by Sven Hassel
‘Retire,’ orders the Old Man with a taut expression on his face.
We begin to run back, but the patch-eyed Oberleutnant appears and fires on us with his submachine-gun. We decide to stay where we are.
‘Hold on, boys!’ shouts a voice from the bank. ‘The flamethrowers are on the way.’
‘I’ll ‘old on to ‘is bollocks for ‘im, if I ever get close enough,’ promises Tiny, and sprays the far side where the 20 mm gunner seems to be going mad.
But the flamethrowers do come. Flamethrowers and explosive charges. They shoot across the river on strange machines which seem to be a cross between battle pontoons and self-propelled sleds.
We follow them and storm the forward pill-boxes, where the Russians fight back more fiercely than we’ve ever experienced before. They’re komsomols from the industrial areas.
I’ve been given a sack of the new grenade type. The Pioneer-Leutnant warns me solemnly. ‘A little of that liquid on your hands and the flesh is gone. We tried it on a dog once and couldn’t believe our own eyes. Three somersaults and a long howl, and a skeleton was all that was left.’
I’m all alone with my sack. The others keep well away from me. Together with two pioneers I press forward towards the nearest pill-box. It’s one of the big ones with a lift in it.
The weapons dome rises up like a mole-hill and a snugnosed gun spews flame. The dome sinks back into the ground. When it appears again I throw two of the red cross grenades at it.
The heavy steel seems to melt away. We feel the fumes biting at our lungs and eyes, even though we are wearing the new Czech gasmasks. ‘I’m off!’ says one of the Pioneers laconically. ‘This is sheer insanity!’
‘Stay where you are,’ wheezes the other holding the nozzle of the flamethrower against his chest. ‘Don’t forget you’re a penal posting! They ought to have liquidated you in Germersheim, you lousy traitor! The Führer sent you here to tighten your ring. You’ll never see Moscow!’
I keep out of it. It’s none of my business if a busted Leutnant gets a punishment posting to Combat Pioneers. Far as I’m concerned they can liquidate him, or do what they like with him.
I run forward to the next shell hole, throw two red cross grenades and press myself down into the crater.
The pioneers catch up with me. One of them lifts his flamethrower and sends a long hissing burst of fire at the pill-box.
At the same time the former Leutnant vaults up out of the crater and runs towards the Russians with lifted arms.
‘Give him a grenade!’ howls the other.
‘Get fucked!’ I answer. ‘If he’s going to get killed it won’t be by me!’
‘Tovaritsch, tovaritsch, nicht schiessen,’ shouts the Pioneer desperately, only a few yards from the Russian position.
I will him to get away with it. If he comes back it will be to a horrible death in solitary at Germersheim. Not many people know what happens in Germersheim, but No. 5 Company was guard company there just after the French campaign. The chief of the Special Section, Oberfeldwebel Schön, wasn’t a good man to get across. He once came close to breaking Tiny’s back for throwing an oak desk at him. Tiny’s still a little crooked in the spine as a result of that comradely pat on the back. They called it that to avoid having to make a report to the Commandant of the prison. Oberstleutnant Ratcliffe. A more hated officer never lived. The permanent staff, the guard company and the prisoners were in complete agreement about that. In every other respect we weren’t. Germersheim was the scene of a merciless three-sided war, and of the three sides the guard company was best-off. No company stayed on duty there for more than three months. The permanent staff had it worst. They were life prisoners – with keys. None of them dared to move outside the prison alone, for fear of running across a former prisoner back in rank and using his leave to revisit the military prison.
Porta and I met a Leutnant once who had so many medal-ribbons he looked like a walking advertisement for a paint and colour shop. One night, far behind the Russian lines, he told us that he intended to go back to Germersheim to square accounts with three Feldwebels on the permanent staff.
‘I’ll make him hit me first,’ he grinned revengefully.
‘Yes indeed,’ says Porta, ‘I can see very well without glasses. You intend to meet the Feldwebels in a private’s rig. It’s an expensive game striking an officer. Even when you don’t know he is one.’ But the Leutnant never made Germersheim. The very same night the ski-troops got him.
It’s funny how torturers almost always get away with it. They commit one legal murder after another, and every day they make more and more enemies who want to kill them, but it happens very infrequently. In their seventies you can run across them as jolly old pensioners with grandchildren on their knees.
The Pioneer-Gefreiter lifts his flamethrower, sights carefully in on the former Leutnant who is now very close to the Russian position.
‘Ten times damned bloody traitor,’ he snarls, his voice sounding hollow and far away inside the gasmask. His finger presses down on the trigger.
Like a blowlamp at full pressure the flame licks out over the uneven ground.
Small oily flames bob and flicker in front of the Russian position. They’re all that’s left of the Leutnant. Two seconds more and he would have made it.
I don’t pity him. He’s been a fool. Leaving the German Wehrmacht is an operation which needs careful planning. The Leutnant got no more than he deserved. He had been in Germersheim under the care of Oberfeldwebel Schön and should have known he was under observation. The attack rolls on. We fight our way through a whole world of nothing but pill-boxes. The outer defences of Moscow. Villages are blown up time and again. We have to fight for every yard of ground. New bridges are thrown over the river and tanks, field artillery, special units, heavy artillery go rolling over them in long columns towards the Moscow skyline clearly visible in the distance.
We fight through the night against broken armies which refuse to give up. We have to literally liquidate each unit. There is nothing left of the buildings. The Russians employ scorched earth tactics in retreat. They would rather destroy everything than leave it for us.
Every hour the cold becomes more terrible. 52 degrees below zero. We have no frost oil for our automatic weapons. We tie hot stones around the locks to prevent them freezing. Our lives depend on our light and heavy machine-guns.
Coffee-grinders, old biplanes with small bombs attached to the fuselage, come out as soon as darkness falls. We can hear them coming and as long as their motors bang and cough there is no danger. When they stop we take cover. A rushing in the air, a shadow flitting over the snow, and soon after an explosion followed by the cries of the wounded.
Porta shot one down the other night. The pilot killed three of ours before shooting himself, so now we are cured of approaching shot-down Russian pilots. We light a large fire. It’s dangerous but the cold is insupportable and we must have hot stones for the machine-guns.
A few moments after our fire flames up the small, devilish 75 mms are on to us. The Russian forward artillery spotters can’t help seeing the fire, and where there’s fire there’s us.
‘My marrow’s freezing to fucking ice!’ moans Porta pushing a hot stone inside his greatcoat.
‘Jesus, it’s cold,’ Stege cries despairingly, hopping from one foot to the other. ‘Gimme a wound and let me get out of this. I’d give a leg for a warm hospital bed.’
Barcelona rubs his face carefully, thinking of his nose which is already going dangerously white.
‘Not so rough, or you’ll lose your strawberry!’ Porta warns him. ‘Rub it with snow! It’s the only way to thaw out a frozen horn!’
Barcelona wouldn’t be the first to lose his nose. Suddenly it’s in your hand and all you’ve got left is a hole.
‘Bloody lice!’ shouts Porta scratching madly away like a flea-ridden dog. ‘They won’t leave you alone until there’s icicles hanging from your bollocks. Soon as you get warm again and roll up to get a bi
t of shuteye they’re running and fucking about all over you again!’
‘C’est la guerre,’ answer the Legionnaire. ‘Even the red lice are against us!’
I push a hot stone in under my uniform. As soon as it touches my skin I begin to itch. The lice go for the heat, too.
‘These minipartisans have been told about Stalin’s orders,’ explains Barcelona. ‘Don’t give the Fascist invader a second’s peace!’
‘Then they shouldn’t be bothering me,’ comments Porta. ‘I’ve never been a Fascist! Tell ’em to march on over to Julius! He’s pissfull of rich brown Nazi blood!’
‘It feels queer getting to Moscow,’ says Stege. ‘Six months ago none of us would’ve believed it. Now we’ve just got to get into the town,’ he continues, ‘and we’ll have peace inside fourteen days. Stalin’ll go soft when we march into the Red Square!’
‘The Kremlin’s farther off than you think,’ says Porta, clapping his hands vigorously.
‘We can see the bloody place,’ protests Stege angrily.
‘We could see England, too,’ answers Porta drily, ‘but did we ever get there? The Party and the Generals boasted a blue streak. The lords would be put to work as shepherds and whatnot. Buckingham Palace’d be turned into an officers’ knocker. We Germans suffer from an incurable case of swollen head complex. “God punish England,” said the Kaiser when he found he couldn’t do it himself. Now Adolf’s searching for Moses’ rod to part the waters, but it’s kept in a glass case in the British Museum in London! It’s my modest belief that he’s gonna get a shellacking like nobody’s business here at Moscow. Haven’t you ever noticed what a funny lot these house painters are? Quite a lot of them are ring-snatchers. Look at Luetnant Prick on the gun section. His firm in Berlin are house painters. We got at cross purposes with one another the other day.
‘“We’ll meet at Canossa,” he shouts after me. “You’ll get to know me better!”
‘Not on your bloody life he won’t! Everybody’s knows “Canossa”, that little homo’ bar on Gendarmenmarkt. Nobody from over there dares to go into “the Crooked Dog” on the other side. If Leutnant Prick were to drop in to “the Dog” they’d have a whole whitewash brush up his arse crossways quicker’n shit. And it’d be one of the cheap ones that leave stripes on the ceiling.’
‘Victory is just around the corner,’ shouts Barcelona confidently. ‘Tomorrow night we’ll be stuffing the Moscow whores, and in a week’s time we’ll be off on leave!’
‘You’ll get wiser,’ Porta grins a disillusioned grin. ‘Adolf’s Travel Bureau’ll give us all enough sleepless nights yet to last us the rest of our lives.’
When we’re relieved the Russians begin to cover the area with mortars and field artillery.
The concussions follow one another without pause and great craters open in the snow-covered terrain. Russian infantry swarm out of the forest.
‘Uhraeh, Stalino, uhraeh, Stalino!’ comes in an animal roar.
Worn-out German units emerge from the ruins. Flares whistle skywards and illuminate the attacking hordes streaming endlessly from amongst the trees.
With feverish haste we bring our machine-guns into position. Bayonets wink in the ghostly illumination from countless explosions. Grenades are armed and lie ready to hand on the breastwork with porcelain rings dangling. If they get through it’s all up with us. There aren’t enough of us left to win a hand-to-hand fight. There are only a few remaining of those who formed up for the attack on 22 June. The others make a pathway of bodies from Brest-Litovsk via Minsk to Kiev and from Kiev to Moscow. Thousands of them are floating as corpses in the Volga and Dnieper. Greater Germany, and the Führer’s, honoured dead!
Out of the red-black mist comes an infantryman laughing madly. With a scream he throws his carbine away and creeps along close to the ground like a wounded animal. A steel rain of shells whips up the earth around him. Nobody tries to stop him. It’s no business of ours. Even the Watchdogs can see he’s out of his mind. Those piercing screams are unmistakable. They can’t be simulated. The Watchdogs might take him to a field hospital but they might also shoot him through the back of the neck with a P-38 just to get rid of him.
Hundreds of MGs spit tracer across the terrain. Rank by rank the Russians fall to the deadly fire and are replaced by others who pick up their weapons and continue the advance. Every armed rank is followed by two ranks without weapons. A swaying forest of men in khaki.
The commissars are easy to recognize. They’re the ones who wear fur caps with a gilt hammer and sickle in the star and the green cross, symbol of ruthless power. God help the Soviet soldier who hesitates to go forward. The commissars look after him.
Hand grenades whirl through the air. Our rearward lines of communication have been destroyed by Russian commandos. We are cut off and have to use runners to maintain contact. To be sent out as a runner is almost certain death.
The Russians attack in close order with bayonets at the ready. Automatic weapons hammer tracer incessantly into their closed ranks.
‘At this rate we’re going to kill the entire Russian Army,’ says Heide. ‘Their leaders must be insane!’
‘Are they hell!’ answers Porta. ‘They’re cool as the Russian winter. To them men are cheaper than ammunition. Before we’ve killed the half of them we’ll have nothing left to shoot with. We’re not the first who’ve tried. Russia cannot be conquered.’
‘That’s Russian Communist shit,’ shouts Heide indignantly. ‘I ought to set the MPs on you!’
‘And I ought to put my foot up your arse!’ replies Porta sending a long burst away at a dangerous-looking Russian group.
Two Russians appear suddenly amongst us. Oberleutnant Moser and the Old Man are close to being bayoneted; then Tiny grabs the two militia-men by their throats and strangles them. One-handed!
We are about to leave our position when a section of combat artillery rolls up. They stop and fire and trundle on. The shells drop amongst the attacking mass of infantry. The artillery are using incendiaries and instantly the waving forest of soldiers is a roaring sea of flame.
The attackers sway back. Their commissars shoot into them but without effect. They begin to withdraw in panic flight.
A soldier here and there, then a whole column. Suddenly the battlefield is empty.
Stacks of corpses are left behind. Parts of bodies hang on the frozen bushes. Bloody entrails flap in the wind.
We clean our weapons and refill magazines. We are feverishly busy. Nobody knows how soon they’ll be back.
Motor sleds from Supplies come buzzing out of the forest towards us. We help them off-load ammunition. They are older men who were with the infantry in the last war. To protect them they have been put into Supplies. There they only have mines and the partisans to worry about. To our eyes they seem like old, old men who have stopped talking about girls and sit writing letters to some worn-out wife at home who has the air-raids to worry about. Many of them have sons our age among the fighting troops.
Just after darkness falls the enemy attack again but the artillery unit is still with us and takes a heavy toll of their infantry as they march forward in close column, shoulder to shoulder. The butcher’s work continues all night, the fighting swaying back and forth over the open ground. We crawl over ever-growing heaps of bodies; pull ourselves up by stiffened arms which point accusingly to the heavens.
Towards morning the Russians manage to force their way through our automatic fire and we prepare for the final battle. Unexpectedly the weather comes to our aid. A howling storm sweeps across the river and drowns everything in driving snow which makes it impossible to tell friend and enemy apart. We feel our way forward, shout for the password. If the answer doesn’t come quickly enough a bayonet rips into the shadowy figure in front. The fastest talker lives longest.
Quite often you find your bayonet opening up a comrade’s guts, but this doesn’t worry you. The main object is to stay alive. They didn’t teach this kind of war in training school.
/> We’re not human anymore but a kind of arctic animal, killing to stay alive. Whenever we get a break we spend it sharpening our combat weapons. They are keen enough by now to shave with. We have cloths wound around our faces, so that only our eyes show, as protection against the cold. The oil in the locks of our weapons freezes in a few seconds, and all the MGs are out of commission. In the fearful battle which now ensues our best weapons are sharpened out spades. We use those taken from the bodies of the Russian infantry. They are stiffer, and considerably better for the job than the German collapsible spade. A German spade, in a hand like Tiny’s, breaks at the first stroke whilst the stouter Russian job stands up well to this kind of work. Catch them right, just under the ear, and off goes a head with one stroke. Be careful, above all, not to aim at the collar, since the stroke will be partially stopped by thick uniform material.
We fight hand-to-hand, with spade in one hand and pistol in the other. Run quickly from shell-hole to shell-hole, crouch on one knee like beasts of prey, ready to spring again as soon as we’ve got our wind and our blood has stopped pounding in our veins. The heavy artillery lays down a close barrage. Even the Corps Commanders far in the rear have discovered that they are in serious danger. That’s why we get artillery support.
Clouds of smoke and flame rise from the forest. Trees are cut down as if with a giant scythe. the Russians take cover behind their own dead. A body gives as good protection as a sand-bag. In war you learn to use whatever is ready to hand. At the front nobody has time for moral tenets. But the soldiers aren’t to be blamed for that. Let the blame fall on the politicians who have led them down the road to ruin.
The firing and the pressure of the attack, dies away. The screams of the wounded can be heard now. One of them is lying right in front of us. He screams all through the morning and we get so desperate that we send rifle grenades out towards where we think he is, but every time the snow spurts up and we think we’ve finished him there he is again with his longdrawn, heartbreaking wail. The Old Man thinks he must have got an explosive bullet in the gut. That kind of wound takes a long time to kill a man. It can’t be a lung wound. He’d have been suffocated long since. A lung wound hurts terribly but means a quick death. The best wound is a piece of shrapnel in the thigh. All he blood has run out of you before you even realize you’re going to die. Stomach and head wounds are the worst. They take a long time to kill a man. Even if we risk a couple of lives and bring him in the hospital can’t save him. We get nervous, scream, and shout curses at him. We begin to discuss him. What sort of a chap is he? He’s a German we know. ‘Mutti, Mutti, hilf mir! he’s shouting all the time. If it was one of their boys he’d have been shouting: ‘Matj!’ He must be young or he wouldn’t be calling for his mother. The older ones call for their wives.
