by Sven Hassel
A pair of Russian Jabos appear, flying just above the treetops. They strafe the road with machine-cannon. Soviet troops in large numbers come from the dachas along the river, and from behind the burning buildings of a kotchos. A herd of pigs, maddened with fear, run screaming in front of them, turn around and run straight back again into the sea of flames. Both soldiers and civilians spread out their arms to show that they are not carrying weapons. Apathetically they wade out through mud up to their knees, stream down the hills and walk like a solid wall of humanity, directly towards us. Those in front fearfully slacken their pace but are pushed forward by the press of humanity behind them.
They sit down around our tanks, and look up at the viewing-slits, waiting tensely for what is to happen to them.
‘What in heaven’s name are we to do with them?’ asks the Old Man, looking at the mob surrounding us with a defeated air.
‘They are unarmed,’ decides Heide, playing nervously with the forward MG.
‘How are we to be sure of that?’ mumbles Porta, doubtfully.
‘What the hell am I to do with this lot?’ asks Barcelona nervously over the radio. ‘There’s that many of ‘em they could pick the blasted tanks up and run off with ’em, if they wanted to!’
‘Keep cool, now,’ orders the Old Man. ‘Above all keep ‘em off the vehicles! One magnetic and they’ll have pulled the chain on us!’
‘Rotten shits! Nothings!’ growls Heide, angrily. He feels his soldier’s honour touched. ‘It’s high treason in the Soviet Union to surrender!’
‘Yes, those chaps don’t seem to have accepted the soldier’s highly thought of oath of faith: To die for the Fatherland is sweet and honourable,’ grins Porta, jeeringly.
‘Dulce et decorum est pro patria mon,’ quotes Heide, importantly.
One of the ancient ‘coffee-grinders’ swings low above the soldiers who have surrendered. It is near enough for us to be able to see the pilot threatening them with a clenched fist. It rises and is soon no larger than a moth in the sky.
A few minutes later a howling becomes audible, and a salvo of shells explodes in the middle of the crowd, blowing many of them out into the river.
A pack of KW-2’s and T-34’s waddles through the sunflower fields in broad-arrow formation. Their machine-guns send bullets in long bursts into the mass of humanity in front of them. Guns roar. Flames shoot up from the ground. It literally rains with torn-ofF parts of human bodies.
‘Let’s smash those lousy bastards,’ roars Porta, in a fury, ‘the dirty, rotten sons of bitches.’
‘No. 2. Section. All vehicles. Fire at will!’ commands the Old Man, harshly.
‘S-shell,’ I order, and the breach closes. The shell ploughs its way into the nearest KW-2 and blows off the turret.
‘Come death, come....’ hums the Legionnaire over the radio.
A Panzer-3 is splintered to atoms. Two Panzer-4’s suffer the same fate. The tank commanders of the T-34’s are wise enough to concentrate their fire on the lighter tanks, where it is effective at a greater range.
Our tank fills with thick, poisonous, cordite fumes. Our teeth and eyes shine whitely in soot-blackened faces.
More and more tanks crash into and through the panic-stricken mass of humanity. War is celebrating a triumphant orgy, and humanity has become a farce. Ammunition explodes in burning waggons, turrets weighing tons are thrown into the air, and fall to earth with shattering force.
Armoured planes roar out of the sun, and send rockets hissing at the tanks which are dancing their murderous saraband of death on the ground below.
On the heels of the armoured planes come the fighters, ME 110’s and YAK’s bulleting through the sky. The dive bombers and armoured planes flee in panic. Many do not succeed in escaping and go whirling down to explode amongst the tanks.
In a short space of time all the men who sat and lay around the Tiger tanks have been reduced to an unrecognisable, bloody mass, pulped by steel tracks and shells.
‘Turret, 3 o’clock. T-34,’ orders the Old Man, quietly.
I rotate the turret like lightning, and get the T-34 in my sights. I see the shell go into the side of it, quite clearly, but to our amazement the green monster goes on as if nothing has happened.
‘Gun. Load. Ready,’ says Tiny, mechanically, ready with the next black-nosed armour-piercing shell in his hands. Steel clangs on steel. There is a rattling and crashing. Smoke billows around us, making the inside of the tank pure hell.
Again the shell goes into the T-34. A long tongue of flame shoots from the turret. Three of the four-man crew jump from the tank and take cover behind it. The uniform of one of them is in flames.
Heide sends a long burst of tracer at them, but the bullets fall short. Bullets spray earth up behind them as they run.
‘Stop pissing about,’ scolds the Old Man viciously. ‘We don’t need to be worse murderers than we have to be!’
Red flames lick up from the T-34’s hatches, and oily, black smoke goes up towards the clear, blue sky. To our horror it starts to move again, and comes rattling at ever increasing speed towards us.
I swing the turret on manual control, and send three fragmentation shells at the approaching tank without achieving a hit.
‘Is that mad son of a bitch tired of life?’ shouts Porta, pressing the engine’s 700 horses to give him every ounce of power available, so that the Tiger seems almost to rear up and rock on its tracks. With a roar, Porta sends it straight at the T-34 on collision course.
‘Stop!’ screams the Old Man. ‘Have you gone mad too?’
‘Hang on to your false teeth,’ growls Porta, like a baited wolf. ‘This is a matter between a German and a Russian tank driver. Get out an’ walk if you’re scared. I’m going to show that weak-minded neighbour twit where Moses bought his beer!’
I have never in all my life completed a fine sighting so quickly. The shell leaves the barrel of the gun at 3,500 feet per second, and smashes into the edge of the T-34’s turret. Sparks and shreds of steel buzz through the air like angry wasps, but the 88 mm armour-piercing shell ricochets and goes screaming off towards the clouds. The glowing ball of fire which is the T-34 rolls on towards us unchecked.
‘He must be mad,’ screams Heide, crouching down in fear under the radio, ‘or else he’s the very devil himself!’
With a clang and a crash the burning T-34 runs into us. In the course of seconds we are surrounded by a wall of flames and pitch-black, oily smoke.
‘Get back! Get back!’ roars Oberleutnant Löwe over the communicator. ‘Are you crazy?’
For a moment it seems as if the great tank battle has stopped to watch the mad, single-combat struggle, between the fanatical Russian tank-driver in his burning T-34, and ourselves. The whole battle area seems to hold its breath. Any second the T-34’s ammunition can go up, and cause a chain reaction of dimensions seldom, if ever, seen before.
Porta tries to back out of the death grasp of the T-34, but it seems as if the enemy tank is held to us with grappling irons. It follows us.
‘Let’s get out of here before his ammunition and petrol goes up,’ screams Heide, in terror, tearing open the hatch.
‘Fasten hatches,’ orders the Old Man, harshly. ‘Nobody goes outboard without my order.’
‘What the hell’s happening?’ asks Tiny, blankly, pressing his eyes to the viewing eyepiece. ‘Are we gettin’ brown-’oled by a T-34?’
‘Hold on to your cock,’ grins Porta. ‘We’re getting ready to take the air trip of all time with one of the neighbour’s mad sods!’
The interior of the tank is filled with black, stinking smoke, and we double up in violent fits of coughing. The heat is unbearable. Through the observation slits, flames throw a ghostly flickering light in to us.
Porta curses and swears sulphurously, trying every way he can think of to twist the Tiger round. But we are caught helplessly fast. Twisting metal screams and cracks.
‘Give ‘em a pill, then, in hell’s name,’ shouts Porta, furiousl
y. ‘Shoot that Commie sod off the face of the earth!’
‘I can’t,’ I babble, desperately. ‘This shit of a gun is pointing above ‘em!’
‘Try anyway,’ shouts Porta. ‘The shock an’ the blast might make the bastard lose his breath.’
‘S-shell,’ orders the Old Man. ‘Muzzle flame ought to burn the clothes of that crazy fool!’
The shell leaves the muzzle with a deafening clap of sound, but seems to make no impression on the suicidal driver of the T-34. He has managed to force the burning tank up on to our front plating. Flames lick over the Tiger.
‘Must have his brains in his arse,’ aies Porta, as he sees the belly of the T-34 tower up in front of his observation slits. ‘He can’t come with us.’
‘Hell, he’s smashing my gun,’ I shout, fearfully, as the muzzle of the gun is torn from its mounting with a scream of tortured metal.
‘Goodbye gun,’ says Porta, pumping the accelerator pedal as the engine begins to cough for air. With a thunderous roar the Tiger seems to spring forward with such force that the T-34 topples backwards. We crash our way onwards and over it. It seems as if the very earth explodes. A blanket of flame covers us, and blast sucks all the air from our lungs. Cables, radio, all the instruments, ammunition, fly around our ears. Oil and petrol spurt from countless broken leads. The interior of the tank looks as if ten wild devils have passed through it.
I am stuck fast between the clinometer stand and the gun sled. Tiny breaks me loose with a lifting bar. I lie on the deck, shaking with terror, while my heart does its best to pound its way out of my chest. The Old Man throws a fire extinguisher down to me. All five of us begin to pour foam on the dancing flames, which waltz like lightning round the firing room.
‘Back,’ orders the Old Man.
‘Then it’s out an’ push, Old Man,’ answers Porta, laconically. ‘The engine’s in a thousand bits.’
‘How’s the radio?’ asks the Old Man.
‘Scrap,’ croaks Heide, pitifully.
‘Dammit,’ curses the Old Man. ‘Can you fix the engine so we can hobble back?’
‘Maybe I could,’ answers Porta, nose in the air, ‘but I’m not allowed to according to the Collected Appendices to Army Regulations: Major repairs to Tiger tanks must only be carried out by Army technical staff.’
‘We can’t stay here,’ the Old Man explodes.
‘No? It’s pretty peaceful round ’ere now all them war-mad bleeders’ve gone rushin’ off elsewhere to bite one another’s bleedin’ throats out,’ grins Tiny, looking round him with an air of satisfaction.
‘Listen here, Porta,’ the Old Man says, with an attempt at being diplomatic. ‘You can repair that engine, if you want to. It’s not that badly damaged. We’ll help you, an’ hand you down what you need to get that shit back together.’
‘I’m sticking to Army Regulations,’ says Porta, stubbornly, making sure that he gets his share of a passing sausage. ‘All I’m allowed to do is change plugs an’ oil, but this is the lot. The cylinder head! Obergefreiter by the grace of God, Joseph Porta, won’t touch that! That’s what all the clever sods’ve said he mustn’t!’
‘It’s also forbidden to leave the Tiger here,’ shouts the Old Man, desperately.
‘Blow it up then,’ suggests Porta. ‘That’s what they put explosive charges in the turret for.’
‘You know damn well,’ rages the Old Man, turkey-red in the face, ‘that that vehicle mustn’t be demolished without it’s completely wrecked, and can’t be towed back.’
Porta stretches himself out at full length, and lights a cigarette thoughtfully, disregarding the fire risk from the petrol which is streaming out all over the place.
‘Wake me when a tow turns up that can give us a lift.’
‘Shut that piss,’ shouts the Old Man, infuriated. ‘Let’s get lookin’ at that engine! Outside everybody!’
Porta saunters carelessly once round the waggon, singing softly:
Es geht alies vorüber
es geht alies vorbei. . . .
A little later he sits down in the grass alongside the Old Man.
‘Half one track’ll have got to Moscow by now. Two of the four rollers are blown all to hell, and the gun’s dangling like a limp, ministerial prick.’
‘Damn,’ the Old Man swears, viciously. ‘They’ll throw us to a courtmartial, if we demolish her. One of you’ll have to go back and requisition a rescue vehicle.’
‘I’ve got an idea,’ cackles Tiny, putting up his hand. ‘Even a bleedin’ psycho sod couldn’t ’ave thought of anythin’ better!’
‘Holy Mother of God,’ groans Porta. ‘I know you and your ideas! They always end up with us getting knocked on the head!’
‘Spit it out,’ demands the Old Man, willing to accept any plan, however mad, to get us out of the spot we’re in.
‘Over there back of that line of big oaks,’ explains Tiny, ‘there’s a lame T-34/85. The four mateys sittin’ fartin’ inside it, keep peerin’ out of the viewin’ slits like Indian chiefs on the warpath. What about nippin’ over to ’em, an’ suggestin’ they knock our bleeder for six. Then there won’t be nobody as can say we’ve abandoned it needless like!’
‘I don’t want to know it,’ protests Heide, shocked. ‘The worst kind of sabotage is what that is. It will cost you your head. You must be quite crazy!’
‘You are dumb as a pile o’ cowshit, Julius,’ jeers Tiny. ‘If your Führer’s got as little up there as you ’ave, we’re ’eadin straight for the world’s biggest defeat.’
‘Not so crazy,’ says the Old Man, thoughtfully, looking at the T-34, from which a leather-clad head peeps up cautiously over the edge of the turret.
‘We just ’ave to wave a white flag,’ says Tiny, optimistically, ‘so they can get it into their nuts we only want to ’ave a little chat with ’em.’
‘On the surface this sounds completely mad,’ says the Old Man, ‘but it’s a chance. Those four over there get a pretty medal for smashing up a Tiger, and we get out of a court-martial. But why the hell haven’t they shot at us already?’
‘Clear as mud,’ grins Porta, broadly. ‘Their tracks’ve gone, just like ours have. They can’t move. They also can’t see our guns buggered up from where they are. If they miss with the first shell, they think we’ll blow ‘em to bits and pieces before they’ve had time to scratch their backsides.’
‘To hell with everything,’ the Old Man gives in. ‘Let’s give it a try!’
Tiny waves the white signal flag enthusiastically. A little later a white flag comes slowly into view from the turret hatch of the T-34.
‘Well I’ll be damned,’ cries the Old Man, in amazement. ‘They’re playing along with us!’
‘I feel as ashamed as a Jew-boy’s dog that’s had his nose up an Arab’s backside,’ protests Julius Heide, furiously. ‘You don’t talk to untermensch. You destroy them. The Führer himself has said it.’
‘Go an’ ’ave a good cry, be’ind a tree somewhere,’ advises Tiny contemptuously, waving his signal flag even more enthusiastically.
‘Let me have the rest of the cognac and sausage,’ demands Porta, practically. ‘I’ll go over and place the case before ’em. Keep waving that white flag. And no shit tricks from you, Julius. I’m not interested in getting my balls shot off.’ With the cognac and sausage under his arm, he begins to walk towards the green T-34, which is half hidden behind the oaks.
A tall, thin sergeant, with a large, wildly-flowing red beard jumps down from the T-34, and approaches Porta cautiously. The sun sparkles on a pair of binoculars which are aimed at us, and sends flashes back from our own glasses, which are aimed at the T-34. Porta and red-beard meet around the half-way mark. With healthy, but restrained, suspicion they hesitantly offer one another their hands. Porta offers the cognac bottle and cuts off a piece of sausage. The sergeant pulls a bottle of vodka from his pocket. They exchange bottles. After several hearty swigs they have reached the stage of embracing and cheek-kissing. They take a couple mo
re pulls at the bottles and come, laughing loudly, over towards us.
‘Peace is now a fact,’ grins Tiny, triumphantly. ‘Up my arse with the rest o’ this bleedin’ world war.’
‘Sergeant Gregorij Poleshajew, 43rd. Guards Armoured Brigade,’ Porta introduces him with a wide-sweep of his arm, almost falling over in the process.
Cautiously, we greet the sergeant, who looks like the very devil himself with his bushy whiskers and black eyes.
Porta explains the workings of the Tiger, hiding nothing. Everything is examined. The wild-looking Russian shows unconcealed admiration for the equipment, and says he is only sorry Germans are not Russians.
‘With a machine like this we would have reached both Paris and London by now,’ he declares.
A little later the three other members of the crew of the T-34 come across to us. We sit down in the burnt-off stubble of maize, share what we have, and discuss peacetime and women. Porta explains to them how caviare omelettes and oysters in champagne should be prepared.
We leave them at dawn, after watching, in cover of the T-34, the Tiger being shot to pieces. They have to put five shells into it before it begins to burn. After that we help them to repair the T-34’s broken tracks.
‘Dassvidánja,’ they shout, as we disappear between the trees.
When we are some way into the forest we hear the Otto engine begin to roar. The noise of it disappears gradually in the distance.
‘Let’s hope they don’t run into some mad German sod an’ get their arseholes shot off for ’em,’ says Porta.
We sit down on a fallen tree trunk, and stare dreamily out across a lake. Heide is surly, and refuses to talk to the rest of us.
THE END
Table of Contents
Cover
Title
Copyright
Dedication
About the author
By Sven Hassel
1 Obstacle race to the glasshouse
2 Infantry attack
3 Fire controller
4 OGPU Prison
5 War debris
6 Eighty per cent
7 The boxing match