Part Two

"The Gross Deutschland"

Spring 1943 to Summer 1943

LEAVE

Berlin -- Paula

On a beautiful spring morning, we were assembled at Trevda, where Hals had spent such an enjoyable time. Two other companies joined us on a hillside covered with short, velvety grass-the kind which thrusts up so thickly that each blade seems to be fighting for space, and which becomes a tall savannah within a month. There were about nine hundred of us. A group of officers standing on the platform of a half destroyed truck addressed us from the top of the hill. About twenty flags and regimental pennants had been propped around the base of the truck. The speeches were very courteous. We were even congratulated for our attitude in the past-an attitude which made us feel ashamed whenever we heard any bulletins from the front. We stared at the officers with enormous eyes. They said that because of our attitude they were prepared to honor any one of us who might wish it by transferring him to a combat unit. About twenty men volunteered at once. The officers, recognizing our "timidity," tried to put us at our ease, and went on talking in the same style. Certain heroic actions were described in detail. Fifteen more volunteers stepped out of the ranks, among them Lensen, who was clearly born for trouble. Next, the officers mentioned a fortnight's leave, which produced at least three hundred volunteers.

Then several lieutenants stepped down from the platform. They threaded their way through our ranks, selecting individual men and inviting them to take the three fateful steps forward, while a captain maintained the tone of eloquent pressure.

The men chosen were always among the largest, healthiest, and strongest. Suddenly, an index finger sheathed in black leather was pointing, like the barrel of a Mauser, into the ribs of my best friend, my war brother. As if hypnotized, Hals took three large steps, and the sound of his heels as he snapped them together was like a door slamming shut, a door which threatened to separate me-perhaps forever-from the only real friend I had ever made and from the friendship which was my only incentive for life in the midst of despair.

After a moment's hesitation, I joined the group of volunteers without any further pressure. I looked confusedly at Hals, whose face was glowing like the face of a child who has just been given a delightful surprise, and who doesn't know what to say. Henceforth, my identification would be Gefreiter Sajer, G. 100/1010 G4. Siebzehntes Bataillon, Leichtinfanterie Gross Deutschland Division, Sud, G.

In the evening, we went back to the squalid shelters we had already occupied. Nothing seemed to have changed. The fact that our names had been added to the infantry recruitment lists was the only difference between the life we had led yesterday as truck drivers and our new life as combat troops. We felt somewhat confused as to the attitude we should adopt, but our noncoms allowed us very little time for meditation. They kept us busy cleaning up, and restoring to good condition the weapons which had taken a beating during the last battle -a job which took several days. Everything seemed to have quieted down, although strong Soviet counter-thrusts had started several fires to the northeast, at Slaviansk. We were also used for the revolting chore of burying the thousands of men who had died in the battle for Kharkov.

We were officially designated "burial squad" one morning at dawn.

The light was so faint it was still almost as dark as the middle of the night. Laus informed us that our new job would take the place of the fortnight's leave we had been promised, and were so much looking forward to. As a rule, the Russian prisoners were used to bury the dead, but it seemed they had taken to robbing the bodies, stealing wedding rings and other pieces of jewelry. In fact, I think the poor fellows many of them wounded but designated fit for work-were probably going over the bodies for something to eat. The rations we gave them were absurd-for example, one three-quart mess tin of weak soup for every four prisoners every twenty-four hours. On some days, they were given nothing but water.

Every prisoner caught robbing a German body was immediately shot. There were no official firing squads for these executions. An officer would simply shoot the offender on the spot, or hand him over to a couple of toughs who were regularly given this sort of job. Once, to my horror, I saw one of these thugs tying the hands of three prisoners to the bars of a gate. When his victims had been secured, he stuck a grenade into the pocket of one of their coats, pulled the pin, and ran for shelter. The three Russians, whose guts were blown out, screamed for mercy until the last moment.

Although we had already met birds of every color, these proceedings revolted us so much that violent arguments broke out between us and these criminals every time. They invariably became furious and abusive, shouting insults at us. They said they had escaped from the camp at Tomvos, where the Russians dumped German prisoners, and they told us how our countrymen were being slaughtered. According to them, the infamous Tomvos camp, sixty miles east of Moscow, was an extermination camp. Rations as ludicrous as those we handed out to Russian prisoners at Kharkov were served once a day to men reporting for labor. Men who did not work received nothing. One bowl of millet was provided for every four men. There was never enough, even for the prisoners who could work. The daily surplus were simply killed: a favorite method of execution was to hammer an empty cartridge case into the nape of the prisoner's neck. It seemed that the Russians often distracted themselves with this type of sport.

I myself can well believe that the Russians were capable of this kind of cruelty, after seeing them at work among the pitiful columns of refugees in East Prussia. But Russian excesses did not in any way excuse us for the excesses by our own side. War always reaches the depths of horror because of idiots who perpetuate terror from generation to generation under the pretext of vengeance.

We spent hours digging out a long tunnel which had been turned into an emergency hospital during the fighting. The surgeons had been so overloaded that the wounded had almost certainly been abandoned. A line of rough triple-decker beds extended some hundreds of yards down the corridor, each containing three blackened, stiff, and mutilated bodies. From time to time, an empty space marked the final flight of a dying man.

There was no light in this charnel house, except from the electric torches which some of us had fastened to our tunics. These threw beams of horrifying illumination on the thin, swollen faces of the cadavers, which we had to pull out with hooks.

Finally, one delicious spring morning, incongruous in that sad, ruined landscape, a muddy truck drove down the track to the new barracks we had moved into the day before. After a brisk half turn, it stopped about ten yards from the first building, where a group of men which included myself were busy removing a heap of gravel and small stones. The back flap of the truck was kicked open, and a plump little corporal jumped down and clicked his heels. Without saluting or saying a word, he rummaged in his right breast pocket, where all military instructions were supposed to be kept. He pulled out a sheet of paper which had been carefully folded four times, and read out a long list of names. As he read, he indicated with a wave of his hand that the men named should step to the right. There were about one hundred names on the list, among them Olensheim, Lensen, Hals, and Sajer. Feeling somewhat anxious, I joined the group on the right. The corporal told us we had three minutes to climb aboard the truck with our weapons and packs. Then he clicked his heels again, saluting this time, and turned his back without another word, striding off as if he were suddenly going for a walk.

We ran frantically to collect our things. There was no time for conversation. Three minutes later, a hundred breathless soldiers were packed into the truck, whose bulging sides threatened to collapse. The corporal was also on time. He threw a withering glance at the eccentrically bulging packs some of us were carrying, but said nothing. Then he bent down to look at something under the truck.

"No more than forty-five on board," he barked. "Departure in thirty seconds."

He took another hundred paces.

We all groaned silently. No one wanted to get down; everyone had the best of reasons for staying put. Two or three men were shoved off the back. As I was right in the middle, packed in like a sardine, there was no question of moving. Laus finally took matters in hand. He made half the men on the truck get down. The remainder came to exactly forty-five. The corporal, who was already climbing into the front seat, told the driver to start. Laus gave us a friendly wave. We had received our final orders from him. His last smile more than made up in our eyes for all the duties he had imposed on us. Beside him, the other half of the group called out by the corporal watched with dazed faces as we vanished in a whirl of dust.

This half of the group joined us four days later, one hundred miles behind the front lines, at the rest camp of the famous Gross Deutschland Division. A large part of the division, especially the convalescing wounded, occupied the rustic Akhtyrka camp. The division itself held a mobile sector in the vast Kursk-Belgorod region. Everything at the camp was clean and neatly organized, as in the Boy Scouts, only far more lavishly supplied.

Akhtyrka reminded us of an oasis, surrounded by the trackless steppe.

We jumped down at the corporal's order, and lined up in a double file. A captain, a first lieutenant, and a feldwebel walked toward us. Our plump little corporal snapped to attention. These officers were all dressed with astonishing style. The hauptmann looked like a figure from a costume party, in a jacket of fine gray-green cloth with the red facings of a combat unit, dark-green riding breeches, and gleaming cavalry boots. He waved at us, and then said something we couldn't quite hear to the feldwebel, who was every bit his equal in elegance. After a short conversation with the hauptmann, the feld walked over to us, clicked his heels, and addressed us in a tone which at least was more agreeable than that of the corporal who had come to fetch us.

"Welcome to the Gross Deutschland Division!" he shouted. "With us, you will experience a genuine soldier's life, the only life which brings men close to each other on terms of absolute sincerity. Here, a sense of comradeship exists between each and every one of us, which might be put to the test at any moment. Any black sheep, anyone unsuited for comradeship, does not stay in this division. Everyone must be able to count on everyone else, without any qualification whatever. The slightest error on anyone's part affects the whole section. We want no slackers and no strays: everyone must be prepared either to obey without question, or to give orders. Your officers will think for you. Your duty is to show yourselves worthy of them. You will now get yourselves some new clothes and throw away your stinking rags. Absolute cleanliness is the essential foundation for a decent frame of mind. We do not tolerate any sloppiness of appearance." He took a deep breath, and then continued. "When these preliminaries have been accomplished, this group of volunteers will receive their passes for the fortnight's leave which has been promised them. If there is no counter-order, these passes will become effective in five days, when the convoy leaves for Nedrigailov.

"You may now proceed. Heil Hitler!"

It was a beautiful day. Everything in the camp seemed to be efficiently organized. According to what we'd just heard, one did not trifle with orders, but that seemed a reasonable change, after the universe of shit and horror and suffering and panic we had just come from. And then there were our passes! Hals was jumping with delight, like a young goat. Everyone felt overjoyed.

Our plump corporal had one more nasty surprise in store for us, but we were all in such a good humor nothing could ruffle us. He ordered us to wash our filthy clothes before turning them in to the supply store where we would draw new ones. We found ourselves transformed into washerwomen, standing stripped to the skin in front of long troughs. Our underclothes were caked with filth, beyond hope of recovery. I kicked my shorts into the air, and tore my undershirt into shreds. My last pair of socks, which I'd been wearing since the beginning of the retreat, were nothing but holes and joined my shorts. Then, stark naked, we walked across the grass to the store, to hand in our old clothes, which were soaking wet but neatly folded-and receive new ones. Two women soldiers nearly choked with laughter when they saw us coming.

"Hang on to your boots!" shouted the sergeant, who was not particularly amused by the sight of naked boys. "No new boots here!"

We were given a fresh issue of everything from caps to first-aid kits. However, certain indispensable items were missing-among these, underpants and socks-which in the long run proved to be serious omissions. But our spirits were too high to be disturbed at the time.

When we were dressed, we were directed to a wooden army barrack. A notice in large, legible characters was tacked beside the door to remind us of the cleanliness which was officially obligatory: "Eine Laus, der Tod!"* (* "A louse means death!")

 The plump little corporal who had accompanied us from Kharkov waved us inside. We looked curiously around our new room, which was rough but impeccably clean.

"Ruhe, Mensch!" shouted the corporal. We instantly fell silent. "Since there isn't a noncom here, I am going to put one of you in charge."

He worked his way through our ranks, with his eyes half-closed, as if he wished to surprise his choice-who of course would not want the responsibility-or as if the decision were somehow significant. Finally, with a sharp cry, he selected a fellow who didn't seem to have anything special about him:

"Du"

The man he pointed to stepped forward. "Your name?"

"Wiederbeck!"

"Wiederbeck, until further notice, you will be responsible for the order of this room. You will go to the Warenlager to pick up the divisional patches which everyone must sew on his left sleeve. You will also . . ." He enumerated a list of duties, each of which made poor Wiederbeck's head droop a little lower.

A few minutes later, we each received the famous insignia of the Gross Deutschland division, with its divisional title in silver Gothic letters on a black ground. This band remained on my sleeve until 1945, when the rumor ran through our scattered ranks that the Americans were shooting any man wearing a divisional name instead of a number. And at that moment of hasty judgment, they might very well have shot a nobody from the Gross Deutschland or the Brandenburg as easily as a hero from the Leibstandarte, or the Totenkopf. But that time was still far in the future. We were then in the spring of 1943, on the territory of a conquered country. The weather was marvelous, and as a finishing touch we all had two-week passes in our pockets. After everything we had been through, this new life seemed like a dream.

Except for morning and evening roll call, we were free to wander about and entertain ourselves as we pleased.

Akhtyrka was a curious place.

Between the houses or groups of houses, which were built in an agreeable Russian peasant style, the grasses and wild flowers of the steppe grew with vigorous abundance, making a kind of thick lawn, which was often nearly three feet high. These plants and grasses, which all turned brown at the end of summer, were scattered with enormous daisies and a variety of aromatic plants which the Russians collected for seasoning their food and preparing drinks. Fields of rough, light-green gherkins were set off by enormous sunflowers. The groups of houses were inhabited either by members of a family, or by friends, who built in clusters to reduce the effort of paying visits.

The Russians-especially the Ukrainians-are very gay and hospitable, and ready to celebrate almost any occasion. I remember several pleasant gatherings at the homes of these enthusiastic people, during which everyone managed to forget the rivalries of the war. And I remember the girls, shouting with laughter when they had every reason to hate us-on another human scale altogether from the affected Parisian beauty, obsessed by her appearance and her cosmetics.

Each group of houses also had its own burial ground, which was never a sad place, but always a beautiful flowery plot, with wooden tables where people often sat and drank, and an ornamental signpost with an affectionate variation of the place name: Beautiful Akhtyrka, Our Town, Akhtyrka, Sweet Akhtyrka.

Four days after our arrival, the second section of our group of volunteers joined us. It seemed they really had to sweat to make it: almost the whole journey had been on foot.

At last, on the fifth day, we took our places in the convoy for Nedrigailov. Our passes would not become operative until we reached Poznan, which was another thousand miles to the west. After that, there would be six hundred miles to my parents at Wissembourg. I would therefore be traveling for several days. We drove across a huge expanse of country which was absolutely flat-without the slightest trace of hillock or hollow. Here and there, we could see military tractors being used for agricultural work. We were able to maintain a decent speed as far as Nedrigailov, on a road which had been rebuilt by the army engineers, and which, every three or four miles, was littered with the wreckage of hastily abandoned Soviet materiel. We had driven for about 150 miles when our attention was attracted by some tiny shapes outlined against the distant sky. Their black silhouettes were marked by little white clouds, and the sound of explosions.

The two trucks ahead of us slowed down, and then stopped. As usual, the feld responsible for the convoy jumped down from the first truck and stared through his field glasses. As usual, we waited for an order before plunging to the ground. Everyone was quiet, watching the feld attentively, trying to fathom his reactions. Only the sound of the idling engine broke the stillness. The joy which had transformed our faces these last few days slowly faded as our anxiety grew. A few voices cursed our bad luck.

"I thought that by now we were good and far from any trouble." "Goddamnit!"

"What do you think it could be?"

"Partisans," muttered Hals, who had already taken part in a "man hunt." There were several other conjectures as well.

"Whoever they are, I'm not going to let the bastards wreck my leave."

"I wonder what we're waiting for. Why don't they just tell us to go ahead and shoot them?"

Each of us had already picked up the Mauser which soldiers on leave in an occupied country were required to carry at all times. The idea that somebody or something might prevent us from going home made us feel savage. We were ready to shoot anyone at a moment's notice if that's what was needed to keep moving west. But the order to fire never came. The feld climbed back onto his truck, and the convoy started off again. We stared at each other in confusion. When, some five hundred yards further on, we ran into a group of twenty German officers carrying shotguns, we felt so surprised and delighted that our assumption had been mistaken that we cheered them as if we were driving past the Fuhrer himself.

At last, we reached Nedrigailov, where we left the convoy, which turned south. We went on to Romny, the gypsy paradise, where we were supposed to be picked up by another convoy moving west. At Nedrigailov, our ranks were swelled by other men on leave from various parts of Russia, until there were nearly a thousand of us. However, the supply of available trucks had to be used for many purposes other than simply transporting men on leave. The few trucks for Romny took on about twenty fortunate souls; the rest of us were left to mill about in front of a field kitchen equipped to feed barely a quarter of our number. Although we were famished, we decided to walk the thirty miles to Romny, and set off despite the lateness of the hour, in the best of spirits. About twenty fellows who were considerably older than the rest of us and belonged to the Gross Deutschland Division came along. There were also seven or eight fellows from the S.S., who sang at the tops of their lungs. The others took swigs from bottles which they passed from hand to hand. They must have emptied several cellars: every one of them seemed to be carrying a generous collection.

We had instinctively arranged ourselves in threes, as if we were going up to the line, and were proceeding on the double, consciously reducing the distance which separated us from Romny. Evening was slowly falling across the endless green, rolling landscape. Our uniforms, so perfectly matched to outdoor colors, seemed to take on the tone of the surrounding landscape, like chameleon skins. After the first ten miles, our high spirits faded somewhat, leaving us more inclined to contemplate the immense panorama of the Ukraine. The earth, engaged in the processes of spring germination, exhaled a subtle but nonetheless powerful odor, as the horizon faded into the boundless emptiness of the darkening sky. Our uniforms grew darker as the earth darkened, almost as if by magic, and our footsteps seemed to be setting the rhythm of the whole mysterious universe. The blackness of night was spreading behind us, and we fell silent, hushed by the respect which immensity imposes on simple men. Our group of soldiers, members of an army hated throughout the world, was seized by an indefinable emotion. As one sometimes jokes to hide sadness, we began to sing to avoid thought. The favorite song of the S.S. rose up like a hymn to the earth, offered to men:

So weit die braune Heide geht

Gehort das alles wir . . .

Then darkness engulfed us-a darkness which, for the first time in months, seemed made for nothing more than watching over us. Although we had begun to feel our exhaustion, no one suggested a halt. The road home was long, and we didn't want to lose any time. For me, hoping to reach my other country, the road was even longer. Although our leave did not officially begin until Poznan, the idea of getting home overrode every other consideration, and enabled me to endure the painful condition of my bare feet, rubbed raw by my boots.

Hals, who was having the same sort of trouble, cursed the storekeeper at Akhtyrka for failing to supply us with socks. After about twenty miles, we were forced to reduce our speed. Naturally, the veterans who had joined us, and whose feet must have been made of iron, treated us like crybabies. But they gave us their own socks, so that we could go on. For a few of us, however, this was not enough. Our feet were too lacerated, and the three additional miles we were able to manage cost us too much pain. As the rest of the group kept on despite our cries pleading for a halt, we decided to try walking barefoot on the dewy grass. At first, this seemed like an improvement-but not for long. Some even thought of wrapping their feet in the new undershirts we had been issued, but the possibility of an inspection made them hesitate. The last few miles, as we hobbled through the growing daylight, were torture-a torture refined by the first military police we met on the outskirts of Romny, who made us put back our boots. They said they wouldn't allow us into town looking like a bunch of tramps. We could nave murdered them. Further on, we asked some gypsies to take the worst cases as far as the Kommandantur in their carts. They were prudent enough not to argue.

The infirmary was in the same building as the Kommandantur. We even spoke with the Kommandant, who was outraged that soldiers from the Gross Deutschland should have to go without socks. He sent an official statement of indignation to the Akhtyrka camp for failing to provide properly for new troops. Those who wished medical attention were sent to the infirmary, where their feet were washed in basins of warm water to which chloroform had been added. This had an extraordinary effect, easing our pain almost at once. We were each given a small red metal box of cream for coating our feet before setting out on a march. But we still had no socks.

Those of our group who had not gone to the infirmary were looking into the prospects for the rest of our journey. The Kharkov-Kiev line ran through Romny, with daily trains in both directions. Our disappointment therefore was great when our two feldwebels announced that we wouldn't be leaving for at least two days. All available space on trains moving toward the front was reserved for essentials, and on returning trains emergencies were given priority over soldiers on leave. Rumors multiplied among our group of five hundred anxious men for whom each hour counted. People spoke of leaving for Kiev on their own-thumbing a ride on one of the convoys, or sneaking onto a train on the quiet, or stealing some Russian horses. Some even spoke of doing the journey on foot-150 miles, which would take at least five days, even with forced marches. As all of these were really out of the question, we decided it would be better simply to stay where we were.

Old hands groaned: "I can tell you, we'll just sit here and watch our passes expire. We've got to get out of here. Who says we'll leave in two days? We'll probably be right where we are a week from now; so fuck the whole damn mess-I'm clearing out!"

My feet were still feeling too sensitive even to think about a march-no matter how pressing it might be. Hals and Lensen were in the same state. So, for better or for worse, we had to wait in Romny without any idea of what to do, or even where to sleep. The police were always after us, telling us to move on: it was useless to try to explain to them-the bastards weren't interested. In the Ukraine-that paradise for troops on leave-they had rediscovered all the exasperating authority they exercised in peacetime. Anyone rash enough to argue with them risked having his pass torn up in front of his eyes. We saw this happen to one poor devil about forty years old. The gendarmes kicked his pack like some kind of football, and the fellow remarked in an angry voice that he had just spent six months fighting in the Caucasus, and felt entitled to a certain amount of common courtesy.

"Traitors!" shouted one of the horrible cops.

"Traitors who ran away from the Russians and lost Rostov! They should send the whole lot of you back to the front, which you never should have left in the first place!"

And he ripped the poor man's pass into shreds before his horrified eyes. We thought he would break down and howl. Instead, he threw himself on the two cops, knocking both of them flat. He was gone before we could recover from our stupefaction. The furious cops picked themselves up, swearing to have the man shot. We took ourselves off in a hurry, before they had the chance to turn their guns on us.

Two days later, we left for Kiev after all, crammed into a train which was also loaded with cattle. But we didn't care about traveling in comfort. We were interested only in getting to Kiev, which-several months before its destruction-was still a beautiful city.

In Kiev, we felt that we had been saved, that the war no longer existed. The city looked beautiful, and was full of flowers. People were going quietly about their ordinary, everyday occupations. White street cars edged in red moved through the brightly dressed civilian crowds of the pleasant town. Everywhere, troops in trim, brushed uniforms were walking with Ukrainian girls. I had already liked the look of the town in the winter. Now all my agreeable impressions were confirmed. I would gladly have ended the war right there.

From Kiev, we had no trouble finding a train leaving for Poland. Our journey was vivid and colorful. We left in a crowded civilian train and, mixed in this way with ordinary Russian people, had more of a chance to become acquainted with them than at any time during the war. Our train of oddly assorted carriages rolled for hours along a track that crossed the empty expanse of the Pripet marshes. The Russians, who drank and sang nonstop, offered drinks to all the soldiers too, and the noise throughout the journey was almost beyond belief. At the occasional station stops, people got on and off, and the most outrageous jokes were cracked amid shouts of laughter. The women made even more noise than the men. Hals put on a gourharitchka for a short time. We passed in this way from the Ukraine into Poland, arriving after two and a half days in Lublin, where we had to change trains. At Lublin there was also a meticulous police inspection, and we were ordered to go to the camp barber for haircuts before departure. However, our anxiety about missing the train was so great that we decided to take what seemed like an enormous risk-which succeeded. Hals, Lensen, and I managed to walk out past the military police with our hair untouched by any shears. This proved to have been a risk well worth taking, as without it we would surely have missed the train.

We arrived at Poznan in the middle of the night, and were received by a very efficient center. We were given tickets for the canteen and the dormitory, and told to be at the office in the morning to have our passes validated. The office was open from seven to eleven, but we were warned to be there no later than six, as there was usually a queue.

This struck us as somewhat strange. In effect it meant that troops arriving in Poznan at 11:05 in the morning had to wait until the following day before they could continue their journey. I think this arrangement was probably motivated by a desire to keep men under army control even when they were theoretically on leave. In this way, a cancellation order could be sent east while the troops were waiting. By contrast, the office which processed returning troops was open twenty-four hours a day.

We spent what was left of the night in a comfortable dormitory which reminded me of the barracks at Chemnitz, and were at the office for passes by six the next morning. There were already some twenty men ahead of us, who must have spent the night on the spot, and by seven there must have been at least three hundred. The self-important bureaucrats who ran the place took their own time verifying our documents, while we stood in agitated silence. The police standing by the door were ready to cancel the leave of anyone foolish enough to lose his temper.

When our papers had been stamped, we were sent across the courtyard into a large hall where our uniforms were inspected. We were given the opportunity to polish our boots and brush our clothes beforehand, and one might almost have believed that there was no mud in Russia! Then, a final, charming detail: women soldiers distributed packages of choice foods wrapped in paper covered with eagles and swastikas, and inscribed: "A Happy Holiday to Our Brave Soldiers."

Sweet, sensitive Germany!

Hals, who would have been capable of killing himself for a cup of beef broth, rolled enormous eyes. "If we'd only had something like this at Kharkov!"

We felt profoundly moved by these attentions. A package of sausages, jam, and cigarettes seemed generous repayment for our endless nights in the stone-cracking cold, and our wanderings through the mud of the Don Valley. Hals and I set off for Berlin, bearing our gifts. Lensen left us to travel to his native Prussia.

In Berlin, we were once again reminded of the war's existence.

Around the Silesian station, and in the Weissensee and Pankov districts, many buildings had been reduced to rubble, in the first stages of the city's destruction. But otherwise the active, busy life of a capital metropolis went on as usual.

In Berlin, which I was seeing for the first time, I was reminded of a promise I had made. I had promised myself to go see Enrst Neubach's wife. She lived with his parents in the southern part of the city. I explained this to Hals, who advised me to postpone the obligation until my return trip. But I knew very well that I would never be able to bring myself to leave home a day early, and that my parents would try to hang on to me until the last moment. Hals understood this, even though he tried to persuade me to do something else. He didn't want to lose any time either, and left for Dortmund as soon as he could, making me promise to come to see him.

I would have done better to listen to the voice of wisdom, speaking through my friend. My journey came to an end the next day, in the flames of Magdeburg, and I had to stay in Berlin, a city entirely unknown to me, where I had to work hard to make myself understood.

Still carrying my pack and gun, which were beginning to feel very heavy, I set out to try to find the Neubachs' house. Fortunately, I was still able to read the scribbled address I had found among my poor friend's papers. But should I try to get there by subway, or by bus? As I really didn't know where I was going, I decided to proceed on foot, which would at least give me the chance to look around; the idea of walking across the city still seemed normal at that time. However, I didn't want to stray too far afield, to walk west when I should have been walking south. I had noticed a sign, BERLIN SUD, which must be roughly correct. I passed two cops who gave me a long, cold stare when they noticed the spectacular package of a soldier on leave. I saluted them as required -one had to salute those bastards as if they were army officers-and went on my way.

The city seemed beautiful, but serious and well organized. The bombing had only recently begun, and in Berlin affected only the districts immediately around the railway stations. In this large, imposing town, with its austere houses set off by sumptuous, intricate railings, everything seemed to be regulated by a precise, organized rhythm: no raucous crowds or parents pulling down their children's pants to let them pee. Men, women, children, bicycles, cars, and trucks-all seemed to be moving at an even, regular pace toward a precise destination, with a rhythm that seemed conscious and assertive, and designed to avoid any dissipation of energy. It was all very different from Paris, for example. Undue haste seemed out of place, and my legs seemed to fall instinctively into the accepted tempo of the city. To stop moving without good reason would have seemed strange. The huge machine which the regime had set in motion for the cause was turning, and this was evident even in the gestures of the little old lady who was walking just ahead of me, and whom I stopped to ask for directions. Her neat white hair was impeccable, like the streets and the railings and the edges of the sidewalks. The sound of my voice seemed to call her back from some distant daydream.

"Excuse me, gnadige Frau," I said, feeling somewhat embarrassed, as if I were speaking in a theatre where the play had already begun.

"Could you give me some directions'? I am going to this address." I showed her my scrap of paper, which really looked like something pulled out of a waste-paper basket.

The old lady smiled, as if she had seen an angel.

"It's very far, young man," she said in a gentle voice which suddenly reminded me of my childhood. "It's very far. You must go to the Tempelhof autobahn. But it's really very far."

"That doesn't matter." I couldn't think of anything else to say.

"You really ought to take a bus. It would be much easier for you." "That doesn't matter," I repeated, like someone in a dream. In fact, I couldn't think of the German words for anything else. This woman's obvious goodness, after so much loud-mouthed bullying and malignity, moved me even more deeply than the exhausted men at Outcheni.

"I don't mind walking. I'm in the infantry," I finally said, smiling.

"I know," she said, smiling even more tenderly than a moment before. "You must be used to walking. I'll go with you as far as the Schloss von Kaiser Wilhelm. From there, I'll be able to explain to you." She walked along beside me. As I didn't know what to say, the burden of the conversation fell on her.

"Where have you come from, young man?"

"From Russia."

"Russia's a big country. What part were you in?"

"Russia's very big, yes. I was in the South, around Kharkov."

"Kharkov!" she said, giving the name a very German sound. "I see. Is it a big town?"

"Yes. It's big."

For my kindly companion, Kharkov was clearly nothing more than a name which there was no particular need to remember. For me, Kharkov meant a city which had lost its life. If it had ever been a big town, it was now only a heap of rubble, crowned by a cloud of dust, smoke, and fire. It was also the sound of cries and moaning one shouldn't hear in towns. It was a long corridor of stiffened corpses we had to drag out into the air, and three Bolsheviks tide to a fence, with their guts spilling from their bellies.

"My son is in Briansk," the old lady remarked, clearly hoping for news of the front.

"Briansk," I repeated in a thoughtful tone. "I believe that's in the central sector. I've never been there."

"He tells me that everything's going quite well. He's a first lieutenant in an armored division."

"A lieutenant!" I thought. "An officer!" The opinions of a private soldier must have sounded ridiculous.

"Were things difficult in your sector?"

"Things were pretty hard, but they're better now. I'm on leave," I added, smiling.

"I'm really happy for you, young man," she said, and her voice sounded as if she meant it.

"Are you in Berlin to see your family?"

"No, gnadige Frau. I'm going to see the parents of a friend."

A friend! Ernst: a corpse.

What friend was I tramping along like this for? The old woman was beginning to get on my nerves.

"A friend from your regiment," she said, sharing my pleasure at being on leave. I felt like knocking her onto one of those intricate railings full of spikes.

"Where do your parents come from?" she asked.

"From Wissembourg, in Alsace."

She looked at me with surprise.

"So you're Alsatian. I know Alsace very well."

I almost told her that she knew it better than I did.

"Yes, I'm Alsatian," I said, hoping to get a little peace.

She began to tell me about a trip she'd taken to Strasbourg, but I wasn't listening any more. By forcing me to remember Ernst, she had irritated me. I had better things to do than listen to this old bird reminisce about her travels. It was a beautiful day, I was on leave, and I needed to see something gay. This desire made me wonder what attitude to take when I got to the Neubachs'. These people had just lost their son, and were probably overwhelmed by grief.... Maybe they didn't even know he was dead. If that's how it was, what on earth could I say to them? It would be better to visit them on my way back. By then, they would surely have been told. Hals was right. I should have listened to him. He, at least, was still alive.

We came to a crossroad opposite a bridge over a stream-or even perhaps a large river. I knew that the Seine flowed through Paris, but couldn't have said whether Berlin was on the Elbe or the Oder. To the right, there was a massive block of buildings-the Schloss von Kaiser Wilhelm-and directly across the avenue an impressive memorial to the heroes of 1914-18: twelve hundred helmets of that time set round a forecourt, to give some idea of the sacrifice. Two sentries from Hitler's guard walked slowly back and forth along a cement apron at the base of the monument; their slow, even pace seemed to me strangely symbolic of a human being's slow progress toward eternity. With a regularity which a master watchmaker might well have envied, the two men executed impeccably synchronized half turns, faced each other at a distance of about thirty meters, resumed their march, crossed, turned, and began again. I found this spectacle somehow oppressive.

"Here we are, young man," the old woman said.

"You cross the bridge and follow that avenue."

She pointed toward the vast, stony backdrop of the city, in which I would have to find my address. But I had already stopped listening. I knew that I wasn't going to the Neubachs', and that these explanations were superfluous. Nevertheless, I outdid myself in expressions of gratitude, and pressed the old lady's hand. She withdrew, repeating her protestations of good will. I couldn't help smiling. As soon as she had disappeared, I rushed back in the direction from which we'd come, trying to make up for lost time, and find the station for the West as quickly as possible.

I walked along the river bank with the obsessive speed of a maniac. Suddenly, the air filled with martial music, and an elegantly dressed military band marched out through a tall gateway, and turned into the street. I remembered what we were taught at Bialystok, and snapped to attention, presenting arms to the indifferent troupe. After an hour and a half, with innumerable stops to ask my way, I arrived at the station from which trains left for the West, and France. I looked desperately for Hals amid the throngs on the platform: he would surely be on this train too-but I couldn't find him in the few minutes before departure. As I caught my breath on the train, the slow regular progress of our acceleration seemed to merge with the measured tempo of the German capital. Everything here was so entirely different from Russia. Even the soldiers had an air of seriousness which matched the civilized, organized life of all large European countries.

The contrast with Russia was so great that I wondered if what I'd seen there wasn't part of a bad dream.

Night fell, and the train rolled on. We had been moving for at least three hours, during which it seemed that we had never left the city. There was no countryside, only buildings. Suddenly, the train came to a stop, although we were not in a station. Everyone leaned out the windows to see what was happening. Although it was dark, the distant sky glowed with red light. We could hear a muffled rumbling, mingled with the boom of guns. The throbbing of a mass of airplanes overhead rattled the windows of the train.

"That must be Magdeburg, getting it in the neck," said a soldier who had shoved in beside me to look out too.

"Who's giving it to them?" I asked.

He looked at me curiously. "Those Yankee bastards, of course," he said, as if he were talking to a simpleton. "Things are just as hot here as they are at the front."

I couldn't tear my eyes away from the glow of the burning city. I had thought that we'd left the war far behind us. The train began to move again, only to come to a fresh halt fifteen minutes later. Soldiers ran up the track, calling everybody off. Somebody said that the line had been cut, and that all military personnel, whether on active duty or on leave, had to put themselves at the disposal of the local authorities. Thus I found myself, in my clean uniform and carrying my holiday package, falling into step with about a hundred resigned soldiers.

We walked for about half an hour into the blinding, acrid smoke of countless fires, and began shifting fallen timbers and massive masonry blocks, while delayed-action bombs pulverized what was left of a terrified bourgeois population. Groups of whimpering civilians were impressed into cleanup squads by foul-mouthed officials shouting at the tops of their lungs. Everyone was put to work. Although it was pitch dark, we were able to see: broken gas pipes thrown up onto the torn earth blazed like blow torches, amid the heaps of stones, broken wood, window glass, furniture, arms, and legs.

A gang of territorials handed out picks, and we piled the rest of our equipment beside a fire truck. We had to dig into the ruins with the greatest possible speed: we could hear the groans and cries of people trapped in the cellars. Women and children weeping with terror were carting away bricks and stones to clear some space. Shouted orders overlapped: "Quick! This way!" "We need help over here!" "Quick! The water pipes have burst and are flooding the cellars!" Of course, the military were chosen to deal with the most dangerous situations, and sent into places threatened with immediate collapse.

We reached the cellars through the deep airshafts. We attacked a brick wall which seemed to be blocking the entrance to a basement where people were calling for help. My pick sank into something soft: probably the stomach of some poor soul crushed by the debris. And damn it! I was on leave, and all of this was holding me up! An explosion shifted the ground we were standing on: another one of those American bombs which blow up some time after they've landed. Nonetheless, our efforts were finally successful. The last brick wall fell beneath our blows, and a bunch of haggard, blackened people surged through the jagged opening, engulfed in a swirling cloud of dust. Several people embraced us, sobbing with relief and recognition. Others were in a state of literal madness. Everyone was somehow hurt or wounded. We had to climb down ourselves to bring out terrified women clutching their children so tightly they were nearly suffocating them.

I pulled out the first child I saw. A kid of about five was tugging at one of my trouser legs so hard that it came right out of my boot. He was trying to drag me to a particular spot, and he was crying so hard that his gasps for breath between each sob were extraordinarily long. He pulled me over to a recess where a crushed wine bin was holding up the base of a vault on the brink of collapse. An inert human form was lying in the jumble of rubble at my feet. The kid was still howling, in a passion of grief that couldn't be helped.

I shouted as loud as I could: "Licht aus! Schnell!"

Someone came over with a torch, and we saw the body of a woman crushed by the metal of the bottle rack, which had collapsed under the weight of thirty or forty tons of disintegrating masonry. The body of a child was wedged in beside her. Pulling against the stiff, dusty clothes of the corpse, I dragged out the child's body as if it were just another stone. But maybe the kid was still alive: it seemed to move a little. Dragging the two kids with me, I made for the exit hole, and handed over the child in my arms to some rescue workers. The one who was howling trailed along with me for a short distance, until I abandoned him. He could shift for himself, for God's sake. In Germany, everyone had to be ready for that-the younger the better. We were already needed for another job.

The sirens were howling again: the Anglo-Americans were faithfully adhering to their practice of coming back with a second dose before we had time to help the victims of the first. The gang chiefs blew their whistles for retreat. Voices were shouting: "Everyone take cover."

But where? For four hundred yards around us we could see nothing but heaps of rubble. People who knew the district ran in what they hoped were likely directions. Bewildered children were crying. Above us, we could hear the roar of four-engined planes. I was running too, and I knew what I was looking for. The fire truck had disappeared, but our heap of packs remained where we'd left them. Soldiers were turning them over, grabbing the right one, and running off. I recognized mine by the metal eidelweiss I had sewed onto the piece of calfskin which served as a pillow. I pulled it out, along with my gun. . . . But my gift package ... God damn it!

"Hey ... you ... my package!"

Someone threw me a package across the maelstrom. Everyone was hurrying off.

"Hey . . . This isn't it! Wait a minute! God damn it!"

Bombs were beginning to fall at the other end of the city. God damn it to hell!

I ran as fast as I could across an empty space where I narrowly escaped a car in as great a hurry as I. The surface of the road seemed to be rising and falling in ripples, and the sound of thousands of panes shattering simultaneously added a crystalline note to the huge shock produced by bombs of four and five thousand kilos.

The number of people on the street was shrinking rapidly. Only a few fools like myself were still running about looking for shelter. My eyes, stinging from the clouds of acrid dust, could see, in the intermittent flashes of white light, the outline of the houses bordering the street. On one of the buildings I could make out a white poster with black letters: SHELTER: THIRTY PERSONS.

Never mind if there were already a hundred! I ran down a spiral staircase between the only two walls left intact in the building. A dim lamp which some thoughtful soul had hooked to the wall lit the turns in the stair. But after two spirals the way was blocked by a large gray cylinder, which was even taller than I. I tried to squeeze through the narrow gap next to the stair wall, but a closer look at the object made my blood freeze. I was pressing myself against an enormous bomb, whose broken wings indicated that it had crashed through every floor of the building from the roof down. It must have weighed at least four tons, and might explode any minute. I streaked back up the stairs and out the door into the darkness, which flickered unevenly into brilliant light like a huge neon sign. Finally, gasping for breath, I collapsed beside a bench in a square, and lay there for about twenty minutes, until the sirens sounded the all clear. When everything was quiet again, I went back to the job of cleaning up, from which I was released at the end of the morning. Then I was given the most depressing news of all.

I was ready to continue my journey westward. Two days of my leave had already been wasted, and I couldn't spare another minute. I asked a territorial where I would find the train for Kassel and Frankfurt. He asked for my pass, looked it over, and told me to follow him. He took me to a military police station. I watched through the little window as my pass traveled from hand to hand, keeping my eyes firmly fixed on it. I saw several stamps being added to the scrap of paper I had brought from Akhtyrka. Then it was handed back to me, and I was informed, in an indifferent, administrative tone, that I could not proceed beyond the Magdeburg sector. Given the location of my army corps, I had come to the extreme western limit of permissible travel.

I was absolutely stunned, and stood staring at the cops. The shock of disappointment was so great that for a few moments I felt numb.

"We can understand that you are upset," one of them said, officially taking note of my condition. "You will be well taken care of at the reception center here in town."

Without a word, I took my pass from the counter, where the cop had put it down when he got tired of holding it out to me, and walked through the door. My throat felt as if it would burst from the effort of holding back my tears.

In the street, where the sun continued to shine, I stumbled on in a daze. I could see that people were staring at me as if I were drunk. Suddenly I felt ashamed, and looked for someplace where I could withdraw for a few minutes to compose myself. A little farther on, I took shelter in the ruins of a large building, collapsing onto a stone in the darkest corner I could find. Clutching my stamp-covered document, I burst into tears like a child. The sound of footsteps made me look up. Someone had followed me into the building, thinking, perhaps, that I was a thief. When he saw that I was only crying, he turned back to the street. Luckily, people cared more about ration cards than about tears in those days, so at least I was allowed to remain alone with my sorrow.

That evening, I caught a train back to Berlin, letting Fate dictate that I should call on the Neubachs after all. I didn't know where any of my German relatives lived-although at that time they were quite near Berlin-so I was reduced to either the reception center or the Neubachs'. I felt obsessed by my disappointment: I had been looking forward to this leave so much! And I had earned it, too: I had joined the infantry expressly to get it. And now, here I was with nothing but a ludicrous scrap of paper. I didn't even have my gift package any more: it had vanished at Magdeburg, which I had left with a box of some soldier's dirty laundry. Now I would have to show up with empty hands at the house of people I had never met. I certainly didn't have enough money to buy them anything.

That evening, I counted myself lucky to get a bed at the reception center in Berlin. One of the older soldiers there listened to the story of my pass, and advised me to speak to a noncom at the registration desk. The noncom turned out to be quite sympathetic, noted down all the details, and told me to come back in twenty-four hours.

Early the next morning, I set out to find the Neubachs' house. After several hours of hesitant, groping progress, I finally found myself in front of number 112, Killeringstrasse, a simple, three-story house with a graveled walk beside it, which could be shut off from the street by a low gate. A young girl who seemed to be about my age was leaning on the bottom half of the front door, looking out into the street. After a moment's hesitation, I went over to ask a final direction.

"Yes sir," she said, smiling. "This is the right house: they live on the second floor. But at this time of day they're all out at work." "Thank you, miss. Do you know when they'll be back?"

"They'll be here this evening, after seven."

"Thank you," I said, thinking of the long day ahead of me. What could I do with all that time? As I shut the gate, I thanked the girl once again. She smiled faintly, and nodded her head. Who was she waiting for? Certainly not the Neubachs.

I had already walked a short way down Killeringstrasse when it occurred to me that I could, at any rate, have talked to the girl a little longer. After several moments of hesitation, I turned back, hoping that she would still be there. Every minute I could subtract from the interminable day ahead seemed like a minute gained. As long as she didn't laugh at me right to my face, I was ready to take almost any amount of sarcasm. I was soon back at number I12. She was exactly where I'd left her.

"You think they're already home?" she said, laughing.

"Of course not. But I feel so lost in this town that I'd rather sit here on the steps and wait than have to hunt for the house all over again."

"You want to wait here all day?" She seemed astonished.

"I'm afraid so."

"But you ought to look around Berlin. It's an interesting place."

"I agree with you. I should. But really, I feel so lost I'm afraid I wouldn't see anything."

And I still felt so disappointed that I had no wish to flirt. "Are you on leave?"

"Yes. I've still got twelve days. But I'm not allowed to leave the Berlin sector."

"Are you from the Eastern front?"

"Yes."

"It must have been very hard. I can see it on your face."

I glanced up at her in surprise. I suspected that I did look like the undertaker's assistant, but for a pretty girl to remark on it after the first few minutes!

Then she said something about the people on the third floor, but I wasn't really listening. If she thought I looked as bad as all that, this minuscule conversation that was bringing me somewhat closer to normal life might end at any moment. The idea terrified me. I would have done almost anything to keep this encounter going.

I tried to change my expression, to force my mouth to smile, to make myself agreeable. Heavily and clumsily I asked her if she knew the city.

"Oh yes," she said, apparently unaware of the trap I was arranging.

"I've lived in Berlin since before the war."

Then she told me about herself: how she studied for part of the day and was a first-aid assistant for an eight-hour shift. She was studying for a teacher's license. I listened, but with only half my attention. The simple sound of her voice seemed to wrap me in tenderness; I only wanted it to continue. I tried to look agreeable. When she fell silent, I thrust home with my question: the technique of a feldwebel.

"Since you don't have to be at the first-aid station until five, couldn't you show me some of the sights? That is to say, if you don't have anything else to do . . ."

She blushed a little.

"I'd like to," she said, looking down at the ground. "But I can't say until I've spoken to Frau X. . . ." (I no longer remember the woman's name.)

"Oh. Well, I've got lots of time.... Twelve days . . ." She laughed. "Good sign," I thought.

We talked for about an hour, until the good lady arrived. We couldn't avoid the war, of course-although I certainly wanted to but I did my best to embroider what I said. I described heroic deeds the like of which I'd never seen. I couldn't believe that the filth of the steppe was what this girl wanted to hear about, and I was afraid of speaking too frankly. I didn't want her to understand what our experiences had really been like. I didn't want her to catch the stench of mud and blood through anything I said, or to see the huge gray horizon still stamped across my vision. I was afraid of infecting her with my terror and disgust, and afraid that if I did she'd resent it. My descriptions of heroism came straight from Hollywood, but at least we were able to laugh, and I could go on talking to her.

Finally, Frau X arrived. At first, she looked at us disapprovingly. Then Paula-she had told me her name-introduced me as a friend of the Neubachs.

"To tell you the truth, gnadige Frau, I was a friend of Ernst's. I wanted to visit his family."

"I understand, young man. Come in and wait in my place-you'll be more comfortable there.

Those poor Neubachs. Their courage is almost unbelievable. To think of losing two sons in ten days: it's too awful! My God, I hope this war ends before one of mine is killed!"

So the Neubachs already knew. . . . They knew not only that Ernst was dead, but another son as well. I hadn't even known that

Ernst had a brother. Suddenly, Ernst's death came back to me in all its detail: Ernst, the Don, the Tatra . . . "Ernst, I'll save you! Don't cry, Ernst!" These things were blotted out only when I looked at Paula; and they had to be blotted out; I had to forget them. Paula was beside me, smiling ... to forget: how hard it was!

"You may wait here, dear sir, or at the Neubachs'-whichever you wish," said the older woman, addressing the boy of seventeen like a grownup gentleman.

"How was Ernst killed?"

"Forgive me if I don't speak of it," I said, looking down.

But looking down was no help. My eyes fell on my boots: the boots which had trampled the earth on Ernst's grave. Everything here kept reminding me, except Paula's smile.

"You must invent something, then," said the kind-hearted woman, guessing at the horror behind my silence. "You must spare those poor people."

"You can depend on that, gnadige Frau," I said. "I've already had some practice."

Frau X changed the subject, which was clearly too painful. She brought out a large bowl of cocoa and milk, and then began talking to Paula, who worked for her as a dressmaker's assistant.

"I hope, Paula, that you will entertain our friend Sajer here. You should show him Unter den Linden, and the Siegesallee. This young man needs some distraction, and that will be your job today."

I could have kissed her!

"But Frau X, there's all that work I should finish, and . . ."

"Ta, ta, to . . . You take him on a tour of the capital. There's nothing more urgent."

I thanked the kindly woman effusively. Was Paula glad to have a holiday? I didn't really care. I was too pleased with my circumstances to analyze them.

We set out, promising to be back for lunch. I walked along beside Paula, struck dumb with pleasure. She tried to fall into step with me, miming my military stride to tease me, but I only laughed. We passed a little booth painted red, where a woman was selling fried fish, and I thought of buying some for Paula. She followed me, smiling her delicious smile. The woman behind the counter prepared two helpings of fish on two slices of thick bread spread with some kind of ersatz butter. Then she asked for our ration cards.

"But I don't have any ration card. I'm here on leave." I smiled, hoping to gain the woman's sympathy.

This did no good at all. Paula laughed as though she would burst. I felt ridiculous.

"J'aurai to peau, vermine," I added in French.

The fish woman naturally didn't understand me, and went on raking out her ashes. We walked off without our fish.

Our lunch with Paula's employer crowned my happiness. Despite rationing and shortages, the good-hearted woman had managed to prepare some delicious dishes. She also produced some liqueur, which went straight to my head. I left the table aware of an unusual state of excitement, and began to bellow out a marching song, which my two companions absolutely could not sing with me. Belatedly coming to my senses, I begged their pardon, and then began another song which was just as objectionable.

My hostess seemed amused, but somewhat apprehensive. Paula writhed in her seat, and stared at me as if I were some kind of grotesque Punch. Her employer, weighing my drunkenness against her concern for her china, suggested to Paula that she take me out for some air. Paula obediently dragged me off, plainly displeased by the company of a drunken soldier, who might do something stupid at any moment.

On the staircase, my timidity was suddenly overcome by a ludicrous surge of confidence. I grabbed Paula by the waist and spun her into a dance in time to my stamping boots. She frowned, and pulled herself away so abruptly that I almost lost my balance.

"Stop it, or I won't come with you," she said.

This brought me crashing to my senses. The simple fact that she was no longer smiling filled me with anxiety. A fog seemed to have risen between her suddenly hardened eyes and mine, momentarily clouded by a good meal. I felt as if I were back in a foxhole seeing in a dream a glowing fragment from what had been my youth. I felt chilled to the bone. Perhaps by my stupidity I'd lost Paula already.

"Paula!" I cried in desperation.

I stood frozen in my tracks. Paula had already reached the bottom of the stairs, and was standing in the doorway, framed in sunlight.

"All right," she said. "Come along, but pull yourself together." Still somewhat numb, I clutched at my imperiled happiness. "What would you like to see?"

"I don't know, Paula. Whatever you like."

I felt panic-stricken. Clearly Paula was exasperated by the company of a drunken enlisted man. I would have to become an officer. Paula was trying to make me decide something I knew nothing about. Inside my head, her irritated voice seemed to blend with the remembered voices of sergeants shouting orders, exhorting me to actions which I had no hope of accomplishing. "You there! Jump into that Tatra! Well, have you decided? What would you like to do? Put your foot on the gas! Watch out for that chain! Your uniform is spotted; you have to be more careful. Well, have you decided?"

Yes, Herr Leutnant, Jawohl! Yes, Paula. Of course.

Suddenly, she took hold of my sleeve and dragged me from my lethargy. I looked at her. My eyes must have been full of sadness. She seemed astonished.

"Let's go to the square, anyway," she said. "Then we'll decide something. Come on."

She pulled me after her. I let her do it, knowing that, if we ran into an officer or one of the military police, my leave would swiftly come to an end in a labor camp. Holding a girl's arm in the street was strictly forbidden, but when I mentioned this to Paula, she only laughed.

"Don't worry," she said. "I'm not drunk. I'll be able to see them coming."

Finally, as I remained more or less incapable of speech, she took the initiative herself, and showed me a round of sights. I stared at them with unseeing eyes. I couldn't shake off the feeling that she was simply doing her duty, that my company was no pleasure for her-and I wanted her to enjoy me as much as I enjoyed her. But that was impossible. There was no reason for her to concede me that happiness. There was no reason, either, for me to be walking along that clean, well-organized street in a state of disarray, and no reason for anyone to be patient with a poor, befuddled soldier, just because he'd spent months wallowing in snow and mud and horror. People at peace with themselves have no idea that anyone unaccustomed to happiness shouts himself breathless in the face of joy. I was the one who had to try to understand, to adapt myself to this mood of tranquility, to avoid shocking anyone, to smile a correct smile, neither too wide nor too tense. At the risk of seeming wild or apathetic, I had to make the effort, to invent, and avoid the impression I often felt I was making in France, after the war, of telling boring war stories. I often felt like killing the people who then accused me of lying. It is so easy to kill-especially when one no longer feels any particular link with existence. I-a poor bastard soldier in the wrong army-I had to learn how to live, because I hadn't been able to die. Why, Paula, did you make a point of the stain on my jacket? Why was a stain enough to erase your smile? Why? And why do I still like to smile-I, who have see an infinity of horrifying stains? This evening, perhaps, the Neubachs will laugh, Paula, and I will try to laugh too, like you.

Paula left me near the Oder bruke, at five o'clock, with detailed instructions on how to return to the Killeringstrasse. She held my hand as she spoke, and smiled, as if in pity. I smiled as if I were happy.

"I'll come by the Neubachs' for a moment this evening," she said. "Anyway, we'll see each other tomorrow. Good night."

"Gute Nacht, Paula."

That evening I met the Neubachs. I could easily recognize my friend Ernst in his mother's face. These poor people did not dwell on the double catastrophe which had obliterated all their hopes. The idea of Europe after the war no longer had any meaning for them, because those who should have inherited it no longer existed. But they made heroic efforts to celebrate my passage. The kindly woman from upstairs who had so generously wet my throat that afternoon joined us, and Paula came in for a moment about eleven. Our eyes met, and Paula saw fit to make a joke about our earlier falling-out.

"I had to preach him a sermon about decent deportment this afternoon. He was singing and dancing right in the middle of the street."

I looked carefully at all the faces. Were they going to scold me, or would they laugh? Luckily, all I had to do was laugh with the others.

"That wasn't nice of you, Paula," said the good, kind, generous lady from the third floor. "You must ask him to forgive you."

Paula, blushing and smiling, made her way round the table through a circle of laughter, and put a kiss on my forehead. I received the touch of her lips like a man condemned to the electric chair, and sat blushing, unable to move. Everyone recognized my emotion, and called out:

"Forgiven!"

Paula herself waved a cheerful goodbye to us all, and vanished through the door.

Paula! Paula! I would have liked . . . I didn't know what. I sat motionless, turned to stone, deaf to the conversation.

They asked me about my parents, my former life ... thank God, not about the war. I answered evasively. Paula's kiss burned against my forehead like a hot cartridge case. I would gladly have done a daily patrol with her, instead of with the war, and five or six other soldiers . . . God damn it!

It was late, and I would have liked an excuse to leave the table. But I had to sit patiently with these people for another hour, until everyone was ready for bed. The Neubachs offered me Ernst's room. I thanked them effusively, and explained that for military reasons I was required to return to the center. In fact, I couldn't bear the thought of sleeping in my friend's bed. Also, I felt like walking through the streets. I might run into Paula.

The Neubachs understood about military regulations, and didn't insist. In the street, I was suddenly seized by a wild sense of gaiety, and began to whistle. I asked for a few directions, and found my way back to the center without too much trouble. But I didn't run into Paula. I walked past the reception desk, where two civilians were playing cards with two soldiers, one of them the feld who had taken my deposition.

"Hey, you there!" he called.

Instinctively, I spun round and saluted.

"Aren't you Gefreiter Sajer?"

"Ja, Herr Feldwebel."

"Good. I have good news for you. One of your relatives will be coming to see you in a couple of days. I managed to get a special authorization for a member of your family."

"I don't know how to thank you, Herr Feldwebel. I am really very grateful."

"I can see that, boy. You certainly took your time coming back."

I clicked my heels and spun round, while the four of them joked about me.

"Put in a little time at the Fantasio Hotel, eh?"

They must have been talking about a bordello. I spent an agitated night, unable to think of anything but Paula.

Two days went by, filled with pleasures and delights. I never left Paula's side. We always had lunch with Frau X, and dinner at the Neubachs'. Frau X, who noticed everything, was aware of the growing feeling between Paula and me, and was horrified. She tried several times to make me realize that the war wasn't over, that it was idiotic to fall in love. After the war, it would be a fine thing for me to unleash my emotions, but for the moment anything like that was premature.

To my adolescent mind, the war had no power over my love for this girl, and holding back any emotion was out of the question. The only limits would be set by my leave, whose duration, unfortunately, I was powerless to affect.

One of my family was coming to see me, so I couldn't move too far from the center, where I spent my nights. This restriction irritated me, because I lost precious time which I could have spent with Paula. On the day of my visitor's expected arrival, I must have made five or six trips to the center. Finally, in the middle of the afternoon, the kindhearted sergeant answered my question even before I asked it.

"Someone's waiting for you in the dormitory, Sajer."

"Ah!" I said, as if this was the last thing I'd expected.

"Thank you, Herr Feldwebel."

I ran up the stairs, and pushed open the door of the large room where I'd already spent several nights. My eye traveled past the double row of beds to a man in a blue-gray overcoat: my father.

"Hello, Papa," I said.

"You've turned into a man," he said, with the air of timidity which was always one of his characteristics.

"How are you? We haven't heard much from you, you know. Your mother's been very worried."

I listened, as I always did when my father spoke to me. I sensed that he felt ill at ease in the heart of Germany, in this dormitory, where everything reflected implacable military discipline.

"Shall we go out, Papa?"

"If you like. Ah! By the way, I brought along a small package for you. Your mother and I had a hard time getting all these things. The Germans kept it downstairs." He lowered his voice when he said "Germans," as though he were speaking of a bunch of savages.

Although he had married a German woman, my father did not feel particularly friendly toward Germany. He had never shaken off the hatreds of the 1914-18 war, although he himself had been well treated when he was a prisoner. However, the fact that one of his sons had been stuck into the German army prevented him from listening to Radio London with any sense of relief.

Downstairs, I asked the feldwebel for my package. He handed it to me, while speaking to my father in almost perfect French:

"I'm sorry about this, sir, but all food is strictly forbidden in the dormitories. Here is your package."

"Thank you, sir," my father said, clearly abashed.

I checked over the contents of the box while we walked through the streets, talking: a chocolate bar, some biscuits, and-joy! a pair of socks, knitted by my paternal grandmother.

"These are just what I need," I said.

"I thought you'd be most pleased by the cigarettes, or the chocolate. But of course, there's no shortage for you."

My father was convinced that we feasted from morning to night. "With us, it's different. The Germans take everything."

"We do all right." I had learned to make the most of present pleasures, to forget the miseries of another day. But this answer was a mistake.

"Well, that's fine for you. For us it's another story. Your mother really has a hard time scraping our meals together. Life is far from easy." I didn't know what to say to this. I thought of giving him back the package.

"Well," my father said. "Let's hope it's all over quickly. Things are going badly for the Germans. On London Radio all we hear is the Americans here, the Americans there ... Italy . . . the Allies . . ."

This was all news to me. A group of men from the Kreigsmarine passed by, singing. I saluted, as required. My father stared at me with dismay. France was in such a state of chaos, and talking about it filled him with such despair that it was very hard to cheer him up.

For the next twenty-four hours, he told me about the suffering in France, explaining things to me as if I were Canadian or English. All of this put me in a very difficult position, and I didn't know quite what attitude to adopt. I held myself in check, contenting myself with "Yes, Papa. Exactly, Papa." I would have loved to talk about something else, to have forgotten the war, to have told him that I loved Paula. But I was afraid he wouldn't understand, that he might even be angry.

The next day I took my sorrowing father to the station. I was fool enough to snap to attention as the train pulled out-a gesture which I'm sure gave him no pleasure. I watched his anxious face pull away from me, into the hot June evening. I wouldn't see him again for two years-two years so full of experience they might as well have been a century.

As soon as my father was gone, I ran to the Neubachs'. I excused myself for not having introduced him, explaining that we had only been together for a very short time. They understood perfectly, and were not in the least offended. As I was clearly bursting with impatience, Frau Neubach gave me news of Paula. I was extremely disappointed to learn that she would be away until the afternoon of the following day. This was hard to bear. We had already lost twenty-four hours plus a day and a night: in the seven or eight days I had left, this counted for a great deal. I ate with the Neubachs, maintaining a gloomy silence which they understood and respected. Then I left them, to walk the streets, in the hope of meeting my love. I walked for about an hour, until the air-raid sirens drowned out the clocks, which were just striking eleven. The city filled with the sound of their long-drawn-out howling, and the few lights which had remained in the blacked-out streets disappeared. Our fighters were already climbing into the black sky above Tempelhof. The roar of their engines swept over the roof tops, and their trailing exhaust left occasional pink traces in the darkness. The sidecars of the territorial defense were ploughing through the streets, urging the few pedestrians to take shelter. I was still on the street, obsessed by a single idea, when we were suddenly enveloped in the heavy throb of enemy bombers.

I knew that the first-aid teams would turn out as the first bombs began to fall, and that perhaps then I would see Paula. I slid into a doorway opposite the entrance to a shelter under a low building beside a canal. I could see quite far down the canal to a large horizon washed in light fog. The sky to the northwest glowed in the light of an improbable-looking curtain of fire, which was probably concentrated on the big Spandau factories. Everywhere, little points of light crackled like fireworks. The numerous anti-aircraft guns defending the capital some of them firing from the terraces of houses-were erecting a lethal barricade against the approaching rain of death. Each brilliant light flaming suddenly in the sky and then falling to earth marked the death of an enemy plane. A thudding and hammering of incredible violence shock the wall of the stone porch against which I had pressed myself. Forcing my eyes to accept the brutal contrast between the darkness and flashes of light, I stared down the street and along the quai, where a few laggards were still running for shelter. Then a cacophony of breaking glass marked the blanket of bombs falling across a section of the city about a mile ahead of me. A hurricane of displaced air ran over the surface of the canal, whose water responded in a pattern of sinister waves.

I could hear thousands of objects falling all around me. In spite of my intense desire to stay in the street, an irresistible fear made me run to the shelter. The pavement trembled under my feet like a piece of badly attached plating on the hood of a moving truck. In no time, I was in the midst of a crowd of desperate, anxious people. The atmosphere was suffocating. A loud roaring which seemed to emanate with equal strength from above and below shook loose pieces of plaster from the ceiling. People looked for some reassurance on faces as tense with fear as their own. Children asked questions of childish innocence: "What's making that noise, Mama?"-while the mothers caressed the small blond heads with trembling fingers. The lucky ones, who believed in some God, prayed. I was leaning against a pipe which transmitted every sound and vibration from the street. The roaring noise grew suddenly louder, crushing the air in our lungs. The room filled with cries of pain, and then with an intensified din, like the sound of a thousand locomotives. Horrifying screams of terror, like screams from hell, rang through the darkness. The electric lights came on. Then the entire shelter filled with thick black dust, which poured in from the outside and engulfed us. We could hear some men shouting: "Shut that door!"

The door slammed. We felt trapped in a communal grave. Some of the women broke down from nervous tension and began to howl and wave their arms wildly. We felt the floor shake five or six times, as if in the grip of some overpowering force. We were all terrified, and clung together, despite a hideous sense of suffocation. An hour later, when the storm seemed to have died down, we left that ghastly hole. We were confronted by a scene worthy of Dante.

The dark waters of the canal reflected the numerous fires ravaging its banks and destroying the structures which had given it some point. What was left of the tidy street and its white-edged sidewalks lay strewn with rubble between two giant crevasses. A constellation of sparks ascended into the summer sky in a rising column of acrid, suffocating smoke. People were running everywhere, and as at Magdeburg I was immediately impressed into a cleanup squad.

After an exhausting night, and most of the next morning, I finally found Paula, who was just as done in as I. The happiness I felt when she told me she had worried about me during the bombing erased the miseries of the night in a single stroke.

"I was thinking of you too, Paula. I looked for you all night long."

"Really?" she asked, in a tone which told me that her sentiment was as strong as mine.

I felt giddy with emotion. My eyes remained fixed on the young girl before me. I wanted passionately to take her in my arms, and knew that I was blushing. She broke the silence.

"I feel like a limp rag," she said. "Why don't we go out to the country, somewhere around Tempelhof? It might make us feel better."

"That's a good idea, Paula. Let's go."

I rode out with my first love in a little motorcycle taxi to the sandy countryside near the civil and military airfield at Tempelhof.

We left the autobahn and climbed onto a small hillock covered with a kind of spongy lichen onto which we collapsed with delight. We both felt crushed by exhaustion. It was a marvelous day. Less than a mile away the ground was cut up and crisscrossed by the network of airport runways from which Focke-Wulf trainers leaped into the sky with astonishing speed. Paula lay on her back with her eyes closed, as if she were nearly asleep. I leaned on my elbow and stared at her, as if the rest of the world didn't exist.

My head was filled with things to say to her-a thousand amorous communications-but my mouth remained ludicrously shut. I felt that I should and must say everything to her right away, that they could wait no longer, that I must take advantage of this ideal moment and make her understand, that it was idiotic to be so timid. . . . Perhaps Paula was being deliberately silent, so that I would have a chance to speak. Time was passing-especially the time still left in my leave: but, despite all these considerations, my love for Paula imposed silence.

She murmured: "The sun is so hot."

I stammered a few stupidities. Finally, in a surge of courage, I slid my hand toward hers. The ends of our fingers touched, and I lingered for a moment at this delicious contact. Then I screwed up my courage so that my breath almost stopped, and Paula's hand was entirely mine. I grasped it fervently, and she didn't try to withdraw it.

My shyness had presented me with a problem more taxing than finding a safe passage through a mined field. I lay stretched on my back for a moment longer, recovering my strength. I stared at the sky, overwhelmed with happiness, lost to the rest of the world.

Paula turned her face toward me. Her eyes were still closed, and her hand gripped mine. I felt that I might faint. In a fever of emotion,

I think I told her I loved her. Then I pulled myself together. I didn't know whether I had spoken or not. Paula hadn't moved. I must have been dreaming.

Suddenly, we turned our heads. The air was filled once again with the sinister sound of sirens howling in unison from the airport to the edge of the city. We stared at each other, astounded.

"Can it be another raid?"

This seemed unlikely. At that time, daytime raids near the capital were still extremely rare. However, the sirens were impossible to mistake: they were signaling the start of a raid, and we quickly believed them. Planes were rolling down all the runways, gathering speed.

"The fighters are taking off, Paula! It really is a raid!"

"You're right! Look down there-all those people running to the shelter!"

"We should get into a shelter too, Paula."

"But we're perfectly safe here-it's the country. They're going to bomb Berlin again."

"I guess you're right. We're as well off here as in one of those airless holes."

The German fighters roared over our heads.

"Ten ... twelve . . . thirteen . . . fourteen," cried Paula, waving at the Focke-Wulfs boring through the air over our heads. "Good luck to our pilots! Three cheers for them!"

"Go on, boys!" I shouted, to fall in with her mood.

"Go on," Paula repeated.

"It's not nighttime now-they'll be able to see. Twenty-two, twenty-three, twenty-four-how many there are! Hooray!"

Thirty fighters had taken off, and were soaring into the sky. Their tactic was to climb as high as possible, so that they could swoop down on the bombers from above and sting them in the back. The Luftwaffe had perfected the formidable Focke-Wulf 190's and 195s, which could soar up quickly, for precisely this purpose. We could hear the distant firing of anti-aircraft guns.

"If we catch them that far away, they'll never even get to Berlin," Paula said.

"I hope not, Paula."

I had already forgotten about the damned raid, which had made me drop my girl's hand. Leaving the fighters to look out for themselves, I was preparing a second attack. I was already quite close to Paula, when the roar of enemy bombers drowned out the sounds of the nearby city, and overwhelmed us.

"Oh, look, Guille," she said, as always mispronouncing my name. "They're coming from over there-look!"

With her delicate hand, she pointed to a huge mass of black dots which were steadily growing larger against the pale blue sky.

"How high they are," she said. "And look-there are others over there."

I stared at the double apparition bearing down on the city and on us.

"My God, how many there are!" The noise grew louder and louder. "There must be hundreds of them!"

"It's impossible to count," Paula said. "They're still too far away." I began to feel afraid-for us, for her, for my happiness.

"We've got to get away from here, Paula. It could get very dangerous."

"Oh no," she said, unconcerned. "What would happen to us here?" "We could be strafed, Paula. We've got to find a shelter."

I tried to drag her after me.

"Look," she said, fascinated by the spectacle of danger growing visibly larger. "They're coming straight at us. And look at the white trails they make. Isn't it strange!"

Now our flak went into action. On all sides, thousands of guns were spitting steel at the attackers.

"Come quick," I said to Paula, tugging her hand. "We've got to get to a shelter."

The shelters at the airfield were too far away for us now, so I pulled her toward a hollow in the ground, beside a large tree.

"Where are our fighters?" cried Paula, gasping for breath.

"Perhaps they've run away-there are so many enemy planes."

"You mustn't say that! German soldiers never run away!"

"But what can they do, Paula? There must be at least a thousand bombers."

"You have no right to say that about our heroic pilots!"

"Forgive me, Paula-you're right. I would be astonished if they ran away."

The thunder of bombs once again filled the air of the martyred city. German soldiers never run away. I, who had run from the Don to Kharkov, knew that perfectly well-although it must be admitted that German soldiers could fight against odds as great as thirty to one as in Russia, for instance. From the hole into which Paula and I had dived, we were able to watch the avalanche which flattened a third of the airfield and ninety percent of Tempelhof.

The daytime raids were always stronger than the ones at night. On that particular day, eleven hundred British and American planes attacked the Berlin region, opposed by roughly sixty fighters. The heavy American losses were caused largely by flak: at least a hundred planes were shot down. The German fighters had not run away: not a single German plane came through undamaged.

I can still see very clearly the whistling clusters of bombs falling seven or eight thousand feet onto Tempelhof and the airfield, and feel the earth trembling under their giant blows. I can see the ground cracking, and houses bursting into flame, and the oil depots near the field spreading the flames over hundreds of yards. . . . I can see a suburb of 150,000 people blotted out in a blanket of smoke. And with my eyes involuntarily wide from the shock, I can see trees tearing upward from the ground in groups of ten or twelve, and hear them ripping open the earth. I can hear doomed planes roaring their engines, and see them spinning, exploding, falling. And I can see the terror in Paula's eyes, as she pressed herself against me. Flaming debris was falling all around us, so we made ourselves as small as we could at the bottom of our hole. Paula hid her face between my shoulder and my cheek, and I could feel her trembling, quite apart from the trembling of the earth.

Pressed together like two lost children, we watched helplessly. Long after the planes had gone, delayed-action bombs were exploding in Tempelhof, where the raid had taken twenty-two thousand lives. Berlin had received a battering too, and its rescue services were completely overwhelmed. The streets were still strewn with wreckage from the night raid, Spandau was still burning, and in the southwest quarter of the city delayed-action bombs were still exploding fifteen hours later. Tempelhof was shrieking with pain.

When we stumbled from our hole, haggard with exhaustion, Paula clung to my arm. Her nerves were strained to their utmost, and she couldn't stop trembling.

"Guille," she said. "I feel terrible. And look at me-I'm filthy." She seemed to have lost control of her reason. Her head fell back on my shoulder. Without even thinking, I kissed her on the forehead. She made no effort to stop me.

I was unable to reassemble the thoughts which had obsessed me at the beginning of our walk. I no longer felt any hesitation about kissing my friend: we seemed to have passed beyond the stage of infantile flirting. I kissed her hair as if I were consoling an anxious child, and saw, through her tears, the tears of the child in Magdeburg, shaking with sobs. I thought of Ernst, of all the tears in this war, and all the anguish. I tried to feel pity, and to show it. My happiness was mixed with too much suffering. I couldn't simply accept it, and forget all the rest. My love for Paula seemed somehow impossible, in this setting of permanent chaos. As long as children were crying in the dust of their crumbled homes, I would never be able to live with my love. Nothing seemed certain. Perhaps nothing would survive this marvelous spring day except my love for Paula-and I didn't know how to declare it.

Three-quarters of the sky was darkened by smoke from the thousands of fires which were burning at Tempelhof, along the autobahns, and in Berlin. I looked from Paula's blond hair to the ravaged landscape.

Once more, we fell down on the grass. I didn't know what to say to comfort her. When we had regained some of our strength, we walked slowly down the autobahn. There, truckloads of rescue workers were driving toward Tempelhof. Without any signal, a truck stopped beside us.

"Come on, you young ones. They need you down there."

We looked at each other.

"Yes. We're just coming." "Paula, I'll help you climb up."

The trucks were picking up everyone they met. One section of the city was abandoned so that another, at least, might be saved. We worked for hours, pulling out the wounded. The Hitlerjugend from a nearby hostel volunteered for the most dangerous jobs, in search of heroism. Many of them were killed, disappearing in the torrential collapse of burning timber frames.

We managed to find a refuge late that night, in an apartment that had been three-quarters destroyed. Dizzy with fatigue, we collapsed onto a bed, and lay there, too tired to speak, staring into the darkness with wide-open eyes. Thousands of luminous butterflies seemed to be dancing in front of us. They looked as solid and tangible as living creatures. My retina, stamped with the lights of the fires, continued to light my inner vision. One of Paula's hands twisted a button on my dusty tunic.

"Do you think we can sleep here?" she said. "I don't know, but anyway ... "

"If anyone found us here, we might get into trouble." What could she be thinking of?

"I don't care. I'm too tired."

Paula, who was sucking one of her skinned fingers, said nothing. I slid my hand under her head, and fully prepared to affront God or the Devil, pulled her to me, kissing her passionately, as her torn hands stroked my hair. We were trying to catch up with what life had denied us that afternoon, but quickly succumbed to sleep, overcome by exhaustion.

We spent all next day cleaning up. It took about a week to restore some kind of functional order. However, in the evening, we were relieved by fresh volunteers, who had been rounded up so that the first group could return to their usual occupations. Luckily for me, I was not impressed into any obligatory duties, although as a soldier on leave I was not involved in any essential activities.

Two more days went by, during which I hardly left Paula's side. Every morning I brought a fresh supply of chocolates and cigarettes from my father's package for us to consume together. The capital was binding up its wounds and burying its dead. Long funeral processions twisted through the streets. The heroic city was returning to its usual productive rhythm.

I only had five days left, and felt oppressed and anguished by the prospect of departure. Paula, who dreaded it as much as I did, tried to fill my mind with other thoughts. Luckily, there were no further raids. The Neubachs had lost all their windows, and had to repair a section of their roof. Three bombs had fallen only 150 yards away, on the square, which now looked like a street in Minsk.

Paula's mother, whom I had met, began to think it rather strange that her daughter never left my side-we met every evening, as well as every day-but she took the times into account, and raised no objection. Paula, who had more money than I did, took me to the movies one evening. We saw a film called Immen See, based on a poem about water lilies.

We lived this way until the day of my departure. I was due at the Silesian station at seven in the evening. The Neubachs were touching in their expressions of good will when I said goodbye to them. They understood that I wished to spend my last hours with the girl they considered my fiancée. Frau Neubach insisted on giving me a heavy pullover which had belonged to Ernst. Her husband gave me cigars, soap, and two boxes of tinned food. They both embraced me, and made me promise to come and see them on my next leave. I assured them I would, and that I'd send them my news from time to time. I asked them to look out for Paula.

"You love her, don't you?" Frau Neubach asked me gently.

"Oh yes, Frau Neubach." Despite an attempt at calm, my voice rang with emotion.

I kissed them both, and left. At the reception center, the feld gave Paula permission to go up to the dormitory with me and help me pack.

I could feel my throat knotting with sorrow. How long would it be before I saw Paula again? We repeated over and over again how much we loved each other, and began to feel somewhat calmer. I would certainly have another leave in three or four months, and Paula, of course, would wait for me. She swore that she would write to me every day, that soon we would belong to each other, that we would marry. Her warm lips murmured this to me a thousand times as we kissed. The war must end soon ... it can't go on like this. We can't have another horrible winter like the one last year. Everyone had suffered more than enough, and the fighting would have to stop: we felt sure of it.

We arrived at the Silesian station, to find that the departure platform had been moved to another position half a mile away because of bomb damage. Paula walked beside me, smiling despite her emotion. She was carrying a package which she wanted to give me at the last minute. The platform was decorated with pennants and flags to salute the long line of men returning to the East. We stopped beside the first carriage of the Poznan train. I shoved my bulging sack inside, and turned back to catch a moment of unguarded sadness on Paula's face.

"Don't be sad, beloved. I love you so much."

I stood for a long time, holding her hands, unable to think of anything else to say. I longed to hold her in my arms, but this was forbidden in public. People walked by, talking. The cement platform rang with the sound of the metaled boots of fellows in the same position as myself. But my eyes were glued to Paula: I was oblivious of everyone and everything else.

The hour of departure had almost arrived. A shiver ran through my body, and made my hands tremble. A stationmaster in a red cap was walking down the platform calling out the stops ahead: Poznan, Warsaw, Lublin, Lvov, Russia. These words crushed my sense of happiness. I braced myself for the whistle which would interrupt our last moment.

"Paula . . ."

The stationmaster continued his list of distant destinations.

"Paula ... What would it have been without you?"

"Auf Wiedersehen, mein Lieber," Paula whispered, in tears.

"Paula, I beg you ... don't cry . . . please . . . You know I'll be back soon."

"Ich weiss, mein Lieber, auf Morgen Guille."

A section was tramping by on the other side of the tracks singing gaily:

Erika, we love you,

Erika, we love you,

And that's why we'll come back,

That's why we'll come back.

"You see, Paula . . . even the song says so. Listen . . ."

I felt overwhelmed by the words. I would come back only for Paula ... that's what the song meant to say.

Then the whistle demolished my sense of joy. I pulled Paula to me and embraced her wildly.

"Einsteigen! Los! Los! Reisende einsteigen! Achtung! Passagiere einsteigen! Achtung! Achtung!"

"I love you, Paula. We'll see each other soon. Don't be sad. See how beautiful it is today. We can't be sad."

Paula was inconsolable, and I felt that I was going to burst into tears myself. I kissed her for the last time. The couplings of the carriages clashed; the train was beginning to move. I jumped onto the step of the carriage. Paula clung to my hand. The train slowly gathered speed. Many of the people standing on the platform were crying, and soldiers leaning halfway out the windows were still hanging on to someone's hand, or kissing a child. Paula ran beside us as long as she could. Then she had to let go.

"See you soon, my love."

The day was so beautiful we should have been leaving for a day in the country. I stood on the step for a long time, watching the outline of my beloved growing smaller and smaller, and finally disappearing for ever.

I will soon come back, Paula. But I never went back. I never saw Paula again, or Berlin, or Killeringstrasse, or the Neubachs.. . . Paula, we'll be married, I swear it. But the war prevented me from keeping my word, and the peace made it lose all its value. France reminded me of that severely enough. So please forgive me, Paula. It wasn't all my fault. You knew the misery of war too, and fear, and anguish. Perhaps-and I wish it with all my heart-perhaps you also were spared. That at least would allow us both to remember. The war destroyed Berlin, and Germany, and Killeringstrasse, and perhaps the Neubachs too, but not you, Paula ... that would be too horrible. I have forgotten nothing. Whenever I close my eyes, I relive our marvelous moments, and hear once again the sound of your voice, and smell your skin, and feel your hand in mine....