by Sven Hassel
He climbed, swearing, into the tank through the bottom hatch. So many people were sitting on the turret that he could not get through the turret-hatch.
Over the radio he announced that we had to pass under a railway line. We had been travelling parallel with it. The tunnel was so narrow that there was not an inch to spare.
We tried to explain to the refugees that they would be swept off if they remained sitting on the tank and promised to pick them up again on the other side of the tunnel. They pretended not to understand. Nobody dared give up the place he or she had won. Even mothers who had lost their children didn’t move.
The first tank disappeared down the steep curve. It lurched about violently. Some refugees fell off, but managed to save themselves on the steep banks on both sides of the road before our tank came slipping on. Our grating tracks were unable to brake on the slippery road which had a decline of thirty-five degrees.
We stared desperately at the first tank as it entered the narrow tunnel. The refugees were crushed between cement and steel or swept off.
In despair Porta tried to brake, to put the tank in reverse, but the huge 65-ton Tiger rolled relentlessly on towards the crawling, screaming people who next minute were crushed under the steel caterpillar-tracks.
Many of the refugees on our tank jumped off when they saw what had happened, only to be crushed by the following tank which like ours came shrieking and slithering down the road. The refugees tried to make themselves small, but they were all mashed down to a red-grey porridge which dripped like paint off the tunnel’s walls.
A small boy threw himself at our tank to stop it from running over his mother who lay unconscious in the road. His terror-stricken face disappeared beneath the tracks of our terrible juggernaut.
The tank bobbed up and down at regular intervals as if we were running over a large wash-board.
On the other side of the railway line we stopped. The lieutenant by now had lost his mind. He ran about in a circle, tore off the badges and decorations on his uniform and threw them in the air. When he had demoted himself, he grabbed his machine-pistol and started firing single shots at us.
Without a word Porta took his sniper’s rifle and pressed the trigger.
The young lieutenant fell back, kicked desperately with his legs and beat out helplessly with his arms in a swinging motion. Another shot and he lay still.
The refugees who had got away alive and the others who had not been on the tanks came across to us threatening and screaming. We had seen what they had done to the gunners from one of the other tanks, how they had choked them with their bare hands.
They came at us swinging weapons and cudgels. The Old Un hurriedly jumped into the tank, but before he could close the hatch some were already on the hull trying to throw in hand-grenades.
A piece of shrapnel wounded The Old Un in the cheek.
We saw them flinging out the corpses through the hatches of another tank.
The Old Un shook his head.
‘God in heaven, help me. What am I to do?’
Porta put his head back and looked at The Old Un.
‘Hurry up, Old Un, what’s your orders? You’re in command of all these sledges now.’
‘Do what you like. I give up,’ sobbed The Old Un and sank down. Tiny’s feet came out and pushed him away.
‘Good,’ replied Porta. ‘I understand. Shut your eyes, old married man, then you won’t see what we’re going to do!’
He turned to the Little Legionnaire who was sitting by his radio to relay his orders to the other tanks:
‘Brush off the refugees! Be ready to open fire! Shoot at any stray tank and anyone carrying firearms!’
The refugees and the desperate German stragglers evidently wanted to finish us off. The first handgrenade was bowled over our heads.
Automatically I sighted my gun on the tank pirated by the refugees. The points met on my mirror. The number on the large turret was visible in my sighting circle. Tiny reported laconically:
‘Ready, gun clear!’
The red lamp blinked. A yard-long flame licked out of the muzzle and a shell burst through the air. The next moment the turret of the other tank went up in the air. Large flames shot skywards. Burnt limbs lay everywhere.
A furious roar rose from the civilians. A shell from a ‘stove-pipe’ crashed into the ground immediately in front of us. Another tore the tracks off another tank which immediately opened fire in return.
A terrific slaughter of people made insane by terror and despair began. Four 8.8-cm. tank-guns, four flame-throwers and eight machine-guns sent bursts of killing steel and fire at their defenceless targets.
After ten minutes it was over. The tracks on the damaged tank were repaired and we went on our way north-west. We carried one dying mother and her new-born babies and five bigger children whose parents we had very likely massacred.
Porta pointed with an expressive gesture at a tree from which hung the bodies of three German infantry soldiers. All the four tanks halted to study the victims a little closer.
‘Hell and damnation!’ the Little Legionnaire burst out when we read the text on the paper notices strung round the necks of the hanged infantry men: ‘We are deserters and traitors and have received our well-deserved punishment.’
Their legs swung in the light wind like pendulums on some large clock. Their necks were horribly long. You suspected they would snap and leave only the heads in the ropes.
Mutely we travelled on.
Just before entering another village we saw several more hanged soldiers, among them a major-general.
‘I have refused to obey the Führer’s orders,’ his label said.
In a ditch lay a whole row of infantry and artillery troops, also a single engineer, easily recognizable by his black shoulder-tabs. They had been executed by machine-gun fire. These had no labels.
‘It’s the head-hunters at work,’ said Porta. ‘Let us get one of these bastards in front of the muzzle of our “candy-sprayer”. May the devil skin me, but he’ll get so many acid drops in his carcass he’ll die of indigestion!’
‘Allah has granted your wish,’ the Little Legionnaire said and pointed ahead.
There stood five MPs. They gave their stop-signal. They were armed to the teeth and their brutal, square faces looked threateningly at us.
‘They’ll hang us for sure, when they discover how far away from the regiment we are,’ The Old Un said.
Porta braked and stopped a little in front of the gendarmes. The tanks behind us also stopped. The crews swung their machine-guns up and down and were obviously nervous of what might happen.
A sergeant-major and a sergeant with fists just made to knot a hangman’s rope approached us.
The Little Legionnaire opened the hatch and peeped out.
The sergeant-major planted himself in front of our tank and shouted arrogantly:
‘What fellows are you?’
‘Tank fellows.’ The Little Legionnaire grinned.
‘Not funny!’ said the sergeant-major. ‘Your papers! Hurry up, or you’ll be swinging, my friend!’
‘11th Panzer Regiment,’ lied the Little Legionnaire.
‘What? 11th?’ shouted the sergeant. ‘You’ve had it! You’re for the rope!’
Porta pushed the Little Legionnaire away and before the gendarmes realized what was going on, he had banged the hatch to. The tank leaped forward and hurled down both men. The tracks went over them. Both our machine-guns started to bark at the three remaining MPs standing a little farther down the road. One was hit immediately and fell. The two others took to their heels across a field, and a stream of bullets followed them.
We quickly radioed the other tanks that the gendarmes were disguised partisans who had tried to stop us.
Laughing fiendishly, Porta swung the tank into the field, accelerated, and, raising a dust-cloud behind us, we rolled at full speed after the two madly screaming gendarmes who had thrown away their weapons to lighten their steps.
The slower one stumbled. The next minute he was crushed under the tracks. The other one stopped, put his hands up and gaped in terror as the huge steel-giant rumbled at him.
Porta stopped when we were right on top of him and made the tank jog to and fro to mash him well into the ground.
Tiny cried out. He pointed to two more gendarmes. They had been placed as covering party in the ditch with a heavy machine-gun.
Porta whipped the tank round on its own axis, but before we could reach them one of the other tanks roared at them and crushed the machine-gun and the two gendarmes. Methodically its vast steel body like a film actress swinging her hips nuzzled to grind the gendarmes to an unrecognizable mess.
Later we joined the remnants of an infantry unit and harboured behind some hovels, where we were camouflaged with grass and branches to mask us from aircraft. The crews of the four tanks were billeted in the same hut. We placed the twins and their sick mother in a corner. Most of the time the woman was unconscious.
A young doctor from the infantry battalion which had absorbed us had a look at her. He let us have various pills to give her but Porta got mad and threw them away. We forced a medical orderly to give her an injection to reduce her fever. She often cried out in her delirium and tried to get up. We took turns to look after her. The Old Un pronounced that she would soon die. To the twins we gave milk stolen from the battalion quartermaster.
The other five children were still with us. One, a boy, kept completely dumb. He never answered our questions. He only looked at us with eyes filled with indescribable hatred. The Old Un was disturbed about him.
‘Be careful he doesn’t get hold of any weapons,’ he said. ‘That lad’s capable of anything. His hatred’s eating him up.’
When Tiny tried to play with the boy, he spat straight into Tiny’s face. It might have had serious consequences but for Porta’s and the Little Legionnaire’s intervention.
The acting infantry battalion commander, an old major, looked on our four big sledges as the world’s eighth wonder. He placed us as flank protection at the southern end of the village. He then lulled himself into the belief that he could counter any attacking forces successfully.
Large columns of fleeing troops arrived from different army units and were absorbed into the infantry battalion, which now took on the proportions of a regiment.
The major acted like a general determined to fight it out with the whole world. He strutted about and announced that victorious battles were soon to be fought.
Flocks of civilians built strong positions round the village. Heavy infantry guns were camouflaged and made part of the intricate defence system, but it was obvious that the work had been executed by inexperienced hands.
One old infantry sergeant who commanded an anti-tank battery was convinced that his two pathetic cannon would make the fast Russian tank units scuttle.
‘You’ll soon be wiser,’ laughed a tank sergeant. ‘Just wait till Ivan comes with his T34s. He’ll parade along your positions. The only thing which counts when T34s show up is how fast you can run.’
The infantry sergeant looked primly at the tank sergeant. He turned to his men and said loud enough for us all to hear, which was what he wanted:
‘The Herr Commander has ordered that the positions must be held to the last man and the last bullet. If anyone withdraws without the personal order of the major he’ll be shot as a traitor!’ Smartly he strutted across to his two 7.5-cm. anti-tank guns.
Porta shouted mockingly to the nearest tank crew:
‘Somebody here’s got a bat in his belfry!’
We soon forgot the sergeant and his simple faith.
Porta started telling stories. He gave us a detailed description of a girl he had once met.
‘You should have seen her,’ he said rapturously and gesticulated expressingly with his arms. ‘Her udders were the most luscious pleasure-buds you ever imagined. Real pets they were. Her legs were the loveliest pins you ever saw, real mare’s form! Maybe she was a bit high off the ground, but, hell, you can’t have everything! She was well-trained, too, lads; four times she’d been caught in the family way, but a medicine-man had fixed her up.’
Tiny stared open-mouthed at Porta who enthusiastically painted in every detail of his girl-friend.
‘Oh, shut up,’ groaned Tiny, ‘it’s enough to drive you crazy!’
‘God help us, your breeding-pin is always restless!’ Porta retorted. ‘If you can’t stand listening to me, run away!’
But Tiny stayed and suffered bravely. Porta raised one of his legs and made a full stop in his usual manner.
‘Thank you! What a hell of a bird that was—’
‘What the hell!’ The Old Un burst out and suddenly jumped up. Simultaneously we spotted the Russians. First a scattered few carrying machine-pistols, then lots of them. Carefully they looked about. An officer waved with his machine-pistol. More of them appeared. At least a company.
Quickly we scrambled into our tanks, pointed our guns and sent a few killing bursts in their direction. That made them disappear for the present.
The tank engines were revved up and we made ready to flee if necessary.
Furious shooting started:
‘Hell, Ivan must be behind us,’ growled The Old Un and listened. ‘Porta, get this coffin out of the hole. We’ve to get into the village to see what’s going on.’
The Little Legionnaire radioed the other three tanks and together we left the position despite the threats and cries of the infantrymen. We drove down into the village in the valley.
Here hell was loose. Russians swarmed everywhere.
Our four tanks rolled snarling into the broad main street. A whole company of Russians was parading. Four machine-guns sent simultaneous bursts at them and they fell like nine-pins. A few tried to run away, but our automatic weapons soon finished them off.
A Russian tank of the small T60 type was literally pulverized as it appeared from behind a hut only twenty-five yards away from our 8.8-cm. cannons.
Tiny shouted from the hatch in the turret:
‘Come on, you devils. We’ll soon flatten you out like bedside mats!’
A bullet hit the edge of the hatch and ricocheted with a sharp whine. Tiny quickly shut the hatch.
In the next quarter of an hour we cleared the village of Russians. They had not the weapons to fight our large tanks.
The Old Un was sure it would be only a short respite before they got T34s and large anti-tank guns.
Darkness fell, nothing happened except some skirmishing in the distance, and we settled into our billets.
At midnight the mother of the twins died. We wrapped her in a thin blanket and decided to bury her at daylight. The Old Un sat holding the twins while Porta and the Little Legionnaire each held an improvised baby-bottle.
‘What on earth are we going to do with these two?’ The Old Un asked. ‘We can’t keep them for good, and if we give them to the refugee-disposal squad what’ll become of them?’
Presently we seemed to hear some movement outside. We thought it was probably some newly-arrived refugee column.
Suddenly the door was torn open. An enormous figure with a sheepskin cap above a flat, earth-brown face, dressed in a quilted coat and carrying a machine-pistol under its arm, stood in the doorway. The Little Legionnaire who by chance had been sitting cleaning his pistol fired at once. The large Russian fell without a sound. Porta grabbed his machine-pistol, Tiny extinguished the Hindenburg-candle with his large fist to plunge the room into darkness.
We ran from the house. The Russians swarmed round the tanks. We ran across the road and threw ourselves into cover behind another hovel.
The major was shaving in his quarters. He opened the door to see what the noise was that had disturbed him. He was probably thinking of the many good years he had spent as a lecturer at the University of Göttingen. He never knew what hit him. He fell with the shaving-brush clasped in his hand. A small blob of soap hit the door-frame. Some earth-brown men stamped
carelessly across his body.
A couple of officers in pyjamas sat up in their beds. They were quickly dealt with by two machine-pistols.
The machine-guns rattled on between the hollow explosions of the hand-grenades. Yelling, indescribable shrieks came from women who had fallen calmly asleep with their children. They were brutally awakened by the Siberian infantrymen. Ghoulish laughter and screams mingled in horrible confusion. Women were wakened by clammy, cold, clawed hands tearing at their breasts.
In the middle of the road, in mud and rain the hysterical females were raped by the drunken Mongolian soldiers.
Threats and curses, yelling and terrible cries for help vied with the stuttering firing. This was the night’s music in the village of Verbe.
In one hut where over fifty civilian refugees were sheltering a sergeant and ten men broke in. They pulled the women out one by one. The men and the halfgrown boys were forced up against the wall and shot. Then the women were raped.
An infantry lieutenant who was sitting in his company office with the sergeant-major and a couple of clerks was surprised by a Russian group. All had to kneel on the floor. A Siberian corporal grabbed them by the hair one by one, bent their heads back and slowly and precisely cut their throats.
A Ukrainian farmer tried to save his 12-year-old daughter from two Siberians. He was hit with a riflebutt and had his throat cut. From it the blood spurted like a fountain. Beside his blood-stained corpse they raped his daughter.
A naked woman with her hair flying ran screaming down the street, pursued by a roaring soldier. One of his friends kicked her legs from under her. They raped her there and then.
Porta half-rose. He aimed carefully as on a firing range. The soldier who had thrown himself at the woman sprang up only to fall again hit neatly in the temple.
The other one who was holding the woman by her feet looked about him, startled. Then he fell, waltzing his death agony, having been hit precisely in the middle of the forehead.
‘A bull’s eye,’ Porta announced with his vulperine grin.
Tiny growled like a wild animal and fingered his pouch of hand-grenades.