Free Blitzfreeze by Sven Hassel Page A

his comrades.
    ‘If only blood wasn’t so sticky,’ grumbles Porta. ‘Can’t get it off. If God’d thought of tanks when He created the world He’d’ve made blood that wasn’t sticky, and could be washed off with plain water before inspection.’
    Heide enters into a complicated explanation, involving red and white blood corpuscles, of just why blood sticks to tanks.
    Slowly we fight our way through the village. Two companies of the 41st Infantry have been liquidated – neck-shot.
    Propaganda says it’s the NKVD, but there are a lot of Mpi 3 cases round the bodies. There’s a rumour that they’re would-be deserters shot down by the SD Special Commando. When we go to have a closer look at the bodies we get chased off. A mortar bomb drops into the middle of a group of SD-men. A torn-off arm, the hand still gripping a pistol, is thrown through the driver’s hatch into Porta’s lap. He picks it up and waves it admiringly.
    ‘Look at that, boys! That’s the way we fight in Adolf the Mighty’s army! Even a torn-off arm hangs on to its bloody weapon! Reminds me of when my biological father went off to war with the 67th Potsdam Infantry who were so inspired by the thought of dying for the Fatherland that they marched away decorated with roses in black and white organdie. 4 The third day in action they deserted to the enemy. They’d had enough of fighting for the Fatherland, but before they left they gave themselves time to beat up some Austrians from Vienna who were shouting traitorously:
Down with the Prussians!
    ‘“Hurra, hurra, long live the King!” cried the 67th as they ran across no-man’s-land.
    ‘The officers never dreamt what these fervent patriotic cries really meant. They thought these coolies were shouting for Wilhelm, King of Prussia. But the Berliners were thinking of Peter of Serbia. The 67th had a drunken Feldwebel called Mateka who had been in front of a court-martial in irons several times, and had it explained to him equally often that a bigger fool than himself had never existed. The Feldwebel’s trouble was that he was a Sudeten German, and as such was forced to change his allegiance the way other people change buses; without feeling any particular interest in either the new or the old one.’
    ‘Where’d ’e come from?’ asks Tiny who is sitting on a body eating a tomato.
    ‘He was from Prague,’ explains Porta. ‘His mother was a Pole from Lemberg who’d lived with a Jew horse-trader from Libau who bought Russian horses for the Scandinavian market.
    ‘These nags from the steppes were so old the Jew had to dye their muzzles before he loaded them. On the way he salted their food so much that they always arrived with nice round bellies from drinking all the time. The oldest of them he doctored with a shot of pepper up the arse to make ‘im seem frisky on arrival. If any of them had been cut out for sale by the Cossacks because they were lame in a leg, this was no problem for him either. The Jew lamed ’em on the
other
side so the purchaser wouldn’t notice it. If pepper-stick couldn’t liven ’em up he’d gave ’em a dose of schnapps laced with arsenic and believe you me
that
made ’em jump about as lively as crickets!’
    ‘Come
on!
What
about
Feldwebel Mateka?’ interrupted the Old Man impatiently.
    ‘Jesus! I nearly forgot
him!
He reported to a Persian Rittmeister of dragoons who handed him over to the care of Polizei-Watchtmeister Joseph Malán. Malán was the type of policeman who was continually beating his own record for idiocy.
    ‘After the first bottle of Slivovitz they were calling oneanother traitors and deserters and swore that each of them would be on the end of a good hempen rope before the evening meal. By the time they opened the third bottle they’d got to singing good patriotic songs and compiling crazy reports and despatching them to places far outside that particular police district. Then they went off arm-in-arm singing away down the