Legion of the Damned (26 page)

"Help's coming now, old man!"

With a cutting apparatus they made a hole through which Porta stuck his blessed, ugly mug:

"Halo, halo!" he said, grinning. "Coming out for a stroll?"

Carefully they cut me free. Of the coach's crew nine were still alive, and while we were bandaging one of these another shell came and shut us in.

Porta and Pluto went at the armored door with a couple of heavy sledgehammers and we managed to get it opened wide enough for us to be able to squeeze out. Armed with our submachine guns and some grenades we ran for the bridge, keeping under cover of the embankment. Some Russian tanks rushed ahead to cut us off and we found ourselves engaged in a life-ordeath race which those who came through will certainly not have forgotten. We got there first. The charges of explosives were got ready in a trice and the fuses lit. Then we set off full tilt across the bridge, between the steel sleepers of which we could see the river far below, churned up by shells and bullets. The Russians sprayed the bridge with their machine guns and several of us were hit and went swirling down into the turbid yellow water. We were almost across when a tremendous bang took our breath away. Slowly the bridge began to sag.

"Hold onto the rails," shouted Porta.

Most of the bridge fell into the river. Sleepers rained down like leaves from a tree in an autumn storm. The rails broke with a whining noise and nuts and bolts were flung in all directions, like projectiles from an automatic cannon.

Eventually the din subsided. With the help of some wires Porta and I managed to get up onto a pier and from there we balanced along a swaying rail and reached the bank and the others.

Von Barring was fearfully burned about the face and in appalling pain. Oberstleutnant Hinka had had his nose and one side of his face pared off. As soon as we had got back to our depot we fell asleep.

We pulled down our goggles and tied silk handkerchiefs round our necks. Von Barring lifted Stalin, the cat, up to Porta. Then The Old Un's voice gave the order through the radio to the other cars:

"Start engines. Prepare for action!"

The automatic weapons were loaded, the long cartridge belts fed in. The car commanders reported themselves ready; then The Old Un's voice sounded again:

"First Armored Reconnaissance Platoon--forward--march!"

The engines sang, the gravel crunched beneath the heavy tires.

"Is it bad, Old Un?" I managed to whisper.

"A couple of little splinters in your tummy and legs. It doesn't look bad. Just you cheer up. You'll see, you'll be all right again in no time. We are taking you and Stege to the casualty clearing station. Stege copped it in just the one leg."

I winced as the car bumped.

"It's hellish sore, Old Un. Give me a mouthful of water."

"You mustn't drink anything till the doctor has had a look at you," replied The Old Un and stroked my hair. "You know yourself that it's strictly forbidden with stomach wounds."

"Won't you have a look at it? It's driving me mad."

"We've already bandaged you. There's no more to be done till the doctor's seen you."

The car stopped. The Old Un jumped out and Porta came up to me.

"Now, old boy, take a good bite on the old ivories, for Pluto and I are going to heave you out of the old box and hand you down to The Old Un and Titch. That done, the worst will be over. Just think, old fellow, of all the little nurses who will wash your vital parts with clean linen cloths four times a day, as they do with our legless friend Asmus."

My lips were bleeding when at length I was lying on the ground with a gas mask case under my head. All at once it had become important to be devilish brave and all that, and not cry out. When they put Stege down, he groaned aloud, because his leg bumped on a wheel of the armored car. Our companions bent over us to say good-by. The Old Un pressed his bristly chin to mine and whispered:

"Keep yourself in garrison till the war's over."

Porta squeezed our hands and held Stalin out, so that he too could bid us farewell; then just before he disappeared into the car again he called out:

"You lucky devils! Kiss them all from me and tell them that I shall attend to my complexion every day so that I'll be just as handsome when they see me again."

Then the powerful engine gave a roar. The Old Un, Titch and Pluto waved to us from the open turret and then they and the armored car had disappeared in a cloud of dust.

Apart from the pain I felt apprehensive and alone. It was good having Stage to feel alone with.

A couple of medical orderlies carried us into a large hall, its floor strewn with straw and covered with wounded soldiers in tattered, dirty uniforms. Stege took hold of my hand as soon as we had been laid down in the straw.

"Is it bad, old man? You'll see, it will be better soon, when the doctor has had a look at you and given you a shot in the arm. We must wangle it so that we can stay together the whole time."

"Yes, we're damn well not going to be parted, whatever happens. God, this hurts. It's like having one's guts stripped. But how's your leg? Did it get it badly?"

"Oh, it hurts a bit," said Stege, attempting a wan smile. "It's worst in the foot. But to hell with a leg, they can cut that off. It's worse with your stomach."

A doctor came along with a couple of medical orderlies who wrote out cards for each patient to the doctor's dictation. He just cast an indifferent glance at Stege's bandages and said:

"Shell splinter in left leg, transport six, fresh bandages at once and three cc. tetanus."

He put a fresh dressing on my belly: "Shell splinters in left leg, right foot and stomach, transport one, three cc. tetanus, two cc. morphia now and the same just before transport."

I braced myself and asked if Stege and I could not stay together.

"Whether you snuff out here or in the hospital train doesn't much matter, as far as that goes," he replied callously. "But stomach wounds go with transport one and he there with transport six. There's nothing I can do about it."

Then he swept on, white coat fluttering. I do not think he was arrogant or brutal, just overburdened. In exchange for a good English pipe, our cigarettes and tobacco, the transport Feldwebel promised to see what he could do for us. I had my injection and dozed off on billows of sleep out of which I only woke when I was lifted up on a stretcher and pushed into an ambulance. In it were four stretchers on racks one above the other. Stege was under me, so the Feldwebel had kept his promise.

When the ambulance bumped or swayed we knocked up against the stretcher above or, where the topmost was concerned, the roof. There was only an inch or two between the stretchers, so that you felt stifled. On the top rack was a gunner with a broken pelvis; he screamed and screamed and asked us to ring, for he was afraid he was bleeding to death. Stege repeatedly pressed the button of the bell that rang in the driver's cab, but neither he nor his assistant paid any attention. When the time came to load us into the hospital train the gunner was dead. The orderlies callously hauled him out, tipped him onto the ground and pulled a tarpaulin over him; then they set about unloading us.

The hospital train was one of the notorious "auxiliaries"--no more than an endless string of freight cars with straw on the floor and forty men in each, only roughly classified. The train kept stopping and starting again with a series of jerks, as though they were trying to shake the cars to pieces. Eleven of those in our car died. I almost went off my head with pain and thirst, but Stege kept the water bottle well out of my reach. It would have been death to have drunk.

That journey took three endless, horrible days and nights after which we were laid in lines on a platform of Kiev Station with a tarpaulin under us, a greatcoat over us and the eternal gas mask container under our heads. All afternoon we lay on the soaking platform, while more died. I was only hazily aware of what went on around me. Stege lay beside me and we held hands as if we were a couple of little boys and not hardened, tough old sweats, well-accustomed to seeing people die, screaming like animals. Late in the evening we were fetched by some medical orderlies and Russian prisoners of war and driven in ambulances to 13th Field Hospital, which had been set up in the suburb of Pavolo. There we were carried straight down to a cellar and de-loused. This was done by Russian prisoners of war, and I have never had more gentle and dexterous nurses. If they ever got a wrong hold and made us moan they were so touchingly horrified that for their sake alone we gritted our teeth and did our best not to show our pain. We wounded were generally agreed that, if only we could be looked after by those big, goodhumored creatures, we would be well off indeed, and gratefully we gave them what cigarettes we had. They had been in the trenches like us; and though they were of another race and nationality and we had once shot at each other, because those in authority had decreed that we were enemies, there was a sympathy between us stronger than any decrees that had long since proved quite without connection with any reality that the private soldier could be interested in.

I and four others were lying in the operating theater awaiting our turn and watching a companion in misfortune on the table beneath a glaring light. Four surgeons were working on him like lightning. They were amputating a foot. As soon as it was sawn off, it was thrown into a white bucket, in which there already stood a leg, sawn off just below the knee, and an arm, the gory stump of which protruded above the edge of the bucket. It nauseated me and I was sick, or rather I tried to be sick but only a little blood and gall came up.

The next patient was a young fellow with a broken back. He appeared to be unconscious. An elderly surgeon with a monocle kept cursing the other surgeons and orderlies, but he seemed wonderfully expert, for he worked like thunder and lightning with never an unnecessary movement. When they had been working on the young chap for some ten minutes the old surgeon exclaimed angrily:

"But, hell, the bugger's dead. Away with him and bring the next body. And get a move on." He gave one of the orderlies a push.

Before I knew what was happening I lay tied to the operating table. I was given an injection in my arm and another in my belly. One of the surgeons clapped me on the shoulder.

"Now grit your teeth, old chap. It won't take very long, but it will probably hurt, for we can only give you a local anaesthetic. So be brave and we'll soon patch you nicely together."

Shortly afterward I was aware of a cut across my belly and heard a faint clatter of instruments. The next moment it felt as though all my guts were being pulled out. It burned and seared and tore like red hot pincers. I had never thought there could be such pain. I screamed like a madman and thought my eyes would start out of my head.

"Shut up," roared the old surgeon. "We haven't even begun yet. Keep your howls for when there's something to howl about."

When I got "something to howl about" I don't know; I only know that when they were finished I had been in a world of torment to which few go. I was broken, crushed. They wheeled me into a ward, put me on a bed, gave me an injection and I fell asleep.

For the first fortnight I was aware of little that went on around me or happened to me; but very slowly my strength began to return. In the next bed lay an airman with bad bums. He was called Zepp. Then there were six badly wounded of whom two died in the course of a few days. I had no idea what had happened to Stege, and no one could tell me.

Three weeks after the operation I was pronounced fit to move. I was put in a proper hospital train with real bunks and large windows out of which you could see, or rather those in the middle bunk could. As I had to have my dressings changed frequently, I was given one of these sought-after middle bunks. Above me lay my new friend Zepp, whose good spirits were a great help to me.

We were taken to Lvov, where Zepp and I were sent to No. 7 Reserve Hospital. The doctor said that my wound looked really well, and he smiled. The tempo there was no longer frantic and the doctors had time to smile and talk to you properly. He pulled a couple of splinters out of my leg, making my nerves quiver, but then to my relief the nurse put the dressings back again. I was given nothing but gruel, and I came to so loathe it that I almost went mad; yet when I asked the doctor if I could have a little variety in my diet he patted my cheek and said, "Later, my friend. Later."

Zepp and I were in a ward for badly wounded. Day and night there was moaning and groaning, and it often stank appallingly of pus and putrescence. One day a young chap, who knew he was going to die and had already taken three torturous weeks about it, got up, dragged himself out into the corridor and flung himself down the steps. It was horrible, because we could not get up and stop him. Zepp did try, but he fell a few steps from his own bed; we others rang the bell till it almost cracked.

That was a wretched time.

My stomach caused me appalling pain, and it was no joke, either, when the doctor dug about in the flesh of my leg to find little pieces of shell splinter. My temperature rose instead of going down, but even so the doctor said that I was making progress. All very well for you, I thought sourly.

I woke in the middle of one night. My bandages felt wet and sticky. I asked Zepp to ring. The next moment a nurse came rushing in.

"What's wrong with you?" she whispered irately. "Are you crazy ringing like that at this hour of the night."

"My wound's burst open," I replied. "It has bled through the dressing." I was almost beside myself with fear and in my mind's eye I could see my mother receiving the laconic card from the army:

"He died like a hero for Fuhrer and Fatherland."

She pulled the covers to one side. Out of consideration for the others she did not put on the light, but just used her flashlight. Quickly and deftly she undid the bandages. It was quite quiet in the ward. A young chap at the far end muttered something in his sleep. Zepp sat up in bed, but the nurse shoved him back and told him to go to sleep. "Sven and I can manage this much better alone," she said, and went for a basin of water. I gave Zepp a frightened look and he looked back at me, equally scared. She came back and, without saying a word, washed me. She was smiling slightly to herself and gave just one look at my frightened face. "This is nothing to be frightened about," said she.