by Leo Kessler
‘What the hell you guys waiting for?’ a beery voice cried.
‘You, Frank!’ von Dodenburg ordered.
‘Watch my finger, sir,’ Frank protested.
‘Shit on your finger – come on!’
Frank joined the two men on the wall. Von Dodenburg looked down at the one-legged sergeant-major. He crouched below, busy fumbling at the straps of his wooden leg.
‘What the hell are you doing, Matz?’
‘Never make it with this,’ Matz yelled back, finally undoing the leg. ‘Here, farmboy, get a hold of this.’ He hopped forward and proffered the leg to Trees. ‘And treat it kindly – it’s the only one I’ve got.’
A bullet whanged into the leg as Trees hauled it upwards. Matz cursed. ‘Marmalade-shitters – don’t even have any respect for poor old cripples!’ he yelled.
‘Come on, you cripple, then,’ von Dodenburg bellowed. With the help of Frank, who was yelping with the pain of his finger, he hauled up the struggling one-legged sergeant-major. Seconds later, covered by the wall and with Matz, hopping as he went, with his wooden leg under his arm, they were doubling towards the safety of the sewer. Seconds later, they had dropped inside and were swallowed up by its stinking gloom.
FOUR
Colonel Seitz, commander of the 26th Infantry, could not speak for a moment when he heard the news. His rage was too great.
‘What the Sam Hill were you guys doing?’ he roared at last at his pale-faced staff officers. ‘Couldn’t you figure that the Kraut might pull a trick like this?’
They remained silent. They knew Colonel Seitz’s rages of old. It was better to say nothing.
Seitz pulled himself together. ‘Okay, let’s get on the stick. Tell the lead battalion to halt for the next two hours and dig in. I don’t want them to be caught with their skivvies down by some Kraut counter-attack in the flank. Charley,’ he swung round on a bespectacled staff officer, ‘where’s the nearest chemical warfare company? I want gas to smoke the bastards out of these sewers.’
The staff officers looked at the CO aghast. ‘You can’t mean that, sir?’ Charley ventured. ‘Gas?’
‘I would not have said it if I didn’t damn well mean it. Where is the nearest company?’
‘Verviers, sir.’
‘Too far away. The bastards’ll escape us by the time they get up here. Flame-throwers – that’s – the answer,’ he said determinedly. ‘Okay, what I need is a plan of those sewers. Then we block them somewhere on the north-south axis along the Wilhelmstrasse – that’s obviously the way they’re making off back to their own darn lines I Once we’ve blocked them, I want volunteers with flame-throwers down there to smoke them out like rats – like rats,’ he emphasised. ‘Do you understand? … Okay, what are you guys standing around for like spare pricks at a wedding? Let’s get on the ball …’
The sudden burst of fire through the grating in the main square caught them completely off guard. Frank fell dead and Trees hit the water, clawing the air in pain. Matz and von Dodenburg ran towards him and pulled him out. He was chewing his tongue and the saliva which dribbled down his unshaven chin was pink with blood. His eyeballs were already beginning to slip upwards so that only a little of the white showed.
As the others scattered for cover and began trying to aim upwards at their unseen assailants, Matz cried. ‘We can’t let the shitty hayseed die like this, sir … He’s choking to death.’
Von Dodenburg nodded grimly and tried to prise open his tightly shut jaws and release his tongue. Desperately he looked round for something with which to force them open. ‘Matz,’ he cried, ‘give me your knife.’ Another burst crashed through the grating, splattering lead everywhere. Bullets whined off the walls.
‘No, sir. If he falls on it or rolls over,’ Matz protested, ‘he’ll cut his damn tongue off.’
‘Don’t argue. Give me the knife! No, better if you stick it in when I lever his jaws open.’
With all his strength von Dodenburg forced open the farm-boy’s jaws and Matz slid the knife between his lips. Immediately Trees started to grind his teeth on the metal, twitching convulsively. His breath became more normal and von Dodenburg sat back on his heels, cold with sweat, feeling he had saved the boy’s life. But he was mistaken.
‘Look at this, sir,’ Matz said, removing his hand from below the boy. It was covered with blood.
Suddenly von Dodenburg was aware of a disgusting stench which didn’t come from the sewer. He looked down at the boy’s nether parts. His trousers were soaked wtih blood. He slid the knife out and slit open the trousers from the knee downwards. There was a cloying odour of rotting flesh.
‘Turn him over,’ he commanded.
Matz rolled the boy over. His buttocks were a mass of yellow-red blood. ‘Haemorrhage,’ Matz gulped. ‘He’s bleeding from behind. Shot in the gut.’ Von Dodenburg parted the boy’s legs and tried to stop the bleeding with his hand. The blood seeped through his fingers. He grabbed a handful of mud from the bottom of the stream and clapped it against the boy’s behind. It was useless. The blood still streamed through, sweeping aside the mud poultice.
‘Sir,’ Schwarz cried from the other end of the underground chamber, ‘I can hear tanks. They’re bringing up reinforcements. We’d better move.’ Von Dodenburg looked down at the dying farmboy. He would never see his dirt-poor Upper Bavarian farm home again, herd the cows up to the higher pastures in spring and slide the hay down in summer. He pulled out his pistol and placed it against the boy’s right temple. The boy’s eyes flickered open for a moment.
‘Thank you, sir,’ he breathed weakly. ‘Sorry to have held you up.’ He closed them again and von Dodenburg could see his pale lips moving to the words of some half-forgotten Catholic prayer. Von Dodenburg squeezed the trigger. The Walther erupted in his fist. The boy’s spine curved like a bow. Then he fell back into the bloody dirt, mouth open, dead.
‘Come on,’ von Dodenburg yelled in the echoing silence, ‘let’s get the hell out of here!’
With Schwarz’s group bringing up the rear and the old civilian in the front, guiding them with his stinking carbide lamp, they waded into the main sewer again. Now the rats seemed to be everywhere. Whether it was due to the frantic activity overhead or because of the growing dark, von Dodenburg could not tell. All he knew was that the loathsome brown-grey creatures were everywhere, fleeing the first flickering light of the old man’s carbide lamp, but slithering under their feet again as soon as the gloom had returned.
‘Ugh,’ said Matz, pushing on behind the CO, ‘gives me the creeps to feel those long-tailed bastards nibbling – even on my wooden leg!’
‘Keep it down,’ von Dodenburg urged, ‘all of you keep it down. And you, old man,’ he ordered the civilian, ‘shade that light. We don’t want them tracking us along the main sewer.’
There was silence now save for the men’s harsh breathing and the slithering of the rats. But despite the fact that they were progressing steadily towards the safety of their own lines, von Dodenburg had an uneasy feeling that, up above, the Amis were keeping pace with them, only waiting for a suitable opportunity to spring the trap.
Time passed. They squeezed their way carefully past a barrier thrown down a manhole by the Amis. One by one, hardly daring to breathe, they crawled through the mass of old chairs, ration crates, timbers hastily slung below by the enemy, knowing that at the first indication of their presence, the Americans would start firing with all they had. They marched on. Now they were up to their waists in the thick stinking mire. Their pace began to slow down.
One of Schwarz’s wounded boys passed out and sank below the surface to be hauled out by his comrades, their faces contorted in disgust at his appearance. Schwarz ordered two of them to take off their belts and tie them round his arms. Thus they dragged the faeces-smeared boy on with them.
Von Dodenburg began to pray that they would reach their objective soon. He had had enough. His head started to spin with the fumes. ‘How much longer, old man?’ he asked thickly.<
br />
The civilian looked up at the dripping curved ceiling. ‘Peterstrasse,’ he announced after a moment. ‘Horse piss corner!’
‘What?’
‘Horse piss. Horse piss corner, we used to call it in the old days. There was a stable up here. On winter mornings, the horse piss used to come pouring in here by the litre, all hot and steaming like—’
‘Oh for Christ’s sake, shut up, old man,’ von Dodenburg interrupted, his voice full of disgust. ‘Can’t you think of anything but shit and piss?’
‘It makes the world go round, sir,’ he answered, not the least offended. ‘Without it, nothing would grow. No shit and piss and we wouldn’t eat.’
Matz retched thickly. ‘I’ll never eat another goddam thing,’ he croaked, pushing his way through the mire, Schmeisser held above his head. ‘I swear I won’t—’
He broke off suddenly. There was the clatter of a sewer lid being raised ahead and dropped on the cobbles of the road.
‘Freeze!’ von Dodenburg commanded.
A thin white torch beam cut into the green gloom ahead of them. They pressed themselves against the dripping walls, hardly daring to breathe.
‘They’re down there,’ a hushed voice said. ‘I’ll bet my goddam bottom dollar they are … Joe, are you ready?’
‘Sir.’
‘Okay, we’re ready, Joe, when you are.’
Von Dodenburg raised his pistol. He could hear the metallic sound of someone fiddling with some sort of apparatus. His brow creased in a frown. What the devil were the Amis up to? Should they make a break for it and push on while they still had a chance? Or should they—
‘Colonel!’ It was Schwarz. His face was blanched with fear.
‘What?’
‘A flame-thrower … they’ve got a flame-thrower up there!’
Now the young CO could hear the soft hiss. Schwarz was right.
‘Quick – let’s make a run for it!’ he yelled.
They surged forward in a panic.
‘They’re bolting!’ a voice yelled from up above, ‘Joe, get that damn weapon of yours going!’
A hush. A roar. An angry tongue of blue-red flame shot into the sewer, curled along the walls and sought them out greedily. A SS man screamed. He fell into the mire, hands thrown up frantically, consumed by flame.
‘Duck,’ von Dodenburg screamed. ‘Duck into the shit!’
They hesitated. The flame-thrower roared again. Once more the terrible hissing tongue flamed into the tunnel. The air trembled. The sour, choking stench of charring flesh and the copper odour of hot blood assailed their nostrils. The survivors flung themselves deep into the stinking mire and felt it drying hard above them. Then the horrifying fire was gone, and they were fighting their way out of the mud.
‘Come on,’ von Dodenburg croaked, wiping his face clean. ‘As quick as you can!’
The survivors scrambled and waded through a morass of skinned, charred bodies, frozen into their last moment of desperate hysteria. Men screamed. Others flung away their weapons in their panic.
Von Dodenburg caught himself just in time. ‘Schwarz,’ he commanded. ‘Stop!’
His helmet gone, his face blackened by smoke, Schwarz was self-controlled again. ‘Sir?’
‘I need you.’ He spun round and faced the black-charred opening to the sewer. ‘When I say fire, aim at that opposite wall. We must try to ricochet shots off it upwards. It’s our one chance to try to stop them long enough for our people to round the next bend.’
Schwarz drew his Walther. Behind them the survivors panted and grunted while the mud sucked and gurgled at their boots, pulling them down like quicksand.
‘FIRE!’ von Dodenburg yelled.
Both men pressed their triggers simultaneously. The pistol shots echoed like cannon fire. The seven-millimetre slugs struck the wall just behind the grating. The stone chipped.
Up above a voice cried out in sudden alarm, ‘Get the hell away from there, Joe! The Krauts are counter-attacking!’
They heard a heavy piece of apparatus being dropped on the cobbles. That was enough for von Dodenburg.
‘Come on,’ he shouted, tucking his empty pistol into his holster, ‘Let’s get the hell out of here, Schwarz!’ Knowing that it was only a matter of seconds before the Amis overcame their surprise and reacted, they turned and began to wade through the mire and the jellied, bloody flesh of the dead.
The Amis pursued them all along their escape route. Time and time again the gratings ahead were flung open roughly and angry voices shouted to them to surrender before some new terror was launched at them. Phosphorus grenades which filled the tunnel with a burning white light and thick choking smoke; tear gas, which was harmless but which had them gasping and crying uncontrollably like children within seconds; satchel charges, containing twenty-five pounds of high explosive, which went off in the narrow confines of the tunnel with the impact of an exploding volcano. Still the procession of ghastly phantoms continued its progress, their heads swathed in their charred jackets, blindly ploughing their way forward behind Gerhardt.
The gas was affecting von Dodenburg’s eyes more and more. He could only just see by narrowing them to slits. His eyeballs seemed as if they were bedded in thick sand and he had to keep blinking all the time. He noted automatically that his head was rolling from side to side like that of a drunkard. Time and time again he tried to control the rolling motion. But within seconds he had slipped back into it again. Now his legs began to lose all feeling; it was as if they were made of jelly. Around him, his men started to fall into the slush and were brought to the surface only by the determined efforts of their stronger comrades.
Time and time again, Matz rapped out that cruel reminder. ‘MARCH OR CROAK.’ And von Dodenburg, continually fighting off unconsciousness, realised in his odd moments of clarity, how true the phrase was. He held on to the thought with all his might. They had to reach the surface.
They edged their way carefully past the last Ami barricade – a rough, barbed-wire-covered hurdle festooned with hash cans, which the Amis presumably thought would serve to warn them of the enemy’s presence. With Schwarz and Matz covering the grating up above, they slipped by and continued their stumbling nightmare progress.
The sewerage started to thin out again. The air became clearer. Von Dodenburg shook his head violently. The thick sand at the back of his eyeballs seemed to vanish. Holding each other’s hands like children in a nursery school, they pushed on in the gloom, following the ancient civilian. And then suddenly a shaft of light shone down upon them. They halted, hearts beating like trip-hammers.
‘It’s them,’ a voice shouted. In German! Von Dodenburg felt his knees almost give way with relief.
Gasping, panting, sobbing, they started to climb up the makeshift wooden ladder lowered to them. They had reached the first German outpost. Filthy, exhausted; trembling with fatigue and shock, they emerged into the beam of the torch, to the cries of disgust of their rescuers.
‘Ugh,’ an unknown voice, called, ‘give them room! … make way for the shit shovellers!’
Despite his exhaustion, von Dodenburg grinned. They had made it.
FIVE
Dawn came slowly, as if it were reluctant to throw its light on the stark, sobering tableau of the wrecked city. Once magnificent trees, stripped of their foliage by the ceaseless artillery fire, now looked like gaunt outsize toothpicks. Jagged chunks of brickwork and twisted steel rods that had once been fine houses. The mutilated carcass of an Opel truck that had struck a mine and had slumped to a dying stop like a live thing. And everywhere discarded equipment, American and German: gas masks, ripped overcoats, empty cans, helmet-liners, broken rifles. One of the GIs waiting to move out kicked a bloody shoe that lay among the mess of war and shuddered to see that it still contained a foot.
At seven-thirty, the big guns started to thunder. The mobile 155s fired their sixty-pound shells at point-blank range. The shattered buildings which made up the confused German front line shuddered like ships
striking heavy seas every time the great shells hit them.
‘Cigarettes out!’ an officer ordered.
The infantry took a hurried last draw, then they stubbed out their cigarettes.
‘Form up!’
They moved forward too slowly for the top kick, who had been a corporal the week before, and he snarled: ‘Didn’t you guys hear the major? Now get the goddam lead out of your tails! Form up!’
They scrambled into position.
At eight o’clock precisely the barrage stopped. The officers blew their whistles. Like an unruly accordion, the lead columns moved out, slithering, stumbling, falling one moment and picking themselves up the next, as they advanced into the chaos of the ruins. Ahead, the Spandaus commenced their old bitter song of death. Colonel Seitz’s 26th Infantry were going in for the final assault.
Seitz was attacking on a different pattern. He had divided his regiment into small assault teams, each team covered by a Sherman or tank destroyer wherever possible. While the armoured vehicle covered the assault team, forcing the Kraut defenders into the cellar by its fire, they would rush the building and start clearing it out from the roof downwards.
Seitz realised that this meant it would be difficult to maintain contact between the assault teams – indeed the new pattern would make it very easy for the Krauts to infiltrate between them in the confused fighting among the ruins. To avoid this, his staff officers had worked out a series of check points based on street intersections and prominent buildings. No outfit could advance beyond these check points until it had established contact with its adjacent unit. Each rifle company was assigned a specific zone of advance to avoid confusion and each company commander, in his turn, assigned a street to each platoon. Thus the old city was divided into a series of interlinking squares which would have to be cleared out systematically before the next ones could be tackled.
