by Sven Hassel
‘Lay down out in the snow, it’ll be over quicker,’ he suggests, springing over the deep ditch. Soon he is swallowed up in the flying snow.
‘If I ever get ‘old of ’im, I’ll tear ’is prick off an’ push it down ’is throat an’ choke ’im with it!’ groans Tiny.
‘You never catch that kind of a shit,’ says Barcelona, darkly. ‘They live through any war!’
’Lord, but I’m sleepy, ’moans Gregor, almost yawning his jaws out of joint. ‘I don’t care a damn what happens, if only I could get some sleep.’
Porta stretches out on the packed earth floor, pulls his greatcoat around him, and lays his head on a dead cow. ‘Hell, I could sleep till way into next year!’
‘Sleep’s funny, man,’ mumbles Albert, tiredly. ‘It’s really only a nice kind of dyin’!’
‘There’s nothing a man longs for like sleep,’ says Gregor. ‘Beats even food and fuckin’.’
‘When I sleep,’ says Albert, in an unclear voice, ‘I always dream about a lovely place where everybody is nice an’ don’t get after niggers like me, an’ I’m always rich as all get out. Once I dreamt I was in court, an’ the judge give me a fine of 100 Reichsmarks, but that didn’t mean nothing to a rich man like me. Here, boy, I said, handing him five hundred smackers. Keep the change your honour, an’ buy yourself some nice black pussy with it! And I lifted my shiny silk hat and off I went!’
‘Were you going to a party, since you had a top-hat on?’ asks Porta, in surprise.
‘I always wear a silk topper, and a black cape with a white silk lining, when I’m dreamin’,’ answers Albert, smiling happily.
‘Do that to a German judge’n ’e’d put you inside for a ’undred years,’ comments Tiny, with a world of experience behind his words.
The deep bellow of a lorry engine breaks off the conversation. We crawl eagerly to the door. A heavy eight-wheeled Puma stops, and an arrogant Leutnant peers down from it.
‘What the devil do you lot want?’ he shouts, irritably, wiping snow from his face.
‘A lift,’ answers the Old Man, curtly.
‘Get up on the back then,’ growls the Leutnant, unwillingly, “we’re in a hurry.’
‘Most of us can’t stand up on our own,’ says the Old Man.
‘Damn your eyes,’ the Leutnant curses, viciously. He gives his crew orders to help us. ‘But hurry, hurry!’ he shouts, impatiently. ‘We’re not a bloody Red Cross unit. We’re tank clearance.’
His crew have just as little pity for us as their chief. They sling us up onto the back of the waggon, in a heap behind the turret, without taking any heed to our cries of pain.
‘Couldn’t you lukewarm shits’ve died a bit sooner?’ shouts an Obergefreiter. His brutal face glares at us from the background of a heavy fur collar. ‘If the neighbours blow us away it’ll be your doin’!’
‘Wait’ll we catch you in the same position, matey,’ Porta threatens him, blackly. ‘We’ll throw you on the shit-heap, where the rats can get at you.’
‘Better keep your trap shut, son,’ the Obergefreiter warns him, wickedly. ‘We just might happen to forget you when we drive off!’
‘Humane sods, aren’t they?’ says Gregor, tiredly,
‘You think so, do you?’ laughs the Obergefreiter, sourly. ‘Just wait till we start this thing. I’m the driver and I’ll do what I can to see you get shook off!’
‘I shall see to it that you go on report,’ shouts Heide, angrily. ‘You hear me, Obergefreiter!’
‘You will, will you?’ grins the Obergefreiter, treacherously. He winks at a little, sharp-nosed Gefreiter with “Gross Deutschland” flashes. ‘Grab the good Unteroffizier’s flat feet and let’s be careful nothing happens to him. It would be a pity if he didn’t get us put on report!’
‘Shut up, dammit,’ rages the Leutnant. He seems to radiate an almost murderous degree of energy. He is one of the dangerous kind who always get their own way. Cross him seriously, and he will draw his pistol, and use it.
The Unteroffizier here’s goin’ to put us on a charge,’ grins the Obergefreiter, sneeringly.
‘Leave him then,’ orders the Leutnant, curtly. ‘He can make his report to the Siberians. They’ll be here soon!’
The two transport men drop Heide. His head cracks against one of the heavy springs. He gives out a scream. Blood pours over his face from a deep hole in his neck.
‘The shit dead?’ asks the pointed-nosed soldier, with a pleased gleam in his eye.
‘No, not yet, unfortunately,’ answers the Obergefreiter. ‘But we’ll put the kind Unteroffizier here on the outside, where he might fall off quite soon.’
‘Finished,’ shouts the Leutnant. ‘No more time for that! The rest’ll have to go on the next waggon.’
‘It’ll be Russian,’ laughs the Obergefreiter noisily. He sidles through the driver’s hatch, and pulls it down after him.
‘Hang on with your teeth’n stick your pricks into the ventilation slits,’ shouts the pointy-nosed man. He disappears into the turret with a cackle of laughter.
The Leutnant throws an irritable glance down at us, and adjusts his throat microphone.
‘Panzer! Full speed ahead! March!’ he orders. He disappears into the turret and pulls the hatch to with a clang.
We have not gone far before the first of us has frozen to death. It is a slim young infantryman whose right arm has been amputated.
‘One ’ere gone to Val’alla,’ comments Tiny. He pushes the body over the side, leaving more room for the rest of us.
The armoured Puma races down a steep declivity. A Feld-webel is thrown out onto the hard-frozen road surface, where his head is crushed like an egg-shell against a pointed rock. Without anyone noticing it, two of the badly wounded have been suffocated by exhaust gas. They were unlucky enough to be at the bottom of the heap directly over the engine ventilation openings.
‘Stop, stop you mad sods!’ screams Tiny, furiously, crashing his Mpi against the hatchway.
The hatch remains closed. Even if they hear us inside the vehicle they do not react at all.
‘Filthy gang of murderers is what they are,’ rages Heide. He has returned to consciousness and has a scarf bound round the open wound in his neck.
‘Be glad they took you along,’ says the Old Man, tiredly. ‘They could easily have left you back there, because of your crazy threats of reporting them. All six of ’em are cold and callous as a Russian winter.’
A mighty explosion cuts him off. Splinters of steel fly around our ears. A corner of the turret has disappeared, and we can see down inside the vehicle.
‘Anti-tank hit,’ groans Gregor, fearfully, huddling against the turret.
The heavy armoured vehicle swings round, and roars over the anti-tank gun emplaced between winter-naked bushes. The gun is crushed.
Two Russian anti-tank soldiers, in clumsy, quilted winter uniforms run headlong over the frozen fields. The Puma’s forward MG’s spit tracer after them.
The leading soldier is thrown forward, and lies, his body twisted, in the snow. The other is crushed under the Puma’s giant wheels. The Puma stops with a jerk and reverses at full speed towards a corporal who has given up and has his hands in the air. When he realises that the armoured vehicle intends to run him down he goes completely crazy, and begins to run round in circles. The murderous vehicle plays cat and mouse with him. Every time the armoured car has almost reached the poor Russian the driver stops and revs up the motor in neutral.
‘What the devil?’ shouts the Old Man, bitterly. ‘We’ve been given a lift with a travelling madhouse!’
The fleeing Russian falls down in the snow. He raises his hands towards the Puma in a prayer for mercy. It stops and seems as if it is preparing to spring on him. The engine howls at maximum revolutions. The heavy eight-wheeled vehicle roars forward and crushes the Russian, leaving only a bloody smear on the snow.
‘I’ll report ’em, devil take me if I don’t,’ shouts the Old Man, furiously. ‘Killing one another
’s all right out here, but this ... this is going too bloody far!’
‘Don’t you think it might be wise of you to stay well away from Torgau?’ asks Porta, with a broad grin. ‘You can bet your life Iron Gustav’s2 found out who it was drank his cognac and filled the bottle up again with horse-piss!’
‘Iron Gustav’s not at Torgau any more,’ says the Old Man, to our great surprise. ‘He’s Hauptwachtmeister at Germersheim now!’
At a sharp bend the driver of the Puma loses control of the vehicle. It begins to wobble, roars over the edge of the road, and down a steep slope. With a crash it breaks through the thick skin of ice covering the river. Freezingly cold water splashes up over us. Rapidly we are sheathed in ice. With a short cough the engine stops.
‘Now I’m really tired of this world war,’ rages Porta, when we are safe from the ice floes. ‘I want to go home and shit on a porcelain water-closet again, and enjoy the benefits of all modern conveniences. Let the sodding Russians shit on rough, iced-up beams, and drop their turds down into holes in the ground and wipe their arses with a handful of gravel!’
‘Home,’ says the Old Man, pessimistically. ‘We’re never going home!’
With inhuman exertions we reach the road and surmount the remains of the low stone protecting wall through which the armoured car has crashed. A motor sleigh picks us up. The driver, a lanky Obergefreiter with a long horsey face, is alone with the dead, frozen body of an Oberst on the back seat.
‘What about throwing Chiefy there out. There’d be more room,’ suggests Porta. ‘He probably wouldn’t care.’
‘Can’t do it,’ answers Horseface. ‘He’s my pass; I’ve already gone through five headhunter road checks. I tell ’em it’s our Chief of Staff, an’ I’ve been ordered to take back for a real German, Christian hero’s burial! Flags, drums, trumpets’n all that shit! What goes on when a big man’s bein’ sent off to Valhalla.’
‘Where you thinking of going to?’ asks Gregor, edging himself in alongside the frozen body.
‘Cologne,’ answers Horseface, with a whinny of laughter.
‘You must’ve swallowed a commissar,’ considers Porta. ‘They’ll string you up long before you get to Cologne. And your frozen old Chief of Staff’ll get strung up alongside you as an awful example to others.’
‘Don’t you believe it,’ answers Horseface, in an assured voice. ‘A Chief of Staff, with red tabs and bits of shiny stuff, opens all doors. Even when he’s dead. The watchdogs become quite human.’
‘Was he really your Chief of Staff?’ asks the Old Man, looking askance at the frozen Oberst’s frost-blackened face, which is set in a grin of death.
‘Course he was,’ answers Horseface. ‘We were out looking at artillery positions when the neighbours threw a shell down alongside us an’ blew the life out of the old ’un there. The Divisional Commander told me to see to it that his Chief of Staff got a Christian, German burial. That I can’t do in this land of the godless, can I? So I’m driving the old boy to Cologne, where I know there’s a Catholic piece of earth, which has, indeed, been blessed by the present Pope, Pius XII.’
‘You bring that one off,’ cries Porta, admiringly, ‘and I’ll take off both my hat an’ my socks to you!’
‘Can’t be done,’ says Gregor, darkly. ‘It just ain’t possible. Somewhere or other he’ll run into some checkpoint where the headhunters begin to ask questions and then there’ll be a rope round his neck in no time. Goodbye Cologne!’
‘Hell’n Tommy!’ cries Porta, fearfully. An MP checkpoint with red lamps and stop signals looms up ahead. Stopped vehicles are lined up at the side of the road, soldiers can be seen in flight across the fields. Bodies hang swinging from the trees. The MP’s are armed to the teeth. Their commander is a nasty-looking Hauptmann. His Mpi is at the ready in his hands and his ability to use it is very apparent.
‘Where are you from and where are you going?’ he asks, in a crackling machine-gun of a voice. ‘Movement orders!’
‘Yes, sir,’ says Horseface, in a tone which reflects long experience in cases of this nature. ‘Beg to report sir! Proceeding under orders from Divisional Commander, sir! Our fallen Chief of Staff to be carried to Heroes Graveyard, sir! For state funeral, sir!’
The MP Hauptmann seems to consider the matter. He stares suspiciously at the frozen Oberst, and does not notice Porta, who has quietly left the sleigh, and appears shortly after behind him.
‘Beg to report, sir!’ crows Porta, exuding stria military zeal. ‘Trouble over here, sir! Behind us, sir! Corps General, sir! Held up with all his gear, sir!’
The MP officer spins round, and glares furiously at Porta, who is standing stiffly at the salute with his hand to his bandaged head.
‘What’s that to do with me?’ he barks. ‘What General’s this you’re talking about?’
‘Don’t know, sir! Sorry, sir!’ answers Porta. ‘Just know, sir, there’s a high-ranking General, sir, sitting in his Mercedes-Kübel, sir, shouting, sir! You there, Obergefreiter, he says to me, sir! Get your arse over to that MP Hauptmann at the crossroads there, sir, an’ tell him from me to get over here and bring his men with him, sir!’
‘Hell’s bells!’ curses the MP officer, angrily. ‘Where is this bloody General? Can you sit on a motorcycle? You, Obergefreiter!’
‘Sorry, sir, no sir, can’t be done, sir! Cheeks of arse shot off, sir! By the Russians, sir!’
‘Stupid bastard,’ says the Hauptmann, curtly, and thunders off on the powerful motorcycle, with all his men following him.
Porta doesn’t even look back at them, as he takes his place in the sleigh again.
‘Shit, but he’ll be mad, when he finds a little twit of an Obergefreiter’s took him for a ride!’ Horseface screams with laughter. ‘If ever he finds you again he’ll kick your arse fifteen feet in the air!’
‘He won’t find me,’ Porta assures him, spitting in the snow.
Several miles on, they catch up with a seemingly endless column of heavily loaded lorries, stuck helplessly in the slush.
An Oberst stands in the middle of the road, waving a machine-pistol.
‘Out!’ he roars, furiously. ‘Out! Only drivers stay in the waggons!’
Nobody moves. None of them will leave their waggon.
‘What’s going on?’ asks Gregor, inquisitively, craning his neck.
‘A war-mad sod, playing hero. Wants to set up defence positions,’ answers an Unteroffizier, from the cab of a Büssing. ‘Going off about oaths on the flag, and all that shit. Defend the Fatherland to the last man’n the last bullet.’
‘Won’t they ever have had enough?’ rages the Old Man. ‘Aren’t we ever to hear anything else but “oath on the flag” and “fight to the last bullet”?’
‘Yes,’ sighs Porta. ‘The oath on the flag.’ He gestures with one hand. ‘The German sickness. Soon as three Germans get together, they start makin’ oaths to the state’n the German God. And the worst of it is, there’s always some lamebrain ready to lead us straight up the arsehole of hell!’
‘That’s enough now!’ screams Heide, insultedly. ‘Lame-brain! I’ll bet I’ve guessed correctly, when I say it is the Führer you are referring to?’
‘For it is he!’ laughs Porta, easily. ‘But there’s plenty more in this country, who’ve just as much shit between their ears and are ready to play “Niebelungen”, so’s all us German’s can get their backsides browned to a turn in the national frying-pan!’
‘That load of Middle Ages shit only a nationality-crazy German’s capable of thinking up,’ says Gregor, contemptuously.
Julius Heide is struck dumb. He has never heard anything like’ it. To call the national masterpiece ‘Die Niebelungen’ a load of shit. He notes down the date, time and names of all present on his message pad.
Tiny looks inquisitively over his shoulder, and sings in a high, falsetto voice:
Wenn alle untreu werden,
dann bleiben wir doch treu. . . .3
The motor sleigh rushes at
full speed over the steppe, away from the mile-long convoy stuck in the snow, and the Mpi-waving, suicidal maniac of an Oberst.
A broad row of tanks comes roaring over the steppe, alongside the hills, closely followed by armoured troop carriers and armed sleighs.
‘We’re in the middle of a counter-attack,’ cries the Old Man, fearfully. He stares at the long lines of self-propelled guns roaring past us.
From the lowering clouds Stukas appear with a nerve- shattering howl. They drop bombs in the midst of the Russian units, which begin to flee in retreat. By battalions, they throw down their arms and put their hands in the air. Only to be crushed under the tracks of the tanks, which rage through the snow in one long, seemingly endless, killing line.
Outside a forward field dressing station, overflowing with sick and wounded, we leave the motor-sleigh. Horseface won’t take us any further, certain that he can manage better with only his frozen Chief of Staff for company.
With a bit of bribery we manage to stay together. If we get separated we may never see one another again. Our division is smashed, and may never be re-formed.
‘Berlin, Berlin, here I come!’ Porta dreams aloud. He grins hollowly. ‘There’ll be some people shitting themselves, when I turn up again!’
Two infantrymen are lying on a heap of dirty straw. Their heads are covered in bandages. Only a thin slit has been left for their mouths.
‘Necked,’ says one of them, in a hoarse voice, gesturing with a frost-charred finger.
‘Necked?’ asks Barcelona, in astonishment, getting up on one elbow. ‘Can you live through that?’
‘I’m the proof you can,’ comes from a bandage-swathed head. ‘They took us prisoner just after we left our position. They were all right in the beginning. All they took was our watches. Ivan’s got watches, bikes and women on the brain. Don’t give a shit for anything else. But then up turned a limping Pallkóvnik4. One of them dangerous bastards with a Nagan in a open yellow holster. He took two SS-men off straightaway, himself. Bang! Bang! One in the guts, then their arses blowed away. Then he yelled a bit at the rest of us, and promised us we’d go the same road. Everybody outside in a straight line, and off we marched towards the east. Some got away in the confusion. The Russians didn’t like it when they found the tally didn’t fit. They knocked us about a bit, an’ three fellows who’d dropped from exhaustion they cracked their skulls, after they’d give ’em a bayonet in the gut. The limping Pallkóvnik had disappeared, and we thought we were gonna be let live. Soldiers usually ain’t too bad with soldiers, even when they’re wearing different uniforms. Well, we halted in a place with thick cover, and we could hear engines going all round us. The Ivans started puttin’ their heads together an’ lookin’ funny at us. We were thinking the engines sounded like Maibachs, and there was most like a counter-attack going on. But it looked as if the natives were brewing up somethin’ nasty for us. They kept on babblin’ away in some queer Asiatic dialect, and sending round a big jar of German schnapps they’d got hold of. After a while they were pretty sloshed, and started to sing so’s you could’ve heard it miles away. Every now and then they’d threaten us with their Kalashnikovs, and promise us a quick trip to the Pearly Gates, and no more war.
