“I beg your pardon,” French Cancan said to us. “I hope you’ll forgive me for encumbering you with my voluminous presence. You must see that digging a foxhole big enough to take me would be an awful lot of work.”
He began to talk, enlarging on anything that came into his head. From time to time, an explosion made him fall silent, blinking his little pig eyes, but as soon as the danger was past he would start talking again, more voluble than ever.
“You can set your mind at ease about the hole we’ll dig for you,” said the veteran without a smile. “A few stones on your beer sack, and that’ll be it.”
“I don’t drink much beer,” said French Cancan. But Hals interrupted him.
“Things must be pretty rough outside,” he said. “Look — there are two of our tanks coming back.”
“The hell they’re ours,” said the veteran. “Those are T-34s, and our anti-tank boys had better notice them.”
We stared at the two monsters roaring toward us.
“God help us,” said Hals. “We’ll never be able to reach them with these pop guns.” He began to fire the heavy machine gun, and a moment later, the tanks were surrounded by flying clods. We also saw luminous impacts on their turrets, which otherwise seemed to be undamaged. Their long tubes, waving and balancing like elephants’ trunks, kept moving forward. An explosion sent us down to the floor, and a Russian shell screamed over us, before exploding somewhere beyond the hamlet. The tanks had just slowed down, and the second one was already shifting into reverse. Our geschnauz was still firing at the two monsters, which were now lurching slowly backward. A second Russian shell hit the left-hand wall of our building, and made the whole cellar shake.
There were several other explosions, but we no longer dared look out. Then an exultant shout from outside gave us a moment of courage, and we saw that the first tank, which had been knocked askew by one of our anti-tank guns, was drawing back, zigzagging on a single tread. It bumped the other tank, which wobbled from the impact, and turned, offering its flank to our geschnauz. A few minutes later, enveloped in a thick cloud of smoke, it joined the other tank, which had completed a half turn, and withdrew. One of them was spouting a thick stream of black smoke, and would certainly not get very far. We could hear all our men cheering.
“You see that, boys!” exclaimed the veteran. “That’s how to make Ivan run!”
We all laughed nervously, except the thin, dark boy. “Why are you looking so grim?” Hals asked him. “I’m sick,” the other replied.
“You mean scared,” the Sudeten said. “But that’s something we’ve all got.”
“Sure I’m scared. But I’m sick too. Every time I have to crap, blood pours out of my ass.”
“You ought to go to the hospital,” said the veteran.
“I’ve tried, but the major doesn’t believe me. What I’ve got he can’t see.”
“Yes. I guess a fellow’s better off without an arm, or with a big hole somewhere. That’s more spectacular.”
“Try and sleep,” the veteran said. “For the moment, we can do without you.”
A mess truck had arrived at the hamlet, and anyone who had the nerve to go out could get his mess tin filled. The simple fact that we were being supplied restored some of our confidence. We felt that we hadn’t lost all contact with the outside world. However, our panic returned at nightfall.
The fighting flared up again with renewed violence, and in short order the rest of the German troops were retreating from the Russians, who arrived before the last of the landser were able to get through. We could see the oncoming muzhiks everywhere, outlined against the shattered orchards. They were running toward us shouting, but the noise of our guns covered their voices. A horrible massacre had begun.
In the cellar, filled with smoke from our two spandaus, the air was almost un-breathable. The noise of the anti-tank gun, which must have been red-hot, had enlarged and multiplied the cracks in the ceiling, whose plaster fell onto our helmets like rain.
“Let’s take turns firing,” the veteran shouted to Hals. “Otherwise, the guns will melt.”
Lindberg, whose face had turned the color of his tunic, stuffed some dirt into his ears so that he wouldn’t hear any more. A fifth belt of cartridges was running through my torn hands into the red-hot machine, which the veteran kept on firing.
One of the two machine guns in front of us had been knocked out by a grenade. The other was still firing, sweeping across the ranks of Soviet troops, who were piling up in a horrible bottleneck. In spite of their desperate efforts to break through, waves of howling men were dying under our mortar and machine-gun fire. We had no idea what was happening beyond our range of vision. Directly in front of us, however, the enemy was taking a terrible beating.
Two or three fragments of shrapnel had come through the holes in the wall, but miraculously no one had been hit.
Then we heard a heavy rumbling sound, and two or three thousand soldiers ducked their heads a little lower. In front of us, among the living and the dead, hundreds of flares lit the darkness. For a moment, we were terrified. Then someone shouted: “It’s our artillery!”
“Thank God,” said the veteran. “I’d given up on them. O.K., boys, we’ll be able to stick it out — this means the Popovs can’t get through.”
The Wehrmacht artillery had finally regrouped, and was pouring down its deadly rain onto the enemy. In the darkness of our smoke filled hole, our faces lit up with relief.
“That’s more like it,” shouted Cancan. “Look at the pounding those Russkis are taking! That’s how it ought to be. Bravo!”
In front of us, we could see the earth flying into the air. Lindberg, who seemed almost mad with excitement, was yelling “Sieg Heil!” at the top of his lungs. Evidently the Russians were no better at standing up to our guns than we had been to their waves of assault the day before.
The German artillery lengthened its range, and pursued the terrified Russians into the trees beyond the orchards. The “Ourrah, pobieda!” of the Russians had been replaced by the death rattle of thousands of dying men, which filled the air with a horrible sound. We thought the hamlet had been saved.
“Let’s have a drink,” the veteran said. “We really ought to celebrate. I haven’t seen such slaughter the whole time I’ve been in Russia. We should be able to breathe a little easier now. You,” he said to Lindberg, pulling him from his corner. “Go find us something, instead of sitting there sniveling.”
It was easy to see that Lindberg had gone mad. He was alternately laughing and crying uncontrollably.
“Get going,” said Hals, who was fed up with him. “Run and find us something to drink.” He gave him a kick in the seat of his pants. Lindberg went off, holding his head in his hands. “Where will I find anything?” he asked.
“That’s your worry. At the radio truck — those fellows usually have something hidden — or anywhere else. Just don’t come back with empty hands.”
Outside, other soldiers were celebrating the rout of so many Popovs. In our cellar, the level of gaiety rose too. Cancan began to dance again, and we imitated him.
“For a while there I thought we were finished. Thank God the artillery stood by us.”
“Thank God’ is right!” laughed the grenadier who’d been with us for three days.
Tears of joy and relief were streaming from our reddened eyes and running down our blackened faces. The veteran was singing and calling for drink, and we trusted him. He had saved us that morning, and if he was rejoicing, so could we. He knew how the Russians operated, and had already done a lot of fighting. He told us we would have a lull — but he was wrong.