by Sven Hassel
As H-hour for the grand attack gets closer, the company is caught in the grip of that strange deathly feeling which always precedes an attack. We scowl wickedly at one another, start nervously without the least cause. Our lips are compressed to thin lines. Eyes empty, and glassy. Stomachs filled with cramping fear.
The Old Man looks at his watch incessantly, and examines the ground in front of us with his binoculars.
‘Has everything I’ve been saying got through?’ he asks, checking his flare pistol.
A mumble of indistinguishable sound is all the reply he gets.
‘What about giving the bones a roll?’ Porta offers, rattling the dice in his cupped hand.
Nobody bothers to reply. We look at one another, knowing well that for many this will be the last morning of life. Which of us will it be this time? We put the question wordlessly and let our eyes wander around. Of course it won’t be any of our lot, we think. We always think that. And are surprised when it happens to one of us.
The list of the men who have caught it is a long one. Very long! A few of us have been together for a long time, and seem, somehow, to have learnt how to edge our way between the knife-edged bursts of shrapnel. We live only fractions of an inch away from death.
A long shrill whistle make us jump. An inch-long furrow appears across Gregor’s forehead. He cries out and falls backwards. For a moment we think he has bought one, but after a few anxious moments his eyes blink open again.
‘Bloody hell, chaps,’ he mumbles, his face twisted in pain. ‘I hate gettin’ shot!’
‘Close one that,’ says Sanitäs-Unteroffizier Jarmer, bandaging the wound with expert hands. ‘You were lucky! That bullet was nearly spent when it kissed you.’
‘Feels as if it’s still knocking around inside trying to find a way out,’ groans Gregor, putting his face in his hands.
Major Zaun comes up, leading his engineers. They are cursing and swearing under the weight of their heavy equipment. The special-type flame-throwers are enough in themselves, but they also carry boxes of high-explosives and large rolls of special wire.
An Obergefreiter with a brutal face breaks open a box of plastic explosive. Porta and Tiny get a handful each.
‘What that, man?’ asks Albert, curiously, bending over the open box which is filled with small packages. They look for all the world like packets of soap.
‘Blow you out of your black skin, they would,’ grins the Obergefreiter. ‘Try treadin’ on ’em. Turn even you pale, mate!’
‘Shit, man!’ growls Albert, moving gingerly away from the boxes.
‘Minus five minutes H-hour,’ a Major confirms. His harsh features tell the story of many desperate encounters. His mouth is twisted, as if it had been put through a grinder.
The Old Man brings out his whistle, adjusts his chin-strap, and pushes a couple more potato-masher grenades into his jackboots.
‘Ready, sir!’ he mumbles.
‘Don’t let us down, Oberfeldwebel,’ snarls the Major, gruffly. ‘Our lives depend a lot on you!’
The engineers ready their long pipes of explosive. Second hands flash round the dials of watches.
‘Where in the devil’s name are those guns?’ asks Barcelona, looking uneasily over his shoulder.
‘The usual,’ laughs Porta. ‘The flayed dog’s wrigglin’ on the pan. Nothing ever goes right in this damned army. The gun coolies’ll be lying about fast asleep, not giving a fuck for us foot-slogger sods!’
‘What the hell’s going on?’ asks the Major, uneasily. ‘H-hour plus one to H-hour plus seven’s the barrage. Now it’s H-hour plus eight.’ He compares his watch with the Old Man’s and Feldwebel Brandt’s. ‘Correct,’ he confirms, thoughtfully. ‘Something’s gone wrong, but why in the name of hell don’t they send a message?’
The thunder of 122 mm and 150 mm guns comes from the OGPU prison. Shells howl over us and crash down into the forest.
‘Ready for attack,’ the Major commands, harshly. He unslings his Mpi.
‘We can’t go over without artillery support!’ protests Leutnant Gernert, angrily.
‘If I need your advice, Leutnant, I’ll ask for it!’ snarls the Major, wickedly. ‘It’s H-hour plus ten! We attack as ordered! Forward!’
‘It’s madness,’ the Leutnant still protests. ‘They’ll slaughter us like cattle! We can’t get up to that goddam prison without artillery support. We’ve tried it countless times.’
‘To God and the Prussian Army nothing is impossible,’ Porta grins, phlegmatically. ‘Fingers out and let’s roll. Für Führer und Reich, Heil!’
‘I often wonder whether God was in a good mood or a bad mood when ’e let us march into the bleedin’ world as Prussians?’ laughs Tiny, noisily.
‘You should be proud of being German,’ proclaims Heide, patriotically, striking his chest.
‘I hope for you that you will continue to be proud,’ smiles the Major, bitterly.
Heide sends him a contemptuous look, and mumbles something uncomprehensible.
‘Time!’ orders the Old Man, sharply, shrilling on his whistle.
White-camouflaged shapes seem to appear from everywhere in the snow. They move forward with long, fast strides.
‘Get on, get on!’ roars the Major, in a shrill voice. Despite his fifty years he takes off like a youngster. He storms forward through the deep snow with Mpi in one hand and an explosive charge in the other.
Harpoon ropes shoot, hissing, up the cliff-face. The first of the assault troops commence their climb. Flares rise in the dark night. Muzzle flames spit from all sides.
‘AlIah-el-Akbar, vive la mort!’ screams the little Legionnaire, fanatically, gripped with battle madness, as always when we attack.
I stumble over a roll of barbed wire. I get caught on the sharp metal thorns. They tear into my long winter greatcoat, through it and into my skin. Feverishly I rout around after my wire cutters, but cannot find them. I must have dropped them somewhere. Terror gets hold of me. Desperately I peer around for the others. They have disappeared, bending forward, into the darkness. The worst thing that can happen to you in an attack is to lose contact and be left behind on your own. We have the initiative just now, but that can change any time. In minutes. Then God help the man who’s cut off. A bullet in the back. Or maybe worse!
‘You’re in a mess all right,’ laughs Barcelona, bending over me. He cuts me loose quickly. The wire snaps out to both sides.
Head over heels I land in a hole together with Porta and Tiny.
‘Gregor’s a bit up front,’ says Porta, pointing into the pitchy darkness. ‘Get on up with him. You’ve got to open the door with the grenades!’
We are no more than a hundred yards from the depressed gun, which has been beautifully camouflaged. We can’t see it, even in the brightness of the flares.
‘They’re fast a’ bleedin’ sleep,’ whispers Tiny, scandalised, stretching his neck. ‘Cheeky bleeders don’t think fuck of us any more.’
‘Throw,’ orders Gregor, hoarsely, taking back his arm. The grenades whirl up in a high arc and drop down into the Russian position.
Porta and Tiny ready them and hand them to us.
My arm pains me. A special throwing technique and a lot of strength is needed to throw a grenade as far as Gregor and I have trained ourselves to do. Your whole body weight has to go into the throw. It is particularly difficult when you are throwing from the lying position. It is as if your body went part of the way with the grenade.
Our two first grenades must have struck an ammunition pile. The explosion is violent as a volcanic eruption. The long-barrelled gun goes whirling up into the air together with its crew. The Old Man appears out of the blinding snow at the head of a party.
‘On your feet, damn you,’ he shouts, madly, pushing on into the remains of the smashed gun position.
At a breakneck pace, we rush through the deep, powdery snow and throw ourselves down on the far side of the position. We have to get on before the survivors pull themselves together and turn ever
ything they have left onto us.
Tiny is like an elephant run amok. He swings his sharpened entrenching tool above his head, slashing and cutting in blind rage.
We are through the protective wire in the first five minutes, throwing grenades into dugouts and fox-holes. Like a runaway storm we roll up the enemy position.
By the light of a flare I see the Major of engineers and his flamethrower group attack the artillerywomen, who come rushing from their dugouts.
The women put up their hands and stare in horror at the onrushing snow-camouflaged devils. Flames roar out in long fiery tongues. There is a stink of burning oil and charred meat.
We take a short rest in the enemy position. We feel as if our chests are too narrow for our lungs. Despite the icy cold, we are soaked with sweat. We tear open our uniform collars, one thought only in our minds. ‘Air!’ The snow around us is scattered with broken, blackened, bloody bodies. The flames bubble and sizzle, with a sound like meat burning on a spit.
‘Where the hell’s the guns?’ shouts the Old Man, angrily.
‘Eleven minutes over time, now!’ mumbles Leutnant Gernert.
‘All it wants now’s for ’em to open fire while we’re in the neighbours’ positions,’ forecasts Barcelona, darkly.
‘They couldn’t be that crazy!’ cries Gregor, fearfully.
‘They must know we’re through ’em now!’
A creeping terror moves up our spines. To be smashed under our own artillery fire seems the stupidest thing that could happen to us.
‘Merde aux yeux, let’s get out of here quick,’ suggests the Legionnaire, looking questioningly at the Old Man.
A company of motorcyclists appears through the choking, poisonous vapours which rise from the ground. Their O.C., a grey-haired Hauptmann, waves us on, and screams something we cannot understand.
‘Fuck that cunt!’ snarls Tiny. ‘Any pistol-packin’ piss’ead can’t order us around. It ain’t that bad yet! We’re still bleedin’ us, we are!’
‘Get on, get on!’ shouts the Hauptmann, feverishly, putting his clenched fist up in the sign for double time forward.
We laugh openly at him and pretend not to understand his signals. From bitter experience we know that we might as well give up if we get mixed up with a strange lot. We’d get all the dirty jobs, stinking of heroism and Valhalla.
‘I don’t move out of here without artillery support, panjemajo?’ decides Porta, categorically. He fishes the rest of a black pudding from his knapsack. ‘Even GROFAZ at the head of all his psychotic cases couldn’t make it to that commie jail without supporting fire!’
An explosion of enormous force cuts him off. Concentrated fire hammers down in front of and behind us.
In the course of a few seconds the gunfire increases to a veritable typhoon of steel and flame. It seems as if the whole earth is thrown up towards the heavens and falls back with an enormous concussion. The whole horizon burns from the Northeast to the Southwest.
Blast throws us around as if we were footballs. We clutch at the snow with hands and feet.
A huge salvo falls on the signal command dugout. Timber, planks, telephone cables and flayed human bodies are strewn in a horrible hotch-potch across the battle-ground.
Yet another direct hit roars down into the destroyed position, smashing it up even more. The area is like some terrible, tumbled rubbish-tip.
A little further back a large shell hits the orderlies dugout. It becomes a boiling cauldron of blood and crushed bone.
Shells fall incessantly. Where the flamethrower company was there is now a landscape of smoking holes and smashed material, spattered with human blood. With unbelievable force the concentrated gunfire ploughs up the heights. Human bodies are thrown into the air, and smash to unrecognisable messes as they hit the ground.
A new sound drowns out the roar of the guns. A blanket of fire rolls towards us like a steamroller.
Panicstricken German soldiers flee shoulder to shoulder with the Russians, but are caught in the all-consuming, crushing rain of shells. Torn-off parts of human bodies geyser towards the burning sky. Wounded men scream heart-breakingly, but nobody helps them. The whole terrain has become a boiling, indescribable inferno. The end of the world.
A deafening roar from the 105 and 150 mm’s brings us down on our faces in the snow. In a continual chain of explosions fire rains down on the assault companies, turning them into a porridge of blood and mangled flesh in the course of seconds.
I lift my head carefully and begin to get up.
‘Down!’ screams the Old Man, warningly, rolling into a smoking shellhole.
A new rain of shells makes the earth shake as if in the throes of a violent earthquake. The air is thick with red-hot shrapnel. Shells are falling on every inch of ground.
The Old Man snatches the flare pistol from Leutnant Gernert and fires off a red flare. The barrage continues without pause. The Old Man sends up another red signal light, and curses our artillery. We all realise by now that it is our artillery which is firing on us.
The pulverising fire moves slowly forward, smashing Russian positions which the German troops have already taken. Shells hail down on the backs of the terrified front line soldiers. Bodies are tossed up out of the snow again and again. The dark clouds open themselves and reveal a long, seething sea of flame.
In the course of only a second it seems as if a giant fist has pounded trees and houses to a sickening mush.
Our nerves are set vibrating by a long, fearsome, howling whine. In terror we peer upwards as long flaming trails drive like comets across the sky and explode thunderously on the heights. A forest of redly glowing mushroom clouds rises from the earth. Rockets bore into the snow.
The Russian heavy artillery joins in the hellish concert. The icy air seems to ring with the sound of steel on steel. Shells hail down. Nothing is spared. The frost-bowed forest along the rounded height is shaved off the cheek of the earth, in one long sweep, by the razor of the guns. Only a stubble remains.
Slowly the hell of fire creeps forward, destroying everything in its path. Nothing escapes destruction.
The terrain is unrecognisable. Tumbled. As if an idiot with a plough had driven back and forth across it. Everywhere bodies. And screaming wounded.
Just as we are about to rise to our feet, there is a new sound in the sky. It is as if millions of empty oil-drums come rattling across the heavens.
A colossal sheet of fire shoots upwards and a deafening explosion shakes the earth.
Julius Heide shouts, and digs his way into the snow alongside Porta.
Feldwebel Brandt dives from the half-crushed dugout, blood fountaining from his face. Without a sound he goes down in the middle of us.
An entire infantry company, seeking cover, is thrown up into the air. It falls back in a carnage of blood and shredded flesh.
‘God in Heaven have mercy on us,’ sobs Leutnant Gernert, hysterically. ‘Those damned fools have opened fire too late!’
A grating whistle cuts him off. His helmet is torn open, as if by a giant can-opener. Half of his face is gone. Like a punctured rubber balloon he sinks down in his own blood.
‘Russians! The Russians are coming,’ a party of Grenadiers shout fearfully. They come down from the heights as if the devil himself was at their heels.
Barcelona sends a long, chattering burst into something he thinks is a Russian. I tear a grenade from by belt, pull the cord and sling it from me.
The antitank gun barks poisonously, joining the long rattling fire of the SMG’s.
‘Now it’s cookin’,’ moans Porta, glassy-eyed, pressing the butt of the LMG into his shoulder.
In front of us star-decorated helmets loom through the poisonous mist.
‘Uhraeh! Uhraeh!’ the shout comes, hoarsely, as the khaki-clad hordes spew out of the mill on the brow of the height.
Feverishly we ready our automatic weapons. Mpi’s hammer at shadows. Hand grenades rain down on the closely-packed attackers.
A
signaller works at his apparatus, screams into the mouthpiece. The line is dead. Every wire has been cut long ago. He kicks the silent telephone, viciously.
‘We need the guns to cover us,’ says Oberst Hinka, who has come up to the front with his entire staff, armed with carbines and machine-pistols.
‘Let’s send the schoolteacher, that inky-arsed bleeder,’ suggests Tiny, laughing noisily becuse he thinks he has said something funny.
‘You nuts, or something?’ answers Porta. ‘He wouldn’t stop going till he was halfway out in the Atlantic!’
‘He’s dead,’ laughs Gregor, looking at the schoolteacher’s slumped body half under a rock.
‘You dead?’ roars Tiny, jabbing at him with a bayonet.
‘Leave me alone,’ pipes the schoolteacher, desperately.
‘Dear God, what have I done to have to go through all this? Help me, comrades. Help me!’
‘Shut your trap, you cowardly swine,’ orders the Old Man, harshly.
As he speaks the skies open. It is as if it were the gates of hell! Fire from the heavy artillery sweeps roaring down over the earth. 210 mm shells drop so closely together that it is unbelievable anyone can survive them. Slowly the shelling increases to a deafening, angry roar which takes away our breath.
The attacking Russian columns are blown away in a rain of fire and steel. A Russian soldier comes staggering out of the glowing cloud of sulphur fumes. His whole stomach is ripped open. His entrails drag behind him. He disappears in a fountain of flame.
Groups of weaponless soldiers press themselves, screaming, into the ground. One terrific suck of air and they are scattered like chaff into the sweeping tempest of fire.
‘Forward!’ roars Oberst Hinka, signalling with his only arm.
We wade through dead bodies and screaming wounded, slipping on pieces of raw meat and the remains of human beings. We throw ourselves down for a moment behind a heap of bodies. It grows from minute to minute.
‘Forward!’ shout company and platoon leaders, but uselessly. Get on your feet and you’re smashed immediately to a pulp.
The mad rain of high explosives rolls on up over the heights, like a volcano in eruption. An unbelievable concentration of artillery fire smashes down on us, pulverising everything to dust and ashes. Hell kisses the earth! Poisonous, sickening gases rise from bubbling, steaming holes and craters.