Cauldron of Blood (16 page)

‘
Then what are we gonna do?’

Schulze
shrugged helplessly. ‘What about praying, eh?’

*

Now the sky to the east was bright with the promise of a clear winter’s day, free from the snow. But it wasn’t the weather which interested the tense men crouched in their freezing pits; it was the ever increasing sound of the tank motors on the other side of the hills, as the Soviet drivers revved up their engines, obviously making sure that they would not stall once the armoured attack got underway.

Some
of the Spaniards were already unwittingly following Schulze’s suggestion. Bare-headed, their sallow southern faces blue with cold, they knelt piously in the snow, hands clasped in front of their skinny chests, while Little Napoleon limped from man to man, sprinkling his dark head with holy water.

At
another time and under other circumstances, Schulze would have made one of his lewd comments, but not now. His spirit seemed broken, as he slumped listlessly, watching the Spaniards perform their last rites with the fervour of a nation dedicated to death.

Matz,
for his part, watched the horizon anxiously, knowing now that it was up to him, for Schulze had snapped. He had been under strain too often and too long. He was no longer capable of command.

Now
the flares started to ascend lazily from the Soviet lines and by straining hard, Matz could just hear the cries of delight as the commissars started to hand out the vodka rations to the soldiers.— their usual practice before an important attack. He licked his own parched blue lips and wished that he could taste one last glass of firewater before he went hop, for he had no illusions about what was going to happen soon. The Popov tanks would overrun their positions and that would be that. They would take no prisoners, especially from the Wotan. This was the end of the road.

‘
Fancy, Schulzi,’ he said conversationally, trying to cheer up his old pal, who seemed sunk in his own gloomy thoughts. ‘Two Christmases ago, we were in bed with those frog whores, living like the king in France. Remember the fat one with the big lungs, who wanted me to give her....’ His words trailed away to nothing. Schulze was not listening.

Little
Napoleon was talking to his men now, his pose vanished, his words obviously selected with care, as he replaced his cork after every phrase and rested his shattered jaw, darting black eyes from face to face, as if willing his men not to break and run once the tanks appeared.

Matz
nodded his head in approval. For spaghetti-eaters they weren’t bad blokes. He could see the resolve on their pinched frozen faces. Christ, he told himself, what made them volunteer to come here to Russia so far away from their own sun-baked homeland to have their turnips shot off by a lot of hairy-assed Popovs? They were crazy. Yet all the same, he could not help feeling that the little men were brave — damned brave.

From
the other side of the hills he could make out the Popovs cheers. Yes, there was no doubt about it, they were cheering. He frowned. He knew what that meant. The political commissar had just finished the usual pep-talk, telling them just what an honour it was to die for the workers’ and peasants’ paradise. Soon they would come barrelling across the ridge-line like bats out of hell. He nudged Schulze.

‘
All right, twinkle-toes,’ he said attempting the humorous tone he did not feel. ‘Get behind the machine gun. They’ll be coming soon.’

Schulze
did not even raise his head.

Matz
swallowed hard. ‘Didn’t you hear what I said, you big dockyard pimp?’

‘
I heard.’

‘
Then get some pepper in yer pants.’

‘
What’s the use?’ Schulze answered miserably.

‘
What do you mean — what’s the use, you big bastard!’ Matz bellowed, his face only millimetres from Schulze’s. ‘We can’t just sit on our fat keesters and do nothing. We can’t let the lads down.’

The
outburst had no effect on Schulze. He continued to slump there, shoulders bent, all spirit gone.

From
the other side of the hills there was the first rusty rattles of many tracks. The Popov tanks were beginning to move off. It wouldn’t be long now.

Desperately
Matz grabbed Schulze’s shoulder and shook it hard. ‘Come on, finger out! Get moving.’

Schulze
looked up at Matz dully. ‘Where?’

‘
We can move the line back. Back into the ruins. We’ll have a better chance against their armour there. Once they’re in the streets they’ll have to break formation and we’ll have a better chance of tackling them.’

‘
What with, Matz — our bare hands?’

‘
Christ, how should I know?’ Matz exploded, exasperated beyond measure. ‘All I know is that we’ve got to do something and do it quick. Look!’

On
the horizon, the first dark menacing shape had appeared, poising there for a moment, its long gun swinging from side to side like the snout of some predatory monster sniffing out its prey. ‘Recce. They’re putting in a recce troops first this time. They don’t want a balls-up like before.’

Schulze
grunted something, but otherwise seemed unconcerned. Matz gave up on him. While more and more tanks of the reconnaissance troop massed on the hillside, he doubled the best he could to where Little Napoleon stood, pistol in hand, watching his men with a stern eye. ‘Major,’ he gasped.

Little
Napoleon pulled the cork out of his mouth. ‘
Que
... what is it?’

‘
Sir, if we pulled back our line, now that the Russians have established where we are, we might take some of the sting out of their attack. Then we’d have a better chance of catching them with their knickers down in the ruins.’

Little
Napoleon shook his head sadly. ‘I am afraid that is not possible, Corporal,’ he answered in his accented German.

‘
Why not, sir?’ Matz demanded heatedly.

By
way of an answer the Spanish Major pointed at the horizon with his pistol.
‘Mire
!’ he commanded.

Matz
looked in that direction. Now the reconnaissance tanks were slipping to the north-west, as the bulk of the Soviet attack force started to rumble over the heights.   ‘What do you think they’re going to do, sir?’ he asked.

‘
It is obvious. They are going to outflank us.’ The Spaniard replaced the cork momentarily to rest his jaw, while Matz watched the first lines of packed infantry beginning to assemble behind the tanks. Then Little Napoleon continued, ‘They will put in infantry to contain us here.’

‘
And then?’

For
the first time since Matz had known the pompous portly Spanish Major, he smiled. ‘Then, my German friend, they will kick us — how do you say? — up the arse, very hard!’ He shrugged eloquently. ‘
Fini
la
grande
guerre
, as the French say.’

Miserably
Matz trailed back to where the others crouched in their trenches, avoiding the enquiring looks in their eyes, knowing now that this had to be the end of Wotan — there was no chance of their surviving against a concentrated Soviet armoured attack — yet angry at having to die in this way. Wordlessly he clambered into his pit next to Schulze and picked up his machine pistol. There was no more ammunition for the MG 42; now they would have to rely on their personal weapons, which meant the Soviet infantry would be able to get within one hundred and fifty metres of their positions before the defenders could do any damage to them.

Schulze
looked at his old running-mate out of the corner of his eye. Matz ignored the look. Instead he concentrated on his front, counting the number of Soviet tanks and giving up hopelessly after they had reached fifty. There were more than enough T- 34s there to wipe out the handful of defenders.

‘
Sending a steam-shovel to kill a fly, Matzi,’ Schulze said in a voice surprisingly meek for him. Then when Matz did not respond, he added contritely, ‘Sorry, I went up the wall, old pal. Too much strain.’

‘
Knock it off, or yer’ll have me crying in me beer next,’ Matz growled, but now there was a smile on his face once more.

Schulze
winked at him.

Matz
winked back.

So
thus they waited, the two old comrades, warmed at least by the knowledge that they would not die alone....

*

The command T-34 started to swing inwards now. The double column of thirty-five-ton monsters behind it did the same. This time no flag signals were needed. The tank commanders had been briefed exactly on the tactics to be used prior to the mission. Now they’d finally deal with the damned Fritzes who had held up the
Stavkas’s
plans for reducing the cauldron for nearly seventy-two hours.

At
a steady twenty kilometres an hour, throwing up a great white wake behind it, the command T-34 skirted the Fritz positions, its turret swung round to face the enemy, the gunner alert behind the breech of the long hooded
75
mm cannon. To its rear, every other tank did the same. Discipline was rigid in the Red Army. One obeyed one’s officers. Questions were never asked. Thus it was that the long strung column of hurrying tanks did not see the lone black shape which emerged from the fir woods to the right and braked to a hurried halt as it spotted the T-34s. Nor did they see the slim, handsome blond officer who emerged from the turret to focus his binoculars hastily on the T-34s which had appeared so surprisingly to his front. And it was only when it was already too late, that the Russians spotted the other Panthers summoned forward by the black-clad observer to ram their steep glacis plates into the snow in the hull-down position ready for action.

It
was the tank commander’s dream: a whole column of enemy armour, caught on the flank, perfectly outlined on an exposed ridge with no cover whatsoever to left or to right. And
Obersturmbannfuhrer
Jochen Peiper of the
Bodyguard
was not the man to spurn a chance like this.

He
pressed his throatmike and said softly: ‘To all. Don’t fire till you see the whites of their eyes.’ Then Peiper laughed.

It
wasn’t a pleasant sound.

*

The Spaniards were praying, while the Wotan looked away, somehow embarrassed at such a naked display of emotion, as the Spaniards read the Rosary in unison, led by a swarthy, one-armed sergeant.

Now
the watchers in the foremost trenches could see the T-34s begin to sweep inwards, as they commenced their last manoeuvre before closing the pincers to the rear of the battered little Russian town.

‘
What are you thinking, Matzi?’ Schulze said, his voice quiet and under control as if he had completely resigned himself to his fate.

‘
Not much,’ his pal answered, equally composed. ‘Bit of a shit that we’re gonna cop it like this – for nothing really. Then thinking to myself that I’d like a bit of the other for one last time and a good stiff drink. Something that’d take the fillings out of yer biters!’

Schulze
sighed. ‘Yeah, that would be the right way to go, old pal. A bit o’ gash and pouring one down behind yer collar, but—’

He
stopped suddenly, and shivered.

Matz
flashed him a curious look. ‘What’s up? A louse ran across yer liver?’

‘
Ner. But am I seeing things, Matz?’ Schulze breathed, a new light beginning to dawn in his lacklustred eyes.

‘
What... what are yer talkin’ about?’

Schulze
’s answer was drowned by the thick, well-remembered asthmatic crump of a German seventy-five. A stab of flame erupted from the side of the leading T-34. It trembled violently like a ship at sea caught broadside-on by a sudden hurricane. One track broke away and the T-34 came to a halt in the very same instant that the German halftrack shot across its front, the gunner standing upright next to the driver in the cab, pouring a hail of tracer into the Soviet infantry massing on the heights ready to charge the defenders.

In
a flash all was confusion on the ridge line, as Peiper’s force whipped shell after shell into the totally confused and surprised column of the T-34s. Tank after tank was hit, with the great resounding boom of metal striking metal. Flame and smoke shot to the leaden sky everywhere. An ammunition tank exploded, its tracer zig-zagging crazily in every direction. Two panicked T-34s crashed into one another. Another reeled over completely and blazed on its side, while its crew lay dead and burning all around it in the snow, rapidly being reduced to the size of pygmies by that tremendous heat.

For
a few minutes the Soviets tried to fight back. But they hadn’t a chance. The Panther was virtually impregnable and Peiper had picked an excellent position for his ambush. While the wild Soviet fire hissed above the heads of his crews, the sweating, wildly excited German gunners struck their mark every time.