by Sven Hassel
The Russians lie in a heap, their bodies, still on fire, blackening slowly, like a roast too long in the oven.
‘Lucky you never know what’s coming till it hits you,’ sighs Barcelona, watching a Russian whose hair is on fire. ‘An old soldier that one. Otherwise they wouldn’t let him wear his hair long.’
‘Get on, get on!’ orders the Old Man, running heavily past us.
We catch sight of a Russian group, attempting to get away. One of them trips over a fallen tree, and slides a long way across a frozen stream.
‘Get ’em!’ shouts Heide, eagerly, bringing up the LMG he carries slung across his shoulder. His whole body shakes, as he sends a long, stuttering salvo after the flying enemy group.
Three of them are killed, shot in the back and their chests blown out. We are using a new kind of bullet. Rough stuff, which makes only a tiny entrance hole, but leaves a huge, gaping hole on its way out. Some of the wounded lie screaming heart-breakingly in the snow.
Tiny kills four survivors with the sawn-off shotgun. A terrible weapon at short range.
An old second lieutenant in militia uniform stands up against a tree with his hands folded behind his neck. He watches us with glaring, terrified eyes, as we go towards him slowly.
‘A commissar,’ says Heide, with a satanic smile.
‘He’s no bloody commissar,’ answers Barcelona. ‘He’s no more’n a poor piss-scared bastard. A shakin’ old bag of bones in an old-fashioned uniform. Let the poor buggar sod off back to his grandchildren!’
‘You out of your mind?’ asks Heide in angry protest. ‘This pig’s a Soviet officer, and we kill Soviet officers. By order of the Führer!’ He lifts his Mpi and shoots the second lieutnant in the chest and head.
The head splits open. He puts a couple of shots into the stomach for good measure. ‘That’s that, then!’ he declares proudly, slinging his weapon on to his shoulder.
A wounded infantryman gets half up, supporting himself on one knee.
‘Njet sstrjeljatj, njet sstrjeljatj, tovaritch germanski,’ he begs, desperately.
In the person of the Legionnaire, his German comrade pushes a bayonet through his back. The point comes out of the Russian at the front. Quietly the Legionnaire twists the bayonet out of the body. It falls forward into the attitude of a praying Musselman.
A Russian warrant officer pulls back his arm to throw a grenade.
Albert smashes his face with a butt-stroke. We kill the others from a distance, as we sight them. We do not go near them until we are sure they are dead, and then carefully. We bayonet them before going over them.
Their pockets are full of machorka, and they have vodka in their water-bottles. It is poor quality stuff — other ranks vodka. From bitter experience we know it gives us a thundering headache, and we graciously give it to the new men. Porta will provide, where we are concerned.
We go through their pocketbooks with interest. We take the snapshots of their girl-friends, and throw the rest away. The few roubles they have are of no interest to us.
Tiny is very taken by a photograph he finds in the wallet of the warrant officer whose face Albert smashed in.
‘’Oly Emma, what a lovely bint,’ he groans, wiping a little blood carefully from the photograph. ‘When you see a Russian bleedin’ rose like this,’ he goes on, winking invitingly at the girl in the snapshot, ‘you realise that our lot’s Maker must’ve been in a bad mood the day ’e made the standard German model, with ’er ’air in a bun, an’ even the ’airs of ’er cunt tied in bleedin’ braids!’
‘Wow!’ cries Porta, admiringly, looking over Tiny’s shoulder.
‘Want to swop? Three of mine for her? What a piece of crumpet! Holy Mother of Kazan!’
‘Sod off, she’s mine!’ Tiny growls. ‘The dead ’un put ’er address on the back. When Adolf’s war’s over I’m takin’ a round trip ticket and bringin’ ’er back to good old ’Amburg, I am!’
‘You must have shit between your ears!’ laughs Porta, jeeringly. ‘She won’t have anything to do with you, when she finds out you’ve knocked off her Commie boy-friend!’
‘I know you think I’m some kind nut,’ says Tiny, sourly, ‘but nutty enough to tell the bint that it was me as blew the other sod’s bonce off I am not! No, no, no, I shall tell the little dear ’ow, with danger to me own life, I carries ’er ’alf-arsed friend on me back for twenty kilometres to get ’im to the care of the good German doctors. It’ll be a lovely story, it will, just like you see at the pictures. The fact of ’er poor ’ero lover dyin’, I shall lay at the door of natural causes.’
‘She won’t give you a tumble,’ decides Porta, shaking his head sadly. ‘The map of the world’ll be very different when Adolf’s lost this war, and the German Wehrmacht has been disarmed. It’ll be no fun being German. Count on it! Anybody who feels like it’ll be able to kick us up the arse, an’ knock us off sharpish if we try to kick ’em back!’
‘Come on, come on,’ shouts Oberleutnant Löwe, impatiently. ‘Forward! Forward! Get a move on! You scoundrels are always finding places to piss it off in! Get moving and let’s get the job over with! It’s got to be done! Oberfeldwebel Beier! Take the lead with No. 2! Scouts in advance and on both flanks.’
‘Always bloody us!’ grumbles Porta, viciously, kicking out at an empty Russian waterbottle. ‘We get all the shit jobs going in this rotten army! Oh, if I was at home havin’ it good in Berlin, they could fuck around here for thirty years if they wanted to!’ He jams shells violently into his sawn-off shotgun, and peers testingly along the barrel. ‘Come on then, for Christ’s sake, let’s go look for that shit of a neighbour and blow his godless, Commie, bloody head off!’
The moment the company leaves the forest we hear the hateful slobbering sound of mortars again. Followed by thunderous explosions. There is no weapon we like less than the trench mortar. It is treacherous, and gives only a short warning before the projectile reaches you, explodes in front of you. No long, warning scream like shells. Another thing we don’t like is the Russian mortar crews! They are almost always women. Coarse, heavily-built peasant types.
Late one night we stormed a heavy mortar company of women. They tried to get away into the forest, and hid behind trees and bushes, but we found them one by one and killed them like rats, despite their tears and screams. The few men in the company we took prisoner. They confirmed what we already knew. These women were fanatics, and treated prisoners in horrible fashion.
‘Kill the bitches!’ said a captured Russian sergeant, with a satisfied grin, kicking at one of the female corpses. He could say what he liked now. His war was over!
One of the new men, a big lad from Barcelona’s squad, has had his entire face shot off. A piece of shrapnel has cut away everything. Lips, nose, eyes and forehead are gone. Only white bone is left. His bubbling screams can be heard far and wide. He is driving us crazy.
We stand in a shivering, uneasy ring around him, watching Sani-Gefreiter Rolfe attempting to dress the wound. He is shaking his head despondently.
‘Shrapnel can really do the job,’ says Tiny, quietly. ‘It’s faster’n ’im as used to murder the pro’s in Düsseldorf!’
‘If he gets away with his life, and they patch his face up somehow, he ain’t gonna be pretty,’ remarks Gregor, thoughtfully. ‘Frighten kids to death, he will!’
The horizon changes colour to a rich, rosy yellow. There is a rumbling and roaring from beyond the heights. A regiment of siege artillery takes up position along the frozen river. Two companies of assault troops join us. They stink of spit-and-polish. Steel helmets painted white, and chinstraps regimentally positioned. Belt, knapsack, gasmask. All there. Even gas-capes correctly folded. We threw ours away long ago. Their greatcoats are so neat they could go on parade with them at the Brandenburger Tor.
We watch them sneeringly, but we are also a little envious. They have everything we are short of. 27. Panzer Regiment is a poorhouse compared to them. We don’t even have tanks, even though we are supposed to b
e a tank regiment.
‘Jesus, you lot are pretty! cries Porta, touching a well-polished belt. ‘Brother Ivan, that old highwayman, why, you’ll frighten him to death!’
‘Where’s the band, then?’ asks Gregor. ‘You know! The old tum-ta-ta-tum boys with the drums and the fifes. Can’t march against the neighbours without them!’
‘You look like a load of tramps,’ says a Feldwebel, staring contemptuously at Porta’s tattered, grimy battle-camouflaged uniform.
‘Just what we are, too, Feldwebel, sir!’ grins Porta. Arrogantly he screws his cracked monocle into his eye and looks condescendingly at the Guards Feldwebel.
‘What kind of a gang are you? trumpets an Oberfähnrich. ’Makes you think of jailbirds just to look at you!’
‘Gang?’ snarls the Old Man, slitting his eyes and rolling his tongue round the word. ‘Let me tell you, Mr. Oberfähnrich, we were fightin’ before you an’ your Guards Association was set up, and we’ve lost more men already’n your Division’d be able to lose in the whole war!’
‘Yes, you do look a little burnt-out,’ laughs the Oberfähnrich, acidly. He puts his fieldglasses to his eyes nonchalantly, and explores the heights. ‘That the little jail up there, we’ve got to help you lads with? We’ll fix that, while you’re taking a little nap to rest your tired old bones,’ he says, cheerily, taking down the glasses.
‘Really?’ answers the Old Man, coldly. ‘Up to now that “little jail”, as you call it, has cost us buckets of blood.’
‘What you’re in need of is backbone and the will to win,’ declares a youthful Unteroffizier proudly. He stinks of Valhalla and Hitler quotations. ‘What the Führer orders, the German soldier executes. These Russian untermensch will not stop us!’
‘Bien sur que si, sergent!’ says the Legionnaire, sarcastically, his eternal cigarette bobbing up and down between his thin lips as he speaks.
‘Everybody talks about the front line,’ the Unteroffizier continues gruffly. ‘It has nothing to do with the question. What makes a soldier is iron-hard garrison service, so that the front line seems like a rest-home by comparison. What we’ve seen of your front line so far, is laughable to us!’
‘You’ve weakened your brain, with wankin’ too much,’ shouts Porta, with a scream of laughter. ‘You’ll shit the creases out of your pants, when Ivan starts playing on his old machine-balalaika.’
‘Before nightfall you’ll be promising God you’ll go to church regularly for the rest of your life,’ whinnies Gregor, delightedly.
‘Rubbish,’ says the Unteroffizier, indignantly. ‘I don’t believe in any kind of God!’
‘A lot of people do not believe, when they get here, mon ami,’ considers the Legionnaire, comfortably. ‘But when they are lying out under an artillery barrage, it is quite surprising to see how God-fearing they become! The most fanatical atheists become more holy than Jehovah’s Witnesses themselves, and call upon Allah!’
‘You’ll see different,’ declares the Unteroffizier in a voice of ice. ‘The job you chaps’ve been pissing about with out here for a week, we’ll have finished in a couple of hours!’
‘We’ll see, we’ll see!’ says the Old Man, with a sarcastic smile. ‘I’d very much like to see you fix that prison up there in just a couple of hours. Save us the job!’
A rain of bullets sweeps along the snowy wall, spraying earth and ice splinters over us.
The Oberfähnrich drops like lightning, quite in accordance with regulations. Heels and boot-tips to the ground. Cautiously he peers over the edge of the cover.
‘Keep down!’ shouts the Old Man, warningly. The warning comes too late. The Oberfähnrich’s head explodes like an overripe tomato, splashing those of us closest to him.
‘Fuckin’ stupid regulations twit.’ Porta curses, wiping blood and splinters of bone from his face. ‘Coming here and shittin’ us up with his goddam filthy guts!’
The air fills with the slobber of several mortars. Snow goes up like a roller blind turning backwards.
Mortar bombs fall in a heavy rain, and a couple of low-trajectory guns put shells in amongst us. In a moment of time the terrain has become like a raging sea filled with all kinds of wreckage.
The heroism slowly evaporates from the Gross Deutschland Regiment. Even the Leutnant with the thin lips and the beautiful tailor-made uniform looks frightened.
‘Down, damn you!’ warns the Old Man, gruffly.
Despite his fear the Leutnant notices that the Old Man has not given him his service rank. He opens his tiny, cruel mouth to say something. But before he can get out a word a short MG salvo catches him, and throws him backwards against the snow wall. He falls forward again face-first splintering the ice underfoot. His legs jerk spasmodically. He lies quite still!
‘Come death . . . come. . . . ,’ hums the little Legionnaire, softly.
Two Panther tanks appear out of the snow. Rattling and roaring they press past us. The enormous gun sticks threateningly from each turret like a giant index finger.
‘Forward!’ shouts Löwe, pushing his clenched fist into the air. ‘5. Company follow me!’
We run heavily forward through the deep snow staying close behind the tanks. When they stop to fire we throw ourselves down to regain our breath.
A party of Russians edge their way out from a smoke-blackened ruin.
A couple of Mpi’s chatter, and they go down with looks of surprise on their faces.
‘Half-trained!’ mumbles Heide, contemptuously, kicking at the bodies. In his opinion everybody who is not a hundred per cent soldier is rubbish. Pity is, to him, the sign of the slave mentality.
A row of heavy lorries, painted with large Cyrillic characters, is standing close to a kolchos. Potato masher grenades whirl through the air. The supply corps soldiers who have been snoozing in their driving-cabins fall out head over heels. Some are killed by the fall. It is all over so quickly that we hardly realise what has happened.
Rapidly we go over the bodies, taking what we have a use for. We are ransacking the lorries when a tiny figure in a general’s uniform suddenly appears amongst us. Brusque, sharp orders crack out like machine-gun salvoes.
Oberleutnant Löwe is standing to attention, with his hand at the brim of his helmet.
‘Yes sir, General sir. Yes sir!’ is all he is able to stammer.
There is hardly anything else to say, when you are in the presence of General Baron von Mannteufel, the feared commander of Panzer Grenadier Division Gross Deutschland. This is the first time we have seen him, but we have heard of him, and that is more than enough. Even Porta and Tiny disappear silently behind one of the Russian lorries.
‘To my knowledge no order has been given to stop here? Or am I mistaken?’ trumpets the slim little general with the ice-cold eyes. ‘We are attacking the OGPU prison, gentlemen. Look around you and you will soon realise that the prison is not here, but still over there, on height 347. Stop once more without permission and I will see to it that you go in front of a field court-martial!’
Before Löwe can open his mouth to reply the little general is gone, together with his grinning adjutant.
‘Shit and corruption,’ says Tiny, disappointedly, letting a single gold tooth plump into his bag. ‘They’ve gotta bepiss-poor in the Soviet. Almost all o’ them’s got steel in ’is bleedin’ choppers ’stead of gold. Takin’ the piss out of a poor German liberator, that’s what this is!’
For the next few hours the company pushes on through the snow with the strength of despair. Sweat pours out of us as we cut our way through crackling, frost-dry undergrowth. I feel, more than see, a Russian patrol, and shoot on the fall. My burst hits a Russian officer in the mouth, and he goes down with a shattered face.
Porta sends off a long, vicious hail of bullets which lift the Russians closest to us into the air and throw them backwards like ninepins.
‘Hell, man!’ howls Albert, rolling suddenly sideways in a flurry of snow. As he rolls he throws two hand-grenades, which blows three Russians to
bloody rags. With a sigh he catches his breath, and wipes his face with a handful of snow. ‘Are you crazy, man?’ he stammers, grey-faced with fear.
‘Tea rooms straight ahead,’ screams Heide, hysterically, diving almost head-first into a fallen-in trench.
‘Idiot!’ snarls Porta, and ties a bundle of grenades to a petrol can.
‘Gimme that!’ hisses Tiny, ripe for destruction. He tears the bundle from Porta’s hands before the latter has time to protest.
With cat-like agility and speed Tiny moves towards the T-34. Quicker than it can be told he is up on the tank, both turret trapdoors of which have been carelessly left open. Small muzzle-flames spit from the forward MG. With a practised hand he slings the bundle of grenades down through one of the open trapdoors. Laughing crazily, he springs down from the tank and rolls to cover behind a large rock.
The T-34 goes up with an ear-splitting roar. Its reserve ammunition adding to the force of the explosion. We can feel the crushing pressure of the blast all over our bodies.
A Maxim barks viciously from the forest.
Leutnant Miiller from No. 1 Platoon gives out an echoing scream. The first MG salvo has broken his back. He rolls around like a living rag-doll, his entrails falling out into the snow.
We take the flamethrower to them, and clear out the position.
We are out on the storm-whipped steppe again. Tired almost to death, we dig in, to await the artillery barrage which is to clear a path for us on the far bank of the frozen river. The motorcycle regiment has already been smashed crossing the river. Many of them drowned, as Russian mortar fire smashed the yard-thick ice to pieces. The ones who did not drown were crushed by the ice floes grinding violently together and sliding up and over one another like cliffs of ice. The noise of them is like thunder.
Porta spreads out his green cloth on the snow, and throws a few trial passes with the dice.
‘Come on, you icebound birds of passage,’ he challenges. ‘Let’s shoot craps. You take the luck! I’ll take the winnings!’