Court Martial by Sven Hassel Read Free Book Online Page A

for ducks to fill up on.'
    'Maybe the travel agency they bought their tickets from has gone broke,' suggests Porta, staring after the ducks which have disappeared across the Lange Lake.
    'Wild duck is wonderful,' says the Old Man, dreamily 'If only we could have potted a few of 'em down!'
    'I've never tried it,' says Heide. 'Is it as good as ordinary duck?'
    'Better,' Porta assures him. 'Kings and dictators serve it at great banquets to which they invite the highest in the land. I have the English king's recipe for wild duck. I got it from a cook in the English Life Guards whom I met in France.'
    Was he an Englishman you had taken prisoner?' asks Heide, interestedly.
    'No, he was a chap I said good-bye to on the beach at Dunkirk, when Churchill's army went off back to London to patch up their uniforms.'
    'You allowed a prisoner to escape?' asks Heide, in amazement.
    'Hell no. That's what I'm trying to tell you. He just went off home!'
    'They're coming back,' screams Tiny, excitedly, pointing out over the lake.
    'Devil take me if they're not,' shouts Porta, throwing a stone up in the air in the vain hope of hitting a duck.
    The Old Man catches up a carbine and shoots into the flock. Tiny and Porta stand watching like a pair of bird-dogs.
    The rest of us pick up our carbines and Mpi's. Shots hail up at the quacking flock, but not a single bird is hit. They disappear behind the hills.
    'Oh shit !' says Porta, in disappointment, dropping down on the snow.
    'It'd have been the first sensible shot fired in the whole bloody war!'
    'If a bloke'd been a fighter pilot it'd've been easy to fly under 'em an' pick'em up on the wing,' says Tiny, swallowing involuntarily.
    Long after the wild ducks have flown past we are still talking about them.
    'They're best with apple sauce and a special kind of gravy,' says Porta. 'And, most important thing of all, the skin must be crisp. It should crackle slightly between your teeth.'
    'They don't understand that in Spain,' says Barcelona. 'They stuff them with oranges and boil them till its like chewing on a limp prick.'
    'People who do that ought to be shot,' decides Porta. 'It's blasphemy to ruin a duck like that.'
    We are on the march again, and pass through a narrow cleft still talking about ducks. High walls of snow and ice enclose us on both sides. An acrid smell of death fills our nostrils.
    Wonderingly we look around us for the bodies. Much later we realise it is we who are carrying that horrible, sickly-sweet stench about with us.
    'We'll stink of corpses the rest of our lives,' says the Old Man, quietly.
    He's right. After four years at the front the death smell has penetrated us so deeply that it will be hard for any of us ever to get rid of it.
    On the march we talk of peace. Some of us have been in uniform since '36 and simply cannot realise what it will be like to wear civilian clothing again, and to be able to go to the loo without clicking our heels together and asking permission first. We don't really believe in peace any more. Porta thinks it will be a hundred years' war. He has worked out a complicated equation which he says demonstrates how it can be done. Every year some youngsters become old enough to be called up and get themselves slaughtered on the altar of the Fatherland. The subject is so interesting that we call a halt to discuss it in more detail.
    Officers of the battle group, which we have joined up with again, strangers to us, begin to shout at us and chase us forward. They are scared and nervous, unused to being inside enemy territory the way we are. A special kind of man is needed to carry out this kind of task.
    A good guerrilla fighter should not, first and foremost, be a sporting fool, nor a product of the usual kind of military academy. He should have a good bit of the villain in him and have the mentality of a sixteen-year-old boy, so that he has no real understanding of the fact that he himself is just as easy to kill as the other fellows he mows down with his