by Sven Hassel
We took up our positions as indicated to us by our guide. High up in the rocks where we now were, there were naturally made parapets and loopholes. The captain and his men pulled out. All round us were boxes of ammunition, baskets of mortar grenades, piles of mines and hand grenades.
Tiny jumped about in the midst of them like an excited child, liberally helping himself to a little of everything.
‘So this is where they’ve been hiding it!’ He snatched up a fistful of grenades and began juggling them. ‘I haven’t seen nothing like this since 1937!’
‘God knows what it’s all doing up here,’ said Barcelona, who had been silent and disgruntled ever since we arrived. ‘Fat lot of chance we’ll ever have to use any of it.’ He waved a hand down the hillside. ‘We’re nothing but sitting ducks, perched up here on this lump of bleeding rock. A blind man with a pea-shooter could hardly miss us.’
‘Why don’t you give your arse a chance and shut up bleeding moaning?’ said Porta. ‘At least we’re out of those piss-awful sodding trenches.’
‘I’d sooner be sitting in a trench than stuck up here for target practice,’ retorted Barcelona.
Porta ignored him. He settled himself comfortably within a circle of rocks, took out his square of green baize and spread it over the ground.
‘Anyone fancy a game?’ he said.
The Legionnaire and the Old Man joined him. I picked up a cow-bell which was lying about and experimentally shook it. The noise it made sent everyone diving for cover with their hands pressed against their ears. I have to admit, I was a bit disconcerted myself.
‘You do that once more,’ panted Barcelona, as the last clanging echoes died away in the mountains, ‘and you’ll get my boot right up your flaming arse!’
Gingerly, I laid the bell on a patch of grass.
‘How did I know it was going to make such a bloody awful racket?’ I said. ‘I’m not a perishing cow, am I?’
I sat and brooded while the rest of them resumed their interrupted game of pontoon. From time to time the Colonel came doddering round to take a look at us. Despite all the years behind him, it seemed that this was the first time he had ever been nobbled for the front line, and it was plain he was scared to death.
Tiny was still dragging round his appointed slave, the ex-Gestapo, Adam Lutz. By now, the man was but a pale shadow of his former fat self, but by some miracle he had survived without so much as a scratch.
‘I reckon this is going to be your big chance,’ Tiny kindly informed him. ‘When they sound the retreat and the rest of us start pulling out, I’m going to leave you here to cover the pass and shoot as many Russians as you can. All right? Just stay put and fire like buggery until you run out of ammo. They’ll give you a medal for that.’
Lutz nervously licked his lips. Porta gave him an evil grin.
‘Don’t you worry, mate. You’ll go down in the annals of history, you will. You’ll make this Regiment famous. There’ll come a time when they’ll all be reading about you in their picture books . . . “ex-Gestapo Adam Lutz, who threw himself fearlessly into the midst of the oncoming horde. Although his left leg was blown off at the crutch by a Russian shell, he picked it up and waved it round his head like a club . . . He succeeded in slaying six hundred Siberian soldiers before he received his mortal blow, but tucking his head under his arm he fought on bravely for as long as his heart continued to pump . . .” Jesus God,’ said Porta, wiping the tears from his eyes, ‘ain’t that moving? To think that the Fatherland can still produce such heroes!’
‘Talking of heroes,’ said Gregor, ‘I wonder what’s happened to old man Weltheim?’
‘Weltheim?’
We looked at him, blankly. Who was Weltheim?
‘The name does ring a slight, far-off bell,’ admitted the Legionnaire.
It was not until Gregor jogged our memories that we realised who he was talking about: Walter Baron von Weltheim, our divisional commander, who had briefly inspected us in the mud and marshes of Matoryta, and had then gone on his way with his grand piano and his two lorry-loads of personal effects and never been seen or heard of since. The Legionnaire hunched a shoulder.
‘He’ll be safe and sound in some gold-plated bunker, no doubt. Sozzling gin and working out how he can give the order for yet another strategic retreat and still manage to make it sound like a victory.’
‘He’s probably already given it,’ said Barcelona, gloomily. ‘The entire ruddy Army’s probably pissed off out of it by now. We’re the poor stupid sods left behind as a farewell gesture. Stuck up here on a lump of bleeding rock miles away from nowhere waiting to be slaughtered.’
‘Anyone as miserable as you are,’ said Tiny, ‘deserves to be bleeding slaughtered. Why don’t you stay behind with Lutz and earn yourself a medal?’
The Colonel was still restlessly pacing to and fro, waiting for the signal of the three green flares which never came, but shortly after midnight the horizon suddenly burst into flames and the rocky ground rumbled and shook beneath our feet as the Russians opened up with their heavy artillery.
‘What the devil is going on?’ cried Schmeltz, snatching up his field glasses. ‘Who the devil is firing at whom?’
‘It’s the Russians, sir.’ The Old Man, calm and sure of himself as always, took his stand at the Colonel’s side. ‘They’re moving up to attack while the troops are pulling out. They’d be mad not to. It’s the chance of a lifetime.’
He stared dispassionately across at the smoke-filled horizon. The Colonel dropped his field-glasses.
‘What should we do?’ he said. ‘They were going to give a signal. They were going to fire rockets for us. We were to stay here until we saw the flares—’ He passed a hand across his brow. ‘What do you suggest we do, Sergeant? You probably have more – ah – experience of this sort of – ah – terrain than I have. You have been in the area far longer. Tell me what you think we should do.’
‘Fuck the flares and get the hell out,’ muttered Porta.
The Old Man raised a warning eyebrow. He turned to the trembling Colonel.
‘I think we probably ought to go down and see what’s happening, sir. See if the bridge is still there. I can’t see we’re doing any good staying up here, and I really don’t—’
The sound of an explosion suddenly ripped through the night, cutting off the rest of the Old Man’s sentence. Everyone rushed to the parapet to look over. Geysers of flame were spouting into the air all the way along the skyline.
‘The bastards!’ screamed Barcelona. ‘The bloody bastards! They’ve blown the bloody bridge!’
I looked at the Colonel’s face. It was grey and scaly, and his lower lip was twitching.
‘I reckon that’s it,’ said the Old Man. ‘I reckon we’ve left it too late, sir.’
‘Nonsense!’ The Colonel drew himself up very straight. ‘Nonsense, Sergeant! They would never blow the bridge without first giving us the signal.’ He gestured nervously with a paper-thin hand. ‘Take these three men with you and go down there and see what’s happened. I shall follow on with the rest of the Company.’
‘Very well, sir.’ The Old Man turned towards us. ‘Sven, Tiny, Porta—’ He slung his rifle over his shoulder and jerked his head in the direction of the river. ‘Let’s go.’
‘Us again?’ I said.
‘Fuck that for a laugh,’ muttered Porta.
The Old Man turned on him, furious.
‘Will you kindly keep your bloody mouth shut and just do what you’re told?’
Porta mutinously slapped his yellow top hat on to his head and set off in the Old Man’s wake, using his rifle as a walking stick. Tiny slipped and fell going down the steep slope of the rocks, and his machine-gun went clattering ahead of him, making a noise like a thunder peal. Tiny’s shouted oaths went ringing after it.
‘For Christ’s sake!’ said the Old Man, irritably.
Barcelona leaned over the parapet and called down to us.
‘Why don’t you just pick up a loudspeaker
and tell ’em you’re coming?’
The rest of the Company caught us up before we had gone very far. It seemed they had decided among themselves that they had waited long enough, and accordingly they shouldered arms and set off, leaving the Colonel to follow them or not as he would. It was obvious that the man was quite unfit for command.
‘Knicker-brained old goat,’ muttered Porta. ‘He should have been preserved in pickle many years ago.’
The night was warm and heavy, and we sweated as we descended the same narrow path up which we had come only a few hours earlier. The mosquitoes were abroad in their multitudes, rising from the marshes which lay below. We could smell the familiar sweet, rotten stench of the bogs, and we knew that somewhere down there was the enemy.
From way ahead of the rest of us, Tiny suddenly fired two warning shots, and we guessed he must have caught wind of the Russians. The Colonel shouted a vague, hysterical order, but men had already followed what had become instinct and were leaping to the side of the path, taking up their positions, setting up machine-guns and mortars.
I saw Lutz crouched behind a boulder. He was shaking so violently I could hear his teeth chattering.
‘Look at him,’ jeered Barcelona, who had regained all his usual good humour now that the time for action was upon us. ‘Like a bloody rice pudding!’
Gregor crawled up to the man and stuck his revolver threateningly into his ribs.
‘Just remember,’ he said. ‘One false move and you’re for the high jump, mate . . . we don’t go too much for the Gestapo round here.’
A whole series of shots resounded from further down the path, and then the Old Man suddenly appeared. He looked round for the Colonel, located him in a ditch, and calmly went up to make his report.
‘Russians all over the place, sir. We don’t stand a chance in hell of breaking through. We’ve managed to wipe out one small section, but the whole area’s lousy with ’em . . . I reckon the best thing we can do is sit tight and wait to see which way they jump.’
Before the Colonel could reply, the sky over our heads was suddenly illuminated with a bright light. Full of joy, the Colonel started to his feet.
‘The signal—’
‘No, sir.’ The Old Man held him back with a restraining hand. He pulled him down again just in time to avoid another flare which burst over our heads. ‘It’s the enemy, sir, trying to locate us.’
Not a single man moved. We stayed where we were, hidden among the rocks, while the flares hovered overhead for what seemed an eternity. Gregor kept his revolver pressed hard into Lutz’s ribs. The Old Man respectfully hung on to the Colonel in the safety of the ditch. The slightest movement could have betrayed our presence.
The last flare went shooting high into the night. It rose in an arc above us, showering us with its light, and slowly, very slowly, fell away across the river and burnt itself out.
‘Right, sir.’ The Old Man helped the Colonel out of the ditch and began to stuff tobacco into the bowl of his pipe. ‘I think perhaps we ought to prepare for action, sir—’
Most of us were already occupied. Heide and the Legionnaire were laying T mines down the length of the narrow path. Porta was busy preparing Molotov cocktails. Gregor and Barcelona were camouflaging the mortar beneath branches of trees. It was stationed well back from the road and was pointed in the direction from which the Russians must come. Tiny was sitting on a rock happily attaching hand grenades to sticks of explosive. As weapons they were verging on the suicidal, but they made a good loud bang and that was enough for Tiny. He seemed cheerfully unconcerned at the prospect of having his head blown off or his arms wrenched out of their sockets. No one else would go anywhere near him.
The Colonel bustled busily from group to group issuing a series of contradictory orders, all of which were discreetly cancelled or corrected by the Old Man going round after him. He reached Tiny, who was perched on his rock playing with his box of hand grenades. He turned in horror to the Old Man.
‘Sergeant, does this corporal of yours know what he’s doing? Is the man feeble-minded? Is he aware that he is about to blow himself up?’
‘That’s all right, sir.’ The Old Man edged the Colonel nervously away from Tiny and his lethal toys. ‘It’s just his idea of fun.’
‘Fun?’ said the Colonel. ‘Is the fellow a cretin?’
The Old Man was spared the trouble of replying. From somewhere below us a machine-gun opened up, and we could hear pieces of broken rock cascading down the hillside.
‘That’s it,’ said the Old Man, calmly. ‘They’re on their way.’
Heide suddenly came scrambling up the slope. He put a finger to his lips and pointed silently down the path towards a clump of bushes. We all squinted at them in the semi-darkness. The Old Man raised an eyebrow.
‘Well? What are we supposed to be looking at? Just a handful of lousy bushes—’
‘A handful of lousy bushes that weren’t there half an hour ago,’ said Heide.
The Old Man looked again.
‘Are you sure?’
‘Bloody positive. That area was nothing but rocks.’
The Colonel clicked his tongue impatiently.
‘Stuff and nonsense!’ he said. ‘What is the matter with your men, Sergeant? Are they all sub-normal?’
The Old Man frowned.
‘Sergeant Heide is one of the best soldiers in the entire Regiment, sir.’
It was quite true. The man may have been a louse and a bastard and a Nazi into the bargain, but call him what you like there was no denying his skill as a soldier. (Despite his fanatical belief in the Party, he was to end up, twenty years after the end of the war, as a lieutenant-colonel in the Russian Army. Not bad for a child of the Berlin slums!)
The Colonel stared haughtily at Heide.
‘Are you trying to tell us that a whole plantation of trees has suddenly sprung up out of nowhere?’
‘Bushes, sir,’ said Heide. ‘They’re bushes.’
‘Bushes or trees, Sergeant! What difference does it make? Have you ever heard of a bush that grows at the rate of five feet an hour?’
‘No, sir, I haven’t,’ said Heide. ‘I’d be a great deal happier if I had.’
The Old Man suddenly drew in his breath. All eyes were instantly trained on the mysterious shrubbery below. As we watched, a couple of the bushes uprooted themselves and walked. They shuffled forward a few yards and then settled down again. Another pair followed them, and then another and another. Lutz gave a frightened yelp, and Gregor closed a hand over his mouth. Tiny picked up one of his home-made weapons. The Colonel stood gaping.
‘When I give the signal—’ said the Old Man.
He held up a hand. We all watched him like hawks. His arm fell, and one hundred and thirty-six hand grenades were sent hurtling through the air. The walking bushes shrieked in agony. Dark shapes were seen bounding off among the rocks. The noise of the explosions died away, and the dust settled on a chaos of torn flesh and severed limbs. The Legionnaire went off to examine the remains.
‘Mongols,’ he said, on his return. ‘Ugly-looking bastards. Still, we seem to have scared them off all right.’
‘Don’t worry, they’ll be back,’ said the Old Man, grimly.
We settled down again, nervously awaiting the next attempt. The Colonel seemed unable to keep still and persisted in marching up and down tearing at his fingernails. Porta was trying to play dice in the dark, right hand against left, and Barcelona sunk back into his former mood of disgruntlement.
‘One Mark a day,’ he was saying. ‘One Mark a bleeding day. Join the Army and have your brains blown out, and that’s all you get for it . . . and me with another twenty years to go! Jesus God Almighty, I must have been mad. I must have been off my rocker. I must have—’
He stopped abruptly as Tiny suddenly made a dive for the machine-gun and began firing frantically into the gloom. The Old Man sent up a flare. By its light, we could see what Tiny’s sharp ears had heard. Bundles of grass moving slowly up
the hillside . . .
They were barely thirty yards away, and as Tiny opened up with the MG they abandoned their attempts at camouflage and came running towards us up the path. They were Mongols, all right. I could see their slanted eyes and their broad, flat cheekbones. Strange soldiers of the Russian Army who could scarcely speak a word of Russian.
‘Fire at will!’ shouted the Old Man.
The Colonel was screaming his usual stream of inanities, but fortunately they were drowned out by the noise of rifle fire. Sergeant Koblin and Corporal Lutz, working without steel gloves, were shoving one grenade after another into the mortar and never seemed to notice their burnt and blistering hands. Heide had snatched up a flame-thrower and was firing in short, accurate bursts into the midst of the oncoming Mongols. The grass was scorched and the path running with blood, but as fast as one man fell, another came leaping up to take his place.
A line of Russian infantry now appeared behind the Mongols, and we picked them off like flies. There is nothing more deadly than attacking on an open slope. They had no form of cover, no protection of any kind, and yet still they kept on coming, wave upon wave of them into the slaughter. I wondered why the enemy should be trying so hard to eliminate us, one solitary company, abandoned and forgotten in the general flight of the German Army.
‘Fire low!’ called the Old Man. ‘Sighting three hundred.’
It was a massacre. In such conditions, it could scarcely have been anything else. Not even the sheer weight of numbers could compensate for our superior position, at the top of the narrow track. When danger point was reached, we simply activated the mines which had been so carefully laid by Heide and the Legionnaire. The resulting blast made us stagger. Great cracks appeared in the path, and a landslide of rocks and rubble tore down the hillside, carrying half the enemy along with it. The other half either fled or were left behind to die. We hurled ourselves after them down the slope, with Tiny in the lead, firing at anything that moved and shouting and hallooing like a maniac.
