Cauldron of Blood (8 page)

Blinded
by the smoke and the sudden greedy yellow-red flames, the next driver smashed into the wreck — and the next. The Russians were not slow to recognize their advantage. They swarmed forward, sticky grenades at the ready, ignoring the flying shreds of metal and the deadly tracer which were cutting through the air everywhere.

They
clambered on to the stranded tanks, clamping home their mines, ducking beneath the machine gun fire of the trapped crews, to drop off and pelt for cover.

They
did their job well. One after the other, both tanks erupted into flame, rocked and torn apart by the tremendous explosions, while Peiper looked impotently on. Not only was he cut off from his own lines, but he had already lost one half of his little force. Now Task Force Peiper was down to exactly three Panthers and the four halftracks laden with frightened young
panzergrenadiers
. It was not exactly the greatest military formation to tackle the Soviet army which would soon be flooding in the Kessel....

THE
BATTLE OF FEDOROVKA

‘There’s Frogs and Tommies, and Amis and Ivans, there’s even Spaghetti-Eaters in this war. But mark my words, lad — they all shit out of the same hole!’

The
Sayings
of
Sergeant
Schulze

ONE

‘What do you make of that, you little fart-cannon?’ Schulze demanded, as the driver braked the tractor and the two of them stared through the steamed-up windscreen at the collection of battered, bomb-shattered buildings down in the valley some two kilometres away.

Matz
pursed his lips thoughtfully. They had been travelling cross-country for over a day now, without food, their only drink snow, melted in mess-tins placed on the tractor’s red-hot engine cowling. Even as he surveyed the little Russian town, his stomach rumbled noisily.

‘
Don’t know, Schulzi,’ he said morosely. ‘Only thing I do know is that it’s occupied.’

‘
Eh?’

‘
You heard, tin-ears! Look over there, next to the church tower, there’s smoke coming up.’

Schulze
nodded and dropping heavily into the deep snow, waded through it to where a crooked signpost stood. He wiped the ice away to reveal the bullet-pocked sign. With difficulty he deciphered the Cyrillic lettering.   ‘Fed... or... o... vka.’ Turning to the others, he called, ‘It’s Fedorovka!’

Matz
said, ‘That’s about fifty kilometres from the edge of the Kessel.’

‘
That is,’ someone commented miserably, ‘if there still is a Kessel. The Popovs might well have carved it up into little bits by now, for all we know.’

‘
Oh, knock it off, you shitty happy ray of sunshine!’ Matz cursed, as Schulze plodded back to the tractor.

‘
But what are we going to do?’ the Golden Pheasant moaned. ‘My stomach’s doing double back-flips for the want of food!’

‘
You ain’t the only one,’ Matz said sourly.

‘
But he’s right,’ the Butcher affirmed. ‘In this miserable climate, a man must eat or die.’

‘
Shut up!’ Schulze cut into the moans and protests. ‘Some of you cardboard soldiers give me a pain in the arse. Always complaining. Why you never had it so good. Winter holidays in Russia at the government’s expense! Now where would you bunch of dead-beats get anything like that in civvie street? ‘

But
the big Hamburger’s attempt at humour fell flat; the men were too tired and too hungry to be amused. He sniffed and said, ‘All right, be it on your own necks. What do you want me to do?’

‘
The Ivans can’t have got this far — yet,’ the Butcher said. ‘I vote we go down and have a look-see.’ He licked his cracked, parched lips and resisted the temptation to pick up a handful of snow and suck it, because he knew that would only result in diarrhoea and a mouthful of painful sores. ‘To judge by that smoke they’ve got some grub down there — otherwise why the fire.’

‘
Ay, ay,’ there was mutter of agreement from the others.

‘
Then we’ll go and have a dekko. But I’m not taking any risks. We’ll swing right round the place and come in from the rear. The first sign that it might be held by the Popovs and we make dust. Agreed?’

‘
Agreed.’

Half
an hour later, Sculze ordered the driver to take his vehicle out of the cover of the trees and start heading for the battered little town, saying, ‘The first sign of trouble, mate, and you swing this monster round and get the hell out of it.’ To the others he added. ‘Let ’em see yer uniforms, so they know we’re German in advance. The Popovs, apart from their snipers, can’t shoot to save their lives. If it’s them down there we’ll soon know about it.’

At
a snail’s pace, trailing a white wake behind it in the virgin snow, the tractor advanced towards the village, the front man standing up in full view, while an anxious Schulze tensed for the first outbreak of firing. None came. As they came closer and Schulze could see quite clearly the bomb-shattered houses, the surviving walls pock-marked with shrapnel marks like the symptoms of some loathsome skin disease, the place remained obstinately silent. But now he knew it was occupied. The smoke from cooking fires rose from half-a-dozen spots and there was no mistaking the smell of warm food.

Next
to him the Butcher rumbled joyfully. ‘Grub, I can smell, hot grub!’

‘
Trap
!’ Schulze snapped. ‘Can t you close yer arse-crack, you big greedy chow-hound?’ He bit his bottom lip and threw anxious glances at the snow-covered ruins which lay to both sides of the track upon which they were now riding. If the place were inhabited by troops, they would have to have some sort of positions there.

They
did. Suddenly a challenge rang out above the roar of the engine. Schulze swung round, not understanding the language, but the tone was a warning all right.

A
small, dark-faced soldier in an overlarge uniform was standing there, rifle held tight to his hip. Schulze breathed out a sigh of relief. The strangely swarthy soldier was wearing the field-grey and typical scuttle-helmet of the Greater German
Wehrmacht
. The town was still in German hands.

*

‘
Hijo
de
Puta
—
adelante
!’ the little soldier growled and dug his bayonet into Matz’s back. ‘
Adelante
!’

Matz
moved under protest. ‘Watch it with that toothpick, spaghetti-eater,’ he complained, but stumbled forward all the same, knowing instinctively that the fifty little men already around them in German uniform would not hesitate to use their weapons. ‘I’m delicate, you know, a bit weak on the chest like.’

The
swarthy little man was not impressed. ‘Go... we see commandant,’ he said in heavily accented German.

Thus
the survivors were herded through the miserable shattered streets, heaps of rubble covered by dirty snow on all sides, scattered with carefully dug in and camouflaged posts, manned by the same little men as those taking them to see the ‘commandant’.

‘
What do you make of it, Sergeant Schulze?’ the Golden Pheasant asked under his breath.

But
before Schulze could answer, the little man with the bayonet, who was obviously in charge, cried, ‘No speak... no speak till see commandant...
bastante
,
hombre
.’

Five
minutes later they entered what must have once been the little Russian town’s main square: a shabby old onion-roofed church, a bullet-pocked statue of Lenin in his usual dramatic pose, a bomb-shattered house-of-culture and a handful of German vehicles, heavily camouflaged, but all clearly bearing the same yellow and red divisional sign worn on their sleeves by the little men.

  ‘
You wait!’ the little man ordered. ‘First speak to commandant.
No
habla
.’

Shouldering
his rifle, he went into the house-of-culture, while the Wotan men shuffled their feet uneasily and cast slightly anxious glances around them, trying to find out in what kind of place they now found themselves. But their captors revealed nothing, nor did the square. It was bare of soldiers and civilians, though a pair of red silk knickers, decorated with black lace, was dangling on a line from Lenin’s outstretched arm and seemingly indicated that there were not just the strange little soldiers in occupation in Federovka. Schulze looked at Matz significantly.

‘
Pase
!’ it was the little man. He pointed at Schulze, Matz and the Golden Pheasant. ‘You... you and you...
Pase
!’

Again
one of the little men stuck his bayonet into Matz ‘s ribs and the three of them stumbled forward, entering the

former
house-of-culture, which was obviously this strange outfit ‘s HQ. They walked down a long corridor, the roof supported by heavy beams and sandbags, with little rooms to each side filled with dark little men busy with papers and telephones.   ‘
Organisacion
,’ the little man said proudly, ‘
muy
importance
.’

Out
of the side of his mouth, Matz whispered to Schulze, ‘Do you think these slime-shitters have still got all their cups in their cupboard? You’d think they were settling in here for the duration, when the Ivans are only kilometres away.’

Schulze
shrugged, as puzzled as Matz.

They
turned off the corridor and were faced with a closed door. The little man with the bayonet snapped to attention in front of it and knocked. From inside there came a muffled voice. It was obviously a command for them to enter. The little man looked his captives up and down sternly and indicated with a jerk of his head that Matz should fasten up an open collar-button. Bewildered, Matz did as he was commanded.

‘
March!’ the little man commanded and flung open the door.

They
‘marched’ along the long strip of threadbare red carpet until the little man barked,
‘
Halt
!’ in a hard, proud voice.

Awkwardly
they did so and stood there, the three of them, facing the man who posed like some nineteenth century captain in front of a big desk.

He
was small, like the rest of these strange men who occupied the Russian town, but unlike them he was fat, exceedingly fat. But the man did not let his lack of stature or gross belly affect his heroic pose, one hand thrust behind his back, the other stuck between the third and fourth button of his immaculate bemedalled uniform, his short thinning black hair carefully plastered down over his low brow.

‘
Shit on the shingle,’ Matz whispered out of the side of his mouth, ‘
Napoleon
Bonaparte
!’

The
strange officer touched the large bandage at the side of his jaw and then hesitantly took what looked like a cork out of his mouth. ‘I speak with difficulty,’ he said carefully in good German. ‘The Reds shoot me here.’ He indicated the bandage. ‘My jaw, it is wired. The cork I need to keep the bones in place.’

The
Golden Pheasant breathed out a sigh of relief. ‘Thank God, you speak German! I thought we had landed...’ he hesitated, ‘I don’t know where I thought we had landed.’ The fat man thrust up his belly and said as proudly as he could with his shattered jaw. ‘You are with the Blue Division, Regiment El Alcazar,’ he announced. ‘I am Commandante Almazen. Welcome to my regiment.’

So
that’s who they were, Schulze told himself. He had heard of these Spaniards who had been ‘volunteered’ by Franco, the Spanish dictator, to fight against the Ivans for Hitler. The Blue Division was generally reckoned to be as fanatical as they came — and by the looks of the little Napoleon facing them, the rumours were not far wrong.

‘We are from SS Assault Regiment Wotan, Major,’ Schulze said hurriedly when no one spoke. ‘We were cut off. Now we’re trying to make our way back to our regiment.’

Little
Napoleon took the cork from between his front teeth. ‘You were,’ he said calmly and replaced the cork hurriedly, as if he thought his upper jaw might fall down and remained clamped there for good.

‘
What do you mean, sir?’ the Golden Pheasant stuttered, fear written all across his fat face. ‘I am Gauleiter Kirn. I must return to my
Gau
at once. These men are now acting as my bodyguard.’

Schulze
flashed the Golden Pheasant a quick look of admiration. The fat bastard was thinking on his feet.

The
Spaniard was not impressed. ‘Every man is needed here,’ he said. ‘I have heard of the SS. They are good soldiers. Almost as good as the men of Regiment El Alcazar. You will stay here and hold the Citadel.’

‘
The
Citadel
?’ the other three echoed.

‘
Here. This building.’ The Little Napoleon slapped his hand down hard on his desk.

The
three of them started.

‘
My regiment is named after our heroic defence of the fortress of Alcazar against the Reds during our civil war. There we held off the Red scum for months, even though we had to eat rats and cats to do so. But we beat them, and here we will beat them again!’ Hastily he slipped in the cork and rested for a few moments, obviously taxed by so much talking, his eyes staring at them with haughty imperiousness — like the Little Corporal himself might have done from some heroic painting by David.

After
a few moments he recovered. Removing the cork, he waved a fat beringed hand at them. ‘Dismiss now. You will be told your duties later,’ and with that, the little soldier with the bayonet was ushering them outside, crying that word which they would come to hate, ‘
Adelante
...
adelante
,
hombres
....’

  ‘
Well, what do you make of it, Schulze?’ the Butcher asked morosely, as they sprawled there in the dirty straw in the big shed that ran the length of the back of the   ‘citadel’.