Moser decides to march at 7 o’clock. This will give us three hours before light, and we should be able to get a good distance from the village in case the villagers alarm the local partisans. They’ll have to do this, in all probability, to avoid being liquidated for aiding the enemy.
Oberfeldwebel Klockdorf suggests, cynically, that it would be wisest to shoot all the civilians before we march off. ‘Dead men tell no tales,’ he says with a grin.
‘You weird bastard!’ Porta stares at him. ‘We can’t knock off all these old matjeri!’6
‘Why not?’ asks Klockdorf. ‘It’s them or us. What’re they worth? People over fifty ought to be put away, anyhow! Heydrich made the suggestion once!’
‘I’ll make a point of calling on your fiftieth birthday, chum,’ Porta promises him, indignantly, ‘just to see if you mightn’t have changed your opinion.’
‘Puncture that bastard!’ growls Tiny.
A little past midnight it’s our turn on guard. It’s bitingly cold, and has just begun to snow. Visibility is no more than a couple of yards.
Porta and I have the post on the north side of the village. The Sani has excused Tiny guard duty, because of his feet. Half the period is over when Oberfeldwebel Klockdorf comes out of the darkness with two men behind him dragging a young woman between them.
‘Found a knocker?’ asks Porta, examining the girl with interest.
‘Ein Flintenweib,’7 grins the Oberfeldwebel sadistically, pushing his Mpi into the young woman’s stomach.
‘And you’re taking her to the OC, of course?’ asks Porta with a sly look.
‘Like fuck we are!’ answers Klockdorf, coarsely. ‘What’s it to do with him? We’ll put this hellcat away right here on the spot.’
‘She’s too good to waste on the worms,’ says Porta. ‘Let me have her, instead.’
‘Don’t try anything with her!’ Klockdorf warns him. ‘She’s poisonous as a snake!’ He bends down over the girl, who cannot be more than twenty years of age. ‘Now then, you dirty little whore. This is where you get your brains blown out!’
‘But you’re going to die slowly, girl! We’re going to gut-shoot you first!’
‘Nazi,’ she hisses, spitting at his face. ‘You never leave Russia alive!’
Klockdorf drives his fist into her groin and she doubles up with a moaning scream.
‘You wicked bitch! You’ll regret that! I’ll break every bone in your Commie body before I kill you!’ he rages, white in the face.
‘Kick her cunt up into her throat,’ suggests a Gefreiter of Pioneers, cheerfully. ‘I know her kind. In Minsk we used to drag ’em after the vehicles on a tow-rope.’
His friend, an Oberschütze from the cavalry, lets out a high-pitched laugh.
‘In Riga we used to hang ’em up by the feet, and when their screams got to annoying us we’d send the executioner to rip out their tongues with his pincers.’
‘Any of you got a thin rope?’ asks Klockdorf, with a wicked glint in his eyes. ‘I’ll show you how far the neck of a bitch like this can be stretched by somebody who knows how!’
‘I’ve got some,’ says the cavalryman eagerly, pulling a length of telephone wire from his pocket.
‘Just the job!’ grins Klockdorf, looping it with almost tender care around the young girl’s neck.
‘There’s a beam over there,’ says the cavalryman, pointing to a hut. ‘She’ll just be able to touch the ground with her toes. Jesus this is going to be good! She’ll struggle. Christ but it’s something to see when they spin ’em off and the rope begins to strangle ’em!’
‘Come on girl!’ says Klockdorf, pleasantly, pushing the prisoner along with the butt of his gun.
The telephone wire is over the beam when Oberleutnant Moser and the Old Man come out of the darkness.
‘Hold on Oberfeld! What’s going on here?’ asks Moser, threateningly. ‘What in Heaven’s name are you up to?’
‘We’ve snaffled a Flintenweib,’ says Klockdorf, with a forced smile. He doesn’t quite know how to take Moser. He is a type of officer Klockdorf’s never run into before.
‘I see,’ nods Moser, a growing coldness in his eyes, ‘and what is a Flintenweib? I don’t recall seeing the term in any Army Regulation. What about making a properly-worded report to your commander, Oberfeldwebel?’
Hate literally drips from every pore in Klockdorf’s body as he brings his heels together unwillingly and spits out his words: ‘Herr Oberleutnant, Oberfeldwebel Klockdorf begs to report his arrival with a captured partisan woman!’
‘Better,’ replies Moser, with a sneering smile. ‘And you have appointed yourself judge and executioner and established a field court, all out of your own little head. Get the hell out of here you filthy insubordinate swine before I forget myself, and keep well out of my way, by God, or I’ll have a court on you, with Oberfeldwebel Beier as my assisting judge!’
‘Want me to neck ‘im?’ asks Porta, eagerly, cocking his gun. ‘Be the best job of work I’ve done in the whole of this bloody war!’
‘Get out of my sight, man!’ shouts the Oberleutnant, savagely, ‘or I’ll give Porta the order he’s asking for, and have him shoot you down like the vicious rat you are!’
Klockdorf disappears quickly, with his two henchmen at his heels.
The Old Man lets down the girl. She gapes at the Oberleutnant, and cannot understand what is happening. If their positions had been reversed she would have done the same as Klockdorf.
‘Beier,’ continues Moser. ‘Keep an eye on those pigs of men. The slightest infringement of discipline on the part of Klockdorf you’re to liquidate him!’
‘Be a pleasure!’ growls the Old Man. ‘Hear that Porta? You and Tiny are to see to that!’
‘Inside twenty-four hours we’ll have his prick for you on a velvet cushion!’ grins Porta. ‘Tiny’ll be on his track within ten minutes, and you know what that means!’
‘I have not given you an order to commit murder!’ says the Oberleutnant, sharply.
‘Killing a thing like that’s not murder,’ says Porta, cheerfully. ‘It’s the duty of every citizen to exterminate rats! You can be fined, in fact, for not doing it!’
‘What’s to be done with her?’ asks the Old Man, pointing to the girl who is still wearing the telephone wire round her neck.
‘Shoot her?’ cries Heide brutally. ‘According to international agreement and the rules of war it is legal to shoot any civilian who takes up arms. The Führer has also said that Bolsheviks are to be destroyed by every possible means.’
‘Kick that man’s arse!’ suggests Porta, without trying to make it clear whether it’s Heide or the Führer he means.
‘I regret what has happened to you,’ says Moser politely to the girl when she has been brought into the hut. ‘You will, of course, be brought before a properly appointed court-martial. Nothing will happen to you as long as you are with my company.’ Porta translates into his broken Russian, but it is obvious that the girl understands German.
‘Beg to report, Herr Oberleutnant,’ says Porta, grinning, ‘this soldier lady requests you go and get fucked, sir, and I am also to tell you, with the usual compliments, that you will not leave Russia alive!’
Moser shrugs his shoulders and goes to the other end of the room together with the Old Man. He cannot understand these political fanatics, and still thinks you can conduct a war like gentlemen.
Big logs crackle in the stove, sending waves of warmth out into the low-ceilinged room. Porta, of course, has got the place behind the stove. The partisan girl is in the corner behind him, so that, to escape, she’ll have to crawl over him first.
The Legionnaire comes back from his spell of guard duty. He seems excited.
‘Porta!’ he calls softly.
‘Here I am, in the maid’s room,’ grins Porta from behind the stove.
‘Saperlotte,8 hurry up and come,’ whispers the Legionnaire. ‘I’ve found a Supplies Depot!’
‘Kraft durch Freude! Die Strasse frei
!’ gasps Porta. ‘Get your balls swinging, son!’
‘I’m with you,’ says Tiny, wide awake in an instant, and rolling out of his blankets without waiting for an invitation.
Silently we leave the hut.
‘What d’you think of that?’ asks the Legionnaire, removing some planks.
With our mouths hanging open, we stare at case upon case, piled on top of one another. They have American inscriptions on them: ‘America salutes the Russian People!’
Tentatively we lift the boxes.
‘Tinned stuff,’ says Porta, with his eyes glowing. ‘Corned beef, pineapples, pears by God my favourite food!’
Suddenly Tiny tenses. He drops the case he is holding and is over behind a snowdrift in one long spring.
‘Run like ’ell!’ he howls. ‘Tickin’!’
‘Tickin – what’s he mean by tickin?’ asks Porta from down amongst the boxes. ‘You’d think it was that boy’s mind there was gangrene in and not his feet!’
‘There’s a bleedin’ time bomb tickin’ away right under your bleedin’ feet!’ wails Tiny, from the snowdrift.
Like lightning Porta is up and out of the hole. His legs drive like piston-rods. He literally bores his way into the snowdrift.
‘Is it still ticking?’ he asks Tiny. ‘Couldn’t it just have been a woodpecker trying to get at my pears?’
‘I dunno,’ replies Tiny, ‘but it’s tickin’ all right. It’ll blow any minute now, I reckon!’
‘Time bombs ain’t dangerous till they’ve stopped bloody ticking!’ shouts Porta frantically, and is back down the hole like a ferret.
‘They ain’t gonna blow all my preserved pears to pieces!’ he shouts, swinging a box up onto his shoulder. He has hardly reached the protection of the drift when it seems as if the whole inside of the world has exploded. A fiery column, of incredible force, shoots up towards the sky throwing boxes and tin cans in all directions. A rain of preserved fruit and shreds of meat falls on us. Tin cans, with edges like knives, fly like shrapnel between the huts.
‘That was a dirty, bloody trick,’ sighs Porta, disappointedly, as we stand looking down into the sooty crater. ‘I won’t forget Ivan for this for a long, long time!’
Tiny takes a taste of some of the meat, but it tastes of saltpetre. With a grimace he spits it out.
We open Porta’s case of preserved pears, and our faces light up when we find it contains thirty tins. We’ve hardly got through one of them when Tiny gives a warning shout.
‘It’s tickin’ again! Let’s get out of this! The whole shithouse’s goin’ up!’
Like chaff blown before the wind we are over behind the big snowdrift.
The second explosion is bigger than the first.
A hut over on the far side of the Supplies Depot is blown into the air and disappears high above the trees. Molotov cocktails fly through the air. Phosphorous fires blaze up.
We are on our feet as soon as the sound of the explosion has died away, running back towards quarters, where the company is paralysed with shock.
Before we can even begin to tell them what has happened the sentries shout:
‘Alarm! Partisans!’
Machine-guns and Mpis bark from the darkness and the screams of wounded ring through the night. Dark forms run from hut to hut. Glass tinkles and explosive bursts light up the darkness. Huts catch fire and burn fiercely.
‘Come death, come now . . .’ hums the Legionnaire, opening out the tripod of his LMG.
Black shadows flit across the large square by the statue of Lenin. As they reach grenade distance Tiny’s heavy machine-gun thunders, mowing them down in rows like corn. But there are a lot of them. They swarm in the narrow, crooked streets. Muzzles flame everywhere. The explosive bullets make terrible wounds.
By the statue of Lenin a commissar is shouting and waving his Mpi above his head.
I put all my weight behind the throw. The grenade explodes right over the commissar’s head and slings him straight across the wide square. His weapon flies in the opposite direction.
‘Masterly,’ Porta smiles, and nods his appreciation.
I run forward, together with the Professor, who is carrying the grenade sacks for me. He feeds me with ready-armed grenades. I put so much into my first throw that now I can’t do much over seventy yards. Still a good average distance for a grenade-thrower, though!
The partisans withdraw in a disorganized rout now that the loud-voiced commissar is dead.
The Legionnaire throws a T-mine into a hut. The house bursts open like a bag of flour dropped from a skyscraper. Suddenly everything goes quiet. The footsteps of men running can be heard receding into the forest.
Klockdorf liquidates two prisoners with shots through the back of the neck, and then smashes in their skulls with the butt of his weapon.
‘What the hell are you doing?’ screams Oberleutnant Moser at him furiously.
‘Beg to report, Herr Oberleutnant, carrying out execution according to regulations. I caught these two men cutting the throat of the Staross.9 He was protesting against them burning the village over the people’s heads.’
‘I intend to report you for sabotaging orders!’ Moser flares up at him.
‘Be a pleasure, sir!’ grins the Oberfeldwebel, jeeringly. We have lost twelve men. Two sentries are found with their heads smashed in. Five men are wounded, one of them with a whole burst of machine-gun bullets in the stomach.
‘Ready to move!’ commands Moser. ‘They’ll be back as soon as they pull themselves together again and get over their first fright. We want to be on our way by then.’
We’ve been marching for about an hour when Moser suddenly remembers the partisan girl.
‘Where is the girl?’ he asks.
‘Beg to report, sir, she’s left for home, but asked me to give everybody her kindest, sir!’ shouts Porta, happily.
‘Do you mean to tell me you let her get away?’ asks the OC, amazed at Porta’s frankness.
‘Not on your life, sir! I fancied her and offered her the chance as first lady at my little knocker in Friedrichsstrasse, but she got tough and tried to get hold of my iron. Then, when I was trying to find some rope to tie her up with she nipped smartly out the back door, and when I went after her pushed a pot down over my head and started banging away at me with a shovel. While this was going on she took her opportunity and moved off to the left into the forest. I shouted after her to tell her that you’d be very angry with her indeed, sir, when you found she’d gone AWOL. But the lady paid no attention to my despairing cries, whatsoever, sir, and is now probably at home in her house on the Street of a Thousand Arseholes, sir!’
‘You’re a problem to me, Porta,’ sighs Moser. ‘I really hope our ways soon part!’
‘Probably they will before all that long, Herr Oberleutnant, sir!’ says Porta. ‘Officers don’t usually last very long with our company, sir. Seems almost to have become a kind of tradition, sir!’ he adds, smiling widely.
‘I’ll speak to you later, Porta,’ Moser promises him. ‘My God, how I’ll speak to you!’
Three days later we reached a ruined village where only naked chimneys point like stone fingers to the sky.
‘They’re firing off red flares over there,’ says the Old Man, pointing out the direction.
‘C’est un bordel!’10 says the Legionnaire, thinking with sad longing of red light districts.
‘That sounds like a bit of all right,’ yawns Porta, ‘think of getting your old tip covered again. Mine could certainly do with a good thawing out!’
It’s a grey, starless night, with a fast-driving cover of cloud. Showers of snow fall every so often. We lie for a while watching the lights away in the distance. They look very beautiful from here. The flares draw long coloured tails after them and explode in a star-burst of colour nuances.
‘Ours!’ states Moser, with assurance. ‘Let’s get on! It looks as if the Russians are pressing heavily. By tomorrow it may be too late!’
Suddenly the whole s
ky lights up. Shortly afterwards a rolling boom of many explosions running into one another reaches us. A fair-sized artillery duel must be in progress.
‘What in God’s name is going on along the front?’ mumbles Moser, thoughtfully, after having observed the great flashes of light for a while.
‘Maybe they’re using up the last of the powder!’ says Porta, trying to twist his mouth into a smile but achieving no more than a grimace.
‘Section leaders to me!’ orders Moser. ‘I want you ready to move off in ten minutes time! In full battle order, please!’ He adjusts the chin-strap of his helmet.
‘What, in the middle of the night?’ asks Feldwebel Kramm, unbelievingly. He joined us with eleven men only a few days ago.
‘The Russians are swarming everywhere!’
‘Show me somewhere they aren’t, Feldwebel, and we’ll go there!’ says Moser, sarcastically.
‘We march in ten minutes time! And we are going to get through even if we have to do it with only spades and bayonets!’
We have used our short rest to fill magazines and cartridge belts. Everybody is grumbling. It’s as if we’ve lost our drive now that we’re so close to reaching our goal.
‘Hear me!’ shouts the Oberleutnant, softly, when the company is paraded ready to move off. ‘We are a fair-sized company, now. A good many units have joined us of all sorts, from clerks and caterers to rocket artillery and demolition experts. Now hear me, all of you! The German positions are no more than four or five miles from here. One last effort and we’re home! We must leave now. Tomorrow morning might be too late. By then the enemy may have broken through the new lines. We must expect to have to fight hard, but there is no other way. Wounded will be taken with us, if there is the least possibility of doing it, but they must not be allowed to hold us back! Above all things. Maintain contact! We shall go forward in a walking hedgehog formation. 2 Section will take the lead. I trust you, Feldwebel Beier! Any questions?’
‘What if the breakthrough fails, Herr Oberleutnant?’ asks Oberfeldwebel Klockdorf.