The telephone crackled again, louder and more aggressive than before. I heard the sound of exploding sibilants. Löwe drew his eyebrows sharply together and pursed his lips.
‘Very well,’ he said, stiffly. ‘If those are my orders.’
He slammed the set to the ground, and Porta turned and winked in my direction.
‘Fancy yourself with a row of medals on your chest? Looks like this is going to be your big chance at last . . . death or glory, here we come!’
Löwe stood a moment, his blue eyes narrowed, staring out at the advancing tanks. They had been forced to a temporary halt, to give the infantry a chance to catch up with them. It’s no fun in a tank when you’re supposed to be accompanying foot soldiers. Löwe gave a small, hard smile.
‘Second section, stand by! Prepare for action!’
Only two years earlier, it had been considered heroism verging on madness for men to launch an attack against tanks. A deed of outstanding valour meriting a decoration. Since then it had become a commonplace. None the less suicidal, but all in a day’s work.
Löwe and the Old Man were the first to spring into action. Each was clutching a T mine. The Old Man flung his under the belly of one tank, Löwe deposited his down the turret of another. There were two simultaneous explosions. Both men flung themselves to one side. Löwe landed in a shellhole, where Kleiner was hunched up with his arms round his legs and his knees drawn up to his chin. His face was grey and leathery with fear, and it was plain he had no intention of partaking in any form of action. Löwe stared round until his gaze fell upon an abandoned bazooka, whose operators were lying dead near by. He jerked Kleiner in the ribs to gain his attention.
‘Nip across,’ he said, ‘and bring that bazooka over here.’
Kleiner took no notice. Somewhat impatiently, Löwe repeated the order, but the man only began to snivel. Löwe regarded him with a mixture of bewilderment and disgust. It was at this point that Tiny slithered down to join them, jumping into the shellhole in a spray of black mud. He took in the situation at a glance, and his methods of dealing with it were cruder and probably more effective than any that Löwe could permit himself to employ.
‘Go and get that flaming bazooka!’ he shouted.
He picked up the shivering Kleiner by the scruff of his neck and booted him bodily into the open. He then sprang out after him and sent a fist crashing into his face. It was a blow that would have rendered most men unconscious, but surprisingly it served to bring Kleiner to his senses. He crawled across to the bazooka, snatched it up and scuttled back with it to the Lieutenant. A T34 was wreaking havoc only about twenty yards off. Very calmly, Löwe raised the bazooka to his shoulder. The grenade hurtled on its way towards the target. The tank had caught sight of us and its machine-guns were instantly trained on the Lieutenant, who had just time to duck back into his shellhole before the bullets started flying.
We waited. There was a loud explosion, and a red tongue of fire leapt skywards from the turret of the tank. At my side, Tiny gave me a dig with the toe of his boot.
‘Off you go, kid!’
Somehow, without knowing it, I had acquired a couple of mines and was grasping one in each hand. The Old Man gave me an encouraging nod and a pat on the shoulder. It seemed I had no alternative but to get out there and play at being a hero. I scrambled over the top and stared wildly round. Right in front of me loomed the bulk of a T34. God knows where it had come from. Above my head was its long cannon, pointing like a bony finger into the distance. Without allowing myself time for thought, I thrust one of my mines directly under the turret, jerked myself to one side and rolled over, nose to tail, into the mud.
The blast of the explosion tossed me into the air and brought me down again about thirty yards away. Another tank was almost on top of me. Terrified, I hurled my remaining mine towards it, twisted out of its path and covered my head with my hands. Nothing happened: I had forgotten to prime it. The tank moved on, and I had to sit there and watch, helpless, as it wiped out the last of our anti-tank guns. I had only my automatic rifle and a handful of grenades, and you don’t attack a T34 with that.
I took refuge for a moment in a shell hole full of muddy water. Oil slicks floated on the surface, and a mutilated body lay near by in a pool of dark red blood. The air all round was filled with black smoke and the fumes of cordite, which made you cough until you vomited. Suddenly, out of nowhere, I saw Tiny surging into the midst of the tanks. He hurled himself towards the nearest one, sprang on to the turret and hammered like a maniac on the hatch. A leather-helmeted head appeared. Tiny instantly shoved it back down, stuffed a grenade after it, slammed down the hatch and dived to the ground. There was a muffled explosion and the huge tank came shuddering to a halt. I saw Tiny pick himself up and go tearing off with a couple of T mines in his hands. His face was streaked with oil and blood and he curled up his lips with animal pleasure, showing a row of sharp white teeth, as he thrust the first of his mines under the tracks of an oncoming tank. He was blown backwards by the blast, and the second mine flew out of his hand and rolled away from him. Tiny went hurtling into a ditch. One of the T34s had obviously caught sight of him, for it immediately altered course and began making straight for him. As I watched from my muddy shellhole, the tank caught up the stray mine in its tracks, and in the resulting explosion the vehicle was crushed and shattered like an eggshell. The sides caved in and the hatch blew open. Only one man was thrown clear. He landed in the ditch with Tiny, and the two of them stood for a moment gaping at each other.
Tiny was the first to recover. He thrust his M.PI into the man’s ribs and pushed him on to his knees. I daresay the Russian thought his last moment had arrived. They took no prisoners in the Red Army, and there was no reason why the Germans should behave any differently. He raised his arms nervously above his head, and from my shellhole I could here his anxious babbling assurances that he was no Communist, he was no Stalinite, he only fought because they made him fight, he had no quarrel with the Germans, he loved the Germans, the Germans were his friends, the Germans were his—
‘All right, all right, knock it off,’ growled Tiny. It’s the same for all of us, mate. You’re not a Communist, I’m not a Nazi, I love Russians, you love Krauts – so why don’t we just get together and be friends?’ Deftly, he dipped a hand into the man’s pocket and wrenched his revolver away from him. He gestured with it towards the bed of the trench. ‘Down you go. Let’s have a gander and make sure you’re quite safe.’
The man obediently sank to his knees, and Tiny patted him all over from head to foot with an expert hand. A trench knife was flung out in disgust. A Nagan was retained as a prize worth having. Tiny tapped the man amiably on the shoulder.
‘OK. That’ll do. Up you get.’
They stood for a few moments side by side in the ditch, listening to the sounds of battle raging above them. The Russian seemed slightly puzzled by Tiny’s attitude. A T34 passed by, so close that it almost touched them, and both men instinctively ducked down under cover. By the time they reappeared, several minutes later, they seemed on the most companionable of terms. The Russian was grinning and gesticulating, and Tiny had abandoned his threatening gestures with the M.PI. The Russian suddenly opened his haversack and brought out a chunk of bread and meat and a flask, and they stood together in the ditch, laughing and munching and exchanging pleasantries. My mouth began to water as I crouched in my stinking mudhole and watched them. I considered for a moment crawling over to join them, but there was too much activity in the strip of land which divided us and I remained where I was and staved off the pangs of hunger by eating a few fingernails.
Tiny and his new pal polished off the last of the food and drink and began showing each other photographs. The Russian’s were probably of his girl-friend or his mother. Tiny’s were without any doubt obscene.
Tired at last of crouching in the mud, I began cautiously to heave myself into the open. Grenades were flying in all directions, and our own artillery had found their range
and were keeping up a concentrated barrage. I saw a tank crew leap like human torches from their burning vehicle and throw themselves screaming to the ground. Near by lay a Russian colonel with both his legs blown off. He was calling repeatedly and in vain for stretcher-bearers, and as I watched one of his own tanks drove right over the top of him and minced him into a pot pourri of torn flesh and broken bones. The same tank was making straight for the ditch where Tiny and the Russian were taking cover. I yelled at them to get out, and Tiny snatched up his M.PI and was up and over the top in one swift action, right in the path of the lumbering tank. The Russian stayed where he was, white-faced and obviously terrified. Tiny shouted at him to shift, but he only shook his head and crouched cowering at the foot of the ditch. I guessed it was the first time he had ever encountered tanks from ground level, so to speak. He was making the elementary mistake of imagining himself to be safer in a ditch than out in the open. Tiny, evidently reluctant to abandon him, held out a hand for him to grasp, but it was too late. The approaching tank was almost on him, and he flung himself to one side as it passed by with only inches to spare. The Russian suddenly perceived his danger: the tank was going right over the ditch, and he would be caught beneath it. Too late, he hurled himself at the parapet and tried to claw his way out. He had lost his leather helmet, and his fair hair was streaming in the wind, his eyes open wide with terror, his arms extended towards the oncoming monster. His comrades probably never even saw him. And even if they did, I doubt if they could then have avoided him. They drove straight over the top, crushing him beneath their tracks, and went on their way sublimely ignorant. Their goal was a German anti-tank gun somewhere behind the enemy lines. They had been told to wipe it out at all costs, and they could not afford to waste time delicately picking their way through the dead and disorientated that strewed their path.
Tiny rose to his feet and stood in the midst of the flying débris shaking his fist and swearing at the departing tank. I yelled at him across the fifty or so yards which divided us. He turned and came towards me. I could see he was in a dangerous mood, uncaring of his own safety and ready to let fly at anything that moved. As he strode, defiant, with the shells bursting before and behind, he brought down his boot on the outstretched arm of a German captain, who was lying on the ground with a hole the size of a grapefruit in his belly. He clawed feebly at Tiny’s legs, and Tiny, taking him for a Russian, turned in a fury and emptied his magazine straight into the man’s head. Too late, he realised what he had done. He stood for a moment, his jaw hanging slack, then fatalistically shrugged his shoulders and continued on his way towards me. The man would probably have died in any case, and God help him if the Russians had laid hands on him. And anyhow, this was war. There could be no room for regrets.
Tiny landed by my side in the shell hole and sent a shower of stinking black mud all over me.
‘What’s happened to your boot?’ he said.
I looked down at my feet, and for the first time I saw that my right boot was hanging in shreds. It must have been torn off my foot by the blast of the first explosion. I hadn’t noticed it before, but now that it had been brought to my attention I felt a great wave of self-pity sweep over me. I suddenly realised exactly how much I was suffering. Cold, wet, hungry, with an injured right foot and no boot to cover it—
‘It’s bleeding,’ I said, and my voice was shrill with horror. ‘Look at it, it’s bleeding! My foot’s bleeding—’ I ripped off the remnants of boot and gingerly picked out the pieces of sock that were embedded in my flesh. ‘I can’t go about like this,’ I said. ‘How can I be expected to go about barefooted over this sort of country? How can I be expected to—’
Tiny thrust his face pugnaciously close to mine.
‘Shut up bleeding moaning!’ he snarled. ‘Just fucking shut up or I’ll fucking belt you one!’
I sat whimpering to myself in the mud and cradling my injured foot in my hands. Tiny gave me a look of mingled hatred and disgust. He suddenly leapt out of the shell hole and cantered away, and I thought he was deserting me, but within seconds he had returned.
‘Here,’ he said. ‘Try those on for size.’ He thrust a pair of boots at me. Boots such as I had never seen before. Pale lemon leather, soft and supple and almost brand new. I gazed at them in wonderment and awe. ‘I got ’em off a dead Russian officer,’ said Tiny, carelessly. ‘I reckon they’ll do you all right.’
I discarded my own one remaining boot, all beat up and battered as it was, and slipped my feet into the new pair. A smile of infantile delight spread itself over my face. I turned up my toes in ecstasy. It was like wearing a couple of swans-down muffs on your feet. Amazing to think that only a few years ago, back in the palmy days of the beginning of it all, we had been fighting an army of rags and tatters; and now it was we who were in rags, it was our uniform which was in tatters, and in order to equip oneself with a decent pair of boots a German soldier must resort to pillaging from a dead Russian officer. The end of the war must surely be in sight.
There was a sudden resurgence of enemy tanks and infantry. Tiny and I sank lower in our shell hole and were forced to lie for minutes at a time holding our breath and our heads submerged beneath the filthy water.
It was late in the evening before we could make our way back to our own lines. The Russian attack had failed, but it had cost both sides dear. The ground was littered with dead and dying bodies, and already the lewd green marsh flies were bloating themselves on human flesh and blood. The flies and the rats were the only ones to multiply and prosper in times of war.
We sat watching them, unmoved by a sight we had seen too often before. Porta handed round a great stone flagon full of rather repulsive-looking liquid. Barcelona was the first to sample it, and he instantly fell back, gasping, with his fingers tearing desperately at his throat. We observed him with interest, wondering if he would recover. Porta himself had already imbibed freely of the concoction, but it was well known that Porta had a stomach of cast-iron and a digestive system that could attack and demolish even prussic acid or cyanide as if they were slices of bread and butter.
‘Sod that for a laugh!’ gasped Barcelona, with the tears streaming down his cheeks. ‘What the bloody hell is it? Someone’s lousy stinking piss?’
Porta smiled, evilly.
‘Spuds,’ he said. ‘Rotting spuds. That’s all.’
He raised the flagon to his lips and took a long draught. Barcelona tore open his collar and began to massage his throat.
‘More like rotting corpses,’ he said, sourly.
‘That,’ agreed Porta, wiping a contented hand across his mouth, ‘is more than likely . . . Anyone else want a swig?’
During the night, reinforcements arrived. They were an SS rifle brigade, and the flash on their collars was the Union Jack. We studied them with undisguised curiosity, and when we heard them speaking English among themselves we could scarcely believe our ears. British soldiers in the SS? Had Churchill and Hitler come to terms at last? Had we formed a new alliance? To present, perhaps, a united front against the Russians?
‘You must be bleeding joking!’ A British Oberscharführer with a mass of flaming red hair turned and spat contemptuously. ‘Those stupid sods in London still think they can work hand in glove with the Communists and get away with it. They still think everything in the garden’s bright red and rosy.’ He spat again. ‘They’ll find out, when it’s too late.’
We listened in silent wonderment to his accent. A real live Englishman in SS uniform . . .
‘You got any objections?’ he said, coldly.
‘None whatsoever,’ the Legionnaire assured him. ‘It’s all one to us whether you’re blood brother to the King of England or a yellow-arsed git from Outer Mongolia. We were merely interested,’ he said, ‘to know what brought you here.’
The man scowled.
‘We’re volunteers. We’re all volunteers.’
He plainly had no wish to talk about it, but a little Unterscharführer at his side spoke up readily
enough.
‘They went round the camps recruiting people. I was in Stalag VIII. I was captured after Dunkirk.’
‘And you volunteered for this lot?’ I said, incredulously.
‘Well—’ The man shrugged. ‘I reckoned the way things were going, I might just as well. It seemed better than sitting on my arse doing sweet bugger all for the rest of the war.’
He looked at us, defiantly, and the Legionnaire shook his head, more in pity than reproof.
‘What about afterwards?’ he said.
The man hesitated.
‘Afterwards?’
‘That’s right,’ said the Legionnaire. ‘Afterwards . . . When the war comes to an end. When one lot of shooting stops and the next lot starts up . . . When they’re raking in the war criminals and the traitors, and the collaborators and the black-marketeers . . . What happens then?’
The man licked his lips. The rest of his companions looked nervously in the other direction. Only the red-haired Oberscharführer seemed to have the answer.
‘Nothing happens,’ he said, curtly. ‘They’ll still need all the fighting men they can get. Only it won’t be Nazis they’re having a go at, it’ll be the Communists . . . A year or two in the nick’s the worst that can happen to us. After that I reckon we’ll be going at it hammer and tongs with the Reds and they won’t be able to let us out fast enough.’
The Old Man raised an eyebrow.
‘There speaks an optimist,’ he murmured. ‘Suppose it’s the Russians that lay hands on you first?’
‘Well? So what if it is? So what if we tell them that the Jerries forced us into fighting for them? Who’s to know otherwise?’
The Old Man smiled rather sadly. It was almost incredible that after five years of war anyone could still be so naïve.
‘You’ll find out,’ he said. ‘You’ll find out . . .’
With the approach of dawn we picked up our arms and took leave of the British volunteers, returning once again to our positions in the trenches. The Old Man cocked an ear in the direction of the Russian lines and turned down the corners of his mouth.