by Sven Hassel
Missed, I think, and stiffen like a frightened animal at the mercy of a rattlesnake, but no explosion follows.
‘Dud,’ mumbles Porta, staring in fascination at the hole the shell has made in the snow. ‘Holy Agnes! A dud! Maybe the parson is right, and the German god is looking out for his own!’
‘Let’s get out of here,’ I say, and start crawling towards the tank, which has begun to speed up its motor.
‘Holy Mother of Kazan,’ shouts Porta, terrified, ‘we’ve bought it! Get down, she’s coming for us!’
The T-34 roars into top revs and seems almost to go into a crouch as if ready to spring. In its oil-reeking interior Leutnant Pospelow presses his forehead against the rubber cushioning of the observation window.
‘Turret, two o’clock,’ he orders.
Less than three hundred yards in front of the tank a small body of men close together show up against the snow.
Leutnant Pospelow smiles in satisfaction, and orders his four other tanks to swing into line to give them a broad field of fire. He does not remove his eye for a second from the observation glass. He is imbued with the hunting fever. This is a tankman’s dream. The targets are beautifully placed, as if for an execution, which in reality it is.
A 20 mm anti-tank gun barks angrily and sends its small, useless shells to splinter on the T-34’s skin. Machine-guns spit tracer.
The tank driver, Corporal Baritz, gives out a laugh.
‘Those dumb Germans think they can knock us out with MGs!’
‘Job tvojemadj,’16 laughs the front gunner. ‘We’ll blow them a pretty tune on our golden trumpet in a minute!’
‘Explosive, fragmentation,’ orders Leutnant Pospelow, coldly.
The shell clatters into the chamber, and the breach snaps closed.
The Leutnant’s hand hovers for a second over the red button as if in doubt, and then comes down on it. The gun roars, flame gouts from the muzzle. The T-34 curtsies. The hot casing rings on the steel floor of the turret. A second later the breach snaps to again and a new fragmentation shell is ready in the chamber.
Again and again the gun fires. The snow in front of the T-34 is blackened with soot. Three hundred yards away it is red with blood. It looks as if a madman had been throwing buckets of jam on it.
Millions of stars dance in front of Leutnant Pospelow’s eyes. He is struck violently on the chest. He slides half-way down into the turret.
The driver, Corporal Baritz, is thrown backwards with terrific force. The loader strikes his head on the turret machine-gun, and gets a deep slash in his forehead. The air is blown out of the forward gunner’s lungs, and he loses consciousness for a moment.
‘Bleedin’ lot o’ sods,’ rages Tiny, banging the snow with his fists. The mine he has thrown is not powerful enough to penetrate the T-34’s steel skin.
The Russian tank crew has been saved by a miracle from being burnt to a crisp.
‘Bysstryj, bysstryj,’17 roars Leutnant Pospelow to Corporal Baritz, who is fumbling with his instruments and pedals. His head, is still humming like a beehive. He can hardly understand how he can still manage to move and to think reasonably clearly.
The tank jumps forward, away from that suicidal German out there in the snow, who is probably already preparing to throw another mine. Unpredictable desperadoes like that are deadly dangerous to any tank. You either have to run them down or get away from them.
Leutnant Pospelow decides to run for it.
‘Karbid,’† he roars, furiously, kicking Corporal Baritz in the back.
With a sulphurous oath the corporal treads on his accelerator without knowing that he is moving directly towards the very thing he wants to get away from.
Porta and I lie in the snow with our bundles of grenades and wait for the right moment to attack the monster approaching us, with snow spurting out to both sides.
One of the turret hatches is thrown open and a leather-helmeted head appears.
‘Kill them, the cursed dogs,’ the Leutnant screams across the snowy wastes. It is the scream of a frightened man.
‘All right then, Ivan Stinkanovitsch,’ grins Porta, demoniacally, running in short bursts towards the T-34, which has stopped again to fire.
It is amazing how the Leutnant can miss seeing him.
The bundle of grenades flies up under the T-34’s turret. In one long jump Porta is behind a wall of snow, and pressing himself down into it to avoid the storm of steel parts the air is soon filled with.
Two other T-34s are working together. They herd the running soldiers into a group. When they are sure of their prey, they back a little then move forward side by side. Alongside the group they reverse their outer tracks so that the noses of their vehicles smash together in a rain of sparks, crushing the trapped men to a bloody porridge.
‘Let’s give up,’ says a Flak-Unteroffizier, with tears running down over the open frost-sores on his cheeks. ‘They’re butchering us!’
Porta stares at him for a moment, then laughs aloud.
‘Don’t forget there’s a war on, son, and both sides seem to be taking it seriously!’
‘Probably thinks we’re makin’ a film. Verdun’s silent, deserted ruins, or something,’ jeers Gregor, throwing an explosive charge like lightning up on to the rear hatch of a T-34 as it roars past. ‘Regards in hell!’ he screams as he dives for cover.
As if at the blow of a giant hammer the hatch-cover is blown in. Leutnant Pospelow screams like a woman, as he is pinned between the heavy cover and the sharp edge of the hatch. He screams for a long time as the red flames lick up around him.
The loader is thrown out of the other hatch opening, and rolls around screaming in a sea of flame which melts the snow around him. Slowly he crisps like bacon on a frying-pan, and turns to a glowing mummy.
‘Out!’ roars the tank driver, Corporal Baritz, tearing the hatch open. He is running as he hits the ground. A shower of machine-gun bullets sends him kicking.
The forward gunner is only half-way out of the hatch when the tank is thrown up into the air like a football. It goes end over end and lands with a ringing crash, before it is blown to pieces by a colossal explosion inside.
A little distance away another of them is going in circles. Faster and faster. Red flames and black oily smoke are pouring from the hatches. Only one of the crew manages to get out of the red-hot steel coffin. He runs over the snow like a living torch. His screams are terrible.
We can feel the heat right over where we are lying. The Legionnaire raises his Mpi and sends a long merciful burst at the burning Russian writhing desperately in the snow.
‘Padaerscha, padaerscha!’18 he roars, stretching his burning arms out towards us.
Several Mpis are turned on him. Shortly after, he collapses. The body melts down to a tiny crisp.
The commander is still trying to free himself from the turret of his T-34. He does not scream, nor plead, but is exerting himself to the utmost to get free of the burning steel box. His face is burnt black, crusted. Oddly his eyes still shine clearly. His lips are charred to cinders. His nose is a strange twisted lump of meat. His hair is burnt off in patches. His hands are the worst. Blackened knobs of flesh with which he is still trying desperately to force open the hinged hatch cover.
‘My God,’ I groan, and hide my face in my hands. The stench of burnt meat turns my stomach and I vomit on to the snow.
‘Cut it out,’ snarls Porta. ‘It was them or us! This is a big fight we’re in, and we’ve promised our big neighbour one on the schnozzle!’
‘It’s dreadful,’ I whisper.
‘It’s war,’ replies Porta, harshly. ‘I’m not that happy to have Ivan on my tail. Up with you! Get hold of a charge! The knockin’ off whistle hasn’t gone yet. There’s the last of those “Tea saloons” fellows comin’!’
An Mpi cracks from some stunted bushes. A burst falls around us.
Like lightning I sling a grenade into the bushes.
A tankman springs into the air, blood spouting i
n a thick jet from his mouth.
I sweep him with a burst from my Mpi.
With a long-drawn scream he collapses, rolling in the snow.
‘What a dope,’ says Porta, pityingly. ‘People are bloody stupid! Heroes to the end! Well, that’s one fool less in the world!’
A terrific blast throws us from our feet and sweeps us through the thick brush. We are forced down the narrow gorge and crash into the rocks at the bottom so hard that we are both unconscious for a moment.
Porta’s reindeer comes flying through the air with all four legs splayed out and strikes the yard-thick ice wall with a hollow thud.
My body feels as if every bone in it were broken. All around us is a sea of glowing metal parts, which shortly before had been a tank. Round about lie the tank crew frying like rissoles.
‘Fuckin’ “Tea saloons” ain’t much when you know what you’re at,’ boasts Tiny, forcing his way up out of the snow.
‘You ought to have your arse reamed out by a gorilla, you mad sod,’ rages Porta, passing his hands gingerly over his aching body. ‘You nearly killed the lot of us.’
‘Can’t make omelets without breakin’ eggs, can you?’ says Tiny, philosophically.
Slowly we fight our way onwards. A snow-storm is beginning to blow up.
The Oberst is almost done. He leans on Oberleutnant Wisling. Leutnant Schultz is almost finished too. He stumbles continuously and can only get up again with difficulty. Nobody helps him.
Tiny tries to whistle a Reeperbahn song, but fails. The Legionnaire raves of the Sahara and the hot sand. The Old Man rolls along in his own bow-legged style. He finds difficulty in keeping his silver-lidded pipe going. His hands are buried deeply in the pockets of his greatcoat. His Russian Mpi hangs at the ready on his chest.
‘Gawd’struth, I wish we was home again with them Finnish spuds and pork gravy,’ sighs Tiny, hungrily.
‘I hope we’re somewhere near Lange Lake when the herring-roe season is on,’ says Porta, smiling with frost-chapped lips.
The Legionnaire lifts his hands towards the heavens and says ‘Allah commend us!’ in Arabic.
It is beneath the dignity of a German to ill-treat defenceless prisoners. Cases of this nature should be reported immediately and guilty persons punished most severely.
Rudolf Hess, 10th April, 1934.
‘God bless you come Sunday,’ says Porta, treading on the commissionaire’s toe, as, together with Tiny, he swings in to Kempinski’s,19 where he intends to celebrate his birthday.
‘This is my sister,’ he tells the commissionaire, pointing to a well-developed lady in the middleweight class.
‘Then my brother’s been fuckin’ his sister,’ she screams delightedly across the overcrowded restaurant.
Tiny pushes himself up on to two bar-stools.
‘One for each cheek, cock,’ he says to the bartender and orders a double vodka and a bottle of red wine. He throws back his head and empties the glass with a loud, slobbering noise. ‘Another little taster, if you please,’ he grins, jovially.
This scene is repeated eight times. Then something happens which later nobody can explain. At any rate a lady in a long green gown suddenly finds herself with a full basket of fish on her head.
Tiny grabs a bowl of jam and throws it in the headwaiter’s face, who in return hits him over the head with a bottle of beer. Tiny revenges himself by sticking a fork in the headwaiter’s arm. The latter rushes, screaming like a madman, into the street, with the fork still sticking in his arm.
The middleweight lady reaches for a waiter’s masculine equipment and gets a good grip.
He gives a shrill scream, and brings both his knees up to around his throat.
Another waiter comes waltzing out of the kitchen with a large dish of Eisbein. The whole lot shoots up towards the ceiling and is distributed over the nearest tables, whilst the waiter does a nose-dive under another table.
A party in formal dress open their eyes widely and attempt desperately to get out of the way of Tiny, who is ploughing his way across the restaurant like a Stalin tank which has taken it into its head to win the war on its own.
He hears a thunderous bang and is certain he is about to die. But it is not so serious. He staggers to his feet, butts someone or other in the face and sways out to the kitchen where he finds Porta engaged in a furious argument with the cook. Together they reduce the kitchen to a heap of ruins.
When the riot squad arrives, they withdraw to ‘The Bent Dog’ on Gendarmenmarkt, where they hear that a battalion of English paratroops has landed at Kempinski’s.
8 Rata = Russian fighter-bomber, used for the first time in the Spanish civil war.
9 MG = Maschinengewehr = Machine-gun.
10Mpi (Maschinenpistole) = machine-pistol.
11 Slang for Knight’s Cross with Oak Leaves and Sword.
† It is war.
12 akja: Finnish reindeer sledge.
† politruk: political commissar.
‡ kz: concentration camp.
13 vojemkom: regimental commissar.
† PAK-gun (Panzerabwehrkanone): Anti-tank gun.
14 Beseff (Arabic): To be sure (quite certainly).
15 HJ (Hitler Jugend) = Hitler Youth.
16 Job tvojemadj (Russian) = Go home and fuck your mother.
17 Bysstryj (Russian) = faster.
† Karbid (Russian) = top-speed (tankman slang).
18 Padaersclae (Russian) = Help.
19 Kempinaki’s = an elegant Berlin restaurant.
COURT MARTIAL
Leutnant Schultz loses no time after we get back. Inside an hour he is reporting to the NSFO20. In every corner there is muttering against the malicious Nazi-Leutnant. A couple of Finnish Jägers suggest we kick his balls in and toss him over to the neighbours.
‘I’ll blow his candle out,’ threatens Porta, pulling his Nagan from its yellow holster.
‘You stay where you are,’ decides the Old Man, brusquely. ‘Let’s keep out of the officers’ private quarrels.’
‘It could’ve been one of us,’ protests Porta, tensely. ‘That Schultz is a real bastard.’
‘Maybe he is,’ says the Old Man, unsympathetically, ‘but it’s not one of us he’s informing on! If an officer needs to be revenged then let the other officers see to it themselves!’
‘Piss,’ Porta gives in, ‘but if that arsehole ever gets in front of my gun-muzzle, you’ll see a pair of balls wither away sharply!’
‘That’s murder,’ shouts Heide, indignantly.
‘No it bloody isn’t!’ answers Porta, furiously. ‘A bastard who runs off at the mouth don’t count!’
We discuss Leutnant Schultz for a long time. One thing is certain when the discussion in the Finnish Jägers sauna is over. Leutnant Schultz won’t need to worry about his old age.
Tiny has been filing away at three bullets while we’ve been talking. Dum-dum bullets make an enormous hole in a man.
The following day a Major from the Secret Security Police comes for Oberst Frick, and Oberleutnant Wisling is picked up in the middle of technical service.
They are put immediately into a JU-52 and flown to 6th Army at Munster to go in front of a court martial.
The final verdict is deferred until evidence can be taken from others belonging to the battle group. In the meantime the two arrestees are sent to the military prison Torgau where they are placed in the boot squad, together with countless others taken into custody. Prisoners who have been sentenced are given much harsher treatment.
Every man in the boot squad is issued each morning with ten pairs of new, iron-hard army boots of smelly yellow leather. The squad marches for one hour in each pair of boots. To attention and at the double. Round and round the great parade ground. When the hour is over a whistle shrills, and everyone changes like lightning to a new pair of boots. Then ‘Qui-ick march!’
This goes on without a break from 05.00 hrs to 21.00 hrs. Some faint. Feet swell up and become lumps of bleeding meat. Blisters burst
and new blisters form. No attention is paid to this. In Torgau pity is an unknown term. It is a military prison, notorious for its strictness, and the permanent staff are proud of their reputation.
‘March, march, you lazy men,’ roars the Feldwebel, standing on a box in the middle of the parade ground. ‘Do you call that parade marching? Get your legs up, you fucking bastards! Stretch those insteps! Hands level with the belt-buckle and down again smartly! Smartly, I said!’
A Major-General collapses. He is an elderly man who comes from a soft job in an outlying garrison.
Curses and oaths rain down on him but he stays down. It takes the fire-hose to get him on his legs again.
‘An hour’s extra marching for you,’ orders the Feldwebel, jovially. ‘It’ll be easier, soon as you get that lazy sweat out of you!’
And the Major-General continues making hard boots supple, so that the fighting-men in the trenches won’t have the trouble.
Every evening between 21.00 and 22.00 hrs each man in the squad hands ten pairs of softened-down boots into the Quartermaster’s Store and receives instead ten pairs of hard, stiff ones in replacement. These are to be marched supple by the following evening.
In front of Oberst Frick runs a Feldwebel with red shoulder straps, a political prisoner. Behind him is a Gefreiter with green shoulder straps, a criminal, and behind the Gefreiter an artilleryman with purple shoulder straps, a religious deviator. Then comes a Rittmeister with white shoulder straps, a defence saboteur. There are many in the squad with white shoulder straps. Only two have black shoulder straps. These are men who have insulted the Führer. They are certain to receive the death penalty. Both of them are from the Navy.
After six weeks on the boot squad, Oberst Frick is done for. His feet are in ribbons, swollen pieces of bleeding meat. In the prison infirmary they amputate two of his toes. Oberleutnant Wisling lies in the bed next to him with broken ribs and concussion. He fainted once too often on the boot squad. The GvD21 was in a bad mood. But the Torgau infirmary is not a place where prisoners are allowed to stay long.