Court Martial

  As they force their way through the snow on their way to the reindeer shed, the peasant confides to them that Prince Nicholas had once tipped him five roubles. In those days a whole month’s pay.

  ‘The prince was a good and holy man,’ he sighs.

  ‘Yes, he had a heart of gold,’ smiles Porta, pleasantly. ‘His tactical errors in handling the Imperial Army can’t have cost more than a few million Russians their lives.’

  ‘Did you know him?’ asks the aged man, interestedly, looking with awe at Porta.

  ‘No, I was never lucky enough to,’ answers Porta. ‘If I had I’d probably have ended in a mass-grave.’

  In concert they manage to dig up a 104-mm Austrian field-gun.

  ‘She’s an old ’un,’ confirms Porta, when they have dragged the gun free of the straw and placed it in position. ‘Could blow to bits and take our arses with it, easy!’

  Tiny opens the breach with a crash, and examines the interior of the barrel with an experienced air.

  Wouldn’t fancy goin’ on inspection with this baby,’ he grins. Where do you keep the powder?’ Porta asks the old fellow, who is in transports of joy and expectation.

  ‘Under the straw,’ he wheezes. ‘It’s not dangerous, is it?’ he asks as they roll the first shells over to the gun.

  ‘Not when you know what you’re about,’ boasts Tiny, pushing a shell into the breach chamber.

  ‘We’ll take load three,’ says Porta, knowledgeably. ‘That’ll make ’em drop their beers with fright down at the inn!’

  Tiny pushes the charge home.

  ‘Hold on to your balls or they might go with it,’ says Porta, turning the elevating wheel.

  The long, dusty gun-barrel rises, and points towards the clouds.

  ‘Let me have first go at it,’ says Tiny, sitting in the gunner’s seat.

  ‘Go on then,’ grins Porta, pulling the old peasant with him, behind a huge rock. ‘Hold on to your hat,’ he says, warningly, forcing him down under cover.

  ‘It is dangerous then?’ he asks, fearfully.

  ‘Dangerous and dangerous,’ says Porta. ‘There’s a certain risk attached to all this war stuff. Now and then people get hit in the head with a cannon, but don’t worry, explosions go upwards so if it does go wrong all that’ll happen is Tiny and the rest of the rubbish’ll just fly over the heads of us two.

  ‘There she goes,’ shouts Tiny, happily, pulling the lanyard.

  But nothing happens.

  He pulls again and gets the same negative result.

  ‘There’s somethin’ not workin’,’ he says, vexed. ‘Come and give me a ’and to sort it out.’

  ‘No, I’m only the loader,’ Porta refuses, from behind the huge rock. ‘It’s loaded!’

  Tiny screws and hammers, sinks and elevates the barrel, and gives the gun a kick or two for good measure.

  ‘Got it!’ he cries, enthusiastically. ‘It’s the firing-pin that’s stuck.’

  ‘Give it one on the napper, then,’ suggests Porta, ‘That’ll get that Austrian shit off its arse, I reckon.’

  ‘Fire!’ Tiny orders himself and pulls the lanyard with all his might.

  A deafening roar shakes the whole village, and a huge sheet of flame goes up. A new explosion follows, immediately on the heels of the first. A spout of snow rises from up by the potato trench, where the heavy shell has fallen. A rain of potatoes flies through the air. Great quantities of them are blown into the bar-room and smash against ceiling and walls.

  Shenja snatches her shotgun from behind the bar.

  ‘Now they’re playing with that blasted cannon,’ she roars. ‘Look at the way those pigs’ve ruined my good inn! I’m not standing for any more of it. I’ve had enough of this World War to last me!’

  She goes out of the door like a rocket and heads for the reindeer shed, where she can see the gun-barrel rocking up and down. But she is only half-way up the hill when she stops and stares in terror out over the snow desert. Eight motorised sledges are coming bouncing over the hills heading for the village.

  A machine-gun hammers from the leading sledge. Tracer bullets kick up the snow along the whole length of the street.

  ‘Rotten swine’ are Shenja’s last words, as she sinks to the snow, shot through and through by the MG salvo.

  The sledges come to a halt on the brow of the nearest hill. A voice roars across the Arctic silence, first in Russian then in German:

  ‘Everybody outside! Hands above your heads!’

  ‘What now,’ sobs Mischa, crawling under a bench, his favourite place of concealment when danger threatens.

  ‘Come death, come . . .’ hums the Legionnaire, readying the SMG.

  ‘Those machine-cannon’ll blast us to pieces,’ whispers Gregor, fearfully, pilling a pouch of hand-grenades closer to him.

  ‘We’ve not got much choice,’ answers the Old Man, ironically. ‘If they take us alive they’ll break every bone in our bodies!’

  ‘On les emmerdent,’ laughs the Legionnaire. ‘Let us attack them with hand-grenades.’

  ‘They’ll have smashed us before we get near ’em,’ says Heide, bleakly.

  ‘Where the devil’s Porta and Tiny?’ asks the Old Man, angrily.

  ‘In the reindeer shed with the old gun,’ answers Gregor. ‘It was them smashed the potato pit.’

  ‘For the last time! Come out with your hands above your head,’ roars the voice from the loud-hailer.

  ‘Don’t you think it’d be wise of you to go outside with your hands up?’ says the Old Man to the Russians, who are pressed close to the walls in terror.

  ‘Nitschewo64 you do not know the NKVD,’ answers Fjedor with a tired smile. ‘If they do not shoot us down on sight, they will as soon as they realise we have fraternised with you.’

  ‘Then what’ll you do when we’ve gone?’ asks the Old Man.

  ‘There will not be any “after”,’ says Fjedor, fatalistically. ‘It is better to die with you than to be slaughtered like cattle.’

  ‘Je leur pisse au cul,’ snarls the Legionnaire, pressing the butt of the MG into his shoulder.

  The sledges rumble slowly down the hillside, and a shower of shells explode out in the snow.

  ‘They’re using explosive shells,’ shouts Gregor, excitedly, diving behind the bar.

  ‘What’d you think they’d be using?’ asks the Old Man, sarcastically. ‘Armour-piercing wouldn’t be much good against us.’

  The three in the reindeer shed are sweating over the antique gun. Tiny is working like a horse. The gun is heavy, and difficult to move, but finally they manage to get it into position.

  ‘Now we’ll give it to them bleeders,’ Tiny curses, sulphurously, lowering the barrel. He grabs at one of the shiny brass cylinders the old peasant has rolled over to him,

  ‘Hell, the fuse!’ Porta demands.

  Tiny rummages in some old boxes and finds some fuses.

  The ancient goes down on his knees and presses both hands over his ears. The long gun-barrel moves irritatingly slowly, but finally is aimed at the furthest sledge.

  ‘Get a soddin’ move on,’ whispers Tiny, ‘or else let me do it!’

  Porta puts his eye to the sighting mechanism, which is of considerably later date than the gun itself,

  ‘Fire!’ he shouts.

  Tiny jerks the lanyard with such force that it is pulled from the eyelet.

  There is a terrific muzzle flash and a thunderous crash. Next second the furthest sledge has disappeared.

  A leather-clad form is thrown from the open turret, and whirls through the air like a shuttlecock.

  Tiny opens the breach and the empty shell casing is ejected. A new shell goes into the chamber.

  Metal clangs against metal and with a crash the breach is closed.

  ‘Fire!’ shouts Porta.

  Tiny rips the lanyard back.

  The lead sledge is thrown into the air and falls vertically back into the snow. There is the heavy thud of an explosion and a yellow-red flash shoots out
from both sides of it.

  A shell goes through the roof of the barn and beams crash down over their heads. A long stream of tracer tracks rushes through the air and bullets smack viciously against the front shield of the gun.

  Porta has his eye to the sight again. Slowly the barrel of the gun depresses.

  Tiny and the old peasant sweat at the supporting legs. The gun cannot be turned laterally, and they are forced to move the entire carriage.

  ‘Fire!’ shouts Porta as he gets the next sledge in his sights.

  ‘Good-bye, you shits!’ snarls Tiny, tugging the lanyard.

  The heavy gun rocks and jumps. The third sledge is knocked across the snow and hits the sledge in front of it. They go over and slide down the icy slope with caterpillars in the air.

  Each time a shot is fired the Old Man roars with laughter and slaps his thighs delightedly.

  Porta gets two more hits, before a 50-mm shell comes through the door and explodes inside the barn. Flames lick up from the bales of straw, and in a few minutes the shed is filled with thick, black smoke.

  ‘Shells!’ coughs Porta, half-choked.

  The breach of the gun closes with a metallic clang. It fires again. A miss this time. The shell whizzes closely past the nearest sledge. Its turret turns and the short-barrelled 20-mm automatic cannon points directly into the barn. Inside, a, casing rattles to the ground and the breach of the Austrian gun closes on a new shell,

  Porta spins the elevating wheel like a madman, then gives up and sights along the barrel as if it were a rifle.

  ‘Fire, for Christ’s sake!’ shouts Tiny, who has taken cover under the gun itself.

  The gun roars and the motorised sledge, which is coming towards the shed, flies to pieces. The turret whirls through the air and two flaming bodies are thrown from the body of the sledge.

  ‘You got ’im! Dammit all to ’ell, you got’em!’ screams Tiny, joyfully. ‘Come on you shits! We’ll show you where Moses bought the beer!’

  The ancient peasant jumps up and down with his legs pressed together, laughing away like a hoarse crow.

  An armoured sledge glides out from between two houses. Its gun swings around uncertainly as if searching for a particular angle of fire.

  ‘Let’s get it moved,’ shouts Porta, jumping from the gunner’s seat to help them turn the carriage.

  The gun on the armoured sledge hammers, and shells howl down towards ‘The Red Angel’.

  ‘Hell!’ cries Porta, ‘I thought they were going to have a bang at us.’

  ‘They can’t see us,’ says Tiny. ‘The smoke’s coverin’ us completely!’

  ‘Beat it, old ‘un,’ says Porta, shoving the old peasant gently. ‘This is going to be hotter than the whole of that shithouse war you were in!’

  ‘Nitschewo,’ answers the ancient man, stubbornly. His eyes are red and swollen from the poisonous smoke, but he is happy, even though he is choking. The dream of a lifetime has been fulfilled: He has seen a real cannon fired off.

  The heavy armoured sledge pushes slowly forward between the houses and creeps towards the inn. Its guns hammer incessantly and shells send the roof flying away. A huge, canopied bed on which Captain Wasilij Zimsow’s body is lying, stands exposed on the remains of the first floor.

  ‘Where the hell’s he got to?’ Porta strains his eyes to see through the thick smoke.

  At the same moment a shell explodes, just outside the barn, and he is thrown from the firing-seat.

  The old peasant, who is standing right behind him, is thrown forward and smashes his face into the ground. Tiny rolls towards the empty pig-pens, where a beam lands on him with crushing force.

  With blood streaming down his face, the village patriarch climbs up into the firing-seat.

  ‘Pascholl65,’ he crows, pressing his eye to the sight. He turns the nearest wheel, which happens to be the height finder. With fumbling fingers he finds the lanyard and jerks it as he has seen Tiny do.

  The gun roars, the muzzle-flash lighting up the whole barn.

  The blast throws the ancient from the seat and sends him sliding some way across the packed earth floor. Confusedly he peers out through the wheels of the gun and gives out a cackle of pleased laughter.

  Only a couple of hundred yards from the barn a heavy armoured sledge is burning. Coal-black smoke ascends towards the heavens.

  ‘Well I’ll be buggered,’ cries Tiny, in astonishment. ‘There’s a good anti-tank man got lost in you!’

  ‘Time we moved. They’re blowing the inn to pieces down there,’ says Porta, emerging from a heap of bricks.

  All hell has broken loose in The Red Angel’. A 50-mm shell explodes, in a sea of flame, in the kitchen and blows the stove through the wall.

  Yorgi runs about screaming and trying to clutch at his chest with the stump of an arm. A torn-off foot flies across the barroom and smashes against the wall at the far end.

  Under the long table Sofija sits staring in horror at her left leg. Only a little of the knee remains. A growing pool of blood spreads out around her. She opens her mouth and starts to scream.

  ‘Sacré Nom de Dieu,’ hisses the Legionnaire, and throws a first-aid pack over to her.

  Two of the armoured sledges are so close to the inn that we can easily read the numbers and tactical insignia on the turrets.

  NKVD,’ comments Heide, drily.

  I tie three hand-grenades together and make ready to throw them.

  ‘Wait a minute,’ says the Old Man, catching at my arm. ‘You can’t throw that far!’

  But it is too late. I have already pulled the cord. There is no safety on these potato-masher grenades. I tear myself free and take my arm back.

  Everything disappears in a hot, blue cloud. I feel a violent blow on my shoulder. The grenades slide across the floor.

  ‘Milles diables,’ howls the Legionnaire, giving the grenades a kick which sends them flying towards the door.

  They explode in the air and tear open Oberschiitze Lung’s entire chest.

  ‘Jesus, Jesus!’ screams Gefreiter Günther. ‘My eyes, my eyes!’ He staggers to his feet with both hands pressed to the bloody gruel that had been his eyes. Screaming he rushes out of the door and into the snow. He stands still in the square, screaming, with his mouth wildly agape.

  An MG rattles and tracer bores into his body. He falls backwards like a log, kicking at the snow so that it whirls up in clouds about him. Sobbing he tries to crawl away. Like a sled he slides down the hillside and disappears in a depression.

  A long, thin splinter has gone through my furs and slashed open the flesh along the shoulder. The wound is bleeding freely, but the bone is intact.

  The entire village is in flames.

  A shell explodes, right in the middle of the bar-room. The floor is a sea of blood. Torn-off limbs and bloody chunks of human flesh are everywhere. A nauseating stench fills the inn, which looks like a slaughterhouse in which the butchers have run amok. Even on the ceiling there are great patches of blood, and the floor is a sticky mass of crushed bone, blood and shredded flesh.

  Feldwebel Karlsdorf sits propped up against a wall, staring blankly at the place where his legs had been a short while before. Now there are only a few shards of bone and some long strings of flesh and sinew. He begins to laugh. Quietly at first, as if at a joke. Then his laughter rises to a mad, sobbing howl.

  Another shell explodes inside the room with a sharp report. When the blue-green smoke has cleared, a bloody mash marks the place where Karlsdorf sat.

  The noise of the shells has sent me completely deaf. I crawl over to the Legionnaire and help him with the LMG.

  Up in the burning barn Tiny lies, with his hands folded behind his neck, and stares thoughfully up at the sea of flame. The fact that the entire barn might fall on him, doesn’t seem to worry him.

  Porta opens and closes his mouth, as if he were chewing on something evil-tasting.

  ‘The devil,’ he groans, hoarsely. ‘What sod’s been eating cat-shit with my chops!
’

  ‘I have seen how a cannon is fired,’ whispers the old peasant. He looks down at his mutilated hand, from which all the fingers are missing.

  ‘What a load o’ shit,’ mumbles Tiny, getting up to help the ancient man. Before he gets to him he is thrown deep into a snowdrift on the far side of Party HQ. Porta is blasted vertically into the air, like a shot from a mortar, and lands behind the remains of the potato trench.

  The barn is torn to pieces. All of the shells which were hidden in it have been brought to explosion, and the blast wave which follows sweeps away everything in its path.

  ‘What in the world was that?’ pants the Old Man, climbing out of a deep hole into which he has been thrown by the blast.

  ‘Porta and Tiny going up! C’est le bordel,’ says the Legionnaire, wiping blood from his face.

  Has an hour, a day or a year passed? I have no idea. My head is aching as if it had been split open by an axe. Dimly I remember something about a colossal explosion and huge flames. I try to rise to my feet, but a heavy kick sends me down again. A guttural voice brings me completely to my senses. Now I remember clearly what has happened.

  They come from the kitchen, a party of small, powerful men with flat Mongolian features and broad NKVD shoulderstraps.

  I turn my head cautiously. A little way from me lies Gregor, tied up like a sack. He looks dead. A little further off the Old Man and Barcelona are sitting, tied back to back. The Westphalian is hanging head downwards, tied to a beam like a smoked ham. Round about I can see the rest of the section. All are bound. Porta, the Legionnaire and Tiny are not there. Probably already dead.

  An NKVD soldier stands by the smashed door, with a Kalashnikov in his hands and a cigarette hanging from his mouth. From a beam over by the staircase swing five hanged bodies. Three men and two women. The civilians have obviously been summarily treated. On the cellar door someone has been crucified. Who it is I cannot see. But he is not dead yet. His body twitches occasionally.

  A wiry little officer kicks me hard in the side.

  ‘You saboteur,’ he snarls at me in bad German. He bends over me so closely that I can smell the vodka and machorka on his breath.

  ‘Speak Russian?’ he asks.