Part Five
The Volkssturm
The Invasion
One September morning, we found ourselves in a farmyard somewhere in the south of Poland.
The horror of our previous experiences had left us entirely without reaction, and we stared about us with the stunned eyes of someone who has been heavily drugged. A short way off an officer was shouting something at us-a speech or a report-which fell on deaf ears. We stared at the sky, to avoid thinking about the earth, which supported human life. Only an explosion, or perhaps a feld's whistle, could have dragged us from our lethargy.
However, in this district there was at least a semblance of order, and under cover of this last fragment of organization we were trying, as best we could, to recover our strength and some sense of morale.
The Russian thrust to the south was so strong that we had to consider Rumania enemy territory. We should soon be fighting in Hungary too, before Kekskemet, and then in Budapest.
The officer went on with his speech, to talk of a counter-offensive, of regaining control of events, regrouping our troops-even of victory, a word which no longer had any meaning for us. Although we couldn't conceive of the defeat which lay ahead, we understood that victory was not possible. We knew that we would still be obliged to make intense efforts defending some particular, organized positions, but we had no doubt that we could stop the enemy before the German frontier.
Despite our general unease and near-collapse and all our disillusion, we knew that we couldn't simply give up. The looming disaster was inconceivable to us. Even today, survivors of that experience find it difficult to accept all the facts. But, despite our unshakable faith, we all felt temporarily unable to continue fighting; some time off, some rest, was absolutely essential. We were in a state of exhausted collapse, capable of nothing.
"General Friesener has re-established the Southern Front," the officer was shouting. "Our regiments will be re-formed and reinforced by substantial reserves. The enemy must not go any further. You will stop him."
We were divided into groups, companies, and regiments, and loaded into trucks. It seemed there was still gas hereabouts. The Gross Deutschland units were sent north, which surprised us, as the rest of the division or what was left of it-was fighting with Army Group Center. Some units were already with Army Group North, and the two hard-pressed armies were eventually joined.
The trucks took us to a train which was waiting on a single track, sheltered by a pine forest. There was no station. We left in a long string of miscellaneous cars. My group was loaded onto an open platform like the one which had taken me out of Poland and into Russia so long ago. Today there was no need to fear any future in Russia: the Germans had been chased from that country. Today we were going north, slowly and carefully, as the track might be mined, or the sky full of bombs. The train took us to Lodz, where we saw many astonishing things.
We stayed in Lodz for about thirty hours.
The front was very close, and like all towns near the fighting Lodz was full of troops. As in the south, men were being sorted out and regrouped. Thirty, forty, even fifty percent of the names on the regimental lists had to be scratched off. In some cases, men already scratched off as dead or missing reappeared from the void.
The Gross Deutschland had a rallying point at Lodz-a former candy shop stripped of all its wares, the adjoining room for the concierge, and a long corridor. A large panel correctly painted black on white, and a stylized white helmet, the regimental emblem, hung over the door, which was still intact. Two sentries in correct uniform were stationed on either side of the door.
"Here we are," Lensen said. "Back at the Gross Deutschland." For an hour and a half we had been tramping through the city from which nearly all the civilians had gone-looking for this place. Lieutenant Wollers presented the officer at the center with his list of the men with him, including the numbers of their companies, regiments, and groups. There were about two hundred of us.
"Here is the list of men with me, Herr Hauptmann."
"But you're bringing me a bunch of Russkis, Herr Leutnant," the captain said, looking at our motley collection of clothes. Many of us were wearing padded Russian jackets.
"My apologies, Herr Hauptmann. We began to run short of uniforms."
"Very short," said the officer, smiling. "I'm going to send you to the store, and you'll see if there's anything left. You'll have to be quick, because you won't be here long."
In the next street, we found the divisional store, which was still much better stocked than the supply stores of ordinary divisions. Some of our men could be given quite a few of the things they needed. While we waited, we watched a crowd of men, part of a new Volkssturm battalion, swarm into a factory courtyard. When we looked more closely at these men recently called up by the Fuhrer our eyes opened wide with surprise. They all belonged to the last class of reserves and seemed to be an even more extreme case than the Marie-Louise conscripts at the end of the Napoleonic era.
Some of these troops with Mausers on their shoulders must have been at least sixty or sixty-five, to judge by their curved spines, bowed legs, and abundant wrinkles. But the young boys were even more astonishing. For us, who had saved our eighteen-, nineteen-, and twenty year-old lives through a thousand perils, the idea of youth meant childhood and not adolescence, which was still our phase of life, despite our disillusion. But now we were looking literally at children, marching beside these feeble old men. The oldest boys were about sixteen, but there were others who could not have been more than thirteen. They had been hastily dressed in worn uniforms cut for men, and were carrying guns which were often as big as they were. They looked both comic and horrifying, and their eyes were filled with unease, like the eyes of children at the reopening of school. Not one of them could have imagined the impossible ordeal which lay ahead. Some of them were laughing and roughhousing, forgetting the military discipline which was inassimilable at their age, and to which they had been exposed for barely three weeks. We noticed some heart-wringing details about these children, who were beginning the first act of their tragedy. Several of them were carrying school satchels their mothers had packed with extra food and clothes, instead of schoolbooks. A few of the boys were trading the saccharine candies which the ration allotted to children under thirteen. The old men marching beside these young sprouts stared at them with incomprehension.
What would be done with these troops? Where were they expected to perform? There was no answer to these questions. Were the authorities going to try to stop the Red Army with them? The comparison seemed tragic and ludicrous. Would Total War devour these children? Was Germany heroic, or insane?
Who would ever be able to judge this absolute sacrifice?
We stood in profound silence, watching and listening to the final moments of this first adolescence. There was nothing else we could do.
Some hours later, we were driven to a new assembly area a few miles from the Vistula, in a town called Medau. There we found a large part of our full division, which had left us in the south long ago. Even our regiment was there, and its officers, with their familiar names. The auxiliary services of our autonomous unit had performed enormous feats of imagination to continue functioning. We were extremely surprised to find that the full Gross Deutschland Division was still quite strong-a discovery that raised our morale considerably. We needed to cling to some form of solidity to avoid recognition of the final tragedy which had engulfed us, and of our strictly limited choice between combat in the most desperate circumstances, captivity, or the end, once and for all. Here, on the banks of the Vistula, which could be considered the cradle of hostilities, we found companies restocked with young boys to fill the gaping holes the war had made in our elite division. We also found some familiar faces, including Wiener, the veteran, who seemed quite astonished that we were all still alive.
"We must really be indestructible," he exclaimed. "When I left you on the second Dnieper front, everything looked so black I really thought I'd never see any of you again."
"Quite a few missing," Wollers said.
"And quite a few still here. Mein Gott, Leutnant!"
We told Wiener that Wesreidau was dead, and Frosch.. . . He too had a list of names we could forget. No matter how intense the grief aroused by any particular name, the expressions on our worn faces never changed.
We pressed Wiener for news of Germany, of civilian life there and the situation of ordinary citizens. We all had reasons for concern and followed the movements of his lips, trying to grasp the implications of his inadequate words.
"I was in the Kansea military hospital in Poland," he told us. "I had lost so much blood and seemed so weak that for two horrible days they did almost nothing about me. I would never have guessed that life had so strong a grip on me. It would have been so easy-one last sigh, and then into the hole. But it didn't happen that way. I groaned and howled for ten days or so-especially the first two-and went through infection, transfusion, disinfection, re-infection, and here I am, back with you again, for another autumn of crap. Now I find the damp hard to take, too. I've got rheumatism, and that's fatal."
As before, the veteran relieved his desperation by cracking jokes.
"But you must have had convalescent leave, didn't you?"
"Yes, Hals. I was in Germany. I went to Frankfurt, not am-Main, but am-Oder. I could have gone further if I'd wanted to, but there wasn't any particular reason. They put us up in a girl's high school-sad to say, without the girls. There wasn't enough to eat, but at least they let us alone. Have you noticed, by the way, that I'm missing an ear?" The veteran grinned sardonically.
When we looked, we saw that his right ear was gone, and that his skin where the ear should have been was a pale, shiny pink, which looked as though it might break at any minute. We had all noticed, with out attaching any particular significance to it. So many men were missing one piece or another that we scarcely registered such things any more.
"Yes," Prinz said. "On that side, you look dead."
The veteran grinned again. "That's because you're so used to stiffs you're beginning to see them even where there aren't any."
"Drop all the crap," Solma shouted, "and tell us about Germany."
"Well ... Yes." There was a moment of silence, which seemed to last forever.
"What's it like in Frankfurt?" asked Feldwebel Sperlovski, elbowing the rest of us aside. (He came from Frankfurt, and his family was probably still there.)
The veteran was no longer looking at us. He seemed to be staring into his own interior.
"The high school was on the east banks of the Oder, up on a hill. You could see a big piece of the town from there. It was all gray-the color of dead trees-with walls sticking up here and there, all black from the smoke of fires. People were living down there, like landser in the trenches."
As Sperlovski listened his face began to twitch, and his voice trembled as he spoke. "But our fighters . . . and flak . . . wasn't there any defense?"
"Of course ... but so out of proportion . . ."
"Don't worry too much, Sperlovski," Wollers said. "Your family was certainly evacuated to the country."
"No," Sperlovski shouted in a voice of despair. "My wife wrote me that she had been conscripted and had to stay in town. No one has the right to leave his job."
Wiener knew very well what effect his words must have on an audience starved for good news, but nothing seemed to distress him any more.
"It's total war," he said, like an automaton. "Nothing and no one will be spared, and German soldiers must be able to endure everything." Sperlovski walked away. He looked stunned. His eyes were glazed, and his steps faltered, as if he were drunk.
German soldiers would have to endure everything, in the world we had created. We were fitted only for that world, and were otherwise inadaptable. Lensen was as still as stone, and listened, stony-faced.
"Is it the same for all our towns?" Lindberg asked. He must have been thinking of his town, by Lake Constance.
"I don't know," the veteran said. "It's possible."
"You certainly know how to raise morale," said Hals in irritation.
"Do you want the truth, or a fairy story?"
I felt as though I were wandering through a landscape shrouded with fog and strewn with rubble. I knew that I could never manage to be disappointed again. Before mourning with the suffering world, I would somehow have to regain my balance. Of course I thought of Paula, but it was so long since I had heard anything from her that I wondered if I would even be capable of reading a letter if we should suddenly get mail. I was filling up with bad news like a barrel filling with water from a rainpipe. When the barrel is full to overflowing, all the torrents in the world are incapable of adding to its capacity.
We found ourselves in one of the rare trains still moving through that region, rolling toward East Prussia through the first frosts of our third winter of war-the fifth or sixth for some of the older men. We moved at night, with all our lights out, as Russian planes, which occupied our bases in Poland, were particularly active by day. We were moving toward Prussia, Lithuania, Latvia, and the Courland front, to which the remnants of several German divisions were clinging.
Through the darkness and the thick fog we could see large masses of people moving on foot across the northern Polish landscape. At first, we thought we were watching infantry units on the march, but after several good looks we realized we were watching civilians-thousands of them-fleeing through the night and fog to escape the Red hordes who they sensed were very close behind them. We couldn't linger to watch those people, but could easily imagine their situation.
Then we crossed the Prussian frontier, into the home territory of Lensen and Smellens-two pure-bred Prussians, suddenly back on their native soil. Lensen stood up and leaned over the carriage door to get a closer look at his country. The rest of us didn't care so much: the landscape was scarcely distinguishable from that of Poland. Perhaps there were a few more lakes. Otherwise, as in Poland, there was forest.
"You really ought to see it when there's snow on the ground," Lensen said. He was suddenly smiling again. "This way, you can't really tell what it's like."
As we remained silent and uninterested, he spoke up again.
"You're in Germany, for the love of God! Wake up! Think how long you've been dreaming of this."
"East Germany," Wiener said, "practically the front. And then, I don't know if you realize it, but I have a compass, and I can tell you we're moving to the northeast, which is no good at all."
Once again Lensen turned purple with anger.
"You're nothing but a bunch of milksops," he said. "It's your kind of defeatism that's brought us to this. The war is already lost inside your goddamned heads, but you've got to fight anyway, whether you want to or not."
"Shut up!" shouted five or six voices. "If they want us to win the war, let them treat us like normal soldiers."
"You're just a bunch of whining puppies. The whole time I've known you, you've done nothing but whine. For you, the war has been lost since Voronezh."
"For good reason," Hals said.
"You'll fight, whatever the cost, and I'm the one who's telling you because you have no choice. There's no other way out."
The veteran stood up.
"Yes, Lensen, we'll fight-because we can't stand the idea of defeat any better than you can. And we have no choice. I don't, anyway. I'm part of a machine which operates a certain way, and only that way-and I've been part of it for too long."
We stared at Wiener, somewhat taken aback. We had thought he would be able to adapt himself to any kind of life. And now here he was saying that he could live only for the cause which had already cost him so much.
Lensen went on grumbling, and we went on thinking confusedly about the glimpse of the future the veteran had given us. For me, from the vantage point of Prussia, France seemed remote and unimportant. The cause which Wiener spoke of was also my cause, and despite all the difficulties and disappointments I had endured, I still felt closely linked to it. I knew that the struggle was becoming more and more serious, and that we would soon be obliged to face appalling possibilities. I felt a strong sense of solidarity with my comrades, and I could think of my own death without too much flinching, as a soothing veil that would fall slowly over me and all my terrors of the past, present, and future. My head seemed to be filled with a milky fog, which was without joy, but which suddenly made everything easy. Did my comrades feel the same way? I couldn't be sure, but my resignation seemed general. We rolled on for several hours at a reduced speed. Finally we stopped and walked through the gray, foggy morning to a camp of wooden huts, whose appearance recalled the robust military organization only recently lost. We were given an hour to rest, and the chance of a cup of hot water with a few grains of soya in it.
"And to think that some fellows volunteered for the food," somebody muttered.
"There couldn't be too many volunteering these days," another voice said. "Very few are around for long enough even to dream of becoming an officer. There's hardly the time to make obergefreiter, before they're getting a posthumous stripe."
A few were still around for a little longer than that.
Then a major, who was probably the camp commander, spoke to us.
"Proud soldiers of the Gross Deutschland," he said. "Your arrival in this sector fills us with joy. We know your reputation for courage in combat, which gives us a strong sense of support. Your comrades-in-arms in the infantry regiments fighting in the Polish forests near our frontiers feel as we do. Your arrival here reassures and comforts us, and also helps us in the extremely difficult task which has fallen on us: the defense of German and European liberty against the Bolsheviks, who would take it from us, employing the most extreme and bestial means. Today, more than ever before, our unity in combat must be total and deliberate. With the addition of your strength, we shall build a definitive rampart against the Soviet horde. Think of yourselves as the trailblazers of the European revolution, and feel proud that you have been chosen for this undertaking, however heavy it may be. I wish the greatest possible glory for you, and convey to you the congratulations of the Fuehrer and of the High Command. Transportation and food have been specially placed at your disposal to help you in achieving your aims. Bravo, soldiers, and courage. I know that so long as a single German soldier remains alive no Bolshevik will ever tread on German soil. Heil Hitler!"
We gaped at the elegant officer in stunned silence, trying to penetrate the veil of ignorance which hid our valor from us.
"Heil Hitler!" shouted a feld, who realized that the prescribed response to the major's remarks had not occurred.
"Heil Hitler!" we shouted heroically.
"Either I'm crazy," Kellerman muttered, "or he was expecting us to raise his morale."
"Ssht," said Prinz. "We're getting another speech."
This time, it was a hauptmann.
"It will be my privilege," he said, "to take two-thirds of the men in your regiment under my command, and lead them into battle."
We all had known what was waiting for us, but that phrase made us swallow hard.
"The entire division will be operating in a sector to the north of us. It will be broken up into several fragments so that a series of widely scattered attacks can be made against the Russian thrust, which is extremely strong in this sector. I am expecting from you the utmost in courage and actions of distinction and glory. These are essential because we must stop the Russians here. No negligence or hesitation will be allowed. Three officers can constitute a court-martial at any time, and sanction any penalty...."
(Poor Frosch! How many officers decided to hang you?)
"We shall be victorious here, or be covered with shame. No Bolshevik must ever, I repeat, ever, set foot on German soil. And now, my friends, I have some good news for you. There is mail for some of you, and citations, and promotions. But, before giving free reign to your joy, you must present yourselves at the store for fresh rations and ammunition. Dis-miss. Heil Hitler!"
We broke ranks without any clear idea of our situation. "Things are looking up," I said.
"A bastard who'd be glad to see us all killed," muttered Hals.
We were standing in a long line in front of a large wooden building. "So that's what we get instead of Wesreidau. Something tells me we'll be having a few eye openers, Prinz."
"Impossible. We've already seen everything there is to see." "He's another one of these madmen," said Hals.
"He's not. He's perfectly right," said another voice behind us. We turned around in surprise.
"He's right. It has to be here, or not at all. I can't explain why without taking too long ... but he's right."
More and more disconcerted, we stared at Wiener without saying a word, unable to grasp his attitude, which suddenly seemed so changed. "I'll tell you why some other time," Wiener said. "For now, you're too thick to get it."
Paula,
As I write, I'm looking at the letter I've longed for so much, and as I read your lines, I forget the icy ground, and the East, which is still so filled with menace.
Your letter, which is in my hand, seems like a miracle from heaven.
I don't expect anything more from the ordinary world, from which we seem entirely cut off. I read your lines as our comrade Smellens, who is lucky enough to believe in God, recites his prayers.
Nothing can help us any more, Paula. Prayers seem like vodka-they blunt the cold for a moment.
Happiness has become entirely relative, and can mean simply daybreak, because darkness makes us think of death.
I have been promoted to obergefreiter, and although the stripes are still in my left pocket, I already feel that much more important.
I think these extraordinary and difficult moments have made us into men.
I can hear a roar in the east, Paula, but maybe it's only the wind.
I look forward so much to reading another letter. . . .
For several days now, we had been fighting again as we retreated. The Bolsheviks must never set foot on German soil. However, three powerful Soviet armies had already crossed the German frontier at five or six points, penetrating to a depth of some thirty miles. These three armies had rolled over our defending troops, whose survivors were dragging with them through the autumn countryside the last weapons which supported their claim to be part of an army.
To my regret, I am unable to retrace in detail the chaos of those bitter moments. But I can outline the ends of my friends, like Prinz, Sperlovski, and Solma, and of Lensen, who, in spite of everything, was really a friend. And it is Lensen I wish to salute now, by describing the tragedy of his death, which I can still see clearly, through the memories of so many other deaths. Whatever Lensen may have thought of me at times, I am certain that for all of us, and for his country, he was a brave man, who would have sacrificed his life without hesitation to help the most insignificant fellow soldier. The manner of his death fully supports this view of him, and it is perhaps because of him that I am sitting here now, writing these lines.
Lensen could never have accepted life as it is lived today, with all the concessions the former troops of the Eastern Front are obliged to make. Like the order for which he died, he was irreversible. Men who have embraced one idea can live only by and for that idea. Beyond it, they have nothing but their memories.
Our attempt to save the Courland front failed, and the overpowering Russian thrust reached the Baltic at several points, which I can no longer locate with any precision. The Northern Front was cut in two-the far north, around the Bay of Riga, as far as Libau; and the sector to which we were sent, a continuously shrinking front to the west of Libau, in Prussia and Lithuania, clinging farther south to the Vistula, which was the scene of hideous carnage.
The division was split into several small groups which attempted to throw the enemy off balance by attacking simultaneously at many points.
For the most part, these attacks were unsuccessful, and were hastily transformed into defensive actions. At that time, the division was precipitately attempting to regroup, in order to establish a defensive front some forty miles to the northwest. The bad roads, lack of fuel, mud, and faltering communications combined to slow down an operation which, under good conditions, wouldn't have lost us any time. In addition to our other difficulties, we had to contend with enemy aircraft, which had become increasingly active. Each over-flight spread fresh disorder through our already weakened columns. When the order to regroup came through, our officers decided that the retreat should be spread out, and divided into small groups. This idea made sense in that we offered less of a target to planes. However, when an enemy armored unit ran into two or three widely dispersed companies, our chances of survival were at best problematical. It was under these conditions, in a village of scattered houses, that an encounter took place which almost erased our group from the divisional list.
"I'm sure I've been here before," said Lensen, who was shocked by the misery of the country.
"Everything looks so different now that I don't recognize any details, but I'm sure that over that way there are some villages I know. My own village is about sixty miles from here," he gestured toward the southwest.
"Konigsberg is over that way. I've been there several times, and once I went to Cranz, too. It was raining cats and dogs, but we went swimming anyway."
He laughed, and we listened.
Despite the crushing retreat and numbing cold, Lensen seemed to have revived on his native soil. But he felt the anguished silence of this village, whose inhabitants had fled the day before, more intensely than the rest of us. Three hundred of us, exhausted by a march, which had begun at dawn, of twelve miles over waterlogged ground, were sitting doubled up for warmth, waiting for an uncertain eleven-o'clock distribution of food. Only Lensen was on his feet, pacing up and down the length of the stable wall, which the rest of us were leaning against, sheltering from the incessant rain. We heard his voice against a background of explosions which were more or less loud, more or less distant, coming from the southeast. We scarcely noticed the sounds of war any more. They had become so much the ordinary background of our lives that we no longer paid any attention to them unless they were inside a perimeter small enough to threaten immediate danger. Except for the noise to the east, everything was quiet. We were somewhat like people these days who cannot enjoy peace and quiet without a phonograph-who need noise before they can relax. Perhaps they are simply afraid of true silence. Unfortunately for us, we had no control over the volume of noise, and in fact would have been much happier without it.
Except for Lensen's harangue, nothing was happening.
Some twenty-five yards from us, six men were preparing lunch. Somewhat further off, another group were seriously engaged in attending to personal needs. Others were resting, with their eyes half closed, or staring into space, dizzy with exhaustion. The melancholy autumn weather brushed our faces with its damp freshness. We had been through so much misery that we were unable to appreciate conditions which ordinarily would have moved us to pity.
Through our condition of near torpor, we were dimly aware of suffering and weeping. The wounded were groaning and dying. But none of that stopped anyone from sleeping whenever there was a chance.
The first part of our meal had been passed out: cellophane sausages stuffed with soybean puree-one for every two men. It goes without saying that these were cold. During the retreat the men in charge of supply, with a stirring display of professional conscience, had collected enough old and wrinkled potatoes to fill a sidecar. They were just handing them round to the men when four soldiers jumped over a wall. They were gasping for breath, and as they ran toward us they made large, sweeping gestures with their arms.
One of them called to us without shouting too loud: "Ivan!"
The sluggish mass of men stood up with a single movement. We knew that the next few minutes could face us with the most appalling danger. With the instinct of hunted beasts, we had already scattered each man running to wherever he saw a possibility of the slightest protection. Those who were lucky enough to have already received their food wolfed it down hastily. Lieutenant Wollers had just joined us in a recess sheltered by a roof. His field radio, which he always kept near him, was already crackling out an alert. We waited in silence for about ten minutes, but nothing happened. The Russians could not have been very far off, as our sentries had announced them. But none of us knew whether we would be dealing with a section or a squad, a regiment or ten men. We hastily organized patrols. We had to find out whether we were going to fight or run as fast as we could.
The six fellows nearest Wollers were sent over toward the wall our two sentries had jumped. I was among them.
Two other groups of about the same size were sent in other directions. To describe my desperation and terror would be repetitive; it was the same as at Outcheni, Belgorod, the sheds where the partisans had hidden, and so on.
Like everyone else, I was resigned to the bad moments of our existence-to the sinking feeling which comes with being ripped from sleep to meet some disagreeable obligation. This was like that, only more so.
We moved along the other side of the stable against which we had been dozing a few moments before, and came out onto a rough piece of ground stacked with old timbers.
We were fully aware of our danger, and a heavy sense of desperation, which no longer accelerated the beating of our hearts, made us alternately hate death and long for it. My Mauser weighed down my hands like an object of no value, on which I could no longer count for anything. Formerly, as we marched through Polish and Russian villages, its weight of wood and metal had given me such a sense of confidence that I had felt almost invulnerable. Today the possibility of organizing any kind of effective defense with these weapons seemed entirely unlikely.
We crossed the waste ground and arrived at a cluster of buildings, where we separated into two groups of three men each, and continued to advance as carefully as if we were carrying explosives. We turned the corner of the building, and were able to see a much larger piece of the horizon, marked by a line of trees which had been almost entirely stripped of branches. Beyond the trees was a road, swarming with men. In the distance, we could see still more approaching.
"There must be at least three or four hundred of them," whispered the man next to me. "Look over there."
We walked back past the building where we had been resting earlier. At its far end, a row of tar barrels stood out very black against the chalky soil. Beyond them was a small house. Our steps made a light crunching noise against the fine gravel. Still silent, we stepped into the space beyond the barrels. We took four steps and found ourselves face to face with four Russian soldiers on patrol, who were taking the same precautions and observing the same silence we were. For us, all process of thought froze.
Our gestures were without haste. The Russians opposite us were also moving very slowly, and watching us. It seemed as if, by some miracle, the same calm had been imposed on both sides. No one fired. With deliberate, calculated movements, both Russians and Germans withdrew to the shelter of the building. We stared at each other with enormous eyes.
"We've seen enough of them," muttered Wiener. "Half turn."
We went back to our starting point, and Wiener made his report. We felt as if we'd been dreaming.
A quarter of an hour later, we had set up our defenses in the northern part of the village and its approaches. According to our intelligence, we were involved with an infantry regiment of some two or three thousand men. There were three hundred of us, but we were not ordered to retreat.
Hours of agonized waiting went by. We were used to lengthy Russian preparations, but we also knew how steady their thrust would be. By the time the first contacts occurred, it was already growing dark. The first Russian assault units moved carefully up to the buildings under cover of dusk. The waves of Russian infantry no longer had the same dash as at Belgorod or on the Dnieper. Such astounding losses had been inflicted on those howling.mobs throughout the reconquest of their territory that the Russian High Command had been obliged to conceive a somewhat less heroic tactic. Also, although they were fiercely determined to revenge themselves on us by trampling on German soil, they were fully expecting us to mount a desperate resistance. And they had come to count more heavily on the effectiveness of their tanks and aviation to reduce our smaller, underequipped units.
On our side, the magnificent lines of shouting soldiers were becoming increasingly rare, while the Bolsheviks were increasingly fighting in a "European" style, using techniques more or less learned from us. This shift did not make our position any easier. Our group fired at a Russian patrol leaping toward us, but we saved our mortar for later; we were beginning to run out of shells.
This was only a small encounter, which seemed without importance to men accustomed to tornadoes of fire-a few fragments of brass hurtling through the dusk, breaking a shoulder, crushing a breastbone, or carrying off a life-nothing, in short, which even approximated the pitch of a real battle. Of course, if the same exchange should take place in Paris today, it would be considered sufficiently serious to empty a whole section of the city, and make all the headlines; each time has its own habits and style....
Throughout that black and foggy night, the Russians continued to dig in beside our precarious positions. The thought that they might burst out at any minute was terrifying enough to make us sick. Perhaps this evening would be our last. Ivan would overrun us and put an end to this desperate chase which had lasted for nearly two years and covered thousands of miles marked with fear and blood. Probably tonight would be the night; we no longer knew what to hope for. But the night went by-a night of cold watchfulness broken by flares and distinguished by nothing in particular. The Russians, who seemed to be in no hurry, watched us, as we watched them.
I even managed to sleep, despite the watch we were supposed to keep unbroken. Several others did the same, and it was only the cold that kept us from having a real rest. Finally, dawn broke, and with it our tension increased. The air and ground shook. The rain, which usually muffles noise, seemed to have no effect on the heavy grinding of chains and the percussive exhaust of a large number of armored vehicles. A column of tanks was driving toward the motionless village, where Russian infantry was already waiting, calm and resolute, for our deaths.
We knew that there were not enough of us for any kind of defense against tanks. We had no anti-tank guns, and the few Panzerfausts we had left would never be able to stop that mass of tanks, which we judged from the noise to be quite large. Our hair bristled with cold and fear as we organized our disengagement with the speed that had become familiar. Everyone was on foot except for the drivers of our two sidecars, which were used for liaison between the command group and ourselves. Ten soldiers were harnessed to each gun, as we couldn't let the Russians hear the sound of engines. The company withdrew in a silence worthy of Hollywood Indians, leaving just enough men to form three interception groups. Each of these was made up of ten men, with two Jagerpanzerfausts, and four covering riflemen.
My group included Smellens and a young boy who had been specially trained in handling a Panzerfaust. Lindberg, two other fellows, and I covered them. This proved to be the only time I was ever in command-a unique and tragic time during which I was responsible for five other men.
In the second group, I knew Lensen at the Panzerfaust. In the third group, no one.
Each anti-tank group had three Panzerfausts-heavy, cumbersome weapons which allowed us a total of eighteen chances. With maximum luck, if we hit home every time, we could hope to stop eighteen of the sixty to eighty tanks we knew were coming toward us.
We stiffened with terror as we grasped the desperate reality of our situation. Lieutenant Wollers told us that the enemy was slowing down, and that when five or six of their tanks were in flames their demoralization would increase. He said that we would rejoin the company within twenty-four hours. But nothing could distract us from the horrible mathematics of the situation. We knew too well that the implacable thrust of the war could not be stopped. Today, on this day accursed of all others, our turn would probably come.
The rest of the company moved silently past us, as we listened to the final recommendations of our superior. The rumble of tanks continued unbroken. I saw Hals going by beside the veteran, and ran out to grasp his hand. Lieutenant Wollers stopped talking when he noticed me. I produced a few obscenities for Hals and Wiener, inappropriate to the gravity of the moment, and briefly considered giving Hals something to send to my family later. But I couldn't find anything, and limited myself to a hoarse laugh. Hals couldn't think of anything to say to me, and Wiener dragged him off.
Wollers left us next, and our groups separated. I remained alone with my command, and with my doubtful friend, Lindberg, who had turned white and numb with fear. I-much too young for the job myself had become a group leader, charged with dragging five other boys who had not yet attained their majorities into a horrible game of cops and robbers. I threw a quick glance at my subordinates. They were staring toward the south, where the noise was coming from. Lensen shouted, and waved toward a dip in the ground where there were four or five buildings-probably a farm. I and my group ran after Lensen. The third group looked for somewhere to hide along the road.
The wind was blowing in gusts, carrying the first half-formed flakes of the season. At that moment, the Russians began to pound the positions we had just left. The houses in the village about half a mile away were surrounded by geysers of black earth. Hastily, I sent my two jaegers to a position among the large roots of some overturned trees. They began to dig frantically, trying to lower themselves a little deeper into the ground.
The rest of us looked for shelter nearby. I was with a young fellow whose name I forget but whose expression of determined tenacity remains ineffaceable. Lindberg and our sixth man ran into the house behind us. A hundred yards to our left, I could see Lensen and his assistant.
The Russians were pounding the village into the ground. It was lucky we had left it when we did.
As we listened once again to the noise of tanks rolling through smoking ruins, we relived the sensation of waiting through the unbearably long minutes just before action begins. We tried hard to think, but the diabolic round of our past unwound through our memories-good and bad moments in a rush too fast for any of the relief tenderness can bring. For me, there was a mixture of childhood, the war, and Paula and all the things I still had to do and should have done: the kind of debt which weighs on the heart, when time for settling has run out.
We were all torn between wanting to weep and run away, and to scream and run out to meet the danger.
"No Bolshevik will ever tread on German soil." But they were there by thousands, crushing it with frenzy and jubilation-and there were eighteen of us to stop them: eighteen young men ready to cling to any miraculous superstition to go on hoping for a future as tormented as the present.
Then they appeared, ten of them at first, following the road guarded by our third group.
The third group watched them coming and did their duty. We helped them, inspired by almost unbearable emotion, played out by thousandths of a second.
The first tank was stopped some twenty yards from the two Panzerfausts in the third group. One of their projectiles burst on the tank's front apron scattering a shower of rivets and killing the monster and its occupants.
The others were slowly maneuvering, heavily attacking the incline of the bank, to make their way around the burning tank.
I couldn't stop myself from whispering, "They're coming for us." But the tanks-three to be exact-climbed back to face up to the threat. They hoped to frighten the anti-tank crew, counting heavily on their terrifying appearance-a calculation which almost always worked. However, a second monster burst into flame. The tank behind it brushed past, opening up a passage. It reached the German position, and broke its occupants' nerve. We saw our comrades jump from their hole and run like madmen. They were trying to reach the woods, and began to climb the hill. The tank, which was following right behind them, drew so close it almost touched them, before knocking them to pieces with the machine guns on board. The rest of the defense suffered the same fate. In three or four minutes, the third group was knocked out. Ten or twelve tanks were roaring down the road the company had taken-on foot-an hour earlier. They were certainly too far for us to try to reach them with any prospect of success. Five more tanks appeared, following the dip of the valley, driving straight at the farm and at Lensen, who was just in front of it.
Lensen and his number-two man fired at the tanks, which were about twenty yards from them. They hit two, and the noise of the explosions flooded the valley with a wave of sound. A third tank passed the two wrecks and seemed to beheading directly for my group. Lensen's group fired a third time, missing the tank and nearly killing us. A building some five yards from our hole burst into flame. The explosion half buried us, and made us totally deaf for nearly a minute. The three tanks continued, pouring fire into the farm buildings. They must have thought our defense was centered there. Two more T-34s which had just appeared on the road left it, driving at Lensen's position. They were out of our range, but we fired at them anyway. Smellens fired at a tank some 150 yards away and just missed it. The shell touched the ground, bounced off it, and landed farther off without exploding. All we had done was to draw their attention to us. One of the tanks drove straight at us, using all its guns.
I could hear the shouts of my men. They were unable to fix their sights on the huge machine, which drove at the ruins of the house and skidded over them, probably in the belief that they were crushing us beneath their tracks. I could hear the grinding from my hole-a sound I shall never forget.
The monster stopped short and turned back toward its original route, along the road.
Lower down, the David and Goliath battle between Lensen's group and four more tanks, all firing with all their guns, continued.
We heard the final crash of Lensen's Panzerfaust. The tank closest to them turned back on its tracks, bumping the tank behind it. We could hear horrible screams through the demented confusion of smoke and flame. A T-34 drove straight over the hole which sheltered Lensen and his companion. Then it reversed, and leveled the place. So Lensen died, on the soil of Prussia, where he had wished to die.
For us, the nightmare went on. If the tanks left us to continue their advance, we would be in terror of the infantry, which must be right behind them. In a state of indescribable fear, we looked about us. By "we" I mean myself and my companion in our hole, and the two others, who remained as motionless as the roots that sheltered them.
What had happened to Lindberg and to the sixth man in my group? They had probably been crushed in the debris of the building knocked down by the tank. For the moment, that was the only possible conclusion. I also knew that the group on the road had been knocked out, and that Lensen had died a horrible death. Where were the rest of his men? Perhaps they too were lying under the rubble of the farm. Probabilities and possibilities poured through my head. It was most unlikely that any of us could remain unseen against that pale gray soil, where every protuberance was marked by a dark shadow. I thought of making a break for it, but quickly realized that every way out was in fact impossible. I might head for the pine woods to the left, but that meant at least three hundred yards entirely in the open. The Popovs would be sure to see me before I had gone even halfway. There was still a lot of smoke, but most of it was rising vertically and wouldn't hide anything.
Suddenly, in a spasm of egotism, I felt myself caught in a trap from which there was no escape. I was so sure of this that I ordered my companion to shoot me. He was feeling much as I was, and stared at me with anguish.
"No," he said. "I could never do that. But I wish you would kill me. Please kill me."
Caught in our grotesque dilemma, we stared at each other, full of mistrust and rancor-each trying to hand over sole responsibility to the other.
"We're going to die here, you bastard," I snarled. "So shoot me. That's an order."
"No. No, I can't," he sobbed.
"You're afraid of being left alone, that's all."
"Yes. And so are you."
"But don't you see there's nothing else we can do?"
We could hear the sound of fighting. It was coming from the north from behind us.
"Those bastards must have caught up with the company," I said.
The noise continued. We stared at each other, motionless and silent. There was no more to say, because everything had already been said a long time ago.
Then my two forward men appeared, and a few moments later Lindberg, dragging along with him a fellow with a badly swollen face. We all squatted down, and then someone noticed some men whose moving figures blotted out the ruins of the farm. They were moving forward by cautious leaps, toward the woods, some 150 yards to the left.
"We should get over there too," pleaded Lindberg. "The Russians are nearly here."
"That's easy enough to say," I answered. "But look at the open ground we'd have to cross. The Russians would see us right away."
No one could argue with that. Everyone looked from the woods to the edge of the village to me. If only, at that moment, I had possessed the conviction and the decisiveness to impose on the others an idea of what to do, to take responsibility for the men entrusted to me. I remained as I was, incapable of dealing with either the circumstances or the men, who were looking to me for some sort of initiative. The damning appraisal Lensen had once made of me seemed crushingly true: I was unworthy of command, incapable of leading.
And it was here, a hundred yards from the site of Lensen's heroic death, that my incapacity manifested itself.
I remained where I was, overwhelmed by the thousand miseries of our situation, internally sobbing with despair.
I felt that my companions would make for themselves the decision I was unable to impose on them with any authority. Was I a simple coward? Wasn't I really as bad as Lindberg, whose all too obvious fear had so often disheartened us? I no longer wished for death, but simply cursed my existence, which had become a series of nightmares.
On that day, at a critical moment, I failed. I failed in everything I had hoped for, from others and from myself.
My head wobbled on my neck like the head of a drunk at the moment when his condition changes over from hilarity to despair. I was there, fully conscious, aware of everything, but paralyzed by insurmountable panic. I shall never forgive myself for that instant, when reality touched the deepest recesses of my being.
Minutes went by, and my condition remained unchanged-minutes I should have been putting to good use. Fear nailed me where I was, in the midst of five other human beings who were all on the brink of madness. I was no longer trying to see where our danger might be coming from, but was turned inward, on myself. I found nothing but despair.
We could hear more tanks-the grinding of tracks and the roar of engines. I began to tremble uncontrollably, unable to tear myself from my obsession. The others were clinging to each other, their faces distorted with fear, ready to scream.
Lindberg stood up, in spite of himself. He wanted to see what was happening. He had lost his gun and was no longer thinking of defending himself. A wild thought had entered his stunned mind. He fell forward, across the edge of the hole, trembling convulsively, like me. He had just clenched his fists around two stick grenades.
Death was stalking us, approaching with giant steps. This time, with a horrible shudder, I could feel its presence.
Once again, from all sides, we heard the firing of big guns. The explosions nearest us destroyed what was left of our lucidity. We were no longer in a state to understand anything, except that we could also hear the sound of a truck, quite nearby. Then we heard the barking of light machine guns. We stared at each other, without words. The sound of a voice speaking German fell on our incredulous ears. Behind the shattered building, beside a truck with a throbbing engine, some men were speaking German. We heard more tanks and automatic weapons, and stayed where we were, stiff with fear. A man leaned over our hole: a German officer. We observed his presence without really seeing him. Perhaps he thought we were dead. He went away again. But a few minutes later two Panzergrenadiers led us from that hole, and we followed meekly.
The anticipated German counter-attack had taken place, led by two S.S. armored regiments, and had caught the Russians on the flank, inflicting heavy losses. We even took back the village for a few days, before continuing our retreat.