Court Martial

by Sven Hassel

  ‘No bloody wonder,’ answers Gregor. ‘Take a sniff. Must be a million gallons of petrol inside there!’

  ‘Yes, enough for another Thirty Years War, or more,’ whispers Tiny, overcome.

  ‘Was it to the left or the right we were supposed to turn those warheads?’ asks Porta, nervously.

  ‘To the right,’ says Tiny, confidently. But I don’t remember if it was 5 or 9 as come first! It’s gotta go click though or else it goes off!’

  Suddenly we are all in doubt. Tiny suggests, with his usual optimism, that we can take it in turns and see what happens. Then it would only be every second rocket that blew up.

  ‘Jesus, man, don’t turn that thing!’ I warn him, in terror, as Tiny is about to turn the dial. ‘We could get our arses blown off!’

  ‘If it does, let’s hope they’ve lit the landing-lights back home,’ grins Porta, fatalistically.

  The Old Man comes crawling over to us from behind a great stack of shell casings.

  ‘What in the name of hell are you farting about here for?’ he snarls, sourly. ‘First and fourth groups have got theirs set up already!’

  Was it to the left or the right we were supposed to turn it?’ asks Porta, holding a warhead out towards the Old Man.

  ‘God in Heaven have mercy on us,’ groans the Old Man, despairingly. ‘To the left you mad sods! Ivan’d die laughing if he could see you now!’

  ‘Give him a shout, then,’ suggests Porta. ‘Then the war’d be over, and we’d go down in history as Adolf’s secret weapon!’

  ‘An’ turn it to 5?’ asks Tiny, with his hand on the dial.

  ‘Not now, you great shithouse, you,’ hisses the Old Man, slapping his fingers. ‘Set ’em up and aim ’em first! What do you want to blow up here?’

  ‘Lorries,’ says Tiny, happily. ‘There’s masses on ’em.’

  ‘Piss off, man,’ snarls the Old Man. ‘And to hell with the vehicles. These rockets are to be used against the most distant targets. You don’t seem to have understood anything of what I explained to you! First we hit the distant targets with the rockets, then you place Lewis bombs and radio mines in the square you’ve been assigned to. Even a dummy could follow that. Try, for Christ’s sake, to listen when I’m telling you what to do. When you get to the big open area where the trains are standing, be on your toes. They’ve planted signal-mines there with trip-wires. Don’t touch the trip-wires!Don’t even breathe on ’em! If they go off they’ll send up parachute flares and the whole damned enemy camp’ll be lit up like daylight!’

  ‘Don’t be nervous,’ Porta comforts him. ‘We can skin a louse without it even noticing!’

  ‘I was at the Jews’ pickpocket school on the Reeperbahn,’ boasts Tiny. ‘I could draw the rags off the throat of a whore with ’em on an’ she’d never notice it!’

  ‘How dumb can you get?’ snarls the Old Man, angrily, disappearing again.

  Squabbling, we reach the place where the rocket launchers are to be set up. We assemble the parts. The firing base seems a primitive affair, almost like an unfinished wooden packingcase. The one thing it does not look like is a firing base.

  At the lower end of one of the aluminium rails are three small wheels with dimly lighted, graduated scales. These are used to adjust the launching base.

  Tiny puts the 52 centimetre tube in place, and I screw on the warhead.

  Porta attaches the odd-looking cables, which look as if they’d been taken from the inside of a spring mattress.

  ‘Think it’ll work?’ asks Tiny, doubtfully. ‘I’d rather ’ave a spray-gun.’

  ‘It’ll work,’ says Porta, with conviction, shading the spiritlevel on the firing ramp with his hand.

  ‘Group six ready,’ I tell the radio, in a low voice.

  ‘Stay by the launchers until the rockets are gone!’ orders the Old Man. He and Heide are lying in amongst the ammunition piles, to receive readiness reports from the various groups.

  ‘Turn the dials to figure 5,’ orders the Old Man, looking attentively into the green box.

  Tiny rushes at his rocket as if he were afraid one of us was going to beat him to it.

  Was it right or left?’ he asks.

  ‘Left, you fool!’ growls the Old Man, irritably.

  ‘This is gonna make a bang that’ll make the devil’s grandmother jump with fright,’ grins Tiny, happily, and turns the dial to 5.

  The launcher shudders slightly, and there is a low fizzing sound, as if a bundle of matches had all been struck together. Soundlessly the rockets leave their mountings and fly through the night like ghostly bats. No muzzle-flame. No exhaust flame. Their course is precisely directed by the instruments in the green box.

  Several of the rockets land in the far-off petrol depot. Others adhere to piles of ammunition and to workshops inside camp 3. After five hours they will explode with inconceivable force.

  Rapidly we destroy the launching rails and the rocket mountings. The Old Man presses a white button on the oblong firing box. A boiling, bubbling sound begins to come from it immediately. An acrid mist tears at the throat and palate, as a corrosive acid runs from the small glass phials inside it, destroying condensers, spools and blocks. A remarkable piece of engineering is destroyed in seconds, an apparatus the like of which no other Army possesses. The odd-looking measuring antennae, which resemble mattress springs, we cut into small lengths and disperse far and wide.

  ‘Now the Lewis bombs,’ whispers the voice of the Old Man through the radio. ‘You’ve got one hour. Not a second more!’

  One at a time we rush over the wide, heavily-trafficked road, leading into the recesses of the enormous ammunition and petrol storage camp. The air shudders with the noise of motors, and hoarse, guttural orders sound through the night.

  Several times we pass so close to Russian sentries that we can hear their breathing quite clearly.

  ‘Smell the petrol?’ asks Porta, in a whisper. ‘What a spot for a pyromaniac!’

  ‘Ivan Stinkanovitsch’s gonna shit ’imself with fright,’ rumbles Tiny, deep down in his belly.

  We almost run into the twenty-foot high perimeter fence.

  Tiny pulls out his cutters.

  ‘Let’s ’ope there ain’t no current in it,’ he remarks, as he lays it on the first wire.

  ‘Then you’d know what the electric chair was like,’ answers Porta, drily.

  ‘Piss!’ growls Tiny, cutting through the wire as if it were cotton. His strength is superhuman.

  ‘Jesus,’ cries Porta, as we stand surrounded by great stacks of petrol drums. ‘I didn’t think there was that much petrol in the whole world!’ He bangs on a couple of drums. ‘Wouldn’t want to blow up a load of empties, would we?’ he continues.

  Tiny has filled his lighter and is about to light a cigarette.

  ‘A lame monkey must’ve chewed on your arse,’ Porta scolds him. ‘We’ll all go to the devil if you start blowin’ sparks about in here!’

  With every sense taut, we move slowly along the mountainous stacks of boxes and drums. Well into the camp, we turn off to the left and come out into a wide connecting path, which stretches off into the distance.

  Porta stops so suddenly that I run into him.

  ‘Ivan,’ he whispers, in an almost inaudible voice.

  As at a command we draw the wires from our pockets.

  Two Russian soldiers in ankle-length greatcoats come towards us. They are chatting to one another.

  ‘Job tvojemadj,’* one of them laughs, loudly.

  Tiny tosses his head impatiently and lifts his wire. Porta holds up a warning hand. It is better to let them go.

  As soon as we are round the corner we ready the first of the Lewis bombs. We set the detonators on four hours. Tiny bites into the glass phials, unconcernedly, and spits the pieces into the snow as if they were cigarette ends. If one of them is cracked it is certain death. The powerful acid would eat its way from a man’s tongue down through his whole body. Tiny does not realise the danger. He spits glass splinters
continually, and washes his tongue clean with vodka.

  ‘’Oly maiden,’ he cries, as we stand looking at the mountains of shells. ‘And Adolf wants us to believe Ivan’s arse is ’angin’ out! Germany ain’t never ’ad that much gunpowder!’

  ‘Careful,’ warns Porta, as we attach the sticky bombs. ‘For God’s sake don’t bend that bloody pin! If this lot goes up while we’re inside we’ll end up on Postdamer Platz with such a bang we’ll never be able to get up and go into “The Crooked Dog” for a quick ’un again!’

  • Russian: Go home and fuck your mother.

  ‘Ssssh!’ whispers Tiny, excitedly, pressing himself close to the shell stacks. ‘Ivan!’

  ‘Steady!’ whispers Porta. We won’t take ’em unless we have to!’

  Two sentries come creaking towards us. They are talking to one another quietly in a dialect we cannot follow. ‘Mongolian apemen,’ whispers Porta, whipping the wire from his pocket.

  That strange front-line tension begins to creep up my spine. I tighten my grip on the wooden handle of the wire and search with my left hand for my paratrooper knife.

  A third soldier emerges from a narrow passageway and begins to bawl the other two out for smoking. They stop five or six yards from us and begin to quarrel. They throw their arms about and shout angrily at one another.

  The NCO stamps his clumsy felt boots in the snow and shouts louder than any of them.

  Porta makes a wordless signal. We simply have to take them.

  Noiselessly we close on the three Mongolian soldiers, who are standing with their backs to us shouting at one another.

  Porta gives a sibilant signal, and we are on top of them. With sharp tugs we tighten the wires around their necks. Then we go down on our backs, each with a kicking Russian on top of us.

  A weak gurgling noise is the only sound they can make. They kick a little more and throw out their arms weakly. The piano wires cut deeper into their throats. For a few seconds their bodies continue to shudder slightly. Then we loosen the wires and get to our feet.

  ‘Let’s get these three tourists under cover,’ says Porta, taking a swig of vodka.

  ‘Leave it to me,’ says Tiny, eagerly. He disappears with two of the bodies and forces them in between the ammunition boxes as if they were no more than two bundles of dirty washing.

  ‘He’s going to frisk ’em,’ says Porta. ‘That’s why he was so eager!’

  By the big oil store we meet Feldwebel Schröder and Fähnrich Tamm. We agree to help one another to move some large boxes and drums in order to place the small radio bombs better.

  We have almost finished moving the boxes when a sentry comes out of a narrow passageway.

  Who goes there?’ he shouts, in a penetrating voice. ‘Who goes there?’ he repeats, swinging his Kalashnikov from his shoulder.

  Paralysed with fear we stare at him, anticipating the burst of machine-pistol bullets which will knock us over.

  Then Porta answers him in pure Ukrainian: Rabotschijs dvidatji porokh!’53

  With his Mpi at the ready the tall Russian approaches us gingerly.

  ‘Krass tjuk?’†

  ‘Job tvoje madj, djaddja,’ grins Porta, walking slowly towards him. ‘Papirossa, starschij serschant?’‡ he asks, holding out a packet.

  ‘Spajisibo’,§ smiles the sergeant. He wears green NKVD shoulder straps.

  Porta extends his lighter politely. At the same moment Tiny lunges with his paratrooper knife. It enters the man’s body close to the spinal cord and continues up into the neck.

  Without a sound the stabbed NKVD man sinks to the snow. Remarkably, the cigarette is still in place between his lips.

  Porta takes it and puts it back into the packet. The dead men has no more use for it.

  Tiny withdraws the knife and wipes it on the dead man’s greatcoat. With practised fingers he runs through his pockets and finds some pornographic photographs, which he keeps.

  A little later we come out on to the wide connecting path, where we are bawled out by a lieutenant for not saluting a passing NKVD company.

  ‘Report to me after morning parade,’ he barks, angrily, in parting.

  ‘Dashe, Mladschij lejtenant,’** shouts Porta, loudly, and clicks his heels.

  In between some large brick buildings a long row of JS tanks are parked. Their huge 122 mm guns point threateningly at the clouds.

  ‘Odd,’ mumbles Porta, looking down through the hatchway.

  ‘They’re all tanked up, full of ammo, and ready to go!’

  ‘Let’s blow ’em away!’ says Schröder.

  ‘If we put the bombs on top of the petrol tank cover,’ says Porta, ‘we ought to achieve a good result when they blow down into the petrol.’

  In the course of a few minutes we have positioned the bombs on the petrol tanks. Singly we run across the large parade ground and take cover between the packing-cases.

  I am almost across when I stumble over a rail and slide on my stomach across the icy snow with my Mpi rattling behind me. I am stopped by a pair of felt boots planted solidly like pillars in the snow. Automatically I grasp my paratrooper knife, as I rise, groaning, to my feet.

  The Russian, who is twice as big as I am, lays his machine-pistol on the snow and helps me.

  ‘Spajisibo, spajisibo,’ I stammer, nervously.

  As he bends over me I drive my knife deep into his throat. With a rapid movement I turn the knife and withdraw it.

  He emits a rattling sound, falls to his knees, and tries to draw his pistol.

  I kick him in the face and drive my knife into his chest. To my horror the blade snaps.

  Breathlessly, the others come to my aid. Tiny smashes the heel of his boot with all his strength into the face of the dying Russian, whose pistol is half-drawn from the holster. Schröder stabs him in the stomach.

  ‘Come on,’ says Porta. ‘Let’s get out of here! All we’ve got left to do’s to place the last of the bombs amongst the boxes of vehicle spares.’

  Feldwebel Schroder climbs up on the boxes and sits astride them. Tiny hands up the explosive charges while Porta readies the detonators.

  I have just passed the last of the radio bombs to Tamm when I hear a faint click. Tiny hears it too, and drops flat. Porta disappears, in one long, acrobatic spring, and I roll under some drums behind a tractor.

  Tamm, who apparently has not heard the click, stares uncomprehendingly about him.

  Before we can manage to warn him, the bomb explodes with an ear-splitting noise. He is thrown into the air by the blast from it. His entrails are torn from his body, as if he had been cut open lengthways, and his backbone splintered to pieces. Flesh and bone spurt out to all sides.

  The breath is blown from my lungs. The next minute I am thrown high into the air. For a fraction of a second I see Porta hanging in the air alongside me with his arms spread out as if he had wings.

  Tiny comes flying past, as if he had been fired from a gun.

  Feldwebel Schroder drops back into the snow in a bloody rain of flesh and bone. His own!

  I whirl round in empty air, high above the camp, and fall back towards the earth. I go straight through a thatched roof and land in a giant bath filled with icy-cold, oily water. I go down and down into it, and the chill brings me back to consciousness. For a terribly long moment I feel the strangling grip of the water at my throat. I strike out desperately with arms and legs to get back to the surface. Air, air is my only thought. At last I am up, and filling my lungs with ice-cold air. My breathing apparatus freezes and again I am suffocating. The water alongside me boils, as if a tank had been thrown into the water. Time passes, seconds, minutes, hours, I cannot tell, and then Porta’s scruffy red head pokes up out of the water alongside me, spouting like a whale.

  ‘What the hell happened?’ he chokes, half-suffocated. ‘I’m stone deaf and there’s a lot of stuff in my guts that hasn’t any business being there!’

  In a state of shock we work our way back to terra firma. All around us explosions crash and r
oar. We run like madmen, our only thought to get away from the burning camp.

  ‘Where’s Tiny?’ I ask, in a voice which is still shaking from the terrible shock.

  ‘He flew thataway,’ mumbles Porta, pointing to the north-west. ‘He’s probably reached Alaska already, and is telling the story of his air trip to the bears!’

  Behind us we can hear excited shouts. Machine-pistols bark, viciously.

  ‘I think it’s high time we got out of here,’ says Porta, firmly. Behind a long declivity we run into the section, waiting for the stragglers.

  Tiny is sitting in the middle of a huge snowdrift, wiping off blood and dirt.

  ‘Where the devil did you get to?’ asks Porta.

  ‘Bleedin’ ’ell,’ Tiny pants, wrenching his broken nose back into place. ‘First of all I went straight up to the German God’n knocked ’is throne over. Then I sailed off through the air with about a ton o’ explosives back o’ me arse, and ended up in this ’ere snowdrift!’

  ‘I’ve never seen anything like it,’ Heide tells us. ‘He came rushing down from the clouds like a spaceship and bored his way ten feet down into the snow!’

  ‘You must’ve made a balls of it,’ says the Old Man, reprovingly. ‘Those radio bombs are foolproof!’

  ‘Maybe we’re bigger fools than they reckoned on,’ says Tiny, modestly.

  A colossal explosion cuts him short. A volcano of snow, ice, earth, stones and military material explodes into the air and flies in all directions.

  In the middle of it all are hundreds of lorries and tanks.

  For a brief moment everything seems to float high in the air, then the cloud breaks into millions of fragments which rain down on the earth. Two long barrack buildings fly into the air and look as if they are floating on a sea of flame. They fall and shatter in a cloud of blood, entrails, smashed beds and the gods know what else. A long, shrill, massed scream comes from the soldiers, who are blown from the building and fall back to earth in a spurt of blood and crushed bones.

  For a few seconds a terrible silence reigns. Then flames rise with a roar from the great storage camp.

  Searchlights begin to criss-cross the sky, and flak-guns fire from the batteries around the camp. They must think it is an air raid.