Wheels of Terror (17 page)

When one of the wounded dies he is quickly thrown outside. The door opens and shuts quickly to prevent the frost getting in to those who still live.

The regiment lies in reserve at Petrushki. The completely destroyed regiments have been reinforced with new troops. There is a rumour about new forces being parachuted to us; yes, even about troops from special training colleges in Germany. But not one of us old sweats believes it.

It looked so nice and cosy on paper. In the Goebbelsrun UFA magazines we were a fine, big army, well equipped with modern arms and trained troops. The truth was sadly different. Our reserves were poorly trained and had poor weapons. The recruits we received had been taught parade-marching and a fine salute according to the army regulations. Many hours had been wasted teaching them the ranks of officers and NCOs. That was of great importance. After all, what would a Prussian depot be without recruits stiffly saluting the brilliantined chair-borne officers who swaggered at home right up to the bitter defeat of the Third Reich?

Some of these heroes popped up in the prison-camps where they went on playing officers and NCOs. As I write several are strutting about in uniform, crying bombastically about the defence of the Fatherland. It is very comical that we never once saw any of that race at the front, I mean in the front-line where we were able to count the buttons on our enemies' tunics. All our officers belonged to the reserve and were hatched on hurried courses lasting a few weeks.

We were now lying near the little village of Petrushki waiting for new arms and cannon-fodder. The period was shortened by playing pontoon, catching lice, and quarrelling with everybody.

The Old Un was filling his pipe with the ill-smelling machorka. He had a peculiarly soothing way of doing this. It was almost possible to dream yourself back to a fishing-village by the sea on a moonlit night when the light-house flirted with the calm sea.

We started to chat as only men who have gone through serious events together can. We chose our words with care. Thick volumes might have been written on the thoughts which lay behind The Old Un's slow words:

'Children, children.'

Even the fool Porta with his incessant obscene vocabulary shut up.

After a moment's silence. The Old Un said:

'You'll see, Ivan will throw in the whole of the 42nd Corps here at Cherkassy.' He puffed out a thick cloud of smoke into the room, put his feet in their clumsy boots on the table littered with greasy pots, sketches of the terrain, handgrenades, a couple of machine-pistols and a half-eaten loaf.

'In my opinion Ivan is very keen on getting his reinforcements together here. His generals are already rubbing their hands together and hoping for another Stalingrad. Mark my words, the whole 4th Army will go to hell in this lousy hole!'

Porta laughed loudly:

'Well, why not? Sooner or later we'll all go to hell and salute the devil in proper army fashion: "Heil Hitler! Red Front!".'

'True, and if a T34 gives you a push in the arse you'll land right in the devil's arms.'

He and Tiny slapped their thighs and laughed.

'Well, maybe we'll have to dig lead and Kolyma before we reach what you call hell,' interrupted Moller.

'Yes,' said Bauer thoughtfully. 'Maybe we'll welcome the padre's hell after Stalin's. Personally I've no wish to be introduced to the country round Kap Deshnev.'

'Nobody's going to ask what you want,' grinned Porta. 'Our colleagues on the other side will serve you with the padre's hell with the help of a shot from a Nagan, then you can start looking round for the other half of your head. Plenty of blood, brains and boneshavings. That's what'll be left. Only your ragged black uniform will show you're a German tank-soldier. Or maybe they'll do it a little slower. Maybe they'll send you to a dirty, cold place behind the Urals, for instance Voenna Plenny, and then after a few years they'll bash your bones to bits with a rifle-butt or a Nagajka. For you it will be all the same. If you're lucky you'll get a bloody great big rock on your head down there in the lead mines. Then it will be curtains, quick and painless.'

The Old Un sucked heavily at his pipe.

'If we get out of this cauldron, a new one will come soon after. And at last, when the whole rotten lot is finished we'll be sent east. It's rotten luck to have been born in filthy Germany just when that paperhanger Adolf decided to imitate Napoleon. If only you could be sure of the people at home.'

Stege laughed in his own inimitable gurgling and infectious way:

'Well, well, one thing is sure enough. Adolf has lost his war. If we could only destroy the red Nazis along with our brown ones it would be the first time a war had ended in a sensible way.'

An orderly interrupted our chattering. The Old Un was to go at once to Captain von Barring.

'I smell a rat, dear friends,' shouted Porta. 'I, Corporal by God's grace in the freezing Nazi army, humbly report that The Old Un is going to Barring to have whispered in his ear that our short rest has come to an end. We're at it again. The 27th Murder and Arson Regiment will again be the lever for the chair-borne strategists. To hell with them!'

Freezing in his thin grey coat. The Old Un stamped through the snow to von Barring's quarters, at the other end of the mile-long village. The gale had increased. It raced whining across the blood-soaked Russian soil. With forty degrees of frost it was sheer hell when the snow whipped into our faces. The cold was worse than anything else, except perhaps the lack of sleep.

Porta was right. After an hour The Old Un returned and announced that our company with the 3rd and 8th were to form a fighting-group and to make a wedge for the regiment in an attempt to break out of the cauldron. Our task was to push towards Terascha and there force an opening. The enemy had dug themselves in in strong-built snow positions. As soon as we reached the village the reinforced No. 5 Company were to clear the enemy forces out quickly. We were to have no help from the artillery. Our only chance lay in a surprise attack by night. Lastly, there was a great shortage of small arms ammunition. The element of surprise was to compensate for our weakness against an enemy with far more troops.

Colonel Hinka came across and took farewell of us. He shook hands with the three young company commanders. They were not ordinary 'gold-pheasants' but officers who had risen from the ranks.

We had no illusions. We knew our job. It was the only thing they had taught us, but they had taught us that well.

'You know what it's all about,' Hinka addressed us. 'I rely on you and on Captain von Barring, your leader. To make the surprise complete attack will be with fixed bayonets without a single shot fired! Good luck!'

We went off filled with apprehension. We did not know that the action was to last for days. Neither did we know that only a few from the three companies would get away alive.

At dusk von Barring attacked the southern end of the village Terascha. The night was moonless and icy cold, and the snow glistened whitely. Yet because of its very severity the weather was our ally.

All day we had had a camouflaged reconnaissance patrol lying just in front of the Russian positions. Its leader had reported only a weak concentration in front of us.

Our task was to act as a storming party on the right flank of the fighting-group. Just before we crawled out, Stege whispered:

'One consolation is that we're on our way to liberty.'

Nobody answered. Where was liberty really to be found? On both sides the barbed wire and the oppression was the same.

Every man clung to his weapons and stared into the threatening night. Behind and on both flanks we saw the tracer ammunition. It told us clearly the cauldron was getting smaller all the time. Soon Ivan would have us. The attack was only a last desperate attempt to break out of the trap.

The orders were whispered carefully from man to man.

'Fixed bayonets! Advance!'

The companies moved slowly. They were almost invisible in their long snow-shirts.

The enemy discovered us when we were a few yards in front of their positions, but it was too late. We stormed forward and after a short, furious scrap the position was rolled up. The other sections from the regiment coming in at our heels finished off the last Russians.

We went forward despite a hefty curtain of fire from the woods west of Selische. We ran forward completely hypnotized by our luck. Porta sprayed the next positions at point-blank range with his hissing flame-thrower. This time too our luck held and we had hardly any casualties.

When, breathless and exhausted, we reached the Sukhiny-Shenderovka road in the middle of the night, we could clearly hear engines in the direction of Sukhiny. Whispered commands ordered us to shelter by the road-side.

Every man dug feverishly to make a hole in the snow. We lay behind a couple of anti-tank guns and listened as the engine-noises grew even louder.

We had not long to wait. An enormous column of huge lorries appeared on the snow-packed road. They trundled past in bottom gear with roaring engines.

We crouched in silence waiting, savage animals poised to kill coldly and pitilessly what travelled on the road. They were men whose mothers and fathers would be crushed by grief when the message reached them: 'Your son has fallen in the fight against the Nazi bandits, defending our beloved proletarian country ...'

Was it much different on our side? Did we not have fathers and mothers at home dreading what was in effect the same message: 'Fallen for the Fuhrer and the Fatherland ...' As if a ridiculous phrase could ever console a mother who still looked on her son as a boy whatever uniform he wore. How many mothers were to receive this message before we had finished fighting at Cherkassy? Yet the blood-bath there was mentioned in the newspapers and army reports only as 'a local defensive action in the area near Cherkassy.'

We judged the trucks to be a unit on its way to the point where we had broken through. Evidently the Russians were ignorant of what had happened.

The surprise was complete when we opened up with all our automatic weapons at ten yards distance. The first few trucks heeled over and burst into flames. Some of the crews managed to get off a few bursts from their machine-pistols before they were wiped out by the concentrated fire from our weapons.

Three trucks loaded with mortars were destroyed in a few seconds. One single crew managed to let off all their rounds but the shells exploded far behind us without doing any damage. A couple of survivors who tried to run off were mowed down by our machine-guns.

At three o'clock in the morning our fighting group again attacked, this time at Novo-Buda. We had not yet heard a single shot from the village.

Captain von Barring decided we should attack in a scissor-like formation from the north and south, again with the hellish fixed bayonets only.

We advanced like ghosts on the first sentries at the entrance to the village. I saw Porta and the Little Legionnaire cut the throat of one of the sentries. Tiny and Bauer saw to another. The sentries did not even sigh as their throats were cut from ear to ear. One of them kicked a little in the snow and the blood spurted out of him like a fountain.

We crawled forward like snakes, as soundless and just as dangerous. In one of the first houses we broke into, led by Porta, we found some sleeping Russians lying on the clay-trampled floor, rolled in their long coats. We were at them like lightning. Breathing heavily, we stabbed furiously with our long combat-knives. My knife sank deeply into the chest of one. He gave a short cry. In desperation I stamped on his white upturned face with its panic-stricken eyes. Time and time again I kicked with my hob-nailed boots what had once been a face.

The others were equally busy destroying lives. Porta ran his knife into the crutch of a giant of a sergeant who had almost managed to get up.

The smell from hot blood and steaming intestines was fearful. I vomited violently and helplessly. One of our men started to weep and was on the point of screaming when Porta's fist knocked him cold. A mad-man's cry at this point would have been fatal.

We stormed out and went down the long street. From several huts we heard muted sounds of combat and groans from the men fighting their evil battle. It became one of the biggest mass murders we committed.

Tiny had got hold of a Cossack sabre. I saw him behead a Russian lieutenant in one swipe. I jumped as the head rolled over the floor and hit the Little Legionnaire who kicked it.

We ran from cottage to cottage, and when we came out no living thing remained inside.

At six o'clock the village was in our hands. With feverish haste we started to dig ourselves into the snow. As soon as the Russians realized what had happened they would try to recapture the village. Not one would escape with his life if he fell into Russian hands. One rule only reigned here. The same old high-falutin one which Hitler and Goebbels had repeatedly shouted: 'Fight to the last man and bullet!'

The only difference was that we cared nothing for the Fatherland or Hitler's war-aims. We fought only for our lives. Maybe we had fought only a local defensive battle.

The whole of our group had settled down in a big communal hollow in the snow. The Old Un lay on his back, his head supported by his gas-mask container and his body wrapped in a Russian greatcoat. Porta squatted like a Muslim on his haunches on top of a couple of packs of loot. He held a half-full bottle of vodka, licked his lips and belched loudly.

'Blimey, what a war we're in. First our enemies run away and now the devil's after us. And to think the doctor has forbidden me to run. I'll confide in you, my friends. I've got a weak heart and have to avoid any kind of exertion. The doctor who told me this was not, worse luck, a party-member, that's why I was sent to prison and put into this stinking Nazi army. Of course now nobody asks about my heart or if I can stand this round trip of Russia. If you don't run Ivan'll prick your bottom with his bayonet, and judging from reports that hurts. If only we could come to terms with the beasts over there, we could slow up a bit, I believe Stalin must have promised them mashed potatoes with diced pork and lumps of butter when they get to Kurfurstendamm: Something must be dangling in front of their conks to make them run so fast.'