Assignment Gestapo by Sven Hassel

Author:Sven Hassel [HASSEL, SVEN]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Orion Publishing Group
Published: 2010-07-21T16:00:00+00:00

‘Let me see,’ said the Legionnaire, ‘I was nineteen when I saw my first execution. It was at Casablanca, I remember. Some idiot who’d been twelve years in the army and suddenly gone berserk. Taken it into his head to go galloping off God knows where . . . Thought he could get away with desertion, poor fool . . . Of course, I’ve seen hundreds of others since then, but somehow you never manage to forget the first one.’

‘I was only eighteen,’ said Barcelona. ‘It was in Madrid, when I was with the Thälman Battalion.11 We had to shoot a kid of about my own age behind the abattoirs. He hadn’t done anything, poor sod. He just had a rich father, that was all. So we shot him . . . and Christ, what a hash we made of it! No training, no experience . . . we blew half his head away!’

Heide shrugged a contemptuous shoulder.

‘Personally, I never trouble my head over executions. Can’t see the difference between shooting a man who’s standing up against a brick wall and shooting a man who’s hiding in the trenches. It all comes to the same thing. It’s all war.’

‘You remember that time we had to shoot that telephonist bird?’ demanded Tiny, with his usual eagerness for recalling gruesome spectacles. ‘That was a right farce, that was! It was Sver’s fault. Him and Stege. Wanted to act the gentleman and save her unnecessary suffering . . . and while they was buggering about she took to her heels and scarpered.’

Porta gave a loud crack of laughter.

‘I remember! We had to chase her back into the building and all up and down the bleeding corridors—’

‘Yeah, and old Gustav bleating along behind us telling us not to shoot or we’d bugger up his books—

‘That’s right, she had to be done away with proper, according to the regulations, else her papers wouldn’t be in order.’

‘She was a murderer’ said Heide, coldly. ‘I saw her file in Hauptfeldwebel Dorn’s office. She killed her best friend.’

‘Yeah, but only because her best friend happened to have pinched her fiancé,’ I objected.

Heide looked at me.

‘Fiancé, my arse! She just slept around with him and took presents off of him . . . he was a rich bloke, remember?’

‘Next week we’re on duty at Fuhlsbüttel,’ said Steiner, suddenly. ‘I’ve arranged to be sick that week, I’ve already seen the Feldwebel down at the infirmary. It’s costing me two cartons of fags, but I reckon it’s worth it. I know for a fact they’ve got at least five executions laid on for that week.’

‘Don’t worry me none,’ declared Tiny. ‘So long as they give us a bit of extra cash for being there. I don’t care how many flaming executions they got going. Way I see it is, if we didn’t do it there’d be a hundred others who would.’

‘Precisely’ said Heide. ‘And in any case, we’re supposed to be soldiers. We just do what we’re told to do . .

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