The Devil's Shield (Dogs of War)

by Leo Kessler

  Matz shot backwards over the couch, his wooden leg trailing behind him. The girls screamed and scattered, naked breasts quivering.

  Matz pulled his leg free. ‘Here, Heidi,’ he ordered the girl he usually slept with. ‘Get your big arse over here.’ Then, supporting himself on her shoulder, Matz raised his wooden leg menacingly. ‘All right, you big bastard — sergeant-major or no sergeant-major, I’m going to knock your stupid big turnip off for you.’

  Urging Heidi forward, he advanced upon Schulze.

  Schulze’s ugly face was set in a broad grin. He smiled benevolently at the angry Matz. He farted leisurely. ‘Let’s have a little bit of green smoke first, shall we … We had pea soup at the HQ, Gertrude,’ he explained to the blonde. ‘Now, now, Matz, you’re going to rupture yourself lifting that leg. If I were you, I’d save my strength to lift that pathetic little thing you’ve got down there!’

  Matz lunged wildly at Schulze with his wooden leg. Schulze ducked easily. One big hand shot out and punched Heidi in her scarred, naked belly. She collapsed like a deflated balloon. Matz careened over the sofa and landed in the lap of a screaming redhead. Schulze threw himself forward. Matz rolled to one side. The two drunken NCOs rolled back and forth across the cellar floor, aiming wild punches at each other and laughing like two schoolboys. Thus engaged and cheered on by the shouting, naked whores, they did not hear the thin chill wailing of the air-raid siren until it was almost too late.

  A kilometre away in another cellar, now shuddering violently under the impact of the bombs, Colonel von Dodenburg and the redhead stared at each other in silence, the flickering yellow candle throwing grotesque shadows across their pale young faces.

  Von Dodenburg could see that she was reaching the end of her tether. Her green eyes shone hectically in her emaciated face. He had brought her two cans of Old Man but she had explained that she was ‘too hungry to eat it’, whatever that meant. Her hands trembled violently with every fresh explosion.

  He leaned forward across the rough wooden table and clutched them tightly in his own. They were icy cold; they felt like the hands of someone already dead. ‘Don’t be scared,’ he pleaded, trying to calm her. ‘At the front we always say you never hear the one which kills you.’

  ‘They’re dying everywhere in the cellars now,’ she said, her voice hardly audible. ‘Old men, women, children – not soldiers. Just unarmed civilians. Dying everywhere.’ Her voice trailed away and her green eyes filled with tears, as if she felt and bore the whole world’s cares.

  ‘We shall make them pay back our losses tenfold,’ von Dodenburg snapped, iron in his voice.

  Another 500-pound bomb dropped in the street overhead. The cellar swayed. The yellow flame of the candle guttered with the blast and almost went out.

  ‘Pay them back?’ she said listlessly. ‘How can you pay for a life, Kuno?’ her voice rose, ‘they are dead. That’s it.’ She pulled her hand free from his grasp. ‘Dead, finished, kaputt – nothing can bring them to life again! All that we must do now is save the lives of the few who are left before it is too late.’ She stared at him, her beautiful green eyes hysterical. Like some front swine, von Dodenburg realised suddenly, she had seen too much and was preparing to escape into the blessed oblivion of voluntary madness.

  He pulled her naked body close to his. She was lathered in sweat although the fat-bellied coal-stove in the corner was almost out. ‘Don’t talk,’ he whispered urgently. ‘Talk is for fools – now. All that counts is action – and love.’

  Almost brutally, he thrust back on the hard wooden table. Her legs spread automatically. He forced the glistening triangle open. She shuddered – whether with pleasure or distaste he no longer knew nor cared. The frantic, panting, sweating act of love began, while all around them the world shuddered, trembled and died.

  They scrambled naked against the banks of flame, wading out of the bomb-shattered, smoking cellar through a morass of dead bodies, their bare feet slipping in bloody, jellied flesh. Everywhere, now the bombers had gone, women’s voices called in anguish for their missing children, children tottered aimlessly through the burning streets.

  Schulze, who had rescued a bottle of Korn, raised it to his lips and took a mighty swig, not noticing that the fiery liquid was running down his unshaven chin. ‘Where’s Gerti?’ he yelled.

  Matz gave him his answer. He stumbled suddenly and would have fallen if he had not been supported by a weeping Heidi, still naked save for the one-legged NCO’s issue pants, which reached to her plump knees.

  ‘She’s here, Sergeant-Major,’ he yelled and tried in vain to stand to attention. ‘May I respectfully report one casualty, Sergeant-Major? The whore Gertrude X, shot in the line of duty. Hero’s death for Folk, Führer and Fatherland!’

  Drunkenly Schulze staggered over to him and stared down at the naked body sprawled out grotesquely in the brick rubble, her face shaded a blood-red hue by the flames. He took another swig of the Korn and passed the bottle automatically to Matz, who was still trying to maintain the position of attention.

  ‘She was a good whore, Matz,’ he said numbly, while the other whores, shoulder bent, hands held protectively across their flabby breasts, sobbed steadily. ‘Yellow card or not,1 she put her heart into it, believe you me. I’ve had plenty of good workouts from that whore there! She knew her business.’ He reached his big hand for the bottle, without taking his eyes off the dead woman. ‘Korn,’ he commanded. He drained the rest in silence with a mighty gulp. He coughed and wiped the back of his big dirty hand across his mouth, then slowly bent down and closed the whore’s legs. ‘Better that way,’ he said.

  Matz grabbed him firmly by the big muscular arm. ‘Come on, Schulze,’ he said, ‘Let’s get back to HQ.’

  Without a word, the two naked men, the one limping badly, slowly began to make their way through the burning streets, where the dust-white, frantic civilian police were beginning to lay the dead out in long lines ready for the flame-throwers. Already the big black rats and the half-wild city mongrels were gnawing the ones in the shadows, stealing off with chunks of dripping human flesh. They had almost reached the Quellenhof when the ruddy glare of the flames illuminated the faded white scrawl on a half-shattered wall. Schulze read it aloud in a dazed drunken voice, swaying from side to side as he did so: ‘Give me five years and you will not recognise Germany again! Adolf Hitler.’

  With all his strength he hurled the empty Korn bottle at the fading notice. The bottle shattered loudly against the bricks. ‘That you can say again, Adolf,’ he groaned, ‘that’s for shitting sure!’

  The two men staggered on.

  THREE

  On October 13th while Wotan’s panzer grenadiers, aided by von Dodenburg’s remaining fifteen Tigers, held the Big Red One half way down the embattled hillside, dominated now by the broken stump of the great cross, Hobbs’s men finally managed to break through the Rimburg Line. The First Army Commander, Courtney Hodges, had personally been to see the situation on the 30th Division’s front.

  Afterwards he had told a troubled and apologetic Hobbs, ‘All right, Leland, the chips are down. You either produce or you go. I hate to go over a corps commander’s head to do this, but I want this goddam Aachen gap closed! After all, Ike’s on my tail too with a big stick. He wants me to get my butt out of this Aachen mud and be on my way to the Rhine.’ He had smiled thinly, but Hobbs had not been fooled. The writing was on the wall for him. He threw his last remaining strength into the battle, supervising the night attack personally; and it worked. By dawn the German positions around the onion-towered baroque Rimburg Castle were broken; by mid-morning the Krauts were streaming back towards Aachen in panic-stricken confusion.

  Pandemonium reigned at Donner’s HQ at the hotel. A young staff officer, his immaculate uniform now splattered with mud, ‘monkey swing’2 hanging loosely across his breast, blood streaming down the left side of his face, reported in a choking voice: ‘Most of the lead companies have been wiped out, sir … position razed to the ground.
’

  ‘Artillery?’ a frantic Donner yelled.

  ‘Lost contact, sir,’ a sweating fat staff major, crouched over the main command radio, yelled back. ‘Everything’s destroyed. The lines are down everywhere.’

  ‘Heaven, arse and twine,’ Donner cried angrily. ‘How the devil can I defend a city when I’ve got nothing to defend it with? What do those rear-echelon stallions think they are playing at?’ For one awful moment he remembered that terrible breakthrough of the Allies in France in September 1918 on that Black Sunday which had heralded the end of everything he had known and respected as a young officer in the old Imperial Army. Then he pulled himself together, aware of the young aide’s shocked face and the fat staff major’s gaping mouth. It wouldn’t do to allow his staff see him go to pieces; they must have confidence in the leadership even if the world was damn well falling apart all around him.

  Before he could act, however, the field telephone shrilled. He beat the aide to the instrument. ‘Donner,’ he barked.

  Even his voice could not calm the hysterical officer at the other end. ‘Large tank formations bearing down upon us from the east,’ the officer cried, forgetting all wireless procedure. ‘We’ve got no AT3 left. No bazookas. All our mines have been used.’ The officer sobbed hysterically. ‘Sir, you’ve got to send reinforcements …!’

  ‘Pull yourself together, man,’ Donner snapped, sickened. ‘Hold on – I make you personally responsible for the position. It’s your head!’

  ‘But, sir.’

  Donner slammed down the phone. His spirit was restored. Full of energy, he started rapping out orders.

  ‘Major, don’t just sit there! Get your base stallions moving. I want reinforcements – I demand reinforcements! Turf anyone who can hold a rifle out of the dressing stations! Throw in the police – they’re all trained to use weapons. Get the cooks – the clerks. Go through the hospitals. This is not the time to allow the malingerers to lie there farting between clean sheets while better men die. Well, come on, get moving!’

  ‘You,’ he turned to the bleeding aide. ‘Get on that damned motor-cycle of yours and press on the tube. I want you to get through to Colonel von Dodenburg. At all costs, do you hear? I need big friends 4 – and I need them quick!’

  The aide ran out, trampling over the useless maps with his dirty boots. The time for strategy was over. The naked struggle for the existence of Aachen had begun.

  The retreat from the Rimburg Line was a shambles, governed by panic, powered by naked fear. While the whole horizon burned brick-red with the barrage from Hobbs’s massed batteries and the very earth rocked with their insane hammering detonations, the survivors struggled back; an endless stream of Horch staff cars, eight-ton Opel trucks, looted tractors pulling farm-wagons piled high with groaning wounded, ambulances covered fearfully by Red Cross flags in the pathetic hope that the Jabos of the Ninth US TAC would respect them. And in the midst of the forlorn, frightened grey-coated stream, the two Tigers stood like steel fortresses, their long guns pointing menacingly the way the Amis must come.

  Von Dodenburg had positioned well the only two tanks he could spare from the vital height. The half-track load of panzer grenadiers he had brought with him to cover the Tigers against Ami bazooka attacks had blasted the great oaks which had bordered the cobbled road for a distance of five hundred metres. Now they blocked it like huge fallen matchsticks, forcing both the retreating German infantry and their American pursuers into the fields on both side. Krause had taken up his position on one side of the road and his tank on other, both covered by their thin skin of infantry. Forced into the fields, the Shermans would lose the advantage of their superior speed and greater manoeuvrability, and be easy meat for the Tigers’ 88s.

  Thus while the survivors streamed shame-faced into the city where Donner’s head-hunters were already waiting to reform them into new companies, at pistol-point if necessary, the two lone Tigers prepared for the uneven battle. Above them the huge crimson sun hung in an iron-grey sky heavy with menace.

  ‘Do you know, Matz,’ Schulze said as they draped the Royal Tiger with camouflaged netting and oak branches, ‘that there are over two hundred million Ivans.’

  ‘Someone ought to invent the Parisian5 in Russia then,’ Matz growled, aiming a fruitless kick at a soaked and hatless straggler who almost bumped into him.

  ‘And there’s nearly the same number of shitty Amis, not to mention the Tommies and all that nigger cannon-fodder they’ve got from India and Africa.’

  ‘Well, all I can say, Sergeant-Major, is that I’ve been doing my best these last goddam five years to plant as many of them as I could in the soil.’ He sniffed. ‘But still I didn’t realise that there were so many of ’em.’

  Schulze nodded his head significantly. ‘No, and a lot more people don’t either. Five hundred million of the shits and all we’ve got on our side is a few greasy spaghetti-eaters and a lot of operatic tenors from Hungary and Rumania, who cream their knickers as soon as they hear a popgun go off.’

  Matz finished his side of the big vehicle. Across on the other side of the road, Krause’s crew was also finished. ‘We’ve still got the V-weapons, Sergeant-Major. You can’t overlook the Führer’s V-weapons, you know.’6

  Schulze made an obscene gesture with his middle finger. ‘You know what you can do with the Führer’s V-weapons, don’t you, Matz.’

  ‘But the rockets, they’re giving the Tommy civvies a hard time in London, according to the papers.’

  ‘You’ll be telling me next you believe in Father Christmas and Grimm’s Fairy Tales,’ Schulze sneered, dropping the last of the netting on the gun into place.

  ‘And if you’ll forgive my German, Sergeant-Major, you’re talking out of the back of your arse. We’ve got V-weapons that’ll win the war yet for Germany. When I was in hospital in Heidelberg after Cassino getting this movable saucer fitted,’ he tapped his wooden leg, ‘I heard them talking about a new poison gas that would—’

  ‘Poison gas!’ Schulze interrupted scornfully. ‘The only poison gas you’ll see in this war is when those kitchen bulls serve shitty pea soup and those big farmboys of the heavy weapon company start farting. No, Matz, we’ve got half the fucking world against us.’ He paused for breath. ‘How come we’re holding this road with only two Tigers. Explain that, will you, you sodding field marshal!’

  ‘I can explain, sodding Field Marshal Schulze,’ von Dodenburg’s Prussian voice said behind them.

  The two NCOs sprang to attention, but he waved to them to desist. ‘Don’t try to bullshit me,’ he said with a faint smile. ‘I know you like the back of my hand. The two of you have no respect for an officer and a gentleman.’

  ‘Well, they do say that human beings begin with the rank of lientenant, sir,’ Schulze said pleasantly, standing at ease.

  ‘You see what I mean,’ von Dodenburg said. His handsome young face hardened and the smile vanished. ‘You asked, Schulze, why we’re out here trying to defend that damned road there with only two tanks against what is virtually a whole Ami division? I’ll tell you why. Because we wear this cursed black uniform and these damned stupid silver badges.’ Angrily he tapped the gleaming SS runes on his collar. ‘Because our cap badge is a death’s head that makes half Europe tremble with fear. We’re the SS, Schulze, hated and feared wherever we go and one day those people who hate and fear us will attempt to take their revenge for these last five years. What else can we do but fight on? Each day gained is another day of life for people like us, whether we achieve it with poison gas or with this beautiful monster here.’ He slapped his gloved hand against the Tiger’s metal side, his eyes glowing with a warm fanaticism. ‘Because the day we stop fighting we’ll be looking at the potatoes from beneath within the hour. Understand?’ His blue eyes searched the big Hamburger’s face.

  Schulze nodded. ‘Yessir,’ he gulped.

  ‘Good, I’m going over to check out Krause’s camouflage. You carry on here.’

  Matz waited till the lean co
lonel had crossed the road to Officer-Cadet Krause’s Tiger; then he tapped his dirty finger significantly against his temple. ‘Schulze,’ he said slowly, ‘I think the Old Man’s going off.’

  The big Hamburger did not reply, but his brown eyes set in their deep exhausted rings followed von Dodenburg anxiously.

  ‘Loaded – safety catch released,’ snapped Schulze, as the little red light began to glow.

  Below, the big Maybach engines burst into life. ‘Engines started – ready to go,’ Matz reported over the intercom.

  ‘Thank you,’ von Dodenburg said, as cool and collected as ever now, searching the desolate horizon for the first sign of the Amis.

  Schulze sighed and looked at the long line of shells lying in the bin. All sparkling new innocence. Soon they would become the harbingers of destruction, making men quake, scream in torment and terror, die.

  ‘Here they come,’ von Dodenburg reported, lowering his glasses for a moment to wipe the lenses clean with a dirty handkerchief.

  Schulze thrust his right eye against the sight and adjusted it quickly. A line of slow black beetles had breasted the height, prevented from using the road because of the fallen oaks.

  ‘Watch that armourd car,’ von Dodenburg barked. ‘At two o’clock.’

  Schulze spun the 14-ton turret round as effortlessly as if it had weighed 14 grammes. A six-wheel Ami Staghound was racing past the tanks, bouncing up and down across the bumpy fields. ‘Recce, sir,’ he said.

  ‘Yes, give it six hundred metres and then we’ll inform them that we are here. Just before they die, they’ll learn they have carried out their mission successfully, eh?’

  Nine hundred metres … eight hundred … seven hundred … The Staghound started to slow down, as if its commander sensed trouble was awaiting him somewhere ahead. Behind him the line of Shermans rumbled closer. The Staghound commander knew he had to go on. Schulze could almost sense the Ami’s fear. He guessed he’d be sitting there in his dark, oil-stinking turret, the sweat pouring down under his leather helmet, eye glued to the periscope, one hand held ready on the trigger of the smoke-discharger, which would cover his flight once the trouble started. Carefully he adjusted his sight so that the first shell would hit the left side of the armoured car’s turret where the three smoke-dischargers were located. He told himself it was a shitty thing to do – it meant the Staghound would be a sitting duck – but, as the CO had said, it might also mean one more day of precious life to them.