The 700 hp motor gives out a roar, as Porta turns the Tiger in a circle. The long dining table and the silk-upholstered chairs are smashed to firewood. A sofa hits the ceiling, followed by a bookcase. Books rain down on the turret.
Both machine-guns rattle viciously. The Tiger goes straight through a wall and smashes a kitchen as large as a ballroom to pieces. Dividing walls go down in a cloud of mortar and plaster dust. With a tinkling crash we go down into a garden, smashing a glassed-in terrace in the process. We tear up a lilac hedge by the roots, and the Tiger is covered in a cloak of blue and white lilac, as if it were a bridal coach on the way to the church with a bride.
We go through an outhouse, which is crushed flat. Twenty yards in front of us we catch sight of a 55 ton Stalin tank. The crew are changing the tracks. They stare at us, paralysed with fear. Two seconds later and there are only scorched earth marks where the heavy tank and its crew had been standing. The house beside it has disappeared with it. The steel-cased high explosive shell must have made a direct hit on the reserve ammunition, and the eighty-five shells gone up together in one disintegrating explosion. The blast throws the Tiger several yards backwards, back into the flower garden from which we had emerged.
In a split tree a Russian captain is hanging, spitted like a piece of meat on a grill.
Countless batteries of Stalin Organs lay down a wall of fire and steel, aimed at destroying our tank support infantry. They stay close behind the tanks but in short order whole battalions are reduced to a shamble of meat, blood and bone.
Two T-34/85’s come racing towards us like greyhounds. They fire, stupidly, while on the move, their shells going over us harmlessly without doing any damage.
‘Turret ten o’clock,’ orders the Old Man, calmly, ‘Panzer halt. Range 800. Armour-piercing. Fire!’
The first shell glances off without damaging the T-34, but the second tears open the front armour, like a can-opener cutting into a can of peaches. The driver’s headless body hangs out over the ripped-up plating. The telegraphist has lost the bottom half of his body.
Two shells crash against our forward armour, without penetrating the four inches of armour plating. They ricochet, howling, straight up into the air.
‘God’d better get his arse moving before they get there,’ Porta screams with laughter.
My next shell tears a track off the closest T-34. It swings round and crashes into one alongside it.
‘Hit it in the face,’ shouts the Old Man. ‘S-shell. Fast!’
‘Take a deep breath, mate,’ protests Tiny. ‘I’ve got an armour-piercer in this pea-shooter already, an’ I ain’t bleedin’ takin’ it out again. There’s a limit to the amount o’ work as can be expected of a feller for the money the Army pays!’ He dries his black face with an even blacker piece of waste, and takes a long swallow of water. ‘Bleedin’ slavery, that’s what this is,’ he grumbles, sourly. ‘The German Army treats us worse’n any slavedealer in America ever treated Albert’s forefathers when they pinched ’em from Africa.’
‘Shut up,’ shouts the Old Man angrily. ‘Fire!’
‘You said “S”,’ I protest, folding my arms. ‘There’s armour-piercing in the chamber. What do I do?’
‘Fire, was my order!’ yells the Old Alan, furiously, stamping on the steel deck. ‘some day I’ll bloody strangle you!’
A ringing crash almost splits our eardrums. We are completely deaf for several minutes. The radio falls from its shelf into Heide’s lap, and loose cables fly around our heads. A burst oil pipe spurts oil onto Porta, making him look like some kind of monster in an American horror film.
‘Hit,’ howls Heide, and is halfway out of the hatch when Porta pulls him back inside again.
‘Just a moment, Unteroffizier Heide. We’re not finished yet. Our wonderful, valuable, teetotal, sex-despising Führer wouldn’t like to see his model soldier running from the subhuman enemy! He couldn’t bear it. He might even be disappointed enough to go back home to Austria and let the Germans go their own way.’
Our next shell is a strike. Straight into the ammunition lockers. The Russian tank explodes like a ripe melon dropped from a skyscraper. The other tank rolls over and over like a kicked tin-can and ends in the river. It explodes under water like a submarine volcano.
No. 2. Section’s four Tigers crash through the forest, breaking off thick-boled trees like matchsticks. A forester’s house is reduced to a pile of rubble in seconds. A small boy stumbles and is mashed under the wide tracks.
To the time of the engines we press forward through a thick hedge. Branches of thorn, as thick as an arm, catch at the whipping tracks. As if trying to hold the tanks back. In front of us appears a seemingly endless column of green lorries, horsedrawn waggons, tanks, and bus after bus packed with women soldiers. The column is stationary, caught hopelessly in a mile-long traffic jam, which grows longer by the minute.
OGPU soldiers rush round like excited sheepdogs, trying to get the column on the move. Heavily loaded lorries, blocking the road, are pushed ruthlessly over the edge, and go rumbling down the incline alongside it. The shouts and screams can be heard for miles. Every now and then a burst of Mpi fire comes from the OGPU-men’s ready Mpi’s. There is no grousing allowed here. The OGPU soldiers, with the blue caps, do all the talking that is necessary.
‘God save us,’ mumbles the Old Man. ‘They’ve been handed to us on a plate. Just sitting there waiting to get shot all to hell. 2. Section! Hear me! Aim at the fuel transporters, and the fuel transporters only. Load with incendiary. The rest’ll look after itself!’
‘What about picking up that bus-load of carbolic soap perfumed lovelies before we set fire to the shithouse?’ suggests Porta, pointing to a white bus filled with nurses.
‘Close hatches,’ orders the Old Man. ‘Fire at will!’
The Russian soldiers catch sight of us. A murmuring quiet falls over the long, jammed-up column. Then a concerted scream of terror goes up.
Crews and passengers pour from their vehicles and run off across the plain. They all know what is going to happen.
Women soldiers fight desperately to escape from one of the long, grey buses.
The tank guns open fire. Incendiaries smash into the tankers’ inflammable loads. Giant tongues of flame roar up towards the heavens, flaming petrol sprays out over ammunition-packed lorries. In the winking of an eye the column has become one great roaring bonfire. Hundreds of humans perish immediately in the glowing inferno.
A small group of Russian soldiers come rushing towards us, when we stick in a deep hole.
I tear the MG from its mounting, and crash open the flap. Quick action is needed if we are to prevent them from destroying us, with the close-combat bombs which are every tankman’s secret fear.
I am only halfway through the hatch when I look up to find myself staring straight into a twisted face. A tangle of long red hair and beard.
‘Schort,’ he roars, drawing back a hand holding a grenade. I pull the trigger and loose off a whole magazine.
The hail of bullets throws him backwards, splintering his face. Gouting blood he slides down from the tank and lies half in between the rollers. The grenade goes off, with a hard crack, alongside him.
‘Hell and tommy,’ curses the Old Man. ‘Did that take a roller out?’
I bang the hatch shut. I have had enough fresh air.
The Old Man calls Barcelona on the radio and orders him to come and pull us out of the hole. Towing is, in fact, strictly forbidden, since the effort strains the Maibach’s power resources. We did it, nevertheless, in serious emergency, although it almost always meant serious damage to the tank doing the hauling. It was an order for all types of tank, but the decision was usually a difficult one. It cost a crew their heads to abandon a useable tank. It was the glasshouse for ruining a motor by aiding another tank in distress.
‘Whose turn for a walk?’ asks the Old Man, with a crooked smile.
‘The Führer’s super-soldier and Sven,’ grins Porta, malici
ously.
‘Out you get. Ready the wire!’ orders the Old Man, brusquely.
‘It was us last time,’ protests Heide, affrontedly.
‘What you cryin’ for?’ asks Tiny, with a pleased grin. ‘This is goin’ to give you a chance at the ’ighly-praised ’ero’s death, mate! Out you go, an’ pull Ivan’s pud for ’im!’
‘We’re here,’ comes Barcelona’s voice over the radio. ‘Get your arses movin’ an’ make that wire fast. The competitors are on the way with machine-popguns!’
‘Give baggy-arsed Ivan our love,’ grins Porta, as Heide opens the flap, and edges out.
I throw myself into cover between the rollers as a machine-gun burst whips up dust all along the side of the Tiger.
‘Get those fingers out, you devils,’ shouts Barcelona, impatiently, from up in the turret. ‘We’ll have a charge down our throats ‘fore we know where we are!’
‘Shut up, you silly man,’ snarls Heide, raging. ‘You’d do better to come down here and give us a hand. This wire’s as stiff as a board!’
Cursing and sweating, our hands pouring with blood, we finally get the wire up over the heavy towing-hooks.
‘Pull,’ screams Heide, furiously.
I let out a terrified shout, as a hand-grenade lands beside me. From pure reflex I kick at it. The kick sends it flying back. It lands by a corporal and explodes, sending him up into the air.
‘What the hell are you doing, fucking about down there?’ jeers Barcelona, his head just visible above the edge of the turret.
‘You can see they’re shooting at us, can’t you?’ I shout, angrily.
‘What did you expect, then?’ he laughs. ‘Ain’t you found out yet, you’re taking part in a world war?’
The engine roars. Flames shoot from the exhausts, and the tracks throw large clods of earth up over us.
‘Get out of there, in the name of hell,’ roars Barcelona, wamingly, bending down from the turret. ‘Want to get your bollocks rolled flat, you lame turtles, you?’
I roll over, and. lose my Mpi under the tracks.
‘You’re going to have to pay for that,’ yells Heide, in his insulted unteroffizier tone. ‘Every penny of it’ll be held back from your pay!’
‘Squarehead!’ I shout at him, rolling under cover from an MG burst.
‘Let’s get that wire off, now,’ orders Barcelona, superciliously, when our Tiger is out of the hole.
‘How was the weather out there?’ asks Porta, as we edge through the hatches. ‘Neighbours’ boys got any new stories?’
We don’t bother to answer him.
Later that afternoon the regiment is lying in ambush at the edge of a wood. The long gun-barrels are pointing at the Charkov-Kiev road, which goes via Orel straight to Moscow. Many of us doubt we will ever get that far. In our section only Heide believes it, but his belief is strong enough to carry all of us along with him.
Down from the river fog comes rolling, sweeping across the maize and sunflower fields. A battery of heavy Stalin Organs send rockets over at the German positions. It is fascinating to watch a rocket come rushing through the fog and explode above ground level. It reminds one of those old-fashioned gaslamps which always looked as if they were about to go out, and then suddenly brightened up again, to shine with a wavering white light.
Up on a hill-top flames dance up from a burning house. It must be the residence of a highly-placed official. The whole hill is covered with an artistically planted carpet of flowers. A fantastically beautiful sight in the flickering light of the fires.
A whole village burns in the distance. It seems as if the flames from it are licking the clouds.
Clouds of velvet-textured black smoke swell up from Russian T-34’s and German P-4’s, on fire down by the river bank.
The order has been given for radio silence, and there is a strange, threatening feeling in the air. All round us stripped trees loom like huge, naked sentinels. Down by the railway station, or rather the ruins of what once was a railway station, stand shell-damaged locomotives and burnt-out goods waggons. A personnel train must have suddenly driven in under the rain of steel and fire. Bodies of soldiers lie scattered everywhere.
An old woman scuttles around, in the ruins of what was once her village. She sniffs cautiously about her, like a cat moving through a dark forest. A single rifle shot sounds, wickedly. She goes down, crawls a little way, then goes rolling, faster and faster, down over the ruins like a fluttering bundle of rags.
‘Why’d they have to do that?’ sighs Porta, sadly. ‘Enjoy life while you can, boys. You can soon lose it!’
‘Wonder what a bloke thinks about when ’e gets shot dead?’ says Tiny, interestedly. ‘Wonder if there’s time to be sorry for all the time you’ve wasted?’
‘It goes that quick, you don’t even know it before it’s all over!’ says the Old Alan.
‘Some of ’em scream for a long time,’ protests Tiny, thoughtfully.
‘Yes, you’re right, I suppose,’ the Old Man gives in, tiredly.
Red-hot shells stream across the sky from the far side of the river. They hammer into the ruins, knocking down walls pitted with empty, gaping window openings. German rocket batteries reply from behind the woods. A blanket of fire sweeps across the heavens. The air is filled with howls, whines and the roar of explosions, as if a thousand mad demons were on their way towards the earth. The huge OGPU building in Styrty goes down in a great sheet of flame. A whole salvo of rockets crashes through the roof. Tiles are thrown over onto the opposite bank of the river. Yard-thick walls go down, sending giant clouds of brick and mortar dust billowing out across Proletariat Place.
A long row of tiny prison cells is revealed behind the collapsed wall.
‘Jesus’n Mary,’ shouts Tiny, mouth agape. ‘There goes the bleedin’ jug!’
‘It’s what a long-term jailbird dreams about all his miserable life,’ says Porta, taking one of the Legionnaire’s cigarettes. ‘Hell, it must be annoying for the place to be empty when some mad shit or other in uniform finally gets to draw a bead on it.’
‘Seen the sky?’ asks the Old Man, quietly. He folds his hands behind his head. ‘There’s so many stars up there you wouldn’t believe it.’
We stretch out on the dew-wet grass and enjoy the midsummer’s night. The river glistens, and throws out flashes of light, like a necklace set with diamonds.
A long way away, on the far side of the river, the Russian heavy artillery rumbles. The shells pass far above our heads, with a sound like a long goods train moving across a steel bridge. Suddenly, the stars are wiped from the sky by the brilliant white light from, a rain of magnesium, parachute flares. The bright glare reveals everything. Ruins, corpses, smashed trains, shattered tanks, twisted guns, a desolate, broken landscape frozen in the cruel harshness of burning magnesium. The deathly light illumines every nook and cranny, warning of sudden, violent death. The flares seem to hang in the sky for an eternity of time, light dripping from them like white blood, ruins, and the banks of the river, glittering like glass in their monstrous white brilliance. A long time after the last flare has gone out, and the stars twinkle above us again, we rise carefully to our feet and stare, nervous and tense, out into the night, where death lurks behind each tree and each rock.
The guns roll again, sending a long, thousand times repeated echo along the river. Flames and flashes blink, in every imaginable colour. The stinking smoke from the burning tanks takes on a reddish violet tinge. An automatic rifle coughs, and a long line of tracer snakes across the river. A rattling scream cuts through the night. Flares go up! Soldiers press their bodies to the ground, and hide their faces in the wet grass.
The maize fields are burning. Crackling and popping, as if thousands of rattles were being swung out in the shrouding dark. The grass is soaked with night-dew, but we take no heed of it. We stretch out tiredly under our tanks, with only one thought in our minds. To sleep for a hundred years.
The thirty-six Tiger tanks waiting inside the edge of t
he forest, are the remnants of three heavy companies, which have escaped the hell of fire and steel. Every one of them is black with soot, and their yellow-green paintwork is blistered and peeling. Track shields are gone from most of the vehicles, and there are dents and holes in their armour from shells which have not succeeded in penetrating it. Their yard-wide battle tracks tell the tale of the mire of flesh and blood through which they have ploughed. Parts of humans and animals hang from every link. The crews have grown used to it. The smell is the worst part. It hangs in our uniforms and on our skin. The Old Man says it will stay with us for as long as we live.
Partridges take wing immediately in front of us, with a great clatter. Porta and Albert are off the mark like hunting dogs, and go after the fleeing birds. Albert is first to give up, but Porta is optimistic enough to follow them right down to the river, before he has to admit defeat. He glares after them disappointedly and champs his jaws dreamily.
‘Think, those devils have been squatting there in front of us all the time, just waiting to jump into the pan. And I didn’t see them,’ he says, almost crying with disappointment.
‘Do you know, by the way, the Peruvian dish called “Partridge in hiding”,’ he asks, licking his lips. ‘First go out and catch four partridges. Then their necks must be wrung, they must be cleaned carefully, plucked, and cut in two, lengthways, with a sharp knife. Five onions must then be sliced in thin rings. Two of those Commie-coloured peppers, sliced into nice even strips. White celery, two, chopped fine. Three cloves of garlic are an absolute necessity, and one single bay-leaf, which must be torn across. Then do not forget, for the sake of the Holy Virgin, salt and parsley. Half of this must now be spread out on a small roasting pan, and the partridge laid on top of it, with the fatty parts upwards. Cover them nicely with the remainder of the greenery, and make up a mix, which finer cooks call a marinade. Thereafter, take three tablespoonsful of olive oil. Not, repeat not, butter or rifle oil. That would frighten our partridges so much that they would pull themselves together and fly away.’