Forced March Page 5

  ‘Afterwards?’ Matz queried.

  ‘Yes, afterwards of course,’ the boy agreed.

  Schulze shook his head. ‘Jesus H. Christ, Matzi,’ he exclaimed, ‘what’s the Army coming to! This wet-tail here wants to talk to a piece. Great crap on the Christmas Tree, you don’t pay ’em to talk, lad, you pay ’em to lie on their backs with their pearly gates open!’

  ‘Give him a chance, Schulze,’ Matz protested. ‘He’s a nice boy. He probably drinks his nigger sweat with his little pinkie stuck out like this.’

  ‘I’d like somebody I could live with a bit while we’re in France,’ the boy persisted.

  ‘What about my old woman?’ Matz volunteered with a scowl. ‘You can have her, if you like – and I’ll throw in twenty marks.’

  The boy smiled. ‘No, she’s got to be French.’

  ‘Hey,’ Schulze snapped. The big frizzy-haired brunette behind the bar swung round.

  ‘What you want?’ she called in her fluent, ungrammatical German.

  ‘You, Rosi-Rosi.’

  She put down the glass she was cleaning. ‘I come, Sergeant Schulze,’ she answered.

  ‘Yeah, you might,’ Matz chortled, ‘but Sergeant Schulze don’t!’

  ‘Currant-crapper!’ Schulze cursed, but only half-heartedly; his attention was directed on the brunette brothel-owner, who had gained her nickname Rosi-Rosi from the rouged nipples of her huge breasts which had a habit of popping out of her low-cut silk dress at odd moments. ‘Shit on the shingle,’ he breathed admiringly, ‘I’d like to get my choppers into them. And look at that ass on her, Matzi – like a ten dollar mare!’

  Rosi-Rosi stopped in front of their table, the tops of her breasts trembling like jellies. ‘Yes,’ she demanded, ‘what you got in mind, Sergeant?’

  ‘It’s not in my mind,’ Schulze leered up at her, ‘it’s in my britches.’

  ‘Then keep the filthy thing there,’ Rosi-Rosi said without rancour.

  ‘Come?’

  ‘If only he could!’ Matz exclaimed.

  Schulze ignored him. ‘It’s this lad here, Rosi-Rosi. He’s just had an unhappy love affair.’

  ‘Yes?’ Rosi-Rosi leaned forward curiously, giving Schulze a panoramic view of her magnificent breasts and their rouged nipples.

  ‘Sure. He broke his right hand!’ Schulze laughed out loud at his own humour.

  ‘Sale con!’ the Madame cursed in her own language, but there was a twinkle in her bright blue eyes all the same. Nor did she object when Schulze put his plastered paw experimentally on her dimpled plump knee.

  ‘But seriously, Rosi-Rosi, this lad here has decided to give up the old five against one and take up with girls – you know, boys in skirts? But she’s got to be different – she’s got to be someone he can talk to.’ He winked hugely. ‘He’s a bit funny that way.’

  ‘Germans,’ Rosi-Rosi sighed. She swung round, her breasts quivering. ‘Jo-Jo,’ she said to the cross-eyed bartender with a Galoise glued to his bottom lip. ‘He wants a cunt he can talk to.’

  Jo-Jo nodded. He dived into the heaving, sweating throng and emerged a moment later with a fat girl with a moon face who looked like two sacks of potatoes tied together by the belt that disappeared into the soft pillow of her massive stomach.

  ‘Jeanne,’ Rosi-Rosi announced and stroked the enormous girl’s hair which looked as if it had been cropped by a cross-eyed barber.

  ‘Christ,’ Schulze exclaimed, ‘Jeanne d’Arc!’

  But the boy seemed well enough satisfied. A few moments later he was deep in an excited conversation with the girl, replete with many hand gestures and ‘oui-ouis’.

  Schulze turned his attention to Rosi-Rosi. ‘You and me could make beautiful music together, cherie,’ he said, putting his big hand around her well-corsetted waist and drawing her massive bosom close to his face.

  ‘Watch it, Schulze,’ Matz said urgently, ‘she’ll poke yer right eye out with her tit if you’re not careful.’

  ‘You want jig-jig?’ Rosi-Rosi said, seemingly oblivious to Schulze’s big plastered paw already fumbling beneath her skirt.

  ‘Want it?’ Schulze exclaimed energetically. ‘If I had to get up now, Rosi-Rosi, there wouldn’t be a glass left on this table, and I’m not shitting you!’

  Rosi-Rosi laughed and her breasts quivered delightfully. Schulze grew bolder. He thrust his paw right up between her legs. Rosi-Rosi jumped. ‘It is very hard – and hot!’

  ‘It’s not the only thing either,’ Schulze said darkly. ‘Now if you and me could only –’

  But Schulze was not fated to enjoy Rosi-Rosi’s delectable charms that night. For suddenly the thick big felt blackout curtain which covered the cafe’s door was flung back to admit the massive frame of the Butcher and a group of his cronies, all flushed and obviously deep in their cups. He spotted Schulze and the woman at once and bawled drunkenly so that everyone could hear: ‘Get yer paws off’n him, Rosi-Rosi! That particular fart-cannon, masquerading as an NCO, is First Company’s pox-cop. You never know that yer can catch from even touching him.’ He opened his big arms in welcome. ‘Come on over to Pappa, where you’re nice and snug and safe.’

  Rosi-Rosi released herself from Schulze’s grip and pushed her way through the laughing throng towards the big Sergeant-Major, who clutched her round the waist and staggered off with her to the nearest table, which he cleared by the simple expedient of kicking the nearest soldier over the back of his chair.

  ‘Perverted banana-sucker!’ Schulze growled morosely. ‘If I only had his missus under me tonight, I’d give her a right old rattle for that, I would!’1

  ‘Rank hath its privileges,’ Matz said in sympathy. ‘And besides you’ve got to admit – there’s plenty of other talent around.’

  ‘Hm,’ Schulze grunted and sank into a sullen silence, glowering at the whores in their thin flowered dresses, and the sweating servicemen, their big knees jammed deep into the women’s crotches as they swept round in the tango.

  But Schulze wasn’t allowed to wallow for long in his despair or his unspoken plans for taking some terrible revenge on the Butcher.

  ‘Hey Schulze,’ Matz broke into his reverie, ‘there’s one of ours and look at that pig he’s dancing with. If anybody’s got a full house, she has.’

  Schulze looked at the First Company soldier tangoing with a whore who could have been his mother, her long tongue stuck in his ear with professional concupiscence, breathing hard with pretended passion. Her chin was covered with red sores.

  ‘Well, come on, you sewer stomach. Don’t sit there like a spare prick at a wedding. That wet-tail’s probably got stiff of the ear already the way she’s got her spotty tongue stuck in it.’

  The two of them shoved back their chairs and barged their way through the crowd, bowling protesting soldiers and whores to both sides.

  Schulze dropped his big hand on the whore’s thin shoulder. ‘Yer yellow card,’ he demanded.

  ‘Piss off!’ she said, still dancing.

  ‘Hey sergeant,’ protested the soldier, ‘don’t give me a hard time. I’m only here for the dancing. The way they marched us to the Goebbels yesterday, I haven’t even got the strength to get it up.’

  But Schulze was still in a bad mood. ‘The CO said I’ve got to check their shitty yellow cards to see that they don’t start spreading any little Frenchie souvenirs around once they take off their drawers. All right, cherie, let’s have the card.’

  ‘Piss off!’ the whore repeated over her shoulder. She pressed her belly deeper into the soldier’s. ‘Come on, shuffle ’em, soldier.’

  ‘I’m not telling you another time –’ Schulze began, just as a fat Obermaat of the Navy bumped into his back and nearly knocked him off his feet.

  He spun round angrily. ‘Are you blind, you perverted naval banana-sucker?’ he cried.

  ‘What yer standing in the middle of the shitty floor for then?’ snarled the Obermaat. ‘Stupid SS sod – got to be told to come out of the rain some of ’em!’

 
‘You’re looking for a knuckle-sandwich,’ Schulze said threateningly, bringing up his plastered fist.

  The Obermaat relinquished his hold on his partner. ‘You talking to me, soldier?’

  ‘Who do you think – the shitting Big Lion2 himself?’

  ‘Admiral Doenitz, to you, you nasty poisonous garden-dwarf.’

  Schulze flushed. ‘You’re gonna get a mouthful of knuckles if you’re not careful, you fat fart-cannon!’

  ‘Hey, what gives here?’ Rosi-Rosi burst through the circle around the little group. ‘We’re here for jig-jig, not for box-box.’

  ‘I told him,’ protested the First Company boy earnestly, ‘that I only want to dance with the whore. After yesterday’s march to Berneval –’

  Matz jabbed his elbow into the boy’s stomach and his words ended in a sudden gasp as he doubled up. At the same moment the fat Obermaat launched a tremendous punch at Schulze. The big NCO ducked just in time. Unable to stop, the Obermaat staggered into Rosi-Rosi. Caught by surprise, she shrieked with such force that her red-tipped breasts popped out of the confines of her silken dress.

  But even that tremendous display of naked flesh could not stop the fight which was spreading with spectacular speed. Bottles flew through the air. Glasses crunched underfoot. Here and there whores crawled under overturned tables. The three-man band faded away with one last gasp of a dying accordion.

  A beer mug hit Schulze on the back of his big head. He staggered forward dizzily. Through the bloody haze he caught a glimpse of the Butcher’s ugly face grinning at him. ‘Serves you shitting well right,’ the Sergeant-Major growled and shoved him back into the fighting, screaming, howling throng with the toe of his boot.

  ‘Arsehole!’ Schulze growled, then shaking his head like a bull brushing away a swarm of tormenting flies, went to work on the sailors all around.

  From outside there came the howl of a military police truck.

  ‘The chain dogs!’ Matz gasped, grabbing Schulze’s arm.

  ‘Let me go! I’ll slaughter the bastards, every single one of the currant crappers!’

  ‘Come on,’ Matz cried desperately. ‘You don’t want to go back to the Charité do you, you stupid horned-ox? This way – through the window of the piss corner.’

  Swiftly the two of them carved a path through the brawling mob and disappeared into the latrine, one second before the military police rushed in through the door, their rubber clubs at the ready.

  * * *

  Thirty minutes later the MPs had dragged the last struggling servicemen out and the Lieutenant in charge had signed the chit which Jo-Jo had handed him, to certify that the German Town Commandant would be responsible for all damage caused by the brawlers. Now Rosi-Rosi stood there in the empty cafe, surveying the wreckage and massaging her left breast, as if she were kneading bread. But her mind was not on the mess of broken furniture and smashed bottles. It was on the two boys’ strange words. Why had both of them complained about their feet? And what were the Wotan boche doing marching to Goebbels – the battery located at Berneval – when they had plenty of transport? It might mean something and then again it might mean nothing. Still one couldn’t be too careful. In the end she made up her mind. ‘Jo-Jo,’ she called.

  ‘Yes, Rosi-Rosi,’ her small lover replied, the cigarette still stuck to his thick wet bottom lip.

  ‘That Boche Sergeant-Major wants to stick his meat into me in thirty minutes at his quarters.’

  Jo-Jo nodded, bored. ‘So?’

  ‘I haven’t got time. You’ll have to go, Jo-Jo.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘To see the Englishman. I want you to tell him this …’

  Notes

  1 For further details of this episode, see SS Panzer Battalion.

  2 The title given by his submariners to the head of the Submarine Service, Admiral Doenitz. (Transl.)

  EIGHT

  ‘Cor ferk a duck,’ Colonel, the Laird of Abernockie and Dearth groaned in pure Cockney and tugged at his over-long kilt to keep the keen sea wind from blowing it up. ‘It’s parky about the goolies in these sodding things, Freddy!’

  Major the Hon Freddy Rory-Brick, known behind his back to the men of Number Seven Commando as red prick, took his gaze off the green, swaying mass of the Channel, ‘Well, you don’t weally need to wear one, sir.’ Languidly he screwed his monocle tighter in his eye and looked down at the tiny, red-haired figure of his CO in his tam o’shanter and drooping Abernockie kilt. ‘Do you, now?’

  ‘What do you mean, you long streak of Scots Guard piss! I’m the Laird, ain’t I. The lads expect it from me. Besides, Freddy, when yer a CO like me you have to keep up with the Joneses. If Lovat of the Fourth Commando can wear civvie bags and have his personal piper, and Jock Churchill of the Third can go into action with that great ruddy sword of his, I’ve got to have this bleeding tweed skirt.’ He swept his hands across the great white V of the Eureka landing craft speeding towards the chalk cliffs. ‘My gillies and gamekeepers like me to keep up the old traditions. They’re just as toffee-nosed as you are, Freddy.’

  ‘Toffee-nosed, sir!’ the Scots Guard Major exclaimed. ‘Weally, Colonel, you do use the most extwaordinary expwessions!’

  The Laird gave the other man one of the sly grins which had gained him the nickname of ‘Foxy Fergus’ in the days when he had been a barrow boy in the Tottenham Court Road before, to his complete surprise, a long forgotten great uncle, the Laird of Abernockie and Dearth, had died and he had been informed he owned ‘half o’ ruddy northern Scotland’. ‘All right, Freddy,’ he said. ‘Screw in that window-pane firmly, and finger out. Here they come! Start timing ’em!’

  As the first Eureka crunched into the shingle one hundred feet below, the big Major pressed down the catch of his stop-watch. The last rehearsal had begun.

  The ramp slapped the wet pebbles. Swiftly, expertly, the men of Number 7 Commando doubled to left and right, pelting up the beach towards the base of the cliffs. They dropped simultaneously, Tommy guns at the ready, forming a defensive screen round the two rocket launchers.

  ‘Stand back, Freddy!’ the Laird rapped.

  Not a moment too soon. There was a soft belch as the men below fired the grapnel launchers. Two swift puffs of white smoke. From their centres two great gleaming grapnels burst into the open, heading for the top of the cliff. Behind them sneaked a wildly quivering 100-foot length of stout rope. The first hook hit the chalk metallicly. A second later the other grapnel gripped fast.

  ‘Two minutes, sir,’ Freddy announced.

  ‘Sodding spot on!’ the Laird exclaimed, feeling his blood already beginning to run faster with a sense of rising excitement.

  Two burly sergeants grasped the ropes. Without a second’s hesitation they started to scramble upwards, while a Tommy-gunner sprayed the top of the cliff with blank ammunition. Another pair of commandos grasped the rope. Now more and more Eurekas were hitting the beach. The air seemed full of flying grapnels.

  ‘Bash on, lads!’ the Laird cried, his kilt flying up about his spindly shanks unnoticed now.

  The first crimson faces appeared above the edge of the cliff.

  ‘Five minutes!’ rapped Freddy.

  Eyes wild and staring, chests heaving with the effort, the commandos unslung their weapons. Crouched low, they dashed for the first line of apron wire. On the heights above Southsea’s Home Guard, the enemy opened fire with blank slugs.

  A corporal flung himself at the wire at full-tilt, arms out-stretched. He screamed shrilly as the wire bit into his body. But already the second man was running up his impaled body and dropping over the other side. More and more of the commandos followed him across the human bridge.

  ‘That’s it, lads!’ the Laird screamed. ‘Give ’em sodding hell! Mix it!’ His eyes gleamed excitedly; the weeks of remorseless training were paying off.

  ‘Eight minutes!’ Freddy cried.

  His comrades hauled the bloody human bridge across the wire. Now they broke up into little groups of four and
five, each under the command of an officer or NCO. Swiftly they doubled to their allotted positions facing the seven simulated mg pits which they knew from Intelligence surrounded the Battery.

  The Laird raised his Very pistol.

  ‘Ten minutes,’ Freddy announced, even his voice excited now. The Laird pressed the trigger. Once. Twice. The two bright red flares hushed into the English sky.

  It was the signal. In perfect unison, the commandos opened up with their automatics. The morning was full of the crazy chatter of blank. Training Mills bombs sailed through the air like black rain. In the same instant, one man dashed forward from each group, zig-zagging violently like rugby internationals going in for a try, firing from the hip as they did so.

  ‘Here come the Wangers!’ Freddy cried.

  The mg posts taken, the handful of US Rangers attached to the Commando doubled forward through the gap in the line, lugging their ten-foot-long Bangalore torpedoes with them.

  ‘Come on, Yanks. Move them all-American legs of yourn!’ the Laird screamed excitedly.

  Expertly the Americans slithered through the grass in one wild dive and thrust their Bangalores beneath the triple line of apron wire directly in front of the wooden mock-up of the Battery.

  For a moment nothing happened. Then there was a violet flash of cordite and wire flew everywhere.

  ‘Twelve minutes, sir!’

  The smoke was split by scarlet muzzle flashes. Gradually the firing began to die away. The rapid snap and crackle of small arms became the odd dry crack. Abruptly a green flare sailed out of the smoke and hung there in the sky, tinging everything below it an eerie, sickly hue.

  ‘The signal!’ the Laird exclaimed excitedly. ‘How long Freddy? Well, come on, old cock – how long?’

  Freddy pressed the stop. ‘Exactly sixteen minutes and wather more than thirty seconds!’

  The Laird of Abernockie and Dearth beamed up at the tall elegant guardsman. ‘Ain’t yer window pane steamed up with excitement, Freddy?’ he cried. ‘We did it – right on time!’