Devils with Wings (14 page)

He gritted his teeth, pushed his left foot forward and out and pushed off with his right leg and hit the plank below before he had even registered the leap. He suspected that his eyes might have even been closed.

The relief was palpable and he could feel his limbs trembling as he continued on the rest of the trapeze seeing the grinning Erich and Helmut waiting for him at the bottom. Even the instructors gave him a reluctant well done. He had passed this test; he was one step closer to his precious eagle’s wings.

It was day fifteen; today they had gone through the second fear of heights test for new recruits. Each recruit had to jump into a tank of water from a fifteen metre high tower. All passed, generally the case if they had successfully completed the trapeze course the previous day.

The next day was spent on a long cross-country run followed by the obstacle course again. They were tested against the clock and against each other, again and again. Platoon competitions were fierce and extracted their innate aggression to the full.

Up until now Paul and Erich had only received training in using hand grenades and the Wehrmacht’s standard Mauser Gew 98 rifle and the Kar 98 carbine, both typical bolt action rifles with a five-round box magazine. Their knowledge of weapons had to be extensive and intuitive. Behind enemy lines, isolated, they would come to depend on this knowledge.

Now they were to learn a whole new range of weapons, such as pistols, machine guns, such as the MG34, sub-machine guns, mortars and mines.

Day after day, all they had to look forward to was arduous physical training, morning, noon and night, a toughening process tailored to the light Infantry role that the Fallschirmjager were to fulfil. Physical exercise and drill on the square occupied much of the day during the early weeks. Bayonet practice, unarmed combat sessions, weapons instruction, the training and testing was relentless.

Other tests were to follow, some designed to test leadership qualities, looking for inherent initiative and imagination. Manual skills such as field stripping and re-assembling weapons again and again, as ever against the clock and sometimes blindfolded. The worst of the training Paul hated was the written and oral tests, and exams on subjects as various as military law and National socialist history and doctrine.

Their training programme progressed from squad level tactics through to Platoon and Company level exercises. As Officers, Paul, Erich, Curt and Helmut were pushed and tested even harder than the rest. Everything they did, they were expected to do it better and faster than the rest of the platoon. This added a new dimension to the pressure they were already under.

Eventually they would tackle such obstacles as replica fortifications with lashings of real barbed wire and dummy minefields.

The real test, the test that they all feared the most, more so than even the dreaded obstacle course, the one that caused most of the recruits to be RTU’d (Returned to Unit), was the interview with the Commandant who they first saw on day one. His probing questions were designed to tease out the reasons for a recruit wanting to join the Fallschirmjager and test their suitability to be part of this talented unit.

Finally, back in their barrack room, lying exhausted on their beds, the three soldiers swapped stories of the painful day they had experienced.

Erich had caught his combat trousers on the barbs while doing the leopard crawl, and was now making repairs.

Helmut came into their room, throwing himself down onto his bed completely burnt out. He had just completed, for the fourth day in a row, a punishment for talking in the ranks. The latest one was for grumbling about his hunger pangs, again. For half an hour, he had been running on the spot with his rifle held above his head, which was excruciatingly painful after only a few minutes. Then he would have to run a few yards, again with his rifle held aloft, dropping to the floor in the prone position, back up again and continue to run on the spot.

Curt was just staring into space, his mind elsewhere other than the barrack room.

Paul rolled over in his bunk and looked at him.

“Are you ok Curt?”

“My needle’s broken, damn it,” cursed Erich from across the other side of the room.

“Can you throw me your sewing kit Paul?”

Paul sat up and rummaged through his kit bag and finding his ‘housewife’ he tossed it over to Erich who continued at his attempt to make a repair.

“Just tired,” responded Curt to Paul’s question.

“We’re all tired.”

“I know, but I can hardly move. How am I going to get out of bed tomorrow?”

“A good night’s rest and you will feel like a new man tomorrow,” Paul said encouragingly.

“That’s if they allow us a full night,” responded Curt despondently.

The last four nights they had been pulled from their beds to parade in front of Oberleutnant Nagel. They looked dog tired and untidy compared to the immaculate turn out of the Oberleutnant. He had participated in all of their activities, completing some of the tasks twice over, due to him having to run backwards and forwards, encouraging the recruits to achieve their best endeavours. He seemed tireless to Paul and his friends.

“It will be ok Curt old buddy,” joined in Erich, “Just do what I do. Pretend you are sleep-walking, go through the motions and when you return you will be asleep as soon as your head hits the pillow.”

“I’ll give it a try,” Curt replied tentatively, not sure of the validity of the advice.

Helmut, as usual, was describing the last Wiener Schnitzel he had eaten back home, at the same scoffing a biscuit he had acquired from somewhere; constantly being told to shut up by the others whose stomachs were also growling with hunger. But all of them would have probably been too fatigued to rise off their beds to eat anyway.

“As if the training wasn’t harsh enough,” exclaimed Helmut, still panting on the bed. That was the last they heard from him that night, he was asleep before he had taken a breath after his pronouncement.

At that point the lights were switched off.

“Shit!” exclaimed Erich, “I’ve just stabbed my bloody finger! I’ll just have to make do and hope it doesn’t fall to pieces tomorrow,” he said disgustedly, throwing his trousers over the end of the bed.

He looked around. No one was listening; they were all asleep, grabbing their three hours a night. Seconds later Erich was in the same state of sleep as his comrades.

CHAPTER TEN

The Tank was a Panzer Mark III. It was loud, big and spewed out smoke and fumes as the driver revved the engine.

“This,” shouted the Feldwebel, “is a panzer light tank. It weighs over twenty tonnes, carries a thirty-seven millimetre gun and can hit a top speed of forty kilometres an hour. Today, you are going to learn how not to fear it, you will learn to conquer your fear.”

The Feld indicated to the tank Commander situated in the turret, his upper body in clear view. The tank Commander looked down into the body of the tank and spoke to the unseen driver.

The armoured vehicle’s engine roared, its steel tracks scraping on the road, ripping up the tarmac as they turned the armoured vehicle around a full one hundred and eighty degrees. The tank moved away from them, stopping at a distance of about three hundred metres.

It swung back round to face them, the engine roaring even louder as the monster jerked forward, slowly gathering speed. Its tracks clanked on the hardened ground, the sound getting louder as it gained speed and got closer to the watching trainee paratroopers.

The tank jerked in kangaroo fashion as the driver took the armoured vehicle through its gears, pushing it to go ever faster. By the time it reached the recruits, it shot passed at over thirty kilometres an hour, covering them in a film of dust. The tank came to a halt some one hundred metres further along, its glacis dipping and its back end rearing up on its suspension as the driver expertly brought it to a halt.

“Right gentlemen, it is now your turn to perform. I want you in troops of ten, to lie down head to toe, in a line over there,” the Feldwebel pointed to the narrow track in front of them. “Make sure you keep your legs together and your arms by your side.”

Erich and Paul were in the first group of ten soldiers to lie down. Paul lay with his head by Erich’s feet and his feet touching the head of Franz, another recruit he had come to know. He squeezed his legs together so tightly that he almost lost feeling in them and his arms became a part of his body.

The revving of the tank’s engine could be heard as it lumbered slowly towards the first soldier in line. Paul could hear it getting closer and closer, sweat starting to pour down his face and pool on his chest as his racing heart attempted to cope with the fear that was welling up inside of him. The adrenaline added to the fear, pushing his body to fight or flight, wanting him to get up and run for his life. But that he could not and would not do, he was in this for the long run.

The tank was just starting to move over the first recruit next to Erich. There was a scream, the fear obvious in the outcry, but the recruit remained where he was, frozen to the spot, the fear of getting up in front of the moving monster and then facing his comrades and instructors proved to have the greater dread.

“I don’t like this!” shouted Erich, using his voice to make contact with Paul to help him control his fear.

The tank slowly rolled over Erich, the huge mass covering him completely and Paul could sense the shadow of the tank’s glacis approaching him.

Now it was Paul’s turn, the ground vibrating beneath him, shaking him and making his hair stand on end from fear. A dark shadow was cast over his face and a dark, blue tinted cloud of diesel fumes washed over him, evading every part of his nostrils, mouth and lungs. The tang of the diesel fumes bitter on his tongue. The light disappeared and he was in complete darkness.

The noise was deafening, the roar of the engine and the clatter of the bogey wheels and tracks either side of his face. His face was centimetres away from the dark grey underbelly of this twenty tonne killing machine. The very tracks that were within centimetres of him now, had probably crushed an enemy as they were driven under and aside, as it relentlessly pushed its way forward to victory. Just by raising his hand in front of his face he would be able to touch its black underbelly.

The rear of the tank moved slowly past him, billowing dust trailing behind, choking Paul even more than the smoke and fumes.

The tank completed its run and Paul and the rest of the troop were ordered up and back into formation to watch the next victims. They were shaking and their limbs trembled and they all chattered nervously, until silenced by their instructors.

This was something none of them would forget for a very long time.

Their arduous training continued into week three, with a twenty-five kilometre forced march, with full packs and equipment that stretched them all.

Many of them afterwards had blisters that had to be treated with iodine and powder. That experience was almost as excruciating as the pain of walking on burst blisters and skinned feet. Binding them tightly after the treatment was the only way to ensure that they could get through the next day and the day after that.

Their last session of the day was to prepare for their first night time exercise, after that they were free to eat. Every day, after a full day’s training, they fell into their bunks exhausted.

Day twenty-two was a full day on the range and although hard work it gave them a well needed break from runs and forced marches. Although they had to march three kilometres to the range, it was a breeze after what they had been through.

Weapons training was their favourite activity; it helped to make them feel like real soldiers, not just cannon fodder for the crippling assault course.

Paul and Helmut consistently scored over thirty-six hits out of a possible score of forty, at one hundred metres.

Erich struggled to get over thirty five, but excelled with the heavy machine gun.

They were frequently reminded of their fifth commandment, ‘The most precious thing in the presence of the foe is ammunition. He, who shoots uselessly, merely to comfort himself, is a man of straw who merits not the title of parachutist.’