Claws of Steel Read online

  ‘Heaven, arse and twine, man,’ von Dodenburg exploded. ‘What are you talking about? Where are we off to?’

  ‘To the front, sir! We march in twelve hours’ time.’

  The growing knowledge that the Battalion would be going to the front again soon finally galvanised Metzger into action. On that same morning, he slipped out of the Battalion Office and instead of going for his ‘second breakfast’ of a beer and a gin, he hurried to County Leader Schmeer’s headquarters.

  Schmeer’s secretary, a hard-faced bitch who had plenty of wood stacked in front of her door, as he couldn’t help noticing, shook her head when he asked to see her boss.

  ‘The County Leader is a very busy man. One can’t just see him like that.’

  ‘I can,’ Metzger snapped, made bold by his knowledge and his sense of urgency. ‘Tell him it’s damned important.’

  She sniffed, but did as he asked, swishing out with an arse on her like a ten dollar horse. She seemed to be away a long time, leaving him with a baggy-eyed bust of the Iron Chancellor; a poster of the Führer sitting on a white horse, dressed in medieval armour and carrying a swastika banner; and a picture of a little boy urinating into a pool with beneath the old caption: ‘Don’t drink water – it’s bad for you!’

  Finally the secretary with the big arse returned.

  ‘The County Leader will give you five minutes now,’ she said.

  ‘And I’ll give him fifty years, if he’s not shitty well careful,’ Metzger grunted as he elbowed his way past her.

  Inside the inner office, he snapped to attention and bellowed, ‘Heil Hitler, County Leader!’

  ‘Heil Hitler,’ Schmeer said wearily, barely raising his hand. ‘Not so loud, Metzger, if you please. I was on the piss last night. Too much beer – and the other.’

  Metzger’s grim look did not relax. ‘I’m not surprised, County Leader. You like your little parties, don’t you. Up the cups – cheers New Year, the night’s going to be cold!’

  Schmeer looked up at Metzger’s big, angry face in bewilderment.

  ‘What the hell’s the matter with you, Metzger. Haven’t you got all your cups in your cupboard or something?’

  ‘Oh, yes, Mr County Leader. I’m all right in the head. It’s your head you should worry about – you and your girlfriends named Sarah.’

  ‘Sarah who?’

  ‘Don’t try to take me on your arm,’ Metzger snapped angrily. ‘I saw you with that Yiddish whore the other night.’

  ‘Oh that,’ Schmeer said easily.

  ‘Yes, that! What do you think the Gestapo would say if they knew that a senior member of the Party was having sexual intercourse with a Jewess!’

  ‘If you only knew what the Gestapo did in this town, Metzger,’ Schmeer sneered, completely unmoved.

  Metzger ignored the comment. ‘While men like me are at the front,’ he threw a contemptuous glance at Schmeer’s War Service Cross Second Class, ‘you base stallions interfere with our women and not only that you commit racial impurity with Jewesses.’

  A light dawned in Schmeer’s reddened eyes. ‘So that’s it, Metzger. You think me and your Lore,’ he didn’t complete the sentence, but his thumb thrust obscenely between his two middle fingers made his meaning quite clear.

  ‘Yes, I sodding well do and I intend to stop it.’

  Schmeer tugged the end of his long nose. ‘Not that I wouldn’t have minded, Metzger. Your Lore’s got a fine pair of lungs on her. All that meat and no potatoes,’ he chuckled. ‘That’s what we say in East Westphalia.’ He sighed. ‘But I’m afraid a better man than me was there first, Metzger.’

  ‘What?’ Metzger exploded. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘What I say. Someone else was getting a piece of it before I got to know your Lore.’

  ‘Who?’ roared Metzger.

  ‘That little fellow in your house. Haven’t you ever noticed the way his shoulders are bent. That’s always a sign a man’s got plenty of meat in his breeches.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Who?’ echoed Schmeer, his fat face one huge malicious grin. ‘Can’t you see what’s going on right under your big nose?’

  ‘Who?’ Metzger yelled, his face crimson, the veins standing out at his temples.

  ‘That little spaghetti-eater, of course.’

  ‘Mario?’

  ‘That’s right, that’s him.’

  The bedsprings were going like overheated pistons as he flung open the door and started pelting up the stairs two at a time; and he didn’t need to be told that Lore was not changing the bed sheets.

  ‘Great crap on the Christmas Tree,’ he roared to no one in particular. ‘Thank God, I’ve not got my duty pistol with me. ‘I’ll shoot both the fornicating bastards!’

  He flung open the door of his flat. He could see right through the place into the bedroom and what he saw was worse than he could ever have imagined.

  Lore was on her back, her plump legs stuck in the air, the sweat pouring off her naked flesh, her mouth like that of a dying fish gasping for air, while the undersized muscular, dark-skinned spaghetti eater jumped up and down on top of her soft white body, as if he were trying to pump her full of gas with the thing that he had stuck into her dark cavity. And the way Lore’s eye were rolling crazily under her disarranged hair there was plenty of it too.

  ‘You bitch!’ he exploded. ‘You shitty fornicating bitch!’

  Mario started. He swung a look behind him and his dark face went a shade of green. ‘Lore,’ he cried in alarm and raised his upper body from her. ‘It’s him – your man!’

  ‘Shut up,’ she gasped in ecstasy and pulled him down on her again. ‘It’s lovely, my little cheetah. More!’

  ‘More – I’ll give you fucking well more!’ Metzger yelled, beside himself with rage, as she clung to Mario, her legs wrapped round his back while he writhed desperately to free himself.

  With a heave he pulled himself off her plump white body. Slowly she opened her eyes and stared up stupidly at her husband’s crimson enraged face.

  ‘You,’ she breathed.

  ‘Who did you shitting well expect – bloody Father Christmas!’

  He doubled up his big fist and prepared to smash it in her face. But he never completed the action. From down below came the honking of a car horn and an urgent impatient official voice shouted up the stairs.

  ‘Sergeant Metzger – alert, alert! Report to the barracks at once! We march – we march.’

  Notes

  1. A catch-phrase used in wartime Germany to mock Nazi thinking on the role of women in the Third Reich (transl.)

  TWO: OPERATION CITADEL

  ‘It’s been an excellent day. Obviously we caught the Popovs with their knickers down.’

  Major Geier to Capt. von Dodenburg,

  July 5th, 1943.

  ONE

  ‘What a sodding awful time of day to go and get yourself killed,’ Schulze grumbled, staring at the silent endless steppe in front of them. ‘Midday in the month of July. At least it’s cool in a dawn attack.’

  Von Dodenburg crouched next to him in the parched yellow Russian grass, pushed back his helmet, wiped the sweat off his brow and said, ‘My dear thick Schulze. The Popovs are accustomed to us attacking at dawn. This time we’re doing it at late afternoon, because we want to catch them with their Soviet knickers down.’

  ‘I’ve got to see that first, sir,’ Schulze persisted.

  ‘You will – never fear.’

  Von Dodenburg cast a glance behind into the hollow to check if his company was still alert in spite of the heavy oppressive summer. They were, despite the Russian sun beating remorselessly down on the Tigers, quivering in blue burning waves over the metal. But the faint wind had dropped now and the flies and sand fleas were at work again. The men of Wotan scratched their bodies with sullen angry persistence.

  Von Dodenburg prevented himself from beginning to scratch his own infested body by an effort of will and glanced yet once again at his big issue watch. But the Vulture
beat him to it.

  ‘Thirteen fifty,’ he rasped and rose to his feet, riding crop – his only weapon – held firmly in his little hand. Von Dodenburg joined him. If the Popovs spotted them, they would assume that the two Germans were on some sort of reconnaissance mission, he told himself. They would not suspect that the best part of two elite divisions were massed by the long line of ridges.

  But there was no sign of the Russians in their line of fortified hedgehogs1 some eight hundred metres away.

  ‘Sleeping off their midday meal,’ von Dodenburg observed, ‘Like any self-respecting member of the great working masses should.’

  ‘Recovering more likely from that cheap vodka they’re always drinking, von Dodenburg.’

  ‘All the same, it looks good sir,’ von Dodenburg said, covering the immense plain with his binoculars and not seeing a sign of movement save for a thin column of blue smoke in the far distance.

  ‘I think we’ve caught them this time on the hop.’

  ‘Yes, I agree. I have a feeling that we’re going to pull it off without too much trouble. Even that sergeant who runs the division’ – he was referring to Dietrich as von Dodenburg knew – ‘can’t make a balls up of this one.’

  ‘Let us pray you’re right, sir,’ von Dodenburg said with sudden fervour. ‘The whole future of the Reich depends on success at Kursk.’

  The Vulture sniffed and tugged at the end of his monstrous nose which had been burned a salmon pink by the hot Russian sun.

  ‘Yes, and my chances of getting a regiment too, it must be remembered, my dear von Dodenburg.’

  The younger officer opened his mouth to protest at such cynicism when it was obvious that Operation Citadel would be the decisive campaign of the whole long bloody Russian war, but the Vulture did not give him the opportunity to do so. He tugged his officer’s whistle from his jacket and blew a shrill blast on it.

  The men waiting below reacted immediately, as if they were only too eager to get started. While von Dodenburg doubled back to his company, Schulze at his heels, the panzer grenadiers started to slide into their combat packs, slinging their machine pistols over their chests. NCOs began to hand out extra stick grenades, which were seized eagerly as if they were ice cream cones. Behind them the tankers clambered up the sides of the steel monsters and swung themselves easily into the hatches. Here and there the more nervous urinated for the umpteenth time against the Tigers, while the drivers made their usual comment: ‘What do you think this is – a sodding St Pauli piss-corner or something?’

  Schulze stuck a last piece of the special combat-issue chocolate into his big mouth and chewing mightily, he strolled towards von Dodenburg’s command tank, as if they were about to set off on some routine mission and not on an attack against the greatest mass fortification system in history.

  ‘First Company, ready – sir!’ von Dodenburg yelled above the noise, raising his hand high into the air.

  Vulture touched his riding crop to his helmet in acknowledgement.

  ‘Second Company ready – sir!’ Schwarz yelled.

  And so it went on. The Vulture took one last look at their tough confident young faces, as if he were seeing them for the very first time.

  ‘Start up!’ he yelled.

  The drivers pressed their starter buttons as one. Everywhere there were thick, asthmatic coughs. Thin smoke began to stream out of the Tigers’ exhausts. With a roar the first engine burst into life. And the next. Suddenly the still summer afternoon was hideous with the noise. Hastily the panzer grenadiers clambered onto the tanks like a crowd of schoolkids boarding an excursion bus scared of being left behind.

  On the stroke of two there was an earth shaking roar behind them which drowned the noise of the tanks into in-significance. With a hoarse exultant scream, the whole weight of the SS Panzer Corps artillery sped over their heads to tear into the Soviet first line, bursting with a mighty anti-phonal crash. As they rumbled to the start-line just below the brow of the rise, the thunder of the guns, continued. Flight after flight of shells streamed over their heads in a vicious anger. Their first red-hot sighing became a scream – a monstrous baleful scream. The scream rose in fury, elemental yet controlled. Before them the first Soviet line disappeared in smoke, the clouds rising straight into the still air.

  The heavy artillery moved on to the second line. Now the six-barrelled rocket-mortars took over. From their positions two hundred metres behind the Wotan Battalion, the gunners pressed the buttons that activated the electric firing mechanism. There was the sound of someone hitting the bass notes on a piano. It was followed by a grating noise – like a diamond being run across glass. Suddenly the air above them was full of clusters of heavy canopies. With tremendous crashes they landed among the hedgehogs. This was it. The mortar men would keep any surviving Soviet in his hole until the tanks with their loads of crouching panzer grenadiers were among the hedgehogs, ready to mop up.

  ‘Roll ’em!’ the Vulture’s voice rasped metallicly over the radio.

  Automatically von Dodenburg pressed both his radio and intercom buttons.

  ‘Forward – first company,’ he commanded. ‘Gunners prepare to fire smoke once the barrage lifts!’

  As he pulled the turret flap and pulled the periscope towards him, he could hear the other company commanders rapping out the same orders.

  Schulze, who had taken over from the driver, for the first attack, let out his clutch. The Tiger lumbered forward. The next instant it had breasted the rise, showering the tanks behind it with rubble and dust.

  Von Dodenburg sucked in his breath and felt as if something had suddenly scorched his tonsils. The Popov first line was on fire. Angry blue flames licked up everywhere among the wall of dust. But still the deadly rockets kept striking the hedgehogs. Surely, he told himself, no one could live in that hell!

  But they could. A zinc-like light bared itself to his right front. A wild tearing struck the air. Like the sound of a huge piece of canvas being ripped apart, the first Soviet shell zipped by his Tiger. Suddenly his right ear seemed to go deaf. Angrily he banged his right earphone with the flat of his hand.

  ‘Get ready for smoke, gunner,’ he ordered the gunner hunched into his scope, his own voice sounding strangely distorted. ‘The Ivans are reacting.’

  ‘Sir!’ the gunner snapped, his free hand cranking the turret with its long hooded gun from left to right, ready to fire in an instant, if a hostile appeared.

  Suddenly von Dodenburg spotted the first T-34, emerging from the smoke.

  ‘Popovs!’ he yelled over the radio, warning the rest of the company. ‘Gunner – cannon traverse right – two o’clock … on!’

  Hastily the gunner swung the 88 round.

  ‘On!’ Von Dodenburg took a quick look through the periscope. The T-34 was neatly outlined against the cross-wires of the sight. ‘Fire!’ he yelled.

  The gunner squeezed the firing bar. Automatically von Dodenburg opened his mouth against the blast. The great tank shuddered and reared back on its rear sprockets. Acrid yellow smoke filled the turret. The blast whipped against von Dodenburg’s face and next instant the breech opened and the smoking yellow cartridge case came clattering onto the deck. With his left hand he loaded a fresh round and with his right pressed the smoke-extractor.

  ‘Fire again – brew the bastard up!’ he yelled, as the smoke cleared to reveal the T-34 had stopped.

  Slowly, terribly slowly, the Popov gunner was trying to swing his 76 mm round, as if he were already slumped dying over the breech. Von Dodenburg’s gunner did not give him a chance. The 88 spoke again. The T-34 reared up like a live thing. Its right track flapped out behind it. Suddenly the turret lurched forward and its gun sunk, as if it were an animal whose head had been severed.

  ‘Stop firing!’ von Dodenburg yelled, eager not to waste any more precious ammunition on the T-34.

  But Schwarz’s voice screamed over the radio to his own gunner. ‘Hit him – hit him again – I want to see the Soviet bastard burn!’

>   To von Dodenburg’s right there was the dry flat bark of an 88. The shell struck the crippled T-34 squarely in its fuel tank. It jetted orange flame, surrounded by thick black oily smoke. Still no crew appeared.

  But Schwarz was not to be cheated of his prey. ‘Keep on that machine gun,’ von Dodenburg heard him command against the crackling background of the static.

  A small dark figure appeared in the cupola. For a moment he hesitated, the blue flames licking up about him everywhere. Then he made up his mind. He toppled into the dusty grass and rolling frantically, tried to extinguish the flames. Schwarz did not give him a chance.

  ‘Gunner,’ he ordered eagerly. ‘Spandau! Ivan near tank – fire!’

  Schwarz’s gunner must have hesitated, for von Dodenburg heard the officer cry crazily: ‘I said fire, you shitty green-beak you!’ The next instant a flat angry burst of tracer zipped across the burning steppe.

  The gunner could not miss at that range. The Ivan’s spine curved frighteningly, his black-charred hands clawed the air, and he fell back screaming. The gunner’s next burst caught the driver fighting his way out of the escape hatch. It took his head off. On the turret, a third crew member flung up his hands in fearful surrender. The plea did not help him. At one hundred metres range, the gunner poured a burst into his defenceless body. It disappeared in a bloody broken welter, as if someone had just thrust it into a mincing machine.

  At the driving controls the big Hamburger Schulze gulped and said thickly, ‘Well, I’ll crap in my hat! We’re really getting off to a good start, ain’t we, sir?’

  Von Dodenburg did not reply, but as they rattled by the burning T-34 and its slaughtered young crew, he looked away.

  As soon as the rocket barrage ended, the Russians reacted quickly. Salvo after salvo – ragged though they were, as if the Russian gunners had been caught off guard – rained down on the advancing battalion. Almost immediately, the terrifying ‘Stalin Organs’2 joined in. But their aim was wild and they concentrated on plastering the empty positions which the Wotan had just left.