Wheels of Terror

by Sven Hassel

  ‘Don’t try cheating Tiny for what he came for. Have I bought you or not? I only ask!’

  He banged up the stairs with the two shouting women.

  ‘Shut up, girls! I only want my rights!’

  He kicked open the door of the first room he saw, but Porta was lying there with his black-haired beauty. In the next room Pluto and Stege were acting out an insane play with two loud-voiced girls.

  Tiny swore and tried his luck farther down the passage. Every room was engaged! He charged up to the second floor. The first room he burst into was used by a flak-gunner.

  ‘Out of my way, stupid swine,’ ordered Tiny. ‘A drawing-room soldier like you had better be off when decent people come to town.’

  The flak-gunner protested, but Tiny made short work of him. He flung the two kicking girls on to the broad bed, grabbed the gunner and sent him flying out of the door. His girl sat up in bed stark naked, staring at the two chaperones and Tiny who stood menacingly in the middle of the room. Then she curled over backwards with howls of laughter. That a customer had been torn away from her in the middle of love’s act was funny enough, but even funnier was the plight of the two chaperones.

  ‘Off with the rags,’ neighed Tiny gleefully and peeled off his trousers. He kept on his cap, tunic and boots.

  ‘What are you thinking of?’ one of the women began shouting. ‘I’ll—’

  The rest of the sentence disappeared in an angry terror-stricken cry. Tiny had peeled off her dress and slip and grabbed her by the ankle. Her mauve pants flew in an arc over his head. He threw himself at her and held on to the other two with his petrol-reeking iron fists. But love’s pleasures relaxed. Tiny’s attention and the flak-gunner’s girl managed to get away, but not very far before she was caught by a half-naked soldier and borne off in triumph to his room.

  On the floor underneath Porta and Pluto enthusiastically changed girls. When they were fed up with that they started playing dice for the girls.

  An infernal noise came from the reception-room where the waiting customers were making difficulties because there were only twelve girls for over a hundred soldiers.

  Hell was let loose that night. The worst off were the two chaperones subjected to the pleasure-drunk Tiny. He grunted and roared with satisfaction. At length, when he found them a little monotonous, he burst into another room which was being used by an infantry soldier and his two girls. Without explanations he ordered them to change partners. They protested but everything turned out to Tiny’s satisfaction.

  In between his wild excesses he drank vodka. Porta and Pluto who had heard the noise came to his room with their girls. They competed in insane perversions. Porta’s pornographic magazines were left sadly behind.

  Porta dressed himself back to front in a black brassiere. Apart from that all he had on were his boots and top-hat.

  Tiny, more modest had removed only his trousers. He was dressed in his cap, tunic, belt with pistol and clumsy boots.

  Pluto tore around as he was born, apart from the black regimental sweat-rag round his neck.

  All the girls were stark naked. A few tried in terror to get away, but Tiny, roaring with laughter, caught them deftly and flung them on the sofa.

  Porta found a louse on his red-haired chicken breast. Proudly he displayed it before he generously let it drop on the stomach of a shrieking girl.

  Tramping boots thundered up and down the stairs and passages. Steel-helmeted field-gendarmes trooped into the room and, bellowing, ordered us to leave the establishment.

  ‘Do you mean us?’ Porta asked good-humouredly.

  The head-hunter sergeant who led the other two chain-dogs became red in the face and answered in a voice choking with fury.

  ‘Out! At once, or you’ll be charged with indecent behaviour in public buildings!’

  Pluto opened the window and relieved himself in a big arch. His big naked bottom smiled at the stiff Prussian field-gendarmes. They took themselves and their duties very seriously.

  The sergeant groped for his revolver-holster. As usual it was hung much too far back for him to reach without curling himself round like an acrobat.

  The Little Legionnaire popped up behind them and at once grasped the situation. He started intoning:

  ‘Allah-akbar! Vive la legion!’

  The next minute he was hanging like a panther round the neck of the field-gendarme, who fell heavily forward, taken completely by surprise.

  The other two were overcome, disarmed and sent flying down the stairs.

  Porta suggested it would be a good thing to get away. The girls immediately rallied round and helped to bundle the uniforms together.

  Porta, Pluto and the Little Legionnaire quickly made their getaway out of the window, and with the help of the girls got across the roofs to disappear among the neighbouring houses. Only Tiny refused to leave the battlefield. He preened himself like Napoleon after a big victory.

  ‘Let the whole Nazi army come,’ he cried and spat on the floor. ‘I’ll deal with the lot! I’m here to have tarts, all I can manage, and I’m having them in a quiet and decent manner!’

  Growling happily, he flung himself at one of the girls.

  The field-gendarme returned with reinforcements. Five men strong they clattered into the room and tackled Tiny in the broad bed. A fierce fight started and even the girls did not escape unmolested. One got such a big black eye she quite forgot she was a chaperone in the establishment. Getting hold of a chair she swung it into the face of one of the field-gendarmes. He immediately gave up the fight.

  With the girls on his side Tiny fought like a grizzly bear. The chain-dogs were flung down the stairs and greeted with jeering bravos from the spectators downstairs.

  Tiny now had what was in effect an attack of rabies which came out in a form of persecution-mania. He was convinced that even the naked girls were against him, so he bundled them down the stairs after the field-gendarmes.

  Then he started to barricade the door, using the smashed furniture.

  An officer from the chain-dogs asked what was going on. One of the naked chaperones sobbed:

  ‘Herr Wachtmeister, this is a disgrace to the establishment. We are respectable ladies, doing our duty for the ultimate victory, and now we are exposed to such treatment!’

  The other one, crouching in a coma at the bottom of the stairs, sniffled:

  ‘What will all the others think when this gets around? This immoral evening has shocked me deeply. But my friend who is Stabszahlmeister knows the Führer. I’ll see that he complains to him. My membership card is in good order too. I must ask you to deal properly with these fellows, Herr Wachtmeister.’

  ‘Who is up there?’ asked the Wachtmeister impatiently and adjusted the chin-strap on his steel-helmet.

  ‘The wild animal from St John’s Revelation,’ stuttered a very upset girl who sat rocking on the bottom step of the staircase with the remains of a pair of military underpants covering her knees.

  ‘Fetch the brute down,’ the Wachtmeister ordered his head-hunters. He stepped aside to get out of their way as they attacked Tiny’s fortress.

  A sergeant took courage and ordered the door to be broken down. He motioned with his pistol as if prepared to shoot his three colleagues. They heaved at the closed door, but it withstood their first assault.

  A savage growling came from Tiny behind the door. One of the field-gendarmes asked:

  ‘Is a human being in there?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ answered his colleague, ‘but I curse the day I joined the police!’

  The three strong men then put their shoulders to the door and it collapsed into Tiny’s boudoir.

  He was over them like a lion. ‘What the hell d’you mean by this?’ he roared. ‘Breaking in without knocking. Attack me when my trousers are down? I’ll see you get your desserts, you lousy mongrels!’

  There followed horrible bangs and crashes. Animal roars sounded through the whole brothel.

  One of the chaperones in despair
cried:

  ‘Throw him out of the window! Shoot him. Our reputation! Our reputation!’

  In the end Tiny had to give in to superior force, but even when he was unconscious the head-hunters furiously beat him with their truncheons. They chucked him down the stairs. The Wachtmeister gave him an expert kick.

  Three weeks passed before we saw Tiny again. Despite numerous beatings he had not given away the names of his companions. They only knew the men came from the 27th (Penal) Panzer Regiment. So the whole regiment was forbidden to visit any field-brothel for six months.

  Tiny’s sentence was three months mine-detection in noman’s-land. He took part in what we called the ‘ascension party’ for five days. After that nobody remembered to send him out again. Our battalion commander Colonel Hinka knew better than any court-martial how to tame a wild fellow like Tiny. He also understood the art of evading the clumsy, man-destroying edicts of the higher command.

  No. 5 Company taciturnly agreed to make a human being out of the monster that was Tiny. He really was a great big naïve child to whom fickle fate had given great strength in a too large body but had forgotten to add the brain.

  11

  The soldier in war is like a grain of sand on the beach. The waves wash over it – suck it out – throw it back to suck it out again – it disappears without anyone noticing it or caring about it.

  Close Combat in Tanks

  It started snowing, a porridgy ice-cold snow. Everything was turned into a bottomless mess.

  It was shortly before midnight. We were sitting half-asleep in our tanks. We had not had one moment’s peace for five days. Many of the regiment’s vehicles lay scattered – burnt out wrecks – across the enormous area where the fighting had taken place. But we kept getting new reserves of men and material in a steady stream so somewhere behind the lines we knew there must be a great concentration of supplies …

  We are getting unbelievably dirty with gun-powder, mud, oil and slime. Our eyes are red with lack of sleep. We have not seen any water apart from what we collect in muddy ditches. Food supplies have broken down and that bombastic nonsense – the iron-ration – is long since eaten. Porta is famished. The Little Legionnaire several times goes out in search of something to eat, but where we advance seems to be vacuum-cleaned of edibles. The only supplies behind the lines are ammunition, tanks and crews. As The Old Un says:

  ‘They seem to have found out they can earn money by trading the rations of the coolies.’

  Now somewhere in the town some distance from where we sit we hear the rattling of tank chains.

  ‘Hope it isn’t Ivan,’ says Pluto and stretches his neck to look into the rumbling darkness which surrounds us.

  Many of the tank crews are getting nervous. All ears strain to identify the goose-flesh pregnant chain-rattling coming from behind the silent buildings.

  The engines are revved. The gears growl. The dynamos sing.

  Nervousness is spreading. We cannot make out whose tanks they are. Porta who is a specialist in detecting tank noises is hanging half-way out of his driver’s hatch in the front of the tank. He listens tensely. Suddenly he pops back and categorically says:

  ‘It’s healthier to withdraw with clean noses. They’re Ivan’s tanks in there, T34s.’

  ‘Not on your nelly,’ comes from Pluto. ‘It’s our Mark VI tank. Sounds like an army of Dutchmen in clogs. Anybody can hear that. You need to gargle those cardboard ears!’

  ‘Why the hell are you so careful then?’ snaps Porta with a jeer. ‘But we’ll soon see, lads.’

  He bends back and looks up at me:

  ‘See that you have your pop gun ready!’

  ‘If that’s Ivan,’ says Tiny, ‘call me Adolf. It’s either the Mark IV or heavy artillery.’

  Colonel Hinka is coming down the long columns of tanks, talking quietly to the company commander.

  A little later von Barring reaches our tank and says to The Old Un who is sitting in the turret:

  ‘Unteroffizier Beier, make ready for a reconnaissance patrol. We have to find out who’s in front of us. If it’s Ivan, hell’s breaking loose. He’s liable to get behind us, the way we’re sitting.’

  ‘Yes, sir, No. 2 Section is ready to patrol.’ The Old Un took out his map and went on: ‘The section will move—’

  Then a few shells come whistling down and burst into a house.

  ‘Ivan – Ivan …’ the cry goes up.

  Everybody is rushing about. Machine-pistol and rifle-shots split the air. Panic spreads. Some jump out of their tanks. The fear of burning to death in a tank is deep-seated in all tank-crews.

  A pack of the dreaded T34 tanks is coming down the street rumbling menacingly, spreading fire from all guns. A couple of flame-throwers stick out their blood-red tongues at a flock of panzer grenadiers squeezed up against the walls of a house. At once they are changed into living torches.

  Several of our tanks are burning and illuminate the streets with their deep-red blaze. Explosions come from petrol-tanks and ammunition going up. Everywhere is chaos.

  Tanks collide in their attempt to escape. Nobody knows who is friend or enemy.

  Two Russian tanks smash together with a rain of sparks. They fire simultaneously and in a second are swallowed by flames. The crew of one appears from the turret, but a burst from a machine-gun mows them down. They grill there, hanging half-out of the red-hot hull.

  Four 10.5-cm. field-guns start ragged firing directly at the T34s. Red and white balls of fire fly skywards. The Russian tank-guns blaze incessantly. The whole battle is completely without plan or direction. All leadership has ceased.

  Several of our tanks firing furiously with all guns swing out and seek desperately for shelter.

  Tiny, our loader, is standing with a couple of tank-shells under each arm and bellows:

  ‘Fire, you fool, fire!’

  I bid him shut up and take care of his own job.

  ‘Muck-heap,’ says Tiny.

  Porta sitting at the steering-rods grins.

  ‘You’re trembling round the gob, what, lads? Well, that’s how it is when you don’t believe Porta. Lovely tanks, T34s, eh?’

  He backs the tank into a wall which collapses on top of us in a cloud of dust. Quickly he gets the huge tank free, makes full speed ahead and crashes thunderously into a T34.

  I just manage to see part of its turret in my periscope before I fire. The fire from the muzzle and the shell-explosion merge at this short distance. The breech shoots back. A hot shell-casing rattles down to the bottom of the tank. Tiny flings high-explosive S-shells into the gun.

  The Old Un roars.

  ‘Back! Hell! Porta, you idiot, back! Another one is coming down the street. Turret at eleven. Got it? Fire, for God’s sake!’

  … I stared wildly through the periscope, but could see nothing but a river of tracers rushing through the street.

  ‘You imbecile cow, the turret’s at 9, not 11. Turn to 7 minus 36. Got it? Fire, man!’

  A shell whistled past the turret. And another. The next moment our 60-ton Tiger tank nearly overturned as Porta backed. Scarcely five inches from our bows a T34 trundled past. It swung round flinging water and mud sky-high, then slid a dozen yards, but Porta was just as quick as the Russian driver. His tank spun two or three times round on its axis with Porta sitting at the huge steering-rods grinning genially.

  I pressed the pedal. The turret swung round. The triangles met in the sighting mechanism. A shell sped out, and another. Then it seemed as if the tank capsized. Our ears were ringing and clanging with the din of steel meeting steel.

  Pluto was half-way out of his hatch, when it dawned on him that we’d been hit by a T34 at full speed. For a moment the Russian tank rocked in its tracks. Then the engine roared as the driver speeded it up to its full stretch. Like a ram running wild it bashed into our left flank. Our tank rose in a forty-five degree lurch.

  Porta was flung on top of Pluto, tearing out all the radio-wires in the fall. I was sent flying and landed
in Porta’s seat. Luckily I had my steel-helmet on. My head crashed with terrific force against the steering-rods. Only Tiny remained standing as if welded to the tank-floor.

  The Old Un hit his head on a steel edge and fell unconscious with blood spurting from a deep wound in the head.

  ‘Bastards, swine, bloody Stalin-droppings!’ shouted Tiny out of the hatch which in his fury he had opened.

  A couple of stray shells hissed past the turret and he hurriedly banged the hatch to. He shovelled shells out of the lockers till they lay in wild confusion on the deck of the turret. It did not seem to disturb him that the heavy 8-cm. shells time and time again landed on his feet. He slapped oil-saturated rags on The Old Un’s head, tore a piece off his shirt to bandage him, and then pushed him into an empty ammunition locker.

  ‘I’m the biggest and strongest here,’ roared Tiny. ‘I’ll take over command!’

  He pointed at me:

  ‘And you, you miserable pimp, all you have to do is fire. That’s why we were sent to Russia.’

  He stumbled over The Old Un’s protruding legs. It was a miracle that his head was not shattered as the gun-breech banged back. Speechless he glared at me, then full of rage burst out:

  ‘You little devil, you’ll kill your commander! What in flaming hell is the good of firing that pop-gun? I refuse to take command. I won’t be shot at!’

  Porta and Pluto collapsed with laughter at Tiny’s ranting. For a moment we forgot the deadly danger we were in. We were surrounded by confused masses of guns, tanks and infantry. The whole scene was lit by the furious waves of machine-gun bullets. Two 8.8-cm. flak-guns were in position a little way from us. They sent off shell after shell into the darkness. But the muzzle-flashes betrayed them and they were soon ground down by a T34.

  … This night is an apocalypse when everything is cleansed by the annihilating fire. The cry for medical orderlies from hundreds of wounded German and Russian soldiers is the accompaniment of the death-dance in the inferno of darkness.

  The only helpful thing is to press your nose to the dirt and flatten yourself to escape the whistling bullets.