by Sven Hassel
I kick the toes of my boots into the snow and obtain a foothold. I inch my way down. Several times the terrible Arctic storm comes close to blowing me over the edge and smashing me against the cliff face. For a moment I consider jettisoning the ammunition pouches, but I know what the others will do to me if I get down without them.
At last I reach the narrow bulge. Only a bit over 300 feet to the bottom. I crawl carefully across the snow. It is slippery as glass. With fear clutching at my throat I slide over the edge and lower myself slowly down. At least the sea is no longer directly below me. To my relief I feel hands clutch at my boots and guide me on to safe ground.
‘Well done,’ Heide praises me, giving me a playful punch in the stomach.
As if in a dream I see the rope disappear upwards.
Soon the next man is on his way down.
Porta and Tiny come last. They stand right out on the edge and play the fool, Porta throws out one hand.
‘After you, sir!’ he says to Tiny.
‘I’ll shoot those idiots,’ shouts the Old Man, exasperatedly.
They come down together, like a couple of Siamese twins, pushing off strongly against the cliff face. The rope shakes above them.
‘Bloody jumping-jacks,’ shouts the Old Man, fearfully. ‘You’ll break your necks!’
‘It is your duty to report them,’ says Heide, solemnly.
‘Shut your damn mouth,’ roars the Old Man furiously. ‘I’11 decide who’s to be reported or not reported. Just remember that, will you, once and for all?’
‘Got a pain somewhere?’ Porta asks the Old Man, when he gets down to him. ‘You told us to get a move on, and weren’t we down twice as fast as anybody else?’
‘I’ll get you two a court martial,’ shouts the Old Man, angrily. ‘This is the limit!’
‘Blimey, ’ow mad can you get?’ says Tiny, admiringly. ‘Watch out you don’t ’ave a stroke, now!’
‘I curse the day I ever took over No. 2 Section! You are the biggest shower of shits in the entire blasted German Army!’ the Old Man flares up at them.
‘If we were to leave you you’d die of grief,’ smiles Porta, flatteringly.
‘The whole damn world can get to hell far as I’m concerned and No. 2 Section with it! I wish the whole bloody business was all over and done with!’ rages the Old Man,
Gregor laughs.
Ja, wenn’s aus sein wird
mit Barras und mit Urlaubschein,
dann packen wir unsere Sachen ein
und fahren endlich heim,’68
he sings softly.
Just before we reach the strange-looking ravine a volley of rifle shots splits the icy air.
Unteroffizier Kehr spins round like a top, staggers forward a few steps, and falls to the snow. The bullet has hit him in the stomach. It feels as if a boxer has punched him in the solar plexus.
‘What bloody shit hit me?’ he asks. With blood dribbling from the corners of his mouth, he goes down like a dog-tired man. The new, powdery snow rises and falls back to cover him like a shroud. ‘Hell, the bloody Russians got me,’ he mumbles and looks in surprise at his hand which is filled with blood.
Two shots crash, and the snow spurts up in front of me. Frightened, I push myself down into the snow and send a burst of tracer at the ravine. Off to my left an automatic rifle barks noisily. Behind me, in a depression, Heide and Gregor wrestle with the mortar.
‘Give ’em a couple of backscratchers,’ shouts the Old Man, from over by a big snow drift. Eagerly, Gregor opens the box containing the queer, Japanese grenades, which we call backscratchers. They have a different kind of explosive charge, and are only issued to special service units. We are exhilarated at the thought of what will happen in the gulch when the backscratchers fall there.
‘Plop, plop,’ goes the mortar.
We follow the curved flight of the vaned bombs with our eyes.
‘Forward,’ orders the Old Man, giving the hand signal for one man to double forward at a time.
Machine-gun fire hammers viciously at us, throwing up lumps of ice.
‘Get opened out,’ shouts the Old Man, leading us on in a peculiar sideways run, peering continually behind him. ‘Open out,’ he repeats. ‘Why the hell can’t you open out? Get your arses into gear!’
‘Cool it, afterbirth!’ howls Porta, furiously:
Tiny goes down, throws away his Mpi, and tries to dig himself into the snow with hands and feet to escape from the tracer bullets which buzz around us like a swarm of wasps.
Porta stops at his side, and prods him with the butt of his weapon.
‘Come on, you big Hamburg shithouse! Think you can lie there sawing wood all day while we do all the work?’
‘I ain’t got piss in my nut like you lot,’ screams Tiny, hysterically, digging himself deeper into the snow. ‘’Im as kills people with a machine-shooter shall ’imself get a burst in the bonce, Lot’s wife says!’ He is getting his Bible stories mixed up, as usual.
Heide rushes up in a cloud of snow, and stops in amazement when he discovers Tiny down in the hole.
‘Now I’ve seen it all. Cowardice in the face of the enemy. Cost you your head!’
‘Creep back up into the German Nazi cunt you crawled out of,’ bawls Tiny, dangerously. He pulls out his P-38 and empties the whole magazine at Heide, who flies off in terror towards the Russians.
‘I ’ope they shoot your fascist balls off,’ snorts Tiny after him.
‘Who’s got a Kaspanos?’ shouts the Old Man, throwing himself under cover from the violent fire from the gulch.
‘I’ve got two,’ I answer, holding them up.
‘Off you go, then,’ the Old Man orders, brusquely. ‘Put ’em both under Ivan’s arse!’
‘Think I’m mad?’ I protest violently.
‘It’s an order,’ roars the Old Man, turning his Mpi on me. ‘Get moving, you cowardly shit!’
For a moment there is silence where we lie behind cover. They all look towards me. Then something happens up in front. The Russians are attacking. ‘Uhraeh, uhraeh,’ they shout harshly. They come at us at an amazing pace, half sliding, half running down the slope, their automatic weapons rattling incessantly.
‘Kaspanos,’ shouts the Old Man, crawling further behind cover.
I throw one of them over to him. It is one of the big five kilogram jobs that can tear a Stalin tank to pieces.
Tiny takes the Kaspanos from the Old Man, bites off the pin and slings it forward in a great arc. It explodes with a roar that sounds like the end of the world.
The leading enemy group is literally pulverised.
‘Plop, plop,’ sounds from behind us, as the mortars spit out their devilish bombs.
They explode in front of us, sending stones and snow into the air. There is a continual roaring and whistling to all sides of us. The sound of the explosions is accentuated enormously in the cold air.
‘Allah-el-Akbarr screams the Legionnaire, fanatically, and gets to his knees. His machine-pistol smashes out death into the deep snow, where the NKVD troops are advancing in a long line.
‘Forward,’ shouts the Old Man. ‘Let’s get that gate open!’
We excite ourselves to animal rage and follow the Old Man uncaringly into the rain of tracer coming at us.
Barcelona falls to his knees, and presses his fur gloves to his face. A stream of blood runs out from between his fingers.
‘Dig yourself in, we’ll pick you up later,’ shouts the Old Man, rushing on.
Barcelona rolls down into a hole and thinks of other head wounds he has seen. Usually they mean instant death, and he comforts himself with the thought that since he is still alive his wound cannot be so bad.
Heide and Gregor come lumbering through the snow with the mortar between them.
‘Watch out for the soap,’ shouts Porta, warningly, and points to the treacherous packets of TNT which lie, scattered, seemingly casually, in the snow. Tread on one of those small packets and you’ll end in the icy sea.
<
br /> Tiny picks one up and throws it at a giant Russian in a white bearskin coat. The Russian is torn in two and his head goes flying through the air like a football.
Gefreiter Linde, who is running a little in front of me, rises suddenly into the air as if he had been shot from a mortar, and there is a noise like the end of the world. Snow, and blocks of ice, rain down on us. Linde must have set off at least ten soap-tablets by treading on one.
Bullets whistle, ricochet and snarl. Somebody is shouting for help, and calling for stretcher bearers. Our stretcher bearers have been blocks of ice out on the tundra for a long time now.
The shelling and rifle-fire become even more violent. The Old Man is on the verge of desperation. He knows very well that the section has reached the point where it is no longer functioning. The next stage is mindless panic.
He waves the mortar forward, and a little later it begins to sound again.
In front of us the snow is burning, where the bombs have fallen.
Suddenly the Russians are moving, retreating back towards the gulley.
‘Plop, plop,’ the mortar bombs follow on their heels.
Heide is a genius with a mortar. But a new body of Russians comes rushing out of the ravine and before he has time to correct his sight they have reached cover behind the snow walls.
‘Help me with the SMG,’ shouts the Legionnaire, struggling with the carriage.
Gregor gets hold of the supporting tripod, but slips and bangs his face down hard on the machine-gun.
‘Lift your fuckin’ shit yourself,’ he rages, kicking out at the carriage.
‘Il est con, comme ma bite est mignonne,’69 roars the Legionnaire, throwing a piece of ice at him.
‘Keep that snow wall under fire,’ orders the Old Man. ‘Don’t let them come over it!’
All at once the snow is swarming with Russians.
The 42 spits tracer at the figures in snow-camouflage. I fire like a madman. The barrel steams and the hot cartridge cases hiss and splutter as they sink into the snow.
Porta comes running, and rolls into cover behind a projecting rock.
Behind me the SMG rattles and it almost seems as if the Russian attackers run unharmed straight through the concentration of fire.
I take careful aim at the leading soldier. He has a tall, grey fur cap on his head, with a large, red enamelled star. His head seems to be balanced on the edge of the sight as I fire. Next moment he is gone. The Mpi flies in a great arc from his hand, and seems for a second or two to be suspended in the air.
An explosive bullet sends a rain of stone and ice splinters into my face. Blood runs from hundreds of tiny wounds. Luckily my eyes have not been hit.
I get to one knee and throw the Kaspanos in amongst them. Joyfully, I watch them go up into the air and smash to the ground again.
Automatic weapons rattle. A tapestry of tracer tracks canopies the terrain.
‘Uncle Ivan’s out to get us, can tell you,’ shouts Porta with a broad grin, jumping over the snow barrier with a bundle of grenades in his hand.
Oberschfitze Krohn rises part way up. A thick jet of blood spouts from his throat.
Gefreiter Batik comes to his aid but is also hit, and falls, screaming, alongside him.
‘The whole world’s goin’ for a shit,’ shouts the Westphalian.
‘Let’s beat it, before we end up in the garbage can!’
‘Shut up and go forward!’ shouts the Old Man, from his hole.
‘No, we stay here,’ shouts Gregor. ‘We’re throwing our lives away for no reason. Let ’em get inside a hundred yards, then we’ll take ’em!’
A heavy Maxim MG is placed just in front of us. They’ve placed it well, and can fire on us with hardly any risk to themselves.
Heide tries to put it out of action with the mortar, but his bombs fall all round the MG-nest without doing it any noticeable damage:
I crawl forward and try to throw grenades into it, but the distance is too great. That damnable. SMG has already wounded four of us badly.
Tiny gets up, with a bundle of grenades in his hand.
‘Shoot like ’ell,’ he shouts, spitting on the snow. ‘I’ll knock those bleeders’ bollocks up for ’em!’ He starts off with long strides.
‘Mad as a hatter,’ says Gregor. ‘They’ll knock him over before he’s got half-way!’
It is a riddle to us how such a huge man can move with such unbelievable speed.
With a long jump he is down behind a fallen Russian. He swings back his arm and throws the grenades.
A fur-clad form appears on the rim of the snow wall, and a hand-grenade whirls through the air towards Tiny. He rolls to one side with the agility of an acrobat. The grenade explodes with a loud crack in front of the body and shatters it.
With a terrific roar Tiny’s string of grenades explodes inside the SMG-nest.
‘Viva la mart,’ howls the Legionnaire, jumping up with the Mpi cradled in his arms.
Shouting and screaming, the rest of the section follows him
The Russians stream in disorder, back towards the gulley.
‘Kill ’em,’ howls Gregor, murderously. His Mpi chatters.
Suddenly it is all over. We sit down in the snow and try to catch our breath. Porta rolls a cigarette from a bag of machorka he has discovered in a dead Russian’s pocket.
The Legionnaire bandages Barcelona, who has received a long, deep slash in the face.
The Old Man fills his silver-lidded pipe, and leans against a powder-blackened snow drift.
‘Jeepers in ’ell,’ Tiny breaks out. ‘We give the neighbours what they asked for there, all right!’
Silently we walk round, examining the bodies. We help ourselves to whatever we have a use for. Some of them are not yet dead. We take their weapons and leave them where they are lying. The cold will soon finish them off. We cannot help them. We cannot even do anything for our own wounded. Curses follow us, but we do not even try to answer back.
The Old Man presses his lips together, and looks uneasily at the flickering Northern Lights.
‘Pick up your weapons! Single file! Follow me!’ he orders, briefly.
Early in the morning, two weeks later, we are looking for a quiet spot through which we can get back to our own lines.
The Old Man thinks we are on the northern end of the Sala front.
A Russian supplies soldier runs straight into our arms. It was, of course, Porta, who noticed the smell of coffee, long before we heard the supplies soldier. He comes, singing softly, over the hill, with a container of coffee on his back. When he sees us he is quite paralysed with fear, and we shake him violently to get some life back into him
He begins to weep, and says this war is the wickedest thing he has ever run into.
‘Stop your crying, now, you little misery,’ Porta comforts the unhappy Russian. ‘If the coffee’s good we won’t hurt you!’
Later he tells us he is from Tiflis, where everybody is in favour of the Germans, and confides to us that he, himself, has always been really fond of Germans.
We go under cover in amongst the fir trees and enjoy his good coffee.
‘Think now! The neighbours drink coffee,’ says Porta, letting off a thunderous fart. ‘I always thought they only slobbered tea with jam in it!’
‘Yes, you do learn a lot in these World Wars,’ says Tiny, wonderingly, blowing into his mug.
‘Keep quiet,’ hisses the Old Man. ‘You chatter loud enough to wake the Seven Sleepers!’
There is a muffled thump from the far side of the trees.
‘Cripes,’ shouts Tiny, throwing himself flat.
The next minute there is a roaring and creaking in the forest and several trees come sailing through the air like giant javelins.
We change in a moment. Our easy-going attitude has gone. Our faces are tense.
They emerge from the trees, over the rolling hills, moving along at ease, quite sure nothing bad can happen to them here.
The Russian artillery roars agai
n, and we hear the long drawn out rushing sound of the shells on their way to the Finnish positions.
‘Ready,’ whispers the Old Man, excitedly. ‘We’ve got to mow ’em down in one long swing!’
I aim the LMG into the thick of them.
The Old Man lets his arm fall in the signal to open fire. All the automatic weapons roar in one single long salvo, which echoes back from far off amongst the trees.
Some of them manage to reach the long snow ditch, but by far the majority remain lying still on the path.
‘The galley,’ shouts Gregor, furiously. ‘Shoot the bottom out of it! Those devils are lying there just waiting to get shot!’
The SMG roars, ripping along the whole length of the ditch. We throw hand-grenades into it. There is utter stillness.
During the firing the supplies soldier has disappeared.
‘Dammit!’ the Old Man swears. ‘If he gets back and gives the alarm, we’ll have the whole of 238 Infantry Division on our backs.
‘We’ll knock them off too, then,’ boasts Tiny, loudly.
‘Dope,’ snarls the Old Man.
A salvo of shells falls on our side of the front-line. Trees fly towards the skies like giant arrows shot from a bow. Here and there the woods begin to burn.
‘Let’s get out of here,’ says Heide, uneasily, looking nervously about him. When that fucking supplies soldier gives the alarm all hell’ll break loose! Let’s go for a break-through! It’s our only chance!’
‘You break through on your own, then, you fucked up German monkey, you,’ shouts Porta, viciously. ‘You’re so fuckin’ stupid you’ve not even found out yet there’s trip wires an’ wolf-traps everywhere!’
‘Wolf-traps?’ mumbles Heide, scared, lifting his feet gingerly, as if he were already standing on top of one of those devilish inventions.
‘Yes, wolf-traps,’ Porta laughs, sarcastically, ‘and if they catch us they’ll push us into one of ’em, so they can enjoy the elevating sight of us wriggling ourselves to death on the points of the stakes!’
‘An’ a puffed-up Nazi Unteroffizier like you,’ says Tiny with a sneering grin, ’they’ll first cut the prick off of, and send it to the Zoological Museum in Moscow, so everybody can ’ave a good laugh at the Nazi’s mini-pricks!’