SS General (25 page)

"Well? Lost your tongues, have you? Who's in command here? Who's the most senior?"

"I am, sir." The Old Man stepped forward.

The Colossus looked him up and down and his lip rose into a sneer. "And who are you?" he asked.

"Feldwebel Beier, sir."

"Which regiment?"

"Twenty-seventh Panzers."

"How many men have you got here?"

"Seven NCOs, forty-three men. We've also got one bazooka, two submachine guns, six light machine guns and one flamethrower."

"Ammunition?"

"Yes, sir."

"Well? How much?"

The Old Man just perceptibly shrugged his shoulders. "I couldn't say exactly, sir."

He might have added, and what the hell does it matter anyway? If the Russians attacked us, we certainly hadn't enough to defend ourselves with for more than a few minutes.

The general kicked a tin helmet across the floor, and the sleeping Unterscharfuhrer awoke with a resentful start.

"Hell's bells, Feldwebel!" the general barked. "We're still fighting a war, you know!"

"If that's what you call it, sir," said the Old Man respectfully.

The general changed his tack. "What are you doing here, anyway? Why aren't you with your regiment? You're not serving any useful purpose skulking here like this."

"The regiment doesn't exist any more, sir. We're all that's left."

The general made an impatient click with his tongue and turned to stare rather piercingly at the Unterscharfuhrer, who had risen to his feet and was hovering at the back of the group.

"What's that man doing here?" He pointed a finger. "You! Unterscharfuhrer! Get back to your own battalion! You have no place here!"

The Unterscharfuhrer smiled rather slyly. "Haven't got a battalion, sir. We were surrounded at Rynok." He drew a finger across his throat. "Only lasted half an hour. I was buried under a load of corpses, they didn't spot me."

The general raised an eyebrow. "That's your story, Unterscharfuhrer. It remans to be seen what a court-martial will make of it. To me it sounds suspiciously like desertion."

He unbuttoned a top pocket and pulled out a large black cigar. Julius Heide at once rushed forward with a light and received a kick in the shins on his return.

"Ass-licker!" hissed Tiny venomously.

The general walked over to Porta's bed and began to spread out a map, beckoning to the Old Man as he did so. "Where was your last position, Feldwebel?"

"Near Kotluban, sir."

"Kotluban, eh?" The general found it on the map. "Thirty-three miles--hmm." He frowned, pulled out a pencil and began making a series of marks. Then he looked gloatingly up at the Old Man. "Feldwebel, perhaps you will kindly clarify something for me. Here is Kotluban," he pointed to it, "and here," he pointed again, "is a Soviet Guards regiment. Show me exactly where your positions were, if you please."

"Here, sir. Near this wood. Facing away from the Volga. We were part of the 16th Panzer Division."

"That is as may be, Feldwebel! But it hardly explains to me how you succeeded in crossing the enemy lines in order to get from Kotluban to your present position!" He swung around on the Old Man. "Am I to infer that you were issued with special passes signed by the Soviets?"

The Old Man pinched his lips disapprovingly together. "If you mean, sir, that any of my men collaborated with the enemy or deserted their posts or anything of that nature, then I hope you'll pardon me saying that you're talking through the top of your brass hat! We leave that sort of behavior to the officers, sir. The only man who went over to the Russians was Lieutenant Reiniger of the 79th Infantry Division. He was put in charge of the regiment, but he deserted before he'd been with us twenty-four hours. He not only gave away our positions, he also . . ."

"That's quite enough, Feldwebel! Hold your tongue!"

The general slapped the Old Man hard across the face with his leather gauntlets. The Old Man breathed very deeply and remained where he was, but to everyone's surprise the Unterscharfuhrer suddenly bounded forward with a cry of rage and made straight for the general. He can hardly have been avenging the Old Man. We could only assume that his mind had snapped, and with it. his instinct for self-preservation. Before he had even reached his intended victim, the general had snatched up his submachine gun and pumped him full of bullets.

"Pity," observed Porta. "We'd hardly got to know him."

The general glared across at us, eyes snapping in his hawk face. "Well? Is there anyone else here who's tired of life? Because if there is, just let him step forward! I'll be happy to deal with him."

We stood looking back at him; hating him, despising him, with murder in our hearts and our hands meekly at our sides. We had been too well trained. We had been Prussian slaves for too many years to break the habit of blind obedience. The idea of raising one's hand against a general was not one that came readily to mind.

"Very well!" He moved to the door, breathing heavily through dilated nostrils. "Pick up your arms and follow me. You're under my command from now on."

We left the bunker and took up positions along the Stalingrad-Pitomnok railroad. On our way there we stumbled across the remains of a battery of howitzers, now halfheartedly manned by the only three survivors from the original group. The general swept them along with us and commandeered the howitzers. We set them up and dug ourselves in, then settled down to wait. For what, we hardly knew. But the general had said wait, and so we waited. He was huddled into his greatcoat and had let down the flaps of his fur cap to cover his ears. The rest of us shivered with rattling teeth and frozen limbs in our holes in the snow.

At dawn the enemy arrived. A convoy of T-34s in search of trouble. We saw them breast the slope, hang for an instant in space, then come thundering down toward the railroad line. They crossed over with no opposition. Our infantrymen fled from their holes before the great white monsters, and few of them escaped. The tanks pounded after them, caught up with them, tossed them into the air, ground them into the snow, moved on implacably. Mounds of pulped and bloody flesh lay strewn in their wake.

Behind our camouflaged howitzers we crouched and waited. A man needed nerves of steel to sit tight while a row of monstrous great tanks bore down on him. My own nerves were of a pretty mediocre variety, and had it not been for the dogged presence of my companions on either side of me, I should almost certainly have fled before the tanks were within striking distance. They rumbled on toward us. Nine hundred yards--eight hundred--seven hundred--if we missed at the first crack, we should not be given a second; we should join our infantry comrades as mutilated heaps of raw flesh in the snow.

The tanks seemed almost on top of us. They were gathering speed, evidently not yet suspecting our hidden presence.

"Fire!" shouted the Old Man.

The four big guns roared together. The moment had come, and we had not failed. The leading T-34s were thrown into the air in a flaming mass of debris, and our fear abruptly left us. We even knew a certain exaltation. We had it in our power even now to destroy the enemy! We no longer noticed the cold, our nerve ends no longer trembled, our muscles no longer twitched with the tension of waiting. The oft-repeated gestures, loading and firing and loading and firing were so familiar as to be part of us and to dispel our momentary terrors. The guns roared, the tanks drew back; torrents of flame burst out of their turrets, balls of burning metal were thrown after them and tossed up and down on jets of scorchingly hot air. Men were quickly reduced to blackened corpses, their mouths drawn back over their teeth in hideous charred grins. Nineteen tanks fell prey to our guns and the sky was hidden behind a great black umbrella of smoke.

There was a moment's respite. We were running dangerously short of ammunition, but the general had no intention of pulling out. We remained at our posts, waiting for the next onslaught.

They came straight at us this time. They had obviously spotted our position, and they rolled majestically forward in a hail of shells, in no particular hurry. No matter how many we wiped out, another always moved in to fill the gap.

Those infantrymen who had survived the first attack now came scurrying toward us from their shallow holes in the snow, taking shelter behind us as if some measure of safety lay in the big guns. But once the ammunition had gone, we were as powerless as they, and the poor fellows were merely exchanging one hell for another.

I saw a young boy in twisted agony with a broken back. His tortured screams rose even above the roaring of the guns, temporarily blotting out all other sounds, but there was nothing we could do for him. There was no time even to take out a revolver and put a bullet through him.

Russian shells were landing among us with increasing accuracy. The cries and yells of the wounded were growing slowly to a nightmarish cacophony. I saw Big Paul from Cologne crumple up with his breastbone smashed and his ribs crushed in; I saw Corporal Duval from Sauerland collapse with his left arm hanging in shreds from a shattered shoulder; Sergeant Scheibe from Wupperthal had had both legs neatly severed below the knee; a shell exploded beneath the feet of Private Weiss from Breslau and reduced him immediately to a shapeless phantom of crushed bones and blood-splattered flesh.

The tanks continued relentlessly to stagger up the slope and tumble down toward us on the other side. How many more of them lay beyond the slope we could only guess. In my imagination I saw an endless line.

A shell scored a direct hit on Gregor's gun. The long cannon slewed around and had smashed off the head of his loader before the boy had time to duck. The body remained standing a few seconds with a fountain of blood spurting into the air. Gregor himself escaped injury but lost control of his nerves. He threw back his head and laughed and laughed, while the blood cascaded down his uniform. I had no time to slap him out of it, I was far too busy with my own affairs. When I glanced at him seconds later, he was on his knees in the snow, his whole body shaken with sobs.

The attack stopped quite suddenly. The T-34s veered around in the opposite direction and plowed off through the snow. No more came over the ridge. For several minutes we stood gaping, staring after them in imbecilic disbelief. Their victory had been assured, we could not possibly have held out for more than another quarter of an hour at the very most. And there they were, moving off into the snow, leaving us shaken but alive in the midst of our fallen comrades, whose bodies were already growing stiff.

All around was the acrid smell of cordite, which burned the throat and the lungs and made the eyes water and smart. I saw Gregor staggering to his feet and the Legionnaire grimacing with pain as the Old Man dressed a deep gash in his forehead. For once in his life he had been wearing his helmet. Without it he would certainly have been scalped.

Across the sullied snow came the general, followed by a group of silent, brooding soldiers. He waved an impatient hand at the guns. "Blow those things up, they're no more use to us! Reassemble down there, in the gorge."

He strode off, leaving Porta and me to dispose of the howitzers. We set the charges, Porta lit the fuse and we ran off toward the assembly point in the gorge. Just as we reached it there was an almighty explosion and our antitank battery was no more. In a few hours all traces would be covered by a fresh fall of snow.

It was thirty-eight below zero. The wind, as usual, was howling across the steppe and blowing icy crystal chips into our raw faces. Whichever way one looked, one encountered the glassy stare of a corpse, saw a stray arm or leg protruding from a drift, saw a trail of red over the snow. It seemed that the whole of the vast steppe had been turned into a graveyard.

At the head of the straggling column marched our SS general. His long coat was whipped about his legs by the wind, but his neck was protected by the upturned collar, his head was snug in its fur bonnet, and his feet encased in stout leather boots. The man was, of course, completely bats. We had realized that almost straightaway. He was a coldblooded fanatic bent on fighting his way single-handed across Russia, and we poor fools were to be dragged at his heels as convenient, transportable fodder for the enemy guns.

We dug ourselves in again by the side of the Volga, at the foot of a triangle of steep hills. From there, we could see long columns of enemy troops on the march, crossing the frozen river, and the next day the heavy artillery opened up and the bombardment began. Four times I was blown from the shallow trench by the force of the blast. The fourth time I had to be rescued by Porta, who made a quick sortie and hauled me back again. I was in such a state of shock that it was several minutes before I could manage to stand unaided.

The section in the neighboring trenches were subjected to a barrage of napalm grenades. A long line of fire ran through the ranks and men clawed their way screaming out of the trenches with their hair and their clothes alight. The very snow itself seemed to be on fire. The smell of burning flesh filled our nostrils, impregnated our clothes and our skin, until the stench turned our stomachs and made us vomit.

I had succeeded in wedging myself beneath some blocks of concrete, and I set up my submachine gun so that it pointed through a narrow fissure. Porta and Tiny were on either side of me, and we crouched together at the bottom of the trench, chewing hungrily at a few hunks of dry bread the consistency of brick. The thought of ordinary bread, even stale, plain, mildewed bread, was an almost unbearable luxury.

As the enemy poured in to attack, the mists from the Volga came rolling our way, shrouding the landscape in a chill, damp haze. For a few moments the panic and confusion were such that we fired blindly, not knowing whether it was friend or foe. And then, looming up out of the mist, came the squat, bloated forms of the Siberians, animated snowmen in their thick, white, padded costumes. We heard their raucous yells of encouragement, of death to the Germans and glory be to Stalin!

We beat off the first wave of the attack, but our fanatical general would give us no respite. With a wild shout he was down the hill and chasing after the withdrawing enemy, and we had no option but to go running along with him like a stampede of silly, frightened horses. The Siberians had evidently not expected such an act of insanity on our part. They were taken off guard. Some stopped and fought, others scuttled back to their own lines, where their officers, demented like the general, promptly turned them around and sent them back at us again.