Blitzfreeze by Sven Hassel Read Free Book Online

become Germans! Which is a great advantage! Or so they say in Berlin!’
    Infantrymen run panting alongside the vehicles, the tracks spattering them with mud. Automatic weapons send tracers tracking light across the terrain. Incendiary shells turn enemy nests of resistance to seas of flame.
    We pause briefly and carry out service tasks on the vehicle: change oil, clean ventilators and filters, tighten tracks. No time for sleep. The order comes as soon as our tasks are completed: ‘Panzer march!’ comes through the loud-speaker.
    A few hundred yards on a swarm of Jabos attack us. Their rockets skip over the fields. No. 1 Company is wiped out in the first minutes of the attack. Every tank is affire. The Panzer infantry flees in panic as a wave of Russian soldiers rises from the clover-fields.
    ‘
Uhraeh Stalino, uhraeh Stalino!
’
    Young GPU troops with the green cross on their caps, political fanatics, storm forward with bayonets at the ready.
    ‘300 metres, straight in front, enemy firing line!’ comes from the speaker. ‘Explosive shells and all automatic weapons! Fire!’
    Two hundred machine-guns and a hundred cannon thunder. All sixteen of the regiment’s companies have moved into line. The first row of young khaki-clad soldiers drops, but new ones take their place, as if rising from the earth, form up and advance.
    Artillery behind us gets the range. The attacking Guards disappear in fire and screaming steel. The sky itself seems to blaze. Every living thing is killed under the tracks. Some dive into foxholes. When we see them we stop over the hole and see-saw the wagon until the screaming soldier in it is crushed. This short, bloody, engagement will not even be mentioned in the daily report, so unimportant is it, even though it has cost several thousand humans their lives. No, sorry, not humans, merely soldiers. They’ve no connection with humanity.
    We are now moving directly north-east and reach the Smolensk-Moscow motor road. Straight as a string it runs, through swamp and forest, over rivers, swinging in smooth curves as it by-passes towns. On the way we overtake endless columns of marching infantry and horse-drawn artillery. The motorized units are further on. You can tell by the wrecked vehicles lying at the sides of the road. We pass a spot where an entire regiment has been killed with one strike. ‘Blast bombs,’ says the Old Man quietly. These wicked things, which are shot from emplaced heavy mortars, literally tear the lungs out of their victims. The regiment lies there in good order. In companies and platoons. It’s as if they’ve been given the order:
    ‘Fall out dead!’
    A single tree with naked branches remains standing in the wood. A dead horse hangs high up in it.
    ‘I hope this war ends soon,’ says Barcelona. ‘There’s noend to the hellish weapons they’ll discover if it goes on much longer.’
    ‘Might even last that long we’ll ’ave nothin’ left to shoot
with
an’ll ’ave to go at it with clubs,’ surmises Tiny. ‘Glad I ain’t one o’ them Tiny Tims!’
    Tired, sour fog comes down over everything in a heavy shroud, reminding us of death. The infantry marches in single file down the motor road. They sleep as they march. The old sweats are masters at it. The fog comes from the marshes, and is a real pea-souper. Visibility three feet, no more. The torsoes of the marching column are all that can be seen of them. Where the road dips they disappear entirely and suddenly pop up again on the other side. We drive along with hatches open. The drivers can see nothing and have to be directed by wireless. To an advancing army nothing is worse than fog. Continually we expect to meet the other side. They could attack and butcher us with pocket-knives before we knew they’d even arrived.
    In front of us three tanks crash into one another. One turns over on its side, and immediately the cry goes up:
    ‘Sabotage! Court-martial!’
    Confusion spreads past us and far behind.
    Two