by Leo Kessler
As if in a daze, the big Hamburger nodded his head in agreement. The little man was right. Now they were well and truly trapped in Fedorovka.
FOUR
Peiper pressed his throatmike and gave his order. Instantly the driver halted behind the snowbank, going into the hull-down position, while the gunner swung the turret round, long hooded gun instantly fixed on the broad, grey crocodile shuffling slowly across the snow-bound steppe. Behind Peiper’s command tank, the remaining halftracks and tanks did the same without command. Worried as he was, Peiper was nevertheless pleased; in spite of the uncertainty, their exhaustion and hunger, his veteran crews were wide-awake and alert.
He focused his glasses, his ears already taking in the soft hum, his nose wrinkling up at the stench that rose from the broad column which shuffled wearily across the snowfield. Instantly the details leapt up into the bright circles of calibrated glass: field-grey figures, lurching and stumbling, falling to their knees in the last stages of exhaustion, urged on by some last flicker of the will to live and staggering to their feet once more.
Peiper bit his bottom lip, aware now of the curses and commands of the guards trotting at the side of the seemingly endless column on their shaggy Siberian ponies, and watched how one of the Red Army men beat a prisoner back into line with repeated blows of his knout. They were German all right. Obviously the first of the great catches the Russians must have now begun to make, as they broke into the Kessel and with their usual tactics started to split it up into isolated groups of bewildered, estranged captives.
‘What are we going to do about them, Obersturm?’ the gunner’s query cut into his reverie, as Peiper watched their frightened, exhausted faces with the great burning eyes of starvation, through his binoculars.
‘I don’t really know, Kurt,’ Peiper answered, his mind beginning to race.
Of course there was no chance of his escorting such a great body of men back to their own lines. Air recce would soon spot them and they would be sitting ducks for the Russian dive-bombers. But could he just hide this way and let them march into captivity and possible death, for he had no illusions about the way the Popovs treat their prisoners? Just as they did themselves, the Popovs were in no way concerned about keeping their POWs alive; after all they were only useless, extra mouths to be fed. All the same, if he did attempt to free the prisoners, might this not compromise their own position? What was he going to do?
It was the fate of the gaunt man with the burning eyes which made his decision for him. A lanky fellow, his head wrapped up in a blood-stained bandage, he stepped out of the column to pump ship. But just as he had opened his flies to do so, one of the guard’s whiplash curled about his skinny shoulders, forcing him to drench the prisoner at his side with the hot steaming urine.
The gaunt man swung round on the guard who had struck him, his eyes burning with such hatred that the watching Peiper felt that the unknown German must be consumed by his own burning passion. The guard stepped back, hand dropping instinctively to his pistol holster. For one long moment, while the others shuffled by, the two of them faced each other thus, a still life in the middle of a snowy nowhere. Then, deliberately, as if making the ultimate challenge, the gaunt man hawked and spat carefully into the snow at the guard’s felt-clad feet.
Through his binoculars, Peiper could see the Russian’s sallow face flush. Suddenly his pistol appeared as if by magic in his gloved hand. But if the Russian had expected the gaunt man to flinch and cower with fear he was mistaken. Instead, the German calmly crossed his arms across his chest and gazed down at the enraged Russian, as if daring him to make the final, overwhelming move in this strange little contest. The Russian hesitated for a fraction of a second. Suddenly Peiper jumped at the crack of the pistol. The gaunt man staggered back. For one long moment he remained upright, blood beginning to trickle from the side of his mouth, then his knees began to crumple beneath him.
The Russian waited, but obviously the German was taking too long to die. Reaching down from the saddle of his pony to where the gaunt man now crouched on his knees in the snow, he placed the muzzle of his weapon against the back of the man’s bent head. Peiper was tempted to turn away his head, but he forced himself to watch, knowing what the inevitable outcome of this one-sided encounter had to be, yet telling himself that it was his duty as a German officer to continue to look — for this was the only way in which he could keep steeling himself to the daily task of killing his fellow men.
The Russian’s jaw hardened. His finger curled round the trigger. Crouched on his knees, the gaunt man seemed oblivious to everything happening around him. The Russian pressed the trigger. The gaunt man’s skull seemed to erupt. The watching officer could quite clearly see the slurry of blood start up and drench the Russian’s hand which held the pistol and the brilliant white flakes of bone whirl, as the German’s skull disappeared under that tremendous impact like a soft-boiled egg struck by a too-heavy spoon.
Next instant Peiper dropped the binoculars and pressed the throatmike. ‘To all,’ he barked, iron in his voice. ‘Fire star shells and bursts of m.g. over their heads! Stampede the Popovs. Over!’
‘Shouldn’t we wait and see, sir?’ It was the familiar educated drawl of von Ribbentrop on the air.
‘No,’ Peiper snapped harshly. ‘You know what wait-and-see did, you diplomatic dummy. He shat himself!’ Angrily he kicked the waiting driver. ‘Advance!’ he commanded.
Next to Peiper, the gunner chuckled. ‘That’s the stuff to give ’em, Obersturm!’ he cried enthusiastically, hastily unloading the AP shell and shoving a star-shell into the breech, as the driver rammed home first gear and with a roar of his engines, burst from their cover.
‘The Popovs’ll piss themselves when they see us!’
‘Let’s just hope that they’re the only ones who do so,’ Peiper said sourly, his rage vanished now as quickly as it had come. Then the flying V of tanks and halftracks was rattling madly across the surface of the hard-packed snow, machine guns chattering, star-shells exploding to their front above the heads of the suddenly elated column in crazy profligacy....
*
‘God bless you, sir!’
‘Thank you, sir!’
‘Ein Hoch der SS’
‘It’s just like Christmas!’
‘I knew the Fuhrer’d save us!...’
Peiper ignored the cries coming up from all sides, as the tanks and halftracks came to a halt, firing a last burst at the few surviving Popovs who were urging their Siberian ponies in a mad gallop across the steppe.
A man jumped up and tried to kiss his hand, but the young colonel snatched it aside just in time, crying, ‘Now listen you lot. You’re not out of the wood yet... Do you hear, you’re still in trouble!’
His words had their effect and the hoarse cries of joy died away, while the gaunt-faced prisoners, many of them with snow-heavy rags tied around their feet in the place of the boots which their guards had stolen, stared at the speaker, suddenly sombre.
Peiper pressed his throatmike. Von Ribbentrop, you’re our diplomat,’ he said sotto-voce. ‘Tell them the situation we’re in. Give them a rough course back to the three rivers, and make it clear to them we’re not in any way able to help them any further.’
‘I will endeavour to do my best, sir,’ von Ribbentrop relied solemnly.
‘Do that. But don’t let them piss on your striped pants,’ Peiper said with unusual coarseness for him, irritated as he was by the young lieutenant’s solemn tones. ‘Over and out!’
Hastily he slipped out of the earphone and mike set and dropped neatly over the side, trying to avoid the score of hands wanting to pat him on the back. Quickly he cut his way through the milling crowd of ex-prisoners eyes darting to left and right, looking for the familiar green collar tags of the Wehrmacht reconnaissance outfit. If he were to get any reliable information about the current situation in the Kessel it might well be from a recce soldier.
It took him some time to do so, running the gauntlet of
questions and queries flung at him from all sides, dodging outstretched hands and importuning officers, knowing it would not be long before the surviving guards reported what had happened to the column and the enemy armour came looking for them. But in the end he did so, spotting the young officer, back to a snow-heavy fir, re-winding the foot-rags around frozen feet, from which the dull-pink flesh dripped in long skeins.
‘Trench-foot?’ he asked softly, gently forcing the lieutenant to remain seated when he attempted to rise.
‘Afraid so, Obersturm,’ the Lieutenant answered and winced as yet another strip of flesh came away with the dirty foot-rag. ‘First time I’ve been able to look at my feet for two weeks.’ He grinned ruefully, ‘and I must confess I don’t much like what I see. But forgive my lack of courtesy. Von Prittwitz, Lieutenant Baron von Prittwitz.’ Even as he sat there the blond youth with the pinched handsome face squared his shoulders in an attempt at traditional military courtesy.
Peiper was struck by the accent at once. It was not the Polish-tinged German of West or East Prussia, yet it sounded strangely Slavic. ‘Are you from the Baltic?’ He guessed.
‘Riga, or thereabouts,’ von Prittwitz answered smartly. ‘Family been there eight generations. Always military of course, either the Czar, Warsaw, or Berlin.’
Peiper smiled, half-amused, half-admiringly at the young officer’s clipped speech. He was a typical member of the lower Baltic nobility who had served the Russians, Poles and the Prussians these four hundred years or more. ‘I see you are from the reconnaissance corps,’ he said.
‘Attached to Foreign Armies East, though with a front-line assignment, Obersturm.’
Peiper ‘s grin vanished. He had found just the man he was looking for. ‘Listen,’ he said urgently and quickly explained their mission within the Kessel, before making his request for information.
The baron listened intently, bandaging his feet but not taking his level blue-eyed gaze from the SS colonel’s wolfish face for one instant, then immediately Peiper had finished, told him what he knew. It was not much, but it was enough.
Just as Peiper had guessed, the Ivans were now probing into the Kessel in strength, attempting, as they usually did in such situations, to break it down in a series of smaller Kessels which they could reduce at their leisure and without too many casualties.
‘Any idea where these Kessels are, Prittwitz?’ Peiper rapped.
The baron snapped a twig from the fir and swiftly sketched in a rough outline map of the Kessel, breaking it into several smaller circles with one large one roughly left of centre.
‘What’s that one?’ Peiper queried.
‘That’s Fedorovka, Obersturm. It’s commanded by a madman from the Spanish Blue Legion.’
‘Do you know it?’
In spite of the pain in his feet, the young baron smiled. ‘Do I? I was doing an intelligence mission there when the shit hit the fan and the Spaniards took over. I tried to reason with their commander, telling him that to attempt to defend the place was just what the Ivans wanted. It would be much better to attempt to fight them off while on the move, the way we usually do it.’
Peiper nodded his understanding.
‘But he wasn ‘t having that. He wanted to fight from a fixed position. There was no reasoning with him.’ The baron shrugged easily. ‘As Napoleon once said, “Europe ends where the Pyrenees begin”. Those spaghetti-eaters just have a completely different mentality to us.’
‘Possibly,’ Peiper said thoughtfully, a plan slowly beginning to form in his mind.
The men milling all around him were beaten; pathetic creatures that they were, it would be many months before hard training and severe discipline turned them into determined frontline soldiers once more. Now they were not much more use to the Wehrmacht, save perhaps as cannon-fodder. Yet such a great body of men might well attract the Ivans’ attention, while he drove deeper into the Kessel, not only now to find the missing Wotan men, but also to link up with the determined forces still holding the remote Russian town.
He had everything to gain and little, but his life, to lose. Fireball had cut off his retreat. All right then, he would help the spaghetti-eaters hold the place, build up one of those fortified hedgehogs beloved by the Fuhrer. Perhaps a little hint that the missing golden pheasant was also in the place and he could predict even now what the Fuhrer’s reaction would be — a direct order to the SS Corps to break through to Fedorovka.
Peiper sucked his front teeth, while the baron watched him intently. He knew the plan had certain loopholes, but it seemed to him at that moment that it was the only one open to him. He could not go back; therefore the only alternative open to him was to go forward.
‘Baron,’ he said suddenly.
‘Yes?’
‘How would you like to be a national hero?’
The baron tugged the end of his dripping red nose. ‘Is it going to cost me my turnip?’
‘Possibly. ‘
The handsome intelligence officer pulled a face. ‘I rather like my turnip, I’ve had it a while, you see, and have grown accustomed to it.’
Peiper returned the other man’s smile — he was obviously a man after his own heart. ‘I’ll do my best to see that you retain it a little while longer, Baron.’
‘Oh, well, that’s all right then,’ the baron rose awkwardly to his feet. ‘I’m sick of hoofing it anyway.
He picked up a pistol dropped by one of the surviving guards who had fled and thrust it into his belt. ‘Where are we heading for, Obersturm?’
Peiper ‘s smile broadened. ‘To that place where the Pyrenees end.’
The baron’s mouth dropped open stupidly. ‘The shitting spaghetti-eaters!’ was all he was able to gasp.
Five minutes later they were on their way, heading steadily eastwards, while behind them the long weary column once more began its march towards its final doom.
FIVE
The snow-covered hills all around the little town quaked with fire. Gun after gun cracked into action, filling the morning air with their hellish din.
Everywhere, the men of the Blue Division hugged their foxholes, while the shrapnel hissed murderously overhead, cutting down everything in its path, until the very air shook under the impact of the constant shelling. White as sheets, fists pressed into their ears, mouths agape, they stared horrified at the trembling soil millimetres away from their pinched noses, wondering when this terrible bombardment that had been going on since dawn would finally end and release them from this endless misery.
Crouched on the tower above the Citadel, Matz and Schulze peered over the parapet at regular intervals, knowing that in spite of the danger they had to do so. They knew the Popov tactics of old. The enemy artillery would attempt to make the defenders keep their heads down to the very last moment, when they would launch their tank-infantry attack. Their only chances of survival was to be able to spot that attack at the very outset.
The two running-mates had abandoned their plan of escape for the time being, realizing that there was little chance of the Wotan men making it on foot through the massed Soviet tanks, which now lay somewhere beyond the horizon waiting for the signal to attack. For better or worse, they would have to go along with Little Napoleon and his defence strategies. As a result, they had agreed to his plan to fortify the Citadel and make it the centre of the little town’s resistance. But although the Wotan and the rest of the Germans held in the place were now in position below, waiting for the enemy bombardment to cease and the attack to commence, the two veterans were not happy with Little Napoleon’s plan for static defence.
Schulze ducked as yet another fist-sized piece of whirling shrapnel dug a piece of masonry out of the parapet just above his head, and cried into Matz’s ear, ‘Won’t be long now, Matzi! Did you get a gander at those red signal flares?’
‘Yeah,’ Matz roared back, hands cupped around his mouth trying to overcome that tremendous racket. ‘Usual Popov attack signal. Over there, the Russian shits will be knocking back the
firewater by the bucket-full.’ He wiped the back of his frozen hand across parched lips. ‘Christ, I’d sell my ring for a drop of hard stuff at this moment.’
‘Never fear, if any of them Siberian mare-suckers get this far, they’ll have yer ring for nothing — and without vaseline.’
Matz shuddered dramatically. ‘Don’t say things like that, Schulzi!’ he protested, as yet another salvo of 105 mm shells straddled the area to the immediate front of the Citadel, making the whole building shudder alarmingly.
Schulze wasn’t listening any more. His head was cocked to one side, as he tried to distinguish the new sound from that of the artillery. ‘Tanks,’ he concluded. ‘They’re warming up the engines. They’re coming in first with the tin cans.’
‘Shit!’ he cursed and chanced a look below. The Spaniards dug in to their front had heard the new noise too. They were hurriedly wheeling out two 57 mm anti-tank cannon, shoving and pushing them across the smoking brick rubble towards the end of the street facing the white-covered steppe beyond.
‘Pissing pea-shooters!’ Schulze commented scornfully, as the artillery barrage began to slow down and more and more rockets shot up along the length of the Soviet lines. ‘Couldn’t even frighten the Popovs with those things. The shells’ll bounce off the T-34s like ping-pong balls.’
‘Balls is the operative word,’ Matz agreed miserably. ‘But what are we gonna do, Schulzi?’
The big Hamburger did not answer at once, as battery after battery hidden beyond the horizon ceased firing and the monstrous din slowly began to give way to an ominous echoing silence.
‘Well?’ Matz prompted after a while and Schulze had still not replied to his question.
‘Well,’ Schulze said, his brow creased in thought, ‘you know how the Popovs work their tanks because they don’t have any intercom radio like we have in the Wotan?’
Matz nodded. ‘Yeah, they wiggle these little flags up and down at each other like a lot of wet-arsed kids waving at a parade. So?’
