"Stabswachtmeister Schmitt, have these men issued new uniforms and cleaned up. You will report of their activities since they left their unit at Nikopol. You will report back to me at fifteen hundred hours with the report and these men."
Schmitt clicked his heels together. "Zum Befehl, Herr Oberst." Turning his attention to Langer he barked out as if he were on a drill field, "Achtung, about face, quick march. Eins, zwei, drei, vier," He literally tried to goose-step Langer out of the door.
Once out into the open, leaving the colonel to his delusions of grandeur in his log and sandbag HQ, he halted Langer. "Okay, knock off the tin soldier shit. You're in a lot of trouble. That prissy bastard in there will have you before a firing squad in the morning unless you have some help. Do you have anything to trade for the services I might be able to render you in the name of German soldierity? Gold, silver, jewels, opium. I'm not hard to get along with; almost anything will do that I can resell."
Teacher and the others joined Langer, who had had just about enough. He looked the sergeant major over carefully. The lack of combat badges or ribbons was obvious. This was one of those bullies who had spent the last four years in some training regiment, impressing recruits and being careful to make themselves indispensable to their commanders in order to avoid going to the front. But time had caught up with this one and he was on the front, now. It was high time he learned a reality.
Gus moved up closer to Schmitt; Yuri began to give his butcher knife a finer edge, stropping it on his boot tops, while squinting and looking up at Schmitt, grinning. His gold tooth gleamed in a dark, wizened face. Teacher merely smiled and began fondling his submachine gun. Schmitt hesitated. What was this? Why weren't they afraid of him? He was a sergeant major and outranked them. Everyone had always been afraid of him back in Germany.
Langer moved up closer to Schmitt, his face only inches away from the other's. "Listen to me. I have seen your type for years and you're a gutless piece of suet. You can get away with that bullshit back in Germany, but here on the front it's a little bit different. You mess with us and I'll twist your head off your shoulders. Do you know what it means to die? For your sake I hope so. Now get away from me and go scare some children."
The first real fear he had ever known struck him. Schmitt took a step back in shock. He had been on the front only two weeks, and there had not even been a shot fired other than an occasional sniper and that was on the lines, a place he carefully avoided. He cursed himself. His mistake was making himself too indispensable to Col. von Mancken. When the colonel received orders to the front he just had to take his faithful sergeant major with him. The pompous bastard! Blustering, he tried to fake it. "You watch your step. I'm the boss here and you heard what the colonel said. The showers are over behind supply. Get cleaned up and write out your report. I'll see you later."
Langer snorted and turned his back on him. Yuri rose from his squatting position and passed in front of Schmitt. Smiling and bobbing his head, he took out a small bulging cloth bag. He grinned as he pressed it into Schmitt's hands. "For Germanski, presento." Gold tooth gleaming he followed after the others.
Schmitt, who was used to his lessers presenting him with tokens of their esteem, mumbled to himself that the savage had more sense and manners than the others. At least he recognized his betters. "Wonder what it is?" Pulling the drawstring open, he shook the contents out into his hand and froze; his gut squirmed and he let the contents fall to lie on the snow. Ears! Human ears! A dozen or more, all from the right side. Sweat broke out on his forehead in spite of the cold. He backed away and almost ran back into the security of headquarters.
The showers were a canvas field tent with empty petrol drums set up outside filled with water. It had a stovepipe affair running from an old wood-burning stove, up through the center of the drums to heat the water. Crude, but right now it was the most luxurious innovation they had ever experienced. All except Yuri, who distrusted water in any form other than drinking, but he gave in to the demands of the others that shed his lice-infested rags and joined in.
Gus, removing his boots, let out a yelp of pure joy. "Here, fellows, look what I got." He had to peel his socks off and there exposed to daylight for the first time in days were two blackened toes on his left foot, the two small ones, black and dead; frostbite. "I got my bleeding ticket out of here, ain't they beautiful?"
Gus refused to go to the dispensary until after he washed. "There's no rush, they ain't goin' no place, for a while, that is." A supply clerk came over with clean uniforms for them after they had been de-loused. The only one who wasn't infested was Langer. For some reason the little bastards didn't like the taste of him, but the others had to submit to a complete spraying and laughed as their clothes were tossed into the wood stove. They enjoyed each hissing pop that said another Russian louse was cremated. Of those they had inspected only a few had the little gray cross on them that said they were the carriers of typhus. In the early days of the war you could get a couple of marks apiece for each of them you turned in to the medics for shipment back to Germany, where they were analyzed and tested. By now there were probably more of them in the Fatherland than in Russia.
Gus joyfully presented himself to regimental hospital. An hour later the doctor took a pair of pliers and simply pulled the two blackened toes off without the benefit of any anesthetic. Taking a pair of surgical scissors he trimmed up the edges, rinsed off the foot with a little raw alcohol, sprinkled it with sulfa powder and cursed him all the time for being a slackard and a defeatist. That there was no good reason for anyone to get frostbite if they only took proper care of themselves. It was treason not to take proper maintenance of an item that was the property of the state, even a piece of obviously defective equipment as the traitorous Stabsgefreiter clearly was. Gus asked the doctor how he'd like to have his ass stuck in a snow bank for three weeks and then see how much would be left after the Stabsgefreiter, by the grace of our Holy German or Austrian Führer, took a pair of his pliers to it.
After Gus proceeded to describe what he could do with his pliers to other portions of the doctor's anatomy, he was hurriedly moved out to a hospital ward. The doctor made a note to have the man's mental condition tested. He was most certainly, at the least, a nonsocial and emotionally disturbed person who shouldn't be permitted to run around loose without professional supervision. At fifteen hundred hours Langer, Teacher and Yuri presented themselves to the sergeant major at regimental HQ. The clean uniforms and showers gave them a semblance of military appearance. The Knight's Cross around Langer's neck did more than anything else to give Schmitt a case of the jitters. You didn't get one of those for kissing babies. Taking their paybooks and papers, Schmitt knocked on the colonel's door and received permission to enter.
Returning, he told them to stand easy and wait. It would be a while; the colonel was busy. Ten minutes later a Blitzmädel left the colonel's office, looking pleased with herself. She took a look at the Knight's Cross holder and the man's rugged face and smiled, wet her lips, patted back her light brown hair done in an efficient bun, and exited after one more smile.