‘Hamdoulla,’2 shouts the Legionnaire. ‘There won’t be as much as a button left of you, if you go out there!’
‘It’s a big ‘un’ mumbles the Old Man, taking an extra big bite of his plug, before sitting down again. ‘He’s presenting his bill. It won’t be pleasant!’
‘It’s the Jews fault!’ shouts Heide, fanatically. ‘They started it all by crucifying Jesus!’ Nobody bothers to answer him. He is only barking senselessly like any other dog.
‘Last time I was on leave I picked up a dose,’ says Feldwebel Jacobo, gratuitously. ‘It all started very promisingly in the “Zigeunerkeller”. That’s where I ran into Sylvia. Her husband, a ground-staff pilot in the Luftwaffe had been posted missing, but we didn’t miss him. Sylvia took my load out in the toilets. It was a solemn occasion, I can tell you. The orchestra was playing Düstere Sonntag3 all the time we were on the job. Later on that evening I gave it to Lisa while the ladies’ orchestra was playing Mädchen wie schön.4 They certainly get you in the mood at the “Zigeunerkeller”, and I took one for the road with the girl driver of the cycle-taxi that took me home. My wife was out when I crawled into bed. She’s very pretty with everything in just the right places. She’s the kind a man can only have shares in. Real good stuff, like her, you can never keep all to yourself. When she got home, she got the whole gun, even though she was dog-tired. She’d been with an Oberst from the night-fighters. They say they get really lecherous up there fighting above the clouds. My wife had got a bit more than she fancied, anyway, but after a bit she warmed up and began to tell me that a Feldwebel was a lot better than an officer.’
‘Is your wife a racehorse, or something?’ asks Porta with interest.
‘Not really,’ smiles the Feldwebel, ‘though she is very good on the run-in. We must live, and preferably live well, so when you’ve got a good product why not sell it?’ He pulls a photograph from his pay-book. ‘See here. My wife’s a frigate; she sails straight for any gold-plated bollard she sees on the horizon. You can bet your sweet life Grethe’s got a paying guest in our marriage bed right this minute.’
‘And you stand for it?’ cries Heide disgustedly. ‘I’d have her picked up by the MPs. The Führer says unfaithful wives should be sent to the brothels. They are unworthy of being allowed to live in our National Socialist society. Germany must be cleansed of whoredom!’
‘They’ll be some dreadful types, them that are left!’ grins Porta.
The Old Man turns the handle of the telephone desperately and whistles into the receiver.
‘Who the hell are you so anxious to get hold of?’ asks Porta. ‘Nice piece of crumpet?’
‘The OC damn your eyes,’ curses the Old Man, taking a new bite at his plug. ‘We’ve got to have orders,’ he growls.
‘Make up your own,’ says Porta. ‘It’ll all be the same in the end. We’re going backwards! The trip home has begun, and I’d be a lying bastard if I said I was sorry!’
‘Crazy bastard!’ the Old Man swings the handle again. ‘The line’s gone,’ he growls. ‘2 Section, two men! Get it fixed. I’ve got to speak to the OC.’
‘Merde not now?’ protests the Legionnaire. ‘It’s madness. Fix it one place and it’ll go in another and we’ll go with it.’
‘Let’s get out,’ suggests Porta, draping another belt of cartridges round his chest.
‘Two men,’ orders the Old Man, roughly. ‘I want the OC!’ Two signallers are detailed from 2 Section. An Unteroffizier and a Gefreiter. Carelessly they put on their helmets and adjust their gasmasks. There are as many poisonous vapours out there as if we were under a gas attack.
Bending low they work their way through the hell of exploding shells. The Unteroffizier in front with the cable running through his fingers. They find the first break, repair it, test with their own apparatus. Still dead! They move on, dodging shells all the time. Find the next break.
‘Stop,’ snarls the Unteroffizier. He scrapes the wire clean with his combat knife and twists the ends together. Insulating tape binds them. Seven times they have to repeat this job before the Old Man gets his connection.
‘Very good, sir,’ he shouts into the telephone. ‘Yes! Hold the line at all costs! A mass attack, Herr Oberleutnant, sorry, Herr Major! I thought I was speaking to Company, sir! 2 Platoon, 5 Company, Feldwebel Beier, here, sir! Platoon torn to pieces. Fifteen men. Very good, Herr Major, understood! My neck? What I’ve got in front, Herr Major? Don’t know, sir! Army Corps I should think. No, sir! Not being insolent sir! This connection’s cost me five men, you puffed-up bastard!’ he concludes, but not until after he has broken the connection.
We stare at him expectantly. Now it’s up to him. Will he follow the battalion commander’s orders, or do the only sensible thing and get out in a hurry.
He takes a new chew of tobacco and begins to study the chart, pushing the plug around between his teeth and pulling thoughtfully at his beetroot of a nose.
‘Take up your positions,’ he snarls, ‘and take all your equipment with you.’
‘Oh, no!’ groans Porta. ‘We’re going to be heroes.’
‘You heard the orders! Hold on at all costs!’ the Old Man says, defensively. ‘We’re the last crap Greater Germany’s got left! The commander gives the orders, but it’s Ivan who makes the decisions!’
‘This lovely dug-out,’ moans Tiny. ‘We’ll never ’ave another like it! Oh, fuck it all!’
‘Stop it cry-baby,’ scolds Porta. ‘You can build a new one when we get a break. With a verandah, and a swimming pool too, if you like!’
From the east, across the Lenino road, the thunder of mortars and the scream of tank tracks can be heard. Quickly we ready our equipment: hand-grenades, signal pistols, mines, bandoliers, sharpened spades, combat knives, magnetic bombs.
We wait patiently, our nerves tight, and listen to the scream of tracks from the far side of the road.
A flare explodes throwing its white dead light over the torn earth. The countless dead seem to begin to move and get up. Slowly the light dies, but immediately a new flare bursts. The front is nervous.
An artillery dump gets a direct hit and a rosy light spreads above the woodland area.
They come in packed masses. Infantry in white camouflage hoods. Legs, thousands of legs in jackboots, storm through the snow. Everywhere you look boots are tramping.
‘Uhraeh Stalino! Uhraeh Stalino!’ comes the hoarse battle-cry. As if at one word of command every automatic weapon commences firing into the human wall crossing no-man’s-land.
They are mowed down like corn.
New infantry forces rise from the snow and storm forward with bayonets at the ready.
That night Marshal Tsjukon joined the troops at the front, and did not return to the Kremlin until the Germans were beaten!
The second wave of Russian attackers take up the bodies of the dead and use them as shields as they continue to advance towards the German positions.
The slaughterers burst like a hurricane from the clouds and drop their bombs. The attack breaks down. The snow is dyed red with blood. The survivors flee in groups, running for their lives.
Tracer hammers into bodies making them jump and jerk as if they were still alive.
The panic stricken Russians are stopped by the NKVD units. With gun butts and shots they send them back into the attack again. They run heavily through the snow with their long greatcoats flapping behind them.
‘Uhraeh Stalino! Uhraeh Stalino! On to the victory for the Great Communist Fatherland! Long live Stalin!’
With our automatic weapons adjusted to waist-high fire we prepare to receive the new attack. The human wave is pushed back by the murderous fire. The Russian ranks break in confusion.
‘Forward, you cowardly dogs!’ roars a commissar, firing ruthlessly into his own men.’
Other commissars follow his example. The packed hordes panic. They fly, trampling the commissars underfoot. They are no longer soldiers. They are terrified animals with the fear of death in them. Run, r
un from the slaughter yard. But both the butchers in front and the butchers behind them are without mercy. Shell-bursts smash showers of snow and earth across our faces. A shell blows up half a trench. With a nerve-shattering howling the shells rain down blanketing our positions.
A boy stands next to me, the last man of a whole company. He looks at me with frightened eyes, smiling with the pale lips of a corpse. Even though he hasn’t been out here very long he has already experienced a whole world of horror.
The curtain of fire moves slowly forward. We rip our machine-guns free of their mountings and crawl down into the tiny dug-outs.
Now they’re right over us, whining, howling, roaring, thundering. Earth shoots up in cascades like water.
‘Holy Mother,’ prays the boy, kneeling with hands pressed together in front of him. I keep an eye on him. His nerves will break soon. He’ll run straight out into the rain of shells. I grip the barrel of my submachine-gun, ready to knock him out. If I hit too hard I’ll crack his skull. But then, won’t it be all the same if I kill him or if the Russians do the job? According to Regulations I’m supposed to try to stop him.
A shrill scream, and a huge column of fire lifts itself immediately behind us.
My machine-gun has disappeared without trace. I feel as if every bone in my body is broken. The boy is lying half across me. They’re firing air bursts and heavy calibre HE.
A terrible sight meets my eyes. The sea of bodies is turned to a trembling, sucking morass of flesh and blood. Shells are exploding wherever I look. I am still frightened but my fear is under control. I have been turned into a deadly killing machine. I hold the LMG, with its long triangular bayonet, at the ready.
‘Jesus Christ!’ screams the young infantryman. ‘I’m hurt! I’m hit!’ He humps his body along the floor of the trench like a wounded reptile. I try to get a grip on him, but he slips away from me and runs out into no-man’s-land.
‘Oh God! I’m blind!’ he falls on his knees, his hands clasped to the place where his eyes had been.
A long whine cuts into my ear drums. I flop down quickly. It is one of the smaller calibre high explosive shells which cause frightful personnel damage. All kinds of debris rain down onto my back and my hunched shoulders. I feel down my body. All there? You don’t feel the loss of a member straight away. I lift my head cautiously. Where the young infantryman had knelt there is now a great soot-blackened hole.
I’m pretty safe if I don’t get a direct hit. Dead and dying lie all around me. I listen intently. Artillery fire is more than an indescribable noise. It’s a book the old hand at the front can read in. This artillery fire tells me that a new attack is being mounted and that the enemy infantry are already on the way. I peer cautiously over the lip of the trench.
Something’s moving. An enemy patrol? No it’s a fir tree, flattened to the ground by the pressure of heated air. The little fir is almost the only surviving tree. All the forest giants have gone long ago. A foolish thought flashes through my brain. If that stubborn little fir can live through this then I can too!
‘Down,’ I scream at the tree. A big HE is on the way. Snow and clods of earth rain down on me. Carefully I look up again. The tree is still there. Stubbornly it sways back to the vertical. It shows up startlingly green against all that white.
Crouching over, with his old artillery helmet on his head, the silver-lidded pipe clenched between his teeth, the Old Man runs from man to man. He has a piece of sausage for me.
‘How’s it going?’ he asks.
‘Scared to death!’ I smile wretchedly.
He takes the pipe from his mouth and looks out at the deep crater where the infantry boy disappeared.
‘They’ve had a go at you all right! And nothing’s happened?’
‘Nothing much. An infantryman they’d blinded got blown to bits.’
‘Anybody we knew?’
‘No, not really.’
‘Oh well, never mind. It happens all the time. Hals-und-Bein-bruch, son!’ And the Old Man disappears round the corner of the trench.
The Old Man’s alive still! Nothing much can happen to us then.
‘All the luck there is in the world, and the Old Man’s section’s got the lot!’ Porta always says.
When it gets a bit quieter I’ll try to find the dead infantryman’s dog-tags. His people ought to know he’s gone.
Now they’re using light field guns and mortars. They’re deadly dangerous but not so unforseeable. If you take a little thought you can move about between the falls. Porta can tell exactly where the shells are going to hit as soon as he’s heard the muzzle report. Inexperienced people often mistake the actual discharge for the muzzle report.
‘Rumm! Rumm!’ It sounds crazy but the first sound you hear is the muzzle report. I’ve got 22 seconds, but that’s more than enough to get to the comparative safety of a shell-hole. It’s not often a shell drops in the same hole. It can hit the edge and slide down the side but I’ve never heard of one hitting dead on in the bottom, and I’m right in the bottom of an HE manufactured hole.
The mortar bombs explode above my head with an infernal din. These 80 mm mortars are wicked things. They blow all sorts of rubbish in all directions and you can never feel completely safe from them. Right in front of me lie the infantryman’s dog-tags. There’s a little piece of greasy string still hanging from them. I pick them up.
Infanterie Ersatzbattalion 89,
Fenner, Eswald,
geb. 9.8.24.
Now his family will at least get to know that he has died for Führer and Fatherland. If they are patriotic they will also believe the euphemism ‘fighting bravely’! They’ll never hear the truth from me. Their son died a hero. Sooner or later this will be some solace to them. It is for all Germans. Every German family should have its hero.
I crawl back to my MG emplacement. The artillery fire is now dropping in front of the trench again. Shell splinters whistle above me. My little tree is still standing.
Suddenly the shell-fire stops. The silence is frightening. Small fires here and there flicker out. A scream comes. Long, complaining, wild.
‘E-e-e-e-ya! E-e-e-e-ya! Germanskij sabaka!5 Russkij come get you!’
A machine-gun chatters viciously. A couple more start talking. Tracer tracks whistle across no-man’s-land. The scream comes again. Long, horrible, wailing. Impossible to believe such a devilish sound can come from human throats.
‘Germanskij, we come get you. Make dog meat you! You never leave Russia! Fritze, throw down your gun! We catch with gun we cut prick and ears off!’
The machine-guns bark in protest, blowing long lines of tracer into the Russian positions.
‘Come and get pissed on, brother Ivan!’ screams Porta, making a megaphone of his hands. ‘Come on you Mongol shits! You’ll go back without your balls!’
‘You scare, Fritze, tonight I come get you!’
‘Big-head!’ Porta howls back. ‘Be a man and come on now! You can keep your prick and take it back home on a lead!’
A blinding burst of flame and I’m thrown high into the air. I smash down into a pool of blood, bones and snow. Slowly I come to myself and realize I am lying in front of the Russian positions. I can hear them talking quite clearly. Some grenade-throwers light up the scene now and then. Not far from where I’m lying there must be a field battery. I hear the bangs repeatedly. They are nearly shaking my eyes out, my head and my ears are deafened. In the muzzle-flash I can see the wire in front of the Russian lines.
As the short grey winter day passes, the bodies in front of me seem to grow smaller. The Russian cold eats everything up. Night comes and drips frost. The killing frost of death.
Cautiously I begin to crawl. Fear bores like a knife at my brain. Am I crawling in the right direction? There are Siberiaks in front of us. They wouldn’t make pleasant hosts to drop in on.
Tensely I crawl on, flattening when a glare goes off above my head, and taking cover in shell-holes when the firing gets heavier.
By th
e light of the tracers I search for my next cover. Wherever I look there’s wire, devilish damned barbed-wire. Often a half destroyed body hangs on it, flapping bloody arms and legs at me.
I hear German voices, but by then I’ve been crawling round for hours in this mad lunar landscape. I drop my head down on to the butt of my weapon and cry. The field guns and mortars are still firing. The Germans are shelling our backward area heavily. German batteries reply to the Russians, but more often than not they drop short.
Porta and the Legionnaire slide down into my hole. They are out looking for me.
‘Are you wounded, mon ami? How we have searched for you!’ says the Legionnaire breathlessly.
Porta hands me his filled water-bottle.
‘Where the hell have you been farting about? The Old Man’s already reported you missing. They promised us a bang at the Old Man of the Steppe’s daughter if we found you.’
By the light of the rockets we see something moving over by the wire. We are about to raise our weapons when Tiny comes rolling over the lip of the shell-hole with a stretcher under his arm.
‘You shockin’ shower o’ bastards!’ he bellows angrily. ‘I crawl around riskin’ me one an’ only bleedin’ life to find you lot an’ ’ere you sit ’ittin’ the bottle an’ scratchin’ your bleedin’ arses!’
A couple of hours later we’re sitting by the cook-wagon on margarine boxes, with our belts round our necks and our trousers down round our ankles, shooting dice. Every so often we look at one another with happy, satisfied eyes. What more can one ask for: a set of dice, a dixie of beans, a good latrine, a stove to warm your naked backside, and the shelling a good long way off.
Tiny hands me a fat cigar. He’s got two of them on the go at the same time. He stole a whole box not so long ago when he was temporary driver for the general commanding the division.
I’ve still got the dead seventeen year old infantryman on my mind. I feel guilty for letting him get away from me. The next day I speak to the Old Man about it. He listens to me silently, puffing away at his old silver-lidded pipe and spitting tobacco-juice regularly. He’s the only man I’ve ever met who smokes a pipe and chews tobacco at the same time. He takes me over to watch the snipers, murderers with Feldwebel stars. For several minutes we watch their results through glasses. Ruthless murder. We go over to the cook-wagon. There are mountains of sauerkraut. We sit down with the cook. Unteroffizier Kleinhammer, and fill ourselves with sauerkraut and mashed potatoes.