Legion of the Damned (30 page)

Suddenly the blood froze in my veins. With mouth agape I stared up into the sky where a dense shoal of howling, glowing rockets came driving at us with flaming tails of fire behind them, screeching worse than all the evil spirits of hell, a ghastly noise that seemed to be slowly pulling every nerve out of my body. Every one of us lay pressed to the ground, and we howled with nameless terror, bit and kicked. It was the Stalin organ, the most terrifying instrument of all time.

After thirty-six hours' fighting the Russian attack flagged and ebbed, and the final result was that both we and the Russians were back in our former positions. Then began a tremendous artillery duel, a hurricane that lasted for six days and nights and cost many their reason. A small wood was razed to the ground in two hours so completely that there was nothing to show that there ever had been a wood at that spot. We sat in our dugouts staring into space with sickly bloodshot eyes. Talk was impossible, for you could not make your neighbor hear even if you bellowed at the top of your voice.

It was the sight of Porta and The Old Un that saved me from going off my head. I had only to look at them sitting quite unaffected by the exploding, deafening inferno and I became calm. The Old Un puffed at his pipe and Porta played on his flute with the cat Stalin curled up on his lap. No one, not even Porta, could hear a note of what he played, but he played on in grave concentration, paying no attention to the uproar. Perhaps he had achieved such a degree of detachment that he actually could hear what he was playing.

In the forenoon of the fourth day von Barring appeared in our dugout. He looked more ill than ever. The Old Un had told us that he was suffering from pernicious dysentery and had to spend most of the day sitting with his trousers round his knees, and also something had gone wrong with his kidneys. To all appearances he had not long left.

He gave The Old Un a paper on which was written:

"We must get the men a meal. I have already sent four parties for rations but they have not come back. Will you and your two comrades try it? We must have the food fetched. You three are my last hope."

We looked at each other and at von Barring, who sat there exhaustedly, his head in his hands. The Old Un shrugged his shoulders and nodded. He was given a report to take, telling our HQ that our telephone had been shot to pieces.

It was an indescribable sight we saw as, with the food buckets strapped to our backs, we dived out into the shattered trench. It was like a plowed up lunar landscape. An incessant rain of fire and steel was coming out of the dark sky. The clouds hung low and threatening. The Old Un gave a worried shake of his head. Porta nodded indifferently and then we jumped up and out of the trench.

It took us six and a half hours to cover the artillery belt that was four kilometers wide, and seven hours to make our way back with full food buckets. It was pork and yellow peas.

We ourselves ate at the field kitchen, ate and ate and ate till even the cooks began to have scruples. Porta stuffed a piece of boiling, quivering meat into either trouser pocket, remarking that we must also think of the evening. The buckets felt darned heavy when we strapped them on again. Porta put Stalin into the pocket he had made on the outside of his greatcoat, and there he sat looking out over the edge, a red cat with a forage cap tied on its head.

I have also fought deep underground. The Russians had started mining under our positions. If we put our ears to the floor of the dugout we could hear the thud, thud, thud of their picks as they worked down there. It became our task to dig down to them, kill their miners and undermine the Russian positions instead.

We were lying in a gallery and we could hear the Russians working: thud, thud, thud.

All at once there was silence. We listened, all our senses strained to the utmost. Had they finished and would we in a short While hear a muffled roar, after which the earth would cave in on us?

We listened for a quarter of an hour, and that is a long time to sit listening for a noise that does not come, when otherwise there is absolute silence.

We listened for an hour.

Then the thuds began again. It was like a new lease of life. I heard The Old Un draw a deep breath of relief behind me.

We prepared to go into action.

Softly The Old Un whispered to those who were young and inexperienced:

"Remember when you stab with a knife never stab between the ribs, the knife just sticks there. Stab in the neck or in the belly, preferably obliquely down into the groin, cutting up as you pull out."

Cautiously we made our way down the long tunnels that in places were so narrow that we had to crawl on our bellies. Turning one corner, we almost ran into four Russians who were lying ten feet away busily working with their picks. Without a sound we crept up behind them and stabbed them. All around us in the communicating galleries our people lay waiting for the Russian sappers, who now came crawling up, having smelled a rat. The Old Un, Porta, I and six others crawled forward to the end of a tunnel from which we could see a gang of eight at work. While the others hid against the side of the tunnel, Porta called in Russian:

"Comrades, hurry and come up. We're being relieved."

The Russians peered in surprise at the dark tunnel, but did not see us. One of them called back:

"Are we all to come?"

"Yes. Hurry up! The others are all up already. They're waiting for you."

We struck them down as they came abreast of us. Our knives glinted in the light of their sleepy torches. One of them managed to drive his short pick into the belly of one of our boys, who started to scream so that we had to cut his throat.

They threw a lot of explosives down at us.

One day we buried Pluto. We could not find his head, but the rest was there.

It fell to the 27th Regiment to remain behind in an evacuated sector one hundred and twenty kilometers long to camouflage a big withdrawal. The positions on this sector were built-up above ground, and we were to see that for the next twenty-four hours the stoves were kept alight and the chimneys smoking, and every now and again we were to fire a few bursts of machine gun fire at the Russians. Besides doing this, we were to make booby traps. Our company was allotted twenty kilometers; there were two hundred of us. We had strict orders that under no circumstances must we leave our positions unless the Russians actually entered our trenches.

We were thirty in our platoon facing four thousand five hundred Siberian riflemen, the most feared of all the troops in the Red Army.

We set about our preparations. Every door was connected with mines that exploded the moment the door was opened or shut. An innocent-looking piece of firewood set off a bundle of aerolite cartridges if anyone picked it up to put it in the stove. A loose board on the edge of a trench was connected with fifty tank mines a hundred yards away. It was strange going about preparing those surprises. Why did we not leave them undone? Perhaps because it was just as pointless not to make them as to make them.

The afternoon passed quietly. The Russians apparently had not noticed that facing them they had only a handful of forlorn, sad men. The ensuing night was not very pleasant. We did not dare sleep. We just sat and stared. It was fifty or a hundred yards from you to your next door man, and you never knew when you might expect a patrol to come sneaking up--a Siberian patrol! With my head filled with such thoughts I sat in a corner with a pile of grenades ready to throw and two loaded submachine guns beside me, staring and staring into the darkness.

At daybreak the Russians began to suspect that all was not normal. We sent a few bullets over at them, but they became more and more venturesome, sticking their heads over their parapets and gazing inquisitively at us. I hurried to The Old Un and said excitedly:

"Shouldn't we make off now, before it's too late? It can't make any difference whether we stay here twenty hours or twenty-four."

The Old Un shook his head.

"Sven, an order is an order; and, above all, the others are relying on us as they trot along out there in the snow. The poor devils have a bad enough time ahead of them. Let us give them a chance to get themselves out of the trap, if they can."

Porta now joined us and he too grumbled, but The Old Un just said that as far as he was concerned we could go if we liked, but he would remain, alone if necessary.

"Oh, shut up, you silly old Feldwebel," shouted Porta angrily. "Of course we shan't leave you. But don't say we didn't warn you."

Fuming and cursing, we went back to our posts where we stayed watching the Russians and fearing the worst. Some Russians now got up onto the parapet of their trench and signaled across to us. We sent a couple of bursts at them, which made them jump; but shortly afterward they were back again. Suddenly, to my horror, I saw a dirty face appear over the parapet not ten yards from where I sat. Like lightning I flung a grenade at it. The man was killed on the spot. Then things became frantic. The Russians came sauntering across in large groups, and then at last The Old Un gave orders to abandon our positions.

We tore off on our skis across the snow covered steppe. At intervals we heard a bang behind us. That was one of our booby traps going off. Otherwise all was still and desolate. Now and again a column of Russian tanks went rolling along the highway scarcely two kilometers away. After five days' search we found the remnants of the 27th Regiment which, at last, was being taken out of the fighting to be re-formed.

I was made Fahnenjunker, which I did not like. Hitherto I had been nicely hidden in the ranks, but now I had to stand well out in front and receive the report of the Kommandofeldwebel, who, previously, had been my superior. It was like standing out there naked. My companions grinned.

Some time later he said in the same whispering voice:

"When you make your revolution against the Nazis and the generals, will you give Adolf a couple of extra wallops from me?"

"We promise you that, Porta. He shall have so many on the mustache from you that you would have been very tired if you had had to apply them yourself," replied The Old Un.

"Good!"

Then for a good while there was silence and all we could hear was The Old Un puffing at his pipe.

"Old Un, have you got your instrument with you?"

The Old Un pulled his mouth organ out of his pocket.

"Play that bit about the girl combing her hair. The one who was sitting on the rock combing her hair."

The Old Un played and I sang softly, while Porta lay there gazing up at the ceiling.

"Ich weiss nicht, was soil es bedeuten,

dass ich so traurig bin;

ein Marchen aus alter Zeiten,

das kommt mir nicht aus dem Sinn."

We wept. Then Porta whispered:

"Now Joseph Porta, Stabsgefreiter by God's grace, is going. It's a bit hard. Promise me to look after Stalin. Let me see him before I set sail."

The Old Un lifted the cat up and put it to Porta's face. "Remember to smack Adolf and Himmler! Servus!" Yellowy-black fluid trickled from the corner of his mouth, but his grip tightened slightly on our hands. Then slowly the grip relaxed. Porta was dead.

Though I did not know it, my second trip to hospital was to prove a turning point. I had been left hanging on the barbed wire, but then they dragged me in and I was sent to the rear and hospital. After my release I was sent to the tank school at Wunschdorff in Berlin for a short officers' course before going back to the 27th Regiment. There, in Berlin, by a strange dispensation of Providence, I became courier for the conspiracy against Hitler. But that's another story.

One morning while I was in the reserve hospital in Franzenbad a small, stocky person of about twenty-five came into our ward and made straight for my bed, held out his hand and said in resonant Viennese: "Old friend, Ernst Stolpe's the name. 7th Alpine Regiment and queer in the top story, raving mad and I've papers to prove it; here, see for yourself."

He handed me a certificate that was as good a "game license" as any reasonable soldier would dare dream of wangling:

Obergefreiter Ernst Stolpe, 7th Alpine Jager Btn., is to be classed as gravely war wounded by reason of three serious injuries to his head. Under no circumstances may he be put to heavy work or made to wear heavy equipment, especially not a steel helmet. In the event of an attack he should be taken immediately to the nearest military hospital.

Standortlazaret 40

Paris

Dr. Waxmund, Oberstabsartz.

"Old friend, that's pretty Heil Hitler, isn't it? You aren't crazy, I suppose? If you are, you mustn't say so, for it would never do to have two here in the one hunting ground. I go about taking letters to various idiots in the HQ's and garrisons. When I need a little holiday I dot an officer one on the snout, give him a sweet smile and show him my license. Then I'm sent to hospital. When you're allowed up I'll show you Franzenbad and Eger and Prague. Would you like to hear how I came to this somersault factory?"

"Yes, do tell me," I replied. All at once it occurred to me that I had not smiled for several weeks. I had sent Barbara a telegram and she had come, and then she had got herself transferred so that she could stay at Franzenbad and look after me, but my spirits had not improved. I was so tired and exhausted. Barbara was very worried.

"Make your ear comfortable and listen, then, my dove," said Stolpe. "The first time I got one too much was in France. It was a tree trunk on a railway car and I got it right on the nape. Fracture of the skull. Into hospital. Out again. Out for a fortnight, then I show a fellow how to ride a motorbike the way a bike ought to be ridden. Take my hands off the bars, but darn me if someone hasn't put a fence just where I wanted to go. I sail through the air like a shell and land in an iron water trough. The trough holds. I don't. New fracture of the skull, plus a broken collarbone. Discharged without a certificate. Six weeks and there I am again. This time it is a wagon pole. Now, I say to myself, this time I must do it; but you've no idea how hard it is to get a certificate to say that you have a screw loose. A good German soldier doesn't have a screw loose, not a bit of it. That, I imagine, is because most of the good German soldiers I have met have
several
screws loose. Well, I got going, but I had to work at my part till it brought me a bonus. I began by giving the house physician a broken nose. Oh, you should have seen his snout afterward; boy, he
wept
, I can tell you. 'Do you like it?' I asked politely. 'My name's Stolpe.' But it didn't work. Well, I thought, you must use a coarser file; so one afternoon I said to the head sister, an elderly and very shriveled virgin of fifty or so, 'Off with your knickers, Cleopatra; I want a word with you!' That didn't work either; I suppose she had still been hoping. Well, said I, but I said it to myself, a good German soldier never gives up. What I need is a hammer. So I got myself a hammer and waited till the time was ripe. So one day I discover that it is ripe; go in to a major. Greet him nice and polite and admire his private room. Then I admire his watch, an elegant piece and of gold. Ask him if it is strong. The chap doesn't answer, just gapes. So I wink, out with my hammer, bring it down on the watch. No, that wasn't a strong watch at all, say I, and wipe the head of the hammer, while he rings his bell. Just cheap muck, say I disdainfully and hand him ten pfennigs. That's for a lottery ticket for a new watch, say I. Half the hospital comes rushing in, but I slip quietly down to the kitchens and wink at the girls there. Pretty hot down here, say I. Wouldn't you like me to open a window for you, girls? And so I out with my hammer: eight panes. That gives you a bit of air, eh, ladies? Then I fling my socks, three handkerchiefs and a floor cloth into the soup and ask if they can't wash those for me while they're about it. That, at last, gave me my license."