Crack of Doom (25 page)

He was sitting right behind the driver, whose bent back masked the steering wheel. An officer with blood pouring from his face was lying at the driver's side, not moving; Stiller recognized him as Lieutenant Schleippen. On the back seat, squashed so tight that Stiller was almost being squeezed out of the car, sat three other officers, of whom the middle one was Colonel Kreisel, who sat with his face buried in his hands. The two others belonged to Kreisel's staff.

Stiller looked down at his hands, with which he had squeezed the Russian's eyes out of their sockets. He rubbed the fingers together and felt how sticky they were. But he no longer felt any disgust. His whole being was pervaded with a glow of satisfaction, and the more he thought about how he had survived, the more this mood swelled into exultation. Remembering the way he had battered at the Russians with his bare fists, he was overcome by amazement and admiration. In his military career there had been many situations he could remember only with an uneasy shudder; but never before had he been involved in hand-to-hand fighting with the Russians. For a general it was a rare and, as he thought, a notable experience, which many could envy him. He suddenly noticed that the driver was reducing speed and staring hard ahead, where the burned-out remains of two assault guns emerged from the snow storm, now somewhat abated. The guns were near the road at the edge of the wood, and it looked as if they had been taken there after being knocked out. Further on there was another, and in between, almost covered by the snow, lay vast numbers of men.

He leant out of the window and looked at all that remained of Colonel Wieland's regiment. Horror seized him as he remembered that he himself might meet Russians again any minute. The kindly indifference in which he had wrapped his exhausted body, the genial images with which he had soothed his wounded spirit and distracted his mind from ghastly memories, now burst like punctured balloons, leaving him with a dreadful sense of disillusionment and shock. But then he was once more the general, whose sharp voice lashed the other officers out of their lethargy and made the driver step on the brake, so that the car began to skid and came to a halt.

In a bound Stiller was out of the car, looking around. They could not have covered more than a mile and a quarter at most, and it was another two miles to the road fork, where the assault guns had been in the morning. Stiller supposed that the Russians had a few men posted there or perhaps a tank. Also, they might have marched westward from Durkov after crushing the assault regiment's two companies, in which case they would come out on the pass road at the fork— unless they preferred to relieve their regiments fighting at Rozhanovce. Furthermore the other lot of Russians must still be somewhere around—the ones he had watched in Durkov when they were marching north through the wood.

All these reflections flashed through his brain, and by the time Kreisel had got out of the car, he had already made up his mind. His eye fell on Lieutenant Schleippen, with whom nobody had so far bothered, slumped on the front seat next to the driver. But Stiller could not stop for that now. Behind them, in place of gunfire, the noise of powerful engines could be heard. The Russian tanks would be on them any minute, and he turned to Kreisel with an abrupt movement. The young regimental commander's face was grey; he was staring past Stiller in the direction they had come from.

"We must leave the car," Stiller said. "We shan't get any further on the road."

A captain pointed to Schleippen: "What's to happen to him, sir?"

"We can't drag him with us," the general answered in an impatient voice. "Is he still alive?"

The captain turned Schleippen's head so that he could look into his face. "He's dead."

It was on the tip of Stiller's tongue to say, "Good," but he swallowed and merely remarked: "Best thing for him." He noticed Kreisel still staring back down the road, grey-faced. "What are you waiting for, eh? The Russian tanks?"

"There's a truck coming, sir," said Kreisel.

Stiller swung round. Emerging from the snow storm, the truck came careening along the road. Now it reduced speed and pulled up in front of them. It was an ambulance.

The door flew open, the driver and three other men jumped out, ran up to the general and clicked their heels. "The tanks are behind us, sir," they cried.

Stiller looked at their scared faces and at the sides of the ambulance; it was riddled with holes. "Have you casualties inside?" he asked.

The men nodded. "Crammed full of them, sir," answered one.

"Are there any more of our vehicles coming?" asked Stiller.

The men looked round doubtfully. "There were a few more behind us, sir," answered the one who had spoken before. "But I don't think they're still coming."

"Most of them left earlier, sir," the driver of Stiller's car put in. "The major took them along."

"Which major?"

"Major Giesinger, sir. Before the Russians came, he got into a command car—and the rest drove off after him."

"My car, I suppose," said KreiseL "I noticed it wasn't there any more."

"Yes, sir, I think it was," their driver confirmed. "He wanted to take mine at first, but I told him the general was going in that."

Stiller turned to KreiseL "When did you last see Major Giesinger?"

"When we left my headquarters, sir."

"Not since then?"

"No."

"That's what I wanted to know," said Stiller, climbing back into the car with the other officers. "Drive slowly on," he ordered.

Dead men were still lying on both sides of the road. The snow had settled over their uniforms, making it impossible to see whether they were Germans or Russians. The officers stared tensely ahead. A few minutes later they noticed a single command car standing deserted on the road.

"Stop here," Stiller told his driver. He climbed out. "Is this yours?" he asked KreiseL

"Yes, that's mine, sir."

Their eyes followed the prints of two men's boots, which went off to the right into the trees, and disappeared into the wood. If I were in his shoes, I might have done the same, thought Stiller, and cleared his throat: "Herr Giesinger allowed the other vehicles to drive on till they ran into the Russians—probably at the fork. When he heard the fire, he left his car and escaped over there with his driver."

"He ought to hang for it," exclaimed the captain.

"He will," said Stiller, looking back along the road. Apart from the ambulance, which was now following them, there was no sign of anything. "Take the dead men's personal belongings and paybooks, we're marching off at once." He went to the edge of the wood and watched the officers pulling Lieutenant Schleippen from the car and turning out his pockets. The ambulance men opened the back door and climbed in. One of them came running up to Stiller. "There are a few still alive, sir."

"Can they walk?"

"I don't think so, sir. They're all seriously wounded."

"Then we must leave them here," said Stiller.

Kreisel, who had listened, stared at the general. "You're not serious, sir?" he gasped.

"We've no choice. There's only one thing we can do," he said, turning to one of the orderlies. "Have you a Red Cross flag with you?"

"Yes, sir."

"Good. Then take it and wait till the Russians come. As soon as the first tank appears, go toward them."

"They'll kill me," said the man in shocked tones.

"As a medical orderly they won't kill you. You've only got to hold the flag up high—it's the surest way of saving the lives of the wounded."

"I don't want to become a prisoner, sir," the man said doggedly. 'Til do anything you tell me, but. . . ."

"Quiet," roared Stiller. "As a soldier all you have to do is carry out the order given you by your general." He turned and walked off into the wood. Everyone followed him except for Kreisel, who was looking uneasily at the man who was supposed to stay behind.

The man said: "I've got an old mother, sir."

"We've all got old mothers," Kreisel answered, gazing down the road where the drone of engines grew more and more distinct.

He heard his name called. Stiller had come back to the edge of the road and was standing with his fists clenched. In a furious voice he yelled: "How much longer do we have to wait for you?"

Kreisel straightened up with a jerk and said: "I'm waiting here, sir; there may still be some men from my regiment coming. I'm not returning to Dobsina alone."

"Don't be a damned fool," Stiller snapped. "In that case, you could have stayed in Rozhanovce in the first place."

The orderly began to whimper again. "Take me with you, sir. What can I do alone against. . . ." The rest of his sentence was drowned in a shrill howl which suddenly came roaring over their heads to be cut short in a deafening crash. A cloud of smoke rose a few yards away from them.

Stiller bounded away into the wood and the orderly shot across the road in the same direction. Kreisel alone stayed by the ambulance for a few seconds longer. Now he saw the tanks coming through the snow like shadowy monsters; they were piled high with infantrymen. He watched them without moving while his thoughts veered between the intention of staying where he was and the knowledge that it was a senseless sacrifice. When the next shell whined low over his head he made up his mind instinctively, and sprinted after the general into the wood. There was a thunderous crash behind him; a direct hit on the ambulance. Kreisel saw Stiller plunging down through the wood with the other men. They did not stop till the descent ended in a narrow ravine leading northward, where a mountain peak could be seen above the trees.

Stiller waited for Kreisel to catch up with them, then went on without saying a word. For half an hour they marched through the ravine, and with each step they took, the peak ahead soared higher into the black sky. It began to grow dark. But with the beginning of dusk, which filled the forest with its grey veils, the snow's intense gleam grew stronger; and the solemn silence over the whole mountain stirred the men's shaken hearts. They walked with hanging heads, engrossed in their troubles and painful memories, worried by the grim prospects of the coming hours; yet they were glad to have survived the terrible day. They placed their reliance entirely on the general, who marched ahead with long strides.

And their confidence was rewarded. For ten hours Stiller led them westward. They plunged into deep valleys where the forest was so thick they had to force their way through it; waded across icy mountain streams; bruised their knees and elbows on jagged rocks; by-passed hills too steep to be climbed; panted up endless new ridges; and trudged through snowdrifts several feet high.

Stiller himself felt utterly worn out. His whole body was nothing but a mass of cramp-ridden muscles, and he could scarcely stand upright. Yet the thought of the Russian tanks driving further and further west blasted his failing powers to new action, inspiring an almost superhuman energy. He maintained the same fast pace as he started with, forcing the tired men to efforts beyond anything they had ever known or thought possible. He had hoped to reach the road by midnight, but it was three o'clock before they heard the drone of a great many vehicles. After stumbling down one more steep slope, they reached the edge of the wood and saw the road ahead, with a long line of convoys driving along it in a northerly direction. Despite the darkness Stiller recognized the lances painted on their sides, and as he stood there with sagging shoulders, his face slack from strain, he realized they belonged to his division.

He was too exhausted just tLen to feel even relief. For ten hours he had been lashed onward by the obsessive fear that the Russians might be already on the road; now that this fear had proved groundless, it left behind only a complete lassitude. He stalked out
on to the road, and took up his stand in the headlight beams of the next truck. It drew up in front of him, and he opened the door. EL and Kreisel got into the cab, the others climbed into the back. "Drive on," he told the man at the wheel, who was staring in awe at this general who had so suddenly materialized.

"Where have you come from?" Stiller asked.

"Banko, sir."

"That's near Kosice," said Kreisel. Stiller asked the driver a few more questions, and soon formed a fairly clear picture of the situation at Kosice. After the Russians had taken the town, they had evidently been thrown out again by an armored division, and were now regrouping their forces a few miles to the east. The armored division was to move out of KoSice again at eight o'clock that morning.

"I suppose," he remarked to Kreisel, "they only retook KoSice to carry out corps' withdrawal operations according to plan. Interesting, isn't it, that there's a whole armored division here all of a sudden. If they'd brought it up a few hours earlier, your regiment wouldn't have been lost, nor my division."

Kreisel nodded. "Too little and too late, as usual— and then only when corps is starting to get it in the neck."

"The whole town's burning, sir," said the driver. "We could see the smoke from Banko."

"I must find a phone," said Stiller, paying no attention to this unsolicited remark. "Perhaps corps are still at DobSina."

"We're heading for Iglo," said the driver.

Kreisel yawned. "Herr Kolmel will get a bit of a surprise."

"I doubt that. Probably they expected something like this at corps."

"Corps are going to Novy Sul, sir," said the driver.

Stiller looked at him irritably. "Who asked you? Try keeping your eyes on the road."

"Yes, sir," the man stammered; and proceeded to concentrate on the wheel. After a few minutes, when he cautiously glanced across at the two officers, he saw that they were both asleep.

After an hour the general stirred and looked at his watch. "Keep your eyes peeled for somewhere I can phone," he said to the driver.

"There may be a place at Margitfalva," the driver replied.

"Is that far?"

"Ten minutes at most, sir," was the reply.

Shortly afterward the first houses came into view. A lot of vehicles stood in the road. It was a rather large village, and they had to drive almost to the other end of it before they discovered the small rectangular flag indicating a field telephone. Telling the driver to wait, Stiller got out and went into the house with Kreisel. Inside they stumbled over a number of feet, and several voices swore soundly in the darkness.