Comrades of War (35 page)

‘Certainly, Herr First Sergeant,’ Tiny grinned, his mouth stuffed with biscuits. He clicked his heels without getting up.

Fatty opened and closed his mouth. Then he asked inquisitorially: ‘Where did you get the biscuits?’

Again Tiny clicked his heels, without getting up from his comfortable position at the edge of the trench.

‘From a whore in Dubrasna, Herr First Sergeant. She sent it to me by a Vlassov Cossack on a dappled old mare.’

‘Sassy fellow,’ Fatty snorted. He would have liked to say more but got tongue-tied and hurriedly left. He felt unpleasantly affected by the glance of Colonel Hinka, fixed on him as if saying: Wouldn’t it be a good idea if you and your shocks troops moved forward? The thought itself was enough to make Fatty quake all over. What business did this monkey of an officer have bringing him, the company sergeant, out to the position, as if a command noncom had anything to do here? A hell of a crazy idea! These young puppies of officers thought they were somebody. Nah, it was the old active NCOs that formed the backbone of the Army. Wasn’t the Führer himself an ordinary NCO, no more no less? And he got the better of all the golden pheasants. Fatty grinned aloud at the idea that generals had to click their bony legs together for an NCO.

Colonal Hinka looked at him in surprise and asked what the joke was.

Fatty faltered. ‘Something funny just occurred to me, Herr Commander.’

‘Is that so?’ answered Hinka. ‘Not, by any chance, a shock unit in full battle dress?’ Lieutenant Ohlsen smiled.

‘Maybe the First Sergeant would like to come along?’

Tiny gave a howl. ‘Then he’ll shit in his pants!’

Hinka gave Tiny a sharp look. ‘You’ll be kind enough to keep your mouth shut and spare us your stupid expressions. The First Sergeant is your superior. Don’t forget that!’

Tiny again clicked his heels and crowed:

‘Certainly, Herr Commander, I’ll surely never forget that. I wish I could.’

Hinka had difficulty keeping a straight face, but managed to mumble: ‘Watch out!’

‘Ready, Beier?’ Lieutenant Ohlsen whispered, tapping the Old Man’s shoulder.

Tiny took his stand beside the Old Man, holding the light MG in front of him like a shovel. Colonel Hinka shook his head resignedly. But he didn’t say anything. To discuss regulations with Tiny was simply hopeless.

‘Keep the sapping equipment in your hands so it won’t rattle,’ said the Old Man, ‘and be sure to keep your eyes out for each other so no one will get lost.’

We rolled across the edge and crawled on our stomachs across the dismal no-man’s-land toward the Russian positions.

We sneaked noiselessly forward along the gallery, lunged like panthers through the wire and crept cautiously into the darkness lying ahead of us like a velvet wall. The Legionnaire and I crawled right behind the Old Man. Behind us were Tiny and Porta. Heide trailed the little bag with the bundled hand grenades to shatter the bunkers with. He was breathing noisily as if he had asthma. When he was afraid he always did.

All around us there was an ominous silence. The earth was breathing. Vapors rose from the swamp. There was a scent of burnt wood.

We felt terribly alone. Death lurked on every side.

Noiselessly the Old Man adjusted his heavy equipment and looked at his sub-machine gun, checking whether the long magazine had got stuck. Heide passed his hands over the grenades in the legs of his boots.

The East Prussian shoved the entrenching spade in front of his face.

Tiny was about to light a cigarette.

‘Imbecile,’ the Legionnaire whispered, ‘do you want to make soaring angels of us all?’

‘Pig,’ Tiny answered under his breath.

‘Shut up, man,’ the Old Man nervously whispered in return.

Bauer put his head on the bag with the hand grenades.

‘This will never end well,’ he whispered pessimistically.

Lying squeezed together, we looked over a mound toward the Russian positions, which were uncomfortably near. We could touch the enemy’s minefield just by stretching out our hands.

Tiny set up the machine gun and stared at the Old Man. ‘How do you plan to get through the minefield?’

The Legionnaire bit his lip. ‘We’ll be hitting the clouds before we can say boo.’ He didn’t say any more. Some sound came to us. A slight clinking. Every muscle in our bodies tensed.

‘Death and damnation!’ Porta whispered. He nudged Tiny. ‘Watch out on the left!’

Once more a clinking noise in the dark and low cursing: ‘
Yob tvoyemat
’!’

‘Ivan in person,’ Tiny whispered cheerily.

The Old Man gave him a savage kick.

He didn’t speak, though we felt he wanted to say something.

We pressed tight to the ground and held our breath. Tiny swung the machine gun into position, ready to sweep the terrain clean of enemies.

Porta’s eyes glittered in the dark; he held the battle knife in his hand. Stein unscrewed the cap of a hand grenade. The porcelain ring made a small clink.

Sounds of laughter came from the darkness.

‘
Mille diables
!’ the Legionnaire whispered, ‘he’ll soon forget about grinning.’

Four dark figures popped up a few yards from us. All we had to do to get prisoners was to put out our hands. The problem solved without any fuss. It looked so simple.

‘Go for them!’ the Old Man whispered.

On noiseless cat’s feet we sneaked up on the four figures, who didn’t have the slightest suspicion of the danger in store for them.

We could hear them whisper and laugh in low voices.

All at once a crashing noise and a short outcry cut into the stillness of the night. Heide had fallen into a hole.

In the same instant things started moving. The four Russians jumped to their feet and plunged head over heels toward the Russian positions, screaming: ‘
Germanski, Germanski!
’

Tiny sprang up, gave a roar and hit the nearest Russian a slanting blow on the shoulder with his short entrenching spade.

From the Russian positions star shells shot hissing into the air, flooding the whole glacis with a crude glaring light.

Heide, who was out of the hole by now, lunged behind the machine gun and raked the positions with concentrated fire.

A man pounced upon me. I barely glimpsed a contorted Mongolian face brushing past me. An almost childish voice snarled: ‘
Pyos!
’ Dog!

I sent three shots from my .38 into his broad face with the lightly slanted eyes. He keeled over and lay still.

From the Russian side came muffled reports from the heavy infantry guns and trench mortars.

Brandt, our top provider, was hit by a Russian spade and fell over, with blood streaming from a big open wound between his neck and shoulder.

This caused us to lose our heads. We hit out savagely with no thought for our object: to bring back prisoners.

‘
Pomoshch! Pomoshch!
’ cried a wounded soldier lying some distance away. Medics! Medics!

‘Do you have any prisoners?’ the Old Man asked in agitation while we were lying together in a hole catching our breath. ‘We can’t go back without prisoners. That was the whole point, you know.’ He cast an inquiring glance toward the screaming Russian. ‘What about that one?’

Tiny indifferently shrugged his shoulders. ‘He’s weak. I’ve made mincemeat of him. My spade is all bent from hitting him.’

‘Damn ass!’ the Old Man shouted at him. ‘Do you have to do everything wrong, you lunkhead? When you’ve finally managed to get hold of a Russian you have to kill him right away. I curse the day we got burdened with you.’

‘Shove it up your ass,’ Tiny yelled loudly, disregarding the fact that the Russians could hear him. ‘I always get hell. If I drag in a Russian marshal some day, you’ll jump on me straightaway: “Tiny, you stupid ass, why didn’t you bring Stalin and Molotov?” And when we start our revolution some time and I hang SS Himmler, you’ll call me a dirty son of a bitch because I didn’t hang Hitler!’ He furiously pounded the earth with both fists, then he stretched to his full height and roared loudly: ‘But don’t you worry, everything’s all right, you cry babies. Now I’m going over to Ivan to pick up your colonel. Then maybe you’ll be content!’

‘Tiny!’ the Old Man called, horrified. ‘Get down!’

A couple of Russian sub-machine guns started pounding away. The tracer bullets brushed right by Tiny. He ran ahead in complete indifference, swinging the sub-machine gun above his head.

He disappeared in the dark, but we could hear him roar savagely.

‘God, he’s mad, stark raving mad!’ the Old Man groaned. ‘We’ve got to catch up with him before he jumps into Ivan’s trench.’

‘This is the most dim-witted bunch in the whole “Disarmed Forces”, and here is where I had to end up,’ Heide said hopelessly.

‘Don’t preach so much,’ Porta said and ran after Tiny.

We found him in a shell hole bundling hand grenades for bunker cocktails. We made such a racket shouting and scolding that it could be heard far away. Tiny, who was half demented, yelled for Ivan. The shooting stopped on both sides. Watchful silence. Evidently they thought we had gone mad.

An hour later we jumped down into our positions, where we were received by Lieutenant Colonel Hinka. He was in a rage and gave the Old Man hell because we hadn’t brought back any prisoners, as ordered.

‘This whole company is nothing but a bunch of cows. The worst one in the entire army,’ he stormed. ‘But we’ll have another talk!’ He about-faced and took off without giving his hand to Lieutenant Ohlsen.

Tiny stood leaning against the wall of the trench.

Next night the company was ordered to send two platoons behind enemy lines to find out what the Russians were really doing.

When Lieutenant Ohlsen made the Commander aware that it would probably cost most of the men their lives, he went completely wild.

‘Who are you to tell me, Herr Lieutenant?’ he yelled. ‘The war is a fact, and the duty of a soldier is not to save his life, but to fight. The Division has ordered me to reconnoiter behind the lines, and this order must be followed out at whatever cost. The only thing that matters is that one single man out of the sixty-five returns and can report what goes on back there. Thousands of lives depend on this.’

Lieutenant Ohlsen tried to say something, but Colonel Hinka interrupted him brutally:

‘You think too much, Herr Lieutenant. Walk around dreaming of honor and such empty phrases. An order has to be obeyed, unless we want to wait for death holding hands in some passageway at Torgau. Forget what you have on the ball as long as you have to wear a steel helmet. We’re the last filthy remnant of the 27th. Try to realize that! Within six hours I’ll await your report, Herr Lieutenant. Over!’

Lieutenant Ohlsen stood there with the receiver in his hand. He looked lost, as if expecting Hinka’s snarling voice to begin all over again.

For a long time we had heard a whirring of engines from the Russian side, but the German observation fliers hadn’t been able to see anything. As was customary with the Russians, everything was expertly camouflaged. Every single tank track had been erased by working parties, and now they made use of an old standby: infantry recon.

In the marrow of our bones all of us veteran soldiers felt that something was up. The Old Man said: ‘I don’t like this quiet. Something is happening, and something big, too. Ivan has brought together great quantities of material back there.’

The East Prussian snorted scornfully. ‘They’ll make a regular hare-hunt for us when they come.’

‘Why exactly do we have to go out on this recon?’ Heide grumbled. ‘As soon as there’s dirty work, it’s 1 or 2 Platoon or all of 5 Company that has to do it.’

‘Because you’re a stupid pig,’ Porta answered, ‘and serve in a regiment of a special sort, every single member of which is meant to have his brains blown out. I always knew you were a maned sheep and rather slow, but I’d no idea you’re as stupid as you now seem to be.’

‘You’d better shut up, you bull,’ Heide shouted and threatened him with his knife. ‘Some day I’ll get at you! You may take my word for it!’

Porta was about to jump at Heide, but the Old Man held him back.

‘Why don’t you cut out your perpetual squabbles and fighting! Use your strength when we get to Ivan!’

‘And become the heroes of Greater Germany,’ Porta scoffed. ‘Just wait and see! We’ll have our portraits displayed in Potsdam, with inscriptions in gold lettering: “The heroes from the 27th.” I hope we won’t choke on our own bravery!’

‘I am brave,’ Tiny said. He made a threatening movement with his head toward Porta. ‘I’ve more guts than anybody else in this whole war,’ he cried loudly. He snapped a rifle butt with a single blow. ‘I’ll take care of my enemies in the same way. You’re one of them, Julius Jew-hater,’ he said, turning to big brawny Julius Heide.

At the same moment Lieutenant Ohlsen entered the bunker.

‘Here are some letters,’ he said, throwing them on the wooden frame table. ‘There’s one for you too, Tiny.’

Tiny was speechless with amazement. His lower jaw dropped.

‘Letter for me?’ he stammered, glancing almost timidly at the dirty gray envelope inscribed, in pencil, with childish clumsy letters: Panzer Corporal Wolfgang Creutzfeldt, Panzer Replacement Unit 11, Paderborn. Obviously, the sender hadn’t been in contact with Tiny for a long time. It was more than four years since Tiny had been at the Paderborn garrison. The garrison unit had written our field post number underneath: 23745.

‘Holy Mother of Kazan!’ Tiny whispered, ‘it’s the first letter I’ve received in my whole life. I haven’t the damnedest idea how to open it.’

‘Oh, come now,’ Lieutenant Ohlsen said, ‘that shouldn’t be a problem.’

Clumsily Tiny tore the envelope with his finger and pulled out a piece of gray wrapping paper, covered with grubby writing.

We nearly had a shock when we saw him turn pale as he laboriously spelled the letter through.

Julius Heide raised his eyebrow and asked circumspectly: ‘Bad news, Mac?’

Tiny didn’t answer, only stared at the letter as if hypnotized.

Heide nudged him with his elbow. ‘What’s happened, Mac? What’s made you so blue about the beak? Tell us. Why, you look like a poisoned abortion.’