March Battalion (8 page)

'Now we'll show the bastards!' he yelled.

He positioned himself straight in the path of the oncoming tanks and knelt on one knee, calmly waiting, as if it were no more than a routine exercise. The rest of us crouched in the undergrowth, biting our nails with anticipation.

'Fire, for God's sake,' muttered Alte.

Little John was unable to contain himself.

'For Christ's sake FIRE!' he shouted to Porta.

All hell was promptly let loose about our ears, but in that instant Porta fired and a long flame snaked out towards the nearest T.34. The tank seemed to rear up in an effort to avoid it. It moved forward a short way, then stopped. An answering flame shot skywards from the turret. A man appeared in the opening. He pulled himself half out into the open air and then fell back again, with blue flames licking greedily at his body. His long cry of agony was enough to curdle anyone's blood. Except, perhaps, Heide's. He probably enjoyed it. The revolting smell of burning flesh filled our nostrils. The two remaining tanks made a half turn and crashed away through the undergrowth in a panic. They had obviously taken the flamethrower, for an anti-tank gun and had no intention of remaining behind to be slaughtered.

As for us, we also took to our heels. We ran until we were free of the woods, emerging breathless and exhausted into the open, where we fell to licking the snow like so many animals to soothe our parched throats. All round us it was still and silent, but far away, in the distance, we could hear the whine of shells and the heavy groaning of artillery.

'There it is,' said Steiner, pointing to the north west. The front.'

'God, how I hate it all.'

The Professor suddenly flung himself down in the snow, and after a moment's hesitation the rest of us followed suit. We needed a short period of relaxation before facing the next load of problems.

'What do you hate especially?' asked Porta, lying on his back and staring up at the trees.

The Professor made an impatient movement with his hand.

'Everything. All the lies and the cheating and the senseless slaughter. They made it sound so different when we first joined up, back in Oslo.'

'Naturally,' said Porta, dryly. 'I suppose they promised you glorious victory and little flags to wave and tin trumpets to blow? And the enemy was just a bunch of toy soldiers waiting to be knocked down like a load of skittles? Jesus Christ Almighty, the things some people believe!'

'We died like flies,' said the Professor. 'They sent us into battle totally unprepared. Before we'd even had a chance to discover the danger we were in most of us were already dead.'

'Heard it all before,' muttered Barcelona.

'Yeah. They made you think the war was some sort Sunday school outing,' said Porta.' 'What sort of training they bother to give you?'

'Six weeks,' said the Professor.

We all turned to look at him. 'Six weeks?'

'That's all.'

'My God, we had three years of it,' said Alte slowly. 'For us the war began easily enough with Poland. Just like manoeuvres, only real bullets instead of blanks ... six weeks! God in heaven! How many of you survived the first onslaught?'

'There were two hundred and thirty-five of us at the beginning. All volunteers. All in the Viking Division in the Ukraine. The first day, one hundred and twenty-one of us were killed. More were lost when the road was strafed by Russian, fighters and some of the ambulances went up in flames... The C.O. went mad and put a bullet through his brain. Two days later, eight of us were shot for "desertion in the face of the enemy". Nine more of us were sent to disciplinary regiments for having said that our officers were more to blame than we were. They were professional soldiers and they knew what to expect. We were volunteers and we'd been misled ... I was beaten for six hours non-stop in the prison at Lemberg. At first I thought I was lucky to be left alive. I'm not so sure now.'

'So long as there are whores in the world, it's worth being alive,' said Little John, bracingly.

The Professor smiled, and we all, automatically, perked up at the sound of the word 'whore'. Sex was a subject of which we never tired. We all knew each other's preferences by heart, we lived intimately with each other's day dreams, yet somehow they never ceased to be an enthralling topic of conversation.

It was not long before we heard a volley of shots away to our right, and instantly we were on the alert.

'Probably a search party out looking for us,' whispered Alte. 'Take cover and stay hidden.'

Silently we crept on our stomachs back into the shelter of the undergrowth. It was dusk now, and our nerves were on edge at the prospect of being hunted. The search party were obviously also nervous. They fired a few shots into the bushes, retreated, came on again, fired at random at nothing at all. Doubtless they would willingly have given us up for lost had not their officers urged them on with the usual mixture of threats and curses. We caught a quick glimpse of them as they came through the trees. They were gauche young recruits, it was probably their 'first action. We heard one, more confident than the others, boastfully declare his intention to shoot on sight. The officer in charge turned on him wrathfully.

'You wait until then, you'll be dead! In cases like this you shoot by instinct not by sight. Now shut up talking and keep your ears pinned back.'

The Legionnaire silently rose up from the bushes and sent a volley of shots in the direction of the voices. We heard a cry, then someone cursing. The undergrowth crackled, then there was silence. We could sense the presence of someone not far away. The Legionnaire frowned intently through the darkness. Heide began to slide stealthily forward along a narrow path, followed closely by Porta and Little John, Barcelona covering them with his machine gun. A twig snapped in two and we saw a dark figure step out from the bushes. Barcelona at once opened fire. The man screamed and clasped his hands to his eyes. It was a Russian officer, a lieutenant He came blundering up the path towards us, blood streaming down his face. Barcelona fired again and put the man out of his misery, and at the same moment the rest of us opened fire on several figures that loomed up in the darkness. They were an easy prey. Those that did not fall turned and ran, and from some distance away we heard a Russian voice raised in anger. Doubtless the C.O. at tempting to restore order. Alte jerked his head. 'All right Let's go.'

For the rest of the night and the following day we remained hidden and undisturbed in the wood. Towards evening, we prepared ourselves for our journey to the German front line. We had evolved a plan that was simple enough in theory, though whether it would work in practice seemed, to me at least, highly problematical,

We approached the line of Russian trenches. Naturally we were stopped and questioned. To each question Alte gave the same reply; we had been sent out in capacity of a mine-clearing unit. No one batted an eyelid. We were provided with equipment and even wished good luck. .

'Rather you than me,' said the sergeant who guided us on the last stage of our journey through the front line of Russian trenches. 'I just hope the saints are looking out for you!'

'Spassibo pan,' replied Porta, unctuously.

Then we were in no-man's land, crawling rapidly across it; towards the German lines. A hail of machine gun bullets ploughed up the ground all about us and we fell in a huddle into a shell hole. We leapfrogged from shell hole to shell hole, until at length Alte insisted on leaving us behind and going it alone. We hardly dared to watch his progress. We just lay chewing our finger nails and waiting for the fun to start. And then, after what seemed an eternity, an unknown voice yelled at us in German.

'O.K., you can start moving across, but don't try any funny business. I'll have one man at a time, a minute between each man.'

They were evidently fearful of a trap, for as each one of us jumped down into the trench we were met by the sharp end of a bayonet pricking our chests. A young infantry lieutenant questioned us and remained highly sceptical - as who could blame him? German soldiers dressed in Russian uniforms? German soldiers appearing in no-man's land from behind the Russian lines? Now that we were back, we could hardly believe it ourselves.

'You'd be amazed at the things that go on in the German Army,' said Barcelona, cheerfully.

The Lieutenant turned on him.

'Hold your tongue, Feldwebel! You may have been racketing round the country enjoying yourselves for the past few weeks, but you're back in the army now and you'll do well to remember it.'

'We're back all right,' muttered Steiner. 'Who else would give us such a nice warm welcome? Red carpets and all! I tell you, Lieutenant, it's a real treat to get back home again.'

Captain Lander was, if anything, even less welcoming. We had the odd feeling that he was not really pleased to see us. However, three days later his body was found riddled with bullets in a thicket, and it hardly seemed respectful to the dead to go on doubting him.

As usual, it was the partisans who were held responsible for the murder, although some people did, indeed, raise their eyebrows in the direction of Porta and Little John. In the end they had to take the extreme measure of attending the Captain's funeral in order to prove their innocence.

He came to us from the military prison at Glatz. The court martial had sentenced him to serve ten years in a disciplinary regiment for having dared to say that war was the means by which a second-class housepainter had come to be called a genius.

From lieutenant-general, he was demoted to major. In Africa he lost his left eye, in Finland he left behind a part of his stomach. He was an excellent tank commander, capable of leading a whole division, but he had never learnt to guard his tongue against what he believed to be the truth.

Major Mercedes was the best officer we had ever had. Standing upright before us on an old packing case, bareheaded and
in
his shirt sleeves, he introduced himself
.

'O.K. I'm your new officer. Karl Ulrich Mercedes. Like you, I'm in the shit right up to my neck. I'm thirty-five years old and I weigh 151/2 stone. Any questions? No. I've nothing else to say to you, except this: you pull your weight and I'll pull mine and we'll all get along fine.'

At Lugansk he was wounded in the belly and had half his jaw shot away. He was one of the very few officers we ever respected.

L
UGANSK
was a sea of flames when we drove through in the tanks. Bodies spilled across the streets and lay in the gutters like so much rubbish tipped out of the dustbins. Columns of soldiers, torn and bleeding, dived for the illusory safety of turning houses and crumbling piles of masonry.

A shot. And then another, and then more. Shells, hand grenades, anti-tank guns, incendiary bombs. A whole barrage aimed at destruction and death.

The interior of our tank, a 52-ton Tiger, resounded with the harsh noise of metal on metal: mess tins, water containers, tin mugs, spanners, wrenches, empty boxes that had once held hand grenades. Porta stepped on the gas, the Tiger ground forward and the whole range of ironmongery rattled and clanked at our feet.

Mechanics, covered in mud and blood and oil, sought desperately through the devastated streets for their units. An Infantry captain, shouting orders in the middle of the road, was caught by one of the Tigers and thrown to the ground. The following tank was unable to avoid him. All that remained visible were his legs and his leather boots with their shining spurs.

No one said anything. No one cared. What was the death of one more man when set against the wholesale slaughter at Lugansk on the night of 14th March? We were past the stage of emotion, our feelings were dead.

Somewhere a roof collapsed with a thunderous roar and a shower of sparks rained down upon us. We pressed on, in line, until a sharp cry from Little John brought us to a halt. In one bound he was out of the tank and running back hell for leather up the burning street.

'What's got into him?' demanded Heide. 'What's he think this is, a joy ride?'

The radio crackled angrily into life. It was Lt. Ohlsen asking roughly the same question as Heide and adding the curt command that we should get started again and stop holding up the column. Porta shrugged his shoulders and put his foot down. The tank moved forward, at the same moment as Little John reappeared. He threw something down the hatch and himself after it. We sat gaping at a grubby urchin, not more than four or five years old, who gaped back at us uncertainly.

'What's the meaning of this?' snapped Alte.

Little John pulled the child on to his lap.

'He was sitting in the gutter all by himself. I couldn't just leave the kid out there to get killed. A second later and he'd've been buried under half a ton of burning timber.' He glared round at us. 'He's mine, see? And from now on you can contribute part of your rations ... You and me,' he told the boy, 'we're together now. O.K.?'

'Yes, I can just imagine the Major's expression of when he hears about it,' said Alte, sarcastically. 'He'll be overjoyed.'

'I don't give a monkey's cuss,' said Little John, 'for him or for anyone else. This kid is mine and we're sticking together. ... Imagine that, I'm a father! Poor little sod, he's scared to death. Turn your ugly mug the other way, Julius, it's enough to put the shits up anyone.' He turned the boy to face him and pointed a finger at himself. 'Hey, tovaritch! Toi pljemjanjik! Me, Little John Otschoenasch!'

Porta gave a derisory laugh.

'You cretinous great oaf ... That means you're God the Father.'

'All right, you explain to him,' said Little John, heatedly. 'Tell him I'm his father. Go on! '

Porta obligingly let loose a stream of fluent Russian. The boy bit his finger, evidently soothed by the sound of his own language but generally uncertain what to make of the situation. He was in rags, filthy dirty, with burns on his bare feet an a nasty gash running down his cheek. The Legionnaire cleaned him up a bit and dressed his various wounds, and Heide gave him an apple, which he ate ravenously, core and all. We had nothing else to offer him, but in any case there were more pressing matters requiring our attention. Shells and incendiary bombs were exploding all about us, houses were toppling down like packs of cards, burning roof beams lay in our path and debris littered the hose of the tank. We pushed on our way out of town, moving slowly and cautiousy. A bunch of soldiers rushed at us from some ruins, and it was not until we had mown down the last of them that we realized our mistake: we had shot at our own soldiers. They had obviously taken refuge in the burnt-out houses and must have thought themselves saved on seeing their own tanks approaching. Unfortunately, in the heat of the moment it was difficult to distinguish between the camouflaged tunics worn by the Germans and the khaki uniforms of the Russians. The tanks hurled themselves out through the suburbs at full speed. We took a left turn through what had once been a beautifully laid-out garden. An ornamental pond was cracked in two beneath the weight of the tank. The surrounding fields were a mass of khaki. Everyone, on foot, by tank, by lorry, by motorcycle, had but one idea: to put as much distance as possible between himself and the burning hell of Lugansk. 'Advance!' screamed the Major's voice over the radio. We advanced, mercilessly; a line of fifty tanks ploughing through the sea of khaki. All round us was the staccato rattle of machine guns, the bursting of shells. Flame throwers set the very air alight, soaked as it was in the escaping petrol of various wrecked and abandoned vehicles. Russian infantry troops surged about us in a state of panic, milling first this way, then that, hurling themselves to the ground and clawing with their fingernails in a despairing attempt to dig themselves into the earth. But our artillery was always one step ahead, ploughing the ground into deep furrows and the men with it. The tanks churned onwards, crushing whatever and whoever stood in their path.