Heroes Without Honour

by Alan David

  ‘Feeling good this morning, Sergeant?’ Schultze demanded.

  Kurt nodded, looking around into the greyness of predawn. He glanced at his watch and swallowed the coffee quickly, aware that he had to get to Leutnant Reinhalt’s tank for the day’s briefing. The guns were still bellowing in the background, and Warsaw lay before them, waiting to be taken.

  He felt in a strange mood as he crossed to the command tank, and all through the briefing he tried to push the incident of the night before out of his mind. But it was impossible to eradicate, and he knew life could never be the same again. A heat came to him as he walked back to his own tank, and if there had been time and the opportunity he would have returned to the farm to look for the women. There was a frown on his face as he called the crew together, for he wondered what other changes would come to him before this war was over.

  ‘What’s the word for today, Sergeant?’ Schultze demanded in cheerful tones.

  ‘We’ve got to support the infantry. We’re going into the built-up area but we’ve got to be careful. No narrow streets for us.’

  ‘What’s the general news?’ Weilen demanded. ‘Are we still winning?’

  ‘Warsaw is the only major city still in Polish hands, and we are going to take that within the next few days,’ Kurt retorted firmly.

  He saw the others glancing speculatively at him, as if they noticed something different in his manner, and he glanced at Schultze to see the driver grinning. He wondered if the man had told the others what had happened the previous evening, and clenched his teeth as he guessed what might be passing through their minds.

  They ate, and in no time at all were inside the tank and moving forward. A stick of mortar bombs plastered their formation and shrapnel screeched against the turrets. Kurt ducked, but kept watching his front. Machine-guns were firing from several points ahead, and he saw German troops crouching in cover, waving them on. They needed all the support they could get and were relieved to see the steel monsters. But Kurt was not happy with the situation as they began to enter the suburbs. He hoped Warsaw would fall quickly. The Poles were finished, and everyone knew it except the enemy.

  The battle raged ceaselessly, and there was little the Panzers could do except support the infantry. There was no room for tanks in street fighting, although they were called upon to demolish strong points. But it was suicidal to approach buildings which had not been cleared, and they were all aware of the fact.

  But in support they were invincible. A shot from their 75mm could take out the front of a house and bring down the roof. Machine-gun posts sited to cover the streets were prone to high-explosive shells, and as the infantry cleared the houses and streets the tanks moved on like prehistoric monsters, their gun barrels like snouts as they swung and centred upon their targets.

  The noise was overwhelming, and the heat inside the tank, coupled with the fumes of gunsmoke and petrol, made the Panzers a hellish world in which to fight. Once, Schultze mounted a pavement and crashed against a wall, bringing it down, leaving a Polish machine-gun crew and their weapon without cover. The tank behind them opened up with machine-gun fire, wiping out the crew, and Schultze was grinning as he sent the big steel vehicle across to the other side of the street.

  When they reached a main thoroughfare they made better time, the tanks pushing ahead of the troops, firing their guns at all opposition, destroying houses and wiping out nests of resistance. Then they had to pull back to refuel and rearm, and paused to put the tank into full fighting trim. They were all blackened and dirty, hungry and thirsty, and the whole of Warsaw lay before them, each house a strong point to be assailed, each street a well-organised unit of defence that had to be crushed, and Kurt realised that taking the city would be a tougher job than had been anticipated.

  With the ammunition lockers fully loaded with fresh shells they went forward again, and Kurt’s tank was in the lead when the wide street they were following opened up into a square. There was a church to the left, with a tall spire which leaned drunkenly.

  ‘Halt!’ Kurt called sharply, and Schultze brought the tank to a stop with only a part of the turret exposed to the square.

  ‘What’s the trouble?’ Leutnant Reinhalt demanded over the wireless.

  ‘There’s a square in front of me. It’s very wide. I think we might find some anti-tank guns there. It’s a good place for an ambush.’

  ‘Show yourself and draw their fire,’ came the steady reply. ‘We are approaching. We will be ready to take over if you are hit.’

  Kurt swallowed the lump which suddenly rose in his throat. This was it, he thought remotely. All along he had sensed that they were going to get it. Now the war was nearly over and they were pushing him out into the open to draw fire. He held his breath until he could feel his lungs palpitating, then heaved a long sigh.

  ‘Advance,’ he ordered, aware that any anti-tank gun would have had time to sight upon their gun barrel and be ready for them while they would probably have to traverse through three hundred degrees before they could fire.

  But at that moment a tank burst into the square from a side street, and Kurt’s attention was drawn to it. He saw the black cross on the turret and noted that it was a Mark III. Almost immediately an anti-tank gun fired, and the Mark III erupted into a blazing inferno. Kurt froze in his position as they lumbered forward, the turret already traversing, their gun swinging to cover the point from which the shell had been fired. He dragged his attention from the stricken tank, although out of the corner of one eye, he saw figures baling out of the stricken vehicle. But he stopped the tank with only half its length exposed, enough for the turret and gun to operate, and his voice was thick with emotion as he gave the order to fire. The machine-guns were chattering, for there were men running out of the nearest building. One paused and threw something at them, a grenade, Kurt thought, but it fell short of the tank and burst into flames, giving off greasy black smoke.

  The 75mm blasted at the anti-tank gun, which was across the square at about two o’clock. Hohner jerked open the breech, the empty casing crashed into the well of the tank, and Hohner reloaded again, closing the breech within a few seconds. The gun fired and part of a house across the square disintegrated, falling upon the anti-tank gun. Their machine-guns kept firing, the rapid sounds grating upon the nerves, and smoke drifted.

  Kurt peered around swiftly, looking for more trouble, and ordered Schultze to keep well away from the houses. He spotted a group of the enemy running from one house to another and ordered high-explosive to be fired. The group of moving men vanished in a cloud of smoke and flying debris. Machine-guns returned fire from other points, and Kurt could hear the bullets slamming against the steel hull. Their gun barrel swung steadily, firing rapidly, and before the other tanks of the troop arrived most of the defensive positions were knocked out of action by Kurt’s tank.

  Kurt sweated freely. His tanksuit was moist and sticky, and he wondered if he had wet himself during his moment of extreme fear. He was breathing heavily, feeling nauseous from the fumes rising up around him from the interior of the tank, and his hands shook as he lifted his field glasses to check their surroundings. The other tanks of the troop pulled into the square, firing rapidly, and they became masters of the area. German infantry appeared at the double, entering the houses and clearing them, and the advance went on, slowly but surely.

  Kurt discovered later, as they pulled back to refuel, that another change had overcome him. His extreme fear upon entering the square earlier seemed to have pushed his mind beyond its normal limits. Ever since the war had started he’d felt a cold knot of fear twisting and squeezing in the pit of his stomach. But now it was no longer there, as if someone had administered a local anaesthetic. His dread was gone completely. He was still afraid. That sensation would never leave him, but he felt as if he had stepped outside of himself and was watching everything from a spot about two feet behind his own left shoulder. He had become detached from reality.

  A kind of fatalism seemed to have
settled upon him, for he knew that when his time came he would be killed, no matter how much he worried and sweated about it. But he might last longer if he could remain calm and cool and do all the right things at the right time. It had to be wrong to try and calculate the odds against them every time they went forward. But there were only days left for this war to run its course. Polish resistance was beginning to deteriorate. Then it would all be over and probably they would be able to go home.

  He thought of the farm as they prepared to go back into action, wondering if he would ever see it again, and smiled wryly as he checked his equipment. Smoke and dust were rising up above the city, but still the fighting went on. How much longer could the Poles hold out?

  The days slipped by, one seemingly like another, but men died each day on either side, their useless bodies littering the streets or lying crushed in ruins that had been brought down in the greatest artillery and aerial bombardments of the war. There was no haste on the German side for they were masters of the situation, and the only concern felt by Kurt and his comrades was directed towards the waiting Russians, who had occupied eastern Poland. German and Russian forces were already confronting each other with loaded guns in their hands, and the uncertainty of that situation seemed worse than the actual fighting in Warsaw.

  But on 27 September Warsaw capitulated. Officers of the Polish and German armies met in a bus on the outskirts of the capital and arranged terms of surrender. The fighting ceased and an uneasy silence settled upon the battered city.

  Kurt was jubilant as he sat on the back of his tank and forgot his fears. The war was over! The remnants of the Polish garrison were going to march out of the city in three days, disarmed and dejected, and the Germans would move in to occupy their barracks. In one month Poland had been overrun and defeated, and now the rest of the world could make what they liked of the incident. The Allies were inactive, and there was nothing they could do to help Poland. The threatened counter-offensive in the west by the French had not materialised.

  The battle-weary German troops remained on guard but rested, and Kurt began to look forward to the orders which would take his regiment back to Germany. Then he would get leave. He would see the farm again, Aunt Gretel and Anna, and there would be many changes. But, most of all, he had changed. It was incredible but true.

  Chapter Eleven

  Max Eckhardt was apprehensive after the capitulation of Warsaw for he was concerned about what the Russians might do and worried over the French in the west. But he was not given time to brood over his thoughts. His wish was that the division would be transferred to the western front so that he could fight the French, although the radio announced that the Führer had addressed the Reichstag on the European situation and made suggestions for the cessation of hostilities and for settling problems resulting from the war. But the Allies rejected his overtures and refused to enter into negotiations.

  On 5 October the Führer flew into Warsaw to take the salute at the march-past of his victorious troops. The route was carefully chosen to avoid those parts of the city which had been devastated by the bombardment and the streets were lined with German troops to keep the crowds in check. But Warsaw’s population stayed at home and the procession made its way through almost deserted streets.

  Captain Dantine called an officers’ briefing and they all gathered in the Company Office, smartly dressed in clean uniforms. Dantine’s dark eyes glowed as he leaned back in his seat, immaculate as a tailor’s dummy, and gave them permission to sit down and relax.

  ‘Gentlemen, I have just come from the Colonel. We company commanders have been briefed, and I can tell you now about the duties we are to take up as from this moment. You have already learned that we will on principle have pity on the German people only and nobody else in the whole world. We have shed some of our best blood in conquering Poland. I don’t have to explain to you the first principle of German expansion. It was clearly outlined in Mein Kampf for you and the whole world to read. The east is here for the use of every pure-blooded German as living space. We have gained our lebensraum and now we have to prepare it. All unwanted, non-German people must be cleared out and true-German families will be brought in to restock it.

  ‘Our immediate objective is to arrest all Poles who are capable of organising resistance against us. That is our primary task. We are taking on the role of police, and sections will be accompanied by Polish police and given addresses of those undesirables who must be apprehended immediately. Lists of undesirables have already been compiled, and we start now with the arrests.’

  Eckhardt frowned as he listened, and wondered how successful an application for a transfer would be. But when he looked into Captain Dantine’s harsh eyes, which were resting on him as if trying to read his thoughts, he reconsidered his intention.

  ‘The Führer has said that the Poles are fit only for slavery, and we must remove all those who could incite the Polish workers to resist us. The kind of people you will be arresting come from the higher walks of life — teachers, lawyers, doctors; the intelligentsia.’ Dantine spoke quietly, yet his words had a riveting effect upon the platoon officers.

  Eckhardt shifted his feet uneasily. He, like most of the officers, had spent some time training in one of the several concentration camps which had been opened for enemies of the State. He had seen the human vermin imprisoned, and learned to detest them for what they were. He could remember quite vividly some of his earliest impressions. But he had been hardened by the training. He had witnessed the hostility of those prisoners, and been accustomed to demonstrate his feelings for the sub-human element that had to be eradicated from Germany before the Führer could lead the whole country into its idyllic state.

  It had been a deliberate policy of the SS leaders to keep prisoners in a state of unhygienic degradation for it served not only to humiliate and subdue them but also made them appear loathsome in the sight of the guards. Eckhardt could remember keenly his revulsion of the shaven-headed men in their striped prison clothes with numbers sewn on them. Enemies of the State! That knowledge in itself was sufficient to make the guards hate the prisoners and beat them into subjection, or shoot them at the slightest provocation. It had also instilled in all true Germans the fact that sub-humans were a poison which had to be ruthlessly stamped out. Healthy Aryans had to he protected from impure races. Those enemies of the State were a blot upon the honour of the country, and their smear would remain while any continued to exist.

  ‘What are we to do with these prisoners, sir?’ demanded one of the platoon officers, interrupting Eckhardt’s thoughts.

  ‘They will be brought back here to the barracks where they will be interrogated and tried by special military courts. If they are found guilty of crimes against the State then they will be executed. Special Action Groups are being recruited from other arms of the SS to deal with the guilty. We had agents in Poland long before the war started, and they compiled the lists which you will be given. But make no mistake about these people you will be dealing with. They will protest their innocence, and their very appearance may give you cause to think a mistake has been made. But you all know where your duty lies, and if any of these wanted people escape there will be trouble for you. Do I make myself clear?’

  He paused and glanced around, but there was no comment from the officers. Dantine nodded, his gimlet eyes boring into each of them.

  ‘Each section will travel in a truck, and whole areas will be sealed off at a time. The Wehrmacht is co-operating with us insofar as they will supply troops to cordon off areas, but that is the extent of their involvement. We do not take orders from the Wehrmacht. They are to remain in the background and will not interfere with our duties. Now I will assign you to your areas, and you will each have a street map in order to check that your Polish police guide is being loyal. I want this whole operation to go smoothly, and any problems must be dealt with promptly.’

  ‘And if any of these wanted people try to resist, sir?’ Eckhardt demanded.

 
‘You will use whatever force is necessary to make an arrest. Naturally we do not want scenes on the streets, but no one must be permitted to escape. Shoot to kill if there is no alternative. Just remember that the penalties for failing to comply with these orders are severe.’

  Eckhardt nodded, and they arose to gather at Dantine’s back to look at the large-scale map that was spread out on the desk. They were assigned Platoon areas, and saw how the whole city was divided into sectors so that it could be completely covered.

  ‘I think you know now what has to be done,’ Dantine said finally. ‘We will leave the barracks at three this afternoon. Brief your platoon sergeants and section commanders.’

  They were dismissed, and Eckhardt went across to his platoon quarters. Sergeant Meyer was lecturing the assembled platoon on the way they were to behave when off duty, and he called the men to attention and saluted before reporting.

  Eckhardt issued his orders, and saw some of the men exchanging glances. He sensed the atmosphere which filtered into the room and asked for questions.

  ‘We thought we’d be sent to Germany, sir, to prepare to fight the French,’ Meyer said in obvious disappointment. ‘That’s the most popular rumour going around the barracks at this time. We know we did well in the fighting here. But the Wehrmacht aren’t happy with us.’

  ‘I am disappointed also,’ Eckhardt said. ‘I was looking forward to fighting the French. But the trouble here in Poland is not over yet. I suggest that we handle this assignment as efficiently as possible and then perhaps we’ll get our wish granted.’

  The men nodded in approval, and Eckhardt went over the orders with the section commanders and Sergeant Meyer. They studied the maps which had been issued, and Eckhardt satisfied himself that each man knew what to do. When he glanced at the hard, eager faces he felt a tingle of pride. These were the finest men in the armed forces and duty was their god. Honour meant loyalty, and loyalty shone from their eyes. He noted the new faces amongst the familiar ones, and missed some that had been present only one month before but had paid the price for gaining the Führer’s lebensraum. Their blood was sacred, and their sacrifice could not be permitted to have been in vain.