The Bloody Road to Death (36 page)

‘
Now
you tell us. And us on Demon Heights,’ wails Porta.

The cook’s runners roll down into the trench, shaking with
shock. Crossing the open stretch two of them have been hit. Three of the containers have been cut open, and half the rations have been lost.

‘You twits’ve been stuck up one another’s arsehole making a lovely target for the bloody heathen, I suppose!’ Porta scolds them furiously.
Food
has been wasted.

‘Why the bleedin’ ’ell couldn’t you ’ave stuck your fingers in the ’oles, then we’d at least’ve got somethin’ to eat,’ snarls Tiny, throwing a helmet at the nearest runner.

Everybody is angry at the food having been lost. The bear almost takes an arm off one of the cooks. Our section gets by, thanks to Porta who has surrounded some Russian tinned rations. They are half-rotten but still eatable. Only Gregor complains, but he has been used to general officer’s rations.

‘You’d have to have been in
their
bloody Army a long time to eat
that
shit,’ he shouts, disgustedly, throwing a tin far out into no-man’s-land.

The bear has the best of it. Porta has got hold of half a pail of honey. Two bone-dry army loaves are broken up and mixed with it. The bear gets outside it in record time.

There must be something big coming up. A stream of replacements are coming in from Germany. Since 1939 the regiment has never been so close to being up to strength, but the replacements are poor stuff. Much too young or much too old and with only sketchy training. There are even invalids amongst them. A stiff leg is no handicap any more. The German Army is mechanized, so what? Who
needs
two legs?

In the first hour three of the replacements blow themselves to bits in our own minefields. They are blown up so effectively that nobody can be bothered to look for the pieces of their bodies. The others sit down in the dugouts paralysed with fright. They want to go home, they say.

‘Us too go home!’ laughs Porta. ‘It’s thataway!’ he points a thumb to the west. ‘But we’re not going. We’re staying here. Here we
know
who the enemy is. Back there they’ve got watchdogs ready to string people up on a branch of the nearest tree!’

When the mortar fire begins, as usual at around five o’clock, the rookies go mad and begin to bang their heads into the walls of the dugouts. We have to knock them unconscious. Just at
present things are comparatively quiet. The mortars they only put on for the sake of appearances. We reply with grenades merely to hear the noise of them. In our opinion we’re having a real holiday. We can sit peacefully in the bottom of the trench enjoying the sunshine. We are having beautiful autumn weather. Yesterday three hares came right to the edge of our trench and looked at us. Tiny ran one of them down. Not even Ivan’s snipers shot at him during that fantastic race across no-man’s-land. When he holds it up proudly by the ears a cheer goes up from both sides of the line and steel helmets whirl into the air. It’s not every foot-slogger who can run down a hare. So we are having roast hare for dinner today. Porta makes the sauce, and potato mash with diced pork, and we feel like millionaires.

Tiny has got hold of some cigars. He went past the office where they had been careless enough to leave a window open, and commandeered a whole box which had been left on the sill. We know that they are the property of Hauptmann von Pader. This makes them taste twice as good.

There is a nasty rumbling in the distance. They’re dropping at least fifteen miles away but still the ground trembles where we are.

The good weather continues, but the whole front seems strangely nervous and sniping increases. In one day there have been nine shot through the head in our company alone.

Porta holds up a helmet and immediately there is a hole in it, but Tiny gets the sniper.

When we pass through the open machine-gun posts we have to move like lightning. The Siberian snipers are trained in on these spots, and even though we have warned the rookies they still get two of them in the course of the afternoon. This kind of thing annoys us. It seems so unnecessary. A bayonet in you during an attack we can understand, but this sniping business is damnable.

Hauptmann von Pader is sitting half-dead with fear down in the company deep shelter. Whenever a shell goes off close by he throws himself flat on the ground with his hands over his ears. We regard him with contempt. A tough and ruthless commander we can respect, but not a coward. Oberst Hinka has
sent for him twice, but von Pader sends back the excuse that the artillery fire is too heavy for him to be able to get through to Regimental HQ. The orderly who tells us this almost dies laughing. He is Oberst Hinka’s personal Obergefreiter Müller, called Little Jesus because he
looks
like Jesus. Together with a battalion orderly he has picked a whole pail of raspberries on the way from Regimental HQ to the front line.

‘It’s that peaceful you could set up a bloody knocker out there!’

‘Isn’t the oberst doing his nut about this yellow bastard not comin’ runnin’ when he sends for him?’ asks Barcelona, wonderingly.

‘He’s hoppin’ bloody mad, he is,’ laughs Little Jesus, ’but this von Pader shit has got such good connections in Admiral Schröder Strasse that he can shit on obersts both before and after breakfast.’

Tiny loves the early mornings. He is always first up. We live like the best families on the French Riviera, with coffee and toast every morning. We go hunting too, but not often with any luck. The war has taught the game a few things, speeded the animals up, but we do manage to hit a wild boar. We roast it and the aroma wafts along the whole front. Two of the Ivans run over to us. They have cucumbers with them.

All night long we can hear motors roaring over on the other side. They are getting ready for something. If they mount an attack with tanks we’ll be finished. Our spotting planes have reported long columns on the move, some with up to 200 tanks. They are the new Josef Stalin tanks.

Panzerfausts
⁴
are issued, a suicide weapon. They look very effective in the propaganda films, but the reality is quite otherwise. If you ever hit a tank with one you can be dead certain of getting smashed by the next tank. In most cases the rocket glances off, and before you get the chance to load again you’re getting mixed up with the tank’s tracks. But, by now, we’ve been so long at the front we don’t worry about what’s going to happen an hour from now.

Tiny leans up against the assault ladder and sings to the music of Porta’s piccolo:

Der Sieg ging an uns vorbei,
verbrannte uns die Finger.
Zum Todesschmaus der Wodka fliesst,
doch niemand ist betrunken . . .
⁵

A machine-gun coughs long and viciously. The trench mortars spit out their bombs.

Porta takes the piccolo from his lips and looks into the periscope.

‘Sounds as if they’ve got something up their sleeves for us,’ he says, thoughtfully.

‘Let’s send ’em a couple o’ callin’ cards,’ suggests Tiny, ’to stop ’em gettin’ too bleedin’ big in the bonce. They’ve just got replacements in over there. Pissy bleedin’ Guards, from Moscow, sent out to get a whiff o’ powder ’fore it’s too late. You’ve all seen ’em. Collar an’ tie bleeders, who’re frightened they might lose the crease in their trousers and ain’t tried shit-tin’ their pants yet.’ He screws the grenade cup on his rifle and sends a couple over. The Maxim goes silent.

Tiny laughs hollowly, lies back against the ladder again and continues his song:

Aufs Wohl ist erster Trunk,
und darauf folgt der zweite,
der fünfte und der zehnte, – dann
der bittere, der Abschiedsschluck. . .
⁶

The expected attack does not develop. The days go by and the good weather continues. None of us dare think of the winter, the third Russian winter. No one who has not been through a Russian winter in the trenches can know what winter really is. But now the sun is shining and hares and rabbits gambol behind the front line.

Porta and Tiny get hold of an electric hailer and amuse themselves with the Russians.

‘
Russki tovaritsch
! roars Porta, so that it echoes along the front. ‘We know you have to use gravel to wipe your arseholes dry with! Come over to us, an’ we’ll show you how to polish ’em with ni-i-i-ce, so-o-o-oft, shit’ouse paper!’

‘Fritz! Fritz, your old sausage women are getting sausages stuffed up the other end from the sausage boys at home,’ comes back from the other side.

That’s
great
! Tiny howls back happily. They’ll be well greased for us lot when we get back to ’em!’

‘Ivan you crazy
alik
,
⁷
what
do
you think the boys at home are doin’ while you dummies are fartin’ about here?’ shouts Porta. ‘Why, they’re fuckin’ your bandy-legged old Tartar mares all to bits. There’ll only be bones an’ hair left of it when
you
get back!’

An angry burst of machine-gun fire is the answer.

‘Ivan, Ivan, ’ow can we
take
you anywhere?’ Tiny shouts reproachfully. ‘Don’t bite the ’and that’s feedin’ you good advice!’

For hours they continue, tirelessly, without repeating themselves once.

‘Hey, neighbour, you old tramp, you! Scrape the shit out of your ears and hear the news,’ shouts Porta. ‘We’re comin’ visiting tonight. We’ve taken the edge off our knives so it’ll take longer to saw your throats open!’

‘Fritz, bighead! It’s us that are coming over to chop off your tiny little pricks and take ’em back to Moscow to give the girls a laugh!’

A few days later these shouted exchanges are forbidden by Regimental HQ. Instead we throw hand-grenades with insults written on them.

The earth shudders as if in an earthquake when a 380mm shell drops on the section of trenches next to ours.

‘Holy Mother of God, those things can certainly dig up a potato patch,’ cries Gregor admiringly, following with his eyes the course of the bodies thrown high into the air.

Ten minutes later another one drops, this time even closer to
us. The blast wave hits us like a hot wind and throws Barcelona to the floor of the trench.

‘God’s death,’ he mumbles as he gets up. ‘Better have a little chat with the sky-pilot, maybe, so’s to be ready for a sudden departure!’

‘What about strengthening the sentries?’ asks the Legionnaire, looking at the Old Man, who is sucking thoughtfully at his silver-lidded pipe.

‘It appears that this war, which has been forced upon us, will be conducted with increasing violence,’ Gregor imitates the tone of the Wehrmacht communiques.

At eleven o’clock I relieve Porta at the SMG. It is quiet again along the front. We cannot understand what the violent shelling meant.

Far to the south there is an unceasing rumble of shell-fire, and the entire horizon is a bloody red. Perhaps they are trying to make a break-through there. If they succeed we’ll be left hanging in the air. Before long they will be behind us.

‘Watch out, keep awake,’ the Old Man instructs me when I take over sentry duty. ‘They captured two men from the boys next to us last night, without so much as a squeak out of them. They’ve got a depressed gun just over there. They have a go with it now and again, so keep well down behind the parapet.’

‘Nice work if you can get it,’ I answer, pulling the hood up over my helmet. It is cold at night.

Mist rises from the marshy ground. Fear is a dead weight in the stomach.

The Old Man pats me encouragingly on the shoulder and disappears silently around the elbow of the trench to check the other sentries.

Now I am alone and scared. Through the periscope I can just see the Russian lines. I can feel the presence of the forward posts. Everything seems peaceful, and not at all dangerous, but as a veteran of the trenches I know that there is nothing at the front which is not dangerous. Death never takes a holiday.

The front is dozing with a faint rumbling noise like a heavy snoring. A couple of magnesium flares light up the terrain. In their glare I can clearly see the sunken road behind the Russian
position. Death Alley we call it. It is paved with bodies. The position is not called Demon Heights for nothing. It is not really a hill but the brow of a ten-mile-long fold in the ground.

I turn the periscope. Bodies everywhere. Hundreds of skeletons and partly mummified corpses. They lie singly, and in heaps, covered with reddish-yellow filth. Just in front of me a boot projects from the ground. The rest of the body is buried in the earth. It is a German boot. A little farther out, a skull grins at me from beneath the brim of a Russian helmet. Over there an arm, with a rag of grey-green uniform fluttering from it. The fingers of the hand point accusingly at the heavens. A young German Jaeger lies across a torn-off gun wheel. The weight of his pack stretches his body in a bow. The wind plays with his hair, which is longer than regulation length. He screamed for a whole day and died last night. Several of the company tried to bring him in but had to give up and come back with an empty stretcher. The Siberian snipers do not know the meaning of mercy.

Wherever I turn the periscope I see bones, joints, arms stripped of their flesh, hands, vertebrae, grinning skulls, staring, glassy eyes under battered helmets, fresh corpses, corpses half rotted away, corpses, expanded by the gases of degeneration, which burst like balloons if one happens to tread on one of them. The breeze carries a sweet, sickening stench over to me.