Legion of the Damned (19 page)

"Now do your job properly, you swine," he said.

Paying no attention to the Hauptmann, von Barring shook hands with each of us and wished us good luck.

The Old Un gave the signal, we leaped over the parapet and dashed on through our barbwire barricade. After that there was a long, dangerous, open stretch that we had to cover at full speed. When we were roughly halfway across a Very light went up and transformed the darkness into dazzling white light. We flung ourselves down and lay completely still. The slightest movement is seen instantly when those light screens are laid down, and all movement in no-man's-land is regarded as hostile. The light was an incredibly long time in sinking to the ground.

We jumped up and dashed on again, but we had only taken a few steps when there was another flare blazing above us. The Old Un cursed savagely.

"If this goes on much longer we shan't get back alive. What the devil's got into Ivan this evening, sending up all that rubbish?"

Another couple of flares came hissing down, and then there was a pause in which we reached the Russian wire. Lying on our backs, we clipped away with our wire clippers and the wires flew apart with small whines and curled up. Then followed the most dangerous part of the job: lying on our stomachs with a tangle of barbed wire above us, we had to find the mines by probing the earth with long, thin iron rods. The mines were made of wood and so we could not use a mine detector.

This was not work for tank troops at all, and that we had been given it was entirely due to the swine Meier and his urge to wear the Iron Cross. He had asked the regimental commander to give his company the job. Not only were we to map the mine fields, but we were to dig some of the mines up and re-lay them in the lanes the Russians had left free for themselves to use in attacking. By doing this we would make new lanes, of which only we would know and which we could use when we attacked.

As I had no experience of digging the devils up I was given the one spear we had, which I was told to stick slantingly into the ground. Within a moment or two the spear had come up against something hard.

"Old Un," I called softly.

He crawled over to me.

"Have you got one?" he whispered.

"I think so."

He took the spear and tested the ground cautiously.

"That's good enough. You've got a bite. Now be careful that it does not get a bite too."

He marked the mine on the map. After that we found them in quick succession. When the whole field was mapped we dug a number of them up and re-laid them elsewhere. It was villainously nerve-racking work for the least noise would have given us away. We had almost finished when a star shell burst right overhead. I was walking along clasping a mine and had to fling myself flat, and for almost sixty endless seconds I lay with the highly explosive thing clasped to me.

We all got back, unharmed, at daybreak. For four nights running we had to go out. We were incredibly lucky, for nothing happened to any of us.

When we reported that the work on the mine field was complete, Hauptmann Meier gave a mocking laugh.

"Finished, you say? You have lain snoring in some shell hole or other out there, you swine. I have sent up flares several times, but there has not once been a sign of you to be seen. But you won't get the laugh on me, you loathsome animals. You will report here with your maps at 23.00 and I'll go out with you and just check your filthy work. Understand?"

"Yes, Herr Hauptmann," replied The Old Un, and did an aboutface that sent the mud spurting over our crazy company commander.

The moon was up when, together with the swine Meier, we worked our way across no-man's-land toward the mine field. We came down into a long dip, where the Russians could not see us but where the mines lay as close as herrings in a barrel. Meier went in front, searching out the free lanes on the map The Old Un had given him, and just behind him came The Old Un himself, also studying a map, though we all knew the entire field inside out.

Meier moved to the right. The rest of us halted and quietly lay down. He walked ten, fifteen yards into the mine field and nothing happened. Then he discovered that he was alone. He did not dare bellow at us, as he liked to do, for that would have attracted the Russians' attention.

"What the hell's the meaning of this, you stinking criminals?" he hissed softly. "You follow me as I have ordered or I'll have you arrested and court-martialed!"

The Old Un half-rose to his feet and said with a laugh: "It's all finished with you and your court-martial, for within five minutes you'll have been made into mincemeat, do you understand that?"

Meier looked, bewildered, at the map he held in his hand.

"Yes, gape at your map, you ----," said Porta. "Only there happens to be a tiny difference between it and the one we have. You, being an officer, of course had to have a better map than we, so we thought we would put a few of your red ticks on the right instead of on the left. So don't say that we don't do things for you...

For the next couple of minutes we laughed aloud at him. Then Porta put up his sniper's rifle and called to him: "Now dance for us, you officer swine, or I'll put a bullet in your belly."

Deathly pale, Meier set out step by step on the return journey, but he had only come a yard or two toward us when there was a sharp report from Porta's rifle and Meier had a dumdum in his shoulder. He stood swaying and moaned with the pain of it, while the blood from his broken shoulder ran down his chest.

"Dance, blast you, swine that you are," hissed Porta. "Dance a waltz! We'll provide the drums with our little guns here that you and yours have taught us to use!"

The Old Un pulled out his heavy service pistol and put a bullet between Meier's feet, so that he gave a jump that was like a sort of dance. Stege, Pluto, I and the others in the section also fired bullets into the ground in front of the shaking, shuffling officer.

When he fell, the first of the land mines exploded and flung him high into the air. Five times the impact of his fall set off another mine.

The star shells now began shooting up, for the explosions had alarmed the entire sector. Machine guns barked and there was the occasional dull roar of a mortar. From the German side red Very lights soared up into the air, signaling to the artillery to lay a barrage along the Russian lines; the Russians sent their signals whizzing up to call for a barrage to be laid on the German lines. Both sides believed that the other was about to launch an attack.

The storm came down upon us like a howling hurricane, and earth reared up like a wall. We flung ourselves headlong into a shell hole, and there we lay for two hours before the duet quietened down. Shortly afterward we jumped down into our own trench and The Old Un reported back to Oberleutnant von Barring:

"Herr Oberleutnant! Unteroffizier Beier reports back with 2 Section from reconnaissance ordered in the enemy's mine field. The reconnaissance went according to plan, with Hauptmann Meier in command. The Hauptmann was killed, because despite warnings from the section he insisted on going into the enemy mine field."

Von Barring looked at us thoughtfully; his eyes passed from man to man, dwelling an instant on each face. I have never seen eyes so profoundly human and grave as his.

"Hauptmann Meier killed? Well, that is what happens in war. Unteroffizier Beier, take your group back to the dugout. No. 2 Section has done a fine job with that mine field. I shall send a report to the C.O."

He saluted, two fingers at the brim of his cap, and went back to his dugout.

The Old Un smiled. "As long as he lives there will be no more swine hunts in No. 5 Company."

"Did you notice the somersaults the swine turned as our dear little mines prodded his backside?" said Porta gleefully. "It would have gladdened the heart of his old gym master to have seen it."

Such was the funeral oration over Hauptmann Meier, a German bourgeois who was too small to go to war and become someone.

"What? Weren't there two of them?"

Uttering a roar, Pluto rushed after Porta and the girls. Soon they were out of sight, but we could still hear the delighted squeals of the two buxom girls.

"We won't see them for a couple of hours," said The Old Un with a laugh.

The rest of us lay down again in the tall grass. We lay there dreaming and watching the smoke from our pipes. Quietly we talked of our comrades who were with us no more.

Early in the morning when you came from the fresh air into the crowded peasant's cottage the stench of it was almost enough to knock you down, but you became accustomed even to that, and within a few minutes you had fallen asleep to the accompaniment of the snoring and hawking of the Russians. We knew that the wife was riddled with TB, but what of that? You accepted germs along with the rest: lice, rats and filth.

It seemed that no sooner had we lain down that we were wakened by the Russians getting up. Porta swore at them, but the old Russian answered calmly and firmly:

"Shut up, Herr Soldier, and sleep!"

An hour later a hen came in clucking, with her chicks in tow, and when it trod on Porta's face he lost patience altogether. He shot up out of the straw like a rocket, seized the hen by the neck, gave it a slap on the face with his index finger and shouted:

"Now take yourself and your illegitimate offspring out of here, you ill-mannered fowl!"

Then he threw the hen out of the window and began chasing the panic-stricken chicks out of the door. That brought the daughter-in-law running up, and she began screeching. "I must have peace!" bawled Porta and swore at her till she lost her temper and banged him on the head with a big pot ladle. The rest of us let out a great guffaw that made Porta quite demented. He rushed after the woman in just his shirt, the tails fluttering round his skinny legs. Out into the field he went, the Russians roaring with laughter, and shortly afterward he came back out of breath, shut the door with a bang that shook the whole cottage, shoved his head out of the window and bawled:

"I wish to sleep, and the next person who disturbs me will be shot, bang-bang, finished, dead!"

It was nearly noon before we got up, and I fetched our food from the field kitchen. For once we had something decent, bean soup. Our mess kits were almost full and we gulped it down like animals. When we had licked our platters clean we started on a parcel that Stege had been sent from home. There were cookies, small cakes and a large piece of smoked ham. We carried the things out to a table we had made down by the latrine. Porta had a bottle of vodka.

We had made our latrine in such a way that we could sit opposite each other with the table between us. Having settled ourselves, we fished out our greasy pack of cards and began to play. We helped ourselves to the cakes and now and again cut ourselves a hunk of ham. The bottle went the rounds. Glasses, cups or mugs were luxuries that we had long come to regard as unnecessary and effeminate. So there the five of us sat with our trousers down by our knees, eating and drinking and playing cards, smoking and chatting, doing what we had come for and enjoying life. Our naked bottoms grinned cheerily at the people in the villiage street, for the latrine was sited on an eminence from which we had a good view on all sides, as everyone had a good view of us. A bird was singing in among the trees and beside us lay a dog slothfully outstretched in the heat of the autumn sun. Some women at work in a field were singing a Russian song.

Not till toward evening, when the Russians started coming home from the fields, did we rise from our idyl and saunter lazily back to the cottage.

One forenoon The Old Un and the other tank commanders were summoned to the company commander. When The Old Un returned an hour later he told us delightedly:

"Boys, we're off on a lovely little expedition. We are to go to the plain fifteen miles south of Nowji and dig the old box in till only the turret is above ground. We shall be pleasantly on our own and thirty miles behind the front, so there won't be any shooting. There we are to stay, blossoming and waiting, till Ivan breaks through our positions at the front, and then we are to smash his tanks as they come rolling along. We are to hold the position at all costs, and the ignition key is to be thrown away as soon as we have got the old box dug in."

Porta gave a laugh: "You said the ignition key?"

The Old Un smiled: "Yes, that's all that was mentioned."

"Splendid."

We had four spare keys.

We reached our new position shortly before daybreak. It was right out in the middle of the plain, where the grass was so high that we had to stand erect to see over it. It was cold, and we wore fur caps, greatcoats, thick mitts and leather breeches on top of our black uniform trousers. As we had only two spades and a shovel in the tank only three could work at a time, and there was great competition to do so because of the cold.

The Old Un flung out his hand and in a lyrical tone of voice said:

"Children, children, little children. Isn't it wonderful to be digging here in the open? See, now the sun is rising and we no longer need to be afraid of the bogeyman. It is going to be hot, and the birds will sing lots of little songs for us, and if we are very, very good the Old Man of the Steppes will perhaps come and tell us a long, dirty story. Do you not feel the kiss of the fresh wind of the steppe on your downy cheeks, and how it plays with your curliest locks?"

As the sun rose higher we lost some of our ardor. We began to sweat and removed one garment after the other until in the end we were working in just shorts and boots. Even so the sweat still poured off us and our hands blistered from the unaccustomed labor of digging in the hard ground of the steppe.

"Tell me," exclaimed Porta, "are we soldiers or are we ditch diggers? I only want to know because of the union rate."

We kept measuring the tank to see if the hole would not soon be deep enough, but at noon, when we had been digging for seven hours, we were still only halfway. The Old Un began cursing the army and Porta asked him innocently if he could not feel the soft kiss of the wind of the steppe, and if his heart was not gladdened by the warming rays of the sun and the educational effect of spade work. The Old Un hurled the spade furiously at Porta and went and flung himself down in the shade of the tank.