by Sven Hassel
‘“You villains! You’re not Royal Serbian Police at all!” roared the Rittmeister. “You’re nothing but a shower of flat-footed pot-bellied parsons in uniform. You’re the Royal Austrian Steers!” he added thoughtfully as he looked at his sleepy herd.
‘The Rittmeister was generally known as a notorious nutcase who sprayed insults and curses around whenever he was under the influence. Which was almost always.
‘“I hate the bloody sight of you!” he continued. “You stand here on parade thinking all the time that the Fatherland and the war effort can all get fucked as far as you are concerned. But the Fatherland has no intention whatever of getting fucked! You would be surprised what the Fatherland does intend and will do! With you however it will have nothing whatsoever to do”
‘He went on to speak of discipline and regulations.
‘“Presumptuous persons, who put their hands up under the skirts of officers’ wives in the public streets, shall be handcuffed and taken to the police-station. The lady will also be taken to the station as a witness, but not handcuffed, you witless fools! At the station the crime can be reconstructed for the report!”
‘He withdrew a circular from his cuff and began to read aloud:
‘“From the All-Highest Royal Ministry of War it is made known that it is not beyond the bounds of possibility that spies and similar criminals are operating, by reason of the present war, within the country. It is the Royal Police’s highest duty to apprehend these suspicious persons and make provision, according to the law, for their being hanged.”
‘The Rittmeister of police from the Zagreb Military District was, all-in-all, a highly respected idiot who every Saturday evening at the officers’ weekend parties stripped himself completely naked. He was close to disgrace once, when he lay down in front of the Tihomil statue in Petersplatz with a kipper stuck up his backside and explained to passers-by that he was a mermaid on tour to Monte Negro. It wouldn’t have been half so bad if the drunken fool hadn’t had his sabre with ceremonial trappings clanking around his naked loins, and if he hadn’t had his garrison cap hanging on his dick. He explained this later as being due to personal modesty. They took him to the main guardroom where the warrant officer in charge of the cells, Brieler, ordered him to be hung in irons and gave him a thorough going-over with the bastinado.
‘“We’ll teach a civilian bastard like you not to take the piss out of the fighting forces. Lying down in front of King Tihomil and farting straight up in his noble granite features!”
‘The next day the warrant officer was broken two grades and fined a quarter’s pay for disrespect to an officer. His excuse, that the Rittmeister was naked and in this condition bore a remarkable resemblance to a civilian, did not help him in the least. Further, he suffered from piles. This latter was, however, deleted from the report to save the face of the Army. No officer could possibly be afflicted with piles. This affair cost the Rittmeister a packet. He was posted to a miserable frontier district, where the people were so suspicious of one another that they took their bikes in to church with them, which is a thing they do in certain parts of France. . . .’
‘Can it, Porta!’ sighs the Old Man, ‘and climb aboard! We’re moving!’
‘This war’s getting on my bloody nerves,’ shouts Porta furiously. ‘What the bloody hell’s it got to do with me, anyway! It’s just the same as with old Levinsky, the gents’ bloody tailor from Königsallee in Düsseldorf, who was a specialist in turning jackets. When you turn a jacket, naturally the breast-pocket comes out on the wrong side. There was one hell of a row over that in the Kaiser’s War in 1916, one Monday. Herr Oberstleutnant von Schletwein had had this civilian jacket turned. The first time he wore it he met a major of hussars who asked him interestedly what it felt like to pull a fountain-pen out of the wrong side of a jacket. That’s when the Obersleutnant discovered that there were problems involved in having a jacket turned.’
‘Shut your great gob!’ yelled the Old Man. ‘We don’t give a sod for your Düsseldorf tailor and your Oberstleutnant! Start the bloody motor!’
‘Don’t you even want to know what happened to Levinsky when he was called up in the 7th Uhlans, which had been turned into a foot regiment because all the horses had been eaten. Their Oberst wasn’t too clever where war was concerned and advanced in column of route. He was against all the new-fangled stuff they were teaching the young officers.
‘“Machine-guns are of no importance,” he explained to his adjutant, “and I’ll prove this by making my advance in column of route. When these Frenchmen recognize our blue Uhlan uniforms advancing towards them they’ll run from their machine-guns like rabbits.”
‘It was a costly proof for the cavalry Oberst and his Uhlans. The Frenchies mowed the lot of them down with those same machine-guns. Even as he lay dying the Oberst still sobbed! “Machine-guns are of no importance in war. . . .” The only man of that regiment who got out alive was Levinsky the tailor who was discharged for the loss of a leg, and this . . .’
‘One word more,’ hisses the Old Man, pressing his revolver muzzle against Porta’s neck, ‘and I’ll blow your bloody brains out!’
A 100 mm anti-tank gun is dug-in in the ditch alongside the road, behind a heap of agricultural machines and burnt-out lorries. ‘Fire!’ the gun commander’s hand chops down. The shell flies above the leading T-34. Too high! A slight correction is made to the sights. The next shot is a hit. The gun crew are jubilant and thump the aimer on the back. He is an old soldier with nerves of steel. A necessity for a good antitank man.
It’s a hit, all right. But the only result is a shower of fat sparks struck from the tank turret as the shell bounces off.
‘Fire!’
Another hit! Without effect! Again and again the antitank guns fire but they might as well be using pea-shooters.
‘God have mercy on us!’ pants the gun-commander fearfully.
‘What the devil is that monster!’ asks the loader nervously. He has never met a T-34 before. Until now they have only operated singly. This is a whole formation of them.
‘And they say Ivan’s finished!’ mumbles the gunner. Shaking with fear the gun crew stare at the giant tank with the unbelievably broad tracks, the sloping green sides and the enormous gun projecting from the round turret with the red Soviet star on each side.
‘Fire,’ roars the anti-tank NCO in despair. ‘Maximum rapid! Try to hit the swine in the same place every time!’
But the results are equally ineffective. The fear of death comes over the gunners. They send shot after shot at the steel monster rocking and roaring evilly on the same spot. A loaded lorry is crushed, unnoticed beneath its 38 tons weight.
The twenty-fifth shot crashes from the PAK-gun and glances off the enemy tank with as little effect as all the others.
Suddenly the turret opens. A leatherclad figure appears and threatens the German positions with a clenched fist.
The German gun crew is morally defeated. All eleven feel themselves doomed and only await the stroke of death. They are beasts pushed into the arena to be slaughtered and the toreador is the T-34.
Ammunition bearer nr. 2 is the first to panic. He breaks desperately for the woods. A line of tracer spits from the T-34s turret and ends in the running figure. The four men in the tank laugh aloud. This is revenge for Brest-Litovsky where their BT class tanks were crushed like eggshells.
‘Why doesn’t he move forward and make an end of it?’ asks the gun commander.
‘He’s enjoying himself,’ answers the loader, and Obergefreiter who has been in the service since ’39.
The turret of the T-34 turns slowly. The long 76.5 mm gun sinks.
A fiery howl, a flaming burst at the edge of the wood, and a German machine-gun group is wiped out of existence. Again the gun thunders and a mortar group is blasted to bits.
The diesels rattle. Tongues of flame shoot from the gaping exhausts. A stench of burnt diesel oil blows, like a charnel breath of death, over the anti-tank crew at the road bl
ock.
The loader lights a cigarette from a burning fir-twig, sits down on an ammunition box, looks thoughtfully up at the grey clouds driving overhead and sucks the smoke deep into his lungs. With a sketchy smile he inspects the T-34 then jabs a thumb between the gun commander’s ribs.
‘Lenau, you’ve lost your war! Before long you’ll be manuring the Russian sunflower fields, and next summer the women street sweepers of Moscow will eat you in the form of Stalin Chocolate. The Herrenvolk’s bravest soldiers eaten by the untermensch!’
He hands his water-bottle to his comrade. ‘Take a swig! If you’re drunk enough maybe you won’t feel the kiss of death.’
‘Do you think dying is painful?’ asks the gun commander staring fearfully at the T-34 which is sending a finger of light from its turret projector, searching to the left of the group.
‘I’ve never tried it,’ laughs the loader carelessly. ‘But I’ve seen a few go off. Some of them just gulped and died. Others howled something fierce. If our friend in the steel coffin hits us clean with the tracks we won’t even know we’re dead, but if he just nips our legs off, it won’t be so pleasant.’
‘I’m going to finish it myself,’ says the gun commander releasing the catch of his P-38.
‘Adolf certainly won’t like that,’ sneers the loader. ‘Two years ago you were the battalion hero, named in orders, and now you’re about to blow your brains out for fear of an untermensch! What are you thinking about, man? You’ll bring shame on the Fatherland!’
‘Shut the hell up with that goddam Nazi shit!’ curses the commander. ‘Those Soviet pigs are going to massacre us in a minute.’
‘Did you expect anything else?’ grins the loader. ‘Were you one of those who thought the other side didn’t use bullets and gave in as soon as they saw a German steel-helmet?’
‘Your goddam cynicism gets on my nerves,’ says the gun commander in a shaking voice. ‘Aren’t you afraid of dying?’
‘Yes. It’s a sod dying only 150 miles from Moscow and victory.’
‘You believe, then, we’re going to win the war?’
‘What I believe? Winning’s saying a lot, but it won’t be pleasant for us if we do lose. Being a German won’t be good. What about sticking up our hands and waiting for the final victory in one of their prison camps?’
‘The Bolshies’d liquidate us,’ says Lenau darkly.
‘Balls, Ivan isn’t so bad at bottom. My father was a prisoner eight years in the last war, so I know all about that. He even became a Communist because of it.’
‘What’d Adolf’s boys have to say to that?’ asks Lenau interestedly.
‘They sent the old fellow to Fuhlsbüttel.5 He crossed the white line one day and SS-Oberscharführer Zach set his man-eating alsatian on him. I’ll get Zach for that some day!’
‘Ididn’t think alsatians ate people,’ inserts Lenau wonderingly.
‘Believe you me! You can train them to do anything. They were the only dogs we could teach to run with mines at the anti-tank school. We started with English dogs but they just sniffed at the mines and went home with their tails between their legs. They weren’t going for it. But our German police-dogs only needed a little speech about the Fatherland and the Führer, a couple of cracks across the neck and a kick in the arse and off they went with the mines. They’re the only dogs in the world you can teach to march. Have you ever seen how the dog companies train them? The first dog dashes forward and barks twice. This means: Centre here! All the other German dogs place themselves accordingly.’
The T-34 is now only a few yards from the road block. It stops for a second. Both machine-guns chatter and an infantry patrol is wiped out. Like a steel mountain the colossus rises above the anti-tank gun. Hot oil fumes beat down on the terrified gun crew. Steel and wood crackle under the broad tracks. Slowly the tank tilts forward but the tracks cannot get a proper purchase.
The gun commander throws a hand grenade but it does no damage. With a crash the T-34 tips forward and down. The PAK-gun is crushed to scrap. Water, blood, dirt and earth mixed to a gruel. The loader rolls away, the only survivor. Cold-bloodedly he ties three hand-grenades round a petrol bottle and runs after the T-34 which is engaged in the massacre of a machine-gun group. He slips and falls in blood and shredded flesh, comes to his feet wiping blood and slime from his face. He is alongside the monster. He has only one thought. To avenge the gun commander, his friend. The rest of the crew mean nothing to him. They are newcomers, arrived just before the attack on Russia. He grasps the tank’s infantry-grip but stumbles and is dragged alongside it. He rips out the arming string with his teeth, throws the bomb and drops flat. Rolls to cover, and watches from behind the wreck of something which was once a lorry.
There is a hollow explosion and two rollers fly through the air together with a piece of track.
The T-34 stops. The motor races but the monster only scuttles round on the same spot like an insect with its legs torn off.
The loader takes cover behind a corpse with his Mpi at the ready. The turret hatches are thrown open. Three leatherclad figures jump out and commence making repairs. Only the driver remains in the tank.
The loader opens fire. All three fall together. Only the commander is still alive when he reaches the tank.
Carefully he plants a foot between the Russian’s eyes. Blood and brains spurt out over the heavy army boot. This is what it was designed for. The tracks of the Prussian boot are lined with corpses and slaves! Long live the Kaiser! Sieg Heil! From behind the horizon rises the German sun! Look out, enemy! We’ll be back!
The loader withdraws a hand-grenade from his boot and unscrews the cap. With his eyes on the driver’s hatch he lights a cigarette he has found on a body. He has almost finished it before the hatch goes back and the driver appears to look for his comrades.
‘Dassvidánja tovaritsch,’6 the loader says with a grin and throws the grenade through the hatch.
‘Njet!’ cries the driver in terror before a column of fire throws him out of the hatch opening. The loader wanders dazedly towards the wood. He doesn’t even see the German P-IV, which crashes through the underbrush, until it is on top of him crushing him under its tracks. All that is left of him is a messy pool and a flattened steel-helmet.
‘Hurra!’ roar the grenadiers following in the wake of the tanks. According to regulations they are supposed to shout ‘Hurra’ when advancing. But they do it to keep up their courage as well. Now they die cheering. What they should be shouting is: ‘Hurra, we’re going to die! We’re going to die, hurra!’
Rank after rank falls to the Russian waist-high machine-gun fire. the forward positions are overrun; the fighting is merciless; with knives, bayonets and entrenching tools. He who stabs first lives longest.
The flame-thrower operators move forward to relieve them. Jets of flame hiss along the ground. The stink of burnt flesh nauseates us. A 20 mm gun barks angrily, spouting tracer at us. A Maxim hammers from the steps of a cellar.
Under cover of our two MGs the grenadiers storm the burning Party HQ. A group emerges from it with hands above their heads. We mow them down without mercy. We are no longer human beings but blood-crazed monsters who want to kill, kill, kill!
The tanks rumble through burning ruins crushing everything under their tracks. A company presses itself up against a wall. Both machine-guns stammer together.
‘Say your prayers, moujik!’ cheers Heide fanatically. ‘We’ve no room for you in the new age!’ He empties the whole belt into the company.
‘They’re our own men you’re flattening you slavering Nazi idiot!’ rates Porta. ‘Can’t you tell field-grey from khaki any more?’
‘Jesus!’ gasps Heide in a strangled voice.
‘Your Leader wouldn’t approve of your calling on a Jew for aid,’ smiles Porta sociably.
‘Jesus wasn’t a Jew,’ protests Heide. ‘Alfred Rosenberg spoke to us on that subject at the Nazi youth school. Jesus was a German. His family came from Bielefeld, the German Bethlehem.’
‘That’s a bloody new ‘un,’ shouts the Old Man from the turret doubling up with laughter.
‘Do you really believe that yourself, Heide?’
‘Of course,’ replies Heide with conviction. ‘If you read the Bible properly you’ll see how much it resembles “Mein Kampf”. Jesus was the first National Socialist but he didn’t clearly understand the Jewish peril threatening from Moscow.’
‘You’re nutty as a fuckin’ woodpecker!’ shouts Tiny bringing a water-bottle down on Heide’s head. ‘They shoulda ’ung you up on one side o’ Jesus the bleedin’ partisan, ’stead o’ the bleedin’ prophet Elias.’
Tiny’s always a bit uncertain on the story of the Bible but we know the man he means.
‘You’re insulting the Aryan race!’ screams Heide hysterically. A thunderous crash stops the conversation. The tank lifts from the road and almost topples. A feed-pipe has broken and petrol spurts all over the combat cabin.
‘Wrecked left track,’ reports Porta calmly. ‘Vehicle immovable!’ He stops his motor, drops the back of his seat and takes a long pull at the vodka bottle which hangs by the fire extinguisher. The Old Man opens the hatch cautiously. Alongside us two other P-IVs are on fire giving off billows of black nauseating smoke. The charred bodies of their crews are hanging out of the hatches. By the village well lie a group of dead grenadiers. They look as if they are sleeping. Just a little blood around the mouths of a couple of them. Killed by the blast bombs which have only recently been taken into use.
Porta takes another swig at the vodka bottle, scratches at his red mop of hair, and screws his cracked monocle into his eye.