Wheels of Terror (36 page)

A lot of them tried to find cover in the wood. Screams and cries reached us.

'Don't let them get into the forest,' warned The Old Un. 'Then they'll get us! They'll smash us before we can wink an eye.'

The turret swung round, the points on the sighting-mirror met.

'
Rummmun ...!
' thundered the guns and sent a rushing fountain of fire, earth and bloody limbs skywards as the 8.8-cm. high-explosive shell exploded in the middle of the clump of people.

Two machine-guns, Mark 42, pumped ammunition into the scrub. The engine's growl rose to a roar as we rolled towards what had been a road-block.

Were we shocked when the truth in all its horror dawned on us? I don't think so. Rather relieved. Maybe a little uneasy.

The 'road-block' was a cart which had broken down. The hostile 'gunners' were refugees, women, children, old men, sick and exhausted. The 'stove-pipe' was the shaft of the cart.

The hatches were carefully opened. Inflamed eyes registered the destruction. Five pairs of tank-soldiers' ears listened to the death-rattle of the dying. Five noses sniffed the sharp stink of cordite. Steel rattled against steel as the hatches were made fast. Rocking on its tracks the large killer-apparatus curtsied to the dead and dying.

A tank with a handful of soldiers, a Russian woman and her new-born twins disappeared, cursed by the dying.

We sucked up petrol with the aid of a rubber hose. Three lonely Russian gunners had been killed before they knew what came growling up behind them.

In the distance we heard the rumbling of a heavy artillery barrage. We smeared the swastikas on each side of the turret with mud until they became indistinguishable.

The woman had a temperature. She talked wildly. The Old Un shook his head.

'I'm afraid she's dying.'

'What are we going to do?' asked the Little Legionnaire in despair, and twisted his hands.

The Old Un looked at him for a long time before he answered:

'You're a funny lot. By God, you're funny. You fire without blinking at everything which moves, and yet you fear for the life of an unknown woman just because she lies beside you and breathes in the same rotten stale air.'

Nobody answered.

It was almost dark when we halted. In the distance we saw a fire.

'It looks like a large town going up in flames,' Porta said. 'Maybe Oscha?'

'Are you mad?' replied The Old Un. 'Oscha is far behind us. No, more likely it's Brodny or Lemberg.'

'It doesn't matter two hoots which it is,' decided the Little Legionnaire. 'It's burning. A good thing we're not there!'

... Tiny saw them first. Two large diesel-trucks. Proper 'soldier-sledges'. They were German air force lorries. A dozen air force personnel were lying about sleeping. Farther away and half-hidden in the bushes lay about a hundred women and children.

We climbed out.

They jumped up panic-stricken as we approached them soundlessly in our black tank-uniforms. They stared paralysed at Porta's top-hat with its red-painted bands.

There were two German nurses among them. The hospital they had been at had been surprised and occupied by Russians. These were the only two who had got away alive. All the wounded had been liquidated in their beds or in the corridors. A large Russian infantry unit had come to the village where they had sought shelter. But they had been friendly and warned them to get away as those who were following them were really brutal.

The whole village except a few old people had run away. Day after day they had dragged themselves along. Other refugees had joined them, Polish, German, Russian, Latvian, Estonian, Lithuanian. People from the Balkans, yes from all directions, had joined in the refugees' wretched caravan. They had forgotten racial and regional emotions in their common terror: the rapidly rolling Russian tanks.

The air force men had brought them here. They had been fired at several times. Some had died and been thrown off. New refugees had fought for the spare places in the trucks.

When they had left the forest they had been fired at again. The soldiers had raced on and stopped where we now met them.

The air force men would not go on. They had quite simply given up: full of apathy they had laid down to sleep.

They stared indifferently at us with our machine-pistols under our arms. A sergeant lay on his back with his hands folded under his head. He grinned mockingly at us.

'Well, heroes, still racing for victory? Why not call Ivan, then you'd be able to use your pop-guns? Bah, fascist-dirt!'

'Hell's bells!' Tiny fumed. 'Are you fresh, my sparrow? Shall I let him have it, Old Un?'

'Quiet Tiny,' answered The Old Un and studied the sergeant through half-closed eyes.

'What are you going to do?'

The sergeant shrugged his shoulders.

'Wait for the colleagues, and shake their hands.'

'And the women?' The Old Un wanted to know and indicated the women and children with a jerk of his head.

'Give the lot to Ivan. That is, if you don't wish to take 'em along on your victory-chase. I've had enough and I'm thinking of myself. I don't care a scrap about what becomes of that lot. Can you swallow that, black brother?'

A terrible quarrel began between The Old Un and the apathetic sergeant. Several others interfered.

'Do you think we want to get away from Ivan just to be hanged by our own "head-hunters"?' asked the sergeant.

Suddenly the Little Legionnaire pushed himself forward with his machine-pistol ready. He pointed the muzzle at the sergeant and his men.

'You cowardly filthy dogs! What a lot of damned collar-and-tie soldiers! The whole war you've been sitting on an aerodrome far behind the front-line, and now when you hear a few bangs you're scared stiff. I'll shoot the lot of you if you don't take the women along!'

For a moment there was deathly silence.

We withdrew from the Little Legionnaire. He stood with splayed legs, his machine-pistol ready, his body tensed.

One of the air force men grinned.

'Well then, shoot. Why don't you shoot, you black monster? Did Goebbels teach you fat words? We're tired of waiting!'

Several others started to jeer at the Little Legionnaire.

'Careful now,' whispered The Old Un. 'Something's going to happen.'

Slowly we spread out with our machine-pistols ready.

'Will you drive?' hissed the Little Legionnaire. His cigarette bounced in his mouth and sparks dropped on his chest. 'For the last time. Will you drive the girls?'

'You're a hero,' laughed one of the air force men. 'A big hero from the steppes of Ukrania! Woman-Liberator! They'll put up a statue of this mannikin on top of the wash-house!'

Roars of laughter reverberated. Evil flames burst from the Little Legionnaire's blue-black weapon. The Little Legionnaire swayed with the recoil. The laughter changed into a rattle. Grey soldiers twisted about on the ground. One crawled on all fours to us shrieking like a lunatic.

Again the machine-pistol barked. Dead bodies trembled under the burst of steel.

Only three got away with their lives. They were pushed into the drivers' cabs of the three lorries with the help of machine-pistols. Muzzles at the ready.

Dumb and with dead eyes, the refugees crawled into the trucks.

With the tanks bringing up the rear we drove north-west. Away from a heap of bloody corpses in grey uniforms. Men who had given up hope, and so had been killed by their own.

The war rolled on.

Small groups of soldiers were dragging themselves along the road. One voice started to cry desperately:

'Comrade, take us along!'

But our comrades disappeared in a breath of petrol fumes. One truck collapsed. Its load of people fled on foot along the road.

In Velenski, a village like thousands of others in Ukrania and Poland, a river of people had stopped marching for a little rest and warmth.

'Hurry up!' The shout was repeated ceaselessly, but it was not necessary. The threatened collapse of the 3rd Panzer Army and the rapidly rolling Russian tank columns which crushed every living thing were more than enough to make the refugees race on.

German grenadiers and Russian prisoners ran about like confused chickens among the swarm of civilians. They flocked round our tank. Everyone asked the same question:

'Where is the Red Army?'

For days, disrupted military units and wretched civilians had travelled through Velenski. Panic had taken a strangle-hold on everyone from the youngest to the oldest. The terror of the Russians racing behind. The shock of the total collapse of the front. Horror of the T34s which loomed up and crushed a whole column of refugees in a moment. The frightfulness of the 'butchers' and Jabos which made the road a sea of flames in a split second.

In addition came fatigue, hunger, gales, frost and rain.

Invocations to God rose to heaven in many tongues, but nothing helped. The tank-tracks ground along the blood-soaked earth of Ukrania and Poland.

One of the nurses had some morphia which we gave to the mother of the twins. We got hold of some milk and made ready to drive on. They stood round us, hundreds of them. Imploring hands were stretched to us:

'Take us. Don't leave us to die!'

They offered the most unbelievable things in exchange for a small corner in the tank. They sat on the turret, at the back and in the front. They hung by their arms from the gun-ports. Many sat on the long barrel of the cannon, tightly packed shoulder to shoulder.

We cursed and swore and threatened them with our machine-pistols to get them off the muzzles of the guns and flame-thrower, but they did not care.

The Old Un shook his head in despair.

'Heaven help us! If we get into a scrap, they'll go to hell, the lot of them!'

We took some children into the tank before we made the hatches fast. Then our death-march began.

A few miles on we met four more tanks. They belonged to No. 2 Panzer Regiment and like us they had lost contact with headquarters.

A lieutenant, 18 years old, took command of all our five tanks. He ordered all the refugees to get down, but not one obeyed. On the contary, more refugees plus some German stragglers crawled on.

He climbed, swearing, into the tank through the bottom hatch. So many people were sitting on the turret that he could not get through the turret-hatch.

Over the radio he announced that we had to pass under a railway line. We had been travelling parallel with it. The tunnel was so narrow that there was not an inch to spare.

We tried to explain to the refugees that they would be swept off if they remained sitting on the tank and promised to pick them up again on the other side of the tunnel. They pretended not to understand. Nobody dared give up the place he or she had won. Even mothers who had lost their children didn't move.

The first tank disappeared down the steep curve. It lurched about violently. Some refugees fell off, but managed to save themselves on the steep banks on both sides of the road before our tank came slipping on. Our grating tracks were unable to brake on the slippery road which had a decline of thirty-five degrees.

We stared desperately at the first tank as it entered the narrow tunnel. The refugees were crushed between cement and steel or swept off.

In despair Porta tried to brake, to put the tank in reverse, but the huge 65-ton Tiger rolled relentlessly on towards the crawling, screaming people who next minute were crushed under the steel caterpillar-tracks.

Many of the refugees on our tank jumped off when they saw what had happened, only to be crushed by the following tank which like ours came shrieking and slithering down the road. The refugees tried to make themselves small, but they were all mashed down to a red-grey porridge which dripped like paint off the tunnel's walls.

A small boy threw himself at our tank to stop it from running over his mother who lay unconscious in the road. His terror-stricken face disappeared beneath the tracks of our terrible juggernaut.

The tank bobbed up and down at regular intervals as if we were running over a large wash-board.

On the other side of the railway line we stopped. The lieutenant by now had lost his mind. He ran about in a circle, tore off the badges and decorations on his uniform and threw them in the air. When he had demoted himself, he grabbed his machine-pistol and started firing single shots at us.

Without a word Porta took his sniper's rifle and pressed the trigger.

The young lieutenant fell back, kicked desperately with his legs and beat out helplessly with his arms in a swinging motion. Another shot and he lay still.

The refugees who had got away alive and the others who had not been on the tanks came across to us threatening and screaming. We had seen what they had done to the gunners from one of the other tanks, how they had choked them with their bare hands.

They came at us swinging weapons and cudgels. The Old Un hurriedly jumped into the tank, but before he could close the hatch some were already on the hull trying to throw in hand-grenades.

A piece of shrapnel wounded The Old Un in the cheek.

We saw them flinging out the corpses through the hatches of another tank.

The Old Un shook his head.

'God in heaven, help me. What am I to do?'

Porta put his head back and looked at The Old Un.

'Hurry up, Old Un, what's your orders? You're in command of all these sledges now.'

'Do what you like. I give up,' sobbed The Old Un and sank down. Tiny's feet came out and pushed him away.

'Good,' replied Porta. 'I understand. Shut your eyes, old married man, then you won't see what we're going to do!'

He turned to the Little Legionnaire who was sitting by his radio to relay his orders to the other tanks:

'Brush off the refugees! Be ready to open fire! Shoot at any stray tank and anyone carrying firearms!'

The refugees and the desperate German stragglers evidently wanted to finish us off. The first handgrenade was bowled over our heads.

Automatically I sighted my gun on the tank pirated by the refugees. The points met on my mirror. The number on the large turret was visible in my sighting circle. Tiny reported laconically: