And it takes time to explain to a fellow who's never felt it on his own hide, just what that thing means.
"So I lay there and soon I heard the tanks rumbling.
Four medium German tanks went by me at full speed in the direction I'd come from. What do you think that felt like?
Then came the tractors hauling the guns, and a mobile kitchen, then the infantry, not many of 'em, not more than a company all told.
I'd squint up at them out of the corner of my eye and then I'd press my face into the earth again; it made me sick to look at them, sicker than I can say.
"When I thought they'd all gone past, I lifted my head, and there were six submachine-gunners marching along about a hundred paces away.
And as I looked, they turned off the road and came straight towards me, all six of 'em, without saying a word.
Well, I thought, this is it.
So I got into a sitting position- I didn't want to die lying down-and then I stood up.
One of them stopped a few paces away from me and jerked his gun off his shoulder.
And it's funny how a man's made, but at that moment I didn't feel any panic, not even a shiver in my heart.
I just looked at him and thought:
'It's going to be a short burst. I wonder where he'll place it?
At my head or across my chest?'
As if it mattered a damn to me what part of my body he made his holes in.
"Young fellow he was, pretty well built, dark- haired, but his lips were thin as thread, and his eyes had a nasty glint in them.
That one won't think twice about shooting me down, I thought.
And sure enough, up goes his gun. I looked him straight in the eye and didn't say anything. But another one, a corporal or something, he was older, almost elderly to look at-shouted something, then pushed the other fellow aside and came up to me. He babbled something in his own language and bent my right elbow. Feeling my muscle he was.
'0-o-oh!' he said, and pointed along the road to where the sun was setting, as much as to say:
'Off you go, you mule, and work for our Reich.'
Thrifty type he was, the son-of-a-bitch!
"But the dark-haired one had got his eye on my boots and they looked a good sound pair. He signed to me to take them off.
I sat down on the ground, took off my boots and handed them to him.
Fair snatched them out of my hands, he did.
So I unwound my footcloths and held them out to him, too, looking up at him from the ground.
He shouted and swore, and up went his gun again.
But the others just roared with laughter.
Then they marched off.
The dark-haired one looked round at me two or three times before he got to the road, and his eyes glittered like a wolf-cub's with fury.
Anyone would think I'd taken his boots instead of him taking mine.
"Well, mate, there was nothing for it.
I went on to the road, let out the longest and hottest Voronezh cuss I could think of, and stepped out westward- a prisoner!
But I wasn't much good for walking by that time- a kilometre an hour was all I could do, not more. It was like being drunk. You'd try to go straight and something would just push you from one side of the road to the other.
I went on for a bit and then a column of our chaps, from the same division as I'd been in, caught up with me.
There were about ten German submachinegunners guarding them.
The one at the front of the column came up to me and, without saying a word, just bashed me on the head with his gun.
If I'd gone down, he'd have stitched me to the ground with a burst, but our chaps caught me as I fell and hustled me into the middle of the column and half carried me along for a while.
And when I came to, one of them whispered:
'Don't fall down for God's sake!
Keep going while you've got any strength left, or they'll kill you!'
And though I had mightily little strength left, I managed to keep going.
"At sunset the Germans strengthened their guard. They brought up another twenty submachine- gunners in a lorry, and drove us on at a quicker pace.
The badly wounded ones that couldn't keep up with the rest were shot down in the road.
Two tried to make a break for it, but they forgot that on a moonlit night you can be seen a mile away out in the open; of course, they got it too.
At midnight we came to a village that was half burned down.
They herded us into a church with a smashed dome.
We had to spend the night on the stone floor without a scrap of straw. No one had a greatcoat, so there wasn't anything to lie on.
Some of the boys didn't even have tunics, just cotton undershirts.
They were mostly NCOs.
They had taken off their tunics so they couldn't be told from the rank and file.