SS General (22 page)

From that moment on, luck was against us. About a mile farther down the road we were surprised by a patrol of motorized MPs, who promptly arrested us as deserters.

"Deserters, my fanny!" said Porta indignantly. "We're looking for our regiment!"

This, it seemed, was exactly what everyone else claimed to be doing. We were thrown into the attic of a nearby farmhouse, where we found ourselves locked up in the company of fifty other unfortunates. They, too, had been picked up off the roads. Some were in a genuinely dazed condition; some had been wandering aimlessly about the countryside, some had been caught pillaging, while others had undoubtedly been in search of their own companies. It appeared that we were all indiscriminately condemned to death.

"Fucking greased lightning," said one man bitterly. "Don't stop to ask you no questions, they just stick a label on you and that's it, you've had it."

He was quite correct. Only a few minutes after our arrival, a Feldwebel appeared and solemnly pinned bits of cards on our chests.

"What's all this?" asked an indignant Tiny.

Our informant waved a hand. "Death, that's what that is. Don't worry, we've all got 'em."

The door opened and a couple of MPs came in. They glanced around the room and one of them beckoned to a man sitting by himself in a corner. "Come on! We'll have you next, you look pretty done in."

The man was dragged out, we heard the sound of shots, the sound of tramping feet, and the MPs returned. This time they went off with a loudly protesting sergeant. We found we could count up to fifty-three before the shots were fired, and up to a hundred before they came back for their next victim. Occasionally the proceedings were interrupted by the delivery of a fresh prisoner. One Oberfeldwebel succeeded in killing a guard and throwing another down the staircase, but he himself was so seriously wounded that they had to take him out on a plank of wood to be shot.

"Us soon," I said.

"Bet they do me last," said Tiny with simple pride as he flexed his gigantic muscles.

We both turned to look at Porta, but for once he remained silent.

"You thinking of something?" I inquired hopefully.

"What is there to think about?" he retorted.

"I just wondered. I somehow never pictured it like this," I said. "I always imagined I'd be killed outright--step on a mine, something like that. Odd how it turns out, isn't it?"

"Odd, my ass," said Tiny.

At that moment the two MPs returned again. They looked around the room as usual and their glance flickered over me, passed on, returned briefly to me and finally settled on someone else.

"That was a close shave," I said as they bundled their victim through the door.

"Your turn next," suggested Tiny.

"Want to bet?" I challenged.

Suddenly, from somewhere outside, we heard the familiar sound of tank tracks. We stampeded to the window, but before we could reach it there was the thunderous crash of cannon fire, followed by the rapid typewriter clacking of a machine gun. We could see nothing through the window, it was too high and too small. Tiny hoisted himself up into the rafters, kicked a hole through the thatched roof and pushed his head out.

"What's going on?"

"What's happening?"

"What is it?"

We all clamored around him, demanding information.

"It's the Russians!" said Tiny. "Lousy Cossacks galloping all over the place--couple of tanks just gone through-- whole village is on fire . . ."

"Let's make a break for it!" shouted Porta, hurling himself at the door.

Tiny and a large Feldwebel set their shoulders to it and went crashing through. At the foot of the stairs lay an MP with a bullet through bis head. Tiny snatched up his submachine gun and everyone began pouring out of the farmhouse. It was the Feldwebel who had second thoughts.

"How far do you think you're going to get without your papers?" he yelled after us. "No papers, and red labels pinned to your chest--you must be out of your minds!"

No one else paid him any heed as they went streaming off in a panic. Only the three of us turned and hesitated.

"All very well to talk," said Porta, pulling off his condemned label and throwing it into the trampled snow, which had been churned up by the tanks and the Cossack horses. 'They took our papers off us when they brought us in."

"Well, you're dead without 'em, that's for sure. No papers and you're a goner in this war."

"You got yours?" demanded Tiny aggressively.

"No." The Feldwebel stood frowning, then suddenly snapped his fingers. "Hang on a minute! Give me that thing!"

He grabbed the gun from Tiny, moved back into the house with the three of us close on his heels, walked down the passage and pointed silently to a closed door.

"In there," he mouthed. "I guess that's where they've put all our papers."

A burst from the submachine gun and the door crashed open. Another burst, and three astonished MPs fell open-mouthed from their chairs. We found a whole stack of papers in a drawer. Our own were fortunately near the top of the pile.

"Best set fire to the place," advised the Feldwebel. "Just in case."

"In case what?" asked Tiny, looking vacant.

"In case some nosey parker comes along and sees our names on one of their lousy lists! You want to be picked up and shot in six months' time, all because we didn't finish the job right?"

We left the farmhouse in flames and set off along the road, deserted now.

"You coming our way?" said Porta. "Which way's that?"

"Back to our company, if we can find it." "Oh, no! No more war for me, thank you very much. I've been in this business a hell of a long time--too damn long, if you want to know. I used to be with the SA in the old days." He shook his head. "I've had a bellyful, I don't mind telling you. This little mess has just about finished me."

"But what'll you do?" I asked.

"Go over to the other side, I guess. Find the Russians and give myself up. I'd sooner see out the war in a prison camp than go on like this."

"They don't take prisoners," said Porta. "They'll shoot you."

"Or drag you along behind a horse," added Tiny eagerly. "I seen 'em do that to a chap one time."

The Feldwebel shrugged. "I'll have to take my chance."

"Well, all the best," said Porta without much hope in his voice. "I'm as sick of it as you are, but I don't fancy a prison camp. Leastways, not a Russian one. Now, an opportunity to get across the Don, I wouldn't say no to that!"

"Get across the Don?" The Feldwebel laughed. "You'd never make it. You'd freeze to death on the steppe before you'd even been gone twenty-four hours. Even the wolves can't survive out there. They come down into the villages and scavenge for food. And if you think it's cold now, you just wait until the temperature drops to fifty below zero and see how you like it! Enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey! You'll be thinking of me in my prison camp . . ."

"With a bullet through your head," said Porta.

We shook hands and went our separate ways. We never did learn what happened to the Feldwebel, though we often had cause to remember bis words.

About half a mile out of the village we caught up with a small group of wounded men crawling back in search of their regiments. We stayed with them and were joined later, at varying intervals along the road, by other stragglers, until we became quite a sizable group.

Some hours later, at a place called Rotokina, we came upon familiar faces. The company was there but they had no time to welcome us back, for our arrival was the signal for the Russians to launch yet another attack, and almost immediately the order came through that we were to withdraw to new positions farther south.

A government must take care that its people are not irrevocably swept away in the drunken delirium of heroics.

Adolf Hitler,
Mein Kampf

The commanding officer of the 71st Infantry Division, General von Hartmann, had given the order for a subterranean village to be constructed near Tsaritsa. The task was entrusted to the 578th Engineers, and they in turn enlisted the help of the two thousand Russian civilians who were held prisoner in that area. They were put to work as slave labor, women and children, old men and idiots, the sick and the dying. Seventy-five percent never survived to see the result of their efforts.

The village was called Hartmannsdorf, and extravagant rumors were rife throughout the whole of the Sixth Army. The general's bunker, it was said, had four rooms and a bath and had been furnished with articles stolen from the museums of Stalingrad. There was a chandelier and a four-poster bed, thick carpets and rugs on the floor, oil paintings and crystal vases and a whole library of precious books. The general's division had been the first to enter Stalingrad, and it was naturally assumed they had laid hands on all the valuables they could find.

In addition, the village was reputed to have its own flour mill and two silos full of grain; a poultry farm with six thousand chickens; a herd of over a thousand cows; stables containing one hundred and thirty-eight thoroughbred horses; a dairy and a bakery.

Certain it was that the general and his staff could be seen most mornings enjoying themselves on horseback in the countryside surrounding Tsaritsa. It was a bewildering sight for the soldiers who made their painful way back into the town from distant battlefields. Men weak with hunger, men gravely wounded, men half dead with typhoid, looked at the well-fed general and his plump and healthy staff and wondered if they were ghosts from the past.

Hartmannsdorf flourished until the middle of January, 1943, but the 71st Infantry Division was wiped out of all practical existence sometime before then. That January, von Hartmann called up the remnants, gathered them together, and marched bravely out of his village to launch a last desperate attack upon the enemy. It had not been the general's idea to make heroes of the remaining few. The orders had come from Berlin.

"We are but pawns," said von Hartmann grandly. "The Fuhrer disposes of us as he will."

General's Cakewalk

A portly Russian general, flanked by two sergeants, came toward us bearing a flag of truce. Our orders were to shoot all envoys on sight, but after a second's hesitation, Captain Glaser told us to hold our fire. The Russian general moved closer. He was a big man, over six feet tall, with powerful chest and shoulders, hanging belly and sturdy legs. His face was harsh and furrowed, his small blue eyes pitiless as the Russian winter.

As they approached, one of the sergeants tossed across a white sack. We picked it up gingerly and looked inside. Food!

"A present from the Soviet people," said the general in good German. "I am instructed to offer you terms for a capitulation. The offer to remain open until 1800 hours, after which time I am instructed to inform you that we shall launch a massed attack of tanks and artillery. You understand, of course, what that would mean, Captain?"

Not only the captain: we all understood. A massed Russian attack would completely annihilate us.

"From midnight on," pursued the general with a bland smile of anticipation, "we shall take no prisoners and accept no surrender."

Captain Glaser bowed his head in silent acceptance. Whichever way you looked at it, it was the end of the great German victory in Russia.

"On the other hand," said the general, replacing his smile with a severe frown of discouragement, "if the offer is accepted, then each of your soldiers will be given the same ration of food as is given to our own troops. Your sick and your wounded will receive the necessary treatment." He smiled again, showing a row of needle-sharp teeth. "We know that you are short of food and medication."

From the corner of my eye, I could see Porta already conducting his own brand of negotiations with the enemy. I saw him take out a pack of opium cigarettes and I saw one of the Russian sergeants hand over a pack of photographs. I wondered what thrills Porta could experience from pornographic photographs when we all stood to be wiped out of existence in less than twelve hours' time.

"Accept the offer and you will be treated honorably, as soldiers. Decline, and--" the general made a brief gesture.

Captain Glaser very slightly hunched his shoulders. "I shall pass on your terms to General von Hartmann."

"Let us hope he will prove a reasonable man. All this continued bloodshed can profit neither side."

In a bunker near the railway line at Orlovka, a group of officers were seated in solemn conference around an old plank table. General von Hartmann of the 71st; General Stempel, commanding officer of the 176th Infantry Division; General Pfeffer, Colonel Crome and General Wultz.

"In my opinion," von Hartmann was saying, "we have no option but to fight until the last man goes down, and then to kill ourselves rather than fall into the hands of the enemy." He looked around at his fellows. "It is up to us to set an example."

"I agree," said Wultz. "It would be a fine end."

"And the men?" asked Colonel Crome.

The question fell heavily into the sudden silence. The generals looked covertly at Crome. He had been promoted to lieutenant when in command of assault troops at Arras. He had the Cross of Merit around his neck, and his tunic was heavy beneath the weight of his other decorations. He was still absurdly young to be a colonel.

He cleared his throat and again asked, "What about the men?"

"Colonel Crome," said Pfeffer, "never mind about the men. Our duty is quite clear. Our first thoughts now must be for Germany. However," he turned to von Hartmann, "I cannot agree that we should kill ourselves. We must die, yes! But not by our own hands. What I propose," he said, his eyes gleaming with an almost childlike pleasure, "is that we ourselves should lead the men into battle--march at their head with bayonets fixed! What a way to go, gentlemen! What a way to be remembered!"

"Splendid! Splendid!" cried Stempel, quite carried away by the glory of it all. "Drums and trumpets! What a spectacle! I find it most edifying!"