The Bloody Road to Death (37 page)

I become sleepy, have terrible difficulty in staying awake. My eyelids feel heavy and inflamed, but it is dangerous to doze off. Not only is it punishable by death, but also in the mere wink of an eye they can be on top of you. They can have rolled up a whole trench before I know where I am. It has often happened that two whole enemy companies have sneaked up on a trench company, and once they are down in the trench not many are left alive.

I press my tired eyes against the rubber eyepiece surround of the periscope, wriggle my toes in my boots, bite my lips, do everything I can think of to keep myself awake. I count the bodies again. Are there more than there were? I am wide awake in an instant. Fear trickles like ice-water down my spine. For a moment I think I see dark shapes. I count them again and keep
an eye on the bodies. It is an old trick, moving forward pushing a body in front of you.

A couple of shells explode in bursts of flame just behind the line. Lines of tracer come whistling from a hidden MG. A mortar barks with a hollow sound. Then everything goes quiet again. A rabbit, grown accustomed to war, hops down towards the reeds, stopping to sniff at the dead German Jaeger. Its long ears turn, first towards the Russian position, then towards the German.

A shot sounds. The rabbit rolls over and over. I have seen the muzzle-flash. It is enough for me. I sense him, jumping up in the air, over there. I hit him. He won’t shoot any more rabbits. God knows who he was? How he lived? Was he young? He was, at any rate, a Guardsman, and belonged to the fanatics.

I examine the MG. Check that all the belts are filled. Our lives depend on this. I look through the periscope. Something is moving. Movement in no-man’s-land means enemies. I have the flare pistol in my hand. Should I send a light up for safety’s sake? My front-line instinct warns me. Every nerve in my body responds to the alarm.

‘Pop! Whi-i-sh!’ the signal flare spreads a ghostly white light over the dead, lying out there in the shattered landscape.

Now I am quite sure. There is something not as it should be out in no-man’s-land. In one leap I am over at the SMG, tear the canvas cover off and snap the lock. Cautiously I bend down. The snipers have got the new infra-red sighting telescope and a Siberian sniper does not need much time to take a human life.

The MG rattles wickedly. A long pearly row of tracer hastens towards the Russian position. An explosive bullet goes off close to me. I drop, in fear, to the bottom of the trench. I pick up my Mpi and wait a moment before showing the helmet above the parapet.

‘Crack!’ comes the shot immediately.

Splinters of steel whizz about my ears. The helmet spins from the muzzle of the carbine. There is a sizeable hole in its side. He is observing my area. He knows I am here. Now the question is, is he just an ordinary murderer, or do the shots have a much more dangerous meaning? A patrol out clearing up, or perhaps sent out to take prisoners?

I lie, quiet as a mouse, and wait. I cannot see very far to either side along the connecting trench, but years in the front line have sharpened my hearing. I could hear a cat coming on tip-toe. I have readied my Mpi, and press myself close to the wall of the trench. I screw the caps off two grenades, for safety’s sake. Our patrol must also be on the way, but they do not make much noise either. I can hear them now. They are at least four bends away.

‘Password!’ I dare not make the challenge loud. The chaps across the road must not hear it.

‘Shit and shankers!’ comes Gregor’s soft reply. That is better than any password. I recognize the voice.

Suddenly Tiny is in front of me pushing his Mpi into my stomach. I let out a soft cry of fright. I neither heard nor saw him. He must have floated in.

The patrol has two new recruits along. They are to relieve sentries alongside me. Heide gives them explicit instructions.

‘Don’t show your heads above the parapet, or your lives’ll be bloody short ones!’

The patrol disappears as silently as it came.

‘If you catch a woman soldier, give me a shout!’ calls Porta. ‘We’ll ail bang her before we send her back.’

‘Send ’er
back
? Tiny shouts in annoyance. ‘What do you mean send ’er back? What’s Rasputin done, then? Ain’t ’ad a fuck in a month o’ Sundays
that
poor bleedin’ bear ain’t!’

The Old Man scolds us softly. He doesn’t like filthy talk.

I can hear the rookies talking. They are crazy and it is very, very dangerous. If the kidnap squads are out, the noise of voices is an invitation, and who is to say they are not lying out in no-man’s-land waiting their chance?

Over on the enemy side a steel helmet is moving about oddly. I watch it inquisitively through the periscope. It disappears for a moment. Then it comes into view again, alongside the opening where they have placed an SMG. That fellow must be the world’s prize chump I think, and feel a burning urge to let go at him. A dangerous hunting fever flames up in me. The sniping rifle is already in my hand, but front line instinct warns me. Suddenly I dare not even move over to the SMG. There is something I don’t understand about that bobbing helmet. It
draws me like a magnet, yet, at the same time, it shouts a silent warning at me. I have my rifle half up, but lower it cautiously again. The recruits in the section next to me have also seen the helmet. The dangerous hunting lust has also taken hold of them. They have never before fired at a live human target. Shaking with excitement they camouflage a firing slit with twigs and sods of grass. Carefully they rest their carbines in it. They are wildly excited. Silently they agree to fire one after the other.

Calmly the first of them presses the stock of the carbine against his cheek, takes the first pull, restrains his breathing; all exactly as he has been taught on the range at Sennelager.

His comrade waits his turn anxiously. It will be their first Russian. Something to write home about, at least.

‘Ping!’ sounds the shot.

A long whine, and a rain of sparks explodes before the eyes of the marksman. A violent blow knocks his head back. He is dead before he hits the bottom of the trench.

His comrade gives a frightened shout, and stands up. At the moment he rises he feels a blow on the side of his head, as if from a piece of red-hot iron. His helmet flies far away and the explosive bullet tears off half his face.

I realize what has happened as soon as I hear the scream and sound the alarm.

The whole section arrives at the double, Porta working feverishly at the flame-thrower as he runs.

‘What the hell’s up?’ asks the Old Man, excitedly. ‘Where’s Ivan?’

‘The slit-eyed bastards’ve knocked off the two new boys,’ I answer.

‘Fools!’ says Heide, annoyed. ‘And I
told
them to keep their heads down.’

‘
C’est la guerre
,’ sighs the Legionnaire, tiredly. ‘You can talk till you’re speechless, and still they don’t – or
worit
– understand. They’ve got to learn the hard way before it sticks and then it’s usually too late.’

Stretcher-bearers remove the bodies and the guard goes back to the dugout. Soon the brief intermezzo is forgotten.

I whittle at a walking stick to keep myself awake. Everybody
is making walking sticks whilst on sentry duty. Some of them are real works of art. Behind the lines they are willing to pay almost anything you ask for one of these beautiful sticks.
Volchow
sticks they call them. Not because they have been made by that particular river, but because that was where the soldiers first began to make them.

A line of clouds marches across the moon, and everything goes completely dark. A couple of puffs of wind blow in, carrying dirt from no-man’s-land with them.

The tin-cans hanging from the barbed wire defences rattle warningly, as if someone was trying to break through. I stare into the periscope and listen intently, but I can neither see nor hear anything. It
must
be the wind, I think, attempting to calm myself.

The marshy ground, south-east of our positions, lies in pitchy darkness. It is said that they have constructed a path through it below ground level. The Russians are good at that kind of devilishness.

There is an hour for me to get through before my relief comes. The watch I have caught is the worst one of all. Two to four. The death watch we call it. If anything at all happens it happens then. Still, if they had been going to pull any tricks tonight they would have been pulled already, I think to myself. I slide a few berries from the grass stalk I have threaded them on. Everybody is plucking berries and threading them on grass stalks. Porta has collected two large pailsful of berries. We are planning to steal a cook-pot from the QM and make schnapps out of them. We have sugar, and yeast is easy to get hold of.

I shoot off a rocket for the sake of appearances. As it floats down the rocket reveals a fantastic sight. The only trouble is you get even more nervous when the magnesium flare goes out, and darkness sweeps down on you again. The rocket also has the effect of bringing the front to life again for a short while.

Nervous trigger fingers contract and send bullets fleeting out over the shell-torn ground. With bad luck it could be the last rocket one’s sent up.

The lowered cannon thunders and a series of explosive shells strike behind the maze of entrenchments. Shrapnel whizzes
over my head and buries itself in the walls of the trench. Then all is quiet again.

A faint noise further along the connecting trench makes me start. Pebbles rattle down to the floor of the trench. In a second I become a beast of prey, taut and expectant with all my senses wide open, ready to receive impressions. Can it be the patrol on its way back? Or is it some crazy officer who thinks he is still in garrison and is out inspecting the guard? More than a few new officers have lost their lives in this fashion. It is highly dangerous to move around in the trench network at night. It would be just like von Pader to do that very thing. He would love to catch a sentry napping.

I cock my Mpi, safety off, decide to shoot if it does happen to be von Pader. Nobody can prove I recognized him. It would never be murder, merely self-defence. He wouldn’t be the first idiot to have been killed by a nervous sentry.

By now I am quite sure there is somebody in the communicating trench. I hear metal clink on metal. I catfoot a little way further along the trench. The night is black as ink. I can see no more than a few yards in front of me. An animal screams from the marshes. There is an answering scream from close at hand.

‘Who goes there? The password!’ I shout, nervously.:

No reply.

I can perceive a large shadow, a little further along the trench. I press the trigger but the gun merely clicks. The lost fraction of a second is enough to bring the world falling down around me.

A broad dark form bounds at me. The barrel of the Mpi is pushed to one side. To struggle to hold on to it would be madness, the end of me.

I let go of the weapon and push the attacker’s Mpi to one side, just as he has done mine.

A series of shots explode into the air. A bullet tears the collar from my great-coat. At the same time something hits me hard in the stomach, but I am still mobile and let out a kick which gets him in the crotch. He is an officer. I feel the broad shoulder-straps under my hands. I pull him towards me by them and crash the brim of my helmet into his face. A Danish kiss, they
call it. I didn’t learn it in Denmark but at the battle school at Senne.

Fear of death gives me superhuman strength. I bite, kick, and tear with my nails. My helmet flies off. My Mpi has gone the same way. I cannot reach the combat knife in my boot.

The Russian officer has a slight edge on me for size and he is as fast as lightning.

‘
Ssvinja
,’ he snarls, grinding his teeth and trying to put me out with a swing of his edged hand. I twist to one side and his hand hits a stone. He curses viciously.

I manage to jolt my knee up between his legs. He falls forward and I sink my teeth into his throat. Blood runs down over my face but I don’t notice it. I am fighting for my life. He struggles desperately to tear himself loose, but I clamp my teeth together like a mad bulldog. My mouth fills with his blood. He makes a long rattling noise and a terrible shiver goes through his body. I have bitten his throat out. There are whole rows of figures behind him. They push and shove but the trench is too narrow for them to pass one another.

I suddenly realize that they are afraid to shoot as long as we lie entangled with one another in the bottom of the trench.

‘Help!’ I scream, in horror. ‘Ivan’s got me! Help!’

An Mpi chatters furiously close by.

‘
Job tvojemadj! Khrúpkij djávol!
⁸
’

‘Help!’ I shout with all my might. ‘Help! Ivan’s in the trench!’

I wriggle underneath the body of the dead Russian and get hold of his Mpi. I turn it towards the others and pull the trigger but the magazine is empty. With all my strength I hammer the muzzle into the face of the foremost of them. With a shrill scream he collapses. His face is a bloody ruin.

‘
Job tvojemadj!
’ sounds furiously from the others.

They rush towards me. The first of them knocks me head over heels with the butt of his Mpi. They don’t want me alive any more. Their kidnap patrol has failed in its object. Now their aim is to get back with whole skins and to kill as many of us as possible whilst doing it.