March Battalion (3 page)

'How much petrol have we?'

Porta considered the matter.

'Just about enough to clean Little John's trousers.'

'That's O.K., then,' said Heide, cheerfully. That should mean there's enough to take us all the way to Siberia and back.'

Alte rounded on him.

'Do you mind? This is no laughing matter. I want to know exactly how much farther we can hope to get.'

'According to the petrol gauge, no farther at all,' admitted Porta.

'Right. In that case we'll send her over the top with the other. We'll strip her of arms and ammunition, anything that might come in handy - and just remember that the machine guns are of more use than the vodka. There's another 600 kilometres between us and the German lines.'

'Nothing I like more than a nice stroll in the country,' said Porta, beaming round at us.

'What about my corns?' hissed Little John.

'I don't give a monkey's cuss for your corns!' snapped Alte, exasperated. 'If you don't want to walk you can stay here and rot.'

Heide shrugged a shoulder. .

'As far as those other bastards are concerned, we were goners from the moment we set out.' .

We unloaded the tank, Porta set the motor running, turned her towards the edge of the road and jumped out. We watched with a certain satisfaction as the heavy grey mass moved slowly into space.

'That's that,' said Steiner, hoisting one of the machine guns over his shoulder. 'Come on, you band of bleeding heroes get walking!"

'I don't feel at home in all this snow,' complained Little John. 'It's not a bit like the Reeperbahn... number 26.'

'What's so different about that?'

Little John's eyes clouded over and an expression of dreamy imbecility spread across his face.

'It's a whorehouse,' he said, blissfully.

We walked on throughout the night and the following morn ing, not calling a halt until late in the afternoon. Little John produced a packet of machorkas, of the kind doled out to the Soviet troops, and we sat about in the snow smoking them, hungrily drawing the raw smoke into our lungs, exhaling on long sighs of satisfaction. Our rumbling bellies, our aching feet, our frostbitten hands and faces and our desperate position were all temporarily forgotten in the earthly joys of the vodka bottle and a packet of fags.

On the sixth day we emerged from the mountains and were once more in the plains. Alte, Steiner and Barcelona trekked doggedly on, while the rest of us, Porta and Little John, the Legionnaire, the Professor and myself, took momentary shelter behind a jagged line of rocks and shared out, with scrupulous care, our last hunks Of bread. Sheer fatigue had robbed us all of our former alert watchfulness. When the harsh cry of 'Stoj ktol' (halt) came ringing across the plain towards us we were scarcely able to believe our ears. Or, seconds later, our eyes, when we turned in the direction of the sound and found a dog sledge moving towards us across the snow. It had come up unexpectedly, previously hidden by a fold in the ground, and it was on us before we had the wit to prepare ourselves.

The sledge drew to a flying halt a few feet away from Alte and the other two. Its only occupants were a couple of soldiers, short and stocky, wearing the green cross of the N.K.V.D. They both had skis on their feet and they both carried guns. As the sledge drew up, one of the soldiers stepped off into the snow and went towards Alte, holding out his hand imperatively while the other stood covering him. It was plain to the rest of us, now crouched down behind the rocks and furtively watching every move, that they were asking for papers. The imperious gesture was unmistakable, even on the wind-swept wastes of the Caucasus.

There seemed little we could do to help the situation; Our own comrades stood between us and the two Russians, directly in the line of fire. Impossible to shoot without hitting them. The Legionnaire, hardened by long years of fighting in the mountains and the deserts of Africa, was the only one of us capable of dealing with such a situation. Inch by painful inch, he left the cover of the rocks and dragged himself on his belly through the snow. Alte and the others were fortunately standing in a close group, the snow blanketed all sound, and the Legionnaire was able to move right up behind them before anyone was aware of his presence. At the last moment he rose up like an avenging ghost and opened fire without giving the Russians a chance to defend themselves. One, indeed, managed to turn tail and run, but Little John's knife was between his shoulders before he had gone more than a few yards.

The dog team had bounced forward at the sound of the shots. Alte fortunately managed to head them off, and caught hold of the leader's harness. The dog growled, menacingly, attempted to sink its teeth into the nearest portion of human flesh, but the Old Man clenched a firm hand round its muzzle and spoke soothingly to it.

Piled high into the sledge were spare skis and a supply of both food and arms, not to mention two kegs full of vodka. In five minutes flat we were ourselves full of vodka, and the Russian soldiers had been stripped naked, even down to their identity discs. We left them lying in the snow and set off once more on our interrupted journey, making use of both sledge and skis. Before we left the spot, the two naked bodies were already frozen solid.

We called him 'the Professor'. He was Norwegian, and at theoutbreak of war had been a student. He had voluntarily enrolled in the SS. No one was quite able to make him out. Portasaid he was a traitor and would be hanged in the Gudbrandsdalif ever he went back to Norway. Alte attempted to defend him,by pointing out that we did not know precisely what had ledhim to join up, but Porta maintained that if he were not guiltyof treachery he was guilty of stupidity, and stupidity in itselfdeserved punishment.

He was certainly naive. Having made the initial mistake of joining forces with Hitler, he then discovered to his amazement and dismay that he was by no means in agreement with certain of the methods of the S.S
. --
and was foolish enough to imagine that he could voice his opinion on the subject and get away unscathed. He was naturally transferred immediately to Camp KZ and from there to the front line, to a disciplinary regiment. Our regiment
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E
VERY
now and again, Little John would trip over his skis and fall flat on his face in the snow. And every time Little John fell flat on his face, the steppes rang from one corner to another with vicious oaths. The Professor stumbled along behind, no more skilled in the art of skiing than Little John and even less able to cope. His spectacles were iced over and he sobbed convulsively, without, I think, being aware of the fact.

'Bloody S.S. man!' jeered Porta. 'That's what you get for volunteering!'

The Professor caught his skis together and lurched forward. His spectacles fell into the snow.

Julius Heide was running alongside the dog team, encouraging them with a flow of abuse.

'Come on, you bastards! Get a flaming move on, can't you?'

The leader of the team raced neck and neck with him, curling its lips back over its teeth and from time to time, when man and dog converged upon each other, taking quick, hopeful bites in Heide's direction. Heide would then roar with rage and shake a fist.

'Lousy stinking dog! Tschorny! (Pig!) Bite me again and I'll punch you in the throat, you mangy yellow cur! If I hate one thing more than Jews, it's dogs... And if I hate one thing more than dogs, it's snow...'

Heide made an effort and for a moment outpaced the team. Then the leader bounded forward and overtook him, the other dogs straining forward in its wake, and as the sledge passed by Heide tripped and fell headlong.

'Hoha! Hoha!' bellowed Alte, cracking his long whip above the heads of the team.

The sledge moved on, swift and silent. Heide picked himself up, shook an angry fist in its wake and stepped out again with his long, rangy strides.

'I've had just about as much of this as I can take,' I confided to Porta. - 'Then drop out and die,' came the unfeeling response.

I began counting every step I took. One step must be about a metre. More or less. Perhaps a bit more... No. One step was a metre. Therefore a thousand steps were a kilometre. We covered one kilometre in three minutes. For twelve hours -twenty-four hours - forty-eight hours - I continued counting steps. I fell down, I stood up, I closed my eyes, my legs moved automatically, I lost count, I started again, I fell into reveries in the middle of it all. But I calculated that in fourteen days we should reach the German lines. Always assuming that there were still any lines to reach.

Frequently, Alte checked the direction with his compass. Far, far away to the northwest there was the Baltic; and on the far side of the Baltic were Sweden and Denmark.

I was dreaming of Sweden and Denmark when the Professor - it had to be him - gave a pitiful wail of despair and announced that one of his skis had broken. The news brought us to an immediate standstill. Alte called the dog team to a halt, slowly stepped off the sledge into the snow and pulled out his pipe. Little John sank to the ground and lay sprawling with legs falling apart. Within seconds he was covered by a thick layer of snow. He looked quite ridiculous. Porta sat propped up against the runners of the sledge, Heide lay down full length on his stomach. The rest of us flopped about in various positions. We were all too weary to talk, or even to think. The dogs had also settled down. They huddled together, nose to tail, huge furry snowballs. We stared at them, unseeing, until at length Alte removed his pipe from his mouth and shook us out of our lethargy.

'Can't stay here like this, not moving. Let's call it a day and get dug in.'

Mechanically, we began scraping up the snow with our hands, crawling on all fours like children, fashioning solid blocks of snow for our nightly igloo. Little John worked with a fury that put the rest of us to shame, producing four blocks for every one of ours. In his haste and enthusiasm he occasionally dropped and broke one of his freshly-made blocks. He then expended yet more energy in trampling it underfoot with a volley of curses directed partly at the weather, partly at 'those bleeding Russians'.

'Pat-a-cake, pat-a-cake, baker's man,' chanted Porta, lovingly kneading the crisp snow into shape. 'Has it ever occurred to you lot that the upper classes spent hundreds going winter sporting every season? And here are we, getting it all for nothing--'

'Oh, put a sock in it!' growled Heide.

'You don't know when you're well off, that's your trouble--'

'Be quiet!' The Legionnaire suddenly sat up straight, his head on one side. 'I can hear something.'

We all listened.

'Balls!' said Porta, succinctly. 'As I was saying--'

'They've heard it, too.'

The Legionnaire nodded towards the dogs. Their ears were pricked up, their hackles raised. We all listened once again, but there was no sound anywhere on the silent steppes.

'You're dreaming,' said Barcelona.

'Oh? And what about the dogs?'

'They've caught it from you. You think there's something out there, so it makes them think there's something out there. Snow madness, like water in the desert.'

The Legionnaire merely pursed his lips, picked up his gun and held it at the ready, as if he were expecting someone or something suddenly to surge up out of the whiteness. And then, disconcertingly, the dogs began to whine. They sat up, stiff and straight, their heads turned towards the west. We all stared in the same direction. The Professor frantically wiped the snow from his glasses and screwed up his short-sighted eyes.

'I can't see a thing,' he complained.

And then Alte pointed sharply ahead.

'Dogs! Get down, all of you ... Professor, stay with our team, and God help you if any of them start barking. Porta and Heide, over there with the heavy guns. Sven, you and Barcelona over on the left with the flame throwers. The rest of you, space yourselves out. Fifty metres between each man.'

We had carried out his orders almost before he had finished.: speaking, digging ourselves into the ground with weapons at the ready. The snow quickly camouflaged us.

We could all hear the approaching dogs now, although we could not yet see them. They burst suddenly into view: two long sledges, with three soldiers of the N.K.V.D. on each. They were passing within forty metres of us, going south at a spanking pace, drawn by two teams of three dogs. We heard the crack of a whip and the encouraging shouts, 'Ho aho! Ho aho!' and we lay trembling in our dugouts praying that our own dogs would not respond to the call..

A miracle: nothing happened. We held our breath to bursting point, unable to believe our luck. The two sledges passed us by, were soon out of sight and sound, and still we remained frozen in place.

'Jeesus!' breathed Heide, at last. 'That was a close shave.'

'We could have coped with 'em,' declared Little John, roundly. 'What's six Russians more or less?'

'We should have shot them,' said Barcelona. He appealed to Alte. 'We ought to have shot than. One N.K.V.D. type in the , bag is worth half a dozen of any other sort.'

Alte shrugged his shoulders and squinted up at the sky. The weather seemed to be growing worse, if that were possible. The sky was entirely hidden by the snow and the Russian wind was howling as if in sympathy with its six compatriots who had passed within so short a distance of the enemy without ever seeing them. The whole country seemed to be against us, screaming out its hatred of all invaders.

With a sudden violent burst, the wind excelled itself. We saw our equipment hurled in all directions, flung wildly about by the tempest, and with shouts of rage and despair we hurled ourselves after it, staggering in the face of the gale.

'Sodding awful country!' screamed Heide.

The Professor came stumbling back with his arms full of equipment. Tears were running down his face.

'I'm so tired. I'm so tired. I'm so--'

'Flaming shut up!' shouted Porta. 'If you'd have had any sense you'd have stayed nice and safe at home in Norway. You got yourself into this mess, didn't you? You wanted to be a hero, didn't you? Gallant little Norwegian fighting the good fight against the nasty wicked Bolsheviks? My God, old Quisling must have been proud of you!' He turned and spat into the face of the wind. 'You wait till you get back home again, that's all I say.'