Wheels of Terror

by Sven Hassel

  Startled and frightened we pressed ourselves flat to the snow. Four more explosions, then silence.

  ‘Katjuscha,’ whispered The Old Un, ‘they must be quite near.’

  Soundlessly and carefully we crawled on. Through a gap in the trees we saw a battery of the feared Russian 30-cm. rocket-thrower M13, called ‘Katjuscha’.

  Without a word our party fanned out ready to destroy the battery.

  Four huge Otto-Diesel trucks stood unmanned 200 yards away on the forest road. Bauer quickly went ahead and placed a sticky-bomb in each engine so that the vehicles would blow up when the fuses detonated.

  ‘They must feel bloody safe here without a single sentry to guard the trucks,’ said Stege.

  ‘Quiet,’ The Old Un whispered sharply.

  The Russian artillery men were busy loading the twelve barrels of each gun. It takes fifteen minutes to load a rocket-thrower like that even when you are well trained.

  The Old Un pointed out each rocket-thrower crew to the separate parties detailed to eliminate them. It was essential for each of our four parties to attack at once and to reach its target at the same time.

  Just as we were about to rush at them a light shone from a bunker between the trees where someone opened a door, and a voice gave some orders. Then the door was shut again.

  ‘Porta and Tiny take care of that bunker,’ ordered The Old Un. ‘But no shooting, or else we’re sold.’

  We pulled out our knives and entrenching-tools and went forward as one man. Only one of the rocket-crews had time to defend itself.

  The whole thing took only a few minutes and not a single shot was fired. The Russians lay in their blood-stained snow.

  We sat down sweating after the short but violent battle. Möller, visibly shaken, sat rocking while he mumbled a prayer.

  Porta looked at him:

  ‘What are you mumbling about, brother?’

  Möller started and looked around nervously before he whispered in a stutter: ‘I prayed to Him who reigns over us all.’

  ‘Hm, I’m sure that’ll help. Why not ask Him to stop the war?’

  ‘Stop blaspheming the only beauty that remains,’ said the fanatical Möller. The anger in the glance he gave Porta was clear for all to read.

  ‘And if I don’t stop, what’ll happen?’ said Porta, silkily threatening.

  ‘You’re too damned sure of yourself,’ raged Möller, ‘but there’s a limit to what you can get away with, and if you blaspheme God you’ll have me to reckon with.’

  Porta half stood up and threatened Möller.

  ‘Now listen, holy-man, take care we don’t have an extra casualty on this picnic.’

  The Old Un interfered in his calm way which always brought us to our senses.

  ‘Porta, leave the holy-man alone. He’s not doing any harm.’

  Porta nodded haughtily and spat over the head of Möller.

  ‘All right, holy-man, what The Old Un says goes. But for your own sake, don’t come too near Joseph Porta. And tell your God to keep his distance too.’

  Just before we reached the first of the Russian positions we found the body of a German NCO with his hands cut off and a piece of barbed wire stuck up his rectum. Both his eyes had been cut out.

  ‘The bloody swine!’ burst out the Little Legionnaire. ‘They’re even surpassing the Riffs and that’s saying plenty. Let me get my hands on the bastards.’

  Our skins crept at the thought of falling into Ivan’s hands and giving him a chance at us …

  We were lying in some undergrowth waiting for Porta and Little Legionnaire who had crept forward to find out where we had best attack.

  Half an hour went before they came back. They had done their work well. Porta maintained it would be child’s play to roll up the positions.

  With a cigarette dangling in his mouth he whispered his plan of attack. He made a sketch in the snow of the whole sector and explained where all the sentries were posted.

  ‘Here on the left, when we go down in the trench, is a company bunker or some such thing. At least four officers are inside. Let’s try and get ’em alive. A few hundred yards further down is a sharp bend and here’s a telephone bunker. I wouldn’t be surprised if the commissar isn’t sitting there.’

  ‘It would have been nice if you knew for sure,’ interrupted The Old Un.

  Porta completely forgot to be quiet and cried out:

  ‘You’re a smart fellow. Should I have gone down, knocked on the door and asked: “Pardon me, Ivan, are you a commissar? If so we’re going to take you prisoner!”’

  ‘Shut up, Porta, I didn’t mean it literally.’

  A little later we were on our way. We all wore Russian fur-hats which we had taken from the dead rocket-crews.

  A faint death-rattle broke the silence. Tiny had strangled a sentry with a piece of thin wire.

  Then it broke loose. A machine-pistol flamed up before us. Three of our chaps fell, killed on the spot.

  The Old Un flung a mine at the first visible forms and hand-grenades flew through the air. Between the explosions we heard surprised Russians shouting: ‘Germanski, Germanski!’

  Porta ran laughing through the trench spraying fire at the dark figures running about completely confused. The Little Legionnaire and Tiny were immediately behind him with barking light machine-guns.

  The Old Un and I kicked in a door of a bunker and some Red colleagues fell out of their beds, but before they realized what was happening they were killed by our machine-pistol fire.

  A huge officer came tearing down the trench. His coat was open and flapping. As we leaped at him he lost his cap with the green cross in the crown. I bored my knife into his groin and cut swiftly upwards. His blood spurted out.

  The Old Un stormed after Porta and the others. By now, they had almost finished their macabre mopping-up.

  I had lost my machine-pistol in the fight, but with a spade in one hand and my 7.65 pistol in the other I raged on. A chop at a mounted soldier who tried to sit up. A burst from the pistol. On and on. The legs moved automatically. Then it was all over.

  Mines were flung down in the bunkers as a last farewell. They burst like a thin crust of earth during a volcanic eruption. The Old Un sent up red and green lights as a signal to our own people that we were on our way back.

  Pushing five prisoners in front of us we arrived breathless at our starting-point.

  Lieutenant Weber bombastically ordered us to send the prisoners back to regimental headquarters so that information might be extracted from them.

  Porta laughed in his face:

  ‘No, Herr Oberleutnant, those Russians stay here. They are our own private loot. But information you’ll have, Herr Leutnant – as much as you want.’

  Weber started to shout about mutiny and special courts-martial, but nobody took any notice of him. We were far too interested in our prisoners.

  Porta grabbed the nearest and dug his thumbnails into his nostrils tearing them apart with a quick movement. The prisoner howled.

  Porta put his mouth to his ear and roared:

  ‘Who gave orders for the performance of that little play we saw this evening?’

  The prisoner, a captain with the gold insignia of a commissar on his arm, kicked desperately to get away from the satanic hold.

  ‘Answer, you bastard! Who crucified our pals? And what did you do with the others?’

  With an oath he let go of the terrified man and flung him to the floor of the bunker, while Tiny kicked him.

  ‘Bring the next one,’ roared Porta.

  Tiny and the Little Legionnaire pushed a major forward to Porta who, pointing to the screaming commissar, said:

  ‘Look at him, you swine, and hurry with your answer before I have your eyes out.’

  The prisoner jumped back and started screaming.

  ‘No, no, I’ll tell you everything!’

  Porta guffawed mockingly.

  ‘Ah, you know the method, comrade! I used to think our SS men were the only culprits
. Who crucified our friends?’

  ‘First platoon, Sergeant Branikov.’

  ‘H’m. Lucky, a dead man. Who gave the orders? But no dead man’s name this time, you swine!’

  ‘Comm … ommissar Topolzniza.’

  ‘Who’s that, you bastard?’

  Without answering the major pointed to a prisoner who stood with the others who were being looked after by the Little Legionnaire.

  Porta went slowly across to the man indicated and stared for a moment at the little officer, who squeezed himself against the wall of the bunker.

  Porta spat in his face and knocked off his cap with its green cross.

  ‘So it’s you who likes playing Satan? I’m going to skin you alive, you animal, but first you’re going to talk, you pig.’

  ‘I’m innocent,’ shouted the commissar in fluent German.

  ‘Sure,’ grinned Porta, ‘but only of the Düsseldorf murders.’

  He turned round and walked across to the pale major who was standing in the middle of the bunker, just where Porta had left him.

  ‘Hurry up now, talk, or you’ll be shot, you Soviet turd. Who put the barbed wire up our pal and cut his paws off? You’d better talk, brother, or shall we have your ears off?’

  ‘I don’t know what you mean, Herr Obergefrieter.’

  ‘It’s funny how polite you dogs suddenly are. It must be the first time you’ve addressed a paltry Obergefrieter properly. Does your memory require a little prodding?’

  He smacked his pistol-butt into the major’s face and his nose broke.

  Tiny slid across and whispered, leering devilishly:

  ‘Let Tiny fix him up. I remember all the fifty-five tricks they used in Fagen on us Zebra-men. Hell, Porta, let Tiny fix that SS Soviet man. I swear that in less than a minute he’ll have confessed to everything.’

  ‘Do you hear, you snivelling wreck?’ grinned Porta. ‘Tiny wants to train on you. What about our pal? Who put that barbed wire in him? Who cut his paws off? Talk, you skunk!’

  He nodded almost imperceptibly at Tiny. Tiny rushed at the major with a joyful cry, grabbed him by the seat of his pants and swung him like a doll over his head: then threw him right across the bunker where he landed with a crash against the wall.

  Tiny was on him like a tiger. We heard brittle snapping sounds like dry sticks breaking.

  The major gave a cry which made the hairs on our heads rise.

  The Old Un groaned:

  ‘No, no, let me out. I don’t care what they’ve done. I can’t look at this.’

  He went out with some others among whom was Lieutenant Weber, who was white as a sheet.

  Tiny did his work thoroughly and effectively. Many years of accumulated revenge and hatred were vented on a disciple of the system which did not differ much from the brown regime.

  Maybe we felt some justification and reminded ourselves that the major had himself taken part in the sort of thing that had now befallen him.

  When Porta stopped Tiny, the major was unrecognizable. His uniform was in rags. He looked as if he had been trampled by a furious gorilla.

  One of the prisoners fell forward in a collapse at the sight of him.

  The Little Legionnaire gave him a kick. It did no good; the man was half-dead with terror.

  Stutteringly, the information came from the major’s broken and now toothless mouth. The prisoner who had fainted was pointed out as the instigator of the torture on our pals. It had been he who had given the orders about the barbed wire.

  When the man came to, the Little Legionnaire questioned him:

  ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘Captain in the Red Army, Bruno Tsarstein.’

  ‘It sounds German, doesn’t it?’ asked the Little Legionnaire thoughtfully.

  No answer.

  ‘Are you German, you gallows-bird?’

  Silence, frightened silence.

  ‘What the hell,’ roared Tiny, ‘can’t you hear the desert-rat’s question? Do you want Tiny to make jam of you?’

  ‘Do you hear?’ said the Little Legionnaire, laughing evilly. ‘Are you German, you commissar-pig?’

  ‘No, I’m a Soviet citizen.’

  ‘That’s a good one. The lads here aren’t satisfied with that,’ grinned the Little Legionnaire. ‘I’m a French citizen, but German all the same. I became French because I knew how to kill France’s enemies and you’ve become a Soviet citizen to kill the Soviet’s enemies.’ He put his hand gently into the breast-pocket of the pale captain and jerked out his pay-book which he threw across to Porta who thumbed it without understanding a word in it.

  The Russian major was more than willing to oblige with a translation into German. It seemed that Captain Bruno Tsarstein had been born in Germany on April 7th, 1901, and had lived in the Soviet Union since 1931. He had been through the prescribed political college courses for commissars, and had been appointed as battalion commissar to the 32nd Siberian Rifle Division.

  ‘Ho, ho, you bastard,’ the Little Legionnaire grinned again. ‘I’ve got to punish you extra severely according to paragraph 986, part 2, in the penal code. It says that everyone is punished who leaves the country and takes up foreign citizenship without informing the National-Socialist attorney general’s office. And you haven’t have you, louse?’

  ‘That’s a good point,’ Porta joined in. ‘You will pronounce his sentence my desert-wanderer. Just do what the hell you think’s right.’

  ‘Tell me,’ said the Little Legionnaire pleasantly. ‘Do you know what they did to me when I came home from the Legion Etrangère? Make a guess comrade commissar. They hit me over the kidneys with iron chains. Have you tried passing blood?’

  Porta interrupted the Little Legionnaire to roar into the German-Russian commissar’s ear: 172

  ‘Answer, by Christ, or we’ll cut your eye-balls out and make you eat them.’

  Tiny pricked Tsarstein with his bayonet. He leaped forward but Bauer’s rifle-butt made him jump back.

  ‘Answer, you dog. Didn’t you hear what the gentleman said?’ Porta exhorted him. ‘I ask you again. Have you tried?’

  ‘No, no,’ whispered the commissar hoarsely and stared as if hypnotized at the Little Legionnaire who in turn looked back with an almost fatherly smile.

  ‘Do you want to try?’

  ‘No, Herr Soldat.’

  ‘I didn’t want to either, brother. But your colleagues in Fagen forced me. Have you heard about Fagen?’

  ‘No, Herr Soldat.’

  ‘Do you think you ever will now?’

  ‘Answer, you snotty cow,’ roared Porta. Tsarstein swallowed his saliva with great difficulty. Every word hurt him when he spoke:

  ‘No, I don’t think so.’

  ‘I don’t either. They gave me a hit across the kidneys with the chains for each quarter of a year I’d been in Le Legion Etrangère. They might have chosen each month, week, or even day. But then I’d have been dead and imagine my sorrow if we hadn’t met – you and I? SS Unterscharführer Willy Weinbrand thought it great fun to see me licking spit. Ever tried it, Herr Commissar? No? But you’ve tried crucifying people. Don’t you think it hurts to be crucified?’

  Tsarstein squeezed himself desperately against the wall, trying to get away from the staring fanatical eyes of the Little Legionnaire.

  ‘You don’t answer. Have you tried?’

  ‘No, Herr Soldat.’

  Tiny spat on the floor.

  ‘Lick it up.’

  Bruno Tsarstein’s head spun. He looked as if he was about to collapse. Hypnotized, he stared at the slimy blob on the bunker-floor. We had all tried spit-licking. We knew what stirred in Tsarstein’s body.

  Tiny grabbed him and flung him down.

  ‘Eat it up, comrade-commissar-murderer!’

  The Little Legionnaire pricked his neck with his bayonet.

  ‘Seek and you’ll find,’ he said thickly. ‘Allah is great. Inshallah!’

  Tsarstein started to vomit. It seemed as if his stomach turned itself i
nside out.

  ‘Good gracious me,’ said the Little Legionnaire quietly. ‘That sort of thing was severely punished in Fagen!’

  He kicked him in the side and the NKVD man rolled over the floor.

  The Little Legionnaire bent confidentially over him:

  ‘Your SS colleagues castrated me with a kitchen-knife in the bog. Ever seen anything like that?’

  ‘No, Herr Soldat.’

  ‘God help us, what an innocent you are!’ His voice cut like a knife. The sound of it remains to this day in my brain. ‘How many have you castrated in your concentration camps?’

  ‘No Germans, Herr Soldat, only anti-social elements.’

  An ominous almost satanic silence reigned. It enabled the commissar to crawl, back to the other prisoners, but they, his own comrades, drew back in terror.

  ‘So, only anti-social elements,’ the Little Legionnaire said, as if thinking aloud. He savoured the word ‘anti-social’. His voice rose in a shriek of rage: ‘Get up, whore’s spawn, or I’ll skin you alive!’

  He kicked the commissar, who tried to shield himself with outstretched hands.

  ‘You say anti-social, you bloody bastard. Here we’re all anti-social in the eyes of your SS chums. You think that gives you the right to make us all half-men? Get his pants off!’ he roared.

  Tiny and Pluto literally tore the clothes off the commissar who screamed hollowly like a frightened animal.

  The Little Legionnaire opened his combat-knife and tried the edge with his thumb.

  Just then a sharp command rang through the room.

  ‘Section, attention!’

  We started and obeyed.

  There stood Captain von Barring, the ordnance officer and The Old Un. Slowly brushing the snow off his greatcoat, von Barring advanced into the bunker. He glanced indifferently at the prisoners, and, at the half-naked commissar creeping into hiding.

  ‘Lay off it, boys.’ Von Barring turned to us. ‘Prisoners are to be sent to regimental HQ. Didn’t you remember?’

  Porta started to explain, but von Barring cut him short.

  ‘All right, Porta. I know what you’re going to say.’ He pointed to the prisoners. ‘These fellows will be dealt with, you can be sure, but we’re not torturers here. Remember that, and never let me catch you at it again. This time we’ll pass it over.’