Reign of Hell (12 page)

They had barely gone two paces into the trees when the whole area blew up in their faces. The old man’s sons were torn from his grasp. Broken bodies were shot high into the air. People screamed and sobbed, and ran in panic through this inferno. There were more explosions, more shrieks. Pandemonium. The second row of victims were driven forward to their death. A young woman with a long splinter of wood embedded in her hip had been thrown clear. She dragged herself forward, along the dusty blood-spattered ground, moaning in pain and begging for mercy. But mercy was not the order of the day. She was tossed back into the terror that raged among the trees.

The third column found themselves caught between a minefield on one side and a row of SS rifles on the other. Some ran towards the guns and were riddled with bullets. Some fled into the woods and were blown apart as they scrambled and stumbled over the writhing bodies of their companions.

Haupsturmführer Sohr tipped his cap to the back of his head as he stood surveying the carnage. He smiled as he watched the woods burning.

‘Two thousand human detonators,’ he murmured. ‘The most efficient mine-detecting squad it has ever been my pleasure to command . . .’

The Regiment was back in the middle of the marshes. The marshes of Tomarka, this time. Actually one patch of bog is really very much like another. The same sticky dampness, the same endless swarms of mosquitoes.

We had got used to it by now, and during quiet periods even managed to find compensations for being there. Once you’d settled in, and the native wildlife had survived the shock invasion, you came to realise that in fact the place was a fascinating nature reserve. There were swallows and frogs in abundance. One day a couple of storks flew down to investigate the heavy machine-gun, and since then made a habit of fishing for frogs directly underneath it. Their nest was high up in the trees near to our front lines. After the first few days they seemed to grow accustomed to the constant clatter of machine-gun fire and the bursting of shells. It was remarkable how quickly the animal life came to terms with the disruption caused by men and machinery. They took it in their strides as a new pattern of daily life. There was a family of hares which came visiting every morning, begging for scraps of food. We used to throw them bits of cabbage, which they’d gobble up despite the activity going on. Then they’d lope off towards the Russian lines, where, doubtless, they were given a second meal.

By the end of our stay, we’d collected quite a menagerie. As well as the storks and the hares, there was a family of foxes which used to come scavenging each evening at sunset. One of the cubs we’d christened Toscha. He was a magnificent creature, pure white from head to foot. Tiny made the mistake one day of trying to capture him. He received a nasty bite in the leg from the infuriated animal, and from then on he had to content himself with watching from a distance. Behind the communications post was a badgers’ nest. We used to open cans of condensed milk and leave them at the
entrance to tempt them out into the open. Such were the small amusements of the marshes.

As for the Russians, we saw far less of them than we saw of the animals, but we knew where they were, all right. Every night, without fail, between 1900 and 2100 hours, we used to open up with the mortars. And every night, as soon as we stopped, they would send us their reply. It was really quite a gentlemanly and predictable procedure. There was no need for anyone to get himself killed if he took due precaution. It was only the raw idiots of 999 who ran into trouble. They insisted on wearing their steel helmets, only because they had been issued with them. Gleaming and glistening as they did in the humid atmosphere of the swamps, they presented the enemy with a target that was too easy to miss.

Porta and I were standing guard together one night, near the advance machine-gun post. We found the heavy silence quite oppressive, and were not perhaps as grateful as we should have been to the unknown bird that serenaded us from time to time from the middle of the marshes. It had a curiously raucous voice, harsh and gravelly. It persistently sang two notes followed by an off-key trill which began to grate on the nerves after a while.

‘Bleeding bird,’ I said. ‘Like a bleeding donkey with hiccups.’

Tiny and Gregor turned up at last to relieve us, but we stayed on with them to keep them company. We were due back on guard in a couple of hours and it scarcely seemed worth our while to go away and come back again. Porta produced his dice and a strip of green baize and we settled down to a game. They were beautiful dice. Ivory, with the figures embossed in gold. They had been picked up by Porta from the Casino at Nice. We spread the cloth over an ammunition box, and between each throw either Tiny or Gregor would take a stroll up to the parapet and casually glance over to see what the Russians were doing. As usual, they were doing nothing at all. Playing cards, in all probability. The bird in the marshes continued to bray, otherwise the night was silent.

Time passed slowly. We were all alert for the slightest sound, and even the beautiful ivory dice failed to hold our attention. Gregor kept tearing at his fingernails and spitting out the pieces. Every time the marsh bird opened its beak and trilled, he gave an agitated jerk and said, ‘For Christ’s SAKE!’ After a bit, even Porta lost interest in the game. He started prowling about in the darkness, pacing up and down by the machine-gun. It was asking for trouble, but no trouble came. Finally, in exasperation, he danced about in the shadows playing his flute, and the marsh was suddenly alive with the sound of birdsong. We listened, entranced. Perhaps the Russians listened too, but they made no attempt to fire.

And then, quite suddenly, Tiny put a finger to his lips and waved an admonitory hand at Porta. I could hear nothing myself except the bemused twittering of the birds, but Tiny had an animal instinct for the approach of danger and all three of us fell respectfully silent as he sat listening. At last we heard it: the drone of aeroplanes in the distance. Porta put his flute back to his lips.

‘Stukas,’ he said, contemptuously.

Tiny frowned.

‘You reckon?’

Before Porta could reply, the night sky was abruptly torn apart with a blinding flash of light. It was as bright as day, and we were standing exposed in the middle of it.

‘Stukas my arse!’ screamed Gregor, and he dived for cover beneath the parapet of the trench, with the rest of us falling pell-mell on top of him.

Somewhere behind us, the anti-aircraft batteries opened up. The drone of aeroplanes increased to a pulsating roar of engines. We saw them going overhead, wave upon wave of them. So much for Porta and his Stukas: they were Russian bombers.

No more the silence of the night. No more the braying donkey bird with his off-key trill that had so annoyed us. The marshes came alive with a hail of bombs, they were turned into a furnace, into a burning sea of flames.

‘Get the hell out of it!’ screamed Porta; and we got.

The air was filled with flying fragments. The entire third section, thirty-two men strong, were killed by one direct hit. Everywhere men were running and shouting. Bunkers and trenches, command posts, ammunition dumps and petrol stores, were all being torn apart by enemy bombs. No sooner had one wave of aircraft passed overhead than another appeared only seconds behind. There was no let up, no breathing space. You could only run from cover to cover in a vain attempt to get somewhere. Exactly where, God only knew. The whole of the front line was being ripped to shreds. The confusion was total. We discovered afterwards that the strength of the entire Fourth Wing of the Soviet Air Force had been directed against us. Seven hundred bombers had attacked that night. Whichever way you looked, you could see nothing but destruction. Dead men lying in heaps; mad men hopping about like jack rabbits; wounded men screaming; frightened men cowering; officers shouting orders that were never carried out because there was scarcely anyone left to listen.

After the seven hundred bombers, the heavy artillery came to complete the ruin. We could only crouch in the few trenches that remained and hope to weather the storm. Bomb damage had caused full-scale collapse, and the water from the marshes had begun to force its way in. The stench of sulphur was overpowering. Our bodies doubled up standing in the ooze and the mud and we coughed until our very guts seemed to rise into our gullets.

When the barrage finally ceased, we crawled out like ghosts from another world and grimly took stock of the little we had left. The trees were twisted and charred into grotesque shapes. Near by was a Panther tank, neatly sliced in two. All five occupants were dead. One man had been sliced in half along with the tank. A squad of terrified WUs were being driven along by a sergeant, in search of dead officers who, after all, had to be given decent burials.

They allowed us only a short respite before they came at us again. A thick yellow mist was sent rolling across the swamps towards us, and God help the fools who had discarded their
gas masks. The yellow mist contained a chemical substance which ate its way right down into your lungs, and no man could survive without some form of protection. Sergeant Linge attempted it, and his sufferings were so hideous to watch that in the end we had to put him out of his misery. From that day on, men never let their gas masks out of their sights.

Behind the swirling banks of poison, we could hear unmistakable sounds of enemy activity, which we were at a loss to identify. I would have said troop movement, except that the Engineers had long since blown the only bridge that spanned the marshes, and there was no other way across. Finally, the advance observation post sent back the information that the noises we could hear were tanks assembling.

‘Tanks?’ said Löwe, incredulously. ‘What the hell do they imagine they’re going to do with tanks? They’ll never be able to get them across.’

Half an hour later the fog had dispersed, and there indeed were the tanks, nosing their way forward from the enemy positions on the far side of the marsh. The great cannons were set ready to fire, and already the first hail of grenades was coming over.

Slowly, as we watched with disbelieving eyes, the tanks descended towards us; and in their wake, the tight-knit ranks of infantry. Over on our own side, the remaining WUs, by now thoroughly demoralised, were whimpering with unconcealed terror. For most of them it was their first sight of tanks in action, and the great green creatures looked like primeval monsters about to lower themselves into the slime. A section of flame-throwers was moved up to support us, and an anti-tank battery was hastily installed at two hundred yards. However, it was demolished by one of the advancing T34s, before it could open fire.

‘They’re crazy!’ yelled Löwe, and it was a cry of sheer despair. ‘They’re raving bloody crazy, they’ll never be able to make it!’

The first of the monsters dipped its nose downwards and plunged headfirst into the squelching swamp. Great clumps
of mud flew up on either side, and to our astonishment the tank straightened out and began a determined path towards us. It looked like a well-laden vessel wallowing in a heavy sea. It rolled and it floundered, the water lapping at its tracks, and still it kept on coming.

‘How the devil—?’ Barcelona turned in stupefaction to face us. ‘The bridge has been blown! There’s no way across!’

The Legionnaire hunched a thin shoulder.

‘Obviously,’ he said, ‘they’ve gone and built another one.’

They must have had it already prepared: a floating bridge, which they had thrown across the marshes during the general pandemonium of the air bombardment. Through the glasses you could make out the shining strands of wire with which they had secured it round the trunks of trees. It must have cost the lives of many of their men, but the Russians along with the Nazis had never rated human life very high on the general scale of values. Humanity, after all, was by far the cheapest form of raw material.

As the cavalcade proceeded, a great many more lives were lost. Several of the tanks found themselves sliding off the floating causeway. They balanced for a moment on the extreme edge of disaster, and then plunged to their doom into the bubbling brown waters. All over the marshes the green frogs were leaping, croaking their protest against this invasion of their privacy. There was a reek of oil which the wind carried across to us in the wake of the yellow poison mist.

Löwe had seen enough. He waved the anti-tank section forward, and they moved up at the double, followed by a straggle of panting WUs carrying boxes of grenades.

The advance positions were eliminated by the leading T34 in classical fashion before they could fire more than a few pitiful shots: the heavy tank simply churned the men to pieces, reducing them to a raw red pulp and then continuing serenely on its way with scraps of human flesh and bone still clinging to its tracks. It was, however, destroyed before it could do any further damage, and an exultant cheer went up. Two more tanks were wiped out in quick succession, but
all the time the monsters were lumbering across the marshes, hauling themselves like hippopotamuses out of the rank, brown mud.

I felt myself shivering involuntarily, and Porta jabbed an elbow hard into my ribs.

‘What are you shaking for? You got the galloping palsy or something?’

The Engineers had by now arrived with a supply of T mines, which they dumped at our sides. The tanks were barely twenty yards away. We could feel their breath hot upon us, and the soft earth heaved beneath our feet. Löwe yelled at us to prepare for action. Each man had his own target, but then there were still the oncoming waves of infantry to be reckoned with. He snatched up a mine and crouched, ready to spring. You had to admire the man. Whatever might be your opinion of officers in general, Lieutenant Löwe was always there, always with you in the thick of the fighting. He had a cold-blooded courage that commanded respect. For my own part, I pressed myself trembling against the earth and made no attempt to play the hero. Sooner or later I would be forced out of the illusory safety of my hiding place, and pushed into the open to battle with fifty tons of enemy iron and steel. Until that moment came I preferred to make myself as small as possible. I had no false notions of my own bravery.