Legion of the Damned (25 page)

"Oh no, Hauptmann," said Porta with a laugh. "Then they'll send us all the girls. Couldn't we put our names down now for a good assortment of film extras? I would gladly train a section of those. I have some very stimulating exercises in the prone position --"

"Porta, I shall certainly put you in charge of the film squad if it comes to that," interrupted von Barring, smiling. "Meanwhile, do me a favor and remember what I have just said. That is merely a suggestion on my part, but I am sure you won't mind acting on it.

After the fall of Kharkov the 27th Regiment was withdrawn and sent to Dnepropetrovsk, where we were allotted the armored train "Leipzig." As soon as we were installed, we and another armored train went to Kharol, 100 kilometers west of Poltava, where we did some firing practice to get acquainted with our new guns. We five were allotted a coach: The Old Un was coach commander and Porta was in charge of the eight machine guns and three automatic cannon; Stege was in charge of No. 1 Turret and I of No. 2 Turret with its 12-cm. long-barreled gun, one of which Stege also had. Pluto was in charge of the radio and communications. For crew we were given twenty-five recruits who had had four weeks' training. The youngest was sixteen, the eldest sixty-two. They made a pitiful sight.

We went up toward the front where we shot a village to smithereens and engaged Russian artillery with our automatic arms. After that we went southwest. Day and night we thundered along the hundreds of miles of track, stopping only to take in water or oil, or to wait in a siding to let past a train coming from the opposite direction. We were able to stretch out and sleep in our coach and had a wonderful time. War, we thought, was not really so bad if only you could sleep your sleep out every now and again. It was the continual lack of sleep to which we had been subjected that made it all so intolerable and our nerves raw.

In Kremenschug we were sauntering round the station area when suddenly a woman's voice shouted:

"Sven! Sven!"

We turned round in amazement. There stood an empty hospital train, and in one of the doors stood a nurse waving to me:

"Sven, come here and say how do you do!"

It was Asta. She hugged and kissed me. I scarcely recognized her in her uniform, and also because, in the days when I knew her in Gothenburg, she had been reserved and a bit boring, though pretty. I could see that war had roused her. There was no hesitation in her eyes or movements. She pulled me up into the train while two of the other nurses took Porta and The Old Un in hand.

Asta had married and been divorced from a man twenty-two years older than herself. Then she and a friend had volunteered for the German Red Cross, and then, and then. Heavens, how randy I was. And heavens, how randy she was. We gazed at each other and did not say what we wanted. Then another nurse came and whispered something into her ear.

"Come," said Asta and took me along to another coach and shoved me into a lower bunk and pulled the curtain and undressed with swift, practiced movements. In one twist she was out of her dress and there was nothing to talk about--we both wanted it equally badly, and it was good and lovely to be presented out of the blue with a clean, well-washed, firm-fleshed girl who knew what it was all about and that a quarter of an hour is plenty of time if you do not waste it talking about the weather or thinking of what you do not dare. We were so starved for it, so avid and in harmony, that we managed it twice for the simple reason that we did not stop to consider, but acted, unhesitatingly, obeying the accumulated urge of many months. Strange that life, naked and unashamed, should also choose to waylay three dirty soldiers and give them a reminder of its existence, its very near existence, in a railway station, just any old station. That shows that you can always run across something good, and when you do a quarter of an hour is more than time enough if you wish it to be.

I can still see, and smile at, the slightly comical picture of three dirty soldiers not unproudly trotting back to their armored train, their backs stubbornly turned on a hospital train that is on the point of pulling out. We did not look back, but I always imagine one window of a carriage filled with girls with tender, moved expressions. It was not three nurses, but the women of a hospital train who had bestowed their gifts upon three men and received a good return. It happened so swiftly, and it was so complete.

With laughing eyes we boarded our train.

Was it good?

It was indeed.

Even Porta was silent, which shows that there is more than just salacity in the world.

The Old Un began humming to himself and Porta took out his flute. Then we burst out laughing and just let the others gape.

"The poor girls," said The Old Un. "Such an awful lot of lice they must have got."

And so we played that piece about the king who got a flea.

It had been a poetic miracle, as natural and surprising as when, while lying in the grass on a summer's day, you suddenly discover that a leveret is sniffing at your fingers.

The armored train moved up to the battle area during the next twenty-four hours. At Bachworat, near to a tributary of the Donetz, we were told our task. We were to support an attack, and then penetrate as far as we could down the Lugansk-Kharkov line and create as much havoc as possible in the enemy's rear. We were then to withdraw, destroying bridges and track behind us. Should the train be put out of action we were to blow it up and all survivors were to try and get through to our own lines.

Oberstleutnant Hinka's voice spoke across the radiotelephone to all coaches:

"Make ready. Prepare for action."

The covers were taken off the guns, shells laid ready and each man stood at his place. Slowly the train gathered speed until it was rocking, the wheels humming and now and again screaming and whining on a sharp curve. Then the loudspeakers barked out the order:

"Train! Get ready to engage!"

The breeches of the big guns flew open, shells and charges were slammed in. There was the rattle and clang of steel on steel; the wheels for altering the setting of the guns turned and the automatics were duly loaded. At the same time we pulled our asbestos helmets down over our heads. I stared through my periscope at the countryside. Ahead and to one side lay the river, broad and dirty yellow in color, twisting like a ribbon among gray slopes. At considerable speed we rattled through an abandoned village and swayed and rumbled across a large iron bridge. The river far below us was like a huge yellow corrugated iron roof.

We were a good five kilometers beyond the river before we made contact with the enemy, who suddenly fired a couple of shells at us. The train at once put on speed, so the noise of the heavy wheels almost drowned the howling of the shells. Then the alarm bells shrilled in all the turrets, and the order to open fire was given.

Each coach commander was informed of the target and in turn instructed his turret commanders. The big guns turned their black mouths to face the woods and fields lying there bathed in sunshine.

Then came the order: Fire! and there was a deafening, tremendous, rolling thunder, as our thirty heavy guns struck up their song of death for that smiling, summery landscape. It was not long before we were shrouded in smoke and dust. Each time that all the guns fired together in a great broadside the train swayed so violently that several times we thought it was going over on its side. The Russians began to answer, and shells struck crashing against the sides of the coaches; but they were too small to do any harm. It was not long, though, before our fire was being answered by heavy 28-cm. guns, and some of their shells took effect, striking down on us like hurricanes. We at once changed target and fired at the Russian artillery instead. Suddenly the train stopped. Soon it was being rumored that one of the front coaches had had a direct hit and one of its trucks been smashed. Some of our engineers had to slip out and, under cover of the train, tip the damaged coach off the line. It was imperative to get moving again as soon as possible, for a stationary armored train is a helpless prey for the enemy's artillery. Before they had got that coach off the track, however, the Russians managed to smash another coach, killing its entire crew.

This violent artillery fire forced us to withdraw toward the big iron bridge across the river. As we went we blew up the track behind us with tremendous bangs. Then our HQ on the far side of the river sent us orders to halt one kilometer east of the bridge and to cover the infantry while they were crossing it. Once they were over, we were to get ourselves across and the engineers would then blow up the bridge. Another armored train, the "Breslau," was being sent up to reinforce us, and as soon as it had taken up position by the bridge Oberstleutnant Hinka wanted to make a thrust with our train down the Rostov-Voronezh line and do what he could to harass the enemy. Hinka thought that we ought to be able to get to the lesser town about twenty kilometers away where there was a Russian divisional HO. "Breslau" was to remain halted by the bridge and fire at the enemy in the hope that they might not discover that "Leipzig" was on the move in their rear.

For the first few kilometers we tore along at full speed without being fired on, but then they turned their heaviest guns on us and within fifteen minutes several of our coaches were badly damaged, though still able to fight. Then our locomotive itself received a couple of serious hits and we had to retreat, crawling slowly back the way we had come.

Some big tanks moved up on us and we had to dip the guns' barrels and engage them. It was a fantastic sight seeing them being hit. Our 12-cm. shells smashed such tanks to smithereens, sending steel plates flying through the air like feathers from a burst Cushion

Shells fell incessantly round our locomotive, which was losing steam through innumerable holes with the result that our speed was reduced to a slow, jerky progress. It was more than doubtful whether armored train "Leipzig" would get back.

When I think of all the fantastically costly material both enemy and our own that I have helped to smash, my mind boggles at the mere values involved. When you think of it you must just laugh, loudly and shrilly; otherwise you would burst into tears and put a bullet through your brain. Do people understand nothing? Do you, who read this, not realize what fantastic wealth is lying waiting for you to exploit, that if you used the military to your own advantage your material and cultural position would be that of the well-to-do today? You would be able to afford to live well, eat well and have a car each, or whatever it is that you want to have; you would be able to travel all over the world; you could go out and enjoy yourself; you would be able to set up house without fear or anxiety. There is enough, more than enough for all.

Nobody believes that--or rather, nobody dares believe it. What is this curse that makes us all so inert and cowed that we cannot pull ourselves together and deprive the generals of their grants? We are oafs, most of us, lazy and ignorant, and we nod our heads and are satisfied when we hear a lot of profound nonsense about "balance of power" and "interplay of forces" and all the rest of the jargon. Balance of power? If every Tom, Dick and Harry were to exert himself and demand that the money should be spent on making him better off instead of on arms and war there would be no war and we should all be better off. But the Toms, Dicks and Harrys must first bang their fists on the table and let it be known who holds the power and how that power is to be used.

But the fact is that Tom, Dick and Harry are not educated enough and so they have to rely on their emotions, and that is not enough. Things will be all right, they say, and we're pretty well off as we are; and, anyway, we don't understand politics, and politicians only screw you as soon as they get their fingers on the spoils. If you tell Tom, Dick or Harry that they could get a car for nothing and tax free and that gas need not cost more than a few cents a gallon, they just laugh, because they do not know. And if you begin to work it out for them and show them what everything costs, then they become angry, for that is tantamount to showing them that they are silly idiots paying their money away unnecessarily.

It took only a few hours to smash an armored train equipped with guns the barrels of which alone were worth a fortune. We were encompassed by howling shells, and though we smashed tank upon tank, they gradually closed in upon us like ghastly attacking insects.

Then the fire-control center fell silent. Feverishly Pluto twiddled his knob, but he could not make contact even with the other coaches. From then on The Old Un himself had to fight our part of the battle. We were now only eight hundred meters from the bridge and "Breslau"; but in the meantime "Breslau" had been transformed into a blazing wreck and all its guns were silent.

A tremendous explosion shook our coach and made our heads sing. Some of the crew began screaming, screams that jabbed at our nerves, and smoke and flame poured from No. 1 turret. It was a direct hit. We tackled the resultant fire with our extinguishers and then counted: four killed and seven wounded. Fortunately Stege was unhurt except for a few minor burns on his hands.

Now mine was the only gun left able to fire. We sweated as we moved about the overheated turret into which flames stabbed at every shot we fired. One after the other the coaches were smashed and finally the whole train came to a stop, so that the enemy was able to get the range exactly. Then there was a bang like the Day of Judgment and a searing white flame filled the turret. I received a violent blow on the chest and everything went black before my eyes. I groaned. It felt as though my body Was being crushed. I had to breathe very carefully, but even so each breath was like being stabbed with knives. I could not move. I was caught in a vice consisting of the gun that had been forced from its seating and the steel wall of the turret.

I was spattered with blood from head to foot. Whose blood it was I did not know, but I presumed that it was my own. Beside me lay one of the gun crew, the top of his head shorn off like the top of a boiled egg. My face and shoulders were covered with his brains. There was an insufferable stench in my nostrils: that of steaming blood and guts mixed with the acrid smell of ammunition. Then I vomited. Then there was another tremendous bang and flames shot up on all sides. The coach began to heel over and it looked as though it were going to overturn, but something caught it and it remained poised at an angle of forty-five degrees. This second hit had shifted the gun slightly so that I could now move my legs and one arm, and so I was able to wipe some of the sticky brains off my face. Behind me lay Schultz, a lad of sixteen, both his legs smashed to a red pulp. Above my head hung a tom-off arm on one of whose fingers was a gold ring with a blue stone. My head began to swim and I started to scream. I quickly came to my senses, however, and shouted for The Old Un and Porta. Shortly afterward I heard a voice through the thick steel plates asking me to tap to show where I was. And then came The Old Un's comforting voice: