The Cross of Iron (26 page)

‘Mamma’s boy got a sore footy?’ Steiner asked, his voice dripping scorn. Still Krüger did not reply. He stretched out his foot, held the painful heel up to the rain, and groaned with relief. Steiner’s frown grew fiercer by the second. He stooped, picked up the machine-gun and asked: ‘How long are we supposed to wait for you?’ Stubbornly, Krüger held his tongue. The men had come closer and were grinning broadly.

Suddenly they fell flat on their faces as though all had been kicked in the back. In front of them, about at the spot they would have reached by now but for Krüger’s breakdown, the night exploded like a ball of fire. A crashing roar broke over them, forcing their mouths open. Steiner lay with his face on Krüger’s back. Krüger had forgotten his painful heel. The roar continued with undiminished violence. At last Steiner raised his head cautiously; he had realized that he was unhurt, and his analytic faculties, schooled by three years of war, returned to him. A moment later he had grasped the situation. The platoon was no more than fifty yards from the emplacement of a heavy Russian battery which must be up ahead in one of the innumerable hollows of this terrain.

Steiner slowly got to his feet and looked up at the battery, which was firing without pause. The others, too, got up one after the other. Only Krüger, Kern and Pasternack remained sitting on the ground. The East Prussian was clutching his boot and sock in his right hand, and his bare foot stood out as a bright shape against the dark ground. Steiner regarded him silently. Then he laid the machine-gun across Krüger’s legs and said: ‘Put on your boot before you catch cold.’ The men’s shoulders began quivering; they bit their lips and shook like saplings in a wind. Ignoring their amusement, Krüger carefully laid his footgear on the ground beside him, used both hands to draw his foot up above his left knee, and with his finger-tips felt his abused heel. Then he raised his head. ‘Anybody got a needle?’

Silently, Steiner reached under his belt, fumbled for a moment, and brought forth a large safety-pin. ‘Hurry up,’ he said, not harshly. Krüger nodded. As he pressed the pin into his flesh, he felt the lymph spurt out over his fingers. ‘More water in there than in all your heads put together,’ he said. He carefully pressed out the blister, took a packet of bandages from a pocket, and bound up the heel. ‘There,’ he said contentedly, put on his torn sock and his sopping boot, and quickly stood up. As he did so the artillery fire stopped.

‘A short cease-fire,’ Schnurrbart murmured. ‘They’ll be-’

‘Sh!’ Steiner interrupted him savagely. They raised their heads to listen. Somewhere, surprisingly near, the shells were falling, and the men looked meaningfully at one another. Krüger turned philosophical. ‘If we were over there,’ he said. ‘Over there where they’re landing, we’d be where we want to be.’

They were still quaking inwardly from the shock and surprise, but they grinned and looked almost tenderly at Krüger. At this moment each of them felt about the others as he felt about himself No better and no worse. They were very close.

They made a wide detour around the Russian emplacement. Their apathy had altogether vanished, had given place to an abnormal alertness. They started climbing again, and this time the ascent seemed to go on for ever. When Steiner suddenly stopped for no apparent reason, they raised their heads in alarm. The rain pattered evenly down upon their weary faces. They saw that Steiner was staring fixedly up the hill. ‘What is it?’ Kern whispered excitedly. Steiner pointed toward the darkness in front of them. For a few seconds they stared at the sky without understanding. Then they all saw it. For brief moments the outlines of the hill stood out, clearly visible against the rainy darkness; then it seemed to fuse with the darkness again, like water that is poured into a bottle of ink. At irregular intervals the same phenomenon was repeated. Before they could grasp the meaning of it, Steiner hurried on.

A few minutes later they reached the top of the hill and stood still again, panting for breath and shivering with emotion. At their feet the terrain fell away steeply to the south. Far below them stretched out what appeared to be a broad plain. An endless chain of dimmed headlights was moving from east to west. The whole of the western horizon stood in the spectral illumination of white flares. The men fought in vain against the emotion that tightened their throats and filled their eyes with moisture. They began to swallow and rub their hands over their damp faces. ‘The front,’ Maag whispered almost reverently. ‘The front,’ Kern repeated, placing his hands one over the other as if he wanted to pray. They stared fascinated toward the west. Steiner raised his arm and pointed to the row of lights. His voice thick, he said: ‘That’s the road to Krymskaya. The battalion must be dug in to the left of it. Fix it in your minds, in case we get separated.’

Schnurrbart threw him a glance. He was the first to realize the significance of the heavy traffic on the road. ‘Man, something’s going to be popping down there.’

‘So what?’ Steiner said, shrugging.’ Once we reach the battalion others can worry their heads about it.’ He crouched down on the ground. ‘We’ll take a short rest here.’

Schnurrbart looked around uneasily. ‘Isn’t this place dangerous?’ 

‘Not especially. At least from here we can see what’s going on. Sit down. The final sprint comes next.’

‘How do you figure to get through?’ Krüger inquired. ‘There are whole armies rolling along down there.’

Steiner grinned. ‘Then us few Russians won’t make much difference.’ He looked at his watch. ‘It’s half-past nine now. We have plenty of time. There’s no sense trying to cross before three o’clock—too much doing down there.’

The men sat down and began talking in whispers.

‘Not a chance we’ll get through there,’ Kern protested. ‘We must try it in some other place. Imagine what it’s going to be like when we try to cross the Russian trenches. Why, it’s mad!’

‘Don’t get so alarmed,’ Steiner retorted contemptuously. ‘We’ve made it this far and we’ll make it the rest of the way, you can depend on that.’ He turned to Dorn. ‘Won’t we, Professor?’ 

Dorn looked shiftily down at the ground. He thoroughly agreed with Kern and could only think with horror of what lay before them. On the other hand he did not want to provide Steiner with fresh food for mockery. He limited himself to a silent shrug. Steiner watched him out of the comers of his eyes. Then he laughed curtly. ‘You seem to think differently. As you like. To tell the truth this whole business amuses me, amuses me enormously. Damn it all, what do you want? This is a bit of a change from sitting around in a filthy mudhole and waiting till one of those blasted things goes off over your head and turns you into fresh hash. Isn’t it?’

He looked around at their abashed faces. Listening to the overtones of his own words, he felt a serene satisfaction because they had arisen out of his deepest convictions. The sense of being dependent only upon his own instinct for all decisions increased his boldness, gave him a feeling of immense confidence. Suddenly, in contrast to his usual manner, he grew quite garrulous and came out with a long string of cynical remarks. The men did not know what to make of Steiner in this new mood. Finally Krüger looked up angrily. ‘Now cut it out,’ he said. ‘I’d like to know what’s so funny. Was what happened to Dietz a big joke, eh?’

Steiner started as though he had touched a hot iron. Grief welled over him, along with a profound astonishment that he had not thought about Dietz for so much as a moment during the past few hours. Could the boy have meant so little to him that he was able to forget him within so short a time? The question was answered by the aching pain within him, which grew in intensity from second to second, washing away all his high spirits and arousing a dull rage that was directed solely against Krüger. The men were aware of the sudden change, and Schnurrbart gave Krüger, who was sitting in front of him, a furious shove. Krüger bit his lips. The words had slipped out involuntarily and he was already regretting them. Dorn, too, was distressed; it seemed to him that a harmless, casual conversation was being needlessly dramatized. He tried to stop the avalanche: ‘Let’s not weigh every word on a chemical balance,’ he said. ‘I think we all agree that war is horrible in all its manifestations.’

With a look of disgust, Steiner stretched out on the wet ground. Conversation stopped.

Later, when they began ascending the hill again, the incident was forgotten. Steiner centred his whole attention on the difficult terrain. Although the front in the main ran due west, there was a deep salient at one point, a wedge that appeared to expand far to the east. The flares which rose at regular intervals along the line gave him a fairly accurate picture of the course of the front, and Steiner vainly tried to understand why in defiance of all tactical rules the German commanders had permitted this extension of the line. Probably the reason lay in the character of the terrain, which he could not judge properly from his present position. They had reached the foot of the hill meanwhile and were now moving toward the front. They kept close to the line of hills until these turned off at an acute angle toward the north and the terrain opened up on all sides. The ground turned mucky and walking again became difficult. The front was closer than ever now. The men could already hear the boom of mortars and occasionally the hollow, heart-stirring chatter of machine-guns. During the past few minutes Steiner had been slowing their marching tempo. Now he moved forward toward a dark barrier that crossed the land in front of them. When they reached it they discovered that it was a shoulder-high line of thicket running along both sides of a narrow brook. The water was not deep, but the current was surprisingly strong.

On the other bank, Steiner stopped abruptly. He had bumped his head into an obstruction which proved to be the wire of a telephone line. It crossed the brook a few yards away and ran between the bushes toward the front. Thoughtfully he slid his fingers along the wire and stared into the night. The men thronged around him, and Anselm asked: ‘Shall we cut the wire?’

‘You’re out of your mind,’ Hollerbach said. ‘We’d only bring the Russians down on our necks.’

Steiner considered. The moment he had touched the wire he had perceived how the platoon was going to cross the lines. He looked at his watch. It was shortly before midnight—too early to carry out the plan. He turned to the men: ‘We’ll have to wait two hours. Shortly before dawn will be the best time. Take a rest.’

They slipped their packs from their backs and crouched down on the bank of the brook, as deep in among the bushes as they could get. Steiner stood by for a few seconds; then he vanished softly as a cat into the darkness.

After following the wire for nearly half a mile, he came upon a Russian sentry. He fell flat to the ground, eyes fastened on the dark silhouette of the man, who stood motionless some seventy feet away. In spite of the distance he could hear the Russian whistling idly under his breath. The man’s back was turned to him, so that there was no great danger of being discovered, and Steiner crawled a few feet closer. I should have taken Krüger with me, he thought. The original plan was better. The front line seemed almost within reach from here. Every time a flare rose up toward the sky, the figure of the sentry stood out plainly against the dark background. With satisfaction Steiner noticed that the direction he was taking led straight to the point of the protruding salient in the German front, which fitted in neatly with his intentions.

When he had got it all straight in his mind, he crawled slowly backwards, careful to make no noise at all, until he was far enough from the sentry to stand up without risk. As he approached the line of bushes he looked to his left, toward the road, and found confirmation of his earlier observations. At a particular spot the headlights of the vehicles were extinguished and it was no longer possible to see their course. He guessed that the Russians must be assembling their material at this spot. Probably there was a small village down there. The distance was too great for him to see anything more in the darkness, but his map would probably show. When he reached the men, he dropped to the ground and disregarding their eager silence took the map out of his pocket and studied it by the shielded light of his flashlight. His guess was correct. About a mile and a half south of the road was a fairly sizeable village, and off to the west, approximately in line with the front line, lay a wooded area, its northern edge bordered by the highway. As he examined the immediate vicinity of the wooded area he came across a number that attracted his attention: 121.4. He frowned thoughtfully. Possibly that indicated a hill, which would explain the puzzling wedge in the front line.

He looked up from the map and briefly outlined his plan to them. Concluding, he said: ‘Of course we first have to find out how many bunkers there are. If you don’t mess it up, it ought to work. Only you have to act fast, and with as little noise as possible. Close the doors behind you when you shoot, and don’t miss.’

‘The firing will be heard,’ Schnurrbart remonstrated.

Steiner shrugged impatiently. ‘There’s always firing going on at the front. As I’ve said, be sure you close the doors behind you. Can you think of any better plan?’

They did not answer. Now that they were facing the decisive test, their excitement began to die down. Steiner’s bold plan no longer seemed so fantastic, and the more they considered it the more hopeful it began to look. They talked in whispers. Kern, eyeing the front, remarked: ‘This seems to be a quiet area. No artillery or nothing.’

‘Why shouldn’t our company come in for a quiet sector once in a while,’ Krüger replied.

Schnurrbart grinned: ‘If this is a quiet sector you won’t find our company here. Take a look at that torchlight parade over there. Do you think they’re laying Easter eggs?’

‘Hell, no,’ Maag said, looking down at the road, where the headlights of vehicles still showed.

‘Our artillery is sound asleep again,’ Kern said grimly. ‘That stuff down there would be a sure target for a forward observer. They ought to be able to see what’s going on here.’

‘Shortage of ammunition,’ Schnurrbart replied. ‘You mustn’t forget that our supplies have to come in over water. We’ll need what we have when the big show starts.’