by Sven Hassel
A shell explodes a few yards from him, and showers him with snow. He is thrown backwards. Loses his steel helmet. He rises, with difficulty, and staggers on through the deep snow, taking no notice of the screams, the crashing of trees and the deafening explosions around him.
‘Forward, No. 2!’ orders the Old Man. ‘Look after that old shit,’ he turns and says to Tiny.
‘Pleasure,’ grins Tiny, satisfiedly. ‘Like a bleedin’ mother! But all mothers ain’t good mothers!’
‘God help you, if you turn him off!’ warns the Old Man, with a hard look in his eyes.
‘’Ow could you ever believe me capable of a thing like that?’ asks Tiny, with a sly look on his powder-blackened face. ‘Stick to Jesus’s Third Commandment i do: Thou shalt not knock thy neighbour off! Nor I don’t forget what Moses said neither: ’Im as ’its ’is mate on the bonce with a blackjack, gets ’is own brains bashed in likewise!’
‘Mad sod!’ snarls the Old Man, irritably, and runs down the slope together with the Legionnaire.
The ex-Oberst comes panting back, and throws the flamethrower tank down furiously at Tiny’s feet.
‘Are you out of your mind, man?’ cries Tiny, reproachfully. ‘You’ll make a dent in Adolf’s tank, you will! They’ll knock it off your pay, they will! And don’t forget you’re drawin’ coolie’s pay and not officer’s pay! Take you a year to pay it off. Up on your back with it, now, an’ ’ang on to my arse! We’re goin’ out an’ toast the neighbours! Where’s that bleedin’ schoolteacher sod got to? If ’e’s run away I’ll catch ’im an’ stick ’is blackboard pointer straight up through ’is arse’ole!’
‘Here,’ pipes the schoolteacher, putting a frightened face up over the edge of a hole in the snow.
‘Well that’s all right, then,’ growls Tiny, in satisfaction. ‘Be worst for you two, if you get me feelin’ un’appy! Grab the bleedin’ ammo’n follow your cocks! The worst as can ’appen to you lot is for you to get your arses shot off so’s you can’t go for a shit on the pot no more!’
‘Double up, double up, you shower o’ lame heroes, you!’ The Old Man chases them impatiently. ‘Get on! Close up, you sods! Follow the tanks!’
‘You must’ve been eating shit, and it’s gone to your head,’ rages Porta. ‘Close up yourself, if you’re tired of life! I’m not leaving this man’s army on the end of a bullet! I didn’t volunteer to get myself killed!’
‘Rush, rush, rush! All bleedin’ rush,’ curses Tiny, savagely, and grabs onto a P-4’s tow-hook. ‘I’ll soon be walkin’ on me balls! Me legs are worn down nearly to me ’ips!’
The horizon flames. Rockets whine across the sky from our batteries, and heavy Stalin organs answer them fiercely.
Russian Maxim guns chatter heavily, in front of and at an angle to us. We go at them with hand-grenades and S-mines, and clean up the survivors hand-to-hand. It all goes so quickly we hardly realise what is happening ourselves.
‘En avant, marche! Vive la mort!’ screams the Legionnaire, fanatically, shoving his long Moorish knife into a Russian lieutenant. He stumbles across a corpse, the Kalashnikov flying from his hand.
Again and again the Legionnaire’s Moorish battle-cry sounds through the curtain of snow.
‘The sand in that war-nutty desert prick’s boiling up again,’ jeers Porta, spitting contemptuously into the snow.
‘Mad as a hatter,’ considers Gregor. ‘Why the devil’s he fight like that? He don’t like neither Adolf nor Old Germany neither!’
‘A camel probably bit him in the buttocks, when he was running round the Sahara with the rest of the Froggies’n cutting the balls of the poor Arabs,’ laughs Porta.
The feared Russian field guns start up. Shells explode round about us, throwing snow, earth and frozen corpses into the air.
Cursing and swearing we struggle through the mountains of snow, often sinking down in it up to our armpits and only with difficulty being able to free ourselves from it.
We get out on the road again and literally turn cartwheels as we slip on the icy surface. Our studded boots cannot get a grip on it.
Russian machine pistols sweep the roads in long, deadly bursts. Hand-grenades explode around us in an inferno of spitting fire. We go forward in long bounds, jumping over a party of infantrymen, who press themselves into the snow fearfully and raise their hands in the belief that we are Russians.
‘The Führer’s ’eroes feelin’ tired?’ grins Tiny, sending a burst round the feet of an Unterfeldwebel.
‘Forward comrades. The quickest way home’s via Moscow,’ shouts Porta, jeeringly.
With sharp-edged spades and bayonets the squad goes at the Russian positions. Tiny sends a long, rattling burst through the observation slit of a defence post. The havoc is terrible as bullets ricochet around inside the concrete shell. Few live through it. They are literally sawn to pieces in an undirected crossfire of misshapen projectiles.
I throw a hand-grenade towards the pill-box farthest back in the position. I throw so hard my arm almost goes out of joint. The explosion which follows throws me back with enormous force, and all the air is forced out of my lungs.
The entire post is thrown into the air in one piece, and comes down upside down. My grenade must have set off their reserve ammunition depot.
The blast wave throws Tiny and the schoolteacher into the air and drops them heavily back into the snow.
‘You mad or somethin’?’ screams Tiny, white with rage, clawing his way from a heap of snow. ‘You don’t ’andle explosives like that, you twit, you! Nearly got blown out o’ me boots, I did!’
Two self-propelled guns come rattling past. The leading SP stops on top of a pill-box and twists on its tracks like a man extinguishing a cigarette with the sole of his boot. Wood crackles. Concrete is crushed. Men scream chokingly. The SP continues to twist and rock until the voices are silenced.
I throw a grenade towards an MG nest. Pieces of timber fly into the air. A Maxim topples, its muzzle pointing towards the earth. Over its cooling jacket hang the remains of a Russian soldier, his face a bloody unrecognisable mass.
All around us we hear the characteristic crack of tank guns.
A tall, thin Rittmeister with an officer’s dress cap tilted arrogantly over one eye chases us on.
‘Come on now, come on. Keep the damned pot boiling! Show you’re the Führer’s soldiers, lads!’
‘An’ you’re a pile o’ bleedin’ chicken-shit, you are!’ growls Tiny, ragingly, but not loud enough to reach the Rittmeister’s ears.
‘What a lot of shits there are running around in this man’s war with verbal diarrhoea,’ grumbles Porta, spitting contemptuously after the lanky Rittmeister. Suddenly the officer is hit. Blood spouts from his face, and he goes down with a shrill scream. His elegant cap rolls across the snow and catches on a bush.
Gregor takes the officer’s weapon, one of the coveted Kalashnikovs. Barcelona breaks off half of his identification disk and puts it in his pocket.
‘More dung for the military muck-heap. Come death, come . . . .!’ hums the Legionnaire.
Suddenly Leutnant Braun throws down his Mpi and slumps onto some empty ammunition boxes. We stop and look at him. His eyes stare glassily at us.
‘He’ll soon be on his way towards the setting sun,’ grins Heide, jeeringly.
‘What’s going on here?’ asks Oberleutnant Löwe. He has come slipping and sliding down a height at the head of the Command Group.
Heide points at Leutnant Braun, laughing. ‘Cowardice in the face of the enemy,’ he breathes, with a cruel expression on his face.
‘There ’e goes again, the bloodthirsty bastard,’ shouts Tiny. ‘Why can’t you just put your bleedin’ ’ead up long enough for Ivan to shoot it off?’
‘Shut up!’ snarls Löwe. ‘I’ll take care of this! Up on your feet, Braun! Come on. Up with you, man!’
Leutnant Braun stares emptily at nothing. He seems to be in another world.
‘All the stuffin’s gone out of ’im,’ exclaims Tiny in amazemen
t. ‘Not a bleedin’ bit left, there ain’t!’
Löwe shakes the petrified officer, without result.
‘Took the short cut to Valhalla, he has,’ says Gregor, shrugging his shoulders indifferently.
‘Forward, men!’ orders Löwe, brusquely. ‘Leave him to the medics.’
The ground slopes upwards. The strain of climbing is in human.
Tiny catches me by the shoulder as I slip and go sliding backwards towards a steep drop. My head reels, as I look downwards into nothingness.
Raging and swearing we struggle on and up, cursing the Army and all its ways, Germany, and the parents whose fault it was we were born at all. Many give up, and stretch out in the snow, but section and platoon leaders get them on their feet again and moving forward. Heide is extremely zealous. His piercing, icy voice can be heard far and wide.
‘Just think! I volunteered for this! groans Albert, flat on his race in the snow and hanging onto a bush to keep himself from sliding back down the icy slope. ‘It’s a punishment from God. I shouldn’t never’ve pissed in that Bishop’s wine-butt in Munich, and given him jaundice, I shouldn’t. The fat pig!’
The Legionnaire’s climbing irons slip, and his Mpi goes sliding down the incline. He watches it unhappily, as it goes sliding and cartwheeling away with a tail of powdery snow behind it.
We all of us know that it is statistically impossible for active front-line soldiers like us to live through this war. But we still hope, and are happy to greet each new day and still be alive.
This attack, which is carried out with a foolhardy bravery beyond anything which could be called reasonable, has nothing at all to do with heroism. It is simply a desperate fight.
Army Corps HQ has been ordered to take the heights, and our regiment has been given the job of ejecting the Russians from the OGPU prison, and holding it come what may. Whoever holds the prison on the hill dominates that whole section of the front. We’ve been fighting over it now for almost four weeks. Several battalions have been lost on both sides, but no German soldier has yet set foot inside it. We have reached no farther than the outer walls. Only to be repulsed. It seems that this time we really mean to do the job. Two veteran divisions have been allocated to the attack. A Pioneer battalion which has been attached to us, is pulling some strange weapons along with it. Queer things like harpoon-guns which are intended to fire scaling ropes towards the prison walls. These we are supposed to use to climb the hill, which is almost a mountain. Then we break into the prison itself.
Wild rumours circulate about what goes on in the OGPU prison. Several thousand prisoners are said to be immured inside it. Our artillery has bombarded it constantly for four days now, and it is a question whether many of those inside it are still alive.
Julius Heide, who is always well-informed, says that it is an old prison, which existed even before the revolution. Now, it is used as a transit station by the Russian Secret Police, and the prisoners in it are collected from the Kiev and Charkov military districts.
After three days of bloody close combat we have a footing on the first height. Half-dead we drop in our tracks. Our lungs ache as if they had been stabbed through and through with icy daggers. We are drenched in sweat even in this freezing air.
Leutnant Braun is back with us. He lies flat on his back, his eyelids fluttering. He is dead to the world. Oberleutnant Löwe, sooty-faced, sits with his back to a tree which gives him a degree of protection from the icy wind. The Old Man stares sadly at nothing, as he fills his old silver-lidded pipe. He has difficulty in lighting it. The tobacco is damp.
Tiny lies full length on his stomach, alongside Porta. Out of the corner of his eye he watches the schoolteacher and the ex-Oberst. As usual he is puffing away at a fat cigar.
“You’re pushing those two,’ says Porta, with a one-sided smile. ‘What’ve they done, anyway?’
‘Done? Done?’ shouts Tiny, hoarsely. He blows his nose on his fingers. ‘They ain’t done nothin! Just let ’em try to do somethin’! Look ’ere now. Schoolteachers I cannot stand! Never ’ave been able to. Not since I got out o’ the bleedin’ whippin’ institution! I swore then as I’d get every last one of them bastards I ever got me fingers on. An’ that walkin’ blackboard pointer over there is one o’ the worst of ’em! Oberschulrat ’e calls ’imself! That’s the bleeder as walked into company office an’ said as ’ow ’e was a foot-slogger at present but ’e was really an Oberschulrat. For that reason ’e’d like to go to officers school quick as possible. I asked for ’im, an’ Feldwebel Schluckebier, who don’t like schoolteachers neither, give ’im to me. “Officers school!” ’e snorted at me. “I’ll give ’im officers school! When I’ve finished with ’im, there’ll be nothing left of ’im but ’is tonsils!” ’
‘Well, what’s with the Oberst then?’ asks Gregor. ‘He’s not a schoolteacher, and there’s a lot of all-right Obersts. Nothing wrong with our bloke Hinka, is there?’
‘E’s all-right, right enough,’ answers Tiny, ‘but this other bastard ain’t. Not by a long way ’e ain’t. My friend, Stabsgefreiter Frick of Divisional Staff’s told me enough about ’im. They used to call ’im “the mad rookie killer” at Sennelager. The wickedest bleedin’ trainin’ depot commander in all o’ bleedin’ Westphalia’n the Rhineland. All of a sudden though, the list of dead rookies got too long’n they ordered an investigation. ’Fore ’e knew where ’e was, there ’e was in Germersheim with ’oles in ’is shoulder tabs where ’is pips used to be! ’E’d good connections though’n got off the mornin’ walk, with twelve good friends and true armed with rifles, on the way to a wooden overcoat. ’Is connections let ’im off goin’ to the boneyard’n sent ’im ’ere instead to give ’im a chance to show ’e was a ’ero really’n get ’is pips back again. Schluckebier give ’im to me as a birthday present. Look at ’im! Ain’t no pips shinin’ in ’is eyes no more! ’E’s cannon bleedin’ fodder an’ nothin’ else. One thing ’e’s learnt though. ’E’s learnt what an Obergefreiter is!’
‘Watch it anyway,’ the Old Man warns. ‘Even if he has been bust he’s still got connections. And busting a shit of an Obergefreiter like you ain’t much of a job!’
‘I don’t give a crap for ’is connections,’ declares Tiny, grandly.
‘When I’ve finished with ’im — well — anythin’d be worth the pleasure!’
‘You’re balmy,’ says the Old Man, shaking his head. Finally he manages to get his old silver-lidded pipe going.
‘Come on, come on! On your feet there! Move now!’ shouts Oberleutnant Löwe. He pushes up a clenched fist, the signal for a rapid forward movement.
‘Ivan’s gone into hiding again,’ states Porta, after an hour has gone by without the least sign of a Russian.
‘Don’t let ’im fool you,’ says Gregor. ‘Comrade Ivan’s the wickedest and slyest bastard on the face of this earth. Just when you think he’s sodded off, then there you are — looking round for half your head what the bastard’s shot off you.’
‘Ma-a-n I don’t like it,’ mumbles Albert. ‘These goddam hills here they could hide a whole army corps, and here we are marchin’ straight between ’em. ’Fore we know where we are there’s gonna be a regiment of them lousy Cossacks riding their fucking nags straight up our arses! Hell, man, this place just stinks of them treacherous bastards’ sneaky ways.’
‘You don’t like horses?’ asks Porta.
‘I just hate them, man,’ snarls Albert, pulling back his thick lips like an angry wolf. ‘Like I told you, my ol’ man was a drummer in the hussars. And he used to get a ration of free meat when some horse or other keeled over’n died. We had horse-meat twice a day, and us kids we stank that much of horse, we couldn’t go past the stables without’m whinnyin’ after us. Horses! Jesus Christ, man! You go past their back parts’n they just fart in your face!’
Just after midnight, in a blinding snowstorm, the company reaches a large kolchos, which the enemy appears to have left in a hurry. Abandoned equipment lies about everywhere.
> Tiny finds two heavy, triple-barrelled shotguns. He gives one to Porta with a box of bear shells.
‘What the hell are you going to use those things for?’ asks the Old Man, in amazement.
‘You’ll see,’ laughs Porta. ‘First we saw ’em off short, so’s they don’t take up so much room, and the shot spreads better. Then when they go off old comrade Ivan’d better duck down sharp if he doesn’t want to get spread all over the landscape!’
‘We can cut the bollocks off the entire bleedin’ Red Army with one shot!’ Tiny screams with laughter.
‘Trouble-makers they are,’ Gregor warns them ominously. ‘Ivan catches you with them he’ll stick ’em up your arse and blow the tops of your heads off!’
‘Jesus Christ of Nazareth,’ comes a scream of astonishment from Porta down in the cellar. ‘We’ve struck the Reds main supply cache!’ His head pops up from a trap-door. ‘We can make bortsch, my sons, the Red Army’s favourite soup,’ he laughs. ‘Give me a hand with this pot, lads. It’s the world’s biggest, I do believe.’
‘Everything’s big in Russia,’ Barcelona philosophises. ‘Did you know that Russians always buy their boots two sizes too large? Makes them feel more confident of themselves.’
‘You peel the onions,’ Tiny orders the schoolteacher, ‘and then chop ’em into thin strips. An’ you, you walkin’ sentry-box you,’ he turns to the ex-Oberst. ‘You look after the beetroot’n the cabbage. Do it right or, by Christ, I’ll ’ave your ears off, I will!’
Porta has a flour-bag on his head, and has tied half a white sheet round his waist. He looks for all the world like the Head Cook of the Grand Hotel in Paris.
‘Let us see, now,’ he shouts, eagerly, waving a large knife above his head. ‘First we must have five litres of water. Not a drop more, and not a drop less. Julius, you Prussian perfectionist, you must pour the water. Let us see, let us see! Here is a piece of beef. We need three kilogrammes, and then we need a kilogramme and a half of lean pork. Then, five leeks, one to every litre of water, and four hundred grammes of cabbage. We will use five hundred. It won’t do any harm. One kilogramme of beetroot, half a celeriac, a handful of chopped parsley. Do we have that?’