The Legionnaire Read online

  Two of the six Russians in the back of the vehicle scrambled to get away when they saw the grenade dropping toward them. The others went up in a cloud of cordite and diesel flames when the grenade set off a pile of land mines stacked neatly in the rear of the half-track.

  The driver and the man next to him were blown through the windshield to hang half in and half out of the truck. From the waist down they were turned into flaming cinders. They were lucky. The explosion which threw them through the windshields had snapped their necks and spines before they had a chance to feel the flames dissolving their lower limbs. The two who escaped the explosion were stunned as they staggered to their feet, eyes trying to focus on the figure coming at them. One of the Russians tried to raise his hands to surrender but couldn't find the strength. It wouldn't have made any difference. Langer had no intention of leaving anyone around to call the wolves down on him later. Two quick three round bursts from his rifle and the Russians went south.

  At a lope, he left the half-track and its occupants behind. He knew he would have to acquire a new identity soon. He'd have to get to where he could find civilians and lose himself in the crowd.

  Finding the body of a civilian lying near the Autobahn, he made a quick change of clothing, keeping only his P-38 pistol. He put his identity papers on the body and set it square on the road where the next passing tank or truck would be sure to smash it. From that moment on, Carl Langer would be listed as dead if anyone ever bothered to go through the pockets of the body that carried his ID. Now he was just another refugee fleeing from the hordes of Soviet Asia. He knew there was little likelihood that he would be able to claim he was a non-combatant; he just didn't look the part. But from a distance, he should be able to blend in.

  He still kept to his plan of traveling by night when he could, avoiding when possible any other parties of refugees or soldiers that he saw. It took him nearly a week to cross the plains, living off potatoes he dug from the fields or, when he was lucky, finding a dead horse that wasn't so far gone it couldn't be eaten. Once a plane, a Soviet Yak, flew overhead to drop leaflets in German announcing the death of Hitler and the unconditional surrender of all German forces. It was a wasted effort; everyone knew the war was over anyway.

  As he neared the Allied lines, the numbers on the roads increased to tens of thousands. Women pushed baby carriages piled with the few scraps of their lives they had been able to salvage before the Russians found them. Children held on to their mothers' coats so as not to get lost. On the sides of the roads were the bodies of those whose strength had not been great enough to go any further. They had just lain down and quietly died.

  It was nearly impossible to avoid the congestion. He was nearly run over several times by fast mobile patrols of vans, racing back and forth over the Autobahn, playing what they liked to call German pool, where one gained points for how many he could run over at one time. They weren't interested in going through the drudgery of interrogating the thousands that were trying to flee from them. Up ahead were road blocks where specially trained troops would separate those they wanted to keep in their zone.

  Lagers saw planes overhead more frequently now. Fighters would fly low over the long lines of refugees, buzzing them but not firing. All the planes wore the markings of the British or American Air Forces. There were no German planes left to fly. Near Nuremberg, he took off cross country, not wanting to go through even the most cursory inspection by the Russian security forces. He knew that they would take one look at him and he would be packed off with the other escaping soldiers to the slave labor camps. The crippled and old were let go, but the ones who were capable of work would be forced to rebuild what had been destroyed in Russia, and the same time dismantle everything in Germany that could be taken apart and shipped back to Russia. He wondered why the Allies had held back so long and let the Russians take Berlin and so much other territory that they could have had under their control without having to fire a shot. For some reason they had given over to the Russians thousands of square miles of German territory. They had just stopped their advance and waited.

  He wished he still had his field jacket to keep him warm. The suit he was wearing was thin and did little to keep out the damp or chill of having to sleep in the open fields or under a pile of damp leaves. Cutting across country, he entered the woods. Near Regensburg, for the first time, he saw signs of the Allies. A lorry full of British Tommies roared past him on a dirt road to disappear in a cloud of dust. They never gave him a second look.

  Once past Regensburg, he found shelter for the night in a hayrick. He had just dropped off to sleep thinking that in a couple of more days he'd be in Switzerland when a pain in his ass brought him up to his feet. A bayonet had interrupted his rest. At first he thought his captors were English, but the Gallic accent that told him to get his hands up demonstrated clearly they were French. There were four soldiers carrying American weapons and wearing uniforms on which they wore the insignia of the Free French Army.

  "Deine Karte, jetzt! " They demanded his papers. Instead of answering them in German, he responded in good French, "I have none." The taste of the French words on his tongue was strange. It had been many years since he had spoken anything other than German or Russian. A hand torch lit up his face, blinding him for a moment as his captors looked him over. He stood stock still as practiced hands frisked him, taking the pistol from his waistband. The light went to his feet and the army boots still on them. The shoes of the civilian he had traded clothes with had been too small. A caporal chef pointed his M-1 carbine at his face and demanded to know, "What organization were you with?"

  Langer responded quickly: "Avec le Corps de Panzer."

  He caught a look at the face of his captor, a thin man with a large Gallic nose and hot eyes who ordered him, "Come with us and no tricks, or I'll put a bullet in the back of your head, Heini." Langer promised not to give them any trouble.

  He was shuffled along for several kilometers until they came to a paved road leading to Stuttgart. There he was handed over to a bored military policeman who checked him in and asked for his papers, which of course he didn't have on him. Then he was moved to a building being used as a temporary stockade. Inside were nearly fifty others. They all had the look of fighters about them. Some were still in uniform and there was a fair representation of the German armed forces mixed in with them, including several members of General Student's Fallschirmjagers (paratroopers) who kept to themselves as did several men who Langer thought were probably SS men, though they wore a mixture of Wehrmacht and civilian dress. Each stuck to his own kind.

  They were fed and in the morning loaded into trucks and taken the short distance west from Stuttgart and Germany to the borders of France, which suited him well enough. The farther he could get away from Germany, the better he liked it. He noticed that all the men with him in the British lorry were very fit looking. The French were taking with them only those who looked to be in good condition and who had been members of fighting units. There were no civilians.

  The ride was long and monotonous, passing through Nancy then heading south to Lyon. The men with him in the truck said little, now and then asking the guard if he had any cigarettes on him. A pack of Gauloises was tossed to them to be shared. Langer took one from the pack and passed it on.

  At Lyon, they were off-loaded and herded into a barbed wire enclosure after they had been strip-searched once more. The shakedown produced a small .25 caliber Mauser, a trench knife and, from the Fallschirmjagers, two of the gravity knives of the kind where the blade came straight out of the handle with a flick of the wrist.

  After all were checked out completely, including their bodily orifices, they were sent in to join several hundred others in the compound. All the POWs were like themselves, fighting men. They were hustled into rough shacks and tents, where their own former comrades in arms gave them a thorough delousing, then had their heads shaved to get rid of any of the little pests that might remain. Their clothes were fumigated.

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p; Only then were they brought in one at a time to stand before a member of the field gendarmerie. He questioned them about their activities in the German armed forces and compared their features to a stack of photographs. If they resembled any of the pictures, they were quickly hustled off through a rear door and not seen or heard from again. Only a very few were given this special treatment.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Langer knew they were looking for war criminals and escaping Nazi leaders, many of whom had put on the uniforms of common soldiers to try and lose themselves in the crowd much as he had.

  Once the separation of those suspected of major war crimes had been made, those remaining were formed into several groups of ten to twenty. On the tenth day after his capture, he and his group were brought to attention by a Polish sargent wearing the insignia of the 13th Demi Brigade Etrangeres on his American fatigue uniform. He left no doubt in anyone's mind where his sympathies lay. The Legion was all! Countries and nationalities were nothing; only the Legion mattered. He made his offer to the assembled men in plain clear words. Volunteer for the Legion or go to the POW camps where they might not be released for years. If they volunteered, they would be given new papers, then, after completing their enlistment, most important, a French passport and citizenship if they wished. In the Legion they would be safe from their pasts.

  Out of nearly three hundred men, two hundred and twenty three chose the POW camps. The rest were more than ready to give their oath of loyalty to France in exchange for the rights and gifts promised by the Polish sergent chef. Some of the volunteers would be weeded out later when they took their physicals, but the pre selection techniques shown by their field recruiters kept the number small. Many of them, when they were picked up and put into the bag, thought they were to be rearmed for the time when the Allies would move against the Russians. This rumor faded rapidly when they were told to get ready to leave. They would be taken by convoy to Marseilles and from there most would soon be off to the training camps in Algeria.

  It was amazing the changes that could take place in a few weeks. Hitler was dead. Germany had surrendered unconditionally. He had made it out of Berlin ready to give odds that he would be captured by the Ivans and sent to the slave labor camps. Now he was en route to North Africa and what? France wouldn't be doing all this for nothing. Where the Legion went, trouble lived.

  The crossing from Marseilles was made on choppy waters that soon had the tub's passengers heaving their guts before they were at sea three hours. Langer fared well enough. One minor benefit from his ancient affliction was he was never very prone to mal de mer and therefore received some pleasure in helping his fellow shipmates by eating their rations for them during the short sail from Europe to the coast of North Africa.

  It was one that he had made more times than he could recall. The worst part of it was the rancid odor of too many men, most stinking from their own vomit, packed in close confinement between the steel decks of the rusting freighter. They were permitted on deck twice a day to stretch their legs and get some fresh air, but always under the watchful eyes of guards who mounted their posts with the safeties off their weapons, ready to fire, even though the men they guarded would someday be their comrades. However, until they had proven themselves, they had to be watched, for they were the Boche, the hated Hun. Even the half dozen members of the guards that were of German origin felt themselves to be set apart from their countrymen below deck. They had passed the boundaries of national identity. They were Legionnaires.

  As before, Carl noticed that the men separated into different groups. He wondered why this was always true? He had seen it often enough. The cruel ones would gather to bully the others; and the intellectuals would find quiet corners to discuss obscure philosophies and the meaning of life. There were a few like him who preferred their own company. He knew these were the most dangerous of all. The ones who stayed alone were those with the greatest amount of hate in them or those who had something to hide. Men who had things about their past to conceal would not hesitate to kill to keep it that way.

  The vibrations of the old coal bucket eased as it slowed to a crawl upon entering the port of Oran. It was just before dawn. Carl knew that in a few hours he would be back on the soil of North Africa. Officially, the war had been over three months now and he was looking forward to seeing Oran and Algiers again. He knew he would not feel too strange being in North Africa. He had been there in much the same position before. The Legion was a marvelous device for one to use when there was a need to get lost and find a new identity. He also had an appreciation of the warm blood of the women. He recalled a dancer he had once known who came from Moulay and wondered if he went there, would he be able to find one her equal in the fine art of driving a man crazy.

  It looked like the Legion was still organized much as it had been. But why were the French so anxious to bring their former enemies into their ranks? It must have been that France had trouble brewing on the horizon and with her own manpower severely depleted by the war, had to rebuild her strength by using that of her former conquerers. Well, that had happened more than once in history too.

  A whistle from the upper deck, followed by the curses of a caporal chef, told them to get ready to disembark; they were at the docks of Oran. He already had his small sack of personal effects ready and shoved his way up to the front of the line, waiting to climb the damp rusting ladders to the deck. He had never liked being closed in.

  At the word from the caporal, they began to climb. As they made it on deck, their names were called out and checked off the master roster. They were then put in ranks and marched down the ramp to the docks, where they were immediately put on trucks. The flaps dropped and they were driven out of the city escorted by gendarmes in American jeeps with machine guns mounted on the hoods. Anyone who suddenly felt a desire to change his mind about joining the Legion would not live long enough to do anything about it.

  The sun was barely up as they were loaded in the trucks, and before the heat of the day rose, they were already well out into the fifty miles that lay between the sea ports and what would be their new home. Langer knew that for many it would be hell.

  Sidi bel Abbes was the training center for the Legion. Before they were there a month, many would stick rifles into their mouths and pull the triggers with their toes, or simply hang themselves by their belts. The Legion had only one way of training men and that was to discipline and push them to the point where they were more afraid of their sergents than they were of dying. The Legion did have a few things in common with the SS and that was one of them, but Langer also knew that those who did make it through the training cycle for the most part would, in spite of their curses and oaths otherwise, end up having a great pride and feeling of belonging. That was what made the Legion what it was, a union of men.

  He caught a glimpse behind him as the trucks entered the crenellated walls that surrounded the city. Farmers with carts hauled by donkeys shook their fists at the trucks as they were forced off the road to make way. They were on their way into the central market to sell their wares as had been done since the country had belonged to the Carthaginians. Algeria had not always been a kind host to the Legion and Langer knew there would be trouble here again. There had always been trouble here. Perhaps that was why the French were in such a hurry to build up their forces. They were afraid that the rebels would take advantage of their weakened condition to stage another uprising.

  Sidi Slimane hadn't changed very much over the years. The same flat roofs and whitewashed mud brick houses were there as were the hostile looks under hooded eyes that watched them pass. He knew that the story of Abdul el-Kabar, the first Arab leader to fight against the Legion with any success, was still being told in the coffee houses. And that had been in 1832. The Arabs, like the Chinese in many ways, did not have the European concept of time.

  Curses and whistles informed him they were to get their asses out of the trucks and into ranks. They had arrived. They were at the headquarters of the 1st Regime
nt des Etrangeres. The sun pierced his eyes and he recalled a few of the things he didn't like about Africa. Their names were called off again, then they were marched into a walled enclosure that served as their barracks area, the walls of which were guarded by armed men. The only way out was with a pass, which would be rarely seen, or to be on patrol or training exercises. During their first year in the Legion there would be damned few passes.

  They were fed a sparse meal then sent to draw their kit from the quartermaster, all the time being escorted under the watchful eyes of a sergent chef and a caporal, who swore at them in a mixture of French, German and Arabic. Langer smiled inwardly at several of the Arabic curses he hadn't heard before. The new recruits were separated into groups by language capability, the majority of which was German, though there were several Poles and others from eastern European countries. They were displaced persons without papers, or those for whom death awaited if they returned to the lands of their birth. Most of them had been either foreign volunteers in the Wehrmacht or from forced labor camps. Once more the Legion proved the ability of its peculiar form of democracy to work. Here, former enemies shared bread and swore to protect each other in battle. Not that there weren't a few difficulties from some die-hard members of the master race, but the Legion had its own method of dealing with them a field pack filled with sand on their backs while they marched the parade ground from dawn to dusk under the lashing tongue of a sergent or caporal. It was not unusual for a strong man to die from this minor form of drill punishment the Etrangeres considered suitable for minor disciplinary infractions.