by Leo Kessler
“You’ve got your weapons, haven’t you?” the Golden Pheasant said. “We old fellows stuck it out for four years in France, you lot shit your pants after four days in the line. Besides, there’s no room for you on the sleds.” He was suddenly hesitant and avoided von Dodenburg’s eyes momentarily. “They’re full of top secret papers meant for the eyes of Gauleiter Koch4 himself – and then there’s my staff…”
“Your whores, you mean!” the Vulture’s voice cut in. He was standing at the door, supported by Schwarz, his Schmeisser slung around his neck.
The Golden Pheasant flushed a brick red. “What the devil do you mean? My Christ, man, do you know who you’re talking to!” He snapped his thick, sausage-like fingers beside himself with rage. “I could break you just like that!”
The Vulture sighed. “Schwarz,” he said softly. “Go and check those sleds.”
“Sir!” Schwarz hurried out, slinging his Schmeisser as he went.
“You can’t do that,” the Golden Pheasant cried in alarm. “Those papers are meant for one person only – Gauleiter Koch. This’ll mean a punishment battalion for you, Major. Good God, man, have you gone mad? Don’t you realise what you’re…”
He stopped short, his mouth gaping, as Schwarz walked slowly through the door and dropped a golden goblet on the floor.
“Important papers – meant for Gauleiter Koch,” the Vulture said slowly.
“Every sled is loaded with the same sort of stuff,” Schwarz said. “He must have looted half the Crimea.” The Golden Pheasant blustered. “It’s not mine. It’s intended for Koch. I have an express order from him.” He turned and began to fumble furiously in his brief case. “Let me show it to you…”
“Shoot the fat bastard,” the Vulture said, as if he were ordering a waiter to bring him a bowl of soup.
“What!”
The Golden Pheasant swung round in alarm as Schwarz pressed the trigger of his Schmeisser. His fat body spun from side to side as each slug hit him, until Schwarz’s magazine was empty and the Golden Pheasant, the blood streaming from a dozen wounds, was allowed to sink slowly to the ground, dead. It was all over in a matter of minutes. A couple of other Golden Pheasants tried to prevent them unloading the sleds, pistols in their hands, their screaming whores running after them, trying to restrain them. But they were mown down in cold blood and they died among the gleaming loot being tossed so carelessly into the snow.
The rattle of the Russian tanks was getting ever closer. The drunken whores were grabbing what they could of the loot and running half-naked into the forest. The Hiwis gunned their engines anxiously, continually casting glances over their shoulders; they well knew what their fate would be if they were caught by their fellow countrymen. With renewed energy, born of fear and hope, the survivors finished unloading the sleds. “Mount up,” the Vulture shouted shrilly and supported by Schwarz and von Dodenburg, he hobbled towards the lead sled.
“I’ll take the rear sled, sir,” Schulze shouted from the door of the central hut, machine pistol clenched in his fist.
“Good, but don’t leave it too late!”
“Don’t worry, I’ll be there,” Schulze replied. The men were scrambling for places in the sleds. The first Soviet flare hushed in a wide arc over their heads, bathing their emaciated faces in a blood-red hue. A moment later the first T-34 nosed its way through the firs, its long 75mm swinging from side to side. A panic broke out among the Hiwis. The Vulture’s driver let out the clutch with a jerk. The sled shot forward, throwing them against the support post. Gibbering like an idiot, the Hiwi crashed home second gear and shot the three-ton sled round the bend as if he were driving a toy car at some autumn village fair. Behind them the other Hiwis followed suit. As they cleared the glade, the first shell crashed into the central hut, sending its wooden walls flying like matchwood.
The Vulture looked back at the burning encampment, the flames making a death’s head of his exhausted face. Yet his indomitable will still blazed in his eyes. “We shall be back,” he said slowly, looking at the beaten faces of the handful of men that was all that remained of his Battalion. “Believe me, von Dodenburg, the Russians haven’t seen the last of us yet. Wotan will return.” He broke off suddenly. His head slumped on the young Captain’s shoulder and he fell into an exhausted sleep, his task finally completed.
Von Dodenburg looked down at his CO’s ugly face and felt a new kind of affection for him. The Vulture, he realized, was the supreme realist. Somehow or other they would return. One day a new SS Assault Storm Battalion would return to Russia and then the Ivans would really learn to fear the name of Wotan.
In the rear sled, Schulze nestled closer to the honey blonde’s plump little naked body, hidden under a great fur rug, while her hand was already beginning to take stock of his equipment. Her Golden Pheasant was dead and she’d got herself a new chicken for the plucking. Schulze took a last bite out of the piece of pork he had snatched from Golden Pheasant’s table and flung the remainder over his shoulder. “Whee!” he yelled crazily as the shit-scared Hiwi driver took off into space from the summit of a small hill. The sled hit the snow again with a spine-chilling crash. It tore up the trail at a hundred kilometres an hour, the wind cutting their excited burning faces, as the girl’s hand began to move more rapidly under the rug.
Sergeant Schulze raised himself on one elbow and screamed at the Russian tanks behind them. “Retreat is a thousand times better than advances, mates! The grub’s better and the dames are randier!” Just before he spread her legs preparatory to burying himself in her eager body, he yelled in parting, “Ponemayu?”
Notes
1. Good, but in this sense “okay?”
2. Contemptuous army term for high-grade Party officials who had taken over much of the rear echelon administration in Occupied Russia.
3. German Army auxiliaries recruited locally in Russia.
4. The chief administrator in Occupied Russia and Gauleiter of East Prussia.
Also by Leo Kessler and available as an ebook in The Dogs of War Series
No. 1 Forced March
No. 2 The Devil’s Shield
No. 3 SS Panzer Battalion
No. 4 Claws of Steel
No. 5 Blood Mountain
No. 7 Blood and Ice
No. 8 The Sand Panthers
Copyright
First published in 1978
Reprinted in 2006
Spellmount is an imprint of
The History Press
The Mill, Brimscombe Port
Stroud, Gloucestershire, GL5 2QG
www.thehistorypress.co.uk
This ebook edition first published in 2012
All rights reserved
© Charles Whiting, 1978, 2006, 2012
The right of Charles Whiting, to be identified as the Author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyrights, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.
EPUB ISBN 978 0 7524 8890 5
MOBI ISBN 978 0 7524 8889 9
Original typesetting by The History Press
Ebook compilation by RefineCatch Limited, Bungay, Suffolk
ale(100%); " class="sharethis-inline-share-buttons">share