Authors: Sven Hassel
'O.K., take her away!'
His men, flung themselves towards a parked car further Up the road. The Oberfeldwebel pressed the plunger of the detonator. There was an ear-splitting explosion and the bridge plunged down into the water below. The Oberfeldwebel was gone like a shot and we saw the car haring off along the road.
'Wait for it,' said the Legionnaire. 'That'll bring them running
...I
give 'em two minutes to get here.'
He was accurate almost to a second, Before we had even finished setting up the M.G. the first of the enemy troops had appeared on the opposite bank of the river. The more impulsive of them threw themselves into the water and began to swim across. Little John waited patiently until they reached the bank and then lobbed a succession of hand-grenades into their midst.
'O.K., that's enough!' shouted the Old Man. Let's get out of here.'
We struggled back to the road, dragging the heavy equipment with us. We were just in time to see the last of our trucks disappearing in a shower of dust, swaying and bumping over the uneven surface.
'Bastards!' roared Porta, hurling a stone after them.
Already the Jabos were coming over, swooping low across the backs of the departing column of trucks and lorries. As it happened, we probably owed our lives to the fact that they had gone without us. The road was jammed with burning vehicles and- wounded men, and as the Jabos hurled in for a second attack we heard Lt. Lowe yelling at everyone to get the hell out as fast as they could, which of necessity meant abandoning the wounded.
'The Tommies'll take care of them!' Lowe waved vigorously towards us, beckoning and pointing ahead. 'It's more important we get to the rendezvous, I can't afford to lose the whole damn Company!'
We took up a new position in a bombed-out village a few kilometres away. Whoever had destroyed the place, whether British, American or German, or more likely all of them together, had certainly made a very thorough job. The streets were a sodden mass of rain-filled holes and craters. Not one building remained intact. There were only ruins. Heaps of rubble and charred wood; piles of stinking garbage, wrecked motor vehicles, gaping holes where once there had stood a row of houses. There was nothing left to damage any more. Everything destructible had been destroyed; everything that could burn, had burned. And over the whole empty ruin of a place hung the sweet stench of death and the swarms of hovering flies, bloated on their diet of rotting human flesh, that inevitably accompanied it.
Our section installed itself within a heap of rubble that had once been part of the village school. On two sides of us were the remains of brick walls; before and behind us were great hillocks of debris, roof beams, iron girders, shattered glass, bricks and mortar and plaster. And people. For the most part, thank God, they were buried out of sight beneath the rubble. We could only guess at their presence. But the half-rotted corpse of a small child could plainly be seen, and it was Porta alone,who had the necessary sang-froid to remove it. He slung it out into the street, and I involuntarily turned away and retched as I saw one leg detach itself from the rest of the body. Almost at once a rangy yellow dog slunk out of the shadows, snatched up the spare limb and loped away with it. The Old Man was more upset than any of us. He retired into his shell and spoke to no one for the next forty minutes. You could get used to almost anything in the Army, in wartime, but most of us still had at least one vulnerable spot that refused to grow insensitive. With the Old Man, it was children. God knows we had seen enough of them killed or maimed over the past few years, and the rest of us had come to accept it with a certain detachment, but with the Old Man it was different. We knew how he felt on the subject and we respected his feelings and left him alone until he'd come round again.
Surprise, surprise, we had a delivery of letters round about mid-day. Most were several weeks old, but the novelty of receiving any mail at all was sufficient to cause a flutter of excitement in the ranks. Barcelona was handed a large brown envelope containing the papers for his divorce. The solicitor wrote to say that his wife had been granted custody of the children.
'Infidelity,' read Heide out aloud, peering over Barcelona's shoulder. 'Alcoholism... Whoever would have thought it of you?'
Porta spat disgustedly.
'Everyone's an alcoholic in this flaming war, just as everyone's flaming unfaithful. It shouldn't be allowed as a cause for divorce in wartime. By that reckoning the whole flaming Army could be had up for it.'
'Custody of the children of the marriage is granted to the wife,' continued Heide, 'the husband being judged unfit to give them a proper upbringing.'
'Jesus Christ, it's a bit bloody much!' snarled Porta, as if Heide himself were responsible for the order. He turned indignantly to Barcelona, who was staring ahead with a moody, vacant expression on his face. 'I ask you! You fight all the way from the bloody Ebro to bloody Stalingrad, and what do you get for it? A kick in the bloody teeth, that's what!'
'And a bullet in the head,' added Little John, helpfully.
'And a bullet in the head,' agreed Porta, remembering the occasion when Barcelona had come very near to dying on us. 'Even got the scar to prove it, and much bleeding good it does you! Not fit to bring up his own bloody brats! And who says so? I'll tell you who says so! Some po-faced old git who couldn't tell a hand-grenade from a new-laid egg!'
We all turned solemnly to look at Barcelona and see how he was bearing up. He shrugged his shoulders, evidently resigned and probably past caring.
'What can you do?' he said. 'You can't really blame her, can you? Trouble is, you get home on fifteen days' leave and it just goes straight to your bloody head. Before you know where you are you're drinking beer with every Tom, Dick and Harry in the neighbourhood. You leave the old girl behind with, the kids--'I'm just going up the local to see the lads, I won't be more than an hour'--and you mean it, you really mean it! Only six hours later you're still there, pissed to the eyeballs and telling 'em all how you've helped win the war. That's the trouble,' said Barcelona, plaintively, 'they flaming
encourage
you. They buy drinks for you, they treat you like a ruddy hero, you don't know whether you're on your arse or your elbow... And then there's the birds,' he said, with a sombre expression on his face. 'All them birds just hanging about waiting to be had. See a soldier in uniform and they go berserk... It was never that easy before the war. You just couldn't get it for love or money before the war. They just didn't want to know... But you go home on leave and walk down the street in uniform and they're yours for the asking. So of course,' he said, simply, 'you take 'em. Who wouldn't?'
None of us, at any rate. We nodded, in complete sympathy and understanding.
'And these birds,' continued Barcelona, 'they're young and single, they don't give a damn, you have a bleeding good time and you forget all about the old cow waiting up at home with curlers in her hair, moaning at you to shut up or you'll wake the kids, nagging at you because you're pissed, won't let you have it because she says you stink, going on at you because she thinks you've been having it off with some other bird...' He sighed,deeply. 'You can't really blame her, can you? Even if she is an old cow... But believe me, by the time she's finished with you you
?
re only too glad to get back to fighting the flaming war again!'
We sat silently brooding for a while.
'What it is,' said Little John, sagely, 'they don't understand us back there at home. We've been away too long, I reckon.'
The Legionnaire opened his mouth to add his opinion, but what it was we never knew: a sudden loud explosion somewhere in the stricken village sent us all flying for cover. Other explosions followed in quick succession. The two remaining walls of our shelter collapsed in a heap of dust and rubble. In front of us the earth was torn up and heaved itself into the air in a solid geyser of mud. The enemy had obviously located us. It was a full-scale barrage and it continued non-stop for two hours. The moment it showed signs of letting up we crawled out of our hiding-places and began feverishly to assemble hand-grenades and machine-guns. The barrage had been but a preliminary: we could now expect the attack.
Sure enough, it came. Eight Churchills advanced upon the ruins, followed by swarms of infantrymen. I saw Gregor and Barcelona dash across the street with their bazookas. Barcelona knelt calmly behind a pile of bricks and took aim: the nearest Churchill lurched in its tracks, came to a halt and blew up. Gregor hit the turret of the one behind. The tank remained intact, but I doubt if any of the crew survived. Further up the street a Churchill had come to a full stop. Heide coldly and precisely made his way up to it, slapped a limpet mine on the turret and hurled himself to safety in a shell hole seconds before it exploded. We covered his return with the machine-guns.
The remaining Churchills seemed undecided. They made a half turn and began returning the way they had come, and Little John rushed after them with a bellow of rage, hurling grenades as he did so. One of the Churchills blew up even as we watched it. That made it the twenty-ninth tank that Little John had personally demolished with either hand-grenades or Molotov cocktails--an astonishing record. It was, generally speaking, a foolhardy thing to attempt, and most people counted themselves lucky to destroy one, or at the most three tanks and get away with it. Little John had the devil's own luck, although he personally attributed it to the charm that he wore round his neck. It was the skin of a cat that he had caught in Warsaw and turned into a quite palatable stew, and his faith in it was such that if ever he had lost it I believe he would have lain down and died simply to prove his point.
There was a second's breathing space and then a new wave of infantry arrived. The English were obviously determined to take possession of the village, heap of rubble though it was. Almost immediately three of our machine-guns were put out of action, but Little John had a nest of grenades at his side and the M.G. was safely camouflaged and still in perfect working order.
'Hold your fire,' murmured the Legionnaire. 'Let 'em come a bit closer.'
Softly, under his breath, he began chanting the celebrated song of the Legion: 'Come, sweet, death...' And the enemy came, closer, closer, until we were able to recognize them as one of the famous regiments of General Montgomery, the 9th Grenadier Guards.
'Hold it, hold it,' breathed the Legionnaire, laying a restraining hand on my arm. 'All in good time... Wait till they're on top of us.'
We waited. We could hear them laughing and calling out to each other as they picked their way through the debris. They seemed very sure of themselves.
'Plenty of dead Krauts about!' I heard one of them shouting. 'I reckon all those that could still walk must have pissed off by now!'
'That's all you know,' I muttered, and my finger twitched impatiently on the trigger of the M.G.
I pressed my shoulder hard against the gun. The Legionnaire's steely fingers were still closed about my wrist. At our side, Little John had prepared a heap of grenades, tying them together two by two; The first of the enemy troops were no more than thirty metres away.
'Fire!' hissed the Legionnaire.
All hell was promptly let loose about their unsuspecting ears. Those that survived the first salvo at once scattered themselves in shell holes and behind protective heaps of bricks and began furiously to return our fire. The M.G. rattled out continuous streamers of bullets, and I reflected that if she should suddenly choose to give up the ghost then we should probably be done for.
Out in the street the bodies were piling up, one on top of another. Most of them were young boys, green recruits with no experience of full-scale fighting. The only ones to survive in this sort of warfare were the old hands like ourselves; those who had learnt to use all their senses automatically and simultaneously, who could sense danger seconds before it manifested itself, who could read the enemy's mind and anticipate his next move. It was a game of cunning and brutality, and it was not for novices. We mowed them down even as we pitied them.
The constant kick of the heavy M.G. had bruised my shoulder so badly that I was in real pain from it. I tried wedging my cap underneath my shirt but it did little to cushion the blows. My eyes were burning and watering, my throat was parched and cut like a knife edge each time I swallowed. Worse than all that, the ammunition was running dangerously low.
A moment's respite, which prolonged itself minute by incredible minute until at length it had stretched itself into a whole hour. And then they came back again, in force this time. It began with the aeroplanes screaming overhead and dropping napalm bombs. Hot on their heels came the artillery, closely followed by more tanks. Little John snatched up a T mine and dashed out with it towards an oncoming Churchill. He was not so lucky on this occasion. The mine exploded with no harm to the tank and Little John himself was blown off his feet by the blast. Furiously he picked himself up and glared round. The Churchill was still there, intact, grinding its way down the street over the piles of bodies. With a manic yell Little John bounded after it, hauled himself up to the turret and discharged a whole round from his machine-gun down the open hatch. Not content with that, he then lobbed a couple of hand-grenades down there before leaping off into the road and rolling into the nearest bomb crater. The heavy Churchill turned ponderously on its axis, reared into the air, slewed round in a semicircle, crushing several infantrymen beneath its chains as it did so, reversed into a couple of sturdy oak trees and finally ended up on its nose with burning petrol spouting out of it.
Lieutenant Lowe, his face awash with blood, yelled the order to retreat. In small groups, one by one, the Company pulled out. Our turn came, and in my excitement and confusion I began firing rapidly from the hip, totally forgetting that you just couldn't do that with a 42. Barcelona and Porta narrowly missed death and I myself was knocked to the ground by the fierce recoil. The machine-gun lay only a short way off, firing manically of its own accord, and I found myself in the ludicrous position of having to take cover from my own weapon. Unhappily one of the bullets gouged a hole through Little John's calf. It would have to happen to him, of all people. Little John was not the man to take a personal affront of that nature lying down. He turned in a fury, aimed an almighty kick at the machine-gun, hurt his toe, gave a loud howl and suddenly went completely berserk.