Devil's Guard- The Complete Series Box Set

by Eric Meyer

  Our new HQ was in the only comfortable building in Podvirky. It had formerly belonged to the mayor who probably had intervened to stop its destruction. Von Meusebach had established his new quarters in the upstairs rooms, downstairs was the Regimental offices. Outside, near where his black Mercedes car waited, a group of Hiwis were working to lay a hard bed of broken stone and boiler ash to make a hard stand to keep it out of the mud. Another Hiwi was scrubbing at the mud and filth that coated the Mercedes as well as everything else in this theatre of war. I went into what had been the dining room where a map was pinned to the wall. The other officers were already waiting.

  “Ah, Hoffman, you decided to give us the benefit of your presence.”

  “Sir.”

  He squinted at my uniform, evidently considering whether to find fault, but as his other officers were no better dressed, in some cases worse, he kept quiet. He had a long stick that looked like a billiard cue and he used it to point at the large-scale map of the local area.

  “Our patrol area is from here to here,” he pointed at Podvirky and at the next village along the line, about ten kilometres away. “We will be conducting a patrol each night, Hoffman, your platoon can begin tonight. Remember, I intend to run a tight ship, that means I want you and your men looking like soldiers at all times, on or off duty. A smart regiment is an efficient regiment, understood?”

  We all nodded like puppets. He looked at Hauptsturmfuhrer Glasser’s boots. They were a pair of brown leather paratrooper’s jump boots.

  “Those boots, Glasser. They’re not regulation, are they? Why are you not wearing regulation SS jackboots?”

  “It’s the Russian winter, Sir, mine fell to pieces and these are much better than the new ones that are like cardboard, they just fall apart.”

  “I don’t want to hear excuses about our equipment, Glasser. Get yourself regulation boots!”

  We all envied Glasser his warm, practical boots. He’d soon notice a difference going back to wearing uncomfortable jackboots. Ours were perpetually wet and failed dismally to keep our feet warm.

  “Yes, Sir.”

  “Hoffman, I want a written report on my desk in the morning.”

  “A report of what, Sir?”

  “Your patrol of course. I want you to account for every hour, what happens, what doesn’t happen. By nine o’clock, clear?”

  “Yes, Sir.”

  “Very well. I shall be dining in Kharkov this evening, if anything requires my attention, you can send a dispatch rider to find me.”

  Muller coughed discreetly.

  “Well, Muller?”

  “We don’t have a dispatch rider, Sir, he was killed and his motorcycle destroyed by a Russian mortar shell.”

  Von Meusebach sighed theatrically. “In that case find another motorcycle and detail a man to ride it, deal with it.” He checked his watch. “I need to get changed for the evening, dismissed.”

  We started to walk out. Von Meusebach called out to me. “Hoffman?”

  “Sir?”

  “When you bring your report in the morning, I’ll inspect your platoon. Make sure they look smart, not like a band of partisans. That’s all.”

  I had to stand outside and take a few deep breaths to contain my anger. He obviously thought he was on the parade ground at Lichterfelde, our SS training barracks in Berlin. He was in for a rude shock when the Soviets attacked. Mundt was waiting for me nearby, he took me to the building they’d found, one of the squalid wooden isbas, the shacks that the peasants lived in all across the Soviet Union. This one was slightly larger than some. Apparently it had once been used as the local inn. It had only one large room for cooking, eating and sleeping, just like our quarters in the city.

  “There’s no booze left,” Mundt smiled, “but otherwise it’s not too bad. The roof wasn’t badly damaged and it’s dry enough for us to sleep in.”

  “We’re due to go out on patrol tonight, Willy, so you’d better tell the men to get some rest. The new CO wants to inspect the platoon too, at nine o’clock tomorrow morning, he’s a stickler for smartness.”

  The men looked at me with expressions of alarm.

  “He’s deadly serious, you’ll need to be clean shaven and best uniforms.”

  There was a chorus of moans.

  “Obersturmfuhrer, we haven’t had much sleep for two nights, it’s fucking ridiculous,” Wesserman snapped. “Why is he doing this to us?”

  “It must be the war, Schutze Wesserman, I can’t think of any other reason.”

  The others laughed at his misery.

  “I suggest we all try and grab a couple of hours sleep, we’ve been on duty for a long stretch. If we don’t keep alert we’ll be easy meat for the partisans.”

  That sobered them up. They laid out their gear and settled down to get some rest. I tried to do the same, but I didn’t sleep, my brain was still racing after our journey into the salient.

  Hauptsturmfuhrer Glasser was waiting for us when we reported to begin our patrol. He’d been the second in command until von Meusebach arrived and had hoped to make the position permanent, like Muller he was disappointed at the arrival of the Berlin lawyer.

  “You can see the railway line one hundred metres to the north, Hoffman. Take your men and patrol to the west, you should reach Lyubotin, there is a small station there. Make sure the station is clear of the enemy and then get back, it should take you about six hours, I’ll expect you back here before dawn.”

  “Is there much partisan activity in the area?” I asked him.

  “You’ve been away on a recon mission so you wouldn’t know, Hoffman. The night before last two platoons of regular infantry were wiped out three kilometres west of here, that’s why we were brought in. Does that answer your question?”

  At ten o’clock we marched away and reached the railway line, then we turned to follow it to the west. It was very dark, the moon hidden behind thick clouds.

  “Make sure your machine pistols are ready to fire and keep them pointed away from the rest of us, I don’t want any accidents,” Mundt shouted.

  “Scharfuhrer, try and keep it a bit quiet, if there are partisans around it might be best if they didn’t hear us coming.”

  “Sorry, Sir.”

  The men took the hint and we walked on in relative silence. I was thinking about Irina, mourning the fact that I’d missed out on having a pleasant evening with her as well as a tumble in her bed. I smiled inwardly. In view of what I now knew if she had a tumble with anyone it would not be a man. We’d travelled about five kilometres and I must have been on the verge of falling asleep. I flinched, as a hand touched my shoulder, it was Mundt.

  “Be quiet, I heard something.”

  I was instantly still. The wind was coming from the west, which is why Mundt had heard them before they realised we were in the area. I whispered to the men to get off the line, we’d been walking along the sleepers to make the going easier. We melted into the scrub at the south side of the track and crept forward. It was heavy going, the ground was soaking wet and I could hear my jackboots squelching as I walked. I prayed that whoever was up ahead couldn’t hear the noise. Their voices started to reach us, men murmuring quietly in the unfamiliar cadences of the Russian language. Partisans, it couldn’t be anything else.

  “Scharfuhrer, pass the word to the men,” I whispered. “If they use grenades keep them away from the line, we don’t want to do the partisans work for them. As soon as we get nearer we’ll drop to a crawl. No one is to shoot until I do and watch out for sentries, they’re sure to have them posted.”

  He passed the word along to the men and we crept nearer, then I motioned with my arm and we dropped down onto the muddy ground. I was conscious of the wet mud, soaking through my uniform to my underwear. Stupid thought, I told myself, concentrate on the job in hand, these people would be watching for us. It was sheer luck that put the wind in the right direction for us to hear them first. I heard faint noises, someone was digging, a shovel pushing into the ground and t
hrowing the mud to one side. Then I saw the first one, a sentry, he was sitting on the steel line, staring all around him, occasionally he darted a look up the railway line towards us, but failed to see us low on the ground in the darkness. The other men were about ten metres further behind him and were digging, presumably burying a mine under the line. I had no choice as I was at the front. I took out my combat knife and turned to Mundt, who was behind me. He saw the knife and nodded, then I started to crawl forward, nearer and nearer, each time the sentry turned to look away I crept nearer until I was within four metres from him. It seemed incredible that he hadn’t seen me, but it would be his last error of judgement. He looked away from me again and I rose swiftly and ran the four steps towards him, he heard me coming and whipped around but I launched myself at him, aiming at his head I clamped one hand around his mouth and with the other, slashed across his windpipe. He struggled for a few moments then slumped. I lowered him gently to the ground and crouched low, waiting for the others to come up. I looked along the line, a short distance away the group was huddled around a hole in the ground, muttering quietly. I started as something touched my leg, but it was Mundt, alerting me that the men had come up. He pointed to his machine pistol and I nodded, feeling on my back for my own MP38 and pulling it to my front. We were ready, I looked at Mundt, and he inclined his head slightly. I jumped up and ran, my men either side of me. We got five metres nearer before they suddenly looked up and grabbed for their weapons. It was too late, I pressed the trigger and sent a stream of bullets into the partisans. I counted ten of them. Only one thing mattered and that was to kill them fast before they had a chance to start shooting back at us. Two men went down and the rest of my platoon opened fire, it was devastating, streams of 9mm bullets pouring into the group, knocking them to the ground. Within seconds they were all down, dead or wounded, but as the shooting died away we distinctly heard the sound of footsteps, someone was running, knocking the grass and scrub aside as he rushed through the night, seeking safety from our murderous gunfire.

  “Mundt, Bauer, come with me, the rest of you check the area for any more of them and dismantle their explosives.”

  I ran in the direction of the footsteps, the other two followed. The route took us onto a path of some kind, drier than the swampy ground that surround the railway line, the going was a lot easier and we hurtled along, trying to close the gap. Fortunately he was making so much noise that it was not difficult to follow the fleeing partisan, then we saw him, the moon appeared from behind a cloud, lighting up the scene. He was about fifty metres in front of us, we surged forward, encouraged by sight of our target. Someone behind me fired a burst from a machine pistol, it missed the partisan but he swerved off the path and started to flounder across the soft ground. It was a fatal mistake, we quickly came parallel to him and the three of us fired on full automatic, he went down in full flight, his body rolled and tumbled to land in a muddy puddle. We went across to inspect it and make sure he was dead, but we were in for a shock, it wasn’t a he, it was a she. A young woman of about eighteen years old, attractive too, I reflected that she should have been in school or university, not planting bombs on an obscure Ukrainian railway line in the dead of night.

  “Silly bitch,” Bauer said. “What a fucking waste, a girl like that.”

  “She was defending her homeland, Stefan, wouldn’t you if Germany was invaded?” I said quietly.

  “We all would, Obersturmfuhrer,” Mundt said. “But we wouldn’t send our wives and girlfriends to do it, neither is our homeland a shithouse like this one.”

  I shrugged. “They just think differently to us.”

  One of them muttered, “Fucking barbarians.” I thought it was Bauer but it was too dark to tell.

  We walked back to where my men were carefully pulling out the explosives from the hole dug by the partisans under the line. We’d been lucky, they were almost finished, another thirty minutes and they’d have completed their work and vanished into the night. The bodies of the partisans were lying like discarded sacks. My men worked as if they didn’t exist, they were forgotten already. Voss was pulling out the last of the explosives.

  “That’s about all of it, they hadn’t set the fuse so it was quite an easy job. We’ll take the explosives with us?”

  I nodded. “We don’t want to leave them for the locals to try again.”

  “I doubt that they’re short of supplies,” Voss said. “They seem to have plenty of everything.”

  I thought of the tens of thousands of troops, the hundreds of T34s in that tiny area of the Kursk salient and mentally compared the image of our hastily thrown together company of captured Soviet tanks. There was a conclusion to be drawn there, but not a comfortable one. The men had no such reservations.

  “So how come they seem to have so much equipment and we’re always running short?” Wesserman asked plaintively. “Look at their clothes, Christ, they’ve got padded jackets and trousers, fur caps.”

  “We haven’t seen the Soviets using captured German armour or vehicles against us either,” Voss added. “They don’t need our captured soldiers to fight for them either, someone said that the Sixth Army at Stalingrad was let down because we had so many second rate Romanians and Italians fighting for us. Some said we even had Russian Hiwis in the front line.”

  “The Russians have no shortage of manpower, Wesserman, they have a huge population from which they can recruit more soldiers and workers for their factories to make tanks and guns, that’s why they always outnumber us.”

  “So why did we go to war with them, Sir?” he asked.

  “I have no idea,” I replied, it was a lame answer, but of course, the truth was that the German perception of the Soviet Union was of a severely weakened giant. Adolf Hitler had gone on record as saying about Communist Russia, ‘You only have to kick in the door and the whole rotten structure will come crashing down’. We’d certainly kicked in the door, but the structure was proving to be much stronger than our Fuhrer had anticipated.

  We returned to Podvirky and I wrote out my report in our squalid isba. At nine o’clock I handed my report to von Meusebach and he listened intently as I described our brush with the partisans.

  “Very well, Hoffman, we are expecting trains day and night along the line so it was lucky that you stumbled on them. I’ll have my orderly type up your report and you can sign it, then it will be sent on to Vinnitsa.”

  I was puzzled at such a complicated procedure for a routine report, but made no comment. He was a lawyer, after all.

  “Excuse me, Sir, I think we should consider only running the trains during the day, after dark it’s very risky. If they detonate those explosives as one of our trains goes over them the damage could block the line for several days.”

  “Don’t be stupid,” he snapped. “The trains have been ordered to run day and night, our army needs the new Tigers and Panzer Vs. You’ll just have to lose some sleep and double the patrols, that’ll put a stop to the partisans.”

  We had hundreds of kilometres of railway track running through partisan-held territory, operating trains at night would clearly be an invitation to disaster, but I said nothing. He wasn’t the kind of officer to invite suggestions from his junior officers. He glared at me, then snapped, “I’ll inspect your platoon now, Hoffman!”

  He stalked outside, pulling a face when his gleaming jackboots sunk into the mud. Mundt had the men lined up, they had made some small effort but they still looked a shambles, as did every other soldier on the Eastern Front. Except for von Meusebach.

  “You’re a disgrace to your uniforms, all of you, you look like pigs! Next time you report for duty, make sure you shave and wear clean uniforms. The SS needs men, not scarecrows, to fight battles. Remember, we have won every battle on every front. The German soldier will always win with a combination of personal pride and discipline. Don’t let it happen again!”

  I wondered what he called the Sixth Army’s huge defeat at Stalingrad. He stalked back into his HQ, I left th
e men muttering dark threats about what they’d like to do to von Meusebach and went to get some rest. The massive build-up of men, armour and equipment would mean a lot of sleepless nights for those of us already here. The arrival of the CO could only make a bad situation worse. Hopefully he’d have second thoughts when the shooting started.

  During the afternoon a train stopped with a line of flat cars, each one held a Tiger tank, the huge, battle winning behemoths slumbering on their steel transporters waiting to be unloaded and sent to the assembly areas. Crews and mechanics swarmed over them. In order to move them over the Soviet railways the wide tracks had to be replaced with narrower transport tracks. Once the tanks were unloaded the tracks had to be changed back to the wider tracks that were necessary for manoeuvre in battle. All afternoon the tanks were unloaded and crews prepared them to move, as they became battle ready they drove away to join their units. When darkness fell the engineers used overhead lights so that the maintenance crews could keep working. We returned to our billet in the semi-ruined isba.

  “I wish they’d turn those damned lights out,” Mundt said. “We’re sitting targets for every Soviet fighter bomber that happens in this direction.”

  It was normal to have a blackout at night and we were lit up for the whole of the Red Air Force to see, it sometimes seemed to me that our High Command were oblivious to the realities of the front. I slept uneasily that night, I doubted that anyone got much sleep around the railway yards of Podvirky with so much noise and so many lights blazing, but we were lucky, the Soviets did not attack. No artillery barrage came screaming in to smash the area to rubble, no Soviet fighter bombers came swooping down to destroy us with bombs, cannon and machine gun fire. Even the U-2 biplanes, the night bombers stayed away. The following morning we went out on patrol, but we returned without seeing any more of the partisans. I hadn’t expected to, they mostly operated after dark, but of course we had to keep up the patrols regardless, they would be watching for any kind of a gap in our defences. During the evening I managed to find a ration truck that was returning to Kharkov. The driver agreed to give us a lift into the city but wasn’t keen on bringing us back out to Podvirky at the end of the evening, until I bribed him with a ‘liberated’ Nagant M1895 revolver. The Nagant M1895 Revolver was a seven-shot revolver designed and produced by Belgian industrialist Leon Nagant for the Russian Empire. I’d taken it from a Soviet Major who had been captured during our battle to recapture the city of Kharkov. It had become a dead weight in my pack and I was glad to get rid of it, besides, either there’d be plenty more where that one came from or I’d be dead and it wouldn’t matter. There was no sign that the Russian war was going to end anytime soon and a night out in the city was beyond price, something that might not be repeatable for some or all of us in the forthcoming days, weeks and months.