Wheels of Terror (16 page)

Now somewhere in the town some distance from where we sit we hear the rattling of tank chains.

'Hope it isn't Ivan,' says Pluto and stretches his neck to look into the rumbling darkness which surrounds us.

Many of the tank crews are getting nervous. All ears strain to identify the goose-flesh pregnant chain-rattling coming from behind the silent buildings.

The engines are revved. The gears growl. The dynamos sing.

Nervousness is spreading. We cannot make out whose tanks they are. Porta who is a specialist in detecting tank noises is hanging half-way out of his driver's hatch in the front of the tank. He listens tensely. Suddenly he pops back and categorically says:

'It's healthier to withdraw with clean noses. They're Ivan's tanks in there, T34s.'

'Not on your nelly,' comes from Pluto. 'It's our Mark VI tank. Sounds like an army of Dutchmen in clogs. Anybody can hear that. You need to gargle those cardboard ears!'

'Why the hell are you so careful then?' snaps Porta with a jeer. 'But we'll soon see, lads.'

He bends back and looks up at me:

'See that you have your pop gun ready!'

'If that's Ivan,' says Tiny, 'call me Adolf. It's either the Mark IV or heavy artillery.'

Colonel Hinka is coming down the long columns of tanks, talking quietly to the company commander.

A little later von Barring reaches our tank and says to The Old Un who is sitting in the turret:

'Unteroffizier Beier, make ready for a reconnaissance patrol. We have to find out who's in front of us. If it's Ivan, hell's breaking loose. He's liable to get behind us, the way we're sitting.'

'Yes, sir, No. 2 Section is ready to patrol.' The Old Un took out his map and went on: 'The section will move--'

Then a few shells come whistling down and burst into a house.

'Ivan - Ivan ...' the cry goes up.

Everybody is rushing about. Machine-pistol and rifle-shots split the air. Panic spreads. Some jump out of their tanks. The fear of burning to death in a tank is deep-seated in all tank-crews.

A pack of the dreaded T34 tanks is coming down the street rumbling menacingly, spreading fire from all guns. A couple of flame-throwers stick out their blood-red tongues at a flock of panzer grenadiers squeezed up against the walls of a house. At once they are changed into living torches.

Several of our tanks are burning and illuminate the streets with their deep-red blaze. Explosions come from petrol-tanks and ammunition going up. Everywhere is chaos.

Tanks collide in their attempt to escape. Nobody knows who is friend or enemy.

Two Russian tanks smash together with a rain of sparks. They fire simultaneously and in a second are swallowed by flames. The crew of one appears from the turret, but a burst from a machine-gun mows them down. They grill there, hanging half-out of the red-hot hull.

Four 10.5-cm. field-guns start ragged firing directly at the T34s. Red and white balls of fire fly skywards. The Russian tank-guns blaze incessantly. The whole battle is completely without plan or direction. All leadership has ceased.

Several of our tanks firing furiously with all guns swing out and seek desperately for shelter.

Tiny, our loader, is standing with a couple of tank-shells under each arm and bellows:

'Fire, you fool, fire!'

I bid him shut up and take care of his own job.

'Muck-heap,' says Tiny.

Porta sitting at the steering-rods grins.

'You're trembling round the gob, what, lads? Well, that's how it is when you don't believe Porta. Lovely tanks, T34s, eh?'

He backs the tank into a wall which collapses on top of us in a cloud of dust. Quickly he gets the huge tank free, makes full speed ahead and crashes thunderously into a T34.

I just manage to see part of its turret in my periscope before I fire. The fire from the muzzle and the shell-explosion merge at this short distance. The breech shoots back. A hot shell-casing rattles down to the bottom of the tank. Tiny flings high-explosive S-shells into the gun.

The Old Un roars.

'Back! Hell! Porta, you idiot, back! Another one is coming down the street. Turret at eleven. Got it? Fire, for God's sake!'

... I stared wildly through the periscope, but could see nothing but a river of tracers rushing through the street.

'You imbecile cow, the turret's at 9, not 11. Turn to 7 minus 36. Got it? Fire, man!'

A shell whistled past the turret. And another. The next moment our 60-ton Tiger tank nearly overturned as Porta backed. Scarcely five inches from our bows a T34 trundled past. It swung round flinging water and mud sky-high, then slid a dozen yards, but Porta was just as quick as the Russian driver. His tank spun two or three times round on its axis with Porta sitting at the huge steering-rods grinning genially.

I pressed the pedal. The turret swung round. The triangles met in the sighting mechanism. A shell sped out, and another. Then it seemed as if the tank capsized. Our ears were ringing and clanging with the din of steel meeting steel.

Pluto was half-way out of his hatch, when it dawned on him that we'd been hit by a T34 at full speed. For a moment the Russian tank rocked in its tracks. Then the engine roared as the driver speeded it up to its full stretch. Like a ram running wild it bashed into our left flank. Our tank rose in a forty-five degree lurch.

Porta was flung on top of Pluto, tearing out all the radio-wires in the fall. I was sent flying and landed in Porta's seat. Luckily I had my steel-helmet on. My head crashed with terrific force against the steering-rods. Only Tiny remained standing as if welded to the tank-floor.

The Old Un hit his head on a steel edge and fell unconscious with blood spurting from a deep wound in the head.

'Bastards, swine, bloody Stalin-droppings!' shouted Tiny out of the hatch which in his fury he had opened.

A couple of stray shells hissed past the turret and he hurriedly banged the hatch to. He shovelled shells out of the lockers till they lay in wild confusion on the deck of the turret. It did not seem to disturb him that the heavy 8-cm. shells time and time again landed on his feet. He slapped oil-saturated rags on The Old Un's head, tore a piece off his shirt to bandage him, and then pushed him into an empty ammunition locker.

'I'm the biggest and strongest here,' roared Tiny. 'I'll take over command!'

He pointed at me:

'And you, you miserable pimp, all you have to do is fire. That's why we were sent to Russia.'

He stumbled over The Old Un's protruding legs. It was a miracle that his head was not shattered as the gun-breech banged back. Speechless he glared at me, then full of rage burst out:

'You little devil, you'll kill your commander! What in flaming hell is the good of firing that pop-gun? I refuse to take command. I won't be shot at!'

Porta and Pluto collapsed with laughter at Tiny's ranting. For a moment we forgot the deadly danger we were in. We were surrounded by confused masses of guns, tanks and infantry. The whole scene was lit by the furious waves of machine-gun bullets. Two 8.8-cm. flak-guns were in position a little way from us. They sent off shell after shell into the darkness. But the muzzle-flashes betrayed them and they were soon ground down by a T34.

... This night is an apocalypse when everything is cleansed by the annihilating fire. The cry for medical orderlies from hundreds of wounded German and Russian soldiers is the accompaniment of the death-dance in the inferno of darkness.

The only helpful thing is to press your nose to the dirt and flatten yourself to escape the whistling bullets.

Our tank is hit, and in a second becomes a roaring ocean of fire. Tiny looks like a satyr standing bathed in flames as he throws The Old Un out of the side-hatch before he jumps away himself in a shower of sparks. He rolls on the ground in his oil-saturated uniform to extinguish the leaping flames.

Exhausted we lie, gasping for air, coughing painfully with smoke-filled lungs. Only Porta is indifferent. He lifts up the mangy cat he had adopted and now carries in the breast of his tunic and shouts:

'We got away by the skin of our teeth again, old pussy-lad. Only a few hairs on your backside singed!'

Panic everywhere. Grenadiers, pioneers, tank-gunners, home-guards, infantrymen, artillerymen, officers, NCOs and privates, all in a disorderly mob. Sharp pings from the snipers sound round us. Porta clutches a magnetic fuse. We get hold of some T-mines. Like snakes we crawl towards the huge T34s.

I see Porta jump at one. The fuse is placed where it ought to be. An explosion. Sharp flames lick out of the turret.

Tiny crawls up to another tank. Carefully he places the big T-mine beneath the turret, pulls out the stick and lets himself drop from the bucking tank. A thundering boom, and another T34 is finished. Tiny is going mad.

'I've finished one. Blimey, I've sent a whole tank to the gods.'

That such a clumsy oaf as he is not hit is a miracle, but evidently he is bullet-proof.

I unlock a T-mine, but I can't get it up on the tank crashing by. It explodes a little behind it, and the air pressure sends me several yards along the gutted street.

The roaring steel monsters turn and twist like sledges when they brake. Shell after shell thunders from their guns.

Slowly it dawns on us that these are not just a few stray tanks which have broken through our defences. Fortunately it is only a fraction of their left flank we have contact with. We flatten ourselves against the ground, pretend we are dead. The soil tastes sweet. Our friend affording us shelter! Lovely, dirty churned-up earth! Never have you tasted so delicious, although your porridgy mud and slush penetrate our ears, mouths, noses and eyes.

You blood-saturated lovely earth, you hold us in your embrace and hide us in your bottomless mire. The water running in at our collars feels like a caress from a gentle woman's hand.

The dirt on our equipment and uniforms makes us look like animated clods of mud.

At eight o'clock in the morning all is over. But near the eastern part of Cherkassy town we can still hear heavy firing and the rattling of tank-tracks.

Nobody suggests they might be Mark IVs. Never again will we make that mistake when we listen to that rattling, banging sound.

... Many years after the war. I have woken up, wet with sweat, because in my dream I had heard that rattling death's herald of the terrible Russian T34.

Slowly we emerge from the mud. Porta, thank God you're alive! The Old Un? Where's The Old Un? We breathe relief. There he is, still alive. Stege, Bauer, the Little Legionnaire, Moller although always sour, full of pessimism and religious killjoy - all embrace because they are alive. Tiny shouts with joy:

'A few rotten T34s don't blow Tiny's breath away!'

He is kicking at the peeled off tracks of the burned-out wreck of a T34, the one he destroyed with his T-mine.

'Come on, you red devils, and I'll deal with you!' he bellows in the direction of the clanging tracks.

Pluto is sitting in the mud with his legs outstretched. He stares down the shattered street where tanks, guns, cars and trucks have been ground into one charred mass of wreckage by the Russian tank attack.

Colonel Hinka and Captain von Barring are tottering down the street. They sway like two drunkards. Von Barring is bare-headed. Hinka wears a Russian fur-hat. His greatcoat is black with perspiration and charred. He throws a handful of cigarettes at us.

'So, you're still alive,' he says in a tired voice.

Blood drips from a cut in his forehead, and runs down his cheek. He wipes it off with the back of his hand, only to smear his whole face with it. The red blood and the mud give him a grotesque, almost diabolical appearance.

A quarter of an hour later we march away. The regiment has suffered terrible losses. Seven hundred killed, eight hundred and sixty-three wounded. Every tank lost. Other regiments have fared no better.

The fallen lie everywhere. Despite the dirt and mud we can make out different units by the shoulder-tabs. There lie a dozen panzer-jagers, ground to a porridge. The barrel of one gun points straight at heaven like an accusing finger. Shells lie widely scattered.

Across there, by a burnt-out row of houses, stands a whole battery of 8.8-cm. guns, crushed and flattened by the Russian juggernauts. We stare and stare. It is unbelievable that so many can die in such a short time.

12

The winter had come in all its horror, with frost and gales that killed many more than the Russian guns.

It made men hard and brutal. Terror started, and terror breeds terror.

We became rabid, blood-thirsty animals. We mocked the dead and shouted jests at the crushed men.

Knives, Bayonets and Spades

We are surrounded. We have no tanks. We are again fighting on foot. It snows and snows. The gale races howling over the steppes. Whistles through the thin forests. Puffs the snow into a huge cloud of powder. It puts an icy layer on cannons, machine-guns and small arms. Brings its grim greetings from Siberia.

A man can do sentry-duty for only one quarter of an hour, then he must be relieved or become a corpse. We weep with frost-pain. In our beards hang icicles. Our nostrils freeze up. Every breath is like a stab of a knife. Take a fur glove off, touch a piece of metal without thinking, and the fingers stick making it impossible to withdraw them without tearing off the skin.

Gangrene becomes uncomfortably commonplace. Stinking, rotting limbs are a daily sight. Amputation after amputation takes place in the dirty huts which serve as dressing stations: a little bit of leg, a hand, a large piece of leg, another arm, sometimes all at once, other times piece-meal.

Newsprint has become an expensive black-market commodity. One newspaper fetches fifty cigarettes. It will save you, soldier, from gangrene.

In the corner is stacked a heap of blue-black gangrened amputated limbs. Even when they are deep-frozen and your nostrils are frozen up, you can detect a faint odour.

The field-surgeons operate as best they can. A few Hindenburg-candles are often the only light available at operations.