‘Know what I think, kiddies?’ Gröfass2 has lost his war and we can be glad of it!’
‘Trea . . .,’ is all Julius Heide has time to get out before Timy knocks him unconscious with a plank. When the Old Man speaks everybody else keeps his mouth shut, because the Old Man knows what he is talking about. No. 2 Section suddenly realizes that Adolf Hitler has lost his war seventy miles from Moscow. We should have realized it long ago, but the countless ranting speeches have blinded us and the endless columns of prisoners filling the roads have made us believe in the victory. What do a couple of million men mean to Joe Stalin? A mere two or three armies. No more than a division means to us. For every Russian we kill there are ten waiting to take his place.
‘The German Army is running itself into the ground,’ continues the Old Man. ‘Here we are. Panzer soldiers with a long and expensive training behind us running around as footsloggers. Our neighbour is wiser. He knows what a Panzer soldier is worth. As soon as a crew steps out of a wreck there’s a new T-34 waiting for them and they’ve learnt something more about what not to do. Kiddies, kiddies! If we’re going to get out of Russia with whole skins we’ve got to learn a lot from Ivan.’
‘Doubter of the Victory, you’re insulting the Führer,’ screams Heide who has recovered from his meeting with Tiny’s plank.
Tiny lifts a heavy log and is about to hit him again.
‘Leave him be,’ hisses the Old Man irritatedly.
‘Why?’ asks Tiny open-mouthed. ‘If I snatch ’is bleedin’ balls off ’e won’t be able to make any more little Nazi bastards!’
‘No. 5 Company fall in!’ commands Oberleutnant Moser.
We get up crossly. We were just getting used to not marching.
‘Wake up, man,’ Stege rousts out Barcelona Blom who is lying in a snowdrift.
‘Leave me be,’ sobs Barcelona. ‘Go to Moscow your bloody selves if you want to. It ain’t my war!’
‘Come along,’ I say. ‘You can’t stay here!’
‘Somebody pinched yer sweeties?’ asks Tiny nudging him with his Mpi.
‘That frozen bastard is resigning from the campaign,’ says Stege. He kicks out at Barcelona, misses, loses his balance and rolls in the snow.
‘Frost in ’is speculator,’ reckons Tiny. ‘We’ll soon fix ’im up.’ He takes Barcelona by the front of his uniform smashes a fist into his frost-blue face and shoves him hard into a snowdrift. ‘March, march you weedy bastard! Austria’s Adolf the Great ’as ordered you to Moscow! Russia wants to come back to the Reich!’ Barcelona struggles to his feet with difficulty and slowly wipes the blood from his nose and mouth.
‘I’ll send you to Torgau, Obergefreiter Creutzfeldt,’ he snarls through his nose in a strange Feldwebel voice quite unlike his own.
‘I’m crazy mad to get shoved into a warm cell at Torgau,’ grins Tiny. ‘I’d kiss Iron Gustav3 right on the bleedin’ mouth. I’d even kiss ’is bleedin’ arse, if it’d get me back to Torgau!’
‘You’ll get to know me,’ screams Barcelona in the same tightly screwed up voice.
‘Tain’t necessary,’ answers Tiny pleasantly. ‘I know you already, you squeezed-out ball-bag.’
Barcelona’s Mpi is up and ready to shoot. There is a queer light in his eyes, the sign of a sickness which hits soldiers who have been in combat for too long. Battle madness!
‘You dare to lay hands on a Feldwebel?’ he snarls hoarsely. ‘Goddam you!’ He looks around him quickly as if to ensure himself that there are no witnesses. His Mpi comes up. He mumbles to himself. Jumbled sentences which have no connection with what is happening. We back towards the trees. Any minute he may get the idea we’re Russians and let go at us.
‘So a fuckin’ Russian’ll lay his hands on a German Feldwebel!’ he shouts so loudly that every man in the company looks up at him and realizes what is happening.
In the twinkling of an eye the whole company is in amongst the trees. Nobody wants to get himself killed by a German Mpi.
Tiny is on his belly in the snow with his weapon at the ready. It’d be easy for him to shoot Barcelona down, but it isn’t easy to bring yourself to shoot down a comrade even when he’s raving mad and thinks he’s surrounded by enemy soldiers.
‘Listen to me Feldwebel Blom, peace has been signed,’ says the Old Man. He walks towards Barcelona. ‘The war is over. Throw down your gun! See I’m not armed.’ He holds his open hands out to the side.
‘You’re trying something, you bloody Communist,’ screams Barcelona, ‘But I’m gonna blow the Goddam shit out of you!’
Tiny springs like a panther and pins him just as a hail of bullets rips up the snow at the Old Man’s feet.
Barcelona bawls like a wild bull.
‘Help me! The enemy’s got me!’ He takes Tiny for a Russian.
The company comes back to life. Everybody is shouting at the same time.
Some suggest shooting Barcelona immediately before he goes crazy again and thinks we’re Russians he has to put to sleep.
The MO arrives on the run and shoots a hypo into him and soon he is himself again. He goes round offering his hand and apologizing to everybody. It’s a characteristic of the sickness. They always do that as soon as the mad fit leaves them.
Not so long ago we had an Unteroffizier who went round talking about black angels with golden wings. He claimed he was Chief Mechanic in the garages of the Heavenly Mechanized Host. We kept a close watch on him, and were ready when his eyes started to glare, but we still weren’t quick enough. He managed to kill five men before we disarmed him. He went round afterwards shaking hands and saying he was sorry. He even shook the five bodies by the hand and said he wasn’t mad at them. The same evening it hit him again and he shot off over to the enemy to arrange an armistice. We never saw him again.
In front of us the heavens glow red, lit up by the almost continuous flashes of mighty explosions. An SS tank regiment thunders past us.
A few hours later we catch up with them, but now the tanks are smashed and the frozen twisted bodies of the SS-men hang from the hatches. In amongst the trees are shattered Russian tanks and the remains of an entire antitank battalion.
A dozen or so Russians have been neck-shot. Probably for trying to run for it when things got too hot. We’re through their things faster than professional pickpockets but there are no great pickings. There’s one thing common to both sides: We’re hungry.
In a hut Porta finds a pot containing a little frozen balanda. There are five dead civilians in the room. All shot in the neck, faces torn away by the bullet exiting.
‘Neck-shot Nagan,’ confirms Stege shortly. ‘Traitors, then!’
‘Cut that traitor rubbish out,’ says the Old Man irritably. ‘It’s the most overworked word in the language. Soon as the nationalists need a goat they smell out a traitor. Preferably a little one who can’t answer back.’ He points to the body of a young girl lying across a pile of wood. Her face has been torn away by the bullet and blood has run down over the logs. ‘Think she ever dreamt of being a traitor? Who could she betray?’
‘There’s always traitors in wartime,’ Tiny considers. ‘In school they told us everybody in Alsace was a pack o’ traitors as ought to be strung up. They fired on our soldiers when they marched through in 1914. My teacher who was ’oly, an’ a ‘oly terror with the cane, was there ’imself an’ ’ad a bullet put through ’is ’oly shoulder by one o’ them Alsace traitors.’
‘Merde!’4 shrugs the Legionnaire. ‘The Alsatians were Frenchmen. It was their duty to shoot at German soldiers. But these border people are, like the proverbial louse, caught between two nails. In 1871 the people of Alsace suddenly became Germans and had to take their orders from Berlin. In 1918 they became Frenchmen again and Paris gave the orders. In 1940 they went back to being Germans. You can bet your sweet life they’ll be Frenchmen again as soon as we’ve lost this war. You cannot wonder at it being difficult for them to know where their allegiance lies.’
‘No matter what they do the
poor bastards are traitors!’ grins Tiny. ‘Thank Christ for livin’ in bleedin’ ’Amburg. No sweat bein’ there. If you can’t think for yourself they do it for you at Stadthausbrücke 8.’
‘What’s all this to do with them?’ asks Barcelona, gesturing towards the five bodies. ‘They’re not from Alsace. They’ve always been Russians.’
‘It’s different with them,’ answers the Old Man, puffing violently at his silver-lidded pipe. ‘They were probably ordered to open fire on us, tried to discuss it, and the NKVD won the argument.’
‘It’s not clever startin’ discussions with the NKVD nor the bleedin’ Gestapo. You gotta work ’em a flanker,’ says Tiny looking sly. ‘I’d a’ said to these ’ere NKVD tovaritsches: Gimme a cannon, mates, an’ see ’ow I’ll neck them Germanskij bastards. I’ll ’ave ’em laid out in rows by the bleedin’ company. Comin’ ’ere without even bein’ invited.’
‘Do not forget who you are, and what uniform you are wearing,’ comes threateningly from Heide.
The balanda was only enough for two spoons full each, and hunger gnaws worse than ever.
The cold becomes even more intense. We rest in a ruined tile-works. There are a lot of charred Russian bodies just inside the main gates.
‘Flame-throwers,’ comments Stege.
We drop to the floor half-dead from fatigue. Our feet feel like lead in our frozen boots. Nobody says a word. Not even Porta. I sit beside him inside one of the large ovens. We’re out of the wind here, and inside the oven it is slightly warmer. Most of us sleep. Oberleutnant Moser lies rolled into a ball across a heap of ashes. He is wearing a Russian captain’s fur coat. Risky if he is taken prisoner. The Old Man shoulders in beside us and takes something out of his padded coat. He hands it to us. A little sugar and a piece of mutton sausage.
‘Where in the world did you get it?’ I ask in amazement.
‘Shut up and eat,’ growls the Old Man. ‘It’s little enough for three. D’you want the others to hear?’
‘Got any more?’ asks Porta chewing away fiercely.
‘A little sausage, a little bread and some soup powder,’ nods the Old Man.
‘Holy Mother of Kazan! We’re the richest bloody soldiers in this man’s army,’ laughs Porta his eyes shining again. ‘Let’s have the rest of the sausage and the bread. We’ll keep the soup till tomorrow.’
‘Jesus, I think we’re going to make it,’ I say confidently as I feel the warmth spreading through my body.
‘Reminds me of a butcher in Berlin-Moabitt,’ says Porta. ‘He had so much black sausage left on Christmas Eve that he had to give it away. He was from Breslau and thought they ate black pudding in Berlin too on Christmas Eve. Late in the afternoon he was standing outside his shop on Schlesischer Strasse with a box of black pud’ in front of him shouting: Come one, come all! Free Christmas sausage! Free Christmas sausage!
‘Three Schupos dropped down on him and dragged him off to the psychiatric section. The sausages they sent for chemical analysis. Their idea being that he was either stark staring bonkers or else he was a mass-murderer who was trying to depopulate Berlin with poisoned sausages. No normal Berlin butcher ever gives anything away.’
‘Cold?’ asks the Old Man laying his arm around my shoulders.
‘As hell!’ I answer pulling my thin summer coat closer about me. Winter equipment hasn’t got to us.
‘Turn your back towards me!’
His strong fingers take hold of my neck. He begins to massage me hard, at the same time blowing his warm breath down my neck. Slowly warmth comes back into my body. When I’m quite warm I do the same for him. Then we both go to work on Porta. Now we feel good. We roll together in a heap like animals in the woods and fall into a heavy sleep. . . .
Nine men of the company freeze to death that night. A pity for them, since we wake up to a wonderful morning.
The cooks have got through to us with supplies. There’s a whole herring per man and half a mess-tin of Kipjatok. Best of the lot we get half a pound of bread. We feel like multimillionaires.
‘Kiddies, kiddies!’ enthuses the Old Man skipping joyfully around. ‘They’ve not written us off entirely yet!’
The rest of No. 2 Section sit round in a circle, every man with a frozen salted herring in his mouth. Not a morsel goes to waste and a frozen herring takes a long time to eat. You break off a small piece of it and put it in your mouth where it thaws out slowly. God how we enjoy it. A solemn silence sinks over us. We huddle close like fledglings, and feel the body heat from the man next to us. It is a long time since we’ve been so happy. Each piece of food goes into our mouths as if we were performing some holy rite. Slowly the herrings disappear; head, fins, bones, tail, every last part of them. Not an atom is left. Even a cat couldn’t have done it better. We dip our bread in sugar and hold it in our mouths long enough for our own spittle to make it swell hugely. The sugar trickles down our throats in a wonderful stream and we feel its strength bubbling out into every corner of our body.
‘Bread and sugar just about beats every other kind of eats in this whole damn world,’ says Porta dipping a small piece of bread in sugar and handing it to the Old Man.
Suddenly a whole lot of bread and sugar goodies are on the way over to the Old Man. The Old Man is not only our section leader, he is our father and mother, this stocky little carpenter from the Berlin slums who has been forced into a Feldwebel’s uniform. It’s our lives that are at stake if anything happens to the Old Man. If we lost him our section’s finished. We know that.
Oberleutnant Moser pushes in amongst us bringing tea with him. A big can. We get a swig apiece.
Porta digs out two cigarettes, and they go round three times!
1 Long is the road to the Fatherland, so long, so long!
There where the stars show at the woodland’s edge, blooms the New Day,
yes, the New Day.
Each brave Grenadier longs in his heart for you,
yes, long is the road to the Fatherland, so long, so long!
The clouds come from it and to it, crossing even the sea.
Humans live but once and never more!
2 Gröfass (Grösster Feldherr aller Zeiten): The Greatest Military Leader of All Time (contemptuous nickname for Hitler).
3 Iron Gustav (Gustav Dürer): See ‘March Battalion.’
4 Merde (French): Shit.
‘They know nothing about reality, these incompetent careerists, bureaucrats and adjutant-minded souls, all the high Wehrmacht officers, the leaders of the General Staff. They are now classified under one generic title: Adjutants. Have you noticed, how they tremble when they duck their heads before me?’
Hitler in a conversation with
Obergruppenführer Heydrich 23.12.36.
‘Tomorrow morning, gentlemen, we attack Borodino,’ began General-Leutnant Weil. ‘Here, on the historic ground on which we now stand, the Emperor Napoleon, on 7 August 1812, defeated the Russian General Kutusow. I am happy that we can repeat this victory and be spoken of in the history of our nation with honour and pride. When Borodino has fallen the way to the Kremlin is open, with only a few unimportant hindrances.’ The General stopped for a moment and took out a cigar. A dozen lighters snapped out smartly. Outside, artillery roared. The little chateau trembled slightly. The glass of the chandeliers tinkled. The General smiling and well-satisfied, looked around at the officers.
‘Gentlemen, I almost dare to say that it would be a fine thing to meet one’s fate on this historic earth. We have . . .’ His words were drowned in the roar of an explosion and a sun-burst of light illumined the scene. With a deafening crash half of the ceiling fell in.
Oberst Gabelsberg, commanding infantry, bent over the General and together with the chief-of-Staff carried him to a sofa. A shell splinter had torn open his back. The medical officer could do nothing to save him.
‘Gentlemen and comrades, our General is dead,’ said Oberst Gabelsberg quietly. ‘Let us take leave of him in a proper manner.’ He brought his heels together
and raised his hand to his cap in the salute. All the officers followed his example. ‘Like the remarkably brave soldier he was, Herr General Weil has led our division, over a long period, from victory to victory. It is because of him that we have always been permitted to fight in the forefront of the battle. Thanks to him we have, in this present war, added many names to the great battles already named on our colours, which were present at Waterloo. Our General died the death he would have desired. God has ordered his discharge and has taken him into a greater army. Comrades, Sieg! Heil! Honour our dead heroes!’
The officers stood with their field service caps in their hands looking sorrowfully at the ground. It was expected of them.
‘As senior line-officer I now take over the Division,’ Oberst Gabelsberg hurried on. He had difficulty in concealing his delight at the General’s death. ‘Our Panzer Division has the noblest traditions of any in the Greater German Wehrmacht, and as Commander of the Division I shall see to it that this tradition continues. We will not mourn our dead but thank God that they died for the honour of the Division. Gentlemen, I would be proud to fall within the hour for my Führer, my Fatherland, my fellow countrymen!’
The farewells were solemn. A General had fallen on the field of honour. The occasion demanded the employment of tact.
Cigars were not lighted, and women were not mentioned. The German officer corps were cultured men.
The new Divisional Commander drove away in his Kübel, mud splashing behind the car. The heavy vehicle swung and slid over the bottomless mud plowing through ridges of dirty snow.