Part Three
In September, Kharkov was retaken by the Soviets.
The entire south and central front was seriously shaken, with several major breakthroughs which the enemy poured their tanks, jeopardizing our whole system of defense. A general withdrawal began, during which the Russians often managed to surround entire divisions. Our unit had been re-equipped with new weapons and rapid motor vehicles, and was used to check enemy penetration behind our lines, often achieving prodigies which were cited in the orders of the day. Wherever the Gross Deutschland appeared, our troops took heart and routed the enemy-or so it seemed. Of course, the general difficulties of our situation-our encirclement, and the despair of troops forced to abandon their weapons in a sea of mud-were never mentioned. Nor were such things as the adjutant and his section taken prisoner, and liberated too late, or the profound sense of hopelessness and misery which settled over the adult children we were, facing another winter of war-more human bridges across icy rivers, like the one over the Dnieper; more frozen, abandoned regiments and scorched earth and weeks of terror, like our week at Chernigov; more hands cracked open by chilblains; and more fatal acceptance of the idea of death. Generals have since written accounts of these events, locating particular catastrophes, and summarizing in a sentence, or a few lines, the losses from sickness or freezing. But they never, to my knowledge, give sufficient expression to the wretchedness of soldiers abandoned to a fate one would wish to spare even the most miserable cur. They never evoke the hours upon hours of agony, or the obvious resentment of individuals swamped by the herd, in which each man is lost in his own misery, and oblivious of the sufferings of others. They never mention the common soldier, sometimes covered with glory, sometimes beaten and defeated, burdened by the angry remonstrances of the noncoms and by the hatred of another herd of human beings whom it is officially permissible to hate, confounded by murder and degradation, and later by disillusion, when he realizes that victory will not return him his liberty. In the end, there was only the physical crime of war, and the hypocritical and intellectual crime of peace.
"That's why you're fighting," Hauptmann Wesreidau, our captain, said to us one day.
"You're nothing more than animals on the defensive, even when you're obligated to take the offensive. So be brave: life is war, and war is life. Liberty doesn't exist."
Captain Wesreidau often helped us to endure the worst. He was always on good terms with his men, and was never one of those officers who are so impressed by their own rank that they treat ordinary soldiers like valueless pawns to be used without scruple. He stood beside us during countless gray watches, and came into our bunkers to talk with us, and make us forget the howling storm outside. I can still see his thin face, faintly lit by a wavering lamp, leaning over, beside one of ours.
"Germany is a great country," he used to tell us. "Today, our difficulties are immense. The system in which we more or less believe is every bit as good as the slogans on the other side. Even if we don't always approve of what we have to do, we must carry out orders for the sake of our country, our comrades, and our families, against whom the other half of the world is fighting in the name of truth and justice. All of you are old enough to understand that. I have done a good deal of traveling-to South America, and even to New Zealand. Since Spain, I have fought in Poland and France, and now Russia-and I can tell you that everywhere there are the same dominating hypocrisies. Life, my father, the example of former times-all of these taught me to sustain my existence with rectitude and loyalty. And I have clung to these principles in spite of all the hardships and follies which have been my lot. Many times, when I could have responded with a thrust of the sword, I only smiled, and blamed myself, assuming that I myself was the cause of all my troubles.
"When I had my first taste of war, in Spain, I thought of suicide-it all seemed so vile. But then I saw the ferocity of others, who also believed in the justice of their cause, and offered themselves up to acts of murder, as to a purification.
I watched the soft, effete French shift from terror to toughness, and take up the arms they couldn't use when they needed them, once we had restored their confidence, and offered them the hand of friendship. In general, human beings don't accept the unaccustomed. Change frightens and upsets them, and they will fight even to preserve situations they have always detested. But a slick armchair philosopher can easily arouse a rabble to support an abstract proposition-for instance, `all men are equal'-even when the differences between men are obviously as great as the differences between cows and roosters. Then those exhausted societies, drained by their `liberty,' begin to bellow about their `convictions' and become a threat to us and to peace. It's basic wisdom to keep people like that well fed and content, if one wishes to extract even a tenth of the possible return.
"Something of this kind is happening on the other side. As a people, we are fortunate in being somewhat less indolent than they. If someone tells us to examine ourselves, we at least have the courage to do it. Our condition is not absolutely perfect, but at least we agree to look at other things, and take chances. We are now embarked on a risky enterprise, with no assurance of safety. We are advancing an idea of unity which is neither rich nor easily digestible, but the vast majority of the German people accept it and adhere to it, forging and forming it in an admirable collective effort.
This is where we are now risking everything. We are trying, taking due account of the attitudes of society, to change the face of the world, hoping to revive the ancient virtues buried under the layers of filth bequeathed to us by our forebears. We can expect no reward for this effort. We are loathed everywhere: if we should lose tomorrow those of us still alive after so much suffering will be judged without justice. We shall be accused of an infinity of murder, as if everywhere, and at all times, men at war did not behave in the same way. Those who have an interest in putting an end to our ideals will ridicule everything we believe in. We shall be spared nothing. Even the tombs of our heroes will be destroyed, only preserving-as a gesture of respect toward the dead-a few which contain figures of doubtful heroism, who were never fully committed to our cause. With our deaths, all the prodigies of heroism which our daily circumstances bring and the memory of our comrades, dead and alive, and our communion of spirits, our fears and our hopes, will vanish, and our history will never be told. Future generations will speak only of an idiotic, unqualified sacrifice. Whether you wanted it or not, you are now part of this undertaking, and nothing which follows can equal the efforts you have made, if you must sleep tomorrow under the quieter skies of the opposite camp. In that case, you will never be forgiven for having survived. You will either be rejected or preserved like a rare animal which has escaped a cataclysm. With other men, you will be as cats are to dogs and you will never have any real friends.
Do you wish such an end for yourselves?
"Anyone who wishes to go but is hesitating from fear of our authority should speak to me; I will take as many nights as it needs to reassure you. I repeat: those who wish to leave should do so. We cannot count on men who feel that way, and our efforts cannot gain from their presence. Please believe that I understand your sufferings. I feel the cold and fear as you do, and I fire at the enemy as you do, because I feel that my duty as an officer requires at least as much from me as your duty does of you. I wish to stay alive, even if it's only to continue the struggle somewhere else. I wish my company to be united in thought and in deed. Once the fighting begins, I will not tolerate doubt and defeatism. We shall be suffering not only in the interests of ultimate victory, but in the interests of daily victory against those who hurl themselves at us without respite, and whose only thought is to exterminate us, without any understanding of what is at stake. You can feel certain of me, in return, and certain that I will not expose you to any unnecessary dangers.
"I would burn and destroy entire villages if by so doing I could prevent even one of us from dying of hunger. Here, deep in the wilds of the steppe, we shall be all the more aware of our unity. We are surrounded by hatred and death, and in these circumstances we shall daily oppose our perfect cohesion to the indiscipline and disorder of our enemies. Our group must be as one, and our thoughts must-be identical. Your duty lies in your efforts to achieve that goal, and if we do achieve it, and maintain it, we shall be victors even in death."
Our conversations with Captain Wesreidau made a deep impression on us. His obvious and passionate sincerity affected even the most hesitant, and seemed of another order than the standard appeals to our sense of sacrifice, which left us stupefied and incredulous. He invited questions, which he answered with intelligence and clarity. He spent his time with us, whenever he was free from other duties. We all loved him, and felt we had a true leader, as well as a friend on whom we could count. Herr Hauptmann Wesreidau was a terror to the enemy, and a friend to his men. Every time we moved, or were sent out on an operation his steiner preceded our vehicles.
The veteran, who had a good sense of men, had pointed him out to us the day after the battle for Belgorod, while we were resting in the rear, nursing our wounds.
"I've seen our captain," he said. "He looks intelligent and wise."
We fought two more battles before re-crossing the Dnieper in the beginning of the autumn. Several of us had to be re-equipped before these engagements, and the most serious accusations were leveled against anyone who returned without his weapons.
Lindberg, the Sudeten, and Hals, however, were officially recognized as wounded, when they came back the evening of the rout, in rags, without weapons or equipment. It can easily be imagined that equipment has to be abandoned when one is on the run, but in Russia our soldiers were never supposed to abandon their arms. They were supposed to die with them-or live, hanging on to them at all times. I myself had kept my gun without thinking of the consequences, like a blind man who never lets go of his white cane, and the veteran had dragged along his heavy spandau, out of habit or discipline; but I had lost my helmet, my ground sheet, the gas mask we never used, and what remained of the ammunition for the veteran's spandau.
We met Lensen, who had come out alive too, although he had left behind most of his gear. He was tearing his hair at the thought that this oversight might cost him his rank.
The veteran, who was also an obergefreiter, suggested that next time Lensen think of putting in for a posthumous promotion. Lensen's anxiety and our laughter were simultaneously drowned a short time later in the samahonka*(* Home-brewed alcoholic drink) someone found in the cellar of an abandoned house.
It was almost surely because of Wesreidau that we all escaped a court martial, which filled us with just as much terror as Soviet rockets. We had three good weeks of rest behind our lines, in a village of dreary, identical shacks. Luckily, the weather was magnificent. I took advantage of the lull to write often to Paula, but I could never bring myself to tell her of my terror at Belgorod. Hals had made the acquaintance of a Russian girl, with whom he was able to arrange a mutually profitable relationship. It turned out he was not the only one to enjoy the good woman's favors. One evening he arrived to find himself part of a troika. The other masculine member was the Catholic chaplain, who had survived hell and was indulging a few sins of the flesh as his consciousness of life returned, hoping they would be pardoned because they were so rare. From that moment on, he was never able to intone a psalm without an accompanying chorus of laughter, at which he would blush furiously, and laugh as loudly as the rest of us.
All went well until one morning toward the end of September, when the distant rumble of guns reminded us that we had not come to Russia to play. In fact, the Russians had just broken through the front which our troops had managed to re-establish west of Belgorod, and our grand debacle was beginning.
Our generals, who believed that our troops could, if not attack, at least hold the reconstituted front, noticed somewhat belatedly that our regiments were being decimated simply to slow down the irresistible momentum of the strong Russian forces which were attacking all along the central sector.
What we should have done, before even thinking of turning back to the east, now seems like a simple act of realism which should have been recognized while it was still possible. At the time, however, the order to withdraw to the west bank of the Dnieper was given very late. The line of the Dnieper meant Kiev on the central axis, Cherkassy on the south, and Chernigov to the north, on the Desna: a distance of hundreds of miles. We were continuously pursued by an enemy who was fast becoming far more mobile than we, and threatening to overtake us at any moment, filling our ranks with panic and confusion. What might have been possible before Belgorod was no longer so, except at an inordinate price in blood and sweat, with incessant rearguard fighting. The Wehrmacht, adhering strictly to orders, sacrificed many more men on this belated retreat than they had during their advance.
We died by the thousands that autumn on the Ukrainian plain, and our battles, unheralded by any fanfare, consumed many heroes.
The front-line troops, in constant contact with an ever more pressing enemy, had already made up their minds about the future. Even the most hermetically sealed of our men understood that no matter how many hundreds of Russians he killed, or how bravely he fought, the next day hundreds more would appear, and so on for the next day and the day after that. And even the blindest saw that the Russian soldiers were moved by a blind heroism and boldness, so that even a mountain of dead compatriots wouldn't stop them.
We knew that under such circumstances combat often favors simple numerical superiority, and much of the time we felt desperate.
Can anyone blame us?
We knew that we would almost surely be killed, buying time for a large-scale redeployment of troops. We knew that our sacrifice was in a good cause, and if our courage incited us to hours of resignation, the hours and days which followed would find us with dry eyes which were filled with an immense sadness. Then we would fire in a lunatic frenzy, without mercy. We didn't wish to die, and would kill and massacre as if to avenge ourselves in advance for what we knew was going to happen. When we died, it was with fury, because we hadn't been able to exact enough retribution. And, if we survived, it was as madmen, never able to readapt to the peacetime world. Sometimes, we would try to run away; but orders, adroitly worded and spaced, soothed us like shots of morphine.
"On the Dnieper," we were told, "everything will be easier. Ivan won't be able to force the barrage. So courage, and do your best to hold him off, if you want everyone to get through.
The Russian counter-offensive will be crushed on the Dnieper, and then we'll resume our push to the east."
Through our panic and despair, an order became a duty. Our adversaries were astonished by the courage of ordinary German soldiers. A hundred yards at a time, we withdrew to the Dnieper and safety, slowing down the enemy as much as we could, watching our comrades fall all around us. Our desperate efforts sometimes continued for days at a time, across hundreds of miles. When men who had escaped from rearguard units finally reached the river, they were faced with a vast human swarm. Entire armies were waiting beside the few bridges which our engineers had managed to restore, tramping up and down the sandy bank, climbing onto anything that could float. The Russians were right on our heels, pressing against our perimeter of defense, which shrank alarmingly. The Luftwaffe was always somewhere overhead, and partly saved the situation, but our planes were soon outnumbered by Migs, and Yabos. Those of our planes which escaped the long-range anti-aircraft fire had to face a constantly growing swarm of fighters. The men who had not crossed the river were pressed into counter-attacks at odds of a hundred to one. We performed deeds of astonishing heroism, which demonstrated once again the extraordinary resourcefulness of our soldiers. The weather was still good, and we fought many successful battles. However, these are victories which can never be celebrated. An army fighting for its life cannot speak of victory.
Nonetheless, they were victories, which cost us far more than those we had fought as conquerors. This time, on the banks of the river, we were fighting not simply to take this or that town or district, but to avoid catastrophe. Everyone felt it and knew it. We had hours and even days of calm, but our anguish and anxiety always increased to a point of unbearable pressure, and we would throw ourselves back into battle to try to drive off the red monster about to devour us. This time, we managed to avert a total catastrophe: Army Group Center passed through, and the regiments still fighting were ordered to disengage. During the night, we destroyed almost everything, leaving only men and light arms to be transported in the ferries which had been provided to embark the last of our troops to the west.
At dawn, our exhausted men arrived at the river, which was heavily shrouded in autumn fog. Expecting friendly faces, they called out, only to be answered by Ivan's machine guns. In many places, the Russians had arrived ahead of us, sunk the boats, and killed the ferrymen. Our men threw themselves into the river, and tried to swim, abandoning everything. The Russians, of course, opened fire, shooting at the heads bobbing in the water as if they were clay pigeons at a fair. Perhaps a few Germans managed to reach the western bank. Elsewhere, our men crowded onto the precarious ferries which were fired at from both the shore and the sky. Others were surrounded, and fought to the last. Most of these men were killed, as the Russians were in no mood to take prisoners.
Thus we established a new front, hoping to find safety on the western bank of the Dnieper. We dug ourselves in, preparing for a long stay. This time, Ivan would not break through. It had begun to snow, and we set about arranging our bunkers, calming ourselves, reorganizing, and waiting. But news was spreading with the rapidity of the flash which followed a Russian rocket. The staff officers had done everything they could to keep the true nature of the situation from the troops. But reality was too strong, and too important, and broke down all the barriers of discretion, smashing the fragile hopes of the soldiers, and sweeping them away in a tumultuous flood.
The Red Army was moving toward us from Cherkassy in the east, and the Dnieper in the west. To the north, they had crossed the Desna, and a large number of our troops were trapped at the confluence of the Desna and the Dnieper. Winter had begun, and with the falling snow a deep feeling of despair settled over us. We were exhausted, and had no hope of future respite. Where could we find it? How far would we have to withdraw? To the Pripet? The Bug?
"The Oder?" The veteran grinned sardonically. That seemed impossible, unimaginable.
One can only draw a very general view of our situation from the lines I've just written, without any of the details. I am not trying to recreate precise geographic chronologies of the Russo-German War, but to give, an account of the almost inconceivable difficulties we faced. I have never had more than a very approximate idea of our movements and centers of operation, and would certainly be incapable of drawing an accurate diagram of the front at any point in the war. That is the province of the various disbanded staffs. I, on the other hand, can describe certain moments down to the last detail. A simple smell can revive a whole tragic past for me, and leave me, for long stretches of time, wrapped in memory, and lost to the present.
I know in my bones what our watchword "Courage" means-from days and nights of resigned desperation, and from the insurmountable fear which one continues to accept, even though one's brain has ceased to function normally. I know what it means, remembering deliberate immobility against frozen soil, whose coldness penetrates to the marrow of the bones, and the howling of a stranger in the next hole. I know that one can call on all the saints in heaven for help without believing in any God: and it is this that I must describe, even if it means plunging back into a nightmare for nights at a time. For that is the substance of my task: to reanimate, with all the intensity I can summon, those distant cries from the slaughterhouse.
Too many people learn about war with no inconvenience to themselves. They read about Verdun or Stalingrad without comprehension, sitting in a comfortable armchair, with their feet beside the fire, preparing to go about their business the next day, as usual. One should really read such accounts under compulsion, in discomfort, considering oneself fortunate not to be describing the events in a letter home, writing from a hole in the mud. One should read about war in the worst circumstances, when everything is going badly, remembering that the torments of peace are trivial, and not worth any white hairs. Nothing is really serious in the tranquility of peace; only an idiot could be really disturbed by a question of salary. One should read about war standing up, late at night, when one is tired, as I am writing about it now, at dawn, while my asthma attack wears off. And even now, in my sleepless exhaustion, how gentle and easy peace seems!
Those who read about Verdun or Stalingrad, and expound theories later to friends, over a cup of coffee, haven't understood anything. Those who can read such accounts with a silent smile, smile as they walk, and feel lucky to be alive.
I shall now resume my account of our life and how we began to regain our health and spirits, despite the distant thunder of guns.
"It was too good to last," muttered the Sudeten, as we watched the stream of troop carriers and other vehicles which had been flooding back for the past twenty-four hours.
Each house in the small hamlet had become temporary headquarters for groups of officers deliberating the immediate fate of the men they were leading. The men themselves waited patiently beside their equipment-whose total mass must have been at least ten times as great as the mass of the buildings. We had just been chased from our billets, and were waiting under the trees at the edge of the village. Our entire company was there, grouped in order, with our equipment loaded into civilian vehicles. A rough wind swept across the dried steppe, raising clouds of dust that veiled the empty horizon.
"They've thrown us out!" said the veteran to a heavy drinker named Woortenbeck.
"But we've left them nothing but empty bottles."
They waved toward the newly-arrived troops who had pushed us from the isbas where we'd been taking it easy.
"I packed all the samahonka that was left under the seats of the car."
"Good for you, Woortenbeck," shouted a thin sergeant.
"Samahonka's for an elite unit like us. The rest can get water from the troughs."
I had made a new friend my own age, who spoke French well. Holen Grauer had spent some time studying in France in '41. Then the army had collared him, promising him that he would be able to continue his studies as well as provide the indispensable value of his presence in the service. Like me, he had been overwhelmed by military enthusiasm at the age of sixteen, and had volunteered, marching in step, and singing "Wolken ziehn dahin, daher," in the impeccable ranks of the Wehrmacht. Then he had experienced the war through Poland and across a huge expanse of Russia, in Belgorod, and on the sack where we were sitting, contemplating the world and the war.
Like me, he had dreamed of becoming a famous aviator, piloting JU-87s, and like me, all he retained of this dream was a vision of huge birds screaming as they swooped down from the sky. As we couldn't speak of the ordinary life we had never shared, the shattered dream we had so much desired often illuminated our misfortune.
Hals had made himself scarce for the last few days: his girl, who helped him forget the war, had absorbed him almost entirely. He had just reappeared with one of his comrades in sin. His forehead was creased by an anxious frown, and he couldn't stop fretting. He unburdened himself to Grauer and me: "If Captain Wesreidau won't let Emi come with us, the Reds will kill her. We can't let that happen."
"I understand how you feel," I said to Hals.
Woortenbeck and the veteran, who were amused by our innocence, roared with laughter.
"If everyone in the company brought along the girl he's sleeping with, there wouldn't be enough transportation in the whole division."
"But there's no question of that, you bastards."
"Don't cry over it. You'll have plenty of time to do the same thing somewhere else."
"You're too thick to understand what I'm talking about."
There were many jokes on this subject, which Hals did not find funny.
"Are you in love with her, Hals?" I asked, quite by chance, understanding, because of Paula, what "being in love" meant.
Hals continued to bristle.
"Because it would certainly be possible to fall in love with a whore."
"Sure. Why not?" said Grauer, who undoubtedly was about as experienced in these matters as I.
Hals calmed down somewhat.
"Let's go for a walk," he said, taking us each by the shoulder. "With you two, at least, it's possible to talk."
When we had drawn apart, he unburdened himself. He had fallen head over heels in love and was certain he could never love anyone else. On that point he was absolutely beyond any reason or argument. As for me, despite my earlier certainty that I could never mention Paula to anyone, I found myself pouring out the whole story to Hals and Grauer.
"So that's why you had such a long face at the end of leave," said Hals. "Why didn't you say anything? I would have understood, you know."
We talked over our amorous difficulties for a long time, and Hals decided I was lucky.
"You, at least, are sure to see her again," he said, opening his mess tin. Through eyes misty with youthful passion, we watched the sky grow dark and the stars come out.
Our company moved out at dawn, heading west. During the day we watched an aerial combat which revived-for Grauer and me-all our old feelings about the Luftwaffe. Our ME-109s had the upper hand, and seven or eight Yabos fell from the sky in whirling flames, like enlarged fireworks.
Toward noon, we reached an important divisional base. Thirty companies, including ours, were regrouped to form a large motorized armored section.
For the first time, we were given over-garments of reversible cloth: white on one side and ordinary camouflage on the other. We were also given medical checkups, which we hadn't expected, and drew a large quantity of supplies. A Panzer colonel commanded our group, which was classified as "autonomous."
We were surprised by the quantity of new supplies for our armored section. Everywhere, drivers and mechanics were giving their machines a final look over, and reving the enormous tank engines.
Tiger tanks on Porsche bodies roared as their engines began to turn over. From the sound of it, we could have been at the start of a giant motor race. We waited about two hours for the order to leave.
Hals, Grauer, several other friends, and I were loaded onto a brand-new truck, which had tires in front and treads at the back. We drove as far as some woods on the edge of an airfield. Everything was perfect, except for the whirlwind of dust raised by our passage. The new vehicles had all been fitted with huge filters against this hazard; some of the filters were so big it was impossible to shut the hoods of the trucks or put back all of the heavy metal plating which protected the tank engines.
In the welcome shade, we shook our clothes, which were gray with dust. Although we had only gone a short distance, dust had penetrated everything, especially our parched throats.
"Damned country!" someone grumbled. "Even the autumn's unlivable here!"
A second group as large as ours joined us. We were now spread over several acres of brush. A short distance away, Wesreidau had just joined a cluster of officers, who were conferring beside a large radio truck entirely covered with camouflage netting, and all but indistinguishable from the leaves of the woods. Thin scraps of cloth in the whole range of woodland colors fluttered and rustled in the wind, like the leaves themselves.
We were a powerful, well-organized unit. Our two groups together included six or seven thousand men, about a hundred tanks, an equal number of machine-gun carriers, and several mobile machine shops. There were also three companies of light cavalry, equipped with sidecars, who were supposed to seek out the enemy and guide the unit to him. During this period, which was already very critical for the army, materiel was concentrated in motorized units, which in turn were supposed to support selected under equipped infantry divisions. It is certain that the abundance of impeccable, well-conceived new materiel showered upon us at this time gave our morale, which had been faltering seriously since Belgorod, a much needed lift. Soldiers once more walked about with the assured air of men who feel that everything is going well. Only Hals was miserable, because he had been forced to abandon his Emi to a fate which was almost certainly predictable. He was inconsolable.
"They should cut the balls off soldiers in wartime. That would stop fellows like Hals from making things so hard for themselves," murmured Woortenbeck.
"Have you ever heard of eunuchs making war?"
"Well," our chaplain put in, "geldings are just as strong as other horses."
Luckily, the padre had already proved that he was as much inclined that way as any of us, otherwise we would have imagined the worst and refused to listen to him.
When it was dark, our formidable armored column took off. As I watched, I began to understand the powerful impression our long columns of Panzers must have made at the beginning of the war, when they invaded the countries we still occupied. The roaring masses of tanks, their exhausts bursting into intermittent flame, gathered speed, and passed our heavy trucks, spreading out fanwise across the large and favorable terrain. We felt curiously moved and stirred by the sight.
We drove through the deepening darkness, enveloped by a terrible uproar and din, which must have been audible for a great distance. As usual, the common soldiers knew very little about their situation, and for us this movement seemed to mean that everything was going better.
We felt very strong, and in fact, as a group, we were strong. We didn't realize that a general and laborious retreat was under way throughout the central sector, approximately from Smolensk to Kharkov, involving whole divisions and several hundred thousand men. In our case, our rate of progress was determined by the speed of our engines, but this was not generally so. Hundreds of regiments stripped of even the basic necessities were withdrawing on foot, while fighting constantly against an enemy who enjoyed an almost unbelievable numerical superiority. This time, our armies were even without the horses we had used the year before for dragging heavy machinery through the snow, as most of them had died during that winter. We were also seriously short of fuel. Everywhere, columns of vehicles in perfect condition were burned to keep them from falling into enemy hands, while the infantry plodded slowly westward in tattered boots. The Russians were well aware of our disarray and worked overtime, hoping to weaken the center army.
All our available resources were placed at the disposition of certain units which were then reorganized from top to bottom and sent out to deal with particular desperate situations. This is what happened to our group, giving us the impression, for a couple of weeks, that we once again controlled the steppe. Our principal difficulty, which was clear to us even then, was the question of supply, as we always reached the prearranged sectors too late.
At dawn, when our Panzergruppe stopped, both men and machines were gray with dust. As planned, we had reached a vast forest, which stretched right across the eastern horizon. We were allowed two hours to rest and put them to immediate use, as the jolting of the trucks had been exhausting; but we were wakened again before we had really slept. The weather was perfect, with a soft, almost cool breeze rustling the autumn leaves, and this perfection made everything seem easier. We jumped on board again, wreathed in smiles. Toward noon the dispatch riders, who were always quite far ahead of us, rejoined the front of the column. Brief orders were issued, and shortly afterward a large part of our group turned off for a village which was soon in sight. We could hear the sound of automatic weapons, and before we quite realized what was happening, about fifteen Tiger tanks were firing at a small cluster of houses.
Our heavy tractor was pulling a couple of sixteen-barrel rocket launchers. We were told to prepare for action, and everyone flung himself down on the ground, regretting that the tranquility of such a beautiful day was going to be disturbed.
There seemed to be nothing for us to do. The tanks and one mortar unit whirled like Sioux around the village, which was soon blazing. In the distance, some Russian artillery, whose presence we hadn't suspected, opened a restrained fire. Several groups were detached and sent to deal with it. They returned twenty minutes later with two or three hundred Russian prisoners. Then the tanks drove through the burnt-out village, knocking down everything which was still standing. The whole operation took less than three-quarters of an hour. Then the whistle blew, calling us back to our places, and we went on our way. During the afternoon we also flattened two advanced Soviet positions. The Russians were so surprised to see us that they offered almost no resistance.
On the second day we reached Konotop, in a dense swarm of troops looking for transport.
Our group moved to the southwest to meet a strong Russian army. We had been supplied in town under the horrified eyes of the Commissariat officers, who had to give us the gas they had been saving for their own personal use. Twenty minutes later, we were in contact with advanced Russian elements, which surprised us. In town, our soldiers were busy with odd jobs, like repairing bicycles. Our tanks were briefly engaged, and then withdrew on orders.
We drove for the rest of the day to reach a point where, according to plan, we should have been supplied. We arrived at the dump just a few minutes before the engineers blew it up. An enormous silo filled with tin cans, drinks, and foods of all kinds was about to be burned. We stuffed our pockets and every cranny in our trucks with everything we could grab, but we had to leave behind enough to feed the whole division for several days, and the flames consumed precious provisions which would have made a great difference somewhere else.
Hals watched the silo collapse with tears in his eyes, cramming as much food into his mouth as his stomach could possibly hold. The whole company witnessed the scene with regret, puffing on the cigars we'd been able to save. Then we had about six hours' rest before returning to business. During this time, the Red Army entered Konotop, and the German forces withdrew, fighting hard as they went.
Our group thrust violently into the south wing of the Russian offensive, and once again our tanks opened a passage for us through the enemy reserves, which scattered before our guns were ready to fire. However, that evening, the Russians turned away from the town, and concentrated their efforts on us. Our tanks made a half turn, and left six of theirs in flames. All the guns we'd brought with us were prepared to fire, and I saw our famous rocket launchers go into action for the first time.
Commanded by Captain Wesreidau, our company and two others were used to protect the left wing of an armored detachment. Some of our fellows squeezed onto the platforms of the motorized geschnauz. The rest tramped along behind the machines, which proceeded at more or
less a normal walking pace. It is strange how often the sense of having the initiative can lead men to confront an enemy far stronger than they. The progress of our Panzers had seemed so irresistible during the last couple of days that everything seemed possible to us. Our three companies, in groups of thirty, tramped through the relatively cool night among the ragged stands of brush scattered across this part of the plain. From the near distance, the roar of our engines filled the air, giving us a sense of reassurance, and, we hoped, a proportionate sense of alarm to the Soviets who were trying to intercept us. From time to time we could hear shots, which were undoubtedly intended for the shadowy figures fleeing through the brush. We went on in this way for about two miles, until suddenly we were surrounded by flares, shooting upward and throwing their light onto the ground all around us. Everyone-that is to say, every one of our eight hundred souls-plunged down in a single movement. Our steel helmets, which in theory had a dull finish, glinted in the flashes of brilliant light. In no time, the armored cars had turned back into the brush, their formidable barrels swinging silently in search of a moving silhouette. We braced ourselves for a shower of missiles from the Russian bomb throwers, instantly aware of the shrinking sensation which comes with bad moments.
Two violet German flares shot into the sky. We knew that this was the signal to advance. After a moment of surprise and hesitation, we began to crawl forward, taking every precaution. A few men stood up, and advanced bent double. Most of the Russian rockets had already landed, and we took advantage of the lull to make a leap forward. I reached a small hollow edged with low scrub. A moment later, two companions caught up with me, and the sound of their quick, loud breathing betrayed the nervous tension knotting their throats. There is nothing more terrifying than moving at night through a piece of wooded or bushy country, in which every shrub might release a sudden flash of white light to dazzle and blind -a moment before the intense pain which could mean the end of life. There was no way of keeping our progress silent, and for an invisible Russian waiting with his finger on the trigger any moment might present an ideal opportunity.
However, everything remained more or less quiet. The enemy, who must have been very close to us, decided to stay hidden, and kept us in a state of prolonged tension. We continued to advance, slowly and cautiously. My temples throbbed, and my body was taut, ready for the plunge which might be necessary any minute.
We heard a voice some twenty or thirty yards to our left, and the three of us shoved our noses into the dry grass. For a moment, we thought we were finished. I fitted my Mauser into the hollow of my shoulder with my eyes screwed up, anticipating the first shot. However, nothing more happened. On the left, where we'd heard the noise, two Russians had just surrendered to some of our men. A short distance in the other direction, the same thing happened. We couldn't understand it. What could have been happening inside the heads of these men who'd been ordered to intercept us? It's anybody's guess. Maybe they thought they were cut off from their main body of men and were afraid. For at that time, when the spirit of vengeance was the rule, the Russians were just as afraid of us as we were of them. We even thought we might have fallen into some kind of trap.
An hour went by before we were ordered to regroup. During that time, our tanks went back into action, and as we silently withdrew, the flashes of their guns lit our faces with glimmers of pink light. We climbed into our trucks and started off again, apparently in the same direction as before. Dispatch riders whirled busily around our group of heavy transports. About two miles ahead, the tanks were apparently pushing back an enemy who was putting up only a feeble show of resistance. In these circumstances, the first light of dawn fell over our column-or rather columns-for we were out of line by as much as five hundred yards, both to the left and to the right.
During the night our forward troops had been firing continuously. Ahead of us, through a veil of fog, we could see a town whose name I no longer remember. The motorized troops of the Gross Deutschland were fighting through streets lined with houses with tightly closed shutters. Our vehicles moved slowly forward, with soldiers walking on either side, holding their guns, and ready for anything. We came to a small square where a group of vehicles which included two ambulances had stopped. About thirty Russian civilians were standing under guard beside one of the houses. We kept straight on. At the edge of town we passed several tank crews patching up minor damage. The miserable shacks all around them were on fire. We stopped for a moment and stared at what was left of these wood-and-straw hovels. There was no sidewalk, no orientation or alignment of the buildings; this place, like the outlying districts of innumerable Russian towns, looked like an oversized barnyard. Watering troughs or preikas obstructed without any rhyme or reason passageways which might eventually be turned into streets. Villages buried in the wilds of the steppe seemed more attractive, with their clusters of isbas turning their backs to the north. The outlying districts and even most of the town centers I saw-with the exception of Kiev-were of an incredible dreariness.
We had stopped above all to wash and get water, and we knew we had only a very short time. Some men beat their clothes against trees or the sides of buildings, as if they were ambulatory doormats; others drenched themselves with water from the preikas or wash troughs, although the day was cool and a damp wind boded no good. Nonetheless, we were frantic with thirst from the dust stirred up by our machines. German water bottles are small, so we took along extra water in anything we could find. Next, joined and encouraged by the veteran, we climbed over a low wall surrounding a small orchard. The branches of the nearest tree were weighed down with masses of skimpy, unripe pears, which refreshed our parched mouths even though they were hard and sour. We were busily picking them when a Russian popped up, like a jack-in-the box. He had summoned up the nerve to come out of his house, carrying a kind of bowl of braided straw full of pears like the ones we were nibbling. He jabbered a few words to the veteran, who had gone over to him. His white face was trying to smile, but was only able to manage a stiff and desperate grin. His eyes were glued to the straps of the veteran's gun belt, which crossed his chest, and especially to his spandau.
"Davai," said the veteran, reaching out a hand. The Russian held up the basket, from which our friend took a pear. He threw it away and took another, which he also rejected. This was repeated some five or six times. Then the veteran began to shout at the Popov, who backed away, with nervous little steps.
"They're all half rotten," roared the veteran as he came back to us.
The Russian, hoping to save his orchard, had offered us the putrefying fruit he kept for his pig. As soon as we realized this, we shook the tree, which filled a tent cloth. The Popov disappeared into his lair.
We could hear guns to the northwest; our advance troops must have made contact with the enemy. We were ordered to move out. Half an hour later, we climbed down from the trucks again. The feld's whistle was blowing for combat readiness. Fighting was in progress about half a mile, away, in a small village built round a factory.
Wesreidau quickly explained that we had to neutralize a large enemy force which was holding the place. Two companies had been detached for the job; the rest of the group would keep moving.
With our guns slung, we walked toward the village, while our tractors pulled our rocket launchers and anti-tank guns into firing position. Almost immediately, the Russians, who were watching from their trenches, showered us with a rain of shells. If their aim had been more precise, it would have been the end of us. As it was, their only effect was to make everyone run for cover. Our two companies spread out and partly surrounded the fortified point. Then we had about ten minutes of quiet while our captain, sheltered behind a pile of stones, discussed the forthcoming action with his subordinates.
The noncoms rejoined us and told us what positions we should try to reach. We scanned our surroundings as they talked, observing with our combat sense, which by now was quite well developed, every fold and hollow which might offer some shelter. Everything was quiet, and the. instructions seemed ludicrously easy.
Nothing was moving, and the silence would have been total, if it had not been for the vehicles of our armored group bumping along the rocky road below us, filling the air with exhaust and deafening noise. The Russians kept quiet, and many of us thought they had already been knocked out. The immediate presence of our main body of troops reassured us, and it seemed likely that the approaching fight would be no more than a skirmish.
We were ordered to move out, and from every nook and cranny troops proceeded toward the village, bent double. Here and there we could hear someone laughing, and wondered if it was innocence or bravado.
Our men reached the first houses. The Russians remained silent and invisible. I had just joined my group, which included Hals, the dear friend who so often saved me from feeling completely lost. His innocent, good-natured face smiled at me from the crowd, and I smiled back. We exchanged a look which said a great deal more than many long conversations do.
The war seemed quite different to us now that we had an aerial escort. Our terrible memories of the Don, and the retreat from Belgorod belonged to the past, and to bad times which wouldn't come back. Of course, we knew that the war wasn't over, but for the last week we had been making the enemy run.
We were watching the progress of about thirty of our men who were leaping through the ruins of a brickworks. Five or six Panzer grenadiers were running along beside the principal building. One of them had just thrown a grenade through a gaping window. A moment later the air was shaken by its explosion, which was immediately followed by a heartrending scream of a kind we had often heard before. We knew that that nothing must distract us from our objective; however, we saw a human figure dressed in white fall from the window and roll down to the feet of our soldiers. It was a Russian civilian, a woman, who had been cowering beside the window, probably praying to all the saints. In spite of her fall, she seemed to be unhurt, and ran toward us, screaming. One of our soldiers lifted his gun, and we thought we heard it fire, but nothing happened. The Russian woman in her white shirt ran screaming through the ranks of petrified men.
No one said a word, and for a half minute, the war seemed to be standing still. Our grenadiers had already kicked in the door, and were in the house. Three other civilians came out, two men and a child. Once again we watched as they ran through our astounded ranks.
The Russians had not evacuated the village, and we would have to take the civilian population into account.
Wesreidau, who had just realized this, installed a loudspeaker on a half-track, which drove between the rows of houses waving a white rag fastened to a pole. The loudspeaker crackled out some nasal Russian words, while the four men on the half-track looked desperately at their comrades, who had remained in shelter.
The loudspeaker must have been giving the Russians a chance to evacuate civilians or to lay down their arms. But the half-track had gone less than a hundred yards when the irreparable occurred. It suddenly seemed to fly upward, as a series of deafening explosions rang out, and five or six huts disintegrated. The truck had driven over a minefield.
A heavy cloud of dust and smoke hid the village from our eyes. We could see two black silhouettes gesticulating in the flaming halftrack, and hear them screaming.
"Look out for mines!" someone shouted.
But his voice was drowned by the roaring of mortars and Paks, as the ground in front of us burst into geysers of flame and earth. Thatched roofs flew off in one piece, leaving the houses exposed, like bald men who've lost their wigs.
The Russians reacted, using at least two batteries of heavy howitzers. Every shell landing within 150 yards of us made the ground shake under our feet, and sucked the air from our lungs. Despite the almost certain presence of mines, the assault whistles blew. Everyone left shelter and ran for the nearest embankment. Our mortars pounded the ground some thirty yards ahead of us, to disrupt the arrangement of mines, and if possible explode some of them. The Russians, with multi-barreled machine guns set up on trucks, poured a devastating fire on everything they could see.
What had seemed so simple only fifteen minutes earlier now looked impossibly difficult, and suddenly no one felt confident. There were five of us hiding in the rubble of the brickworks, and our faces, pressed into the ground, knocked against the dirt with every explosion. From another heap of shattered bricks, a noncom was shouting at the top of his lungs to fire at anything we could see. One at a time we risked looking out, but the whine of shells made even the boldest duck down immediately.
Only our mortars and rocket launchers kept on firing steadily and profusely at an enemy who, for the moment, had the upper hand. In the distance, the metallic factory tower we had noticed when we arrived was proving curiously resistant to our Pak shells, which must have passed right through it at several points. Once again, we had to jump to a more advanced position. Some men were shouting to give themselves courage. Others, like me, ground their teeth, and clenched their sweaty hands on their guns, less from emotion than from a reflex akin to that of a drowning man hanging on to a rope.
Accompanied by deep or shrill sounds, and brilliant or fading light, the earth flew up all around us, sometimes engulfing pathetic human figures dressed as soldiers. About thirty yards away, on our left, five of our men who had hidden behind a small wooden building, like a blacksmith's shed, fell, one after the other. The last two had no idea where to run, and looked frantically for the enemy who would presently knock them off too. Finally, they threw themselves down among the bodies of their companions. A thick stream of blood ran out from the tangled mass of limbs and trunks and sank into the gray dust, which absorbed it like blotting paper.
Suddenly, to our left, a raging fire broke out in a cluster of four or five sheds. Its smoke and heat climbed into the sky, and a huge sheet of flame quivered and grew with astounding speed, giving off giant wreaths of black smoke and intense heat, which we could feel even where we were.
Our men surged back rapidly from that quarter. The metal roofs of the sheds buckled in the heat, and the isbas closest to the fire burst into flame. A horde of Russians-both civilian and military-ran from the burning buildings; our soldiers shot them down like rabbits.
One of our shells must have hit a gasoline dump. The resulting inferno routed the panic-stricken enemy, who paid dearly for having concentrated so many men beside such a volcano. Their men rushed through the confusion with their hands in the air, occasionally remembering the way to other Russian entrenchments.
Our Paks were now concentrating their fire on the area immediately surrounding the factory, and the job of cleaning up the people running from the gasoline dump was left to us. The fore-sight of my gun often disappeared in a swiftly moving Russian silhouette. A light pressure on the trigger, a puff of smoke, which for an instant veiled the end of my weapon, and my Mauser looked for another victim. Will I be forgiven? Was I responsible? That young muzhik, already wounded several times, more bewildered than anything else by the lethal uproar whose purpose was as obscure to him as it was to me, who stayed in my sights a moment too long and then turned ashen and clutched his breast with both hands before making a half turn and falling face down onto the ground-shall I ever deserve pardon for that? Can I ever forget?
But the almost drunken exhilaration which follows fear induces the most innocent youths on whatever side to commit inconceivable atrocities. Suddenly, for us, as it had been for Ivan a moment before, everything that moved through the din and the smoke became hateful, and overwhelmed us with a desire for destruction, a desire which led many soldiers to their deaths as they pursued the panic-stricken enemy.
Our big guns pulverized the top end of the village, where the Russian artillery had dug in. In the general flight, the few wretched hovels which had not been burned fell, one by one, into our young, criminal hands. We ran full speed over ground which might have been mined; nothing could stop us. Nothing stopped my good friend Hals from jumping across a stable threshold and shooting the Russian gunners who were desperately trying to fire their jammed weapon. Nothing could stop the glorious 8th and 14th companies of German infantry. As the communiqués later observed: "With an irresistible thrust, our valiant troops retook the town of X this morning. . . ." Nothing could stop our demoniac assault, not even the rending cries of obergefreiter Woortenbeck, who clenched his trembling hands on an iron grille and stiffened himself against the death which flooded from the bloody pulp which had once held his entrails.
A few more of our comrades were destroyed before we reached the factory. At that point, the Paks stopped firing to spare our own troops, who were right beside the Soviet defenders. The Russians clung stubbornly to what they still had, particularly to the sector immediately around the factory.
I no longer remember exactly what happened. My group joined the veteran and his men, who were snatching a few moments of rest in a large cement settling tank. We all emptied our water bottles without quenching our thirst. Everyone was covered with dust. A telephone operator settled down beside us, and spoke with Group Commandant Wesreidau. The fighting had died down somewhat, and the German troops were regrouping for the final assault. The veteran's section had a mortar as well as its two F.M.s. Ours consisted of grenadiers armed with machine guns and rifles. Our sergeant placed us down the length of the cistern, specifying the points we should try to reach once the attack had started. We agreed to do as he asked before there was time for our terror to grow uncontrollable. These moments of waiting were often the hardest of all.
A group of Russians suddenly appeared, climbing through some dismantled scaffolding near the factory, waving a white cloth. There must have been at least sixty of them-all civilians-probably factory workers. Maybe they were partisans, and afraid of execution. They walked up to the veteran's men, and turned themselves in; the anxiety stamped across every man's face lent great pathos to the moment.
The veteran, who was fluent in Russian, talked to them. Protected by the white cloth, four of our men took the prisoners to the rear. It was one of those odd moments of calm, when it almost seemed as if a few friendly words between the adversaries might produce a settlement which would have allowed all of us to sit down and have a drink.
But in the madness of our existence the most simple things eluded us.
Everyone was absorbed by immediate necessities; most of us never even thought of the symbolic value of the steps those men had just taken-first steps back to the essentials of life. Even the exceptions to this general insensibility kept their wild eyes glued to the metallic wreckage of the factory, which we would soon be obliged to attack and enter. Animals, which have a stronger instinctive sense than human beings, turn and run from a fire. But we, the elect among living creatures, press forward, like moths to a candle. That is what we call courage-a quality I lack. Fear knotted my throat, and I felt like a sheep at the threshold of the slaughterhouse.
I'm sure I wasn't the only one who had this feeling. The fellow beside me stared at me for a moment from his blackened face and murmured: "If only those bastards would give up!"
But our feelings, of course, were unimportant. The trench telephone rang and crackled out an order: "One-third of the men forward. Count off by threes."
One, two, three . . . One, two, three . . . Like a miracle from heaven, I drew a "one," and could stay in that splendid cement hole, which at that moment seemed to me as magnificent as any palace. It was a secure refuge in which I would have spent my days in gratitude so long as death was stalking outside. I cut off a smile, in case the sergeant should notice and send me onto the field, but inwardly thanked God, and Allah, and Buddha, and heaven, earth, water, fire, trees, anything I could think of, that I was in that cement depression, which had held God knows what kind of filth before it sheltered me.
The fellow beside me had number three. He was looking at me, with a long, desperate face, but I kept my eyes turned front, so he wouldn't notice my joy and relief, and stared at the factory as if it were I who was going to leap forward, as if I were number three. But, in fact, everything was normal. "Drei" was my neighbor; he was going to inspect the factory. Then the sergeant made his fatal gesture, and the brave German soldier beside me sprang from his shelter with a hundred others.
Immediately, we heard the sound of Russian automatic weapons. Before vanishing to the bottom of my hole I saw the impact of the bullets raising little fountains of dust all along the route of my recent companion, who would never again contemplate the implications of number three. The noise of guns and grenades was deafening and almost drowned the cries of the fellows who'd been hit.
"Achtung! Nummer zwei, voraus!"
The veteran and his spandau ran up in turn.
Next, it was going to be me, along with everybody else who'd counted "one." While everything outside was flashing and exploding, I thought for a moment about numbers. Usually, people begin counting with "one." Why had they started with "three" this time? But I could only pose the question. Before there was time to consider it, my turn had come.
"Nummer eins, nachgehen, los!"
After a moment of hesitation, I sprang from my shelter like a jack-in-the-box, into madness. Everything looked gray, through a thick fog of whirling, choking dust, except for the glimmering flashes of light. In a few jumps I had reached the foundation of a shattered hut where a German soldier had died staring at the open breech of his machine gun. It's strange how often human beings die without any kind of style. Two years before I had seen a woman run over by a milk truck, and had nearly fainted at the sight of her mangled body. Now, after two years in Russia, visible death meant nothing at all, and the tragic element of even the best murder novels seemed petty and frivolous.
With my watering eyes, I stared through the smoke, trying to see the enemy and do my duty.
About twenty-five yards away some trucks exploded into little fragments, one after the other, engulfing four or five running soldiers. Were the men German or Russian? I couldn't tell.
I was with two companions in an open shelter made of logs packed with dirt, which the Russians had built to take a machine gun. We were more or less sitting on the mangled bodies of the four Popovs who'd been killed by grenades.
"I did that bunch in, with one shot," shouted a strong young soldier from the Gross Deutschland.
A burst of mortar fire forced us down into the heap of enemy corpses. A shell hit the edge of the bunker, and the earth and logs blew apart, falling back onto our heads. The fellow huddled between me and a dead Russian was hit. As his body jerked up from the impact, I tensed myself to run. Another shell struck the shelter, disintegrating it. The debris poured down onto my legs and sent me reeling back against the opposite wall. I howled for help, sure that my legs were broken, and afraid to move. My trousers were ripped down the leg, but the bruised skin underneath was unbroken, although I could trace the red-violet passage of the blow I'd taken.
I plunged back into the heap of Russian corpses, falling onto the fellow who'd been hit a moment before. He let out a howl. We lay side by side, with our heads touching, as an avalanche of rubble poured down all around us.
"I'm wounded," he groaned.
"Something is burning in my back. Call for a stretcher."
I looked at him, and dazedly shouted: "Sanftentrager!"
But my ludicrous cries were lost in the deafening uproar of two spandaus firing quite near us. The big fellow from the Gross Deutschland was shouting at us to advance, as loud as he could: "Come on, fellows! Some of our boys are already at the water tank."
I looked at the wounded man, who was staring at me with desperate, imploring eyes and clutching my sleeve. I didn't know how to tell him that there was nothing I could do for him just then. The big soldier had jumped out of the shelter. I pulled myself brutally away, and turned my head. The wounded man called again, but I had already jumped from the shelter and was running like a madman after the other fellow, who was nearly fifteen yards ahead of me.
I joined another group who were hurriedly setting up two trench mortars, and helped them maneuver the tubes into position. Instantly our mortar bombs were shooting almost straight up. A landser, whose face was pouring blood, shouted that the Russians had withdrawn to the central tower.
The veteran, whom I hadn't noticed before, let out a savage howl: "Got 'em!"
As he shouted, a white flash lit his face, which was covered with an incredible layer of dust, and a geyser of flame enveloped the tower. The Russian defense crumbled and fell under the impact of our concentrated fire. Our assault groups moved in and cleaned up the last resistance. Another German soldier fell, clutching his face, and then it was all over, except for a few widely scattered shots.
I and my companions ran into the ruins of what had once been a factory but was now reduced to rubble beyond classification. Once again, we were victorious; but the victory gave us no joy. Stupefied by the noise and the nervous tension, we wandered among the twisted, collapsed metal roofs. A landser with a face drawn by exhaustion mechanically picked up an enameled plaque which had something written on it in Cyrillic characters, perhaps a direction, or the word for "toilet."
The town had fallen to us. There were about three hundred prisoners, in addition to two hundred enemy dead or wounded. The noncoms regrouped us, and led us back through the smoking devastation of the village. Herr Hauptmann Wesreidau reviewed his two companies, and called roll. About sixty men were missing. We collected the wounded, and regrouped them to wait for our three orderlies to give them first aid. There were about fifteen wounded men, including Holen Grauer, whose right eye was gone.
Finding water was difficult. The preikas had been smashed, and we finally had to lower soup kettles down a well in the ashes of one of the isbas. The water was black with soot. The wounded were screaming with pain; most of them were delirious.
There were also about seventy-five Russian wounded, who presented a dilemma to our Kommandant. In principle, we should have helped them too, as best we could. But we were under orders to rejoin our division as soon as the operation was completed. So we abandoned the Russian wounded, and piled ours into and onto the vehicles we had, which bore no resemblance to ambulances, or even to ordinary trucks -a few gun carriages and a couple of light artillery tractors. We felt exhausted, disgusted, and numb.
There was also the question of how to move the prisoners. There was no room in our collection of already overloaded vehicles. Finally, a sidecar fitted with an F.M. slowly drove some fifty of the prisoners along ahead of it. We turned them loose two days later, for lack of anything better to do with them.
As an autonomous group, we were faced with extremely difficult problems of supply. In theory, the vehicles carrying munitions and gasoline picked up the flotsam of war as their loads grew lighter. But the division already had some eleven hundred prisoners, and we didn't know what to do with them. We set off with clusters of men-German and Russian-hanging on to everything that could roll.
We all looked back at the town, from which a thick cloud of smoke was climbing, and spreading out to the horizon. The dark gray sky was threatening rain, which would soon fall on the graves of forty German soldiers sacrificed to neutralize a single point of enemy resistance, which we weren't even interested in holding. We moved on to another operation, not as part of any design to conquer, but simply as part of an attempt to protect our vast withdrawal of troops to the west bank of the Dnieper.
No one smiled. We knew that our victory couldn't make any difference to the outcome of the war, and only hoped that it might have some strategic interest. The experience of the battle itself had been as always-more fear and, for some, like my friend Grauer, irreparable mutilation.
A young blond soldier, huddled beside the driver of the machine which was carrying about thirty of us, began to play on his harmonica. The melody rang softly in our nearly insensible ears: ". . . mit dir, Lilli Marlene, mit dir, Lilli Marlene . . ."
The music was slow and filled with a nostalgia which weighed heavily on our exhaustion. Hals was listening, his mouth hanging half open, making no sound, and staring at nothing.