March Battalion by Sven Hassel Page B

infantry division that had joined us.
    'Hey, be a pal and tell us if we're on the right road for the war! We'd like to have a bash if we're not too late.'
    'You'll bleeding find out where it is soon enough,' came the disgruntled reply.
    In the distance were the familiar rumblings of heavy artillery. The sky was criss-crossed with searchlights, and away beyond the treetops coloured flares lit up the night.
    The Tigers mustered together and stood patiently awaiting orders, a long line of tanks stretching far back down the road. Porta and Little John left the comparative comfort of the interior and ventured outside, where they installed themselves in a ditch and played dice for vast sums of money that neither possessed. They were joined after a while by Heide and the Legionnaire, and the game swiftly became the opportunity for a fresh bout of brawling.
    Somewhere too close for comfort a cannon gave a short, dry bark.
    'T.34,' said Alte, calmly.
    The order came through to move forward. The four gamblers forgot their differences and leapt back into the tank, Barcelona gave us the thumbs-up sign. Ahead of us, a stream of white and green tracer bullets rose into the blackness. It was the signal for attack.
    Slowly we edged forward into the thick undergrowth, crushing bushes and young trees beneath us. Our guns fired in short bursts. Somewhere a T.34 exploded and rained down a red-hot shower of steel upon us. All around us the anti-tank guns were hard at work. Each time we heard one we instinctively sunk our heads into our shoulders.
    Suddenly the booming and roaring of the heavy artillery stopped, and there came instead the cracking of automatics and rattle of machine guns. From the raucous shouts of encouragement we heard, we gathered that the infantry had gone into the attack.
    'Tigers, forward!'
    We increased speed. Thick gouts of mud were thrown up, trees were knocked down like so many skittles. We halted momentarily to let a column of infantry pass through, then advanced in formation on the Russians ahead of us. The fever of the chase was on us again, but with this difference: no one was sure whether we were the hunters or the hunted. Everything was in a state of confusion.
    We came to a small village, a railway crossroads, where there was fierce fighting. The steady chattering of machine gunfire; hand grenades, rockets, flame throwers; harsh cries in Russian and German; screams and yells and thick columns of smoke. An ammunition dump went up in a sheet of flame. Gigantic torches that were burning houses lit our path. We were given a warm welcome by a couple of anti-tank guns, both of which had to be wiped out before we could continue. The usual carnage littered the streets. Dead soldiers, dead horses, dead civilians. Pieces of equipment that had been abandoned. A Russian captain trapped beneath an overturned vehicle, screaming with his mouth wide open and his eyes staring, unseeing. Many of the wounded, unable to crawl away fast enough, were crushed beneath our tracks. A constant fine shower of burning cinders fell over everything, even penetrating to the interior of the tank. We drove through hell with our arms held protectively across our faces, but for those outside it was far worse. We saw many soldiers yelling with pain and staggering across the street with both hands clapped to their eyes.
    Half-way through the village there was hand to hand fighting; we had to turn aside and plough across a row of houses. The walls slowly crumbled beneath the impact of fifty-two tons. In one house, a bed, with two dead bodies; between them, still alive, a small girl. Porta was unable to brake in time to avoid her. No one said a word. We lied to each other by our very silence. No one spoke for the simple reason that no one had the courage to admit what he had seen. This was not war, it was murder. It was one of those things you would never talk about. The villagers had lost everything; including, in many cases their lives. An old woman