by Alan David
But they had received specific orders, and only death itself would prevent them carrying out their detail. They moved forward cautiously, their jackboots crunching broken glass and rubble. Somewhere in the background, almost muted by the roaring of the insatiable flames, the thin wail of the ‘all clear’ sounded, and Steine clenched his teeth. Now it was safe and human rats would be sneaking out of their holes to grab what they could before full daylight came and the police regained control.
Some rescue workers yelled for them to help, but Vaterland was not on rescue work and could not turn aside from their allotted duties. They moved forward like grim shadows, peering around, checking everyone who crossed their path, and each time they saw movement they halted and covered the figures, calling harshly for them to halt. Generally they discovered that the men were rescue workers, but on occasion a figure would turn and run, making for the nearest ruins and safety, and machine-pistols or rifles crackled briefly and the figure would drop out of sight. There was no mercy for anyone not doing his duty in these hazardous times.
A large hotel was burning and rescue workers were trying to bring out the survivors. Smoke hampered their efforts and the searing flames kept beating them back. All the windows in the front wall of the tall building were belching smoke and flames, but at one of them a woman appeared, screaming wildly for help. Steine paused and looked up at the small figure, black against the inferno. He clenched his teeth, cursing. The figure vanished suddenly, sucked into the fire by the gusting flames, and he turned and motioned for his men to follow as he went on, filled with rage against the Allies for murdering innocents, despite the fact that the week before, in Italy, he had turned his machine-pistol upon a group of innocent women and children. It was total war; a grim, horrifying experience.
They turned into a darker street, where only high explosive had wrought its damage, although fire was spreading from the surrounding area like poison from a bite. A policeman, helmet in one hand, was emerging from a shattered doorway, and Steine covered him, calling for identity.
‘It’s hell in there!’ the policeman gasped, bending over. ‘A cellar full of women and children! I know them personally. They are from the clinic here. They’re all dead. A gas main ruptured. They’ve been gassed. Don’t strike a match for God’s sake, or the whole area will go up like a fire-bomb.’
‘We’d better get out of here then,’ Steine remarked. ‘The fires are getting closer. They’ll roar through here before they’re put out.’ He motioned to his men and they continued along the street. Before they had covered fifty yards there was a terrific explosion at their backs and they were flung to the ground. Glare surrounded them. Rubble crashed down, and Steine, looking back through slitted eyes, saw the ruined clinic burning fiercely. The escaping gas had ignited.
People were emerging from their shelters now, amazed that they were still alive, gazing around to see what damage had occurred in their own area, and they stood in little groups, dazed, shocked into a kind of paralysis. Bodies were lying in the gutter and amidst the strewn rubble, and here and there a living figure was crouched over a motionless one, separated by the chasm of death.
Steine spotted a figure picking its way out of a shattered store. It was burdened with a sack, and Stein’s lip curled as he lifted his machine-pistol.
‘Halt!’ He snarled the word with all the loathing he could muster. His men crowded forward and they discovered that the figure was a youth of about fourteen. ‘What are you doing here, Ɉunge What do you have in that sack?’
‘It’s nothing,’ the boy stammered, looking around at their merciless faces, noting their uniforms, the sinister SS runes on their collars and the Death’s Head emblem painted on the front of their steel helmets. ‘Just a little food. It will only rot in there, or the rats will eat it. My mother is sick and I wanted to get something for her. Food is scarce these days.’
‘And not to be stolen by the likes of you,’ Steine rasped. ‘Where do you live?’
‘My house has been destroyed. We are living in the cellar. It is half-filled with water. Please let me go.’
Steine motioned for the others to step away from the boy and pushed the muzzle of his machine-pistol into the youngster’s stomach. He squeezed the trigger and fired a short burst which tore through the slim body. Steine’s teeth were bared as he looked around, and they went on, for now they were in a shopping area and could expect trouble.
They came upon another store and saw several figures flitting around, silhouetted by leaping flames. They were obviously looters, grabbing anything of value, and Steine motioned for his patrol to spread out. They opened fire without warning, cutting down the people as if they were withered sticks. Then they moved in to finish off the survivors, firing single shots into heads. They were sickened by this open defiance of the Führer’s orders. It seemed as if the whole fabric of Nazism was splitting open at the seams.
Turning a corner, they came upon a crowd of people being urged back by a policeman. Steine pushed his way through and confronted the policeman.
‘What’s the trouble?’ he demanded.
‘Unexploded bomb! I’ve got to get these fools back until it has been dealt with. The bomb disposal men are already at work. But these idiots want to get their possessions from their homes. Help me keep them back. It’s a block-buster in there. If it goes up it’ll destroy the whole street.’
‘Sorry! We’ve got our orders. We’re searching for looters.’ Steine motioned for his men to go on, and they left the policeman to his duty.
Captain Eckhardt remained at his HQ, receiving information from his platoon commanders. When the ‘all clear’ sounded there was a sharp increase in the number of looters caught and shot. Colonel Dantine would expect a report when they returned to barracks, and Eckhardt was mentally writing it, composing all but the final figure of executions. When daylight came he checked with the police and discovered that they were slowly assuming control. The Vaterland patrols were coming back now, each with a grim tally of deaths carried out during the holocaust of the night.
The city was covered by a pall of smoke. All the men were grimy and exhausted, coughing, eyes watering, and Eckhardt felt relieved that their tour of duty was coming to an end. But the rescue teams were faced with an insurmountable task. They would not be able to clear the city before the Americans came over to make their daylight raid. It was an impossible situation, but somehow life seemed to go on, the war effort continuing, pumping fresh supplies into the front lines where Germans were fighting valiantly. It would take more than terror bombing to crack the morale of the German population. The civilians were suffering as badly as those trained men in the fighting areas, and neither could let the other down. They needed each other to survive, and apparently the Allies were aware of this for they were doing everything within their power to smash the home front.
Eckhardt understood that these were legitimate attacks upon a vital part of the German war machine, not terror bombing, but that knowledge did not make him feel any easier. And when he looked at the stacks of burned, blackened caricatures of human bodies that were being pulled out of the still blazing ruins he could not accept that this was the result of the Führer’s determination to gain Lebensraum. Something was wrong somewhere, but the Führer was not at fault. Others with less intelligence were incapable of carrying out the inspired orders, and Eckhardt could only wonder how the Führer managed to endure the incompetence of those around him.
If they lost the war, and he had to admit to some doubt as to their ability to win, then it would not be the fault of the Führer. He tightened his lips as he watched his men form up and march back to their waiting trucks. Somewhere along the line they had diverged from the planned course and everything had gone wrong. They were desperately struggling to keep going, but if only they could win in the end their horrific sacrifices would be justified.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Kurt and his Regiment remained in reserve, their tanks camouflaged in fields and woods, awaiting the
onslaught of the Allies and the much vaunted Second Front. Their days consisted of crouching in cover and watching the swarms of fighter-bombers roaring over, hitting every available target. Roads were strafed, bridges blasted and shattered, and railway lines devastated so that nothing could move along roads or rails. Everywhere there were wrecked vehicles, shattered trees, craters at vital points, and the ceaseless air war tore at the nerves of the waiting men. They wondered at the volume of enemy air attacks, and could only believe that when the land forces arrived they would be as strong.
Kurt became bitter and fearful as the days passed. Rumours swept through the Regiment, some wild but some sounding as if they just had to be true. Everyone was convinced that an Allied invasion of Europe was imminent, but the problem was to decide where it would take place. The most favourable area was the Channel coast of France somewhere between the Somme estuary and Dunkirk. High Command, in spite of their conviction, could not afford to stake everything upon it, and station nearly all their forces in the Pas de Calais area, ignoring the risk of a landing elsewhere. The Germans had to prepare to defend themselves with inadequate forces against an enemy who was now overwhelmingly superior on the sea and air and who could strike anywhere from Holland to the Spanish border.
But the ordinary troops in the field knew nothing of the indecision and doubt which gripped their Commanders. They awaited orders, and would obey them when they arrived. They lounged around during the day, listening to the ceaseless sounds of fighter-bombers, seeing few German planes. The Luftwaffe had been knocked out of the skies. Nothing could stop the Allies, and daily the wrecks along the roads and railways increased. Even at night there was no rest: heavy bombers pounded marshalling yards, destroying valuable equipment and supplies. The whole of France was under constant air attack.
The French Resistance Movement became more active as the first days of June passed, and Kurt resented sending his men out to guard all the strategic local points. They mounted guard on bridges and railway stations, patrolled endless miles of track looking for saboteurs, and shot a number of Frenchmen who were out after curfew. But they could not stem the increasing tide of resistance.
Then, suddenly, it happened: the Allies stormed ashore in Normandy, forming five beach-heads, and everyone in the back areas expected to be rushed to the spot to deal with the invaders. It was obvious that the Allies had to be thrown back into the sea at the earliest possible moment. If they were permitted to consolidate then they could not be dislodged. But no orders arrived, and the men waited desperately by their radios, listening for news and information as the Allied air attacks became heavier.
But High Command was reluctant to throw in their reserves in case the Normandy landings were merely a diversionary raid and that the real invasion would still come in the Pas de Calais area. Tense days passed, and what little news leaked back from the forward areas seemed to indicate that the Allied beachheads were linking up and presenting a continuous front. They were snatching fresh ground daily, and Kurt listened gloomily to the reports. For a long time France had been used as a convenient place in which to rest, reform and refit divisions which had been decimated on the eastern front while the better divisions, having been brought up to strength, were pulled out and sent to Russia. Consequently the German forces in France were in a constant state of flux.
Rumours were rife, and confused reports of what was happening in Normandy added to the chaos. Allied paratroops had landed at several points and were scattered around almost haphazardly. Their numbers were greatly exaggerated, and Kurt fully expected to hear that the German defenders were pulling back in strength. But the Allies were more concerned with consolidating than taking ground. They had to build up their strength faster than the Germans, who had to hold their counter-attacks until they knew for certain that this was the main invasion area.
Then came action. Kurt’s Regiment received orders to move forward. They camouflaged their Panzers with tree branches and moved along hedges and the edges of woods. Progress was slow, but they needed to travel without incurring losses. Yet the fighter-bombers found them, forcing them to halt. The tanks remained motionless, heavily camouflaged, but several were hit and many of their trucks carrying fuel and ammunition were destroyed. Smoke columns billowing into the sky marked their end, and Kurt, surveying the area with his field glasses, realized that reinforcements were not going to reach the front quickly. The Allies held the upper hand. All road junctions were bombed repeatedly, and bridges were knocked out. Kurt’s Regiment had suffered serious losses for a unit nowhere near the front and still out of action.
The next day they were again ordered forward and started before first light, but by five-thirty the Allied fighter-bombers were overhead in swarms. Spurts of fire flickered along the column as dark shadows darted overhead, and the very air vibrated from the sound of powerful aero-engines. The tanks were immediately halted and camouflaged, but waves of aircraft approached, bombing and machine-gunning, and the soft trucks were hit and fired. Men jumped out of vehicles and ran for cover, hiding in the hedges and the neighbouring fields. Flames licked upwards as some men lay face-down, unmoving, caught in the hail of bullets.
The whole column was completely disrupted. For fifteen minutes the terror continued before it was broken off as quickly as it had begun, and then survivors began to drift back towards the column, some just staring at the wreckage, shocked and dazed by the suddenness and viciousness of the attack. The whole length of the road was strewn with splintered and shattered equipment, flaming trucks and charred implements of war.
The advance was called off and all vehicles that had survived were hidden in dense bushes or barns. No one dared show himself in the open. Kurt and his crew looked at one another. This was worse than anything they had experienced in Russia or Italy.
They continued their movement at night, travelling along secondary roads lined with cover, but still they encountered in, numerable wrecks proving that even the most circuitous routes were not safe after dawn. They halted well before the sun came up and spent a great deal of time and effort camouflaging their Panzers. When dawn came they were already lying in cover, with strict orders that no one was to move around during the long hours of daylight, and they listened to the horrific sounds of this new type of warfare that plagued them. Aircraft threw swift shadows across the ground as they wheeled and dived to attack, and all reserves moving forward to bolster the German counter-attacks were effectively halted.
‘So this is the way the war will be fought in future,’ Schultze observed. They were lying under their tank, which was covered by trees. They had cut down several trees in order to get the armoured vehicle back into the tree line, and branches and foliage covered it completely. The good old days are over, hein? The Luftwaffe can’t show its face during the day, and that’s when we need it most. If it’s like this in the rear then what will it be like in the forward area?’
‘I’m trying to close my mind to the future,’ Hohner retorted, scratching his nose. ‘Maybe we can stay here with our tank when the Regiment moves on tonight. If we don’t let on that we’re here they may forget about us. Then we could wait for the war to end.’
‘I don’t think it will ever end,’ Weilen cut in harshly. ‘Why did they pull us out of Italy? We were losing the war there as well. They didn’t need to bring us all the way to France to take another beating. They licked us well and good in Italy.’
‘We made them pay for what they got,’ Hohner grunted.
‘Can’t you change the subject?’ Kurt demanded. ‘It’s no use talking about it. We’ve all known for a long time that we’re losing the war, We tried to get through to Stalingrad, remember? The Russians gave us a bloody nose and threw us back. Since then we haven’t won a battle anywhere. The beginning of the end started eighteen months ago, and only the poor swine in the front line recognized the fact.’
There was a shocked silence at his words, and Niehaus looked uncomfortable. The young radio operator had not been in action befor
e and was looking to these veterans to give him the courage he would need. But they seemed disillusioned by the war, and he could not understand why they had lost their optimism. He knew nothing of the illimitable Russian front, the overwhelming hordes of Russian troops and endless supplies; and could not imagine the kind of slogging match in which they had been engaged in Italy. The exhausting days of action had taken their toll, and now these veterans were fully aware of the situation, although that knowledge would not prevent them doing their duty when the time came.
Aircraft roared overhead, engines blaring stridently, causing them all to cringe. Moments later the staccato sounds of machine-guns hammered and bombs burst crisply. Someone had been caught out in the open and was paying the penalty. Kurt fancied that somehow the French Resistance were reporting German troop movements to the Allies, who were relaying the information to their air force. He could not understand how the aircraft appeared so quickly to deal with any movement, no matter how small.
Time ceased to exist for them. The daylight hours seemed endless. From the lowest level, that of the fighting man on the ground, it was impossible to have any idea of what was happening. There was no overall picture for them to contemplate. All they knew was that they were being pounded unmercifully and could not advance to their allotted positions. The enemy possessed a superabundance of war machines and equipment and knew how to use them to the best possible advantage. Nothing seemed to be going right for the Germans. It was possible that those troops in contact with the Allies might now be reeling back in retreat, and reinforcements being pushed forward would only further confuse the issues.
