Cauldron of Blood Read Online Free PDF Page A

these days, you even take back your dead with you, if it’s at all possible.’
      ‘ Yes,’ Bremer frowned at being reminded of that unpleasant subject. ‘The Popovs have unpleasant little habits with the SS of the Bodyguard . It’s the armband that does it.’ He indicated the ‘Adolf Hitler’ scrawled across his sleeve in white lettering. ‘More than once we’ve found our dead with their tails cut off and thrust into their mouths. Yes, we try to get them back and if any one of the boys is too seriously wounded to be moved, we deal with him ourselves rather than let him fall into Popov hands alive.’ He curled a big finger and clicked it back and forth as if pulling the trigger of a pistol. ‘Back of the neck shot.’
    ‘ And prisoners, who land up with the Ivans?’ von Dodenburg asked, steering towards the subject which was paramount in his mind this evening. ‘What do you do about them?’
    ‘ In the Bodyguard , we never let ourselves be taken prisoner,’ Bremer replied proudly.
    There was a rumble of laughter from the others. ‘Come off it, Gerd,’ Witt chuckled, his fat crimson face wreathed in steam from the beaker of punch he held beneath his nose. ‘Don’t try to pull our pissers. The Bodyguard loses men to the Ivans just like all our SS units do.’
    ‘ I’ll tell you what we do in the Bodyguard ,’ Panzermeyer burst out in that harsh, uncontrolled voice of his that grated on the nerves of everyone present. ‘We form a battle-group and we go in after the poor sods. We carve them out. In the Bodyguard , we don’t leave prisoners in the hands of those murdering red bastards.’
    ‘ And what about Sepp? What does he say?’ von Doden-burg queried.
    Panzermeyer shrugged impatiently. ‘ Was man nicht weiss , macht man nicht heiss . We forget to tell him. It’s as simple as that.’
    ‘ Why are you asking all these questions, Kuno?’ a calm Berlin voice asked. It was Jochen Peiper, speaking for the first time that long drunken evening. ‘You know in the old days you were always against talking shop in the mess.’
    Von Dodenburg took the plunge. ‘Because, Jochen, some twenty odd of my men including Wotan’s top sergeant and two very good NCOs are now somewhere in the Kessel. It can be only a matter of a day or two before the Ivans catch them.’
    ‘ And the Vulture?’ Bremer asked with a grin on his broad dark face. ‘What does the tame warm brother commanding the Wotan have to say on the subject?’
    Gloomily, von Dodenburg told them and they laughed sympathetically. ‘ Typisch !’ Panzermeyer rasped. ‘Officers like that should never have been allowed to transfer from the field-greys to the SS. All they’re out for is personal glory. They have no thoughts for their men.’ He glowered at his punch. ‘ Glory - hunters !’
    ‘ You could disobey orders and go in and find them yourself, Kuno,’ Peiper suggested carefully.
    Von Dodenburg shook his head. ‘Impossible. The Vulture guards what is left of our armoured vehicles as if he damned well paid for them himself out of his own pocket. Not a chance.’
    For a while the conversation died away and then picked up again as the orderly, red-faced and panting, came racing up the wooden stairs with yet another bubbling pail of steaming punch, but all the while von Dodenburg felt Peiper’s eyes on him, watching him curiously in that half-mocking manner the young colonel affected.
    But it was only when Peiper went out to urinate at the thunderbox in the yard and von Dodenburg accompanied him that the former spoke out. Standing there in the freezing cold with the sky a bright hard silver, Peiper said: ‘Kuno, anyone in our bloody business knows that we officers live on sufferance. We are nothing without the poor humble stubble-hopper. They win us our tin. They give us the glory. They provide us with the classy receptions at the Fuhrer HQ. It’s their guts and their blood that does everything.’ He buttoned up his flies and stared at