Court Martial (46 page)

Heide and Gregor come lumbering through the snow with the mortar between them.

'Watch out for the soap,' shouts Porta, warningly, and points to the treacherous packets of TNT which lie, scattered, seemingly casually, in the snow. Tread on one of those small packets and you'll end in the icy sea.

Tiny picks one up and throws it at a giant Russian in a white bearskin coat. The Russian is torn in two and his head goes flying through the air like a football.

Gefreiter Linde, who is running a little in front of me, rises suddenly into the air as if he had been shot from a mortar, and there is a noise like the end of the world. Snow, and blocks of ice, rain down on us. Linde must have set off at least ten soap-tablets by treading on one.

Bullets whistle, ricochet and snarl. Somebody is shouting for help, and calling for stretcher bearers. Our stretcher bearers have been blocks of ice out on the tundra for a long time now.

The shelling and rifle-fire become even more violent. The Old Man is on the verge of desperation. He knows very well that the section has reached the point where it is no longer functioning. The next stage is mindless panic.

He waves the mortar forward, and a little later it begins to sound again.

In front of us the snow is burning, where the bombs have fallen.

Suddenly the Russians are moving, retreating back towards the gulley.

'Plop, plop,' the mortar bombs follow on their heels.

Heide is a genius with a mortar. But a new body of Russians comes rushing out of the ravine and before he has time to correct his sight they have reached cover behind the snow walls.

'Help me with the SMG,' shouts the Legionnaire, struggling with the carriage.

Gregor gets hold of the supporting tripod, but slips and bangs his face down hard on the machine-gun.

'Lift your fuckin' shit yourself,' he rages, kicking out at the carriage.

'
Il est con, comme ma bite est mignonne,
'
69
roars the Legionnaire, throwing a piece of ice at him.

'Keep that snow wall under fire,' orders the Old Man. 'Don't let them come over it!'

All at once the snow is swarming with Russians.

The 42 spits tracer at the figures in snow-camouflage. I fire like a madman. The barrel steams and the hot cartridge cases hiss and splutter as they sink into the snow.

Porta comes running, and rolls into cover behind a projecting rock.

Behind me the SMG rattles and it almost seems as if the Russian attackers run unharmed straight through the
concentration
of fire.

I take careful aim at the leading soldier. He has a tall, grey fur cap on his head, with a large, red enamelled star. His head seems to be balanced on the edge of the sight as I fire. Next moment he is gone. The Mpi flies in a great arc from his hand, and seems for a second or two to be suspended in the air.

An explosive bullet sends a rain of stone and ice splinters into my face. Blood runs from hundreds of tiny wounds. Luckily my eyes have not been hit.

I get to one knee and throw the Kaspanos in amongst them. Joyfully, I watch them go up into the air and smash to the ground again.

Automatic weapons rattle. A tapestry of tracer tracks canopies the terrain.

'Uncle Ivan's out to get us, can tell you,' shouts Porta with a broad grin, jumping over the snow barrier with a bundle of grenades in his hand.

Oberschfitze Krohn rises part way up. A thick jet of blood spouts from his throat.

Gefreiter Batik comes to his aid but is also hit, and falls, screaming, alongside him.

'The whole world's goin' for a shit,' shouts the Westphalian.

'Let's beat it, before we end up in the garbage can!'

'Shut up and go forward!' shouts the Old Man, from his hole.

'No, we stay here,' shouts Gregor. 'We're throwing our lives away for no reason. Let 'em get inside a hundred yards,
then
we'll take 'em!'

A heavy Maxim MG is placed just in front of us. They've placed it well, and can fire on us with hardly any risk to themselves.

Heide tries to put it out of action with the mortar, but his bombs fall all round the MG-nest without doing it any noticeable damage:

I crawl forward and try to throw grenades into it, but the distance is too great. That damnable. SMG has already wounded four of us badly.

Tiny gets up, with a bundle of grenades in his hand.

'Shoot like 'ell,' he shouts, spitting on the snow. 'I'll knock those bleeders' bollocks up for 'em!' He starts off with long strides.

'Mad as a hatter,' says Gregor. 'They'll knock him over before he's got half-way!'

It is a riddle to us how such a huge man can move with such unbelievable speed.

With a long jump he is down behind a fallen Russian. He swings back his arm and throws the grenades.

A fur-clad form appears on the rim of the snow wall, and a hand-grenade whirls through the air towards Tiny. He rolls to one side with the agility of an acrobat. The grenade explodes with a loud crack in front of the body and shatters it.

With a terrific roar Tiny's string of grenades explodes inside the SMG-nest.

'
Viva la mart
,' howls the Legionnaire, jumping up with the Mpi cradled in his arms.

Shouting and screaming, the rest of the section follows him

The Russians stream in disorder, back towards the gulley.

'Kill 'em,' howls Gregor, murderously. His Mpi chatters.

Suddenly it is all over. We sit down in the snow and try to catch our breath. Porta rolls a cigarette from a bag of machorka he has discovered in a dead Russian's pocket.

The Legionnaire bandages Barcelona, who has received a long, deep slash in the face.

The Old Man fills his silver-lidded pipe, and leans against a powder-blackened snow drift.

'Jeepers in 'ell,' Tiny breaks out. 'We give the neighbours what they asked for there, all right!'

Silently we walk round, examining the bodies. We help ourselves to whatever we have a use for. Some of them are not yet dead. We take their weapons and leave them where they are lying. The cold will soon finish them off. We cannot help them. We cannot even do anything for our own wounded. Curses follow us, but we do not even try to answer back.

The Old Man presses his lips together, and looks uneasily at the flickering Northern Lights.

'Pick up your weapons! Single file! Follow me!' he orders, briefly.

Early in the morning, two weeks later, we are looking for a quiet spot through which we can get back to our own lines.

The Old Man thinks we are on the northern end of the Sala front.

A Russian supplies soldier runs straight into our arms. It was, of course, Porta, who noticed the smell of coffee, long before we heard the supplies soldier. He comes, singing softly, over the hill, with a container of coffee on his back. When he sees us he is quite paralysed with fear, and we shake him violently to get some life back into him

He begins to weep, and says this war is the wickedest thing he has ever run into.

'Stop your crying, now, you little misery,' Porta comforts the unhappy Russian. 'If the coffee's good we won't hurt you!'

Later he tells us he is from Tiflis, where everybody is in favour of the Germans, and confides to us that he, himself, has always been really fond of Germans.

We go under cover in amongst the fir trees and enjoy his good coffee.

'Think now! The neighbours drink coffee,' says Porta, letting off a thunderous fart. 'I always thought they only slobbered tea with jam in it!'

'Yes, you do learn a lot in these World Wars,' says Tiny, wonderingly, blowing into his mug.

'Keep
quiet
,' hisses the Old Man. 'You chatter loud enough to wake the Seven Sleepers!'

There is a muffled thump from the far side of the trees.

'Cripes,' shouts Tiny, throwing himself flat.

The next minute there is a roaring and creaking in the forest and several trees come sailing through the air like giant javelins.

We change in a moment. Our easy-going attitude has gone. Our faces are tense.

They emerge from the trees, over the rolling hills, moving along at ease, quite sure nothing bad can happen to them here.

The Russian artillery roars again, and we hear the long drawn out rushing sound of the shells on their way to the Finnish positions.

'Ready,' whispers the Old Man, excitedly. 'We've got to mow 'em down in one long swing!'

I aim the LMG into the thick of them.

The Old Man lets his arm fall in the signal to open fire. All the automatic weapons roar in one single long salvo, which echoes back from far off amongst the trees.

Some of them manage to reach the long snow ditch, but by far the majority remain lying still on the path.

'The galley,' shouts Gregor, furiously. 'Shoot the bottom out of it! Those devils are lying there just waiting to get shot!'

The SMG roars, ripping along the whole length of the ditch. We throw hand-grenades into it. There is utter stillness.

During the firing the supplies soldier has disappeared.

'Dammit!' the Old Man swears. 'If he gets back and gives the alarm, we'll have the whole of 238 Infantry Division on our backs.

'We'll knock
them
off too, then,' boasts Tiny, loudly.

'Dope,' snarls the Old Man.

A salvo of shells falls on our side of the front-line. Trees fly towards the skies like giant arrows shot from a bow. Here and there the woods begin to burn.

'Let's get out of here,' says Heide, uneasily, looking nervously about him. When that fucking supplies soldier gives the alarm all hell'll break loose! Let's go for a break-through! It's our only chance!'

'
You
break through on your own, then, you fucked up German monkey, you,' shouts Porta, viciously. 'You're so fuckin' stupid you've not even found out yet there's trip wires an' wolf-traps everywhere!'

'Wolf-traps?' mumbles Heide, scared, lifting his feet gingerly, as if he were already standing on top of one of those devilish inventions.

'Yes, wolf-traps,' Porta laughs, sarcastically, 'and if they catch us they'll push us into one of 'em, so they can enjoy the elevating sight of us wriggling ourselves to death on the points of the stakes!'

'An' a puffed-up Nazi Unteroffizier like you,' says Tiny with a sneering grin, 'they'll first cut the prick off of, and send it to the Zoological Museum in Moscow, so everybody can 'ave a good laugh at the Nazi's mini-pricks!'

Heide is too shocked to reply.

A couple of miles further along we run into some Russian MPs lurking about amongst the fir trees. Everything happens so quickly we do not realise what has been going on until the action is over.

Machine-pistols bark, and battle-knives flash in the twilight. We drag the dead policemen away from the path so that they will not be found immediately.

The artillery fire, on both sides, is ebbing out, and a strange, threatening silence falls over the huge forests.

Porta's reindeer has vanished. Despite the Old Man's protests we go back to look for it.

Tiny finds it amongst some trees where it has dragged itself to die. Its throat has been slashed open lengthwise by an explosive bullet.

Porta throws himself down, unhappily, by its side. It looks at him with a glance full of affection, and we are close to tears. Gregor fishes out a morphine ampoule and gets a needle ready.

'It's the last of them,' he says, 'but why should he suffer because us crazy humans want to knock one another's brains out?'

Soon after, the reindeer dies. We bury it, so that the wolves will not find it straight away.

Suddenly Tiny jumps up and listens, tensely.

'Dogs!' he says. 'Bleedin' dogs!'

'Are you sure?' asks the Old Man, doubtfully.

'Dead sure,' asserts Tiny. 'Can't you 'ear 'em,
really
?It's
a
'ole pack of 'em, an' big 'uns too!'

Several minutes pass before the rest of us can hear a deep, continual baying.

'War dogs,' whispers Gregor, nervously. 'They'll tear us to pieces if they get to close quarters!'

'Them stinkin' 'ounds can just 'ave a go at gettin' to close quarters with yours truly,' grins Tiny, diabolically. 'I'll tear their bleedin' tails out their arseholes I will, so they'll forget all about bein' war dogs!'

'Wait'll you see 'em,' says Gregor, with fear in his voice. 'A hungry tiger's like a bloody housecat alongside
them
!'

'What the devil do we do?' asks Barcelona, straightening the heavy bandage which covers the whole of his face.

'Let's go south,' suggests Heide, 'They won't be expecting us and in the forests there's more cover.'

'Not against Siberian war dogs,'
says
the Old Man, checking the magazine of his Mpi.

'Let's talk Russian to 'em, then,' suggests Tiny, 'then them Communist 'ounddogs'll think we're pals! With the clothes we're wearin' we could just as like be neighbours!'

'You can't fool a war dog,' says the Old Man, with conviction. 'They've tasted the whip so often when they've made
a
mistake that they just don't
make
mistakes!'

'I'm so homesick, suddenly,' says Porta, beginning to run into the woods towards the west.

'Yes, that way,' shouts the Old Man, grimly, 'forward and straight on through! Spread out, and give one another covering fire, and have your battle-knives ready! Keep the knife pointing upwards when they spring. That way they'll open themselves up when they leap at you!'

With a great deal of noise we force our way through the thick underbrush, run across a frozen stream, and come out into open country.

Behind us we hear a voice bawling gutturally, and a machine-pistol burst throws up the snow around us, but the trees give us good cover. It is difficult to hit a moving target in the forest.

Like a bulldozer, I force my way through the brush.

A shrill scream, which turns into a death rattle, sounds behind me.

'What was that?' I ask, fearfully.

'Feldwebel Pihl,' answers Gregor. 'Looked as if his hair and his helmet went off at the same time!'