Legion of the Damned (29 page)

Finally our suspense was relieved: the man was granted his leave and sentenced to three days' strict arrest for having left his post without authorization. This was to be served when he came back from leave.

The Russians had other, more robust means of making propaganda. For example they had what they called "radio transmissions." These began with a skit on a German radio program, often pretty coarse, but nonetheless witty and effective. Then came the request program. A well-trained speaker's voice said:

"You will now hear a request concert of various instruments. First a composition on lighter instruments."

At that a score of machine guns and light mortars started firing and tore the parapet of our trench to pieces, sending earth spurting round our ears.

"And now, honored listeners, you will hear a phantasia on the Stalin organ."

The next moment it was as though the world were coming to an end; the nerve-shattering rocket shells of the famous "organ" came howling down upon us and exploded with deafening bangs.

"And for a festive finale we have chosen a potpourri of all instruments in our large and well-rehearsed symphony orchestra."

Oh, that smiling, chatty voice!

The whole sector quivered with horror during the hurricane that was then unleashed upon us. As we crouched down each kept an eye on his next door man, ready to knock him out the moment he showed signs of faffing victim to the frenzy of shell shock.

There were various units of Russian volunteers in the German Army. As well as General Vlasov's notorious division of traitors, there were some Cossack regiments that were sheer devils when it came to mishandling Russians who fell into their clutches. The most horrifying of all, however, was a woman's battalion. These megaerae used to pull the clothes off their prisoners and tie them to a table or a bed, whereupon they excited the poor wretches till they were willy-nilly able to satisfy the others' bestial sexual urges. The usual end of the debauch was that either they cut off their victim's penis and stuck it in his mouth, or they crushed his testicles with a hammer. This last Porta one day witnessed, and what he saw earned seven of the women a bullet through their heads from his sniper's rifle that same night.

When the Russians got hold of any of these Cossacks or
Flintenweiber
they paid them out in their own coin. The most appalling sadism flourished and spread like fungus. There were also Ukrainians enrolled in independent battalions in the SS, and others incorporated individually in German regiments and known as Hiwis (
Hilfswillige
), and one and all grew more and more desperate and unhappy the nearer the war drew toward the inevitable, and to them fearful, end. They had put their money on the wrong horse, whether out of conviction or calculation, and the realization was making mad beasts of them.

It naturally happened that some of these Russian deserters grew tired of the German discipline and deserted back to the Russians. What happened to them then we never succeeded in discovering. Presumably they were hanged for high treason. Then the Russians put a sudden and radical end to this traffic. They returned all Russian and Ukrainian deserters to us by the simple expedient of flying them in over the German lines and there chucking them out. In the breast pocket of each was a yellow service envelope and delivery note:

Military Police Unit 174 hereby returns

SS Volunteer Boris Petrovich Turgoiski

born March 18, 1919, in Tiflis.

He deserted on December 27, 1943, at Lebed from 18th SS

Battalion and was taken by 192 Rifle Regiment of the Red

Army.

This deserter is being returned to the German Army by Lieutenant Barowich, pilot of the Red Army Air Force.

Receipt

Receipt is hereby acknowledged of deserter

Rank

Name

Unit

It is requested that the receipt on completion be returned to

the nearest unit of the Red Army.

Such atrocities had a stupefying effect on one. For a long time I went about in a state of queer, dull resignation and was on the point of being infected by my companions' belief that we were all doomed and that nothing mattered at all, since all men were evil and sinister without exception.

Hauptmann von Barring began to drink.

Only the machine guns had been removed. We got hold of the farmer and asked him how the devil the tank had got into his barn. Delightedly he showed us a paper on which was written in German:

"We, the crew, have sold this tin can to Farmer Peter Alexandrowich for a cow, both being in a good serviceable state.

Heil Hitler!

A Kiss on the ----, dear Party Member."

In almost every farm of the Ukraine, big or small, you could expect to find a German car or vehicle of some kind.

The reason they gave was that an SS untersturmfiihrer had been killed just outside the village. As a warning to others the SS commander had ordered that every man and woman between the ages of fourteen and sixty be hanged. They were hauled up into a couple of trucks which backed in under some gallowses, ropes were placed round their necks and the trucks drove away.

A loud, distinct growl rose from our ranks as we marched past. The SS squinted nervously at us and took a tighter grip on their weapons while our officers urged us on so as to avoid a clash.

The conflict between the army and the SS was on the point of becoming an open one. Himmler had crushed all attempts to create an organized underground movement against the regime, whose watchdog he was, but to no purpose, for he had not identified his enemy. In fact, he had crushed the wrong ones. The real enemy-- though naturally he could not know that--was the weapon of terror that he thought he could use as he saw fit. This, in fact, was employed quite without plan, and in the end it became his undoing. It was this that roused German resistance until it became an underground movement whose chronicles have not been written, and never can be, because there are no records. It was not an organized movement, but it was there, and it did its work in the same inconspicuous and seemingly fortuitous manner as when we liquidated the swine Meier.

The Russians had occupied half Kiev when we moved in. In the city we divided up into small combat groups, which penetrated independently into the different streets. I rattled along in my tank just behind those of Porta and The Old Un. We went down Wosduchffotskoje, then crossed a railway line and along Djakowa Street, all the houses in which were occupied by the Germans; then we turned out toward Pavolo at the northern end of the city. Down narrow streets and alleys we drove, and then, just as day was breaking, we reached an old factory.

In the great yard we discovered eighteen T34's and five KW2's lined up side by side while their crews were paraded for roll call in front of their tanks. The sudden apparition of our three tanks not twenty yards away paralyzed them.

I pulled our inexperienced unteroffizier away from the sighting apparatus and flame thrower, machine guns and gun roared out together. The nicely paraded company went down like ninepins and within a short space of time all the Russian tanks were ablaze. After that we drove full pelt down a couple of side streets, encountered a company of infantry and disposed of them, using first our flame throwers then machine guns, while the steel tracks of our tanks attended to the few survivors.

On we went, crushing everything that came in our way. Suddenly there was a loud bang and The Old Un's tank stopped with a broken track. I swung round at full speed and thundered down a side street to get in the rear of the Russian antitank gun. This, and its crew of eight, I simply ran down; but they had already set fire to The Old Un's tank and killed two of his crew. The Old Un came into my tank and the other two went into Porta's.

We continued thus all day. It was exhausting, monotonous and a constant strain that nearly drove us mad. When we got back we learned that No. 5 Company had lost all its tanks and that Oberst von Lindenau had been burned to death.

Kiev was burning.

There is no more nerve-racking or brutal form of warfare than street fighting. You never really know what you are up against as you dart from door to door, sometimes suddenly having to get into cover behind a cement lamp post, because howling, whistling, banging things are being hurled at you from the houses.

On several occasions we had to leave a house because it had collapsed under us, so that we fell three or four stories. We fought savage hand-to-hand battles using knives and spades, and the whole time the city was burning; always there were flames round us and bangs and shrieks and people getting frostbitten because the temperature was minus 40-50degC.

The huge iron bridge across the Dnieper had been blown up, and only twisted bits of steel protruded from the water. The city's pride, the radio station with its steel masts, was a pile of broken iron and twisted cables. In the great abattoirs thousands of carcasses were drenched with acid. Hundreds of tons of sunflower seed and millet oil were spoiled with gas and set alight. The huge locomotive shops resembled an elephants' graveyard.

During the withdrawal our hatred of the SS flared up and found open expression. Things reached the stage that no SS unit dared move up during an attack if regular army troops were behind it. It happened repeatedly that when Russians and Germans were blazing away at each other from their respective sides of a street and an SS unit came creeping up it, there would be a pause in the fighting to allow the Germans to mow down the SS. Once they had been dealt with the fighting would be resumed.

Early one morning, shortly before daybreak, we reached a sector near Berditschev, where things were about to happen. As well as our regiment, there was a reserve infantry regiment there. Having lost our tanks, we were being used as infantry.

We of the 27th Regiment at once crawled out into no-man's land, which was always our place. We dug ourselves narrow oneman foxholes in which we could lie with impunity while the Russian tanks rolled across. The idea was that, once the tanks had passed, we were to engage the infantry following them with our machine guns, flame throwers and possibly close-combat weapons, bayonet and spade.

In the trenches behind us our grenadiers were being subjected to violent shelling. Hour after hour passed and the artillery duel only increased in intensity; then at three o'clock there was a sudden, brief pause and the barrage was moved to just behind the front lines and resumed with the intensity of a hurricane.

The sight that now met our horrified eyes almost made us swoon. Through the low-lying mist great herds of T34's came thundering toward us, and behind them stormed a brown mass of infantry with fixed bayonets.

Suddenly it became dark in my hole and some earth trickled down over me. A cold sweat broke out on my forehead and my knees began to shake. Again a tank rolled over above me and as soon as it had gone another was there.

Then the machine guns began, accompanied by the rumble of the guns. That meant that they were engaged by our grenadiers and antitanks guns.

I did not dare stick my head out of the hole and have a look in case a T34 should come along and decapitate me, but when the machine gun in the hole next to mine began to chatter I had to straighten up.

About fifty yards away I saw a Russian heavy machine gun in position with twelve men lying round it. In an instant I had my flame thrower aimed and pressed the trigger. There was a hollow rumble as the red flame shot at them. Two of them reared half up and dropped again, blazing furiously. Then I came under fire from another machine gun a little to my right, and I had to duck quickly, stopping the flame thrower.

Carefully I eased the muzzle of the flame thrower over the edge of my hole, used my periscope to aim it and pressed the trigger. The machine gun fell silent.

Then came the next wave of tanks, and this time it was worse, for they knew that we were in the holes. The method of closecombat between the infantryman and the seventy-ton tank is this: the infantryman, fearless in accordance with the regulations, jumps out of his hole, rushes at the tank from
in front
and flings himself onto its bows, clinging fast to its big towing hook with one hand, while his other clasps a magnetic bomb.

The violet effort of heaving myself up onto the huge tank that was tearing along at full speed made me break out into a sweat. Fortunately for such as I, the crew of a T34 can see nothing within a radius of ten feet from their tank. Several times I was almost thrown off; my hands were torn and bleeding and my nails broken. But the dauntless warrior got up and stuck the bomb against the steel rail that runs round the rearmost part of the turret. Then he pulled the release-cord, jumped off and flung himself into a shell hole, where lay a dozen of the grenadiers with a machine gun. Five seconds later there was a hollow roar from the tank, which stopped with its nose in a shell hole. Its entire crew were killed instantly by the blast of the powerful magnetic bomb.

When the next T34 came thundering along the fearless soldier picked up one of the mines the grenadiers had with them and swung himself neatly onto the tank, breaking several more nails. That sort of thing becomes almost routine. How effective the routine was I only realized when a piece of tank turret, having described a curve through the air, dropped a foot from me with a mighty smack. It cannot have weighed less than half a ton.

Our antitank artillery drove the enemy tanks back, pursued by mines and magnetic bombs. Then the Russian guns began to speak and the grenadiers and all the new boys in the 27th Regiment went off their heads. They took to their heels and ran in headlong flight in all directions. Even we old sweats were infected and followed their example. The Russian infantry at once set off in pursuit and came storming after us with wild shouts of: "Uray Stalino! Uray Stalino!"

An elderly major tried to halt us and force us to turn and face the Russians, but his automatic pistol was wrenched from his hands and he was trampled to death by panic-stricken soldiers. What suddenly brought us to our senses and made us halt I do not know, but halt we did; and so we fought the Russians hand-to-hand. I seized a Mongol's rifle with both hands and tried to wrest it from him. We bit and snarled at each other like two animals, for we knew that one of us must die. Possessed by a mad frenzy, I got the rifle and, like lightning, plunged the bayonet into his back. He fell forward with a bellow, tearing the rifle from my hands. I had to put my foot on him to pull the bayonet out. Having kicked him off it, I stormed on, bellowing like a bull and screeching like a madman, the bayonet held horizontal in front of me. I ran into a Russian with such force that the bayonet pro.. truded from his back. He screamed, with his mouth wide open. There was nothing but these bellows and screams, all animal noises and contorted faces.