Blitzfreeze (38 page)

They order their men to their posts, and make a moving speech to these brave soldiers before leaving, to get help, as they say. A high-ranking officer must go himself, for another high-ranking officer to be convinced that help is really needed. A Leutnant could never convince an Oberst. You must have an Oberst to do that.

Others put their Walthers theatrically into their mouths and pull the trigger. But not before the T-34’s Ottos can be heard on the outskirts of the village and there is no chance of retreating.

On the desk the obligatory farewell letter. ‘My Führer I have done my duty! Heil Hitler!’

The letter seldom reaches the Führer. Usually some Russian soldier uses it to wipe his backside on.

‘All hell’s broken loose. The front line is simply dissolving!’ report others.

‘50 Army Corps has been liquidated,’ whispers an Oberst confidentially to a General-Major, who immediately begins to prepare for a rapid move westwards.

The survivors of an Artillery Regiment state confidently that there isn’t a German soldier left between them and the Kremlin.

Panic spreads with the speed of fire on the steppe. Very soon there are no German troops anywhere within a hundred miles of the front.

Every man capable of moving at all is on his way towards the west. The wounded have to take care of themselves. Blind soldiers carry wounded comrades on their backs. The blind using the eyes of the legless. Madmen stand by the side of the
road shouting ‘Heil!’ with raised arm every time the car of a red-tabbed General flashes past.

Nobody worries about the front-line troops standing far to the east at the gates of Moscow. All lines of communication are broken. The line-units re-equip themselves with Russian leavings. Very soon only Russian arms and ammunition are to be seen. Front-line units battle on in pockets surrounded by a sea of enemy.

‘Can’t raise a damned thing!’ says Oberleutnant Moser furiously, banging the telephone down viciously.

‘No, Herr Oberleutnant,’ answers the Signals Feldwebel. ‘The line is intact, but there is no one there to take the call.’

Porta throws six sixes.

Tiny cries out, shaken. He has lost fifty gold teeth and says he is cleaned out. Porta knows he has two more bags of them hidden away under his shirt. It’s not long before Tiny ‘accidentally’ discovers a couple more teeth.

The Signals Feldwebel tries to get through to battalion again.

‘They’ve made a run for it!’ says Porta, without looking round. ‘Goodnight Amalia. The money’s on the window-sill and your maidenhead’s hanging on a nail!’

‘You’re insulting the honour of the German officer class,’ screams Heide furiously. ‘A German battalion commander doesn’t run from Soviet
untermensch
. He destroys them. Herr Oberleutnant, I wish to report Obergefreiter Porta!’

‘Try to keep your mouth shut, just for a moment, Unteroffizier Heide. ‘You make me more nervous than the Russian infantry. Go out and check the sentries!’

‘Herr Oberleutnant! Order received and noted! Unteroffizier Heide to check sentries!’

‘Would you mind putting your head in the way of a Russian lead pill, while you’re up there?’ grins Porta, pointedly.

‘Do you want it to be understood that you would like to see a German unteroffizier murdered?’ asks Heide from the
doorway, as he adjusts his belt to the regimentally correct tautness.

‘No!’ grins Porta. ‘I’m protecting us against the plague!’

‘Not understood,’ mumbles Heide, blankly, and disappears.

‘What
did
you mean by that?’ asks Tiny scratching his broad rump. ‘Julius got somethin’ catchin’?’

‘Yes, brown plague!’ answers Porta, with a broad grin.

‘Oh, that!’ says Tiny, looking wise, but still not understanding a word. ‘Is it dangerous?’ he asks after a lengthy silence.

‘Quiet down there!’ comes sharply from Oberleutnant Moser. ‘I won’t have you always on the back of Unteroffizier Heide. He can’t help being one of the faithful.’

‘Gawd! Is ’e a bleedin’ missionary?’ shouts Tiny incredulously. ‘I never knew that. I thought ’e was only Nazi bleedin’ barmy.’

‘That’s right,’ smiles Porta condescendingly. ‘Don’t try to think. You’ll get a headache at both ends!’

‘But it must be awful for Julius with two kinds o’ barminess. One lot for Adolf an’ the other lot for Jesus,’ considers Tiny sympathetically. ‘I’d go to a bleedin’ trick cyclist an’ get ’im to give me some pills against it if I was ’im.’

Between two violent bursts of shelling a breathless runner tumbles in on us. ‘Report, Herr Oberleutnant, Battalion Commander fallen with entire staff. Battalion consists of only 160 men! Orders from Regiment: Company to retreat to new front line. New orders on arrival at Nifgorod!’ with a click of his heels the runner concludes his report and continues on to No. 3 Battalion. He runs from shell-hole to shell-hole, literally dodging between the shells.

We never see him again. A runner’s life is a short one at the front.

‘Move!’ orders Oberleutnant Moser. ‘All equipment. Beier place the explosive charges! We don’t want to make Ivan a present of anything!’

Porta hangs a giant charge up in the doorway. God help the man who opens it!

Tiny pushes a stick of dynamite into a hollow log and puts it on top of the log-pile temptingly ready to hand.

‘Pity if Ivan was to get chilly!’ he says, and bends over grinning with laughter.

A piece of half-rotten meat is laid in the middle of the table with a short fuse. If it’s touched the whole dug-out will go up.

‘They’ll be sorry they couldn’t stand the stink when they throw that out,’ laughs Porta in happy anticipation.

We position a bundle of grenades underneath a body. If they move it the grenades will go off.

On a tree we’ve hung a large picture of Hitler. No Soviet soldier could resist tearing it down. When he does he’ll have set off a stack of 6 inch shells two hundred yards further along the trench. Barcelona nails a crucifix to a door and connects it to fifty small charges.

‘Anybody can see you don’t like commissars,’ grins Porta. ‘Very clever indeed. No Russian foot slogger’ll touch that crucifix. He’ll bow his head and cross himself, but the dear heathen of an NKVD commissar’ll go straight for it. Remove that shit – boom! – no more commissar! Far away in the Siberian villages it’ll be rumoured how Christ looks after the godless! I do believe Saint Peter’ll give you a medal for this when you get to Heaven.’

‘It’s really a pity we can’t sit up in a tree and watch what happens when they move in,’ says Stege.

‘Come and see what
I’ve
done,’ says Porta pulling him over to the latrine. ‘Take a seat on one of these planks for a comfortable shit and I promise you you’ll get your arse polished like never before. Before you’ve even slacked off your ring, twenty-five 105 mms’ll ensure you’ll never be troubled with piles again. I’ve attached the plank to a Bowden cable. And there’s another little finesse here that’ll make you split your sides. The boys who’re waiting for a shit jump straight down into the split trench when the bang
comes, and
then
there’ll be a
new
bang, because I’ve put the rest of our shells under the planks down there. They won’t forget
that
trip to the shithouse in a hurry.’

‘I think we’d better not fall into the hands of the people you’re doing this to!’ says Barcelona drily.

‘We’re not going to,’ grins Porta, unworried. ‘Ivan just can’t run that fast!’

‘Fingers out!’ shouts the Old Man. ‘Ivan’s on his way! Porta, drop that supplies sack! Take grenades instead!’

‘Can’t eat grenades when I’m hungry,’ answers Porta, ‘and hungry’s what I always am!’

‘You can’t defend yourself with ’em!’ shouts the Old Man angrily.

‘What the hell’d I want to defend myself for if I was dying of hunger?’ shouts Porta, hanging on to his supplies sack.

The advance party is already over the river when we hear the firing of a Stalin Organ in the distance.

‘Get on! Faster, faster!’ shouts the Oberleutnant, impatiently chasing us. ‘They’ll be here in a minute!’

Most of us are across by the time they start to drop into the river. Black water is thrown high into the air, and yardthick ice-floes fly into the forest.

Barcelona screams terribly from out on the ice. The blast has thrown him into a fissure. His screams turn to a gurgle as he disappears under the icy water.

In seconds we have tied our slings together. Porta snaps the hook on to his belt and crawls out over the ice to where Barcelona has disappeared.

Tiny and I are anchor-men. Others come running to our assistance.

Barcelona appears and disappears again under the ice.

Porta drops into the water and gives a shocked cry. The water is so cold it feels like red-hot pincers tearing great chunks of flesh from his body.

‘Crybabies,’ roars Tiny, enraged. ‘Gimme the line!’

‘Where the hell can I make it fast?’ I ask, in confusion.

‘Wrap it round your prick, if you can’t find anything
better,’ he yells, irritably. ‘
My
bleedin’ iron could ’ave a T-34 parked on show on it!’

When I leap back again, two or three great ice-floes break away, but by some miracle I don’t go into the water.

The Old Man pulls me to the bank and gives me a terrible scolding.

Tiny is lying on the floe and pulls Porta up to him. Together they get a grip on Barcelona and haul him out by the feet like a sack of potatoes.

‘Some weather for a river picnic,’ coughs Porta breathlessly. ‘Jesus, but it’s
cold
!’

We make a ring of fires and put Porta and Barcelona in the middle of them.

When Barcelona stands up water pours from his buttonholes.

‘Jesus’n Mary,’ cries Porta. ‘You’re like a leaky bucket! I wouldn’t have believed you could’ve held so much!’

We force Barcelona to roll naked in the snow. We’ve got to get his blood circulating. He’s alive but he’s like ice inside. You don’t take a bath in the Moscow at 52 below and live, without the roughest kind of first aid treatment. He cries, sobs, curses us, but we are merciless. We’re going to take our Spanish orange farmer home with us. In a couple of hours we’ve saved him. Porta has looked after himself. He has put on a dead German major’s uniform, and insists on Tiny saluting him every time he passes, which he does continually. At last this gets too much even for Tiny. He demands a posting to another division. There’s too much saluting in 6 Panzer.

We reach a deep ravine and Moser orders us to swing ourselves over on the overhanging branches. The last man, Gefreiter Kono, disappears into the depths with a scream, as the branch breaks..

‘They might have warned us,’ grumbles Barcelona. ‘Save their own bloody skins and
piss
on us!’

‘We have never retreated before,’ states Heide, proudly. ‘The decadent German aristocracy is behind this. The Führer
should have slaughtered every one of the noble swine long ago.’

‘German soldiers only learn how to attack,’ says Moser. ‘The word retreat is unknown at the German officer factories.’

‘Considered immoral, I suppose?’ sighs the Old Man disillusionedly.

‘Of course,’ Porta laughs contemptuously. ‘It’s bad for fighting morale, but all the heroes are getting so tired they soon won’t give a fuck which way they’re going!’

‘You talk like a lot of bleedin’ books,’ growls Tiny. ‘Let’s talk about bints instead.’

‘How
was
that Russian nurse you raped the other day?’ asks Porta, scratching himself under the arm, where his lice have their favourite place of rendezvous.

‘Dry as a ‘ambone that’s been ’angin’ ’undred years in the rotten pantry,’ grumbles Tiny, disappointed. ‘They don’t understand ’ow to make the most of their big moments in this country. It’s somethin’
I’ve
been experimentin’ with for years.’

‘
What
have you been experimenting with?’ asks Porta, in astonishment.

‘’Ores an’ orgies, of course,’ answers Tiny, irritably. ‘When you’re goin’ to arrange an orgie the first things to lay on are buckets o’ wollop an’ a bunch o’ itchy-arsed bints. It’s best if the bints roll up about an hour’s time after the boys’ve filled their gut. Me an’ a mate o’ mine ’ad a quiet place at Hein Hoyer Strasse, 19. The shack belonged to the Yid fur bloke, Leo, properly, but ’e nipped off smart when Adolf started comin’ round the bleedin’ mountain. Even though ’e
was
always dressed in black, ’e wasn’t a bit like Reichs-’Eini’s black boys, an’, of course, there ain’t no really normal people as are!’

‘You’ll answer for those opinions, Obergefreiter Creutzfeldt! Your cup will soon be filled to overflowing!’ shouts Heide solemnly.

‘Must’ve run over long ago,’ replies Tiny, consideringly.
‘All them reports you’re goin’ to put in I reckon there’ll be a big paper shortage when we get back. But just give your jaw a rest for a bit, Julius. Stick a couple o’ bullets in your ear-’oles and think of somethin’ else. Well, when we
started
’avin orgies we didn’t understand it much and just pulled in passin’ crumpet off the street. This meant we only got casual customers,’ continues Tiny. ‘There was even some as asked for credit. A bleedin’ nit from Bolivia wandered in one night straight from the bleedin’ jungle. ’E thought it was all free an’ we ’ad to throw ’im out.