Court Martial by Sven Hassel Read Free Book Online Page B

machine-pistol.
    Shadowy forms jump at us from the darkness. Bayonets flash and machine-pistols sing of death. It takes only a few minutes. A few bodies in the snow mark the episode.
    The battle group marches on in a long column of route. The officers are irritable, shouting and screeching at the men to conceal their own fear.
    No. 2 Section pulls away from the group a little. If the neighbours come back we'll do better on our own, and we know he will be back. Siberian units like to make a lightning swoop and then to disappear like ghosts into the snow.
    'Think if it was going to be all over tomorrow,' says Gregor, his face taking on a strange expression, 'and you got your nut caved in today! Make you look, wouldn't it?'
    ' C'est vrai , mon ami , it can happen like that if your luck's out,' says the Legionnaire. 'I had a comrade in the Second Regiment of the Legion. He had been with us everywhere where we had seen hard and dirty fighting, without having received a scratch. On his chest they had hung every decoration it was possible for an NCO in the French Army to win. After eighteen years he decided to leave the service. His papers were clean and he had a job to go to in Customs and Excise. He had been up to say good-bye to the Colonel and had taken a glass with our O.C. Coming downstairs from handing in his arms to the armoury, he jumped happily from one landing to the next and came down with his foot in a bucket of soapy water. He went head first down the rest of the way, and smashed his head into a rifle-rack at the foot of the stairs. Dead on the spot. Both neck and back broken!'
    'You can choke on a chunk of meat while you're sitting having a shit,' says Porta, who often lunches in the latrines.
    'Think I'll keep a better eye out in the future,' says Tiny, thoughtfully. 'Think o' breakin' your neck in a bucket! Wicked to bleedin' think on ain't it?'
    We are tired and pessimistic on the march back. Only Porta is happy as a lark. He is selling part of the Russian supplies. But suddenly his growing business effort comes to a stop. The sledge disappears in the course of the night. The following day the reindeer comes back, but with an empty sledge. Porta cries with rage.
    For a moment he suspects Chief Mechanic Wolf, but puts that right out of his head. Wolf would never get anywhere near the front, not even when one took his psychotic greed into consideration.
    'Let me just get hold of that rotten crook,' he howls, punching the snow helplessly, 'and I'll wind these well-manicured fingers round the bastard's neck and squeeze an' squeeze till there's no more life left in the son of a whore. Oh, he's got to be some wicked old pervert. It can't be Chief Mechanic Wolf. He's a thieving, money-grabbing pig like the rest of the top lot, but he's not filthy enough for this. In some ways he's like me. If some wicked sod's got to be relieved of the burden his life must be to him then we help him off with it in a pleasant, civilised manner. I know Wolf like I know myself. No sneaky crookednesses, 'less they're agreed on in advance. No, he'd never pinch what I've had to labour for in the sweat of me brow. Well, at any rate, he'd leave half of it behind, if he did. If it can't be Wolf, though, then who can it be? It's got to be somebody who doesn't know me.' He looks up at the driving clouds and folds his hands. 'Dear God, help me get hold of that dirty viper, that cursed snake, so I can whip his arse to shreds with red-hot barbed-wire!'
    'The devil take this horrible weather,' groans Gregor stopping for a moment to scrape the snow from his face.
    'We'll never get through,' whines the Westphalian, resignedly. 'Let's sit down and wait for them, and get it over with!'
    'You're out of your mind,' shouts Porta, contemptuously. 'Don't shit yourself before it gets dark even!'
    'I can't go on,' weeps the HJ 15 leader, heartrendingly, throwing himself down in the snow.
    ''Itler's boy's capitulatin',' grins Tiny, pleased, swinging the SMG over his