Comrades of War (37 page)

‘All the same, one feels quite at home with this sprayer,’ he said, whisking away a speck of dust from the lock. ‘There’s a lot to be said against our trip to the woods but nothing at all against this sprayer. With this rod it isn’t half bad even if the whole field swarms with Russkis.’

‘Really, come down to earth, will you,’ the East Prussian muttered. ‘Let’s continue our talk in six to seven hours, if we’re still alive!’

We were equipped with camouflage from our helmets to our boots. We looked like spacemen. A never-ending, unchanging line of men armed to the teeth.

‘Thirty seconds,’ Lieutenant Ohlsen croaked. He stood between the Legionnaire and Tiny, sub-machine gun across his shoulder and stop watch in his hand. ‘Forward,’ he commanded. Like weasels we clambered over the edge of the trench.

A grenadier first lieutenant said ominously: ‘I’m glad I’m not going. It will turn out badly.’

‘Squirt,’ Porta grinned, hustling after the Legionnaire and Heide.

One after another the squads vanished over the edge and plunged into the darkness.

To throw the Russians off the scent short fierce artillery fire started up in the adjacent sector.

‘Watch your snouts!’ Tiny warned. ‘There are mines around. I can smell those contraptions ten yards away.’ He wormed his way ahead of the squad and piloted us across the tightly packed minefield. ‘Forward, heroes! Follow Tiny!’

‘For Christ’s sake, shut your trap, Tiny,’ the Old Man said. ‘You’re blabbering so loud it can be heard for miles!’

‘Don’t scold me,’ Tiny warned, ‘or I’ll go crazy and get up and start calling Ivan!’

We got through the Russian lines and reached a village about four or five miles behind the front.

It was Porta who discovered the expertly camouflaged tanks.

‘Holy Mother of Kazan!’ Tiny exclaimed. ‘A whole army of T-34s!’

‘If these start rolling we won’t even have time to tighten our ass-holes,’ the East Prussian followed up.

‘Shut up,’ the Old Man said, looking nervously about him.

‘Don’t get excited, now,’ Porta grinned, ‘in a moment we may flutter around with the angels blowing trumpets!’

‘Jesus Christ, I get goose pimples just looking at all those T-34s,’ Stein exclaimed. ‘Must be at least a hundred of them.’

‘May I offer you a piece of good advice?’ Tiny asked. ‘Let’s take the through train to the German lines. You can smell murder for miles around here – neck-shots!’

‘You’re right,’ the Legionnaire said. ‘Let’s get away from here mighty fast. We’ve seen all we wanted.’

‘Very well,’ the Old Man muttered. ‘Let’s clear out!’

‘I’ve got my racing shoes on,’ Tiny grinned. ‘Just follow me and it won’t take long to get home again, I promise you!’

‘You’re just about the biggest chicken I’ve ever run across,’ Corporal Trepka scoffed. ‘To run before those inferior Russians is a disgrace!’

Tiny scrutinized Trepka’s arrogant Junker face, with its spiteful staring eyes. He gave a grunt.

‘You’re welcome to stay behind and talk with those inferiors. As for me, I’ve no desire to be a hero.’

‘Keep shut, Tiny, and let’s get going,’ came resolutely from the Legionnaire.

With Tiny and Porta in front we rushed head over heels through the forest. They guided us across the narrow and often submerged paths with unerring instinct.

We had barely reached open country when four green star shells went up and turned the night into a hall of phantoms. Our faces took on a corpselike look.

Quick as lightning we threw ourselves down for cover. Everything suddenly came alive around us, as if an invisible hand had pushed a button.

Shrill voices of command and the screeching of peawhistles came from the darkness. The air quivered with the roar and rumble of hundreds of engines. There was a clanking of heavy tank chains. The ground beneath us shook as self-propelled artillery and T-34s rolled forward in battle formation.

‘Holy Mother Bridget!’ Tiny exclaimed, halfway getting up. ‘I’ll be hanged if we aren’t right in the middle of the concentration area. This is the fault of that damn black cat I ran across this morning, but just let the grinning thing wait till we meet again!’

‘Imbecile,’ Trepka hissed, ‘it’s hard to believe you’re normal.’

Tiny turned his head and put out his fist at him, but Trepka drew back instantly.

‘Is that so?’ Tiny growled. ‘It seems the two of us should have a little talk, you little cardboard soldier!’

‘What are we to do?’ Grenadier Schmidt whimpered, peering to see where the droning sound in the forest came from.

‘Just go on lying quite still and count the stars,’ the Legionnaire answered, ‘and then follow the rest of us when we take off.’

‘When you want to get out is your own affair,’ Tiny said, ‘but I’m getting out right now, because in a little while Ivan’s infantry will turn up and then there will be neck-shots. I can’t stay with you, because I promised Emma I’d come back home.’

‘How do you know that infantry are coming?’ Trepka asked doubtfully.

‘What a greenhorn!’ Heide snorted. ‘You’ve a lot to learn yet. The infantry usually come after the tanks, and if they find us here you’ll forget about being a hero.’

‘Then may God help us,’ Bauer continued.

‘There they are,’ Porta said, pointing toward the edge of the forest.

A long line of figures came out of the forest in single file: Russian infantry.

A moment later the tanks started rolling towards the German lines.

‘’Bye, heroes, Tiny’s moving out.’ And he was off.

The Old Man and Porta followed. Then the Legionnaire and I beat it. Trepka tried to hold Heide back, but he cut loose with the butt of his sub-machine gun.

Star shells were sent aloft.

Behind us the Russian infantry were roaring, ‘
Ura
Stalin!’ and firing wildly in every direction.

Wave upon wave of brown-clad infantrymen were pouring out of the Russian trenches.

The whole front came alive. It turned into some terrible inferno. Shells of all calibers tore up the gutted ground. German and Russian artillery vied with each other in making hell perfect.

In one jump the Legionnaire and I landed in a deep shell hole, still warm from the explosion. Vague parts of a man lay at the bottom, but we didn’t care. Anything for cover against the shells.

Someone fell on my back. I screamed in terror.

‘Quiet, you fool!’ came Tiny’s voice. He was smeared all over with blood. He had had a hand-to-hand fight with a Russian.

The sounds of clanking chains were coming closer.

‘A T-34 – they must have seen us,’ Tiny whispered. ‘Lie where you are till he’s almost on top of us, then we’ll run.’

The hateful sound of rattling chains came closer and closer. I could feel a sickening fear crawling up my spine, but I knew it meant certain death to run a second too early.

The Legionnaire’s lips quivered like a rabbit’s. In his fear he dug his fingers deep in the ground. Tiny looked as if the whole thing didn’t concern him. Suddenly he roared: ‘Go!’ We saw the nose of the T-34 by the edge of the hole.

How we got out I don’t know. All I know is that our legs moved themselves.

The tank wriggled across the hole, crushing everything in it.

Then it rumbled on.

We landed in another hole, where we lay with open mouths gasping for breath. Our motley camouflage clothes were too tight, as if set on strangling us.

Tiny bunched together six hand grenades for an extra strong sticky-bomb, muttering: ‘I’ll settle their hash for them. Damn Stalin-fry trying to keep Tiny from getting back to Emma!’

Again chains rattling.

‘I can’t stand it,’ I screamed.

‘Then why don’t you send a telegram to Zhukov so he can pause while you recover?’ The Legionnaire sneered. He raised his head above the edge of the hole to look for the tank we could hear approaching.

It stopped. The engine idled. The turret searched the terrain with its long gun. Then the heavy diesel engine whined again.

Once more the uncanny clatter of chains.

There was a clank and a roar. A shell flew from its gun against a German machine-gun post, which blew up in a shaft of flame.

Tiny swung back his arm with a triumphant leer. The big bunch of grenades hissed.

‘Let them go, damn you,’ the Legionnaire yelled, with a hypnotised stare at Tiny’s hand.

He held them maddeningly long before he threw them, then dropped back in the hole.

We pushed our faces in the mire. An ear-splitting explosion. We were surrounded by a sea of flames.

‘Now we can take off, boys,’ Tiny said, looking exultantly for a moment at the burning tank. A man hung halfway out of a turret hatch, shrieking insanely.

The Legionnaire fired his sub-machine gun at him. ‘A new kind of anesthesia,’ he groaned.

Lieutenant Ohlsen rushed out of the forest like the rest of us. Right behind him fifteen fresh recruits ran in a close huddle.

A T-34 spotted them. A searchlight flared and caught them in its blinding light.

‘Run,’ cried Lieutenant Ohlsen. But no one heard him.

From a depression in the ground where he lunged for cover he saw the reddish-blue and green tracer bullets sweep the fifteen recruits off their feet.

Sergeant Schneider ran headlong toward the silenced German lines. A fifteen cm high-explosive shell grounded before his feet. A dazzling flare of fire. He was torn into three pieces.

NCO Grunert and tank gunner Hauber came into the sights of a T-34 driving around doing target practice with its machine guns.

Hauber was hit by a tracer bullet. It went right through his breast. He stopped, fell on his face and uttered a loud ringing scream. His arms and legs thrashed the earth. The T-34 ran over him. His bones scrunched, and blood and shreds of flesh squirted to the sides of the heavy chains. It looked like a car driving through a puddle.

NCO Grunert stood petrified in front of the steel monster. He stretched out his arms as if trying to stop it with his hands.

The T-34 rocked gracefully in its chains as if about to dance a quadrille. In the joint of the left chain hung one of Hauber’s hands. It seemed to be waving. Blood dripped from the two front rollers.

Grunert’s eyes nearly popped out of their sockets. Then the heavy engine roared. The gears shrieked. The vehicle curtsied.

Grunert screamed and started running. He fell. In the next moment everything in him seemed to get crushed. Fifty-five tons of steel trundled over his legs and turned them into pulp. He dragged himself along the torn-up ground, the mush-like stumps trailing behind him.

A Russian infantryman caught sight of him, cursed and fired half a score of bullets at his back. He collapsed and gurgled. Then he lay still. The infantryman had only smashed his shoulder.

Lieutenant Burgstadt, second in command, panicked and ran into a mine which sent him flying. His abdomen was torn up. His right leg dangled from a couple of muscle fibers just below the knee. When he was found by two Russian infantrymen, he was squatting. He pressed both hands against his abdomen, trying to hold back his intestines. The blood oozed out between his fingers. His mouth was wide open, but no sound could be heard.

‘
Pyos!
’ one of the Russians grumbled and sent a bullet through his nose.

‘
Chort germanski
,’ the other said, plunging his long triangular bayonet into the chest of the nineteen-year-old Lieutenant. He did it very slowly and deliberately. His sister had been hanged by the SS in Kharkov. He followed the motto of Ilya Ehrenburg: ‘Kill, you Bolshevik soldiers of Russia! Hate, you riflemen of the Red Army! Slake your thirst for revenge in German blood!’

He grinned to his comrade and shouted: ‘
Davay!
’

The men in the third platoon, under the command of Sergeant Major Dorn, ran around like stray sheep in noman’s-land. Three T-34s blazed away at them.

They sought cover in a hole, where they huddled together one on top of the other. Russian infantry stormed toward them from the edge of the wood.

Sergeant Dorn roared his brief snarling command. They opened fire on the Russians with their three MG 42s. The T-34s fired some high-explosive shells at them.

They stood up and stretched out their arms, despite Sergeant Dorn’s threat to report them for cowardice.

The Russian infantrymen, who were under cover, stood up likewise. They raised their sub-machine guns and used the shocked third platoon for target practice. They didn’t stop till the last man had hit the ground.

‘Now we know what we have to expect,’ the Old Man said. ‘There’s only one thing to do: Get back to our own lines as quickly as possible and fire at anything that stands in the way!’

Joseph Porta sat on the edge of the trench, a large can of beef in his hand. He lectured Tiny about the connection between beef and heightened potency. He made an eloquent gesture with his hand to get Tiny to understand what was meant by potency, but was interrupted by long rumbling detonations from hundreds of guns.

The blast from the firing was so tremendous that Porta and his can were sent flying and hit Tiny’s head. Tiny had been sitting cross-legged at the bottom of the trench.

In a few minutes the entire trench system had been pulverized beyond recognition.

The dive bombers poured from the sky in swarms. Napalm bombs exploded.

From the forest the Russian artillery belched forth destruction against the German lines.

There was no earth. No sky. No sun. No grass. The world consisted of explosions, yells, roars, groans, and screams.

Those who were already dead were again and again hurled high in the air.

Thousands of shell splinters hissed around both the living and the dead.

The Division existed no more.

XV

The Partisans

The remnants of 5 Company stood at the edge of a forest seventeen miles to the southwest of the original German front line area. Some of the men, twelve in all now, were sitting; others lay around. The men were Lieutenant Ohlsen, Fatty, Porta, Tiny, the Legionnaire, the Old Man, Bauer, the East Prussian, Stein, Heide, Trepka, and myself.