SS General (27 page)

On Christmas Day, at three o'clock--precisely the same time as they had withdrawn the previous day--the enemy returned. But not in force. Five T-34s were all they sent. Five T-34s in a line, moving our way across the snow. From a loudspeaker on the leading vehicle came the stirring sound of a march. The five tanks proceeded in perfect formation towards the third section. There was nothing we could do to halt their advance. We were powerless, we had almost nothing left to fight with. No antitank guns, no flamethrowers, no heavy artillery, not even a grenade.

At the last moment the T-34s turned in their tracks and set off at a tangent, away from the third section and toward the hitherto unsuspecting second. From the loudspeaker came the strains of the "Radetzky March." Solemnly, ponderously, deliberately, each tank came to a halt before a dugout. Terrified men stared up at them, some too scared to move, some already scrambling out. The tanks rose up, came crashing down into the snow, pulping and pulverizing, each tank turning slowly on its axis. That done, they casually mopped up the one or two who had escaped and went back the way they had come, soon disappearing in a cloud of snow.

We watched in silence. The silence of death. Not a voice spoke, not a shot was fired. The second section was no more than twelve bloody heaps lying in the snow. We sat back and waited.

The next day, at three o'clock, they returned. The same formation, the same music, the same cold precision. Another section disappeared. We buried our heads ostrichlike in the snow to muffle the sound of our comrades' unearthly shrieks and to shield our eyes from the sight of their mangled corpses.

The long winter night was silent and full of terror. We thought we still heard the screams of the dying men, but it was only the wind howling across the steppe.

Toward dawn a few random shells landed on the snow-covered slope behind us, presumably to make sure we were awake and ready to receive their propaganda outburst, which came booming across from their loudspeakers: "German fascists! Capitalist swine! We'll be over again today--round about three o'clock--the same as yesterday . . ."

"Capitalists!" jeered Porta. "Gregor, fetch my Cadillac, I feel like taking a trip to the Cote d'Azur!"

The loudspeaker crackled again, and a different voice came through. It spoke better German than the last one, and it was altogether more agreeable and more persuasive in tone.

"Comrades!" it beseeched us. "This is Sergeant Buchner of the 23rd Panzer Division speaking to you .. ."

We looked at each other wonderingly.

"Why don't you come across and join us? Show yourselves to be friends of the people! Throw off your bondage! Break out of your chains! Spit on your capitalist masters!"

Sergeant Buchner promised us all manner of earthly rewards, including a supply of women, if we would only surrender ourselves to the delights of the Soviet Union, that proletarian paradise where working men were free and happy.

"All very well," said Porta, "but what's the point of exchanging a capitalist master for a Communist one?"

Two men made a desperate bid to gain the proletarian paradise, but their capitalist master, in the shape of our rabid SS general, gunned them down before they had covered more than a few yards.

The Russians returned as they had promised, at three o'clock in the afternoon. We crouched paralyzed in our holes. Whose turn today?

The usual five tanks moved slowly across a field of fresh snow, to the usual accompaniment of martial music. Porta defiantly took out his flute and began playing in competition. The rest of us sat and stared. Our holes were as deep as we could possibly dig them. We had no tools at our disposal and the ground underneath the snow was hard as granite.

One or two men bounded out and began loping across the field away from the tanks. They were shot by their own officers. Desertion in face of the enemy!

Through a small hole which I had bored through the surrounding wall of packed snow, I watched the approaching tanks. There was nothing to be done save wait. I had nothing with which to defend myself. Not even a grenade to throw. Not even a bullet to put through my head.

A tank passed within a few yards. I crouched even smaller in my hole. The tank moved on. It chose our neighbors for its target. I heard them screaming as they died. We knew them well, they had been with us for some time, and I tried to shut out the sounds of their agony and to close my mind to the pictures that were flooding it. But I couldn't help hearing, and I couldn't help seeing . . .

I saw Sergeant Wilmer, the cheerful little shopkeeper from Dusseldorf. I saw his face as he died. I remember how he told us he had joined up in 1936 for four years, and how he had written personally to Hitler in 1940 asking that he should now be allowed to go back to Dusseldorf. Hitler had never replied, and Wilmer had never understood. And now he never would understand. Poor Wilmer! Nothing but a heap of blood and crushed bones in the snow. What a way to go--God, what a way to go!

The screams continued. It was important, for one's own precarious sanity, not to attach the sounds to any particular face, but visions swam before men's eyes whether they would or no. Was it Bohmer, big fat Bohmer, the machine gunner from Cologne? Or was it his buddy, that skinny little fellow from Lubeck? Or was it that other guy--what was his name? That little dark guy who came from Hamburg and was obsessed by railroads? Well, whatever his name was, he had seen his last train go by ...

Their faces lingered before my unwilling eyes. Their screams tore through my head.

"Stop that racket!" shouted Heide hysterically. "Stop that god-awful racket, for God's sake!"

He crammed his fingers into his ears, but nothing kept out the sound of those screams. Only God seemed deaf to them.
Gott mit uns,
it said on our belts, but we all knew it for a lie. God was not only not with us, he was nowhere near us on that day. Perhaps he never had been near us. Perhaps it had always been a lie.

They came again, the following day. The same music, the same slow advance. And still we remained helpless at our posts and waited.

This time they settled on the fourth group. As we watched, a sergeant of the Marines jumped from his hole and began tunneling away from them through the soft top layer of snow, burrowing underneath it like a giant mole. He crawled so fast he seemed almost to be swimming, his arms and legs flailing before and behind, pushing the snow out of his way.

His comrade was not so ingenious. Left alone in the hole they had been sharing, he panicked, shot out at the last moment and tried to run. The leading tank lumbered after him. I saw it rear up, catch the man by one arm and toss him into the air. As the body came down, they began to play with it, worrying at it, pushing it about, tearing off first one arm and then the other, finally crushing the mutilated corpse deep into the snow. They had no pity, these Russians. They could hear the shrieks of the poor wretch as they ground him beneath them, but they went on with their sport until he was no more than a red splat in the snow.

The slaughter was over for another day. There was always a chance that something would happen in the next twenty-four hours to save us. The general might come to his senses and pull out; the Russians might disappear in the night; the war might even come to an end.

It was a shock when the familiar row of T-34s appeared on the horizon for the second time that day. We were scarcely able to believe it, it was going against all the rules of the game. Once a day, at three o'clock. That was the routine. They had imposed it themselves and they had no right to break it. The unfairness of it all filled me with bitter resentment and brought me close to angry tears. I was momentarily more concerned at the Russians' lack of honor than at my own imminent and agonizing death.

The first tank had already found its prey. A lieutenant, a middle-aged professor from Munich, who threw up his arms in a futile gesture, attempting to ward off the blow. But human arms are a fragile defense against thirty tons of metal, and the T-34 smashed them contemptuously aside and went on to claim the rest of its victim.

And now, at last, it was our turn. They came at us in a line, music blaring. For the first time the general himself was directly threatened. He shouted ferociously at us to remain at our posts, but Porta, pausing only to thumb his nose at him, leaped from his hole and went bounding away through the snow, followed by his black cat, which had stuck to Porta like a leech through all our vicissitudes. I held my breath, my head moving compulsively from side to side as I tried to keep one eye on the approaching tanks and the other on the receding Porta. We waited for the general to open fire. The officers waited for the general to open fire. Now that he himself was facing death, would his fanatical principles still hold good?

Apparently not. With a sudden agile bound, the general was up and away, running after Porta as fast as his legs would carry him through the deep snow. That was the signal for the rest of us. Heads down, lungs heaving, we deserted our posts and fled in the face of the enemy. It was blatant disobedience of the Fuhrer's orders. The last man, the last bullet.. .

The tanks came after us, mechanical monsters in pursuit of men. Anyone who stumbled or tripped, anyone who lagged behind, was caught up and crushed, while the rest of us plowed on without a backward glance, only too thankful that a comrade's torture and death was giving us a few seconds' respite. I didn't care who they caught, so long as it wasn't me. My terror was too great to permit the luxury of caring for anyone else's skin.

Gasping, panting, sobbing, I stumbled on through the snow. It was impossible to keep up a fast pace for very long, the snow was too deep, it clung around your legs and it was like trying to flounder through sand dunes. The air was so cold that it burned your throat and tore your lungs apart. My nose had started to bleed, and between sobbing and panting and bleeding I began first to choke and then to suffocate. I suddenly tripped and fell headlong into a deep drift. It was rather like falling into a hot bath. Or a feather bed. Or a blast furnace. I shrieked in agony as the boiling cauldron of the snow enveloped me in its fiery grip. The pain was ecstatic. It was beautiful. It consumed me and it lulled me and I wanted it to go on forever.

A large hand suddenly gripped me by the shoulder and hauled me out of my hypnotic shroud. I dangled helpless with my feet off the ground as Tiny shook me like a rat.

"What's the matter with you?" he demanded roughly.

He set me down and slapped me hard about the face. A spurt of blood from my nose splashed onto the ground at my feet. Behind us lurched a T-34, its flamethrower reaching out for us across the snow.

"Get a move on!" roared Tiny.

He caught my hand and bounded off through the snow, towing me behind him. Some way in front I saw Porta and the general, running neck and neck with the black cat springing at their heels.

We eventually reached a narrow gorge in a range of high hills. The T-34s had fallen back and seemed to have abandoned the chase, and we threw ourselves down exhausted, our eyes glazed and shoulders hunched.

The gorge appeared to be a military dumping ground. It was full of wrecked vehicles, empty crates and cans, unidentifiable chunks of twisted metal. We lay about uncaring in the trash, while the Legionnaire sat cross-legged . and cleaned his submachine gun.

"Army shit dump," he said, nodding at the gorge. "Saw something very like it at Sidi-bel-Abbes."

There was scarcely any French colony where the Legionnaire had not done battle. He was a born soldier. Less fanatic than Heide, but tougher and more instinctive in his reactions. He didn't care where he fought or who he fought. Fighting was his job and he carried it out with the same dour efficiency wherever he was. His heart was still in France, with the Legion, but he saw nothing anomalous in fighting at Stalingrad for Hitler. He was reserved and independent, unemotional but not insensitive, ruthless and reliable. While Heide straightened his uniform, the Legionnaire checked his submachine gun. The rest of us lay inert and vacant amid the abandoned hardware in the gorge.

The general suddenly appeared, striding angrily in our direction.

"On your feet! What are you lounging about for? Who gave you permission to relax?" He swung around and glared at Porta. "You needn't think I've forgotten your behavior-- desertion in face of the enemy! I shall deal with you later." He took a pace backward. "And that goes for the rest of you as well!" he shouted. "A more disgraceful exhibition of collective cowardice I have yet to see. It shall not go unpunished!"

The T-34s had disappeared, and the rising wind howling about our ears drowned the noise of their receding engines. The general chivvied us to our feet. We distributed what weapons we had and stood about wearily on aching legs. The general yelled for us to fall into line and for all section chiefs to step forward. From somewhere close by came a loud snort of derision.

"Section chiefs! How may of those does he think we've got left? Bloody butcher!"

There was a moment's silence. I felt a nervous impulse to start braying like a donkey. Tiny opened his mouth and guffawed, and the general at once moved forward and grabbed him by the collar. "You! Was it you who said that?" He pulled out his pistol and jabbed it into Tiny's ribs. "Admit it or I shall shoot! You have three seconds--one--two . . ."

"Leave him alone! It was me!"

A man stepped out of the ranks and came up to the infuriated general. He was a sergeant. His head and neck were swathed in bloody bandages. One of his hands was a withered stump, the bones of the fingers curled in on themselves, the flesh burned away. The sergeant was the sole survivor of a section that had been destroyed by Russian flamethrowers. He stood defiant before the general. "Bloody butcher," he repeated stolidly. "You're all butchers, all you generals."

He was knocked off balance by a hard slap across the mouth. He staggered, and with his good hand snatched at his revolver, but before he could draw it the general had put a bullet through his temple.