The Cross of Iron (46 page)

‘We can’t stay here,’ he said firmly. ‘The Russians will be here any minute. They must be rolling up the whole trench. What do you think those men were running from?’

Krüger plucked at his nose. ‘I don’t know. If we stay here they’ll come to us, and if we go out we’ll come to them. We’ll get it just like those others did.’

‘We’ve got to try,’ Steiner said. ‘Stick close behind me.’ He turned to the right and began walking, crouching low, along the trench. Krüger shifted the MG to his right hand. They reached the bomb crater under which the ruins of the company command post lay, climbed down into it and scrambled out the other side. It was so quiet now that they had to walk on tiptoe to muffle the crunching of their boots. Only above them, on the brow of the hill, some random rifle shots were still being fired.

After a dozen paces they reached Steiner’s bunker and glanced in briefly. The door was open. No one was inside. Now came the hardest part of the way; they continued forward on hands and knees. As they turned a comer of the trench they came across a man who had been pinned to the bottom of the trench by a heavy bomb. The bomb fin protruded from his back like a ventilator, the metal red and gleaming dully in the sunlight. Went right through his back and chest and into the ground, Steiner thought. He closed his eyes and crawled over the man’s guts. Krüger followed close behind him. Their faces were filthy, the sweat pouring down their foreheads and into their eyes. But they moved steadily along over discarded equipment, pieces of uniform and human limbs scattered about the half-collapsed trench, as though the barren soil of Hill 121. 4 had suddenly become a womb bearing waxen faces, clenched fists and bloody rags. They crawled over three men who had been mashed into a single heap of flesh, their mouths open in death, as if to scream curses at a sky that now arched velvety blue above the hills. As Steiner wiped a ghastly, sticky mess from his fingers, a cry above their heads threw them flat on their faces. '
Stoi!’
They lay numbed. A Russian sub-machinegun hammered above them. At the same moment Steiner sprang to his feet, fired blindly over the wall of the trench and raced on. Stumbling, panting, Krüger ran behind him. Hand grenades exploded in their rear; loud shouts sounded down the trench. From somewhere to one side of them a dark face under a fur cap appeared for a few seconds. Steiner fired without taking aim. The face withdrew. In its place a dark object rolled up to their feet, hissing meanly. Eyes widening with terror at the sight of the hand grenade, Steiner was about to throw himself backward. But he could already hear Krüger’s panting breath right at his neck. Instead, he took a leap he did not know he was capable of over the grenade, dashed several yards further on to the next turn in the trench, and threw himself flat. The detonation came just as a heavy body fell right on top of him. Then he heard Krüger’s voice again, felt his hands pulling him up, and stared unbelievingly into his contorted face.

‘Keep going,’ Krüger groaned, ‘keep going, keep going.’

Exhausted, they stumbled ahead, heard the shouts and the firing behind them growing feebler. Abruptly, they stopped. Some thirty feet away, diagonally across the trench, stood a Russian tank. ‘This is it,’ Krüger said tonelessly. They stared at the monster as the turret slowly swerved around until the cannon was pointed directly at them. Then, with an inarticulate cry, Steiner hurled himself forward, and Krüger followed him as though they were one body.

Things were happening fast at the regimental command post. As soon as the barrage ended, Brandt had hurried to the message centre, run through the reports that had meanwhile arrived, and then talked by radio with Division. He had described the tactical situation in the blackest colours and persuaded the general to give him the support of a Stuka wing. Shortly afterwards Kiesel had come into the bunker and reported that the Russian assault had apparently bogged down in front of 2nd Battalion’s positions, but that it was rolling steadily up the hill over the trenches of the 1st Battalion. Meanwhile alarming radio messages from Stransky had come in. He reported that dispersed remnants of the 2nd and 3rd Companies were reaching the battalion command post. There could no longer be any doubt that the line had collapsed on Hill 121. 4. Through the artillery observer’s telescope Brandt had personally verified the disastrous situation. Now he was standing in his bunker bent over the maps, with Kiesel and two other officers of the regimental staff at his side.

Brandt raised his head. ‘The breakthrough must have come at Gausser’s part of the line,’ he said gloomily. ‘We have no time to lose. By the time the assault regiment arrives it will be too late. Look here.’ The officers stepped closer and bent over the map. ‘Vogel was almost untouched,’ Brandt went on. ‘He’s still holding his positions. If the Russians have reached the top of the hill, they’ll turn up in his rear.’

‘How is Körner’s company?’ Lieutenant Mohr, the communications officer, asked.

‘Körner's holding firm,’ Brandt replied. ‘He’s in the least danger. His right flank is covered by Stransky, who is gathering the dispersed soldiers at his command post and will attack in ten minutes.’

‘With the assault regiment?’ Kiesel asked.

‘No. If we wait for that to arrive, Vogel will be encircled. I’ve already radioed orders to him and Stransky. Vogel will abandon the positions as far as the battalion command post and attack from the south up the hill, where he’ll meet Stransky.’

‘I see.’ Kiesel nodded. ‘Then the line will no longer run around the hill but over it. A simple rectification of the front.’

Mohr spoke up. ‘That seems all clear to me,’ he said. ‘But it looks as though advanced Russian sections—mainly tanks, I should think—will already be west of the point where Stransky and Vogel are supposed to close the gap in the line.’

‘That’s true,’ Brandt said, rubbing his unshaven chin. * But those isolated Russian forces will run into the assault regiment which is attacking from Kanskoye. If it makes you feel any better, that regiment has ten self-propelled assault guns with it.’

The gloomy faces around him brightened. Brandt tapped his knuckles on the table. ‘Once the assault regiment gets here, we’ll take the hill back, you can depend on that. We’ll attack with Stuka support and the comrades will find things a bit hot for them.’

The other officers were partly convinced by his confidence. They consulted their watches, and discussed the situation in low voices while Brandt conducted several telephone conversations. Lieutenant Stroh, regimental special-missions officer, was less optimistic than some of the others. ‘The attack on the hill will not be easy,’ he brooded. ‘Think of the artillery the Russians have massed over there. As soon as our men appear on the hill there’ll be a barrage that will make them reel.’

Kiesel glanced at Brandt, who was sitting at the table talking over the telephone. ‘I assure you,’ he replied quietly, ‘that the commander is aware of that. But after all it’s the commander’s duty to show optimism even against his better judgment.’

‘Has there been any news of the company commanders?’ Mohr asked.

Kiesel nodded sadly. ‘Yes, some. Meyer is presumably dead. Merkel and Schwerdtfeger wounded. There’s no trace at all of Gausser.’

Stroh sighed. ‘In other words, the 1st Battalion is without officers.’

‘Except for Stransky and Triebig, yes. Körner has also lost two of his company commanders. It’s pretty raw.’

They looked up eagerly as the commander rose to his feet. 

‘Good news,’ he said. ‘Division reports that the attack was beaten off almost all along the line. Small penetrations here and there, most of them already cleared up.’ He turned to Mohr. ‘Radio message to Stransky and Vogel. The counter-attack is to be postponed ten minutes. The Stukas ought to arrive at any moment. I don’t want our own men coming in there just when the bombs are falling. That would be all we need.’

As Mohr hastened out, Brandt turned to Stroh. ‘Inform Spannagel and get in touch with Potzenhardt. I need every one of his guns. As soon as the Stuka attack is over, have him put covering fire on the hill until he doesn’t have a round left.’

‘Is he still with Vogel?’ Stroh asked.

‘Yes, his observation dugout is near Vogel’s command post. Try to reach him through his battalion. The wire to Vogel is still out.’

Stroh went tearing out. ‘And now,’ Brandt said, ‘a little refreshment. I feel we’ve earned it.’

He filled the glasses and pushed one across the table to Kiesel, who had silently seated himself. They drank. Kiesel set down the glass and searchingly regarded the commander’s exhausted features. ‘May I give you my frank opinion?’ he asked quietly.

Brandt settled back in his chair with a groan. ‘I can’t remember ever saying that you couldn’t,’ he replied grumpily, ‘though you’ve never asked permission before. What is it?’

‘We won’t recapture that hill,’ Kiesel said incisively.

Brandt regarded him from half-closed eyes, his broad face expressing thorough lack of sympathy. Suddenly he smiled unpleasantly. ‘Are you giving me advice, Kiesel?’

‘I should like to remind you of the several hundred guns on the other side.’

‘Do you imagine I’ve forgotten about them?’

Kiesel shrugged. There was a silence for a few seconds. Then Brandt reached for the bottle and refilled his glass. His voice rang out clear and cold. ‘Division has ordered me to throw the Russians back to their starting point at all costs. The general thinks it is possible.’

‘The general?’ Kiesel asked hesitantly.

Brandt drained his glass at one swallow. Then he leaned across the table. ‘I want to tell you something, Kiesel. If you as my adjutant try to impose your personal views upon me, you are at liberty to do so. All you are risking is my good feelings toward you and perhaps your position as adjutant. But if I as regimental commander want to prove a point of mine with the general, I can do so only by bleeding the whole regiment to death.’ His voice rose. ‘My regiment, Kiesel, and because my regiment consists for me not of figures but of men, and because that fact is with me every minute of every day, because I have to think not only for myself but for 4, 000 men, I find it just too goddamn much to have to sit and listen to your damned ideas.’ He fell silent.

Kiesel, seeing the revelation of agony on that lined face, bit his lips. He bowed his head. ‘I beg your pardon,’ he faltered.

‘None of that!’ Brandt commanded sharply. His face looked more normal again. Noticing that Kiesel had scarcely drunk, he urged him to finish his glass.

‘The thing is,’ Brandt went on in a somewhat lower voice, ‘you have to be either up at the very top or down at the very bottom, either a private or commander-in-chief, not one of these thrice-damned middlemen like us who have no breathing space to the right or left, who neither produce nor consume, but simply receive and pass on. Ah-’ He clenched his big hands in disgust.

Kiesel folded his arms over his chest and nodded assent. ‘The purchase price was too high,’ he said quietly. ‘Can you still remember what your uniform cost you?’

‘Is that a joke?’ Brandt asked sharply.

‘The subject is too grave for joking. We did not buy our uniforms; we swapped them. Swapped them for our consciences, and now we’d like to take back the swap, but it is too late.’

‘Too late?’ Brandt whispered.

‘Too late,’ Kiesel repeated boldly. His eyes flashed. ‘It was already too late when we raised our hands and took the oath for Führer and Nation and for something else—we knew at the time what it was, although we did not have the guts to admit it to ourselves.’

Brandt’s face was chalky. ‘Shut up!’ he barked. ‘For the last time I order you to shut up, Kiesel. I won’t permit you to talk that way; do you hear, I won’t permit it!’

He sprang abruptly to his feet and paced back and forth. Finally he came to a stop at the table again. ‘Even if it were true,’ he said, ‘as long as our men are bleeding and dying out there, you have not the right to talk like that, you have no right and I have no right. Here’—his hand came down heavily on the maps scattered over the table—‘here is my job; here is my regiment’s sector and here is where the Russians have broken through. Nothing else interests me, not today and not tomorrow, not at all. If this war is lost I’ll be able to stand before any mirror without spitting in my own face, and I will not permit anyone to work with me who cannot say the same for himself. Have I expressed myself clearly?’

‘Unequivocally,’ Kiesel said. He had listened in perfect calm to the commander’s outburst. Obviously this was an inappropriate moment for such a discussion, and he made up his mind to return to the subject some other time. But he could not forbear to remark that he personally would prefer not to look in any mirrors at all, since it might well be that his better judgment would be grinning scornfully over his shoulder, awakening doubts that he could easily escape by keeping his eyes shut. At that Brandt left the bunker without another word. As he did so, a swelling drone in the sky announced the arrival of the expected planes. Kiesel also went outside in time to see about a hundred of the thick-set dive-bombers flying in a gigantic V and heading straight for Hill 121.4. They disappeared beyond the brow of the hill. Seconds later the air was filled with a volley of thunderous detonations; the sound waves battered their ears as they listened in breathless exultation.

The officers were all standing in front of their bunkers, their faces expressing grim satisfaction. Kiesel wondered whether he should follow the commander, who had started up the hill to watch the counter-attack from the observation post. Then he decided it would be better to leave Brandt alone with his thoughts, and he went into his bunker. For several minutes he sat pensively at his table. Then the telephone rang. He lifted the receiver and recognized the voice of Sergeant Hüser, the signals platoon leader, who asked where the commander was and informed Kiesel that a radio message had just come in reporting the success of the counter-attack. He also said that communications with the 3rd Battalion had been restored. Kiesel sighed with relief. ‘I’ll inform the commander,’ he said. ‘If any further messages come in, we’ll be up at the artillery OP.’