Partisans
Christmas, 1943
The Siege of Boporoeivska
Our prayers were granted and we were able to march for thirty miles undisturbed.
We were unpleasantly surprised to find no reserve positions in that distance. Except for a few surveillance posts, where the fellows to their astonishment were told to pack up and leave with us, we encountered no serious defensive efforts. The Russians could easily have continued their advance without firing a shot.
On the second day of this third retreat, the most mobile portion of our battalion stopped and settled in to act as a covering force while the rest continued westward. Some two thousand men, among them myself, were stationed near a village which was not marked on any of the staff maps. As we arrived, the inhabitants fled into the thick forest. We established ourselves with light but motorized weapons. We had four minuscule tanks, which had been effective in Poland but were like toys compared to the T-34s. Their armament consisted of a double-barreled machine gun and a grenade thrower, and we used them principally as tractors, to pull the twelve sleighs which made up our train. Four half-tracks doubled as anti-tank machine-gun posts, and as a source of emergency power for our six trucks when they stuck in the deep snowdrifts.
Three enormous Zundapp-Russland sidecars skated through the powdery snow, which often plugged the space between the front mudguard and tire, preventing that wheel from turning. Their engines were powerful enough to free the back wheel and the wheel of the sidecar, which was also motorized, and send the whole machine zigzagging forward, roaring from its twin exhausts, while the blocked driving wheel skated over the surface like the runner of a sleigh. Three Paks completed our defense. With these weapons, which were suitable for chasing partisans, and the classic infantry weapons-P.M.s, mortars, F.M.s and grenades-we had been ordered to stop three Russian divisions, including several armored regiments, for at least twenty-four hours. Lastly, our orders were to withdraw, even if our efforts should be triumphantly successful.
Throughout our sector, whose front was roughly sixty miles long, groups analogous to ours were left behind, while the main body of troops withdrew to the west in a series of forced marches.
The Russians, who had broken through further south, neglected our sector. There was no need for them to take any more losses pursuing an enemy who was withdrawing anyway. The Red Army left our harassment to the partisans, whose numbers were continuously increasing, and which soon reached proportions astonishing in a country nominally under our control. On Stalin's orders, they intensified the desperation of our retreat with sudden ambushes; shells with delayed action fuses; booby-trapped and mutilated bodies of men from interior positions; attacks on supply trains, isolated groups, and rallying points; hideous mutilation of prisoners; and a constant refusal of contact with units capable of fighting.
The partisans-or terrorists, a name they richly deserved-always took on easy victims, and greatly intensified the usual cruelties of wartime. By these means, they achieved an effect which the regular army was never able to equal.
The Wehrmacht bent before the power of an incomparably greater enemy. The unbearable harassment by partisans was added to the overwhelming and heroic rigors of the front, while our territories in the rear no longer guaranteed any repose to our exhausted troops. The Ukraine, which had shown some sympathy for us, was itself pillaged by partisan bands-on orders from Moscow. The Ukrainian population had to choose, and be actively for one side or another. The partisans either killed or enlisted the young Ukrainians who had until then been so respectful to us. The invisible war triumphed: war which no longer offered any retreat, or calm, or pity. Wars of subversion have no face, and like revolutions create their own martyrs, innocent victims, and hostages, and provoke confused judgments of ill-considered actions. Men kill for revenge, in reprisal for what has happened or might happen.
The partisans were pouring oil onto a huge conflagration.
In the name of Marxist liberty, the Ukraine was forced to alter its attitude. German and Ukrainian alike grew bitter and full of hate. The war became a total war, a war of scorched earth, offering the towns and villages in its path no more relief than we would eventually receive when we became the vanquished. In this period, as the war attained the most violent paroxysms of an already unbearable conflict, our unit sat out its sentence of round-the-clock guard duty in the murderous cold.
Over the snow-covered ground silence hung, unbroken except for the occasional howl of a gray taiga wolf deep in the forests, which were still largely unexplored. A quarter of our men were always on guard, watching from the shelter of ludicrously inadequate fortifications or frost-covered tank turrets, or mounting hurried patrols at the edge of the forest. The rest waited in the abandoned isbas.
The stoves in these huts had been systematically destroyed before we arrived-no doubt by partisans, who hoped that without shelter we would die of cold. Some of the isbas were open to the sky, with their roofs burned or pulled off. Probably the partisans had not had time to destroy the village completely before we arrived. There were far too many of us for the number of buildings still standing, and hundreds of men were reduced to finding what shelter they could, huddled behind gutted walls whose only roof was the heavy, opaque fog. Inside the walls, these men burned everything they could find. In the better isbas, the intense flames threatened to set fire at any moment to the structures themselves. Our exhausted troops no longer bothered to collect deadwood from the forest, and burned every combustible fitting left in the huts. Cursing at the smoke which blinded them, and which in the roofed isbas escaped only through the open doors, our soldiers packed closely together for warmth, tried to sleep on their feet, despite the coughs which shook their bodies. In the isbas without roofs smoke was never a difficulty, but the men were never warm. Those closest to the fires rapidly grew so hot they had to move, while others, only four or five yards away, felt only the faintest warming of the air, whose temperature rose to fifteen or sixteen degrees above zero.
Every two hours another quarter of the men went back to the dugouts to make room in our precarious sleeping quarters for those who would return white with cold. The winter was now serious: fifteen degrees below zero, according to the thermometer of our radio group. As before, our general state of filth aggravated the situation. Any desire to piss was announced to all present, so that hands swollen by chilblains could be held out under the warm urine, which often infected our cracked fingers.
I was taking my first tour of guard duty in the early-morning hours of polar darkness, and my second began at one o'clock, in the diffused light of midday, which was veiled by a sky as dark as the sky over Tempelhof the day it was destroyed. Toward the end of my patrol, the day would turn an unusual pink. By three o'clock, when I returned to the smokehouse, there was nothing further to report.
My eyes hurt me, and my nose was so enflamed by frostbite I could no longer bear to leave it uncovered. We hid our faces like Chicago gangsters, with our collars raised and tied around our faces with scarves or strings. An hour later, the pink light turned violet, and then gray. The snow turned gray too, and then it was dark-from mid-afternoon until nine the next morning. With darkness, the temperature always plunged sharply-often to thirty-five or forty degrees below zero. Our materiel was paralyzed: gasoline froze, and oil became first a paste and then a glue, which entirely blocked the mechanism. The forest rang with strange sounds: the bark of trees bursting under the pressure of the freezing. Stones cracked only when the temperature fell to sixty degrees below zero. For us, the horror we had been dreading for so long had arrived.
Winter at war-a reality we had almost forgotten-fell on us like the die of a gigantic press ready to crush us.
Everything combustible was burned. A lieutenant defended two of our sleighs with a gun against some forty landser, whose breath rattled through their congested lungs. The nose of every face cover developed a block of ice which grew larger as each fresh breath condensed and froze.
"We want the sleighs for wood!" the men shouted.
"Get back!" the lieutenant screamed in reply. "The forest is full of wood."
The landser stared at him, wondering what good the sleighs would do them if they all froze.
A party sent out to fetch wood from the forest ran to the shelter of the trees. Faceless specters returned with bundles which they threw down onto the dying fires. The fires had to be kept alive, which made rest impossible. We prayed that the Russians wouldn't attack: all attempts at defense had been abandoned.
Guard duty was the hardest of all. To stand still one seriously risked being frozen alive. At nine o'clock it was my turn again. Fifteen of us were standing watch in the ruins of a building crusted with hard snow which cracked like glass. We got through the first half hour beating each other to keep our blood moving. The second half hour was torture. Two men fainted. We thrust our stiffened hands from our sleeves and clumsily tried to help them. Our gloves, part wool and part leather, were already full of holes and good for nothing. The pain in our hands and feet seemed to travel through our bodies and clutch at our hearts. Four men carried the unconscious soldiers to the fires which gleamed in the darkness. If the Russians had come, they could easily have wiped us out. One man was running round and round in small circles, crying like a baby. The pain in my feet made me scream aloud. Despite orders, I abandoned my post and ran to the nearest isba. Shoving my way through a compact mass of soldiers, I stopped just short of the fire, and fell grimacing to my knees. Then I thrust my boots right into the coals. They immediately began to crackle and hiss, and at the pain of contact between hot and cold I burst into loud sobs. I was not the only one to cry, and there were others whose screams and moans were far louder than mine.
The hour of release finally came, and we prepared to leave. The Russians had not swarmed down on us, and the steel of our frosted weapons, which had not been heated by explosions, glimmered bluer than ever in the horrible cold, and looked as brittle as glass. Our men assembled listlessly, torn by a conflict of disloyalties which brought them close to madness. Although no one had covered himself with glory fighting against the Russians, another fight, which was equally formidable, had been fought against the cold and our exhaustion and filth and the lice we scarcely felt, they had become so much a part of our everyday condition. The cold had also claimed its victims. Three times, detachments of the last group on guard had returned to the fires carrying inert bodies Pneumonia, generalized frostbite, and physical weakness had been unable to resist the overwhelming cold. For three men, their return to the fire came too late. Five others were revived by flagellation and alcohol.
In the motionless cold of the polar night, we covered the rigid corpses with snow, marking each improvised grave with a stick and a helmet. There was no time for sentiment or reflection. Those who were still-to their astonishment-among the living were trying to shake off the general numbness enough to start our solidly frozen engines. The situation seemed desperate. Not one of the engines turned over.
Feldwebel Sperlovski stamped down on the pedals of his Zundapp, which resisted the pressure his 190 pounds of flesh and bone could still bring to bear and then cracked like a piece of dead wood. The metal itself seemed to be affected. We lit fires under the Panzers, to try to thaw them slowly before making any attempt to start them. For the cursing, gasping landser, the effort was immense, straining our congested lungs, which whistled and rattled. Wesreidau himself was impatient. He had wrapped his boots in rags picked up during the retreat.
We should have kept at least one engine running all night," he exclaimed. "It's elementary. This sort of carelessness could ruin all of us."
We listened to him with expressionless faces. Undoubtedly several among us would have regarded death as a deliverance.
An hour or so later, we heard the asthmatic backfire of an engine. Someone had managed to start one of the half-tracks. The driver let it warm up for a while, and set to work on the gear box, which had not yet thawed. After two hours of intense effort, our column set out, under orders to maintain the lowest possible speed. Until the machines had reached a certain minimum temperature, we had to limp after them on foot.
At midday, there were several breakdowns, and the convoy had to stop. The radiator hoses of several vehicles had been damaged by the pure alcohol in the radiators, and we had to repair them, using spare parts if we were fortunate enough to have them. Otherwise, we patched them up as best we could. While the work was in progress, we opened some cans of solidly frozen food: meat which could be chopped with an axe, a puree of peas and soya with the consistency of cement, and a solid brick of wine. Our enforced stop cost us an hour. According to radio instructions, we had one more hour to rejoin the main body of troops.
We were crossing the territory of one of our interior defense posts: two round blockhouses and three or four huts built into the ground. No one came out to meet us, and the place seemed deserted. However, a plume of smoke was rising from one of the blockhouses. No doubt the men inside were asleep beside a warm fire. We sent a small group over to investigate. Five minutes later, one of them ran back to the column, his breath spreading around his face in white clouds. When he reached us, he stopped, gasping.
"Everything in there has been destroyed, Herr Hauptmann, and everyone is dead. It's terrible!"
Every gray face filled with anxiety. Looking more closely, we saw that the doors of the isbas had all been knocked in, and that four or five bodies lay beside one of the huts.
"Partisans!" someone shouted. "Six men recently killed!"
"There's been fighting here recently, Herr Hauptmann. Those bandits must still be holding their guns."
Another detachment went into the second blockhouse. There was a long, echoing explosion, and a geyser of earth and snow and fragments of wood shot into the air over the building. Wesreidau cursed aloud, and ran toward the smoking bunker. We followed him. Three men had just been torn to pieces. Two were unrecognizable, while the third was gasping his last breath, rattling as the blood spurted from his body. Mixed into the rubble lay the bodies of four German soldiers who had been killed before we arrived.
"Watch out for mines!" Wesreidau shouted.
The word passed from mouth to mouth. Soldiers stopped at the door of the second blockhouse and looked in without daring to enter. Six men, who had been stripped almost naked and hideously mutilated, were lying in pools of black, congealed blood. Some of the mutilations were so horrible that we couldn't look at them. Two soldiers-men who had fought outside of Moscow, at Kursk, Briansk, and Belgorod, and seen appalling horrors-hid their faces in their hands and walked away. None of us had ever seen anything so gratuitously horrible.
Taking infinite precautions, a section removed the cadavers. Two of them had been booby-trapped. We covered their bodies with debris, as we had neither the means nor the time to dig graves.
To all of us, the tactics of the partisans seemed more ignoble and senseless than anything else we'd seen. Wesreidau led a ceremony of final farewell to the eighteen massacred men. We removed our hats and caps and helmets, and stood bareheaded in the snow.
"Ich hatte einen Kameraden . . ."
Our funeral song rang through the stone-age setting of Russian winter with the discordant sonorities of thousands of voices. There were no flags or fanfares-only profound consternation.
The spirit of revenge motivating the terrorists further destroyed the fragments of understanding so far spared by the war. Our men could not accept it. If they could still bear the torment of the trenches with heroic resolution they could not accept the treachery of the partisans.
Our column set out again. As we passed the center blockhouse we saw the coarse placard thrust into the snowy mound. Across it, scrawled in charcoal, we read the word "Revenge."
We drove on for another hour. The snow, which deadened the noise of our vehicles, also intensified distant sounds. Suddenly we heard the crackle of automatic weapons. Wesreidau, together with our two other officers, ordered us to halt. Immediately, we heard the noise of firing more distinctly. Some five miles to the west, fighting was in progress. We were ordered forward on the double. The tank crews wanted to go on ahead and rush to the scene of combat, but our officers couldn't allow them to leave the column. We had to stay together, with our tank-tractors each pulling three Russian sleighs loaded with men and equipment. The half-tracks helped the trucks, which would never have been able to make it alone. I was riding on the third sleigh of one of these trains. Behind us was a large sidecar whose transmission was failing. The tanks were pulling with full power, to the great peril of their own mechanisms. The crackle of guns grew continuously louder. Suddenly, Wesreidau stopped the convoy and jumped down to check his maps. Everyone on the sleighs was ordered to follow him, and I found myself going into action once again. The Panzers detached themselves from their trains and drove toward the noise. We followed, running as fast as we could, waved forward by Wesreidau, who came with us in a large B.M.W. sidecar. A steiner with an 8o-mm. mortar skidded past us in a cloud of whirling snow.
Gasping for breath, we ran along the track made by the tanks. They had pulled far ahead of us and entered into combat with the enemy some ten minutes before we reached the scene of fighting. We could hear their machine guns ripping into the air, sounding much louder than usual. The sidecar came back toward us and suddenly spun round.
"Spread out into the forest."
We carried out the order, some of us remaining behind to pull out the sidecar, which was stuck in a drift, before running on through the trees, standing up as straight as the masts of ships. The virgin snow rasped and cracked in great sheets under our weight. We could no longer see the tanks, which seemed to be pursuing an enemy in flight. We didn't meet any partisans ourselves. Twenty minutes later, a flare called us to the nearby blockhouse, which was like every other. It was supposed to guard the track, which in normal times was heavily used.
The post had been attacked by partisans-which, of course, we had to expect-probably the same band that had massacred the men we'd found earlier. Here, fortunately, there had been time for the defense to react. Of the twenty-two men holding the post, six had been wounded and two killed. Some twenty enemy dead or wounded lay on the trampled snow. There were also several guns: Russian and German and some American. A few wounded partisans were trying to crawl into the forest. No order could have stopped our men. They fired at the Russians and put an end to their suffering. Two shaggy prisoners had fallen into our hands. Their eyes rolled wildly like the eyes of trapped wolves, and they answered our questions with absurd, repetitive replies: "We . . . not . . . Communists." What did they take us for? Or did they really know nothing? That, of course, was possible. They looked like beasts being dragged to slaughter. No talk was possible, and our men were muttering for revenge.
Wesreidau looked at the partisans, and then at us. He tried a little longer to get something from the prisoners, but his efforts were unavailing. Finally, his patience exhausted, he raised his arm with feigned indifference. Our men grabbed the two prisoners and pushed them along in front of them. The human wolves looked back, snarling. But the sight of our guns made them lose their heads. They began to run, and ran until the first volley caught them and knocked them to the ground.
The post had been saved at the last possible moment. According to the men who'd been there, at least four hundred partisans had attacked them, and the fighting had lasted for over two hours. The men greeted us with bear hugs. They were overjoyed to hear that we had brought an evacuation order with us. For the moment, we seemed to be acting as the last broom of the Wehrmacht, making a clean sweep.
To crown the misery of the day, a hideous incident occurred within ten minutes of our departure from that place. The sidecar at the head of the column, preceding the first tank by some thirty to forty yards, drove back onto the track, moving through the snow with considerable difficulty. A tank followed it, rolling over the same ground. Suddenly an explosion shook the earth and reverberated through the air. Frozen snow showered down with a crystalline sound from the heavily laden branches all around us. The tank had been blown off its tracks and torn open from below. We could hear the roar of the flames as fat plumes of smoke rolled out from beneath the machine, spreading over the icy ground. The men on the sleighs which followed reacted immediately. One of the junior officers jumped onto the turret of the tank to try to free the frantic men inside, who were probably seriously wounded. Others ran to help, while the infantry spread out on either side of the road, to be ready for any eventuality. By now the tank was wrapped in thick black smoke, and we could do nothing to help the trapped men. We emptied three extinguishers onto the blackened metal, but the flames inside only increased in violence. The sleighs were hastily drawn back, as the tank's reservoir poured out forty gallons of flaming gasoline, which spread across the snow. In panic, the scorched landser yielded to the fire whose black plumes of smoke were climbing into the dark sky. In helpless anger, officers and men alike watched the immolation of three men. The smell of burned flesh mingled ignominiously with the smell of gas and oil. The two men in the lead sidecar had passed over the same spot a few seconds before the tank. Their tires must have missed the detonator
of the partisans' mine by only an inch or two. They also watched the hideous scene with cold sweat running down their spines.
The column abandoned the burning tank, whose flames had begun to make its ammunition explode. We also abandoned three heavy sleighs, and some of our materiel, which we burned. The men who had ridden on those sleighs found places on other vehicles. We all made a wide detour to avoid the exploding machine-gun bullets. We left behind the tomb of two men who had been killed without a chance to defend themselves, two men who had three years of fighting behind them and who deserved Valhalla.
We abandoned the territory to the Red waves that followed us. This was the final passage of the last European crusade-in the complete sense of the word.
The piercing cold was a continuous element we could never forget, even during moments of strong emotion, as in our recent clash with the partisans. A short time later, we rejoined the division in a town of a certain size and importance called Boporoeivska, if I remember correctly. Between the trenches and the barbed wire, the engineers and the Todt organization were busy mining the area. Other infantry regiments and an armored unit equipped with Tiger-panzers had also reached this point. A dozen of these motionless monsters seemed to be grinning at us as they watched the passage of our battered equipment. The presence of the Tigers reassured everyone. They were like steel fortresses, and no Russian tank could equal them.
Several Wehrmacht civil servants had been billeted at Boporoeivska. These gentlemen were surprised and displeased to find themselves suddenly at the center of a battlefield. They all seemed to be in an extremely bad humor, and their attitude toward us seemed tinged with a certain distrust. Perhaps their bureaucratic minds resented our fighting as we retreated. For them Russia meant this organized town where one could shelter from the cold and eat one's fill, provided one had established the proper connections with Supply. Perhaps there were also charming evenings with the charming Ukrainian women who seemed to abound in these parts. These ladies and girls seemed to be preparing for a hasty departure in the company of their gentlemen friends, to look for a distant and more tranquil spot. We, it seemed, would be given the honor of defending these bureaucratic love nests. This attitude infuriated us, and many brawls began, but were quickly stifled. In the end, we were too exhausted and hungry to bother with these people, and occupied the warm isbas we were given with the greatest satisfaction. In the isbas we found food and drink and the opportunity to wash. Our cabins were rarely equipped with candles or lamps, but the flames in the fireplaces, which we fed with every combustible substance we could find, brilliantly lit these fragments of paradise. Within a few tours of our arrival, several cubic yards of snow had been melted in each billet, and we were all stripped naked, scrubbing off our filth as best we could. We soaked our trousers, underwear, shirts, and tunics with feverish, almost panicky haste. Our opportunity would certainly be brief, and everyone wished to make the most of it. Someone had even found a box full of small cakes of toilet soap. These were mixed into the water of the largest tubs.
In turn, timed by a stop watch, we plunged into the warm, foaming bath: two minutes each and. no overtime. We joked and larked as we hadn't done for months. The water spilled over the edge of the tub, and flooded the big room, where some thirty shadowy figures cavorted. We kept pouring water into the tubs, to keep the level up. The dim light prevented us from noticing that the foam which so delighted us had turned gray with filth. However, our lice died a scented death: Marie Rose.
When we had finished washing, we emptied the tubs into a hole we had dug inside the isba. There was no question of going outside. The thermometer registered twenty degrees below zero, and everyone was naked. When the water was gone, we broke up the tubs and burned them. The fire had a voracious appetite, which was difficult to satisfy. Hals was exultantly chewing a fragment of soap, laughing and shouting that he had to clean his innards too, as they were probably just as filthy and overrun with lice as his skin.
"Now the Popovs can come whenever they like," he shouted. "I feel like a new man."
The door suddenly opened, letting in a blast of astonishing cold. Everyone howled in protest. Two soldiers stood on the threshold, their arms loaded with delicacies for the table. We gaped at this gift from heaven as the soldiers laid down their burden on a pile of damp overcoats: a string of spicy wurst, several loaves of gingerbread., several boxes of Norwegian sardines, a brick of smoked bacon. There were also eight or ten bottles-schnapps, cognac, Rhine wine-and cigars. The fellows kept right on emptying the huge pockets of their coats, and our shouts of astounded delight seemed to shake the flimsy walls.
"Wh . . . where did you find it?" someone asked, almost sobbing with joy.
"Those goddamn bureaucrats were really living it up: Grandsk [our company cook] never saw anything like this. Those bastards were keeping it all here. They were ready to run off with it, too. This is just a small sample, but they're all as mad as hornets; said they'd report us for stealing personal possessions. Who the hell do they think they're fooling? They can take their goddamn report, and any time they like I'll tell them what they can do with it. To hell with them!"
Everyone plunged into that astonishing mound of delicacies. Hals's eyes were starting out of his head.
"Keep my share for a minute," he said, pulling on his damp clothes. "I've got to have a look for myself, and bring back some more. Those bastards think they're going to leave us to take care of the front while they clear out with all this delicatessen, for God's sake!"
Hals wrapped himself in a Soviet eiderdown and rushed out into the cold. Solma-a young fellow who was half Hungarian and had joined the regiment under more or less the same circumstances as I had-went with him. When they had gone, Pastor Pferham, aided by Obergefreiter Lensen, and Hoth, Lensen's number-two man at the Panzerfaust, divided up the food. We had to hack the bacon with our picks, because our bayonets were too blunt. Pferham, who must have left some of his religious convictions on the east bank of the Dnieper along with his virginity, was swearing like a pagan.
"To think that this damned thing which has already poked holes in plenty of guts should be stopped by a goddamned piece of bacon!" "Borrow some dynamite from the Todt if you have to-but hurry up with it!"
No one was cheated; the amazing sense of comradeship and unity of the Wehrmacht held, and everyone received a fair share. The war had brought together men from many different regions and walks of life, who would probably have mistrusted each other under any other circumstances; but the circumstances of war united us in a symphony of heroism, in which each man felt himself to a certain extent responsible for all of his fellows. The bureaucratic attitude which had been preserved in this relatively peaceful atmosphere astonished rather than shocked us. We felt that it was perfectly legitimate to plunder these stockpiles of hoarded goods. The sense of order which was part of National Socialism was still very much alive among the troops who were fighting for it. Those who appropriated delicacies for themselves while combat troops were dying of hunger seemed to belong to another species. Pferham spoke of all this as he ate, comparing these officials to the bourgeoisie Hitler speaks of in Mein Kampf. Combat troops have immediate concerns. For men living the lives of hunted beasts, all leisurely conversation is a waste of time. We had to eat and drink what and when we could, and make love when we could, without taking any time for eloquence over the girl's hair or eyes. Every moment was precious; every hour might be our last.
Hals's and Solma's shares waited for them inside their helmets, which were turned upside down. We sang as we emptied the bottles. Our friends who'd gone out for more didn't come back, and later Hals cursed that impulse. He and Solma had been caught pinching some cognac from one of the bureaucrats-which meant six days of detention for both of them.
Stille Nacht ... Heilige Nacht ... Oh! Weihnacht!
Christmas night, 1943.
The wind howled through the labyrinth of trenches north of Boporoeivska. Two companies occupied the positions prepared by the security division and the Todt organization, which had since withdrawn to the west, beyond the Bessarabian frontier. We had settled into these ice-coated molehills two days earlier. The front seemed solid, and we would almost certainly be fighting soon. The collapse of our southern front had forced this last retreat and regrouping along this line. The vast Soviet thrust was moving inexorably and slowly toward us, like a steamroller. We were well aware of this, and the continuous buildup of reinforcements in our sector led us to foresee a violent clash.
The country immediately around us was hilly and wooded. Tanks and mobile artillery waited in the frozen underbrush and terrible cold, which stripped the bark off the trees. The stocks of provisions in Boporoeivska had been repeatedly plundered; our commandant had tacitly consented to a few days of carousal, as if to compensate for the impending holocaust.
It was Christmas night. Despite our miserable circumstances, we were filled with emotion, like children who have been deprived of joy for a long time. Under our steel helmets and behind our silent faces moved a crowd of glittering memories. Some men talked of peace, others of childhoods which were still very close, trying to hide their feelings and hopeless, ludicrous dreams by hardening their voices. Wesreidau made his round of the trenches, talking to the men, but his words seemed only to be disturbing private reflections, and he soon withdrew into his own. He too undoubtedly had children and wished to be with them. Sometimes he stopped for a moment, and looked up at the sky, which had cleared. The frost glittered on his long coat like spangles on a Christmas tree.
For four days we had to endure nothing more severe than the cold. The sections in the line were relieved continually, and the unbearable nights were divided into two parts. Each day brought fresh cases of pneumonia. Frostbite had become commonplace. Twice, I was carried into an isba and brought back to consciousness and life from the brink of death. Our faces were badly cracked, particularly at the corners of the lips. Fortunately, we had enough to eat. The cooks had been given special orders to prepare our food with as much fat as possible. Supplies arrived regularly, which enabled Grandsk to produce gluey soups, full of margarine.
These concoctions were nauseating but effective. Our cooks had learned something about cold-weather cooking from the ingredients of Russian soups. We also took saunas-a horse-doctor treatment which didn't coddle any weaklings. We moved straight from the hot steam into cold showers, a transition so violent that our hearts often threatened to stop beating. Like Grandsk's greasy soups, however, these shocks were effective, and we always felt better afterward.
"Make the most of it," Grandsk told us. "Eat up and enjoy it. In Germany, kids are going without dessert, so you can have this."
Alas, Grandsk's words were too accurate. As Paula explained in a letter which reached me in only six days, rationing bad become very strict. We were getting much closer to our own frontier, and every day the distance from home seemed smaller. Soon Germany at bay would no longer be able to send us even margarine.
One morning the feldwebels' whistles drove us from the overheated isba where we slept. A patrol of Soviet tanks was just over a mile from Boporoeivska. The cold as we ran outside was like a blow from the butcher's axe. Each man galloped to a precise point.
We had not yet reached our positions when the sound of heavy explosions shook the thin air to the west of us. Russian tanks, charging like maddened bulls, had driven onto our minefield. Now it was the turn of Russian tank crews to go up in smoke. Our observers were watching through their field glasses. Almost all the tanks were trying to withdraw the way they'd come. Our artillery remained silent, leaving the tanks to the mines. Firing might even set off these traps.
However, three Stalin tanks had managed to cross the minefield and were driving toward the town in a roar of chains and exhaust. With extraordinary courage, they took the fire of our thirty-seven anti tank guns without slowing down, only to be hit by our camouflaged Tigers, with their terrible 88s. In a sequence as unreal as anything Hollywood could contrive, all three tanks were hit by the first salvo. One turned over and exploded. Another stopped dead like a boar hit behind the shoulder. The third, although hit, turned without stopping, exposing its flank to our anti-tank machine guns, which ripped off all its protruding guns. It continued in a circle broken by a series of banking turns, trying to execute a half turn. This dramatic attempt left us gasping with admiration. In his will to survive, the Russian driver headed straight for our minefield. A series of explosions ripped the tracks off his left side, and the tank slowly settled, like a vanquished beast. As the thick black smoke began to pour from its entrails, two dark figures climbed out. But our cold-stiffened fingers did not fire. Both Russians were holding their pistols, prepared to defend themselves. When they didn't hear any guns, they took a few steps toward our lines, then threw down their guns and raised their hands. A moment later, they were crossing our front line. The landser, who considered them heroes, grinned, and the Russians grinned back, their teeth gleaming very white, like Negroes' teeth, in their smoke-blackened faces. Our men took them to an isba and gave them some schnapps. Their attitude and performance seemed so far removed from those of the partisans that we felt no hate for them. Lensen watched them for a moment and said: "If Wiener were here, he'd probably drink a toast with them."
During the following night, we sent out patrols to re-lay the minefield. Our defensive fighting was relying increasingly on mines to take the place of weakened or missing lines. The next day there was a general reinforcement of the front. Two Rumanian regiments and a Hungarian battalion were sent to join us. We were told that we would also have the support of a squadron of fighter-bombers based somewhere near Vinnitsa.
"It seems we're getting ready for a big show," Pferham observed. "I don't like it."
Obergefreiter Lensen took the opposite view, rejoicing in our increased strength. As he saw it, the Red tide must be stopped here. The idea that Prussia itself would soon fall into enemy hands never even crossed his mind. But then, that was true of all of us.
One night, the Russians sent a human wave of Mongols in a direct assault against our positions. Their function was to knock out the minefield, by crossing it. As the Russians preferred to economize on tanks, and as their human stockpile was enormous, they usually sent out men for jobs of this kind.
The Soviet attack failed, but Stalin hadn't been looking for success. The minefield exploded under the howling mob, and we sent out a curtain of yellow and white fire to obliterate anyone who had survived. The fragmented cadavers froze very quickly, sparing us the stench which would otherwise have polluted the air over a vast area.
The Russians had not even used any of their artillery to help the Mongols, which seemed to confirm our estimate of the situation. We sent out patrols to try to re-mine the field, but the Russians were ready to fire on anything that moved. We were able to put down only a light sprinkling of mines, with regrettably heavy losses. It was clearly no longer possible to rely on mines to protect our front lines.
On another evening, when the cold had attained a dramatic intensity, the Russians attacked again. We were manning our positions in a temperature which had dropped to 45° below zero. Some men fainted as the cold struck them, paralyzed before they even had a chance to scream. Survival seemed almost impossible. Our hands and faces were coated with engine grease, and when our worn gloves were pulled over this gluey mixture, every gesture became extremely difficult. Our tanks, whose engines would no longer start, swept the spaces in front of them with their long tubes, like elephants caught in a trap.
The muzhiks preparing to attack us were suffering in the same way, freezing where they stood before there was time for even one "Ourrah pobieda." The men on both sides, suffering a common martyrdom, were longing to call it quits. Metal broke with astonishing ease. The Soviet tanks were advancing blindly through the pale light of flares, which intensified the bluish glitter of the scene. These tanks were destroyed by the mines which lay parallel to our trenches some thirty yards from our front lines, or by our Tigers, which fired without moving. The Russian troops, with frozen hands and feet, faltered and withdrew in confusion in the face of the fire we kept steady, despite our tortured hands. Their officers, who had hoped to find us paralyzed by cold and incapable of defense, were unconcerned about the condition of their own troops. They were ready to make any sacrifice, so long as our lines were attacked.
I managed to keep my hands from freezing by thrusting them, in their gloves, into two empty ammunition boxes, when the cartridges had run into the spandau. Our gunners, and everyone forced to use his hands, sooner or later turned up at the medical service with severe cases of freezing. There were a great many amputations.
The intense cold lasted for three weeks, during which the Russians restricted themselves to sending over music calculated to make us homesick, and speeches inviting us to surrender.
Toward the end of January, the cold lessened somewhat, and became tolerable. At times during the day the thermometer rose as high as five degrees above zero. The nights were still murderous, but with frequent shifts of duty we managed to get through them. We knew that the Russian offensive would soon resume. One night, or rather one morning, toward four or five o'clock, blasts of the whistle sent us out once again to our interception posts.
A mass of T-34 and Sherman tanks were moving forward in a loud roar. An artillery bombardment had preceded them, inflicting heavy damage on Boporoeivska, and provoking a mass evacuation by the civilian population, which had been waiting for the fighting in terrified apprehension. Our tanks-about fifteen Tigers, ten Panthers, and a dozen Mark-4s and -3s-had managed to start their engines, which had been heated continuously the day before. At the beginning of the offensive, two Mark-4s had been destroyed side by side in the Russian bombardment. The front was once again threatening to give way. We lay in our trenches, our eyes reduced to slits, waiting for the hordes of Red infantry which would surely be coming soon. For the moment our machine guns and Panzerfausts were quiet, leaving the way clear for our heavy artillery and our tanks.
Adroitly camouflaged, the Tigers lay waiting, with their engines idling. Almost every time a Russian tank came into range, a sharp, strident burst set it on fire. The Russians were moving toward us slowly, sure of themselves, firing at random. Their tactic of demoralization would have worked if there had not been so many plumes of black smoke rising against the pale February sky. Our 37s and Panzerfausts, designed to be used at almost point-blank range, were scarcely called on. The first wave of Soviet armor was consumed five hundred yards from our first positions, nailed down by the concentrated fire of our Tigers and Panthers and heavy anti-tank guns.
The Tiger was an astonishing fortress. Enemy fire seemed to have almost no effect on its shell, which, at the front was five and a half inches thick. Its only weakness was its relative immobility.
A second Russian wave followed closely after the first, more dense than the first, and accompanied by a swarm of infantry which posed a serious threat.
We waited, dry-mouthed, our guns jammed against our shoulders and our grenades in easy reach. Our hearts were pounding.
Suddenly, like a miracle, thirty of our planes flew over. As promised, the squadron from Vinnitsa was attacking. This particular job was easy for them, and every bomb hit home.
A cry of "Sieg Heil, der Luftwaffe," rang so loudly from our trenches that the pilots might almost have heard it. We opened fire with everything we had, but the Russian offensive kept coming, despite over whelming losses. Our tanks drove at the stricken enemy with an ardor worthy of 1941.
The noise became unbearable. The air was thick with bitter fumes and smoke, and the smells of gunpowder and burned gasoline. Our shouts mingled with the shouts of the Russians, who were reeling under the unexpected resistance.
We were able to watch the magnificent progress of our Tigers, pulverizing the enemy tanks before they were able to complete a half turn. The Luftwaffe attacked again with rockets and 20-mm. cannons. The Russian rout was hidden by a thick curtain of luminous smoke.
The Russian artillery kept on firing at our lines, causing several deaths which we scarcely noticed. However, their guns were soon overrun by their own retreating troops, and fell silent.
A second wave of German planes, an undreamed-of extra luxury, completed the Russian debacle. We hugged each other in excitement, bursting with joy. For a year now, we had been retreating before an enemy whose numerical superiority was constantly increasing. Lensen was shouting like a man possessed by demons: "I told you we'd do it! I told you we'd do it!"
Our achievement was mentioned in special bulletins. The front on the Rumanian border had held. After months of sustained attack and terrible cold German and Rumanian troops had once again pushed back the Russian offensive and destroyed quantities of enemy materiel.
The mass of broken, twisted metal strewn with corpses which lay in front of us was visible proof of what we'd done. Along a front of two hundred miles, the Red Army had launched sixteen attacks inside of a month. Taking into account the three weeks of inactivity during which all operations were impossible, these sixteen attacks had all occurred inside the space of one week. Five points had borne the brunt of the Russian effort, and at only one had the Russians come close to success.
The front was broken to the south, but this thrust was cut off, and the Russian troops were either annihilated or taken prisoner.
In our sector all the lines had held, and we felt very proud. We had proved once again that with adequate materiel and a certain minimum preparation we could hold off an enemy of greatly superior size, whose frenzied efforts were never intelligently employed. .
The veteran, Wiener, had often remarked on this Russian failing at difficult moments. At the sight of an enemy tank in flames, he would bare his teeth in a wide, wolfish grin.
"What a damned fool," he would say, "to let himself get caught like that. It's only their numbers that will get us someday."
There were thirty Iron Crosses for the Gross Deutschland, and as many for the small tank regiment, which also earned the honor.