March Battalion (11 page)

Half-way through the village there was hand to hand fighting; we had to turn aside and plough across a row of houses. The walls slowly crumbled beneath the impact of fifty-two tons. In one house, a bed, with two dead bodies; between them, still alive, a small girl. Porta was unable to brake in time to avoid her. No one said a word. We lied to each other by our very silence. No one spoke for the simple reason that no one had the courage to admit what he had seen. This was not war, it was murder. It was one of those things you would never talk about. The villagers had lost everything; including, in many cases their lives. An old woman sat amongst the ruins of her home, amongst a few broken sticks of wood that had once been her furniture. Her long grey hair was charred, her arms and legs covered in burns. She followed the passage of the tanks with eyes that opened wide in terror, but she made no attempt to hide from us. There was nowhere left to hide, in any case. Three civilians lay dead in the middle of the road. Further on, the bodies of a dead child and a dead soldier lay together, their blood mingling, still warm and red.

Without knowing why, we were ordered to a halt in the centre of a street. Nearby was a square, a cobbled courtyard with a well in the middle. At this well a German soldier was relieving himself. He must have been holding it in for a long time, because the operation continued indefinitely. We sat watching him in silence, as if he were performing some curious ceremony. Why did he have to pollute the supply of drinking water? There was no malice in his action. He urinated into the well because the well was there, because the well was convenient, because he didn't think; and for no other reason. When he had finished he tied up his flies and stepped back with a deep sigh of satisfaction, as if the world were now a better place.

On the other side of the well a small boy was, playing in the sand, seemingly unmoved by the war that was taking place all round him. The soldier walked over to him, said a few words, patted him on the head. He turned and saw the tanks, waved cheerfully towards us; lit a cigarette, leaned back against the well, smoking. Then he glanced over his shoulder again at the child, pulled something from his pocket and tossed it into the sand. The child clawed it up and instantly crammed it into his mouth. The soldier grinned and nodded. Next moment, with an expression of sheer amazement on his face, he slowly folded in upon himself and sank to the ground. His legs twitched, a spout of blood came from his open mouth. The child stood up and took a few uncertain, steps forward, then he, also, collapsed. None of us had heard the shell that killed them both until it actually reached the spot and exploded. It threw up a surprisingly small quantity of sand, and the dust soon settled again.

The scene was almost as before. A couple of chickens wandered out into the open and began pecking hopefully for food near the two bodies.

Under cover of the tanks, our infantry pressed forward in another attack. From innumerable holes, men in brown uniforms suddenly made their appearance. Porta leaned out of the side of the tank and waved them on. 'See you in Moscow, lads!'

A hail of bullets rained about his head and he withdrew it quickly amidst jeers from the troops.

The attack advanced, retreated, advanced again and then hesitated in the face of fierce Russian opposition. The Russian artillery now began to join in the fun. Our troops threw themselves to the ground, flat on their bellies, but still the shock of the explosions hurled them up into the air and tossed them back again like broken puppets. With my forehead pressed against the rubber surround of the observation panel. I watched the whole macabre scene as if it were a cinema show.

'Enemy anti-tank to our right,' announced Alte, suddenly.

There was a battery of them concealed behind the walls of a farm. In company with the other Tigers we advanced upon them, subjecting them to a concerted bombardment. They held out for a while, inflicting serious damage on us, but soon we were on top of them, crushing the guns beneath our heavy tracks. The crews had, fled, and we picked them off with machine gun fire. Lt. Ohlsen's tank received four direct hits simultaneously and the explosion reverberated through our own Tiger. We saw one of the crew flung up into the air in a mass of flames. Whether anyone survived, we were not then certain. Four other tanks were left as burning wrecks. Of the entire First Company, only six tanks now remained. The whole of the Fourth Company had been wiped out some time back.

Once again, we had become the hunted. We moved away from the area of immediate danger and reformed, in positions of attack, several kilometres further on, The divisional commander, General Keller, turned up in an open car and quickly restored order from a state of chaos. Reinforcements arrived from other armoured sections and we were sent off once more. The atmosphere inside the tank was suffocating. The ventilating system had ceased to function and we were all choking and red-eyed from the constant discharge each time the guns were fired. Heide was overcome by the fumes after a while and collapsed on the floor at our feet. We kicked him out of the way and left him there. We had neither the time nor the opportunity to do more for him.

Coming up on the left, along a strip of road bordered by poplars, I sighted a long column of familiar black shapes, and in spite of the heat I felt the goose pimples break out like a rash on my arms.

'T.34s!'

'That's all we wanted,,' said Alte, bitterly.

'Some party,' commented Porta. 'Anyone feel it's time to go home yet?'

'Twelve hundred metres,' murmured Alte. 'Have you got them, Sven? If you shit this one up, we've had it.'

I was too well aware of the fact for comfort. I had the leading T.34 in my sights. The image was clear. I fired, without even realizing that I had done so.

The sound of an explosion. The welcome sight of smoke and. flames. I fell backwards with the recoil of the gun, hardly able to believe my luck.

'You did it!' yelled Porta, fetching me a thump on the back. 'You bloody did it!'

The long column of T.34s had come to a confused halt. They turned their guns to the right, obviously not sure what had hit them nor where the enemy was situated. They probably took us for a battery of anti-tank guns concealed behind the poplars.

Once again I had them in my sights; once again I fired; and once again the missile found its mark. The other Tigers were joining in, we had the enemy at a disadvantage, and the air was soon thick with clouds of dense black smoke, shot through with red and yellow flames.

'That's it!' yelled Little John, suddenly. 'Firework display over!'

Alte looked at him in astonishment.

'What the hell are you talking about?'

'No more ammo,' said Little John, cheerfully. He sank on to the floor beside the unconscious Heide and gave him a contemptuous kick. 'You can wake up now, you've missed all the fun.'

We withdrew from the battle and Alte called up the refuelling wagons. By the time they had arrived and we were provided with a further stock of ammunition the T.34s had been effectively wiped out and the rest of our section were moving forward to a new destination.

We emerged from a thicket of trees and found ourselves on the edge of a plain that was black with a dense mass of assembled tanks. It was a breathtaking vision, a display of sheer force. There must have been at least two hundred Tigers gathered there, obviously called up from a number of regiments.

An S.S. man, an Obersturmfuhrer, watched us go by and spat disdainfully on the death's head painted on our tower. The death's head was the emblem of the disciplinary regiments. The Obersturmfuhrer belonged to the Second Division, of S.S. tanks, 'Das Reich', probably one of the most arrogant in the entire Germany army. By way of showing him that we were every bit as coarse as we looked, we gave him the two fingers as we passed.

The orders were to proceed towards the south-west, in the direction of Sinegorsky, where an entire division was encircled by the enemy. We were able to pick up their desperate appeals for help over the radio.

We reached them within the hour. In the absence of enemy tanks we were soon able to deal with the opposition and were given a heroes' welcome by our own troops. The only trouble was, they turned out to be members of the S.S. And as Porta said, had we known that we should never have bothered to rescue them. It was a fine point which we detested more: the S.S. or the Russians.

The order came through to reassemble and retreat from the area while the going was good. Within minutes we were on our way, but we were not long left in peace. A squadron of JL2s appeared and began dive bombing us. We promptly dispersed into the wooded areas bordering the road, but when the bombers finally departed, disappearing towards the east, they left behind them a scene of appalling carnage. To add to the misery, several divisions of Russians troops had been sighted in the distance.

Major Mercedes consulted the map, then conferred with Lt. Gaun, his ordnance officer.

'I think we'd better get the hell out of here while there's still a chance. If we hang about too long, they'll cut us off.'

'What about the wounded?'

The Major picked up his field glasses, surveyed the advancing Russians, glanced back at the map, then shook his head and climbed back into his tank.

'All those not capable of marching under their own steam will have to be abandoned.'

Lt. Gaun took a protesting step forward.

'Sir, we can't leave them here like that. You know the Russians won't take prisoners. It's certain death. We might just as well have left them in the first place.'

The Major gave him a brief look.

'It'll be certain death for a lot more of us if we don't pull out of here.'

He disappeared into the tank and it moved slowly forward. For a moment the Lieutenant stood watching it, then he turned and let his gaze travel over the various groups of wounded men sitting or lying on the ground. Admittedly they were the S.S., admittedly we loathed them, but still it was a pitiful sight. Many were in a bad way and would obviously not last long without expert attention. There had not been time to apply proper dressings to the wounds. Several men nursed shattered limbs that were nothing but raw pulpy masses of flesh covered with makeshift bandages, already soaked with blood. Here and there the sharp edge of a bone protruded, gleaming white and jagged. But on the whole, the troops were cheerful. It obviously never occurred to them that they would be left to the mercies of the oncoming Russians. They spoke longingly of the peace and quiet of a hospital room; they were already seeing visions of beautiful nurses, cool hands upon their brow, clean sheets, soft blankets; no more stinking trenches, no more fighting, no more terror. On the whole, those who had lost arms or legs were inclined to rejoice. For them, it meant permanent retirement from the nightmare of the front line trenches, a return to Germany, to their wives and their children. Those of us who had overheard the Major looked sympathetically upon Lt. Gaun and did not envy him his task. The orders for departure were given. Ponderously the big tanks moved off, each covered in as many soldiers as could find a foothold. It took a moment for those left behind to accept the truth. When they did so, the reaction was worse than any battle I had yet known. Screams of rage and terror mingled with desperate cries of appeal. Supplicating hands clawed unbelievingly at those who had been lucky enough to find a position on the outside of a tank. Men with blood pouring from open wounds came tottering towards us, shrieking with pain and with sheer incredulity at this thing we were doing to them. Some crawled, some used each other as crutches. Others just lay and stared, with eyes that were vacant and glassy. Three officers hurled themselves into the path of an oncoming tank and were instantly crushed. It was our final farewell to thousands of our own wounded. That was all the thanks you could expect in wartime. Heil Hitler and try to die like a hero.

For us, it was a race against time. On both sides the Russian tanks were closing in on us in an attempt to cut off our means of retreat. Their shells rained down upon us. The sky was full of flak and tracer, and over and above everything else we slowly became aware of the droning of enemy aircraft.

They came screaming at us from out of the clouds. We barely had time to take note of them before the entire tank was lifted off the ground, as if by some unseen excavator, thoroughly pounded and then flung back again with a jolt that jarred every bone in our bodies.

One of the enemy bombers had found its mark: a bomb had exploded just under our tower. It was a miracle that the tank itself did not explode. We were thrown up to the ceiling, back to the floor, one on top of another. Wires and pipes were ripped away, the gun was torn bodily from its mountings, pieces of glass embedded themselves in our flesh. The world became a whirling mass of bombs, earth, rocks, steel, all performing some crazy flying dance through the air.

The Jabos came screaming back from another direction. For the men outside, it must have been wholesale slaughter. It was hellish enough inside. Trapped in a pitch black hole, unable to see, unable to breathe, our eyes and throats burning with the acrid vapours that swirled round us. There was an almost overwhelming urge to burst out into the sea of bombs and meet death head on rather than sit waiting for it in the dark, expecting at any moment to be blown into a million pieces.

But when, at last, it was all over, we none of us moved or spoke. The sudden silence was strange and unnerving. It seemed impossible that we should be still living. For a long time we were scared to move, scared to see what horrors lay in wait outside.

We emerged slowly, almost reluctantly, into the fresh air. Of those who had clung to the outside of the tanks, scarcely a man remained alive. Many of the tanks themselves were mere smouldering heaps of wreckage. From those that remained, grimy, unrecognizable figures were painfully pulling themselves into the open. We saw a man come crawling out of a tangled pile of steel with blood pouring from a wound in his throat. We saw another with half his face burnt away, the charred flesh hanging in ribbons. Little John's right hand had been split open, Porta had a hole the size of a fist in his forehead. The Russian bombers had done their work well. It was a wholesale massacre.