Blitzfreeze (45 page)

‘That sounds like a bit of all right,’ yawns Porta, ‘think of getting your old tip covered again. Mine could certainly do with a good thawing out!’

It’s a grey, starless night, with a fast-driving cover of cloud. Showers of snow fall every so often. We lie for a while watching the lights away in the distance. They look very beautiful from here. The flares draw long coloured tails after them and explode in a star-burst of colour nuances.

‘Ours!’ states Moser, with assurance. ‘Let’s get on! It looks as if the Russians are pressing heavily. By tomorrow it may be too late!’

Suddenly the whole sky lights up. Shortly afterwards a rolling boom of many explosions running into one another reaches us. A fair-sized artillery duel must be in progress.

‘What in God’s name is going on along the front?’ mumbles Moser, thoughtfully, after having observed the great flashes of light for a while.

‘Maybe they’re using up the last of the powder!’ says Porta, trying to twist his mouth into a smile but achieving no more than a grimace.

‘Section leaders to me!’ orders Moser. ‘I want you ready to move off in ten minutes time! In full battle order, please!’ He adjusts the chin-strap of his helmet.

‘What, in the middle of the night?’ asks Feldwebel Kramm, unbelievingly. He joined us with eleven men only a few days ago.

‘The Russians are swarming everywhere!’

‘Show me somewhere they aren’t, Feldwebel, and we’ll go there!’ says Moser, sarcastically.

‘We march in ten minutes time! And we are going to get through even if we have to do it with only spades and bayonets!’

We have used our short rest to fill magazines and
cartridge belts. Everybody is grumbling. It’s as if we’ve lost our drive now that we’re so close to reaching our goal.

‘Hear me!’ shouts the Oberleutnant, softly, when the company is paraded ready to move off. ‘We are a fair-sized company, now. A good many units have joined us of all sorts, from clerks and caterers to rocket artillery and demolition experts. Now hear me, all of you! The German positions are no more than four or five miles from here. One last effort and we’re home! We must leave now. Tomorrow morning might be too late. By then the enemy may have broken through the new lines. We must expect to have to fight hard, but there is no other way. Wounded will be taken with us, if there is the least possibility of doing it, but they must not be allowed to hold us back! Above all things. Maintain contact! We shall go forward in a walking hedgehog formation. 2 Section will take the lead. I trust you, Feldwebel Beier! Any questions?’

‘What if the breakthrough fails, Herr Oberleutnant?’ asks Oberfeldwebel Klockdorf.

‘You’ll soon find out, Klockdorf,’ smiles the company commander, sarcastically. ‘We’ll be dead, Klockdorf!’

Tiny has got hold of a brand-new Russian machine-gun in beautiful condition. He hugs it, tenderly as a mother nursing her newly born infant.

Porta throws a tin of pears over to me. I swallow the contents and feel new strength flow into me.

We advance in a wedge across a stretch of open ground. Halfway over a raging machine-gun fire opens up on us from a group of trees and is supplemented by rifle fire from the flank.

Porta sweeps the foreground with machine-gun bursts, and covers us while we work our way forward towards the trees.

Moser dashes forward, closely followed by the command group. He stops a moment to throw a hand grenade.

Tiny jumps and passes the company going like a tank.
The machine gun hammers, grenades explode in the forest, screams and curses arise:

‘
Job tvojemadj, germanskij, germanskij!
’

Branches and twigs crackle and snap under fast-moving feet. A burst from an MG knocks over two Pioneers. Sani bends to help them.

‘Get on!’ shouts Moser, pushing Tafel on in front of him.

No. 2 Section rolls over the Russian group, and finishes them off with spades and bayonets.

Tiny breaks the neck of a woman captain, with a chop from the edge of his hand, just as she lifts her gun to shoot him. Her head hangs crazily down her back as if she were trying to see herself from behind.

Panting, we rush forward through the loose snow. Often we go in up to the shoulders and have to be pulled out. The snow is like a bottomless swamp sucking you down into its depths. Three Russian infantrymen are stuck in the snow. Only their heads are showing above it. Klockdorf liquidates them with shots through the back of the neck. Blood-red rings colour the whiteness around them.

When we stop we find we have lost twenty-three men. A machine-gun section has disappeared without trace.

‘Damnation!’ curses Moser, bitterly. ‘That wouldn’t have happened if they’d kept in touch as ordered. Their names?’

Nobody knows them. They have only joined us quite lately.

‘Nothing we can do about it,’ decides Moser. ‘We can’t go looking for them. Once again, then!
Keep contact!
It’s your one and only chance of getting through. Death is running with us!’ Four times in succession Tiny falls into giant snowdrifts. He is as hard to get out of them as a horse would be. When it happens for the fourth time running he goes quite mad and fires a burst down into the snow in hysterical rage. He sends two bodies sailing into the forest.

‘Out o’ the way, you dead bastards! Out o’ the way o’ men an’ the war! You’ve ’ad it, you ’ave, see!’

The Professor falls behind. His strength is quite gone. He falls sobbing into the snow.

The Legionnaire takes him by the arm and drags him along with him.

A little later he finds he has lost the ammunition bags, and wants to go back after them.

‘Tiny’ll kill me for losing the bags,’ he moans, weeping.

‘
Pas d’objections!
’
¹¹
snarls the Legionnaire, dragging him on.

‘You can pick up a couple of full ones when we hit Ivan again, which won’t be long now.’

Shortly afterwards Tiny catches up with them. His rage at the snowdrifts has cooled somewhat, but breaks out again when he discovers the Professor has lost the ammunition.

‘D’you mean to say you’ve thrown the ammo away?’ he roars, pointing a big, dirty accusing finger at the Professor.

‘I’ve lost the bags,’ admits the Professor, feebly.

‘Lost the bags!’ howls Tiny, his great beery, bass voice echoing through the forest. ‘’E’s lost the bags, ’e says. You ’aven’t got the brains of a frozen bleedin’ Bolshie monkey! You don’t lose your bleedin’
ammo
in the middle of a bleedin’ war! Where’d we be if everybody was to do that? There soon wouldn’t be no war,
would
there? No ammo no bleedin’ war! Where’d we be
then
? Go back an’ find it! ’Ow’d you expect me to make coffins for Ivan without any nails to put in me bleedin’ ’ammer? Want me to go rushin’ at ’im without no ammo in me gun an’
frighten
’im to bleedin’ death? I’ve never ’eard nothin’ like it! A loader what throws away all ’is bleedin’ load! That’s what you get for lettin’ these barmy bleedin’ arf-arsed alien bastards into your bleedin’ army!’

‘He stays here!’ says the Legionnaire, decisively.

‘Say that again!’ says Tiny, unbelievingly. ‘You must’ve swallowed a bleedin’ date-stone when you was wanderin’ round in Africa an’ got a bleedin’ moudly date palm
growing up through your brain, mate! You’re sabotagin’ the Second World War. Thought o’ that? You ain’t still fartin’ around with that gang of flat-footed Legionnaires you ’ad in the ’ot Sahara sun ’avin a ’igh ol’ time watchin’ them mirages of Arab cunt winkin’ at you from the bleedin’ clouds’

‘Don’t forget I am an Unteroffizier, Obergefreiter Creutzfeldt. I order your loader to stay here!
Compris?
’

‘Oh you
do
, do you?’ snarls Tiny, raging. ‘All right then! I ain’t got no alien loader any more, see? You can stick ’im straight up your rotten sand-filled arsehole if you should feel like it, and all ’is snow-capped, icy, bleedin’ mountains after ’im, an’ then you can get yourself transferred to the Engineers an’ make a livin’ shittin’ gravel onto the roads for the rest o’ the bleedin’ war. That’s what you can do, mate!’

He disappears into the forest with the Russian machine-gun under his arm like a walking stick. We can hear him for a long time, cursing Norway and Morocco as if those two countries were to blame entirely for the loss of his ammunition bags.

‘Who the devil is that shouting?’ asks Moser, who is bringing the company together again.

‘It’s Tiny,’ grins Porta. ‘He bit off a commissar’s prick in the fighting in front of Moscow, and now he’s just discovered he hasn’t had his monthlies. He’s cursing the Maternity Corps because they won’t give him a free abortion.’

‘Your section again, Beier!’ snarls the Oberleutnant, viciously. ‘It’ll drive me out of my mind! Either you get out of 5 Company when we get back, and take that crazy crew of yours with you, or I ask for a posting away from the company altogether! I can’t stand it any more!’

‘There’s a shower o’ yellow Commie monkeys a mile the other side o’ the coal-mine,’ comes Tiny’s deep voice, as he steps from the thick forest. ‘They near shit themselves when I turned up an’ took a couple o’ bags of ammo away from ’em.’ He swings the filled ammunition bags above his head.
‘’Ow about nippin’ over an’ fixin’ ’em proper? They’re only bleedin’ militia, an’ it’d be easy as stampin’ on a frog.’

‘God damn your eyes, man!’ screams Moser. ‘My cup of patience is running over!’

‘Cup?’ asks Tiny, looking round him. ‘If they’re dishin’ out tots I’m due for a double ration. I was ’avin’ me prick looked at last time we ’ad a ration issue.’

‘Shut up, shut up, shut
up
!’ rages Moser, taking a step towards Tiny and clicking over his safety-catch. ‘Open your mouth just once more, Creutzfeldt, and it’ll be the last thing you’ll ever do in this world!’

Tiny goes over and stands by Porta.

‘This bleedin’ war’s gettin’ worse an’ worse,’ he says, injuredly. ‘Ain’t even allowed to open your mouth, now. ’Fore you know where you are it’ll be forbidden to go for a shit!’

The company commander sends him a killing look. ‘Let’s get on,’ he turns, resolutely, to the Old Man.

Now the artillery fire is thunderous. The Russian artillery positions can’t be far away. Flashes show continuously above the trees.

Silently Porta holds up his hand in the signal for Halt! Without a sound the company sinks down in the snow.

A thunderous roar and a muzzle flash which makes everything light as day splits the darkness. A Russian heavy-calibre gun is firing only a few yards away from us. By the light of the flash we see the artillerymen rushing around preparing the gun for the next shot.

‘
Mille diables
, a 380 mm!’ whispers the Legionnaire. ‘It will take them at least fifteen minutes to ready her again. Let’s take them just before they’re ready. Then they’ll all be looking at the gun. They won’t even feel themselves dying!
Vive la mort!
’

There is a jingle and rattle of steel on steel from over by the gun. Short, sharp commands are given, the loading crane groans under the weight of the heavy shell being hoisted up to the breech.

‘Ready?’ whispers the Old Man, drawing his combat knife from his boot.

‘Like a hungry stork about to nip up a big fat frog,’ answers Porta, splaying out the legs of his LMG.

Moser brings back his arm and throws a grenade into the middle of the gun crew. As the gunner falls he fires the gun. The chatter of our weapons is drowned in the muzzle report, and we dart forward.

I stumble across a body, come quickly to my feet, and roll down a steep incline. Thorns tear the skin of my hands and face to ribbons.

Porta is right on my heels. He twists like an eel as he falls, and fires a burst at some figures which come running along the top of the ridge. The tracer tracks seem to sweep them over backwards.

Tiny comes down with a rush like an avalanche, a Russian clutched tightly in his arms. They are thrown apart and come to their feet together with a roar. The Russian has a bayonet, but Tiny kicks him in the crutch and smashes his head open against a stone.

We rush on. A machine-gun hammers at us from a split-trench. Grenades explode snappingly, flares pop. In the twinkling of an eye we have taken the machine-gun nest. We are desperate men. They were blocking our way to safety.

The Signals Feldwebel is hit in the throat, and his blood spurts over me. He cries out hoarsely and tries to staunch the wound with snow. Too late! A main artery has been cut. Two SS-men fall into a Stalin trap, and are spitted on the rusty bayonets in the bottom of it. Their screaming can be heard a long way off. There’s no time to take them with us. Breathlessly we arrive at a little cluster of sheds used by shepherds as shelter for them and their flocks.

Tiny is in the lead. He throws a grenade through the open doorway and drops into cover. The grenade explodes with a heavy thud.

‘Hear anything?’ asks Porta.

‘Not as much as a fly scratchin’ ’imself!’ answers Tiny.

‘Something smells,’ says Porta, suspiciously.

‘It ain’t our friends the enemy,’ mumbles Tiny, staring anxiously at the sheds. ‘I’d be able to ’ear ’em breathin’!’

I raise the signal pistol and send up a flare. Slowly the umbrella of light sinks down, illuminating the huts. Still nothing to be seen.