The Cross of Iron (44 page)

He heard hasty movements; then there was silence. Slowly, he closed the door behind him, pressed his back against it and tried to make out something in the absolute darkness. He switched on his flashlight. On the low cot lay two men. It took a moment for him to recognize one of them as Triebig, who held his pistol in his hand and was staring wide-eyed into the light. The man beside Triebig he knew only by sight—a member of the battalion staff. Steiner took a step forward and placed the flashlight on the table. As he did so, he saw the clothing strewn on the floor. The silence became agonizing. He walked round the table, the Russian sub-machine-gun held like a club in his hands, and stopped in front of the bed.

‘Put that down,’ he whispered, indicating the pistol which Triebig was still clutching. Triebig did not stir. The waxen pallor of his face was suddenly washed away by a rush of blood that mounted to the roots of his hair and seemed to flow even into the whites of his eyes. He uttered an inarticulate sound and tried to pull the blanket over his naked shoulders. But Steiner’s hand flashed forward, caught a corner of the blanket and wrenched it off the bed. He tossed it behind him on the floor. ‘Stand up-’ he said to Triebig. When the lieutenant did not obey, Steiner gripped his wrist tightly, took hold of the pistol and laid it and his own gun beside the flashlight on the table. Uncertainly, Triebig stood up. The other man pressed against the wall, drawing up his legs. His childish face reflected such abysmal terror that for a moment Steiner felt sorry for him.

‘You should have barricaded the door,’ Steiner said. ‘Then you wouldn’t have been caught, you swine.’

‘What do you want?’ Triebig whispered. They were the first words he had spoken since Steiner had entered the bunker.

‘I almost forgot,’ Steiner said, smiling savagely. ‘Thanks for reminding me.’

Triebig backed away from him. Steiner followed until the man was brought to a stop by the wall and stood still, trembling. ‘I meant,’ Steiner said, ‘to beat you up for what you said over at Stransky’s bunker. The problem would have been to keep you from shouting for help. Now I’m going to give you that beating and you won’t shout.’

‘I will,’ Triebig stammered.

Steiner shook his head. ‘No you won’t,’ he declared grimly. ‘If you do, you’ll be heard, and if you are heard people will come and see what’s going on here. What do you think Stransky will say if he finds you in this state?’

Triebig moved his lips without making a sound. Suddenly he propelled himself from the wall, ran to where his clothes lay and stooped. As he reached out his hand, Steiner brought his nailed boot heavily down on his fingers. Triebig opened his mouth to scream. But only a low moan emerged. ‘So you’re keeping that in mind,’ Steiner said hotly. He lifted his foot and pulled Triebig up by the shoulder. ‘For all I care you can stick a handkerchief between your teeth. Only you’d better keep quiet. It will cost you your neck, remember.’

He struck abruptly. His clenched fist hit Triebig squarely in the face. Triebig tried to defend himself, but Steiner gave him no time. His blows followed one another mercilessly, with all his strength behind him. He pounded the man until his fists ached. Then he picked him up and tossed him on the bed. The other man pressed even closer against the wall.

‘What’s your name?’ Steiner snapped.

The man did not answer.

‘What’s your name?’ Steiner repeated sharply.

‘Keppler,’ the man whispered.

‘Are you his orderly?’

The man nodded.

‘Get up, get dressed and get out. If you tell anyone about this, you’ll be up against a court-martial yourself. Clear?’

The man nodded silently. He stepped over Triebig and got off the bed. Steiner picked up his tommy-gun. He glanced at Triebig. The fellow had passed out. It would be a while before he came to again. Without another word to Keppler, he left the bunker. Cautiously, he climbed the steps and peered about.

The figure of the sentry was outlined indistinctly in the darkness. Steiner watched him for a while. At last he was able to make out. that the man had his back turned to him. Hastily, crouching, he stole among the trees to the trench and started up the slope. It was the hour before dawn. Night still lay blackly over the land. Beyond the hill, isolated rifle shots cracked away. The light was ebbing tiredly out of the stars. Reaching his bunker, Steiner paused, wondering whether he should go to see Meyer. But the company commander must be asleep by now. Indecisively, he looked over the rim of the trench. He felt soiled.

Suddenly a glow passed over his face. He raised his head in astonishment. In the east the heavens were cracking open. The horizon became a darting sea of flames, and a few seconds later a roar like a monstrous wave surged over the positions. He jumped down the steps, kicked open the door and found half a dozen horrified faces staring at him. A candle was flickering on the table. He shut the door behind him and looked at his watch.

‘It’s just three o’clock,’ Faber said quietly.

‘Yes,’ Steiner murmured. ‘Just three.’

LIEUTENANT-COLONEL BRANDT
was sitting on his bed, half-dressed. As he reached for his shoes, still dazed with sleep, he fiercely cursed the unreliability of the intelligence people in Krymskaya who had predicted that the Russian offensive would begin in the middle of May. If you got to the bottom of it, he thought angrily, you’d probably find they were hand in glove with the Russians and deliberately feeding us misinformation.

He had got his shoes on, but sat for a while with drooping head. Outside there was a rumble as loud as a hundred trucks passing over a cobblestoned road. Objects in the bunker vibrated; the window glass hummed and the light of the candle dipped and flickered and threatened to go out. Suddenly the telephone buzzed. Brandt picked it up and recognized Captain Kiesel’s voice. ‘It’s starting, sir.’

‘Never stopped,’ Brandt growled. ‘Come over here in five minutes.’ He replaced the receiver and remained bent over the table for a moment. The enormous barrage had startled him out of deep sleep. He had been dreaming vividly that he was at the opera. But he could no longer remember what opera was being played. Perhaps the ‘Marriage of Figaro’, he thought, closing his eyes.

There was a knock. He quickly slipped on his tunic and turned to face the door as Kiesel, tall and energetic, stepped in. At the same moment the telephone buzzed again. As Brandt lifted the receiver, Kiesel came over to the table. ‘The general,’ Brandt murmured, winking at Kiesel and pressing the receiver tightly against his ear.

The smile vanished. He listened, nodded thoughtfully. ‘Of course,
Herr General.
I shall issue the appropriate orders at once.’ He dropped the telephone and turned to Kiesel. ‘Drum fire along the whole line. All available reserves have already been alerted. The general thinks this is the greatest massing of artillery the Russians have yet achieved. It really looks like the expected offensive.’ He turned the telephone crank and exchanged a few words with the operator. ‘There we have it,’ he said irritably. ‘Communications with the front are already broken.’

‘We have radio,’ Kiesel replied.

Brandt nodded. ‘They’re busy establishing connections now.’ He made a few more telephone calls. Then he went to a corner of the bunker, produced a bottle of kirschwasser, and filled two glasses. ‘You’ll make an exception of your rule today,’ he stated. ‘We have a warm day before us and are going to need a tonic.’ Kiesel nodded. They drank. Brandt set the glass down hard on the table and looked at his wrist-watch. ‘Twenty past three,’ he noted. ‘The overture will last another two hours at least. Send the other officers in to me.’

Kiesel went out and shortly afterwards returned with the rest of the staff officers. The conference lasted only an hour.

The radioed reports coming in from the battalions were increasingly disturbing. Stransky reported loud motor noises from the edge of the wooded area. Kiesel shook his head as he read the message. ‘If Stransky can hear motor noises while this barrage is going on, the tanks must be right in front of his bunker,’ he said. Shortly afterwards telephone communication with the battalions was restored and Brandt had a chance to say a few words to the commanders. He tried to reassure them by pointing out that an assault regiment was on its way up front as reinforcement. Shortly afterwards the wire was broken again. The signals officer informed Brandt that in attempts to restore the line more than half his men had fallen. Brandt ordered him to give up trying; radio communication would be good enough until the attack began, he said. The officers, with the exception of Kiesel, returned to their bunkers. Slowly, the sky grew brighter. The barrage had increased in violence and seemed to be drawing closer. Brandt raised his head, listening. Then he looked at Kiesel who was standing by the door, smoking a cigarette and looking calmly out of the window. ‘We’ll take a look at the show from outside,’ he said to him. ‘Do you feel like it?’

Kiesel smiled. ‘Even if I did not feel like it I wouldn’t admit it. In ninety-nine out of a hundred cases our courage is nothing more than an expression of common politeness or sense of duty.’

‘And in the remaining case?’ Brandt asked.

Kiesel opened the door up a crack and flipped the cigarette out. ‘An expression of our insanity,’ he replied tersely.

It was already light enough for them to have a good view of the steep slope. The dull grey of the sky was shot through with silvery threads, and the stars were fading rapidly. Beyond the hill the artillery fire rumbled on undiminished. An inferno, Kiesel thought as they plodded up the slope. When they reached the brow of the hill, they both stood still at one impulse. Toward the east, as far as the eye could reach, a volcano was raging. The horizon had been transformed into a writhing dragon that lunged, stretched and twisted its giant length, spewing yellow flame over the land, puffing fiery clouds, never pausing for a moment. Between the blue-black hills there still hung pockets of darkness into which torrents of sparks were showered. The knife-edged ridges of the hills stood out distinctly against the burning sky. Far to the west the moon stared down like the half-shut eye of a cyclops. Brandt gripped Kiesel by the shoulder and their eyes met.

They walked on a short distance to a trench which had been dug a few days earlier at the commander’s order. It was intended for observation and provided with a number of solidly built dugouts with broad look-out slits. In one of the dugouts they found Lieutenant Spannagel, the forward observer of the 2nd Artillery Battalion. He had a radio section with him, and was visibly delighted by the unexpected visitors. Since he also had a telephone connected to the regimental switchboard, Brandt informed the communications platoon of his whereabouts and ordered all messages and telephone calls for him to be switched to the forward observation post. Then he questioned Spannagel about the situation. The lieutenant said that the guns were ready to fire, radio communications were intact, and the supply of ammunition should be adequate to hold the Russians.

Brandt then turned to the artillery officer’s telescope and studied the opposite hillside. Meanwhile Kiesel talked in low tones with Spannagel. In spite of his sanguine words, the thin-faced, likeable young lieutenant seemed nervous. He kept shifting his weight restlessly from one leg to the other. ‘If I had only half the stuff the Russians are throwing away over there, I’d make things hot for them,’ he said.

‘I thought you said you had enough ammunition,’ Kiesel remonstrated.

‘Oh, I do, I do, but I’ll need it when the attack starts. As long as the Ivans are hiding in the woods there's not much sense wasting my shells. The battalion has let me have 500 rounds. You have no idea how fast they use up.’

‘True enough. How many guns would you estimate they have on the other side?’

Spannagel shrugged. ‘Hard to say. I’ve been with the battalion since the start of the Russian campaign, but I’ve never seen anything like this. Just listen to it. You’d have to go back to the First World War to find a parallel for this kind of squandering of material.’

‘Which goes to show how seriously the Russians are taking us,’ Kiesel commented. ‘They seem to know they’re facing the crack divisions of the southern front.’

‘Not much consolation in that. I just wonder what’s left of our front lines.’

Kiesel gave a worried nod. He looked at his watch. ‘It’s been going on for two hours already. Before long their bombers will come.’

‘And then their tanks. They couldn’t ask for better terrain.’ 

Brandt turned to them. ‘The fire seems to be concentrating primarily on 121.4. I don’t think the Russians are going to attack along the road. They’ll try to take the hill. If they succeed in that, our tank barrier on the highway will be worthless and they’ll pay us a visit from the rear.’

‘They must not take the hill,’ Kiesel said gravely. ‘If they do, we’re done for.’

They stepped over to Brandt’s side and followed his gaze out across the landscape. With the sky’s dull grey taking on more and more colour, the frightful glare on the horizon waned under the cold light of the new day. Slowly the light moved from the east over the hills, almost imperceptibly drawing the gentle lines of the terrain out of the dusk. The greyish-black cloud of dust hovering above the churned-up hills became more and more visible, and a huge banner of smoke blocked all vision to the more distant east.

Kiesel suddenly raised his head and listened. At first there was only a delicate humming that set the air in the dugout vibrating; then the sound swelled to a drone that seemed to fill the whole of the sky above their heads. Their faces paled. ‘The second phase,’ Brandt declared coolly. ‘Planes.’

The shrilling of the telephone made them all jerk around. Spannagel picked up the receiver and said a few words. Then he turned to Brandt. ‘The general, sir.’

Brandt took the telephone from him, and his body involuntarily stiffened. ‘Herr General?’

‘How do things look out your way, Brandt?’ The voice sounded thin, remote, as though coming from a distant planet.

‘Unchanged,’ Brandt replied. ‘Violent artillery fire on the trenches. I’m afraid the casualties will be high.’