The Forgotten Soldier

4. LEAVE

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

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

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

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

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

We were officially designated “burial squad” one morning at dawn.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He took another hundred paces.

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

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

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

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

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

“You may now proceed. Heil Hitler!”

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

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

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

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

When we were dressed, we were directed to a wooden army barrack. A notice in large, legible characters was tacked beside the door to remind us of the cleanliness which was officially obligatory: “Eine Laus, der Tod!”[10]

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

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

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

“Du.”

The man he pointed to stepped forward. “Your name?”

“Wiederbeck!”

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

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

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

Akhtyrka was a curious place.

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I thought that by now we were good and far from any trouble.”

“Goddamnit!”

“What do you think it could be?”

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

“Whoever they are, I’m not going to let the bastards wreck my leave.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Traitors!” shouted one of the horrible cops.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sweet, sensitive Germany!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“That doesn’t matter.” I couldn’t think of anything else to say.

“You really ought to take a bus. It would be much easier for you.”

“That doesn’t matter,” I repeated, like someone in a dream. In fact, I couldn’t think of the German words for anything else. This woman’s obvious goodness, after so much loud-mouthed bullying and malignity, moved me even more deeply than the exhausted men at Outcheni.

“I don’t mind walking. I’m in the infantry,” I finally said, smiling.

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

“Where have you come from, young man?”

“From Russia.”

“Russia’s a big country. What part were you in?”

“Russia’s very big, yes. I was in the South, around Kharkov.”

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

“Yes. It’s big.”

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

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

“Briansk,” I repeated in a thoughtful tone. “I believe that’s in the central sector. I’ve never been there.”

“He tells me that everything’s going quite well. He’s a first lieutenant in an armored division.”

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

“Were things difficult in your sector?”

“Things were pretty hard, but they’re better now. I’m on leave,” I added, smiling.

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

“Are you in Berlin to see your family?”

“No, gnadige Frau. I’m going to see the parents of a friend.”

A friend! Ernst: a corpse.

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

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

“Where do your parents come from?” she asked.

“From Wissembourg, in Alsace.”

She looked at me with surprise.

“So you’re Alsatian. I know Alsace very well.”

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

“Yes, I’m Alsatian,” I said, hoping to get a little peace.

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

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

“Here we are, young man,” the old woman said.

“You cross the bridge and follow that avenue.”

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

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

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

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

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

“Who’s giving it to them?” I asked.

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

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

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

A gang of territorials handed out picks, and we piled the rest of our equipment beside a fire truck. We had to dig into the ruins with the greatest possible speed: we could hear the groans and cries of people trapped in the cellars. Women and children weeping with terror were carting away bricks and stones to clear some space. Shouted orders overlapped: “Quick! This way!”

“We need help over here!”

“Quick! The water pipes have burst and are flooding the cellars!” Of course, the military were chosen to deal with the most dangerous situations, and sent into places threatened with immediate collapse.

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

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

I shouted as loud as I could: “Licht aus! Schnell!”

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

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

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

“Hey… you… my package!”

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

“Hey… This isn’t it! Wait a minute! God damn it!”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Yes sir,” she said, smiling. “This is the right house: they live on the second floor. But at this time of day they’re all out at work.”

“Thank you, miss. Do you know when they’ll be back?”

“They’ll be here this evening, after seven.”

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

I had already walked a short way down Killeringstrasse when it occurred to me that I could, at any rate, have talked to the girl a little longer. After several moments of hesitation, I turned back, hoping that she would still be there. Every minute I could subtract from the interminable day ahead seemed like a minute gained. As long as she didn’t laugh at me right to my face, I was ready to take almost any amount of sarcasm. I was soon back at number 112. She was exactly where I’d left her.

“You think they’re already home?” she said, laughing.

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

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

“I’m afraid so.”

“But you ought to look around Berlin. It’s an interesting place.”

“I agree with you. I should. But really, I feel so lost I’m afraid I wouldn’t see anything.”

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

“Yes. I’ve still got twelve days. But I’m not allowed to leave the Berlin sector.”

“Are you from the Eastern front?”

“Yes.”

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

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

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

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

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

“I’ve lived in Berlin since before the war.”

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

“Since you don’t have to be at the first — aid station until five, couldn’t you show me some of the sights? That is to say, if you don’t have anything else to do…”

She blushed a little.

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

“Oh. Well, I’ve got lots of time…. Twelve days…” She laughed. “Good sign,” I thought.

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

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

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

“I understand, young man. Come in and wait in my place — you’ll be more comfortable there. Those poor Neubachs. Their courage is almost unbelievable. To think of losing two sons in ten days: it’s too awful! My God, I hope this war ends before one of mine is killed!”

So the Neubachs already knew…. They knew not only that Ernst was dead, but another son as well. I hadn’t even known that Ernst had a brother. Suddenly, Ernst’s death came back to me in all its detail: Ernst, the Don, the Tatra… “Ernst, I’ll save you! Don’t cry, Ernst!” These things were blotted out only when I looked at Paula; and they had to be blotted out; I had to forget them. Paula was beside me, smiling… to forget: how hard it was!

“You may wait here, dear sir, or at the Neubachs’ — whichever you wish,” said the older woman, addressing the boy of seventeen like a grownup gentleman.

“How was Ernst killed?”

“Forgive me if I don’t speak of it,” I said, looking down.

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

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

“You can depend on that, gnadige Frau,” I said. “I’ve already had some practice.”

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

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

I could have kissed her!

“But Frau X, there’s all that work I should finish, and…”

“Ta, ta, to… You take him on a tour of the capital. There’s nothing more urgent.”

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

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

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

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

“J’aurai to peau, vermine,” I added in French.

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

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

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

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

“Stop it, or I won’t come with you,” she said.

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

“Paula!” I cried in desperation.

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

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

“I don’t know, Paula. Whatever you like.”

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

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

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

“Let’s go to the square, anyway,” she said. “Then we’ll decide something. Come on.”

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

“Don’t worry,” she said. “I’m not drunk. I’ll be able to see them coming.”

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

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

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

“Gute Nacht, Paula.”

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

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

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

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

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

“Forgiven!”

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

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

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

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

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

“Hey, you there!” he called.

Instinctively, I spun round and saluted.

“Aren’t you Gefreiter Sajer?”

“Ja, Herr Feldwebel.”

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

“I don’t know how to thank you, Herr Feldwebel. I am really very grateful.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Someone’s waiting for you in the dormitory, Sajer.”

“Ah!” I said, as if this was the last thing I’d expected.

“Thank you, Herr Feldwebel.”

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

“Hello, Papa,” I said.

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

“How are you? We haven’t heard much from you, you know. Your mother’s been very worried.”

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

“Shall we go out, Papa?”

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

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

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

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

“Thank you, sir,” my father said, clearly abashed.

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

“These are just what I need,” I said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“That’s a good idea, Paula. Let’s go.”

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

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

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

She murmured: “The sun is so hot.”

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

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

Paula turned her face toward me. Her eyes were still closed, and her hand gripped mine. I felt that I might faint. In a fever of emotion, I think I told her I loved her. Then I pulled myself together. I didn’t know whether I had spoken or not. Paula hadn’t moved. I must have been dreaming.

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

“Can it be another raid?”

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

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

“You’re right! Look down there — all those people running to the shelter!”

“We should get into a shelter too, Paula.”

“But we’re perfectly safe here — it’s the country. They’re going to bomb Berlin again.”

“I guess you’re right. We’re as well off here as in one of those airless holes.”

The German fighters roared over our heads.

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

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

“Go on,” Paula repeated.

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

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

“If we catch them that far away, they’ll never even get to Berlin,” Paula said.

“I hope not, Paula.”

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

“Oh, look, Guille,” she said, as always mispronouncing my name. “They’re coming from over there — look!”

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

“How high they are,” she said. “And look — there are others over there.”

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

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

“It’s impossible to count,” Paula said. “They’re still too far away.” I began to feel afraid — for us, for her, for my happiness.

“We’ve got to get away from here, Paula. It could get very dangerous.”

“Oh no,” she said, unconcerned. “What would happen to us here?”

“We could be strafed, Paula. We’ve got to find a shelter.”

I tried to drag her after me.

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

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

“Come quick,” I said to Paula, tugging her hand. “We’ve got to get to a shelter.”

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

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

“Perhaps they’ve run away — there are so many enemy planes.”

“You mustn’t say that! German soldiers never run away!”

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

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

“Forgive me, Paula — you’re right. I would be astonished if they ran away.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Come on, you young ones. They need you down there.”

We looked at each other.

“Yes. We’re just coming.”

“Paula, I’ll help you climb up.”

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

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

“Do you think we can sleep here?” she said. “I don’t know, but anyway…”

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

“I don’t care. I’m too tired.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

“You love her, don’t you?” Frau Neubach asked me gently.

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

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

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

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

“Don’t be sad, beloved. I love you so much.”

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

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

“Paula…”

The stationmaster continued his list of distant destinations.

“Paula… What would it have been without you?”

“Auf Wiedersehen, mein Lieber,” Paula whispered, in tears.

“Paula, I beg you… don’t cry… please… You know I’ll be back soon.”

“Ich weiss, mein Lieber, auf Morgen Guille.”

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

“You see, Paula… even the song says so. Listen…”

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

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

“Einsteigen! Los! Los! Reisende einsteigen! Achtung! Passagiere einsteigen! Achtung! Achtung!”

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

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

“See you soon, my love.”

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

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

5. TRAINING FOR AN ELITE DIVISION

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 “harteübung,” 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 Hundehütte.” 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 Hundehütte 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.

6. BELGOROD

On a hot evening in the summer of 1943, we found ourselves once again in the immediate vicinity of the front.

Belgorod had recently been retaken by the Russians, who had set up their advance positions just beyond the town, inside our own lines. The front, which ran through Belgorod, from Kharkov to Kursk, was more or less quiet. The campaign, which had continued almost without a break since our withdrawal from the Belgorod — Voronezh — Kursk triangle, had been exhausting. The Russians were now catching their breath and collecting their innumerable dead, before launching an even stronger attack against our positions in September. Kharkov had remained in our hands after the slaughter at Slaviansk, and the Russian breakthrough on our Southern Front had finally been stopped somewhere near Kremenchug.

The Soviets had regained some of their strength, and had forced the German and Rumanian troops to withdraw from the Caucasus and the Kalmuck plain. They had also pushed us back from the Donets. However, the situation was not yet entirely in their hands, and strong counter-attacks from our side often broke their frantic thrust. Belgorod, Kharkov, and Stalino all figure prominently in any account of German counter-attacks. Sixty thousand troops took part in the battle of Belgorod. I was one of them.

Eighteen thousand Hitlerjugend had also arrived from Silesian camps to receive their baptism of fire in this unequal combat, in which a third of them lost their lives. I can remember their arrival very well, in brisk columns, ready for anything. Some units carried flags with inscriptions embroidered in gold letters: JUNGE LÖWEN, or THE WORLD BELONGS TO US. Platoons of machine gunners arrived, and infantry regiments loaded with bandoliers stuffed with grenades, and motorized regiments with all their heavy equipment. The plain was covered with soldiers, and for the next three or four days more and more came…

Then everything quieted down. By regiment, section, and group we were all directed to precise locations, where we settled down to an armed watch. Once again, I speak as though we knew of the impending attack. In fact, we engaged in these preparations as part of the normal routine.

As in the past, I and my comrades were used for a thousand and one chores, which reminded us of the old days in the Rollbahn. It was suffocatingly hot, and the dried yellow grasses of the steppe did not hold down the dust, which was stirred up in clouds by the slightest movement.

In the evenings we sat beside enormous campfires and talked or sang. The front was some fifteen miles away, so fires were permitted. There was plenty of time for an abundant correspondence with Paula, and I thought about her constantly.

Then, one afternoon, we were assembled for distribution of ammunition.

Each man was given 120 cartridges and four grenades. Ten of us — nine men and a noncom — were organized as an assault group. Hals was a machine gunner, one of two men with F.M. Spandaus, each with a number-two man. There were three men with rifles, one of them me, two grenadiers armed with automatics and heavy bags of grenades, and a noncom. In total silence, and with every possible precaution, we were led to a shelter near a large farm, right behind the front line. An armored section of the Gross Deutschland was next to us, with Tiger tanks and heavy howitzers pulled by tractors and camouflaged by real and artificial leaves. We walked past a table set up near one of the buildings, and a fat clerk took down our identification numbers. At another table, a lieutenant in the cavalry was studying a map, surrounded by other Panzer officers and a couple of noncoms. With painstaking precision we were taken from the farm to the place marked for us on the map. Suddenly, at the edge of some woods, I recognized the wide communication trenches which led to the front line, and I think we all had the same thought: now we’re in for it. All around us, other groups were taking up their positions.

We formed part of Company 5, which was sent down a communications trench cutting in at right angles and leading to the brush where the trees stopped. The engineers must have really sweated, cutting through all those roots. Everywhere, sections were settling in, improving and deepening their shelters. It was about six o’clock in the evening, and the heat of the day was beginning to slacken off.

We followed the trench out of the woods and across a range of low hills with wooded crests. An officer with his eyes glued to a map showed us the way. We turned off to the right, which brought us back under the trees, where the heat was trapped and much more oppressive than out in the open. Everywhere, men pouring with sweat were jostling each other, looking for their positions. Finally, we came to a large half-covered shelter packed with young soldiers from the Hitlerjugend.

“Halt!” shouted the noncom who’d been leading us. “You’ll split up here, and take your positions when the order’s given. Your feldwebel will explain what’s expected of you.”

He saluted, and left us with the Hitlerjugend, who were sitting on the ground or squatting on their haunches, talking gaily. I went over to Hals, who had just put down his MG-42, and was wiping the sweat from his face.

“Hell,” he said. “I was better off with my Mauser. This damn thing weighs a ton.”

“I’ll be with you, Hals. It seems we’re part of the same group.” We compared left hands, which had both been stamped 5 K. 8.

“What does that mean?” asked Olensheim, who had just come up.

“Our group number, Gefreiter,” said Hals. “If you’re not in the 8th, we don’t know you.”

Olensheim looked anxiously at his hand.

“Damn — I’m eleven. Do you know what that means?”

“Not I,” said Hals. “But ask Corporal Lensen. He must have an inside tip.”

“We’re going on a picnic,” Lensen said, laughing, secretly displeased that his rank did not let him in on the secrets of the gods.

One of the Hitlerjugend came over to us, as pretty as a ripe young girl.

“Do the Soviets hang together in combat?” he asked, as though he were inquiring about an opposing football team.

“Extremely well,” said Hals, sounding like an old lady in a tearoom.

“I was only asking because I thought you looked experienced,” he said. We were all about the same age.

“Let me give you a piece of advice, young man,” said Lensen, whose tiny promotion was after all worth a little something. “Fire on anything Russian without the least hesitation. The Russians are the worst sons of bitches the world has ever seen.”

“Are the Russians going to attack?” Olensheim looked very white. “We’ll surely attack first,” said the beautiful young man, whose Madonna face was incapable of a ferocious expression. He walked back to his gang of boy companions.

“Do you think someone will tell us what all this is about?” Lensen said, in a voice loud enough to be overheard by the feldwebel.

“Shut up,” shouted a real veteran, sprawled full length on the ground. “You’ll know soon enough where they’re going to do you in.”

“Hey,” one of the Hitlerjugend took him up. “Who’s the shit talking like that?”

“You shut up too, you crap heads,” said the veteran, an old man in his thirties, who must have been taking it for several years now.

“We’ll have enough of listening to you when you get your first scratch.”

One of the Junge Löwen got up and walked over to the veteran.

“Sir,” he said in the assured voice of a law or medical student, “will you please explain your defeatist attitude, which is sapping the morale of everyone here?”

“You just let me whistle my own tune,” said the other, who appeared unimpressed by a flowery turn of speech.

“But I’m afraid I must insist on a reply,” said the young man. “And I say you’re a bunch of fatheads, who won’t begin to think until you’ve been cracked on your nice little skulls.”

Another of the young Hitler boys jumped up, as if he’d been shot. His features were regular and firm, and his steel-gray eyes reflected an unshakable determination. I thought he was going to rush the older fellow, who wasn’t looking at anyone.

“Do you think we’re still tied to our mothers’ apron strings?” he asked, in a voice as steady as his look.

“We’ve been through months of training too, and we’re just as tough as you. We’ve all been in endurance squads. Rummer,” he said, turning to a friend. “Hit me in the face.”

Rummer jumped to his feet, and his strong, nervous fist struck his friend in the mouth. The latter staggered for a moment under the impact of the blow, and then walked over to the veteran, who decided to look up. Two streams of bright red blood were pouring from the mouth of the Junge Löwe and running down his chin.

“Fatheads like me can take it just as well as bourgeois shits like you.”

“All right,” said the veteran, who had decided against coming to blows ahead of H-hour. “You’re all heroes.”

He turned away, and tried to whistle.

“How about writing to your families, instead of squabbling like this?” said our feld. “Mail will be collected in a little while.”

“That’s a good idea,” Hals said. “I’m going to write to my parents.” I had a letter to Paula in my pocket which I’d been carrying around for a couple of days, waiting for a chance to finish it. I added a few tender sentiments, and sealed it. Then I wrote to my family. When anyone is afraid, he thinks of his family, especially of his mother, and as the moment of attack drew closer, my terror was rising. I wanted to confide something of my anguish to my mother, and felt that somehow I could do it in a letter. I had always found it difficult to confide in my parents face to face — even the slightest of crimes — and had often criticized them for failing to help me. But on that occasion I was able to express myself.

I sealed my letter and, together with the one to Paula, handed it to the postman. Hals, Olensheim, Kraus, and Lensen all had letters too….

Everything was quiet on that summer evening in 1943. After dark, of course, there would be a few clashes between patrols — nothing more. But that’s war.

Some of us were rounded up to distribute supper, which we ate late. We were forbidden to touch the few cans we had, for they constituted our total reserve. Dusk was falling when the feld responsible for our section waved us over to him. We were soon listening intently, as he told us what we would be expected to do. He had a large map of the district, on which he showed us the points we should attain, taking every precaution. When the order was given, we should be prepared to protect the infantry, who would quickly join and then pass us. We were given a list of rallying points and other details which I only partly understood, and advised to rest, as we would not be called before the middle of the night.

We stood and stared at each other for a long time. Now we knew. We were going to be part of a full-scale attack. A heavy sense of foreboding settled over us, and the knowledge that soon some of us would be dead was stamped on every face. Even a victorious army suffers dead and wounded: the Fuhrer himself had said it. In fact, none of us could imagine his own death. Some would be killed — we all knew that — but each one imagined himself doing the burying. No one, despite the obvious danger, could think of himself lying mortally wounded. That was something which happened to other people — thousands of them — but never to oneself. Everyone clung to this idea, despite fear and doubt. Even the Hitlerjugend, who spent years cultivating the idea of sacrifice, couldn’t consciously envisage their own ends occurring within a few hours. One might be exalted by a grand idea based on a structure of logic, and even be prepared to run large risks, but to believe in the worst is impossible.

Finally, night came: a soft summer night, which brought with it a breath of freshness after the torrid day. Everywhere free of the war, people must have been stretched out on the grass beside their houses, enjoying the season with their friends. Sometimes, when I was small, I used to take a walk with my parents before going to bed. My father believed one should enjoy these summer evenings to the maximum, and kept me out until my eyelids drooped with sleep. Hals pulled me back from my thoughts.

“My dear Sajer, be sure to look out for yourself when we get going. It would be too stupid to get killed just before the war’s over.”

“Yes,” I said. “That would be stupid.”

All of us were haunted by so many thoughts that conversation was impossible. And each of us was obsessed by the particular question: “How shall I come through this time?”

In the depths of the covered shelter, one of the Jungen Löwen was playing quietly on his harmonica, and the voices of his companions joined softly in the melody. Then the sound of gunfire made us jump.

“Here we go!” we thought.

But everything quieted down again. Lensen came up to us.

“The first Soviet line is less than four hundred yards from here,” he said. “The feld just told me. That’s really not very far.”

“But it’s not too bad, either,” said the veteran of a little while ago. “At least we can sleep in peace. At Smolensk the Popovs’ holes were less than a grenade’s throw from ours.”

No one answered him.

“I’m commanding Group 6,” said Lensen, “and I have to get right under Ivan’s nose, to keep him from moving when the assault troops begin their attack. You can imagine…”

“We’ll have it about the same,” said the sergeant who would lead us. “According to what I’ve heard, we’ll be right in line with one of their positions.”

We listened attentively, hoping that our part of the enterprise was not going to be too dangerous.

“But the Russian scouts are sure to see us!” cried Lindberg, horrified. “That’s crazy!”

“That will be the hardest part of it, but let’s hope the night is dark. Also, we’ve been advised not to fire before the attack — to get into position without any noise.”

“Don’t forget mines,” said the veteran, who in fact had not gone to sleep.

“The ground was checked for mines by details from the disciplinary battalion — insofar as possible,” the noncom retorted.

“Insofar as possible,” sneered the veteran. “I like that! All the same, you’d better be careful if you see any wires. Don’t go tugging them.”

“If you keep on like this,” Lensen shouted in a threatening voice, “I’ll put you to sleep until the attack.” He shook his stubby-fingered fist under the older man’s nose. The veteran only smiled, but didn’t say anything.

“What if we run right into Ivan?” asked grenadier Kraus. “Then we’ll have to use our guns, won’t we?”

“Only as a last resort,” the noncom answered. “In principle, we’re supposed to take them by surprise, and knock them out without any noise.”

Without any noise! What did he mean?

“With the butts of our guns, or spades?” asked Hals anxiously. “Spades, bayonets, anything. We’ve got to get rid of them — that’s all. And without raising any alarm.”

We’ll take them prisoner,” murmured young Lindberg.

“Are you off your rocker?” said the noncom. “An assault group can’t take prisoners during a mission. What would we do with them?”

“Hell,” said Hals. “You mean we’ll have to skewer them?”

“Lost your guts?” asked Lensen.

“Hell, no,” said Hals, to show that he was a man. But his face was white.

I glanced at the spade-pick hooked to my big friend’s waist. Then we had to stand up so a hauptmann and his group could get through.

“Where are we, exactly?” young Lindberg asked naively.

“In Russia,” said the veteran.

No one smiled at this feeble joke, and the noncom tried to give us a rough idea of our position — some three miles northwest of Belgorod.

“I’m going to try and sleep,” stammered Hals, who was clearly shaken by all these preparations.

We lay down side by side, without bothering to undo our bedrolls. The steel of the spandau which Hals had set up pointing down the length of the trench gleamed with a dull luster. Sleep was impossible — not be cause of the discomfort of a night out of doors, strapped into all our gear — we’d done that often before — but because of our anxiety about what lay ahead.

“Hell — I’ll have plenty of time to sleep when I’m dead,” said Grenadier Kraus in a loud voice. He stood up and pissed against the wall of the trench.

I lay awake for a long time, thinking and thinking…. Finally, I did sleep, for about three hours, until I was wakened by the distant sound of a motor. My movement woke Hals and Grumpers, the other grenadier, who was lying beside me with his head on my shoulder.

“What’s the matter?” he groaned sleepily.

“I don’t know. I thought maybe they’d called us.”

“What time is it?” Hals asked.

I looked at my school watch. “Two-twenty.”

“What time is dawn?” asked young Lindberg, who hadn’t been able to sleep at all.

“Probably very early this time of year,” someone said. The sound of engines continued.

“If those fucking drivers keep it up, they’ll wake every one of the goddamn Russkis.”

We tried to go back to sleep, but couldn’t. About half an hour later we heard a muted noise of bustle and commotion just beyond the walls of the covered shelter. In the darkness, we guessed that we were listening to some fellows collecting their gear. We all turned toward the sound, trying to grasp what was happening, when a feld appeared, wearing camouflage.

“Groups 8 and 9?” he asked in a low voice. “Present!” answered the two group leaders.

“You’ll be leaving in five minutes, by way of access C, and will proceed to your respective positions. Good luck!”

He pointed to a small sign, scarcely visible in the darkness, marked with the letter C. All our reflections came to a dead stop, and our brains emptied, as if we had been anesthetized. Everyone grabbed his gun, and checked the critical points of his harness and straps, as Hauptmann Fink had taught us — especially the chin straps of our helmets. Hals lifted the big F.M. onto his shoulders, and Lindberg, who was his number-two man, slipped his slender silhouette in beside the man he was supposed to serve. Only the veteran — our second machine gunner — behaved as if he’d forgotten the object of all these preparations. His movements were not marked by the febrile haste which characterized the actions of all the rest of us. He knew all this from before. He propped the heavy F.M. against his leg, and waited for the order to move out.

“I hope you’re in good shape,” he said to the gun, grinning sardonically.

“Group 8!” called the sergeant, sounding as if he’d been struck by a sudden electric shock.

“After me, and silence!”

We took exit C and, sticking close together, followed the trench to the forward positions. Our noncom was at the head of the column. Behind him came Grumpers, the grenadier, who was about twenty-two years old; then Hals, just past eighteen, and Lindberg, not quite seventeen; then our three gunners: a Czech of indefinable age with an unpronounceable name, a Sudeten of nineteen, whose name ended with an “a,” and me. Right behind me was the veteran with his number-two man, another terrified boy, and finally Grenadier Kraus, who must have been well into his twenties. We moved out in good order, exactly as we’d been taught at Camp F, where we’d sweated so hard.

Indefinable noises reached us, coming from either the Russian or the German lines. We crossed several trenches jammed with troops who were still half asleep in the warm summer air, before climbing out of our own trench in the middle of the woods. Young Lindberg, who was loaded down like a donkey, slipped on the earth embankment, and the magazines of the spandau he was carrying clashed together. The noncom grabbed him by his straps and helped him climb up. Then he glared at him furiously, and kicked him in the shin. We walked to the edge of the wood in single file. The noncom stopped short very suddenly, and we all more or less piled into each other.

“It’s darker than Hades here,” the veteran muttered in my ear.

It seemed to me that our guide, having signed us to stop, was now going on ahead. We stayed where we were, bent double, waiting for an order to proceed. Despite our best efforts to keep quiet, we couldn’t avoid a certain amount of metallic clatter from all the weapons we were carrying.

The noncom came back, and we set out again, walking forward another short distance to the foxholes at the edge of the wood, where our scouts were waiting, as quiet as snakes. We threw ourselves down into their short trench.

“As flat as you can,” whispered the Sudeten, who in principle walked just ahead of me. “Pass it on.”

One by one, we left the last German positions, and crawled out onto the warm earth of no man’s land. I kept my eyes glued to the hobnailed soles of the Sudeten’s boots, trying nervously to keep in sight all that could be seen of my closest companion. From time to time the air ahead of me would darken with the looming shape of a comrade who had to climb over some obstacle. At other moments, the soles of the boots ahead of me would suddenly stop inches from the end of my nose. Then I would be gripped by a horrible anxiety: maybe the Sudeten had lost sight of the fellow in front of him. A moment later he would begin to move again, and the instinctive confidence I felt as part of the group would unknot my throat.

During such moments, even naturally reflective characters suddenly feel their heads emptying, and nothing seems to matter except the dry, cracking stick pressing into one’s stomach, which one must somehow crush and pass over without making any noise. A new, hitherto unsuspected acuteness sharpens every sense, and the tension seems pressing enough to subdue one’s wildly racing heart.

We inched slowly forward across that damnable Russian soil, which all of us had already trampled more than enough.

We had to crawl around a short stretch of light sand against which we would show up too easily, crushing under our bodies a mat of thorny creepers which we took at first for Russian barbed wire. Then we came to a mossy hollow where we stopped for a moment. Our sergeant, who had a very good sense of direction, was going over our route in his head, trying to fix our position. The hollow reeked with a pestilential smell. When we began to move again, I was startled to see two motionless figures lying on the sand some two yards to our right. I pointed at them, nudging the veteran, who looked and grabbed his nose. With a shock of horror, I understood that we had just passed two corpses, which were quietly rotting as they waited for burial in a common grave.

We seemed to have crawled as far as China. About half an hour after we had started, we came to the first Russian wire. We waited with beating hearts while our first men opened a precarious passage. Every time we heard the cutters snap we expected to see a spray of dirt shooting up from an exploding mine. Our faces, blackened with soot from the canteen kettles, were pouring with sweat, and the tension was so great we certainly must have aged several years during the few minutes we needed to crawl under the Soviet wire, at a speed of about fifteen yards an hour.

When we had all made it through, we stopped for several moments and huddled together. Every one of us was trembling. We could hear faint sounds from the Russian forward positions. We rolled our eyes at each other and understood without words that we all felt the same way. We crept forward another twenty yards to a stand of low scrub or tall grass. We could hear the sound of voices and knew beyond any doubt that we had reached the first Russian line.

Suddenly, we were staring incredulously at an almost invisible figure — a Soviet reconnaissance man, who was bending over a hole which undoubtedly contained some of his comrades. We almost stopped breathing, and slowly lifted our guns, looking at our leader, who seemed to have frozen, and then at each other, with a look beyond expression, as the Russian walked slowly toward us. Then he turned back. Our sergeant pulled a knife from his belt. Its blade flashed white for a moment, before he thrust it slowly into the ground in front of Grumpers, pointing to the Russian with one finger.

The grenadier opened his eyes enormously wide, and looked with horror from the Russian to the knife to the sergeant. The latter gestured him on, as Grumpers’ quivering hand clenched round the knife handle. With a final mute look of supplication, the grenadier began to creep forward. We followed the progress of his dark shape with an anxiety which made us clench our teeth to keep from crying out. Then he was lost in the darkness.

The Russian was still talking to his friends, as if the war were thousands of miles away. He took a few more steps. We could hear more voices a little farther off. For a few long moments, each of us forgot his own existence. The Russian walked toward the spot where Grumpers must have hidden, and turned back. As he turned, a second silhouette rose up behind him. Grumpers covered the four or five yards that separated him from his quarry in one jump. The Russian whirled around. We heard a rough cry and the sound of a struggle. From a hole a short way off, we heard Russian voices. Then we were able to distinguish the silhouette of our grenadier rolling on the ground, and hear the sound of his voice.

“Hilfe, kameraden!”

The Russian jumped to one side, and the sound of his machine gun tore into the quiet of the night, as its white flashes striped the darkness. To my left another machine gun opened fire, and its bullets followed the howling Russian as far as the earth embankment in front of the foxhole, into which he finally plunged.

From the hole, we could hear voices shouting: “Germanski! Germanski!”

With a leap which looked beyond his capacities, the veteran propelled himself forward, hurling a grenade from his right fist. The object vanished into the darkness for two or three seconds. Then the hole was lit by a brilliant white light, and we heard the outcry of several voices, before a moment of silence.

We withdrew as fast as we could, keeping parallel to the barbed wire. Behind us, we could hear a rising tumult. Risking mines and bullets, we ran for a small hillock, and, gasping for breath, hastily attempted to organize a defensible position in a thicket.

“Idiots!” the sergeant exploded, meaning Kraus and the veteran. “I didn’t give an order to fire. We’ll never get out of this now.” He was as scared as anybody else.

“But Grumpers asked for help, sergeant,” Kraus answered. “He was in bad trouble.”

An instant later a dozen flares lit our surroundings as brightly as day, and a Russian fusillade shook the air all around us. The Russians were also heaving grenades at random, the way we would have done. “We’re finished,” whimpered young Lindberg.

“Quick, a shovel,” shouted the Sudeten. “We’ve got to dig in, or they’ll slaughter us.”

“Nobody move!” the veteran commanded authoritatively. In our terror, we obeyed him. His voice sounded more confident than the sergeant’s. We tried to freeze absolutely, even down to the fluttering of our eyelids. A flare burst into brilliant white light directly overhead, and anyone whose face wasn’t buried in the ground could see every detail of our circumstances. Just beyond us lay the bodies of Grumpers and the Russian, and five or six foxholes preceding a V-shaped infantry position. Other flares lit the edge of the wood from which our adventures had begun. Luckily, the Russians nearest us hadn’t noticed the rise of ground which was giving us cover. However, their soldiers in the more distant positions which we had seen in the light of the flares could see us. They began to throw grenades too, and they were using the superb Russian grenade throwers.

“God,” said the veteran. “If they’ve got those damned things, we’ve had it.”

“We ought to dig,” sniveled Lindberg.

“Shut up. Dig with your belly if you like, but don’t move anything else. If we play dead, maybe they’ll think we are.”

Something fell with a dull thud on the other side of the hillock. Its crest disintegrated, and we were spattered by a rain of earth. There were no new flares coming over, and the ones still falling were fading. As usual, the Russians were shouting curses at us. Another grenade landed somewhere to our left, and we could hear the whistling fall of its fragments through the noise of the explosion. Someone lying beside the veteran groaned.

“Shut up! Hold it back!” muttered the veteran between clenched teeth. “If they hear anything, that’s it.”

He was talking to his number-two man. The boy was clawing at his face, which was twisted with pain. His hands were trembling.

“Don’t make a sound,” said the veteran, putting his hand on the boy’s forearm. “Be strong.”

Grenades were still falling all around us. The boy clenched his fists, and his eyes flooded with tears. He sniffed.

“Quiet,” insisted the veteran.

The flares died out, and everything around us became pitch black. The Russians must have spotted another group of our men somewhat to the north of us: it was their turn to get the lights and the noise. Then we heard other sounds directly ahead of us. By deliberately dilating our pupils as wide as we could, we were able to distinguish several men creeping forward parallel to our position. A cold sweat trickled down our backs. The veteran was holding a large grenade about four inches from my nose. Once again, we froze. The hunched figures came toward us as far as the barbed wire, and then turned back.

We all breathed again. The wounded boy buried his face in the ground, to try to stifle his groans.

“They’re just as scared as we are,” said the veteran. “Somebody orders them up here to see what’s going on, so they take a few steps and then run back as fast as they can and say they don’t see anything.”

“It’s almost dawn,” whispered our noncom. “I think we could stay here. It seems a pretty good spot.”

“I don’t, sergeant. I think we should get out.”

“Maybe you’re right. You,” he said, pointing to Hals. “There’s a hole about twenty yards from here, level with the barbed wire. You get over there.”

Hals and Lindberg slid off like snakes.

“Where are you hurt?” the veteran asked the wounded boy, touching him on the shoulder.

The young man lifted his face, which was smeared with dirt and tears.

“I can’t move,” he said. “Something hurts here.” He touched his hip.

“A splinter. Don’t move. We’ll send someone to help you.”

“Yes,” said the boy, thrusting his face back into the dirt.

“Our assault troops should be here in ten or fifteen minutes, if everything goes well,” said the noncom, looking at his watch. The horizon was beginning to turn pink. Soon the sun would be up. We waited feverishly.

“Isn’t there going to be a bombardment first?” asked Kraus. “Lucky there’s not,” said the veteran. “We’d get it just as badly as the Popovs.”

“There won’t be,” said the sergeant. “The first waves are supposed to take the enemy by surprise. We’re here to neutralize enemy defense.”

“But our fellows might mistake us for Russians, and do us in.”

“Exactly,” said the veteran, laughing.

Russian voices came to us in bursts as clearly as if we were in the trench with them.

“At least they don’t seem worried,” the Czech remarked.

“What’s the use of worrying? We’ll all be dead in an hour anyway,” said the veteran, as if he were thinking aloud.

The light was increasing rapidly. Everything was still gray, but we could distinguish a portion of the Russian V position in line with the veteran’s spandau, and lower down to the left, a motionless gray mass: Hals, Lindberg, and the F.M.

“You, young fellow,” said the veteran, looking at me. “You’ll replace my number-two man. Get over here on my left.”

“Right,” I said, worming my way toward him. A minute later, my nose was pressed against the metal of the F.M.’s magazine.

We could see most of the details of the Russian position a hundred yards ahead of us. From our hillock overlooking the enemy, we glimpsed momentary snatches of pale faces, like faces in a dream. It now seems to me astonishing that the Russians hadn’t occupied our little hill. However, there were similar rises in the ground all around us, and they couldn’t have occupied all of it. We were staring straight ahead when our leader’s hand pointed to our rear left.

“Look!” he said, in almost full voice.

We carefully turned our heads the way he was pointing, and saw the bodies of many men slithering along the ground, breaking through the network of Russian protection. As far as we could see, the ground was covered with creeping figures.

“They’re ours!” said the veteran, and a faint smile crossed his face.

“Get ready to fire, if anyone moves in Ivan’s hole,” our leader added.

Suddenly, I began to shake uncontrollably — not precisely because of fear, but because at that moment, when our mission was about to be accomplished, all the nervousness and anxiety which I had been able to master until then burst out in violent spasms. I tried shifting my weight, but nothing did any good. I managed to open the magazine and nervously slip the first belt into the breech of the gun, which the veteran held open for me, and left partly open, to prevent the sound of its clicking shut.

Far to our left, the dance had already begun: a dance which would surely have inspired Saint-Saens, and which lasted for days. A moment later, among the German troops we were watching, someone must have pulled a wire attached to a string of mines. Our immediate surroundings — the Russian position, the bodies of Grumpers and his adversary, our little hill, and all our hearts — were shaken by a series of thunderous explosions. For a moment we thought that the whole mass of creeping soldiers we had seen just the minute before had been blown to pieces. Everywhere among the Hitlerjugend — for it was they who had been crawling toward us — young men were jumping up and trying to rush through the tangles of barbed wire. Hals had just opened fire. The veteran slammed our gun shut and fitted it into the hollow of his shoulder.

“Fire!” shouted the noncom. “Wipe them out!”

The Russians ran to take their places. The string of 7.7 cartridges slid through my hands with brutal rapidity, while the noise of the gun burst against my eardrums.

I could see what was happening only with the greatest difficulty. The spandau was shuddering and jumping on its legs, and shaking the veteran, who kept trying to steady himself. Its percussive bark put a final touch on the vast din which had broken out. Through the vibrations and smoke, we were able to observe the horrible impact of our projectiles on the lost mass of Red soldiers in the trench in front of us. Day broke over the frenzied scene, and the sky slowly lightened. From far behind us, German artillery was roaring through every tube, pounding the enemy’s secondary positions. The Russians, taken by surprise, were attempting a desperate defense, but from every side the Junge Löwen were surging out of the darkness, breaking like waves over their entrenchments and pulverizing both men and materiel. An overwhelming din engulfed the plain, which rang with the sound of thousands of explosions.

Ahead of us, and far to the right, we were bombarding a town of considerable size. Slow spirals of smoke some fifty yards across rolled along the ground from enormous fires. I was feeding a second magazine into our infernal machine, and the veteran continued to pour his projectiles onto the dead and living who were jammed into the advanced Soviet position.

Then, through all the noise, we heard the unmistakable rumble of tanks.

“Our Panzers!” shouted the Czech with a demoniac laugh.

Hals left his position and rushed toward us with a leap which made us think he’d been hit. He and Lindberg had run just in time. A second later, a huge tank rolled over the ground they had occupied, crushing the barbed wire beneath its treads. The churned-up earth continued to shake with the explosion of mines, which here and there immobilized a heavy armored vehicle, or tossed a landser some fifteen yards. The tank, followed by two others, passed very close to us, thrusting toward the enemy position we had already been peppering for several minutes. In no time, it had crossed the trench, which was overflowing with the bodies of Russian soldiers. Then a second and a third tank plunged through the bloody paste, and rolled on, their treads stuck with horrible human remnants. Our noncom gave an involuntary cry of horror at the sight. Soon the young soldiers fresh from the sportive pleasures of the barracks would arrive at this foul reality. We heard a cry of horror, followed by one of victory, as the first assault wave continued its advance. More tanks were pouring out of the woods behind us, crushing the saplings and brush, and driving, almost rearing up on their treads, toward companies of infantry who had to hurry out of the way. If there were any wounded lying on the ground, that was their bad luck.

The first phase of the attack was supposed to occur like a flash of lightning, with nothing permitted to hinder the progress of the tanks. An infantry group had just joined us, and their leader was talking with ours when a tank bore down exactly on our position. Everyone jumped aside. A young soldier ran toward the tank, trying to wave it off with large gestures. But the monster continued unswervingly, like a blind animal, churning up the ground a bare two yards from our hillock. In my haste, my foot caught on the spandau, and I fell full length down the other side of the rise. The huge machine flattened the edge of our protection, and the steel sections of its treads rolled past, horribly close to my haggard eyes.

What happened next? I retain nothing from those terrible minutes except indistinct memories which flash into my mind with sudden brutality, like apparitions, among bursts and scenes and visions that are scarcely imaginable. It is difficult even to try to remember moments during which nothing is considered, foreseen, or understood, when there is nothing under a steel helmet but an astonishingly empty head and a pair of eyes which translate nothing more than would the eyes of an animal facing mortal danger. There is nothing but the rhythm of explosions, more or less distant, more or less violent, and the cries of madmen, to be classified later, according to the outcome of the battle, as the cries of heroes or of murderers. And there are the cries of the wounded, of the agonizingly dying, shrieking as they stare at a part of their body reduced to pulp, the cries of men touched by the shock of battle before everybody else, who run in any and every direction, howling like banshees. There are the tragic, unbelievable visions, which carry from one moment of nausea to another: guts splattered across the rubble and sprayed from one dying man onto another; tightly riveted machines ripped like the belly of a cow which has just been sliced open, flaming and groaning; trees broken into tiny fragments; gaping windows pouring out torrents of billowing dust, dispersing into oblivion all that remains of a comfortable parlor….

And then there are the cries of officers and noncoms, trying to shout across the cataclysm to regroup their sections and companies. That is how we took part in the German advance, being called through the noise and dust, following the clouds churned up by our tanks to the northern outskirts of Belgorod. All resistance was overwhelmed, and once again everything was either German or dead, and a sea of Russian soldiers had drawn back into the limitless confines of their country.

There were thousands of prisoners — including the pro-Germans, who immediately placed in the hands of our indifferent soldiers lists of those we should shoot. There was the park of Russian vehicles hiding two or three thousand enemy soldiers determined to slow our advance, and the spandau, into which the veteran and I continued to feed cartridges, and Hals’s spandau, and the one attached to Group 10, decimated and re-formed, firing and laughing as they fired, in vengeance for their fallen comrades. We sent a rain of anti-tank shells onto the park, and listened to the howls of the Russians, who no longer dared to move or surrender or attack, before flames devoured the area, and forced us to retire from their unbearable heat.

Toward noon, the Soviets began to retaliate, and rained a devastating fire on the rising waves of Jungen Löwen. But nothing stopped the young lions, even for a moment, and the burnt-out ruin of Belgorod fell into the hands of their survivors on the second evening.

In a heady state, near delirium, we went on, with almost no rest, to enlarge the wedge our troops had driven into the mass of the Soviet central front: a front of 150,000 men, according to our so-called information services. In fact, closer to 400,000 or 500,000 Russians were jostled back by 60,000 Germans.

By the evening of the third day of continuous battle, during which we had only been able to snatch an occasional half hour of sleep, we were seized by the furious strength of madmen. Our group had lost both the Czech and the sergeant, and as they lay either dead or wounded among the ruins, two grenadiers who had lost their units joined us. We were now split into three groups — including the 11th, in which Olensheim was still alive, and the 17th, which had rejoined us — jointly commanded by a lieutenant. We had been ordered to reduce the pockets of resistance in the ashes of a suburb called Deptreoka, if I remember correctly — enclaves which continued to defend themselves, although they had been left behind by the retreating Soviet forces.

Our faces streaked with dust and filth and sweat stared across the ruined, apocalyptic landscape through which we were advancing, more interested in quiet corners for a few moments of sleep than in Russian strays. Explosions from the forefront of our advance were continuously shaking the air around us, and compressing our weakened lungs. No one spoke, except for an occasional “Halt!” or “Achtung!” which threw us down onto the burning ground. We were so exhausted that we stood up only when our fire had subdued the isolated and hopeless resistance from some entrenched hole. Sometimes one or two prisoners might emerge from their hideout with their hands in the air, and each time the same tragedy repeated itself. Kraus killed four of them on the lieutenant’s orders; the Sudeten, two; Group 17, nine. Young Lindberg, who had been in a state of panic ever since the beginning of the offensive, and who had been either weeping in terror or laughing in hope, took Kraus’s machine gun and shoved two Bolsheviks into a shell hole. The two wretched victims were both a good deal older than the boy, and kept imploring his mercy. We could hear their desperate shouts for a long time. But Lindberg, in a paroxysm of uncontrollable rage, kept firing until they were quiet.

Then there was the bread house, so called because after the massacre we found a few wretched biscuits there, which we devoured, hoping to extract some return for the horrors which the war forced upon us. We were mad with harassment and exhaustion, running on our nerves, which were stretched to the utmost, and which alone made it possible to respond to the endless succession of crises and alerts. We were forbidden to take prisoners until our return trip. We knew that the Russians didn’t take any, and although we longed for sleep we knew that we had to stay awake as long as there were any Bolsheviks in our sector. It was either them or us — which is why my friend Hals and I threw grenades into the bread house, at some Russians who were trying to wave a white flag.

When we reached the end of our sweep, we collapsed at the bottom of a large crater, and stared at each other for a long time in dazed silence. None of us could speak. Our uniforms were unbuttoned, torn, and so permeated with dust they were the color of the ground. The air still roared and shook and smelled of burning. Four more of our men had been killed, and we were dragging along five or six wounded, one of them Olensheim. There were about twenty of us huddled in that huge hole, trying to put our thoughts into some kind of order. But our stupefied eyes continued to wander vacantly over the burned landscape, and our heads remained empty.

The radio announced that our Belgorod offensive had been crowned with success, and marked the beginning of our further progress eastward.

By the fourth or fifth evening, we had gone through Belgorod without even knowing it. Our assault troops were catching their breath, and numberless ranks of infantry were sleeping on the great battered plain. We were soon loaded onto a truck and driven to a key position. I didn’t understand why the ruined hamlet where we were put down was considered strategic, but grasped that this was one of the places from which the next phase of our offensive would be launched. The gently rolling landscape of fat-bellied orchards and willow-bordered streams and irrigation canals reminded me somehow of Normandy; it was occupied either by lines of defense or by rallying points for our assault troops.

We began to organize our position among the poor, half-ruined houses of the hamlet. Our first job was to get rid of some thirty Bolshevik corpses scattered through the rubble. We dumped them into a small garden, which must once have been cultivated. The day was hot and heavy. A greasy sun threw sharp shadows, and made us squint in the harsh light, which emphasized every hollow in our exhausted faces. The same light poured down onto the faces of the dead Russians, whose fixed eyes were opened inordinately wide. Looking at them, and thinking about us all, made my stomach turn over.

“Isn’t it funny,” the Sudeten remarked calmly, “how quickly a fellow’s beard grows when he’s dead? Look at this one.” He turned over a body with his foot. The man’s tunic was torn by seven or eight bloody holes. “He probably shaved yesterday, just before he was killed. And look at him now. He’s got a beard on him that would have taken him at least a week otherwise.”

“See this one,” laughed another fellow, who was clearing out a building which had been hit by a heavy mortar shell. He was dragging a Russian soldier whose head had been blown off.

“You’d do better to go and shave yourself, if you want anyone to recognize you when it’s your turn tomorrow. You give me a pain with your idiotic remarks. Anyone would think that’s the first stiff you’ve ever seen.”

The veteran sat down on a heap of rubble, and opened his mess tin.

We found a cellar which made a perfect defense point and moved into it with our two machine guns. We dug out the air vent which had been blocked by the collapse of the house, and even enlarged it, stopping work for a moment to watch a flight of Stukas pass overhead. Somewhere, not too far away, Ivan must have been drenched by a rain of bombs. Hals had made a hole in the masonry walls, and was estimating the firing possibilities. Lindberg was almost jubilant to be setting up this precarious shelter.

Everything which now seemed to be working to our advantage stirred him to a strange excitement, in contrast to the helpless fear in the flaming alleys of Belgorod, which had reduced him to whining and pissing in his pants. Three yards away, the veteran and I were shoving in supports to brace the enlarged air vent, which, at best, seemed a shaky proposition. Whenever we moved, our helmets scraped against the low ceiling. Behind us, Kraus and two other grenadiers were removing the fallen stones and rubble which littered the floor. One of them picked up an empty bottle, and with a civilian reflex, stood it against the wall to wait for the harvest.

As I’ve said, we had lost our noncom, and the veteran, who was an obergefreiter, was now commanding our group. However, we were still under the orders of a fat stabsfeldwebel, who directed all three groups, and who was killed two days later. The bastard checked our work with all the airs of a superior officer, forcing us to check this detail or that, unaware that he had only forty-eight hours left. We spent the day waiting and watching companies of sweating troops march by, against a continuous background of heavy explosions, and a variety of other noises.

It was in precisely these moments that everything became intensely painful. As we slowly regained our spirits, we began to grasp what had happened to us. It suddenly struck us that our noncom, and Grumpers, and the Czech, and the wounded boy abandoned to his fate were in fact no longer with us. We tried to blot out the memory of the Russian trench we had machine gunned, and the tanks driving heavily over that moving mass of human flesh, and Deptreoka, with its piles of Bolshevik corpses, and the hammering of enemy artillery in the narrow streets crammed with Hitlerjugend — all the appalling, inexplicable details. We suddenly felt gripped by something horrible, which made our skins crawl and our hair stand on end. For me, these memories produced a loss of physical sensation, almost as if my personality had split. I knew that I was actually incapable of such experiences — not because I was superior to other people, but because I knew that such things don’t happen to young men who have led normal lives more or less like other people’s.

The three grenadiers stood talking beside the staircase. The veteran, alone by the air vent, through which floods of sunlight poured into the room, was going through his pockets, spreading out their wretched con tents on a flat stone. Hals had curled his big body onto a rough bench and was lying silent, while Lindberg and the Sudeten were staring through holes in the wall, with their minds clearly far away. I went over to Hals and lay down beside him. We stared at each other for a moment, unable to speak.

“What the hell are we doing here?” Hals said finally. His face had grown noticeably harder since Bialystok.

I limited myself to a gesture of ignorance.

“I’d like to sleep, but I can’t,” he said. “Yes. It’s just as hot in here as outside.”

“Let’s go out anyway.”

We went out and took a few steps. The light was blinding.

“Maybe there’s some cold water over there,” I said, pointing to an orchard divided by a thin stream.

“I’m not thirsty — not hungry either,” Hals answered to my great surprise. I was used to his enormous appetite.

“Are you sick?”

“No. I just feel like vomiting. I’m so tired — and those fellows over there don’t help either.” He nodded at the thirty putrefying corpses in the little garden.

“That’s always how it is, with fellows who won’t make any more trouble,” I answered, in a tone which still surprises me.

“Ours were picked up before we got here,” Hals continued.

“There’s some freshly turned ground just inside the village. I don’t know how many they were able to stuff in there. Do you know how many we’ve had killed already?”

We were silent for a moment.

“We’ll probably be relieved soon, Hals.”

“Yes,” he said. “I hope so. We really were shits to kill those Popovs at the bread house.”

He was clearly desperately troubled by the same things that troubled me.

“The bread house is how it is, and all there is,” I answered.

I could still feel the cartridges running through my hands, see them entering the spandau, and see the bluish smoking metal of the barrel and the sparks that flew out each time the gun fired, painfully striking my hands and face, and hear the shrieks penetrating the infernal din, and the cries for help: “Pomoshch! Pomoshch!” Something hideous had entered our spirits, to remain and haunt us forever.

It was broad daylight, but we had no idea what time it was. Was it still morning? Was it afternoon? It didn’t matter: everyone ate and drank when he could, slept when he could, and tried to think whenever he could take off his helmet. It’s strange how much a helmet interferes with thought….

It was still daylight when an enemy barrage ripped into the orchards and the advancing troops, who had stopped only a short distance from us. We dived into our cellar shelter, and stared anxiously at the ceiling, which rained down plaster with each explosion.

“We’ll have to shore it up too,” said the veteran. “If anything lands too close, the whole thing will come down on our heads.”

The bombardment lasted for at least two hours. A few Soviet shells fell right beside us, but they were clearly intended for the assault troops. Our big guns answered theirs, and all other sounds were drowned in the noise of artillery. Shells from our howitzer were shooting right over our ruin, contributing as much to the collapse of our ceiling as the Russian shells which sometimes burst less than thirty yards away.

During the bombardment, we were all gripped by an extreme and exhausting tension. Some of us attempted predictions, only to be contradicted by events a few moments later. The veteran smoked nervously, continuously begging us to shut up. Kraus had drawn apart and sat muttering in a corner. Perhaps he was praying.

In the evening, one of the counter-attack units visited us, and installed an anti-tank gun nearby. A colonel came by a little later and tested the new supports we had put in to prevent any further collapse of the roof.

“Well done,” he said. He made the rounds of our little group, offering each man a cigarette. Then he rejoined his unit, which was part of the Gross Deutschland, a little closer to the front.

It grew dark. Through the tattered silhouettes of the remaining orchard trees, the horizon glowed red with fire. The battle was not yet over, and the extreme tension it generated was almost unbearable. We had to take turns standing guard outside, and no one had a good night’s sleep. We were rounded up well before dawn and forced to abandon our well-organized hole and proceed further into Soviet territory. The German advance had not been stopped.

During our advance, we crossed a frightful slaughtering ground of Hitlerjugend, mixed into the dirt by the bombardment of the day before. Each step made us realize with fresh horror what could become of our miserable flesh.

“Somebody should have buried all this mincemeat so we wouldn’t have to look at it,” Hals grumbled.

Everyone laughed, as if he’d just said something funny.

We crossed a piece of ground so heavily pitted with shell holes it was hard to imagine that anyone who’d been on it could have survived, and an open-air hospital behind an embankment from which the shrieks and groans came so thick and fast it sounded like a scalding room for pigs. We were staggered by what we saw. I thought I would faint. Lindberg was crying with terror. We crossed the enclosure with our eyes fixed on the sky, seeing as if in a dream young men howling with pain, with crushed forearms or gaping abdominal wounds, staring with incomprehension at their own guts puffing out the piece of cloth which had been hastily flung over them.

Immediately beyond the hospital, we had to wade across a canal. The cool water which rose over our waists made us feel much better. On the far bank, the springing turf was strewn with Russian bodies. A Soviet tank, twisted and blackened by fire, stood beside a big gun and the shattered bodies of its operators. To our left, in the northeast, the battle continued more fiercely than ever. We thought we heard a groan from one of the Russian gunners, and went over to a man smeared with blood, who was leaning, gasping, against one of the wheels of the gun carriage. One of our men uncorked his drinking bottle, and lifted the head of the dying man. The Russian stared at us through enormous eyes, widened by terror or shock. He cried out, and then his head fell back, thudding against the metal of the wheel. He was dead.

We continued across a series of rolling wooded hills, where our front-line troops were regrouping and catching a moment’s rest in the shade of the trees. Many men wore bandages, whose whiteness stood out sharply against their gray, dusty faces. We were rapidly regrouped, called out, and sent to precise locations.

The two grenadiers who had joined us were sent somewhere else, while our 8th group was completed by a new pair of strays. Unfortunately, the stabsfeldwebel whom I’ve mentioned before, and who had only one more day of life, was made the leader of our group. We were swiftly attached to an armored section which transported us on the backs of their machines to the edge of an enormous plateau, which seemed to stretch into infinity….

We jumped off the backs of the moving Panzers to join a group of soldiers lying flat at the bottom of a shallow trench. Already, several 50-mm. rounds fired directly at us by enemy artillery had brought it home to us that we were in the front line. The tanks turned back, and vanished under the trees some fifty yards behind us.

We plunged down beside the fellows who were already there, who seemed none too cheerful. The Russian fire followed the tanks, and was lost in the brush. Our idiot stabsfeldwebel was already feeling uneasy about the distractions of the neighborhood, and was discussing them with a very young lieutenant. Then the young officer waved to his men, who followed him toward the woods, running, and bent nearly double. The Popovs, who must have been watching, sent over five or six rounds aimed directly at them. Some of their bullets landed very close to us.

Once again we were alone — nine of us in a hole, facing the Soviet lines. The sun was directly above us.

“Get cracking on that hole, now,” shouted the stabs in a perfect parade-ground voice.

We began to turn over the dusty Ukrainian soil with our short pick-spades. We barely had time to speak. The heat of the sun was crushing, and increased our lassitude.

“We’ll probably die of exhaustion before anything else has a chance to get us,” Hals said. “I give up.”

“My head is killing me,” I answered with a sigh.

But our bastard stabs kept after us, staring anxiously out over the grassless plain, which stretched into the distance as far as the eye could see.

We had just finished setting up our two spandaus when the noise of tanks rolling over the brush behind us made us shudder.

On that magnificent summer afternoon, German tanks were once again leaving the shade and driving toward the east. From behind them, entire regiments, bent double, passed us and vanished into a wall of dust, which hid them from view. About five minutes later, the Russians began a bombardment of unprecedented ferocity. Everything became opaque, and the sun vanished from our eyes, which had become enormous with fright. The storm cloud of dust was relieved only by continuous red flashes shooting up against the darker masses of trees eighty or a hundred yards away. The earth shook harder than I’d yet felt it do, and the brush behind us burst into flame. Screams of fear froze in our constricted throats. Everything seemed displaced. The air all around us was filled with flying clods, mixed with fragments of metal and fire. Kraus and one of the newcomers were buried in a landslide before they even knew what had happened to them. I threw myself into the deepest corner of our hole, and stared uncomprehendingly at the stream of earth flooding towards our shelter. I began to howl like a madman. Hals pressed his filthy head against mine, and our helmets clattered together like two mess tins. Hals’s face was transfigured by terror.

“It’s… the… end,” he gasped, his words broken up by the explosions, which took away our breath.

Overwhelmed by horror, I could only agree.

Suddenly, a human figure crashed into our hole. We both trembled with desperation and fright. Then a second human shape joined the first, in a great leap. This time our huge eyes took in that these were two of our own men. One of the newcomers shouted to us through his frantic gasps for breath: “My whole company was wiped out! It’s terrible!”

He carefully lifted his head just over the edge of the embankment as a series of explosions began to rip through the air beside us. His helmet and a piece of his head were sent flying, and he fell backward, with a horrifying cry. His shattered skull crashed into Hals’s hands, and we were splattered with blood and fragments of flesh. Hals threw the revolting cadaver as far as he could, and buried his face in the dirt.

The explosions had become so violent that we felt the ground all around us must be shifting. Outside our hole, on the torn and ravaged plain, we could hear an engine roaring out of control. Then there was another explosion, more violent than all the others, and an enormous flash of light swept the edge of our trench. Our two spandaus fell back on top of us in a wave of loose earth. Those who weren’t struck dumb with fright howled like madmen:

“We’re finished!”

“Mama! It’s me!”

“No, no!”

“We’ll be buried alive!”

“Help!”

But nothing we said could put an end to this hell, which seemed to go on forever….

About thirty soldiers on the run plunged in with us. We were kicked and shoved without mercy, as everyone tried to burrow down as deeply as possible. Whoever was left on top was finished. The earth all around us was pocked with thousands of shell holes, and from each of these we could hear the sounds of fleeing soldiers looking for refuge. But the cruel Russian soil was torn by fresh salvoes, and those who thought they’d been saved continued to die.

We heard the roar of airplane engines, and cheers for the Luftwaffe rose from thousands of desperate men. The bombardment continued for a few more seconds, and then decreased dramatically.

The officers who were still alive blew their whistles for retreat, and the men packed into our hole poured out like rabbits chased by a ferret. We were about to follow when our stabsfeldwebel, who hadn’t yet been killed, shouted loudly after us: “Not you! We’re here to stop a Russian counteroffensive. Get your guns ready to fire.”

Six Hitlerjugend cadavers were lying on the bottom of the trench, which had completely changed shape. To the left, one end was caved in, and Kraus’s boots were sticking out of two cubic yards of gray dirt. The other grenadier had been completely buried.

With the help of the veteran, whose face was streaming with blood, we were able to get the F.M. back into place. The plain, which had been altered beyond recognition, was scarred with holes and lumps, as if giant moles had been at work. Wherever one looked, there were smoke and flame and a scattering of motionless bodies. In the distance, through spirals of dust and smoke, we could see geysers of fire from the bombs which our ME-110’s were dropping on the Russian artillery. It looked as though we’d hit a couple of their ammunition dumps. The shock waves from those explosions engulfed the earth and sky in an extraordinary intensity of light and displacement of air.

“Those bastards!” shouted the ober. “Now they’re getting what they deserve.”

Our ME-110’s turned back to the west, and the Russian artillery opened up again. They were concentrating particularly on the Panzers, which were retreating in disorder, with at least half their number destroyed.

Although my left arm had almost been broken when the gang of panic-stricken soldiers jumped into the trench on top of us, I had felt nothing at the time. Now, it was beginning to cause me violent pain, which hovered beside me like a supplementary presence; but I was too busy to pay much attention to it. The bombardment was continuing to the north and to the south, and then passed over us once again, intensifying and spreading its complement of pain and terror. Our group of stupefied men could breathe only with difficulty, like an invalid who gets up after a long illness to find he has lost both strength and wind. We were all unable to speak: there was nothing to say then about the hours we had just lived through, and there is no way of describing them now with the vehemence and force they require. Nothing remains for those who have survived such an experience but a sense of uncontrollable imbalance, and a sharp, sordid anguish which reaches across the years un-blunted and undiminished, even for someone like me, who is attempting to translate it into words, although a precise and appropriate vocabulary remains elusive.

Abandoned by a God in whom many of us believed, we lay prostrate and dazed in our demi-tomb.

From time to time, one of us would look over the parapet to stare across the dusty plain into the east, from which death might bear down on us at any moment. We felt like lost souls, who had forgotten that men are made for something else, that time exists, and hope, and sentiments other than anguish; that friendship can be more than ephemeral, that love can sometimes occur, that the earth can be productive, and used for something other than burying the dead.

We were madmen, gesturing and moving without thought or hope. Our legs and arms were numbed by hours of crowding and shoving against neighbors, living or dead, who were taking up too much room. The stabsfeldwebel repeated mechanically that we must maintain our position, but each new series of explosions sent us plunging to the bottom of our hole.

Night fell before we realized day had ended, and with darkness our terror returned. Lindberg, whose nervous condition was alarming, had collapsed into a kind of stupor which, for the moment, made him oblivious of hell. The Sudeten was almost as badly affected. He had begun to tremble, like someone in a fit, and to vomit uncontrollably.

Madness had invaded our group, and was gaining ground rapidly.

In a state of semi delirium, I saw a giant, whom I had known in another time as Hals, leap to his machine gun and fire at the sky, which continued to pour down its rain of flame and metal. I also saw the stabs, seized by a kind of dementia, beat the ground with his clenched fist, and then deliberately turn on the surviving grenadier, and pound him. The grenadier, who had seemed to be functioning normally until that moment, simply stared at the stabs, like someone in a trance, and then burst into tears. I could hear the millions of echoes ringing through the ground with an almost infernal precision, and I felt that I was going to faint. I stood up, totally unaware of what I was doing, shouting curses and obscenities at the sky. I had reached the edge of the abyss, like all my companions, and like them I was nearly finished. My rage burned like a straw fire, consuming my last reserves of strength, my head began to swim, and I fell forward against the edge of the trench. My mouth, which was wide open, filled with dirt. I began to vomit, and knew I wouldn’t be able to stop until I had emptied myself completely. I waded through my vomit with my trembling hands stretched out in front of me, reaching for the support of the crumbling parapet. A white flash, like an element of a nightmare, lit the darkness which had enveloped us, and kept me from losing consciousness. I slowly raised my eyes above the level of the trench wall, to follow the Russian flare as it fell to the ground. During those moments I felt strangely certain that I was at home, that none of my surroundings existed, and that the descending flare was really a falling star.

I remained in my stupor for a long time, while the explosions continued to compress my lungs. Some men stood in one position for hours, asleep on their feet with their eyes wide open. Finally, toward midnight, everything fell silent. However, no one moved. We all felt so weakened that movement was beyond the limit of possibility. Finally the veteran was able to make us pay attention:

“Don’t go to sleep, boys — this is when Ivan will attack.”

The stabs stared at him with troubled eyes. He stood up and leaned against the trench wall. A few minutes later, his head fell forward, and he was lost in paralytic sleep.

The veteran continued to exhort us, but the six of us who were left received his pleas with a silence as absolute as the silence of our eight corpses. Sleep was crushing us, as the guns had not quite managed to do. If the Russians had chosen that moment to attack, they would undoubtedly have saved a great many lives on their side. Our advance interception positions were manned only by sleepers and dead men. Although there must have been more noise from the big guns, and more flares, our ears picked up nothing for the next four hours.

The stabsfeldwebel was the first to wake. When we opened our eyes, we found him leaning over the Sudeten, who was sleeping beside him. The Sudeten had just cried out, which must have waked the stabs. We felt so ground down by exhaustion that every gesture made us grimace with pain. The sky once again was turning pink, and we could already see the chaos scattered across the plain. Everything was calm, and we couldn’t hear a sound. We stared out at the enormous space surrounding us. The horizon was almost a perfect circle, losing its line only in the hedge of woods to the north and to the south. We got out some tins of food, and tried to eat and talk a little.

“That’s right — you should build up your strength,” joked the stabs, who was living through his last moments. “I’d be surprised if this quiet lasted.”

“Maybe it will, though,” someone else said. “That show yesterday must have done in quite a few fellows. We might even get two or three days like this.”

“I doubt it,” said the stabs. “The Fuhrer has given the order to march east, and nothing can stop our troops now. The offensive will begin as soon as the sun is up.”

“Do you really think so?” asked Lindberg, excited as usual when something seemed to be going our way.

“Will our troops be able to knock out those damned Russian guns?”

“If it starts up again,” Hals muttered to me, “I’ll go right off my rocker.”

“Or be killed,” I answered. “We can’t expect the same luck we had yesterday.”

Hals stared at me as he chewed. The stabs, Lindberg, and the surviving grenadier were still talking, while Hals and I traded pessimistic predictions. Only the veteran went on eating in silence, his eyes, red from sleeplessness, fixed on the morning star.

“You two,” said the stabs pointing to Hals and me, “you keep your eyes open for another couple of hours, while the rest of us try to get some sleep. But first we have to get rid of these stiffs.” He waved at the eight mutilated corpses which were already beginning to swarm with big blue flies.

We watched the dead being stripped of their tags: for once we were not playing undertaker’s assistant, and guard duty seemed like a stroke of luck. The same curses and exclamations seemed to occur to survivors every time they had to deal with the remains of their slaughtered comrades.

“Fuck it… this fellow weighs a ton.”

“My God… he would have been better off if they’d finished him right away. Look at that!”

And then the metallic click as the identity tags slid off.

“Pach… he’s swimming in shit!”

We looked away with indifference; death had lost any dramatic importance for us; we were used to it. While the others were shifting the carrion, Hals and I continued to discuss our chances of survival.

“Hands and feet hurt more than other places, but aren’t really serious.”

“I wonder what happened to Olensheim.”

“Broken arm, I heard.”

“How’s your arm?”

“My shoulder hurts like hell.”

Behind our backs the others were hard at their filthy work.

“Heinz Veller, 1925, unmarried… poor fellow.”

“Let’s see your shoulder,” Hals said. “Maybe you’re badly hurt.”

“I don’t think so… just a bruise,” I said, unfastening my harness.

I was about to pull the cloth away from my shoulder when a roll of thunder shook the pure morning air. A second later, a hail of Russian shells fell all around us, and once again we collapsed in terror at the bottom of our hole.

“My God,” someone shouted. “It’s starting again.”

Hals was moving closer to me, through a shower of flying clods. He had just opened his mouth to say something when a violent explosion very near us drowned the sound of his voice.

“We’ll never be able to hold on,” he said. “We’d better get out.”

A shell fell so close to us that the gray earth wall of the trench glowed red in the light of its flames. A thick cloud of smoke enveloped us, and cubic yards of earth fell into our holes. We could hear cries of fright, and then the voice of the stabs: “Anyone hit?”

“God!” shouted the veteran through a spasm of coughing. “Where the hell’s our artillery?”

Lindberg had begun to tremble again. Then the Russian fire stopped. The veteran peered carefully out, and after him our seven heads rose above the rampart. We stared at the plain, which was still scattered with trailing clouds of dust. In the distance, besides the wood, someone was howling.

“They must be running short of shells,” said the stabs, grinning. “Otherwise, they wouldn’t have stopped so quickly.”

The veteran looked at him with his habitual resigned expression.

“I was just thinking the same thing about our artillery, stabsfeldwebel. I was wondering why they weren’t firing.”

“We’re preparing an offensive — that’s why our side is quiet. Soon we’ll see our tanks…”

The veteran stared at the horizon.

“I’m sure,” the stabs went on, “that our offensive will begin again, any minute now….”

But we were watching the veteran: his eyes were growing wider and wider, and so was his mouth, which seemed ready to howl.

The stabs had shut up too; we all followed the direction of our gunner’s eyes.

In the remote distance, a thin black line stretched from one end of the horizon to the other, and was moving toward us like a wave rolling toward the shore. We stood watching for a moment: the line was dense, and somehow unreal. Then the veteran shouted in a voice which paralyzed us with fear: “It’s the Siberians! They’re here! There must be at least a million of them!”

He gripped the butt of his F.M., and a demented laugh burst through his clenched teeth. In the distance, a confused tumult of thousands of roaring voices swelled like a hurricane wind.

“Every man to his post,” shouted the stabs, whose eyes remained fixed, as if hypnotized, on the irresistible Soviet tide.

We had all picked up our guns like automatons, and braced our elbows against the parapet. Hals was trembling like a leaf, and Lindberg, his number-two man, seemed unable to handle the belt of 7.7s.

“Get closer to me,” Hals shouted. “Get closer or I’ll kill you!”

Lindberg’s face was quivering, as if he were about to burst into tears. The veteran wasn’t shouting any more. His gun was on the crook of his shoulder, his finger was on the trigger, and his teeth were clenched tightly enough to break. The Soviet war cry was growing continuously louder and more distinct. It was like a long shout, muffled by its great volume.

We remained frozen by the danger, unable to judge its magnitude. Our stupor was too great; we were like paralyzed mice facing a snake. Then Lindberg broke down. He began to cry and shout, and left his post, throwing himself down on the trench floor.

“They’ll kill us! They’ll kill us! We’ll all be killed!”

“Get up!” shouted the stabs. “Get back to your post or I’ll shoot you right now!”

He dragged him to his feet, but Lindberg had gone as limp as a rag, and was streaming with tears.

“You bastard!” shouted Hals.

“Get killed then. I’ll take care of this damned thing myself.”

By now we could hear the Russian cries distinctly — a huge, continuous Ourrah!

“Maman!” I thought to myself. “Maman!”

“Ourrah! Ourrah pobieda!” muttered the veteran. “Just get a little closer.”

The human wave was now about four hundred yards from us. We could also hear the throb of engines, and see three planes, high in the brightening sky.

“Planes,” said the Sudeten. But we’d all noticed them already.

Our anxious eyes left the Russian horde for a moment. The airplane engines were screaming, as the planes dived down at top speed. “Messerschmitts!” shouted the stabs. “What guts!”

“Hurrah!” we all shouted. “Hurrah for the Luftwaffe!”

The three planes were strung out over the huge Russian thrust, spraying it with death. This seemed to be a signal for our mortars to open fire. They were hidden in the brush, and had lengthened their range. The spandaus which had survived the bombardment began to fire too, while the planes dived down, stimulating our troops to a feverish pitch of courage. I could feel the F.M. cartridges running through my hand at a dizzying speed. One clip was emptied, and we started another. Some of the big Wehrmacht guns had also opened fire, which must have had a lethal effect on the ranks of Bolsheviks, who were charging as in the days of Napoleon.

However, the human tide continued to roll toward us, making our scalps crawl. Only the weight of our helmets kept our filthy hair from standing straight up on our heads, although the idea of death itself no longer terrified us. My eyes remained fixed on the smoking metal of the F.M. in the steady hands of the veteran. The trembling belt of cartridges moved forward into the machine, shaken as if by a titanic frenzy.

“Prepare the grenades!” shouted the stabs, who was firing with his Luger braced on his left arm.

“It’s useless!” shouted the veteran even louder. “We haven’t got enough ammunition. We can’t stop them. Order the retreat, stabsfeldwebel, while there’s still time.”

Our frantic eyes moved from the lips of one man to the other. The Russian war cry, “Ourrah pobieda!” roared closer and closer.

The men were firing from their hips as they ran, and the air shook with the rushing flight of their bullets.

“You’re crazy,” answered the stabs. “No one can get away from here, and our boys should be coming any minute now — so keep firing, for the love of God.”

But the veteran had already loaded his F.M. and picked up the last magazine.

“You’re the one who’s crazy. ‘Any minute now’ is too late. But you go ahead and die right here, if that’s what you want.”

“No! No!” shouted the stabs.

The veteran had just jumped from the trench and was galloping toward the woods, bent over as far as he could, and calling to us as he ran. We grabbed our guns in frantic haste.

“Run!” shouted the Sudeten.

We all followed him. For a moment we were almost mad with terror, racing toward the shattered trees with our lungs on fire, while Russian bullets whistled through the air all around us. There were still seven of us, which seemed astonishing. The stabs had finally followed everyone else, but was still protesting and shouting: “Cowards! Shoot back! You’ll all be killed! Put up a fight!”

But we continued to run for the trees.

“Halt!” the stabs shouted. “Halt, you cowards!”

We had just caught up with the veteran, who had stopped for a minute behind what was left of a tree. I was right beside him.

“You bastard!” the stabs yelled. “I’ll report you for this!”

“I know,” the veteran said gasping, almost laughing. “But I’d take one of our firing squads over Ivan’s bayonet any day.”

We began to run again, climbing a pock-marked hillside stripped of its brush.

“Ai-ee,” howled the veteran, as Russian bullets struck the earth bank with hollow thuds.

“Hurry, stabs! Quick!” he shouted to our leader, who was still climbing the bank and would never complete his ascent.

“You’ll see. We’ll stop them when we get to our lines.”

The veteran had barely finished speaking when our noncom suddenly cried out and stood up, flapping his arms in an almost comical way. Then he ran back down the little hill and collapsed, with his face pressed into the ground.

“Damned stabs,” said the veteran. “I told him to hurry up.” Stripped of a leader for the second time, our 8th group continued its flight through the brush, staggering under our load of weapons. “Let’s stop for a second,” I said. “I can’t breathe.”

Hals had dropped to the ground, and was trying to regain control of his breath. Behind us we could hear guns popping, and an occasional German projectile falling toward the east.

“As if that would stop Ivan!” said the veteran. “Hasn’t anybody told them, for the love of God? Keep moving boys. This is no time to take it easy.”

“Thank God you were there,” Hals said to the veteran, “or we’d all be dead by now.”

“Damn right. Now beat it.”

We began to run again, despite the exhaustion which prevented us from grasping the critical importance of every step.

Three other landser joined us.

“You really scared us,” one of them said. “We thought you were Bolsheviks.”

We came to a small clearing, which we could see at a glance was not a natural glade but the site of one of our munitions dumps which must have been hit the day before by a Russian shell. We found a few fragments of a Pak, but everything else had been burned. A blackened corpse was still tangled in the branches of a fallen tree, some four yards above the ground. Suddenly we were surrounded by a full company of soldiers, ready to attack. A tall lieutenant ran to meet us.

“Sergeant?” he said, without wasting a moment.

“Killed,” answered the veteran, pulling himself approximately to attention.

“Damn!” said the officer. “Where’ve you come from? What company do you belong to?”

“Eighth Group, 5th Company: interception group of the Gross Deutschland Division, Herr Leutnant.”

“Twenty-first Group, 3d Company,” added the three fellows who’d just joined us. “We’re the only survivors.”

The officer looked at us, but said nothing. There was a continuous rumble of guns, and from time to time the shouts of the Siberians. “Where’s the enemy?” asked the lieutenant.

“In front of you, Herr Leutnant, everywhere. They just poured onto the plain; there must be several hundred thousand, anyway.”

“Keep going back. We’re not part of the Gross Deutschland. Reattach when you run into one of your own regiments.”

We didn’t wait for him to repeat himself, but plunged into the brush once again, while the officer turned back to his troops, shouting his orders. We passed many other groups ready for the slaughter, finally arriving at the hamlet where we had organized the defense post in the cellar a short time before. We stopped because a unit from our division had settled in there, but no one knew anything about the 5th Company. We were bombarded with questions, first by officers and then by anxious soldiers, but we were also allowed a few minutes’ rest in the shadow of a ruined house, and were brought something to drink. Everywhere, harassed soldiers were digging in, constructing defensive fortifications, camouflaging, checking over what had already been done. Toward noon, we could hear the battle approaching. A salvo from the Russian artillery made us run for the cellar we already knew, where we saw a fat soldier, a Gross Deutschland veteran, dancing and singing as the earth and air shook with explosions. His companions paid no attention to him.

“He’s off his rocker,” Hals said.

“He was that way already when we got here,” someone else explained.

Pretty soon, we too paid no more attention to the fat lunatic who was trying to execute a French cancan.

“He’s too much,” Hals muttered.

But the madman went right on waving his arms.

In the afternoon, five or six tanks went to meet the Russians, with several groups of grenadiers right behind them. In the distance we could hear fighting, which seemed to go on for about an hour. Then we saw the grenadiers coming back, surrounded by a thick swarm of fleeing soldiers. The woods beyond the orchards were red with fire. Scattered shots were falling all around the gasping soldiers, who were dragging their wounded comrades with them.

We realized that in a short time we would again be on the front line. The battle was drawing continuously closer, with its rumbling explosions and loud bursts of sound, and we felt ourselves gripped once again by the essential, inescapable anguish of the front. The counterattacks of the regiments whose positions we had crossed had been swamped, like our tanks, by the irresistible Soviet flood, for whom the most enormous losses seemed immaterial.

The hamlet had become an important strategic point, jammed with machine guns, mortars, and even an anti-tank gun — which no doubt was the reason for the hell we suffered during the next thirty-six hours. Some sixty yards ahead of us, two holes had been fitted out to hide two spandaus, just in front of the ones manned by the veteran and Hals, which we had re-installed in our position of the day before. To our right, protected by the ruins, a big geschnauz had been set up and was ready to fire, surrounded by some fifty other infantry weapons, rifles, machine guns, and grenade throwers — hidden in the ruins of four or five wooden sheds, or behind piles of wood, or half-collapsed garden fences. A little further along, behind a low wall, some of the soldiers who had fled were being regrouped and set to digging new trenches. To our left, in a trench beside the only structure left more or less intact, a mortar section had set up its position, swelled by numbers of retreating infantry troops, who were reattaching themselves wherever they could. Further to the left and somewhat behind us, above the road which cut through the hamlet, a 50-mm. anti-tank gun protected by earth built up into something like a bunker was aimed toward the orchards, and behind it, somewhat lower down, a radio truck had parked beside the tractor for the gun. We had watched the truck arrive while we were resting.

An endless stream of orders was pouring from our basement shelter.

Officers were regrouping all the fugitives, forming emergency units, and lengthening the line of defense above the hamlet, where there must have been a command post under the authority of a superior officer. From time to time, a bullet fired at random obliged one or another of our groups to dive for the ground. But, compared to what we’d been through the day before, nothing seemed particularly alarming. Only in the distance, about a mile away, violent contact persisted between the last of our retreating troops and advance Russian forces.

The veteran nodded as he listened to the rush above and beyond us.

“Well,” he kept saying, “they’re trying to make another Siegfried line up there. Do they really think that’s how they’ll stop the Russkis? You, preacher,” he turned to a chaplain, “ask your kind God to send us some lightning to help us out. We could use it, since there doesn’t seem to be any artillery.”

Everyone laughed, including the chaplain, who was less sure of his arguments now that he’d seen God’s creatures tearing each other to pieces without the slightest trace of remorse.

A feld looked into the shelter.

“What the hell’s a crowd like this doing in here?”

“Interception Group 8, 5th Company, feldwebel,” shouted the veteran, gesturing at the six of us. “The rest invited themselves in a little while ago.”

“O.K.,” said the sergeant. “Your group stay put, but everybody else out. There are still plenty of holes outside that need to be filled.” The other men groaned and got up.

“Feldwebel,” said the veteran. “Leave us a couple of extra men to help out, in case some of us are killed. We’ve got to be able to hold this place.”

“O.K.” But, before he was able to point to anyone, the fat lunatic who’d been dancing when we arrived proposed himself.

“I was a machine gunner outside Moscow, Herr Feldwebel, and nobody criticized my performance.”

“You stay then, and that fellow over there. The rest come with me.” So our group was enlarged by the fat man, whom we’d nicknamed “French Cancan,” and a thin, gloomy-looking character.

“I beg your pardon,” French Cancan said to us. “I hope you’ll forgive me for encumbering you with my voluminous presence. You must see that digging a foxhole big enough to take me would be an awful lot of work.”

He began to talk, enlarging on anything that came into his head. From time to time, an explosion made him fall silent, blinking his little pig eyes, but as soon as the danger was past he would start talking again, more voluble than ever.

“You can set your mind at ease about the hole we’ll dig for you,” said the veteran without a smile. “A few stones on your beer sack, and that’ll be it.”

“I don’t drink much beer,” said French Cancan. But Hals interrupted him.

“Things must be pretty rough outside,” he said. “Look — there are two of our tanks coming back.”

“The hell they’re ours,” said the veteran. “Those are T-34s, and our anti-tank boys had better notice them.”

We stared at the two monsters roaring toward us.

“God help us,” said Hals. “We’ll never be able to reach them with these pop guns.” He began to fire the heavy machine gun, and a moment later, the tanks were surrounded by flying clods. We also saw luminous impacts on their turrets, which otherwise seemed to be undamaged. Their long tubes, waving and balancing like elephants’ trunks, kept moving forward. An explosion sent us down to the floor, and a Russian shell screamed over us, before exploding somewhere beyond the hamlet. The tanks had just slowed down, and the second one was already shifting into reverse. Our geschnauz was still firing at the two monsters, which were now lurching slowly backward. A second Russian shell hit the left-hand wall of our building, and made the whole cellar shake.

There were several other explosions, but we no longer dared look out. Then an exultant shout from outside gave us a moment of courage, and we saw that the first tank, which had been knocked askew by one of our anti-tank guns, was drawing back, zigzagging on a single tread. It bumped the other tank, which wobbled from the impact, and turned, offering its flank to our geschnauz. A few minutes later, enveloped in a thick cloud of smoke, it joined the other tank, which had completed a half turn, and withdrew. One of them was spouting a thick stream of black smoke, and would certainly not get very far. We could hear all our men cheering.

“You see that, boys!” exclaimed the veteran. “That’s how to make Ivan run!”

We all laughed nervously, except the thin, dark boy. “Why are you looking so grim?” Hals asked him. “I’m sick,” the other replied.

“You mean scared,” the Sudeten said. “But that’s something we’ve all got.”

“Sure I’m scared. But I’m sick too. Every time I have to crap, blood pours out of my ass.”

“You ought to go to the hospital,” said the veteran.

“I’ve tried, but the major doesn’t believe me. What I’ve got he can’t see.”

“Yes. I guess a fellow’s better off without an arm, or with a big hole somewhere. That’s more spectacular.”

“Try and sleep,” the veteran said. “For the moment, we can do without you.”

A mess truck had arrived at the hamlet, and anyone who had the nerve to go out could get his mess tin filled. The simple fact that we were being supplied restored some of our confidence. We felt that we hadn’t lost all contact with the outside world. However, our panic returned at nightfall.

The fighting flared up again with renewed violence, and in short order the rest of the German troops were retreating from the Russians, who arrived before the last of the landser were able to get through. We could see the oncoming muzhiks everywhere, outlined against the shattered orchards. They were running toward us shouting, but the noise of our guns covered their voices. A horrible massacre had begun.

In the cellar, filled with smoke from our two spandaus, the air was almost un-breathable. The noise of the anti-tank gun, which must have been red-hot, had enlarged and multiplied the cracks in the ceiling, whose plaster fell onto our helmets like rain.

“Let’s take turns firing,” the veteran shouted to Hals. “Otherwise, the guns will melt.”

Lindberg, whose face had turned the color of his tunic, stuffed some dirt into his ears so that he wouldn’t hear any more. A fifth belt of cartridges was running through my torn hands into the red-hot machine, which the veteran kept on firing.

One of the two machine guns in front of us had been knocked out by a grenade. The other was still firing, sweeping across the ranks of Soviet troops, who were piling up in a horrible bottleneck. In spite of their desperate efforts to break through, waves of howling men were dying under our mortar and machine-gun fire. We had no idea what was happening beyond our range of vision. Directly in front of us, however, the enemy was taking a terrible beating.

Two or three fragments of shrapnel had come through the holes in the wall, but miraculously no one had been hit.

Then we heard a heavy rumbling sound, and two or three thousand soldiers ducked their heads a little lower. In front of us, among the living and the dead, hundreds of flares lit the darkness. For a moment, we were terrified. Then someone shouted: “It’s our artillery!”

“Thank God,” said the veteran. “I’d given up on them. O.K., boys, we’ll be able to stick it out — this means the Popovs can’t get through.”

The Wehrmacht artillery had finally regrouped, and was pouring down its deadly rain onto the enemy. In the darkness of our smoke filled hole, our faces lit up with relief.

“That’s more like it,” shouted Cancan. “Look at the pounding those Russkis are taking! That’s how it ought to be. Bravo!”

In front of us, we could see the earth flying into the air. Lindberg, who seemed almost mad with excitement, was yelling “Sieg Heil!” at the top of his lungs. Evidently the Russians were no better at standing up to our guns than we had been to their waves of assault the day before.

The German artillery lengthened its range, and pursued the terrified Russians into the trees beyond the orchards. The “Ourrah, pobieda!” of the Russians had been replaced by the death rattle of thousands of dying men, which filled the air with a horrible sound. We thought the hamlet had been saved.

“Let’s have a drink,” the veteran said. “We really ought to celebrate. I haven’t seen such slaughter the whole time I’ve been in Russia. We should be able to breathe a little easier now. You,” he said to Lindberg, pulling him from his corner. “Go find us something, instead of sitting there sniveling.”

It was easy to see that Lindberg had gone mad. He was alternately laughing and crying uncontrollably.

“Get going,” said Hals, who was fed up with him. “Run and find us something to drink.” He gave him a kick in the seat of his pants. Lindberg went off, holding his head in his hands. “Where will I find anything?” he asked.

“That’s your worry. At the radio truck — those fellows usually have something hidden — or anywhere else. Just don’t come back with empty hands.”

Outside, other soldiers were celebrating the rout of so many Popovs. In our cellar, the level of gaiety rose too. Cancan began to dance again, and we imitated him.

“For a while there I thought we were finished. Thank God the artillery stood by us.”

“Thank God’ is right!” laughed the grenadier who’d been with us for three days.

Tears of joy and relief were streaming from our reddened eyes and running down our blackened faces. The veteran was singing and calling for drink, and we trusted him. He had saved us that morning, and if he was rejoicing, so could we. He knew how the Russians operated, and had already done a lot of fighting. He told us we would have a lull — but he was wrong.

The Russian units had grown enormously, and were no longer the crippled divisions which had been shoved out of Poland by the Wehrmacht, and on into Russia for hundreds of miles. Times had changed. Beyond the cellar, beyond the hamlet and its trenches, beyond the thousands of muzhik cadavers and the flaming woods, the Soviet mass was moving into action again, trampling on its own dead and on ours, more powerful than ever, with hundreds upon hundreds of guns wheel to wheel. Soon their cries of victory would drown our laughter.

We had become five pairs of terrified eyes staring into the murky brilliance of the orchard, which was lit by thousands of dazzling, quick-burning fires. The German lines had already been attacked three times by Soviet troops, and three times had repulsed them with extraordinary effort and bravery. Between the assaults the big Russian guns pounded our troops and our artillery, which kept on shelling the enemy as long as it could. For five hours already, our laughter had been stilled, as “Stalin’s organs” hammered at our positions, killing many of our defending troops. The rest were either killed or driven mad by bombs. A few, like our group, who had been lucky enough to dig in solidly, went on firing haphazardly with what they had left. Our ceiling had finally caved in, and the hole in the roof acted like a chimney to let the smoke escape. The tall, thin boy with dysentery had taken Hals’s place at the spandau for a few moments. A bullet or fragment of shrapnel had grazed Hal’s forehead just below the visor of his helmet, and he was lying down beside three dying men who had been brought into our shelter to spend their last moments in relative tranquility.

Then Hals’s gun jammed, and only the veteran was left firing, stiff with exhaustion, helped by Cancan, the Sudeten, and me.

We felt a crushing sense of despair when Russian rockets erected a wall of white fire over our mortar trench. The geschnauz had been dismantled, and the anti-tank gunners had given up long since. Only a few spandaus supported by light infantry guns prevented the howling mob from taking the village. We were threatened with being overrun or surrounded any minute.

“I guess we’ll have to die now,” said the veteran. “Too bad for us, but I don’t see any other solution.”

From time to time, in the light of the flares, we could see the nest of machine gunners in front of us, heroically fighting on.

The Russians pressed their attack, bringing on their tanks as soon as it began to grow light, and death to anyone who remained upright. A shell destroyed what was left of our shelter, and sent us all rolling along the floor. Our cries of distress were mingled with the screams of the two machine gunners and then the shouts of revenge from the Russian tank crew as it drove over the hole, grinding the remains of the two gunners into that hateful soil.

Hals stood for a moment, fascinated by the spectacle. He was the only one of us who had remained on his feet, and the only one who could see what was happening. He told us later that the treads worked over the hole for a long time, and that as they manipulated their machine the Russian crew kept shouting, “Kaputt, soldat Germanski! Kaputt!”

We managed to get out about ten minutes before the Russians arrived. There was no longer any question in our minds: the rest of our forces had abandoned us. God knows how we managed to drag ourselves through the dead and the chaos and the lights of the flares. Our heads were filled with the sound of continuous explosions; it was impossible even to imagine silence. Hals was walking behind me, his hands red with blood from a wound in his neck. Lindberg, who had finally fallen silent, was staggering just ahead of us. The veteran was a short way back, shouting imprecations against the war, our artillery, and the Russians. The fat lunatic was beside me, letting off an endless stream of incomprehensible muttering. As the noise of battle grew louder, and the sky brighter, we forced ourselves into a run.

“We’re finished, Sajer,” Hals shouted. “We’re not going to make it.” I began to tremble and to cry with fright. My head hurt almost beyond bearing, aching with the noise of explosions and fusillades. We kept falling, standing up again, and running on, like automatons. Suddenly, Cancan cried out. I turned my head to look at him through my exhausted eyes, and it seemed as if I were dreaming. I looked at him without feeling, as I moved one foot in front of the other mechanically and with difficulty.

“Don’t let me fall,” said Cancan imploringly.

His hands were clutching his belly, holding in something foul, like the offal on the floors of slaughterhouses.

“How can you go on like that?” I asked him, only half aware of what I was saying.

Suddenly he cried out again, and doubled over onto himself. “Come on,” said the Sudeten in a thick voice like a drunkard’s. “There’s nothing we can do for him.”

We staggered on like sleepwalkers. We heard the sound of an engine behind us, and turned to see what new danger might be threatening. A dark shape was jolting rapidly toward us with all its lights extinguished. We summoned up what was left of our energy, and tried to scatter. The half-track, which was almost on top of us, gleamed with dull reflections of the blazing explosions all around it.

“Climb aboard, friends,” shouted a kindly soul.

We stumbled toward the vehicle, which turned out to be the one that had moved the geschnauz into position above our cellar in the hamlet. Three fellows who had also been in the hamlet had managed to get it started. We pulled ourselves onto the narrow platform, which was almost totally occupied by the heavy, dismantled gun, and the engine started up again, carrying us across a heavily rutted piece of ground which must have been the site of several gun emplacements. The soldiers standing beside piles of empty ammunition boxes waved to us as we passed, their faces drawn with exhaustion.

“Clear out!” our driver shouted to them. “Ivan is almost here!” One of the artillery tractors was blazing brightly. Perhaps its flames dazzled our driver. In any case, we plunged nose first into a deep crater, and everyone was thrown out. I think I went through the windshield. I felt a stabbing pain in my shoulder, which was already sore, and found myself doubled over against one of the front wheels of the machine.

“God damn!” someone said. “What are you doing to us?”

“Shut up!” shouted the driver. “I think I’ve broken my knee.” I stood up, gripping my shoulder. My left arm seemed to be paralyzed.

“Your face is covered with blood,” said the Sudeten, looking at me.

“Only my shoulder hurts, though.”

I saw Hals lying on the ground. Already wounded, he had been thrown a considerable distance, and was either unconscious or dead. I shook him and called him, and he lifted one of his hands to his neck. Thank God he wasn’t dead. Somebody tried to drive our machine out of the hole, but its wheels only dug into the ground and spun helplessly. We walked on to the next artillery position, where the fellows were just pulling up stakes. They loaded us onto trucks along with their gear, and we left in search of a quieter spot.

In the distance, the horizon glowed red.

“You’ve come from that inferno?” one of the artillerymen asked.

He was talking to the veteran, who didn’t answer because he’d dropped into a deep, anesthetic sleep. Within a few minutes, almost everyone had done the same, despite the rough jolts of our progress. Only Hals and I remained half awake. My shoulder prevented me from moving, and caused me great pain.

Someone was leaning over me: my face was covered with blood. The shattered glass of the windshield had cut me in hundreds of places, so that I looked as if my blood were pouring from a deep wound.

“This one must be dying,” said the fellow looking down at me.

“I’m not!” I shouted back.

Sometime later, we were all helped down. Every movement hurt my shoulder, and the pain, intensified by fatigue, made me feel sick at my stomach. I began to retch and vomit violently. Two soldiers helped me to a building where the wounded were stretched out on the floor. Hals joined me with his bloody neck, and our driver, who was hopping on one leg.

“You in a bad way?” Hals asked. “You’re not dying, are you, Sajer?”

His words reached me through a loud buzzing noise, across an immense distance.

“I want to go home,” I said, between two spasms of retching.

“So do I,” Hals said. He stretched out on his back and fell asleep. Sometime later, we were wakened by men from the sanitary service, who had come to sort out the dead and wounded. I felt a set of cold fingers lifting my eyelids, as someone peered into my eyes.

“It’s all right, boy,” he said. “Where are you hurt?”

“My shoulder. I can’t move it.”

The orderly unbuckled my straps, which made me howl with pain.

“No visible wounds, Herr Major,” he said to a tall man wearing a cap.

“What about his head?”

“Nothing there,” the other said. “His face is bloody, that’s all. And there’s something wrong with his shoulder.”

The orderly moved my left arm back and forth, and I screamed. The major nodded, and the orderly pinned a white slip of paper to my tunic. He did the same to Hals and to the driver, and then helped the driver into an ambulance which was already nearly full. Hals and I remained on the ground. Toward noon, two more orderlies came back to deal with the men like us, who’d been left to wait. They tried to help me to my feet.

“That’s all right,” I said. “I can walk. It’s my shoulder that hurts.” The orderlies lined up everybody who could walk, and sent us to the canteen.

“Everyone strip!” shouted a feld.

The pain of undressing nearly made me faint. Two fellows helped me, and my swollen, battered shoulder was bared. We were each given an injection in the thigh. Then the orderlies washed our wounds with ether, and stuck plaster on anyone who needed it. Beside the door they were sewing up a fellow who had a huge rip down his back, and who screamed as the instruments bit into his flesh. Two of them came over and grabbed hold of my shoulder. I howled and cursed, but they paid no attention. With a cracking sound which sent spasms of pain right down to my toes, they pulled my dislocated arm back into place, and moved on to the next case.

I found Hals outside. They had just stuck a gauze bandage onto his neck with a long strip of tape. My friend had been wounded by a metal fragment three inches below the first wound he had received at Kharkov.

“Next time, they’ll get me in the head,” he said.

A short distance along, we found the veteran, the Sudeten, Lindberg, and the grenadier asleep and snoring on the grass. We lay down beside them, and were very quickly asleep too.

And that was the end of the battle for Belgorod. The German offensive had lost all the ground it had taken at such cost during those ten days, and even more. A third of the forces engaged in the fighting had been killed, including many of the Hitlerjugend.

What happened to the beautiful young man with the Madonna face and his friend with clear, loyal eyes, and the student who spoke so well?

Probably they were left lying on the mutilated soil of Russia, like the melancholy harmonica player who sang of his desire to return to his peaceful, green valley, if only to die there.

There is no sepulcher for the Germans killed in Russia. One day some muzhik will turn over their remains and plough them under with his fertilizer, and sow his furrow with sunflower seeds.