Claws of Steel

by Leo Kessler

  2. Soviet rocket-mortars.

  3. Armour-piercing shell (transl.)

  4. General Gehlen, head of the Foreign Armies East, the Wehrmacht’s Intelligence service dealing with the East.

  TWO

  The advance to the village of Pokrovka was a walk-over – not much different from a pre-war road march, von Dodenburg couldn’t help thinking – interrupted only by Popov dive-bombing attacks and occasional snipers. But the Stormaviks were rattled and inaccurate, and the heart seemed to have gone out of the snipers, usually the elite of the Red Army. They surrendered as soon as they had claimed their first unsuspecting victim and Wotan’s special anti-sniper squad went into action, accepting their inevitable fate without much fight. Their camouflaged bodies, their faces painted a sickly light green, hung from the trees on both sides of the dusty white road, marking Wotan’s advance.

  The only real problem that morning was the heat, with the panzer grenadiers, forced to march because their half-tracks had been knocked out the previous day, dropping like flies. All along the route ‘chain dogs’ forced the scared peasants out with buckets of water for the foot-sloggers and they lapped it straight out of the pails like so many parched mongrels. In the end the Vulture sent a DR man1 ahead of the column to warn each miserable, tumbledown Popov farm to be ready with water for his men, who were now beginning to fall out in the tremendous heat. In one place he even managed to find an antiquated Popov fire-engine and when the limping infantry staggered by, each panzer grenadier was sprayed from head to foot by the bare-footed Popov peasants working the handle as if their miserable lives depended upon it. But within a matter of minutes their black soaked uniforms were beginning to steam as the burning merciless sun dried them out.

  In the tanks they had at least a faint breeze created by their movement, and in von Dodenburg’s, in particular, Schulze’s series of ribald stories about his pre-war life in Hamburg’s great Free Port took their minds off the overwhelming heat.

  ‘It was a good life in them days,’ he recalled fondly over the intercom, ‘before that shitty Lesbian talked me into this mob – me with an ‘Old Un who thought the sun shone out of Thaelmann’s arsehole!2 ‘Mind you, you had to pay for your pleasures – even then. I remember when I got my full house in 1938.3 It was just before the Führer decided in his infinite wisdom that we needed a bit of Austrian scenery to make a Third Reich a more attractive place for Ami tourists—’

  ‘Get on with it, Schulze,’ von Dodenburg interrupted hastily. He knew their intercom was monitored back at Corps and he didn’t want Schulze getting in trouble with the Gestapo because of his malicious talk.

  ‘Well, as I was saying,’ Schulze continued without rancour. ‘When I got my packet, the medics really give me a Working over. Without as much as by-your-leave, they had me skivvies down and some sodding bone-mender was sticking his sausage finger up my rear end – right up. I thought he was trying to push through my guts to the other side.’

  ‘You may laugh,’ Schulze said. ‘But it wasn’t funny. There they were, five or six of them, Professor Doctor this and Doctor Doctor that looking at my joystick, as if it were going to come off in their hands the very moment. I can tell yer, it really put the wind up me. But that wasn’t all. One of the bone-menders got this rod. It was as thick as one of Sergeant Metzger’s butcher’s fingers. Well he got hold of my love tube and—’

  But Schulze was not fated to be able to relate the rest of his gory tale. Up ahead the Vulture’s command Tiger, leading the column, skidded to a sudden stop, showering the plodding grenadiers on both sides with thick choking white dust. Tank after tank followed suit and it was a few moments before their crews could see the reason for their CO’s hasty halt. But once the dust had cleared, the full horror of it was soon apparent. Two figures in blood-stained field-grey were hanging from what looked like shattered telegraph posts, their heads ringed with pieces of twisted barbed wire; and to complete the crucifixion, their ‘dice-breakers’ had been removed so that the retreating Ivans could stab at their naked feet with their bayonets as they hurried past.

  Horrified the tankers and the panzer grenadiers crowded round the two poles, oblivious to the danger from snipers of the Stormoviks, and stared up at the two victims who wore the armbands of the Grossdeutschland.

  ‘God in heaven,’ someone broke the heavy silence, his voice at breaking point. ‘Will you look at their flies!’

  The crowd of suddenly white-faced men followed the direction of his shaking forefinger. Now they saw what he was pointing at.

  ‘What a piggery!’ Sergeant Metzger standing on the deck of the command tank roared, his stupid face crimson with rage and horror. ‘The Popovs have cut the poor shits’ eggs off!’

  At the cry one of the two NCOs crucified on the poles raised his gory head slowly. A hush fell on the assembled troopers who stared at his ruined manhood in transfixed horror. He opened his eyes and croaked, ‘Ivans – NKVD … Caught us yesterday … Commissar ordered.’ He broke off, his dark eyes looking down at them, full of unbearable pain.

  ‘Holy straw sack!’ someone cried hotly. ‘Did you hear that? The Popov police did that to them. Christ on crutch, don’t let me get my paws on one of those bastards. I’ll cut his communist eggs off with a broken beer bottle!’

  ‘Yes, you’re right, pal,’ a half hundred voices cried. ‘That’s what the Ivan bastards deserve – their nuts sliced off slowly!’

  ‘Get back to vehicles!’ the Vulture’s harsh incisive Prussian voice cut into the cries of rage and horror. ‘I’ll deal with this.’

  The tankers swung round, their eyes narrowed against the white-hot sun, to stare up at the Vulture, his hand clasped on his Walther.

  ‘But sir,’ someone protested. ‘What about those poor buggers up there?’

  ‘Leave it to me. Now heaven, arse and twine, will you get back to your tanks before the Popovs start knocking us as if we were on a shooting gallery!’

  Hastily they fled back to their vehicles, while the Vulture drew his pistol and without appearing to take aim fired once. The NCO from the Grossdeutschland jerked convulsively. His gory head fell down. The Vulture thrust his Walther back in its holster.

  ‘Sergeant Metzger,’ he snapped, ‘give them both a burst to make sure. Aim at their faces. I don’t like the men following to see the crows pecking at their eyes.’

  As the column started to move off again, Sergeant Metzger pressed the trigger of his schmeisser. A burst of 9 mm slugs ripped into the faces of the two crucified men from the Grossdeutschland. They disappeared at once. As the tanks rolled by, everyone looked studiously at the other side of the road, while the blood streamed down from the men’s faces, drip-dripping into the white dry dust.

  Thirty minutes later they took Pokrovka and the prisoners started to roll in, driven into the village by Schwarz’s second Company coming from the left flank and von Dodenburg’s First from the right. But this time Wotan’s enraged troopers were not content with their usual mechanical execution of their Ivan POWs. They wanted the Popovs to suffer a long time just like the two men on the telegraph poles had suffered.

  A group of shaken, filthy young eighteen-year-olds from a Moscow Guards Battalion were driven into the village’s shabby onion-towered wooden church, whose peeling blue- and gold baroque ornaments looked as if they had not been painted since the days of the Czar. Then the place was set alight. As soon as the flame-throwing tank, which did the job, had backed off, the 2nd Company under Schwarz hurried forward to watch for any attempt to break out and gloat over the piteous cries for mercy and aid which came from the church as soon as the flames really began to take hold.

  While the 2nd Company was thus occupied, a group from the 3rd drove a group of Siberians into the dusty white village square and set about them with their entrenching tools, cleaving their shaven skulls as if they were prime Soviet melons.

  But worse was still to come. A party under Metzger was searching the wrecked village for diesel to replenish their half-emp
ty tanks. As always in such cases they checked the place’s collective farm first and it was there that they found the ‘chain dog’.

  His mutilated body had been tossed on a manure heap after they had finished with him. The hands had been hacked off, the eyes had gone too, but that was nothing to what the unknown torturers had done to the military policeman’s anus. They had thrust the silver plate – which the ‘chain dogs’ wore round their necks and gave them their army nickname – up the orifice sideways, leaving the silver chain dangling purposelessly from it.

  ‘Oh my God!’ a young blond soldier next to Metzger gasped and before he could cover his mouth, the vomit started to shoot from between his lips in hot grunts and gasps.

  The news flashed from soldier to soldier. Despite the Vulture’s frantic attempt to maintain discipline, the men of the Wotan Battalion went wild. Running from cellar to cellar, they drove the civilians out screaming at them like crazy men, the froth bubbling at their lips. Who gave the order, no one ever discovered later. But the lime-caked boards covering the great cess-pool had been torn off and they were thrusting the civilians into the evil green-yellow mess. Men, women and children – they kicked them into it, whacking them across their slimy heads when they refused to drown straight away. One old man with a great white Cossack moustache simply would not go under and half a dozen of them, screaming and cursing, beat his tough old wrinkled face into pulp before he finally sank below the stinking mess of faeces.

  Then they discovered the Commissar hiding behind the sacks of grain in the barn at the back of the collective farm. Half a dozen dragged him out, his pudgy hands raised above his dark curly hair, clearly revealing the gold star of the political officer on his, sleeve. ‘Don’t shoot … don’t shoot,’ he pleaded in a thick, but recognisable German.

  ‘You’re an Issy, aren’t you?’ someone yelled, the words in German finally penetrating his crazed brain, ‘Come on – out with it!’

  ‘No, no,’ the fat fleshy Russian stammered hastily, as they pushed him towards the bubbling cesspool with the old man’s hand still protruding from it. ‘No, no, I learned it at school. At school, you understand?’

  ‘Go on,’ a dozen voices jeered. ‘You’re an Abie all right. Come on, you Ivan bastard – admit it!’

  ‘Why don’t yer take his breeches down,’ someone suggested. ‘They’ve all had their tails docked. Then you can tell.’

  ‘Yeah, yeah,’ they agreed. ‘Get his breeches down.’

  A dozen hands grabbed at his breeches and ripped them down. The Commissar’s underpants – silk – followed. A second later he was standing there with pants hanging down over his well-polished, hand-made riding boots.

  ‘Well,’ a heavy-set corporal growled, ‘let’s see if he’s an Issy. Come on, let’s have a look at his shitty tail!’

  A sweating panzer grenadier, one side of his face covered in blood, lifted up the struggling commissar’s shirt with his bayonet. He whistled through his front teeth at what his move revealed. ‘Look at that asparagus Tarzan,’ he said. ‘He’s had his tail docked by the senior Issy all right … With a blunt razor blade by the looks of it.’

  ‘No, no,’ the Commissar yelled frantically, his German improving by the second. ‘It was an operation! I had to have it done for medical reasons—’ The heavy-set corporal slapped him hard across the face and the babble of protests stopped abruptly. ‘Listen Issy, we know what you and your terrorists did to that chain dog. Chopped off his flippers. Peepers out and then if that ain’t bad enough, you stick his badge up his arse.’ He shook his head in bewilderment. ‘How can you do things like that?’

  ‘But it wasn’t me!’

  ‘Yeah, not you,’ they sneered. ‘Not now that we’ve got you with yer shitty knickers down. But it’d be different if you were getting a medal from Ehrenburg now, wouldn’t it?’4

  ‘But—’

  Again the big corporal hit him across the face. The Commissar staggered back, spitting out blood and teeth, his dark eyes wide and staring with shock.

  For a moment there was silence, broken only by the Russian’s whimpering and the heavy enraged breathing of the circle of young flushed SS men all around him.

  ‘All right, Issy,’ the corporal said slowly and deliberately, as if he had just made up his mind. ‘Now we’re gonna make that little Jewish tail of yours a bit shorter still.’

  ‘What – what,’ the other man stuttered, not quite understanding the Army slang in German.

  The query froze on his lips as the corporal brought out a penknife from his back pocket. It was the kind used by old soldiers to chop up the issue plug tobacco they smoked in their little shag pipes. Almost casually he slipped open the blade and tested its sharpness with a practised thumb movement. The Commissar watched him in frozen terror.

  ‘Get him on the ground,’ the corporal said softly, all anger apparently gone from his voice. ‘And hold him tight.’

  A dozen hands threw the commissar to the dusty scuffed ground and held him there while he stared up at his torturer with dark eyes filled with fear and loathing. But now he did not attempt to protest any more. It was as if he had accepted his fate already.

  The corporal bent over him with the knife and flapped back his shirt tail to reveal again the limp piece of dark flesh against the soft whiteness of the well-fed belly. He took a deep breath and prepared to cut. But another hand seized the knife.

  ‘Give me that,’ an authoritative voice snapped.

  The corporal turned round, a curse on his lips. But it stayed there. Lieutenant Schwarz was staring down at the trapped Jew, murder in his dark eyes.

  ‘This is going to be my job,’ he said in a thick strange voice, not taking his gaze off their victim.

  ‘Yessir – of course, sir,’ the corporal said, backing away and touching his temple significantly to the others behind Schwarz’s back. Schwarz fell to his knees in the thick white dust and ran his thumb along the blade of the penknife as the corporal had done, while the Russian stared up at him in silence.

  His left hand shot out and seized the Russian’s organ gingerly. He tensed. But still the prisoner made no sound. The fear had gone from his pale pudgy face now. It was replaced by hate – sheer naked hate. Schwarz licked his suddenly dry lips and took a firmer hold on the penknife. Suddenly the prisoner hawked and before Schwarz could dodge he had spat directly in the SS officer’s dark face. ‘German,’ the Commissar hissed, as if the name alone were a curse, ‘German pig!’

  Schwarz swallowed. Without attempting to wipe away the dripping spittle, he started to saw.

  Three hours later, SS Assault Battalion Wotan hit the second line of Soviet defence. It stopped them dead.

  Notes

  1. Dispatch-rider, using a motorbike (transl.)

  2. Thaelmann, head of the German Communist Party till 1933 (transl.)

  3. Soldiers’ slang for both venereal diseases.

  4. I. Ehrenburg, the Russian novelist, who was generally regarded by the common soldier in the German Army as being behind the hate propaganda directed against the Wehrmacht.

  THREE

  Against the blood-red disc of the setting sun, the Russian positions were outlined a stark menacing black, their every detail revealed.

  ‘The Popovs must actually have found a general who can think further than his Party membership card,’ the Vulture said thoughtfully, lowering his glasses and tugging at the end of his monstrous nose. ‘Whoever he is, he’s sited his positions very nicely – very nicely indeed.’

  Von Dodenburg and Schwarz said nothing. There was no sound save the crackling of the flames still burning in the two Tigers hit that afternoon.

  ‘I don’t have to tell you gentlemen,’ the Vulture continued, ‘that the Popovs have got any attacker by the short hairs. That stream on the right flank there and the railway embankment on the left – the damn thing must be at least three metres high – would channel any attack into an area of, say, a kilometre. And as you can see, that kilometre is exceedingly well co
vered by their prepared positions, which are also located on the high ground.’

  ‘Give me the order to advance, sir,’ Schwarz said hotly, his eyes gleaming crazily, ‘and I’ll cut through the Ivans with my Second like a dose of salts.’

  The Vulture lowered his glasses and looked at him in mock sadness. ‘My dear young Schwarz! You’d lose half your precious Second before you’d gone two hundred metres. Look at those Popov anti-tank guns dug in over there on the railway embankment. Once you had offered them your flank, they’d pick off your Tigers as if they were on the firing range. One after another.’

  ‘So it’s the back door then, sir,’ von Dodenburg said wearily.

  The Vulture nodded. ‘Yes. A frontal attack would be suicidal and a flank attack is impossible.’ He chuckled cynically. ‘I had been expecting some act of God. After all the Popovs are atheists and we Germans are fighting a holy war out here. But the Almighty seems to have withdrawn his support of our cause of late. So the back door it will have to be.’

  Von Dodenburg ignored his CO’s cynicism. ‘The embankment is out, sir. That leaves the river. We could cross it, put in an infantry attack and try to roll up the right flank. Combined with a flank attack by the rest of the Battalion at that point, we should probably pull it off.’

  ‘Not should, my dear von Dodenburg, must!’

  At his side, Schwarz clicked his heels together formally. ‘I volunteer the Second for the mission, sir,’ he rapped.

  The Vulture shook his head. ‘No, Schwarz, not you. But von Dodenburg here. What is left of his company after this afternoon is virtually infantry anyway and you’ve still got most of your Tigers. Von Dodenburg will do it and you will launch the flank attack.’

  ‘But Sir—’

  The Vulture ignored his protests, and in five minutes the attack was worked out in the tradition of the Armed SS, which had gained a reputation in Russia these last few years for swift if costly actions.