Death's Head

by Leo Kessler

  Just before dawn they stood to, shivering in the darkness while the company officers checked their weapons, and their fingers to see if they were discoloured by frostbite. They were followed by the NCOs rationing out great canteen cups of creme de crime, and boys who a month before had turned up their noses in disgust at a glass of beer gulped the stuff down greedily. “That’s the ticket,” Schulze bellowed enthusiastically. “It’ll make heroes of the lot of you. And if the Ivans don’t get you, your shitty liver will.”

  At dawn, the Soviet batteries opened up with an earth-shaking roar. Flight after flight of rockets from the Stalin Organs flew over the ice, crashing into the snow behind them. The men of Wotan did not even duck. They watched the bombardment, drunken stupid grins on their grey faces, as if they were observing a peacetime firework display.

  For ten minutes the storm raged all around them and the air was filled with hot steel shards and razor-sharp lumps of flying ice. Then as suddenly as it had started, the bombardment ended and the officers were stumbling up the line blowing their whistles and the noncoms were bellowing hoarsely. “Stand to; stand to; the Popovs are coming!”

  On the other side of the Don there was a gleam of silver. Faintly they could hear a hoarse command. There was a deep hollow boom. Suddenly a great sparkle ran down the bank as a military band broke into a march. A long line of men, arms linked together, rifles thrust under their elbows, thin old-fashioned bayonets pointing upwards stepped on to the ice, their long cloth coats flapping about the ankles of their polished jack-boots. In their front a lone officer raised his sabre. In perfect formation the Russians started to march forward. The Germans could hear the steady crunch of their boots on the ice above the music. Another line stepped onto the ice, and another. Without looking back, the lone officer raised his sabre again. The whole formation burst into song, their words punctuated by the steady crunch of their boots. Their bayonets gleaming, the human wall came closer and closer, while the defenders waited in amazement.

  Then the band stopped playing. The singing faltered and died away. The Russians were less than four hundred metres away. Von Dodenburg licked his lips and raised his Schmeisser. He hoped it would fire. As soon as the alarm had been sounded, he had pissed on the bolt and wiped away the urine carefully with the warm inside of his felt jacket. Slowly and deliberately he took aim on the lone officer with the sabre. He aimed at the white blur above the sweeping grey cavalry moustachios. All around him in the foxhole line he could hear his men working their bolts to prevent the grease from freezing up. The Russians were three hundred metres away. They must charge soon. “Hold your fire,” he ordered, trying to control his breathing.

  The lone officer halted. He swung round as if he were on some eighteenth century parade ground and bellowed something at the soldiers.

  “He’s telling them that they must be prepared to die for Mother Russia,” one of the ‘booty Germans’ translated. “Now he’s saying…”

  But his words were drowned by the great roar that rose from the thousand Russian throats. As one they surged forward, bayonets tucked into their hips. “Urra, urra;” the vast stretch of the Don echoed and re-echoed to their cries.

  “Fire!” von Dodenburg screamed.

  “Fire!” All along the foxhole line the officers followed his lead.

  Von Dodenburg squeezed the trigger of his machine pistol. The Schmeisser rose and fell against his cheek. Empty cartridge cases clattered onto the ice.

  The lone officer staggered. He let the sabre sink. Then he raised it again. But only for a moment. Slowly he relaxed his grip. His knees began to give way. The sabre fell and clattered onto the ice, skidding away from him. He fell with a crash.

  The first burst swept into the Russian line. Scores of men were mown down in that first volley.

  From the flanks the spandaus burst into life. Within seconds the first wave was wiped out. But the second line stumbled over their bodies and advanced, firing from the hip as they ran. Russians began to detach themselves from the rest and pelted towards the machine guns. Suddenly the first spandau went out. Then the second. Over the snap and crackle of small arms fire, von Dodenburg could hear Schwarz screaming. “Change the barrel – change the barrel!”

  He glanced over his shoulder. The barrel of the nearest spandau was glowing, steam rising from it in little ripples. Frantically a grey-faced youngster, his eyes wild with terror, was fumbling with it. Schwarz pushed him to one side. He grabbed the barrel and screamed as it burned through his gloves into his flesh. Cursing, he flung it into the snow. The snow hissed and turned black. Tears streaming down his frozen cheeks, he fitted the other one. The gunner forced the new belt in and it chattered into action again, while Schwarz held his burnt hands under his armpits, whimpering with pain.

  Not a moment too soon. The Soviet skirmishers were only a hundred metres away. The slugs cut into them, bowling them over by the score. They skidded over the ice, screaming with pain. But still the mass came on, crying their terrible ‘urra’, as if they would never be stopped. They were only seventy metres away now.

  Then they hit the minefield. The teller mines intended for tanks didn’t explode. But their own ‘debollockers’3 did. Suddenly their front was a crazy mess of screaming Russians clutching their bloodied crotches, hopping around on one leg or fighting to open their flies to see the extent of the damage.

  Von Dodenburg sprang up from his foxhole, forgetting that he was weighed down by three layers of iced clothing. “Prepare to attack!” he screamed, careless of the Russian lead cutting the air all around him. Without waiting to see if his company were following, he stumbled forward, firing his machine pistol from the hip.

  They crawled out of their holes and followed him at a clumsy run, their rifles tossed to one side, their hands gripping spades, axes, knives. Like a pack of wild animals they flung themselves on the wounded Russians slashing, hacking and slicing.

  They had no mercy. As the Russians lay screaming on the ice, holding their ruined genitals, they rained blow upon blow on their unprotected faces.

  Caught up in an elemental rage-of-the-blood4 they continued with their gory butchery until the officers staggered among them, screaming at them to stop.

  Some of the SS men had just strung up a couple of dead Russians over a fire made of ration packets, in an attempt to thaw out their bodies so that they could steal their leather boots, when the next attack came. This time it was more skillful – five T-34s coming in from the flanks, with little infantry ‘grapes’5 behind them, taking their time, advancing with caution, obviously testing the Germans out.

  Schulze lowered the binoculars he had taken from the dead Russian with the sabre. The lenses were already beginning to freeze up again although he had kept them in the warmest place on his body – between his legs.

  “They’re giving us the come-on, sir,” he said to von Dodenburg.

  “Yes. Let ‘em come a bit closer. Then I’ll decide.” The T-34s started to pick up speed. Behind them the Russians in their ankle-length coats broke into a trot. Von Dodenburg was taking a calculated risk. If the Russian tanks managed to get within a hundred metres of their line, they were finished. It would take the Vulture back at Handgrenade Rock a good half hour to get their own Mark IVs started and by that time they would be dead.

  Five hundred – four hundred – three hundred metres. He would have to make the decision now. “All right, smoke,” he yelled. Five men knelt on the top of their foxholes, held their riflebutts on the snow and fitted the grenades. In ragged succession they fired. All five hit the ice about fifty metres in front of the tanks. The grenades exploded with soft plops. Thick white smoke started to stream out of them. They fired again. A rough smoke screen began to form between the defenders and the advancing tanks.

  “Come on,” von Dodenburg yelled to Schulze.

  Together they doubled clumsily towards Schwarz’s positions.

  “I’ll go with you,” Schwarz roared over the noise of the tanks.

  Von D
odenburg pushed him to one side. “Your hands are no good!” he cried. “Can’t use you. Schulze, grab the trails.” Schulze bent down and, with a heave of his powerful back, picked up the iron trails of the 37mm anti-tank cannon. Von Dodenburg flung himself over the thin barrel and brought his weight down to help him. Together they pushed the half-ton weight towards the smoke screen. But the smoke screen was being blown away rapidly. They only had a matter of seconds now. “This is far enough,” von Dodenburg cried. Schulze dropped the trails, kicked them apart and fixed the connecting link, while von Dodenburg sprang from wheel to wheel pulling on the brakes. The smoke was almost dissipated now. Schulze grabbed the shell clipped on the inside of the shield and rammed it into the breech. The breech lever clanged shut. Von Dodenburg yanked the firing lever back. The gun erupted like a wild horse. The breech flew open. The blast slashed him across the face. Schulze thrust in another shell. Suddenly the T-34 burst into flame and huge chunks of metal went flying through the air. But there was no time for triumph. As slugs started to patter against the shield, another T-34 nosed its way through the smoke, its gun swinging from side to side. Schulze reacted instantly. Whipping a grenade out of his belt, he flung it to one side. It erupted harmlessly some twenty metres away. The Soviet gunner responded as he had anticipated he would. He swung his gun round and fired at the burst.

  “Fire!” Schulze yelled. Von Dodenburg jerked the firing bar.

  The armour-piercing shell caught the T-34 at the base of the turret. The massive piece of armour, weighing at least five tons, rose straight in the air and crashed down again in exactly the same spot. The T-34 came to a halt, smoke pouring from it. A moment later it exploded, mowing down the ‘grape’ which had been running behind it.

  The remaining T-34s turned and fled, leaving the supporting infantry to the mercy of the defenders. And the men of Wotan needed no invitation. A volley of lead ripped into them. They died in their scores as they fled over the littered ice, throwing away their weapons in panic.

  “There’ll be the Knight Cross in this for you, Schulze,” von Dodenburg gasped.

  “Sod the Knight’s Cross,” said Schulze. “And sod the fucking war. I’ve had enough.”

  Notes

  1. Like most of the SS troopers who became the veterans of the Russian campaign, Sergeant Schulze was already using odd pieces of broken Russian in his conversation. “Ponemyu” means “understood”.

  2. Army slang for mincemeat on toast.

  3. A home-made infantry mine, consisting of a bullet forced into a small explosive charge which threw the slug up at about waist-height.

  4. A literal translation from the German Blutrausch.

  5. Army slang for supporting infantry.

  FIVE

  By the first week of December, 1941, the whole Crimean front was beginning to break down. Retreat was in the air. The base stallions began to desert in their thousands; and in the rear areas special Death’s Head officer patrols stalked the shattered streets stringing up deserters without trial, leaving their frozen bodies to dangle in the wind as a warning to the rest. But the mass desertions continued; and fewer and fewer supplies were getting through to the men at the front.

  The field commanders started to lose their nerve. General Hans Count von Sponeck, commander of XLII Corps, ordered the withdrawal of the Wotan’s comrades-in-arms at Brest-Litovsk, the 46th Infantry. Manstein countermanded the order. “Withdrawal must be stopped at once.” But it was too late. The shattered 46th pulled back and Count von Sponeck was arrested, reduced to the rank of private and sentenced to death. The 46th Infantry was broken up, at the order of Field-Marshal von Reichenau himself. But von Reichenau, commander-in-chief of Army Group South, could not close his eyes to the reality of the situation. That first week in December, he telephoned to the Führer himself and told him bluntly, “The Russians are penetrating into the over extended German line. If disaster is to be averted the front must be shortened – in other words, taken back behind the Myus. There is no other way, my Führer!”

  But still Hitler refused to admit defeat. He hung on, and on the Don, the starving, exhausted remnants of the SS Assault Battalion Wotan, which had left Belgium a thousand strong, fought off attack after attack.

  The afternoon attack started with a roar like that of an infuriated beast. The spandau gunners crawled into their pits. The riflemen began working their bolts back and forth, feeling the grease grow thinner and the action easier as the grease warmed up. With clumsy fingers the surviving officers fumbled for their whistles, ready to alert the eighty dirty, demoralized scarecrows which was all that was left of the once proud Wotan. The whole Russian front blinked with violet light. More than two hundred shells burst in or about their positions. “Alarm, alarm!” the NCOs screamed. In their holes the riflemen began clawing off their mittens and started banging away at the little figures running across the ice towards them. There seemed no end to the number of Russians waiting to cross the deadly skating rink of the Don.

  “They’re up to Pak Point!” someone screamed.1 And the Russians had indeed reached the shattered 37mm anti-tank gun, now hidden in a mantle of snow.

  “Spandau – concentrate Pak Point!” Schwarz croaked.

  Suddenly something hurtled down from the sky. Schwarz flung himself on the snow and the Spandau disappeared in a ball of red and yellow flame. A rifleman threw away his weapon, sprang out of his foxhole and started running towards Pak Point. A burst of schmeisser fire caught him between the shoulder blades just as he was raising his hands in surrender. He fell flat on the ice and the Russians stamped over his body as if it were a welcome mat. Then they were in the Wotan foxhole line, Mongol faces lathered in sweat.

  The panic-stricken runner skidded through the opening, pulling the tarpaulin down with him, his chest heaving like a pair of old bellows. “The Ivans have broken through!” he shouted. “Metzger,” the Vulture said. “Get the engine started.” “Sir!” And picking up his machine pistol, Metzger doubled outside.

  “You,” the Vulture said to the runner, “give me your bayonet.”

  Hastily Geier slashed open his boot. His leg swelled out of it, a dirty, pus-filled, stinking grey. He grabbed the bandages he had kept ready for this very emergency and started wrapping them round the frostbitten foot. Outside they could hear Metzger kicking away the stove from underneath the Mark IV. He said a silent prayer to Mars that the tank would start. “Get me those strips of horse blanket,” he said to the runner. “Quick!” The two of them bound the blanket round his leg and foot with string. He tugged at it to ensure it was firmly fixed; then hopping like some ancient Milord with gout, he grabbed his machine pistol and stumbled outside.

  At the same moment the Mark IV’s engine burst into life. He cupped his hands around his mouth. “Get in,” he shouted at the runner. “You’re the gunner. Get the lead out of your arse, boy; there isn’t a moment to lose!” A moment later they were off towards the sound of the fighting – the coward, the cripple and the boy, like allegorical figures from some medieval primitive.

  The Wotan line was a confused mess of screaming, swaying, dying men, and the Vulture ignored it. He could not attack there without endangering his own men. There was only one chance to stop the rot. “Pak Point,” he yelled and kicked Metzger in the small of the back to indicate straight ahead.

  The ice was swarming with Russians, hurrying towards their comrades fighting in the Wotan line. But Metzger dared not hesitate. He put his foot down on the accelerator and roared right into them. They scattered in panic and he rolled on, cutting a bloody swathe through their ranks, while the Vulture fired blindly into their midst.

  “Halt!”

  Metzger pulled back on the tiller bars. The Mark IV skidded two or three metres and came to a halt. “Gunner, HE over their heads – and quick!” Geier yelled. The boy pulled the firing lever and the HE shell exploded over the heads of the Russians in the Wotan line.

  The Russians tried to rush the stationary tank, but Metzger and the Vulture m
owed them down from the protection of the armour. In the Wotan line, the Russians began to break. Flinging all caution to the wind, the Vulture dropped over the side of the tank and hobbling across the ice, dragging his monstrously swollen foot behind, he attacked the Russian rear single-handed.

  Five minutes later the Russian attack was broken and they were streaming back the way they had come, leaving 300 dead and dying sprawled on the ice and among the Wotan positions. But Fick’s III Company which had borne the main brunt of the break-through was down to Fick himself and two wounded booty Germans. The end was near.

  Field Marshal von Brauchitsch, Commander-in-Chief of the Army, was fired first as the chief scapegoat. He was followed by Field Marshal von Bock, to whom the Führer was pleased to grant ‘sick leave’, after the hard-pressed chief of Army Group Centre had informed the ‘greatest captain of all times’ that he could not hold much longer.

  In the end Guderian flew to Hitler’s HQ in East Prussia to put the Army’s case to the Führer. He pulled no punches. The Army would have to retreat!

  The Führer’s sallow face flushed angrily: “Once I’ve authorized a retreat there won’t be any holding them,” he rasped. “The troops will just run. And with the frost and the deep snow and the icy roads that means the heavy weapons will be the first to be abandoned and the light ones next and then the rifles will be thrown away and in the end there’ll be nothing left. No, the defensive positions must be held. Transport junctions and supply centres must be defended like fortresses. The troops must dig their nails into the ground; they must dig in and not yield an inch.”

  His eyes bored into Guderian’s. But the Colonel-General did not lower his gaze. “My Führer,” he said, “the ground in Russia at present is frozen solid to a depth of one and a half metres. No one can dig in there.” In the background the flunkies and the toadies in their immaculate uniforms drew in their breath sharply. “How dare he speak to the Führer like that?” their looks seemed to say.