Blitzfreeze (16 page)

None of us is quite ready to shoot the locks off.
Tepluschka
should be treated with care.

There have been
tepluschka
in Russia for as long as there have been railways. They were, in fact, built for military purposes originally. They are large, solidly constructed, goods wagons, built of Siberian wood. In the middle of the floor there is a small iron stove with a pipe going up through the roof. Next to the stove is a hole in the floor, a WC without the W. Practical and simple like everything else in Russia. The wagons are reckoned to take 30 soldiers or 12 horses or 70 prisoners destined for Kolyma, Novosibirst, Chila or elsewhere; terminals for people not in agreement with the big fellows in the Kremlin. When soldiers were being carried backwards and forwards across the great, wonderfully beautiful but cruel reaches of Russia the
tepluschka
would smell of hay and straw. When prisoners were being carried the
tepluschka
stank of excrement. The pipe from the floor toilet soon froze solid and the fish soup which was the prisoners staple diet gave them diarrhoea. They died like flies. They were kicked, beaten, jabbed with bayonets, by everyone who wanted to demonstrate that
he
of all people was the last to sympathize with these lunatics. That’s how it’s always been in Russia and that’s how it’ll always be.

Tepluschka
carried the soldiers, and the prisoners, of the Czars all over the Empire. What the Czar ordered was right, until one dark October day in 1917. Now it was the free men of yesterday who had to take their turn in the
tepluschka
. The Czarist eagle was replaced by the Red Star. All the
tepluschka
had one thing in common: Those inside them were destined to die for the Fatherland; either on the field of battle or in the lead mines.

Porta smashes the butt of his weapon down on the lock. With lifting-bars we prize away at the sliding doors.

‘I’ll eat my tin ’at if there ain’t frozen meat in there,’ shouts Tiny, licking his frost-cracked lips hungrily.

We’ve had nothing to eat for five days. The Russians blow their storehouses up as they retreat. It’s an old Russian tactic. Withdraw fighting and burn everything behind you.

Slowly the doors give way. We jump back in alarm as a frozen corpse rolls out.

‘It
was
frozen meat,’ mumbles Tiny disappointedly. ‘Pity we ain’t bleedin’ cannibals.’

Apathetically we squat in the snow and share out the remainder of the iron rations. In the woods a machine-gun barks wickedly. It’s one of the new kind that sounds like a racing car-engine. Barcelona has quite lost his spirits at the disappointment with the
tepluschka
. He is crying silently. Tears are dangerous. If they turn to ice it can mean blindness. In the beginning ice and snowblind casualties were sent back to the advance medical stations, but now the orderlies don’t even bother examining them. A man’s finished if his friends don’t take him in tow. Wherever you look your eye meets an endless field of white and you walk in circles as if dead drunk. A man without friends is pushed from the column and forgotten as quickly as the dead lying in the snow-drifts.

If he has any energy left he staggers on until he ends in a drift with the others. They say that 100,000 German soldiers lie frozen along the road to Moscow. The Führer’s orders are that German casualties are not to be counted. Only cowards
die. A German soldier will not allow himself to die. That one causes quite a lot of merriment.

The Professor, who keeps a diary, can’t resist keeping count. We warn him. If the NSFO hears of it it will cost him his head, and informers are everywhere; people who are
forced
to inform. Nobody is safe from them. Particularly dangerous are the ones who have family members in the concentration camps. Hostages have been taken and used since 1933. When the Professor came to No. 5 Company he believed every word the National Socialists had told him. Now, like many others, he is cured. He believes only what he sees.

‘With a
tepluschka
like these, a man could go anywhere, if only he had a red star on his cap,’ groans the Old Man, dropping tiredly to the snow. He tries to get his ancient silver-lidded pipe alight.

‘We’d fill up the wagon with beautiful straw and set a bubbling pot of Kascha over on the stove.’ He closes his frost-rimmed eyes dreamily. ‘Scalding hot Kascha! The Russians look after their slaves better. Have you ever met a moujik who didn’t have
something
in his duffle?’ With an angry movement the Old Man turns
his
inside out showing the white lining. ‘And what’ve the Prussian heroes got? Five hundred pages of propaganda piss with golden promises of how good we’re going to have it when we’ve won the war – and fuck-all else!’ He manages to get his pipe going finally, blows out smoke with satisfaction, takes it out of his mouth and points the stem at us.

‘Know what
I
think, kiddies?’ Gröfass
²
has lost his war and we can be glad of it!’

‘Trea . . .,’ is all Julius Heide has time to get out before Timy knocks him unconscious with a plank. When the Old Man speaks everybody else keeps his mouth shut, because the Old Man knows what he is talking about. No. 2 Section suddenly realizes that Adolf Hitler has lost his war seventy
miles from Moscow. We should have realized it long ago, but the countless ranting speeches have blinded us and the endless columns of prisoners filling the roads have made us believe in the victory. What do a couple of million men mean to Joe Stalin? A mere two or three armies. No more than a division means to us. For every Russian we kill there are ten waiting to take his place.

‘The German Army is running itself into the ground,’ continues the Old Man. ‘Here
we
are. Panzer soldiers with a long and expensive training behind us running around as footsloggers. Our neighbour is wiser. He knows what a Panzer soldier is worth. As soon as a crew steps out of a wreck there’s a new T-34 waiting for them and they’ve learnt something more about what
not
to do. Kiddies, kiddies! If we’re going to get out of Russia with whole skins we’ve got to learn a lot from Ivan.’

‘Doubter of the Victory, you’re insulting the Führer,’ screams Heide who has recovered from his meeting with Tiny’s plank.

Tiny lifts a heavy log and is about to hit him again.

‘Leave him be,’ hisses the Old Man irritatedly.

‘Why?’ asks Tiny open-mouthed. ‘If I snatch ’is bleedin’ balls off ’e won’t be able to make any more little Nazi bastards!’

‘No. 5 Company fall in!’ commands Oberleutnant Moser.

We get up crossly. We were just getting used to not marching.

‘Wake up, man,’ Stege rousts out Barcelona Blom who is lying in a snowdrift.

‘Leave me be,’ sobs Barcelona. ‘Go to Moscow your bloody selves if you want to. It ain’t my war!’

‘Come along,’ I say. ‘You can’t stay here!’

‘Somebody pinched yer sweeties?’ asks Tiny nudging him with his Mpi.

‘That frozen bastard is resigning from the campaign,’ says Stege. He kicks out at Barcelona, misses, loses his balance and rolls in the snow.

‘Frost in ’is speculator,’ reckons Tiny. ‘We’ll soon fix ’
im
up.’ He takes Barcelona by the front of his uniform smashes a fist into his frost-blue face and shoves him hard into a snowdrift. ‘March,
march
you weedy bastard! Austria’s Adolf the Great ’as ordered you to Moscow! Russia wants to come back to the Reich!’ Barcelona struggles to his feet with difficulty and slowly wipes the blood from his nose and mouth.

‘I’ll send you to Torgau, Obergefreiter Creutzfeldt,’ he snarls through his nose in a strange Feldwebel voice quite unlike his own.

‘I’m crazy mad to get shoved into a warm cell at Torgau,’ grins Tiny. ‘I’d kiss Iron Gustav
³
right on the bleedin’ mouth. I’d even kiss ’is bleedin’ arse, if it’d get me back to Torgau!’

‘You’ll get to
know
me,’ screams Barcelona in the same tightly screwed up voice.

‘Tain’t necessary,’ answers Tiny pleasantly. ‘I know you already, you squeezed-out ball-bag.’

Barcelona’s Mpi is up and ready to shoot. There is a queer light in his eyes, the sign of a sickness which hits soldiers who have been in combat for too long. Battle madness!

‘You dare to lay hands on a Feldwebel?’ he snarls hoarsely. ‘Goddam
you
!’ He looks around him quickly as if to ensure himself that there are no witnesses. His Mpi comes up. He mumbles to himself. Jumbled sentences which have no connection with what is happening. We back towards the trees. Any minute he may get the idea we’re Russians and let go at us.

‘So a fuckin’ Russian’ll lay his hands on a German Feldwebel!’ he shouts so loudly that every man in the company looks up at him and realizes what is happening.

In the twinkling of an eye the whole company is in amongst the trees. Nobody wants to get himself killed by a German Mpi.

Tiny is on his belly in the snow with his weapon at the
ready. It’d be easy for him to shoot Barcelona down, but it isn’t easy to bring yourself to shoot down a comrade even when he’s raving mad and thinks he’s surrounded by enemy soldiers.

‘Listen to me Feldwebel Blom, peace has been signed,’ says the Old Man. He walks towards Barcelona. ‘The war is over. Throw down your gun! See I’m not armed.’ He holds his open hands out to the side.

‘You’re trying something, you bloody Communist,’ screams Barcelona, ‘But I’m gonna blow the Goddam shit out of
you
!’

Tiny springs like a panther and pins him just as a hail of bullets rips up the snow at the Old Man’s feet.

Barcelona bawls like a wild bull.

‘Help me! The enemy’s got me!’ He takes Tiny for a Russian.

The company comes back to life. Everybody is shouting at the same time.

Some suggest shooting Barcelona immediately before he goes crazy again and thinks we’re Russians he has to put to sleep.

The MO arrives on the run and shoots a hypo into him and soon he is himself again. He goes round offering his hand and apologizing to everybody. It’s a characteristic of the sickness. They always do that as soon as the mad fit leaves them.

Not so long ago we had an Unteroffizier who went round talking about black angels with golden wings. He claimed he was Chief Mechanic in the garages of the Heavenly Mechanized Host. We kept a close watch on him, and were ready when his eyes started to glare, but we still weren’t quick enough. He managed to kill five men before we disarmed him.
He
went round afterwards shaking hands and saying he was sorry. He even shook the five bodies by the hand and said he wasn’t mad at them. The same evening it hit him again and he shot off over to the enemy to arrange an armistice. We never saw him again.

In front of us the heavens glow red, lit up by the almost continuous flashes of mighty explosions. An SS tank regiment thunders past us.

A few hours later we catch up with them, but now the tanks are smashed and the frozen twisted bodies of the SS-men hang from the hatches. In amongst the trees are shattered Russian tanks and the remains of an entire antitank battalion.

A dozen or so Russians have been neck-shot. Probably for trying to run for it when things got too hot. We’re through their things faster than professional pickpockets but there are no great pickings. There’s one thing common to both sides: We’re hungry.

In a hut Porta finds a pot containing a little frozen
balanda
. There are five dead civilians in the room. All shot in the neck, faces torn away by the bullet exiting.

‘Neck-shot Nagan,’ confirms Stege shortly. ‘Traitors, then!’

‘Cut that traitor rubbish
out
,’ says the Old Man irritably. ‘It’s the most overworked word in the language. Soon as the nationalists need a goat they smell out a traitor. Preferably a little one who can’t answer back.’ He points to the body of a young girl lying across a pile of wood. Her face has been torn away by the bullet and blood has run down over the logs. ‘Think she ever dreamt of being a traitor? Who could
she
betray?’

‘There’s always traitors in wartime,’ Tiny considers. ‘In school they told us everybody in Alsace was a pack o’ traitors as ought to be strung up. They fired on our soldiers when they marched through in 1914. My teacher who was ’oly, an’ a ‘oly terror with the cane, was there ’imself an’ ’ad a bullet put through ’is ’oly shoulder by one o’ them Alsace traitors.’

‘
Merde!
’
⁴
shrugs the Legionnaire. ‘The Alsatians were Frenchmen. It was their duty to shoot at German soldiers. But these border people are, like the proverbial louse, caught between two nails. In 1871 the people of Alsace suddenly
became Germans and had to take their orders from Berlin. In 1918 they became Frenchmen again and Paris gave the orders. In 1940 they went back to being Germans. You can bet your sweet life they’ll be Frenchmen again as soon as we’ve lost this war. You cannot wonder at it being difficult for them to know where their allegiance lies.’

‘No matter what they do the poor bastards are traitors!’ grins Tiny. ‘Thank Christ for livin’ in bleedin’ ’Amburg. No sweat bein’ there. If you can’t think for yourself they do it for you at Stadthausbrücke 8.’

‘What’s all this to do with
them
?’ asks Barcelona, gesturing towards the five bodies. ‘They’re not from Alsace. They’ve always been Russians.’