Blitzfreeze (8 page)

Hauptfeldwebel Edel comes slowly over towards the P-IV. In true Hauptfeldwebel style he plants both clenched fists on his hips. He stops by the P-IV and sends Porta a killing look.

Porta lies to attention.

‘Herr Hauptfeldwebel, Obergefreiter Porta reports complying with CO’s instructions: Resting as soon as becomes possible.’

‘Porta,’ snarls Edel viciously through thin, pale lips. ‘You’ll end your days dangling at the end of a good, stout Wehrmacht rope. I’d be a liar if I said I won’t be glad to see you dangling. The cleverest thing you can do is to get yourself a hero’s death p.d.q., Obergefreiter Porta. You are a shameful blot on the Greater German Wehrmacht. If the Führer ever gets to know that you’re a member of his Armed Forces, he’ll retire immediately and go home to Austria.’

‘Request Herr Hauptfeldwebel’s permission to send a postcard?’ Hauptfeldwebel Edel turns on his heel and stalks off. From bitter experience he knows how unwise it is to enter into a discussion with Porta.

Porta turns back to the large ring of soldiers round the P-IV and speaks to them of the new times and the happiness which comes to the cheerful in heart.

He goes on to speak of the ties of blood, the brilliance and warmth of the sun, and ends with a ringing Amen and a ‘Hail the Great Ones of the Earth!’

Then the MPs turn up, but before they get to the P-IV, Russian mortar-bombs begin to fall and the order comes to move off. Grinning all over his face Porta slides down
through the hatch. The Maybachs roar out. Tracks creak. The tank drops a curtsey to the war, which is knocking at our door again.

1
PK: Propaganda Company.

2
Watch-dog (slang): Field Police, who wear a chain around their necks.

3
Die eiserne Portion
(German): Iron rations (only to be opened on special orders).

4
PAK. (Panzer-Abwehr-Kanonen) (German): Anti-tank guns.

5
Komsomol. Russian Youth Organization.

6
Funker-MG. Telegraphist’s machine-gun.

7
BT-6: Russian medium tank.

8
No. 7: A rag-and-bone merchant who uses a hook shaped like a figure 7.

9
Halten sie
etc. (German): Halt at once or I fire!

‘I have often felt bitter pain when considering the German people; how worthy the individual, how wretched the nation as a whole.’

The Sampolit
¹
Malajin walked down the field hospital ward, tore bandages from wounds and in the face of protests from the medical staff hustled the solider patients down to the assembly hall where uniforms and equipment lay stacked.

‘Malingering swine!’ he screamed. ‘You deserve to be liquidated, every one of you. But I am not a cruel man. I leave that sort of thing to the Fascists. I intend to make examples only of the worst of you!’ Quickly he chose ten young soldiers, every one of them with a large blood-soaked dressing on some part of his body.

He pulled hard at his cigarette and blew a stream of smoke slowly through his nostrils.

‘You bastards lie there taking it easy in your hospital beds while every other Soviet citizen is fighting for our Fatherland and Comrade Stalin!’

‘I’m wounded, tovaritsch major,’ said the soldier, Andrej Rutych, just eighteen years of age that day.

‘You’ve still got a head on your shoulders, haven’t you?’ roared the Sampolit, ‘and haven’t you still got both your arms and your legs?’

‘Yes,’ replied Andrej, ‘but I have a lung wound.’

‘Use the other!’ The Sampolit turned to a Colonel.

‘These ten are condemned to death!’ He tightened his belt, straightened his flat cap and spat out his cigarette-butt.

‘Get it over quickly! Liquidate them at the crossroads! I want as many as possible to see it!’

‘Very good,’ replied the Colonel. ‘I’ll have them shot as soon as it’s light.’

‘Fine!’ grinned the Commissar and left the hospital with his four Siberian special service men at his heels.

‘All over!’ thought the young soldier Andrej Rutych, whose father was commander of a regiment. ‘Nobody will ever find my grave. They’ll throw me into a hole like a stray dog and stamp down the earth above me so that no trace is left.’

A grey dawn crept from under the veil of night. They were led to the crossroads. All the wounded from the hospital were lined up against the walls of the house. Many had to be supported by nurses. They dragged the first of them forward and threw a cloth over his face.

Three submachine-guns chattered. Ten times the pattern was repeated. Andrej Rutych came last. They had to carry him to the execution post. He had fainted when the two before him were shot. But regulations must be adhered to. A doctor was called to bring him back to consciousness before they tied him to the post and threw the cloth over his head.

Three hours later the regimental commander, Colonel Kujbyschew, was informed that the Sampolit, Major Malanjin, had fallen in battle.

‘It looked for all the world like suicide,’ said the adjutant, confidentially.

‘That devil went up against a tank with nothing but his side arm and was crushed under the tracks.’

‘That son-of-a-bitch!’ snarled the Colonel. ‘He’s cost me half the regiment. We withdraw. It’s madness to stay here. Withdraw,’ he repeated, ‘but fast!’

With his men behind him in close column he ran straight into the Soviet Security Force. They opened fire with machine guns and mowed the Colonel and his 436th Omsk Rifle Regiment down without mercy. Only a few escaped with their lives. They were neck-shot some days later.

‘
Nitschewo
,’ said an old militia-man. ‘They should’ve known what to expect. That’s what always happens. I’ve seen it often enough. Next time I’ll get my hands up smartly and give Fritz my
most friendly greetings. It’s the safest. Staying on this side is certain death.’

I position my throat mike. The PAKs, which have been pulled into position under cover of darkness, open fire on us. A reverberating roar seems to send the entire wood flying end over end. Whole trees are uprooted and thrown into the air. The leading tank flies to pieces in a fiercely expanding cloud. Bent and buckled scraps of steel are all that remain of it.

A scarlet curtain of fire climbs towards the clouds and spreads across the road. They’re using naphtha shells with pre-contact detonators. The forest is on fire. The flames spread to engulf the overripe unharvested maize fields. Soldiers who have taken cover in them are converted in a moment to living torches, running desperately in circles. Through our observation slots we watch them indifferently. It is a long time since we have been moved by human suffering.

A rain of explosive shells roll across the road and sweeps away an entire company of infantry. It is impossible to differentiate between the sound of discharge and impact. Two P-IVs disappear in one thunderous detonation. The charred remains of an anti-tank crew swing to and fro in a tall fir tree in an oddly casual way. A column of yellow-black smoke mushrooms towards the sky.

‘Panzer, march!’ commands Oberst Hinka over the loudspeaker.

Company commanders signal with raised hand. Section leaders repeat.

The two hundred and sixty tanks form into line. In the van and on the flanks P-IVs. In depth P-IIIs, with their obsolescent 50 mms. P-IIs and Skodas follow, snapping like bad-tempered fox-terriers.

The air quivers nervously with the noise of motors.
Russian positions are ironed flat. Hundreds of enemy soldiers are crushed beneath the tracks. A haze of poisonous smoke hangs behind the steel giants.

The tank jerks to a halt. The gun recoils and a spear of flame shoots from the oddly shaped muzzle-brake. Shot and sound of impact occur almost simultaneously.

Flames flare up where the phosphorous shell strikes. We alternate with phosphorous and HE, and with terrible effect. We roll forward, mashing wounded and dead into the mud!

A Russian captain attempts to save himself by hanging on to our tow-line. The ragged steel of the cable tears the flesh from his hands. He falls behind us, his legs crushed, thrown off like a piece of garbage.

Concentrated fire from a Russian anti-tank group stops our advance.

‘Back to the road!’ orders the Old Man. ‘Cover with flamethrowers and the forward MG!’ He peeps cautiously over the edge of the hatch, and kicks Porta gently with his foot; the signal for full speed forward. The P-IV roars at the road.

I catch sight of a T-34 partly concealed in a clump of trees. The turret swings round, but the long gun-barrel knocks against a stout fir-bole and is stopped. The turret gunner becomes nervous. Attempts to force the tree over with the gun barrel.

I rotate our own turret fast. Figures and lines jump in the sighting lens. The T-34 needs to back only a little to be in position to release a shot, and if it does we’ll be nuts and bolts. Long before we can touch it with our weaker armament it will have destroyed us. Our strength lies only in our superior speed. The Russians have committed the unforgivable error of manning a T-34 with a crew of only four men, so that the tank-commander also has to act as turret gunner.

The fifth man, the observer and objective-finder, is badly missed. Invaluable time is wasted while the turret gunner is finding the objective and at the same time must direct the tank’s movements.

‘T-34 at 200 metres! Armour-piercing!’ orders the Old Man. ‘Loaded, ready,’ shouts Tiny monotonously.

A yellow-white spurt of flame; black smoke expanding to a giant mushroom. The explosion tears the T-34 to pieces. In a procession of glowing balls wreckage rolls across the road. A human body is thrown against our tank and bursts like a ripe marrow. A phosphorous shell explodes immediately behind the smashed T-34. We search the area with our eyes, looking for concealed Panzer grenadiers, and then rumble forward over the wreck. A group of wounded hold their arms out towards us as if trying to stop us with their bare hands.

We meet the road at an angle. A shell from a PAK whistles close above us. The left track throws earth and grass into the air. The tank fights like a drunkard to maintain its balance. Porta, cursing foully, wrenches at the gears and accelerates fiercely.

The tracks clatter on the surface of the road. The long-barrelled 75 mm spews out shot after shot. A platoon of infantry is wiped out. The wounded try to duck away before the tracks can churn over them. The battle area is bathed in the corpse-white glare of the tanks’ searchlights.

‘Loaded, ready,’ mumbles Tiny mechanically. He shouts with pain. He has forgotten he is not wearing his leather helmet and has knocked the safety in with his forehead.

‘Jesus Christ!’ he howls smearing blood across his face.

‘Bloody ’ell! That ’urt!’

‘Stop your boasting!’ jeers Porta. ‘A head as thick as yours pain can’t penetrate! All that’s alive inside it is a bloody woodpecker that thinks he’s found a hollow tree.’

‘It flew straight in up his arse without him even feeling it,’ sniggers Heide.

Tiny throws his battle-knife at him, missing him by a hair as he ducks. ‘You could’ve killed me, you silly bastard,’ shouts Heide, raging.

‘No worry,’ grins Tiny, on top again.

‘Range 500 metres!’ commands the Old Man. ‘With HE! Load! Fire!’

Like a gaping beast the breech gulps the shell.

‘Loaded, ready!’ rasps Tiny aiming a kick at Heide which drapes him over the wireless.

‘You did that deliberately,’ shouts Heide.

‘It wasn’t me, it was me foot did it,’ grins Tiny. ‘All the limbs of me body lives together in self-governin’ freedom an’ brother’ood.’ He begins to sing in an excruciatingly cracked bass:

Wählt den Nationalsozialisten
den Freund des Volkes!
Täglich wechseldnes Programm!
Urkomisch! Zum Totlachen!
Kinder and Militär vom Feldweben abwärts
halbe Preise!
²

‘God knows what the Führer would say to such traitorous filth,’ screams Heide, shocked.

In a long roaring line the tanks roll forward. An enemy PAK is smashed. The barrel flies through the air, a wheel thumps against a tank turret. The gun-crew is left a bloody tangled clump of meat. The next gun sends a fireball howling at a P-IV. The Russian gun is served by only two men. The aimer and the commander. The rest of the crew lie dead around it. It is a brand-new gun and corporal Pjotr Waska is very proud of it. His militia regiment was formed only eight days ago and has already been destroyed.

‘Bravo, Alex!’ screams Pjotr enthusiastically. ‘That’s the fourth fascist bastard we’ve taken!’

A new shell flies into the breech. Ammunition is heaped high behind them. The heap of empty casings is even higher.

‘Smack ’em in the teeth, the German swine!’ he roars and throws his green steel-helmet towards a wrecked tank. He intends to obey the regimental commissar’s order: ‘Stand fast! Don’t give an inch!’

The two Russian anti-tank men are covered in mud. They look like devils risen from the swamp. They make two more hits. The torn-off head of a German grenadier, still wearing its steel-helmet, lands with a thump beside them. They roar with laughter and take it for a good omen. They plant the head on top of their gun-shield.