Part One

Russia

Autumn, 1943

TOWARD STALINGRAD

Minsk-Kiev-Baptism of Fire-Kharkov

We were standing beside a long railway convoy. We had been ordered to stack our guns on the tracks and take off our packs. The time was somewhere between twelve noon and one o'clock. Laus was munching on something he had taken from his pack. His face, although scarcely attractive, had grown familiar to us, even reassuring. As though his action were some kind of signal, we all took out our food, some immediately devouring the equivalent of two meals. Laus noticed this, but contented himself with a brief comment: "All right, go ahead, gobble it all down. But there won't be another distribution before the week is over."

Although we all felt as if we'd eaten only half of what we really needed to assuage our giant appetites, we also felt a little bit warmer. By this time we had been waiting in the cold for more than two hours, and it was beginning to get the better of us. We tramped up and down, joking and stamping our feet. Some, who had paper, wrote letters, but my fingers were too numb, and I contented myself with observation. Trains loaded with war materiel were continuously passing through the station, which had turned into a vast bottleneck, with cars backed up for at least six hundred yards. Everything seemed very badly organized, with convoys moving out, only to be shuttled onto other sections of track, where other companies brought from God knows where were being kept waiting as we were. People were always moving out of the way to let a train go by, only to see it a few minutes later headed in the opposite direction. What a mess!

The train we were leaning against seemed to have been immobilized for eternity. Perhaps it would have been bitter if it had never left.

To give myself some exercise, I hoisted myself up as high as the air holes in the carriages. Instead of cattle, the train was filled with munitions.

By this time we had been in the station for four hours, and felt frozen. It grew colder as it grew dark, and to kill time we plunged once more into our provisions. Although it was already quite dark, traffic continued, dimly lit. Laus was beginning to look as though he had had enough. With his cap pulled down over his ears, and his collar turned up, he was tramping up and down for warmth; he must have covered at least ten miles. We had formed a small group of friends from Chemnitz, which wasn't to break up until much later: Lensen, Olensheim, and Hals, three Germans who spoke French as badly as I spoke German; Morvan, an Alsatian; Uterbeick, an Austrian, as dark and curly as an Italian dancer, who eventually dissociated himself from our group; and me, a Franco-German. Among the six of us, we were making progress in both languages, except for that damned Uterbeick, who never stopped humming Italian love songs under his breath. These plaintive melodies sounded out of place and totally foreign to ears more accustomed to Wagner than to Italian composers, especially those lamentations of an abandoned Neapolitan swain.

Hals had a watch with a luminous dial which informed us that it was already eight-thirty. We felt sure that our departure was imminent, that they were not going to leave us on the station platform for the night. But that is how it turned out. After another hour, several men unpacked sleeping rolls and stretched out as best they could-if possible on some raised surface, for a little protection from the damp. Some even had the temerity to sleep under the train, hoping that it wouldn't start rolling.

Our sergeant had settled on a pile of railway baggage and lit a cigarette. He looked worn out. We simply couldn't accept the idea of a night out of doors. It seemed impossible that we would be left where we were. We knew that the departure whistle would blow soon, and that all the idiots who hadn't had the patience to wait would have a fine time packing up their bedrolls in a hurry. As it turned out, we would have done better to imitate them and gain two hours' sleep; two hours later we were still sitting on the cold stones of the road bed. It was growing steadily colder, and a fine rain had begun to fall. Our sergeant was busy building himself a shelter with the railway baggage-not at all a bad idea. When he covered this over with his waterproof sheet, he was completely sheltered-the old fox.

We now felt compelled to find ourselves some shelter too. We couldn't move too far from our weapons, but we left them nonetheless, with their barrels in the air, open to the rain, expecting a royal dressing down later on. The best places, of course, were taken by this time, and the only thing we could think of was to shelter beneath the railway cars. It had certainly occurred to us to try to get inside, but the doors were held shut with wire cables.

Full of complaints, we crawled into our disquieting and altogether relative shelter. The rain blew in sideways after us, and we were furious. Later on this anger made me laugh....

As best we could, we arranged some degree of shelter from the rain. This was my first night in the open air, and needless to say I never shut my eyes for more than fifteen minutes at a time. I can remember long periods of staring at the huge axle that served as the roof of my bed. Through my exhaustion it often seemed to be shifting, as if the train were about to move; I would wake with a start to find that nothing had changed, fall back again into a half sleep, only to be startled back into wakefulness once again. At the first glimmer of daylight we left this chance resting place, stiff and numb, looking like a gang of disinterred corpses.

We fell in at eight o'clock, and marched to the embarkation platform. Hals remarked several times that we could perfectly well have spent another night at the castle. None of us as yet had any idea of the dispiriting necessities of military life in wartime. This had been our first night out of doors, but we were destined to spend many others which were far worse.

For the moment, we were train guards. Our company had been divided among three long convoys of military materiel, two or three to a car. I found myself with Hals and Lensen on a flatcar which carried airplane wings marked with a black cross, and other parts covered by canvas. These were supplies destined for the Luftwaffe; according to the inscriptions we had been able to read, they came from Ratisbonne, and were going to Minsk.

Minsk: Russia. Our mouths suddenly went dry.

We were pursued by bad luck. We were stuck on an open car; the rain had turned to snow; the unbearable cold was intensified by the motion of the train. After due consideration we ducked under the tarpaulin which covered a large DO-17 engine. This maneuver cut the wind, and by clinging together we managed to achieve a semblance of warmth.

We stayed there a good hour, roaring with laughter over nothing. The train was rolling along and we hadn't the slightest idea what was happening outdoors. From time to time we could hear trains going in the other direction.

All of a sudden, Lensen thought he heard a voice shouting above the noise of the wheels. Carefully he stuck his head out of our shelter. "It's Laus," he said calmly, turning back to us and pulling the canvas down again.

Ten seconds later, the canvas was ripped back to reveal the sergeant fuming with rage at the sight of our three happy faces. Laus, wearing a helmet and gloves, looked very much on the job. His face and coat were powdered with snow, like the rest of the train, whose long profile joggled and swayed behind him. The air rang with a loud "Achtung!" but the spasmodic motion of the train prevented the order from being executed with its customary stiff precision.

The scene which followed was worthy of burlesque. I can still see that great teddy bear Hals, swaying from right to left as he tried to maintain a rigid posture. As for me, my long coat had caught on one of the numerous sections of airplane engine, which made it impossible for me to straighten up. Laus was no better than we were at maintaining a dignified attitude. Finally, beside himself with exasperation, he braced himself with one knee against the floor. We followed his example, and from a certain distance we might have been taken for a quartet of conspirators whispering secrets. In fact, I and my companions were receiving a magisterial dressing-down.

"What the hell do you think you're doing under there?" Laus shouted. "Where in God's name do you think you are, and what do you think you're supposed to be doing on this train?"

Hals, who had a spontaneous nature, interrupted our superior. He said that it was impossible to stay outside the canvas because the cold was so bad, and that anyway there was nothing to look at.

It would seem that by making these observations, Hals was demonstrating a total lack of objectivity. Like an enraged gorilla the sergeant seized our comrade by the collar and shook him violently, with a torrent of abuse.

"I'll make my report! At the first stop I'll have you sent to a disciplinary battalion. This is nothing less than abandoning your post. You could get the firing squad.... What if a car had blown up behind you? You couldn't have warned anyone from that hole of yours!"

"Why?" Lensen asked. "Is a car going to blow up?"

"Shut up, idiot! There are terrorists all along the line, ready to risk anything. When they don't blow the trains right up they throw explosives or incendiaries. You are here precisely to prevent that sort of thing. Take your helmets and come to the front of the car, or I'll throw the whole lot of you overboard!"

We didn't wait for him to repeat himself, and despite the cold which bit into our faces, we took up the positions he appointed. Laus continued forward through the loaded cars, hanging on as he moved from one to the next. He wasn't really a bully, but a man with a clear idea of a job to be done. I never saw him try to make things easier for himself, which is probably why I felt he must have a sympathetic streak, although I hadn't yet spoken to him. None of the other feldwebels in the company were so strict; they claimed to be saving themselves for the big job; but when the moment came Laus did as much as they, if not more. He was the oldest of the sergeants; perhaps he had already been at the front. In fact, he was like every sergeant-major in the world: afraid of responsibility, and at the same time giving us a hard time.

During his tirade he had made us realize, rightly enough, that if we couldn't stand a little cold and a vague, possible danger, we would never survive at the front. It certainly would be idiotic to get killed by some anarchist before we'd seen anything.

We were rolling through a forest of squat, snow-covered pines. I had plenty of time to ponder the case of conscience the feldwebel had put to me. The north of Poland seemed to be very sparsely populated. We had passed only a few small towns. Suddenly, well ahead of the train, I caught sight of a figure running along beside the tracks. I didn't think I could be the only person who'd noticed him, but apparently no one in any of the cars head was doing anything about him.

Rapidly I maneuvered my Mauser into a good position, and took aim at what could only be a terrorist.

Our train was moving very slowly: a perfect target for a bomb. In a few minutes I was level with the man. I couldn't see anything unusual about him. He was probably a Polish woodcutter who had come up out of curiosity. I felt disconcerted. I had been all ready to fire, and now nothing seemed to justify it. I aimed deliberately over his head and pulled the trigger.

The report shook the air, and the butt of my gun crashed violently into my shoulder. The poor fellow took off as fast as he could, obviously fearing the worst, and I felt certain that my ill-considered action had made another enemy for the Reich.

The train maintained its speed, and a few minutes later Laus appeared, continuing his endless patrol despite the cold. He gave me a curious look.

We had decided to take duty in shifts. While two of us watched, the third would try to warm up under the canvas. We had now been on the train for something like eight hours, and felt apprehensive about the night, which would undoubtedly be spent in these conditions. Twenty minutes ago I had taken Hals's place, and for twenty minutes had been unable to control my violent shivering. Night was drawing close; perhaps Minsk was too. The train was moving along the only track. To the north and to the south we were enclosed by dark forest. For the last quarter of an hour the train had been accelerating, which would undoubtedly result in our deaths by freezing. We had also consumed a large part of our rations to keep warm.

Suddenly the train slowed down. The brake blocks grated against the wheels, and the couplings shook violently. We were soon moving at the speed of a bicycle. I saw the front of the train turn to the right: we were diverting onto a secondary track.

The train moved forward for another five minutes, and then stopped. Two officers had jumped down from one of the front cars and were walking back. Laus and two other noncoms went out to meet them. They conferred for a moment but didn't tell us anything. All along the train people were looking out. The forest seemed a likely haven for terrorists. Our train had been standing still for several minutes when we heard the distant sound of wheels. We were walking up and down trying to warm ourselves up when a blast from a whistle accompanied by gestures indicated that we should return to our posts at once. A locomotive appeared in the distance on the track we had just left; it was entirely blacked out.           ,

What I saw next froze me with horror. I wish I were a writer of genius so that I could do justice to the vision which appeared before us. First we saw a car loaded with railway materials, pushed along in front of the locomotive and hiding its dim lights. Then came the smoking locomotive, its tender, and a closed car with a hole in its roof to accommodate a short length of smoking pipe-probably the train kitchen. Behind this another car with high railings carried armed German soldiers. A twin-mounted machine gun covered the rest of the train, which consisted simply of open flatcars like ours, but loaded with a very different kind of freight. The first one of these to pass my uncomprehending eyes seemed to be carrying a confused heap of objects, which only gradually became recognizable as human bodies. Directly behind this heap other people were clinging together, crouching or standing. Each car was full to the bursting point. One of us, more informed than the others, told us in two words what we were looking at: "Russian prisoners."

I thought I had recognized the brown coats I had seen once before, near the castle, but it was really too dark to be sure. Hals looked at me. Except for the burning red spots made by the cold, his face was as white as a sheet.

"Did you see that?" he whispered. "They've piled up their dead to shield themselves from the wind."

In my stupefaction I could only reply with something like a groan. Every car was carrying a shield of human bodies. I stood as if petrified by the horror of the sight rolling slowly by: faces entirely drained of blood, and bare feet stiffened by death and cold.

The tenth car had just passed us when something even more horrible happened. Four or five bodies slid from the badly balanced load and fell to the side of the track. The funereal train didn't stop. A group of officers and noncoms from our train walked over to investigate. Driven by I don't know what element of curiosity I jumped down from our car and went over to the officers. I saluted and asked in a faltering voice if the men were dead. An officer looked at me in astonishment and I realized that I had just abandoned my post. He must have noticed my confusion, as he didn't reprimand me.

"I think so," he said sadly. "You can help your comrades bury them." Then he turned and walked away. Hals had come with me. We went back to our car to fetch shovels and began to dig a trench a short distance above the embankment. Laus and another fellow looked through the dead men's clothes to try to find some identification. I learned later that most of these poor devils had no civilian identity. Hals and I needed all our nerve to drag two of them over to the ditch without looking at them. We were covering them with dirt when the departure whistle blew. It was growing colder by the minute. I felt overcome by a vast sense of disgust.

An hour later our train passed through a double hedge of structures which, despite the absence of light, we could see were more or less destroyed. We passed another train, less sinister than the preceding one, but scarcely comforting. Its cars were marked with red crosses. Through some of the windows we could see stretchers, which must have been carrying badly wounded men. At other windows, soldiers swathed in bandages were waving to us.

Finally we arrived at Minsk station. Our train pulled to a stop down the whole length of a long, wide platform covered with a busy, motley crowd: armed soldiers and soldiers in fatigues, civilians, and groups of Russian prisoners cordoned in by other prisoners who wore red-and white armbands and carried truncheons. These were the informers who had denounced the famous "People's Commissars" and were therefore anti-Communist. They claimed the right of guarding their comrades, which suited our authorities very well, as no one would be more likely to get a decent day's work from the Russian prisoners.

We could hear orders being given, first in German, then in Russian. A crowd of men came up to our train, and the unloading began in the lights of the trucks parked along the platform. We joined in this work, which took the better part of two hours, warming ourselves a little, then plunging once more into our provisions. Hals, a greedy-guts, had consumed more than half his allotment in less than two days. We spent the night in a large building where we were able to sleep in a certain degree of comfort.

The next day we were sent to a military hospital, where we were kept for two days and given a series of shots. Minsk was very badly damaged. There were many gutted houses and walls cross-hatched by machine-gun fire. Some of the streets were totally impassable, with a continuous line of shell holes and bomb craters, often more than fifteen feet deep. Passageways of a sort had been made by planks and other solid objects thrown across this chaos. From time to time we gave way to a Russian woman loaded with provisions, and always followed by four or five children who stared at us with astonishingly round eyes. There were also many curious shops whose broken windows had been replaced by boards or sacks stuffed with straw. Hals, Lensen, Morvan, and I went into several of these out of curiosity. There was always an array of big earthenware crocks painted in various colors, which contained either a liquid and steeping plants, dried vegetables, or a curious heavy syrup which was halfway between jam and butter.

As we didn't know how to say so much as "hello" in Russian, we always went into these places talking among ourselves. The few Russians who were inside invariably assumed an attitude half anxious, half smiling, while the shopkeeper or proprietress would approach us with a white-lipped smile and offer us large dippers of these products, in an obvious effort to placate the fierce warriors they imagined us to be.

We were often given a fine yellowish flour to mix into this syrup whose taste was far from disagreeable, somewhat reminiscent of honey. Its only discouraging aspect was a superabundance of fat. I can still see the faces of those Russians, smiling as they held out this product and pronouncing a word which sounded rather like "ourlka." I never was sure whether this meant "eat" or was simply the name of the mixture. There were days when we really gorged ourselves on "ourlka," which nonetheless did not prevent us from appearing at eleven o'clock for the official midday meal.

Hals accepted everything the Russians offered him with so much politeness. Sometimes I found him quite revolting, holding out his mess tin for the largess of these Soviet merchants as they poured into it mixtures resembling each other only in their loose, runny consistency. Sometimes his tin would hold a combination of the famous ourlka, cooked wheat, salt herring cut into pieces, and several other ingredients. Whatever the concoction, Hals devoured it with evident relish, like a great pig. Except for these moments of distraction seized in the intervals between our many jobs, we scarcely had time to amuse ourselves. Minsk was an important army supply center, where shipments were constantly loaded and unloaded.

Life for the troops in this sector was remarkably well-organized. Mail was distributed; there were films for soldiers on leave-which we were not allowed to attend-libraries, and restaurants run by Russian civilians, but reserved entirely for German soldiers. The restaurants were all too expensive for me and I never went into them, but Hals, who would sacrifice anything for a good stuffing, spent all his money in these places, and a certain amount of ours. The understanding was that he would give us a detailed account of his experiences, which he adhered to faithfully, with many embellishments. We slavered with vicarious pleasure as we listened to him.

We were much better fed than we had been in Poland, and were able to supplement our rations very cheaply-which we really needed to do. The cold in these opening days of December had become extremely sharp, dropping to more than five degrees below zero. The snow, which fell in great abundance, never melted, and in places was already over three feet deep. Evidently this slowed the movement of supplies to the front, and, according to troops returning from forward positions where the cold was even more bitter than at Minsk, the poor fellows were reduced to sharing rations which were already ridiculously small. Insufficient food combined with the cold produced many cases of pneumonia, frostbite, and frozen limbs.

At this moment, the Reich was making an immense effort to protect its soldiers from the implacable hostility of the Russian winter. At Minsk, Kovno, and Kiev, there were enormous stores of blankets, special winter clothing made of sheepskin, overshoes with thick insulating soles and uppers of matted hair, gloves, hoods of double catskin, and portable heaters which operated equally well on gasoline, oil, or solidified alcohol, mountains of rations in specially conditioned boxes, and thousands of other necessities. It was our duty, as convoy troops of the Rollbahn, to deliver all of this to the front lines, where the combat troops were desperately awaiting us.

We made superhuman efforts, and yet they were not enough. The punishment we suffered, not at the hands of the Russian Army, which until that moment had done almost nothing except retreat, but from the cold, is almost beyond the powers of description. Outside the great towns there had not yet been time to repair the damaged roads-few and far between to begin with-or to open others. While our unit was doing its autumn gymnastics, the Wehrmacht, after an extraordinary advance, had marched itself and its supplies into an unbelievable quagmire. Then the first frosts had solidified the monstrous ruts leading to the east. Our machines had suffered enormously on these roads, which in fact were passable only for wagons, but the hardening of the soil had temporarily allowed the provisioning of the troops. Then winter poured down its tons of snow across the immensity of Russia, once again paralyzing traffic.

That is the point we had reached in December, 1942. We shoveled away snow so that our trucks could move forward fifteen or twenty miles in a morning, only to find our efforts covered over again the same day. The earth beneath the snow was a sinister relief of bumps and potholes, which we tamped down or blew up. In the evenings we scrambled to find shelter for the night.

Sometimes this would be a but fitted out by the engineers, sometimes an isba, *- A log hut- or any house we could find. We often crowded more than fifty men into a but intended for a couple and two children. The most desired accommodations were the big tents especially designed for Russia. They were tall and pointed, like teepees, weather-proofed, and planned for nine men. We were rarely fewer than twenty, and even at that there weren't enough tents. Luckily, we had raided our stores of food because of the cold, and with enough to eat, we were able to keep going reasonably well. Some of us began to crawl with vermin, as we were only rarely able to wash, and when we returned to Minsk, our first duty was to pass through disinfection.

I was beginning to feel that I'd had more than enough of Holy Russia and of truck driving. Like everybody else I was afraid of the idea of being under fire, but I was also beginning to long to use the Mauser which had been dragging around with me for what seemed like an eternity, without ever being the slightest use. I felt that somehow firing at something would avenge me for my sufferings from the cold, and from my blisters. My hands were badly blistered from shoveling, and my woolen gloves were already full of holes, exposing the tops of my icy fingers. My hands and feet felt the cold so sharply that it sometimes seemed as if the pain were stabbing me in the heart. The thermometer remained around five degrees below zero.

We were now billeted some fifteen miles north of Minsk, guarding a huge parking depot for military vehicles. We occupied the seven or eight houses in the hamlet, leaving only one, the largest, occupied by a Russian family. Their name was Khorsky; they had two daughters and claimed to have originally come from the Crimea, which they spoke of with nostalgia. They ran a kind of canteen where we could buy food and drink-from our own pockets-and find a few companions with whom to kill time.

The snow had stopped, but the cold was growing steadily more intense. One evening after our company had been in the hamlet for about a week, I was scheduled for two hours of guard duty. I crossed the huge parking lot, where five hundred or more vehicles of every description were half buried in snow. I had been feeling apprehensive all day at the prospect of walking across this space at night. It would be so easy for partisans to hide between the cars and shoot us as we went by. But I had gradually persuaded myself that the war, if it existed at all, was really taking place somewhere else. The only Russians I had seen were either merchants or prisoners, and it seemed highly probable that I would never see any others.

With this idea in my head, I walked to my post, about fifteen yards from the first vehicles, through a trench about a yard deep, which allowed us to advance as far as the cars, or withdraw, without being exposed. The edges of the trench had already been raised nearly another three feet by new snow, and each fresh fall obliged us to dig. I stood up on the box that allowed the sentry to see a little farther. I had wrapped a blanket over my coat, which made it very hard for me to move my arms.

I had refused my allotment of alcohol, the taste of which disgusted me, and was mentally preparing myself for another siege of uncontrollable trembling from the cold. The night was clear; I could have seen a raven a hundred yards off. In the distance the horizon was cut by a mass of stunted bushes. Three of the four telephone lines which crossed our camp were visible, stretching away in different directions. Their posts, shoved unevenly into the ground, were indifferent supports for the wire, which sometimes drooped right down to the snow.

My nose, the only part of me directly exposed, began to burn with cold. I had pulled my cap down as far as I could, so that my forehead and part of my cheeks were covered. Over this I wore the helmet required for guard duty. The turned-up collar of the pullover my parents had sent me overlapped the edge of my cap at the back of my head.

From time to time I looked at the expanse of machinery I was guarding and wondered what we would do if we had to move it all in a hurry. The engines must have reached a state of magnificent solidity!

I had been at my post for a good hour when suddenly a silhouette appeared at the edge of the parking lot. I threw myself down into the bottom of my hole. Before extracting my hands from the depths of my pockets, I risked another look over my parapet. The silhouette was advancing toward me. It must be one of our men making the rounds, but supposing it was a Bolshevik!

Grunting with the effort, I pulled my hands from their shelter and grabbed my gun. The breech, sticky with frost, bit into my fingers, as I maneuvered my weapon into firing position and shouted out, "Wer da?" I got back a reasonable reply, and my bullet remained in the gun. All the same, I had been prudent to take these elementary precautions: it was an officer going his rounds. I saluted.

"Everything all right?"

"Yes, Leutnant."

"Fine. Well, Happy Christmas." "What? Is it Christmas?" "Yes. Look over there."

He pointed to the Khorskys' house. The roof, loaded with snow, sloped down to ground level; the narrow windows were shining far more brightly than blackout regulations usually permitted, and in their light I could see the swiftly moving silhouettes of my comrades. A few moments later a tall flame burst from an enormous woodpile which must have been soaked with gasoline.

A song supported by three hundred voices ascended slowly into the stillness of the frozen night. "O Weihnacht! O stille Nacht!" Was it possible? At that moment, everything beyond the perimeter of the camp was without meaning for me. I couldn't tear my eyes from the light of the bonfire. The faces closest to the flames were illuminated; the rest were lost in darkness, while the strong outpouring of song continued, divided now into several parts. Perhaps the circumstances of this particular Christmas night made a critical difference, but in all the time since then I haven't heard anything which moved me so much.

The memories of my earliest youth, still so close, returned to me for the first time since I had been a soldier. What was happening at home this evening? What was happening in France? We had heard bulletins which informed us that many French troops were now fighting along with us-news which made me rejoice. The thought of Frenchmen and Germans marching side by side seemed marvelous to me. Soon we would no longer have to be cold; the war would be over, and we could all recite our adventures at home. This Christmas hadn't brought me any gift I could hold in my hand, but had brought so much good news about the harmony between my two countries that I felt overwhelmed. Because I knew that I was now a man, I kept firmly at the back of my mind a foolish and embarrassing idea which kept pursuing me: I really would have liked someone to give me an ingenious mechanical toy.

My companions were still singing, and all along the front millions like them must have been singing as they were. I didn't know that, at that very hour, Soviet T-34 tanks, taking advantage of the truce which Christmas was supposed to bring, were crushing the forward posts of the Sixth Army in the Armotovsk sector. I didn't know that my comrades in the Sixth Army, in which one of my uncles was serving, were dying by the thousands in the hell of Stalingrad. I didn't know that German towns were being subjected to the horrifying bombardments of the R.A.F. and the U.S.A.F. And I would never have dared to think that the French would refuse a Franco-German entente.

This was, in its way, the most beautiful Christmas I had ever seen, made entirely of disinterested emotion and stripped of all tawdry trimmings. I was all alone beneath an enormous starred sky, and I can remember a tear running down my frozen cheek-a tear neither of pain nor of joy but of emotion created by intense experience.

By the time I got back to the billet, the officers had put an end to the celebrations, and ordered the bonfire extinguished. Hals had saved a half bottle of schnapps for me. I swallowed down a few mouthfuls, not to disappoint him.

Four more days went by. The hard cold continued, embellished by snow-filled squalls. We went out only for obligatory duties, which we reduced to the minimum, and burned tons of wood. The houses had been built to conserve heat, and we were sometimes even too hot. We felt very well, and as is usual under such circumstances, we very soon had some trouble.

Ours began one morning sometime around three o'clock. A guard noisily kicked open the door of the hut, admitting a blast of icy air and two soldiers whose stiff, bluish faces made them look remarkably alike. They rushed to our stove, and it was a few minutes before they spoke. Along with everybody else, I shouted at them to shut the door. In reply, we received a curse, and were ordered to stand at attention. As we gaped, somewhat startled and without reaction, the fellow who had shouted kicked over the bench standing next to him, and shouting out his order a second time, hurled himself at the improvised bed of one of our men, violently ripping apart the mound of blankets, coats, and jackets in which our comrade had buried himself. In the dim light of the stove we recognized the epaulettes of a feldwebel.

"Are you bastards going to get the hell up?" he shouted pulling out everybody he could reach. "Who's at the head of this bunch? It's a disgrace! Do you think this is how we'll stop the Russian offensive? If you're not ready in ten minutes I'll throw you out of here just the way you are."

Stupid with sleep and stunned by our sudden awakening, we hurriedly collected our things. Leaving the door wide open, the feldwebel rushed from our but like a madman, to inject panic into the isba across the way. We had no very clear idea of what was happening. Our sentry, who seemed quite shaken, told us that the intruders had arrived from Minsk in a sidecar. Those fifteen-odd miles must have taken them quite a long time, which would explain their furious condition.

But, despite all the demonic howling the feldwebel could muster, it was a full twenty minutes before we were standing at attention in the snow. Laus, who had been as deeply asleep as anyone else, tried to shock us into wakefulness with a pretense of rage as intense as his colleague's.

The other feldwebel, whose anger had not abated, barked out our orders: "You will join Kommandant Ultraner's unit at Minsk before dawn." He turned to Laus. "You will take fifteen trucks from the depot and proceed as I've ordered."

Why hadn't he telephoned, instead of working himself into such a state? We found out later that, while we had been sleeping peacefully, the telephone line had been cut in four places.

The difficulty of getting under way and bringing the trucks out from the depot was almost unimaginable. We had to roll out barrels of gasoline and alcohol to fill the gas tanks and radiators, crank up the engines an exhausting labor-and shovel out cubic yards of snow, almost entirely without light. When the fifteen trucks were ready, we set out for Minsk, following the bumpy, snow-covered track the feldwebel had taken to reach us. One of the trucks skidded on the icy ground, and it took a good half hour to pull it from the ditch. We hooked it to another truck, which could only skate along the ice. In the end, almost the entire company was involved in the struggle,, and we literally carried the damn machine back onto the road. Toward eight o'clock in the morning, well before the late winter dawn of those regions, we joined Ultraner and his regiment, and stood shivering, despite our exertions, in a vast city square, with two or three thousand other soldiers. Minsk seemed to be bursting with excitement and energy.

A network of loudspeakers which had been set up throughout the square disseminated a short lecture from the High Command. The lecture pointed out that even a victorious army had to accept deaths and casualties, and that our role as a convoy unit was to carry, at whatever the cost and despite all the hardships, which the High Command thoroughly recognized, the food, munitions, and materiel the combat troops required. Our convoy, by any means available, had to reach the banks of the Volga, so that von Paulus could continue to wage his victorious battle. One thousand miles separated us from our destination, and we hadn't a moment to spare.

We left after the midday meal. I found myself, separated from my closest friends, aboard a five-and-a-half-ton D.K.W. loaded with heavy automatic weapons. The road leaving the city was well ploughed, and we rolled along at a brisk pace. There must have been road gangs working around the clock. The snow banks on either side of the road were nearly twelve feet high. We passed a signpost bristling with pointers. On the sign indicating the road we took I read NACH PRIPET, KIEV, DNIEPER, KHARKOV, DNIEPROPETROVSK.

Our troops had rounded up everyone capable of holding a shovel, and we were able to cover nearly one hundred miles in good time. We soon reached the summit of a hill from which we could see the immensity of the Ukraine stretching into the distance under a yellowish gray sky.

The ten or twelve vehicles ahead of us had suffered a serious reduction in speed. Ahead of them, a company of soldiers were busily engaged in moving snow. A heavy truck was pushing a sled fitted with a kind of ventilator which blew out the snow in all directions. Beyond lay an infinity of immaculate snow nearly three feet deep. (Heavy snowfalls buried the road so completely after the passage of each convoy that we needed a compass to dig it out again.) Our commanding officer and his noncoms had walked a short distance out onto the upswept snow, sinking in over the tops of their boots, and were scanning the horizon, wondering how they could possibly proceed through all that soggy cotton. Inside our D.K.W., with all the windows shut, I and my traveling companion were relishing the warmth of our running engine.

But soon they were ordering us out of our machines and distributing snow shovels. As there weren't enough to go round, our noncoms told us to use anything we could lay our hands on. I saw men digging with boards, helmets, big serving platters. . . .

With two other fellows I was pushing against the tailgate of a truck which we had detached, hoping to use it as a crude sort of snow plough. The blast of a feldwebel's whistle interrupted our disorganized labor.

"What do you think you're proving over there? Come along with me; we'll go and round up some manpower. Bring your guns."

I felt a surge of jubilation, which I kept well-hidden, as I inwardly thanked the idiots who had devised our hopeless procedure. I preferred almost anything to shoveling snow. We followed the feldwebel. I had no idea where he hoped to find more manpower. We had only passed two deserted villages since leaving Minsk. With our guns slung, our little group split off from the track the trucks had traced in the snow, and headed north. We sank in over our knees with every step, which made progress extremely difficult.

For ten minutes I did my best to follow the feldwebel, who was about fifteen feet ahead of me. I was gasping for breath, and I could feel the sweat beginning to trickle down my spine under the heavy cloth of my coat. My breath projected long streams of vapor, which vanished instantly in the icy air. I kept my eyes glued to the feldwebel's deep footprints, trying to step exactly into them, but as he was bigger than I, this meant that every step was a leap. I deliberately avoided looking at the horizon, which seemed so far away. A thin screen of birches soon hid the convoy from us.

Ludicrous in our smallness, we continued forward into the immensity of white. I was beginning to wonder where our noncom thought he would find his famous manpower. We had been exhausting ourselves in this way for nearly an hour. Suddenly, in the absolute quiet, we heard a rumbling sound which was growing steadily louder. We stopped.

Our sergeant limited himself to the observation that we hadn't much further to go, and then added that it was a pity we would miss this one.

I didn't really understand what he was talking about, but the noise was becoming increasingly clear. To our left I caught sight of a black line stretching across the snow. A train! We were approaching a railway line. I still didn't see what a train could do for us. Would they take our cargoes on board?

The train was going by very slowly about five hundred yards ahead of us. It was extremely long, a line of black broken at intervals by one of the five locomotives, spewing out impressive clouds of white vapor which vanished almost instantly, as if by magic. The train must have had a special mechanism for snow disposal.

Fifteen minutes later, we reached the tracks.

"A lot of supply trains go through here," the feldwebel said. "Most of the cars carry materiel, but there are usually a few passenger cars for Russian civilians. We'll stop one of them and collect some Russian labor."

Finally I understood.

All we had to do now was wait. We tramped briskly up and down the tracks trying to keep warm. However, it felt as if the temperature had risen somewhat, as if by now it might be up to 15 degrees-which indicates the astonishing degree to which we had grown accustomed to zero temperatures. The cold, as we waited for the next train, seemed quite bearable. Soldiers wearing only pullovers were shoveling snow and streaming with sweat. I have never met anyone better able to stand punishment, whether from cold or heat or anything else, than the Germans. Each Russian I saw was more frozen than the last, but I certainly could not feel superior on that account. Life in Russia for me was a perpetual shivering fit.

The first train passed by without even slowing down. Our feldwebel, who had outdone himself in his efforts to stop it, was furious. Soldiers shouted to us from the train that their orders were not to stop for any reason whatever.

Extremely irritated, we walked on in the direction of the train which had passed us. At all events, the road must be parallel to the tracks; we would only have to make a right-angle turn to find our com pany again. The difficulty was that we were far from the kitchen and the hour for the distribution of food must have come and gone. I had two pieces of rye bread in my coat pocket, but I didn't want to take them out for fear of having to share them. The two soldiers with whom I had been shoveling snow must have known each other for some time. They were deep in conversation, and had stuck together ever since we'd left the convoy. Our noncom was walking ahead of us, by himself, and I tried to catch up with him. By now we had been walking for some time. The tracks were sunk between two banks which supported a thin growth of scrubby brush. They extended straight ahead into an indefinite distance. If a train came along, we would be able to see it for at least five miles. The scrub on the banks at this point was growing more thickly, and extending a greater distance from the tracks.

It was now some three hours since we had left our company. Everything stood out clearly against the snow. For some moments now I had been staring at a black shape about five hundred yards away. Ten minutes later, we could see that it was a hut. Our feldwebel was walking toward it; it must be a shelter for railway workers. The feldwebel raised his voice: "Hurry up. We'll wait in that shelter over there."

It didn't seem a bad idea. We had regrouped, and a young fellow covered with freckles, one of my snow-shoveling companions, was joking with his friend. We were making our way toward the but when a violent burst of sound struck my ears. At the same moment, I saw, to the right of the hut, a light puff of white smoke.

Utterly astounded, I looked around at my companions. The feldwebel had flung himself down on the ground like a goalie onto a ball, and was loading his automatic. The fellow with the freckles was staggering toward me with enormous eyes and a curious stupefied expression. When he was about six feet from me, he fell to his knees. His mouth opened as if he wanted to shout, but no sound came, and he toppled over backward. A second barrage of sound ripped the air, followed by a modulated whistle.

Without thinking, I threw myself flat on the snow. The feldwebel's automatic crackled, and I saw some snow from the roof of the but shoot up into the air. I couldn't take my eyes off the freckled young soldier, whose motionless body lay a few yards away.

"Cover me, you idiots," the feldwebel shouted, as he jumped up and ran forward.

I looked at the freckled soldier's friend. He seemed more surprised than frightened. Calmly, we aimed our weapons toward the woods, from which a few shots still rang out, and began to fire.

The detonation of my Mauser restored some of my confidence, but I was still very scared. Two more bullets whistled in my ears. Our sergeant, with appalling self-assurance, stood up and threw a grenade. The air rang with the noise of the explosion, and one of the worm-eaten planks of the but disintegrated.

With incomprehensible calm, I continued to stare at the cabin. The feldwebel's automatic was still firing. Without panic, I slid another bullet into the barrel of my gun. As I was about to shoot, two black figures ran from the ruins of the hut, and headed toward the forest. It was a perfect opportunity. My gun sight stood out clearly in black against the white of the countryside, and then merged into the darkness of one of the galloping figures. I pressed the trigger ... and missed.

Our chief had run as far as the hut, firing after the fleeing men without hitting them. After a moment, he signaled us to join him, and we extricated ourselves from our holes in the snow.

The feldwebel was staring at something in the ruins of the cabin. As we drew closer we could see a man leaning against the wall. His face, half covered by a wild, shaggy beard, was turned toward us; his eyes looked damp. He gazed at us without a word; his clothes, of skin and fur, were not a military uniform. My eye was caught by his left hand. It was soaked with blood. More blood was running from his collar. I felt a twinge of unease for him. The feldwebel's voice brought me back to reality.

"Partisan!" he shouted. "Hein? . . . You know what you're going to get!"

He pointed his gun at the Russian, who seemed frightened and rolled farther back into the corner. I too recoiled, but our noncom was already putting his automatic back in its holster.

"You take care of him," he ordered, waving toward the wounded man.

We carried the partisan outside. He groaned, and said something unintelligible.

The sound of an approaching train was growing steadily louder. This one, however, was returning to the rear. We managed to stop it. Three soldiers wrapped in heavy reindeer-skin coats jumped from the first carriage. One of them was a lieutenant, and we snapped to attention. "What in God's name do you think you're doing?" he barked. "Why did you stop us?"

Our noncom explained that we were looking for labor.

"This train is carrying only the wounded and dying," the lieutenant said. "If we had some troops on leave I'd help you out. As it is, I can't do anything for you."

"We've got two wounded men," the sergeant ventured.

The lieutenant was already walking over to the freckled soldier, who was lying motionless where he had fallen. "You can see that this one's dead."

"No, Mein Leutnant. He's still breathing."

"Ah ... well, maybe ... But another fifteen minutes . . " he gestured vaguely. "Well, all right . . . we'll take him." He whistled at two skeletal stretcher-bearers, who lifted our young comrade. I thought I could see a brown stain in the middle of his back, but I wasn't sure whether it was blood mixed with the green of his coat, or something else.

And the other one?" the lieutenant asked impatiently. "Over there, beside the hut."

The lieutenant looked at the bearded man, who was clearly dying. "Who's this?"

"A Russian, Mein Leutnant, a partisan."

"So that's it. Do you really think I'm going to saddle myself with one of those bastards who'll shoot you in the back any time-as if war at the front wasn't enough!"

He shouted an order to the two soldiers who were with him. They walked over to the unfortunate man lying on the snow, and two shots rang out.

A short time later, we were making our way back to the road. Our noncom had abandoned the idea of an improvised labor force, and we would now rejoin our unit, which undoubtedly had not made much progress.

I had just been under fire for the first time, an experience I can no longer describe with any precision. An element of the absurd was mixed into the day's events: the feldwebel's footsteps in the snow were so enormous, and I, in my confusion, kept looking for the young freckled soldier who should have been returning with us. Everything had happened so quickly that I hadn't been able to grasp the significance of anything. Nevertheless, two human beings had suffered senseless deaths. Ours had not yet celebrated his eighteenth birthday.

It had already been dark for some time when we finally found our company. The night was clear and cold, and the thermometer was dropping with horrifying speed.

Despite our forced march of nearly four hours, we were shaking with cold, and famished. My head was swimming with exhaustion, and frost from my breath lay on the high collar which I had pulled up almost to my eyes.

For some time before we reached it, we were able to see our convoy, standing out clearly, black against white. Its progress had indeed been small. The trucks had sunk in through the icy white crust over the tops of their wheels, and great slabs of snow clung to their tires and mudguards. Almost everyone had taken refuge inside the cabs. After chewing on their meager rations, they had wrapped themselves in everything they could find, and were trying to sleep, despite the bitter cold. A short distance away, the two fellows who'd been chosen for guard duty were stamping on their boots, hoping to warm their feet.

Inside the cabs, through the frosted glass, I could see an occasional gleam from someone's cigarette or pipe. I climbed into my truck and felt in the darkness for my rucksack and mess tin. When the tin was propped between my icy fingers, I wolfed down a few mouthfuls of some filthy mixture that tasted like frozen soya. It was so bad that I tipped most of it onto the snow and ate something else.

Outside, I could hear somebody talking. I craned my neck to see who it was. A small fire had just been kindled in a hole in the snow, and was burning with a cheerful brilliance. I jumped down from the truck and hurried as fast as I could toward this source of light, heat, and joy. Three men were standing beside the fire, among them my feldwebel of this afternoon. He was breaking pieces of wood across his knee.

"I've had enough of this cold. I had pneumonia last winter, and if I get it again it's goodbye to me. Anyway, our trucks are visible for at least two miles, so we're not giving anything away by just lighting a few sticks."

"You're right," replied a fellow who must have been at least forty-five. "The Russians, partisans or not, are all snug in their beds."

"I certainly would be glad to be home in my bed," said another, staring into the flames.

We were all practically in the fire, except for the big feldwebel, who was busily reducing a packing case to fragments.

Suddenly someone shouted at us. "Hey, you over there!"

A figure was approaching us between the trucks. We could see the silver trim on his cap gleaming through the darkness. Already the feldwebel and the old man were trampling on the fire. The captain came up to us, and we stood at attention.

"What do you think you're doing? You must have lost your minds! Don't you know the orders? Since you've come out to watch round the campfire, you can pick up your guns and make a nice patrol of the neighborhood. Your festivities have undoubtedly attracted a few guests.

Now it's up to you to find them. By twos until we leave. Understood?" It was the last straw. With death in my soul, I went off to look for my damned gun. I was on the point of collapse from hunger, exhaustion, cold, and God knows what else. I would certainly never have the strength to spend the night slogging through that horrible snow, whose frozen crust covered more than two feet of white power, into which I sank over the tops of my boots. I was filled with rage which I couldn't express. Exhaustion prevented reaction. I returned to my companions in misfortune as best I could. The feldwebel decided that the fellow who was pushing fifty and myself should take the first patrol.

"We'll relieve you in two hours, which will be easier for you."

I have never understood why, but I had the distinct impression that the miserable cur had purposely put me with the old man. No doubt he preferred the other fellow as a companion-twenty-five years old and strongly built-to a scrawny seventeen or an old man. I started off with my fellow sufferer, convinced that we were a vulnerable combination. After the first few steps I tripped, and fell down full length onto the snow, scraping my hands against the hard, icy crust. As I was pulling myself up, I was scarcely able to contain a paroxysm of tears.

The old man was a decent sort: he too seemed to have had about enough.

"Did you hurt yourself?" he asked in a paternal tone.

"Merde," I replied.

He said nothing. Pulling his collar a little higher against his head, he let me get in front of him. I didn't really know where we were supposed to be going, but that was unimportant. What I knew beyond a doubt was that I would double back as soon as the black mass of the convoy was out of sight, and despite my exhaustion I managed to put a considerable distance between myself and the old man. I moved forward nervously, breathing as little as possible, as the icy air burned my nose. But after a moment I couldn't go on. My knees trembled, and I dissolved in tears. I could no longer grasp anything that was happening to me. I could see clearly in my mind's eye France, and my family, and the games I used to play with my friends and my Meccano set. What was I doing here? I can remember crying out between bursts of sobs: "I'm too young to be a soldier."

I don't know whether or not my companion was surprised by my confusion. When he caught up with me he contented himself with saying:

"You walk too quickly, young fellow. You must forgive me if I can't keep up with you. I shouldn't even be a soldier. I was retired before the war. But six months ago they called me up anyway. They need everyone they can get, you know. Anyway, let's hope we get home again safely."

As I didn't understand very much about the times, and needed someone to blame, I began to attack the Russians: "And all of this on account of those bastards! The first one I meet has had it!"

However, I wasn't able to forget the events of the afternoon. The partisan and his execution had overwhelmed me. The poor old man looked at me in bewilderment. He must have wondered whether he was involved with a party fanatic or a security agent.

"Yes," he said in a carefully veiled tone. "They're certainly making us sweat. It would be better to let them settle it among themselves. They won't stay Bolshevik for long. And in the end, anyway, it's none of our business."

"And Stalingrad! We certainly have to supply the Sixth Army! My uncle is there! They must be having a tough time."

"Of course they're having a tough time. We don't know everything. Finishing off Zhukov isn't going to be easy."

"Zhukov will quit, the way he did at Kharkov and Zhitomir. This won't be the first time General von Paulus made him run."

He said nothing. As we lived without much information from the advanced front, the conversation came to a halt. I certainly never guessed that the doom of Stalingrad was already sealed; that the soldiers of the Sixth Army had given up hope and were fighting in horrible conditions, with heroic tenacity.

The sky was covered with stars. In the moonlight I was able to see the little student's watch strapped on my wrist, a souvenir of my certificat d'etudes in France. Time seemed to be standing still, and those two hours dragged like centuries. We walked slowly, watching the tips of our boots sink into the snow with every step. There was no wind, but the cold, which was growing increasingly severe, pierced us through and through.

For two hours at a time, throughout that accursed night, we shivered in this way. Between each tour of duty, I was able to snatch a brief sleep. The first glimmers of light, which found me shoveling snow, fell on a face creased with exhaustion.

With dawn, the cold grew even more intense. The woolen gloves we had been issued were worn through, and our frostbitten hands were wrapped in rags, or in our extra pairs of socks. But in spite of the exercise of shoveling the cold was no longer bearable. We slapped our hands against our sides and stamped our feet to keep our chilled blood moving. The captain, in a moment of compassion, ordered some ersatz coffee prepared and served to us boiling hot. This was doubly welcome because for breakfast that morning we had been given nothing but a portion each of frozen white cheese. The corporal at the canteen told us that the thermometer outside his truck read twenty-four degrees below zero.

I don't remember exactly how much longer this journey took. The days which followed have remained in my memory like a frozen nightmare. The temperature varied between fifteen and twenty-five below zero. There was a horrifying day of wind when, despite all of the orders and threats from our officers, we abandoned our shovels and took shelter behind the trucks. On that day the temperature fell to thirty-five degrees below zero, and I thought I would surely die. Nothing could warm us. We urinated into our numbed hands to warm them, and, hopefully, to cauterize the gaping cracks in our fingers.

Four of our men, who were seriously ill, suffering from pulmonary and bronchial pneumonia, lay groaning in makeshift beds set up in one of the trucks. There were only two medical orderlies for our company, and there wasn't much they could do. In addition to these serious illnesses, there were at least forty cases of frostbite. Some men had patches of skin on the ends of their noses which had been frozen and had become infected. Similar infection was common in the folds of the eyelids, around the ears, and particularly on the hands. I myself was not seriously affected, but each movement of my fingers opened and closed deep crevices, which oozed blood. At moments the pain was so intense that I felt sick at my stomach. At moments my despair was so intense that I broke down in tears, but as everyone was preoccupied with his own troubles, no one paid much attention.

Twice, I went to the canteen truck, which doubled as the infirmary, to have my hands washed in 9o-degree alcohol. This produced paroxysms of pain which made me cry aloud, but afterward my hands felt warm for a few minutes.

Our inadequate diet contributed to our desperation. From Minsk, our point of departure, to Kiev, the first stop, was a distance of about 250 miles. With all the difficulties of the route taken into consideration, the authorities had given us food for five days. In fact, we required eight days, which obliged us to consume some of the rations intended for the front. In addition, we had to abandon three of the thirty-eight vehicles in our group because of mechanical failure, destroying them along with their cargoes, so that they wouldn't fall into the hands of the partisans. Of the four men who were seriously ill, two had died. Many others suffered from frostbite, and a few had to have frozen hands or feet amputated.

Three days before we reached Kiev, we crossed what must once have been the Russian line of defense. We drove for hours through a landscape littered with the carcasses of tanks, trucks, guns, and aircraft, gutted and burned, a scattering of junk which stretched as far as the eye could see. Here and there, crosses or stakes marked the hasty burial of the thousands of German and Russian soldiers who had fallen on this plain.

In fact, many more Russians than Germans had been killed. However, insofar as was possible, the soldiers of the Reich were given decent burials, while each orthodox emblem marked the grave of ten or twelve Soviet soldiers.

Our journey across this boneyard naturally did not make us feel any warmer. The huge shell holes, which we had to fill in as best we could, made it particularly difficult.

Finally, our convoy arrived at Kiev. This handsome city had not suffered much damage. The Red Army had tried to stop the Wehrmacht outside the town, in the zone we had passed through. When they had no longer been able to withstand German pressure, they had preferred to withdraw to the other side of the city, to spare it the kind of destruction Minsk had suffered. Kiev was our first stop, halfway between Minsk and Kharkov. Our ultimate destination, Stalingrad, was still more than six hundred miles away.

Kiev was an important strategic center, where units coming from Poland and Rumania regrouped and made ready for the offensive which would push on to the Caucasus and the Caspian Sea. To an even greater degree than Minsk, the city swarmed with soldiers and military vehicles, with the difference that here there was a perceptible atmosphere of alert.

Our group entered the outlying zone of the city, and halted until further orders from the Kommandantur.

Once again we found ourselves walking on a snow-covered roadway as slick and firmly packed as a ski run. We thought we had reached the end of our troubles. Everyone was anticipating the arrival of orders which, we felt certain, would direct us to our new lodgings.

We were sent first of all to the hygienic center, which was extremely welcome as the cold had made even the most cursory washing impossible. We were all disgustingly dirty and covered with vermin.

Those with serious injuries were hospitalized-a category to which only seven men were admitted. For everyone else, the journey continued: we spent only seven hours in Kiev.

As we left the remarkably well-organized sanitary service, our group was ordered to stand at attention on the snow-covered esplanade in front of the building. A hauptmann arrived at high speed in a Volkswagen. He turned toward us and delivered a short speech without getting out of the car.

"Soldiers! Germans! Convoy troops! At this hour, when the conquests of the Reich extend across a vast territory, the Fatherland depends on you to assure the victory of our arms by your devotion. It is your responsibility to hasten the pace at which essential supplies reach our fighting troops. The hour has come for you to perform your duty on the front you know so well-the road, fraught with a thousand perils and hardships, upon which you have already expended such prodigious energies. From our factories, where our workers are drawing on all their strength to forge the necessary weapons, through your exhausting journey toward our heroic combatants, no one is allowed a moment's respite so long as any German soldier might suffer from a shortage of weapons, food, or clothing. The nation is drawing on all its strength to insure that our soldiers at the front receive what they require and are thus able to retain their enthusiasm and confidence in our solidarity. Not one of us has the right to flinch or falter in the face of momentary discouragement. No one has the right to doubt the heroism daily confirmed by our fresh victories. We all have to bear the same sufferings, and dealing with them as a unified group is the best way of surmounting them. Never forget that the nation owes you everything, and that in return it expects everything of you, up to and including the supreme sacrifice. You must learn to support suffering without complaint, because you are German. Heil Hitler!"

"Heil Hitler!" we answered in unison.

The hauptmann cleared his throat and continued in a less theatrical tone: "You will make up a full group and will rejoin the 124th and the 125th at the edge of town, on the Rollbahn to Kharkov. Your formation will be accompanied by a section of motorized combat troops belonging to Panzerdivision Stulpnagel. They will protect your convoy from the terrorists who will try to impede your advance. As you will see, the Reich is making every effort to facilitate your task."

He saluted, and his orderly immediately shifted into gear.

We joined the two other sections of our company at the selected place to form the 19th Kompanie Rollbahn, under Kommandant Ultraner. My first thought was that now I would surely run into my friends from training camp, if they hadn't been transferred or killed. I didn't know whether they'd left Minsk before or after us, but in fact our old 19th had been re-formed.

We now possessed a rolling kitchen which could serve us hot meals. This made a great difference to us. Immediately before our departure we were served a large hot meal, which produced an almost unbelievable sense of well-being, and raised our spirits to a remarkable degree. The cold seemed to have settled at about four degrees below zero, which was an improvement. But then we had just taken hot showers and changed our clothes.

I had no trouble finding Hals, whose exuberant gestures I recognized easily.

"Well, what do you think of the weather, young one? And of the restaurant, hein? It's ten days since I've swallowed anything hot. We thought we'd die of cold on that damned train."

"You were on a train! If that's not luck . . ."

"Luck! You can talk . . . You should have been there when the locomotive blew up. It made a cloud of steam at least a hundred yards high. Four of the fellows were killed and seven wounded. Morvan was wounded while we were cleaning up the mess. It went on like that for five days. I was with a patrol that went after some terrorists. We caught two of them hiding in a kolkhoz.*  (Collective farm).

One of the peasants they'd robbed put us on their trail, and afterward invited us to his place and gave us a regular feast."

I wasted no time in telling him my adventures; talking this way made us both feel better. We had just run into Lensen and Olensheim. Our sense of happiness and relief at meeting again was so great that quite spontaneously we grabbed each other by the shoulders and mimed an exaggerated polonaise, shouting with laughter. Some of the older men stared at us in astonishment, unable to see any reason for this burst of gaiety, so inconsistent with the gray and icy atmosphere.

"Where's Fahrstein?" I asked.

"Ouf," roared Lensen, still laughing. "He's snug and warm in his truck. He sprained his ankle, and it's so swollen he can't take his boot off, so he's waiting for it to deflate."

"He's making the most of it," Hals remarked. "If I carried on like that every time I turned my ankle . . ."

Our conversation was interrupted by the order for departure, and we returned to our posts. Knowing that my friends were there, with only a few trucks between us, made me feel a great deal better, and I almost forgot that each turn of the wheels was taking me closer to the front. It was still so far away. We were traveling on bad roads covered with snow and ice. On either side, a wall of snow thrown back by road-clearing operations hid the countryside. Through the occasional gaps we were able to see traces of the terrible fighting which had overrun this part of the country the year before. The hastily patched road was so rough that we had to crawl through several hundred miles of this ruined countryside.

The troops of von Wichs, Guderian, von Reichenau and von Stulpnagel had wrenched this territory from the Soviets after weeks of heavy fighting, and held several hundreds of thousands of prisoners between Kiev and Kharkov. The amount of Russian war materiel strewn about under the snow made me wonder how they could possibly have much left.

Rising temperatures brought fresh snowfalls which made it necessary for us to bring out our shovels again. Fortunately, a section of the armored column which was supposed to accompany us joined us two days later. We were able to attach four or five trucks to the back of a tank so that, with their engines going, the trucks were able to manage a slipping, sliding advance despite the snow and ice.

However, the low clouds soon vanished, leaving a pale blue sky. The thermometer plunged sharply, and we were caught once more by a biting cold, on that accursed Russian plain. Occasionally a group of German airplanes would pass over our column with throbbing engines. We waved wildly at the pilots, who responded by dipping their wings. Higher up, squadrons of JU-52s passed slowly over us, flying east. Our hot meals no longer warmed us, and frostbite was eating into my hands once again. Fortunately, this time our convoy included a doctor. Each time we stopped to eat, we lined up beside his truck. He coated my hands with a greasy, curative ointment which I tried to keep on as long as possible as it reduced the pain in my cracked skin and preserved it from the cold. I kept my hands buried in the depths of my giant overcoat pockets unless absolutely forced to pull them out, and then I was very careful not to rub off the ointment against the rough cloth.

I spent long hours in the cab of a three-and-a-half-ton Renault, jolting from rut to rut. From time to time we had to remove the snow which accumulated between the mudguard and the tire, or help another machine which had skidded and gotten stuck.

Otherwise, we avoided everything which obliged us to step outside. So far I had escaped guard duty at night. When darkness made further advance impossible, we stopped where we were. The driver had the right to the seat. I usually slept on the floor, with my legs wedged in beside the pedals and my nose on the engine, which gave off a sickening stench of hot oil. We always woke up stiff and numb with cold.

Well before daybreak we began the exhausting struggle of starting our frozen engines. Hals had come to see me several times, but my driver always protested that three was too many for our tiny cab. He advised me to go and see my friend instead, but that always came to the same thing, and there was certainly no question of standing outside for a chat.

One day, just after we had passed a large town with a Luftwaffe airfield beside it, we were joined by a reconnaissance plane, which entered into radio communication with the Kommandergruppe of the armored section accompanying us. A moment later, the plane left the convoy and veered to the north. The tanks in our column disappeared in whirlwinds of snow thrown up by their treads. We went on as before, without feeling any special anxiety. A few hours later we heard the booming sound of distant explosions. This stopped, began again a few minutes later, then stopped, then began again. At eleven o'clock the convoy halted in a village covered with snow. The sun was shining, and its gleam on the snow made us squint. The cold, although intense, was bearable.

We walked over to the soup truck,. whose two stoves were belching smoke. The first arrivals were sent by the cook to fetch the kettles. This cook was not at all a bad sort, and his skill was adequate at least to prevent insurrection. The dishes he prepared really weren't bad at all. The only oddity of his cooking style was that everything without exception was served with the same thick flour sauce. I joined Hals and Lensen, and we were walking back to our trucks, bent over our steaming mess tins. Suddenly a series of more or less distant explosions shook the icy air. We stopped for a moment and listened. Everyone else seemed to be doing the same thing. The explosions began again. Some of them were obviously far away. Instinctively we began to hurry.

"What's going on?" Lensen asked an older soldier who was climbing into his truck.

"Guns, fellows. We're getting closer," he said.

We had all guessed this already, but we needed confirmation.

"Ha!" said Hals. "I'm going to get my gun."

Personally, I didn't take any of this too seriously. There were a few more explosions, some separate and distinct, others overlapping each other.

The departure whistle blew, and we climbed back into our trucks. The convoy jolted into motion. An hour later, as we reached the top of a hill, the gunfire brought us to a complete stop. It was coming from much closer. Each explosion literally shook the air, which was a very strange sensation. Some nervous drivers had stepped on their brakes much too quickly. Their trucks had skidded on the ice, and the drivers were racing the engines, trying unsuccessfully to straighten their machines. I had opened our door, and was looking down the line of trucks. A Volkswagen was driving from the rear at top speed, and a lieutenant was shouting through its open door: "Hurry up, get going, keep moving! You ... help that idiot out of the rut."

I jumped down from our Renault and joined a group of soldiers trying to pull an Opel Blitz back onto the road. The firing had begun again. It seemed to be quite close and coming from the north. Slowly, and with difficulty, the convoy began to move. As we had jammed on our brakes in the middle of an ascent, my driver had a particularly hard time starting up our truck. We descended slowly into a rolling, wooded countryside. The dull sound of explosions continued. Suddenly, the trucks at the head of the column stopped again, and we heard the blast of a whistle. We quickly jumped to the ground. Soldiers were running to the head of the convoy. What was happening?

The lieutenant of a while ago was running too, collecting a group of soldiers as he went by. I was one of them. Carrying our Mausers, and running as fast as we could, we reached the front of the column. The big Kommandergruppe half-track seemed to have driven deliberately into the thick snow at the side of the road.

"Partisans up ahead," a feldwebel shouted. "Scatter for defense." He pointed to our left.

Without understanding very much, I followed the sergeant who was at the head of our group of fifteen soldiers and plunged into the snowy slope. As I pulled myself up on the white barrier, I could see very clearly a swarming mass of black figures emerging from a stunted woods and proceeding at right angles to our line of march. The Russians seemed to be moving as slowly as we were. The cold and the weight of our clothes combined to deprive this spectacle of the animation of Westerns, or of American so-called "war" films. The cold made everything sluggish: both gaiety and sadness, courage and fear.

Ducking my head like everyone else, I moved forward, paying more attention to the position of my boots than to the movements of the enemy. The partisans were still too far away for me to see them in any detail. I imagined that, like us, they must be making huge strides to avoid disappearing in a hole in the snow.

"Dig your foxholes," the feldwebel ordered, lowering his voice as if the other side could hear us.

I didn't have a shovel, but scraped away some snow with the butt of my rifle. Once I was crouched in this relative shelter, I was able to observe the scene at leisure. I was astounded by the number of men coming out of the woods opposite; there were so many of them! And I could see still others in the forest itself, through the branches of the leafless trees. They looked like ants swarming through tall grass. They were obviously moving from north to south. As we were moving east to west, I couldn't grasp their intention. Perhaps they were going to try to encircle us.

Our troops had just set up a heavy machine-gun battery on the slope nearest us, about twenty yards away. I didn't understand why there had not yet been any exchange of fire. The enemy had begun to cross the road, about two hundred yards from us. The sound of big guns from the north was louder than ever, and there seemed to be some answering fire directly opposite us. My hands and feet were beginning to feel the cold. I didn't understand our situation, and felt entirely calm.

The band of Russians crossed the road without bothering us. They appeared to outnumber us by three or four to one. Our convoy consisted of a hundred trucks with a hundred armed drivers, and sixty accompanying troops whose sole function was defense. In addition, there were ten officers and noncoms, a doctor, and two medical orderlies.

Each explosion created clouds of powdered snow. From the wooded hill in the near distance, plumes of smoke synchronized with the increasingly frequent sounds of explosion rose into the air. The heavy machine gun to my right burst into sound for a moment, and then fell silent.

Stupidly, instead of crouching down in my hole, I lifted my head. I could see little white clouds puffing out among the numerous silhouettes of the partisans. There was a sound of dry detonation, with an answer in kind from the Russians.

My eardrums had begun to feel as though they would burst from the noise of the machine gun, which was joined by another on the slope opposite. Everywhere, soldiers were firing their Mausers. Over in the Russian sector, the black silhouettes were running in all directions, faster and faster, through the puffs of white smoke. Some of them fell and lay motionless. The sun went on shining. None of it seemed really serious. Here and there, Russian bullets whistled through the air. The noise was deafening. With my slow reflexes, I hadn't yet fired.

To my right, someone cried out. The sound of firing was almost continuous. The Bolsheviks were running as fast as they could toward the shelter of the snowy thickets. Our tanks were rolling toward them with sharp bursts of gunfire.

Three or four Russian bullets landed in the snow in front of me, and I began to fire blindly, like everyone else. Seven or eight other tanks had arrived and were harassing the partisans. The whole episode lasted about twenty minutes, and when it was over, I had fired about a dozen cartridges.

A short time later, our tanks and armored cars returned. Three of them were driving prisoners ahead of them, in groups of about fifteen men, who all looked deeply humiliated. Three German soldiers supported by their comrades climbed down from one of the cars. One of them seemed almost unconscious, and the other two were grimacing with pain. Three wounded Russians and two Germans were lying inert on the back of one of the tanks, one of them moaning. A short distance off a German soldier, leaning against a snowbank, was gesturing to us and holding his head, which was red with blood.

"The road is clear," announced the commanding officer of the Mark 4 nearest us. "You can go ahead."

We helped carry the wounded to the hospital truck. I went back to my Renault. Lensen passed by close to me, and shook his head in perplexity.

"Did you see that?" he asked.

"Yes. Do you know if anyone was killed?"

"Of course."

The convoy started off again. The idea of death troubled me, and suddenly I felt afraid. The sunshine of a moment ago had been pale, and the cold had become more intense. Bodies in long brown coats were lying along the sides of the road. One of them gestured as we passed.

"Hey," I nudged my driver. "There's a wounded man waving at us.

"Poor fellow. Let's hope his side takes care of him. War is hard that way. Tomorrow it may be our turn."

"Yes, but we've got a doctor. He could do something for him."

"You can talk. We've got two truckloads of wounded already, and the doctor has more than enough to keep him busy. You mustn't be upset by all this, you know. You'll see plenty more of it."

"I already have."

"I have too," he said, without believing me.

"Especially, I've seen my own knee. The whole kneecap was taken out by a shell in Poland. I thought they were going to send me home again. But they stuck me into the drivers' corps instead, along with the old men, the boys, and the infirm. It's no joke you know; a wound like that really hurts, especially if you have to wait for hours before they give you any morphine."

He launched into the history of the Polish campaign as he had experienced it. At that time, he had belonged to the Sixth Army, which now was fighting in Stalingrad.

It was growing dark. Our long convoy stopped in a small hamlet. The armored column was there too. The captain had ordered this halt so that the wounded could be cared for. The crust of snow and the roughness of the road made the hospital truck rock and jolt. The surgeon couldn't operate under such conditions. Two Russians had already died of hemorrhage, and the rest of the men had already been waiting for several hours.

Our truck had just stopped beside a large building where the peasants stored the harvest. I was about to open the door and run to the kitchen truck when my driver held me back:

"Don't be in such a hurry, unless you want to be on guard duty tonight. The sergeant doesn't keep records here, you know, the way he does at the barracks. He just grabs the first people he sees, assigns them, and then takes it easy."

It was true. A short time later I was listening to the complaints of the eternally hungry Hals: "Scheisse! They've stuck me for guard duty again. God knows what'll happen to us all. It's getting colder and colder. We won't be able to stand it."

It was another clear night, and the thermometer fell to twenty-two degrees below freezing.

I thanked my driver for saving me from another night in the open air. However, the fate that befell me instead almost made me regret my luck. We were walking toward the kitchen truck feeling somewhat anxious about dinner, wondering if there would be enough left to fill our mess tins. When the cook saw us coming, he couldn't resist a little sarcasm: "So, you're not feeling hungry tonight?"

He had already taken the tureens off the fire and replaced them with the big serving dishes, which were filled with hissing water coming to the boil.

"Hurry up and eat," he said, plunging his gloved hand armed with a big spoon into the depths of one of the tureens. "I have to boil this water for the surgeon. He's busy carving up the wounded."

We were bolting our tepid meal, still wearing our ragged gloves, when a lieutenant arrived.

"Is the water nearly ready?"

"Just now, Leutnant. It's just boiling."

"Good." The lieutenant's eye fell on us. "You two: take the water to the doctor." He pointed to the lighted doorway of one of the houses. We closed our mess tins, still half full of food, and hooked them onto our belts. I grabbed one of the steaming basins, taking care not to empty its contents onto my feet, and walked toward the improvised operating room.

The sole advantage of being inside this house was its temperature. It had been a long time since any of us had experienced indoor warmth. The doctor had requisitioned the large common room of a Soviet farmer, and was busy with the leg of a poor fellow stretched out on the central table. Two other soldiers were holding the patient, who was jerking spasmodically and moaning with pain. Everywhere-on benches, on the floor, on the big storage chests-wounded soldiers were lying or sitting, groaning as they waited. Two orderlies were tending to them. The floor was littered with bloody bandages.

Two Russian women were washing the surgical instruments in basins of hot water. The room was extremely badly lit. The doctor had put the farmer's big gas lamp beside the operating table. The farmer himself was holding another lamp over the surgeon's head. A lieutenant and a sergeant were each holding another lamp.

In an angle of the room made by the big comer chimney, a young Russian was crying. He looked about seventeen, like me.

I put my basin down beside the doctor, who plunged a thick wad of dressing into it.

I stayed where I was, transfixed by the terrible sight in front of me. I couldn't lift my eyes from that naked thigh inside which the surgeon was working. The skin around the wound seemed to have been crushed, and everything was soaked with blood. New streams of blood, of a brighter, clearer red, kept running from the enormous hole in which the doctor was working, with what looked like a pair of flat-bladed scissors. My head began to swim, and I felt sick at my stomach, but I couldn't look away. The patient was tossing his head from one side to the other. He was being held down firmly by two other soldiers. His face was completely drained of color, and streaming with sweat. They had stuffed a bandage into his mouth, perhaps to keep him from crying out. It was one of the soldiers from the armored column. I couldn't move.

"Hold his leg," the doctor said softly to me.

I hesitated, and he looked at me again. My trembling hands took hold of the mangled leg. As they touched the skin, I could feel myself shaking.

"Gently," murmured the doctor.

I saw the scalpel cut even more deeply into the wound, and I could feel the muscles of the leg tensing and relaxing. Then I closed my eyes. I could hear the sounds made by the surgical instruments, and the heavy, panting breath of the patient, who kept moving in agony, despite the partial anesthetic.

Then, although I could hardly bear to recognize it, I heard the sound of a saw. A moment later, the leg was heavier in my hand unbelievably heavy and I saw that it was supported five inches above the table only by my anguished hands. The surgeon had just detached it from the body.

I remained for a moment in a ludicrous and tragic attitude, holding my hideous burden. I thought I was going to faint. Finally, I put it down on a pile of bandages beside the table. I shall never forget that leg, even if I live a hundred years.

My driver had managed to leave, and I waited for a moment of general inattention to do the same thing. Unfortunately, such a moment did not arrive until very late that night. I had to do a great many other things almost as troubling as the amputation. It was nearly one o'clock in the morning when I finally opened the double doors of the house. As the cold struck me, it seemed more violent than ever. I hesitated, but the thought of returning to those dying men and those streams of blood turned me resolutely back into the night. The sky was clear and light, and the air seemed absolutely still. The shadows of the houses and the trucks were stamped with precise outlines on the hard, gleaming snow. I couldn't see a living soul.

I walked through the village looking for my Renault; the whole convoy could have been destroyed before anyone gave the alarm. The door of an isba flew open and a bundle of blankets with a Mauser slung across it ventured a few faltering steps onto the snow. When the man inside the blankets caught sight of me he mumbled a few words. "You go in now. It's my turn."

"Go where?"

"To warm up. Unless you feel like taking another round."

"But I'm not on guard. I've just been helping the surgeon, and now I'm going to get some sleep."

"I see. I thought you were . . ." He mumbled a name. "Did you say there was somewhere to get warm?"

"Yes. You go on in there. They've made it headquarters for the guard. We take shifts every fifteen or twenty minutes. Of course, you don't get any sleep that way, but it's better than freezing for two hours." "Yes. Thank you. I'll go in."

I pushed open the heavy door and went inside. A big fire was blazing in the fireplace. Four soldiers, one of whom was Hals, were roasting potatoes and other vegetables under the ashes. The light from the fire was the only light in the room. Another fellow came in right after me, probably the guard I had been mistaken for. I warmed up the rest of the food in my mess tin, ate without appetite, and stretched out on the floor in front of the fireplace to sleep as best I could. Every fifteen or twenty minutes, one of the guards would shake awake some poor fellow flattened by sleep. From time to time the voice of someone protesting his fate would waken me. It was still dark when the reveille whistle shrilled in my ears.

Slowly we stood up on the floor which had served as our bed. We were rather stiff, but it had been a long time since any of us had slept without feeling cold. A young Russian woman was coming toward us from the shadows in the corner of the room. She was carrying a steaming pot which she held out to us, smiling. It was hot milk. For a moment I wondered if the milk might not be poisoned, but Hals, who preferred to die with a full stomach, had already grabbed the pot and helped himself to a generous swig. We passed the milk around among the four of us, then Hals laughed and returned it to the Russian woman. Neither of them could understand a word the other said. Hals went up to her and kissed her on both cheeks. She blushed a deep red. We bowed, and left.

Immediately, the cold fell on us like an icy shower. There was roll call, and distribution of lukewarm ersatz coffee. As on every other morning, we needed a good half hour to warm up the engines and get them started. Well before daybreak, the 19th Kompanie Rollbahn was jolting along the glare ice of that damned Soviet highway, the "Third International."

Several times, we had to make way for convoys driving to the rear. We stopped for lunch in a squalid hamlet where the column of tanks which preceded us had also stopped, and we learned that we were only fifty miles from Kharkov.

We were all jubilant to hear that we were so close to our destination. Our convoy should arrive in two or three hours. We tried to imagine our quarters in Kharkov.

"What do you think it will be like?" Lensen asked.

The fellow who'd been with me for this interminable trip, the one without a kneecap, was not one to jump for joy.

"I hope we won't be spending too much time there," he said. "It would be just like them to send us on to the Volga. I'd rather start back the other way than keep on going east."

"If no one wants to go east, we'll never be through with the Russians," someone said.

"That's true," another voice remarked.

"Some people would do better to shut up instead of always talking about how afraid they are."

We were back on the road about half an hour later. The sun had disappeared into a fog which veiled the horizon. The cold seemed less sharp, but damp and penetrating. We drove for about an hour. My eyes were half closed, and I had nearly fallen asleep, staring at an illuminated spot on the dashboard. My head was jolting from side to side with the motion of the truck. I decided I might as well sleep, and propped myself against the door. Before closing my eyes, I looked out once more at the snowy countryside. The sky had turned gray, and seemed heavier than the earth. Two tiny black spots were coming toward us over the top of the nearest hill. Probably a couple of patrol planes. I closed my eyes.

A few seconds later, my eyes flew open again. The roar of an engine passed right over our heads, and was immediately followed by a series of crackling detonations.

Then something unimaginable hurled me against the windshield, and I felt as if my chest and eardrums were going to explode. There was an intensity of noise which sounded like the end of the world, and we were engulfed in a shower of ice, stones, boxes, helmets, and mess tins. Our Renault nearly crashed into the car in front of us, which had come to a dead stop.

Stupefied and bewildered, I opened the door and jumped down to the ground, looking back toward the source of the noise. The truck behind had almost run into us, and behind it a third truck had rolled over. Its wheels were still turning in the air. Beyond it there was nothing but flames and smoke.

"Quick! Get over the bank!"

Soldiers were scattering across the snow as far as I could see. "They're shooting at the trucks!" someone shouted.

I dug myself into three feet of snow behind the bank. "Anti-aircraft defense!" yelled a sergeant, who was running, doubled over, along the side of the bank.

The soldiers floundering in the snow beside me aimed their guns at the sky.

Good Lord! My gun was still in the Renault. I was already running back to the truck when I heard the noise of airplane engines once again. I pushed my head into the snow. A hurricane passed over me, followed by explosions, both nearby and far away.

I lifted my snowy face and looked at the two bi-motors diving down behind distant birch woods. The captain's Volkswagen was bouncing from rut to rut, driving down the length of the convoy in reverse. Soldiers were running in every direction.

I got up and ran toward a pillar of black smoke. A truck loaded with explosives had been hit by Soviet planes. The truck had exploded, destroying the vehicles immediately in front of it and behind it. The snow was strewn with smoking debris for a distance of nearly sixty yards. What was left of the trucks was burning, giving off a black, acrid smoke. I saw the feldwebel emerging from this cloud with another soldier. They were carrying a bloody, blackened body.

Instinctively, I and some others ran into the black fog to see what we could do. Through the smoke which stung my eyes I tried to see if I could recognize any human beings. A silhouette crossed my path, coughing.

"Don't stay here; it's too dangerous. The munitions cases are about to blow up."

I heard the sound of a racing engine, and then two headlights pierced the curtain of smoke. A truck was coming along the bank, and behind it another, and two others . . . The convoy was continuing its journey.

Despite the flames, I was beginning to freeze. I decided to return to the relatively warm cab of my Renault. As the road was becoming visible once more, through the veil of thinning smoke, I noticed a group of soldiers, wrapped in their long overcoats, lined up in front of an officer.

"Come over here, you two," shouted the lieutenant.

We ran over to the line.

"You," he said, pointing at me.

"Where's your gun?"

"Over there, Leutnant ... behind you ... in the Renault."

My voice was trembling with anxiety. The lieutenant looked furious. He must have thought I'd lost my gun, and that I was just telling him a story to cover up. He walked over to me like an enraged sheep dog.

"Break ranks!" he shouted. "Attention."

I stepped out, and had only just snapped to attention when I was rocked by a thunderous slap. Although I had pulled it down as far as I could, my cap rolled onto the snow, exposing my dirty uncombed hair. I thought the lieutenant was going to shower me with kicks.

"Guard duty until further orders," he muttered, shifting his furious gray eyes from me to the sergeant, who saluted.

"At ease," he added, staring at me with a petrifying expression.

"You scum," he went on.

"While your comrades in arms are getting themselves killed to protect you, you are incapable of spotting two stinking Bolshevik aircraft firing at us. You should have seen them. You must have been asleep. I'm going to get all of you sent to the front in a disciplinary battalion. Three trucks destroyed, seven men killed, two wounded. They must have been asleep too. There's your result. You are unworthy of the arms you bear. I am going to report your attitude." He walked off without saluting.

"To your posts," the sergeant shouted, trying to maintain the tone of his superior.

We all ran off our separate ways. I darted for my cap, but the sergeant caught me by the shoulder.

"Back to your post!"

"My cap, Sergeant."

A soldier who was standing right beside my hat gave it back to me. In a daze I climbed into my truck, which was just starting up.

"Wipe your nose," said my driver.

"Yes ... It seems as if I'm getting it in the neck for everybody."

"Oh, don't worry. Tonight we'll be at Kharkov. Maybe there won't even be anything to guard."

After the shock of a moment ago, I was beginning to feel angry.

"He could have seen those planes himself. After all, he's part of the convoy too!"

"Why don't you go tell him that?"

I thought of the two little black dots I had noticed in my half sleep. There was some truth in what the lieutenant had said, but we hadn't been prepared for anything like that. In fact, we hadn't yet encountered any of the real dangers of war, and we were all exhausted by the lack of sleep, the cold, this endless journey, and by our revolting condition of almost unbelievable filth. We were too cold to wash during the few minutes of our daytime halts, and in any case it was almost impossible to find water. We had to ask the peasants for it, and as they didn't understand a word we said we had to proceed without their permission, in front of their stupefied faces and their enormous eyes. All of that took time, and we had time only in the evening, after dark, when all we could think of was sleep.

But all these excuses wouldn't bring my comrades back to life. I was appalled by the thought that a difference of three trucks would have meant ours. I had never been wounded, but I already had an idea of how painful that could be.... I glued myself to the window.

"If any others come back, I certainly won't miss them."

My driver looked at me with his habitual mocking expression.

"You'd better look in the rear-view mirror too. They might come up from behind." He was almost sneering.

"You think I'm an idiot. What should we do?"

He shrugged his shoulders. His expression didn't change.

"Well, you know, there really isn't too much you can do. When I broke my knee, I was thinking about my head. The best thing would be to go in the other direction."

"That's it! And quit on our comrades at the front!"

He looked at me, and for a moment stopped smiling. Then his face relaxed again, and he added in the same offhand tone as before: "All they have to do is what I just said: half-turn, right face." He imitated the tone of a feldwebel.

"You're not really thinking about what you're saying," I said. "The Bolsheviks would certainly take advantage of anything like that. It's impossible. The war isn't over. You have no right to talk that way."

He looked me full in the face. "You're too young. You thought I was serious. No. We've got to go as fast as we can, and faster." As if to emphasize his remarks, he stepped on the gas.

"I'm too young! You all drive me crazy saying that. As if only fellows your age were any good. Don't I wear the same uniform you do?"

I didn't really believe what I was saying with such passion, or even that I was really there, among all those soldiers.

"If you're not satisfied, get another taxi." He was openly laughing at me.

As he plainly wasn't going to take me seriously, I was silent. I was both furious and sad. First they beat me up for lack of vigilance, then they bawl me out. Our line of trucks was continuing its sliding advance across the ice and snow. Night was falling, and with the darkness the cold was increasing. The thought that we were nearly at the end of our journey was in some way encouraging. We would be approaching the outskirts of Kharkov within a half hour. What condition would the town be in? It was the last big city before the front, before the Don, and beyond that, the Volga, and Stalingrad. Stalingrad was still four hundred miles from Kharkov. Secretly, despite my feeling of revulsion toward the Soviet countryside, I felt almost disappointed that we weren't yet at the front.

Then came the crushing blow.

I remember that we were going down a hill. The trucks ahead of us slowed down, and then stopped.

"What now?"

I had already opened the door.

"Shut that door. It's too cold."

I slammed the door in his face, and walked across the icy crust that covered the narrow "Third International" highway. A sidecar had just come to a stop ahead of me, and was still skidding on the ice. A courier from Kharkov was bringing us an order. In the gray light I could see some officers talking rapidly to each other. They seemed to be trying to make a plan, to be discussing some serious news. One of them, our captain, was reading a paper.

Another moment went by, and then a sergeant ran down the length of the convoy, blowing the whistle for assembly. While everyone was collecting, the sidecar, which had started up again, drove by in front of me. There were two soldiers in it, wearing what looked like diving suits. The captain came over to us, followed by his two lieutenants and three feldwebels. He didn't lift his eyes from the ground, and his expression was one of despair.

A shiver of anxiety ran across our shaggy and exhausted faces.

"Achtung! Stillgestanden!" shouted a feldwebel.

We stood at attention. The captain gave us a long look. Then slowly, in his gloved hand, he lifted a paper to the level of his eyes.

"Soldiers," he said. "I have some very serious news for you; serious for you, for all the fighting men of the Axis, for our people, and for everything our faith and sacrifice represents. Wherever this news will be heard this evening, it will be received with emotion and profound grief. Everywhere along our vast front, and in the heart of our fatherland, we will find it difficult to contain our emotion."

"Stillgestanden!" insisted the feldwebel.

"Stalingrad has fallen!" the captain continued.

"Marshal von Paulus and his Sixth Army, driven to the ultimate sacrifice, have been obliged to lay down their arms unconditionally."

We felt stunned and profoundly anxious. The captain continued after a moment of silence.

"Marshal von Paulus, in the next to last message he sent, informed the Fuhrer that he was awarding the Cross for bravery with exceptional

merit to every one of his soldiers. The Marshal added that the Calvary of these unfortunate combatants had reached a peak, and that after the hell of this battle, which lasted for months, the halo of glory has never been more truly deserved. I have here the last message picked up by short wave from the ruins of the tractor factory Red October. The High Command requests that I read it to you.

"It was sent by one of the last fighting soldiers of the Sixth Army, Heinrich Stoda. Heinrich states in this message that in the southwest district of Stalingrad he could still hear the sound of fighting. Here is the message:

"We are the last seven survivors in this place. Four of us are wounded. We have been entrenched in the wreckage of the tractor factory for four days. We have not had any food for four days. I have just opened the last magazine for my automatic. In ten minutes the Bolsheviks will overrun us. Tell my father that I have done my duty, and that I shall know how to die. Long live Germany! Heil Hitler!"'

Heinrich Stoda was the son of Doctor of Medicine Adolph Stoda of Munich. There was an impressive silence, broken only by a few blasts of wind. I thought of my uncle there, whom I had never met because of the rupture between our two families. I had only seen his photograph, and they had told me he was a poet. I felt very keenly that I had lost a friend. A man in the ranks began to whimper. His white temples made him look like an old man. Then he quit his rigid posture and began to walk toward the officers, crying and shouting at the same time.

"My two sons are dead. It was bound to happen. It's all your fault -you officers. It's fatal. We'll never be able to stand up to the Russian winter." He bowed almost double, and burst into tears. "My two children have died there ... my poor children . . ."

"At ease," ordered the feldwebel.

"No. Kill me if you like. It doesn't matter. Nothing matters...... Two soldiers stepped forward and took the poor man by the arms, trying to lead him back to his place before anything worse happened. Hadn't he just insulted the officers? Unfortunately he struggled, like someone possessed by demons.

"Take him to the infirmary," the captain said. "Give him a sedative." I thought he was going to add something else, but his expression remained fixed. Perhaps he too had lost a relative.

"At ease."

We returned to our trucks in small, silent groups. By now it was full night. The rolling white horizon was tinged with a cold bluish gray. I shivered.

"It's getting colder and colder," I said to the fellow walking beside me.

"Yes. Colder and colder," he answered, staring into the distance.

For the first time I was strongly impressed by the dismal vastness of Russia. I felt quite distinctly that the huge, heavy gray horizon was closing in around us, and shivered more violently than ever. Three quarters of an hour later, we were rolling through the ravaged outskirts of Kharkov. We couldn't see very much by our dim headlights but everything that appeared in the path of the light was damaged.

The next day, after one more night on the floor of the Renault, I was able to look at the chaos which was all that remained of Kharkov, a city of considerable importance, despite the devastation of war.

During the years 1941, 1942, and 1943 it was taken by our army, retaken by the Russians, taken back by the Germans, and then finally retaken by the Russians. At this particular moment, our troops were holding it for the first time. But the town looked like a jumble of burnt-out wreckage. Acres of total destruction had been used as dumps for the piles of wrecked machinery of every kind which the occupying troops had collected in their efforts to clear the roads. This mass of twisted, torn metal reflected the ferocious violence of the battle. It was all too easy to imagine the fate of the combatants. Now, motionless beneath the shroud of snow which only partially covered them, these steel cadavers marked a stage of the war: the battles of Kharkov.

The Wehrmacht had organized itself in the few sections of the city which were more or less standing. The sanitary service, ingeniously installed in a large building, was a bath of rejuvenation for us. When we were clean we were taken to a series of cellar rooms which made up a large basement filled with every conceivable kind of bed. We were advised to try to sleep, and despite the hour-it was the middle of the afternoon we almost all fell into leaden unconsciousness. We were wakened by a sergeant, who led us to the canteen. There I found Hals, Lensen, and Olensheim. We talked about everything; particularly about the fall of Stalingrad.

Hals maintained that it wasn't possible: "The Sixth Army! My God! They couldn't be beaten by the Soviets!"

"But since the communiqué said they were surrounded, that they didn't have anything more to fight with, what else could they do? They were forced to surrender."

"Well, then we'll have to try and rescue them," someone else said.

"It's too late," remarked one of the older men.

"It's all over...... "Shit, shit, shit!" Hals clenched his fists. "I just can't believe it!"

If for some the fall of Stalingrad was a staggering blow, for others it provoked a spirit of revenge which rekindled faltering spirits. In our group, given the wide range of ages, opinion was divided. The older men were, generally speaking, defeatist, while the younger ones were determined to liberate their comrades. We were walking back to our dormitory when a fight broke out for which I was mainly responsible.

The fellow with the broken knee, my companion in that damned Renault, had just fallen into step with me.

"Well, you must be pleased," he said. "It sounds as if we'll be going back tomorrow."

I could see a certain irony on his face, and felt myself turning red with anger.

"That's enough from you," I shouted. "I hope you're satisfied. We're going back, and it's at least partly your fault if my uncle is dead in Stalingrad."

He turned pale.

"Who told you he's dead?"

"If he's not dead that's even worse,"

I went on shouting. "You're nothing but a coward. It's you who told me we ought to leave them to their fate."

My companion was astonished, and looked around for reactions. Then he grabbed my collar. "Shut up!" he ordered, lifting his fist.

I kicked him in the shin. He was going to hit me when Hals grabbed his arm.

"That's enough," he said calmly. "Stop it, or you'll get yourselves thrown in jail."

"So. You're another young fellow who wants what's coming to him?"

My antagonist was now carried away with rage. "I'm going to give it to all of you, you . . ."

"Drop it," Hals insisted. "Shit."

He didn't say anything more. A blow from Hal's fist caught him on the chin. He spun round and fell onto his backside in the snow. By now Lensen had come up too.

"You bunch of kid shits," shouted my driver. He tried to get up to return to the attack.

Lensen, short and thick-set, kicked him in the face with his metaled boot before he'd regained his balance. He fell onto his knees with a cry of pain, lifting his hands to his bloody face.

"Savage," somebody shouted.

We didn't persist further, and rejoined the group, swearing under our breath. The others looked at us blackly, and two of them helped my driver to his feet. He was still groaning.

"We'll have to look out for that one," Hals warned.

"He might very well shoot one of us in the back the next time we're attacked."

Reveille the next day was later than usual. We went out for company roll call and were greeted by a whirlwind of snow. With our heads muffled in our upturned collars to escape the stinging ice fragments in the wind, we heard some good news. Feldwebel Laus, whom we hadn't seen in an eternity, was standing in front of us holding a piece of paper with both hands. He too was having trouble with the wind.

"Soldiers!" he read, in the lull between two gusts.

"The High Command, aware of your condition, grants you a leave of twenty-four hours. Nevertheless, given the present situation, a counter order could come at any time. You will, therefore, present yourselves at your billets every two hours. Needless to say, this will not give you time to call on lady friends or visit your families," he added, laughing. "But at least you'll be able to write to them."

Laus sent two men to fetch the mail, which was then distributed. There were four letters and a package for me. We would have liked to look at Kharkov, but the appalling weather kept us indoors. We spent a restful day, preparing for the return journey. We were therefore astonished to be told next day that we would re-supply with food and weapons a unit stationed in the combat zone. We were even given more or less precisely the location of our new destination. We were to proceed to a sector somewhere to the south of Voronezh. We received this news without enthusiasm.

"Bah!" said Hals. "Whether we tramp through the snow to Kiev or to Voronezh, it's all the same thing."

"Yes," said Olensheim somewhat cautiously. "But Voronezh is at the front."

"I know," said Hals. "But we'll have to see it sometime."

As for me, I didn't know what to think. What really happened on a battlefield? I felt torn by curiosity and fear.