Guns At Cassino by Leo Kessler Read Free Book Online

fellers to fall into!'
    `After the war when they start making the war films in Berlin, they ought to show the front like it really is,' one of the South Tyroleans said in his almost unintelligible mountain dialect. 'Parts of soldiers lying all around, people getting shot while they're trying to take a shit - that kind of thing!'
    `Yeah,' another young blond trooper supported him, 'and they should throw a little crap into the theatre's air-conditioning when they show it, so the civilians in the audience can smell what it was like on a battlefield too. Shitty!'
    `Civvies don't want to know anything about us front line swine,' the ex-Torgau man said bitterly. 'They don't shitting well know and they don't shitting well care.'
    Schulze lowered his fork, laden with fried potatoes.
    `And I don't blame the poor bastards,' he said so softly that no one in the little group crouched around the heat glowing from the trench stove heard. 'It's better that no one knows what this kind of war is like.'
    As the fifth day came and still the Amis had not attacked, Schulze and the ex-Torgau man, who had been sentenced to death in 1942 for striking an officer and had accepted recruitment into the Wotan as an alternative, organized the Battle Group's first beetle race. There were plenty of the repulsive, black, hard-shelled insects around. All the competitors needed to do was to dig a hole at the bottom of their foxholes and an hour later it would be alive with black wriggling beetles. The racing system was simple. The beetles' backs were painted different colours and then they were placed in a large jar. The jar itself was deposited in the centre of a large circle, raised and the first beetle out of the ring was judged to be the winner.
    By the end of the first day of racing, Schulze had won over three hundred cigarettes, eight cans of 'Old Man', the standard issue meat ration, reputedly made of dead old men, and four pairs of sheer silk Italian black market stockings - 'and I'm going to draw them on myself, lads, every lovely centimetre of the wench's leg!' he had boasted, rolling his eyes lecherously.
    But when the ex-docker had discovered that he was running out of the black syrup with which he had managed to dip the feet of the other men's beetles and thus slow them down, he had decided to withdraw from 'this season's racing', as he told the others, 'Regretfully.' Still the beetle racing craze caught on and it was during the afternoon 'Derby', the major race of the stand-down period, on the sixth day, the new officer appeared in their midst.
    The race had just ended when a herd of black Italian pigs, chased up the rise by a puffing, red-faced Sergeant Metzger, the Battle Group's senior NCO, scuffled across the 'race course', crushing two of the 'favourites' under their hooves. There was an immediate outcry and Schulze cried:
    `Where the hell did those cruddy pigs come from!' Then he pretended to catch sight of the big ex-butcher with the stupid wooden face for the first time and added in mock apology:
    `Sorry, Sergeant Metzger, I didn't realize they were friends of yours!'
    Metzger's red face turned crimson with rage, but he contained himself. The Hamburger knew too much about him from the days when they had been NCOs together before Schulze had decided to desert.
    `Those cruddy pigs, Schulze, are Colonel Geier's - for your information. They cost this unit exactly one truckload of "Old Man" on the Macaroni black market. It had gone off, of course, but those stupid Italianos did not know that, did they?'
    He grinned suddenly, his little pig-like eyes full of peasant cunning.
    `You're the smart one, Sergeant Metzger,' Schulze complimented him, winking surreptitiously at the grinning Tyrolean boys, who knew just how much he hated the Group's senior NCO. 'What would we all do without you, Sergeant! When do we get our piece of Schnitzel, then?' he added, licking his lips in mock anticipation. 'I'm getting sick of that Old Man and giddi-up soup.'