Cauldron of Blood

by Leo Kessler

  ‘FIRE!’ he screamed fervently and in that same instant, pressed down the trigger of the machine gun.

  The MG 42 kicked hard at his shoulder. His nostrils were assailed by the stink of cordite. Madly the machine gun chattered, pouring out tracer at a rate of eight hundred rounds per minute.

  The front rank of the Russians melted away before his eyes. In a flash, the perfect formation had become a mess of flailing arms and limbs, punctuated by dreadful screams, as men went down by the score, ripped apart by that terrible fire at such short range. But the second rank came on as steadily as ever, stumbling here and there over the bodies of their comrades writhing in the blood-stained snow, but coming on all the same.

  Frantically Matz fed a new belt of ammo into the breech, while all around them the mixed group of Spaniards and Germans thrust new clips of bullets into their hot rifles. To their right, Little Napoleon ripped open his flies, the cork threatening to pop out of his mouth at any minute in his excitement, and poured a stream of urine over the pink-glowing barrel of the ancient Maxim to cool the machine gun.

  Now the Russians were only a hundred metres away. In the unreal light of the flares, that coloured their tense faces, an eerie blood-red and green, Schulze could see them quite clearly. They were mere boys, eighteen-year-olds for the most part, he guessed, but in spite of their youth there was determination in those faces. They would not run. They would keep coming until a bullet finally dealt with them.

  ‘FIRE!’ he cried once again.

  Once more the German line erupted with fire. At waist-height Schulze scythed the advancing line with his deadly white fire, swinging the MG 42 from side to side, cutting great swathes in the advancing line. All round him the others did the same, working their rifle-bolts frantically, ejecting the spent cartridge cases, their faces greased with oily sweat, eyes full of fear now as the Russians came nearer and nearer.

  ‘God in Heaven!’ Matz cried in an agony of fear and rage, ‘Will nothing stop the bastards?’

  Now they were less than fifty metres away. There were great holes in their ranks. Behind them the snow was littered with hundreds of bodies, with here and there a desperately wounded Russian attempting to crawl to the rear, leaving a blood-red trail behind him. Yet they still came on, like robots, impervious to human calculation.

  To Schulze’s immediate front, a young officer minus his helmet now and the blood trickling down the side of his handsome pale face from a terrible wound in his forehead, raised his silver sabre and screamed something in Russian. The line broke into a clumsy run, the soldiers bringing their bayonets down level with their hips.

  ‘They’re charging!’ someone screamed in a paroxysm of fear.

  ‘The Popovs are charging!’ a half-dozen scared voices took up the same cry.

  A Spaniard rose, his sallow face green with fear, and threw down his rifle. Little Napoleon did not hesitate. His pistol cracked. The Spaniard screamed shrilly and fell to the snow. The man next to him, who had been about to do the same, changed his mind and aimed his rifle once more.

  ‘Hold fast!’ Schulze yelled desperately and swung the machine gun round to face the new threat. He pressed the trigger.

  Nothing!

  He pressed it again. Nothing once more.

  Now the screaming, blood-crazed Russians were only twenty metres away. Schulze stared at Matz aghast. ‘What—’

  ‘Stoppage!’ Matz rapped and started fumbling frantically with the belt of ammo.

  A grenade sailed through the air. The two of them ducked instinctively. It exploded behind them in the middle of a group of Spaniards. Severed limbs sailed everywhere. A head flew through the air like a football.

  A Russian ran at Schulze with his fixed bayonet. Schulze whipped off his helmet and threw it with all his strength. It smashed into the running man’s face. He screamed and reeled back, his features a blood-red pulp.

  Another Russian raced towards the machine gun crew struggling to free the blockage. The man was screaming furiously, saliva dripping from his canine-like yellow teeth, eyes full of wild animal hate. Schulze lifted the empty machine gun belt and hurled it at the man. He hit the snow, the belt curled around his legs, bayonet flying from his surprised hands. Schulze grabbed it. He grunted savagely and with all his enormous strength brought it down on the Russian’s upturned face. Once, twice, three times. The man’s terrible screams were stifled as he choked in his own blood, his upturned face disappearing in a welter of crimson gore and gleaming smashed bone.

  ‘Clear!’ Matz yelled.

  ‘’Bout shitting time.’ Schulze dropped the rifle and threw himself behind the gun. He snapped back the bolt, rammed it home and pressed the trigger.

  The machine gun burst into frenetic life. Tracers sprayed left and right, scything down the third line of Russians rushing screaming to the aid of their comrades, as they battled in close combat with the Germans and Spaniards.

  ‘Come on, you bastards, come on!’ Schulze screamed, carried away by a fervent blood-lust, eyes wild and crazy as the Russian dead mounted up in great mounds in front of his murderous weapon.

  Still they came on, stumbling and staggering over the earth-brown carpet of their own dead, getting ever closer to the survivors of the first wave, who still battled the defenders.

  And then abruptly they broke. The heart went out of them, as if someone had opened a hidden tap and let, the boldness and resolve which had carried them this far against that terrible fire run out in one great stream.

  Some tossed away their weapons and held up their hands in token of surrender. But Death was not to let them go. The gun continued to chatter. Others fled, madly pushing and clawing at each other in their frantic desire to escape that murderous fire, and a few went to ground and tried to fight back.

  Death was indiscriminate. It reaped the bold, the brave and cowardly without distinction.

  Five minutes later, it was all over and there was no sound save the whimpers of the wounded and the harsh gasping of the surviving defenders who slumped in their holes, chests heaving as if they had just run a great race.

  Schulze took his dulled eyes from the corpse-littered snowfield and prodded Matz in the ribs, as he lay there full-length, the only sign that he was still alive, the heaving of his shoulders, as if he might be sobbing. ‘Matzi,’ he whispered hoarsely, ‘Matzi, get up.’

  Matz raised his head and stared at him with eyes that were wild and out of focus. ‘What?’ he croaked.

  ‘Get up... We’ve got to move back,’ Schulz said slowly, with long pauses between the phrases, as if he were finding it very difficult to speak. ‘Move back another hundred metres... They’ll be back...’

  One minute later the survivors, helping the limping walking wounded, started to trail back to new positions, moving slowly and with difficulty like old, old men.

  The Soviet ring of iron around the embattled town was growing ever tighter....

  *

  All that long Christmas Eve night the Soviets pounded the defenders’ positions. From end to end the horizon was alight with flame, so that the very earth quaked under the impact of that tremendous bombardment. With hoarse, exultant screams, salvo after salvo ripped through the night sky to crash into the ruins of the Russian town.

  The defenders buried deeper and deeper, often unwittingly digging their own graves in advance, as the ruins around them swayed and heaved like stage decorations caught in a heavy draught.

  Schulze and Matz did their rounds hourly, doubling from position to position to yell encouragement to the defenders, helping to free the survivors from yet another near miss, lending a hand when necessary to dig out some half-conscious man trapped when his foxhole was hit, knowing in their innermost thoughts as they did so, that it wouldn’t be long now before the Popovs launched their next all-out attack, which might swamp the handful of desperate men now holding Fedorovka.

  Just before dawn the bombardment started to ebb away, until finally it ceased altogether, leaving behind a loud echoing sil
ence which seemed to go on for ever. Schulze rose slowly from his foxhole, clearing the mess of snow and earth which had been deposited on his chest by the last explosions. He stared wearily to the east. The sky was already flushed a dirty white. It wouldn’t be long now. With the last of his energy, he rose to his feet and ignoring the lunar landscape all around, littered with the frozen corpses of the dead, shouted, ‘Every second man, take a piss-and-drink break! Five minutes, only and no buggering off or I’ll be coming looking for yer. At the double now!’

  He waited till the men started to stream to the shelter of the still smoking ruins to carry out their bodily functions and attempt to melt sufficient snow to quench their parched mouths. ‘The rest cross yer knees like virgins,’ he commanded. ‘If yer can’t, use yer holes. They won’t smell any less sweet on account of that.’

  But no one appreciated the big Hamburger’s humour this freezing dawn; they were all too afraid, as they gazed at the deserted hills beyond, waiting for the new terrors which the Popovs would undoubtedly launch against them soon.

  It was just after the second batch of defenders had disappeared into the ruins that Matz heard it. ‘Schulze,’ he whispered softly in order not to alarm the others yet. ‘Did you hear that?’

  Schulze nodded gloomily. ‘Yer I heard — tanks.’

  ‘Sounds like it to me, Schulze. What now?’

  ‘What do you expect, Matzi?’ his running-mate said, all the old spirit gone from his voice. ‘We’ve got no mines, no anti-tank weapons left.’

  ‘The flag trick?’

  Schulz shook his head. ‘No, they won’t fall for that one twice. They’ll have planned their tactics in advance so that they won’t need any signals.’

  ‘Then what are we gonna do?’

  Schulze shrugged helplessly. ‘What about praying, eh?’

  *

  Now the sky to the east was bright with the promise of a clear winter’s day, free from the snow. But it wasn’t the weather which interested the tense men crouched in their freezing pits; it was the ever increasing sound of the tank motors on the other side of the hills, as the Soviet drivers revved up their engines, obviously making sure that they would not stall once the armoured attack got underway.

  Some of the Spaniards were already unwittingly following Schulze’s suggestion. Bare-headed, their sallow southern faces blue with cold, they knelt piously in the snow, hands clasped in front of their skinny chests, while Little Napoleon limped from man to man, sprinkling his dark head with holy water.

  At another time and under other circumstances, Schulze would have made one of his lewd comments, but not now. His spirit seemed broken, as he slumped listlessly, watching the Spaniards perform their last rites with the fervour of a nation dedicated to death.

  Matz, for his part, watched the horizon anxiously, knowing now that it was up to him, for Schulze had snapped. He had been under strain too often and too long. He was no longer capable of command.

  Now the flares started to ascend lazily from the Soviet lines and by straining hard, Matz could just hear the cries of delight as the commissars started to hand out the vodka rations to the soldiers.— their usual practice before an important attack. He licked his own parched blue lips and wished that he could taste one last glass of firewater before he went hop, for he had no illusions about what was going to happen soon. The Popov tanks would overrun their positions and that would be that. They would take no prisoners, especially from the Wotan. This was the end of the road.

  ‘Fancy, Schulzi,’ he said conversationally, trying to cheer up his old pal, who seemed sunk in his own gloomy thoughts. ‘Two Christmases ago, we were in bed with those frog whores, living like the king in France. Remember the fat one with the big lungs, who wanted me to give her....’ His words trailed away to nothing. Schulze was not listening.

  Little Napoleon was talking to his men now, his pose vanished, his words obviously selected with care, as he replaced his cork after every phrase and rested his shattered jaw, darting black eyes from face to face, as if willing his men not to break and run once the tanks appeared.

  Matz nodded his head in approval. For spaghetti-eaters they weren’t bad blokes. He could see the resolve on their pinched frozen faces. Christ, he told himself, what made them volunteer to come here to Russia so far away from their own sun-baked homeland to have their turnips shot off by a lot of hairy-assed Popovs? They were crazy. Yet all the same, he could not help feeling that the little men were brave — damned brave.

  From the other side of the hills he could make out the Popovs cheers. Yes, there was no doubt about it, they were cheering. He frowned. He knew what that meant. The political commissar had just finished the usual pep-talk, telling them just what an honour it was to die for the workers’ and peasants’ paradise. Soon they would come barrelling across the ridge-line like bats out of hell. He nudged Schulze.

  ‘All right, twinkle-toes,’ he said attempting the humorous tone he did not feel. ‘Get behind the machine gun. They’ll be coming soon.’

  Schulze did not even raise his head.

  Matz swallowed hard. ‘Didn’t you hear what I said, you big dockyard pimp?’

  ‘I heard.’

  ‘Then get some pepper in yer pants.’

  ‘What’s the use?’ Schulze answered miserably.

  ‘What do you mean — what’s the use, you big bastard!’ Matz bellowed, his face only millimetres from Schulze’s. ‘We can’t just sit on our fat keesters and do nothing. We can’t let the lads down.’

  The outburst had no effect on Schulze. He continued to slump there, shoulders bent, all spirit gone.

  From the other side of the hills there was the first rusty rattles of many tracks. The Popov tanks were beginning to move off. It wouldn’t be long now.

  Desperately Matz grabbed Schulze’s shoulder and shook it hard. ‘Come on, finger out! Get moving.’

  Schulze looked up at Matz dully. ‘Where?’

  ‘We can move the line back. Back into the ruins. We’ll have a better chance against their armour there. Once they’re in the streets they’ll have to break formation and we’ll have a better chance of tackling them.’

  ‘What with, Matz — our bare hands?’

  ‘Christ, how should I know?’ Matz exploded, exasperated beyond measure. ‘All I know is that we’ve got to do something and do it quick. Look!’

  On the horizon, the first dark menacing shape had appeared, poising there for a moment, its long gun swinging from side to side like the snout of some predatory monster sniffing out its prey. ‘Recce. They’re putting in a recce troops first this time. They don’t want a balls-up like before.’

  Schulze grunted something, but otherwise seemed unconcerned. Matz gave up on him. While more and more tanks of the reconnaissance troop massed on the hillside, he doubled the best he could to where Little Napoleon stood, pistol in hand, watching his men with a stern eye. ‘Major,’ he gasped.

  Little Napoleon pulled the cork out of his mouth. ‘Que... what is it?’

  ‘Sir, if we pulled back our line, now that the Russians have established where we are, we might take some of the sting out of their attack. Then we’d have a better chance of catching them with their knickers down in the ruins.’

  Little Napoleon shook his head sadly. ‘I am afraid that is not possible, Corporal,’ he answered in his accented German.

  ‘Why not, sir?’ Matz demanded heatedly.

  By way of an answer the Spanish Major pointed at the horizon with his pistol. ‘Mire!’ he commanded.

  Matz looked in that direction. Now the reconnaissance tanks were slipping to the north-west, as the bulk of the Soviet attack force started to rumble over the heights. ‘What do you think they’re going to do, sir?’ he asked.

  ‘It is obvious. They are going to outflank us.’ The Spaniard replaced the cork momentarily to rest his jaw, while Matz watched the first lines of packed infantry beginning to assemble behind the tanks. Then Little Napoleon continued, ‘They will put in infantry to c
ontain us here.’

  ‘And then?’

  For the first time since Matz had known the pompous portly Spanish Major, he smiled. ‘Then, my German friend, they will kick us — how do you say? — up the arse, very hard!’ He shrugged eloquently. ‘Fini la grande guerre, as the French say.’

  Miserably Matz trailed back to where the others crouched in their trenches, avoiding the enquiring looks in their eyes, knowing now that this had to be the end of Wotan — there was no chance of their surviving against a concentrated Soviet armoured attack — yet angry at having to die in this way. Wordlessly he clambered into his pit next to Schulze and picked up his machine pistol. There was no more ammunition for the MG 42; now they would have to rely on their personal weapons, which meant the Soviet infantry would be able to get within one hundred and fifty metres of their positions before the defenders could do any damage to them.

  Schulze looked at his old running-mate out of the corner of his eye. Matz ignored the look. Instead he concentrated on his front, counting the number of Soviet tanks and giving up hopelessly after they had reached fifty. There were more than enough T- 34s there to wipe out the handful of defenders.

  ‘Sending a steam-shovel to kill a fly, Matzi,’ Schulze said in a voice surprisingly meek for him. Then when Matz did not respond, he added contritely, ‘Sorry, I went up the wall, old pal. Too much strain.’

  ‘Knock it off, or yer’ll have me crying in me beer next,’ Matz growled, but now there was a smile on his face once more.

  Schulze winked at him.

  Matz winked back.

  So thus they waited, the two old comrades, warmed at least by the knowledge that they would not die alone....