Auf, marsch! Marsch!
I remained in the corridor of the crowded train, and quickly opened the little box Paula had given me as we parted. It contained two packs of cigarettes which I had given her from my father's parcel. My father wasn't a smoker, and must have collected those cigarettes on odd occasions, for years. Paula had added a short note, and her photograph. In her note, she said that she hoped the cigarettes would help me through some of the hard moments ahead. I must have read her words over at least ten times before tucking her letter and photograph into my pass book.
The train lurched forward. Everyone was wrapped in his private melancholy. I tried to find a relatively stable spot where I could press a piece of paper against the window frame and begin a letter to Paula, but some bastard from the Alpine Corps had to try and talk to me.
"So, leave's over. Always too short, isn't it? Mine's over too. Now, back to the guns!"
I looked at him without answering. He was a pain in the neck.
"And with good weather like this things must be really rough out there. I can remember that very well from last summer. One day we . . ."
"Excuse me, Kamerad, but I'm writing a letter."
"Ah. A girl, eh? Always girls. Well, don't worry about it."
I felt like sticking my bayonet into his stomach.
"There are such marvelous girls everywhere! I can remember in Austria once . . ."
Enraged, I turned my back on him, and tried to begin my letter, but the general uproar was too distracting, and I had to give up till later. I stood for a long time with my forehead pressed against the glass, staring with unseeing eyes at the countryside sliding past us. The carriage was full of raucous talk and laughter. Some of the men were trying to joke, to help themselves forget the hideous reality of a front which stretched from Murmansk to the Sea of Azov-a reality in which two million of them would lose their lives. The train moved slowly, making frequent stops. At every station, both soldiers and civilians got on and off, although most of the passengers were military, and bound for the East. We arrived at Poznan during the night, and I ran to the re-groupment center, where my pass had to be stamped before midnight. I thought that I would then go to the dormitory where I had slept for a few hours passing through the other way. The crush of the crowd at the military police office kept me from thinking of Paula. All the formalities were handled far more rapidly than on the way out, as if the double line of soldiers was moving forward to be devoured by a diabolic machine with the appetite of a giant. Inside of ten minutes, my expired pass had been initialed, stamped, and registered, and I was told to proceed to train number 50 for Korosten.
"Oh?" I was surprised.
"When does it leave?" "In an hour and a half. You've got time."
We would be traveling that night, then. I followed a group of soldiers who were walking along the wooden gallery toward train 50-an interminable string of passenger and freight cars which would be crammed to the bursting point with soldiers.
I walked through the frantic din, looking for a more or less comfortable corner where I could settle myself and write my letter. Following the advice of my father, who considered the rear cars safest in case of derailment, I was thinking of one of the carriages with straw-covered floors at the back of the train. I pushed my way inside one of the cars, past five pairs of boots dangling from an open door.
"Welcome aboard, young fellow," cried the landser already there. "Get set for Paradise."
"Well, kid, coming with us to shoot some Russians?"
"Going back to shoot Russians, you mean."
"Hell. The first time around, you must have still been in your diapers."
Despite everything, we were able to laugh. Suddenly, in that sea of green cloth, I saw Lensen.
"Hey, Lensen! Over here!"
"I'll be damned," Lensen said, climbing over the fellows in the doorway.
"So you didn't desert!"
"And you didn't either!"
"It's not the same for me, though. I'm Prussian. I've got nothing in common with you black-haired bastards from the other side of Berlin."
"Good answer!" shouted one of the boys in the doorway. Lensen was laughing, but I knew that he had meant every word. "Look," he said. "There's another of our gang."
"Where?"
"Over there-the big fellow who thinks he's so tough." "Hals!"
I jumped down from the carriage. "Whoever quits the nest loses his nook," someone shouted.
"Hey, Hals!" I was already running to meet him. I could see his face lighting up.
"Sajer! I was wondering how I'd ever find you in this mob." "Lensen saw you."
"Is he here too?"
We turned back to the train. "Too late, boys. Full up."
"That's what you think!" shouted Hals, grabbing the legs of one of the kibitzers, and pulling him down onto the platform on his backside. Everybody laughed, and, with a jump, we were on board.
"Well, that's fine," said the fellow Hals had dislodged, rubbing his backside. "If this goes on, we'll be jammed in here like frankfurters in a box, and there won't be any room to sleep."
"So it's you, you bastard," said Hals, giving me a long stare. "I've been waiting to hear from you for two solid weeks."
"I'm really sorry ... but when I tell you what happened . . ." "You'd better make it good. It got so that I really didn't know what to say to my parents."
I gave my friend an account of my misadventures.
"Goddamn it," Hals said. "They certainly fucked you up, didn't they? If you'd only listened to me. We could have gone to Dortmund together. Plenty of alerts there too, of course, but the planes only passed over. You got it right in the neck."
"Well, that's life," I answered, in a mock-melancholy tone.
In reality, of course, the experiences of my leave left no regrets. If I had gone straight home with Hals I would never have met Paula.
And Paula had been able to obliterate for me all the sights and sounds of Tempelhof's blazing fires.
"You certainly have a long face," Hals said, commiserating with me.
But I didn't feel like talking. Hals quickly understood, and left me to myself. We were sprawled on the straw like animals, trying to sleep. Each piercing jolt of the wheels passing over the joints in the rails seemed to be adding to the barrier separating Paula from me. We passed through villages and towns and forests, all as dark as the night, and distances which stretched into infinity. The train seemed indefatigable, unending. At daybreak we were still rolling, and three hours later we were in lower Poland, crossing the Pinsk marshes, parallel to the rough, rutted roads pockmarked by war, and washed with sadness, and with the sweat of the armies that had tramped along them. The sky seemed inordinately large, and filled with the summer which the earth was denied. I fell asleep several times. Each time I woke the jolting wheels were still striking the same two notes: CLANG glang, CLANG, glang, CLANG, glang.
Finally, the train slowed down and stopped. The locomotive was re-supplied with coal and water at a pitiful hovel which passed for a station. We all jumped down onto the ballast, which was made of God knows what, to relieve ourselves. There was no question of official nourishment. German troop transports at that period were officially considered to be without that category of need, and no food would be distributed before Korosten. Luckily, nearly everyone had brought supplies from home-which is what the quartermaster general was counting on.
The train resumed its eastward journey. Hals tried to engage me in conversation several times, but always without success. I would have liked to tell him about Paula, but was afraid he'd treat it as a joke. We reached Korosten at nightfall, and were ordered to disembark, and line up beside a mess truck, which produced a revolting gruel. I felt very far from the excellent cooking of Frau X. When we had eaten, we all went to rinse our tins and drink at the tank which held water for the locomotives.
Then we set out again on a Russian train, which was no more comfortable than the one we'd just left, and into another eternity eastward. Trains were moving non-stop toward the front, both day and night. We had nearly reached our sector in less than three days. The Southern Front, where fierce fighting was under way at Kremenchug, had shifted, but our sector seemed almost unchanged. Our exhausting railway journey came to an end at Romny, where we had met with so many difficulties on the way out. From the train we were herded straight to the canteen, where we were given food and drink to quiet us as if we were frantic sheep on the way to the slaughterhouse. Then, with a haste which gave us no time to think, the military police called us out for our various units. It was very hot, and we would have been glad of a chance to sleep. A great many idle Russians stood and watched us, as though they were watching a fairground being prepared for a fair. When our group for the Gross Deutschland was called out, we were told to follow a sidecar, which led us to the edge of town. Instead of staying in first, or slowing down his machine, the bastard forced us onto the double. Heavily loaded, in that heat, we were nearly choking when we arrived at our designated position.
The stabsfeldwebel climbed down from his sidecar, called the other noncoms, to whom he distributed our marching orders, and divided up our group. In sections of forty or fifty at a time we marched off to our new camp. As we were commanded by fellows who were also just back from leave, and none too anxious to return to the firing line, we made numerous stops before arriving at Camp F of the Gross Deutschland Division, about twenty miles from Romny and over a hundred from Belgorod-out in the country, like Akhtyrka.
In this training camp for an elite division-all divisions with names instead of numbers were considered elite-one sweated blood and water. One was either hospitalized after a week of almost insane effort or incorporated into the division and marched off to the war, which was even worse.
We entered the camp through a large symbolic gateway cut into the trees of the forest which stretched away thickly to the northeast. Although we were marching in step, as we'd been ordered to do, and singing "Die Wolken Ziehn" at the tops of our lungs, we were still able to read the slogan which decorated the impressive entrance in large black letters, against a white ground:
WE ARE BORN TO DIE.
I don't think anyone could pass through that gate without a swallow of fear. A little further on another sign bore the words ICH DIENE (I serve).
Our noncoms marched us in impeccable order to the right-hand side of the rough courtyard, and ordered us to halt. A huge hauptmann walked over to us, flanked by two feldwebels.
"Stillgestanden!" shouted our group leader.
The giant captain saluted us with a slow but definitive gesture. Then he walked up and down our ranks, giving each of us a long stare. He was at least a head taller than anybody else. Even Hals seemed small beside this impressive personage. When he had petrified each of us with his astonishingly hard stare, he stepped back and rejoined the two felds, who were standing as still as the cedars of Jussieu.
"GOOD MORNING GENTLEMEN." His words sounded like stakes being driven into the earth.
"I CAN SEE ON YOUR FACES THAT YOU'VE ALL BEEN ENJOYING YOUR LEAVES, AND I'M VERY GLAD TO SEE IT."
Even the birds seemed to have been stilled by the sound of that voice.
"HOWEVER, TOMORROW YOU SHALL HAVE TO THINK OF THE WORK WHICH MUST ABSORB ALL OF US."
A dust-covered company had marched up to the gateway, but had stopped short, in order not to interrupt the captain's speech.
"TOMORROW A PERIOD OF TRAINING BEGINS FOR YOU, WHICH WILL TURN YOU INTO THE BEST FIGHTING MEN IN THE WORLD. FELDWEBEL," he shouted in a voice which was even louder,
"REVEILLE AT SUNRISE FOR THE NEW SECTION."
"Jawohl, Herr Hauptmann."
"GOOD EVENING, GENTLEMEN."
He turned on his heel, then changed his mind, gesturing with one finger for the group of men at the gate to come in. When the fellows, stripped to the waist, and gray with dust, drew even with us, he stopped them, with a similar tiny gesture.
"Here are some new friends," he said, addressing himself to both groups. "Salute each other, please."
Three hundred men, their faces drawn with exhaustion, made a quarter turn to the right and saluted, shouting, "Thank you, comrades, for joining us."
We presented arms, and the captain walked off, looking very pleased with himself. As soon as he was gone, the two feldwebels who'd come with him chased us off to the barracks as if they'd suddenly gone mad.
"You've got four minutes to settle in!" they shouted.
Forgetting our tiredness, we were presently standing at attention at the feet of our double-decker beds. Our noncoms, who were clearly terrified, called the roll under the baleful eyes of the two camp felds, who then explained what they expected of us in the way of order, cleanliness, and discipline. They also advised us to sleep, although it was still early, as we would need all our strength tomorrow. We knew that in the German army words of that sort often had a significance far greater than their literal meaning. The word "exhaustion," for instance, had nothing to do with the "exhaustion" I've encountered since the war. At that time and place, it meant a power which could strip a strong man of fifteen pounds of weight in a few days. When the felds had gone, slamming the door behind them, we stared at each other in perplexity.
"It seems that life here won't be a joke," Hals said, from his bed beneath mine.
"God, no! Did you see that captain?"
"He's all I saw, and I dread the day I get his foot in my backside."
Outside, a section was leaving in camouflaged combat uniform probably on some night exercise.
"Excuse me, Hals. I've got to write a letter, and I want to do it while there's still daylight."
The feld had told us we weren't supposed to use candles after lights out except for emergencies.
"Go ahead," Hals said. "I'll leave you alone."
I hurriedly pulled out the scrap of paper I hadn't yet been able to turn into a letter.
"My dearest love . . ."
I described our journey and arrival at the camp.
"I am all right, Paula, and think of nothing but you. Everything here is quiet. I remember every minute of our time together, and long to get back to you.
"I love you passionately."
The sun had barely touched the tops of the trees with pink light when the door flew back against the dormitory wall as if the Soviets themselves were bursting in. A feldwebel produced some piercing blasts on a whistle, and made us jump.
"Thirty seconds to get to the troughs," he shouted. "Then everybody stripped and outside in front of the barracks for P.T."
One hundred and fifty of us, stripped to the skin, ran for the troughs on the other side of the buildings. A short distance away, in the dim half-light, we could see another group of soldiers jumping to the bark of another watchdog.
In no time, we had washed and were lined up in front of our barracks. Luckily we had reached the first days of July, so we didn't have to worry about the cold. Then the feld chose one of us to put the rest through a gymnastic routine until he came back. We had to stretch our arms in various directions, touch first the tips of our toes and then the ground to the right and to the left, at the greatest possible extension, and begin again.
"Get going," he said as he went off. "And no stopping."
We turned and stretched in this way for nearly fifteen minutes. When the feldwebel came back and ordered us to stop, our heads were spinning.
"You have forty-five seconds to get back here in battle order. Raus!"
Forty-five seconds later, 150 steel helmets topping 150 men whose pulses were racing to the explosion point lined up facing the flag. It was then that we made the acquaintance of Herr Hauptmann Fink and his formidable training methods. He arrived wearing riding breeches, and carrying a whip under his arm.
Stillgestanden!" ordered the feld.
The captain stopped at the appropriate distance, made a slow half turn, and saluted the flag. We were ordered to present arms.
"At ease," he said in a calm voice, turning back to us.
"Feldwebel, you will simply accompany us today. In honor of the new section, I myself am going to drill them."
He shifted his weight, and stared down at the ground, which was already lit by the sun. Then he jerked up his head again.
"Attention!"
In a hundredth of a second, we were standing at attention.
"Very good," he said in a honeyed voice. He walked toward the first row of men. "Gentlemen, I have the impression that you perhaps entered the infantry a trifle hastily, without sufficient reflection. You probably do not realize that the specialized infantry, such as we are here, has nothing in common with what you knew in the auxiliary service, which you voluntarily quit. Not one of you seems adequate to the job we have to do. I hope that I am wrong, that you will prove the contrary to me, that you will not oblige me to send you to a disciplinary unit to teach you that you have made a mistake."
We listened to him transfixed, with empty heads and rapt attention.
"The task which you will all have to assume sooner or later will certainly require more of you than you supposed. Simply maintaining a decent level of morale and knowing how to handle a weapon will no longer be enough. You will also require a very great deal of courage, of perseverance and endurance, and of resistance in any situation. We, of the Gross Deutschland, have merited mention in the official communiqués which are published throughout the Reich, and this is an honor not lightly bestowed. To deserve this honor we need men, and not pitiful specimens like you. I must warn you that everything here is hard, nothing is forgiven, and that everyone in consequence must have quick reflexes."
We didn't know how we ought to receive this tirade.
"Attention!" he shouted.
"Down on the ground, and full length!" Without a moment's hesitation, we were all stretched out on the sandy soil. Then Captain Fink stepped forward and, like someone strolling down a beach, walked across the human ground, continuing his speech as his boots, loaded with at least two hundred pounds, trampled the paralyzed bodies of our section. His heels calmly crushed down on a back, a hip, a head, or a hand-but no one moved.
"Today," he said, "I am going to take you for a little outing, so I can judge your abilities for myself."
He divided us into two groups: one of a hundred, the other of fifty.
"Today, gentlemen," he said, addressing himself to the group of fifty, to which neither Hals nor I belonged, "it will be your privilege to assume the role of the supposed wounded. Tomorrow, it will be your turn to look out for your comrades. WOUNDED SECTION ON THE GROUND!"
Then he turned to us: "In twos! Pick up the wounded!"
Hals and I made a seat of our hands for a wincing fellow who must have weighed at least 170 pounds. Then Captain Fink led us to the camp exit. We walked as far as a low hill which seemed to be about three quarters of a mile away. Our arms felt as though they would break under the weight of our comrade, who gradually grew used to the situation. When we reached the top of the hillock, we had to climb down the other side. Our boots cracked as we stumbled down the steep slope. By now the day had turned hot, and we began to run with sweat. Every so often an exhausted man let his grip slip for an instant, and the supposed victim slid to the ground. Whenever this occurred, Fink, with the help of his feld, would separate the enfeebled trio from the main body of men and assign them an even heavier load: each man would have to carry another on his back. At the bottom of the slope, I sensed that it was going to be my turn.
"I can't go on, Hals. My wrists are giving way. I've got to let go."
"You're crazy. You can't. Would you rather lug him all by yourself?"
"I know, Hals. But I really can't help it."
"Keep going," said the captain. "Los, los."
Hals tightened his grip on my hands to keep me from letting go. We could hear the men behind us gasping for breath, and stumbling on the rocky ground under the weight of a comrade and full equipment. The feld was trying to keep them going, urging them on with a torrent of abuse. Hals, who was a great deal stronger than I, clenched his teeth. Each crease in his face was pouring with sweat.
"I'm sorry boys," said the fellow we were carrying. "I'd gladly walk this, if they'd only let me."
We somehow managed to stagger to the next wooded hill, which we climbed with almost unbearable effort. By now the wretched fellows with their separate burdens had dropped far behind us, still relentlessly pursued by the feld. The captain never took his eyes off us. With every yard, we were expecting the order to halt, but every yard was followed by another, which was still more difficult. My numbed hands were now entirely without circulation.
"I can't stand it any more, Hals. Let go."
Hals clenched his teeth and didn't answer. The pain and pressure had become so great that I'd lost my grip altogether, and Hals was hanging on alone. The groups of men who had broken apart were straggling over a wide distance. Captain Fink reorganized them into couples. Then it was our turn.
I shook my bloodless hands, and heaved a long sigh. The giant shadow of the captain loomed over me, and I was ordered to lift a man heavier than myself onto my trembling shoulders. But the shift in position was a relief. Although my head was swimming, I was able to keep going.
This torture went on for nearly an hour, until we were all on the point of losing consciousness and at the extreme limit of our capacities, which Captain Fink seemed to be deliberately overestimating. Finally, he decided to shift us to a new exercise.
"Since you all seem to be tired, I shall now assign you a lying-down exercise, which may revive you. Picture to yourselves that over there behind that hill there is a nest of Bolshevik resistance."
He gestured toward a hillock about a half mile away.
"Furthermore," he went on in a jovial tone, "imagine that you have the best of reasons for taking that hill, but that if you walk over there on your feet, the Bolsheviks will make it their business to lay you flat. Therefore, you will make yourselves even flatter than the ground, and proceed toward your objective on your bellies. I shall precede you, and shall fire on anyone I see. Understood?"
We gaped at him, astounded. He was already walking away from us, pulling his Mauser from the holster on his belt. The few minutes he needed to reach the hill gave us a chance to breathe-almost the only chance we were to have during our three weeks of training. We kept our eyes glued to the hauptmann, who had gone to take up his position, wondering if we had heard him correctly.
On the feld's orders, we threw ourselves down on our stomachs, and began to squirm forward. The feld ran to join the captain, and we drew slowly closer to the rocky outcrop. Hals was struggling along on my left. We had covered about four fifths of the distance when the tiny silhouette of the captain appeared against the sky. He began firing almost at once. We hesitated for a moment, wondering what was happening, but the feld's whistle was still summoning us forward. The captain must have been under orders to avoid undue damage to his trainees, otherwise I am sure he wouldn't have hesitated to aim true.
His bullets whistled down among us until we had reached our objective. The game was not entirely without danger. During our three weeks of training, we buried four companions to the strains of "Ich hat ein Kamerad"-victims of so-called "training accidents." There were also some twenty wounded, with injuries ranging from a long infected scratch received during a crawl through a barbed-wire entanglement, to a wound from a bullet or a fragment of shrapnel, to a limb crushed by the track of a training tank. We also pulled out two fellows who had nearly drowned crossing a piece of water on waterlogged wooden crosses made of old railway ties.
We were sent on interminable marches. One day, we spent hours following the edge of a swamp, on the water side, while another section fired at us, forcing us to remain submerged up to our chins. During that particular game, everyone's head was down in earnest. We were trained to hurl grenades, both offensive and defensive, on a carefully prepared piece of ground. We were given bayonet practice, and exercises to develop balance, in which one in five cracked his head, and tests of endurance which seemed to last forever. One of these, for instance, took place in an old conduit, which must have been used to supply several towns with gas. It was made of two elbows, and the fellows in the middle learned all about the horrors of claustrophobia. There were many thousands of similar tests. In addition there was the famous "harteiibung," which was almost continuous. We were put on thirty-six hour shifts, which were broken by only three half-hour periods, during which we devoured the contents of our mess tins, before returning to the ranks in an obligatory clean and orderly condition. At the end of these thirty-six hours, we were allowed eight hours of rest. Then there was another thirty-six-hour period, after which everything began all over again. There were also false alarms, which tore us from our leaden sleep and forced us into the courtyard fully dressed and equipped, in record time, before we could return to our uncomfortable beds. Our first days were a time of martyrdom. No one had the right to talk. Sometimes a fellow would drop from exhaustion, which would place an extra charge on the section, obliging them to get the fellow onto his feet again, slapping him and spraying him with water.
Sometimes one of our comrades would return to camp so exhausted he could only stagger with the support of two other men. In principle, within five-hundred yards of the camp we were supposed to line up in order, fall into marching step, and sing, as if we were returning from a healthy and enjoyable hike. On some evenings, however, despite every curse in the book, and the threat of the disciplinary hut, we were so exhausted it was impossible for us to assume the attitude the feld required. To his chagrin and fury, he was obliged to drag a long line of sleepwalkers past the flag, before chasing us into our barracks, where we dropped onto our beds with all our clothes and equipment, our mouths bone dry and our heads aching. Nothing ever affected the routine at Camp F; Captain Fink simply carried on, in total disregard of our bleeding gums and pinched faces, until the stabbing pains in our heads made us forget the bleeding blisters on our feet. A cry for mercy would have brought no relief: any appeal was guaranteed an identical reception: "Auf marsch! Marsch!"
For us there was the heat of the Russian summer, which followed the winter with practically no spring in between. There were the storms, with their torrents of rain. There were our tender-skinned shoulders rubbed raw by our straps, particularly at the point which bore the weight of the gun. There were kicks and scuffs, and for many of us, the whip. There were mess tins half-filled with tasteless pap. There was the fear of failure and of the disciplinary battalion, and the fear of ultimate success as a dead hero. There were our heads, emptied of every thought, and the fixed, staring eyes of comrades who no longer saw anything but the earth on which we had to crawl. There were also two letters from Paula, which my heavy, exhausted eyes could no longer make any sense of, and my remorse at being unable to reply during my eight hours of rest.
Two thousand miles to the west, people were complaining because at certain hours it was impossible to find anything to drink at the Paris bistros. It still makes me laugh to hear how bitterly this abstinence made them suffer.
Throughout the war, one of the biggest German mistakes was to treat German soldiers even worse than prisoners, instead of allowing us to rape and steal-crimes which we were condemned for in the end, anyway.
One day we were given anti-tank exercises-defensive and counterattack. As we had already been taught to dig foxholes in record time, we had no trouble opening a trench 150 yards long, 20 inches wide, and a yard deep. We were ordered into the trench in close ranks, and forbidden to leave it, no matter what happened. Then four or five Mark-3s rolled forward at right angles to us, and crossed the trench at different speeds. The weight of these machines alone made them sink four or five inches into the crumbling ground. When their monstrous treads ploughed into the rim of the trench only a few inches from our heads, cries of terror broke from almost all of us. Even today, I am fascinated by the sight of a bulldozer at work: its treads remind me of those terrifying moments. We were also taught how to handle the dangerous Panzerfaust, and how to attack tanks with magnetic mines. One had to hide in a hole and wait until the tank came close enough. Then one ran, and dropped an explosive device-unprimed during practice-between the body and the turret of the machine. We weren't allowed to leave our holes until the tank was within five yards of us. Then, with the speed of desperation, we had to run straight at the terrifying monster, grab the tow hook and pull ourselves onto the hood, place the mine at the joint of the body and turret, and drop off the tank to the right, with a decisive rolling motion. Thank God, I myself never had to mine a tank coming straight at me. Lensen, who was promoted to ober, and then sergeant, partly because of his prowess in this exercise, gave us a demonstration which no suspense film could ever hope to equal. His assurance was partly responsible for his horrible end a year and a half later.
There was a but in the courtyard-a roof supported by four stakes -for those who retained some trace of individualism or disobedience. Under the roof there were some empty boxes which served as benches. This structure was familiarly known as "Die Hundehiitte." I never saw anyone there, but heard enough about the treatment dished out to men who were being punished to realize that this was in an entirely different category from the punishment huts in France, where the fellows spent their time lying on a mattress. At Camp F, soldiers being disciplined spent their thirty-six hours of active training like everyone else. However, at the end of this period they were led to the Hundehutte and chained, with their wrists behind their backs, to a heavy horizontal beam. Their eight-hour rest period would be spent in this position, their backsides supported by an empty box. Soup was brought to them in one of the big tureens for eight, from which they had to lap like dogs, as their hands were immobilized behind their backs. Suffice it to say that after two or three sessions in this chalet, the wretched victim, denied a rest which was absolutely essential, lapsed into a coma, which would put a merciful end to his sufferings. He would then be sent to the hospital. There was a horrible story about a fellow named Knutke, who had been to the but six times but who still refused, despite kicks and beatings, to follow the section out for training. One day, they took the dying man to the foot of a tree and shot him.
"That's what the hut leads to," everyone said. "You've got to avoid it." So, despite groans of pain, everyone marched.
It surprises me most of all that at that time we thought we were useless, impossibly inferior, and that we would never make decent soldiers. Despite our desperate life, we really tried, with the best of wills, to do better and better. But Herr Hauptmann Fink had his own ideas about "better," which could lead to the brink of death.
Toward the middle of July, only a few days before the battle of Belgorod, the captain Kommandant of Camp F swore us into the infantry at an open-air ceremony. We dedicated ourselves to the Fuhrer in front of a stand, made of branches and decorated with flags, which held the officers of the camp. One by one, we marched alone, in parade step, to the level of the stand, made a quarter-turn, and marched toward it. When we had reached the stipulated distance-about seven or eight yards-we snapped to attention, and declared in a loud, clear voice:
"I swear to serve Germany and the Fuhrer until victory or death."
Then we executed another quarter-turn to the left, and joined the ranks of those who had already completed the ceremony, in a high state of emotion, ready to convert the Bolsheviks, like so many Christian knights by the walls of Jerusalem.
For me, only half German, this ceremony may have had even more significance than for the others. Despite all the hardship we had been through, my vanity was flattered by my acceptance as a German among Germans, and as a warrior worthy of bearing arms.
Then-a miracle. Fink produced a glass of excellent wine for each of us, and lifted his own glass along with ours, to a chorus of "Sieg Heils." Then he walked through our ranks, shaking each of us by the hand, thanking us, and declaring himself equally pleased with us and with himself. He said that he felt well satisfied that he was sending a good group of soldiers to the division. I really don't know whether we were good soldiers or not, but we had assuredly been through the mill. We had all lost pounds, which was evident in our sunken eyes and lined faces. But all that had been foreseen. Before we left the camp, we were given two days of complete rest, which we used to maximum advantage. It seems scarcely credible that by the time we left we all nourished a certain admiration for the Herr Hauptmann. Everyone, in fact, dreamed of someday becoming an officer of the same stripe.