Claws of Steel

by Leo Kessler

  The Vulture looked down at the pale-faced young second lieutenant who had just joined the Battalion from the Bad Toelz Officer School the month before, as if he had just popped up from the earth.

  ‘My dear Horten,’ he rasped. ‘Your folk-comrades, as you call them, are the scum of Europe, bribed or beaten to come to Germany to work in our industries. Before I would trust my life to the workmanship of some Polack or spaghetti-eater, I would want to see how the vehicle they have produced stands up to fire. Unfortunately in actual battle, my dear Horten, as you will undoubtedly find out, the Popovs don’t allow one to settle down in the middle of the fight and make up for the deficiencies – or sabotage, if you like – of your folk-comrades.’

  There was some sniggering in the rear ranks of the Battalion and Horten’s pale face flushed red with embarrassment. He opened his mouth to say something else, but the Vulture didn’t give him a chance.

  ‘Mount up!’ he yelled through the megaphone. ‘Every crew to its vehicle!’

  Hastily the SS men broke ranks and doubled across the uneven range towards the waiting steel monsters. The next instant the still afternoon was broken by the roar of engine after engine bursting into powerful life. One after the other the raw crews rattled down the range to face up to their frightening baptism of fire. Time and time again there was the angry whang of metal striking metal. Young troopers staggered out of the vehicles, white-faced and shocked. Others did not manage to clamber out of the turrets, but vomited where they stood, their heads ringing still with the impact of the 37 mm shells at such close range.

  But the Vulture would not allow any let-up. He urged ever fresh crews into the Tigers, chivvying the young soldiers with his cynical rasping voice, while von Dodenburg sweated over the breech of the red-hot anti-tank gun, the pile of gleaming smoking shell cases mounting ever higher behind him.

  And then it happened. A frightened tank commander ordered his Tiger to break away after the second shell had jarred his tank from side to side. The Vulture, his eyes gleaming angrily, did not hesitate.

  ‘Schwarz,’ he yelled above the roar of the Tiger’s great engines. ‘Let him have it to the right of the turret mount!’

  Schwarz, his eye glued to the rubber eye-piece, took a quick aim. The next instant he fired. The 37 mm canon jerked wildly, its trails starting up from the dusty ground. But no one had eyes for the anti-tank gun. Their gaze was fixed on the Tiger.

  Schwarz’s shell caught the tank exactly at its weak spot – the turret ring. Angry red sparks flew up from the thin metal. It heaved back on its sprockets like a live thing. A sharp spike of ugly yellow flame stabbed out of its engine cowling. There was a gasp of horror from the spectators.

  ‘Bale out … for Chrissake – bale out!’ von Dodenburg yelled wildly. He dropped the shell he was holding and doubled forward. His move broke the spell. Suddenly they were all running towards the fiercely burning Tiger from which dark shapes were now tumbling blindly, screaming in agonized pain.

  But their aid came too late for the tank commander who had been too scared to face up to that last shell. He lay dead on the scorched grass, angry blue flames still licking his blackened body.

  Carelessly the Vulture turned the body over with his elegantly booted foot, and stared down at the black-charred face in bored curiosity. ‘As I thought,’ rasped. ‘Friend Horten of the anthropological studies.’ He looked at von Dodenburg cynically and then removing his polished riding boot allowed the body to fall on its first-burst stomach again. ‘Well, now he knows that the length of your foreskin is no indication of your bravery, what, von Dodenburg!’

  The Vulture slapped his cane against his boot. ‘All right, you wet tails,’ he roared at the wide-eyed young soldiers crowding in on all sides to get a glimpse at the dead officer sprawled out extravagantly in the blackened grass. ‘So you’ve seen your first stiff. Good. Now then, let’s get on with the exercise, yes …’

  Time was running out. That was clear even to the rawest recruit of SS Assault Battalion Wotan. Every day the Vulture stepped up the pressure – platoon-strength attack, company-attack, battalion-attack; tank support attack with infantry; night attacks; partisan defence attacks. Hour after hour from six in the morning until late at night when the red ball of the June sun finally sank below the flat Westphalian horizon and the recruits could stagger off blindly to their bunks, the veteran NCOs and officers of the old Wotan poured the knowledge of four years of war into the green-beaks’ ears.

  ‘At night when the Ivan T-34s come at yer, don’t wet yer knickers, let them have a couple of star shells straight to the turret. That’ll blind the Ivan gunner long enough for even duds like you to get in the first shot …’

  ‘Wait till the T-34s breast the rise. Then you’ve got ’em by the short, black and curlies. Their big old guts – with no armour – will be showing. Zap! Yer let ’em have one there, just as if yer slipping yer girl friend a quick link. That is – those of you who like girls …’

  ‘Their tank radio communication is crap – virtually non-existent. The Ivans can’t build radios because they’ve got six shitty fingers on each dirty hand. So what happens when they try to launch a concentrated attack? I’ll tell you, wet tails. They get out little flags and start signalling to each other like a lot of shitty boy scouts. What do you do? You let the first Popov who pokes his head up with flags have a nice long burst of m.g. fire. Then the whole attack will fall apart. Because that Popov will undoubtedly be the company or battalion commander. And the Popovs go ape-shit when they’ve got nobody to give ’em orders.’

  ‘Flank ’em – always flank ’em. One Tiger is good enough to take on a whole company of T-34s from the flank. Suspension, turret ring, engine cowling – you can pick ’em off one by one from the flank. You’ll really have ’em by the juicy nuts. But remember this, the T-34’s glacis plate is as tough as that of the Tiger. So if you don’t want to die for Folk, Fatherland and Führer earlier than you’re going to do anyway, remember that flank, Flank …’

  And so it went on. Von Dodenburg found that Karin Schmeer’s exciting nubile body could hardly keep him awake, just as Sergeant Schulze discovered that her mother’s Schnitzel and fried potatoes had begun to lose their attraction, whereas Metzger’s suspicions of his Lore were muted somewhat by his fear that the intensive training meant the Battalion was going to be sent to the Eastern Front yet once more.

  And Sergeant Metzger was quite correct in his fears. On the 20th June, 1943, battalion commanders and their company commanders were summoned urgently to divisional headquarters at Bielefeld for an immediate briefing by the divisional commander himself.

  Sepp Dietrich, the stocky, tough ex-World War I tank sergeant, who had formed the ‘Bodyguard’ way back in the old days of the Party’s fight for power, was in his usual swaggering, quick-witted Bavarian form, helped no doubt by the half a bottle of schnapps he had usually consumed by midday.

  ‘Gentlemen,’ he began without any preliminaries, as soon as the officers had settled down in the map room, ‘the High Command has really given us a juicy one this time.’ He struck the big wall map of the central section of the Russian Front. ‘We’ve got the point with the Gross-Deutschland.2 Our initial target is Prokhorovka so that we can outflank Kursk. When we’ve done that – and Jesus, Mary, Joseph, we shall do it with 700 vehicles under command including 100 Tigers – we’ll push forward to link up with Model’s army coming down from the north.’ He picked up the glass of Korn which the orderly always kept close to his right hand, and downed it in one gulp. ‘Most of you have cured your throat ache, I see. But there’ll be some other kind of tin3 and promotion in this one for the lot of you.’ His brown eyes twinkled merrily and he stuck out his cleft bully boy’s jaw aggressively. ‘I want a corps out of this one, gentlemen, so I want no-one slipping up. Or by the Great Whore of Buxtehude, I’ll want to know why! Understood?’

  ‘Understood, General!’ they roared back in unison, including the Vulture who had no great respect for Dietrich�
�s talent as a commander.

  ‘Good. But I don’t want you to get the impression that this is going to be a nice little comfortable Viennese waltz. The Soviets have got tremendous defences south of Kursk.’ He slapped the map with his bruiser’s fist. ‘They’ve dug themselves everywhere in their hedgehogs.4 According to the Old Fox’s5 men, they’re expecting a tank attack in the area so their plan it to let the tanks swing by their strongpoints and wait for the follow-up infantry. Good, let the bastards wait.’ He smiled, showing his strongwhite teeth under the trim little moustache. ‘They can wait till the Day of Judgement as far as I am concerned. The Bodyguard will take its infantry with it on the backs of the Tigers. When we’ve linked up with Model’s Army and the Popovs are still scratching their hairy backsides and wondering what happened to the Germanskis, then we can start sorting out their fine hedgehogs. All the same you’d better hear what exactly the Popovs have got waiting for us south of Kursk.’ He raised his voice and barked, ‘Kraemer, come and play my Chief-of-Staff. And Orderly, bring me another goddam drink before I die of thirst!’

  With a sigh Kraemer, Dietrich’s elegant Regular Army Chief-of-Staff, who had often confided to the Vulture that his boss could not even read a map, stepped into the centre of the group and began rattling off the statistics.

  ‘The depth of defence of the Central and Varonezh Fronts on the axes of German attack reach from 120 to 170 kilometres.’ Even the hard-bitten battalion commanders of the ‘Führer’s Fire Brigade’ could not fight back their gasps of surprise; but Kraemer did not seem to hear. ‘The Soviets have dug some 5000 kilometres of trenches and have laid approximately 400,000 bombs and ground mines. There are some 2,400 anti-tank and 2,700 anti-personnel mines per kilometre of front – six times that of the defence of Moscow and four times that of Stalingrad last year. The Soviets have also given their anti-aircraft defences great attention. According to the Old Fox’s spies, they have nine anti-aircraft artillery divisions, plus 40 regiments—’

  ‘Enough, enough,’ Dietrich broke in suddenly. ‘Christ, Kraemer, do you want to frighten the life out of them?’

  ‘I’m simply giving them the facts, General,’ Kraemer said without rancour, as if he had gone through similar scenes many times before.

  ‘Facts!’ Dietrich snorted. ‘Soldiers can’t concern themselves with facts. If they did, they’d never even go into action. They’d be too petrified by the knowledge that, according to the statistics, one of the pieces of shit flying around must have their number on it.’ He looked at the assembled officers a rogueish look in his brown eyes. ‘Gentlemen, I suggest that since you know what is expected of us in this new mission and – thanks to my little ray of sunshine here, Kraemer – what kind of shitty opposition we can anticipate, you leave here and do what every soldier should before he goes into battle – get a snootful of booze and get himself laid, if he can.’ He raised his voice and bellowed, ‘Orderly – the drinks!’

  A group of white-coated mess waiters came hurrying in, bearing silver trays of ice-cold glasses of Korn. Hastily they passed them out to the officers.

  Sepp Dietrich raised his glass. ‘Gentlemen, to the success of Operation Citadel!’ he roared.

  ‘Operation Citadel!’ they bellowed in unison.

  In one gulp they downed the fiery spirit. The next instant the room was full of the noise of splintering glass, as officer after officer flung his glass into the stone fireplace.

  Notes

  1. The steep front plate of the tank, usually the most heavily armoured part of any armoured fighting vehicle (transl.)

  2. An elite motorised division, which although it did not belong to the SS, had the privilege of wearing an armband as did the SS divisions (transl.)

  3. SS slang for decorations (transl.)

  4. Fortified positions, manned by a company of infantry with four or five pieces of artillery, linked together in a rough line (transl.)

  5. Name given to Admiral Canaris, the sly head of the German Intelligence Section.

  SEVEN

  Von Dodenburg shook his head and the room came into focus. But his vision was still blurred. He shook his head again, a little more forcefully, and wished a second later that he hadn’t.

  Slowly, carefully, he let his eyes wander round the room. Her clothes were everywhere. The white cotton slip, such as schoolgirls wore, on the floor; her pants screwed into a ball flung on the dresser, as if she hadn’t been able to get them off quickly enough; her sweater spreadeagled over the end of the big bed, the arms thrust out, like a headless swimmer.

  Karin was still sleeping peacefully, face down on the rumpled stained bed, the feather quilt thrown back impatiently the way children do in their sleep. But there was nothing childlike in the brown-tanned naked body at his side. The dark down revealed from under one raised arm, the plump curve of the breast, the rise of the buttocks and the pubic puff between her spread legs – they all indicated a woman: an experienced woman.

  For in spite of her sixteen years, there was nothing sexually immature about Karin Schmeer. When Schulze had deposited him, weaving drunkenly from Bielefeld, outside her door, she had not hesitated; ignoring the big-breasted maid’s shocked looks, she had almost dragged him up to her bedroom and started pulling off her clothes with excited trembling hands.

  Thereafter the night had been one frantic, frenzied bout of lovemaking after another, as if the teenaged girl could not get enough to satiate the burning lust which tore at her body. Finally he had pleaded he must sleep and although she had cried bitterly, he had drifted into a dream-racked sleep in which he saw the battalion standing completely naked on some God-forsaken burning Russian steppe while monstrous Soviet tanks mowed them down calmly and deliberately as if engaged in a peacetime exercise.

  At his side Karin groaned. She turned, opened her eyes and put her brown arms round his neck. ‘Kiss me,’ she whispered through cracked, scummed lips.

  He did so. But there was no conviction in his kiss, and she knew it. She drew back and surveyed him for a moment. Then she pushed back a lock of the long blonde hair which had fallen over her brow.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ she asked soberly, without any emotion.

  He shrugged his naked shoulders. ‘This I suppose.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Somehow it’s wrong. I mean you’re only a schoolgirl and I’m an SS officer. I’ve had experience—’ He broke off a little helplessly, not able to find the right words to express himself.

  ‘Don’t you think I’ve had other men, Kuno?’ she asked.

  ‘Obviously. But what if your father found out? What would he think of my – well you know?’

  She grinned cynically and ran her hands over her full breasts contemptuously. ‘Him! He doesn’t care. All he cares about it filling his own pockets and those Jewish whores down in the old city, who let him play out his dirty little tricks because they’re scared to death he might put them in the camps if they didn’t.’

  ‘Filling his pockets – Jewish whores – in National Socialist Germany!’ von Dodenburg stuttered.

  She smiled at his bewilderment, and not taking her eyes off him, reached out for a cigarette. ‘A German woman does not use make-up or smoke,’1 she said and lit it. Blowing out a long stream of contented blue smoke, she added. ‘Don’t look at me like that, Captain von Dodenburg! Shit! Where have you been all these last years since 1939, eh?’

  ‘At the front.’

  ‘The front – oh, there!’ she said carelessly, as if it were as far away as Mars. ‘I understand. But you must understand too, that this is Germany 1943. Things have changed.’

  ‘How have things changed?’ he persisted, although he could already feel her free hand fondling him, a look of dreamy amusement on her young face.

  ‘Just changed. People are out for themselves.’ Her cunning hands were stroking him into excitement now with soft feathery movements like those of some Parisian whore.

  ‘You are just a child, what do you know?’ he persisted, trying to
fight back the desire which had begun to bubble up within his loins once more.

  ‘Child,’ she whispered huskily. ‘Put your arms around me and I’ll show you whether I am a child or not.’

  He attempted to push her hand away, but she held on to him tightly, as if she could not bear to let go of this source of intense delight. He could feel her body begin to tremble with desire.

  ‘Come on,’ she urged and slowly began to open her long brown legs.

  In spite of himself, he threw his right leg over her, ready to mount. But fate had decreed otherwise. He would never make love to Karin Schmeer again. Just as she began to draw up her legs to receive him, there was a thunderous knock on the door and a well-known voice called.

  ‘It’s only me, sir.’

  Next moment Schulze burst in, clad only in his boots and vest, a half empty bottle of Korn in one hand, the other clasping the enormous right breast of the hopelessly drunk and giggling maid, who was completely naked.

  ‘Sir—’ he stopped suddenly when he realized what von Dodenburg was about to do. ‘The Prussian don’t shoot that quickly, sir!’ he cried, a huge grin spreading over his cheeky waterfront face.

  ‘What the devil do you think you’re up to, Schulze?’ von Dodenburg yelled angrily, hastily pulling the feather quilt over himself and the girl, her legs still raised expectantly.

  ‘Don’t get angry, sir. I’m just doing my duty – sorry that I had to interrupt you in yours,’ he added with a knowing grin at the girl.

  ‘Get on with it. What damn duty?’

  ‘Dehn, you know him, sir?’

  Von Dodenburg nodded.

  ‘Well, sir, I told him last night where to find us if anything came up.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘It’s come up, sir – like a couple of other things this night, no doubt.’

  ‘What, man. Spit it out!’

  ‘We’re off. Dehn just got me and the maid here out of the pit to tell us. Now he’s waiting outside with the Volkswagen.’