Reign of Hell (Cassell Military Paperbacks) Read online

  ‘Bastards,’ said the corporal. ‘They’ll get what’s coming to them when they reach the roadblock . . .’

  Another thirty minutes and we ourselves had reached it. The road was swarming with MPs, and a tight-lipped captain came towards us. Thanks to the intervention of the corporal, I was allowed to pass safely through this ante-chamber of death and go on my way unmolested. I could see that many others had not been so fortunate.

  I reached the far side and turned to wave goodbye to my erstwhile companion. He had taken up his position behind the barricade, and suddenly he was no longer the man with whom I had smoked and talked and played at football, he was a military machine primed to kill. I raised my hand in a farewell gesture. His eyes flickered very slightly in recognition, but he did not return my salute.

  I continued my journey alone, under skies that were grey and menacing.

  1 Halt! Who goes there?

  ‘We live all our lives in close proximity with death. Let us therefore turn that fact to our advantage. Let us learn how to make full use of it . . . If the future of the German race is to be assured, there must be room for expansion: Europe must be wiped clear of the inferior nations . . .’

  Himmler. Talk given to SS Generals at Weimar on

  12th December 1943.

  ‘It is a stain on the honour of the German Army that a single Pole should still be left alive in Warsaw!’ Himmler turned in cold fury upon Obergruppenführer Berger. ‘Why have you not carried out my orders? Did I not tell you to destroy them down to the last man, woman and child? So! Why has it not been done?’

  Berger wiped his perspiring forehead with a hand that trembled.

  ‘Reichsführer, we have done all that we can. The losses have been appalling. The uprising in Warsaw has already cost us the lives of two thousand German soldiers—’

  ‘Don’t talk to me of losses! I am not interested in your tales of woe. Results are the only things that matter. You think the Fatherland should sit down and weep for every soldier killed in battle? On the contrary! It should be proud that it has sons who are willing to lay down their lives for their country!’

  ‘Yes, indeed, Reichsführer, but—’

  ‘But me no buts!’ Himmler made a fist and brought it crashing down on to a table. ‘I gave you an order, and I expect that order to be carried out. Raze Warsaw to the ground! Wipe it off the face of the map! It has no place in the German Reich. It has forfeited all claim to such an honour! Do I make myself quite clear? Because if not,’ said Himmler, with a glacial smile, ‘it can always be arranged to have you transferred to the Russian front. There is no room in the SS for those who are scared to spill a little blood. Blood, my dear Berger, is the currency of war. And it is from rivers of blood that strong nations are born . . . Remember that, and act accordingly.’

  The Reichsführer swept from the room. Berger put away his handkerchief and crossed rapidly to the telephone.

  ‘Dirlewanger? This is Berger speaking. Why the devil haven’t you carried out my orders? I thought I instructed you to raze Warsaw to the ground? Why the devil is it still standing?’

  There was a guarded pause.

  ‘Well?’ snapped Berger.

  ‘My dear fellow,’ said Dirlewanger, ‘I assure you we have done the best we can. Perhaps you are not aware that we have suffered ninety per cent losses trying to exterminate this place?’

  ‘I am not interested in your losses! If you think the task is beyond your capabilities, just say so and I can easily arrange to have you transferred to the Russian front. Otherwise I give you forty-eight hours in which to complete the job. By the end of that time I shall expect the name of Warsaw to have disappeared once and for all from the face of the map . . .’

  At the Sign of the Welcoming Goat

  Warsaw. Gregor and Porta were reclining on the wreckage of a burnt-out JS1 tank. They were passing a bottle of vodka between them. Porta had his feet propped nonchalantly on the charred remains of a Russian major, and Gregor was using the upturned hand of a dead man as an elbow rest.

  ‘It’s a known fact,’ said Porta. ‘Churchill’s got a list of every Nazi in the country. He’s sworn they’re all going to be hanged.’

  ‘He can skin ’em alive and tear their guts out as far as I’m concerned,’ said Gregor, vindictively. ‘Serve ’em bloody well right.’ He took hold of the vodka bottle and squinted at it thoughtfully. ‘What I can’t understand,’ he said, ‘is why Adolf had to go and pick on England in the first place.’

  ‘He couldn’t stand Churchill,’ explained Porta. ‘It’s a known fact.’

  Gregor downed another quarter of a pint of neat vodka.

  ‘God will punish the English,’ he said, righteously. ‘That’s what the Kaiser said.’

  ‘Adolf thinks he is God,’ said Porta.

  He leaned back with his hands behind his head. He crossed his legs one over the other and one of the Major’s feet dropped off. Gregor stared dispassionately at it as it rolled into the gutter.

  ‘Know what?’ he said.

  ‘What?’ said Porta, with his eyes closed.

  ‘I reckon I’ll be bleeding glad when it’s all over,’ said Gregor.

  Porta shrugged.

  ‘Who won’t? Might get a bit of peace and quiet at last.’

  Gregor picked up a spent shell and flung it moodily at the blackened remains of the foot lying in the gutter.

  ‘Maybe now we’ve had the arse kicked out of us all the way round Europe and back, they won’t be quite so keen on picking quarrels no more.’

  ‘You wanna bet?’ said Porta, cynically. ‘It’s them up top who picks all the quarrels. It’s easy, ain’t it? They pick the quarrels and we do all the dirty work for ’em. They don’t hardly know there’s a war going on, they don’t.’

  Gregor selected another shell.

  ‘It’s all a bleeding con trick,’ he said.

  ‘You’re right it is,’ agreed Porta. ‘Whole of life’s a bleeding con trick, ain’t it?’

  Over on the Praga side of the town they were fighting a battle for the Kommandantur in the Place Adolf Hitler, where Armija Krajowa and his partisans had installed themselves. They had slaughtered all the personnel and were now themselves being subjected to a fierce barrage by German troops, who had been trying unsuccessfully to dislodge them for the past couple of hours. The Poles were returning the fire with captured German guns, and as we listened the battle began to increase in intensity. Shells started to fall uncomfortably close, and Porta sat up and swore as a flying splinter embedded itself in his cheek.

  ‘This place is getting to be unhealthy,’ he complained. He snatched the precious bottle of vodka from Gregor, swung himself off the wreckage of the tank and set off down the street. ‘Let’s go,’ he said.

  We had barely taken half a dozen steps across the square when a hail of machine-gun fire sent us diving for the nearest doorway. We crowded inside, trampling our way through the usual scattering of corpses.

  A couple of young girls went running past, their skirts flying high in the air. Tiny, risking his life, poked his head out of the doorway and whistled at them. This instantly provoked another stream of bullets from the far side of the square.

  ‘Damn you, get back!’ snapped the Old Man.

  We retired hastily behind our stockade of human sandbags.

  ‘For crying out loud,’ said Porta, as half the ceiling collapsed on top of us and covered everything in grey powder. He clutched anxiously at his vodka bottle. ‘We can’t stay here all day. There’s nothing to eat.’

  The Old Man glared at him.

  ‘We’ll stay here until I say we go!’

  There was a fresh burst of machine-gun fire. Porta’s vodka bottle was shattered. He gave a yell of rage, but it was drowned out by an agonised scream from a corporal of the Pioneer Corps who had attached himself to us earlier in the day. I turned in time to see a jet of thick purple blood spurting from his mouth, and then he fell forward on to the barricade of corpses.

  �
��This is no longer a joke,’ snarled Porta, hurling his broken bottle into the street.

  ‘It’s coming from that house over there,’ I said, pointing.

  Porta turned furiously on me.

  ‘If you can see where it’s coming from, why don’t you go and do something about it instead of standing there like a fart in a bleeding trance?’

  ‘I was only trying to be helpful,’ I said.

  ‘Helpful, my arse! You’re worse than bloody useless!’

  ‘So what do you want me to do?’ I said, frigidly. ‘Go across and ask them to stop?’

  Before Porta and I could make matters even worse by coldbloodedly attempting to murder each other, Tiny had suddenly snatched a couple of hand grenades from his pouch and gone bounding over the barricade and across the street. He dived for cover behind an overturned car, and as he did so a grenade was thrown from one of the windows of the house and landed directly in front of him. Tiny promptly scooped it up and sent it flying back again. There was the sound of an explosion, and the entire front of the house was torn away. Three men scrambled unhurt out of the rubble and attempted to make a run for it, but the Legionnaire eliminated all three with one burst from his sub-machine-gun.

  ‘Let’s get the hell out of here,’ said Gregor.

  We fled from the house and round the corner of the square into a narrow street which was filled with smoke and the stench of burning flesh. The men of the SD had blown up the central prison and all the prisoners. Warsaw must be wiped off the face of the map. Every man, every woman and every child must be exterminated . . .

  Porta was complaining about his belly. It was almost two hours since he had last eaten, and even the Old Man agreed that he could scarcely be expected to go any further without stopping off somewhere for a refill. There was only one place to stop off in Warsaw, and that was at the Sign of the Welcoming Goat. It was a bistro which had been discovered by Porta within an hour of his arrival in the town. It was small, filthy, noisy and overcrowded and it stank of sweat and unwashed feet, but Porta had come to some sort of an arrangement with Piotr, the vast red-bearded Ukranian to whom it belonged, and he made sure we had the best of whatever was going.

  We seated ourselves at an unscrubbed table which was covered with the mouldering remnants of yesterday’s meals. Piotr came to take our order.

  ‘I think we’ll try the duck today,’ said Porta.

  A military policeman at the next table swung his head round sharply, his eyes bright with suspicion. He need never have worried. The duck was only a crow, boiled until it tasted like an old dish cloth. It was served with cutlet of dog, and followed by a particularly foul-smelling fish preserve. Each delicacy was washed down with a strong red wine. This was part of Porta’s financial arrangement with Piotr. How he ever came to make such an arrangement, we never found out. We always maintained a discreet silence on the subject. It never did to inquire too closely into Porta’s commercial affairs, particularly when you yourself were reaping the benefit. On any reckoning, boiled crow and cutlet of dog were preferable to a slice of sewer rat or a leg of mouse.

  Not far away from us was an Army padre. He studied us a while, but seemed more interested in an officer who was slumped in a corner by the stove drinking beer. His eyes returned again and again to this man, and in the end he rose and walked across to him.

  ‘Excuse me, Captain—’ He pulled up a chair. ‘Do you mind if I join you?’

  The officer looked up from his beer glass. His head and one eye were swathed in layers of bloodstained bandages. Half his face had been badly burnt, the skin was red and puckered and the features were all distorted. His uniform was tattered and torn, covered in mud and blood and oil. The hand holding the beer glass was shaking. The padre sat down with a gentle pious smile.

  ‘I wonder,’ he said, ‘if you would let me help you?’

  ‘Help me?’ The Captain threw the last of his beer down his throat and called across to Sofja, behind the bar, for a refill. ‘How the devil can you help me?’ he demanded. ‘Unless, of course, you have a regiment to offer me?’

  ‘I did not mean that sort of help, my son—’

  ‘No?’ said the Captain. He twisted his lips into a parody of a smile. ‘A new face, then? How about a new face? I mislaid the old one somewhere. Rather careless of me. That’s why they won’t issue me with another one, you understand. A man is given only one face in his lifetime. It’s up to him to make sure he looks after it. Don’t you agree?’ He raised his beer mug. ‘Your health, Father. May your beauty never desert you.’

  The padre shook his head gravely.

  ‘Beauty is not external,’ he said. ‘The Lord does not look upon a man’s outward appearance. He does not judge a man by the quality of his flesh, but by the quality of his soul.’

  ‘Spare me the sick-making sentiment, for God’s sake!’ The Captain banged down his glass on the table. He wiped a hand across his mouth and rose somewhat unsteadily to his feet. ‘Go and prate elsewhere! You offend me with your pious gibble gabble. Go out there and get half your head blown away, and then come back and tell me what it feels like. I might be a bit more willing to listen to you.’

  He staggered out of the bar, and the door swung shut behind him. The padre remained silent a moment, then he, too, rose to his feet. He made a brief sign of blessing to everyone in the room.

  ‘God be with you,’ he murmured, and followed the Captain out into the street.

  ‘Daft old goat,’ said Porta.

  He reached across the table for the bottle of vodka, but before he could pick it up there was the sound of an explosion and all the lights went out. The door was blown off its hinges and was carried across the room by the blast. Tables and chairs were overturned, windows shattered and men thrown to the floor.

  We lay for a moment where we had fallen. Flakes of plaster rained down upon us from the ceiling, and the floorboards quaked beneath us. Slowly, the smoke and the dust began to clear. We crawled cautiously to our feet and looked about us at the damage. Piotr rose up ghost-like from behind the bar, his head and shoulders covered in plaster. Through one of the gaping windows we could see across the street to the Radio Building. Polish partisans had set up a mortar on the roof, and half a dozen German soldiers were engaged in a mountaineering expedition up the side of the building. They went hand over hand up a length of rope which had been attached to the railings on one of the balconies.

  While Piotr and the Old Man struggled to put the door back on its hinges, the rest of us began setting up the chairs and tables, trying to figure out the cost of broken glasses and bottles. Tiny stepped outside to have a closer look at the progress of the mountaineers and returned with the information that the rope had been cut and that there were half a dozen bodies lying on the pavement.

  ‘What about the padre?’ asked the Old Man. ‘He must have walked right slap into the middle of it.’

  Piotr clapped a hand dramatically to his forehead.

  ‘I should have warned him! Fifteen hundred hours, every day, regular as clockwork, it’s always the same, boom!’ He thumped a fist on to the nearest table, which promptly collapsed. ‘I should have warned him.’

  ‘Well, where is he?’ said the Old Man. He turned to Tiny. ‘Did you see him?’

  Tiny shrugged a shoulder.

  ‘I didn’t stop to look. There’s too much going on out there for my liking.’

  ‘That’s the end of it,’ said Piotr. ‘They’ve finished for the day. They won’t start up again. Not unless the Army comes along and starts interfering with them.’

  We clattered down the stairs in search of the padre and found what was left of his body lying in a pool of blood only a few yards away. I remembered the Captain, with his ruined face and his bloodstained bandages.

  ‘Your health, Father. May your beauty never desert you . . .’

  But the Lord does not judge a man by the quality of his flesh, but by the quality of his soul—

  ‘Just as well,’ I muttered, as I stared down
at the mangled remains.

  ‘Just as well what?’ demanded the Old Man, bending over the body and searching for the identity disc and personal papers.

  ‘Just as well,’ I said, ‘that the Lord’s not too fussy about appearances.’

  The Old Man frowned.

  ‘That’s not funny!’ he snapped.

  ‘It wasn’t meant to be,’ I said.

  A Kubel suddenly drew up with a loud screech of brakes. A major stepped out, followed by a little rat-faced corporal.

  ‘What is that?’ he said, pointing his cane at the remnants of the padre scattered about the road.

  The corporal approached cautiously.

  ‘It’s a body, sir.’ He bent down to make a closer inspection. ‘A chaplain, sir, I think.’

  The Major looked pained.

  ‘A chaplain?’ he said. ‘Dear God, is nothing sacred any more?’

  He strolled nonchalantly across the road and poked about with the tip of his cane. The head and trunk of the body rolled over to face him. There was a long pause. The Major raised his eyes, unseeing, in the direction of the Vistula. I saw his adam’s apple move. He cleared his throat and tucked his cane back under his arm.

  ‘Corporal,’ he said. ‘Stay behind and make sure this man receives a decent burial. We can’t leave a parson lying about in the middle of the road like this. It’s not seemly.’ He climbed back into the Kubel and seated himself behind the wheel. ‘I leave it in your hands, Corporal. See to it that my orders are carried out.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  The corporal saluted smartly and the Kubel shot off up the road. The minute it was out of sight he dropped his hand and sent a coarse, two-fingered gesture winging after it.

  ‘Decent burial, my flaming arse! He’ll get exactly the same as anyone else, no more and no less!’ He turned and spat into the gutter. ‘Two-faced old git! What’s a bleeding parson?’

  Tiny stepped forward and waved the man out of the way.

  ‘Off you go, mate,’ he said. ‘I’ll give him his decent burial. You can piss off out of it.’