The Bloody Road to Death (46 page)

Tiny and Buffalo storm forward like avalanches with their MGs at the hip.

A sentry, sitting in a hole, is killed by a kick in the face.

Rasputin thinks something has happened to Porta. With a hollow roar of rage he rolls forward on all fours and literally smashes a Russian sentry.

The forest is alive with Russians, We withdraw towards the marsh, shooting as fast as we can.

Night falls. Flares swish up, exploding with a heavy thump above the three-tops. The forest is as light as day.

I throw a hand-grenade past Porta who is lying in a cross-fire from two MG’s. It goes straight into one of the nests and the gun whirls into the air. Ammunition explodes in one long rolling roar.

We rush forward. Rasputin is like a mad thing. His head and chest are covered in blood. He strikes and bites at mutilated bodies.

At last we are through.

We drag the Legionnaire after us on a ground sheet. He has lost so much blood that he can no longer stand. Most of the time he is unconscious. When he comes out of it he moans heartbreakingly. He thinks his arm has been torn off. It does not help to show him it is still there. But he is lucky. The explosive bullet hit his weapon. If it had hit the shoulder direct it would have taken his whole arm off.

Once inside the marshes we are able to rest for a while. A threatening silence presses down on us. We cannot understand where the Russians have got to but they cannot be far away. We hear nothing but the croaking of frogs.

There must be
millions
of those boys,’ says Porta, in an undertone.

‘Noisy buggers,’ mutters Gregor back.

A flare whistles up. Quickly we go down in the reeds and stay quiet as mice. The smallest movement can be seen in that glare. But the bear becomes nervous and stands up on its hind-legs.

An Mpi chatters. Rasputin roars wildly and falls forward.

Porta rushes forward, ignoring the bullets. The bear whines like a child. The whole side of its head has been blown away. Lovingly it licks Porta’s face, rolls itself into a ball and dies.

Two more flares wobble up, but the noise dies slowly away.

‘Ivan’s going to pay for this,’ hisses Porta. ‘I’1l cut the throat of every one of those godless bastards I meet from now on!’

None of us say anything. We understand him. The section
had come to love that bear. We pull it after us on a ground-sheet. It is heavy but we manage it. We will not suffer it to be left behind like so much battlefield rubbish.

Some way behind us harsh commands ring out, and automatic weapons crack. They are apparently keeping up their courage by shouting and firing off their weapons. It is stupid of them. All they are achieving is to let us know where they are.

‘We
must
soon be at the path through the marshes,’ says the Old Man, tired and discouraged.

‘Hope we haven’t passed it,’ comes worriedly from Gregor.

Porta is completely cast down by the death of Rasputin. His usual flow of talk is cut off. He will not even answer questions. He keeps going over and running his hand lovingly over the bear’s fur.

‘We’ll have to snap him out of it before he goes round the bend,’ says the Old Man.

‘Piece o’ the other’d soon put
Hm
right,’ says Tiny, who never thinks of anything else.

At last we find the path through the marshes. It moves under our feet like a ship under weigh. You have to be careful here. Slip and fall into the marsh and you’re finished. In a few seconds the green, bubbling ooze has closed over you. Forever!

‘Cease fire! Close up!’ a guttural voice comes from behind us. ‘Those German swine can’t have got far!’

Flares fly, like tiny comets, over the forest and marshes. A machine-gun hammers out a long burst close behind us.

The Legionnaire comes to himself and screams piercingly.

Gregor claps a hand over his mouth, but too late. They must have heard him.

‘There! Forward! Take them alive!’

I screw the cap off a couple of grenades and examine my
Tokarew
. I shall need it for myself. None of us want to fall into the hands of the Russians alive. We know what to expect behind the lines in enemy uniform.

Tiny lifts the Legionnaire up on to his back. It’s quicker than pulling him after us. We have to take care not to knock him against obstacles.

We double down the shaky path.

‘They can only go through the marsh,’ comes a shout from
our rear. ‘Dobroschin Section, make a rifle chain! Forward march, you lazy sods!’

The Old Man lifts the signal pistol high above his head and fires off two flares immediately after one another. In the sky blaze six orange stars which can be seen miles away.

‘Down!’ he orders us. But already there is a rushing sound like that of a long goods train roaring through a tunnel.

An SMG barks viciously, but its rattle is drowned in the terrible explosion of the first shells. Forest and marsh are ploughed up in a wall of fire. Iron and earth roil upwards in front of us. Whole trees fly like javelins through the air.

The Old Man has sent up his signal exactly as planned. He is a master at that.

‘For once in a while they were on the ball,’ Gregor commends the artillery.

The section crawls on. We have to keep in front of the creeping barrage of shells if it is to help us get back.

‘Soon be ’ome now, mate,’ grins Tiny, wickedly, digging the commissar in the ribs with his Mpi. ‘They’ll cut your balls off! Adolf don’t like bastards like you gettin’girls in the family way!’

‘Adolf doesn’t know what it’s all about,’ says Gregor, disrespectfully, ‘His prick stopped growing when he was seven years old!’

‘I ’ave ’eard as ’e tosses ’imself off while lookin’ at dirty pictures a Party mate of ’is sends ’im from Scandinavia in Red Cross parcels,’ shouts Tiny, joyfully.

‘Shut it!’ snarls the Old Man, sourly. ‘We’re not back yet!’

‘Shoot me,’ begs the Legionnaire. ‘I cannot stand it any more!’

‘You ’ave your ’ead examined, when we get back, mate,’ says Tiny. ‘You’re goin’ into ’ospital anyroad. They’ll soon get you in a good ’umour again. When you’re lyin’ there ’avin’ your arse powdered by them randy bleedin’ BDM
²⁷
’ores in the white overalls.’

A battery of Stalin Organs spurts out rockets. It feels as if the very core of the world is exploding under us. An area of the forest is literally shaved clean.

The German artillery continues scattered firing over the
Russian positions to keep the infantry down in the trenches, and help us to cross the front. The Russians have the answer to that one. They let go not only with mortars and Stalin Organs but also with their heavy field artillery.

Thick sulphur fumes tear and eat at our throats and lungs. The stink of TNT makes us retch. We throw up. It is as if we were strangling in the pestilential stench of high-explosive.

A shell comes rushing and earth fountains upwards. Thousands of glowing scraps of steel whistle through the air.

I go head over heels down into a hot, steaming shell-hole. My throat burns, my nose feels like one running sore. It is as if all the demons of hell have been let loose at once and are trying to turn the earth inside out. Trees, earth, stone, huts are thrown upwards, fall, and are thrown upwards again.

Tiny grabs a leather water-bottle from a body as he rushes past on his way to find cover. In a shower of mud he slides to the bottom of the shell-hole. He sniffs suspiciously at the contents of the water-botde.

‘Ah! Extract o’ Turkish ’ore piss!’ he declares, knowledge-ably. ‘Still, anythin’s better’n nothin’,’ With a long belch he passes the bottle over. ‘’Eavens above, ’ow that did put a poker up the back o’ me old patriotic pride,’ he declares. There ain’t no God but Germany an’ Adolf is ’er prophet!’

‘I’ve got that down,’ shouts Heide, indignantly. ‘The National Socialist gallows will tremble with pleasure when you swing on ’em!’

Red balls of light are going up along the whole of the front, sending out stars under the darkened sky. Shells are coming over in a close-knit, shielding barrage, like a wall of flame and steel rising from the earth. The world is exploding. Thousands of volcanoes are being born continuously.

Bending low we run forward, crash through the enemy defence blocks, throw hand-grenades behind us. Machine-guns chatter. A long row of trip-mines goes up. Then we are at the final stretch of marshes.

An umbrella of parachute-borne rockets sinks towards the ground, lighting up the night as if it were a clear summer day.

‘
Idisodar charoscho, germcmski
,
²⁸
comes from behind us.

They know the marshes and are right on our heels. This is the way they come when they are out picking up prisoners.

The Old Man stops, blowing hard, and holds his hand to his heart. He is nearly all in. But then he is also much older than the rest of us.

‘Grenades! In their faces! Soon as – they show – their bloody faces – through the reeds. . .’ he pants the order.

I throw the first grenade, but it explodes in the marsh and does no damage.

Porta drops down behind the bear’s dead body. The MG-42 rattles wickedly. Short well-aimed bursts smash into the leading pursuers, throwing them out into the ooze.

I throw another grenade. It explodes in the midst of an enemy group.

Screams of anguish rend the air.

Porta sends a mowing burst at the soldiers huddled together in the reeds.

We retreat in short spurts. Run – turn and fire – run – turn and fire!

A shell-splinter has torn open the commissar’s arm. Blood runs down over his hand. Nobody attends to him. It is not worthwhile. They will hang him anyway.

We ready ourselves for the last stretch.

I am half over the low earthwork when the Old Man gives a sharp shrill cry and slides back. Terrified, I dash over to him.

It looks bad. His back is one bloody wound. Shredded flesh, clothing, bones, leather and blood. He looks up at me with a faint smile on his lips.

I light a cigarette, and put it in his mouth.

Heide jumps down to us, tearing open a field dressing as he moves. Then Porta. We dress the wound as well as we can and carry him along between us. We hardly notice the concentrated infantry fire.

‘I’ll cut that bleedin’ commissar bastard in strips, I will,’ roars Tiny, raging. ‘It’s all ’is bleedin’ fault, the dirty, rotten traitor!’

‘Take him back alive,’ groans the Old Man, painfully. ‘Heide, you’re responsible!’

The Old Man knows what he is doing. Heide is a slave to
regulations. He would let himself be shot to ribbons rather than not obey an order to the letter.

Suddenly there are familiar helmets and yellow-green camouflage dress around us. Hands reach up to help us down into the positions.

‘Holy Mother of Kazan, we
made
it!’ groans Porta, and lets himself drop to the floor of the trench.

Water-bottles are offered us. Lighted cigarettes pushed between cracked lips. Like lightning the word goes down the lines.’

They’re back and they’ve got him with ’em!’

The regimental MO looks after the Old Man and the legionnaire personally. They are taken back, immediately. They are sent off so quickly we hardly have time to say goodbye to them.

Barcelona takes over the section, and No. 2 is satisfied with the choice. He can never replace the Old Man but he has the experience which is necessary for a good section-leader.

The commissar is taken straight back to Regimental HQ, where two SD officers await him impatiently. One of them, Sturmbannführer Walz, lets loose a cascade of foul language at him and strikes him in the face with his fist.

Oberst Hinka moves between them.

‘
I
give the orders here, Sturmbannführer!’ he says sharply, pushing the SD officer back.

‘
Do
you?’ snarls Walz. ‘If I have not been misinformed about this case, the prisoner is a political commissar and a deserter from the Reichswehr
²⁹
. In other words this is a political matter and of no particular military importance.’

‘It could perhaps be looked at in that light,’ comes hesitatingly from Hinka.

‘Then we are in agreement?’ smiles the Sturmbannführer, coldly. ‘The prisoner is the responsibility of RSHA and I will accept that responsibility and return with him to Berlin.’

‘My regrets! The prisoner stays here, until I receive a written order, with regard to his disposal, from my superiors.’

‘I have such an order here, Herr Oberst, and I expect you to obey it,’ shouts Walz, triumphantly.

‘I accept only the orders of my Commanding General or of
the Commander of the 5th Panzer army,’ states Oberst Hinka, brusquely.’

‘Am I to understand then that you
refuse
to hand over this prisoner to us?’ asks the SD officer threateningly and taking a step towards Hinka.

‘You have understood me correctly, Sturmbannführer,’ smiles Hinka, sitting down easily on the edge of the table.