Cauldron of Blood (15 page)

EIGHT

CRUMP
!

Schulze
and Matz reeled back, as the world was turned upside down, filled with a great tearing wind that bore all before it in a red-roaring fury. Before them, a yawning smoking chasm opened up as if by magic. Whirling flailing bodies hurtled through the air.

They
gasped for breath. Weak, pitiful cries escaped from their strangled throats, as the blast tore the very air out of their lungs, and their nostrils were assailed by the biting acrid stench of cordite.

Everywhere
men screamed. Others moaned piteously. ‘
Sanitater
...
Sanitater
!’ the cries for help rose on all sides. ‘
Mother
...
God
help
me
,
please
....’ But neither God nor Mother was present this terrible crazy night — just Death.

The
salvo went its murderous way, tearing huge gaps in the defenders’ positions and then, as the last obscene howl of the mortar echoed into the distance, the Popovs came running forward through the whirling snowstorm once again.

‘
Stand
-
by
!’ Schulze yelled desperately, and flung himself behind the MG 42, while Matz pushed aside the dead loader, the left side of his face gone.

To
their right, Little Napoleon pulled the cork out of his mouth and cried urgently,
‘
A
la
battalla
!’

‘
Arriba
Espana
!’ his men roared back, tucking, their rifles into their shoulders, as more and more dark figures were outlined against the white wall of snow.

Whistles
blew. NCOs shouted orders in German and Spanish. Flares hissed into the sky on both sides of the line to descend like falling angels. ‘
URRAH
!’ the massed Russian infantry cried.

In
the fantastic, eerily glowing light of the flares, the sabres of the Russian officers gleamed as they brought them up. The long pointed bayonet sparkled. Even as he brought the final pressure to bear on the machine gun, while Matz holding the long belt of ammunition tensed at his side, Schulze could not quite repress his awed admiration for the Popovs. They were advancing to a certain death, yet they did not hesitate, their broad Slavic faces full of determination and glowing with the vodka they had been drinking for hours before the surprise attack.

‘
FIRE
!’ he screamed fervently and in that same instant, pressed down the trigger of the machine gun.

The
MG 42 kicked hard at his shoulder. His nostrils were assailed by the stink of cordite. Madly the machine gun chattered, pouring out tracer at a rate of eight hundred rounds per minute.

The
front rank of the Russians melted away before his eyes. In a flash, the perfect formation had become a mess of flailing arms and limbs, punctuated by dreadful screams, as men went down by the score, ripped apart by that terrible fire at such short range. But the second rank came on as steadily as ever, stumbling here and there over the bodies of their comrades writhing in the blood-stained snow, but coming on all the same.

Frantically
Matz fed a new belt of ammo into the breech, while all around them the mixed group of Spaniards and Germans thrust new clips of bullets into their hot rifles. To their right, Little Napoleon ripped open his flies, the cork threatening to pop out of his mouth at any minute in his excitement, and poured a stream of urine over the pink-glowing barrel of the ancient Maxim to cool the machine gun.

Now
the Russians were only a hundred metres away. In the unreal light of the flares, that coloured their tense faces, an eerie blood-red and green, Schulze could see them quite clearly. They were mere boys, eighteen-year-olds for the most part, he guessed, but in spite of their youth there was determination in those faces. They would not run. They would keep coming until a bullet finally dealt with them.

‘
FIRE
!’ he cried once again.

Once
more the German line erupted with fire. At waist-height Schulze scythed the advancing line with his deadly white fire, swinging the MG 42 from side to side, cutting great swathes in the advancing line. All round him the others did the same, working their rifle-bolts frantically, ejecting the spent cartridge cases, their faces greased with oily sweat, eyes full of fear now as the Russians came nearer and nearer.

‘
God in Heaven!’ Matz cried in an agony of fear and rage, ‘Will
nothing
stop the bastards?’

Now
they were less than fifty metres away. There were great holes in their ranks. Behind them the snow was littered with hundreds of bodies, with here and there a desperately wounded Russian attempting to crawl to the rear, leaving a blood-red trail behind him. Yet they still came on, like robots, impervious to human calculation.

To
Schulze’s immediate front, a young officer minus his helmet now and the blood trickling down the side of his handsome pale face from a terrible wound in his forehead, raised his silver sabre and screamed something in Russian. The line broke into a clumsy run, the soldiers bringing their bayonets down level with their hips.

‘
They’re
charging
!’ someone screamed in a paroxysm of fear.

‘
The
Popovs
are
charging
!’ a half-dozen scared voices took up the same cry.

A
Spaniard rose, his sallow face green with fear, and threw down his rifle. Little Napoleon did not hesitate. His pistol cracked. The Spaniard screamed shrilly and fell to the snow. The man next to him, who had been about to do the same, changed his mind and aimed his rifle once more.

‘
Hold
fast
!’ Schulze yelled desperately and swung the machine gun round to face the new threat. He pressed the trigger.

Nothing
!

He
pressed it again. Nothing once more.

Now
the screaming, blood-crazed Russians were only twenty metres away. Schulze stared at Matz aghast. ‘What—’

‘
Stoppage!’ Matz rapped and started fumbling frantically with the belt of ammo.

A
grenade sailed through the air. The two of them ducked instinctively. It exploded behind them in the middle of a group of Spaniards. Severed limbs sailed everywhere. A head flew through the air like a football.

A
Russian ran at Schulze with his fixed bayonet. Schulze whipped off his helmet and threw it with all his strength. It smashed into the running man’s face. He screamed and reeled back, his features a blood-red pulp.

Another
Russian raced towards the machine gun crew struggling to free the blockage. The man was screaming furiously, saliva dripping from his canine-like yellow teeth, eyes full of wild animal hate. Schulze lifted the empty machine gun belt and hurled it at the man. He hit the snow, the belt curled around his legs, bayonet flying from his surprised hands. Schulze grabbed it. He grunted savagely and with all his enormous strength brought it down on the Russian’s upturned face. Once, twice, three times. The man’s terrible screams were stifled as he choked in his own blood, his upturned face disappearing in a welter of crimson gore and gleaming smashed bone.

‘
Clear
!’ Matz yelled.

‘’
Bout shitting time.’ Schulze dropped the rifle and threw himself behind the gun. He snapped back the bolt, rammed it home and pressed the trigger.

The
machine gun burst into frenetic life. Tracers sprayed left and right, scything down the third line of Russians rushing screaming to the aid of their comrades, as they battled in close combat with the Germans and Spaniards.

‘
Come on, you bastards, come on!’ Schulze screamed, carried away by a fervent blood-lust, eyes wild and crazy as the Russian dead mounted up in great mounds in front of his murderous weapon.

Still
they came on, stumbling and staggering over the earth-brown carpet of their own dead, getting ever closer to the survivors of the first wave, who still battled the defenders.

And
then abruptly they broke. The heart went out of them, as if someone had opened a hidden tap and let, the boldness and resolve which had carried them this far against that terrible fire run out in one great stream.

Some
tossed away their weapons and held up their hands in token of surrender. But Death was not to let them go. The gun continued to chatter. Others fled, madly pushing and clawing at each other in their frantic desire to escape that murderous fire, and a few went to ground and tried to fight back.

Death
was indiscriminate. It reaped the bold, the brave and cowardly without distinction.

Five
minutes later, it was all over and there was no sound save the whimpers of the wounded and the harsh gasping of the surviving defenders who slumped in their holes, chests heaving as if they had just run a great race.

Schulze
took his dulled eyes from the corpse-littered snowfield and prodded Matz in the ribs, as he lay there full-length, the only sign that he was still alive, the heaving of his shoulders, as if he might be sobbing. ‘Matzi,’ he whispered hoarsely, ‘Matzi, get up.’

Matz
raised his head and stared at him with eyes that were wild and out of focus. ‘What?’ he croaked.

  ‘
Get up... We’ve got to move back,’ Schulz said slowly, with long pauses between the phrases, as if he were finding it very difficult to speak. ‘Move back another hundred metres... They’ll be back...’

One
minute later the survivors, helping the limping walking wounded, started to trail back to new positions, moving slowly and with difficulty like old, old men.

The
Soviet ring of iron around the embattled town was growing ever tighter....

*

All that long Christmas Eve night the Soviets pounded the defenders’ positions. From end to end the horizon was alight with flame, so that the very earth quaked under the impact of that tremendous bombardment. With hoarse, exultant screams, salvo after salvo ripped through the night sky to crash into the ruins of the Russian town.

The
defenders buried deeper and deeper, often unwittingly digging their own graves in advance, as the ruins around them swayed and heaved like stage decorations caught in a heavy draught.

Schulze
and Matz did their rounds hourly, doubling from position to position to yell encouragement to the defenders, helping to free the survivors from yet another near miss, lending a hand when necessary to dig out some half-conscious man trapped when his foxhole was hit, knowing in their innermost thoughts as they did so, that it wouldn’t be long now before the Popovs launched their next all-out attack, which might swamp the handful of desperate men now holding Fedorovka.

Just
before dawn the bombardment started to ebb away, until finally it ceased altogether, leaving behind a loud echoing silence which seemed to go on for ever. Schulze rose slowly from his foxhole, clearing the mess of snow and earth which had been deposited on his chest by the last explosions. He stared wearily to the east. The sky was already flushed a dirty white. It wouldn’t be long now. With the last of his energy, he rose to his feet and ignoring the lunar landscape all around, littered with the frozen corpses of the dead, shouted, ‘Every second man, take a piss-and-drink break! Five minutes, only and no buggering off or I’ll be coming looking for yer.
At
the
double
now
!’

He
waited till the men started to stream to the shelter of the still smoking ruins to carry out their bodily functions and attempt to melt sufficient snow to quench their parched mouths. ‘The rest cross yer knees like virgins,’ he commanded. ‘If yer can’t, use yer holes. They won’t smell any less sweet on account of that.’

But
no one appreciated the big Hamburger’s humour this freezing dawn; they were all too afraid, as they gazed at the deserted hills beyond, waiting for the new terrors which the Popovs would undoubtedly launch against them soon.

It
was just after the second batch of defenders had disappeared into the ruins that Matz heard it. ‘Schulze,’ he whispered softly in order not to alarm the others yet. ‘Did you hear that?’

Schulze
nodded gloomily. ‘Yer I heard — tanks.’

‘
Sounds like it to me, Schulze. What now?’

‘
What do you expect, Matzi?’ his running-mate said, all the old spirit gone from his voice. ‘We’ve got no mines, no anti-tank weapons left.’

‘
The flag trick?’

Schulz
shook his head. ‘No, they won’t fall for that one twice. They’ll have planned their tactics in advance so that they won’t need any signals.’