you.’

A heavy burst of shelling breaks into this strange family history. Muzzle reports and bursts roll, echoing deeply, across the mountains.

We move. A nervous unease catches at us.

‘Let’s stay where we are,’ urges feldwebel Schmidt. ‘It’s madness to go up into that cactus. Even animals keep away from it.’

‘C’est le bordel,’ snarls the Legionnaire, fierily. ‘It’s madness to stay here. They’ll have cut our throats before we even know it. The cactus is our only chance!’

‘I know way. Very bad way,’ says Stojko from the Bulgarian Guards Regiment. He is the only man left alive from a Field Surgery taken by the partisans. He saved himself by hiding in a bin of amputated limbs until the guerillas had left.

‘March time?’ asks the Old Man hopefully.

‘T’ree maybe four day,’ answers Stojko uncertainly, ‘but we go very quick. No think ’bout water.’

‘Water’s the biggest problem,’ sighs the Old Man, lighting his silver-lidded pipe.

‘I’ve heard tell camels eat cactus cos of the juice in ’em,’ says Buffalo.

‘Impossible, mon ami,’ answers the Legionnaire, ‘they taste worse than boiled monkey-piss.’

‘Couldn’t you get used to the taste?’ asks Porta, interestedly. ‘I’d rather drink monkey-piss than die of thirst!’

The entire day dribbles away, without our being able to arrive at a decision. The corpses emit a powerful stench. The Old Man has several times told us to bury them but we pretend not to have heard him.

He gives up temporarily and sits down on a stone between Barcelona and the Legionnaire.

‘We must put our trust in Stojko,’ he says quietly, eyeing the Bulgarian in his filthy, blue-grey Guards uniform with its red piping and patches.

‘He knows the bush,’ says the Legionnaire, lighting a Cap-oral thoughtfully. ‘These mountain peasants are masters at forcing their way through a cactus forest. And where they can go we can go too. I would like to see the peasant who is better than we regular soldiers.’

‘You ever been in this kind of bush?’ asks Barcelona with a mocking smile.

‘Non, mon ami,’ answers the Legionnaire. ‘But I have heard quite a lot about it, and I know that it is worse than a trip barefoot across the cauldron of hell.’

‘I’ve been there,’ answers Barcelona sombrely, rubbing away at his Mpi. ‘It’s hell upon hell. The devil himself wouldn’t dare go in there. It’s a place God’s forgotten existed. After a few hours you feel convinced that life is over. The whole place breathes death. The only living things are poisonous reptiles, which attack you on sight. Scratch yourself on one of those wicked thorns and you’re finished.’

‘What a look-out. What a look-out!’ shouts Porta, swallowing a sardine whole.

We’ll soon fix them bleedin’ serpents and the bleedin’ cactus,’ growls Tiny, with conviction in his voice. ‘We’re Germans, ain’t we? Conquerors, ain’t we?’

Late in the afternoon a mud-spattered Kübel roars into the village. A major in camouflage dress with a sub-machinegun in the crook of his arm jumps down and starts shouting.

‘It’s about time you people pulled yourselves together and got a road-block set up, isn’t it?’ He stamps on the ground. ‘Closing-time is it? Putting the shutters up, are you? Reinforcements will arrive from Division latest tomorrow morning. And you, feldwebel,’ he turns towards the Old Man, ‘will answer for it with your head if this village isn’t held!’

‘We’ve not much ammo’, sir. Can’t hold this hole more than an hour!’

‘Don’t try to teach your grandmother to suck eggs,’ screams the major, going purple in the face. ‘You’ll hold it, or you’ll swing for it!’

He spins on his heel and climbs back into the Kübel which disappears down the road at a terrific speed.

‘Moves like a mule with a cactus up his jacksey,’ grins Porta: ‘Does he really think we’re going to do battle with the neighbours for this place.’

‘He was moving fast,’ says Tango. ‘Wouldn’t have believed a Kübel could make that speed.’

‘Babby-shitters with a bad bleedin’ conscience,’ declares Tiny angrily, and kicks viciously at a torn-off foot.

‘Goddam typical! Them shined-up bastards. Don’t they just love orderin’ other people out where it stinks of Valhalla an’ a hero’s goddam death!’ remarks Buffalo despondently.

We sit down again. Skull snatches at flies. He eats them. Says they taste like shrimps. He’s even got us to try them. We don’t agree with him. Was he a bird in a former incarnation?

‘Allons-y!’ says the Legionnaire. ‘To stay here is camel-dung.’

‘What about holding the village?’ says the Old Man thoughtfully. ‘You heard the major’s orders!’

‘That bleedin’ mother-fucker,’ shouts Tiny. ‘’E’s no bleedin’ idea who we bleedin’ are, even! That’s the only bleedin’ good thing about this bleedin’ army. We all look the bleedin’ same in bleedin’ uniform.’

In a welter of foam-flecks, dust and glittering sabres, a unit of Vlassov Cossacks trots into the village.

A wachtmeister reins his horse in. It rears and whinnies nervously.

‘What unit, you?’ asks the Russian in bad German.

‘The ’Oly Trinity unit,’ answers Tiny, grinning broadly.

‘You no cheeky, you obergefreiter!’ snarls the Cossack wachtmeister, slashing out wickedly with his sabre in Tiny’s direction. ‘You stand attention, you talk me!’

‘Why, you son of a bleedin’ Caucasian goat!’ shouts Tiny contemptuously.

‘Think a citizen of bleedin’ ’Amburg’s gonna click ’is ’eels for shit like you? Your own lot’ll string you up one of these days. Count on it, son!’

‘Feldwebel, you make charge-sheet that man,’ screams the wachtmeister, raging.

‘Shut it!’ hisses the Old Man, turning on his heel. ‘Find another playground!’

The wachtmeister reins his horse so that it rears up on to its hindlegs.

Tiny jumps to one side to avoid being struck by its forelegs. He draws a deep breath of astonishment.

‘What the bleedin’ ’ell? Why you son of a syphilitic sow an’ a ’or’s bleedin’ cunt-barber! I’ll bleedin’ teach you,’ he shouts, giving the horse a straight left to the muzzle. He catches it round the neck and attempts to throw it to the ground.

The horse goes to its knees and screams in fright.

The wacht