Blitzfreeze (27 page)

Violent artillery fire cuts short the conversation. A seething cloud of smoke cloaks everything. Men are blown from their holes and strewn about the snow. A few get up and run until they are caught again and blown higher than the flaming tree tops. In the wink of an eye frozen snow and earth is turned into a boiling broth whipped up by glowing metal.

We retreat at speed, racing through thick, steamy mist. The Russians cannot follow us through the sea of flame. We throw hand grenades behind us, shoot into the flames.

An Oberst sits against a tree, his teeth showing in an obscene deathshead grin. Both his arms are gone. The Cossacks dash past, sabres gleaming, and disappear into the smoke.

A German artillery limber rushes past as fast as the horses can go. There is a long thunderous roar and it disappears. The horses fall screaming from the sky, their legs splaying outwards, to splash to a bloody gruel on the ground.

The earth opens up in front of us like the mouth of a roaring volcano. Stone, earth and snow fly far away through the riven air. A giant crater, large enough to hold a four storey building, is torn out of the ground. A lorry comes flying through the air. The driver is still at the wheel as if he is steering it. With a crunching sound, it lands at the bottom of the crater in a heap of tangled metal.

A soldier runs towards us. His insides trailing like ghastly snakes behind him. His mouth is one great gaping, screaming hole. He stumbles over his own entrails, falls, gets up, and runs on until he disappears in a flaming explosion.

A two-storey house hangs seemingly suspended in the air, above a company. It falls and house and soldiers mingle to an unrecognizable mash. Long tree trunks with parts of bodies hanging between their branches come flying through the air
with inconceivable force and bore themselves into the ground like giant javelins. A salvo of shells turns them to firewood.

Porta and I are lugging the heavy machine-gun. Tiny has Leutnant Jansen over one shoulder like a sack.

We take up position behind the ruined village. A swarm of Jabos hoses the battleground clean of stragglers.

1
Izba
(Russian): Peasant hut.

2
Moujik
(Russian): Peasant.

3
Staross
(Russian): Mayor.

4
Kolchos
: Collective.

5
Rasbom
: Blast bomb (compressed air).

6
ICH DIENE
(German): I serve.

7
PG Parteigenosse (German): Party Member.

‘It is no longer necessary for the Courts to give a decision. An order from the Führer is sufficient where the execution of criminals, for crimes against the state or for parasitism, is concerned
.’

At Headquarters Hitler raged for the third hour without pause. ‘Cowards, traitors, bunglers,’ he howled, at the officers sitting in silence along both sides of the heavy oak table.

Marschall Keitel fiddled with a pencil. General Olbricht watched a fly crawling around on the great war chart. It edged its way between the coloured pins and flags and stopped on a large red spot: Moscow. General-oberst Jodl leafed through documents concerning the disappointing tank production. Reichsmarschall Göring sketched ideas for new uniforms. SS-Reichsführer Himmler noted energetically the confusion of orders flowing from Hitler.

‘Guderian is to be dismissed!’ he roared. ‘Hoepner, that criminal dilletante, must go too!’

‘Very good!’ mumbled the Chief of Personnel, General der Infanterie von Burgerdorf, making a note in a pocket diary.

‘Have I not ordered the troops to hold on and to fight fanatically to the last bullet?’ screamed Hitler. ‘And what happens? No sooner do these
untermensch
begin to fire back at them my miserable soldiers flee like frightened hares! I blush for the German people. If I did not feel myself called to lead them I would resign immediately!’ He kicked viciously at a chair sending it flying across the ankles of General Fellgiebel, who could not restrain a half-smothered exclamation of pain.

Hitler sent the Liaison Chief a deadly look.

‘Fieldmarschall von Bock is to be removed from his command, and I forbid him ever again to show himself in uniform.
Halder has informed me that we have lost one million and one hundred thousand fallen and seriously wounded, but it is no more than they have deserved! Catastrophe I hear? No, a weeding-out! Only cowardly swine let themselves be annihilated by these
untermensch
. I forbid that any man from the middle echelon be decorated or promoted until such time as he has rehabilitated himself by service on other sections of the front!’

Hitler ordered thirty-eight more generals removed, twelve to be executed.

Ruthlessly he raged on, demanding the blood of others in payment for the failure of his own reckless plans.

Panzer General Model came close to losing his life when he explained that Napoleon’s armies had also attacked Russia on 22 June and were in Moscow by 14 September, 86 days later. And this was done on foot whilst, by 14 September 1941, Hitler’s Panzer Troops were still 220 miles from Moscow.

For fully five minutes Hitler stood like a stone statue staring at the little general. Then he exploded into a long wailing scream and threw a bundle of documents at his head.

‘Do you dare to say that the Führer of Greater Germany is inferior to that comical little Corsican gangster? A person who only became an officer by reason of the times he lived in! Only the degenerate French could be proud of such an individual. Model, you are dismissed! Never show yourself before me again! You have insulted Germany!’

A week later Hitler was forced to order Model to take command of the retreat. Six other generals had refused it. Hitler had almost to go on his knees to his army leaders. Two of them were sent to concentration camps, but did not give in.

Hitler stuck at nothing to demonstrate his power and cruelty. Troops sent to the front were given orders to fire on the traitors who had opened the line of battle to the enemy. Countless soldiers who had fought desperately to break the Russian bear-hug were executed by their own side. Without trial they were lined up against a wall and butchered. Those without weapons were lost. If they protested a rifle-butt smashed their mouths shut before they fell to the whipping bullets of a firing-squad.

Chief Mechanic Wolf
¹
has ventured out to the front line. Puffing badly, he seats himself on a gun carriage and thoughtfully ignites one of the special cigars which only he and the generals at HQ smoke. He has the largest private haulage company in the German Army. You can buy
anything
from him – especially if you can pay in hard currency.

Two fierce wolfhounds lie down watchfully in front of him. Their yellow eyes inspect us hungrily. A snap of their master’s fingers and they’d tear us to pieces. An expensive officer’s fur-coat gives him the look of an operetta general playing in a theatre in some Vienna side-street. His buttons and badges are pure silver. He is, of course, wearing a tall fur cap, and a sabre which couldn’t cut a radish in two. Anybody else would be punished for being so irregularly dressed.

Nobody but Porta dares to cross swords with Chief Mechanic Wolf. For anyone else it would mean a painful death – by starvation!

‘What the devil do
you
want, me old Sprocket Dragoon?’ asks Porta suspiciously.

Wolf grins condescendingly, flashing all his gold teeth at once. It’s not that his teeth are bad. Quite the opposite; but he thinks a mouthful of gold teeth a mark of position. When we captured a Russian Mobile Dentistry Unit complete with personnel Wolf had all his teeth covered with gold. Before then he’d been sparing with his smiles.

Now he’s always grinning.

‘I’ve come to say goodbye,’ he smiles, falsely.

‘You leaving?’ enthuses Porta.

‘
Njet
, not me. You!’ he smiles cunningly.

‘How’d you criminals get the word?’ asks Porta suspiciously, gripped by a sinister foreboding.

If Wolf dares the perils of the front line to bring the message it can’t be just to please Porta.

‘None of your business where it came from but, as you ought to know, a chief Mech. has his network,’ answers Wolf, superciliously. ‘What about those three Zim tractors you’ve stolen? You won’t need ’em where you’re going. So what about a quick little deal? I can offer you a first class battle pack for every man in No. 2 Section, plus a
kalashnikov
and double ammunition. A 150 kilo ration sack extra for yourself. You’ll need it badly in the near future. But it’s up to yourself if you’d rather move off with three days coolie rations and not a bacon rind more. You’ll get that hungry they’ll be able to hear your belly screaming back in Berlin.’

‘Spit it out, you wicked, wicked man,’ says Porta growing suspicious. ‘Where am I going?’

Thoughtfully, Wolf cuts himself a slice of salami. He doesn’t attempt to hide how much he is enjoying Porta’s anxiety.

‘A Zim 5-tonner for it!’ he says, after having swallowed the sausage and picked his teeth clean with the point of his knife.

‘Kiss my arse, chum!’ replies Porta, in a careless tone, spinning his pistol dangerously. ‘That Zim’s my return ticket to Berlin.’

‘Thanks for the information,’ says Wolf, showing all his teeth in a triumphant grin. ‘I wasn’t sure. You got a 150 mm howitzer battery stowed away’s the rumour!’

‘There’s plenty of shithouse rumours going the rounds,’ answers Porta slowly. ‘What the hell’d I want with howitzers? Am I a gunner?’

‘You know what it’s all about,’ says Wolf in a rough but almost friendly tone. ‘The German Wehrmacht’s got its arse dangling gently but firmly in the snow. There’s gonna be more’n a shortage of guns. You can get what you ask for an SP-battery soon as you feel like showing your hand, son.’

‘They’d commandeer it soon as I made the offer,’ declares Porta, trying, as hard as he can, to look naive.

Wolf screams with laughter and takes a swig from a silver hip-flask without offering it round.

‘Balls, my good son!
You
know how to turn that one.’

‘Mind you don’t choke on it,’ answers Porta sourly. ‘The German skeet-club’ll be moving smartly backwards p.d.q., and Ivan don’t give a French fuck for your wagon park. The day they march you off to Kolyma I’ll go with you as a volunteer just to enjoy watching you kick it slowly in the lead mines! They’ll cut the tails off your bloody wolves and stick’em up your arse so far you’ll never get ’em down again and can get a job as crossing-sweeper when the war’s over!’

‘Shit, son!’ replies Wolf, easily. ‘All my wagons are in a nice safe place already, you’ll be glad to know! All I need your Zim for is to haul the last of them out. I’ve got a nice place fixed up at Libau, son. Good harbour. If it should happen our victorious army advances too far backwards I can always take a boat to Sweden. They’ve got a Socialist government there and feel it their duty to take in us boys from the cruel world outside and look after us.’

‘How the hell did you manage it?’ asks Porta with open admiration.

‘Easy for a Chief Mechanic in Transport. Movement in Russia ain’t difficult if you’ve been through the Army Hauptfeldwebel School, and know what it’s all about,’ explains Wolf looking down his nose slyly.

‘Someday they’ll hang you,’ says Porta in friendly admiration, without attempting to conceal that it wouldn’t worry
him
when it happened.

‘Never,’ says Wolf, grinning, ‘but I’m convinced you’ll end
your
dirty little life on the end of a rope. If I’m there I’ll do you a service. I’ll cut you down before the crows get at you, son!’

‘Know what
you
are, you fucked-up son of a mangey wolf and a clapped-out dingo, you’re due to die for Führer, family, if you could get one, and Fatherland,’ comes from Porta with bitter emphasis. ‘You’re the wickedest bastard I’ve ever met in all my life.’

‘
Basura
,’
²
shouts Barcelona, happily.

‘Can it, bastard!’ snarls Wolf, turning his snapping green
eyes on Barcelona. ‘How’d you like a case of Spanish oranges jacked up your arse, son? How’d you like to shit orange-juice the next twelve months?’

‘You’re a sick cat, brother!’ says Barcelona in a dry tone. ‘Keep on shitting in your straw till it smells as bad as you do!’

‘It’s on the record, Feldwebel Blom,’ Wolf smiles villainously. ‘This war ain’t nothing to what’s coming when it’s all over! Porta, we gonna do a deal or ain’t we?’ he continues, without changing his tone. ‘The little Zim for what I can tell you!’

‘I’ll fuck your mother if you like, Wolf!’ says Porta in a condescending voice.

‘She wouldn’t get anything out of it, son!’ says Wolf proudly, patting himself with a heavily perfumed handkerchief. ‘She’s a lady.’

‘You stink like a bucket of slops from a Chinese knocker,’ says Porta, holding his nose and grimacing.

‘’E couldn’t earn a sausage draggin’ ’is brownie on the town even with tight-arsed pants an’ a red ribbon round his charlie,’ shouts Tiny, slapping his thighs and roaring with laughter.