Blitzfreeze

Book 0: Sven Hassel War Classics

by Sven Hassel

Genres: War & Military; Suspense

Synopsis

Porta struggles to keep the heavy tank between the marching soldiers. One moment of inattention, and he will bulldoze an entire company. An enormous fireball strikes the bushes in front of the vehicle. The panzer soldiers jump head first from the tanks for cover. With frightened eyes and beating hearts they lay in the sun, waiting for death. A great wall of fire rises towards the sky. - Stalin organ, Heide mumbles terrified. Porta speeds up the engine. The tank plows through sun and water. They are near Moscow, 1941. "A BRILLIANT DESCRIPTION OF THE WAR" MIROIR DE L'HISTOIRE, FRANCE

Release date: December 23, 2010

Publisher: Orion Publishing Group

Print pages: 384

Sample

‘What’s wrong with you?’ the lieutenant asks.

‘I can’t do it,’ says the girl sergeant.

‘You won’t!’

‘I can’t tell you.’

‘Tell me why you won’t,’ the lieutenant begs softly. He smooths her hair, and her forage cap falls to the ground.

‘You’re unreasonable. A girl can’t do it when she’s feeling down in the mouth.’

‘That’s a lot of nonsense. Even when you’re wounded you can do it. I once did it with both legs in plaster.’

‘When did you have both legs in plaster?’

‘When I was serving with the Soviet Laplanders. The time the Finns attacked us.’

‘Were you there? I didn’t know you’d been garrisoned in Leningrad. Stop it, Oleg! I can’t, I tell you!’

‘You mean you won’t! You don’t like doing it. I’m a holder of the Krasnoe Znamja,1 you know.’

‘Do you think a girl flops into bed with a man, just because he’s got a Krasnoe Znamja? Where did you win it, anyway?’

‘Suomussalmi.’

‘Where’s that? Out east? There’s always war out there.’

‘No, Finland. It’s where we crushed the Finnish fascists and imperialists.’

‘Do you mean the big tank battle?’

‘Yes. They destroyed the division. But then the Commander-in-Chief sent in the whole army corps. We drove deep into their flanks, and got six decorations for bravery.’

‘And you got one of them?’

‘Yes!’ He tries to slip his hand up under her potato-brown army skirt.

She closes her legs. They roll about in the tall maize.

‘You mustn’t, she whispers hoarsely. ‘I tell you I can’t. I’m a soldier like you. All that filthy perversity’ll have to wait till we’ve crushed the occupation force.’

‘Oh, I understand you thoroughly,’ growls the lieutenant bitterly. ‘Hell! how I understand you. I understand you night and day, every hour, morning and evening. Especially evenings when I sit alone in that blasted battlewagon. I understand you the way the devil understands Karl Marx. Job Tvojemadj!’2

‘Do you have to talk filth?’ she says quietly. She straightens her military skirt and shifts the belt supporting the Nagan3 to a more comfortable position.

‘I’m a soldier,’ she repeats, ‘a tankman like yourself.’

‘You’re a soldier, yes, a telegraphist in a battlewagon, Jelena Vladimirovna.’ He catches her by the neck and throws her on her back in the golden maize.

She kicks out at him, resists violently. Her skirt slides up, and a pair of well-formed thighs in khaki stockings come to view. ‘Hell, stop it,’ she snarls savagely. ‘I’ll report you to the Sampolit!’4

‘Do you think I’m afraid of those swine? If we don’t crush the Nazis before they get into Moscow, all the Sampolits will be swinging in the breeze. They’re shaking with fright, every one of them, and with reason. We’re not going to beat the fascists!’

‘Have you gone mad, Oleg Grigorjewitsch? Do you doubt the victory? That’ll cost you your head if I report you!’

‘Jelena Vladimirovna, can’t you be honest with me? You doubt the victory too! Hitler’s manhunters have been chasing us around like frightened chickens since June. Thousands upon thousands have fallen in just a few months. Countless others are behind barbed wire in Germany. Impregnable fortifications have gone down before we knew what was hunting us. We’re finished! Hitler and his generals will be in the Kremlin before Christmas. Where’s General Bagramja and his unbeatable Division of Guards? Crushed, Jelena! We stand on lost positions.

‘We’ve been at war three months and Hitler’s panzer divisions are little more than 200 miles from Moscow. If the weather holds, and it looks as if it will, fascist tanks will be in the Kremlin in less than a week. Did you hear the enemy radio the other day:

‘“Panzer, forward march! Let the tracks roll! Don’t stop till they’re striking sparks from the cobblestones of Moscow. Crush international Communism! Didn’t you hear it, Jelena? The Germans are devils. They’ve never been beaten. Anywhere! You’ve seen their yellow tanks crushing everything before them. For every one of their’s that went up in flames a hundred of ours went. Our own tank brigade has been destroyed and re-formed five times. Do you think that can go on? I heard this morning that they were packing up all ready to evacuate the Kremlin. Josef Stalin lets us be liquidated to save himself. He’s as brutal as Hitler. It’s a question which of the two is Russian’s greatest scourge. You know the order: He who retreats is a traitor and will be shot! If we surrender, they shoot our families.”’

‘I’d rather die than surrender,’ whispers Jelena hoarsely.

‘Don’t be too sure of that. Death doesn’t seem so frightening at a distance. But up close even the bravest lose courage and choose life – if they have a choice at all. But who’s to say we two’ll have any choice. We haven’t met Hitler’s SS yet. They’re a thousand times worse than our own NKVD.’

‘Impossible,’ in a frightened groan from the girl. ‘Nobody could be crueller than Beria’s men.’

‘You’ll learn better! Wait till you meet the men with the skull on their caps. They kill for the love of it. It’s said they get a pint of blood to drink every morning. Soviet blood, Jelena Vladimirovna.’

‘It’s said too, that they eat young children,’ she mumbles, paling.

‘Half a million babies disappeared in Berlin alone. Jewish babies,’ she added after a moment.

‘No, not Jewish, the SS definitely wouldn’t eat them!’ he protests – indignantly.

‘Do you really think we’re losing the great patriotic war?’

‘We have lost it, Jelena Vladimirovna, God help and pity us!’

‘You believe in God, Oleg? A Soviet officer passed out of Frunse Academy?’

‘Yes, since the battle of Minsk I believe in God. He is our only hope. Jelena Vladimirovna, I love you! I’ve loved you from the moment you joined the regiment, and were put in my unit. Come on, girl! There’s a war on. Who knows if we’ll still be alive by evening?’

‘Stop it, I can’t, I won’t! I’m engaged!’

‘No you bloody well aren’t,’ he shouts mockingly. ‘I know there’s something between you and Captain Anna Skrjabina. The whole brigade knows it. They say a T-34 is what’ll come out of it.’ He throws back his head with a roar of laughter. ‘You’re Captain Anna Skrjabina’s mistress. Everybody knows that cow’s crazy about girls. But did you know, too, that they disappear but fast when the old witch gets tired of them? She’ll soon be finished with the unit at Sampolit. Colonel Botapov doesn’t like her.’

‘He can’t touch Anna. She has connections right up to the Stavka.’5

‘You’re in love with her!’

‘So what? Do I have to get my section commander’s permission?’

‘What do you do with one another?’

‘Do you think I’m perverse?’

‘No, just a lesbian. You nauseate me, Jelena Vladimirovna.’

‘Good, then let me go, tovaritsch lieutenant! They certainly didn’t hand out manners together with medals at Suomussalmi.’

‘Are you knocking the Order of the Red Banner?’

‘Report me, if you want to. I can answer for myself! If I’m to be stood up against a wall I’ll see to it I get you for company!’

‘Oh, I’m sure you’ll get by, Jelena. Just crawl into Anna’s little bed. She’s the one who handles all the reports.’

‘You’re an animal. I curse you tenfold – by the Holy Mother of Kazan!’

‘I’m sorry, Jelena, I didn’tmean it but you drive me mad. I will have you, cost what it may!’

‘No, I tell you I won’t I won’t have anything to do with you. Not like that!’

Suddenly he is on top of her. The maize sways. The thick stalks snap noisily.

‘I’m going to have you now, if it’s the last thing I do in my life! Fritz’ll be here before sundown, and that’ll be it. The orders are “stand and die”’ With one movement he rips off her summer blouse. ‘Afterwards you can go running to Anna and tell the old witch that it’s a lot better having it with a man!’

‘Fuckin’ arseholes!’ rumbles Tiny in his deep belly bass. ‘It’s enough to get a jack up on a neutered nigger with a paralysed pisspin! See the way that traitor to the Soviet’s gettin’ across her now! And him as ’as doubts about the final victory. Ought to be stuck up in front of a firin’ squad! Bleedin’ dog’s dinner like ’im want perforatin’!’

‘It’s the bitch who’s gonna get perforated,’ sniggers Porta delightedly. ‘If they knew who was lying here taking the piss out of them! War’s a terrible thing! Just one shocking thing after another!’

‘Christ, now he’s moving up into the jungle,’ whispers Stege ecstatically, wiping the sweat from his forehead.

‘Cut it out, you lecherous monkeys,’ rasps the Old Man, moving forward his LMG,6 one of the new type with a bayonet for close-quarter fighting.

Barcelona Blom chuckles lasciviously and screws the cover off a hand-grenade.

‘He’d better get a move on, that humpty-backed frog. It’ll be his last bang, before we come tapping on the door.’

The girl has pulled herself free again. Her breasts are bared. She is breathing heavily and smacks the lieutenant resoundingly across the face. But this only excites him even more. She aims a kick at his crutch.

‘She should’ve taken a course at the military academy judo school,’ opines Porta, ‘then she could’ve tossed that alik7 straight over to us.’

‘That’d stop ’is fartin’ in church,’ grins Tiny. ‘His nice little officer’s prick’d shrivel up at the sight of us, and ’e’d shoot a load about the size of a sparrer’s tear.’

The two wrestle briefly in the swaying corn. Her skirt has been torn away. The heavy Nagan and white frilly pants seem ludicrous in contrast.

Panting they fall to the grass. Something white flutters into the air and ends on a branch.

‘There go ’er arse-curtains,’ reports Tiny gleefully.

We grin delightedly, all except the Old Man and the Legionnaire. Porta emits a long shrill whistle.

‘What was that?’ asks Jelena nervously.

‘A reed warbler crying to its mate,’ Oleg calms her.

‘A Red warrior crying for his cunt, you bastard,’ Tiny grins unrestrainedly, his face pressed hard to the ground.

‘Right up,’ Porta laughs lustfully and scratches his crutch with his combat knife.

‘No!’ cries the girl hysterically, ‘why should I?’

‘To please me,’ he laughs.

‘I won’t! Can’t you hear? Leave me alone, I tell you!’

‘Just once, what difference can it make?’ he pleads.

There is silence for a moment. Betraying moans come from the bushes. A stifled scream. Jumbled words.

We are dumb with excitement, our breath comes pantingly, we stare greedy-eyed.

Porta wriggles forward to Tiny.

‘Holy Mother of Kazan,’ he whispers breathlessly. ‘Ain’t this something? Here we go knocking the Red Army, when in fact it’s us who’ve joined the wrong army. Ivan understands things. He takes uniformed cunt with him right into the thick of battle. Maybe us two hard-tried Prussian veterans ought to let the faded eagle take off and follow the Communist star? These men are fighting for a holy cause.’

‘Are they ’oly?’ asks Tiny disappointedly. His experience with the missions has been uniformly bad.

‘Like fuck they are,’ grins Porta. ‘No more than the devil is in the arse-part. But they’re made of rougher stuff than our Party bums who want to serve both God and the Devil, and try to keep the latter connection a secret like the Pharisee in the Bible. I’ve heard that every Communist Obergefreiter has a piece of allotjka8 to press his pants whenever her superior feels the need.’

‘If that’s true,’ mumbles Tiny with a hectic flush rising on his cheeks and eyes shining, ‘then we’ve already wasted too much of our time in Hitler’s connin’ army.’

‘Shall we let them finish before we turn it on?’ asks Stege in a whisper.

The Old Man makes no reply, pulls nervously at his ear and plays with the ‘stovepipe’. He is not interested in what is happening in the scrub in front of us.

The girl stands up and begins to order her uniform. Wraps her skirt around her. Now she is again a sergeant of the Guards in the Red Army’s tank arm.

‘I must go,’ she smiles, with a flash of white teeth, ‘but I’ll come back to you after roll-call.’

‘No you won’t,’ answers the lieutenant. ‘You’ll never come back to me!’

‘He must be a bloody fortune-teller,’ whispers Porta in amazement. ‘Can he know we’re here?’

‘I’ll come,’ laughs the girl and disappears into the maize. She goes over towards the four Russian BT-5s9 standing behind the maize-stalks by the sunflower thicket. If they had been painted yellow like ours you couldn’t have seen them.

Russia is all yellow at this time of the year. Even the people seem to take on a slightly yellowish tinge when September is past. Now the green of the tanks shows up strongly against all the yellow and brown.

‘They ought to paint their vehicles four times a year like we do,’ mumbles Porta. ‘Twice ain’t enough in combat conditions.’

‘They really ought to be painted every month,’ was Stege’s opinion. ‘January snow is quite different from December snow, and the powdery snow in November can’t be compared with the old February snow, and in March there are five different shades of white. So you can see that even in winter when white is white, it’s only worth painting vehicles once. When you get to spring, the green is changing almost every week. What good is it riding around in a happy spring green wagon in the middle of all that tired-out old summer green. A wagon like that stands out like a young bint in the middle of a crowd of old men. No, if we really understood how to camouflage ourselves we’d live longer. Just look at our uniforms! Grey-green! Apart from the dust on the roads where do you find that colour? And the boys from the other FPO shag around in their winter khaki well into the spring. Uniform colours are chosen by idiots sitting in offices.’

‘In the old days they all wore red and blue,’ explains Tiny, shaking his head.

‘That was to frighten the enemy,’ says Barcelona. ‘A line of men with fixed bayonets advancing side by side in scarlet uniforms was enough to frighten the shit out of the bravest. It was like a wave of blood sweeping forward.’

‘If there was anybody barmy enough to attack like that, I’d soon have this ol’ chatter box tuned in to lullaby music an’ make a nice row o’ scarlet corpses,’ grins Tiny mockingly.

‘Dope,’ sneers Barcelona contemptuously, ‘they didn’t have automatic weapons then, only muskets that had to be loaded again every time.’

‘Wot, no SMGs?10 asks Tiny unbelievingly. ‘Must’ve been a funny kind of war. Almost ‘armless. Didn’t they ’ave no mine-throwers nor mortars with jumpin’ jacks neither?’

‘Nah!’ answers Barcelona with a superior expression. ‘Nothing like that at all.’

‘Well, they’d ’ave a coupla naphtha bombs on ’and, I suppose, for if things got rough?’

‘Petrol wasn’t even discovered then,’ answers Barcelona.

‘Why the ’ell didn’t they stay at ‘ome? That wasn’t nothin’ to do with war, even if they did ’ave red jackets on. More like a bleedin’ demonstration, like what we ’ad before the war when we wanted more money and ’ad to fight the Schupos,11 who ’ad green ’elmets on special for the day. You could put ’em out on it dead easy by givin’ ’em one on top o’ the elmet so it come down over their bleedin’ ears. I’m dead good at ’ammerin’ Schupo lids down. Easy as scratchin’ your arse in a beer-bar.’

The Russian lieutenant is lying on his back in the grass with a maize-straw waggling in his mouth. He laughs with satisfaction. His summer tunic is unbuttoned. A ladybird moves busily across the yellow star on his Boudionovka.12 He has closed his eyes. Not until the Legionnaire’s shadow falls across him does he realize that he is in danger. Then he is dead. A last frightened bubbling comes from the slashed throat. The Legionnaire wipes his Moorish knife casually on the lieutenant’s summer tunic. We hurry past with the Panzerfausts13 over our shoulders. A smell of coffee comes from the Russian tank crew’s encampment.

‘Holy Moses!’ whispers Porta, eyes wide-open. ‘Coffee! Real coffee! These Communists’ve got every bloody thing! I am slowly beginning to like this: Workers of the world, unite!’ Porta loves coffee. He knows of nothing better. More than once he has jeopardized his life to get hold of coffee beans. The Old Man says Porta would sell the entire company for a pound of coffee. And he is probably not far from the truth. Porta is a coffee-maniac. Tiny, who is well in front of us with the heavy Panzerfaust nonchalantly under his arm, drops down suddenly into the maize and signals to us. Soundlessly we crawl forward to him. He points silently. A Russian tankman is sitting by a small fire, on which a large pot is steaming. Blissfully Porta inhales the penetrating coffee aroma. ‘Holy Guns!’ mumbles Julius Heide in a horrified tone. ‘Four BT-5s!’

‘Five,’ Porta corrects him. ‘There’s a KW-114 behind the stack, the command vehicle.’

‘Pissin’ arseholes,’ says Tiny ecstatically. ‘We’ll smash ’em with one great lovely bang.’ He pats the magnetic grenade and pushes it into the Panzerfaust. ‘This’ll shove their ball-bearin’s up into their throats, so they’ll never be able to shag a soldier’s mare no more. Bleedin’ traitors, wot doubts the final victory! If Ol’ Joe in the Kremlin knew what we was up to ’e’d be tackin’ medals on us!’

‘It is forbidden to wear Soviet decorations, remember,’ Heide instructs him coldly.

‘I ain’t got any yet, so wot’s the problem?’ replies Tiny drily and raises his Panzerfaust to the firing position.

‘Stop that,’ whispers the Old Man irritably. ‘Put down that pipe! Nobody fires until I give the order!’

From the tank soldiers bivouac comes the cheerful laughter of women and men.

‘D’you think they know there’s a war on?’ Porta asks, astonished. ‘They go on as if they were on their way to a Turkish whorehouse. They’ll have a stroke when we turn it on them.’

A woman’s voice cuts sharply through the general noise. A harsh, guttural commanding voice.

‘The prickless captain,’ Barcelona states, withdrawing ‘silent death’ from his pocket. ‘It’s mine. I’ll give it a last bang-up, before I strangle it.’

‘No, I’ll ’ave it,’ growls Tiny. ‘That bitch-captain’s gonna find out what kind of guests ’er country’s gettin’ now.’

‘If you could just keep your trap shut,’ whispers the Old Man sourly. ‘Let’s get closer. We’re a long way from the vehicles yet. All five boxes’ve got to go up in one go! Barcelona, you cover the foreground with the MG!15 Kill the lot! Not one reaches the bridge. If they blow it, it’s a court-martial for us. Everything hangs on that bridge. There’s at least a ton of explosive under it.’

‘What a lovely noise it’d make!’ Tiny dreams aloud. He loves everything that is loud and noisy. ‘Aton o’ HE! Fuckin’ arseholes! You could ’ear it all the way to Greenland. It’d make the lice on a’ Eskimo whore’s belly dance the can-can!’

Shortly after the Russian tank crews are called in and served a mess-tin of coffee.

‘If only to liberate that coffee, we’ve got to blow their candles out,’ gasps Porta nervously. ‘I only hope they don’t guzzle the bloody lot down ’em first.’

‘Nah, they wouldn’t be that nasty,’ Tiny comforts him. ‘They’ll leave us a drop. Wonder where they cornered it?’

‘They’re Guards,’ explains Heide, always well-informed. ‘They get special rations.’

‘How d’you know they’re bloody Guards?’ irritatedly from Porta.

‘Green summer tunics with silver shoulder straps,’ comes knowledgeably from Heide.

‘I can’t understand why you don’t know that. Haven’t you read May orders, in which you were told it was your duty to know the uniforms of the enemy?’

‘I usually wipe my arse on orders,’ sneers Porta. ‘They’re softer than corn-cobs.’

‘That’s sabotage!’ growls Heide, gruffly. ‘Wiping my arse?’ asks Porta with his supercilious street-boy grin.

‘You know what I mean, Obergefreiter Porta. It is my duty to report you to the NSFO.’16

‘I reckon it’s my duty to blow your bloody earholes through from side to side and get your brain moving,’ sneers Porta.

‘Come on,’ orders the Old Man and begins to crawl forward. The Russians are sitting in a circle, chewing at thick slices of bread, which they wash down with aromatic coffee.

The light is fading. Beyond the river, the sky is a rosy red. One of the Russians begins to play a balalaika. The others sing:

Long in his grave

Your father has slept.

In exile, in thralldom

In cold Siberia,

Your brother toils.

Under the nagajka’s17

Biting lash,

Chained hand and foot.

In Russia they have sung these sad songs for centuries. For as long as there have been prison camps in Siberia.

‘What a wicked bleedin’ song,’ mumbles Tiny and shrugs his shoulders as if chilled.

In the distance artillery thunders. We are old hands at the front, and can distinguish clearly the sound of air-bursts. It is the German heavy artillery at work now. It presages an attack. It’s not pleasant to be on the receiving end of those coal-boxes. We feel with the fellows from the other FPO. They’re curled up like hedgehogs behind a bit of an earthwork. Their only defence against death. We’ve been through it ourselves. We too are only soldiers. The human butcher’s-meat of the new age.

‘Muss i denn, muss i denn, zum Städtele hinaus!’ hums Tiny.

The light from the Russian tankmen’s fire throws a fantastic glow over the scene. There is nothing quite so spectral as the dark trunks of fir-trees seen by firelight.

‘Slip me a swig of poor man’s schnapps,’ requires Porta, and holds his hand out demandingly towards Barcelona, who passes him the big French water-bottle.

The gunfire intensifies. The sky flames violently in the distance. Both the Russians and we look to the north. It means death, mangling death, for both sides. Shells can’t tell the difference. ‘Forward, what the hell do you think you were born for?’ Engines drone. Tanks roll forward with infantry running alongside them. Every man of them is sick with fear. Irresponsible politicians have named them the backbone of the nation.

The advance speeds up. The tank has to pass a minefield. Nobody bothers about the grenadier running alongside hanging onto the towrope. He falls, is dragged, makes it to his feet again, shoots at a helmet sticking up over the lip of a trench.

This is war, friend. Kill some other mother’s son, before he can kill you, and you have won a prize in death’s lottery.

If you live through all the madness you will go home a hero, but don’t forget that nothing disappears so quickly from this earth as a hero. Two months after the war is over they’ll be laughing at you. I speak from experience. Never volunteer to be a hero. You’ll be disappointed with it.

Straight above our heads rocket batteries draw fiery trails. The Russians are listening now. Their nervousness infects us. Rockets fall far beyond the river. The summer-dry maize fields begin to burn. Apart from flame-throwers there is nothing we hate more than rockets. Porta says they are made of hair from the Devil’s tail.

‘Ready to march!’ announces a hard commanding Russian voice. A tall officer, no longer in his first youth, gives the command. He too is wearing one of the queer old-fashioned Boudionovkas with a blue cavalry star.

Tiny decides he will liberate that cap. The Legionnaire says it’s his. ‘Stop your nattering,’ snaps the Old Man.

I say nothing but I am quite decided that I am going to get the Boudionovka with the blue star. Everybody’s collecting them, because they’re on their way out in favour of flat-tops. I already own a Boudionovka with the green and black artillery star. The tall officer snaps out orders.

‘What’s he saying?’ asks the Old Man, who can’t – or won’t – understand Russian.

‘He says to get their fingers out and climb in the coffins,’ Porta translates loosely.

‘I bet ’e’s one o’ them trigger-’appy bastards, as don’t just shoot to ’ear the bang,’ says Tiny.

We crawl forward to a better firing position.

I lay the ‘stove-pipe’ on my shoulder and screen in on the nearest tank. Tiny lets out a sigh of anticipation. Porta, seemingly quite unmoved, chews on the butt of a liver sausage. Heide screws at his rocket. Every movement is as laid down in the HDV.18 He is a walking dummy stuffed with army regulations. He isn’t killing human beings with his magnetic rockets, but just dispersing unimportant concentrations of atoms in which he is personally uninterested. He’d cut any throat at all if ordered to. And if you reproached him for it he’d think you were out of your mind.

In his opinion orders should never be questioned or even wondered at. Ordered to march to the moon he would pack his kit as regimentally perfectly as a recruit, swing his gun over his left shoulder, draw eight weeks march rations, crack his heels together and turn smartly to the left. Erect as if he had a broomstick stuck up his back he would march in the direction of the moon and keep on marching, either until he dropped dead or somebody gave a counter-order. Unfortunately for normal people there are a lot of NCOs like Julius Heide around. You find them everywhere. You cant get away from them. But Porta says these regulations robots are indispensable. Without them things would go all to pot. Without a bit of the ‘fear of God’ behind them, people got superiority complexes.

‘Mount!’ commands the Russian officer. With practiced movements the tank crews swing themselves up into their vehicles.

‘Start up!’

With a howl the diesel engines start. Soon they are turning over smoothly, bubbling in anticipation of movement. Only one of them continues racing madly.

A tall powerful woman, in a green uniform with captain’s badges, shouts angrily at the commander of the leading tank.

Immediately the driver lifts his foot from the accelerator pedal.

‘Ready!’ orders the Old Man.

All five Panzerfausts are aimed.

‘Come death, come—,’ whispers the Legionnaire between his teeth.

‘Dawai, dawai,’19 the commander of the lead tank chases the laggards collecting the cooking utensils. Soldiers always have difficulty tearing themselves away from a camp. In a good camp one forgets the war.

‘Where’s Oleg?’ the girl-sergeant cries suddenly, and looks around fearfully.

‘Yes, where’s Oleg?’ repeats the commander of the third tank.

‘Time to get into ’em,’ says Porta.

‘Fire!’ commands the Old Man, chopping his arm forward.

The commanders in their turrets turn towards us as if at an order.

The bazookas roar simultaneously. Five fiery-tailed comets speed towards their goal. A deafening explosion cuts through the woods. All five shots are hits. At thirty metres the Panzerfaust is destructive to all types of tank. Glowing splinters of steel hurtle between the trees. The men in the turrets are thrown high into the air. They seem to balance momentarily, supported on the flame of the explosion. Then their bodies shatter in the force of the blast.

A whole turret with its long gun-barrel whirls above the trees. Burning oil spurts many yards away.

The girl-sergeant stumbles about in a sea of fire. The young soldier who had made the coffee runs headless through the trees. We used to wonder at the distance a human being can run without a head. We don’t anymore. When you’ve experienced war for a while you don’t wonder at anything. The other day we saw a man run without legs. His screams rasped at your nerves. He was a German Oberleutnant, an older reservist. It was comical, seeing him run without legs. Afterwards we discussed the phenomenon. Tiny thought people might be like lice which can still run even after you’ve nipped their legs off.

Heide, that irritating know-all, gave us a long lecture on the nervous system, which it seems becomes particularly strong under the influence of the National Socialist health diet. A Soviet untermensch, not to mention a Jew, would never be able to run without legs like that German Oberleutnant. Now we were all hoping we would run across a Russian who could run just as fast as a German without legs. That’d shut Julius up. A Russian running along without a head didn’t move him at all. A chicken could do that!

We storm forward, between the burning sunflowers, shooting at everything that moves. A little white dog dashes about barking madly. Barcelona catches it. It struggles madly and snaps a piece out of his nose. He throws it from him with a howl of pain, into a pool of petrol where it burns like a torch.

Porta considers Barcelona much handsomer without a nose. Heide clamps it in place. Of course, he would have surgical clamps with him. It was in orders back in 1939. He’s had them with him ever since, in a shiny little metal box hidden in the field dressing pocket of his greatcoat. It’s a certainty that ten minutes after we’re back with the regiment he’ll have drawn replacements, and it’s just as certain that he has six metres of gauze bandage in his individual first-aid pa