Wheels of Terror (2 page)

He stood up and bowed sardonically to the whole gang of us as we lay there with our backs pressed against the sides of the trench:

'Joseph Porta, Corporal by the grace of God, butcher in Adolf's army, habitual criminal and death candidate, corpse-carrier and incendiary! Your servant, gentlemen!'

At that moment a new Christmas tree flamed up near us, and he dropped quickly back into the trench.

He added, sighing: 'Another party is off to hell. Amen!'

For three solid hours, without a minute's peace, the explosives drummed down from the dark velvet sky. The phosphorus containers poured on the streets and houses in close-knit showers, in one impenetrable hailstorm of death and destruction.

The flak had long since been silenced. Our night fighters were up there, but the big bombers were not bothered by their smaller brothers-in-hell. The huge steam-roller of fire crushed the city from north to south, from east to west. The railway station was a roaring ruin of flames with red-hot carriages and engines in one molten heap, as if it had been ground by a giant amusing himself. Hospitals and nursing-homes collapsed in a holocaust of mortar and fire. Here the many beds provided excellent opportunities for the phosphorus to sport. Most of the patients were in the cellars, but there were many left in the wards for the flames to devour. Screaming, amputated cases struggled to get up and away from the flames which licked hot and hungry through doors and windows. The long corridors provided chimneys with a splendid draught. Fireproof walls burst like glass under the devastating pressure of explosives. People got up, only to fall gasping to the ground, suffocated by the heat. The stench of singed flesh and fat floated across to us in our trenches. Between the detonations the last half-strangled screams reached us.

'Children, children,' gasped The Old Un, 'this is bad, this is. Any left alive will be round the bend after this bloody lot. Give me the front-line any time. There women and children don't get roasted and skinned. The damned swine who invented air-raids should have a taste of this.'

'We'll burn the fat off Hermann's backside when we have our revolution,' hissed Porta. 'Where's the fat slug now, I wonder?'

At last it looked like ending. Piercing whistles and words of command rang out through the barracks, which were still illuminated by the ocean of flames. In single file we doubled to our stations.

Porta leaped wildly into a Krupp diesel lorry. The engine whined, and without waiting for orders he swung the huge vehicle out and roared off. We clung on as best we could. A nineteen-year-old lieutenant shouted something, and ran at the roaring vehicle. A couple of big hands heaved him in.

'Who in hell's name is driving this!' he gasped, but nobody answered him. We had enough to do trying to hang on to the madly bucking truck which Porta with a deft hand steered between the deep craters in the road. We thundered through the burning streets where tramcars and other vehicles lay broken between mortar rubble and fallen lamp-posts. But Porta didn't take a fraction off his speed. At one point, he swung in on clear pavement, knocking down small trees like matchsticks. But near Erichsstrasse we had to stop. A couple of air-torpedoes had struck, and a building lay like a wall across the street. Even a bulldozer would have had to call a halt.

We leaped off the truck and with pickaxes, axes and shovels, worked our way through the rubble. Lieutenant Harder tried his best to gather us under his command, but nobody paid any attention. The Old Un took charge. Shrugging his shoulders, the young officer grabbed a pickaxe and followed the file behind. The Old Un, the experienced frontline soldier. Like all of us, he had changed his weapons for a tool which we handled with as much adroitness as when we used flame-throwers and machine-pistols in battle: the entrenching-spade.

Through the raw, nauseating smoke people bandaged with dirty rags came towards us. Grossly swollen burns spoke their own clear language. Here were women, children, men, old and young, whose faces terror had turned to stone. Madness shone out of their eyes. Most of them had had their hair singed off, so one could barely distinguish one sex from the other. Many had wrapped themselves in wet sacks and rags as a protection against the flames. One woman in her madness shouted at us:

'Haven't you had enough! Haven't you dragged out this war long enough! My children are burnt to death. My husband is lost. May you burn, too, you damned soldiers!'

An old man took her by the shoulder and drew her away:

'Now, now Helga, take it easy. You might make things even worse for us, you know ...'

She tore herself loose and leaped at Pluto with fingers spread like a tiger's claws, but the big docker shook her off as if she had been a small child. She banged her head against the hot asphalt, burst into uncontrolled screams. She and the old man were lost to us as we worked our way forward to the gigantic cliff of ruins. Surrounded by flames it towered in front of us.

A policeman without his helmet and with his uniform nearly burned away stopped us and stammered:

'The Children's Home, the Children's Home, the Children's Home ...'

'What are you drooling about?' The Old Un snarled as the policeman dragged at him and kept on stuttering:

'The Children's Home, the Children's Home!'

Quickly Porta stepped forward and slammed his iron fist two or three times in the policeman's face. This treatment had often produced striking results at the front when we had used it on somebody with shell-shock. It also helped a little now. With eyes nearly popping out of his head with terror the policeman gabbled a sort of explanation, words tumbling out.

'Save the children! They're trapped inside. The whole lot is going up like matchwood!'

'Stuff it, you Schupo swine!' bellowed Porta grabbing the man by the shoulders and shaking him like a mat. 'Get your fat copper's carcase moving to the Children's Home and bloody quick! In front of us now -
los mensch!
What are you waiting for? I'm no captain - just Corporal Joseph Porta by the grace of God - but I expect crap like you to take my orders!'

The policeman, who looked as if he wanted to run for it, started to dart about confusedly, but Lieutenant Harder clutched him: 'Didn't you hear? Get going! Show us the way, and don't dawdle or you'll be shot!'

Simultaneously he swung his Mauser under the nose of the half-crazed policeman. His lips were trembling violently and his cheeks were streaked with tears. Normally, as an old man he would have been pensioned off but for the war.

Pluto, his giant's body towering over him, gave him a brutal shove and growled: 'Shut up and march, Grandad.'

The policeman, half-running, staggered along in front through collapsed shells of streets, where flames danced heavenwards. Women, children and men lay pressed fast to the ground. Some were dead, others had been struck dumb, and the cries of some curdled our blood.

Where a few hours before there had been a street corner, a little boy came running to us, shouting and dribbling in his fright. 'They are all trapped in the cellar. Help me get Mummy and Daddy out! He's a soldier like you. He was just home on leave. Lieschen has lost her arm. Henrik has burned up.'

We stopped for a moment. Moller petted the boy's head: 'We'll soon be back!'

We had reached a mountain of fallen rubble. It was impossible for us to go on. As we turned to ask the policeman to lead us another way there were enormous explosions close by. Like lightning we dived for shelter. Experience of the front line helps.

'What the hell, is Tommy back again?' hissed Porta.

Still more metallic thunderclaps, missiles, stones and earth showered over us. When fragments hit our steel helmets they rang with a curious high-pitched scream. But the new onslaught could do little more than interrupt us. Soon it ceased.

'They're dropping them blind now,' said The Old Un briefly and stood up.

We pressed on towards our target, the policeman in front. He led us through a cellar. We smashed holes in the wall with our pickaxes to reach what looked like the remains of a big garden. Its trees had toppled and burnt and layers of rubble and twisted iron, the remnants of a building, were still burning furiously.

The policeman pointed and muttered:

'The children are underneath that lot ...'

'God, what a pasting it's got,' Stege said. 'And what a hell of a stink! They must have had phosphor-bombs on top of the incendiaries.'

The Old Un looked quickly round, taking stock, and began to attack vigorously something that looked like cellar steps.

With feverish anxiousness we hacked, shovelled and dug through the rubble, but for every shovelful we shifted a shovelful of debris poured down. Soon we had to stop to draw breath. Moller said that the most sensible thing would be to make contact with those in the cellar, if any were still alive.

The policeman was sitting with dead eyes rocking himself to and fro.

'Listen, Schupo! Is this the right place,' cried Porta, 'or are you fooling us? And, damn you, stop playing rocking-horse! Give us some help. What do you think you are paid for?'

'Leave him be. He can't help it,' Lieutenant Harder said wearily. 'This is a Children's Home. Or it has been. It says so on that notice-board over there.'

Following Moller's advice, we knocked at what had been a doorpost and after what seemed eternity we got an answer, very faintly as it came through to us:
knock! knock! knock!
Hitting the post again with a hammer, we listened with our ear to it. There was no doubt:
knock! knock! knock!
We worked like madmen with our pickaxes and crowbars to smash through to the cellar. Sweat made furrows on smoke-blackened faces. Skin was torn off hands. Nails broke and palms blistered as we man-handled the hot, sharp mortar and brick.

Pluto swung round at the policeman who was rocking on his haunches as he mumbled incomprehensibly.

'Come here, you stupid old flatfoot. Help us with this shaft,' he shouted.

As there was no response the giant crossed to Schupo, grabbed him and carried him without effort to the shaft, where we worked on indifferently. The old man bumped down to us. When he got to his feet, somebody thrust a spade into his hand and said:

'Get weaving, chum!'

He started digging, and as the work brought him to his senses we didn't worry any more about him. The Old Un was the first to break through. It was only a tiny crack, but through it we could just see a child's hand scratching desperately at the cemented wall.

The Old Un spoke soothingly into the darkness. But instantly a chorus of children's screams drowned him. It was impossible to calm them. The hole was now bigger, and the little hand was thrust through, but we had to hit it in order to make it withdraw. As we got one hand to shrink away another fought to take its place.

Stege turned and burst out: 'It drives me mad! We'll break their hands if we have a real bash at this.'

From the other side of the wall we heard a woman's voice screaming for air, and another shouting: 'Water, water, for God's sake bring water!'

The Old Un still on his knees, spoke soothingly to them. His patience was enormous. Without him we would all have thrown down our tools and run away with our fingers jabbed in our ears to stifle the mad voices.

Dawn hardly penetrated the thick suffocating carpet of smoke over the burning city. We worked with gasmasks but were nearly choked. Our voices sounded hollow and far away.

We had managed to make a new hole. Desperately we tried to quieten the unhappy people in the collapsed cellar. The atmosphere of horror during the raid can be imagined, but only those who have experienced bombs know that they are not the worst. The human spirit's reaction to them is worst of all.

'Our Father, who art in Heaven,' a trembling voice rose. The pickaxes and shovels clattered on. 'Forgive us our trespasses' - a shrieking bang, splashing, and fire poured everywhere. New, ear-splitting bangs. Another raid? Another stray drop? No, incendiaries!

We pressed our bodies hard against the very foundations of what had once been the Children's Home.

'Thine is the Kingdom ...'

'By God, it isn't,' Porta's excited voice answered. 'It belongs to Adolf - that swine!'

'Help, O God in Heaven, help us and our children,' cried a praying woman in the cellar. A child sobbed: 'Mummy, Mummy, what are they doing? I don't want to die, I don't want to die.'

'Oh, God, get us out,' another woman cried hysterically, as a white, well-groomed hand clawed at the hole and broke its polished nails on the cement.

'Take your hand away, my girl, or we'll never get you out,' Pluto bellowed.

But the long slim fingers still clawed desperately. As Porta hit them with his buckled belt the skin broke and blood oozed out. With another smack they lost their grip and slid like dying worms away from the crack.

New explosions. Cries and swearing. Timber hurtled down with stone and gravel into the sparkling phosphorrain. We were trapped on all sides. The policeman lay inert on his back, beaten by exhaustion. Pluto casually rubbed the toe of his boot on his face and said: 'He's had it. The Tommies have dished out more than the old bastard could take.'

'To hell with him,' Lieutenant Harder retorted impatiently. 'Germany is full of tough-guy policemen. How many poor devils has he put in gaol? Forget him.'

We got on with our work.

Then one big explosion, the biggest we had ever experienced, shook the ground under us. Then another and another and another. We flung ourselves headlong into cover and pressed ourselves flat. Those were no stray drops.

It was the start of a new raid.

The phosphorus streamed on to the asphalt. Petrol bombs spurted fire-fountains twenty yards into the air. Flaming phosphorus poured down over the ruins like a cloudburst. It whistled and whirled in a tornado of fire and explosives. The biggest air-mines literally lifted whole houses into the air.

Porta lay beside me. He blinked encouragingly through the gas-mask's large screen. I felt as if my mask was full of boiling water and steam. It pressed against my temples. A choking terror gripped my throat. 'In a moment you'll get shell-shock,' the words shot through my head. I half sat up. I had to get away, no matter where, anywhere, only away.