The Bloody Road to Death (33 page)

‘The next moment the Horch was giving a respectable imitation of a submarine. It hadn’t been the beach we’d scraped on but a treacherous bloody sand bank. Well here we were on our way down with only surprised French fish to salute us as we sank past them. How long we sat in the sinking Horch enjoying the view, I don’t recall. I had heard that it was best to remain in a sinking car until it had filled with water. Then out of it you shot like shit from a cow. This was no problem for us, though, since the car we drove round conquering the world in was a cabriolet. To underline the seriousness of the situation my general put on his field service cap and screwed one of his reserve monocles into his eye. He pointed upwards towards where the normal world should be. He smiled, showing the horsey teeth he’d developed in his time with the cavalry, pleased at Staff HQ Company’s obedience. There they were, all the way down after us. P-3’s and the entire radio station.

‘Well, suddenly we started to rise again. We soon discovered how practical it was to have gills when you live in water. There was a crowd like in a department store on the first day of a sale when we got up to the surface. I reported for duty, saluting as best I could.

‘My general thanked me reservedly, as usual, and ordered me to find some form of transport fit for a general officer, in order that the invasion could be continued with according to plan. The worst thing that can happen to a general is for things not to go according to plan, but it was easier said than done to find a suitable means of transport. Our transport was at the bottom of the treacherous English Channel.

‘We trod water for a while. During the night along came the abominable Navy again with their horrible fast motorboats and splashed water all over us, which we didn’t need at all.

‘Now my general really became annoyed. He had never liked the Navy. He considers it unnatural for human beings to move about in the water. If the good German God had intended that sort of thing He could have seen to it that the German people were born with fins on their backs.

‘“This will be a court-martial matter”, he said seriously,
screwing his fifth spare monocle in his eye. He really exploded when he discovered that they were saving the technical personnel first. He lost his last three monocles during the outburst, and his gold-braided field service cap took off on the water on its own.

‘I told a P-4 driver to save the general’s cap, and my general never forgot me for it.

‘“Unteroffizier Gregor Martin, you are a German hero”, he said, solemnly. “You will be awarded the War Service Cross for this. If we had more men of your kind we would long ago have made our brutal enemy sorry they started this war!”

‘“Very good, Herr General, sir!” I said, swallowing half the Channel as I saluted.

‘We reached the beach at dawn. There we threw an infantry oberst and his adjutant out of a Kübel, and made straight for Army Corps HQ to complain about the Navy.

‘“Infantrymen were born to march”, said my general as we nodded a condescending goodbye to the two foot-sloggers, who didn’t seem too happy about our commandeering their Kübel.

‘The invasion exercise was aborted. Me an’ my general had to get a bit more used to this drowning business first, but
don’t
come telling
me
drowning’s a pleasant death. It was an experience you could only call bitter. My general always said it was the Supreme Command’s fault that the whole of the division’s transport ended on the bottom of the English Channel. Bohemian corporals, he called them.’

‘It is to be hoped that your general no longer has a command,’ says Heide. ‘He seems to reek of Imperial conceit.’

‘
Imperial!
You can bet your sweet bloody life we were,’ shouts Gregor, proudly. ‘I’ve never met the old Hohenzollern but my general told me so much about him, that I can’t do anything but like him. Emperors have to be
born
to the job!’

‘Take up arms,’ orders the Old Man, back from the company commander. ‘No. 2 Section goes over first, and you can thank Tiny for that, because he just
had
to get across that shitehawk von Pader!’

The air shivers and trembles. The explosion is a long way off and must have been very violent.

‘Hard luck on the poor sods who were under that lot,’ says Barcelona.

‘Shit boys, ’ear that!’ shouts Tiny, admiringly, ‘’Ear them old neighbours shittin’!’

‘So what?’ says Gregor.

When we are moving up to relieve the line we always feel anger towards the enemy, but after only a couple of days at the front we begin to develop a friendly feeling for the other side. They are lying in the same muck as we are, and shells don’t know the difference.

A new salvo falls. The tall trees bend to the blast. We duck involuntarily. Some of us begin to put on our steel helmets.

‘Make a lovely bang, don’t they?’ says Tiny. ‘It’s a surprisin’ thing the
power
there is in shells!’

We march up through a murdered forest. There is no bark left on the naked stems of the trees. When we top the heights the Russians will be able to see us. This is where companies of men are turned into mincemeat. Everyone fears this stretch. It has to be passed in short dashes, but as soon as the first party makes a move tracer comes at them from the other side. Men scream for stretchers. They are the ones who didn’t move fast enough.

‘No. 2 Section forward! Move!
Mover!
’ shouts the Old Man waving us on with his Mpi. ‘Run like hell, if you want to stay alive!’

I spring along, seem almost to fly over the ground. The machine-gun feels heavy and clumsy. Tracer winks past me. Earth and fire cascade upwards. A jump of several yards lands me in a shell-hole.

Now they are shelling the heights with field artillery and mortars. No. 3 Company runs straight into a salvo of shells. Their OC, the well-liked Oberleutnant Soest, is tossed into the air and his body seems to explode on the tip of a burst of flame. No. 3 Company is wiped out of existence in just a few minutes. Most of them are smashed beyond recognition. The enemy field batteries have got a bead on the heights.

Porta and Rasputin come rushing along in a cloud of dust. The bear is running on all fours in long bounds. It seems as if it is trying to protect Porta with its body. Every time he drops
down it covers him. When we finally reach safety on the other side of the heights we find that the action has cost No. 5 Company seven dead and eleven wounded. This is light in comparison to the regiment’s other companies.

‘Poor bloody supplies runners,’ I say, looking up at that fiery hell. ‘Twice a day through
that
with food containers on their backs!’

It is midnight, and black as the inside of your hat, when we reach the river. Silently we climb into the assault boats. Nobody has any illusions about anything. We’ve been there before.

‘Once round the harbour, boys,’ chuckles Porta. ‘Free beer after the ride. If you’re good you can come along on the next trip for nothing!’

Nobody laughs.

Tiny installs himself in the bow with the LMG. I carry the explosive charges on a long rod.

Julius Heide and I have to get to the enemy emplacements while the section gives covering fire. I curse the day I volunteered for that explosives course. Now I’m paying for it. This is a one-way trip to heaven. Still and all, when I volunteered all hell was loose at the front and when I came back most of the boys I’d known were pushing up daisies.

‘Run like the devil as soon as we touch bottom,’ whispers Heide nervously to me. ‘We’ve got three and a half minutes to get to them.’

Our fate hangs on what happens in the first minute. Then the enemy are usually still confused, but after that they are on their toes and know it has to be them or us. They have to get us before we can get up to them with our charges.

‘Above all keep your heads,’ the Old Man exhorts us in a whisper. ‘Don’t play hero! Life is short and you’ll be dead a long time. Do what’s needed and not a thing over and above that.’ He taps Julius lightly on the shoulder. ‘You and Sven have to get to those defensive posts with the charges. Run like the devil was after you. They mustn’t get to the lifting gear. If they do we’ve had it. If you get wounded twenty times on the way you must still somehow drag yourselves up these emplacements.
Hals-und Beinbruch!
’

The slender boat grates on a sandy bottom. In one long spring we are over the side, race through the mist and clamber up the sloping bank.

Our lungs are bursting with effort. I throw myself down behind a large rock. My old lung wound is troubling me
²
. There is only a stretch of ten yards left to make, but every inch of it full of death and danger.

An SMG rattles, but behind us. They are giving us covering fire.

Concrete towers above us. The fortifications are much larger than we had thought at first. I push the charge through an observation slit and pull the release string. In one long jump I am down under cover, open my mouth and stuff my fingers into my ears. The wall falls outwards. The explosion is terrible. A wave of heat washes over me.

There is a blinding flash and human bodies are thrown from the pill-box. I feel as if Satan himself had taken a bite at me and spat me out again.

Two more hollow, rolling explosions and the two other pillboxes crack apart like eggshells. Automatic weapons rattle noisily.

Tiny comes sprinting with the SMG in his hand.

‘Get goin’, dope!’ he screams, kicking me as he runs. ‘If they get straightened out, they’ll ’ave our balls for breakfast. Them ’eathens know what they’re up to!’

The Old Man storms forward, with the rest of No. 2 Section in spread order. In a twinkling they have cleaned up the enemy position.

Hauptmann von Pader throws himself down heavily beside the Old Man. He is pale as death and on the verge of a nervous breakdown. He is wearing his steel helmet backwards.

‘Why don’t you let the company spread out?’ asks the Old Man disrespectfully, looking wickedly at him. ‘Just one direct hit as we are, and half the company’s for the scrap-heap.’

‘Don’t try to teach me my business, feldwebel,’ wheezes the Hauptmann. ‘I’ll have you on report!’

‘Good Jesus Christ!’ pants the Old Man, in despair. ‘Are reports all you’ve got in your head? You’re at the
front
, Herr
Hauptmann, and you’re responsible for two hundred German soldiers.’ He gets half-way to his feet and points at von Pader with his Mpi. ‘I warn you, if you make a mess of this, I’ll relieve you of command!’

‘Who do you think you are?’ screams Hauptmann von Pader, excitedly. ‘A lousy peasant like you can’t relieve an officer of command!’

‘Read your own Führer’s orders,’ snaps the Old Man. ‘Latest orders state that even a private soldier can relieve a regimental commander of command if he thinks that commander has failed in his duty.’

‘I’ve never seen that,’ mumbles von Pader, weakly.

‘Better take a day off for reading orders, when we get back,’ suggests the Old Man, ironically.

A runner throws himself down panting by the side of them. Blood is running down his face from a gash in his forehead.

‘Herr Hauptmann, sir! Regimental HQ wants to know if the fortifications here have been taken?’

‘No!’ the Old Man answers for his OC, ‘the attack is held up. No. 5 Company is sitting around in shell-holes scratchin’ its collective arse.’

‘The oberst’ll be glad to hear it,’ grins the runner, throwing a sneering glance at the officer lying gripping his steel helmet tightly.

Porta and the bear slide down to them in a shower of dust and dead leaves.

‘What the hell’re we pissin’ about here for?’ screams Porta, taking no notice of von Pader. ‘Where the devil’s the rest of the company? Me an’ Rasputin can’t win this fuckin’ war on our own!’

The Old Man waves to the neighbouring section. The signal is answered. No. 5 Company storms forward. Only Hauptmann von Pader remains behind in his hole. With terror-stricken eyes he looks at the ground in front which is being ploughed up by the field artillery barrage.

The earth seems to rise up like a huge curtain towards the sky. Bodies and equipment spew out to all sides. Flame shoots up from the ground in giant geysers.

A gun with six horses comes sailing through the air and smashes into the ground.

Hauptmann von Pader breaks down, sobbing. His stomach clenches and cramps. He knocks off his helmet and tears at his collar, the cloth ripping under his fingers. He has never imagined the baptism of fire to be like this. For the first time in his life he feels the Fatherland could be asking too much of him.

The hole he is lying in shakes and sways. It is as if all the evil demons of hell have been let loose and are roaring together. One deafening explosion is followed closely by another. The unbelievable noise rises to an infernal crescendo.

A body falls in front of him. Blood, entrails and brain matter splash into his face.

He screams desperately, thinking it is he himself who has been badly wounded. But it is a nineteen-year-old leutnant whose first day at the front has ended.

Shells rain down. Whistling, howling, exploding. Fire, earth, rocks, whole tree trunks, fly through the air. We are in a gigantic, hellish stadium, where blast plays ball uncaringly with everything inside it.