March Battalion (2 page)

Little John rolled anguished eyes at the rest of us.

'How can I?' he asked, humbly. 'One more sound and I shall be shot.'

For a moment, it seemed only too probable. Lander's hand hovered above his revolver. The seconds passed. 'Down on your knees!'

Little John stepped back a pace and bent his head for a better view of the Captain.

'Who, me?' he said.

The order came a second time, rapped out falsetto.

'Down on your knees!'

Obediently, Little John plummeted down into the snow, like a sack of potatoes falling from a great height. Lander drew a breath, spat disdainfully, turned back to the rest of us.

'This man is a disgrace to the regiment. He shall be dealt with by a court martial.'

Little John muttered to himself in the snow, but Lander either did not hear or chose to ignore it. Abandoning his more usual biblical turn of phrase, he gave us the details of the glorious mission we were to undertake for the Fatherland. Quite simply, it was intended that we should dress ourselves up in Russian uniforms and set off in two captured T.34s for the enemy lines. It was a clear violation of the Geneva Convention, but Captain Lander dismissed both us and the Convention with a wave of the hand. It was plain that as far as he was concerned we were already to be regarded as 'missing, believed dead'.

The first difficulty that we encountered was finding a uniform large enough to cover the bulk of Little John's elephantine frame. He himself declared that it was not so much a question of violating the Geneva Convention as of violating the basic rights of man to make a person put on such a uniform. Only minutes before our departure we were still fighting to squeeze him into a pair of Russian trousers designed for a man of far more modest proportions.

There were no fanfares as our section took its leave of the rest of the regiment. Our tanks moved off across the steppes and were soon lost to sight behind a curtain of snow. 'And that's the last we'll see of them,' seemed to be the general feeling of those who watched us go.

The tank hauled itself, groaning, up the side of a steep incline. A burst of blue flames came from the exhaust pipe, and the sound of the motor rolled and reverberated in the mountain valleys. The adjutant, Blom - Barcelona Blom, who dreamt of Spanish sunshine and orange groves - opened one of the side panels and peered out into the night.

'Mountains,' he said, in tones of disgust. 'Nothing but bloody great snowy mountains.'

'And Ruskies,' added Alte, dispassionately. 'You can bet your' sweet life those hills are crawling with 'em.'

'Do you reckon we're behind their lines yet?'

'Hours ago.'

Alte had his forehead pressed hard against the rubber surround of the turret window. For some time he had been unsuccessfully attempting to see out, but the snow was too thick and visibility was down to nil.

'I just hope to heaven we don't run slap bang into a minefield,' he muttered.

Little John gave a sour snicker and crammed his old grey bowler more firmly on to his head. Little John's bowler was the pride and joy of the battalion - though there were those who said it had been responsible for more than one officer throwing a fit of apoplexy - and he refused to be parted from it for so much as a minute.

'Here--' He turned hopefully to the Legionnaire. 'What's the chance of me getting into this Garden of Allah you're always on about?'

'Not very good,' said the Legionnaire. 'On the other hand, if you could only manage to stop sinning and start praying I don't doubt Allah would manage to find a place for you.'

Porta made a vulgar noise with his lips.

'Allah wouldn't want scum like him mucking up his garden!'

'Besides,' added Heide, gravely, 'if he let Little John in there just think of all the trash that would follow. Before you knew where you were it wouldn't be a garden any more, it'd just be a bloody great rubbish dump.'

'You shut your mouth,' warned the Legionnaire, who was touchy on the subject. 'Allah knows what he's up to without any help from the likes of you.'

A stifled cry from Alte brought us all back to earth. Once again we were soldiers, professional killers. We had run into the rear end of a regiment of Russian infantry, and Porta jammed oh the brakes with only seconds to spare. The Russians were waving at us, shouting to us, but the sound of the motors drowned their voices and they were quickly lost to sight once again in the blinding snow. To our relief, our sister tank presently appeared, a massive black shadow in the white world. There had been no signs of alarm amongst the Russians: evidently there was nothing amiss with our T.34s adorned with the red star of the Soviets. Alte spoke on the radio: 'Distance between vehicles.'

The other tank slowed down, the shadow faded, and we were aware of her presence only by the grinding of her caterpillar tracks coming over the radio.

'Dora here, Dora here,' droned Alte. 'Direction 216, speed 30. Over and out.'

The sounds of the other tank were abruptly cut off and again there was silence.

'God, it's bloody freezing,' I said.

As if anyone cared.

'Get out and run along behind us shouting "Heil Hitler",' suggested Porta. 'You won't be freezing for long. Not if those Russians are still within earshot.'

'It's all very well,' I said, 'but it's not much fun moving along cheek by jowl with enemy troops. If they get the least idea that we're not what we seem to be--'

'Then it's curtains for us,' said Alte, shortly. 'And who could blame them? We're violating all the rules of the game.'

'So why are we doing it?' demanded Little John.

'Because it's bloody orders!' snapped Heide. 'And orders is orders, you ought to know that by now.'

We continued throughout the night, quarrelsome and companionable by turns. We were in the midst of one of our interminable slanging matches when Alte suddenly let out a small, high-pitched bark of terror. The slanging stopped instantly.

'What is it?'

'Prepare for combat.'

No one spoke. The Legionnaire picked up his gun, I groped silently for a grenade, Barcelona glued his eye to the observation panel. A harsh voice suddenly yelled something in Russian, and Alte replied in a Baltic dialect. The other T.34 close behind us, saw us too late to pull up in time and crashed into our rear. The Russian voice cursed it fluently with all the remarkable variety of obscenities available in that language. The owner of the voice then jumped on to our vehicle and bellowed out an order.

'Follow that column of tanks away to your right!'

It was an officer, wearing a cap with the green cross of the N.K.V.D. The sight of him was enough to paralyse us with sheer terror. Little John opened his mouth to yell, but fortunately no sound came out. Alone amongst us, Alte retained his presence of mind.

'Where do you come from? The Baltic?' demanded the Russian.

'Da.'

'I gathered as much from the disgusting dialect you speak. Try to learn some good Russian after we've won the war ... and get this bloody tank moving.'

'Dawai, dawai (quickly) you idle load of sods!' shouted Alte, in our direction, and he added the obligatory string of oaths
.

Meekly we took our place at the end of a long column of tanks. The police of. the N.K.V.D. were all over the place, shouting, stamping, gesticulating, trying to keep some sort of order and creating only chaos.

'Where the hell have you lot come from?' asked the officer, offering the Old Man a machorka.

Alte babbled something incoherent about a special mission, but the officer seemed not particularly interested and in any case his attention was diverted by a sudden bottleneck that brought the entire line of tanks to a halt. We heard him disputing vigorously with one of the policemen, demanding that a passage be cleared for our two tanks'- it seemed that he himself was in a great hurry to arrive somewhere, and after a few sharp exchanges, in which the word Siberia occurred with horrid fre.quency, the police moved back and waved us forward.

'Step on it!' snapped the officer.

Porta only too willingly did so, his performance with the heavy tank bringing forth words of grudging praise and the request that Alte should speak to the CO. as to the possibility of Porta being seconded to the personal service of the Russian. Alte gravely promised to give the matter his urgent attention.

After some fifteen minutes the officer abandoned his exposed position on the outside of the vehicle and came to join the common rabble inside. Alte silently gestured a warning to the rest of us as two booted feet swung into view. A second later, the officer appeared in his entirety. He stamped his feet loudly on the metal floor of the tank, in an effort to restore his circulation.

This place stinks like a brothel.' He looked round at us, studying each in turn and dwelling for some while on Little John and his grey bowler. 'Where's the vodka?' he demanded, at last.

Alte handed over a jar, and we watched in silence as he poured the contents straight down his throat.

We came at length to a check point, when an N.K.V.D. sergeant demanded the password.

'Papliji tumani nad rjegoj,' replied our officer.

'Do these tanks belong to the 67th?' the sergeant wanted to know.

'Niet. They're on a special mission.'

The sergeant told us to wait while he consulted his superiors.

'Hell and damnation!' The Russian hoisted himself out of the tank and jumped to the ground. 'I can't hang around here all day. Time's precious, I'm in a hurry.'

Muttering and cursing beneath his breath, he followed the sergeant. We watched as they approached a major, who was sitting on a canvas stool beneath a tree and was surrounded by a swarm of N.K.V.D. men. We saw the officer waving a handful of papers, saw the major leafing through them; saw him finally look across at our tank and laugh, then point towards another vehicle standing nearby. Our officer also looked and also laughed. Plainly he was being offered a more comfortable means of transport than a T.34.

After a bit, the sergeant came across to us and handed over several sheets of paper.

'Here you are. New password. You can forget the other.'

'How come?' inquired Alte, very casual and offhand.

'There's a rumour that a bunch of Krauts are junketing about behind our lines in a couple of our own tanks, but we'll soon get our hands on them. Just to be on the safe side, we've changed all the passwords... Where's the vodka?'

Alte passed up Little John's own personal supply, and once again we watched spellbound as it disappeared rapidly down an avid Russian throat. The bottle was tossed into the snow and the sergeant broke wind very loudly at either end of himself.

'That's better ... O.K. The new password. You'd best take careful note of it. It's been specially chosen so that any stray Krauts that might be in the area couldn't pronounce it even if they knew what it was - not that you'll be in much better case with your lousy Baltic accents, but still, I can't teach you good Russian all in five minutes... Now try to get it into your thick skulls. "Raswjetili jablonski i gruschi". Panjemajo? (Got it?) The reply is "Schaumjana uliza". And if anyone says otherwise, shoot first and ask questions afterwards. Schaumjana uliza. Headquarters of the N.K.V.D. in Tomsk, in case your ignorance is even greater than I imagined. Now, then--' He climbed up on to the tank and leaned forward towards Alte. 'This is your new itinerary. Take the road for Sadovoje, but don't go through the town, it's already crowded out with the whole of the 14th Division. Take the road to the south, to Krasnoje. They'll give you a new password there. Panjemajo, Gospodin?'

'Da,'said Alte.

'O.K., then,'

The sergeant raised his hand in a farewell salute and jumped off the tank. We were free to go our own way once more - only this time we had the blessing of the Russians to go with us!

For some hours we drove eastwards, giving a wide berth to any villages en route. Several times we passed groups of Russian soldiers, but only once was the password demanded of -

In the late evening we reached the mountains and called a temporary halt in a wood, where the tanks were well hidden from any prying Russian eyes. Alte called up headquarters for new directions, and the order came through at once: proceed towards Tuapse.

We set off again, in a south-westerly direction, and proceeded for some miles in comparative silence, which was ultimately broken by the voice of doom coming from Porta:

'We'll be out of gas pretty soon.'

No reaction from any of us save Little John, who wished to know how we were to continue without petrol, and warned the world in general that with (a) his corns and (b) his piles it was no earthly use expecting him to walk half way across Russia. No one deigned to reply.

As we pressed on, the storm clouds gathered above us and on either side the mountains closed in. The country grew ever more wild, ever more bleak. It breathed hostility in every breath. The road we were following was shown on the map to be broad and straight, but it grew narrower and steeper mile by mile. The heavy tanks tended to skid on the glassy surface and it required great skill on the part of the drivers to keep them under control. The observation panel was a solid block of ice, totally useless. We had to keep the side panels open, with the result that the wind blew the snow in upon us in cold gusts.

Quite suddenly, our sister tank, driven by Steiner, skidded on a patch of ice and slewed round in a semi-circle, and we Were forced to call a halt and go to her assistance. We broke two steel hawsers trying to drag her back on to the road facing in the right direction. They simply snapped in half as if they ' had been pieces of cotton. Next we tried it with the heavy, linked-chain towline. That got her moving all right, but she skidded once more on the same patch of ice and this time she came to rest on the extreme edge of the road, her front half overhanging the abyss. General consternation. Then Porta put his foot down hard on the accelerator, the towline straightened and held, the tank began slowly edging back on to the road. Just as we were all starting to let out breaths of relief, the towline parted company from the tank, which went crashing down into the depths, and somehow managed to take little Muller down with her. God knows how it happened. For a few moments we remained silent and stunned, and as usual it was Alte who was the first to pull himself together.