Wheels of Terror (34 page)

'Don't you think we ought to run away?'

'No, I'm staying here until orders for withdrawal come.'

'What a nice Iron Cross candidate you are!' Porta shouted, red-faced with fury. 'Just you wait till the colleagues across there start banging with their 12.5 cms. That'll bring you to your senses.'

'12.5s!' asked The Old Un and stared through his binoculars.

'Yes, 12.5s! You nit-wit!' raged Porta. 'Don't you realize what sort of sledges these are? KW 1s and KW 2s, my flower! We'll be blown to the roof of the Chancellory in Berlin. Then we'll be hanged for scaring the pants off Hitler.'

The Old Un thought for a moment.

'Well, let's go.'

'Good,' beamed Porta and tore the tank round. 'If you're wise you'll fasten your safety-belts, as the pilots say. You're off on a trip you'll never forget.'

The tank leaped forward as he put on full speed. The Old Un hit his head against the turret-casing.

'Mind how you go, you daft clown!' he shouted at Porta as he wiped the blood off his forehead.

'Joseph Porta, Corporal by the Grace of God, drives this tank in a manner in which, he humbly submits, it ought to be driven with or without your permission. If you don't fancy riding along, get off.'

The radio started to speak. The Little Legionnaire answered:

'Golden Rain here. Over.'

The regiment answered:

'Flower Garden here. Golden Rain return. Over.'

'Golden Rain understands. Which way. Over.'

'Hinka and Love engaged with superior forces. Large losses. Seventeen of ours torn up. Golden Rain's starting-point stopped. Finished.' The radio became abruptly silent.

This meant the regiment was engaged in hard fighting with large Russian panzer forces and had suffered heavy losses. We, the recce-party were to try to escape, but we had to look after ourselves. Our escape route was blocked by Russians. And it was forbidden to use the radio.

The three large tanks thundered through the hilly terrain. Mud splashed sky-high. We tore through a village without either people or animals living. A few houses were burning and some dead civilians lay on the road.

Porta tried to steer clear of them but the tank drove over one. We fancied we could feel it.

A short way out of the village we spotted some trucks escaping to the north. When we travelled through a ravine we were received with hefty machine-gun fire. Our own machine-gun answered and the enemy were quickly silenced.

They turned out to be wounded Russians sheltering in the ravine. When we disarmed them we found a woman in a first lieutenant's uniform. She was wounded in the chest, and said she had been the commander of a T34 which had crashed at Veledniki.

We left the Russians and went on westwards. Near a small spinney a pack of T34s discovered us and followed. The rearmost of our tanks was hit by several shells and within seconds became a sea of flames. Not one of the crew of five escaped. We saw the tank commander stand up in his turret and then fall into the blood-red flames.

Stege's tank was hit next. Four men got away. We turned our tank to cover them and they climbed on at the back of our hull. A corporal got entangled in the tracks and was crushed as we drove off. His screams echoed across the open country. Stege put his fingers in his ears and his face twisted in pain.

We did not get very far before five Russian tanks loomed up in front of us and started firing. We shot one neatly and set it on fire. The other four turned furiously for another attack.

The Old Un ordered us to get out. Short of breath, we ran across the soft-churned earth, beautiful targets in our black panzer uniforms. There was no shelter. We had once chance: to pretend we were dead.

One by one we fell down, very quiet but with hammering hearts.

A hundred yards away the tanks halted. We did not dare look at them. Lie still.

Some minutes passed. It seemed like an evil eternity. One engine revved up. The exhaust exploded. Very slowly one rolled past us only three or four yards away. The second and third followed. At last the fourth, so near that we feared it would roll over us. We could have touched the tracks by putting out a hand.

It had barely passed when Porta jumped up and sheltered behind it. We remained where we were, panic-stricken.

He waved us on, but we were paralysed. A shell whined above our heads and exploded a few yards away.

The Russian tank turned at once to answer the fire. It came from some German Panthers which were speeding towards us.

The ground trembled as they rocked by. The T34s hurried off, pursued by the Panthers.

We jumped on the last Panther and presently rejoined the regiment - shaken but alive.

Next day we had new tanks and went east where large forces of the 3rd Panzer Army were said to be surrounded. Our task was to open the noose the Russians were pulling tighter and tighter. We were three experienced panzer divisions with over 400 tanks rolling forward.

Our opponents were supposed to be the 6th Russian Cavalry Corps under Lieutenant-General Meschkin, the 149th Guard Panzer Division and the 18th Cavalry Division.

For me this march seemed to go on for ever. The moon shone brightly over the steppe and made the night ghostly. When a cloud hid the moon everything was wrapped in a velvet darkness and we had the greatest difficulty in maintaining contact.

Time and time again we got lost and the tanks had to turn and twist in impossible places. Several slid into rivers and stayed their with their bottoms up. The crews drowned like rats in a trap.

The order was that firing was strictly prohibited. Nobody was to open up, whatever happened.

In one place we saw five T34s barely fifty yards in front rolling north. They disappeared without taking any notice of us. We also saw fortifications on both sides of the road. The Old Un swore they were manned by Ivan.

In the middle of the night the column stopped. Nobody knew why. Silence reigned everywhere. Ominous silence. We stood there in a mile-long row, tank behind tank.

The Old Un was half-way out of the turret, but dropped back with a cry.

Tiny stared at him:

'What the hell's wrong?'

'Well, you have a look,' answered The Old Un.

Tiny put his head and half his body out of the sidehatch, but was back again quickly.

'God help us, it's Ivan!'

'Ivan?' asked Porta. 'Where?'

'There,' whispered Tiny and pointed.

At the same time there came a light knock on the tank's steel side and a voice in Russian asked for a cigarette.

Porta pulled himself together first. He opened his hatch and without a word he handed out a cigarette to a dark form. A match flared and lit up a bony face with a Russian cap. The Red drew deeply and breathed happily:

'
Sspassibo!
'

The Russians teemed round the tanks. More and more appeared out of the darkness. They evidently thought we were Russians.

Every second we expected firing, but the Reds leaned on the tanks and chatted. They tried to joke with us, but we remained silent, but for a word here and there.

One cried:

'You petrol rabbits are a dreary lot! Not a decent word from any of you!'

The others agreed. The Old Un had to hold Tiny down when someone promised to box his ears because he did not answer.

Sotto voce
he hissed:

'Nobody's yet invited Tiny to fight and got away with it. Do you think I'm shy of a bunch of lousy Ivans?'

'It'll be your funeral,' grinned The Old Un, 'if you jump out and fight. It seems to me there are millions of Ivans here.'

Tiny glared out. We were stiff with fright in case he started to shout.

'Damn it, they must see we've got swastikas on the sledges and not stars,' whispered the Little Legionnaire.

Porta started to chat in Russian to the Little Legionnaire who succeeded in answering with one-syllable words.

Very quietly we collected our pistols and handgrenades to be ready in case something happened.

'What the hell are we going to do?' whispered The Old Un. 'This can't go on.' Carefully he looked out of the turret. 'Ivan's everywhere. Blimey, we must have stopped in the middle of a whole infantry division!'

Only one explanation was possible. The Russians did not dream that we could be enemy tanks. We had come sixty to seventy miles into their positions behind the main front-line without a single shot, and had travelled in route-formation.

We could easily have shot them all as they stood round the tanks. But firstly, firing was forbidden, and secondly I don't think one of us had the heart to fire at these nosy colleagues standing there joking and teasing us.

Over an hour passed. Then a terrible swearing started up in front of the column. Shots were fired. Some machine-guns coughed hoarsely. We disappeared into our tanks and made the hatches fast.

Our colleagues looked astonished at the firing.

A tank came racing down the column. A figure dressed in leather and an impressive helmet stood in the turret. A Russian officer. He shouted at the men. They flew to all sides. All at once they realized who we were.

Banging and thundering started from all sides. The tanks swung out to the flanks and soon the whole position was overrun. The shells from the cannon exploded like volcanoes over the whole area.

We did not get much further before large Russian tank units were thrown against us. A murderous battle started. After six hours we had to give way.

Planes from both sides swept low and brushed away every exposed living thing with their machine-guns. In great shoals the Russian Yaks, Migs and Laggs came howling through the air and mowed our grenadiers down like grass.

All our tanks ran westwards. The Russians nearly managed to get us in a scissor-like manoeuvre but small groups fought independently with desperate courage. Neither the Russians nor our leaders knew quite what went on until it was too late to take advantage of the situation.

We drove on west over the churned up roads, filled by thousands of refugees. We could hardly get through. Russian peasants, city-dwellers, young and old, women and children, Germans lacking weapons and Russian prisoners who dare not stay behind because they feared the consequences of having been captured.

Everywhere the shout went up:

'Take us along, take us along!'

Imploring hands were stretched at us. Money, food and jewels were offered in exchange for a seat in the tank. Mothers held up small children and prayed us to take them along. But we went on regardless. We turned our faces away, not to see the accusing eyes.

Russian fighter planes, called 'butchers' by us, came tearing low along the road and stirred the horde of refugees to one single cry to heaven. They fired mercilessly at everything they saw.

Chaos everywhere. The west was a big magnet pulling this desperate horde of people along in ever-increasing panic. Parents threw their children up to the foreign soldiers who rolled by. Some threw the children off again. Others tried to make room.

Tiny and the Little Legionnaire sat on our tank. A child was thrown at them. A little girl of two or three. The Little Legionnaire missed her and she fell under the tracks and was crushed by the huge rollers. The mother became crazy and threw herself at the next tank. She was ground under the caterpillars.

Tiny let out a long-drawn howl. We thought he had become insane. The Old Un shouted:

'What's the matter, you big peasant?'

'By Satan! By Satan!' He stood up to his full height and leaned forward. It looked as if he was going to jump off. 'Listen you jokers, Nazi-dogs, Tiny's mad. Tiny's got a screw loose!' A long, terrible wolf-howl came from him.

Nobody knows what would have happened had his cry not been interrupted by a swarm of Jabos. They came shrieking at us and literally ploughed up the road with their guns.

Instinctively Porta flung the tank off the road and drove at full speed into a narrow ravine completely hidden by bushes.

We had hardly stopped in this heaven-sent shelter before the Jabos returned and let loose at the great mass of people on the road.

From this shelter the five of us witnessed the most terrible scenes yet.

Low over a group of trees fifty Jabos came racing. The flames from the guns spewed at the road. Hollow splashing explosions rent the air. The next minute most of the tanks were in flames, covered with a tarry phosphorous substance.

The Jabos treated the people on the road the same way. They ran around like living torches. Many tried to shelter in nearby cottages. The ground shook. Licking flames shot from the noses of the howling devils with the red stars on their wings. In a second the houses changed into roaring gales of yellow-blue flames. People smeared with the incendiary liquid from the exploding shells came out screaming and were changed to mummies.

This was our first acquaintance with the latest military invention.

Tiny had apparently become calm. He was sitting under the tank's nose playing dice with Porta and the Little Legionnaire. He grinned broadly when he threw six ones and when, at his next throw he threw three sixes, he became unmanageable. He rolled about roaring with laughter.

Porta glared enviously at him and said to the Little Legionnaire:

'What do you think, desert wanderer? Have you ever seen such a jackal? What's he laughing at, the stupid animal?'

'That,' gulped Tiny and pointed at the six dice. Each one was lying there challenging them with a six. 'You try it, you two Iron Cross candidates. It's easier for you to get a Knight's Cross than beat Tiny's master-touch.'

'Hell, I'd rather have six ones or six sixes than the Knight's Cross,' said Porta angrily.

Tiny swept up the dice and kissed them. He swung his arm and hit his left hand with his right fist while spitting over his right shoulder.

'God help us, what a superstitious hill-billy,' said Porta, spitting at a headless body which was lying a few yards away.

'That's what you think,' laughed Tiny, and flung the dice down.

'It won't help you a bit,' Porta jeered.

Tiny did not listen. He did head-over-heels and banged his head on an empty ammunition-box, but took no notice of it in his beaming delight.