by Sven Hassel
‘He must be a bloody fortune-teller,’ whispers Porta in amazement. ‘Can he know we’re here?’
‘I’ll come,’ laughs the girl and disappears into the maize. She goes over towards the four Russian BT-5s9 standing behind the maize-stalks by the sunflower thicket. If they had been painted yellow like ours you couldn’t have seen them.
Russia is all yellow at this time of the year. Even the people seem to take on a slightly yellowish tinge when September is past. Now the green of the tanks shows up strongly against all the yellow and brown.
‘They ought to paint their vehicles four times a year like we do,’ mumbles Porta. ‘Twice ain’t enough in combat conditions.’
‘They really ought to be painted every month,’ was Stege’s opinion. ‘January snow is quite different from December snow, and the powdery snow in November can’t be compared with the old February snow, and in March there are five different shades of white. So you can see that even in winter when white is white, it’s only worth painting vehicles once. When you get to spring, the green is changing almost every week. What good is it riding around in a happy spring green wagon in the middle of all that tired-out old summer green. A wagon like that stands out like a young bint in the middle of a crowd of old men. No, if we really understood how to camouflage ourselves we’d live longer. Just look at our uniforms! Grey-green! Apart from the dust on the roads where do you find that colour? And the boys from the other FPO shag around in their winter khaki well into the spring. Uniform colours are chosen by idiots sitting in offices.’
‘In the old days they all wore red and blue,’ explains Tiny, shaking his head.
‘That was to frighten the enemy,’ says Barcelona. ‘A line of men with fixed bayonets advancing side by side in scarlet uniforms was enough to frighten the shit out of the bravest. It was like a wave of blood sweeping forward.’
‘If there was anybody barmy enough to attack like that, I’d soon have this ol’ chatter box tuned in to lullaby music an’ make a nice row o’ scarlet corpses,’ grins Tiny mockingly.
‘Dope,’ sneers Barcelona contemptuously, ‘they didn’t have automatic weapons then, only muskets that had to be loaded again every time.’
‘Wot, no SMGs?10 asks Tiny unbelievingly. ‘Must’ve been a funny kind of war. Almost ‘armless. Didn’t they ’ave no mine-throwers nor mortars with jumpin’ jacks neither?’
‘Nah!’ answers Barcelona with a superior expression. ‘Nothing like that at all.’
‘Well, they’d ’ave a coupla naphtha bombs on ’and, I suppose, for if things got rough?’
‘Petrol wasn’t even discovered then,’ answers Barcelona.
‘Why the ’ell didn’t they stay at ‘ome? That wasn’t nothin’ to do with war, even if they did ’ave red jackets on. More like a bleedin’ demonstration, like what we ’ad before the war when we wanted more money and ’ad to fight the Schupos,11 who ’ad green ’elmets on special for the day. You could put ’em out on it dead easy by givin’ ’em one on top o’ the elmet so it come down over their bleedin’ ears. I’m dead good at ’ammerin’ Schupo lids down. Easy as scratchin’ your arse in a beer-bar.’
The Russian lieutenant is lying on his back in the grass with a maize-straw waggling in his mouth. He laughs with satisfaction. His summer tunic is unbuttoned. A ladybird moves busily across the yellow star on his Boudionovka.12 He has closed his eyes. Not until the Legionnaire’s shadow falls across him does he realize that he is in danger. Then he is dead. A last frightened bubbling comes from the slashed throat. The Legionnaire wipes his Moorish knife casually on the lieutenant’s summer tunic. We hurry past with the Panzerfausts13 over our shoulders. A smell of coffee comes from the Russian tank crew’s encampment.
‘Holy Moses!’ whispers Porta, eyes wide-open. ‘Coffee! Real coffee! These Communists’ve got every bloody thing! I am slowly beginning to like this: Workers of the world, unite!’ Porta loves coffee. He knows of nothing better. More than once he has jeopardized his life to get hold of coffee beans. The Old Man says Porta would sell the entire company for a pound of coffee. And he is probably not far from the truth. Porta is a coffee-maniac. Tiny, who is well in front of us with the heavy Panzerfaust nonchalantly under his arm, drops down suddenly into the maize and signals to us. Soundlessly we crawl forward to him. He points silently. A Russian tankman is sitting by a small fire, on which a large pot is steaming. Blissfully Porta inhales the penetrating coffee aroma. ‘Holy Guns!’ mumbles Julius Heide in a horrified tone. ‘Four BT-5s!’
‘Five,’ Porta corrects him. ‘There’s a KW-114 behind the stack, the command vehicle.’
‘Pissin’ arseholes,’ says Tiny ecstatically. ‘We’ll smash ’em with one great lovely bang.’ He pats the magnetic grenade and pushes it into the Panzerfaust. ‘This’ll shove their ball-bearin’s up into their throats, so they’ll never be able to shag a soldier’s mare no more. Bleedin’ traitors, wot doubts the final victory! If Ol’ Joe in the Kremlin knew what we was up to ’e’d be tackin’ medals on us!’
‘It is forbidden to wear Soviet decorations, remember,’ Heide instructs him coldly.
‘I ain’t got any yet, so wot’s the problem?’ replies Tiny drily and raises his Panzerfaust to the firing position.
‘Stop that,’ whispers the Old Man irritably. ‘Put down that pipe! Nobody fires until I give the order!’
From the tank soldiers bivouac comes the cheerful laughter of women and men.
‘D’you think they know there’s a war on?’ Porta asks, astonished. ‘They go on as if they were on their way to a Turkish whorehouse. They’ll have a stroke when we turn it on them.’
A woman’s voice cuts sharply through the general noise. A harsh, guttural commanding voice.
‘The prickless captain,’ Barcelona states, withdrawing ‘silent death’ from his pocket. ‘It’s mine. I’ll give it a last bang-up, before I strangle it.’
‘No, I’ll ’ave it,’ growls Tiny. ‘That bitch-captain’s gonna find out what kind of guests ’er country’s gettin’ now.’
‘If you could just keep your trap shut,’ whispers the Old Man sourly. ‘Let’s get closer. We’re a long way from the vehicles yet. All five boxes’ve got to go up in one go! Barcelona, you cover the foreground with the MG!15 Kill the lot! Not one reaches the bridge. If they blow it, it’s a court-martial for us. Everything hangs on that bridge. There’s at least a ton of explosive under it.’
‘What a lovely noise it’d make!’ Tiny dreams aloud. He loves everything that is loud and noisy. ‘Aton o’ HE! Fuckin’ arseholes! You could ’ear it all the way to Greenland. It’d make the lice on a’ Eskimo whore’s belly dance the can-can!’
Shortly after the Russian tank crews are called in and served a mess-tin of coffee.
‘If only to liberate that coffee, we’ve got to blow their candles out,’ gasps Porta nervously. ‘I only hope they don’t guzzle the bloody lot down ’em first.’
‘Nah, they wouldn’t be that nasty,’ Tiny comforts him. ‘They’ll leave us a drop. Wonder where they cornered it?’
‘They’re Guards,’ explains Heide, always well-informed. ‘They get special rations.’
‘How d’you know they’re bloody Guards?’ irritatedly from Porta.
‘Green summer tunics with silver shoulder straps,’ comes knowledgeably from Heide.
‘I can’t understand why you don’t know that. Haven’t you read May orders, in which you were told it was your duty to know the uniforms of the enemy?’
‘I usually wipe my arse on orders,’ sneers Porta. ‘They’re softer than corn-cobs.’
‘That’s sabotage!’ growls Heide, gruffly. ‘Wiping my arse?’ asks Porta with his supercilious street-boy grin.
‘You know what I mean, Obergefreiter Porta. It is my duty to report you to the NSFO.’16
‘I reckon it’s my duty to blow your bloody earholes through from side to side and get your brain moving,’ sneers Porta.
‘Come on,’ orders the Old Man and begins to cra
wl forward. The Russians are sitting in a circle, chewing at thick slices of bread, which they wash down with aromatic coffee.
The light is fading. Beyond the river, the sky is a rosy red. One of the Russians begins to play a balalaika. The others sing:
Long in his grave
Your father has slept.
In exile, in thralldom
In cold Siberia,
Your brother toils.
Under the nagajka’s17
Biting lash,
Chained hand and foot.
In Russia they have sung these sad songs for centuries. For as long as there have been prison camps in Siberia.
‘What a wicked bleedin’ song,’ mumbles Tiny and shrugs his shoulders as if chilled.
In the distance artillery thunders. We are old hands at the front, and can distinguish clearly the sound of air-bursts. It is the German heavy artillery at work now. It presages an attack. It’s not pleasant to be on the receiving end of those coal-boxes. We feel with the fellows from the other FPO. They’re curled up like hedgehogs behind a bit of an earthwork. Their only defence against death. We’ve been through it ourselves. We too are only soldiers. The human butcher’s-meat of the new age.
‘Muss i denn, muss i denn, zum Städtele hinaus!’ hums Tiny.
The light from the Russian tankmen’s fire throws a fantastic glow over the scene. There is nothing quite so spectral as the dark trunks of fir-trees seen by firelight.
‘Slip me a swig of poor man’s schnapps,’ requires Porta, and holds his hand out demandingly towards Barcelona, who passes him the big French water-bottle.
The gunfire intensifies. The sky flames violently in the distance. Both the Russians and we look to the north. It means death, mangling death, for both sides. Shells can’t tell the difference. ‘Forward, what the hell do you think you were born for?’ Engines drone. Tanks roll forward with infantry running alongside them. Every man of them is sick with fear. Irresponsible politicians have named them the backbone of the nation.
The advance speeds up. The tank has to pass a minefield. Nobody bothers about the grenadier running alongside hanging onto the towrope. He falls, is dragged, makes it to his feet again, shoots at a helmet sticking up over the lip of a trench.
This is war, friend. Kill some other mother’s son, before he can kill you, and you have won a prize in death’s lottery.
If you live through all the madness you will go home a hero, but don’t forget that nothing disappears so quickly from this earth as a hero. Two months after the war is over they’ll be laughing at you. I speak from experience. Never volunteer to be a hero. You’ll be disappointed with it.
Straight above our heads rocket batteries draw fiery trails. The Russians are listening now. Their nervousness infects us. Rockets fall far beyond the river. The summer-dry maize fields begin to burn. Apart from flame-throwers there is nothing we hate more than rockets. Porta says they are made of hair from the Devil’s tail.
‘Ready to march!’ announces a hard commanding Russian voice. A tall officer, no longer in his first youth, gives the command. He too is wearing one of the queer old-fashioned Boudionovkas with a blue cavalry star.
Tiny decides he will liberate that cap. The Legionnaire says it’s his. ‘Stop your nattering,’ snaps the Old Man.
I say nothing but I am quite decided that I am going to get the Boudionovka with the blue star. Everybody’s collecting them, because they’re on their way out in favour of flat-tops. I already own a Boudionovka with the green and black artillery star. The tall officer snaps out orders.
‘What’s he saying?’ asks the Old Man, who can’t – or won’t – understand Russian.
‘He says to get their fingers out and climb in the coffins,’ Porta translates loosely.
‘I bet ’e’s one o’ them trigger-’appy bastards, as don’t just shoot to ’ear the bang,’ says Tiny.
We crawl forward to a better firing position.
I lay the ‘stove-pipe’ on my shoulder and screen in on the nearest tank. Tiny lets out a sigh of anticipation. Porta, seemingly quite unmoved, chews on the butt of a liver sausage. Heide screws at his rocket. Every movement is as laid down in the HDV.18 He is a walking dummy stuffed with army regulations. He isn’t killing human beings with his magnetic rockets, but just dispersing unimportant concentrations of atoms in which he is personally uninterested. He’d cut any throat at all if ordered to. And if you reproached him for it he’d think you were out of your mind.
In his opinion orders should never be questioned or even wondered at. Ordered to march to the moon he would pack his kit as regimentally perfectly as a recruit, swing his gun over his left shoulder, draw eight weeks march rations, crack his heels together and turn smartly to the left. Erect as if he had a broomstick stuck up his back he would march in the direction of the moon and keep on marching, either until he dropped dead or somebody gave a counter-order. Unfortunately for normal people there are a lot of NCOs like Julius Heide around. You find them everywhere. You cant get away from them. But Porta says these regulations robots are indispensable. Without them things would go all to pot. Without a bit of the ‘fear of God’ behind them, people got superiority complexes.
‘Mount!’ commands the Russian officer. With practiced movements the tank crews swing themselves up into their vehicles.
‘Start up!’
With a howl the diesel engines start. Soon they are turning over smoothly, bubbling in anticipation of movement. Only one of them continues racing madly.
A tall powerful woman, in a green uniform with captain’s badges, shouts angrily at the commander of the leading tank.
Immediately the driver lifts his foot from the accelerator pedal.
‘Ready!’ orders the Old Man.
All five Panzerfausts are aimed.
‘Come death, come—,’ whispers the Legionnaire between his teeth.
‘Dawai, dawai,’19 the commander of the lead tank chases the laggards collecting the cooking utensils. Soldiers always have difficulty tearing themselves away from a camp. In a good camp one forgets the war.
‘Where’s Oleg?’ the girl-sergeant cries suddenly, and looks around fearfully.
‘Yes, where’s Oleg?’ repeats the commander of the third tank.
‘Time to get into ’em,’ says Porta.
‘Fire!’ commands the Old Man, chopping his arm forward.
The commanders in their turrets turn towards us as if at an order.
The bazookas roar simultaneously. Five fiery-tailed comets speed towards their goal. A deafening explosion cuts through the woods. All five shots are hits. At thirty metres the Panzerfaust is destructive to all types of tank. Glowing splinters of steel hurtle between the trees. The men in the turrets are thrown high into the air. They seem to balance momentarily, supported on the flame of the explosion. Then their bodies shatter in the force of the blast.
A whole turret with its long gun-barrel whirls above the trees. Burning oil spurts many yards away.
The girl-sergeant stumbles about in a sea of fire. The young soldier who had made the coffee runs headless through the trees. We used to wonder at the distance a human being can run without a head. We don’t anymore. When you’ve experienced war for a while you don’t wonder at anything. The other day we saw a man run without legs. His screams rasped at your nerves. He was a German Oberleutnant, an older reservist. It was comical, seeing him run without legs. Afterwards we discussed the phenomenon. Tiny thought people might be like lice which can still run even after you’ve nipped their legs off.
Heide, that irritating know-all, gave us a long lecture on the nervous system, which it seems becomes particularly strong under the influence of the National Socialist health diet. A Soviet untermensch, not to mention a Jew, would never be able to run without legs like that German Oberleutnant. Now we were all hoping we would run across a Russian who could run just as fast as a German without legs. That’d shut Julius up. A Russian running along without a head didn’t move him at all. A chicken
could do that!
We storm forward, between the burning sunflowers, shooting at everything that moves. A little white dog dashes about barking madly. Barcelona catches it. It struggles madly and snaps a piece out of his nose. He throws it from him with a howl of pain, into a pool of petrol where it burns like a torch.
Porta considers Barcelona much handsomer without a nose. Heide clamps it in place. Of course, he would have surgical clamps with him. It was in orders back in 1939. He’s had them with him ever since, in a shiny little metal box hidden in the field dressing pocket of his greatcoat. It’s a certainty that ten minutes after we’re back with the regiment he’ll have drawn replacements, and it’s just as certain that he has six metres of gauze bandage in his individual first-aid pack. Not a millimetre more or less.
We catch the woman captain alive. She goes for Stege like a hungry wolf. Porta trips her and she rolls like a ball. She tries to stab Tiny with a needle-sharp Caucasian dagger, but he kicks her on the knee and brings his gun down on the back of her neck. She isn’t finished yet. Comes back like a released spring and goes for the Old Man. Six subs speak at once.
She falls down, screaming. Blood spurts from her mouth. She’s a long time dying. We daren’t go near her. She could have a pistol on a Bowden cable up her arm. Bend over her to wipe the blood from her lips and give her a slug of vodka, and she could lift her arm and nail you through the kisser with a 6.5. We’ve seen it often enough. The Eastern Front is like no other. Even in death they still kill out here. Tiny takes a thoughtful bite out of a mutton sausage and swills it down with slivovitz. Porta slices at a goatsmilk cheese he has found in the Russian camp. I chew at a chunk of Russian army bread, dipping it from time to time in a large tin of sardines in oil I have found. The Old Man bites on a gherkin. We aren’t insensitive animals, we’re just hungry. So that we drive at the supplies the Russians have left us. I can’t remember when I last saw sardines in oil. I love them – and the best bread in the world is Russian army bread. The woman captain writhes in agony.
‘Shall I turn her off?’ asks Tiny and pulls his Nagan from the yellow leather holster which he has strapped to his thigh in real commissar style. ‘None of that,’ snarls the Old Man, ‘or I’ll turn you in for killing a prisoner!’
