Death's Head

by Leo Kessler

  Metzger caught a glimpse of a thatch of black hair. He moved forward, carrying it to her in his hand as if it were a very precious gift. She adjusted her buttocks, preparing to take his weight. But it wasn’t to be. At that moment a high-pitched voice broke into the rural idyll. “Metzger, what the devil do you think you are doing? We’re supposed to be fighting a war, you may recall!”

  It was the Vulture. Metzger looked down. The long-awaited erection had vanished as if it had never been there, while the fat Polack squirmed in the straw to cover up her charms like some teenage wallflower from a boarding school.

  Note

  1. A hard long-lasting sausage issued to the Army.

  FOUR

  Cautiously the survivors of the 1st Company advanced across a piece of ground so heavily pitted with shell holes that it was hard to imagine that anyone who had to defend it could have survived. The yellow mist parted momentarily and they could see the first artificial waterway and beyond it the ruined landscape of Brest Litovsk. The red spurts of flame told them that the fortress was holding out, but von Dodenburg could see no signs of the survivors of the 45th nor anything of Schwarz’s II Company which, he hoped, had broken through the line of T-34s.

  They waded into the water. It was cold and dirty-red from the blood of the corpses floating in it. They knew they were sitting ducks if the Ivans caught them but they reached the other side without a shot being fired. When they had clambered up on the top they saw why. It was littered with dead Russians and Germans. A couple of German halftracks were burning steadily among the dead, their crews hanging out over the sides of the cabs. Von Dodenburg saw that they didn’t bear the skeleton key divisional sign of the ‘Bodyguard’.

  There was a soft groan behind him. He swung round, to see a dying Russian was propped against a shattered gun wheel, a bloody stump where his right leg should have been. “Voda,” he croaked. “Voda, Gospodin.”

  Schulze grabbed his water flask and went over to him. He bent down, but when the dying Russian saw the badge on his collar, his eyes grew wide with terror. “SS,” he gasped. Then his head fell back against the iron wheel and he was dead.

  Schulze stared down at him in bewilderment. “What did I do?” he asked. “I only wanted to help the sod.”

  “It’s your big mug, you frightened the bastard to death, sarge.”

  “Hold your snout,” von Dodenburg snapped. But Schulze was not to be silenced.

  “I ask you, sir. What the hell can we do with this bunch of greenbeaks.” He swept his hand round the survivors of the II Company.

  “I’m sure Lieutenant Schwartz has broken through. Knowing him he’ll be in there somewhere. We’ve got to find him and link up. And as far as I’m concerned, I’m more scared of Major Geier than I am of the Russians. They can only kill us, Major Geier’ll have the balls off us if we fail – with a blunt can-opener.”

  Schulze sniffed. “Well, don’t say I didn’t warn you, sir,’ he said darkly. Von Dodenburg overlooked the remark. He gave the infantry signal for advance. The survivors spread out in a skirmish line on both sides of the dusty road that led to the Citadel, illuminated every now and again by the red flashes of the guns. Cautiously they began to advance, their weapons at the ready. But there was no sign of the enemy, save for the equipment they had thrown away in their headlong flight before the 45th’s first surprise attack. The road and the fields on both sides were strewn with helmets, gas masks, long grey overcoats, capes, cooking pots, even round-barrelled Soviet tommy-guns. Yet von Dodenburg knew that not all the Russians ran away at the first sight of a German. The very determined T-34 counter-attack that morning had proved that. Their tactics might be stupid, reckless, even wasteful, but no one could deny that they were brave.

  Almost instinctively he crouched lower at the thought. The movement saved his life. A bullet whined past his head and ricocheted off the side of a shattered tank behind him. Von Dodenburg spun round, aimed and fired at the same moment. The bullets tore the leaves of the tree. Someone screamed and a dark green shape tumbled through the branches and crashed to the ground, raising a sudden cloud of dust.

  “Hit the dirt!” von Dodenburg yelled.

  They dropped as one. “Schulze to me” von Dodenburg yelled from the ground, his eyes searching their front for other snipers. Schulze scurried towards him and flung himself down. Somewhere he had found a haversack of German grenades and held a potato masher in his right hand. “Spotted you as an officer and a gentleman straight off, didn’t they?” he gasped. “Not bad for sub-humans.”

  “Yes, you’re right, the Russians are not as stupid as the people back home like to think. Cover me, I’m going up to have a look-see.”

  “Not without me, you aren’t, Captain. Those greenbeaks’ll give us both the covering fire we need. They’ll only be too happy to stay where they are while we do the dirty work. Come on.” He began to crawl forward and von Dodenburg followed.

  They wriggled past the sniper. “Well, I’ll be a currant-shitting quartermaster!” Schulze gasped. “Look at that – it’s a dame!” The sniper’s helmet had rolled off to reveal a mass of bright red hair; and although the figure in the sniper’s coveralls was dumpy, there was no mistaking the fact that it was a woman.

  “Always liked redheads,” Schulze panted as they crawled on. “They’ve really got pepper in their pants. You can always rely on a redhead to give you a good roll for your dough…”

  He broke off. Voices were coming from behind the next slope – many voices and, although they spoke in a strange tongue, there was no mistaking the fact that the speakers were drunk. “Did you ever see the like?” Schulze gasped. “All the sods are blind drunk!”

  Von Dodenburg took in the scene in open-mouthed silence. What seemed to be a whole Russian infantry company was staggering about in the dead ground, their peak-caps with the big red star on them thrust to the backs of their heads, weapons held carelessly, while a handful of others in a darker-coloured uniform were shepherding a group of civilians to a spot in front of the troops. The civilians obviously did not want to go, but the men in the darker uniforms threatened them with their pistols and when one of them reacted too slowly, the man received a kick in the seat of his baggy black pants for his tardiness.

  “What do you make of it?” Schulze asked.

  “I don’t know,” von Dodenburg answered. “But one thing is certain; that infantry company is in our way.”

  As they slipped back the way they had come, the men in the darker uniforms had begun forcing the infantry into a sloppy drunken line behind the frightened civilians.

  The last howl of the Russian mortar stonk died away and the SS men cautiously began to raise their soil-littered helmets.

  In front of them the wind was blowing away the brown smoke of the explosions to reveal the field pitted with holes. But there was nothing else to be seen. The Russians had not advanced under cover of the bombardment. Puzzled, von Dodenburg shouted, “All right, watch your front and every second man stand down!” Next to him, Schulze lit a cigarette and said “What now, sir? Where do we go from here?”

  “I wish I knew.” He bit his lip. “I can’t make out what those crappy Russians are up to.”

  Cautiously he peered over the edge of their hole. Still nothing moved to their front, so he sat down next to Schulze and pushed back his helmet. “Like a couple of stiff ones in a convent,” Schulze commented sourly. “No use whatsoever.” Thus they squatted there in morose silence.

  “Sir,” a frightened voice alerted them. “They’re coming!”

  Von Dodenburg tugged at his helmet, grabbed his Schmeisser and stuck his head above the hole. In the ruddy gleam of the setting sun, he could see the ragged line of Russian infantry stumbling drunkenly across the littered field. But it wasn’t the Russians who caught his attention. It was the group of civilians being herded in front of them, their ancient wrinkled faces contorted with absolute terror.

  “Oh, Jesus,” Schulze groaned.

  “That’s the
clock in the bucket!” And von Dodenburg realized with sudden horror what he meant.

  There was no sound save for the breathing of the waiting SS men and the steady tramp of the Russian infantry behind their civilian shield. Now they were only 150 metres away. Close by von Dodenburg heard a bolt being driven home. “Hold your fire,” he ordered.

  “Don’t fire till I tell you to!”

  One hundred metres. He could see the men’s faces quite clearly. They were the faces of men who had worked all their lives in the outdoors – humble, honest faces, void of any emotion save abject fear. Fifty metres. Around him he could sense his men preparing to fire. He had to make a decision soon.

  Suddenly a drunken voice gave a command. The advance came to a halt. A long stream of Russians came from somewhere behind the civilians. He caught the word ‘German’ and the order “Davoi – move!”

  An elderly civilian stepped forward, his hands raised as if in supplication. Then he stopped and said, “Masters, harken to me.”

  The German was strange, archaic, akin to the German spoken by a Swabian peasant but it was the language of the Fatherland all right. “Ye must give up, otherwise they will slaughter us.”

  Von Dodenburg suddenly recognized the costume the old man was wearing. He had seen it in the racial museum at the Bad Toelz officer-cadet school. It was the traditional outfit of the Volga Germans, a group of peasant farmers who had emigrated to that region of Russia in the fourteenth century; the terrified civilians standing between them and the Russians were as much German as they were – perhaps even more so.1

  “Can’t you break away?”

  “No, sir, it is impossible,” the wrinkled old man said. “Ye must give up. Ye must save us. All we want is to return to the homeland…”

  “Davoi,” a voice yelled from the rear.

  “They’ll slaughter us,” the old man said in terror.

  “Christ,” Schulze groaned. “The Ivans’ve got us by the short and curlies! What the sodding hell are we going to do, sir?”

  Von Dodenburg did not answer. What was he to do? The humble peasants stared at him, their shoulders slightly bowed in expectation.

  The voice shouted “Davoi” once more.

  The drunken soldiers prodded their bayonets into the backs of the peasants and they began to march forward. The peasants stumbled on in front of them, their eyes wild with fear.

  All along the line the troopers levelled their weapons. The Russians were only forty metres away now. One or two of them did not even bother to hold up their rifles. They carried them at the port, confident that the Germans would surrender.

  Von Dodenburg looked at the old man’s face for the last time. Then he brought up his Schmeisser. “Fire!” he shouted. With his first burst he tore the old German’s head from his shoulders. Then the massacre started.

  Note

  1. There had been hardly any intermarriage between the Volga Germans and the local Slav peasants.

  FIVE

  It was the third day of the battle for the Citadel. The Vulture had moved his mobile HO into the area of the beleagured fortress which still held out stubbornly against the full weight of Guderian’s artillery supported by the Stukas. But even at that close distance he could not raise his companies successfully. Young Fick was coming through sporadically. Schwarz had reported on the one contact they had had that he had penetrated the Citadel itself. But III Company had disappeared into the maws of the battle as had had the survivors of I Company whom he had dispatched to make an infantry reconnaissance on foot. It was sad. Von Dodenburg had been a useful officer, if somewhat too sensitive for a field command. He would have made an excellent staff officer though. Staff officers could afford to enjoy the luxuries of emotions.

  “Metzger. I think the time has come for us to have a look at the battlefield and earn our pay, what?”

  Metzger swallowed hard. “At your command, Major!” he snapped, using the required military formula as a good senior NCO should. The Vulture screwed his monocle more firmly in his eye. “You can carry the radio. Perhaps we’ll be able to raise Schwarz when we’re closer to the fighting. There are far too many sets being used back here.” Then as an after-thought, “Oh, and you’d better hand me that rifle. One never knows.”

  “At your command!” Metzger rapped, but as he turned to fetch the Vulture, the rifle thrown away by some fleeing stubble-hopper, his legs threatened to give way beneath him. Things must be bad if the Vulture wanted to take a weapon with him!

  “Would you believe it, sir?” Metzger gasped as they crouched in the undergrowth at the side of the artificial waterway, watching the Russians splashing about in the water. “Those Popovs can’t have all their cups in the cupboard! Swimming in the middle of a fucking battle!”

  The Vulture did not answer. His heart was pounding, his lips were dry and his nostrils were gripped as if by a great hand. But not with fear. The emotion which over powered him was desire. He wiped away the sweat which had started up on his brow and stared at their bodies. How delightful they were, broad of shoulder, slim of hip, supported on great hairy pillars of legs. They were unlike German bodies, softened by good living and reliance on machines. These were peasant boys, hard and primitive.

  “Sir.” Metzger was staring at him curiously. “What are we going to do?”

  The Vulture’s finger curled around the trigger of his rifle. “We must get across that waterway,” he said. “When I give the word, fire.” He slid the rifle through the bushes.

  The young Russian soldiers went on playing in the water, seemingly unaware that they were in the middle of a battlefield. One of them bent and started scrubbing himself between the legs. The Vulture swallowed hard. Almost without knowing he had done so, he jerked the trigger of his rifle.

  The boy jumped in the air and fell forward into the shallow water. Beside the Vulture, Metzger’s Schmeisser roared into action. A stream of slugs hissed through the air.

  “Look out!” the Vulture yelled.

  One of the Russians was running towards them, completely naked, a bayonet in his hands. Metzger pressed the trigger of his Schmeisser, but nothing happened. A stoppage! Then the Russian was on top of him. Next to him the Vulture was grappling with another naked Russian. He was on his own. The Russian’s stink engulfed him. He saw the man’s open mouth, his horror-filled eyes, the sweat pouring down his pock-marked face. He brought up his fist and smashed it into his face. Blood spurted out of the Russian’s nose. Big hands gripped Metzger’s throat. The fingers thrust into his flesh. Stars started to pop in front of his eyes. A couple of moments more and he would be out. Desperately he brought his knee up hard into the Russian’s crutch. Metzger did not give him a chance to recover. He brought the metal butt of his pistol down into the centre of the Russian’s face. Metzger grabbed the bayonet and with the remembered skill of the butcher he had once been, he ran his eye over the boy’s body. The guts were best. Drawing a deep breath, he plunged it home. The boy reared up. His hands fixed on the bayonet, its sharp edges cutting his palms. Metzger pulled it out. The boy stared up at him like a dumb animal, the blood running through his dirty fingers. Metzger raised the bayonet once more. Beside him the Vulture had finished off his assailant. Carefully, almost as if he were back in the cutting-up room of Braun & Sons, and was worried that he might make a mess of some prime cut, he slid the bayonet into the boy’s guts. He died without another sound.

  Two hours later they came across what was left of von Dodenburg’s company, dug in around a shattered tram shed, together with a group of men from the 45th Infantry. Five hundred metres to their front was the centre of the fort’s resistance – the eighteenth-century church, its gilded onion-shaped tower holed by the German artillery; but still holding out and preventing the Germans from advancing any further. The Vulture dropped his rifle and took his riding cane from the top of his boot. “Come on, Metzger,” he urged. “They’re our chaps.” While Metzger advanced with his body crouched, the Vulture strode jauntily along the tramlines
towards the Company’s embattled positions as if he were taking a peace-stroll.

  “Jesus, Mary, Joseph,” a thick Bavarian voice called, “it’s the Vulture – I mean the CO,” it corrected itself hastily.

  The battle-grimed defenders of the shattered tram shed stared round at the CO in open-mouthed awe. A Russian sniper-bullet kicked up a spurt of dust a metre away from him. Metzger jumped, but not the Vulture. He slapped the side of his boot with his cane. “Awful bad shots, these Popovs, what!” he commented, the very caricature of the traditional Prussian officer.

  Spontaneously a ragged cheer rose from the defenders. The Vulture smiled thinly and strode inside the shed, its shell-twisted girders hanging down everywhere like grotesquely bent limbs. Crouching beside von Dodenburg, he listened to the traditional report.

  “First company, one officer, one NCO and twenty men, five wounded. Fifty other ranks attached from 45th Infantry, sir.”

  “Good, von Dodenburg, you’ve done well. Now what’s the situation?”

  Von Dodenburg pointed through the shattered window at the twin concrete bunkers two hundred yards up the road, the heat shimmering over their roofs. “Those two anti-tank bunkers are holding us up, sir. If we’d some means of getting by them, I think we’d make short work of the church. One of my lads found some Russki satchel charges, but those anti-tank bunkers are a tough nut. And they’ve got plenty of ammo. They use solid shot on us as soon as we make a move.”

  “Typical hedgehog defensive position,” the Vulture commented, raising his glasses to have a look.

  “Look out, sir,” Schulze warned.

  The flat crack of a Russian 57mm drowned his words. A solid white block detached itself from the left-hand bunker, hissed over their heads and clanged into the metal side of the nearest tram with a resounding echo like some gigantic gong. The Vulture put down his binoculars. “I see what you mean, von Dodenburg.” His hands were shaking slightly. “That was close!”