Free War of The Rats - A Novel of Stalingrad - [World War II 01] by David Robbins

check that room on the other side of the hall?”
     
    “Yes, sir. There was nobody in there.”
     
    “How big is the room?”
     
    “A little smaller than this one. Three windows like these.”
     
    Mercker dragged on his cigarette. His cheeks hollowed. “They must’ve had the same plan we did to grab this building. We rushed in the front door while they were climbing in the windows.”
     
    Nikki looked in the young officer’s eyes. He saw calm there.
     
    “You’re new, sir?”
     
    Mercker smiled. “Depends on what you call new. I was at Leningrad last year. Moscow this spring.”
     
    Nikki ground out his cigarette to keep his hands on the machine gun grips.
     
    “Stalingrad is new, sir. Never been anything like this. The front line can be a thousand meters or it can be a ceiling.” He looked at the door in front of his barrel. “Or a hall.”
     
    Mercker said nothing. Nikki felt the invitation to go on.
     
    “Russians are good at house-to-house fighting, better than we are. If they’d been here first, we’d never have gotten in. We’d have to blow the building up with them in it.” Nikki shook his head. “They’re not leaving, Captain.”
     
    Mercker lit another cigarette. “What did you say about blowing them up in it?”
     
    Three weeks ago, Nikki’s unit had occupied a house in the workers’ settlement west of the Tractor Factory. They’d found five Reds holed up in the basement. The men would not surrender. They did not retreat. After three days of stalemate, with the Russians fighting like crazy Ivans, they’d had to rip up floorboards and drop satchel charges into the basement. For five Reds, his unit had blown up an entire house.
     
    Nikki told his captain this story. The moment he was done, muffled voices issued from across the hall. A song. The Russians were singing! Within seconds, a strong chorus formed. The song was loud and lusty. A dirty ballad, Nikki thought, from the laughter accompanying it. The
     
    Reds are sending a message to the German company across the hall. There are plenty of Ivans in here, they’re singing to us, and they’re not going anywhere.
     
    An idea gleamed in Mercker’s eyes. “You blew up a house for five Russians,” he said over the racket from across the hall. “We’ll blow one up for fifty.”
     
    Mercker called for a messenger.
     
    * * * *
     
    AFTER TWO HOURS OF NONSTOP SINGING, THE REDS quieted.
     
    Twenty minutes later, Mercker’s courier returned through the window. He brought with him three sappers and their equipment: twenty kilos of dynamite, six shovels and pickaxes.
     
    In the center of the room, one of the sappers raised a pickax. He struck a ringing blow on the concrete. Debris scurried from the strike like mice across the floor.
     
    Mercker raised his hand. “Just a second.” He turned to the men. “Those Reds have shitty voices, don’t you think, boys? We should show them how a German sings a song. Loud. In fact, so loud that it’s all they can hear.”
     
    The captain began the Nazi party song, “Horst Wessel.” The men joined in, even those with guns trained on the door and out the windows. Mercker stood in the center, swinging his arms like a conductor, whipping up the spirit and volume. The soldiers’ voices climbed to a roar. Mercker pointed with a flourish to the sapper to smack the concrete. The engineer swung down hard and the floor gave way in a jagged dent. The men smiled and applauded, and all they heard was their voices.
     
    For three hours the soldiers sang. Folk songs, Bräuhaus ballads, popular tunes, even pieces of opera ricocheted off the walls to mask the digging. When the captain signaled the men to stop—again, like a conductor, with a wave of his hands—the tunnel had long since disappeared beneath the floor.
     
    Nikki took his turn with a shovel for a thirty-minute shift, tossing broken earth out of the hole. The tunnel grew to five meters long, two meters wide at a depth of one and a half