Wheels of Terror (18 page)

He swallowed a mighty draught from his bottle and his excessively developed Adam's apple jumped wildly up and down. It always looked as if the apple got drunk before he did.

He handed the bottle to the Little Legionnaire and said to The Old Un:

'As you're a "silver-pheasant" sergeant you'll have to wait till other decent people have had a draught of the ripe grape from the gentleman's vineyard - so light your pipe!'

He tore the bottle from the Little Legionnaire:

'You bloody desert-rat,' he screamed with feigned fury. 'Is that how you drink? By God, you must have been born a camel!'

He had another drink himself before he passed the bottle to the next man. This was repeated each time, and when the bottle reached The Old Un it was almost empty. He swore!

Porta lifted one eybrow, pressed his monocle in and adjusted his top-hat:

'Dear Old Un, don't forget, you "silver-pheasant", that here you're with noble men of good education. Watch your tongue. Stand to attention, you lousy sergeant! Can't you see by God's grace a Corporal? Mind your behaviour, you bloody cow. But we'll learn you, you poor old sod.'

He eased up his seat and emitted one of his usual rude noises.

'It's a wonder all your patter doesn't choke you, you red-haired ape!' said The Old Un. 'But you'll forget your talk when Ivan comes. Something tells me our colleagues are mad to get at us.'

'You're remarkably sharp,' said Porta with a contemptuous grin. 'I thought Ivan was going to build a triumphant arch to let us parade through with nice goose-steps. Then maybe when we get out of the cauldron a couple of comrade commissars from the Red Army Guards'll be waiting with ice-cream and strawberries. Is that what you imagine, you dope? Don't you know yet that we're at war to make Lebensraum? That means hordes on both sides killed to make a little elbow-room, and on the last day of the scrapping all you gold-and-silver-pheasants will cop it, so that you won't take up all the nice new Lebensraum. That's nice, eh, you Iron Cross hunter?'

He pulled open one of the packs, searched for another bottle of vodka, and cracked the bottle-neck.

'Let's stoke up a little. It's very draughty in this modern block. It's a good thing the stove's portable, so that we're not dependant on the landlord's stoking.'

The vodka warmed us wonderfully. We laughed and shouted loudly enough for the Russians to hear us.

Colonel Kohler jumped down into our hollow followed by Lieutenant Harder. Kohler shook off some loose snow and started to roll a cigarette from machorka and newspaper.

'Grrr, but it's cold ...'

He handed the finished cigarette to Porta and started another.

Porta grinned straight at him.

'I don't normally accept anything from officers.'

Kohler went on rolling and said calmly;

'Put a sock in it, you red-haired ape.'

'They've no manners all these big shots,' Porta continued, adding a rude gesture for the officer-class. 'I think I'll send in my resignation and go home. Since my recruit course acquaintances have become sabre-swallowers, it's impossible here. There are no educated men left.'

Paying no attention to the clowning Porta, who was becoming drunk, Kohler said:

'The Russians are gathering their forces to attack at the northern outskirts of the forest. I think you'll be bang in the middle when our colleagues arrive, so keep watch!'

Porta, who had got hold of a portable radio, found a German station broadcasting light music. A man with a caressing syrupy voice bleated a pop hit.

For a second we looked at each other, then burst out laughing.

'That's good,' shouted Kohler between the gusts. 'Here we are waiting to be slaughtered in a snow-hollow at forty degrees of frost and at home they are singing about the great love, girls in enticing dresses and golden moons. Throw that damned thing away!'

Someone turned the wireless off. Porta brought out his flute and began to play something we all understood:

'
Es geht alles voruber
Es geht alles vorbei.
Den Schnapps vom Dezember
Kriegen wir im Mai.
Zuerst fallt der Fuhrer
Und dann die Partei
.'

They joined in the singing from the other hollows, and the last two lines were shouted out across the snow-desert with such fervour that it would have warmed the hearts of the gentlemen mentioned.

13

They were wounded. You need imagination to get the meaning of that. To go through hospital to understand it.

Head-wounds, lunacy, spine-casualties, paralysis, double amputations, four-limb amputations with only a trunk and head left - eyes shot out - blindness - lung wounds - kidney cases - stomach wounds - bone fractures where splinters worked out every day - nose and mouth wounds - joint wounds that would cause a man to drag his body round all his life and to let his feet fall down the stairs: bump-bump-bump, tempting children to cat-call after him: 'hoppity-hop!'

Cherkassy

The moon is cold. It hangs slantingly in the sky and drips frost on trees and bushes. The frost crackles. Even we who have been drinking vodka are freezing. We have been watching for twelve hours in our snow-hollow dugouts of the frozen soil. You cannot resign yourself to the coldness of Russia. It makes fur-hats stiff. The flaps slap you in the face. It is already swollen with chilblains and sores. Your lips too are swollen and bursting with purple scabs. When in addition you suffer hunger in its most brutal form, life becomes intolerable.

The omnipotent German military leadership in its bombastic manner has forgotten to make provision against the worst of our enemies - nature.

More soldiers died of frost and illness than by enemy fire. The Russians' best ally was nature, the Russian winter. Only the Siberian troops could withstand it. It seemed as if the winter made these small soldiers with their high cheek-bones more content and full of fight.

Porta first spotted a movement in the landscape in front of us. He nudged me and pointed silently. We peered anxiously into the darkness.

Then they were over us. The snow-shirted forms sprang out of the void and landed like wolves in our positions. I fired furiously with my machine-pistol hugged to my hip at everything that moved. The hollow teemed with fur-hatted, slant-eyed Siberian riflemen. In close combat they used the dreaded 'kandra', the Siberian knife which is sharpened on both sides and looks like a long butchers' knife, only it is stronger. A single stroke from a kandra will part the head from the body of a winter-clad soldier.

Back to back we use our guns as truncheons. Ivan is so near that we have no time to re-load.

After a few minutes we jump out of the hollow and run back to the huts. We throw ourselves into cover behind the walls. Manage to re-load our guns. Gunfire rattles. Tracer ammunition scores the air which is full of yelling and screaming.

It is difficult to distinguish friend from foe in the snow-filled night. You fire by instinct. We hit our own men. This also happens to the Russians.

Our fighting-group is completely scattered. Any communication between the units has ceased.

Captain von Barring and Lieutenant Harder get some of the men from our company together. Using the huts and the snowdrifts as cover we run back through the village. On the way one of the seventeen-year-old recruits is hit by an explosive shell. He screams loudly and accusingly, spins like a top and then doubles up.

A heavy machine-gun starts hammering us from the left. The bullets land by the dead recruit, whirling up the snow.

We reach a hut, tear inside and fling ourselves breathlessly on the floor. But we have hardly entered before the door is flung open and a couple of small fur-hatted men from far-off Siberia stand silhouetted in the doorway. A burst of fire sweeps through the hut and reverberates painfully in our ear-drums.

We are eighteen men lying like dead, we almost believe ourselves dead. Then it is all over. The two Russians run for it hounded by the hollow detonations of the hand-grenades. They speed into the night. We try to catch them, but we stumble and sink in the deep snow. We feel as if we are choking.

A moment afterwards we lie breathing hard and, with a sickening pressure behind our eyeballs, we disappear in a huge snowdrift where we lie in our white snow-shirts indistinguishable from the landscape. The whole thing is a ghastly nightmare.

Then two human forms spring up right in front of us. Quick as lightning. The Old Un and the Little Legionnaire bring their storm-rifles to the shoulder and the shots rain at the two shapeless forms. Hell breaks loose. Tracer ammunition rains from everywhere.

I see Tiny throwing hand-grenades like a man bewitched. I lose my senses and press myself desperately down. I scream. My nails come off as I scratch at the hard-frozen snow. The Old Un pulls me along when we run back.

Everywhere is confusion. I have been running alongside a Russian; he is as scared as we are. Fortunately I spot him first. I swing my machine-pistol into his face with a killing blow. Heavily he falls to the ground.

The Old Un shouts and points forward. Paralysed we stop and stare at the grey sky; then we see some screaming things each belching a hundred-yard tongue of flame. They are coming fast at the village we have regained.

As if obeying orders both the Russians and ourselves run for cover. What are coming through the air cannot distinguish between friend and foe: they are 'Stalin organs'. And to make matters really hot the Germans start firing rockets at the doomed village.

It is like an earthquake every time a salvo lands. It all lasts only a few minutes. Houses are scattered like antheaps. Nothing is left of the village.

The flames are sucking out both us and the few surviving villagers. The cold no longer tortures us; now it is the searing-hot ocean of fire. The animals go crazy with pain and terror. Children with bare feet run lost among wildly sobbing women. The firing from the automatic weapons barks and yammers in this inferno. People fall cursing in their death-agony.

God, Devil, Dictator, Fatherland - anybody or anything they blame for their torment.

How this heap of rubble called Novo-Buda came into our possession nobody in the fighting-group could have said.

The report sent to headquarters was short and laconic:

'Nova-Buda cleared of enemy forces. We hold the position. Waiting for orders.

Fighting-group Barring'

From the Russian side we heard engine noises from heavy vehicles all day long. Porta was sure Ivan was preparing to liquidate us. If that was so we had no chance. We were going to be flattened.

Porta and a radio man called Rudi Schutz, another corporal, had managed to contact the Russians' wave-length.

Now we were listening to their conversations. On the other side they seemed to have the same trouble with their staff-officers as we with ours. Threats and more threats underlined every order going out to the men in the front-line.

We were lying in our snow-hollows, having seen to it that our automatic weapons had a wide field of fire. There were forty-seven degrees of frost and snow had started to fall again.

Oddly, Ivan tried only a few aimless attacks that day which we easily countered. But we did not doubt that something was in store for us.

Hour after hour we listened to Schutz's radio until early in the morning we heard an enemy commander ask:

'Can we take N?'

'Certainly, colonel, but it's going to be difficult. We think there are strong enemy forces in N.'

After a few minutes' silence we again heard the voice of the enemy commander:

'The battalions have re-established contact. You attack at 13.45.'

'Yes, understood. We attack at 13.45.'

This conversation was the beginning of a battle which was to be unbelievably tough and bitter.

It started dead on time. The Russians attacked with stopwatch precision. They arrived with T34 and T60 tanks. Slowly they ploughed their way through the yards-deep snow. They provided good hunting for us.

For some reason the Russian infantry held back to see what result the tank-attack would have, but during the night they managed to work their way to the middle of the village. We withdrew with heavy losses, leaving our wounded behind.

Again we dug ourselves into the snow and defended ourselves against the furiously attacking Russians.

For hours the battle raged. Then the Russians withdrew. During the morning we had received some so-called support-units as replacements. But they were of little use. They could never be grouped together on their own without stiffening. As soon as they saw a Russian they fled.

In the evening we again listened to the Russians on the radio. One desperate battalion commander was reporting back:

'The infantry can't move. Our tanks are stuck. The crews are killed or taken prisoner. The trucks are in snow-drifts which are getting bigger and bigger. We are being strongly attacked from Sukhiny with mortar shells and artillery. Despite strong engine noise from north-west we have not observed tanks or storm-artillery. Believe Fritz will attack from south to east at Sukhiny. They have great forces concentrated there. Four officers have been executed for cowardice.'

After a few minutes' silence the enemy commander burst out in oaths and curses and threatened his listener with degradation, court-martial and rehabilitation-camps. Then he came to the point:

'You must take N. At any price. Try from two sides. Attack in an hour, at precisely 15.00 hours. Don't dare to be beaten. You'll get no artillery support. That'll help you to surprise the German dogs. Finished.'

At once we reported, and von Barring made the fighting-group's automatic weapons ready to give our colleagues a warm welcome.

The minutes dragged by. It seemed as if each minute lasted an hour. Only Porta was calm. He lay on his back chewing dry bread he had found in a Russian pack. The flame-thrower lay across his belly ready to use.

He had a peculiar love for this deadly weapon. He really was a sharp-shooter. Who had made him a flame-thrower nobody knew. We, the older ones, had a faint recollection that it was just after the 27th Regiment had fraternized with the Russians at Stalino. It was so long ago that everybody had given up asking the red-haired Berliner where he got his flame-thrower from, or how he still managed to retain his sniper's rifle with its telescopic sights.