Casca 42: Barbarossa Page 4

  He had survived, of course, and had come round in the church with the two icons in his pocket. He smiled briefly and wondered what had become of the foppish Etienne Begos, the one man who had stayed with him to the bitter end, the one whom nobody would have thought could have when the others had either died or deserted. He hoped the young man had returned to France and gone on to have a fruitful life.

  Langer would continue on, as ever. Nothing could kill him, he just returned agonizingly to life slowly, cursing the fact he felt pain just like anyone else. He hoped to hell the Wehrmacht would achieve whatever strategic aim they had in mind for this campaign before winter set in. Codenamed Barbarossa, the might of Hitler’s fascism had been unleashed on Stalin’s communism. There would be no quarter, no mercy. Neither side was prepared to tolerate the other, and it had always been a matter of time before one turned on the other.

  Although they were better trained and equipped, Langer had the nagging feeling the superior numbers of Russians would tell, just as it had in Napoleon’s time. That, and the winter. Still, from the borders of East Prussia in the north to the Black Sea in the south, the combined forces of Germany, Romania, Slovakia and maybe even Hungary were on the march.

  The 6th Panzer regiment was part of Model’s 3rd Panzer Division, which in turn was a component of von Schweppenburg’s 24th Panzer Corps. This corps was part of Guderian’s 2nd Panzer Group, one of two in Army Group Centre under von Runstedt. All those names and numbers….. it made the head spin.

  Germany had three army groups. Each had a specific role. The centre had most of the tanks and were tasked to punch through two Russian armies, isolate Brest and free Belorussia from the curse of communism. Moscow was a distant vague target, but nobody had yet said it out loud. Nobody was entirely sure how far they could go. Hitler and his cronies had been confident that the Russians would collapse, but most of the generals and the rank-and-file thought differently.

  He finished his smoke and stubbed it out on the wheel of his Mark IV. In all his time he’d never been part of such a massive confrontation. To be sure, some of the forces he’d been in had been big, like the Western Front in the last big war, but that was broken down into separate commands. This was one huge attack on an insanely immense front. He’d do his bit, if only because he hated communism. He wasn’t keen on Hitler or his brand of authoritarianism either, but he saw that as the only viable opposition to communism.

  He got up and wandered back round to the front. Teacher was wiping his hands in an oily rag. “All in order, Teacher?”

  “No problems, Carl,” the tall gunner said, reaching for his square-bowed pipe. “Just making sure the mechanism’s in good order. Felix is just finishing the engine check. Some of the panzers aren’t holding up that well, did you notice?”

  “Aye I did. We lost as many to breakdowns as to anti-tank guns. Looks like they still haven’t sorted out the Maybach breakdown problems we had last year. Russia’s a damn’ sight bigger than France, so we’re going to have to go much further. Hope our little gem here,” he slapped the metal hull, “is up to the job.”

  “And her crew,” Teacher’s mouth twitched briefly.

  “Oh, I think they’ll be all right,” Langer said, eyeing the returning Gus and Steffan, each carrying a bulging sack. Steffan was sweating and struggling, and he gratefully dumped his load by the tracks of the tank, while Gus nonchalantly carried his and placed it on the ground, whistling tunelessly.

  “Tell me, Gus,” Langer said, gently kicking the nearest sack, “what is it you and Stefan here have managed to find, and will it be sufficient to have us all arrested and shot?”

  Gus yawned and stretched, cracking his shoulder joints. “Ahhh, Carl, my cautious one! You worry far too much. The weight of responsibility carries itself uneasily across your shoulders. Perhaps a demotion to private would ease your distress?”

  “Alright Gus, enough of the buffoonery, what is it you’ve got in here?”

  Gus smiled and delved in the open neck of the sack. He pulled forth a haunch of pig and waved it round proudly. Steffan ducked hastily, alarm on his face. “See, just a little snack I picked up on my way back here from a sightseeing trip to the canteen.”

  “Steffan, what did this hulking beast force you to carry back?” Langer ignored Gus.

  The loader went red, looked at Gus, then almost apologetically slid the sack down until a box was revealed. Langer placed his foot on it and peered at the stencilled lettering on the wooden packaging. “’Bordeaux, France, 1939.’ Wine, is it? I suspect this is for von Schweppenberg’s dining table. This is sufficient for us all to be arrested, you maniacs.”

  “Ah, how was I to know?” Gus shrugged. “It was standing there by itself, unloved and unclaimed, so I just – ah – picked it up in passing.”

  “Can’t you read?”

  “It’s in French,” Gus protested.

  “It’s clear enough to me what it is – France is not that different from Frankreich and the year is plain enough. What else did you think it was if not wine?”

  Gus scratched his head and turned to Steffan. “I’m just a plain dumb driver lost in a foreign country I have no idea as to where it is. Do you know, Steffan?”

  “Uh, ah….”

  “Oh, for God’s sake get them in the tank and out of sight! And what else have you got in your sack, Gus? One haunch of pork isn’t enough for your appetite!”

  “Well, now you mention it,” Gus looked at the sack in wonder, “I do believe I accidentally brushed one or two tables on my way out. Let’s see if anything happened to drop into it…. Hmmm….” He fished in the sack and looked surprised as his hand closed round an object. “Well, Herr Feldwebel, you must be a fortune teller! I do believe you’re right! There is something else in here……” he pulled out a small flat looking box. “Oh, truffles. Well would you believe it? And what’s this? Cigars?”

  Langer put his hand over his forehead and closed his eyes. “Teacher, help Steffan and Gus get them into the panzer. If you let anyone else see what we’ve got, tomorrow we might be shot at by our own side, let alone the Soviets! You’re a madman, completely, and you’re leading young Steffan astray. This has got to stop before a headhunter comes by and hauls you off to a court martial – and me, too!”

  The crew hastily popped everything back into the sacks and, mostly with Gus’s help, got the two sacks inside the tank before anyone else came by. Felix was agog, and Langer waved to him to carry on as if nothing had happened. “Tell the others I’ve gone off for a while. I’ll be back later.” He made his way across from their tank to where the others were parked, arranged in a loose circle, a laager. He smiled briefly at the name that had popped unbidden into his mind. So many times it had been used in the past as an effective defensive arrangement, most notably as far as he was concerned when he was part of the Great Trek in southern Africa about a hundred years before.

  He made his way to the canteen, following the direction Gus and Steffan had appeared from. His nose led him through the ranks of parked tanks and trucks until he reached the mobile canteen in the middle of the regiment. A couple of cooks were arguing and a few soldiers were standing close by. With a feeling of dread, Langer sauntered over.

  One cook was blaming the other for losing a crate of Bordeaux wine; it had been left on an outside table while the dinner for that evening had been sorted out, and by the time the table had been set and the wine called for, it had vanished. The major in the middle of the small group of soldiers was scowling. “This is not going to be appreciated by Herr von Schweppenberg, you know,” he said ominously. “He has been looking forward to his wine all day. What shall I tell him?”

  “I don’t know, Herr Major,” the head cook said miserably. “Perhaps you can say the locals stole it?”

  “What – and waste our time searching every miserable peasant’s hovel in each nearby village for something that won’t be there? Be more imaginative, Herr Denzler. The general isn’t going to be best pleased and I need som
e reasonable explanation!”

  Langer cleared his throat from behind the group of men. They turned, irritably. “Yes, Feldwebel?” the major asked after quickly identifying his rank by his shoulder epaulettes.

  “Excuse me, Herr Major, but perhaps the general might accept the loss through enemy action; a small squad of Russians who were left behind by the retreating army came across the vehicle in question, ransacked it, and made off before help arrived?”

  The major frowned, thought on it, then turned to the head cook. “Well, Herr Denzler? Is that acceptable?”

  Denzler shook his head. “We would have to ‘lose’ the supply of beef too, in that case. They were in the same vehicle.”

  Langer shrugged. “I’m sure the beef can vanish in that case in order to avoid the wrath of Herr General von Schweppenberg. Herr Major here could use the beef for favours, perhaps? More fuel for the regiment? Just a suggestion, of course, sir.”

  The major frowned, scowled, then grunted. His neck was on the line. “And you, Herr Feldwebel? Would you remain silent?”

  Langer nodded. “For just a small portion of beef, yes sir.”

  “Insubordinate wretch,” the major snapped, but there was relief in his face. “Give him a piece, Denzler. Keep some yourself. I shall take the rest. None of us shall speak a word of this to anyone, or I shall personally arrange for an unpleasant visit by a higher authority. Understand?”

  Langer clicked his heels together. It was a suitable outcome – and he’d stopped any possible investigation that might have incriminated Gus and Steffan. Bribery was an old way of life, and when lives were on the line it was amazing just how inventive and co-operative people became.

  Taking a lump of beef and putting it under his jacket, he sauntered back towards his tank, whistling. As he neared his tank, a crowd could be seen outside one of the hastily erected field toilets. It was shaking and a lot of noise was coming from within. It was a square box with one door, the whole placed up on what looked like a septic tank. There were five arranged in a neat row. No doubt there were other such conveniences scattered throughout the camp.

  “What’s going on?” he asked another feldwebel, Andreas Schrader, who was standing close by, a look of horror on his face.

  Schrader, a blonde curly-haired man with a smooth face, turned to face Langer. He was a veteran of the Polish and French campaigns. “Your driver, Beidemann, is in there.”

  The noises came again, a banging and rustling sound, added to every few seconds by grunting and swearing. “I see,” Langer said, non-committedly. “What is he doing?”

  “Search me, but it sounds like two animals fighting,” Schrader said. “The rest of us are too concerned about our safety to use any of the others lest he tips his over.”

  Langer decided to move on. Whatever resulted in Gus’s convenience break, the result would be probably a no-go area for a few hundred meters. The safety of his panzer was a much more welcome thought. Teacher, Felix and Steffan welcomed the beef and Felix switched the engine on again and put a flat piece of sheet metal on the cover. “We’ll cook it on this,” he said, smiling. “It should be ready in a short while.”

  “Cut five portions, one bigger than the rest,” Langer said. “Gus will need refilling once he’s emptied his bowels.”

  “Don’t I know it?” Felix grunted, and fished out his combat knife. “Best let me know how you want your beef done, rare, medium or well done.”

  Langer nodded and waved the other two to let the mechanic know. He took Steffan aside. “Look, Steffan, being taken under Gus’s wing is one thing, but I don’t want you getting mixed up in any silly business again stealing stuff from the general’s personal supply. You were lucky this time round; next time you might end up in front of a firing squad. Got it?”

  Steffan nodded vigorously. “Yes, Carl, I won’t do it again. I was dead scared when we were taking it all, anyway!”

  “I’ll speak to Gus, too. No more hare-brained schemes. Gus might get away with it, but you’re not that lucky.”

  That having been done, Langer puffed out his cheeks. Facing the Russians was bad enough, he didn’t want to have to worry whether his crew would be arrested or not. Still, the beef and wine would be a decent way of spending the evening. He just hoped for a less stressful day on the morrow. He just felt that it wouldn’t happen.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  The next few days were hard – they punched through the Soviet tank army and then had to fight off what seemed almost every day a new unit that had been formed up just the day before. The days remained hot and dry and the clouds of dust raised by the panzers filled the air, clogging pores and covering everyone in a film of the light colored earth. Langer took to wearing a face mask, improvised from a torn shirt which he tied behind his neck and covered his nose and mouth. He had goggles to wear but they weren’t that good – visibility was still awful. Better that, though, than having his eyes full of grit and constantly watering. The other commanders did similar things – the Wehrmacht hadn’t counted on the hot, arid conditions, and Langer worried they also had no planning for the winter when it would come, and he, more than anyone else, knew what that would bring. It gnawed away at his mind.

  For the moment, though, things were going well. Or, rather, as well as the fuel supply allowed. All too often they had to stop in order for the fuel trucks to catch up. Guderian, their commander, fretted at the lack of progress and constantly urged his regimental commanders to keep on going. ‘Fast Heinz’ was trying to live up to his nickname.

  The mechanics were overworked. At one stop, close to Bobriusk, the senior mechanic gratefully accepted a drink from Langer. He was tired, coated in dust and a half-smoked cigarette was stuck behind one ear beneath his crushed looking cap. “What a fuck up!” he said wearily. “The regiment starts off with 215 panzers, and now we’re down to 170, mostly because they’re broken down! My team just cannot keep up with the breakages. You’d think someone had a plan to replace the losses with better models, but no! What am I supposed to do? Find horses or oxen and put them in harnesses to drag the damned panzers after them through this shithole of a country? Fuck!”

  Langer agreed with him. “This country has defeated plenty of invaders before, and no doubt will do its utmost to defeat us. It’s not so much the people here, but the conditions and weather. Mark my words, Haller, come the autumn we’ll be up to our necks in mud, and then in winter, well you won’t ever moan about the dust ever again. If you survive.”

  “Christ you’re a cheerful bastard, aren’t you? At the moment I’d willingly swap this bastard heat for some cooling rain. What about you? You look like a ghost, all coated in this blasted shit!”

  Langer grunted. He slapped the mechanic on the shoulder and told him he knew he was doing a good job and wandered off to find his crew. The last week had been hard on them, battling through the Soviet 22nd tank division and then enduring the poor road conditions. Even their own army hadn’t expected such instant and rapid success. Everyone from the generals downwards had been worried about the sheer size of the Russian army, despite what the Nazis had said dismissively about them. It looked as if they had caught them with their pants down.

  The only worrying feature were the new tanks, the KV-1s and especially the T34s. Up to now they’d got the better of them only because the crews had looked unused to them and had driven them into ditches or streams, or hadn’t been able to work the guns or drive properly. From the descriptions the captured commanders had voiced to him during the time they’d been under the guard of the panzer crews before being handed over to the security people, it had been the fault of the whoresons driving their tanks or the peasants on the guns. Once Mother Russia got trained crews, the fascists had best look out.

  Langer had the nagging feeling they were right.

  Gus was stretched out on the engine cover, hands behind his head, staring up at the deep blue sky. Felix sat by the front wheels fiddling with the radio. It had broken down during the last combat session which
had thankfully been against a hastily improvised infantry unit that they’d scattered. Now Felix was using a screwdriver to either sort out the problem, or equally likely, stabbing it in frustration in the time-honored manner of the emergency repair procedure number one.

  Teacher was smoking his pipe, sitting on a pile of logs with his jacket on top as an improvised chair and Steffan was ogling at one of Gus’ magazines that the Nazi party had tried to ban, not that successfully. It appeared Steffan was more interested in learning some new position that hitherto he’d regarded as being impossible.

  “I tell you, Steffan my lad,” Gus said suddenly, inhaling deeply. “Once we take prisoner one of those Russian female mortar crews, I’ll show you how to conquer a Slavic people! Those Russian women are big, tough and have tits like two barrage balloons, believe me.”

  Steffan nodded slowly, only half listening, his eyes fixed on a nude female sprawled over a rug. He tilted the magazine to get a better look.

  Langer slapped the magazine as he passed. “Keep that under wraps, Steffan, any party member who sees that will have you arrested in no time. Those sort of things are banned.”

  “The party are spoilsports, Carl,” Gus said. “No fun. Anyone enjoying themselves is immediately and henceforth an enemy of the state. No laughing, no sex, no pleasure! Fuck, can you really imagine it?” He leaned over onto one elbow, staring at them all. “The Reichstag. Herr Schicklegruber by the grace of God Fuhrer and chief misery guts of the Greater German Reich, denounces any fun-making function.” He concentrated hard and launched into what he saw as a perfect imitation of Hitler. “’I am told that yesterday the 6th Panzer Regiment betrayed the Reich by actually enjoying themselves in the battle against Jewish Bolshevism! This is not to be tolerated! The pureness of National Socialism is not to be defiled by traitorous elements within our glorious armed forces attempting to undermine morale with outrageous displays of enjoyment! I would direct the SS and Gestapo to arrest the guilty parties, but unfortunately they would enjoy their work too much therefore I have with regret informed them not to take any action with immediate effect. Sieg Heil!’”