Assignment Gestapo by Sven Hassel Read Free Book Online Page A

Just choked and gurgled and made odd noises. They do that, when you really put the pressure on. They—’
    ‘Jesus Christ!’ said Heide. That’s all you seem to live for . . . sex and strangulation!’
    ‘Each to his own,’ said Tiny, pompously. ‘We’re here to kill, so I do it the way I like best. Let’s face it,’ he said, in eminently reasonable tones that forestalled all attempts at argument, ‘everyone’s got their favourite way of doing it.’
    It was true, I suppose. We each had our own preferred methods. The Legionnaire was a devotee of the knife, while Porta was a crack shot with a rifle. Heide liked playing about with flame throwers, while for myself I was accounted pretty hot stuff with a hand grenade. Tiny just happened to enjoy strangling people . . .
    1 Siberian knives with a double-edged blade
    2 The Führer thanks you
    3 Heeresdienstvorschrift – Army Service Regulations
    4 Understand
    5 Mr.
    6 Comrade

The crows objected most strongly when we came along and disturbed their feast. They had settled in a great black cloud on the corpses, and as Porta fired into their midst they rose up in annoyance, circled round our heads in a brief moment of panic and then flew off to the nearest trees, where they set up a harsh chatter of protest. Only one remained behind: it was entangled in a mess of intestines and was unable to free itself. Heide promptly shot it. We dragged the bodies inside and piled them up in heaps. Lt. Ohlsen came to look at our handiwork and began swearing at us. He insisted that we laid them out decently, in neat lines, one next to another .
    ‘Some people,’ observed Heide to Barcelona, ‘are a bit funny about these things .’
    Grumbling, we nevertheless rearranged the bodies as the Lieutenant wished. But as for the officers who had been murdered in their beds, sprawled over the side in their silk pyjamas, with their throats cut, we left them to rot where they were. Dark patches of blood stained the floor, and the flies were already thick on the ground. In one room a radio was still turned on. A persuasive voice was crooning :
‘Liebling, sollen wir traurig oder glücklich sein?’
(Darling, shall we be sad or gay?)
    We sprinkled petrol over the entire garrison and retreated. Once outside at a safe distance, Barcelona and I tossed half a dozen grenades through the windows .
    From the other side of the hills, we heard the drunken singing of jubilant Russian troops :
‘Jesli sawtra wouna,
jesli sawtra pochod,
jesli wrasrhaja syla nahrima,
jak odyn tscholowek’
( When, tomorrow, the war arrives . . .)
    The Old Man looked in their direction, away across the hills in the misty distance; and then back at the burning garrison with its murdered men .
    ‘ Well, there it is,’ he said. ‘That’s their war, that they seem so happy about . . .’

CHAPTER TWO
    Special Mission
    W E caught up with the rest of the Company in a pine wood. Lt. Ohlsen was not, on the whole, very pleasant about our prolonged absence, and it was some considerable time before he was able to express himself in language that did not bring a blush of modest shame to our cheeks.
    Over the next few days we had several skirmishes with parties of marauding Russians, and lost perhaps a dozen men in all. By now we were becoming fairly expert in the art of guerilla warfare.
    We had with us six prisoners, a lieutenant and five infantrymen. The lieutenant spoke fluent German, and he marched with Lt. Ohlsen at the head of the company, all differences temporarily forgotten.
    To compensate ourselves for having to drag prisoners along with us, we made two of the infantrymen carry the stewpot containing our fermented alcohol.
    It was early in the morning – with the sun shining, by way of a change – that we spotted the chalet, a mountain hut with a balcony running round it, two German infantry men standing guard at the entrance. As we approached it, two officers came out and stood waiting for us. One of them, the more