The Bloody Road to Death Read Online Free PDF Page A

off, knocking down a couple of innocent orderly officers.
    ‘“It is good psychologically to go off in a cloud of dust,” my general explained.
    ‘And we’d put our hand into our uniform, for all the world like the pictures of Napoleon.
    ‘“Now these fools will perhaps remember for a while who it is who makes the decisions,” said my general, taking a good gulp from his glass. We always drank cognac out of beer glasses. The usual ones held too little for us.
    ‘“Yes, sir, Herr General!” I’d scream.
    ‘I’d get one glass, but no more. My general didn’t like his driver getting too much to drink. It was a great responsibility driving a general around, but I usually managed to sink a couple or three when he’d gone to bed. A bit after this we got our fourth star and took over an Army Group, but wicked as they are in bloody Personnel HQ they sent oak-leaves and red tabs to Oberst “Wildboar”. If he was a horror as an oberst he was worse’n you could imagine as general-major. I went around there a couple of days just hoping they’d give him a division he could lead to death and destruction. But they didn’t. Instead they made him Chief-of-Staff in my division. That was
my
bad luck. My general flew to Berlin to thank them for his new star and get new uniforms made now he was a general-oberst. The “Boar” met me in the ops. room when I came back from the airfield without my general and our monocle. He was smiling like the devil watching parsons roasting on the coals of hell. He gives me the choice of leaving immediately for the other end of the front line, or taking a summary with him chairing the court. The sentence was decided in advance. I could see the bloody gallows there all right in his wicked yellow eyes.’
    ‘Whatever had you done?’asks Barcelona, wonderingly.
    ‘When you’re driving for a general it’s easy to get mixed up in things which can get you into trouble. I’d never dreamed the bloody “Boar” had been saving it up for me. He hits me across the face with the documents and, with a horrid smile, he adds in his most fatherly way:
    ‘“Unteroffizier Martin, if you had been born twenty years earlier, and lived in Chicago, Al Capone would have found a good right hand man in you. Even now, any court in the world would, without hesitation, sentence you to life imprisonment for the things you have done.”
    ‘For the next fifteen minutes he slandered me shamelessly.As an unteroffizier you have to take that sort of thing when it’s the Chief-of-Staff who’s dishing it out. All those primitive military feelings ran away with him. He walked up and down, and every time he stood still he’d go up and down at the knees and make his boots creak. He had the
creakiest
boots. Specially made for it, like as not. His nose was one of the kind that has trouble with swing-doors and reminds you of Rome’s bloody history. His glasses were like the headlamps on a Horch. I took a deep breath and held onto my guts and asked if I might wait till my general and our monocle returned so that I could congratulate him on the fourth star. It’s not every Prussian who makes that. Generaloberst rank is only for the crème de la crème. My general had often told me it was easier for a murderer to get into heaven than for man born of woman to become a Prussian general.
    ‘I had to ask twice before the “Boar” seemed to realize what I was asking for. He pushed his chin down into his collar and blew through his nose like a rhinoceros getting ready to attacks.
    ‘“Do you think me to be an idiot?” he screamed, enraged.
    ‘I did, but I thought it might lengthen my life a bit if I kept that to myself. He knew what he was doing all right, that bastard. If he’d let me wait to say goodbye to my general and our monocle, it’d never’ve come to anything. It’d’ve been the same as the time I laughed at the generals shooting across the ice on their backsides 11 . My general has tried to get me back