Court Martial

Book 0: Sven Hassel War Classics

by Sven Hassel

Genres: General Fiction

Synopsis

The Legionnaire swings the MG-muzzle. The smoke eats its way into the officers' stomachs. They drop to the snow-covered ground, coloring it red. Bestial shrieks sound from the woods as a wave of fur clad soldiers storm out. They are near the Finish-Russian frontline. The machine guns snarl till the magazines are emptied. Old Man's platoon, with Tiny the giant and Porta in the lead, fights a rough battle behind Russian lines.

"AMAZINGLY WELL WRITTEN - HASSEL TAKES HIS ANTI-MILITARY TENDENCIES TO THE NEXT LEVEL" ARBEIDERBLADET, NORWAY

Sven Hassel was sent to a penal battalion as a private in the German forces. Intensely and with brutal realism, he portrays the cruelty of the war, the Nazi crimes and the crude and cynical humor of the soldiers. With more than 50 million sold copies, this is one of the world's best selling war novels.

Release date: July 22, 2010

Publisher: Orion Publishing Group

Print pages: 320

Sample

The loss of a leg or a foot is not half as bad. These new artificial limbs have joints which often work better than the real thing, and if you get arthritis you can cure it with an oil-can.

Porta to Tiny, 125 miles north of the Arctic Circle.

Porta whinnies with pleasure and offers her a seat on the rotten bench we are occupying.

She laughs, the sound ringing deep into the woods. She is standing with the sun behind her and we can see her body in silhouette. Her grey summer uniform skirt is made of thin transparent material. We’d like her to stay there for ever. Her hair is long and golden, like a ripe cornfield. She cannot speak German and we have to make ourselves understood in a queer kind of lingua franca. Porta speaks something he says is Finnish, but the girl doesn’t understand him.

Splashes jump out in the river. They are like big raindrops.

‘They’re shooting,’ says Gregor laconically. ‘Waste o’ time!’

Waste of powder at this distance,’ says the Old Man, lighting his silver-lidded pipe.

The spurts of water seem to race one another across the river.

‘You not frightened?’ asks the girl soldier, smoothing her skirt.

‘No,’ laughs Porta carelessly. ‘They’re pitiful, those gun-crazy idiots!’

‘I never see them shooting before,’ she says, stretching her neck to see better.

We can get a bit closer,’ suggests Porta, helping the girl up. We’re laughing at them here!’

‘Can you take a picture of me?’ she asks, offering a Leica to Heide. She positions herself on top of the hill.

Heide takes a photograph of her, making sure that all the bullet splashes on the river are included.

‘Let’s take one with you in the middle of me an’ Tiny,’ shouts Porta, with a big smile.

She laughs, and puts her arms around their shoulders.

Heide squats down like a real professional photographer.

The explosive bullet tears away half her face. Flesh, blood and splinters of bone spray over Porta. A torn off ear dangles from Tiny’s chest, like a medal.

‘A sniper, a rotten bloody sniper!’ shouts Tiny, dropping down alongside Porta.

They push the dead girl’s body in front of them for cover.

‘No. 2 Section! Ready to move off!’ orders the Old Man, and swings his Mpi1 over his shoulder. He looks tired and discouraged. A grey stubble of beard covers his face. His ancient silver-lidded pipe hangs sadly from the corner of his mouth.

A few of the section get up and begin to get their weapons and equipment together.

Porta and Tiny stay down in a warm hole they have found, and look as if none of it was any of their business.

‘Didn’t you hear the order?’ shouts Heide officiously, inflating his chest to Unteroffizier size.

‘There ’e goes again,’ says Tiny, furiously, pointing with his Mpi at Heide. ‘What’ll we do with ’im?’

‘Shoot him when we get the chance,’ decides Porta, briefly.

‘Say we tie ’im to the bridge just ’fore we push the bleedin’ ’andle, an’ liquidate ’im an’ cremate ’im in one go!’ suggests Tiny, delightedly.

‘Swine,’ snarls Heide angrily, and moves away.

‘Get your fingers out, you lazy sacks,’ shouts the Old Man, irritably, pushing Porta.

‘You’ve got it all wrong. I don’t move a step till I’ve had my breakfast coffee,’ answers Porta, unconcernedly.

Tiny begins getting ready to boil up. He fills the kettle with snow, and soon has a pleasant fire going.

The Old Man’s face has taken on a coppery-red tinge.

‘What kind of a rotten monkey’s been chewing your arses? On your feet in five seconds, or I’ll make you a cup o’ coffee you’ll never forget!’ He swings his Kalashnikov above his head like a club.

Porta just manages to duck away as the butt comes flying at his head.

‘Hell’s bells, old un, you might’ve hit me! You don’t have to start beating people up just because they want a cup o’ coffee for breakfast!’

‘Coffee,’ shouts the Old Man, in a rage. ‘What do you think you’re on? An outing to look at the Northern bloody Lights?’

‘Sod what I’m on,’ says Porta, stubbornly. ‘I still want coffee! My brain doesn’t start working till I’ve had my coffee.’

‘’E’s right,’ Tiny agrees. ‘This bleedin’ army can’t do what it likes with us. We got a right to coffee. It says so in Supply Regs. Ivan’s snot-’eaded coolies even, they get coffee ’fore they go out ’n get theirselves shot dead.’

‘You! You’ve not got the right to a fart,’ shouts the Old Man, furiously, ‘and if you don’t get your kit together and lift your arses off the ground double-quick, I’ll blow the shit out of your stupid heads!’

‘Do it! Get it over with now!’ Heide prompts him eagerly.

Porta is pouring water on the coffee beans. A delicious aroma rises towards the tree-tops.

Our nostrils begin to quiver. Soon the whole section is sitting down, sharing Porta’s coffee. Even the Old Man sullenly accepts the mug which Tiny graciously offers him.

‘To the devil with the lot of you,’ snarls the Old Man, blowing into his mug. ‘The rottenest section in the whole army and I had to get it! A shower of arseholes is what you lot are!’

‘’E’s no gentleman, is ’e?’ remarks Tiny to Porta.

‘A proletarian prick I’d say he was,’ declares Porta. ‘About as useful as a hole in the head!’

Tiny crows with laughter. He thinks Porta’s remark is the joke of the year.

‘You take that?’ asks Guri, the Laplander, his face splitting in a typical Lapp grin.

‘Damned if I do,’ shouts the Old Man, vehemently. ‘You heard me. I gave a direct order: Section, march!’

‘Don’t shout so loud,’ warns Porta. ‘The neighbours might hear all that German piss. It’s dangerous to talk German in these parts!’

‘That does it,’ roars the Old Man, wrathfully, taking his Mpi from his shoulder.

‘Shoot and you’re dead,’ threatens Tiny, swinging the muzzle of his Kalashnikov towards the Old Man.

‘Let a man have his coffee in peace,’ says Porta pettishly ‘There’ll be no war till I’ve swilled my tonsils clean!’

‘Up my arse,’ the Old Man gives in, and slings his Russian fur-cap far away amongst the trees.

‘Mind you ‘air don’t freeze,’ says Tiny, in a kindly voice. ‘They didn’t issue us them ‘ead-cosies for parade purposes only, y’know!’

Porta is quietly making a new pot of coffee. His breakfast ration is five cups, as a rule.

‘Tell me,’ says the Old Man in a dangerously quiet voice, ‘just how long do you reckon this coffee party is going to go on?’

‘Only idiots expect people to chase around all over the map before they’ve had their coffee,’ says Porta, calmly, filling up the mugs again.

The Old Man accepts his with a shake of the head, but jumps when Tiny starts to make toast.

‘I’m reporting you for refusing to obey orders, when we get back,’ he threatens, shaking with rage.

‘Tell me,’ Porta turns to the Legionnaire, ‘you’re the oldest member of this shootin’ club, did they ever send you foreign legion lot out to get your throats cut by the Muslims without a cup of coffee under your belts?’

‘Non, mon ami, I never remember it happening,’ answers the Legionnaire, well aware that it would not be diplomatically wise, and productive of incalculable problems, to do anything but agree with Porta on the subject of breakfast coffee.

The Old Man loses his patience, throws his mug from him and kicks the toast out of Tiny’s hands,

‘Up on your feet! Up! Now!’

‘Don’t treat good food like that,’ Porta scolds. ‘How d’you know how soon you’ll be hungry!’

‘I’ve said it before an’ I’ll say it again. ‘E’s no gentleman,’ sighs Tiny, patiently collecting the toast from the ground.

‘Watch your blood pressure, old ‘un,’ advises Porta. ‘You’ll shorten your life, going off like that!’

Shortly after this episode we are moving on our way, slipping and sliding down the steep slopes. By dinner time we have reached the road leading to the ice-free port, a long way to the north. A little to the east runs a notorious railway, built at the cost of the lives of thousands upon thousands of prisoners. Rumour has it that it is built on human bones.

We lie in the snow and watch endless transport columns roll past our position.

‘Up on the road,’ orders the Old Man. ‘Follow me in single file! If we’re challenged nobody answers but those of you who speak fluent Russian. The rest of you are just deaf and dumb.’

Merde aux veux! Let’s hope Ivan doesn’t smell a rat,’ mutters the Legionnaire uneasily. He seems to become smaller.

‘Jesus wept!’ hisses the Westphalian, sourly. ‘This is the last time I go on a trip behind the neighbours’ lines. Soon as we’re back I’m going to put a bullet through me foot.’

‘Cost you your old turnip if they find out,’ says Porta with a sarcastic smile.

Slightly north-east of Glenegorsk we find the first of the hidden bridges.

Four long goods trains are held up, on camouflaged tracks, waiting for the green light, and a couple of kilometres further back a fifth train is waiting.

We prepare the explosives inside the fringe of the woods. We have five sledges loaded with the new Lewis bombs, which we have just begun to be supplied with.

Porta and I get the first guard. We couldn’t care less. We can’t sleep anyway. We’re full of pervitin pills. The Russians call them pryshok porokh2. One pervitin can keep a man awake for a week, and they can be a lifesaver for men working behind the enemy lines.

‘You’re off your head, man,’ I protest, when Porta lights up a cigarette. ‘They can see you from here to Murmansk!’

‘Don’t piss your drawers, son,’ mumbles Porta. ‘The Red Army sparkles all night! Why shouldn’t I?’

‘It’ll be your fault if we get knocked off!’

‘You’ll never feel it!’ says Porta, callously, taking a long draw at his cigarette so that it glows brightly.

Early next morning we are listening to Heide, our explosives expert. He is standing up on a windfall to get a good view of us all.

‘Listen to me, and listen good, you arseholes,’ he shouts. ‘As you can all see, what I have in my hand looks like a lump of rubber, and you can do almost anything you like with it without anything happening. Throw it in the fire and what you get is a thick, sticky mass. It looks like chewed-up gum, but it isn’t. This shit consists of a quarter thermite, mixed with metallic oxide, and three-quarters plastic explosive.’

‘What’s plastic?’ asks Tiny, blankly.

‘No bloody business of yours. All you need to know is it’s called plastic.’ Heide holds up a copper tube.

‘This is a copper and aluminium tube, which contains a detonator.’

‘What’s a detonator?’ asks Tiny, lifting his hand like a schoolboy.

‘No bloody business of yours, either,’ Heide rebuffs him. ‘All you need to know is it’s called a detonator. And don’t keep interrupting me with stupid questions! I’ll tell you all you need to know an’ that’s enough. As you can see there are eight bends on this tube and these represent eight different time intervals, so that we can decide when she goes bang-bang. The lowest is two minutes, and I wouldn’t advise using it. The highest is two hours. The tube itself’ – he holds it up proudly, as if he himself had invented it – ‘contains a mercury compound. You bite through this little glass chap here, the acid inside runs down and dissolves the seal holding the striker in position. The striker shoots forward and primes the bomb. The process has commenced.’

‘An’ then it goes bleedin’ BANG!’ shouts Tiny, with a big grin.

‘Idiot,’ snarls Heide, irritably. ‘Cut those interruptions out! Don’t you realise I’m an Unteroffizier, and your superior?

‘If you’d been in the cavalry you’d ’ave been a Unterwachtmoister, and if you’d been in a Alpine Regiment, you’d ’ave been a Oberjäger. You could also’ve been – if, that is to say, you’d been in the paratroops, like Gregor ’ere … ‘

‘When the detonating process has commenced,’ continues Heide, with a superior air, ‘enormous heat is generated, and it is this which ignites the plastic explosive mass.’

‘An’ it goes BANG!’ says Tiny, jubilantly.

Heide sends him a killing look.

‘All known metals, even the heaviest steel, melt in seconds. Without this clever little device called the detonator you can play about as you like with the plastic. Nothing will happen, except you’ll get your fingers sticky. You can jump into a fire with your pockets full of it. It won’t go off! Put it under a steamhammer. No bother! But once the detonator’s blown, watch out for it! Run for your lives. Once you’ve bitten through the glass, get moving! Put sixty yards, at least, between you and the explosion centre. Inside that distance your lungs’ll be hanging out of your arse and throat. I’d prefer seventy yards myself. When they were demonstrating it for us at the Army Ammunition Depot at Bamberg, they lost two ammunition experts. They thought they could play games with Lewis bombs.’

‘Bamberg! I know that place,’ shouts Tiny, happily. We used to blow up trains an’ lorries with some bleedin’ stuff they called TNT. There was a couple o’ them ammo bleeders went up there too. One on ’em was in ’is bed at the time. It turned out as ’ow some wicked bleeder of a Gefreiter ’ad shoved a load under ’is bed an’ sent ’im to kingdom come that road.’

‘Squad leaders on me,’ orders the Old Man, brusquely.

‘Peace in our time,’ says Tiny, laconically, fishing a huge cigar out of his gas-mask container. He always smokes cigars. He considers them high-class.

Our squad has the job of looking after the bridge to the north of Pulosero. Trees have been planted to camouflage it and the work has been so well done that we are only a few yards away when we discover it. It is an enormous railway bridge. The steel supports stretch right into Lapland. We have been detailed to blow up bridges and dams all the way down to Pitkul. A stretch of around 150 kilometres. This should put the railways and the most important road communications out of commission for a considerable time.

‘Wonder if we’ll get leave after this, so we can get ’ome an’ ’aye a gander at the Reeperbahn?’ dreams Tiny, his eyes swimming at the thought.

‘They’ll piss on us and send us on a new outing, without even giving us the chance of a sauna,’ reckons Barcelona, pessimistically.

‘Should’ve been a Finn,’ says Porta, decisively. ‘They get treated like people’

‘Don’t look on the dark side,’ shouts Gregor, optimistically. ‘They’re sure to pin a few medals on us for this.’ He loves fruit salad, just as Heide does.

‘Par Allah, all I want is a Heimatschuss3 and a good sleep in a clean hospital bed,’ sighs the Legionnaire, tiredly.

‘Be satisfied if you get home alive,’ advises the Old Man, drily.

‘Can it,’ shouts Tiny. ‘Let’s get these bridges blown away, so’s we can get a bit o’ fun out of this bleedin’ war.’

The explosives are shared between us. Our special packs are full. We say good-bye to one another before we disperse silently into the white desert and are swallowed up by the forest on the far side of the frozen lakes.

Our squad goes round the river bed and continues along the road leading north. We are challenged several times by drivers and guards who, because of our uniforms, take us to be security troops.

Tiny brings us close to catastrophe when he shouts ‘Arschloch’4 after a Russian truck, which splashes snow over us.

At the road bridge south of Lapland we say good-bye to the Legionnaire’s party.

‘Do it proper, now,’ Tiny exhorts them, paternally. ‘Make it go off in one long bang, my sons, or else nothing’ll ’appen to the bleedin’ bridge. If I was you I’d’ve asked me to do it for you!’

‘Merde, you are not the only one who knows how to blow things up,’ answers the Legionnaire, and disappears at the head of his party.

‘Bridges are ’bout the ’ardest thing there is to blow up,’ Tiny tells Porta. ‘If the charges ain’t right even a million o’ them Lewis bombs won’t do it.’

‘Watch out you don’t make a balls of it some day,’ says Gregor, grumpily. He has a neurotic aversion to anything that can be called an explosive.

‘It’ll never ’appen,’ boasts Tiny. ‘When a bridge ‘as a run-in with me, it’s the bridge what falls on its bleedin’ arse!’

A few hours later we arrive at our bridge. Tiny goes round patting its huge steel girders appreciatively.

‘Lord love us, ain’t she a lovely bridge?’ he grins.

A goods train a kilometre long thunders across it. A fur-clad soldier waves to us from a brake-van.

‘That boy doesn’t know how lucky he was catching that train,’ says Porta, thoughtfully, ‘the next one’ll get blown all to hell!’

The bridge is tougher than we’d expected. It is unbelievably difficult to clamber up on the ice-slick concrete, and there is nothing to get a grip on. Only ice, and rough concrete that rips our hands to shreds.

Tiny raves like a madman each time he slips down and slides comically along on the ice of the river.

‘Who the hell’s the idiot, who didn’t think we’d need climbing irons?’ Porta curses viciously, as he slips back down for the twentieth time.

When we finally get up there, after several hours of exertion, we run into a new obstacle which comes close to discouraging us.

We sit down silently and stare at the coils of wicked-looking barbed wire with which the immediate under-pinning of the bridge is thickly entangled to prevent access to its most vulnerable parts.

‘Jesus, Jewish son of the German God,’ exclaims Porta, ‘all we need now is for the lot of us to be booby-trapped, and them and our Lewis bombs’ll get us out of uniform quicker than Hitler got us in!’

‘Piss’n porridge, there wouldn’t be a button left,’ mutters Tiny, peering under the barbed wire.

‘Oh well, with the Blessed Virgin and good German knowhow on our side we’ll probably get by,’ says Porta, philosophically.

‘If we should ’appen unexpectedly to touch something or other off,’ says Tiny, ‘it’ll be us as gets blown up for a change!’

‘Some nerve,’ sniffs Gregor.

‘Hold on to your hats!’ warns Porta, and begins to cut the wire.

The first rusty strands whip past our faces. Porta tires quickly, and hands the wire-cutters over to Tiny who goes at the wire like a bulldozer.

‘Hell, watch out you fool,’ warns Gregor, terrified. ‘You cut just one wrong wire and we’ve all had it!’

‘’Ere’s a fuckin’ mine,’ shouts Tiny in amazement, bending forward. Carefully he pulls the T-mine towards him. ‘Wires are ’ere,’ he goes on, pointing to a row of grey cables running under the mine.

‘Careful, careful,’ shouts Porta, nervously. ‘Leave it where it is and screw off the cap! We’ll climb down while you’re fixing her. No need for the lot of us to get killed!’

Unworriedly Tiny starts disarming the monster, screws out the detonator and leaves the mine dangling down amongst us.

We’re so frightened we hardly dare breathe.

‘Be more careful for Christ’s sake,’ Porta shouts up to Tiny, who has found three more mines, of a type we’ve not met before,

‘Look at these!’ shouts Tiny absorbedly. ‘There’s a little bleeder ‘ere you can bend!’

‘Christ man, don’t bend that!’ howls Porta, fearfully. ‘It’s the sodding detonator!’

‘What you want me to do with it, then?’ asks Tiny, blankly. ‘Kick it in the soddin’ teeth?’

‘Leave it be, for heaven’s sake,’ moans Gregor, wild with fear.

‘I can’t go on cuttin’ wire, without it goin’ up,’ explains Tiny, poking cautiously at the nearest mine.

‘Isn’t there a red flap on the one side?’ asks Porta, getting well down behind a heavy concrete column.

A goods train rattles over the bridge. All talk stops as it passes over us.

‘Blimey, it’s rainin’,’ says Tiny, wonderingly, when the train has passed.

‘One of the neighbour’s boys has pissed on you,’ shouts Porta, convulsed with laughter.

‘I’ll strangle the bleeder,’ roars Tiny, shaking his fist at the train roaring in the distance. ‘Nobody gets away with pissin’ on me! Stink like a backyard shit’ouse, I do! Commie shit all over me lousy ’ead too!’

‘You can have a wash when we get back,’ grins Porta. ‘Better to get hit with shit than shrapnel! See if there’s a red button on one side of those rotten mines!’

‘There’s a red flap,’ states Tiny, ‘an’ a big ’un too. There’s the ’ole ’istory of the socialist revolution written ‘longside of it.’

‘What’s it say?’ asks Porta.

‘They ain’t started payin’ me Russian translator money yet,’ says Tiny, insolently.

‘Now, let’s go slow on this one and see what happens,’ says Porta. ‘Push in the red flap and hold on to that lever at the same time. If the lever shifts, then up she goes!’

‘Very interestin’,’ bawls Tiny, his voice echoing under the bridge.

‘Mad as a bloody March Hare,’ groans Gregor, resignedly, pushing himself deeper into the snow.

‘No need to take cover,’ comforts Porta. ‘We’re relatively safe down here. Mines always blow upwards!’

‘What about Tiny?’ I ask, innocently.

‘He will have died for the honour of Greater Germany, and his name will be engraved on the heroes monument outside the barracks,’ intones Porta, fatalistically.

‘I’ve pushed the flap in,’ shouts Tiny, unconcernedly. ‘Now what?’

‘Bend it inwards, but slowly! If it begins to fizzle, jump down to us, but move, unless you’re tired of living!’

‘She’s dead as a nit,’ replies Tiny. ‘But I reckon she’s maybe just lyin’ doggo!’

‘Now open the lid,’ explains Porta. ‘Put your hand into the slot, feel round for a little square gadget and pull it downwards.’

‘Got it,’ says Tiny, in a satisfied tone, hurling the mine over the edge. ‘I’ll fix the rest quick as a randy Turk shaggin’ a bunch o’ bints!’

‘Careful,’ warns Porta, ‘careful and hold on tight to that lever! If you let go of it, you’ve met your last mine!’

‘Wait a bit ’fore you shit yourself,’ boasts Tiny, selfassuredly. ‘I ain’t never lost one yet. It’s all right to come up again now!’

‘Look where you’re cutting now,’ says Porta. ‘A cable might have got entangled in that wire, and if you cut it well get our arses blown off!’

We lay the disarmed detonators under the great steel cylinders. Porta feels they cannot do much damage there.

We work our way slowly through the wire in to the supporting girders, taking care not to touch off a mine.

I am sweating with fear despite the arctic cold. I am just as afraid of the mines as Gregor is. During the many hours we have been working under the bridge, countless trains have passed above us. We hold our groundsheets over our heads in order to avoid an experience like Tiny’s.

When we are finally finished with the barbed wire the serious job of getting the explosives up from the sledges begins. I get the worst job, carrying the Lewis bombs from the sledges to the foot of the various piers. After a couple of hours of this I am so worn out that I drop on the snow and refuse to continue without a rest. My arms and back are aching so much that I’m ready to scream at the slightest movement.

Porta and Tiny are engaged in a bitter argument as to which of them is to place the explosive.

‘If we take a pier each, it’ll go quicker,’ says Tiny, who is mad keen to get at the Lewis bombs.

‘You do as I tell you, you walking shit-house, you,’ shouts Porta, throwing a spanner at him.

‘You ain’t no more’n me,’ rages Tiny. ‘An Obergefreiter’s an Obergefreiter and neither God nor the Devil can tell one of them what to do. Where’d we be, I’m askin’, if any bleedin’ Obergefreiter was to get up an’ go round orderin’ other Obergefreiters about?’

‘I attended the Army School of Ammunition and Explosives at Bamberg,’ crows Porta, ‘while you were pissing about at the Army Catering School learning how to ruin sauerkraut! Even you ought to be able to accept that on this job, I’m the boss!’

‘Strike me blind,’ answers Tiny, resentfully. ‘As if I ’adn’t been at Bamberg. They even give me a medal for exceptional diligence, costin’ the lives of two instructors!’

After a great deal more quarrelling and argument they agree to share the work between them. Tiny finds a clever way to fix the bombs to the piers so that they do not slide down. But the most important thing of all is still to get them wired up properly.

It is far into the night before we get one side of the bridge finished, and then Porta demands his dinner.

‘The rot’s spread from your arsehole to your brain,’ cries Gregor, excitedly: ‘It’s suicide to sit down to dinner right here, under Ivan’s own bridge!’

‘’E’ll ’ave a stroke if ’e finds us ’ere, won’t ’e?’ grins Tiny, unconcernedly.

But Porta still stubbornly demands his dinner, which he has a right to according to HDV5.

While we sit eating, NKVD security guards cross above our heads. They are so close to us that we could touch them by merely putting our hands up between the planks of the bridge.

It’s a break-neck trip over to the other side of the bridge and several times we are close to falling. When we get there, there is more of that damnable barbed-wire to cut through.

We throw the explosives from base to base of each pier. The primary charges are the most dangerous. A knock can set them off. If we dropped one the security guards would be all over us in a minute, and we have no illusions about the treatment we’d get from them.

‘You’re pretty good at it,’ Porta praises Tiny, patting him on the shoulder.

‘Long as we keep the wolf from the door,’ Tiny grins with pleasure, ringing the nearest concrete base with Lewis bombs.

He swings under the bridge, with the agility of a monkey, to make the wiring fast.

It makes me dizzy just to look at him.

‘How the hell’s he do it?’ mumbles Gregor, nervously.

‘For the love of the holy St Agnes, don’t ask him,’ warns Porta, ‘it’d make him fall! He’s no idea how piss-dangerous it is!’

A faint noise makes us look up. Three security police are crossing above our heads. We can hear the warning clank of the Mpi’s.

‘Adolf ought to ’ave a go at this,’ roars Tiny suddenly, his voice ringing through the silence.

I tear my Mpi from my shoulder and aim at the security guards on the bridge.

A train comes thundering in the distance. The sound of the salvo drowns in the noise.

Three men in long fur coats topple over the low fence along the bridge and whirl down between the ice-blocks far below.

Porta peers cautiously up between two sleepers. Luckily there were only three of them.

With a steely roar the train crosses the bridge.

What you shootin’ for?’ shouts Tiny, in amazement, looking round a concrete pier. ‘Tryin’ to shit-frighten everybody, are you?’

‘Because you can’t keep that bloody great Hamburg gab of yours shut,’ answers Porta, viciously. ‘Didn’t I tell you not to talk German in these parts?’

By flashing signals to one another we manage to bite the glass capsules open at the same time, ensuring that the explosions are synchronised. This is very important with a bridge of this type. Otherwise the bridge will break at only a few points along its length, and the Russian engineers can easily repair these.

Porta is last man off the bridge. He trails a thin wire after him, and behind the bend in the river he connects it to the plunger box which Tiny is carrying on his back.

We ready ourselves at a safe distance from the bridge on the opposite side of the lake.

Tiny swings the handle like a mad thing in order to build up enough of an induction charge for the explosion, while Gregor watches the meter which tells us when there is enough current available.

Tiny takes a short breather after his strenuous work and lights one of his big cigars. A solemn moment like this, he feels, is worthy of a cigar. With the expression of a padre throwing earth on the remains of a fallen field-marshal, he pulls the plunger to the ready position and gives out a belly chuckle of innocent expectation.

‘Grab your ’ats, boys, she’s ready to go,’ he says, solemnly, patting the box.

‘Don’t you push that till I say so,’ Porta admonishes him, nervously. ‘The priming charge has got to go first or not a shit will happen to that damn bridge!’

‘Jesus wept!’ cries Tiny, in horror, ‘that’d be like goin’ to the pictures an’ findin’ some Yid ’ad ’ooked the bleedin’ film.’

‘That can happen,’ says Porta, seriously. ‘Happened to me once in Berlin’

‘Don’t be fright,’ Tiny assures us. ‘I never met one I couldn’t beat yet! An’ this fiddlin’ little bridge ain’t goin’ to be the first!’

‘Little bridge, you say?’ asks Gregor, in surprise. ‘It’s the biggest I’ve ever seen!’

‘Enjoy it while you can, then,’ laughs Tiny, raucously, ‘couple o’ minutes’ time an’ it won’t be there to enjoy!’

A goods train pulled by two large steam engines rolls slowly on to the mined bridge. A red flag flutters from every other wagon.

‘Holy Agnes, God’s stepmother,’ shouts Porta, his eyes bugging ‘An ammo train!’

‘An’ look at them tanker