Claws of Steel Read online

  ‘And you don’t intend to be among them, Sarge?’

  ‘No, you ain’t shitting, soldier. Mrs Schulze’s little boy has had a noseful, right up to here.’

  ‘And how are you gonna pull it off?’ the other man asked.

  ‘Never you mind just yet. But I am. The question is, you asparagus Tarzan, can I count on you when the time comes? I need somebody like you who knows the world—’

  Before the ex-legionnaire could answer, Metzger was bellowing angrily at them. ‘Come on Schulze, what the hell do you think this is – a Jew school or something? The Reichsführer is going and we’ve got to form up. Come on – get the lead out of your shitty arses, will you?’

  The Storch’s engine roared. In front of it on the parched yellow steppe, what was left of SS Assault Battalion Wotan stood rigidly to attention beneath the burning white sun. Standing to von Dodenburg’s right, the new Colonel Geier had his hand touched to his cap in salute, the sweat pouring off his burned face.

  At the door the two important visitors paused. Reichsführer Himmler took a last look at the hard-faced young men who were staring at some far vista. Even above the roar of the plane’s engine, he could hear the rumble of the heavies as they began to pound the Soviet position, prior to the great tank attack. Tears of emotion came to his dark eyes. Swiftly he took off his clouded pince-nez that made him look like some provincial schoolmaster and rubbed them clear.

  ‘Comrades,’ he said thickly, ‘I your Reichsführer, salute you.’ He clicked his spindly legs together in the position of attention and flung out his hand in the German greeting. ‘Heil Hitler.’ Just behind von Dodenburg Schulze strained himself to launch one of his farts as an expression of his contempt for the base stallions who could send so many men to a violent death with so little thought.

  But the Golden Pheasant Bormann, standing next to the Reichsführer, beat him to it. He belched loudly, grabbed Himmler by the arm and said carelessly, ‘Oh for God’s sake, Heinrich, come on. There’s fried chicken at the Führer’s Headquarters tonight. And if we don’t get there soon, that greedy bastard Hoffmann will have eaten it all up.’3

  Notes

  1. German army slang for the Junkers 52nd transport plane (transl.)

  2. The Legion’s training company.

  3. Presumably this is a reference to ‘Professor’ Hoffmann, Hitler’s fat personal photographer, who was Bormann’s deadly enemy (transl.)

  THREE: CLASH AT KURSK

  ‘The battle you will join in forty-eight hours’ time will be the greatest tank battle in all history, and when you have fought it, those of you who survive will count it as the most significant event in your whole lives.’ – Heinrich Himmler to the officers of Wotan. July 9th, 1943.

  ONE

  As the great ball of the crimson sun slid over the horizon, the Russian Major-General braced himself against the lone tree on the hill overlooking the battlefield and focused his glasses on the Fritzes’ line.

  The debris of war came into view: broken ammo boxes, abandoned jerricans, rusting wire, shattered Russian and German tanks already beginning to sparkle in the sun’s first threatening rays. Beyond were the Fritzes’ laagers, huge boxes of silent Tigers and Panthers, their great hooded guns hanging low. But in the heavy silence that hung over the battlefield, the Russian General fancied he could hear a faint hammering from the German camp and the clatter of metal against metal. Swiftly he adjusted his glasses. As he had suspected men were hurrying everywhere, getting the tanks ready for the day’s great battle.

  ‘The Fritzes are early risers, Comrade General Rotmistrov,’ he muttered to his companion, the commander of the Fifth Guards Tank Army.

  Rotmistrov, the Red Army’s greatest tank expert, looked down at the little Ukrainian politico. ‘They are a great people, the Germans, Comrade Khruschev,’ he said, carefully concealing his dislike of the other man. ‘They work hard and they fight hard.’

  ‘True. Comrade Lenin thought them a great people. For many years he believed that they would start the world revolution. He was mistaken, wasn’t he?’ Khruschev lowered his glasses and smiled, revealing his misshapen yellow teeth. But there was no corresponding warmth in his eyes. He dug his thumb into his barrel chest. ‘But in this I, Nikita Khruschev, will not be wrong, Comrade General. Today, down there on that plain, we Russians, will fight and beat the Fritzes – and we shall beat them so soundly that they will never rise again. Today, Comrade General Rotmistrov, we shall win the war!’

  ‘Rotmistrov,’ Schwarz had asked the night before at the briefing, ‘is that a Jewish name?’

  ‘I do not know, my dear Schwarz,’ the Vulture had answered. ‘And I really don’t care if his mother were a cross-eyed whore from the Reeperbahn and his father the legendary Polack Yid from Lvov. All that concerns me – and you – is that he is a highly competent Popov tank commander who gave us a bad time at Stalingrad and who will oppose us tomorrow with fifteen hundred tanks!’

  That had made the assembled officers start and the Vulture had laughed coldly. ‘Yes, I thought that would startle you gentlemen, especially as Colonel-General Hoth can only muster eight hundred tanks and SP to oppose them. In short we will be outnumbered by two to one.’

  ‘But we are the SS, sir,’ Schwarz had protested hotly.

  For a moment the Vulture had said nothing; then he had tugged at the end of his monstrous beak of anose and rasped, ‘Yes, my dear young Schwarz, we are the SS as you rightly say. Let us hope our Popov friends on the other side of that rise realize that, eh?’ But now as the laager broke up with a yelping of locked tracks, the hiss of hydraulics and the thick throatyroar of diesels bursting into life, von Dodenburg could not help feeling a tremendous sense of power, despite the fact that they were so grievously outnumbered. As the tanks fanned out, the first rays of the sun turning their glacis plates blood-red, the sight of so many German tanks deploying for the drive which would take them this day south-east of Kursk, he was overcome by the sense of immense supremacy. Surely nothing would be able to stop their tremendous drive – even if the Popovs outnumbered them ten to one? Here was the elite of Germany’s armour, manned by the best soldiers in the world, each a convinced believer in the holy creed of National Socialism, Europe’s only hope against the evil of Communism.

  As the Wotan formed up with the Vulture’s command Tiger in the centre and started to rumble forward at ten kilometres an hour, the drivers squinting against the sun, the steppe remained empty and uncannily quiet. At von Dodenburg’s side in the turret, Schulze tensed, waiting for the first frightening flash on the horizon. But to the young officer, he and the rest of the crew seemed possessed of an animal patience. How else could they stand the terrible wait before the first brazen metal started ripping into them, tearing out tendons, muscles, nerves?

  Down below, the new driver whom Schulze had picked from the 8th Division reinforcements revved the engine suddenly. Von Dodenburg jumped nervously. For a moment he was angry with the man.

  ‘Hartmann,’ he snapped into the throat mike, but changed his mind and switched off the intercom. He’d probably only been cleaning out a dirty plug or something. Von Dodenburg looked down at his watch again. The minutes were crawling. He licked his dry lips for the umpteenth time.

  Here and there some of the younger tank commanders were already buttoning up for the action which must come. But still the horizon remained empty and the sun slanting in at an awkward angle made it difficult for the Germans to see if the Popovs had concealed positions waiting for them. Nothing stirred.

  Suddenly a flare hissed into the still morning sky. For what seemed a very long time it hung there, sending out showers of silver sparks into the light blue, before it died and descended to the steppe like a falling angel. But what happened next was in no way angelic. The horizon shook abruptly. There was a sound like a great piece of canvas being ripped apart. Red lights rippled all along the horizon to their right flank. White burning blobs flew towards them, increasing in speed at every moment.
/>   ‘Anti-tank fire,’ the Vulture screamed over the radio. ‘Deploy—’

  His words were drowned by the great clang of metal against metal. A Mark IV close to von Dodenburg’s Tiger reared up on its rear sprockets like a bucking bronco and came to a sudden halt. Solid shot was flying everywhere. Suddenly the air was full of the acrid stink of cordite, scorched metal and burned human-flesh. Von Dodenburg snapped into action.

  ‘Gunner – traverse right … Up a hundred … Popov 57 mm!’

  Hurriedly Schulze swung the great hooded 88 round on the Soviet anti-tank gun, his big fingers working the elevating mechanism almost lovingly. ‘On,’ he rapped.

  ‘Fire!’

  The air in front of the Tiger flashed a bright yellow. The turret rocked like a shaken toy. Blast flew into the turret and the spent shell case rattled to the floor. Von Dodenburg shoved in the next round. Hurriedly he peered through his periscope.

  ‘Short, Schulze,’ he yelled.

  ‘Shit!’ Schulze cursed.

  ‘Up fifty!’

  Schulze’s fingers worked the wheel crazily. The next instant he pulled the firing lever. The turret heaved again. Von Dodenburg flung himself on the periscope. His circle of vision was thick with smoke. Abruptly it cleared. Where the Popov 57 mm had been, there was a gaping glowing hole, littered with bits and pieces which had been men a moment before.

  ‘We’ve got the bastard,’ he yelled exuberently. Got him!’

  ‘Christ, sir – look out!’ Hartmann’s voice cut into their cries of triumph urgently. ‘There’s three of the Ivan bastards at eleven o’clock!’

  Schulze reacted first. As the one-armed commander of the Third Company’s Tiger blazed and skidded to a sudden halt, he fired. The first Russian anti-tank gun disappeared in a vicious red ball of flame. Immediately the remaining two, cunningly concealed in a slight hollow only three hundred metres away, swung their long barrels onto von Dodenburg’s tank. A whooshing rush. That well-remembered frightening whiplash. And the first solid shot hushed by them like a bat out of hell.

  ‘Hartmann,’ von Dodenburg shouted frantically into the throat mike. ‘Find me a bit of ground. I want to tackle the bastards hull down!’

  ‘Sir!’ The ex-legionnaire was a good soldier, there was no denying that. He charged straight into the thick white smoke pouring from Barsch’s crippled Tiger. It shielded them a little from the Russians. When it seemed they would crash into the Third Company tank, he swerved swiftly to the right. Immediately he ran up the Tiger’s forward gears, bringing her up to top speed while her whole flank was exposed to the Soviet guns. Before the Popovs could range, the Tiger had buried her nose into a slight depression and von Dodenburg was almost flung out of his metal seat with the impact.

  ‘First class, Hartmann!’ he bellowed.

  ‘Don’t bother about the medal, sir,’ the driver replied coolly, not even breathing hard. ‘I’ll just take an immediate transfer to the paymaster branch.’

  Von Dodenburg laughed. ‘Schulze engage!’ he yelled the next moment as the enfuriated Russians started pounding the earth in front of their glacis plate with solid shot.

  Blinded as he was by earth and flying pebbles, Schulze took careful aim. The long gun erupted. The Tiger reared like a live thing. A high explosive shell crashed into the steppe fifty metres in front of the first Russian gun.

  ‘Short, Schulze,’ von Dodenburg cried angrily. ‘For Chrissake man, get your finger out!’

  ‘But sir—’

  Schulze’s protest was cut short by the chatter of the driver’s machine gun below. A vicious burst of white tracer zig-zagged flatly across the scorched steppe and ripped into the fleeing crew of the first Soviet anti-tank gun. The shot had been close enough for them. They were attempting to flee. In vain. Hartmann cut down the first three with his burst, waited till the fourth man feigning death among his dying comrades, risked making a break for it and ripped his body apart neatly before he had gone five metres.

  ‘Will they never learn,’ he shouted over the crackling intercom, full now of the static of battle. ‘If he’d just have stayed where he was, he might have lived to tell the story to his grandkids.’

  ‘Grandkids,’ Schulze snorted, obviously angry with von Dodenburg for his criticism. ‘Who in Christ’s name would want grandkids – for this!’

  ‘Knock it off, Schulze,’ von Dodenburg ordered. ‘Plaster that other gun with everything you’ve got – it’s stopping the whole company!’

  To their right another Mark IV brewed up menacingly. The tank commander dropped from the cupola, his coverall a mass of angry flames. He rolled himself over to put out the flames. Screaming wildly, he rose to his feet again and ran blindly across the steppe, the flames mounting higher and higher until he crashed into one of their own tanks. The driver did not see him. The man disappeared beneath the Tiger’s great tracks. When they reappeared they were covered with a sticky red pulp.

  Schulze pulled the firing lever. High explosive burst over the heads of the second Russian crew. Shrapnel pattered onto the shield of the anti-tank gun. A tyre burst and the 57 mm sank to one side. The crew panicked. They began to run. But Hartmann was waiting for them. Again his 7.62 mm spoke. Eight hundred slugs a minute hissed through the air. The Popovs were cut down screaming.

  ‘Excellent, von Dodenburg,’ a voice rasped suddenly over the radio. ‘But get on the stick again. You’re bogging down.’ It was the Vulture.

  Hastily von Dodenburg pressed the button. ‘Yes, sir, will do. Advance on the present bearing?’

  ‘Yes,’ the Vulture’s voice was as calm as it had ever been on any training exercise in Westphalia. ‘I’ve been observing the Popov fire. It was good to begin with. It’s getting worse. They’re obviously losing their nerve. The closer we get to that ridge where their anti-tank guns are, the more chance we have. They won’t be able to depress the sodding guns enough to hit us. Are you with me?’

  ‘Yessir.’

  ‘Good – and good hunting, von Dodenburg.’

  ‘Thank you, sir.’

  As the First Company started to advance again in extended order, von Dodenburg’s mouth fell open. The smoke of war cleared for a moment. Immediately the Popov anti-tank guns on the ridge began firing again. But it wasn’t the guns; it was what lay beyond them. From one side of the horizon to the other, there was nothing but solidly massed Soviet tanks – hundreds, no thousands of them! Next to him in the yellow, smoke-filled turret, Schulze breathed in an awed voice:

  ‘Great crap on the Christmas Tree, do you see that, sir?’

  Von Dodenburg could not answer. He was afraid: more afraid than he had ever been in his life before. Slowly, inexorably, the two great masses of machines began to close in on each other.

  The Führer’s knuckles whitened – a sign of inner tension as the grey-clad ‘field mattresses’1 added more and more newly identified Soviet formations to the great table map of the Eastern front. They were not just battalions, or regiments, but whole divisions, corps, armies! The backs of the girls’ thick uniforms were stained black with sweat, as they hurried to the table from the telephones, to place yet another counter on it. Adolf Hitler turned to a pale-faced Jodl, his face aghast.

  ‘My God, Jodl, where are the Bolsheviks getting the men from?’ Without waiting for an answer, he said hoarsely, ‘Have you checked with Gehlen that these identifications are correct?’

  Major Buechs, Jodl’s highly intelligent aide, who had played such a decisive role in planning the great invasion of the West in 1940, butted in.

  ‘I think we can rely on General Gehlen, my Führer. His identifications are realistic.’

  Hitler turned on him angrily, glad to have found a victim, a chance to vent his rage.

  ‘Good, Buechs, but does Gehlen know the actual strength of these Bolshevik formations? Are we sure that when we talk of a Soviet regiment, it is not really of battalion strength?’

  ‘Naturally the Russians have reduced the strength of their formations, my Führer, just as
we have. But when Gehlen speaks of a regiment, he means a regiment.’

  Adolf Hitler’s sickly face flushed a hectic red. Jodl looking at him, told himself that the man wouldn’t last a year, in spite of all the dope that his Doctor Morrell – charlatan that he was – was pumping into him.

  ‘Thank you, Beuchs, you may dismiss,’ Hitler said stiffly.

  Buechs, his face set angrily, clicked his heels and marched out as if he were on parade. Jodl laughed to himself. He had stood the Führer’s moods for four years; it would take more than that to rile him.

  Urgently Hitler grabbed his arm. ‘Blondi – come,’ he commanded hoarsely. The big Alsatian bitch, her tongue hanging out in the heat, rose lazily from the floor and followed them outside. The leaden oppressive heat struck them in the face like a clammy fist. In the firs the SS bodyguard shook themselves awake and gripped their weapons more firmly in their sweaty fists. As the two men began to stroll through the white Ukrainian dust, their beads bent deep in conversation, they followed them like evil black shadows.

  ‘Jodl, I’ve never liked the Citadel idea. You and your comrades of the Greater German General Staff talked me into it. Now look what kind of a mess you’ve got me into.’

  ‘Yes, my Führer,’ Jodl said dutifully. ‘Victory has many fathers,’ he told himself cynically, ‘defeat, however—’ He left the thought unfinished; the Führer was speaking again.

  ‘But where in heaven’s name, have the Bolsheviks got such strength from? We knew they outnumbered us. But fifteen hundred tanks and ever new vehicles pouring onto the battlefield! I ask you, it is hardly believable. Jodl, what do you say?’