Comrades of War Read Online Free PDF Page A

the horse, he chuckled:
    ‘What’s the harm, let them have their fun.’
    Dr Mahler, Head Medical Officer, was the most unmilitary army surgeon imaginable. For many years he had practiced in the British colonies. His specialty was tropical medicine. After the attempted assassination of July 20, the Nazi authorities had him arrested. It was rumored he barely escaped hanging. He was somehow mixed up with Admiral Canaris, the leader of the German resistance. How he got off alive was never explained. When questioned about it, Dr Mahler would shrug his shoulders and say: ‘Rubbish.’ He still walks the rounds in his fever-ravaged army hospital, accompanied by the head nurse, sister Emma. Thousands of people are alive today because of the devotion of this physician.
    But there were bad physicians in the hospital also, useless Nazis whose greatest amusement was to detect ‘truants’ and malingerers. Dr Frankendorf, for one. He was constantly persecuting flak private George Freytag, who was afflicted with a strange fever no one could make head or tail of. They were continually making blood tests, but every test came out negative. Just when they believed he’d been cured, the fever would set in again. Under the leadership of that bandit Dr Frankendorf, blitz raids were carried out to check whether George possessed benzine-soaked sugar or similar feverinducing agents. They found nothing. Frankendorf held interrogations, cajoled, threatened, cursed, but every time he walked away defeated and deeply disappointed.
    Whether it was convenient for Dr Frankendorf or not, the fever of flak private George Freytag persisted.
    With Dr Frankendorf, all the other patients in our ward were convinced that George was shamming. For a whole afternoon and evening straight till midnight, Tiny was making the most fabulous offers to George in return for his secret. Tiny’s motive was somewhat different from Frankendorfs. To him it seemed that George had found the perfect disease. George shook his head:
    ‘Believe me, pal, my fever is real.’
    Tiny made no bones about his disappointment. He yelled and threatened to punch him in the face. In his fury he kicked a water basin out the window, but to no avail. George kept the divine secret to himself.
    All in all, George was a strange boy. He neither drank nor gambled, and he showed no interest in women. All he did was to take a stroll when the fever would permit it. George was a pretty boy, a good boy. He used to do things for the nurses, from all of whom he received the affection of a child – which he actually was.
    We sat in Number 72 with a view of Reeperbahn and the Palace of Justice, which loomed menacing at the end of Glacis Chaussée. From the Sankt Pauli Brewery came a whiff of beer.
    The Legionnaire pulled a bottle from under his mattress, a big bottle of Kümmel. It passed from man to man. Tiny belched blissfully and had two swigs. He glanced about him to see if anyone objected. Heinz Bauer was already a bit fuddled. This annoyed Tiny, who happened to be in his ‘sensitive’ mood.
    ‘Some real swell girls have been cooled off lately,’ Paul Stein said. He was thinking of the three women who’d been murdered in Hamburg in the course of a couple of weeks.
    ‘That murderer must be nuts,’ Tiny said, and belched once more after a long pull at the bottle. ‘The last one he strangled with a stocking and then cut her up.’
    Paul said that first the girls had been strangled with a stocking or a piece of underwear; afterwards they’d been raped and mauled with a knife. The murderer’s gratification seemed to depend on the girls being strangled with an intimate article of clothing. At this stage the police were nearly throwing fits from frustration.
    ‘Maybe Dr Frankendorf is the sex killer,’ Tiny suggested, his face lighting up. ‘Damn it, boys, what if Dr Frankendorf would get his nob lopped off!’.
    ‘ Bon Dieu , that would be great,’ the Legionnaire exclaimed. In his mind’s