pulled about them and caps down round their ears. The veterans have wrapped their weapons in oiled paper. Ninety-nine alarms out of a hundred are false alarms so why get your arms dirty. It’s forbidden to use oiled paper but no platoon commander ever takes notice of it. To be quite honest we do a lot of things which are forbidden.
Take rape for example.
That’s
forbidden.
Strictly
forbidden. The penalty is hanging but it’s seldom anyone gets hanged for it. In the village of Drogobusch the other day, we found a lovely long-legged girl who’d been treated pretty roughly. She said 25 men had raped her. The medical officer who examined her said it could well be true. But no action was taken. Not a single ‘Watch-dog’ 2 turned up, and they’re there for a certainty every time a threat arises to the interests of Greater Germany’s Defence Forces.
‘Stretcher!’ comes a complaining cry from the darkness. ‘My hand.’
It happens every time there’s an alarm. Some fool lays his hand unthinkingly on the exhaust-pipe. There’s a sizzle and a stench of burnt meat. When he pulls back his hand it’s a skeleton claw. He’ll be punished for his stupidity but what’s six weeks hard in comparison with the front-line? Summer at the seaside! A stretcher-bearer threatens harshly with courts-martial. Self-inflicted wound.
If the chap’s unlucky they might even shoot him – when the medics have brought him back to perfect health. We executed one last Sunday. A fellow who’d had both legs amputated. They tied him to a board so that we could shoot him standing up. Executions have to be carried out standing, in accordance with regulations.
‘They’ll neck ’im,’ predicts Tiny ominously, tearing open
die eiserne Portion
3 and consuming the contents in three colossal gulps.
‘Where the devil do you put it?’ asks the Old Man astonishedly.
‘Put what?’ asks Tiny blankly.
‘Put a couple of pounds of grub at that speed?’
‘Never thought on it. When I was eight years old I’d swaller a ‘ole chicken with legs an’ the lot. You soon learn it when y’ave to get it down quick an’ under cover.’
‘Remember the time we ate Hauptfeldwebel Edel’s Christmas ducks?’ chuckles Porta.
We’ll never forget those ducks. When the Secret Police turned up to investigate the theft of eight corn-fed army ducks they fed the entire company emetics to find the guilty party. The ducks shot out of us in pieces almost big enough to quack at the four leather coated investigators with the turned down hat-brims.
We were escorted to HQ Company, where two offices had been placed at the disposal of the interrogators, but there it turned out that the hat-brims boss was an Obergefreiter pal of Porta’s and the interrogation turned into a crap-shooting session which sent the investigators home without their leather coats.
‘Panzer, forward march!’ comes over the communicator.
Maybach engines roar thunderously.
The Old Man pulls his goggles down over his eyes. From the wood comes distant sounds of armed contact. Our grenadiers have run into the enemy infantry. Field artilleryploughs up the defence positions and soon they are nothing but heaps of clay and stone.
‘We should never have gone into Russia,’ sighs Stege pessimistically and fits a new belt into the machine-gun. He is always pessimistic before going into combat.
MGs chatter madly and 80 mm mortars spit their bombs towards the machine-gun posts.
‘Plop! plop!’ sounds incessantly. Geysers of earth spout up all around us. A polished track runs straight as a ruler along the edge of the wood and disappears in a milky curtain covering the village of Pocinok. We have never been in Pocinok but we know every inch of it. We know where they have positioned their PAK 4 without being told. If they have tanks they’ll be dug in behind the school. The ideal position. They don’t even need to dig them in. With our short-range equipment we can’t touch their heavy KW-1s
Take rape for example.
That’s
forbidden.
Strictly
forbidden. The penalty is hanging but it’s seldom anyone gets hanged for it. In the village of Drogobusch the other day, we found a lovely long-legged girl who’d been treated pretty roughly. She said 25 men had raped her. The medical officer who examined her said it could well be true. But no action was taken. Not a single ‘Watch-dog’ 2 turned up, and they’re there for a certainty every time a threat arises to the interests of Greater Germany’s Defence Forces.
‘Stretcher!’ comes a complaining cry from the darkness. ‘My hand.’
It happens every time there’s an alarm. Some fool lays his hand unthinkingly on the exhaust-pipe. There’s a sizzle and a stench of burnt meat. When he pulls back his hand it’s a skeleton claw. He’ll be punished for his stupidity but what’s six weeks hard in comparison with the front-line? Summer at the seaside! A stretcher-bearer threatens harshly with courts-martial. Self-inflicted wound.
If the chap’s unlucky they might even shoot him – when the medics have brought him back to perfect health. We executed one last Sunday. A fellow who’d had both legs amputated. They tied him to a board so that we could shoot him standing up. Executions have to be carried out standing, in accordance with regulations.
‘They’ll neck ’im,’ predicts Tiny ominously, tearing open
die eiserne Portion
3 and consuming the contents in three colossal gulps.
‘Where the devil do you put it?’ asks the Old Man astonishedly.
‘Put what?’ asks Tiny blankly.
‘Put a couple of pounds of grub at that speed?’
‘Never thought on it. When I was eight years old I’d swaller a ‘ole chicken with legs an’ the lot. You soon learn it when y’ave to get it down quick an’ under cover.’
‘Remember the time we ate Hauptfeldwebel Edel’s Christmas ducks?’ chuckles Porta.
We’ll never forget those ducks. When the Secret Police turned up to investigate the theft of eight corn-fed army ducks they fed the entire company emetics to find the guilty party. The ducks shot out of us in pieces almost big enough to quack at the four leather coated investigators with the turned down hat-brims.
We were escorted to HQ Company, where two offices had been placed at the disposal of the interrogators, but there it turned out that the hat-brims boss was an Obergefreiter pal of Porta’s and the interrogation turned into a crap-shooting session which sent the investigators home without their leather coats.
‘Panzer, forward march!’ comes over the communicator.
Maybach engines roar thunderously.
The Old Man pulls his goggles down over his eyes. From the wood comes distant sounds of armed contact. Our grenadiers have run into the enemy infantry. Field artilleryploughs up the defence positions and soon they are nothing but heaps of clay and stone.
‘We should never have gone into Russia,’ sighs Stege pessimistically and fits a new belt into the machine-gun. He is always pessimistic before going into combat.
MGs chatter madly and 80 mm mortars spit their bombs towards the machine-gun posts.
‘Plop! plop!’ sounds incessantly. Geysers of earth spout up all around us. A polished track runs straight as a ruler along the edge of the wood and disappears in a milky curtain covering the village of Pocinok. We have never been in Pocinok but we know every inch of it. We know where they have positioned their PAK 4 without being told. If they have tanks they’ll be dug in behind the school. The ideal position. They don’t even need to dig them in. With our short-range equipment we can’t touch their heavy KW-1s
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