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another.
    I look straight in front of me, won't look at them. Luckily the orderlies come and lift them up on to the heaps of branches which serve them as a bed. We take them with us as the Oberst has ordered. Nobody is to be left behind.
    We make sledges of thin tree trunks, and lay the wounded on them. When they die we throw them off and go on.
    Four days later we reach two odd-looking hills, shaped like sugar-loaves. It has grown so cold that our noses become plugged with ice, and tears harden into icicles. Metal shatters like glass, and trees split with a loud crack.
    Gregor looks at his nose. It is lying in his hand. He feels at the hole in his face. Looks at the nose in his hand, perplexedly.
    'What the hell,' he cries and starts to scream. He throws the nose and his Mpi from him. Only Heide, the super-soldier, keeps his head. Like lightning he has Gregor on his back. The Legionnaire has picked up the nose.
    'Hold him,' snarls Heide. 'We've got to sew it on again!'
    'Is it worth it?' grins Porta. 'It wasn't a very handsome nose, anyway!'
    Taking no notice of Gregor's babbling, Heide sews the nose on again, takes a bloody bandage from a body and binds it tightly round his face.
    'Wouldn't it be better to sew it double, so 'e can't pull it off again?' suggests Tiny, holding out a reel of heavy thread.
    Gregor whines and moans. Despite the anaesthetic effect of the cold it is still terribly painful.
    Heide is not exactly a cosmetic surgeon. The needle he uses was given him by a veterinary surgeon who used it to patch up horses.
    'Slacker,' he scolds, and pulls at the nose to make sure it is firmly attached.
    'Can a bloke's prick drop off from frost?' asks Tiny, worriedly.
    'Can happen,' smiles Porta. 'The Army Institute of Science at Leipzig has compiled statistics on the subject, and these tell us that thirty-two per cent of all soldiers exposed to arctic conditions come home without a joy-stick!'
    'Jesus Christ almighty, son of the German God,' groans Tiny. 'What'd you be able to tell the 'ores if you went back to the Reeperbahn with no prick?'
    'You'd have no future as a pimp, at any rate, if the polar bears had made a meal of your old John Thomas,' smiles Barcelona.
    A tall, thin Pioneer feldwebel gets up suddenly from the bed of branches, tears the blood-soaked bandages from his body and, before anybody realises what is happening, rushes out across the frozen lake.
    A couple of orderlies chase after him, but he disappears in the mist. His madness is infectious, and shortly after, two more of the wounded follow him.
    The Oberst is furious. He orders a guard mounted over the wounded. Things really begin to go wrong when a guard falls asleep with an Mpi across his knees.
    A wounded SS-Unterscharfuhrer creeps silently across the floor and gets hold of the Schmeisser. A rain of bullets sprays the wounded who roll about desperately on their bed of branches. His eyes burn madly and froth rims his gaping mouth. When the magazine is empty he crushes the guard's skull and attacks the wounded nearest to him with the butt of the weapon.
    The Legionnaire is the first to arrive on the scene. He throws his Moorish dagger and it bores into the madman's throat.
    With a gurgling death-rattle the SS-Unterscharfuhrer collapses.
    All hell is loose in the blood-bespattered igloo. The wounded run amok. An infantry Leutnant commits hara-kiri by thrusting his bayonet into his stomach and cutting upwards. His entrails pour out over his hands. An artilleryman gets Porta by the throat and tries to strangle him.
    A shot cracks. The artilleryman falls backwards.
    Shortly after this we have other things to worry about. The Russians start an attack under cover of heavy mortar fire. The attack lasts only a couple of hours. Then the snow envelops them again and they disappear into it like ghosts.
    Death is so close to us that we feel it already has us in its grip.
    Schnapps is issued. A water-bottle cap full to everyone. No. 2 Section gets half a cap