by Sven Hassel
‘The pain’s comin’ in stabs,’ explains Tiny. ‘She’s turnin’ ’er toes up! I can’t stand seein’ a nice-lookin’ bint like ’er suffer. Let me rock ’er into ’ell, Old’un, so we can get movin’!’
‘Go on,’ we all cried in agreement, ‘give it her in the neck!’ The Old Man springs smartly backwards. The submachine-gun’s wicked mouth gapes at us.
‘The man who kills her, I kill! Put that gun away, Tiny!’
‘You ought’a be in command of a flock o’ bleedin’ nuns,’ growls Tiny and rams the Nagan crossly back into its yellow holster.
The woman captain ends it herself. She did have a pistol on a Bowden up her arm.
‘And I was ready to go over and give her a swig of vodka,’ bursts out Stege in a scared voice.
‘Never do it, mon ami,’ warns the Legionnaire. ‘Always put a bullet into a body before going near it and you will lengthen your miserable life on this military dung-heap appreciably. Thank Allah for all dead enemies. They cannot hurt you anymore!’
Naturally Porta finds a sack of coffee. He swings it over his shoulder with a happy look on his face.
‘Squad, fall in!’ commands the Old Man. Tiny stands with the burnt remains of the very desirable Boudionovka in his hand.
‘Oughta ’ave that spike rammed up ’is jacksey an’ broke off smartly! Wot ’d ’e want to go standin’ on the top of all that explodin’ petrol for? Bleedin’ officers, I don’t know! Wouldn’t give us gun-fodder the shit from under their nails even when there’s a war on!’
He slings the charred cap away amongst the trees.
‘You picked up five gold teeth,’ I say and haul him away with me. The others are already well ahead.
They are easy to track. The aroma of coffee from Porta’s sack hangs like a banner behind them.
Above the trees the rocket batteries draw lines of fire on the sky. The Russians are using Stalin Organs.
‘Where them there ’its,’ says Tiny and points toward a long row of fiery streaks, ‘there won’t be as much as a button left. Queer, when you come to think of it, ’ow it’s possible to chuck a bleedin’ great chunk of iron up in the air an’ ’ave it drop just where you want it to.’
‘It’s something they’ve been a long time working out,’ I explain.
‘I am aware o’ that,’ says Tiny heavily. ‘I am aware that they didn’t pull it all out of a bloody top ’at. But I still say they wasn’t sittin’ right at the back of class when brains was dished out. Think o’ bein’ able to shoot a bleedin’ ton o’ steel miles an’ miles through the air, an’ ’ave it fall bang on top of a general’s bleedin’ nut whenever you feel like it! Bleedin’ wunnerful is that that is! Bleedin’ wunnerful!’
1 Krasnoe Znamja. (Russian): The Order of the Red Banner.
2 Job Tvojemadj. (Russian): Go home and fuck your mother!
3 Nagan. Russian military pistol.
4 Sampolit. The unit commander’s representative in political matters.
5 Stavka. Russian High Command, instituted 23 June 1941.
6 LMG. (Leichtes Maschingewehr) (German): Light automatic rifle.
7 Alik. (Russian): Slang for the male sexual organ.
8 Allotjka. (Russian): Cunt.
9 BT-5: Medium tank.
10 SMG (Schweres Maschinengewehr) (German): Heavy machine-gun.
11 Schupo (Schützpolizie) (German): Uniformed police.
12 Boudionovka: Soviet spiked helmet of cloth.
13 Panzerfaust: Rocket firing apparatus. (Bazooka.)
14 KW-1: 43-ton tank.
15 MG (Maschinengewehr) (German): Machine-gun.
16 NSFO (Nationalsozialistischer Führungoffizier) (German): Nazi Political officer.
17 Nagajka (Russian): Siberian whip, issued to prison camp guards.
18 HDV (Heeres-Dienst-Vorschrift) (German): Army Service Manual.
19 Dawai (Russian): Faster.
‘A strange man, this Hitler, but Chancellor, not to speak of Commander-in-Chief of the Army, he will never be. At the most he could perhaps be used as Postmaster-General.’
President Paul von Hindenburg in a conversation
with General von Schleicher, 4 October 1931.
Marshal Malinovski writes in Wojenno-isoritschesskij-jurnal nr. 6 1961: The zenith of Stalin’s stupidity came when he ordered the Russian troops to remain in garrison and at training bases far behind the front line even after he had been given positive proof that Hitler was preparing an attack. Three months before X-day, more than a million German soldiers were concentrated on the Russian-Polish frontier. The defence plan, worked out to the smallest detail by the Russian General Staff and confirmed by Stalin, was by his own orders never put into operation, and the various divisions and army corps were so stupidly disposed that the German panzer forces destroyed them as easily as if merely carrying out an exercise. The craziest disposition of all occurred on Saturday evening, 21 June 1941, when the tank divisions were withdrawn from their infantry to be formed into new tank brigades. The old BT-5s and -7s were drawn up on the parade grounds and their crews marched away to troop training grounds. On Monday, when the Germans arrived, these specialist troops had not even infantry weapons with which to defend themselves. They were ready-made columns of prisoners served up on a plate by Stalin to the Germans. In the first three days of the war, 90% of the Russian Air Force, forbidden by Stalin to leave the ground, was crushed by the German bombers. During the first six hours of 22 June Stalin forbade the Red Army’s frontier divisions to open fire. But as Pjort Grigorenko ironically says: Thank God for the ‘undisciplined’ soldiers of the Red Army who opened fire against orders.
Stalin refused to believe that German troops had crossed the Russian border on Hitler’s orders. Even in August he was still convinced that the whole thing was a mistake, and provoked by the German Junkers.
He kept on saying: It cannot be true! Adolf Hitler would not break his word! Foreign Minister Ribbentropp has assured me of Germany’s friendship.
Slowly Moscow recovered from the shock, and began to send out attack orders.
Defence Minister Timoschenko still thought he was living in the revolutionary days of 1917 and ordered: ‘Attack with cold steel’.
Front commanders begged to be allowed to move under cover of night.
But no! Stalin ordered attack, and the troops moved forward to their deaths. Easy prey for the Luftwaffe. The remnants of the tank army were sacrificed in a witches’ cauldron stirred by Stalin.
In the Kiev cauldron, the 5th Tank Army battled desperately to avoid complete destruction, and would have won through but for foolish orders given by Stalin and his sycophants in the Kremlin. Thousands and thousands of brave Russian soldiers were slaughtered because of this stupidity.
When all was over, and courageous men had brought some semblance of order out of chaos, the responsible leaders busied themselves looking for scapegoats. The officers of the Western Military District went first – all of them! One of the youngest – and best – army commanders, Colonel-General Kirponis, was executed. His Chief-of-Staff, Lieutenant-General Tupikov met the same fate. Throughout the gigantic land the rifles of the firing-squads crashed. Major-General Grigorenko states that 80,000 higher-ranking officers were executed without benefit of trial in the course of a fortnight. The witnesses to Kremlin stupidity had been wiped out. Stalin took the title of Generalissimo!
2 | Herr Niebelspang’s Via Dolorosa
Before we take over the white castle, the GPU has used it as Staff HQ. There are 200 neck-shot bodies in the cellars. The next day the PK1 people are swarming all over it. When they’ve finished snapping their shutters the dead are buried in the flower-beds. The earth is softest there. We get the feeling that there are a lot of bodies in that park, and that more are on the way; for when we march out SS-Gruppenführer Heydrich’s Special Detachment marches in. We don’t talk about it, but we all know what the job of the SD-units is.
Most of us are very young but have never enjoyed youth’s
light-hearted freedom. They threw us into the war before we even began to live. Something big is cooking. Every second hour we test motors. With the aristocratic Maybach engine this is a necessity. If it stands too long without turning over it won’t start, and Panzer troops never know when they will have to move off. Just when you’re lying there having it good and have almost got to believing the war is over, or that the infantry will do the rest, you get the order: ‘Mount! Start up! Panzer march!’ And then you’re in the thick of it again, and comrades you sat talking to only a short while ago are already turned into burnt mummies. Sometimes it’s quick. If the crew’s been soused with petrol, for example. It’s worst when oil from the flame-throwers boils them slowly to a soup. Sometimes when you get to them they’re still alive. You touch them and the flesh falls away from their bones. They shouldn’t be picked up, really, for they’ll die anyway, and they die easiest when they lie, once they’ve got out of the tank. But Army Medical Regulations say they must be taken to the Medical Aid Centre. And it is wisest for a soldier to obey service regulations blindly.
‘In the Forces there must be order,’ says Porta, ‘otherwise going to war at all would be out of the question. Every so often a great nation has to go to war if only so that their next-door neighbours can see they’re still a great nation. Where’d we be if any slave could do what he liked? To put it bluntly, the ‘Fatherland’s Moments of Destiny would be shat upon.’ All the bloody footsloggers’d down tools after the first day at war, and neither the generals nor the politicians could put up with that. Think of all the trouble they’ve been at, arranging it all. War’s a serious business! You’ll do well to take note of that,’ Porta ends, and slams the driver’s slot shut.
It’s pitch-dark the night we break camp. Rain is pouring down and a gut-wrenching stink of diesel oil penetrates everywhere. The Panzer infantry come over to us wet and chilly with groundsheets pulled about them and caps down round their ears. The veterans have wrapped their weapons in oiled paper. Ninety-nine alarms out of a hundred are false alarms so why get your arms dirty. It’s forbidden to use oiled paper but no platoon commander ever takes notice of it. To be quite honest we do a lot of things which are forbidden.
Take rape for example. That’s forbidden. Strictly forbidden. The penalty is hanging but it’s seldom anyone gets hanged for it. In the village of Drogobusch the other day, we found a lovely long-legged girl who’d been treated pretty roughly. She said 25 men had raped her. The medical officer who examined her said it could well be true. But no action was taken. Not a single ‘Watch-dog’2 turned up, and they’re there for a certainty every time a threat arises to the interests of Greater Germany’s Defence Forces.
‘Stretcher!’ comes a complaining cry from the darkness. ‘My hand.’
It happens every time there’s an alarm. Some fool lays his hand unthinkingly on the exhaust-pipe. There’s a sizzle and a stench of burnt meat. When he pulls back his hand it’s a skeleton claw. He’ll be punished for his stupidity but what’s six weeks hard in comparison with the front-line? Summer at the seaside! A stretcher-bearer threatens harshly with courts-martial. Self-inflicted wound.
If the chap’s unlucky they might even shoot him – when the medics have brought him back to perfect health. We executed one last Sunday. A fellow who’d had both legs amputated. They tied him to a board so that we could shoot him standing up. Executions have to be carried out standing, in accordance with regulations.
‘They’ll neck ’im,’ predicts Tiny ominously, tearing open die eiserne Portion3 and consuming the contents in three colossal gulps.
‘Where the devil do you put it?’ asks the Old Man astonishedly.
‘Put what?’ asks Tiny blankly.
‘Put a couple of pounds of grub at that speed?’
‘Never thought on it. When I was eight years old I’d swaller a ‘ole chicken with legs an’ the lot. You soon learn it when y’ave to get it down quick an’ under cover.’
‘Remember the time we ate Hauptfeldwebel Edel’s Christmas ducks?’ chuckles Porta.
We’ll never forget those ducks. When the Secret Police turned up to investigate the theft of eight corn-fed army ducks they fed the entire company emetics to find the guilty party. The ducks shot out of us in pieces almost big enough to quack at the four leather coated investigators with the turned down hat-brims.
We were escorted to HQ Company, where two offices had been placed at the disposal of the interrogators, but there it turned out that the hat-brims boss was an Obergefreiter pal of Porta’s and the interrogation turned into a crap-shooting session which sent the investigators home without their leather coats.
‘Panzer, forward march!’ comes over the communicator.
Maybach engines roar thunderously.
The Old Man pulls his goggles down over his eyes. From the wood comes distant sounds of armed contact. Our grenadiers have run into the enemy infantry. Field artillery ploughs up the defence positions and soon they are nothing but heaps of clay and stone.
‘We should never have gone into Russia,’ sighs Stege pessimistically and fits a new belt into the machine-gun. He is always pessimistic before going into combat.
MGs chatter madly and 80 mm mortars spit their bombs towards the machine-gun posts.
‘Plop! plop!’ sounds incessantly. Geysers of earth spout up all around us. A polished track runs straight as a ruler along the edge of the wood and disappears in a milky curtain covering the village of Pocinok. We have never been in Pocinok but we know every inch of it. We know where they have positioned their PAK4 without being told. If they have tanks they’ll be dug in behind the school. The ideal position. They don’t even need to dig them in. With our short-range equipment we can’t touch their heavy KW-1s and -2s. The PAK will be next to Party HQ and the Komsomol5. Party HQ is the last thing they abandon.
Gods, how it rains! Rain is coming in through the gasventilators. If rain can get through them gas can too! Involuntarily I look towards my gas-mask hanging over by the periscope. It has two filters. One of them has been used for distilling spirits and smells sweetly of alcohol. It ought to be a great help in a gas attack. You’d be half cut before you’d even noticed you were choking on chlorine.
At the roadside, half in the ditch, a lorry lies on its side. One of the big three-axled heavy artillery jobs. Its howitzers have been blown over into the orchard. One wheel has disappeared completely. The strike has torn up a whole row of fruit-trees. Ripe apples are lying everywhere. 1941 was a good year for fruit. The apple-pickers had been hard at work when the air-borne mine arrived. A ladder has been cut across as neatly as if with a circular saw. An apple-girl has been blasted inextricably into it. She has been blown almost completely out of her clothes. One shoe hangs from her left foot and a piece of amber on a chain is still round her neck. A piece of a rung has gone through her stomach and sticks out of her back. Dead artillerymen lie around the lorry. One of them still clutches a bottle of wine in his hand. He met death in the middle of a swig.
By the gate lies the body of a German infantryman. He cannot be more than seventeen years of age. Both fists are buried in his entrails as if he were trying to retain them. His ribs are bared. They look like polished ivory. In the black crater, blasted by the mine, water chuckles pleasantly, washing away blood and torn remnants of humanity.
‘Odd how wars always start in the autumn, and how they slow down in the spring,’ Porta philosophies. ‘Wonder why?’
When summer begins to wane war begins in all seriousness. Then the infantry skirmishing is over. It usually starts with the sound of engines starting up night after night over on the other side.
Suddenly, just before some dawn, things start to move. The first twenty-four hours are always the worst. There are so many casualties. After a couple of days things begin to ease off. Not because the war itself gets any easier. Just the opposite. What happens is that we get used to living with death.
During the last three weeks fresh troops have been pouring in. Night and d
ay boots have marched past our white castle. Companies, battalions, regiments, divisions. In the beginning we watched them curiously. They smelt of France. We all longed to be back in France. Then we were wealthy. Porta and Tiny did big business. In partnership with a Marineobermaat they once sold a fully-armed torpedo-boat. Tiny reckoned on receiving an English decoration when the war was over. The two shady gentlemen who had bought the torpedo-boat had promised him one.
We thunder through the village without meeting resistance. The heat from the exhaust makes us sleepy. Porta has the greatest of difficulty in keeping the heavy tank moving straight between the lines of troops marching on both sides of the road. A moment’s inattention and he could flatten an entire company.
Our own infantry are lying on the back of the tank half-unconscious from the carbon-monoxide. It is dangerous to lie on top of the engine between the two big exhaust-pipes, but they still do it. It’s so lovely and warm.
Tiny sprawls on his ammunition and curses in his sleep. His snores are almost enough to drown the noise of the motor. Four fat lice race across his face. They are the rare kind with cross-markings on their backs. They are said to be particularly dangerous.
They give us a Deutschmark for every good specimen we turn in to the medical orderly. He puts them in a test-tube and sends them to Germany. We’ve never found out what they do with them back there. Porta has a theory that they wind up in a concentration camp for lice in which scientists are attempting to breed a special Aryan louse just intelligent enough to lift its front legs in the Nazi salute if Adolf should happen to pass by. Heide walked off in disgust when this theory was promulgated. The Old Man wakes Tiny and informs him of the fortune he has running around on him. He manages to catch three, but the fourth, and largest, specimen drops onto Porta’s neck. Naturally, he immediately declares it his personal property. They pin them to the rubber of the periscope mounting, ready to hand over when they run across the medical orderly.