Reign of Hell (Cassell Military Paperbacks) Read online

  Tiny was loading and reloading with all his usual unfailing regularity. He even managed now and again to snatch a sip of vodka or a bite of sausage without interrupting the rhythm. It was a matter of complete indifference to Tiny what we were aiming at. The target could have been anything from a crowd of innocent bystanders to a nest of enemy machine-guns. He knew only that the machine must be kept in constant motion, and that it was his task to feed it with its supply of grenades.

  A row of small terraced houses lay in our path. They crumpled up before us as if they were made of cardboard, but suddenly there was the sound of an explosion, the whole tank shuddered and tilted over and ended up resting on one track and shaking violently.

  ‘Magnetic mine,’ said Heide, tight-lipped. ‘The right track’s been buggered.’

  There was a second’s silence, then Porta swore and got to his feet. He jerked his head at Tiny.

  ‘Repair squad outside. Let’s go.’

  Tiny settled himself comfortably on the floor and stuffed his mouth full of sausage.

  ‘You just gotta be joking,’ he said.

  ‘You want to sit here and wait for them to blow us to bits?’ demanded Porta, furious.

  Tiny shrugged his shoulders.

  ‘It’s better than going outside and getting yourself nobbled,’ he said.

  Before Porta could reply, we were hit for a second time. A shell crashed into the outer casing and exploded in a ball of flame. It did no serious damage, except to our nerves. Our companion tanks had by now disappeared. We were being fired on from behind, and we had to rotate the turret by hand, for the electric circuit had been knocked out by the first shell. There was a third explosion, and this time the whole of the back axle was torn off. There could now be no possibility of sending out a repair squad. Even if they did survive the raging inferno of the roads, they could certainly not replace the back axle.

  The Old Man reluctantly gave the order to abandon the vehicle. A stationary tank is a sitting duck. It could blow up at any moment, and it would have been suicide to hang around any longer.

  Every hatch was flung open, and I saw a scramble of arms and legs as my companions disappeared. It was my job to stay behind and destroy what remained of the vehicle.

  ‘See you in heaven,’ said Porta, blowing me a kiss.

  I watched him as he scrambled out. I waited until I saw the soles of his boots, and then I primed the self-destruct mechanism and dived after him towards the nearest hatch. It refused to open. It had fallen back and it was stuck fast. I was seized at once with panic. The tank was going to blow up, and I was still going to be inside it. I had only seconds left. I was never going to make it. I hammered in futile sobbing fury at the closed hatch. The blast of a grenade had battened it down, and it was jammed tight. It needed more strength than my puny blows to force it open, and more sense than my terror-flooded brain possessed to lead me to another exit.

  Suddenly, I saw daylight. Two hands, vast like carpet bags reached down towards me. They hauled me up through the turret, and Tiny and I fell together over the side of the crippled tank.

  ‘Bloody fool!’ snarled Tiny. He boxed me soundly round the ears. ‘Could have got us both bloody killed, buggering about like that!’

  It was only the blast of the explosion which shut him up. We were blown across the road and hurled straight through the windows of a nearby house. Even Tiny was too shattered to do more than lie on the floor and gasp until one of the walls began slowly to sag towards us and we both went diving out again on to the pavement.

  We tagged on behind a company of infantry and attacked the old Buhl Palace, once the home of royalty, now in the hands of the partisans. They did not give it up without a struggle. We fought from room to room, on the landings and the staircases, in the galleries and the gardens, until at last the place resembled a barracks – its beauty destroyed, its pride humiliated. The partisans retreated, and we were now in sole possession. The silence was oppressive after the ferocity of the combat. The royal palace was a desolate wreck, and it gave me no comfort to stretch my unwashed, aching body on a four-poster bed in a room that had once belonged to princes. Tiny wiped his boots clean on the damask coverlet, and Porta wrenched down the velvet curtains and slept curled up on them like a dog in its kennel. For a few hours we were the lords and masters of a war-torn palace. But with the coming of the dawn we were thrown back into the gutters where we belonged, put to flight by a detachment of Wachnowski’s blood-thirsty guerrilla fighters. Our moment of glory had been very brief.

  The entire town seemed suddenly to be swarming with partisans. We were forced to take shelter in the sewers. We stayed there, ten feet below ground, up to our waists in stinking filth, for the best part of four days. On emerging once again into the open, dripping with slime and half blinded by the brilliance of the daylight, we were snatched up by a company of the SS Reich Division and crammed without ceremony into a Tiger. Never mind that we were weak with hunger after four days roaming about the sewers of Warsaw, the SS needed men to drive a tank, and we were the unfortunates who happened to be on the spot.

  They should have had more sense than to introduce a Tiger into the street-fighting of Warsaw. The heavy tank was too big and too clumsy. It was impossible to manoeuvre it through the narrow, twisting passages, and it was not long before it came to grief, with both tracks shattered by shellfire. The Old Man gave the order to abandon the vehicle and destroy it, and once again it was I who had to remain behind to do the job.

  I waited impatiently until they had all disappeared, then primed the mechanism and made a breathless dive for the hatch. This time it did not stick. I was up and away and racing across the road to join my companions. We crouched behind the shell of a burnt-out truck and waited for the explosion.

  The explosion never came . . .

  An SS Unterscharführer threatened to shoot me on the spot if I did not instantly return and rectify my mistake. We argued hotly for a few moments as to which was at fault, me or the self-destruct mechanism, but whichever it was I knew I had no alternative but to go back and finish the job. Tigers were still classed as secret weapons. On no account must one be allowed to fall into the hands of the enemy. Even if the Unterscharführer spared my life, I should certainly never survive a court martial.

  I crossed the road in a series of nervous jerks and twitches. Heide was giving me a covering fire, but the rooftops were full of snipers, all of whom were very well aware of my mission and were out to prevent it if at all possible. I rolled beneath the belly of the tank with bullets tearing holes in the road all round me. I attempted to force open the lower hatch, but there was no moving it. I would have to go in by the turret.

  I took a deep breath, pulled the pin out of a smoke grenade and sent it rolling across the street. Then I clambered up to the turret under cover of its billowing yellow clouds. Inside the tank, the explosive was still in place. The glass detonator had cracked and the least movement could activate it. Court martial or no court martial, I was going nowhere near it. I shot out again through the turret and scurried across the road like a frightened chicken. The snipers were still at it, but of what danger were flying bullets when compared with the horrors of a seventy-ton tank on the point of explosion? I rolled to safety in the ruins of a bombed house and launched a couple of hand grenades towards the stricken Tiger. The first bounced harmlessly off the outer shell, the second disappeared straight down the turret. I covered my head with my hands and waited.

  The seconds ticked slowly by. Every minute seemed like an hour. Cautiously, I raised my hand. I took another grenade from my pouch and tore out the pin. I raised my arm to throw it, and as I did so the tank exploded.

  The grenade was snatched out of my hand by the blast. Steel plating was flung across the road. The Tiger disappeared in a sea of roaring flame, and the long cannon was projected forward like an arrow from a bow. It made straight for the open window of a house where a section of German infantry had just taken up position. I did not stay to hear th
eir comments. I took to my heels and tore hell for leather after the Old Man and the rest of them.

  The battle for Warsaw continued with unabated brutality. One of Dirlewanger’s battalions arrived while we were fighting for possession of the Allée Jerosolimska. They were known euphemistically as the clean-up squad. Himmler had given all such SS groups a completely free hand. Their task was to clear up the city in whatever way would be most effective. And, accordingly, they looted, raped, burnt and murdered from one end of Warsaw to the other. Their latest game was to kick babies about the streets like footballs until there was nothing left to kick. Mothers who had the temerity to complain had their clothes set on fire and were chased in circles at gunpoint. This was all amidst roars of laughter from delighted officers, most of whom were ex-commandants of concentration camps.

  The Lieutenant-Colonel, under whose command we temporarily found ourselves, seemed to be a stranger to the ways of the SS. He was an old man, and until this moment had probably succeeded in keeping his blinkers on. But his eyes were now opened, and he stared in horror and disbelief at the sight of a baby being tossed high into the air and caught on its way down on the point of a bayonet. He sought out the Hauptsturmführer in charge of the proceedings and ordered him to withdraw his horde of barbarians immediately. The Hauptsturmführer looked him up and down with cold disdain.

  ‘You are obviously not aware, sir, that this is the Third Battalion, the Dirlewanger Brigade, and that we are under direct orders from the Reichsführer. It would be most ill-advised of you to attempt any interference with our work.’

  He pushed the Lieutenant-Colonel out of his way with the butt end of his revolver and led his gallant band of savages further down the street in search of fresh conquests. The Colonel was trembling. His face was grey and puckered, his skin leathery. His eyes seemed to have sunk deep inside his skull in the space of only a few minutes.

  ‘Dear God,’ he said. ‘Dear God, what a way to fight a war . . .’

  The old Prussia had vanished indeed. Gone were the upright generals, the stern disciplinarians. Now it was the turn of the little men. The little men like Heinrich Himmler, Reichsführer SS, Commander-in-Chief of the Army, Minister of the Interior, Minister of Justice, Head of the Police Security Bureau . . . Little men in black uniforms and gold-rimmed spectacles. Men even Hitler himself had cause to fear.

  All along the street the houses were alight. People imprisoned on top floors opened their windows and cried for help, but no one could be bothered with them. Not the retreating Poles nor the advancing Germans. They were left to burn. The whole of Warsaw was in flames. The Rue Chlodna was alight from one end to the other, and Germans and Poles alike were caught in the inferno and roasted alive. No one could have escaped through the solid walls of flame. The tar on the roads was sizzling beneath our feet, and the water from the fountains was so hot that it steamed. Warsaw was being burnt to the ground.

  We plunged down into the cool depths of a cellar for a few moments’ respite, but had been there scarcely ten seconds when a big red-faced staff-sergeant appeared at the entrance and hauled us out again.

  ‘What the bloody hell do you think you’re doing, sitting down there on your great fat fannies? Get a move on before I shoot the whole poxy lot of you!’

  He drove us down the road at gunpoint before him, and then walked straight into the path of an oncoming grenade and had his head blown off.

  ‘Serves him bloody well right,’ said Tiny, pausing automatically in a shower of gunfire to rifle the dead man’s pockets.

  The Lieutenant-Colonel was seated in the basin of one of the steaming fountains singing hymns. He was surrounded by a circle of encroaching flames, and it was quite impossible to reach him.

  ‘He’s gone off his rocker,’ said Gregor, fascinated. ‘He’s gone right off his bleeding rocker . . .’

  We stood a while, watching the spectacle, until at last a stray shell scored a direct hit on the fountain and the Colonel was buried beneath chunks of masonry.

  For the umpteenth time, orders came through that we were to try and recapture the Poniatowski Bridge. I was sick to death of trying to recapture the Poniatowski Bridge. I only wished to God that one side or the other would blow the damned thing up. Then, having nothing left to recapture, we would finally be left in peace. We threw ourselves without any enthusiasm whatever into the attack, and were once again firmly repulsed by Ziemski Wachnowski and his partisans. The Poles were giving no quarter now. Any German who fell into their hands was either burnt alive or beaten to death. I saw a Major, trailing a shattered leg behind him, crawling towards the ruins of the fountain. The Poles also saw him. They turned on a hose and sprayed him with petrol. Then, laughing, tossed a lighted match after him. When the flames died away, the charred skeleton of the Major was still poised on all fours, crawling for sanctuary towards the ruins of the fountain. During the night, we reached the Place Krazinski and found ourselves back with our own Company – or what, at any rate, was left of it. By some miracle they had managed to set up a field kitchen. It was serving nothing but crusts of bread and a dirty grey soup which looked as if it had been wrung out of wet floorcloths. By then we were so hungry we could have eaten fricassée of cowpat and believed it was roast beef.

  Gregor and I were detailed for sentry duty at the end of the Rue Krazinski, while the rest of the Company bedded down for the night in the basement of one of the few standing buildings. Shortly before eleven o’clock it began to rain. The chill, melancholy rain of an autumn night, blew across the square and cut around the corner of the street and into our faces. We stood with hunched shoulders, staring glumly ahead, not speaking, while the water trickled down our necks and seeped up through the tattered soles of our boots. After a bit, Gregor shifted his position and I could hear his feet squelching. He swore. He removed both boots and solemnly tipped the water out of them, then crammed them back on again.

  ‘Fat lot of good that will do,’ I said.

  Gregor sighed.

  ‘It would break my poor old mother’s heart,’ he said, ‘if she could see me like this.’

  ‘Consider yourself lucky to have a mother,’ I said, sourly.

  ‘The fuss she used to make,’ said Gregor, carrying straight on as if I had never spoken. ‘Carried on fit to burst a blood vessel . . .’ He smiled a stupid sentimental smile and gave a wistful little laugh. ‘Fell in the river once,’ he said. ‘Got home dripping wet. Old lady nearly had a fit. Put me straight to bed with hot milk and aspirins. Thought I might catch a cold.’ He laughed again. ‘Catch a cold!’ he said. ‘That’s a good one, that is.’

  ‘Most amusing,’ I said.

  The night was silent save for the persistent dripping of the rain off the rooftops. The stillness seemed unnatural, almost uncanny, after the days and the weeks of continuous bombardment. For the moment there was a lull, but tomorrow it would start up again. Tomorrow a few more thousand would die, a few more bridges would be blown, a few more buildings would change hands. All the pawns in the game would be reshuffled and sent to different squares, ready for the masterminds to make the next move.

  It was time for the relief, but no one came. There was nothing we could do about it. We could remain cursing at our post, until someone, somewhere, chose to remember us. The rain ceased, and near by a bird sang and almost frightened the life out of us.

  ‘Bloody birds,’ said Gregor.

  In place of the rain came a stinking yellow mist, which crawled slowly towards us. It unrolled like a thick carpet all along the Rue Lazienkowska and added to the misery of the countless wounded who were lying huddled on the crumbling steps of the church of St Alexander. From where we stood, we could see three dead bodies, two Polish and one German. The German was lying in the gutter with both his legs blown off. One of the Poles was strung up on the barbed wire, hanging limp and shapeless like a puppet which has lost all its sawdust. The other was curled embryonically in a shell-hole full of blood. By the following evening those bodies would be mottled gree
n and yellow and swollen almost to bursting point. They would stay where they had fallen for a day or two, and then they would be trampled underfoot at the next attack, would explode like over-ripe fruit. If their mothers could only see them. The glorious death that they had died for their countries . . .

  ‘You wouldn’t think,’ said Gregor, following my train of thought, ‘you wouldn’t think there’d be that many people left in the world by now, would you? You wouldn’t think there’d be any left to kill.’

  ‘There’ll always be people left to kill,’ I said. ‘Even if they had to breed them specially.’

  ‘They already do,’ said Gregor.

  The relief arrived at last, almost an hour late. Three motor-cyclists from the 104th were in an even worse humour than Gregor and I. They were sick of the war, sick of the Party, sick of the Führer; sick of the bloody British, the bloody Yanks, the bloody Yids, the bloody Reds—

  ‘How about the Poles?’ I said.

  The bloody Poles, the bloody Wops, the bloody Frogs, the bloody—

  ‘You know what?’ said Gregor. ‘I’d put a bullet through my head, if I was you.’

  Thankfully, we made our way back to the building where the rest of the Company were snoring like a herd of swine. Gregor tripped over a body and woke it up, and the string of oaths which followed woke everyone else up, as well. Then everybody sat up and swore at us in voices full of loathing and contempt. I knew how they felt. Sleep is just about the soldier’s most valuable commodity, and precious little he gets of it. Even when he is allowed the luxury of five or six hours’ undisturbed rest, it’s on a hard floor with a gas-mask case for a pillow and a threadbare coat as a blanket.

  I slipped into position between Tiny and Porta. There was a narrow channel of space between them, and I wriggled my way in until firmly embedded. Here I was not only warm, I was also safe, and I could sleep for the short remainder of the night in comparative peace and comfort.

  We were woken at dawn by the not unwelcome sound of the field kitchen. I became suddenly and very acutely aware that the effects of the previous day’s floorcloth soup had long since worn off and that the sides of my stomach were gnashing themselves together in angry protest. Mechanically, I picked half a dozen lice off me and crushed them between finger and thumb. Tiny and Porta were already on their feet, clutching their mess tins and their forage sacks. As soon as they had swallowed their travesty of a breakfast, they would be up and away in search of more sustaining fare; and doubtless would not return empty-handed.