Now they are shelling the heights with field artillery and mortars. No. 3 Company runs straight into a salvo of shells. Their OC, the well-liked Oberleutnant Soest, is tossed into the air and his body seems to explode on the tip of a burst of flame. No. 3 Company is wiped out of existence in just a few minutes. Most of them are smashed beyond recognition. The enemy field batteries have got a bead on the heights.
Porta and Rasputin come rushing along in a cloud of dust. The bear is running on all fours in long bounds. It seems as if it is trying to protect Porta with its body. Every time he drops down it covers him. When we finally reach safety on the other side of the heights we find that the action has cost No. 5 Company seven dead and eleven wounded. This is light in comparison to the regiment’s other companies.
‘Poor bloody supplies runners,’ I say, looking up at that fiery hell. ‘Twice a day through that with food containers on their backs!’
It is midnight, and black as the inside of your hat, when we reach the river. Silently we climb into the assault boats. Nobody has any illusions about anything. We’ve been there before.
‘Once round the harbour, boys,’ chuckles Porta. ‘Free beer after the ride. If you’re good you can come along on the next trip for nothing!’
Nobody laughs.
Tiny installs himself in the bow with the LMG. I carry the explosive charges on a long rod.
Julius Heide and I have to get to the enemy emplacements while the section gives covering fire. I curse the day I volunteered for that explosives course. Now I’m paying for it. This is a one-way trip to heaven. Still and all, when I volunteered all hell was loose at the front and when I came back most of the boys I’d known were pushing up daisies.
‘Run like the devil as soon as we touch bottom,’ whispers Heide nervously to me. ‘We’ve got three and a half minutes to get to them.’
Our fate hangs on what happens in the first minute. Then the enemy are usually still confused, but after that they are on their toes and know it has to be them or us. They have to get us before we can get up to them with our charges.
‘Above all keep your heads,’ the Old Man exhorts us in a whisper. ‘Don’t play hero! Life is short and you’ll be dead a long time. Do what’s needed and not a thing over and above that.’ He taps Julius lightly on the shoulder. ‘You and Sven have to get to those defensive posts with the charges. Run like the devil was after you. They mustn’t get to the lifting gear. If they do we’ve had it. If you get wounded twenty times on the way you must still somehow drag yourselves up these emplacements. Hals-und Beinbruch!’
The slender boat grates on a sandy bottom. In one long spring we are over the side, race through the mist and clamber up the sloping bank.
Our lungs are bursting with effort. I throw myself down behind a large rock. My old lung wound is troubling me2. There is only a stretch of ten yards left to make, but every inch of it full of death and danger.
An SMG rattles, but behind us. They are giving us covering fire.
Concrete towers above us. The fortifications are much larger than we had thought at first. I push the charge through an observation slit and pull the release string. In one long jump I am down under cover, open my mouth and stuff my fingers into my ears. The wall falls outwards. The explosion is terrible. A wave of heat washes over me.
There is a blinding flash and human bodies are thrown from the pill-box. I feel as if Satan himself had taken a bite at me and spat me out again.
Two more hollow, rolling explosions and the two other pillboxes crack apart like eggshells. Automatic weapons rattle noisily.
Tiny comes sprinting with the SMG in his hand.
‘Get goin’, dope!’ he screams, kicking me as he runs. ‘If they get straightened out, they’ll ’ave our balls for breakfast. Them ’eathens know what they’re up to!’
The Old Man storms forward, with the rest of No. 2 Section in spread order. In a twinkling they have cleaned up the enemy position.
Hauptmann von Pader throws himself down heavily beside the Old Man. He is pale as death and on the verge of a nervous breakdown. He is wearing his steel helmet backwards.
‘Why don’t you let the company spread out?’ asks the Old Man disrespectfully, looking wickedly at him. ‘Just one direct hit as we are, and half the company’s for the scrap-heap.’
‘Don’t try to teach me my business, feldwebel,’ wheezes the Hauptmann. ‘I’ll have you on report!’
‘Good Jesus Christ!’ pants the Old Man, in despair. ‘Are reports all you’ve got in your head? You’re at the front, Herr Hauptmann, and you’re responsible for two hundred German soldiers.’ He gets half-way to his feet and points at von Pader with his Mpi. ‘I warn you, if you make a mess of this, I’ll relieve you of command!’
‘Who do you think you are?’ screams Hauptmann von Pader, excitedly. ‘A lousy peasant like you can’t relieve an officer of command!’
‘Read your own Führer’s orders,’ snaps the Old Man. ‘Latest orders state that even a private soldier can relieve a regimental commander of command if he thinks that commander has failed in his duty.’
‘I’ve never seen that,’ mumbles von Pader, weakly.
‘Better take a day off for reading orders, when we get back,’ suggests the Old Man, ironically.
A runner throws himself down panting by the side of them. Blood is running down his face from a gash in his forehead.
‘Herr Hauptmann, sir! Regimental HQ wants to know if the fortifications here have been taken?’
‘No!’ the Old Man answers for his OC, ‘the attack is held up. No. 5 Company is sitting around in shell-holes scratchin’ its collective arse.’
‘The oberst’ll be glad to hear it,’ grins the runner, throwing a sneering glance at the officer lying gripping his steel helmet tightly.
Porta and the bear slide down to them in a shower of dust and dead leaves.
‘What the hell’re we pissin’ about here for?’ screams Porta, taking no notice of von Pader. ‘Where the devil’s the rest of the company? Me an’ Rasputin can’t win this fuckin’ war on our own!’
The Old Man waves to the neighbouring section. The signal is answered. No. 5 Company storms forward. Only Hauptmann von Pader remains behind in his hole. With terror-stricken eyes he looks at the ground in front which is being ploughed up by the field artillery barrage.
The earth seems to rise up like a huge curtain towards the sky. Bodies and equipment spew out to all sides. Flame shoots up from the ground in giant geysers.
A gun with six horses comes sailing through the air and smashes into the ground.
Hauptmann von Pader breaks down, sobbing. His stomach clenches and cramps. He knocks off his helmet and tears at his collar, the cloth ripping under his fingers. He has never imagined the baptism of fire to be like this. For the first time in his life he feels the Fatherland could be asking too much of him.
The hole he is lying in shakes and sways. It is as if all the evil demons of hell have been let loose and are roaring together. One deafening explosion is followed closely by another. The unbelievable noise rises to an infernal crescendo.
A body falls in front of him. Blood, entrails and brain matter splash into his face.
He screams desperately, thinking it is he himself who has been badly wounded. But it is a nineteen-year-old leutnant whose first day at the front has ended.
Shells rain down. Whistling, howling, exploding. Fire, earth, rocks, whole tree trunks, fly through the air. We are in a gigantic, hellish stadium, where blast plays ball uncaringly with everything inside it.
‘My company,’ gasps von Pader, and creeps still deeper into the hole.
His company is a long way off. It is engaged in fierce fighting for the Russian positions.
I see two heads behind a Maxim and send a stick-grenade whirling at them. I watch carefully to see it doesn’t come back again. We are not up against recruits.
The grenade whirls straight down into the MG nest. A khaki-uniformed body is thrown into the
air together with an SMG.
I sprint forward with the LMG under my arm. It is one of the Russian models, an excellent weapon for close quarter work. I go down behind the sandbagged wall of the nest. The air cuts at my lungs as I breath. That damned lung wound. I’ll never be rid of it.
A Russian sergeant moves close beside me, but before he can fire his pistol I have crushed his head with the LMG butt. Feverishly I ready another grenade.
As if in slow motion I see Gregor come racing out of the bush, spit a Russian captain on his bayonet, tear it out and smash the officer’s face with the butt. A kick in the crotch and he disappears into the connecting trench.
Up on the heights an SMG rattles unceasingly. A violent blow almost knocks my legs from under me. A bullet has torn off the whole side of the boot. It burns and smarts, but it is only a crease. If that had been an explosive bullet my whole leg would be gone, I think in horror, as I tear the burning leather away. But then I would have been out of it all. Or would I? They are even sending amputees back into action again now.
With wheezing, painful lungs I spurt to the next piece of cover. In a few minutes I have got my wind back again. I am covered with blood. Terrified, I feel myself all over. Nothing wrong.
We run heavily down the narrow trench, throwing hand-grenades into dugout openings.
Mpi’s spit death. Half the trench blows up behind us. The trap was sprung a couple of seconds too late. Otherwise none of us would be alive now. A miracle of war.
I find Porta and the Legionnaire in a deep shell hole which is still smoking from the explosion. We load magazines. Fill our pockets, our boot-tops, our belts, with them.
Gregor and Tiny slide down to us. They have a whole bunch of Russian water bottles with them.
‘’Ere’s a drink fit for ’eroes,’ says Tiny, sharing out the bottles between us. The neighbours must’ve just got their rations when we come visitin’. Pity, ain’t it?’
The bear lies down close to Porta. It has a nasty bullet burn across the shoulders. We clean the wound and bandage it. It gets two Russian beers as solace and almost swallows the bottles as well.
‘You should see him fight,’ says Porta, proudly. ‘Sometimes he takes two at a time, and smashes ’em together. They break up as if they were made of glass.’
‘Pravda’ll make a good story out of this,’ laughs the Legionnaire. ‘They will say, no doubt, that we have suffered such great losses that we are having to train animals as soldiers.’
‘He must really be fed up with the Bolsines,’ reckons Gregor, scratching the bear’s neck. ‘What if we were to send him to a meeting of the Party? Be fun if he felt the same way about our golden pheasants!’
‘I’m sure he does,’ considers Porta. ‘Socialist dictatorships are not his cup of tea!’
‘Come on then! Come on!’ shouts the Old Man, impatiently. ‘Peace isn’t going to just lie waiting around until you’ve got time for her, you know!’
The field artillery lays down a close barrage. We press ourselves down into the shell holes. Earth and stones rain on us. We have to keep hard at work digging ourselves out again. There is a stench of picric acid from the exploding H.E. It tears at our throats like the fumes from an acid vat.
The Russians pull back. They run over ground which has been shaved clean. The earth trembles like a wounded beast.
Our heavy artillery at Elipsy is shelling the Russian backward positions. Where these 380mm shells fall they do unspeakable damage. The blast alone is enough to blow a human being to atoms.
I take cover by the side of Julius. He has one of the new MG-42’s and is as proud of it as if he had invented it himself.
‘Holy Mother of Kazan! This is a real German weapon!’ He presses his feet against a rock. It is difficult to lie still with the ’42. He laughs with glee. ‘With a chopper like this a fellow can really show the Bolshies the way home!’
A long burst kicks up the ground in front of us. Scared, we slide rapidly down to the bottom of the shell hole.
‘Those swine!’ snarls Heide, wickedly.
‘Gimme coverin’ fire,’ roars Tiny, from another shell hole.
‘Are you ready?’ shouts Julius, releasing the safety catch of the ’42.
‘You just fire your bleedin’ gun off, you brownie twit,’ screams Tiny, infuriated. ‘But don’t you ’it me, you sod, or I’ll ’ave your bleedin’ guts for bootlaces!’
Heide fires short well-directed bursts.
Tiny comes thundering. It is a mystery to us how such a mountain of a man can move so fast. He is past us like a whirlwind. As usual he is talking to himself.
‘I’m comin’ to get you, you wicked sons o’ Stalin! It’s your own fault, too!’
I jump to my feet and follow him. We climb up an almost vertical slope. Tiny throws the LMG over the brow and swings himself after it.
‘Shoot at Tiny would they, the godless bleedin’ ’ell’ounds!’ He throws two grenades one after the other. ‘We got the German God on our side!’ he roars with the full strength of his lungs. ‘I’m comin’ over an’ blow you Soviet arse’oles straight to ’ell!’ He empties the LMG in one long, rattling burst. Then he jumps forward into close combat. Skulls crack. ‘You should’ve stayed in bed, Ivan, then you might’ve kept your brains inside your head!’
The machine-gun barks viciously. Hand-grenades whirl through the air in both directions.
‘Get your bleedin’ finger out!’ rages Tiny, giving me a push that sends me flying forward.
I throw a stick-grenade and rush forward as it explodes.
Julius Heide is at our heels, with the ’42 cradled in his arms.
‘Goin’ like a bomb, ain’t it?’ screams Tiny, thrusting his combat knife into the middle of an infantryman, who comes up from a dugout with a large loaf under his arm.
I snatch the bread and push it into my belt. There is a little blood on it, but that can be cut off.
We are into the narrow connecting trench. I turn a sharp corner and a Soviet soldier comes rushing at me. Before I know what is happening I am down. A steel-shod boot is swinging at my face.
I have just time to think, this is yours, you’ve had it! Then the Russian is lifted into the air, his feet kicking at space. There is a horrible sound of bones snapping and his lifeless body falls across me.
A pair of hairy legs brush by me, and a fierce growling pierces even the noise of battle. Porta’s bear has saved me.
Two Soviet soldiers gape at the sight of the bear, with a German helmet strapped to its head, coming lolloping along the narrow communicating trench. It rears up and, catching both of them, smashes them together with supernatural force. Then it gallops off again on all fours. It has learned long ago how to take cover from all the whining and screaming pests which infest the air out here. It throws a Russian body into the air and tramples on it when it comes down.
None of us understand what has given it such a terrible hatred of khaki uniforms.
Porta is at its heels. When he peers over the parapet of the trench, the bear stays down behind him watching with interest, but as soon as he goes over the top it is right behind him. When Porta takes cover it imitates him. It does its work like a veteran infantryman, experienced in trench warfare, who never goes into an enemy dugout unless a hand-grenade has gone in first.
A shell from the heavy artillery lands on a mass grave, throwing remnants of bodies to all sides. The whole terrain is like one huge slaughter-house. Torn-off legs, heads and entrails hang in the trees, as if some madman had attempted to decorate them in preparation for a sadistic Christmas.
A whole transport section’s trucks and horses are thrown high into the air and explode like giant sparklers. Telephone poles snap like matchsticks. Wires swish through the air. A house splits from top to bottom and falls into dust. A blinding yellow flash lights up the sky. They are blowing up everything behind them. That several hundreds of their own men go with it is apparently of no consequence. Josef Stalin has never concealed the fact that a milli
on lives more or less are of no importance in the big picture. So what does it matter that several hundreds are blown to bits here in pursuance of his plan?
I take my arm well back, and throw the next hand-grenade. We have reached the outskirts of Jassy now. It looks as if the big offensive is going to succeed. The Russians are on the run everywhere, but we will soon have reached the limit of our strength. Cautiously we sneak through the deserted streets. The 104th Rifle Regiment is in the lead. They have to fight their way from house to house.
In front of us is the 6th Motorcyle Regiment and No. 2 Section is lying on the slope down to the river close by the bridge. We are waiting for the signal to move forward again, and this short break saves our lives.
‘See them?’ cries the Old Man, pointing up at the sky.
A huge formation of bombers is coming in over the town.
Fearfully we press ourselves even more tightly into the slope.
The next moment the air is filled with a dreadful howling noise. The long street with tall houses on each side is lifted into the air as if by a giant hand. For a few seconds everything seems to shimmer like a mirage. Then it falls back to earth again with a shattering roar. It is a fantastic sight. People fly across the nearby fields only to be mown down by roaring Jabo’s skimming close to the ground.
The great fleet of bombers turns towards the east. It seems to disappear into the sun. The town no longer exists. It has been converted into a rubbish tip of beams, stone, wood and iron, from which project feet, bodies, heads and arms.
A sweetish odour is carried to us on the wind.
‘What the military can do!’ says Tiny, solemnly. ‘’Alf-an-hour ago a nice neat market town, an’ now nothin’ but a bleedin’ great shit ’eap!’
Breathlessly we jump down into a trench, where young Russians lie in rows, killed by a tank salvo. Some of their faces are pushed in, flat as a piece of cardboard. Strangely enough, although they no longer have profiles, they retain their individuality of appearance, and could be recognized. The dead men are young officer cadets who have remained at their posts and have been steam-rollered over by three hundred tanks.