Tiny nudges the commissar again, and nods encouragingly.
‘Real comrades o’yours, ain’t they?’
The Old Man holds up a magnetic mine. The Legionnaire nods his understanding and sneaks over to the nearest tank. Porta and I are to take care of the two which arrived last. I am afraid of the Humber and Porta takes it. Heide crawls towards the Landsverk.
The Old Man disappears into the thick brambles with the rest of the section.
I am only two yards away from the rearmost BA-64. All the doors are wide open. As long as I get to it unseen there will be no problem in putting the mine through one of the open doors.
The Legionnaire is over by the tracks of his tank. In two jumps I get to mine and throw the charge through the trap.
The explosion is terrible. Blast throws me through the air and bangs me up against a large tree. A torn-off tank turret buries itself in the ground beside me.
Half a man is smeared across it. For a few seconds I lose consciousness.
Machine-guns chatter all around me. The section opens fire at the four amazed commanders standing by the trucks. They disappear in a sea of flame. It was a good idea of Porta’s to soak the trucks in petrol.
‘See,’ says Tiny exultingly to the commissar, as we stand by the glowing wrecks. ‘Our German God looks after us all right, don’t ’e?’
‘You’ll never make it,’ snarls the commissar, stubbornly. ‘You’ve still got to cross the Pripjet Marshes!’
‘We’ll manage,’ boasts Porta. ‘We got our training with the special swamp trolls commando.’
‘Idiot,’ sneers the commissar. His Saxon dialect irritates us enormously.
Gregor advises him to learn proper German before he is dragged in front of a court-martial.
‘All Saxons are traitors,’ considers Heide, striking out at the commissar, who ducks the blow.
‘Leave him be,’ orders the Old Man. ‘You can volunteer for the execution squad when the court-martial has sentenced him.
‘And you call that justice?’ jeers the commissar. ‘Sentence a man before his case has even begun!’
‘Yes, and that kind of justice we learnt from you Soviet pigs,’ shouts Buffalo, making an easily-understood sign with his finger across his throat.
We slide down the steep slopes and cross the bottom of the ravine.
The Old Man chases us hard. He wants us as far away from the smashed armour as possible. He feels sure they have kept in continual radio contact with their parent unit.
We make camp when darkness falls, and sleep through the night and most of the next day. In the distance we can hear security units combing the woods.
The commissar listens, his eyes wide. He is like everyone else and clutches at the slightest hope. He will not accept the fact that we will kill him before we are captured, even though Tiny constantly lets him sniff at his long, pointed combat knife.
Everything superfluous is jettisoned so that we can move faster. The darkness is so thick that we can only see a few inches in front of us. The moss we walk on absorbs every sound. Where we are marching all is silence. Not even the call of a bird, nor the croak of a frog.
I am afraid of having lost the others and stop for a moment. Buffalo runs into me, and the machine-gun mounting.
‘What the hell are you standin’ here for, boy?’ he whispers angrily, rubbing himself. ‘Throw that goddam thing away!’
The Old Man ordered me to bring it along,’ I whisper back.
‘He’s a goddam sadist,’ says Buffalo.
We move along silently over the thick moss. We feel as if we are walking on heavy rubber. Suddenly I run into the back of a man.
‘Mushyk sstarashyt borof22!’ he shouts, irritably.
Without a word I push my combat knife up into his back. He makes a rattling noise and collapses. I stab him again. He must not, above all, be allowed to alarm the other sentries who must be posted all about us.
‘Ivan!’ I whisper in horror to Gregor, who is just behind me.
There is no doubt that the Russian sentry thought I was a comrade stationed close by.
We lie, still as mice, beside the body. Warm blood runs across my hands. ‘Alex, what’s the matter?’ comes a nervous voice from the darkness.
Gregor disappears in under the leaves. There is a short frightened cry. Then everything is quiet again.
Gregor has cut his throat.
‘Filthy job,’ he whispers, wiping the combat knife on his trousers. ‘Must’ve had hundreds of gallons of blood in him!’
‘Alex, Pjotr, keep your cursed mouths shut!’ roars a hoarse voice from the brush. ‘You know damn well those German swine are coming this way! When we’ve caught ’em you two stupid bastards can shout all you want!’
‘Get him!’ orders the Old Man.
Porta and the Legionnaire are swallowed up by the darkness.;
Shortly after a horrified scream rings through the forest. Another one. It dies away in a long gurgle.
The section drops flat and holds its breath.
‘Those two have sodded it up,’ snarls the Old Man, viciously.
‘Probably cut ’is prick off first,’ Tiny grins, hollowly.
‘He saw us before we could finish him,’ explains Porta, emerging from the brush. ‘Let’s get moving! They’ll have heard that howl back in Moscow!’
‘People ought to learn ’ow to control themselves when they’re bein’ killed,’ declares Tiny aloud.
‘You’ll never get through,’ states the commissar, maliciously.
‘If you don’t keep your mouth shut, I’ll personally tear the fucking tongue out of it,’ says Porta, clenching his teeth.
‘Get your fingers out and get going!’ commands the Old Man. ‘The whole forest must’ve been alarmed by that scream!’
We balance our way across a narrow bridge. Buffalo, of course, falls in with an enormous splash, and when Tiny goes to help him out he falls in too. The current in the river is very strong and we have a lot of trouble pulling them out again. Tiny gets away from us twice. He rushes at Buffalo when we finally haul him on to dry land.
‘You did that on bleedin’ purpose,’ he roars in a voice that could be heard a mile away.
The Legionnaire has to put him out with a chop from the side of his hand. When Tiny is in that mood it is the only thing to do with him. Buffalo would be wise to keep his distance for some time. Tiny could easily get the idea of slipping a knife into his back.
At last we are over on the other side. The ground in the forest is easier to walk on. Suddenly a light flames in front of us. The Old Man stops as if he had run into a wall. The flame shows again and we catch a glimpse of a pale face under a Russian helmet.
There is a heavy thud and a faint groan. The Russian has been cured pf the smoking habit for ever.
The section joins up again in a dip close to the road.
The Old Man is obviously excited. He keeps opening the lid of his pipe and smacking it shut again, a habit he has when nervous.
‘Sergei, idisodar23!’ a guttural voice comes suddenly from the other side. ‘Those German dogs aren’t coming this way anyway!’
‘Don’t you be too sure,’ comes from further down the road. ‘Those grey-green chaps are devils! You can’t be sure of anything with them. I wish the Holy Mother of Kazan’d give ’em all a dose of the plague!’
‘Tin bleedin’ soldiers! Bags o’ shit tied up in the middle!’ growls Tiny, contemptuously. ‘Asleep on bleedin’ duty, eh! Ought to be bleedin’ court-martialled. Poor bleedin’ Stalin, ’avin’ to make do with shit like that!’
‘Damnation!’ The Old Man curses. ‘If we go back they’ll open up on us, and yet we can’t stay here. He strokes his thin thoughtfully. ‘Let’s go forward as if we were their own lot. We’ve got to surprise ’em and take ’em without noise.’
‘There can’t be many of them,’ whispers Heide, ‘or we’d’ve heard them.’
Heide is right. When soldiers sit waiting for something it is impos
sible to avoid a certain amount of noise. A couple of them whispering, weapons knocking against one another, somebody coughing. Ordinary people would not call these things noise, but they are more than enough to give warning to an experienced fighting group.
Cautiously we sneak across the road one at a time with Mpi’s at the ready. An Mpi goes off close behind me. It is as if my head explodes. Porta is firing only a few inches from my ear.;
A scream of horror cuts through the noise.
From the darkness Mpi’s spit blue flame. The angry burst of firing lasts only a few minutes, then a paralysing silence sinks down on the forest. It is as if the night were listening at full stretch after the roar of the shots.; We hear Tiny’s powerful voice:
‘All clear! Four ’eathens despatched onwards!’
Tango is dead. The first burst from the Mpi’s tore his chest apart. It saved the Old Man, who was right behind him.
We stand for a moment in silence by his bloody form.
‘He’s had his last tango, now,’ says Porta, closing the corpse’s eyes.
‘An’ ’e promised to learn me the tango. It’s the best cunt dance there is, I’ve ’eard,’ says Tiny, laying Tango’s arms across his bullet-torn chest.
Heide empties Tango’s pockets and removes his identity discs. Personal belongings go to the family. There is not much. Line soldiers are almost always poor: their only harvest the fruits of sorrow and death.
To the east, in the direction of Rozany, a flare goes up, colouring the sky a bloody red. It is so far away we cannot hear the noise of the burst.
Along the dirt road two half-tracks come rattling. Their searchlights are directed towards the edges of the road.
Silently we drop down and wait until they have passed us. We can see the infantrymen clearly, standing up with their guns at the ready.
This kind of job makes me nervous,’ sighs Porta, stuffing a handful of berries into his mouth. A picnic like this and you know what a wolf feels like with a party of humans with guns pissing up its backside!’
‘Nerves can drive you round the bend,’ explains Tiny, seriously. ‘I ’ad it from a psychopath doctor I ’elped to execute at Torgau. ’E said it was somethin’ called insulin an’ diabetics as go flyin’ up in a bloke’s bonce when ’e gets frightened.’
‘If that’s right then we’ve all had diabetes for years without knowing it,’ considers Gregor, ‘I couldn’t count the number of times I’ve been close to dying of fright.’
Late in the morning we reach the bend of the Horyn but we have to wait until it gets dark before we can risk making the crossing. The river is very broad. It takes us at least twenty minutes to row across, putting our backs into it.
The rubber boat is where we left it. We spread it out and make it ready for inflation. We lie down under the thick bushes and doze. In between we throw dice and consume a few tins of preserves.
Porta wants to brew up coffee but the Old Man forbids it. Time goes slowly when you have to lie around waiting for darkness. We dare not move about much for fear of hidden sentries along the river. The terrain looks bare and deserted but an entire battalion could hide in it. A commando behind the enemy lines cannot permit itself to become careless for a second.
Tiny lifts his head suddenly, listening.
‘What’s up?’ asks the Old Man, uneasily, raising himself on to his elbows.
There’s a ’ole bleedin’ flock of ’eathens comin’ this way,’ mumbles Tiny, staring down the road. ‘At least a bleedin’ company of ’em, an’ comin’ as if Jesus was whippin’ ’em out o’ the bleedin’ Temple!’
‘Are you sure?’ asks Heide, doubtfully, taking a grip on the LMG.
‘Course I’m bleedin’ sure,’ answers Tiny sullenly. ‘Ever know me an’ my bleedin’ ears to be wrong?’
The rest of us can hear it now. A good-sized column is on its way, heading straight for us.
‘Scatter!’ orders the Old Man, sharply. ‘Camouflage yourselves with leaves and boughs and nobody lets off a shot till I give the signal!’
We can hear the rattle of weapons clearly now. Water-bottles bang against gas-mask containers. The sounds which identify a column on the march.
Sweat pours down my face. My teeth chatter like castanets,: We have no chance at all if they find us.
‘Kamppanjija, pjenje!’24
Just opposite us they begin to sing:
Ty obiciala,
mene; u wik lubyty,
ni s kim ne znatys,
y iosich curatys
Idla meiie syty25
When the singing company has passed us, the Old Man orders the Legionnaire to find out whether the sentries along the river bank have been strengthened.
25. You have promised me
Ever to love me;
Never to love another;
To turn from any other;
To live for me alone!
Quickly he shrugs his greatcoat off, lays aside all weapons, pushes his combat knife into his boot and disappears silently into the reeds. The better part of two hours passes, and we have begun to wonder whether the Russians have caught him when he arrives back, breathlessly.
‘Thirty yards down the bank there is a fool snoring away in a hole,’ he tells us, spitting into the river. ‘A little further along another one like him. Also snoring! I made a detour into the forest and almost fell over a third one, with an LMG. He deserved to have it stolen from him. He was snoring so hard you could hear him at a great distance. Merde, alors, I was so close to him that even a deaf Swede could have heard me!’
‘Soldiers, they call ’em,’ Tiny scolds contemptuously. ‘Snorin’ on bleedin’ guard! They deserve to ’ave their bleedin’ throats cut, they do!’
‘Finish ’em off,’ orders the Old Man.
Twenty minutes later the sentries are dead. Strangling-wires are quick and quiet!
Cautiously we push the boat out. The current is so strong that it carries us a good way down with it.
A hoarse shout comes from the opposite bank.
‘Stoi kto!’26
An Mpi cracks sharply. The marksman shows up clearly against the sandy bank.
Porta kills him with a short burst. We are on our way out of the boat when shouts come from the bank we have left.
‘Germanski, idisodar! A dull thump sounds immediately afterwards, and a flare swishes up into the night sky. The river and both banks turn blood-red.
We take cover behind the boat until the flare goes out, but soon after a signal rocket spreads green and red stars across the heavens.
Further over behind the woods a whole series of flares go up.
‘What the hell are they up to?’ mumbles Porta, scared, gazing at the rain of light from a signal rocket.
We deflate the boat quickly and pack it up. We have to take it with us to get over the Slutsch. Without a boat we could never make it.
The commissar tries to make a run for it, but Porta catches up with him and throws him to the ground. The noose is tightened again round his neck. We had loosened it a little, but here is proof again that one must never slacken one’s watchfulness in battle.
‘If I was him I’d sooner get knocked off here,’ says Buffalo. ‘When the SD get hold of him they’ll boil him alive in his own goddam grease!’
‘We’ve got our orders,’ says the Old Man, shortly. ‘And we’re going to carry them out. Afterwards they can do what they like with him. He had no mercy on Oberleutnant Strick and the two others!’
We cross the Slutsch without trouble, and continue rapidly on through the forest after destroying the boat.
During the night we reach the edge of the marshes. The Old Man orders a message sent to Regimental HQ.
Heide makes the transmitter ready. The call signal gets through quickly. They expect us back in the course of the next twenty-four hours.
‘They must have security guards out here, bien sûr que si,’ says the Legionnaire, looking searchingly at the thick forest of reeds.
‘No doubt ab
out it,’ answers the Old Man, curtly. ‘Keep your distancé, damn you! How many times do I have to tell you?’
Porta is in the lead as usual, together with the bear. Suddenly he lifts his hand, signalling us to stop.
Without a word the section drops to the marshy ground. Frogs croak deafeningly. Fish leap in the muddy-green water. In the distance a machine-gun chatters. We are getting closer to the front-line.
‘Stoi kto, who goes there?’ comes a harsh shout in front of us.
‘Where the devil is he?’ whispers Porta, holding on tightly to the bear, which shows its teeth, the fur on its neck lifting.
‘Give the word! Who goes?!
‘Pal with the pox from Leningrad,’ shouts Porta, merrily, in Russian.
‘Password!’ comes stubbornly from the heavy brush.
‘I forget, mate, what about Job tvojemadft’ Porta laughs loudly.
‘What’s your unit, you bent twatt?’
Tanks, lover,’ shouts Porta so that it rings through the forest.
‘Regiment?’
‘87th Guards,’ Porta laughs, unworriedly.
‘Commander’s name?’
‘Colonel Bollockbrain,’ Porta shouts back. ‘He’s never had the politeness, dadja, to introduce himself to me!’
‘Get up you Leningrad miscarriage, you talk like a Finnish Fascist! Scratch at the fucking sky or I’ll put one through you!’
Porta gets up, leaning his Mpi on the ground. To fire from where he is standing would be certain suicide.
‘Quiet!’ he whispers to Rasputin. ‘Still! Down, down!’
The bear understands him and presses itself flat to the ground behind the stone.
‘Come forward, you crazy bastard,’ shouts the invisible sentry.
Porta goes two paces forward, slowly.
‘Alexis, get your arse down here,’ yells the sentry. ‘Here’s a twitt of a tankman from your regiment doesn’t even know what his CO’s name is. You must know him!’
Porta stays where he is with his hands above his head.
An Mpi chatters. Who fired the Old Man never finds out.
Porta drops, like lightning, where he stands.
‘Germanski, Germanski,’ come hysterical screams from all around us, and a storm of firing breaks loose.