Court Martial Read Online Free PDF Page B

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    'You know what that means,' grins Porta, ominously. 'They don't give you a schnapps ration because they like the colour of your eyes. Famous last drink this is!' He throws the schnapps down in one go.
    ''Eroes' piss,' grins Tiny, 'couple o' pints o' giggle water an' I'll go out an' get me a Knight's Cross with vegetables an' a table knife.' 11
    ' Nom de Dieu , it's more likely to be a wooden cross,' smiles the Legionnaire, handing Tiny his schnapps ration. He is a Mohammedan and does not touch spirituous liquors.
    'Out of 'taters, into 'taters, then piss it up the wall!' grunts the Old Man, trying to get his silver-lidded pipe going.
    ' C'est la guerre ,' + sighs the Legionnaire rolling a little machorka in a piece of Bible paper, and getting a kind of cigarette out of it.
    'Give us a puff,' begs Tiny.
    The Legionnaire hands him the bent-up cigarette in silence.
    All through the night we battle our way on against a howling arctic storm. The snow whirls about us so thickly that we can only just see the man in front of us. Which is an advantage. It means the Russians will have a job finding us. Now and then we hear them behind us.
    'They're so certain of us, those yellow monkeys, that they can't be bothered to conceal themselves,' says Porta, downheartedly.
    'Anybody 'ere still believe in the Final Victory?' asks Tiny with a broad grin.
    'Only Adolf and his faithful unteroffizier, Julius Heide, Porta gives out a typical Berlin laugh.
    'Why did we go to war, anyway?' asks Tiny wonderingly What they got in Russia anybody'd want ?'
    'So that Adolf can be a really great warrior,' answers Porta. 'All those shits who've crept up on top of the heap have to have a war so they won't be forgotten again.'
    'Hear me now!' Heide's voice is heard from behind the snow curtain. 'They hang defeatists!'
    'And twisted-up bleedin' abortions like you, they put in cages,' shouts Tiny harshly.
    Late on the following day the Oberst orders a halt. The battle group is simply unable to continue. Many of the group have been left behind in the snow to freeze to death.
    Our rations have run out. Only a few, like Porta, have some crumbs left. He is chewing on a frozen crust, the remnants of a Finnish army loaf.
    'Are you hungry?' he asks, putting the last bite into his mouth.
    'Rotten swine,' snarls the Old Man.
    'Anybody got any vodka?' begs Gregor. His face is dark blue in colour and has swollen up enormously after Heide's surgery.
    'Lost your bleedin' mind, 'ave you, well as your snout?' shouts Tiny, jeeringly.
    'Vodka!' says Porta. 'It's so long since we've had a drop of that Russian piss I can't recall the taste of it.'
    'I could eat a pensioned-off whore from Valencia,' asserts Barcelona. 'I haven't been so hungry since I was inside a Spanish prison camp.'
    Porta and the Legionnaire begin to debate just how many juniper berries one should put into a venison dressing.
    'Six, I feel,' says Porta, knowledgeably.
    ' Impossible ,' the Legionnaire rejects the suggestion, 'but do as you wish. If you include six berries I would not even have to bother to taste the dressing. It would stink to heaven. It is also of importance that the correct kind of pot is used,' he continues. 'If you wish to achieve a true venison dressing you cannot use any ordinary kind of pot.'
    'True, an antique pot should be used,' agrees Porta. 'And the best of these are made of copper. When I was in Naples, I got hold of one which Julius Caesar's chief cook used to make bouillabaisse for the spaghettis' kaiser.'
    'Take a trip to Marseilles, and taste the queen of all soups: Germiny a I'Oseille ,' suggests the Legionnaire. 'After this I would suggest Pigeon a la Moscovite with Champignons Polonaise and Salade Beatrice .'
    'I once dined with a chap who, God save us all, forgot to put truffles in his Perigourdin ,' says Porta. 'He lived on Gendarmenmarkt and was celebrating his release from Moabitt prison. We had actually expected to see the wreck of a man. He'd been in the cage for