March Battalion (27 page)

Some years later, this same captain wrote an account of the strategic withdrawal from Tabar Bunary. The account is now one of the standard textbooks on the subject and is in current use in military training schools. The captain was decorated for his brilliant handling of the withdrawal and has since been elevated to the rank of colonel.

The T.34s that had caused the fiasco could hardly have believed their luck. They stuck nose to tail along the main road, driving scores of half-demented soldiers westwards before them. Those few who tried to keep their wits about them and hang on to their military sang-froid were soon submerged in the general sea of panic. One elderly major general, going under for the third time, gallantly fought his way back to the surface and found himself at the tail-end of the retreat amongst the sick and the wounded. The major screamed and shouted and threatened, but the main body of the army swept boldly past him and out of sight. He remained with the stragglers, tears of shame and humiliation pouring down his cheeks. Unfortunately, tears alone were not enough to stop the advance of the Russian tanks, which slowly crept up on the rearguard. Salvoes of shots from the heavy guns ploughed up the road before, behind and on either side of them. The major could have run. Instead, he wrenched off his stiff collar and the shining cross at his throat, snatched up a handful of grenades and made a dash with them towards the nearest of the approaching tanks. He was only a few yards away when he tripped and fell. The grenades rolled harmlessly into a ditch at the side of the road. For a moment the major hesitated. He lay in the road where he had fallen and the leading T34 was almost upon him. In reaching up in search of a handhold the major came into contact with one of the exhaust pipes, from which the flames were leaping. His hand was burnt to a cinder before his brain had a chance to react. The edge of his cape was caught by one of the caterpillars and the major's body was swiftly wound up and crushed against the wheels. They heard his cry inside the tank A lieutenant glanced out of the slit and laughed as he saw an arm sticking up in a parody of a salute. The Major's body was swiftly sliced to ribbons. The little that remained was mashed to a pulp by the other oncoming tanks, and soon all that could be seen was a trail of blood and a hovering swarm of flies.

It was three months later, in Germany, that the Major's widow heard of her husband's death: he had fallen in battle, when leading his troops in an attack on heavily fortified Russian positions. No one ever fell during a retreat. There were no such things as retreats in the German Army.

At Kita, on the other side of the frontier, a court martial was being held in the town hall. No one had yet thought to inform them of the situation in the outside world, and meanwhile they were having the time of their lives: they had as many deserters on their hands as any court martial could have wished, and they were condemning them to death right and left without batting an eyelid. At the very moment when the line of T.34s was entering the eastern gate of Kita, the court martial were condemning out of hand a young private who had thrown down his arms in the face of the enemy. The presiding colonel was in his element. He knew his law down to the last letter; to the last comma, the last semi-colon. He lost himself in a sea of verbosity, the long legal sentences ebbing and flowing about the court. Inevitably, the outcome was death. It was the Colonel's dearest hope and belief that on the signing of his two-hundredth death sentence he would be promoted to general and recalled to Berlin, there to serve on the Judicial Council of the Reich. At present he was only on his one hundredth and thirty-seventh, but a few more days like today and he would soon fulfil his quota. And with any luck he would reach the two hundred mark without ever having witnessed an execution. The Colonel abhorred violence. For him, his one hundred and thirty-seven victims were not human beings so much as material for the judicial machine, passed to him for preparation, passed on afterwards for processing. If he thought about them at all, it was only to reflect that war demands its sacrifices if the final victory is to be gained.

He drew himself up and regarded his latest victim, the young private who was about to be condemned to death as an example to others. A military policeman tapped the boy on the shoulder.

'Come on, lad. Time we were leaving. It's all up with you now.'

The boy had listened impassively to the Colonel's final summing up. He had made no move when the sentence of death had been passed. But the simple words, 'It's all up with you now', seemed suddenly to strike through to his heart. He turned to the court and flung out his arms wide, screaming and protesting. The M.P. dropped his paternal air and gave the boy a sharp clip round the ear. Next moment he was heaving him bodily out of the courtroom with a knee in the small of his back.

As the doors swung open, the sudden sounds of a bombardment were heard. A second before there had been silence; now the air was full of noise, the thudding of heavy guns, the whine of bullets, the explosions of shells and the staccato chattering of machine guns. The courtroom stood shuddering a moment, then a fine plaster dust rained down from the ceiling.

'What the devil's going on?' demanded the Colonel, brushing the sleeve of his immaculate pearl grey uniform.

One of the judges, a Captain Laub of the Seventh Motorized Regiment, left his chair and walked across to the window. He glanced out, casually, then turned back with his face ashen.

'It's the Russians!'

'Hell's bells, the Russians are nowhere near here! Get a grip on yourself, man! Are you attempting to spread false rumours?'

'No, sir.' The Captain stiffened. 'Perhaps you'd care to take a look for yourself?'

Before the Colonel could reach the windows, Major Blank, the prosecutor, had joined Captain Laub and confirmed the news.

'I'm afraid he's right, sir. It is the Russians.'

'How the hell did they get this far?'

'God knows, but they did.'

The M.P. had automatically released his hold on the prisoner. They stood close together, as if for protection, covered in the fine, powder that was still gently raining down on them. Quite suddenly, the condemned soldier turned and ran. He crashed through the deserted corridors of the building and out into the street, straight into the arms of a leather-jacketed, fur-capped giant who was on his way up the steps into the town hall. The giant grabbed hold of the soldier and shouted out in Russian. The soldier, too petrified to speak, twisted out of his grasp and promptly received two bullets through his skull. At that short range, they blew off most of his head.

'See,' Dr. Goebbels would have said, 'even those whom we have condemned to death are still willing to stand up and fight for the Reich!'

But Dr. Goebbels himself could not have said what became of that particular soldier. The body lay for a short while on the steps of the town hall, until a Russian tank commander, taking the corpse to be a live soldier feigning death and probably only waiting his chance to throw a couple of hand grenades into the oncoming troops, hurled an explosive and blew off the arms and the legs. What remained was crushed to a pulp beneath enemy tanks. The pulp was no doubt discovered and disposed of by some starving dog or cat, of which there were many roaming the streets, and that was the last of Private Wulff. For a long time he was posted as missing, treated as a deserter. His relatives and friends in Germany were subjected to long hours of intensive questioning; his mother was arrested on a charge of harbouring her son. No one ever knew the truth. The fur-capped giant shouted out an order and half a dozen brown-clad Siberians rushed up the steps and into the town hall. The Colonel looked up from his desk and regarded them with an air of grave surprise. Captain Laub pulled out his revolver, but before he could use it he had received a shower of machine gun bullets in his stomach. He sank slowly to the floor, his eyes full of puzzlement. The Colonel turned in protest to the Russian corporal who seemed to be in charge of the raiding party.

'I object to this brutality! Calm yourself, for heaven's sake, and act like a trained soldier!'

Corporal Balama spat on the floor and raised his machine gun. The Colonel stepped back a pace.

'We offer no resistance. Fighting is obviously useless. As far as we are concerned, our destinies are in your hands ... Put down that gun, man!'

The other soldiers laughed.

'Stoi!'

The Corporal turned round and for good measure gave the M.P., still crouched in a corner, a hard jab in the belly with the butt of his gun. The man let out a shriek, more of fear than of pain, scuttled across the floor and fell babbling at the Colonel's feet, seizing him round the knees. The Colonel kicked out, but was unable to extricate himself. A smell of unwashed humanity rose up, rank and rancid, and almost suffocated him. It was one of the worst moments of the entire war.

'Dawai, dawai!' commanded the Corporal.

Again, his soldiers fell about laughing. They began repeating it, 'Dawai, dawai!' and herding the members of the court martial together in one corner of the room. The artillery feldwebel who had acted as chief witness against one of the accused received a bayonet in the back of the neck. The clerk of the court left behind three children and a widow, but the widow had two lovers to keep her occupied and for her, at any rate, her husband's death was probably a happy release.

A Russian commissar came into the hall and let loose a new string of orders. He sounded curt and evil-tempered. The survivors of court martial number 4/6 306 were at once marched outside and crowded together in the back of a T.34, which had run out of ammunition and was returning to base with a cargo of prisoners.

Little John and Barcelona Blum, who were hiding behind a ridge of trees, heard the approaching tank when it was still some way off. The driver was pushing ahead at a speed which hardly seemed warranted, in the circumstances, but he was an old hand at the game and his instinct no doubt warned him of hidden danger. The Commissar, too, seemed ill at ease. He cursed incessantly and for no apparent reason, and he directed a stream of abuse at the driver whenever the motor coughed or spluttered.

Little John stretched out on his stomach, his chin supported on his hands, moodily watching the T.34 as it toiled up the road towards them.

That cretin down there's asking for trouble,' he observed. He turned to Barcelona. 'You feeling like a bit of fun and games? Cover me while I go down and have a bash at it.'

'Let 'em pass,' said Barcelona, carelessly.

'What d'you mean, let 'em pass?' Little John sounded indignant. We're supposed to be guarding the whorehouse, ain't we? Keeping out the Ruskies? And you say sit up here on your great fat arse and watch a sitting duck go by without lifting a little finger to--'

'Belt up, for Chrissakes, you give me a headache ... What the blazes can one solitary tank do? It can't leave the road on account of there's marshes on either side. If they make one little move in that direction they've had it, and you know it as well as I do.'

'So? We're still letting 'em get off scot free, ain't we?'

'Don't be so bleeding thick! Where d'you think they're going to get to, coming along here? It doesn't lead anywhere, except to the sea, so sooner or later they'll have to come back this way.

And when they do, we'll have laid out a nice little bed of mines to greet 'em.'

'I reckon the silly buggers must've lost their way or something ...'

Little John turned back to the road and watched the tank go past. He suddenly sat up and pointed. 'Hey, look at that! It's full of our own chaps--'

'Wounded heroes going back to Moscow, more like.'

'Take a bet?'

At that moment, the motor cut out. The tank lumbered to an ungraceful halt. There were several vain attempts to start her up again, then the sound of angry voices reached the two hidden watchers. Little John grinned. He picked up his M.G. and rammed it against his shoulder, pushed his hat to the back of his head and took aim.

'Don't be such a bleeding idiot!' snapped Barcelona. 'We're not here for that. The Old Man didn't tell us to sit up here and take pot shots at people.'

'Get stuffed,' said Little John, equably.

The first to die was the Commissar. In his fury he had leapt out of the tank and was threatening the driver from the road.

'You know what you'll get for this, don't you? This is an outrage, it's a flagrant breach of--'

What? Discipline? The driver never knew, and probably never cared. There was a crack, and the Commissar suddenly folded up in mid-sentence and fell neatly to the ground.

'What's going on?' yelled a voice from inside the tank.

Silence. No sound but the wind rustling through the tree tops, the branches sighing and creaking. No indication at all where the sniper was hidden. And then the frogs in the marshes began an anxious croaking, as if making a comment on the event that had just taken place, and this was a signal for the prisoners cowering in the back of the tank to lift up their heads and begin whispering amongst themselves.

'What was it? One of ours?'

'Search me.'

'Must have been one of ours.'

'I suppose so.'

'Who else would be firing on us?'

'Dunno.'

'Where'd it come from, then?'

No one answered, because no one knew. The dead Commissar lay in the road where he had fallen, his arms flung out before him, his head turned sideways in a pool of blood. The blanketing silence returned. The gunner suddenly jumped out of the turret and ran round to the front of the tank, anxiously scanning the road on either side. He was followed, reluctantly and nervously, by his two companions, huddled together for greater safety.

Up in the thicket of trees, Little John laughed silently to himself. Once more he took aim. Once more his finger curled itself round the trigger.

'Look, give it a rest, will you?' Barcelona jabbed angrily at him. 'We're not here to play games, we've got other things to do that are more important.'

'What's more important than killing off the enemy?' demanded Little John. 'It ain't every day of the week you find people damn fool enough to get out of a T.34 and go waltzing about in the middle of the road ... Now let me alone before I get really mad.'