by Leo Kessler
Apprehensively, Schulze narrowed his eyes against the icy wind and peered out of the narrow gunner’s slit in the turret. Nothing. Only a solid wall of whirling, furious snow. But he knew the Popovs. They could stand virtually any kind of weather and they were the masters of camouflage and the noiseless approach. It wouldn’t be long now. What was he going to do?
Another shell slammed down close by. Shrapnel rained down noisily on the turret. Beneath his dangling feet, the driver said grumpily: ‘And don’t tell me that’s a snow shower, Schulze!’
‘No, I won’t. It’s a shower of shit!’ Schulze snapped, angry at the driver, the war, the Popovs, Peiper for having placed him in this position, the whole damned crazy world.
Peiper had told him to avoid action, and he would follow that advice. But he couldn’t stick here much longer like this. If the shells didn’t get them, a Popov bazooka patrol would. He had to do something!
He pressed his throatmike. ‘To all,’ he rasped, waiting a moment impatiently while they were ready. ‘Now get this. We ‘re gonna move into no-man’s land.’
‘That would be suicide, sheer suicide,’ The Butcher gasped.
‘Hold yer wind and listen!’ Schulze ordered angrily. ‘Mrs Schulze’s handsome son has no intention of turning up his toes and looking at the taties from two metres down just yet. I’ve got a plan. Pin back yer ears and get a load of this...’
‘Well?’ he asked when he had finished. ‘What do you think of it?’
The Butcher was the first to respond. ‘It’s risky,’ he said uncertainly.
‘Life’s risky,’ Schulze growled. ‘I’ve heard of blokes rupturing themselves when they’re trying to slip on a Parisian.’
‘Don ‘t talk of sacred things like that now,’ Matz said. ‘You ‘re right Schulzi. It’s the only way I can think of getting out of this mess while there’s still time. One thing though.’
‘What?’ Schulze said urgently, his own mind made up completely now, eager to be off. ‘How do we rendezvous afterwards? In this storm it’ll be hellishly difficult.’
‘Torch signal. I’ll flash my torch three times. Got it?’ Each came on the radio in turn and stated that they had. ‘Now in five minutes I’ll move off first. I’ll keep my convoy light to the rear on.’ He meant the concealed light beneath the Panther which could be seen only by someone directly to the rear of the tank.
‘Watch out some hairy-assed Popov doesn’t come along and stick a red-hot bazooka shell right up it.’
Schulze shuddered a little at the very thought, but continued his instructions. ‘You home in on me, Matzi first, then you Butcher. When we’re heading in the right direction, you both know what to do. Now let’s get the timing exactly right — it’s vital.’ He raised his watch so that he could see the luminous dial more clearly. ‘It is exactly twenty-hundred hours. I’d like you now to—’
‘Circumcise yer watches,’ Matz beat him to it.
Schulze laughed. Old Matzi was running true to form. ‘Yes, circumcise yer watches at,’ he paused momentarily to allow them to adjust their own watches if necessary, ‘exactly, twenty-hundred hours and forty-five seconds. Right!’
‘Right!’ Matz barked.
‘Right!’ Schulze followed suit a second later.
Schulze waited no longer. The Popov bombardment was getting ever closer. He pressed the throatmike urgently. ‘Gunner, get down there. You know the drill now. You, driver, are you ready?’
‘Ready, Schulze!’
‘All right then,’ Schulze raised his voice, knowing now that he was embarking on a life-or-death course, from which there was no turning back. ‘Driver — DRIVER... ADVANCE!’ With a great rusty rattle of tracks, the Panther lurched forward.
Schulze switched on the convoy lights. Behind him Matz’s Panther fell into line. A second later the Butcher’s followed suit. Next instant the whirling snowstorm had swallowed the three tanks up. Now it was exactly ten hours until the dawn of January 2nd, 1943 — and the escapers’ personal date with destiny....
SIX
Peiper, his face a mask of clogged snow, looked at his watch. Eleven o’ clock. The halftrack convoy had been going two hours now and still the whirling snowstorm had not let up. Visibility was virtually nil. For the last sixty minutes or so he had been steering by means of the luminous compass and he knew that meant the strange new form of aerial weapon which the Fuhrer HQ had promised would help them in their break-out would be having similar difficulties. How could they fly in this hellish weather, and even if they could, would the Luftwaffe boys be able to spot them at the dawn rendezvous? Somehow the frozen SS colonel thought they would not be able to. That would take a miracle and 1943 seemed to be a year when miracles would be few and far between for the German people.
Yet once again, Peiper wiped his weary eyes free of the driving snow and checked the compass course. He was still dead-on surprisingly enough. Now it was a matter of twenty kilometres to the planned rendezvous with the Luftwaffe and the most dangerous part of the break-out. He had time enough to reach it in spite of the weather, he knew that. The only question was would the Luftwaffe be there to meet him? He dismissed the worrying thought and bending behind the cover from the snow provided by the windscreen, he shouted to the woman: ‘You can give them another spoonful of cognac apiece now and a lump of sugar. But be strict. Only one!’
‘I might only be a frail little woman,’ Gerda declared resolutely, rising like a well-fed polar bear from the snow which had filled the open driving cab, ‘but you can rely on me, Obersturmbannfuhrer.’
Peiper grinned as the woman, displaying a huge grey-clad rump, crawled over the back of the seat to carry out his order, and said, ‘I’m sure I can, Fraulein.’
Then he steeled himself to stand up and brave the terrible wind once more. It was going to be a long miserable night....
*
Major von Igel spun the ancient, horn-gramophone turn-table yet once again. The cracked record started to churn the sickly sweet, sentimental wartime tune once more: ‘Reich’ mir zum Abscheid deine Hande... Es war ja so sch... schoen...’
His pilots, already dressed in full flying kit, sprawled out in the battered leather chairs all around the Ready-Room, groaned as one. Leutnant Jaeger flung his copy of Nackte Schoenheiten, the squadron library ‘s most treasured possession, in the direction of the ancient instrument. ‘God,’ he cried in disgust, ‘have I a noseful of that damned record! It makes you want to puke out your damned ring!’
Von Igel grinned wearily. His pilots were in fine form, although he could see this waiting was getting on their nerves. ‘Not a sentimental bone in your body, the whole lot of you. Have you no feeling for culture? ‘
‘The only feeling I want to do is up that singer’s skirt,’ Gustav the Mad Pole declared. ‘With a good stiff piece of salami! It would do her a power of good.’
‘Tut-tut,’ von Igel chided them. ‘Remember the Chaplain is sleeping next door. What would he say if he heard such language, such piggery.’
‘The sky-pilot plays with himself,’ another officer declared. ‘Five against one.’ He made an explicit gesture with his right hand.
‘The sky-pilot plays with himself... five against one....’ a half-a-dozen voices took up the chant, while the rest stamped down their heavy leather flying-boots in time with them.
Von Igel grinned and imagined the look on the padre’s face, as he listened to the racket next door. The poor sod was shy enough as it was. He would probably not dare to enter the mess tomorrow. Von Igel frowned suddenly. If there were a tomorrow for the pilots of the Black Eagle Squadron. Half an hour ago, no less a person than Colonel-General Alfred Jodl himself had called him to inquire when the squadron would be airborne.
Somewhat embarrassed, he had replied that there were some doubts whether they would ever get airborne this night and had explained the weather situation at the front.
Jodl had not seemed to be listening and he had repeated the Met forecast. When he had finished, he had fal
len silent and a waiting von Igel had sensed him thinking quickly. Finally the Chief-of-Staff had snapped: ‘I want a report from you on the weather at... the Fuhrer is watching a film till zero one hundred hours.... Give me it then. Out.’ And the phone had gone dead in von Igel’s hand.
There had been no threat, not even a suspicion of it, in Jodl ‘s dry clipped, correct regular officer’s voice. But von Igel didn’t doubt for one moment that he was being threatened; the reference to the waiting Fuhrer was danger, acute danger, in itself. He frowned and glanced at his watch. Just gone midnight. He picked up the phone. ‘Met,’ he asked an instant. ‘What’s the good news, eh?’
‘Good news! My dear von Igel, I haven’t had any good news to give anybody since the Landrat fell off his nag, broke his neck and I was promoted deputy back in ’38. I and the Third Reich are completely out of the stuff in this year of 1943.’
Von Igel smiled faintly. The Met man was a card. ‘Listen, the big animals at the Fuhrer HQ are on my back. They want something positive. You’ve got to give me something!’
‘What about a nice case of crabs? I’ve had them ever since I visited that poxed-up Popov kitchen-maid you recommended to me.’
‘Lucky you didn’t get foot-and-mouth disease. But serious now.’ Von Igel’s voice had a vague hint of pleading in it now. ‘Jodi is after my arse!’
‘Well, Kurt, there is just one very faint hope that my former prediction might come off.’
Von Igel seized on it like a drowning man clutching a straw. ‘How faint?’
The Met officer on the other end of the phone hesitated. ‘One in a hundred,’ he answered, his voice serious. ‘Perhaps at the most one in fifty.’
‘Pretty lousy?’
‘Worse than my crabs, Kurt. You might well be able to get the Squadron airborne. You might well get them flying towards the target. A few of the exceedingly lucky ones might even reach it, but with the present prevailing weather, not a one of them would ever find the field again to land. Selbstmord, glatter Selbstmord.’
‘Thanks, old friend.’ Von Igel hung up and slumped back in his armchair, while around him the confident young men relapsed into a doze again.
Outside the wind continued to howl, as if to remind him of his problem and the wooden Ready-Room shook with each new gust. What was he going to do? Take them up as Jodl obviously wanted him to do, bad weather or not – or stand firm and face the inevitable consequences? What was he going to do?
Now it was less than eight hours to dawn...
*
Ivan the Terrible cupped his hands around his mouth and bellowed, the wind snatching at his command, ‘Squadron... squadron, will halt!’
The Cossacks reined in their horses, most of them almost white with the driving snow. Ivan the Terrible could hear the clatter of tank tracks quite clearly now. For a moment back there, he had thought the wind had been playing tricks, but not now. The Fritzes had definitely abandoned their positions. But why in this direction? That was completely crazy. They were heading straight for the Russian lines for annihilation!
‘What do you make of it, Comrade Major?’ the Sotnik at his side cried.
‘Not much,’ he roared. ‘Except that the Fritzes seem to have gone off their heads. That’s all. Why the idiots appear to be—’ he stopped abruptly.
Next to him the Sotnik froze with fear.
To their immediate right, a great dark shape had loomed up out of the swirling mass of snow and there was no mistaking that sinister black silhouette only metres away.
‘A Panther!’ the Sotnik breathed.
For a moment, the bearded Cossack officer was at a loss for words as the tank rumbled past the silent Cossack column, lurching over hillock and rock outcrop as if its driver were blind or drunk.
‘Boshe moi!’ he breathed finally. ‘What is going on?’
Next to him, the Sotnik crossed himself as did several other of the riders; the Cossacks were a superstitious race and there was something eerie and uncanny about the way the tank rumbled straight on, apparently not noticing the Cossacks grouped in the trees.
‘Look — another one,’ a Cossack called.
The two officers took their eyes off the Panther’s taillight and swung round. Another black monster had appeared from the snowstorm and was heading straight towards them, not avoiding the obstacles in its path, just as the first one had done.
‘Scatter!’ Ivan the Terrible cried urgently. ‘Get out of the Fritz’s way — he’s coming straight at us!’
Frantically the Cossacks dug their spurs into their rearing, bucking horses, panicked by the noise and the sudden appearance of the great tank only a matter of metres away. Next to the Sotnik, desperately trying to control his own nervous mount and urge it to one side, a Cossack screamed and fell to the ground, arms flailing crazily as he tried to keep his balance. Too late! He slipped on some frozen snow, just as the Panther reached him. He went straight under the churning tracks, pulped to red gore, his severed head whirling round with the bogies for a few moments before the second tank disappeared in the same direction as its predecessor.
In spite of the freezing cold, Ivan the Terrible’s forehead was suddenly wet with sweat and it took him a moment or two to control the unreasoning fear which urged him to spin his horse round and flee from these uncanny steel monsters, but he managed to keep a grip on himself. ‘Same again,’ he said in a voice that was barely under control, ‘The driver must be blind. He simply did not see us.’
‘Da, da,’ the Sotnik quavered fearfully.
‘But where are they going?’ Ivan the Terrible asked. ‘They’re heading straight for our positions and that prisoner told us they had been ordered to attempt to break-out. What in God’s name is going on?’
But before any of his stunned men could attempt to answer that question, the third Panther came rumbling out of the snowstorm, running on a course which would take it close by the Cossacks’ new position.
Ivan the Terrible cursed mightily. He was a cruel, even sadistic man, but in the tradition of his warrior race he was a brave one, although at this moment he was also very scared. He made up his mind hastily. ‘Sotnik, you take charge if anything happens to me!’ he barked.
‘What are you going to do, Major?’
‘You’ll see!’ Ivan snapped angrily. With one swift movement he drew his sabre and slapped it hard against the trembling rump of his frightened mount. ‘Move!’ he cried.
The horse bolted forward.
The Sotnik gasped. Ivan the Terrible was galloping straight at the massive Fritz tank like some mounted David about to tackle an armoured Goliath!
Ivan the Terrible didn’t hear. His ears were full of the frantic beat of his horse’s hooves and the whine of the tank’s motors. Now he was some twenty metres away from the Panther. He could now see the iron cross on its side quite clearly. Hastily he bent down and seized the reins in his teeth in the Cossack fashion so that he had both hands free for his sabre. He urged his mount ever closer to the side of the tank, half-expecting a burst of machine gun fire to sweep him from the flying horse at any moment. But none came.
Carefully, so that his horse would not realize he had done so and attempt to go its own way, he eased his feet from the stirrups, holding it in place simply by his weight and the reins clenched between his teeth.
Now he was a metre away from the monster, he and his horse splattered by the snow churning up by the tracks. He made a last calculation and took a deep breath. Still the Fritzes hadn’t seen him, although he could have reached out and touched the turret. ‘JUMP!’ he commanded himself and sprang right out of the saddle, sabre clutched in his right hand.
He slammed onto the snow-covered deck. For one long moment he crouched there, praying that he wouldn’t slip, trying to recover his balance, while his horse, whinnying furiously, broke away and fled panic-stricken for the trees. The Cossack officer righted himself. Now they must have heard him. Balancing the best he could on the wildly swaying deck, he ran to the turret.
<
br /> To his surprise it wasn’t closed. Had they not heard him after all? He clutched his sabre hilt, which was wet with sweat, more firmly and cautiously raised his head above the turret-level.
It was empty!
He swallowed hard and was tempted to jump off there and then. Was this a ghost tank? With difficulty he controlled his wildly beating heart and stared into the green gloom of the inner turret. Not only was there no commander, but no gunner too, though the red lights which indicated that the 75 mm cannon was loaded and ready to fire, glowed brightly. What in the devil’s name was going on?
He steeled himself and then sheathing his sabre and pulling out his pistol, he dropped into the turret. Bending to his knees, pistol at the ready, finger curled wetly around the trigger, he peered into the driver’s hatch.
It was empty too!
‘In the name of the devil!’ he cursed in absolute bewilderment, as he crouched there in the empty turret, feeling a cold finger of fear trace its way down the small of his back. ‘What is going on—’ He stopped short. A thick stick, perhaps the handle of a fire-axe, or something of that kind, was wedged under the clutch and over the accelerator and keeping it depressed!
‘By the Black Virgin of Kazan!’ he cried aloud, the fear leaving him swiftly, as if someone had opened an invisible tap. ‘That’s how it was done!’
The next instant, he was standing upright in the swaying turret, hands cupped around his mouth, crying, ‘Sotnik, get on the radio, they’ve done a bunk! Sotnik, can you hear me... They’re beating it....’
*
Schulze paused, leaning weakly against a snow-heavy tree. ‘All right... all right,’ he gasped. ‘Take five, lads... Don’t want to rupture you lot of cardboard soldiers!’
Matz, who had been hobbling after the rest the best he could with his artificial leg, came level with the gasping Wotan men, their breath coming in harsh, leathern-lunged wheezes, and said scornfully. ‘Look who’s talking! Why, you big ape-turd, you’re about ruptured yerself!’
