THE FRONT

South of Voronezh - The Don

Winter seemed endless. It snowed every day, almost without a break.

At the end of February or beginning of March-1 no longer remember which-we were taken by rail to a town used as a major supply center, some fifty miles from Kharkov. Food, blankets, medicines, and other supplies were stored in big sheds, and every cellar and hole in the ground was jammed with munitions. There were also repair shops some indoors, others in the open air. Soldiers perching on tanks blew on their fingers when they grew too numb to hold a wrench. A system of trenches and strongpoints had been organized on the outskirts of the town. This part of the country suffered from frequent partisan attacks, often by large groups of men. Whenever this happened, every mechanic and warehouseman abandoned his tools and inventories for a machine gun, to protect the supplies and himself.

"The only advantage we have here," one of the soldiers said to me, "is that we're very well fed. There's an awful lot of work. We have to organize our own defense-we take turns standing guard-and things can get pretty tough with the partisans. They've given us some hard times, even with all of us fighting, and they've already destroyed a lot. Several times the C.O. has asked for an infantry unit to help him out-but it's only happened once. An S.S. company came, but three days later they were sent on to the Sixth Army. We've already had forty killed, which is a lot for one company."

That afternoon, we organized an odd-looking convoy using four wheeled Russian carts to which runners could be attached, transforming them into sleighs. There were also some real sleighs-a few eidekas and even two or three troikas covered with decorations-all requisitioned from Russian civilians. As we started off, I remember wondering where we were taking this convoy, which looked so like Christmas, but whose load of shells and grenades was of such a different character.

We set off towards the northwest, and a sector somewhere near Voronezh. We had been given special rations for the cold, new first-aid kits, and a two-day supply of precooked dinners. We took a track more or less blocked with snow-which crossed the line of defenses that cut off the steppe. A bulky, hooded soldier, who was the only sentry in sight, waved to us as we slowly went by him. His round shape looked enormously vulnerable as he stood there, puffing on a huge covered pipe, with his feet planted in the snow.

After an hour or so on the trail, which grew increasingly snowy, we fastened the runners to the wheels. Our leather boots, although they were remarkably waterproof, were not the ideal foot gear For tramping through nearly two feet of snow. We tired quickly, and hung on to the horses' harnesses or the edges of the sleighs with the desperation of cripples clinging to their canes. I myself twisted my fingers into the long hair of one of those shaggy ponies whose pelts are thick and tufted, like sheep's wool. However, the horses' pace was too quick, and forced us into an exhausting rhythm which made us pour with sweat despite the cold. From time to time one of the leaders of a column would stop and watch the long convoy going by, catching his breath under the pretext of checking the line of march. When they rejoined the column, it was always at the end of the line: I never saw anyone run back to the front.

Hals, who had become a real friend, was holding on to the other side of my horse. Although he was much bigger and stronger than I, he also looked as though he were nearly through. His face was almost hidden between his upturned collar and his cap, which had been pulled down as far as it could go. His red nose, like everyone else's, was producing a plume of white vapor.

We hardly spoke. I had learned to be as silent as Germans usually are. But, even without words, I knew that Hals was a friend who felt as warmly toward me as I did toward him. We gave each other occasional smiles of encouragement, as if to say: "Hang on! We'll make it!"

We halted at dusk. Feeling that I had been pushed beyond the limits of my strength, I collapsed onto a cart shaft. My legs ached with stiffness, and I could feel exhaustion pulling down my face.

Hals let himself fall onto the snow.

"Aie, my poor feet."

All along the convoy, men were sitting or lying on the snow.

"We're not spending the night here, are we?" asked a young soldier who was sitting next to me.

We looked at each other uneasily.

"I don't give a damn what anyone else does," said Hals, opening his mess tin. "I'm not taking another step."

"You say that because you're still sweating. Wait until you're a little colder. Then you'll have to move if you don't want to freeze." "Shit," said Hals without looking up.

"This food stinks."

I opened my mess tin too. The cooked dinners they had given us early in the afternoon had long since cooled, and then frozen in the metal containers. It looked like tripe.

All around us, other soldiers were making the same discovery.

"God damn it!" said Hals. "But there's no point in just throwing it out."

"What do you think?" someone asked a feld, who was looking at the stuff in his own tin.

"Those bastards must have given us rotten meat."

"Or a week of leftovers. It's unbelievable. There's enough food in that town for a whole division."

"It's not edible.... It stinks!" "We'll have to get out some cans."

"No you won't," the feldwebel flared out at us. "We still have a long way to go, and none too much food as it is. Throw away the meat if you don't like it, and eat the cereal."

Hals, who was never too particular, crunched something vaguely like a lamb cutlet between his teeth. Two seconds later, he spat it out on the snow.

"Pah! It's rotten. The shits must have cooked a Bolshevik."

In spite of our dismal situation, we couldn't help laughing. Faced with the ruins of the meal he had been anticipating with such eagerness, Hals was on the brink of one of his rare fits of rage. Given his giant size, these were always impressive. With a stream of oaths, he gave his mess tin a magisterial kick, which sent it flying across the snow. There was a silence, and then a few laughs.

"You've made things a lot better for yourself," said the young soldier standing beside me.

Hals spun round, but said nothing. Then he slowly went off to pick up his tin. I began to wolf down the mess which had been flavored by the rotten meat. Hals, who looked crushed, collected his battered tin, whose contents had been scattered across the snow. A few minutes later, cursing a cruel fate, we were both digging into my ration.

The noncoms appointed guards, and we were faced with the problem of where to sleep. Already clenched with cold, we wondered where and how to spread out our ground sheets. Some men dug themselves hollows in the snow, others constructed rough huts, using the sacks of dried grass which hung from each side of the horses' collars. Others tried to insure a supply of warmth by making the horses lie down. We had already spent several nights out of doors, but always under more or less sheltered conditions. The fact of sleeping absolutely in the open in such appalling cold terrified us. Here and there, clusters of men discussed what we might do. Some thought we should keep on walking until we came to a village, or at least to some sort of building, on the grounds that it was better to die of exhaustion than of cold. According to this faction, if we stayed where we were, at least half of us would be dead by morning.

"We won't be coming to any village for at least three days," the noncoms told us.

"We'll have to make out the best we can."

"If only we could light a fire!" one man exclaimed. His teeth were chattering, and his voice was almost a whimper. Appalled by the prospect, we prepared ourselves for the night as best we could. Hals and I reorganized the load on a sleigh so that there was a space between the cases of explosives big enough to hold us both. Despite the obvious danger of such a resting place, we preferred disintegration in a hot flash to death by freezing.

Hals had the spirit to crack a few obscene jokes, and they made me laugh in spite of my misery. We managed to doze intermittently, huddled together, haunted by the fear of freezing in our sleep.

We spent a fortnight in these bitter conditions, and it proved fatal for many of our group. On the third day we had two cases of pneumonia. On subsequent days we had frozen limbs and Hergezogener Brand, a kind of gangrene from cold, which first attacks the exposed portion of the face, and then other parts of the body, even if they are covered. Those affected by this condition had to apply a thick yellow pomade, which made them look both comic and pitiable. Two soldiers, driven mad by despair, left the convoy one night, and lost themselves in the featureless immensity of snow. Another very young soldier called for his mother, and cried for hours. We tried alternately comforting and cursing him for disturbing our rest. Toward morning, after he had been quiet for a while, a shot jolted us all awake. We found him a short way off, where he had tried to put an end to his nightmare. But he had bungled his effort and didn't die until the afternoon.

My feet, tortured by so much walking and by the cold, caused me agonizing pain at first, but soon became so numb that I felt almost nothing. Later, when a doctor checked us, I saw that three of my toes had turned an ashen gray. Their nails remained stuck to the double pair of pestilential socks which I took off for the examination. A painful injection saved by toes from amputation. It still seems astonishing to me that any of us should have survived such an ordeal; especially I, who have never been particularly strong.

Now, "at last," I was going to experience war at the front-and ordeals far worse than anything I had yet known.

We used the huts and bunkers of a temporary Luftwaffe airfield for a rest that was indispensable. Most of the field had been abandoned by the Luftwaffe, which had been forced to withdraw farther to the west. Some fighter planes were still there, in various states of disrepair and covered with ice, but a rump ground staff had moved out most of the equipment on big sleighs pulled by tractors.

We were allowed several days to restore ourselves in these more or less comfortable circumstances. However, the moment we began to look better, the authorities plunged us back into the thick of things. For the fighting troops of that sector, our company represented a considerable and unexpected supply of manpower. We were divided into fatigue parties and assigned various jobs. Three-quarters of our men were put to work preparing positions for 77s and even for light machine guns. This meant shoveling masses of snow, and then attacking the earth, which was as hard as rock, with picks and explosives.

Hals, Lensen, and I had managed to stay together. We were in a group that was ordered to supply an infantry section about ten miles away with food and ammunition. We were given two sleighs, each with a troika of shaggy steppe ponies. The distance was not great, our equipment was better than we'd had on our last tragic expedition, and thinking that we could easily manage the round trip in a day, we accepted the job as an easy one.

There were eight of us altogether, counting the sergeant. I was on the second sleigh, which was carrying grenades and magazines for spandaus. *  (* Machine gun from the Spandau works).

Sitting on the back of the sleigh, I had plenty of time to observe the dreary, empty landscape. At rare intervals, small stands of spindly trees thrust up from the immaculate white ground. They seemed to be engaged in an unequal struggle with the overpowering whiteness; it seemed to be gaining on them, slowly but surely. There was nothing else to be seen in this countryside, which must surely be inhabited by wolves-nothing except for the opaque, grayish-yellow sky. We seemed to have reached the far end of the world.

After a short time, we were following a depression in the snow which we took as an indication of a path. As we came to the edge of a thick forest, a soldier jumped up from behind a pile of wood, and stood in front of our first sleigh, which came to a dead stop. After a few words with our sergeant, he stepped aside, and we entered the forest, where we saw a spandau in action, manned by two soldiers, and further on an antlike swarm of soldiers and innumerable gray tents. There were a great many big guns, light tanks of the Alpenberg type, Paks,*( Anti-tank guns) and mortars set up on sleighs. A slaughtered horse had been pulled up into a tree, and was gradually being transformed into steaks by soldiers whose coats were spattered with blood. We were besieged by soldiers who asked us for mail, and cursed us when we said we didn't have any.

An officer checked our orders. The company we were to resupply was farther to the east. He sent an orderly to guide us. We continued through the woods, which concealed some three or four thousand men, and then crossed a series of small, partly cleared hills; I can still see them with absolute clarity. The white snow was crossed by three telephone lines which had been more or less covered over.

"Here we are," said the orderly, who was on horseback. "Beyond this crest you will be under enemy fire, so go as quickly as you can. Follow the telephone line. The company you're looking for is about a mile and a quarter from here."

He saluted in the prescribed fashion and went off at a trot. We looked at each other.

"Well, here I go again," said our sergeant, who undoubtedly was a long-time Rollbahn veteran.

He waved us forward, then stopped us.

"We're going to try and get there really fast. Don't be afraid to beat the horses. If the Russians see us, they'll open fire, but it usually takes them a while. If things get too hot we'll leave the sleigh with ammunition, because if that goes anyone closer than thirty yards will never see his mother again."

I thought of the attack on the convoy near Kharkov. "Let's go," someone shouted, to prove he wasn't afraid.

The sergeant jumped onto the first sleigh and waved us forward. We soon reached the top of the hill. The horses, panting from the climb, stopped for a moment before dashing down the other side.

"Get going!" shouted the sergeant. "We can't stay here!" "Use the whip!" Hals shouted to the fellow who was driving. Our sleigh was the first to start down. I can still see our three plucky ponies jumping through the snow like rabbits, from one depression to the next, churning up a white cloud which undoubtedly was visible a long way off. The three of us huddled behind the driver, in the center of the sleigh, perched on dark green boxes which carried a disquieting inscription in white stenciled letters. We were all feeling nervous, and had forgotten the cold.

I tried to watch the horizon through veils of white dust, despite our jolting progress. I thought that I could dimly see a group of isbas in front of us. All around us, shell holes of a remarkable symmetry mutilated the immaculate whiteness of the slope. Despite our precipitate speed, I noticed the curious borders of these excavations, which the earth thrown up by the explosions had tinged a light yellow. They looked like enormous, stylized flowers, with dark brown centers and yellow petals which turned very pale, almost white, at their outer edges. The holes which had already been there for long enough to be partly filled by new snow made a subtle variation in this curiously decorative pattern.

We reached the bottom of the slope without incident. There were a few heavily damaged isbas, and several large guns almost buried in the snow.

We stopped beside an isba whose roof sloped right down to the ground. The wall nearest us was of open lattice, and we could see some engineers working inside. They seemed to be taking the building apart. A few men came out carrying pieces of wood. Then a plump sergeant with a white garment pulled over his coat came up to us.

"Unload right here," he said. "The engineers are preparing a shelter. It'll be finished in an hour."

A loud explosion made us jump. To our right, we saw a yellow flash, and then a geyser of stones and dirt, which spouted almost thirty feet into the air.

The sergeant turned calmly toward the noise. "Goddamned dirt," he said. "Harder than a rock."

We concluded that these fellows were engineers playing with dynamite. The corpulent noncom looked at our orders.

"Ah," he said, tapping a box of cans with a gloved finger. "These aren't for us. But our supplies are already three days late, and we're living on our reserves which we're not supposed to touch. If this goes on . . . You truck drivers certainly take your own sweet time! That's why fellows up front die of the cold. When you haven't got anything inside, you know, you can't keep going." He slapped his belly.

Judging by his waistline, it was hard to imagine that he'd fasted for long. He must have had a private store of food hidden away somewhere, because it was clear that, despite our best efforts, the front lines were extremely short of supplies.

"You'll have to get over that way," he pointed down the track. "That section is holding a piece of the Don bank . . . and you'll go there on your hands and knees, if you know what's good for you."

We set off across the snow-covered chaos, following a trail marked by trucks half buried in snow. Beyond an embankment, some big guns and heavy howitzers were hidden by a heap of piled-up snow. Once we had passed them, they simply vanished from sight: their camouflage was perfect.

We came to a big trench in which a group of thin, shivering horses were pawing the hard ground. Some sacks of hay-so dry it was practically dust had been ripped open and put down for them. The poor animals were sniffing at the hay with their rimy nostrils, but didn't seem too tempted. A few frozen horse cadavers lay on the ground among the animals that were still standing. A handful of soldiers in long coats were watching the horses. We passed through a string of rough dugouts, and heard machine-gun fire coming from quite nearby.

"Machine guns!" our driver remarked, smiling strangely. "That means we're here." Trenches, foxholes, and dugouts stretched away as far as we could see in all directions. We were stopped by a patrol.

"Ninth Infantry Regiment, ----- company," said the lieutenant. "Is it for us?"

"No, Mein Leutnant. We're looking for the ---- section."

"Ah," said the officer. "You'll have to leave your sleighs here. The section you want is over there on the river bank, and on that little island. You'll have to stick to the trenches, and be careful, because you'll be in range of the Russian forward positions, and they wake up from time to time."

"Thank you, Mein Leutnant." The sergeant's voice was trembling. The lieutenant called over one of the men who was with him: "Show them the way, and then come back."

The man saluted and joined us. Like everybody else, I had grabbed a box that was too heavy for me, and was going to carry it on my back. The sound of machine-gun fire began again, only louder.

"There it goes again. Is it serious or not?"

The gunfire grew louder, stopped, and began again, passionate and violent.

"That's us," our guide replied. "But wait a few minutes. You can't tell right away whether they're doing it just for laughs, or whether it's the beginning of a push onto the ice."

We listened to him without a word. He seemed almost relaxed in this disquieting atmosphere. We were perfect novices: our few scrapes on the "Third International" seemed liked nothing compared to what might happen here. The firing kept stopping and starting, sometimes very close. At other moments we could hear guns that were plainly further off.

Hals suggested that we lay our two boxes across our Mausers, to make a kind of carrying litter. We had just reorganized ourselves to put this plan into effect when we heard some heavy detonations which followed each other in rapid succession.

"That's the Russians," grinned the veteran, who was walking just ahead of us.

The air shook with the rhythm of the explosions. They seemed to be about three or four hundred yards ahead of us, to our left.

"That's their assault artillery.... It might be an attack." Suddenly, about thirty yards to the left, there was a sharp and violent burst of sound, followed by a curious, catlike whine, followed by a series of similar sounds. We hastily put down our burdens, and ducked, looking anxiously in all directions. The air was still for a moment.

"Don't panic, boys," said our guide, who had also ducked. "We've got a battery of 107s behind that pile of stuff over there, and we're answering the Russians."

The infernal noise began again. Even though our guide had told us what it was, I could feel my stomach contracting.

"Put on your helmets," said the sergeant. "If the Russians spot that battery, they'll fire on it."

"And let's keep going," our guide added. "There isn't a quiet corner within sixty miles. We're no safer here than anywhere else." We began to move forward, bent double. The air around us shook for the third time, and we could hear gunfire all around us. The German battery was firing nonstop, and ahead the noise of the spandau was getting closer. We passed three soldiers who were unrolling a telephone wire along a footpath which crossed our route. The sound of explosions now seemed to have a regular rhythm.

"This might be an attack," said the soldier who had come with us. "I'll leave you here. I've got to get back to my section."

"Which way do we go?" asked our sergeant, who was clearly terrified.

"Follow the path as far as the geschnauz* (*Assault gun) over there on the right. They'll be able to tell you. But eat something first. It's lunchtime."

He took a few steps in the other direction, doubled over, as before. So, that is how one moves on a battlefield! A few days later I was used to it, and paid no more attention.

We opened our mess tins, and ate huddled in the snow. I didn't feel particularly hungry. The explosions, which made my head ring inside my icy helmet, seemed far more interesting than food.

Hals, who was not entirely in control of his feelings, rolled his eyes like a hunted animal, and looked at me, shaking his head.

"Maybe we shouldn't stop to eat . . . If an officer came along . . ."

A deafening salvo which seemed to be passing right over our heads interrupted us, and we instinctively hunched our shoulders and shut our eyes. Hals was about to speak again when another explosion, different in kind, but no less brutal, shook the earth, followed by a loud whistle and another explosion. This time we felt as if we were being lifted from the ground. We were shaken by a displacement of the air of an astonishing violence. Then an avalanche of stones and chunks of ice poured down on us.

We made ourselves as small as we could, not daring to move or speak. We had dropped our guns and our mess tins.

"They'll kill me!" shouted a young fellow who had hurled himself into my lap in the general confusion.

"They're going to kill me!" There was another loud boom, and then a deafening German salvo passed over our heads.

"Let's go on; we can't stay here!" yelled our sergeant, shoving his helmet further down onto his head.

We picked up our boxes like automatons. The trench was wide enough for four men to walk abreast, but we proceeded single file, keeping close to one of the walls. I was with Hals, directly behind the sergeant, who kept exhorting us to move.

"Hurry up! Quick! The Russians have spotted our battery! They can see it, and we're right beside it! This damned trench is heading right into their fire. We've got to get to that communication trench down there."

Every other minute we had to throw ourselves into the bottom of the trench. The heavy cases kept slipping from our icy fingers no matter how tightly we tried to hold them: it still seems astonishing that they didn't explode in our faces.

"Hurry up," said the sergeant, disregarding our troubles. "It's down there."

"Tell me," said Hals. "There's still twice as much as this on the sleighs. Do we have to bring all that too?"

"Yes, of course ... I don't know.... Hurry up, for God's sake!" While the Russians were reloading, our battery had fired twice. The next Russian salvo fell about forty yards behind us, followed by two others at an indefinable distance, which nonetheless made us double over a little lower. Suddenly there was a deafening hooting sound, followed by an overwhelming noise which shook the earth and the air. One side of the trench collapsed. It all happened so quickly I had no time to duck. I remember seeing what looked like a disintegrating scarecrow flying through the rubble in a cone of flame, and falling in several pieces onto the edge of the trench, before rolling to the bottom. We were all thrown to the ground without the strength or courage to get up again.

"Quick! Up! We've got to get to the other trench!" shouted the sergeant, whose face was contorted by fear.

"If a shell lands here, it will be a volcano."

There were two more explosions. Our guns were firing steadily. Dragging the cases, we climbed across the debris and the body of the poor wretch who had been blown into the air. I glanced at him quickly as we went by. It was a horrible sight. His helmet had fallen down over his face, and its visor was half-buried in his chin, or neck. His heavy winter clothes were like a sack holding together something which no longer bore any resemblance to the human form. He was missing a leg-or perhaps it was doubled under him. Another body was mixed into the rubble a short way off. The Russian shell must have landed right on some poor fellows who had ducked their heads and were waiting for the storm to pass.

I can remember very distinctly the first deaths I encountered in the war. The thousands upon thousands which followed are blurred and faceless: a vast, cumulative nightmare which still haunts me, in which atrocious mutilations appear side by side with figures who seem to be peacefully sleeping, or with others whose eyes are opened astonishingly wide, stamped by death with an uncommunicable terror. I thought I had already experienced the limits of horror and of endurance, that I was a tough fighting man who would return home in due course to recount my heroic exploits. I have used the words and expressions which my experiences from Minsk to Kharkov to the Don suggested to me. But I should have reserved those words and expressions for what came later, even though they are not strong enough.

It is a mistake to use intense words without carefully weighing and measuring them, or they will have already been used when one needs them later. It's a mistake, for instance, to use the word "frightful" to describe a few broken-up companions mixed into the ground: but it's a mistake which might be forgiven.

I should perhaps end my account here, because my powers are inadequate for what I have to tell. Those who haven't lived through the experience may sympathize as they read, the way one sympathizes with the hero of a novel or a play, but they certainly will never understand, as one cannot understand the unexplainable. This stammering outpouring may be without interest to the sector of the world to which I now belong. However, I shall try to let my memory speak as clearly as possible. I dedicate the remainder of this account to my friends Marius and Jean-Marie Kaiser, who are in a position to understand me, as they lived through the same general events in the same part of the world. I shall try to reach and translate the deepest level of human aberration, which I never could have imagined, which I never would have thought possible, if I hadn't known it firsthand.

We reached the communications trench, which had seemed like safety to our sergeant, and literally dived into it as a brutal burst of fire scattered the soil beyond the parapet. The two men in white overalls who were already there jumped up in astonishment.

One of them had been standing beside the gun surveying the scene through field glasses. The other, hunched down at the bottom of the hole, had been fiddling with the knobs of a radio apparatus.

"The ---section?" asked our sergeant, puffing for breath. "We've got some supplies for them."

"It's not very far," said the soldier with the field glasses, "but you won't be able to get there right now; you'd only be blown up. Put your explosives down-but not right here-and use the bunker." He smiled.

Without waiting for him to repeat the invitation, we slid down into a tomblike structure of boards and hard earth, which was almost without light. Inside, there were four soldiers dressed in white. One of them had somehow managed to go to sleep. The others were writing beside a flickering candle.

The bunker wasn't high enough for us to stand, and everyone had to move over so we could get in, but we were, at any rate, something new.

"Is it solid?" Hals asked, pointing his tattered finger at the roof of the rathole.

"Well ... if something lands a little closer, it might collapse," one of the soldiers answered mockingly.

"And if something lands square on us, our pals won't have to bury us," added another.

How could they joke? Habit, probably. The fellow who had been asleep woke up and yawned.

"I thought they'd sent us some women."

"No . . . just a bunch of kids. Where did you find this brood, sergeant?"

We all laughed.

As if to rub our noses in our situation, the ground shook again. From here the noise was less violent.

"These boys are new recruits, part of the supply train, and they've crossed the whole of Russia so you can fill your stomachs."

"That's nothing," said the fellow who'd just waked up.

"We've been sweating it out here for three months already, while you were taking your own sweet time. I know they've got pretty girls in the Ukraine, but you shouldn't have stayed there so long. We've been dying of hunger."

I ventured a few words in my atrocious German:

"Girls! We didn't see any girls! All we saw was snow."

"Alsatian?" somebody asked.

"No, he's French," Hals answered, joking.

Everyone burst out laughing. Hals was taken aback, and didn't know what to say.

"Merci," the questioner added with a good accent, holding out his hand to me.

"Ma mere est allemande," I replied.

"Ach, gut. Votre mutter ist Deutsche? Sehr gut."

The ground shook again. Some pieces from the ceiling rattled down onto our helmets.

"Things don't seem to be going very well here," said our sergeant, whose mind was absorbed by his terror, and who plainly didn't give a damn whether my mother was German or Chinese.

"Oh, they're just having fun," the other one said. "The beating they took three days ago really calmed them down."

"Ah?"

"Yes. Those bastards made us re-cross the Don about a month ago. We had to give up at least forty miles. Now our front is on the west bank. They've tried to cross on the ice at least four times already. The last time was five days ago. Then you would really have seen something. They attacked for two days, especially at night. It was really pretty rough. You see how I am today: I'm trying to catch up on my sleep. We haven't had much lately. We're supposed to counterattack too, but nothing's happened yet. Take a look through the glasses. The ice is still covered with Russians. The pigs don't even pick up their wounded. I'll bet some of them down there are still groaning."

"We're supposed to resupply the ---- section," our wretched sergeant explained anxiously.

"You'll find them a little further on-right down on the river bank-real daredevils. I think they've got the little island too. They lost it one night when they had to fight hand to hand, but in the morning they took it back. It's a pretty tight spot down there, I can tell you. I'd rather be where I am."

Our battery had been silent for a few minutes, but the Russian shells were still coming over at a slow but regular pace. The soldier with the field glasses came in, hunched up and blowing on his fingers.

"Your turn," he said to one of the soldiers. "I'm shaking so hard I'm afraid my teeth will fall out."

The man he called got up with a groan, and pushed his way through to the exit.

"Our guns aren't firing any more. Have they been destroyed?" our sergeant asked the newcomer.

"You've got some funny ideas," the soldier replied, still rubbing his fingers.

"We'd be in a fine fix without them. A few days ago, we'd have just been overrun without those guns. I sincerely hope that all our comrades of the 107th are still among the living."

"I do too," our sergeant agreed emphatically, realizing that he'd said the wrong thing. "But why have they stopped firing?"

"You should know how tight supplies are. We have to fire drop by drop, so to speak, or when we know we can't miss. The infantry and the artillery both have to economize on munitions to the maximum. But we can't let the Soviets know that, so from time to time we give them a heavy dose . . . you see?"

"I see."

"They're not shooting any more," said someone in our group.

"Yes. It's quieted down. You'd better make the most of it," said one of the soldiers from the geschnauz.

"Let's go, children," said our sergeant, who seemed to have regained some confidence.

Children ... he wasn't far wrong: we seemed like children beside these Don veterans. A few rounds from the big guns had seemed to us like the end of the world. There was a great difference between the proud soldiers we'd been in Poland, marching smartly through the villages with our guns slung, and what we were now. How many times in the past I had thought myself invulnerable, filled with the pride we all felt, admiring our shoulder straps and helmets and magnificent uniforms-and the sound of our footsteps, which I loved, and love still, despite everything. But here, by the banks of the Don, we seemed like nothing, like bundles of rags which each sheltered a small, trembling creature. We were underfed and unbelievably filthy. The immensity of Russia seemed to have absorbed us, and as truck drivers we were not dashing figures, but more like the junior maidservants of the army. We were dying of cold like everybody else, only our plight was never mentioned.

We left the shelter timidly, glancing toward the nearby parapet which screened off the war, and picked up our dangerous burdens. Everything seemed to have calmed down. There was no more noise, and the light in the sky had become less brilliant. We took a zigzag line of trenches, which ran parallel to the point we had to reach. Everywhere there were shelters filled with half-frozen soldiers trying to warm themselves beside those miraculous gasoline lamp-heaters, and everywhere we were greeted by the same question: "Any mail?" Three Messerschmitts passed overhead, and were greeted by a loud cheer. The confidence which the infantry placed in the Luftwaffe was absolute, and on innumerable occasions the familiar shapes of the planes with the black crosses restored faltering courage and frustrated a Russian attack.

Several times, as we moved forward, we had to press ourselves against the side of the trench so that stretcher-bearers carrying wounded could get through. We were drawing close to the outermost limit of the German lines. The trenches grew progressively narrower and shallower, so that eventually we became a kind of human chain, bent nearly double in order to remain unseen. Several times, I sneaked a look over the parapet. Some sixty yards ahead, I could see the tall grass on the river bank, stiff with frost; and somewhere in that space was the section we were supposed to supply.

Now we were advancing half exposed, setting off slides of earth and snow as we jumped from one hole to the next. We clattered down into a huge crater, where an orderly in heavy winter clothes was bandaging two fellows who were clenching their teeth to keep themselves from crying out. He told us we had reached our destination. We wasted no time inspecting the situation of this cursed section, but put our cases in the hole we were shown, and turned back for another trip.

By nightfall we had completed what we later learned to call the "priority" supply of this front-line section. Nothing had happened since the bombardment of the afternoon, and the unfortunate soldiers on the Don were preparing themselves for another icy night. Although the temperature had risen a little, it was still very cold.

We were waiting for two of our men who were collecting the scattering of letters these soldiers had managed to write. Hals, another soldier, and I were sitting on a mound of frost-hardened earth, hidden from enemy eyes.

"I wonder where we'll be sleeping tonight," said Hals, staring at his boots.

"Outdoors, I guess," our companion answered. "I don't see any hotels around here."

"Come over this way," called someone else from our group. "You can see the river very well from here."

We got up from the ground to look through a heap of frosty branches that camouflaged a spandau aimed and ready to fire.

"Look," Hals said. "Bodies lying on the ice."

There were numbers of motionless bodies, victims of the fighting of a few days earlier. The soldiers at the geschnauz had not been exaggerating: the Russians had not removed their dead.

I tried to see further into the distance, to what must be the island we had heard so much about, but this was difficult, as it was growing dark. I could recognize only vaguely what looked like snow-covered trees. Our soldiers must be crouched among them, watching in the silence, with every sense alert. Beyond, in the heavy, unbreathable mist falling across this mournful landscape, the far bank was almost invisible. On this bank, the German advance had been halted, and Russian soldiers were watching for us.

I had reached the front line, the line I had thought about with such dread and had been so curious to see. For the moment, nothing was happening. The silence was almost complete, broken only by occasional voices. I thought I could see a few thin streams of smoke rising through the mist on the Russian side. Then some other soldiers pushed me aside.

"If it interests you so much," said one of the grenadiers standing at the foot of the spandau, "I'll gladly give you my place. I've had enough of this cold."

We didn't know what to say. His place was certainly not very enviable.

A lieutenant in a long hooded coat jumped into our hole. Before we had time to salute, he lifted a pair of field glasses, and stared into the distance. A few seconds later, we heard the sound of heavy detonations coming from behind us.

Almost at once, there were explosions on the ice, immediately reproduced by a long, repetitive echo, and then a sharp whistling sound which rang through the air very close to us. The entire German front responded immediately. The noise of the guns became indistinguishable from the explosion of their projectiles. We all dropped to the bottom of the hole. We felt lost, and stared at each other with anguished, questioning eyes.

"They're attacking," someone said.

The two machine gunners didn't fire right away, but stayed beside the lieutenant, staring at the Don. Some of the explosions were loud and strident; others sounded heavy, and as if they were coming from under ground. Finally, the grenadier who had so generously offered his place decided to speak to us: "The ice is breaking more easily tonight; it's not so cold. Pretty soon they'll have to swim over."

We all hung on his words, as none of us understood what was happening.

"We'll send out the lightest one here," he said. "If the ice holds his weight, we'll have to blow it up."

"He's the lightest," said Hals with a constricted laugh, pointing to a cringing, very young soldier.

"What will I have to do?" the boy asked, white with anxiety. "Nothing just yet," the gunner said jokingly.

The bombardment stopped as suddenly as it had begun. The lieutenant looked out through his glasses for a few more minutes, then climbed over the parapet and vanished. We stayed where we were, without moving or speaking. To break the anxious silence, our sergeant ordered us to open our mess tins and eat dinner, while we waited for the fellows with the mail.

We swallowed down our tasteless, frozen portions without much appetite. As I chewed I went over to the spandau to look down once more at the river.

What I saw explained the German bombardment of a few moments ago. Great blocks of ice, some of them two feet thick, were standing up at right angles to the surface of the river. These ice blocks, partly broken and crushed, formed steep hills of ice, whose crests oscillated with the rhythm of the current beneath the frozen surface. The German gunners fired on the ice every night to deny access to the incessant Soviet patrols, who nonetheless exposed themselves to great danger on these moving blocks. Now the broken ice was rearing up and crashing into other pieces with a strange, heavy sound. New fissures were opening, and the night was filled with the noises of cracking, breaking ice.

I stood for a long time, transfixed by the unreal vision, gradually noticing that hundreds of lights were springing up on the east bank. With my eye glued to the loophole, I stared at these lights, which seemed to be growing stronger.

"Hey," I shouted at the two regulars, "something's happening!" They rushed over to me, pushing me aside so they could see. I stayed where I was, shoving my head between theirs.

"Hell, you really scared us," one of them said. "That's nothing; they do it every night. The Popovs like to make us think they're warming up. Not at all a bad idea, either. Those lights are a damned nuisance. Look how hard it is to see the river now. Even flares make it hard."

I couldn't tear myself away from this disquieting vision. All along the vast horizon, the Russians had lit hundreds of braziers, not to warm themselves, because they must certainly have kept their distance from them, but to dazzle our observers. And in fact, when the eye traveled to the east bank, it remained fixed on those fires. Everything else, by contrast, was plunged into darkness, and this enabled the enemy to effect numerous changes which we could deduce only with difficulty. We were able to see a little with flares, but their radiance, although intense, was reduced at least to half strength by the enemy's arrangement of alternating light and darkness.

I would have stood and stared much longer if our sergeant hadn't given the signal for departure. We had no trouble returning to the rear. The night, undisturbed by the noises of war, hid our movements perfectly.

Everywhere, soldiers were curled up in their holes. Those who were asleep had covered themselves with everything they could find, leaving no fraction of themselves exposed-not a nose, or the tip of an ear. One needed to be accustomed to this strange mode of existence to know that beneath these mounds of cloth subtle human mechanisms were managing to survive and garner their strength.

Others were playing cards in the depths of their lairs, or writing letters in the flickering light of a candle, or of a lamp-heater. These marvelous objects-and I call them "marvelous" deliberately-were about two feet high, and would operate on gasoline or kerosene: one simply had to regulate the nozzle and the intake of air. A reflector behind a glass projected the light. A story had it that the army was working on an improved model which would also dispense beer.

Those who were neither asleep, on guard, playing cards, or writing letters were absorbing the alcohol which was freely distributed along with our ammunition.

"There's as much vodka, schnapps and Terek liquor on the front as there are Paks," I was told later by a wounded infantryman who was waiting for evacuation on the hospital train. "It's the easiest way to make heroes. Vodka purges the brain and expands the strength. I've been doing nothing but drink for two days now. It's the best way to forget that I've got seven pieces of metal in my gut, if you can believe the doctor."

We got back to our two sleighs without incident.

"Am I dreaming," Hals said, "or has it grown warmer? I'm sweating like an ox in these clothes. Maybe I've got a fever: that's all I need."

"Then I've got one too," I said. "I'm soaking wet."

"That's because you had the balls scared off you today," said the fellow who earlier in the afternoon had shouted, "They'll kill me!" "Listen to who's talking," Hals said. "You're still as green as your clothes, and you think you can judge us."

Our sleighs were now carrying six wounded as well as ourselves. Although they were less heavily loaded than they had been, they ran less smoothly. The little horses were clearly having a hard time: we could almost see the snow growing softer as we looked at it. The wind was carrying large flakes of melting snow, which soon changed to rain. This milder air, after such terrible cold, seemed to us like the Cote d'Azur.

It took us two hours to reach our huts in the rear lines, and we needed no urging to fling ourselves onto our rough pallets. However, despite the physical and emotional exhaustion of that wearing day, I wasn't able to sleep immediately. I kept seeing the banks of the Don, and hearing the whine of enemy projectiles, and the explosions, whose violence I would never have been able to imagine. For me, whose eardrums were shattered by the firing of a Mauser, our Polish exercises now seemed like the most trifling of games.

The infantry on the west bank had to fight as well as survive: that was the difference between them and us. We had been promised that we would be as honored as the infantry, as combat troops, if we distinguished ourselves on our supply missions. This promise, which had been made to us on behalf of our commander at the Wagenlager near Minsk, was clearly addressed to young recruits like Hals, Lensen, Olensheim, and me. We had taken it as an honor, and were proud of the confidence which had been placed in us.

Yet the reports in the front-line journal blamed us squarely, almost making us responsible for the German retreat from the Caucasus, and back beyond Rostov. For lack of supplies these troops had been forced to abandon territories won with great sacrifices, so that they would not suffer the same fate as the defenders of Stalingrad. In their exhortations to us, our officers often asked us to achieve a certain goal despite adverse conditions, at whatever the cost, to do more than was humanly possible, to face the prospect of the worst, including death. We had thought that we had accomplished more than the bare minimum. In fact, despite our unstinted efforts, and all our bitter moments, we had achieved somewhat less than half of what had been expected. Maybe we should have given our lives too.

"Absolute sacrifice" was what the High Command called it. These words made my head spin, as I stared with wide eyes into the impenetrable darkness, sinking gradually into sleep, as into a large black pit.