Cauldron of Blood

Cauldron of Blood

Leo Kessler

© Leo Kessler 2014

Leo Kessler has asserted his rights under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.

First published in Great Britain by Macdonald Futura Publishers in 1981

This edition published in 2014
by Endeavour Press Ltd.

‘
Buy combs, lads, there’s lousy times ahead!’ From:
The
Sayings
of
Sergeant
Schulze

‘If you’re up to yer kisser in crap, it’s wiser to keep yer cake-hole shut!’

The
Sayings
of
Sgt
Schulze

Table of Contents

ONE

TWO

THREE

FOUR

FIVE

SIX

SEVEN

EIGHT

NINE

THE BATTLE OF FEDOROVKA

ONE

TWO

THREE

FOUR

FIVE

SIX

SEVEN

EIGHT

THE BIG BREAKOUT

ONE

TWO

THREE

FOUR

FIVE

SIX

SEVEN

ENVOI

Extract from
Guns at Cassino
by Leo Kessler

ONE

A fiery white flare hissed into the sky over the snow-bound clearing like a miniature sun. It was the signal!

The
Vulture, wrapped up to his monocle in a great fur collar, looted from the last Russian village that
Wotan
had crawled through, slapped his riding crop against his boot, and rapped, ‘Major von Dodenburg, answer it before the idiot sets off another flare. Doesn’t the fool know the shitting Ivans are right on our heels!’

‘
Sir,’ his second-in-command snapped, raising his machine pistol and hoping that the freezing Russian cold had not solidified the grease in the moving parts, fired a burst into the misty sky.

A
skinny figure clad in a thick Russian woman’s padded jacket, but wearing a German steel helmet, slipped from the snow-heavy trees and waved to them to advance.

‘
Ours,’ Sergeant Schulze breathed a sigh of relief. ‘There must be a crappy sky-pilot up there after all, protecting His SS.’ He looked upwards in mock reverence.

For
six days now the beaten remnants of the demoralized German divisions on the Northern Front had been retreating towards this point, which was marked on the maps of a dozen divisional generals simply with a large ‘E’. For ‘Erika’ was the code-name for the only spot in the broken front, through which the defeated divisions might still escape the deadly Soviet pincers.

Von
Dodenburg dropped into the deep snow from one of SS Assault Battalion Wotan’s surviving halftracks and doubled back awkwardly to where their guide waited, shivering in every limb, an opaque-grey dewdrop hanging at the end of his red nose. ‘How far?’ he demanded.

The
guide, a skinny mournful NCO, looked at von Dodenburg’s tarnished SS runes and the death’s head badge on the battered cap and said, ‘SS?’

‘
So?’

‘
My orders are to let the Wehrmacht stubble-hoppers through first,’ the NCO answered. His breath was fogging on the icy air in little grey clouds, as he indicated the long lines of field-greys who were coming to a weary halt around the handful of surviving Wotan troopers.

Von
Dodenburg’s pistol appeared as if by magic. ‘SS Wotan goes first,’ he snarled, his emaciated face wolfish and lethal.

‘
Natürlich
...
natürlich
,’ the man quavered hurriedly.   ‘Of course, sir, follow me.’

Von
Dodenburg waved his arm and then pumped his clenched fist up and down three times — the infantry signal for advance. The drivers, who had been gunning their engines to keep them from stalling in the bitter weather, rammed home first gear and began to rumble forward, the noise of their motors drowning the angry cries of the field-greys. The watching von Dodenburg could not overlook their raised fists and angry faces. There was going to be trouble.

Pistol
clenched in his gloved fist, eyes searching the terrain ahead for the first sign of the Ivans, von Dodenburg plodded through the deep snow at the side of the
Wehrmacht
guide. Minutes passed leadenly. They emerged from the snow-bound forest onto a rough wooden road made of birch trees. At its start a notice read:
‘
HERE
BEGINS
THE
ARSE
-
HOLE
OF
THE
WORLD
!
COURTESY
THE
GREATER
GERMAN
WEHRMACHT.
’

In
spite of his hunger and exhaustion, von Dodenburg grinned. ‘You’re a bunch of cynics up here, eh.’

The
NCO pulled a sour face. ‘If you’d been holding this shining river-line all week Major, you’d be a cynic too. The shit the Popovs have flung at us is unbelievable!’

‘
You want eggs in your beer, Corporal.’

They
plodded on. Through the grey mist, which thankfully hung over the immense snowfield, von Dodenburg could now see the slow snake of the river and the rough wooden bridges that ran over it. Surprisingly, it was not frozen over.

The
guide seemed to be able to read his thoughts. ‘The Popovs further up-stream keep blowing up the ice. They hope that the floating pack-ice will bring down the bridges,’ he explained.

‘
I see—’ Von Dodenburg caught his breath suddenly. ‘
What
the
devil
?’

Out
of the mist there had loomed the strangest sight he had ever seen in three years of total war. A German cavalry group had obviously stopped there to rest during the snowstorm of the previous night and had been frozen to death. Naturally von Dodenburg had seen plenty of frozen men since the invasion of Russia had commenced the previous year, but never like this.

Horse
and man, frozen rock hard and waist-deep in the snow, they stood like a shocking equine-monument to the horror of war. In the saddle of a big bay, a wounded man slumped, one arm in a sling, his bushy eyebrows white with frost. Next to him sat a lieutenant, bolt-upright in the saddle, as befitted a dashing young officer, his clenched fists still gripped the reins of his mount. Wedged in between the horses were three skinny troopers, dead like the rest, who had obviously squeezed in there in an attempt to steal the animals’ warmth. As for the skinny horses, emaciated by the long flight, they posed like the heroic animals of some 19th century sculpture, heads held high, their tails whipped up by the wind, but frozen into immobility.

Von
Dodenburg swallowed hard and threw a hurried glance at his own men. Their noses dripped icicles too and their sunken eyes were caked with ice and snow. He knew instinctively that they wouldn’t last another day if he didn’t get them across the river to the warm food and quarters of the
Wehrmacht
which were supposed to be waiting for the beaten survivors over there.

Now
they were at the bridges, three of them. They were terribly fragile constructions, made from wooden rafts and barrels and joined by iron bars some one hundred metres long, which swayed alarmingly every time one of the great ice floes coming down from the Soviet positions slammed into them.

‘
You’ll have to leave your vehicles behind,’ the morose guide said, signalling with his pocket-lamp to the infantry wading into the slit-trenches on the other bank. ‘They’re too heavy for those bits of pisspot and match-wood.’

‘
What did you say, Corporal?’ the Vulture rasped, screwing his monocle more firmly in his eye and looking down the length of his great beak of a nose at the corporal from his position in the turret of the halftrack.
‘
Eh
?’

Hesitantly
the corporal repeated his statement.

‘
Impossible!’ The Vulture barked in his arrogant Prussian manner, ‘The Wotan
never
abandons its vehicles!’ He dismissed the man completely. ‘Von Dodenburg, I want you to ensure that none of that rabble...’ he indicated the massed field-greys with a contemptuous wave of his riding crop, ‘... block the bridges until Wotan is across. We will use all three bridges.’

‘
All
three
,’
the corporal began to protest, but then thought better of it.

‘
And you, sir?’

‘
I shall cross with the first vehicle. I wish to contact the commanding general on the other side immediately. Wotan must have quarters as first priority.’

In
spite of his weariness, the tall young major smiled faintly. The Vulture was certainly no coward, but when he felt the balloon might go up and there’d be trouble, the CO always ensured that he was the first man to reach safety. ‘I’ll see to it, sir,’ he answered and waving the Vulture’s driver to continue, he shouted to a waiting Schulze. ‘Hey, you big rogue, secure this side of the bridge, I’ll do the same on the other side. As soon as the Wotan is across, make dust.’

‘
It’s always us little blokes who get the shitty jobs,’ the enormous NCO called back.

‘
Get on with it, you big rogue,’ von Dodenburg shouted. ‘Here, you can have Sergeant-Major Metzger for morale support.’

‘
But sir—’

A
suddenly alarmed Butcher started to protest. But the young major didn’t give him a chance to get any further. He thrust his own machine pistol into the Butcher’s paws and said, ‘Let’s not waste words, Sergeant-Major. Get on with it!’

Now
the twenty or thirty surviving halftracks of the Wotan started to nose their way across the dangerously swaying bridges, which creaked alarmingly under the weight of the twenty ton vehicles, watched by thousands of sullen
Wehrmacht
men, many of whom had already thrown away their weapons in their headlong flight from the advancing Russians. Posted at the end of each of three bridges, the Butcher, Schulze, and his wizened-faced, one-legged running-mate Lance-Corporal Matz could see it would be only a matter of minutes before their panic got the better of them and they’d rush the bridges.

As
yet another halftrack began the crossing, splattering him with mud and snow, the big, broad-faced Hamburger noisily slipped back the bolt of the schmeisser and said aloud: ‘Now gentlemen, let’s not get nervous. You ‘ll get across.’ He slapped the weapon slung across his barrel-chest significantly. ‘And I have no doubt anyone who gets a bit too pushy might find himself swallowing a lead-sandwich.’

For
a few moments Schulze’s threat worked and the field-greys drew back, but almost immediately they started to crowd forward once more, their faces heavy and dangerous with repressed rage. And then it happened.

Suddenly
there was the hoarse cry of a man beside himself with fear. ‘The Ivans...
The
Ivans
are
here
!’

  ‘
You must be meschugge...’ The words died on Schulze ‘s cracked lips. To the right on their side of the river the mist had parted and there, perhaps some half a kilometre away on a ridge overlooking the Erika crossing-point, half a dozen Josef Stalin tanks were poised motionless. There was no mistaking them. They were the latest Popov tanks all right.

Schulze
felt his stomach churn. He half raised his machine pistol, but it was already too late. A panic-stricken group of Rumanians in their tall fur hats bolted towards him. A fist slammed into his chin and caught him completely off guard; he staggered back against the wooden support.

Next
moment, with a great roar of primeval fear, the mob streamed forward swamping the men guarding the bridges, throwing away their remaining weapons as they did so, clawing and grabbing at each other in their attempt to reach the safety of the other side. A halftrack, which had just been about to enter the third bridge, cut a wide swathe through the hysterical Rumanians, but even as they died, horribly mutilated under the whirling tracks, they reached up and tried to cling to the steel sides, eyes wide and piteous, as they died with a plea for help on their lips.

‘
Schulze
...
Matz
...!’
Schulze, sprawled on the floor and submerged by a mass of screaming fighting fugitives, dimly heard von Dodenburg’s heart-rending cry on the other bank. Then the tremendous thump of the Russian 75 mm cannon split the air and the first huge shell came howling in to drown out every other sound in its murderous explosion.

One
of the Wotan’s fuel bowsers blew up. Its neighbour followed suit a moment later. Flaming fuel streamed down to the river, singeing a black path through the snow and within seconds it became a ghastly burning wave. A group of Rumanians rowing across on a raft screamed and activated their paddles with furious crazed energy. Too late! The wall of flame engulfed them. The oars reared up like fireflies, as the Rumanians tried to beat out the flames which were everywhere. To no avail! Panic-stricken, they dived into the burning water, their heads bobbing up briefly before the infero swept over them.

The
first bridge went up. And the second. The third followed an instant later, and still the tanks fired into the packed masses of frightened men who milled around on the wrong bank of the river. Everywhere the dead lay like broken dolls, trampled on by their comrades, who ran back and forth trying to find some way across before it was too late.

But
it was already too late. Schulze, his head still ringing from the blow he had received, crouched there in a daze watching what looked like a dwarf hobble towards him, its hands held out in bloody supplication. He swallowed hard to repress the bitter vomit — just in time. The thing was a soldier, who had just had his legs and hips blown off — they lay behind him in the snow. Schulze watched it open and close its mouth to suck in air and felt that the horror’s gaze was directed at him. Finally the mouth slacked, the eyes glazed and it was dead, the torso instantly frozen upright.

Schulze
screamed and screamed, the small hairs at the back of his shaven skull standing upright with fright.