by Sven Hassel
The legal officer slams the door with force enough to make the white-wash flake down from the ceiling.
Hauptmann von Pader jumps into his Kübel and races to Signals at Kowel, where he puts through an express call to Bendlerstrasse.
His friend, SS-Brigadeführer Ahlendorf, chief of SD Inland, promises him an immediate recall to Berlin and a posting to the SS.
On top of the world, von Pader returns to his company, and decides to have a look at the front line for the last time. Who knows? Maybe he just might get the chance to settle matters with Creutzfeldt.
‘Where to, sir?’ asks his driver, Obergefreiter Bluhme.
‘To the front!’
‘Where?’ jerks Bluhme in astonishment. He can hardly believe his own ears.
‘Got dirt in your ears, man? I said the front!’
‘No sweat for me, sir,’ grins Bluhme, and starts off at a speed which makes it seem as if he cannot get von Pader out there quickly enough.
‘Keep your stupid remarks to yourself!’
There is a general stir along the trench when we discover von Pader has come out to us.
Cockily he struts down the connecting trench, inspects the advanced posts, observes through the periscope.
This then was the bulwark holding back the Mongol wave. Suddenly he feels himself to be a bigger man. He straightens his new steel helmet.
‘Where is the enemy?’ he asks Barcelona.
‘300 yards that way, sir,’ grins Barcelona.
‘Keeping well out of sight, the cowardly pigs. Untertnensch, that’s what they are.’
‘Don’t suppose they’re tired of life yet, sir,’ smiles Barcelona. ‘If the Herr Hauptmann was to stand over on the other side and look through their periscopes, he wouldn’t see anything over here either. ‘Less it was some damn fool like Hauptfeldwebel Blatas.’
‘Keep your mouth shut,’ snarls von Pader, viciously. He feels his heart beating strongly in his chest. Here he stands. An officer in the army of the Fiihrer. A German crusader fighting the heathen hordes of Asia. Softly he hums ‘Wacht am Rhein’.
Barcelona observes him wonderingly. They continue on through the communicating trench where von Pader stumbles on Tiny, who is sitting in the bottom of the trench with a bucket of hot potatoes in front of him.
‘You’ve lived most of your life, Creutzfeldt,’ von Pader makes a demonstrative gesture, one finger cutting across his throat.
‘The ’err ’auptmann can tell fortunes, maybe, then?’ Tiny clicks his heels in the sitting position.
Suddenly thehammering of a gong fills the trench with sound.
‘Alarm! Panzer alarm!’
‘What’s going on?’ von Pader asks nervously, looking at Tiny, who continues to stuff potatoes into his mouth.
‘It’s the yellow monkey’s comin’ with some bleedin’ armour, I reckon,’ answers Tiny, carelessly, offering von Pader a hot potato. Angrily he knocks it to one side.
Tiny gets up slowly and takes the cover from his SMG, In a moment the trench is full of men.
The air shakes to the threatening rumble of motors. A wall of fire rises up some way behind the positions. A barrage. Shells howl and thunder. But this is nothing special to the veterans of the front line. An ordinary drum-fire barrage such as the Russians usually set up before a local armoured attack. To Haupt-mann von Pader it seems as if the gates of hell have opened wide. Teeth chattering, he throws himself down by the side of Porta and Tiny, who regard him with pleasure.
‘Now ’e’s shittin’ ’imself again, the bleedin’ peacock,’ says Tiny exultantly.
Von Pader grips his steel helmet desperately.
‘’E’s holding on to his tin hat and look at him shaking like a jelly,’ laughs Porta.
A series of mortar bombs drop, showering earth over them.
Von Pader gives a scream of terror, convinced that his last moment has come. He does not realize that this is only the beginning. He has always known that many people die in war. It was a way of dying he has always regarded as something fine and noble and not particularly painful. That wonderful hero’s death which he has so often described to officer cadets. What is happening here is quite different. There is nothing beautiful here. Mud! Screaming splinters of steel! Remains of bodies! Torn-off arms and legs! His mouth fills with bile. It runs down his nose and over his chin. His trousers are full long ago. The beautiful mouse-grey tailor-made riding breeches.
Blast throws him a little way down the trench. Porta drags him back and pushes him down in the SMG pit.
‘Jesus, how he pongs,’ he says, holding his nose delicately. ‘That’s how it goes with all these dressed-up dummies. They come walking tall, and they crawl off the size of a louse!’
‘Don’t leave me in the lurch, comrades,’ sobs von Pader.
‘We’ll drop you in front of the T-34’s when they get ’ere,’ promises Tiny.
‘Comrades, we are comrades!’
‘Sure, sure, Comrade Herbert,’ smiles Porta, ‘don’t forget it now when the noise stops, will you?’
Von Pader cries and screams his misery into the thunder of the shelling.
The SMG chatters at the khaki attack wave, which is approaching slowly with hoarse shouts.
‘Uhrœh Staline! Uhrceh Stalino!
‘Come on up and take a look,’ suggests Porta, nudging the sobbing Hauptmann with his foot. ‘The neighbours are coming to visit us! It’s you they want to have a word with!’
But the Führer’s brave officer stays down in the mud of the trench bottom begging two lousy trench pigs to help him.
A new khaki wave of Russians storms across the barbed wire. Spades and bayonets sparkle. Hand-grenades fly through the air. T-34’s rock forward like a herd of wild buffalo over the deep shell furrows. With a deafening thump the heavy vehicles land in front of the wire.
They stop to fire. A blinding flash and shells blast field-grey figures to tatters.
The Panzerfausts1 bark wickedly. Steel giants splinter. Turrets whirl into the air, together with torn human bodies.
The darkness grows thicker. Suddenly the whole scene is bathed in a blinding white sea of light. The T-34’s have turned on their searchlights. Something only the Russians do. It has a sinister psychological effect.
Machine-guns bark. Soldiers in field-grey are knocked backwards, mashed under the broad tracks of the tanks.
‘Servus, ’err ’auptmann,’ grins Tiny, whipping the SMG from its mounting.
Porta throws a couple of hand-grenades, salutes his company commander nonchalantly and follows Tiny over the lip of the trench.
‘Don’t go! Don’t leave me, comrades!’ screams the Führer’s officer, who for five years has preached the honour and glory of dying for Führer and Fatherland. He gets up and stares towards the roaring monsters of steel which are coming, rocking and bouncing, towards him.
Searchlight beams pick him up.
‘Comrades, help me! I don’t want to die!’
A searchlight beam transfixes him. He presses his hands to his ears, screams madly.
A tank turrent turns slowly. A shell explodes and covers the terrified officer with earth. He scratches and claws his way out, and crawls, howling like a wounded animal, across the battlefield.
A T-34 comes roaring at full speed but passes close to him. without crushing him.
He gets to his feet and runs forward through the blinding light of the searchlights with both hands pressed to his ears. He has lost his helmet. The noise is terrible. Wherever he turns there is nothing but T-34’s shells bursting, machine-guns chattering.
He jumps down into a trench, runs screaming through the communicating trenches without knowing where he is going. He does not see a T-34 which comes flying over an earthwork and lands with a crash a few yards behind him.
The next moment he is on the ground. The broad tracks catch him, whirl him round and round, crushing his legs and arms. He no longer calls on the Führer or any of the people and things he has idolized. He scr
eams, sobbingly, for his mother, whose tears, when he joined the Army, he scoffed at.
The T-34’s roll the German front-line up, and return in the course of the night to their bases. The sun comes up and colours the sky red above a quiet front.
No. 2 Section sits enjoying the weak rays of the autumn sun, Soon it will be winter, the terrible winter of Russia.
Porta deals out the cards. We are playing nap. Every now and then we take a look through the periscope. There are more bodies out there today. There are some who are not quite dead yet, but we cannot go out to bring them in. The Siberian snipers see to that.
Just in front of the SMG post is a blood-drenched heap. A silver shoulder strap with two gold stars gleams from the greyish-red mass. This is all that is left of the Führer’s proud officer, Hauptmann von Pader.
THE END
1 Panzerfaust: Bazooka.
