Blitzfreeze (41 page)

The tank stops with a jerk, as if it had run into an invisible wall. A hurricane of fire lifts towards the sky and a terrific explosion throws twisted fragments of metal far out into the forest. A black mushroom of smoke blooms above the flaming column. Russian tank infantry run heavily forward through the snow in an attempt to get up to us.

Tiny’s SMG chatters. He knocks his bowler further down over his eyes.

The Russians go down like nine-pins. The wounded try to crawl away, but are killed by our concentrated fire.

The SMG wheezes and smokes. Its barrel is red-hot. Tiny kicks it viciously when it has a stoppage.

‘German propaganda shit,’ he curses, raging. ‘Gimme a Russian Maxim!
It’ll
fire as long as you can keep the cooler filled with piss!’

Oberleutnant Moser gets up and swings his arms over his head in the signal to move on him.

‘Let’s get out of here before they send a squadron after us!’ We circle the village to the north cutting the throats of the advanced sentries before they can give the alarm. Desperately we hasten on through underbrush and thorns. Fear lends us wings.

We have five more wounded to look after. One of them soon dies. His insides literally fall out. We leave him sitting up against a tree, his glazed eyes looking towards the west.

‘Adolf ought to see him!’ says Porta.

With bursting lungs we push on into the forest. It’s safer than the open fields. The cold fog closes behind us like a wet shroud. Russian orders sound and we hear the heavy Otto’s speeded violently up.

Terror drives us on. Every muscle in our bodies burns as if it were on fire.

A couple of hours later Oberleutnant Moser gives the order for fifteen minutes rest.

Panting and worn-out we drop where we stand. Despite
the inhuman cold our tired faces drip with sweat and our clothes stick to our bodies.

‘Bloody
lice
,’ curses Porta, wriggling his body despairingly inside his clothes. ‘Soon as there’s the least bit of warmth those prickless partisans chase around like mad things. It’s as if you were in the middle of a mini-size world war.’

‘Maybe you are,’ says Tiny, holding up two overweight specimens for examination. ‘This feller ’ere with the red cross on ’is back is a bleedin’ Commie louse. This grey bastard’s a Nazi. They ain’t so crazy. If they get ’ungry they stop an’ ’ave a go at the bleedin’ battlefield till they’re full up. What do we do. We can’t eat earth an’ bleedin’ trees. Lice are cleverer’n we are!’

‘
Mille diables
, you can’t fight a war in a cabbage-patch,’ protests the Legionnaire.

‘Could if the bleedin’ generals’d take the trouble to think about it,’ considers Tiny, ‘but the big-’eaded bastards can’t be bothered.’

There isn’t a sound to be heard. Only the wind moans complainingly in the tops of the fir trees.

Moser spreads out a dirty chart and calls the Old Man over to him. ‘See here, Beier! The village we’ve just passed is Nievskojo.’ he points it out on the chart with his pencil, ‘and here’s the village Divisional HQ was quartered in. I don’t expect they’re still there though.’

‘No, I dare say not,’ smiles the Old Man. ‘Staff officers don’t like to hear shells howling around them!’

‘If only we knew where the German front-line is now!’ continues the Oberleutnant.

‘German front?’ says Porta. ‘Who says there
is
a German front?’

‘You can’t believe the whole lot’s gone bust?’ asks Barcelona nervously.

‘Not unbelievable,’ answers Porta. ‘Germany always breaks down at some time or other. It’s in the tradition. So we could just as well break down when we’ve reached Moscow as later. Then comes the time when a lot of people’ll give everything
they’ve got just to disappear quietly, and generals’ll swap their stars with pleasure for a Gefreiter’s woollen stripes.’

‘Why we got GOTT MIT UNS on our belt-buckles?’ asks Tiny, naively.

‘Cos He’s the only one who
is
with us,’ explains Porta. ‘He sees to it we don’t win. To stop us getting too big for our breeches. Soon as we’ve had a good bang on the nut, we’re nice, pleasant people again. For the next twenty-five years or so.’

‘Is that a bleedin’ fact?’ mumbles Tiny. ‘Are we really such a lot o’ shits in Germany?’ He runs a big dirty hand over his face.

‘You know, when I come to think of it, all the Germans
I
know
are
rotten bastards!’

‘Thanks for the recommendation,’ says Porta.

‘I don’t mean you an’ bleedin’ me an’ most of us lot ’ere, but the bleedin’
German
for Christ’s sake! You
know
what I mean. It’s piss difficult when you begin to think about it, ain’t it?’ he adds, a little later.

‘As I’ve told you before, son, the best thing you can do with
your
brain is to pack it up nicely and post it off home. Then let others do the thinking for you,’ advises Porta.

‘Be easiest,’ Tiny admits.

‘Take up arms! Single file after me!’ orders Moser, pushing the chart into his report-case. ‘We’ll be through before dawn,’ he promises, optimistically.

The wind pipes through the forest carrying great blankets of snow with it. Trees creak with cold and burst with sharp reports.

We march all through the night and most of the following day. It’s getting dark, the creeping Russian twilight which seems to fall silently from the grey clouds above us.

The wind whips ice crystals at us and the merciless frost lays a mask of rime over our faces. We look like monsters from some fantasy world.

Two steps more, you say to yourself, and I’ll let myself drop. But still you go on. Fear of Russian revenge drives you
on. We lie rolled together in the snow, trying to find warmth from one another, while we listen to the sounds that come from the darkness. Giant firs and pines rise around us like jeering giants.

‘What time is it?’ asks the Legionnaire, who is completely covered with driven snow.

‘Two and one to carry,’ snarls Porta, boring himself still closer in between the Old Man and Tiny. He’s so thin the frost goes straight to his bones.

‘
Naldinah Zubanamouck
,’
⁸
snarls the Legionnaire.

An artillery Gefreiter is calling for his mother. Both his feet are frozen. We take turns to carry him hanging between two men. Many of us have frost sores, and hop along with the help of a stick. Porta considers we have died a couple of days ago and are just zombies moving on automatically. Like headless hens. We’ve marched so much in our lives that we keep on moving our feet a couple of days after we’re actually dead!

‘Think we’ll march straight into ’eaven?’ asks Tiny, rubbing his hands cautiously over the wet, open frost sores on his face.

‘
Non, mon ami!
’ says the Legionnaire quietly. ‘There we shall have peace!
Vive la mort!
’

‘Gawd love us!’ says Tiny, feebly. ‘Do you mean we’ll get a permanent pass for ever? An’ can go for a shit when we want to, without ’avin’ to ask nobody?’

‘
Bien sûr
,’ answers the Legionnaire, in a convinced tone.

‘I’m on my way,’ Tiny breaks out. ‘Jesus Christ, ’ow I’m gonna
enjoy
bein’ dead!’

1
O.T. (Organization Todt): Work battalions.

2
Hamdoulla
(Arabic): Slowly.

3
Düstere Sonntag
(German): Blue Sunday.

4
Mädchen wie schön
(German): Girl, how lovely.

5
Sabaka
(Russian): Dog.

6
‘
Blaue Max
’ (German): Pet name for the Kaiser’s most valued order,
Pour le merité
.

7
EK. I. (Eiserne Kreuz erster Klasse) (German): Iron Cross First Class.

8
Naldinah
etc. (Arabic): Insulting expression.

‘The dead are daubed with slime, and the murderers have an alibi. The executioner not only kills, but also preaches over the dead. Old Germany, you have not deserved this!’

Broad, patrician Bellevue Allée is empty of people one Sunday morning in May 1942. The trees have begun to bud a few days earlier. Everything is dressed in translucent green. It is as if the city begins to breathe again after the hard winter.

A grey Horch swings into the allée followed by three black Mercedes. They stop in the middle of the road outside an old, aristocratic residence. Men in long coats and grey SS caps spring smartly out and run up the steps, with a little man in a blue-grey uniform in the lead, Adolf Hitler.

On the third floor they knock hard on a door. ‘Berger’ is the name on the small brass plate. The door does not open immediately and one of the officers kicks it in.

Hitler rushes in with a pistol in his hand.

A tall powerfully-built man in a silk dressing-gown comes from another room.

‘Mein Führer!’ he cries in astonishment.

‘Traitor!’ screams Hitler springing forward and catching General Berger by the throat. ‘Traitor! Cowardly swine! I arrest you!’ He strikes the general twice across the face and spits a mouthful of vulgarisms at him. Then he lifts his Walther, empties the magazine rapidly, turns on his heel and almost flies from the apartment with coat-tails flapping behind him.

SS-Hauptsturmführer Rochner confides later to a friend that the Führer reminded him of a bat. The confidence costs him his life. He is shot by his own comrades in Dachau.

Neighbours who have heard the sound of shots stand
fearfully at their half-open doors. They are brutally pushed back by the SS officers of Hitler’s guard.

Studienrat Walter Blume, who reproaches them, is ruthlessly shot down before the eyes of his wife and three grandchildren. When his wife resists, her face is smashed by a blow from a pistol.

‘It’s the fifteenth day,’ says the Old Man to Oberleutnant Moser. ‘If we don’t catch up with our boys soon we’ve had it. Over half the company’s suffering from frost bite. Most of them with gangrene. Twenty-three men are wounded. Four won’t live through the night.’

‘I know,’ Moser nods darkly. ‘I won’t last much longer myself. But if they catch us here behind their lines they’ll execute us on the spot. We’ve
got
to catch up!’

‘If we can,’ replies the Old Man. ‘It won’t be long before even rifle-butts won’t keep the men moving.’

‘It’s just hell,’ mumbles the Oberleutnant, and rolls himself in his greatcoat.

Porta nudges me.

Tired and frozen stiff with cold I get up on my elbow to see what he wants. I was just getting comfortable in a snowdrift alongside Barcelona.

He hands me a black, frozen potato and a sardine as hard as a rock.

I try to smile in acknowledgement but the smile turns to a cry of pain. You can’t smile when your mouth is frozen to ice.

Carefully I push the sardine in onto my tongue, where it slowly thaws out. It tastes wonderful. A little meal like this can be made to last a long while if you know how, and you soon learn the trick of it in Russia. I put the potato in my pocket. I’m keeping it for later.

‘Where the devil
is
that front-line?’ asks the Legionnaire. ‘It can’t be much farther now.’

‘That record’ll soon be worn out,’ rumbles Tiny, breaking great lumps of ice away from his beard. His feet are frostbitten too. For the last three days he hasn’t been able to feel his toes when he moves them. Gangrene, which eats you up horribly from the inside, begins like that.

Nobody dares to take off his boots and treat the ruined feet. The flesh can come off together with the boot. Many of us can already say goodbye to both feet if we don’t get treatment soon.

‘Butcher,’ shouts Tiny to Tafel. ‘Can you chop off a ’ind paw without killin’ a man?’

‘Of course,’ replies the Sani, carelessly. ‘But how would you get along without feet?’

‘I suppose you’re right,’ says Tiny resignedly. ‘It’s this bleedin’ stink though. Makes me sick as a bleedin’ owl.’

‘I’m staying here,’ says the Signals Feldwebel suddenly.

‘Are you crazy?’ cries the Old Man.

‘
As-tu perdu les pedales
?’
¹
says the Legionnaire. ‘It’s madness to give up now!’

‘Keep your pecker up,’ shouts Stege from his hole in the snow. ‘Tomorrow evening we’ll be home. You’ll be in the hospital. Clean white sheets, regular meals and
warmth
, son!’

‘No,’ growls the Feldwebel, angrily. ‘I’ve had enough. I’m sick of all the lies they’ve filled us up with. I’m staying here. You’ll go faster without me, too. If I live it’ll be as a cripple and that’s no life for me.’

‘Only the dead will be left behind,’ says Oberleutnant Moser firmly.

‘As long as you’re breathing you’re going with us.’

‘Then what?’ asks the Signals Feldwebel with a sneer.