The Forgotten Soldier

10. “GOTT MIT UNS”

The officers and soldiers waiting to direct us were not particularly agreeable, and the military police, with their badges glistening damply in the fog, were downright unpleasant.

All organizations have police, and some of them must be fine fellows. However, we wanted to forget the police at Romny, and on the retreat from the Don, to preserve some of the joy we felt at being back in the West.

We tramped along, herded by a couple of fellows in a sidecar covered with mud. They didn’t bother to line us up in threes, but let us walk any way we liked, almost as if we were out for a stroll — which was a pleasant variation of usual practice. Maybe they knew what a hard time we’d had, and had decided to give us a break. Now that we were out of it, maybe everything was going to be all right. The sidecar forced us to increase our pace. We went on for about a mile and a half, stumbling through the mud and splattering our companions, to arrive finally at a big camp, where the men who’d crossed ahead of us were already waiting. It was dark and a fine rain was falling. We could see the barbed wire gleaming with wetness. Two soldiers with machine guns under their arms waved us through a makeshift entrance. Then we stopped, and the sidecar drove rapidly away. We stood where we’d been left, surrounded by barbed wire, not knowing what to think.

We tried to tell ourselves that this was just how things happened in the army, and that this welcome seemed excessively cold because we were fresh from the hell of Konotop. They were probably making us wait so that they could take us straight to clean, comfortable barracks, where we would sleep and regain our strength. Or perhaps they were getting our passes ready. This last idea filled us with joy, and annihilated the liquid mud, and the rain, and the barbed wire, which in reality held us prisoner.

We waited for about two hours. A second group of new arrivals joined us. The rain had become heavier, and we were all streaming with water. Quite nearby, we could see a row of huts with firm roofs and weather-tight windows, to which men were being sent in groups of twenty. We waited expectantly, certain that we were living through the last of our miseries. The fellows who went into the huts weren’t coming out again. They must already be sleeping on soft beds, the lucky bastards.

An hour later, it was my turn, along with nineteen others. There were two noncoms and a lieutenant in our group. We went into the building, which had its own generator and was brightly lit. Our state of extreme filth suddenly made us feel awkward. Military men of all ranks and military police were sitting facing us behind a row of long tables. An obergefreiter came up to us, yelling as in the old days at training camp. He told us to get over to the tables to be screened. We should be ready to produce on demand the papers and equipment entrusted to us by the army. This reception only increased our sense of astonished unease.

“First, your documents,” an M.P. shouted across the table.

The lieutenant, who was directly ahead of me in the line, was being interrogated.

“Where is your unit, lieutenant?”

“Annihilated, Herr Gendarme. Missing or dead. We had a hard time.”

The M.P. said nothing to this, but went on leafing through the lieutenant’s papers.

“Did you leave your men, or were they killed?”

The lieutenant hesitated for a moment. We were all watching in frozen silence.

“Is this a court-martial?” The lieutenant’s voice was exasperated.

“You must answer my questions, Herr Leutnant. Where is your unit?”

The lieutenant clearly felt caught in a trap, as did we all. Very few of us could have answered that question with any precision.

He tried to explain. But there is never any point in explaining to an M.P., their powers of comprehension are always limited to the form they wish to fill.

Further, it appeared that the lieutenant was missing a great many things. This fact obsessed his interrogator. It didn’t matter that the man in front of him was effecting a miracle simply by staying on his feet, and had lost at least thirty pounds since entering the army. The M.P. only noted that the Zeiss field-glasses, which are part of an officer’s equipment, were missing. Also missing were a map case, and the section telephone, for which the lieutenant was responsible. In fact, the lieutenant, who had managed to save only his life, was missing far too many things. The army did not distribute its papers and equipment only to have them scattered and lost.

A German soldier is expected to die rather than indulge in carelessness with army property.

The careless lieutenant was assigned to a penal battalion, and three grades were stripped from his rank. At that, he could think himself lucky.

The lieutenant’s eyes were wild, and he seemed to be fighting for breath. He was a pitiful and terrifying sight. Two soldiers dragged him off to the right, toward a group of broken men, who’d been dealt with in the same way.

Then it was my turn.

I felt stiff with fright. I pulled my crumpled documents from an inside pocket. The M.P. riffled through them, throwing me a reproving look. His bad temper seemed to soften somewhat at the sight of my apprehensive, mortified face, and he continued his inventory in silence.

Fortunately, I had been able to reintegrate with my unit, and had saved the scrap of white cardboard which stated that I had left the infirmary to take part in an attack. My head was swimming, and I thought I was going to faint. Then the M.P. read off a list of articles which ordinary soldiers like myself were supposed to carry at all times. The words rolled off his tongue, but I didn’t catch them quickly enough, and didn’t immediately produce the items still in my possession. The M.P. then treated me to a certain German word, which I was hearing for the first time. It appeared I was missing four items, including that fucking gas mask I had deliberately abandoned.

My pay book was passed from hand to hand to be inspected and stamped. In my panic, I made an idiotic move. Hoping to gain favor, I produced nine unused cartridges from my cartridge belt. The M.P.’s eyes lit on these like the eyes of an alpinist who spots a good foothold.

“You were retreating?”

“Ja, Herr Unteroffizier.”

“Why didn’t you try to defend yourself? Why didn’t you fight?” he shouted.

“Ja, Herr Unteroffizier.”

“What do you mean — ja?”

“We were ordered to retreat, Herr Unteroffizier.”

“God damn it to hell!” he roared. “What kind of an army runs without shooting?”

My pay book came down the line. My interrogator grabbed it, and riffled the pages for a moment. His eyes traveled from the filthy, tattered page to my face.

I followed the movement of his lips, which might be about to assign me a penal battalion — to the life of a prisoner, to forward positions, mine clearing, infrequent leaves always confined to camp, so that the word “liberty” lost all meaning, and the cancellation of mail…. I held back my tears with difficulty.

Finally the M.P.’s rigid fingers handed back my liberty. I had not been assigned to a penal battalion, but my emotion overwhelmed me anyway. As I picked up my pack, I sobbed convulsively, unable to stop. A fellow beside me was doing the same.

The crowd of men still waiting stared at me in astonishment. Like a miserable tramp, I ran past the line of tables and left by a door opposite the one we’d entered by. I felt that I had disgraced myself.

I rejoined my comrades, who were standing in the rain in the other part of the camp. They weren’t resting on the soft beds we’d dreamed of before coming to this place, and the rain streaming down their shoulders and backs was another hope disappointed.

However, despite the slap in the face we had just received from our grateful country, we could still count ourselves lucky.

Three days later, we learned that the day after our crossing, with six or seven thousand of our men still waiting on the east bank, the Russians had attacked. They were probably discouraged by their failure to retake Kiev, where the heavily outnumbered German Army was fighting desperately, and had decided to clean up the pockets still occupied by the Wehrmacht. Twenty-four hours after our group left, our comrades on the east bank were suddenly dazzled by the flares that flooded their temporary encampments with brilliant light.

The lookouts in the shallow trenches scratched into the hills overlooking the river, who were supposed to provide an illusion of protection, watched the shouting hordes of Russian infantry flood down to the river. These soldiers quickly realized they would never be able to stop that irresistible tide, and succumbed to a moment of absolute panic. Some ran, through the deafening explosions of Soviet rockets which drowned out our spandaus and light mortars. The Russians, driven by expectations of victory and by the exhortations of the people’s commissars, pushed forward regardless of the cost.

The cost was enormous. Each German projectile seemed to hit home. But Ivan continued his inexorable advance. On the mud landing stage from which I had embarked, panic gave way to madness. One of the rafts, which was loading up as usual, was swamped by a human flood. The few who managed to keep cool heads shouted for calm, and sometimes even used their guns. In the grotesque, trampling rush, mooring ropes gave way, and the raft drifted out a few yards, shuddering under the weight of the mob which had overrun it. Hands trying to grip the edges of the raft were trampled and crushed by heavy boots. On the landing stage, friends were fighting each other. Some of the officers committed suicide. The raft moved out another couple of yards, and then suddenly tipped away from the bank like a child’s toy. A loud cry mingled with the sound of the approaching battle, and two hundred terrified men floundered in the water, clinging together or trying to swim. A great many sank and drowned instantly.

At that moment, Ivan appeared at the crest of the hills, having swept the defenders aside. Drunk with excitement, the Russian soldiers dropped to the ground on one knee, and picked off Germans as if they were clay pigeons at a fair. A few Germans, white as ghosts, fired back with their F.M.s, but their numbers were so small the Russians scarcely noticed them. Several thousand others were running, screaming, trying to get away, and dying as they ran. The Russians also fired at the men in the water who were trying to swim, using flares to light the darkness.

An hour after they had appeared on the skyline, the Russians reached the river. There were a few more scattered shots, but their victory was complete. A third of the remaining German troops were taken prisoner, and for the rest everything was over. Their military responsibilities had come to an end, and they would never again be victimized by military police.

At the reception camp, we stood in the rain a little longer, and then three blacked-out trucks appeared to collect us. Despite the appalling road and the overload which threatened to burst the slatted sides, fifty soldiers wrapped in sacking were piled onto each truck with all their equipment. I was stuffed into one of these human ant heaps: that is to say, one leg was buried in the swarm, while the other dangled out. I was astride the back flap, but there were other fellows hanging on for dear life who were almost entirely outside the truck. We rolled off through the quiet night. I felt completely disoriented, and hadn’t the faintest sense of our direction.

An hour later, we drew up to a group of buildings, which first appeared as a vague, blurred mass in the dim, bluish light. We realized that an unusual rush of activity was taking place all around, and then gradually perceived that we were looking at a row of structures bordered on both sides by tree-lined roads jammed with innumerable vehicles. There were troops everywhere, on foot or arriving and leaving on high-speed motorcycles, and many officers and M.P.s. The trucks jerked to a sudden halt, and we were told to get off. Although we still understood that we’d been saved, we were beginning to feel that we’d had enough. We were famished and dropping with sleep.

We had to wait for another half hour before someone came to take charge of us. The rain fell steadily. Was it raining anywhere else? Was it raining in France? I tried to think of my house and my bed. Where were they now? In which direction? But I could only summon up confused and fragmented memories of the life I had left behind. My only world was the vast anonymity of Russia, which seemed to be engulfing all of us, absorbing entire regiments, so that even their names vanished.

Finally, a noncom came over to us. Our group leader handed him our papers, which he examined with a dimmed flashlight. Then he ordered us to collect our gear and follow him. At last, we entered the shelter of a roof, an amenity to which we’d grown so unaccustomed that we stared at it as if it were the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.

“You’ll be sent to your units later,” shouted the noncom, who, like the rest of us, seemed to have had just about enough. “While you’re waiting, try to get a little rest.”

He didn’t have to repeat himself. We explored the darkness of the but with our pocket flashlights, and discovered that it contained a couple of benches and four or five large tables. Everyone stretched out where he could, making pillows of the nearest leg, or buttocks, or boot. The discomfort seemed unimportant beside the fact that at last we were out of the rain. Some fellows began to snore immediately. Others tried to pretend they were somewhere else. Despite our harsh reception, we all had a sense that from now on everything would go better, and that once again life was offering its possibilities. We all thought of the leave we would surely be getting, which was now only a question of patience.

However, soldiers fresh from the front cannot indulge the luxury of daydreams. The accumulated lack of sleep gripped our temples like an iron band. Like people suffering a serious illness, we dropped swiftly from consciousness into deep sleep.

We probably slept for a long time. It was broad daylight when a burst of noise suddenly woke us. Then a long blast of a whistle ordered us to our feet. We were all filthy and horribly crumpled. If the Führer had seen us, he would either have sent us all home or had us shot.

The noncom who had waked us looked at us with an expression of surprise. Perhaps he too had never imagined that the German Army could be reduced to such a state. He spoke to us, but I no longer remember what he said. I was still only half awake, and understood that he was talking, without really listening to him. We gathered that we were to prepare for departure. We were going to be returned to our units.

One of the huts had been fitted with showers, but so many men were waiting that we clearly had no chance of getting inside. Instead, we were given some empty gasoline vats full of hot water. However, we all felt too exhausted to want to wash. Our days of training, when we were appalled by the smallest spot on our tunics, seemed very far away. Our concern had shifted from hygiene to something far more urgent. Furthermore, it was bitterly cold, and no one wanted to take anything off — not even the sacking draped over our shoulders.

I was so cold I was shivering, and I wondered if I was getting sick again. We had to go outside for food, and lined up like a column of tramps beside the field kitchen. A cold east wind was blowing damp patches of fog in from the river. Two cooks emptied large ladles of hot soup into our chipped and filthy mess tins. We had been expecting the usual ersatz, but it seemed that the time for that had long gone by. As a special gesture, they were serving us eleven-o’clock soup early. The burning-hot mixture made us feel much better.

A hauptmann stared at us as he walked by, and then turned back, obviously looking for our unit leader. The lieutenant who filled this position got up and walked over to him.

“Kamerad,” the captain said, “you and your men have been given this opportunity to clean up. I think you should make the most of it.”

“Jawohl, Herr Hauptmann.”

The lieutenant ordered us over to the vats, which were standing under the eaves of one of the huts. We looked enviously across at the fellows who were going to get into hot showers. At least three hundred men were waiting for an experience which seemed like a blessing from heaven, so close to the front.

Those at the front of the line had more or less undressed, and were scratching the lice which had settled in a ring at the belt line, when we were suddenly ordered to prepare for immediate departure. For me, at least, this was a reprieve. Stripping in that icy air had begun to seem impossibly difficult. I much preferred to keep my lice relatively warm between my gray under-vest and my stomach, which was rumbling with hunger.

I was certainly ill again — I no longer had any doubts.

I couldn’t stop shivering, and felt cold right down to the soles of my feet. We piled into the open trucks, overloading them as usual. But no one com plained. No matter how squashed we were, it was better than walking. However, I was soon caught in a grotesque predicament.

The trucks rolled off down a road which the rains had transformed into a swamp. The truck behind us gave off two sprays of liquid mud as steady and uniform as the sprays of a municipal fountain. I was strangely reminded of the retreat from the Don. Was Russia nothing but a vast sea of mud? As always, we were driving toward a northern horizon marked by dark forests. The echoes of occasional explosions drifted to us on the wind, but they didn’t sound serious. The sky was overcast and threatened rain.

Huddled between two companions, I swayed to the slow rhythm of the trucks struggling through the mire. I felt more and more uncomfortable and ill. My lips and face seemed to be burning, and the slightest motion of the air felt like ice against my skin. My stomach was griped by a brutal pain, which traveled outward through my body, in waves of violent shivers. At first I thought this must be an after-effect of the hard times we’d been through, especially as I had never entirely recovered from my illness at Konotop. I knew that I must look more cadaverous than ever. My intestines were twisting themselves in knots. Naturally, no one gave a damn, and besides I was certainly not the only one with a pain in my gut. Then my pain became so imperative that I tried to double over, despite the crowding and all my gear.

The fellow beside me noticed my restlessness, and leaned his hairy face toward me: “Take it easy, friend…. We’ll soon be there.” But he clearly had no more idea where we were going than I did.

“I’ve got a hell of a pain in the gut.”

“And this is a hell of a time to crap.”

Suddenly, I realized what was the matter with me. My stomach was churning with increasing violence and threatened to explode. I certainly couldn’t stop a military convoy because my guts were about to turn inside out. I had to laugh at my predicament despite my shivers and cramps and salivating mouth. But I also had to try to think of a solution. The convoy was now in the middle of a forest, where there was no reason to stop. And, even if we came to a camp, I couldn’t just leave my group the moment we arrived, without any apparent motive. If I did that, they might even shoot me as a deserter.

But could I hold out much longer? I tried desperately to think of something else, but failed. My pains increased, and I broke out in gooseflesh.

Finally, my gut simply opened.

“Move over a little, fellow,” I said, grimacing. “I’ve got terrible diarrhea, and I can’t wait any more.”

The truck was making a lot of noise, and no one seemed to hear me. I shoved with my elbows, and shouted louder. The fellows on either side of me moved back about four inches, but paid no further attention. I could feel myself blushing with embarrassment. I tried to undo my clothes, jostling one of my neighbors.

“What’s the hurry?” he said. “You’ll be able to crap when we get there.”

“But I’m sick, damn it.”

He muttered something and moved one of his feet, although there was really nowhere to put it. No one laughed; in fact, everybody seemed entirely indifferent to my plight. I struggled desperately with my clothes, but in the cramped space, encumbered with all my equipment, I was unable to free the lower half of my body. Finally, I realized there was nothing I could do. My bowels emptied, pouring a stream of vile liquid down my legs. No one seemed even to notice my condition, which left me in a state of indescribable misery. My stomach was knotted with pain, and I collapsed into a stupefied torpor which prevented me from appreciating the ridiculous aspects of my situation. In fact, the situation was not particularly funny. I was really seriously ill, and my head was spinning and burning with fever. This was the first attack of a chronic dysentery which has plagued me ever since.

Our journey continued for a considerable time, during which I suffered two further attacks of uncontrollable diarrhea. Although my state of filth was scarcely aggravated by these eruptions, I would gladly have exchanged ten years of my life for a chance to clean off and fall asleep in a warm bed. I was shaken by alternate fits of shivers and burning heat, and the pain in my intestines grew more and more intense.

After what seemed like an eternity, we arrived at our new camp, and I was dragged from the truck for roll call. My head was swimming, but, although fainting would have guaranteed the quickest route to the infirmary, I struggled to remain conscious. Somehow, I managed to stay upright among my comrades, each preoccupied with his own fate. However, my ghastly appearance did not escape the attention of the inspecting officer, and my gasping replies to his questions interrupted the regular rhythm of roll call.

“What’s the matter with you?” he asked.

“I’m sick… I… I…” I was barely able to stammer a reply, and saw him only as a blurred and shifting silhouette.

“What’s bothering you?”

“My stomach… I have a fever… Could I please go and wash, Herr…”

“Take him to the medical service as an urgent case,” continued the officer, speaking to a subordinate.

The latter stepped forward and took me by the arm. Someone was actually trying to help me! I could hardly believe it.

“I’ve got acute diarrhea, and I have to clean off,” I groaned as we tottered off.

“You’ll find everything you need in the sanitary block, Kamerad.”

At the infirmary, I stood in line behind some thirty other men. The pains in my abdomen tore at my entrails with an intensity which made me scream. I knew that my gut was about to pour out some more filth. I staggered from the line, trying to make my step firm, and followed the signs to the latrine. When that series of intestinal explosions was finished, I hesitated before pulling up my revolting trousers. Although I was in an incredible state of filth, I noticed that my excrement was streaked with blood. I went back to the infirmary to stand in line for another half hour.

Then my turn came. One after the other, I peeled off my nauseating rags.

“My God, what a stink,” exclaimed one of the orderlies, whose outlook was probably identical with that of the motto over the gate of our training camp: EIN LAUS, DER TOD!

I looked at the long table where members of the sanitary service were sitting like judges. The only plea I could possibly make was guilty. “Dysenteric diarrhea,” muttered one of the judges, obviously shocked by the shit which ran down below my knees.

“Get to the showers, you pig,” the other said. “We’ll look at you when you’re clean.”

“There’s nothing I’d like better. You don’t know how long I’ve been dreaming of a shower.”

“Right over that way,” said the first fellow, who was clearly anxious to be rid of me.

I threw my coat over my bony shoulders, and went across to the showers. Luckily, no one was there but a bewildered-looking boy who was scrubbing the floor.

“Any hot water in the showers?”

“Do you want hot water?” His voice was gentle and friendly.

“Do you have any?”

“Yes. Two big vats for 16th Company laundry. I could let you have some, though. The showers only run cold.”

Through my fever, I saw him as another bastard who’d do a favor for cigarettes or something else.

“I don’t have any cigarettes.”

“That doesn’t matter. I don’t smoke.”

I stood where I was, considerably surprised.

“Well, then, could you do it right away?”

But the fellow was already hurrying off. “Go in there,” he said, pointing over his shoulder to an open cubicle. “You’ll be more comfortable.”

Two minutes later he was back, carrying two buckets of steaming water.

“Were you at the front?” he asked.

I looked at him, wondering what he was trying to find out. He was still smiling his foolish smile.

“Yes. And I’ve had enough of it, too, if you want to know. I’m sick and disgusted.”

“It must be terrible… Feldwebel Hulf says that pretty soon now he’ll be sending me off to get killed.”

I went on with the extraordinary relief of washing off my backside, but looked up at him with some surprise.

“There are always fellows like that, who enjoy sending other fellows out to get it in the neck. What do you do?”

“I was called up three months ago. I left Herr Feshter, and after basic training in Poland was enrolled in the Gross Deutschland.”

“That’s a familiar story,” I thought to myself.

“Who’s Herr Feshter?”

“My boss. A little strict, but nice anyway. I’ve worked for him since I was a kid.”

“Your parents sent you out so young?”

“I don’t have any parents. Herr Feshter took me straight from the orphanage. There’s a lot of work on his farm.”

I stared at him: someone else whose luck had been a little thin. He was still smiling. I clutched my stomach, which once again felt as if it might explode.

“What’s your name?”

“Frösch. Helmut Frösch.”

“Thank you, Frösch. Now I must try to get into the infirmary.”

I was preparing to leave when I noticed a short, thickset figure standing in the doorway watching us. Before I could say a word, the man shouted: “Frösch!”

Frösch spun around, and ran back to the wet rag he’d left on the floor. I went out slowly, trying to pass by unnoticed. But the feldwebel in any case was concentrating on Frösch.

“Frösch! You left your work. Why?”

“I was only asking him about the war, sergeant.”

“You were forbidden to talk during punishment fatigue, Frösch, except to answer my questions.”

Frösch was about to reply when a sonorous whack cut him short. I looked back. The feld’s hand, which had just given it to Frösch full in the face, was still raised. I took myself off as fast as I could, as a torrent of abuse poured over my unfortunate companion.

“Bastard!” I shouted silently at the feld.

At the sanitary service, the aide looked at me without enthusiasm. I understood immediately that he was one of these fastidious fellows for whom a day of filthy scarecrows like myself was less than a pleasure, especially as he received no fees to encourage civility. He fingered all my parts, poking me a little all over, and concluded his examination by sticking his finger into my mouth to check the condition of my teeth. Then he added a string of numbers and letters to a card clipped to my papers, and I was sent down the line of tables to the surgical service. Five or six fellows there checked my documents and asked me to remove some of the clothes I’d thrown over my shoulders. A brute who must have been a wild man of the woods in civilian life gave me a shot in the left pectoral muscle, and I was taken to the hospital hut, where there were beds for the officially disabled. My papers were checked once again, and then, like a miracle, I was shown to a bed — which in fact was only a simple pallet covered with gray cloth. There were no sheets or blankets, but it was nonetheless a genuine bed on a wooden frame, in a dry room protected by a roof.

I collapsed onto the bed, to relish its comforts. My head was ringing with fever, and filled with a host of half-realized impressions. I had grown so used to sleeping on the ground that the degree of well being a soft, clean mattress can induce struck me with astonishment. The room was full of cots like mine on which fellows were lying, whimpering and groaning. But I paid no more attention to them than one does to a hotel carpet which is not entirely to one’s liking. I felt almost lightheaded with well-being, despite the pain which tore at my entrails. I took off some of my clothes and spread my filthy coat and ground sheet over my body instead of blankets, burying myself in them and in the sense that I had been saved. I lay like that for a long time, trying to control the cramps which knotted my guts.

After a while, two orderlies arrived, carrying a cumbersome piece of equipment. Without a word of warning, they pulled off my covers.

“Turn over, kamerad, and let us have a look at your ass. We want to clean out your gut.”

Before I understood what was happening, they had administered a copious enema, and moved on to the next patient, leaving me with some five quarts of medicated liquid gurgling painfully in my distended abdomen.

I don’t know anything about medicine, but an enema has always struck me as a strange treatment for someone who is suffering from excessively frequent evacuations. The fact is that two repetitions of this operation enormously increased the misery of the next day and night, which I spent tottering to and from the latrine. This was situated some distance from the infirmary, which meant fighting the strong, icy wind which blew continuously. Any benefits I might have received from this amount of time ostensibly resting in bed were thus reduced to almost nothing.

Two days later, I was pronounced cured, and sent back to my company on rubber legs. My company — the one which had been organized as an assault group — was stationed in the immediate vicinity, only five or six miles from divisional headquarters, in a tiny hamlet which had been half abandoned by the Russian civilian population. Despite my intense joy at reuniting with my friends all of whom were present, including Olensheim — my condition remained as precarious as it had been the day before I went to the infirmary.

My close friends, Hals, Lensen, and the veteran, made a special effort over me, and did everything they could to help me get well. Above all, they insisted on pouring large quantities of vodka down my throat — which, according to them, was the only reliable remedy for my complaint. However, my precipitate visits to the latrine continued despite these excellent attentions, and the sight of my bloody excrement worried even the veteran, who went with me on these trips in case I fainted. Twice, on the urging of my friends, I tried to re-enter the hospital, which was inundated with wounded from the battle of Kiev. But my papers, stating that I had been cured, presented an insuperable barrier.

I began to look like a tragic protagonist, made of some curious, white diaphanous substance, instead of flesh and blood. I no longer left the pallet which had been given to me in one of the isbas. Fortunately, a reduced service requirement allowed me to stay where I was. Several times, my friends took guard duty for me and did the other jobs which would ordinarily have been required of me. Everything was going well in the company, which was still commanded by Wesreidau. Unfortunately, we were still in a combat zone, which meant that at any minute we might be sent to some exposed position. Wesreidau knew that I would not be able to function in combat conditions as well as I knew it myself.

One evening, about a week after I’d left the infirmary, I became delirious, and was completely unaware of a fierce aerial battle which took place directly overhead.

“From some points of view, you’re really the lucky one,” Hals joked.

Hals even went to speak to Wesreidau about me. But, before he was able to explain himself, Wesreidau stood up and smiled.

“My boy, we’ll be pulling out almost immediately. They’re sending us to an occupied zone at least sixty miles farther west. We’ll have a certain amount to do there, but even so it will seem like a holiday after this. Tell your sick friend to hang on for another twenty-four hours and spread the news that we’re moving. We’ll all be better off.”

Hals clicked his heels hard enough to shatter his shins, and burst out of Wesreidau’s quarters like a hurricane. He looked into every but he passed, shouting out the good news. When he reached us, he shook me from my torpor.

“You’re saved, Sajer! You’re saved!” he shouted. “We’ll be leaving soon for a real rest.” He turned to a couple of fellows who shared the hut with us. “We’ve got to get all the quinine we can for him. He has to hang on another twenty-four hours.”

Despite my overwhelming weakness, Hals’s intense joy communicated itself to me, and ran through me like a restorative balm.

“You’re saved!” he said again. “And just think: with a fever like yours, they’re bound to take you in a hospital — and they won’t cut it off your leave either. You are a lucky dog!”

Every time I moved I felt it in my stomach, which seemed to be rapidly liquefying. Nonetheless, I began to collect my things. Everyone around me was doing the same. I put my packet of letters within easy reach. A voluminous backlog of correspondence had been kept for me by the divisional postal service. There were at least a dozen letters from Paula, which greatly eased my illness, as well as three from my parents, full of questions, anxiety, and reproaches about my long silence. There was even one from Frau Neubach. Somehow I found the strength to write everyone, although my fever undoubtedly interfered with the coherence of my messages.

Finally, we left. I was given a place in a small Auto-Union truck, and we drove to Vinnitsa on roads which belonged to the Carolingian era. Our faltering machines almost drowned in incredible quagmires, whose condition was aggravated by the rain. For a while I thought we had reached the notorious Pripet marshes, which were in fact not very far away. We avoided them by driving around them, on extraordinary wooden pavements which seemed to be floating on mud. These uneven roads made of split logs, on which one could obviously not drive very fast, were surprisingly effective in wet weather. However, it took us at least eight hours to travel ninety miles. The weather was cold and bad — snow flurries alternating with violent bursts of rain — but at least this protected us from Soviet aircraft, which were very active at that time.

When we arrived, I was sent immediately to a hospital, along with some six others from my company. Diarrhea was a common complaint at that time, and a group of specialists were able to stop mine very quickly. My friends were stationed some fifteen miles away, and I knew I would rejoin them once I was well.

The doctors had some trouble getting me on my feet again. I was told that because my complaint had not been attacked until late in the day my “intestinal flora” had been severely damaged.

In fact, it was a good two weeks before I was able to eat normally again. Every day I offered my backside to the orderly, who stabbed me as full of holes as a dressmaker’s pincushion. Twice a day, the thermometer recorded my fever, which remained obstinately at 100°.

Winter had arrived, and I rejoiced as I watched the snow falling from behind the panes of a heated dormitory. I knew that for the moment my friends were out of danger, and, in a state of blissful ignorance, was unaware that over the whole front things were going from bad to worse. Our paper’s coverage of news from the front was limited to photographs of smiling artillerymen installing themselves in a new position, or organizing their winter quarters, and articles which said nothing at all. Hals came to see me twice, bringing mail. He had managed to get himself made a postal assistant, which allowed him to visit me quite easily. He rejoiced at the slightest occasion for rejoicing, roaring with laughter whenever he missed me in a snowball fight. He was just as ignorant as I of the realities of our situation, which would soon involve us in an agonizing retreat, and acquaint us with the depths of horror.

When I had been in the hospital for about three weeks, I was given some marvelous news. I was told to go to the office to be checked for discharge. There an orderly inspected me, and told me that, since I was making a good recovery, he was going to authorize a leave for me.

“It occurs to me,” he said, “that you would rather complete your convalescence at home than here in the hospital.”

I replied that I would, restricting myself to mild assent, lest I offend that kindly angel with excessive exuberance. As a result, I found myself with a ten-day pass — a little shorter than the first one — which would go into effect as soon as it had been stamped. I thought immediately of Berlin and Paula. I would try to get permission for her to go with me to France. And, if that was impossible, I would stay in Berlin with her.

Despite the weakness, which still limited me severely, I was overjoyed. I got ready in record time, and left the hospital — grinning broadly. I also wrote a note to my friends, excusing myself for not having visited them before I left. I thought they would surely understand.

My polished boots moved noiselessly across the snow as I walked to the station. I was so overflowing with happiness that I even nodded and spoke to the Russians I passed on the way. My linen and uniform had been cleaned and mended, and I myself felt neat and new. I forgot my bygone sufferings, and felt only gratitude to the German army and to the Fuhrer for having made me into a man who knew the value of clean sheets and a watertight roof, and of friends who had nothing to offer but devotion, and offered that without reserve. I felt happy once again, and ashamed to have been despairing and afraid. I thought back, from a great distance, to some of the hard times I had experienced during my youth in France, which had sometimes made me think sourly of life. But was there anything that could sour me now? What disappointment could possibly darken things for me? Perhaps if Paula suddenly told me she no longer cared for me?… Yes, perhaps that.

But I felt as though I were now cured of a great many things. During some of my worst moments, I had imagined certain personal disasters — the death of my mother, for instance — and told myself that I could accept even that, if only the firing would stop. I had asked the pardon of every supernatural power for harboring such thoughts, but was prepared to pay that price if it would cut short the carnage by even a little.

The war seemed to have turned me into a monster of indifference, a man without feelings. I was still three months short of eighteen, but felt at least thirty-five.

Now that I have reached that age, I know better.

Peace has brought me many pleasures, but nothing as powerful as that passion for survival in wartime, that faith in love, and that sense of absolutes. It often strikes me with horror that peace is really extremely monotonous. During the terrible moments of war one longs for peace with a passion that is painful to bear. But in peacetime one should never, even for an instant, long for war!

The station was at the end of a cul-de-sac. In front of the esplanade, which took the place of a platform, three wide-gauge Russian tracks ran for a short distance, and then were regrouped into two switchings. A third section of the track vanished after five hundred yards, without any apparent reason. The soft snow deadened all noise and made everything still uncovered look cold and black.

A few wagons and a few empty boxes lay scattered across this peculiarly empty place. Beside the principal station building stood a neat pile of boxes marked WH. Inside, next to a hot stove, four or five Russian railway-men sat absolutely motionless, as if they had died of boredom. There was no sign of a train in any direction, except for a large stationary locomotive, which appeared to be near death after a century of hard use. I no longer remember the name of the place. Perhaps it didn’t have one, or perhaps the signboard had been stuck off in some odd corner so that we Europeans shouldn’t catch sight of its unreadable characters. The prospect of a train passing through seemed as remote and uncertain as the first day of spring.

Despite the slip of paper in my pocket entitling me to a leave and warming my whole being like a glowing stove, I suddenly felt extremely lost in this huge, heavy country. Instinctively, I went to the main station building, where the Russian railwaymen had seemed more profoundly sunk in inertia than any postal worker in France. I knew that it would be almost impossible for me to make myself understood because, even if one of them knew some German, I still spoke it so badly that my fellow soldiers were often hard put to it to make me out. I walked past the door several times, hoping that someone would see me through the pane of glass set in the heavy wood, and give me some information. As no one moved, I pressed my nose against the glass. Inside, I could see four railwaymen identifiable only by the filthy armbands they wore on their sleeves. Otherwise, they were just civilians, and seemed paralyzed by inertia. Not one so much as looked in my direction. I was astonished to see a gray-haired soldier sitting beside them, apparently infected by the same immobility. I looked again, to make sure I wasn’t dreaming, but there it was — a soldier of the Reich fast asleep beside four citizens of occupied Russia. Outraged, I shoved violently against the door, and entered the room, where a heartwarming heat instantly inflamed my cheeks. I clicked my heels as loudly as I could, and the noise resounded like a gunshot through the calm heat of this remarkable place.

The Russians started, and slowly stood up. My half-countryman and fellow soldier only shifted one of his legs. He looked about fifty.

“What can I do for you, Kamerad?” he asked, like a shopkeeper greeting a potential customer.

I stood there for a moment, astounded by such casualness.

“Well,” I said finally, becoming more German than the Germans, “I’d like to know when the train to the Fatherland will be coming through. I’m going home on leave.”

The other soldier smiled and slowly stood up. Then he walked toward me, bracing himself against the table, like a rheumatic.

“So you’re going home on leave, young fellow?” His voice sounded as though it might break into laughter at any movement, which irritated me.

“A fine time to take a vacation!”

“When will there be a train?”

I was hoping to cut short the conversation I knew was coming.

“You have a strange accent. Where are you from?” Unmasked again! I felt sure that I was blushing.

“I have French relatives,” I said, almost angry. “My father… in any case, I grew up in France. But I’ve been in the German army for nearly two years now.”

“Are you French?”

“No. My mother is German.”

“In cases of that kind it’s the father who counts, though.”

He was getting angry, too.

“Look at that,” he said to the Popovs, who apparently hadn’t understood a word. “They’re even taking French kids now.”

“What time will there be a train?”

“Don’t worry about trains. Hereabouts, they come when they can.”

“What do you mean?”

“There’s no timetable, you know. What do you expect? This is no Reichsbahndienst.”

“But after all…”

“Trains come through from time to time, naturally — but you can never predict them.”

He smiled and gestured vaguely.

“Have a seat here with us. You’ve got plenty of time.”

“No. I haven’t got plenty of time. I’ve got to get out of here. I’m not going to sit here gassing with you.”

“Suit yourself. If you’d rather walk around outside and get cold… Or you could hike over to Vinnitsa. Trains go through there more regularly. Only I warn you — it’s forty miles through thick woods, infested with the friends of these fellows here,” he nodded toward the railwaymen, “who aren’t exactly in agreement with Adolph, and who might very well put an end to your leave.”

He looked at the Russians and grinned. They smiled back, without any idea why.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“Partisans, for God’s sake!”

“You mean those bastards are around here, too?”

This time, it was his turn to be astonished.

“Of course… and in Rumania too, and in Hungary, and Poland. Maybe even in Germany.” I was flabbergasted.

“So sit down, young fellow. It’s a big mess that really has nothing to do with you, and you shouldn’t be mixed up in it at all. It would be crazy to get killed just for the sake of a few hours. I managed to get hold of some real coffee, and it’s here in this kitchen, nice and hot. There’s a fellow at the commissary with a good heart, who’s just about fed up with this war himself.”

He came back carrying a big army coffeepot.

“We drink enough coffee here to send us right up the walls,” he said, looking at the Popovs, who were still smiling.

I felt somewhat disconcerted.

“Would you mind telling me what your job is?”

“Hell!” he said in irritation. “I’m supposed to be guarding that pile of boxes” — he nodded at the neatly stacked crates outside — “and these poor fellows here. Who the hell do they think I am? Nearly sixty years old, and they bring me here to play sentry. I spent thirty years of my life working for the railways in Prussia and Germany —and this is the thanks I get. Specialization — that’s what it is. No useless efforts. Everyone in his place. An efficient force. Sieg Heil! I can tell you — I’m fed up!” By the time he was finished, he was shouting. He slammed the coffeepot down on the table. We might have been in a Paris bistro. I felt as if the world had suddenly turned upside down.

“That coffeepot is army property, and you just took it,” I said, clinging to the thread of my first idea.

The fellow looked at me, and slowly put down a cup, which he filled with steaming liquid. Then he held it out to me.

“Here, young fellow. Drink this.”

There was a moment of silence, and then he began talking again in a calm, serious tone which one could interrupt only with difficulty.

“Now, you listen to me, my boy. I am fifty-seven years old. I fought in the cavalry in ’14–’18, and was a prisoner in Holland for two years. Now it’s been three and a half years since they put me back in the army again. I have three sons fighting on three of the fronts which our beloved country has decided to defend. I am an old man, and even if I once felt fiery about political principles which have long since been altered by time, the politics of today leave me cold, and I don’t give any more of a damn for them than I do for this coffeepot. So drink in a little of the heat it offers you, and take this chance to forget for a few minutes that you’re mixed up in all this mess.”

I looked at him, astounded.

“I’m not a spiess, or an officer, or the Führer, but only an old railway worker who was forced to change uniforms. Sit down and relax and drink your coffee.”

“But what you just said is outrageous. After all, every minute of the day soldiers are dying for our country, and…”

“If our country needs something from me, I’ll postpone my retirement for a couple of years.”

“But… but…”

I felt as if I were choking. I couldn’t find the words to express the intensity of emotion which German idealism created in me. I had already suffered a great deal from the war, but couldn’t conceive a life other than the one assigned to me. I felt that this man was somehow missing the point, and that I was unable to express it adequately. Perhaps I was too young to understand it.

“I don’t agree with you at all!” I shouted, beside myself with rage. “If everyone thought the way you did, nothing would be worth anything! Your way of thinking strips life of all its meaning!”

His gun was lying in the corner of the room.

“Your friends might pick that up,” I said, nodding at the gun, and then at the Popovs.

“Did that ever occur to you?”

I thought he was going to throw me out. But his attitude was inconsistent. Perhaps he was a little afraid of me.

“I’ll take the coffeepot back when we’re through with it,” he said with a bitter laugh.

“Would you like a little more?”

I held out my cup, feeling pleased with myself for putting a fellow soldier back on the right track.

I waited for more than nine hours, and had almost given up hope, when at last a train arrived and took me away.

11. CANCELLED LEAVE

On the train from Vinnitsa toward Lvov and Lublin, I was traveling with soldiers who’d been at Cherkassy and Kremenchug.

They told me about the hellish fighting which had taken place near those towns, now lost to us or slipping from our grasp. Everywhere, the crushing numerical superiority of the enemy was finally overwhelming our positions, which we defended with desperate determination, paying an appalling price in casualties. All the fellows on the train were going on leave too, but despite their joy, they seemed crushed by the experiences they had just lived through.

The train came into Lublin station at dawn on a winter morning. The ground was covered with snow, and the Polish cold felt much sharper than the cold in Russia. Even though we were used to sleeping outdoors, no one had been able to rest on the train, and we greeted the morning with turned-up collars and gray faces. Despite the early hour, the station platforms were crowded with soldiers walking up and down to keep warm, dressed and equipped for the front. There were many new recruits, easily distinguishable by their boyish, rosy faces. Military police had been stationed at intervals of ten yards down the length of the platform for incoming trains. I had overestimated my strength. As I obeyed the orders barked over the P.A. system, and jumped down onto the platform, I was shaking with sleeplessness and cold, and my legs were buckling under me.

We lined up parallel to the train, and marched into the big hall which stood at one end of the station. As we tramped toward the hall, the gasping locomotive pulled the empty train onto a secondary track.

In the hall, we were each given a cup of steaming ersatz and two spoonfuls of a curious jam. As we ate, several officers climbed onto a wheeled platform equipped with a loudspeaker. Military policemen were standing watchfully on either side of them, and at the foot of the platform.

First, the amplifier crackled and buzzed for a moment, and then a nasal voice roared unintelligibly until someone adjusted the mechanism. The principal thrust of the officer’s speech struck all of us like a slap in the face:

“…leaves must be cancelled.”

We thought we must have misunderstood him, but then the familiar series — “necessity… difficulty… duty… supplementary effort… victory” brought it home to us that this was no dream. The crowd buzzed angrily, and a few fellows even shouted their outrage. But the loudspeakers were already blaring the “Deutsche Marsche,” drowning our fury in martial music. As the hopes and plans of several thousand men crumbled, the music grew louder. The jam we were swallowing suddenly seemed tasteless, and the ersatz bitter. Before we had time to feel sorry for ourselves, the M.P.s were herding us toward a train which was ready to leave for the East.

Three cars were loaded with supplies for the troops, and we were ordered to line up beside them. Because our nervous exhaustion and disappointment were so evident, and the desire to desert was so clearly stamped on so many faces, we were closely hemmed in by police. We were issued fur hats, like the hats worn by Russian troops, crudely made over-vests of reversed sheepskin, cotton gloves with woolen linings, and enormous overshoes with reinforced cork soles and felt uppers. A few boxes of tinned food were added to this voluminous issue, and we no longer entertained any doubts as to our fate: we were obviously being shipped back for another winter in Russia. Most of us were ready to cry with disappointment.

The train was crammed to the bursting point. Some of the passengers were young boys about to go into combat for the first time. Others were veterans returning from leave, who were scarcely any happier than we were, and others, like myself, had been suddenly obliged to replace their plans for leave with the sinking apprehension which all men, no matter how brave, feel as they are about to confront a highly problematical fate.

We rolled east for a considerable time, before we finally grasped what had happened to us. I was dumb with disappointment, remembering Magdeburg and my despair when the scope of that leave was abruptly limited. This time Berlin wasn’t even on my route, and there was no chance of encountering Paula. There had been no period of grace at all — not even twenty-four hours. As I thought about it, the weight of what had just occurred seemed to increase, dragging me down into a black depression. However, I still had one hope. As soon as I had returned to my unit, I would have my status as a convalescent officially verified. Why hadn’t I thought of explaining that to the police at the station? But, of course, no one in his right mind should ever expect anything decent from a military policeman. My last chance was that once I got back to the company Wesreidau would be able to arrange things for me.

As always, the trains for the front were moving at top speed, unlike westbound trains, which often made long, inexplicable stops. Ours was no exception to this rule.

Nevertheless, an important incident broke our momentum.

The locomotive had just refueled and resumed the speed which was to carry us through to Vinnitsa. The station where we had stopped had bristled with signs bearing the names of towns no longer accessible to us: Konotop, Kursk, Kharkov — names which evoked unbearably painful memories.

About fifteen minutes out of the station the train braked so violently that all the carriages shuddered, and we nearly left the rails. Inside, men and boxes were flung to the floor, and the air rang with angry curses. We all thought we had in fact been derailed. Soldiers in long coats were running down the length of the tracks, answering our shouted questions by waving ahead.

“You were lucky we could stop you,” one of them yelled.

About five hundred yards to the east, the track, which ran between two walls of sparse woodland, was blocked by a chaos of overturned cars. We jumped down to the ground to find out what had happened.

Partisans… dynamite on the track… train loaded with munitions… 150 soldiers killed… reprisals… patrols… pursuit.

The immediate work had already been divided among three hundred unhurt soldiers. One group remained on the spot to help the wounded and another left in pursuit of the partisans, who had not been content simply to derail the train, but had opened fire as our men struggled to get free of the wreckage. Officers were blowing their whistles, and at least three thousand men from our train climbed down. We were divided into three groups. The largest of these, about two thousand strong, was sent out in pursuit of the enemy. I was included in this section. The second was sent to help our wounded comrades, while the third was deployed in the immediate area, to ensure the protection of the train. The bulk of my belongings, like everyone else’s, remained on the train, and at the blast of the whistle we dogtrotted off into the countryside, which lay under a foot of snow.

Running through snow isn’t easy. In less than two minutes one is lathered with sweat, and after twenty it is almost impossible to breathe. Within an hour one’s lungs feel bruised by the pressure of one’s ribs, and everything is dancing with colored lights. The weather wasn’t very cold, and the effects of our gymnastic efforts nearly suffocated us. The noncoms and officers who had followed us eventually grew tired of sustaining a zealous performance and resumed a walking pace. An hour and a half after leaving the train, we slogged into a large peasant village, our heads drooping with fatigue. Almost all the houses had thatched roofs, and attached sheds made of woven sunflower stalks, for storing winter supplies.

When we arrived, the place was already full of German soldiers, and the snow-covered central square was tightly packed with civilians men, women, and children — gesturing excitedly and talking loudly. Soldiers — some of them with spandaus ready to fire — were stationed all around the square, and toward the center other soldiers were shoving their way through the mass of civilians, roughly driving some of them off to one side. To the right, beside a building which probably served as the village hall, a third group of soldiers were standing with drawn guns over a dozen Russians lying on their stomachs in the snow.

At first I thought they were dead.

“Partisans we caught here,” explained one of the soldiers standing beside me.

Were they really guilty, or were they only suspects?

None of the questioning was up to me. The interrogations lasted for at least an hour. The Popovs lying on their stomachs must have had frozen guts but that was true for our machine gunners too.

An S.S. section had been included in the pursuit group. I had the honor of being assigned by them to a smaller group of a hundred men who, like me, were returning to duty. Their attention was undoubtedly drawn to me by the edge of my left sleeve with its Gross Deutschland inscription. The S.S. preferred to use men belonging to elite divisions. Without explanation, we were loaded onto S.S. trucks, ignorant of the fate of the civilians lying on the ground. We drove for about twenty minutes over very hilly country. Then we were ordered to leave the trucks. An S.S. hauptmann in a long, dark leather coat addressed us briefly.

“You will fan out to the right, and move into those woods, taking every precaution. A factory which you can’t see from here is situated about three-quarters of a mile to the west. The Russian informants who are accompanying us have indicated that this is an important center of terrorist operations. We must take them by surprise and wipe them out.”

He appointed squad leaders, and we moved off.

What a splendid convalescence! I would have done better to stay in the hospital at Vinnitsa.

After a short time, we saw a series of metal roofs, which must have been part of the factory. But, before we had a chance to give them a second look, a burst of machine-gun fire broke the silence. One of the S.S. men shouted: “We’ve got you, you bastards! You might as well give up!”

It looked as though the Russian partisans we’d caught in the village had given this place away under pressure. There were some more shots, and then the familiar clatter of Russian machine guns coming from the edge of the buildings. Another fellow and I threw ourselves down under a small tree, whose snow-laden branches touched the ground. We heard whistles ordering us to advance, but for the moment I stayed where I was. It would be too stupid to get knocked off by a handful of terrorists. The other fellow muttered in my ear:

“The bastards! We’ve really got them this time! Now we’ll teach them to blow up trains!”

After five minutes of hard fighting, German soldiers began to stand up all around us. We had taken about ten more Russian prisoners. Some were singing a Russian song of vengeance, but most were begging for mercy. About thirty S.S. men were herding them toward the truck, already beating them and shouting questions. We thought everything was over, when the S.S. captain blew his whistle to fall in.

“Those bastards,” he said, gesturing at the sobbing prisoners, “claim they’re the only ones here. Maybe they think they can fool us and protect their friends who are still hiding inside, but I want you to clear the place.” He pointed at the factory buildings. “We’ve got to take the whole bunch, and all the weapons they’re hiding there.”

Of course, there was no question of argument. With dry mouths, we moved forward into the factory buildings, which were littered with hundreds of large objects — ideal for snipers and as bad as possible for us. The relatively large size of our force was in no way reassuring. Even if we overwhelmed the partisans in the end, each bullet they fired was bound to hit someone, and if I should happen to be the only casualty in a victorious army of a million men, the victory would be without interest for me. The percentage of corpses, in which generals sometimes take pride, doesn’t alter the fate of the men who’ve been killed.

The only leader I know of who finally made a sensible remark on this point, Adolf Hitler, once said to his troops: “Even a victorious army must count its victims.”

What was made in this factory lost in the wilderness? Perhaps they processed timber. The first shed housed a large band saw, and farther on we passed several others, as well as a kind of dredging machine with a string of rusty scoops. The first two sheds were empty. Perhaps the prisoners had been telling the truth. But our orders were to check the whole place. Our group surrounded the entire factory complex, and then began to move toward the center. We passed through a series of enormous barn-like buildings which seemed to be on the point of collapse. They had never been painted, and every iron fixture was half eaten away by rust, like the old anchor chains at a port.

The wind was blowing hard, and the buildings echoed with sinister creaking sounds. Otherwise, everything was quiet, except for an occasional clatter made by one of our men deliberately shoving aside some metal object, or overturning a pile of crates.

About eight of us had moved into the darkness of a building littered with a jumble of miscellaneous clutter. There were no windows, and consequently there was almost no light. Then we all heard a series of clicking sounds. But the wind blowing through the building filled the air with the bangings and clickings of loose boards and tiles. Although everyone understood that theoretically each moment might be our last, no one really accepted that idea, and no one took any special precautions. Outside, the S.S. must have cornered several Russians. We heard a series of shots and cries, and sounds of running and shouting. Suddenly, our shed was filled with the noise of explosions. Five or six flares thrown from a room or closet in an upper story lit the darkness, and almost simultaneously four of our companions screamed with pain. A moment later, two of them had collapsed onto the dusty floor, while the other two staggered toward the open door. The rest of us looked hastily for shelter, stumbling through the darkness, uncertain of where we might find cover. There were several more shots, and somewhere to my right two more soldiers howled with pain. My gun shuddered violently in my hands. A bullet had struck it in the butt, taking a piece with it, and missing me by inches. The two fellows trying to get to the door were both hit again, but neither of them fell until they had reached a drift of white snow which the wind had blown over the threshold. Outside, more soldiers had run up, but they stopped at the door and fired a few shots which were far more likely to hit one of us than any partisan. There were two of us still unhurt, and we began to shout as if we were fifty. Some idiot might think of tossing in a grenade, which would finish us off along with all the Russians. Luckily, someone heard us in time to think of another tactic. While our comrades outside tried to break through the corrugated iron walls, the Russians inside were firing at every detectable movement. The bullets, which pierced the flimsy walls, were as dangerous to our men outside as they were to us. I was half dead with fright.

Was I going to be the last German soldier left in that damned shack? I knew that at least one other comrade was hiding somewhere. I felt even more caught in a vise of terror and danger than I had at Belgorod. I bit my lips to keep from screaming. Our men outside were pressing in, about to blow the building apart, while inside the Russians were perched in the rafters as silent as spiders. From where I lay, I could see nothing. Suddenly I heard a scratching noise behind me, somewhere between a haphazard pile of objects and an upright support. I froze as still as the large glazed pipe behind which I was hiding. The uproar outside prevented me from distinguishing anything clearly. I tried deliberately to extend my hearing beyond the limit of its capacity, and caught a series of scratching sounds, some very faint, some a little louder. I held my breath until my lungs were on the point of bursting, and tried to stop the pounding of my heart. My brain was teeming with horrible possibilities. I saw myself dead or a prisoner of the partisans, who would use me in an attempt to escape from our noose. I was overwhelmed with an intensity of panic greater than anything I had ever felt before, which was suddenly replaced by a savage passion of self-preservation. Trembling with terror and rage, I abruptly stopped thinking.

Some supplementary sense informed me that danger had drawn very close.

Had I been a millionaire, I would have staked my entire fortune on the certainty that someone was moving on the other side of the barrier which concealed me. I felt very much alone and desperate and determined to defend myself at any price. Suddenly I saw a man no more than five yards from me. I felt my skin crawl. Then a second man appeared behind him, crawling toward a pile of sacks. Although they had both been in shadow, I had seen enough to recognize civilian clothes. The one nearest me was wearing a large cap. His silhouette remains indelibly stamped on my memory. He was tall and looked strong. He froze for a moment and appeared to be inspecting the shadows. Then he moved a few steps away from me. As slowly and silently as sand running through an hour glass, I raised my gun until it was pointing at him. I knew that there was still one bullet left in the barrel, so I didn’t have to move the bolt. Tightening every nerve, I tried to suppress the trembling which made my gestures uncertain. I knew that at the slightest sound the other fellow would let me have it. Luckily, there was plenty of noise outside, which divided his attention. My gun was now level, and my finger lay nervously against the trigger. Then I hesitated for a moment. It isn’t easy to kill a man in cold blood, unless one is entirely heartless or, as I was, numb with fear. The man changed his course a little, and began to move slowly toward my hiding place. His companion was scarcely visible now, and must have been some twenty yards away from us.

I could hear the man breathing as he approached. For a moment, perhaps, he distinguished a figure crouching in the shadows, or glimpsed a dull metallic gleam. For a tenth of a second, perhaps, he hesitated. Then a sudden glow of brilliant light blinded him, and he collapsed in the dust, his belly torn open by the shot fired from the weapon which still quivered in my sweat-drenched hands. The other Russian had run off, leaving his companion dead at my feet. I felt as if my skull enclosed a black void, and that a nightmare enclosed me, like a fever. As the noise outside grew louder, I felt myself sinking into a pit of unimaginable depth. I was torn between the desire to flee and my paralyzing fear. I stared at the corpse lying face down on the ground in front of me. I couldn’t really believe I had killed him, and waited for the tide of blood which would soon begin to seep from beneath his body. Nothing else mattered to me. The weight of the drama which had just occurred was so overwhelming that I could only stare at the motionless body.

Suddenly a piece of the wall collapsed. The soldiers outside had managed to pull off a section of corrugated sheeting, and the glare of full daylight somehow diminished the importance of what had happened. The sight of other German soldiers entering the building snapped me from my lethargy. I even distinguished the S.S. captain, who had just joined them, ducking down behind a piece of crumpled metal. He was facing me, at a distance of about twenty yards.

“Anyone still alive in here?” he shouted. I waved a hand, and he saw me. I knew that there was still at least one Russian in the building, and I didn’t want to attract too much attention to myself. Another German, who must have been as terrified as I was, shouted from somewhere deeper in the ruins: “Over here, Kameraden. I’ve got a wounded man, too.”

“Don’t move yet,” the captain shouted back. “We’re going to clear out the rest of the Popovs.”

He had just spotted the dead man, lying almost at my feet. We heard the sound of an engine, which was rapidly growing louder. From my hiding place, I could see a black machine-gun carrier rolling across the snow. A moment later, it was thrusting through the hole in the wall, with an S.M.G. pointing from its turret. A powerful headlight lit up the shed, and soldiers crouched beside the vehicle were aiming their guns at the interior. The beam of light passed over me for a moment, and a shiver ran down my spine. I could almost imagine the faces of the waiting Russians, contorted with terror. In the doorway, beside the two German bodies, I could see other German soldiers regrouping.

The hauptmann shouted: “Surrender, or we’ll shoot you down like rats!”

There was no answer. Then a cry of terror rang out from the dimly lit rafters, like the cry I had fought back in myself a few moments before. The heavy machine gun began its slaughter. Each explosion echoed through the shed as if it would blow it apart. The bullets themselves were explosive and ripped open the roof, letting in new streams of daylight. All the German soldiers outside were firing into the rafters, where some fifteen Russian terrorists were still hiding. I doubled over onto the floor, and pressed my hands against my ears, trying to deaden the sound. Directly overhead, I could hear Russian machine guns. Once again, there were bloodcurdling screams, and a body fell to the floor with the heavy thud of a quarter carcass thrown down onto the butcher’s block. The S.M.G. demolished the rest of the roof, and full daylight flooded in, destroying the partisans’ last hope of invisibility and escape. Another fell to the floor as the rest began a frantic attempt to scramble away through the twisted metal supports overhead. Some dropped to the floor, others clung to the rafters. In the end, all were killed, and our deaths on the train were avenged. The place filled with German soldiers, and I was able to leave my hideout. I was covered with dust, and even found pieces of debris between my belt and my coat.

We marched back to the village singing:

We were still the masters, and no one under heaven could judge us.

The S.S. took over the few prisoners who had surrendered before the massacre and loaded them into their trucks, which then drove off down the road that had brought us here. We were ordered to fall in by threes, By the time we reached the village, the crowd that had watched us leave was gone, which was a relief.

The S.S. task force gave each of us a slip of paper to explain the delay in our return to our units. We were advised to rejoin the wrecked train immediately. No one regretted leaving that place, with its miserable memories. Unfortunately, a final spectacle, as depressing as anything we’d seen in the shed, was unfolding just as we marched by. A firing squad was performing its duties. Four consecutive salvos rang out, each one disposing of four partisans. Their bodies were left on the snow, and the squad marched back to the village. Not one of us said a word. At least a hundred of our soldiers had been summarily killed in the derailment and the disintegration of some of the cars. An officer spoke to us briefly about the tragedy we’d just witnessed. The partisans were held responsible for everything that had happened. Also, partisans were not eligible for the consideration due to a man in uniform. The laws of war condemned them to death automatically, without trial.

We spent the night on the motionless train. I was able to sleep only fitfully and with difficulty. Each time I closed my eyes, I was caught in a hideous nightmare. A huge stone rose up in front of me, and from beneath it a flood of dark, blackish blood flowed toward my feet, burning them as it touched.

The next day was piercingly cold. We joined another train which came to our rescue farther down the line, and settled down to listen to the penetrating clang of the wheels on the rails. We stared out at the tundra, buried under deep snow. From time to time the monotony was broken by a distant horizon marked by pine-covered hills. Once again, the vastness of this countryside, untouched by any human life, filled us with a sense of constraint. The idea of space, the conception of immensity, could not be more perfectly expressed than by this scenery designed for giants. Could anyone possibly control this country? Could we? Could the N.K.V.D.?

We arrived at Vinnitsa that evening. An air-raid alert had disorganized the traffic, and the station was overflowing with soldiers in long winter coats. At that time, the Gross Deutschland division was partly based in the town, and the military police were able to direct me to its command post. I was surprised by the efficiency of divisional organization. With only the name and number of my company, they were able to give me its precise location. I was horrified to learn that we had returned to the front, and, along with twenty other companies, were occupying a zone some three hundred miles from Vinnitsa. I was given a precise district and the number of the sector. I had mentally prepared myself for a reunion with my friends, huddled around some blazing Russian hearth, discussing my canceled leave and the possibilities of getting it revalidated. Instead, we were destined to meet in some frozen trench, in conditions of misery and danger. This misfortune overwhelmed me with the force of a stupefying blow. I stood, motionless and stunned, in front of the stabsfeldwebel who had just checked my name on the list. He would have paid me no other attention, but was suddenly struck by something about my appearance.

“What’s the matter?” he said. “Are you sick?”

I was too numb to think of a suitable answer, so I told him the truth.

“I was just beginning a convalescence leave, Herr Stabsfeldwebel, and it was canceled at Lublin.”

“The fatherland is living through a time of serious trial, young man,” he answered after a short pause.

“You are not the only one to be deprived of a well-earned rest. The men who have gone through here before you and those coming after you are all in your situation.”

I was about to remark that this was in fact my official convalescence when he came on the paper from the S.S. hauptmann.

“I see that you recently distinguished yourself in an encounter with partisans,” he said. “My congratulations. I shall include that information in your dossier, and your company commander will undoubtedly promote you.”

Despite my nervous exhaustion, I smiled for a moment.

“I am very pleased, Herr Stabsfeldwebel,” I said in a semi-sincere, semi-official tone.

“And I am equally pleased for you,” he answered, holding out his hand.

I left with some thirty others in the same plight as myself, my mind torn by conflicting thoughts and feelings.

However, we were sent to spend the night in a warm and comfortable house which had been turned into a military dormitory. There weren’t enough beds, but every room was heated, and the floors were thickly carpeted. We all slept well, despite our anxiety about the immediate future.

We had all learned to use waiting periods for sleep whenever we could, simply to stop thinking and lapse into unconsciousness. Reflection added nothing to such times except increased awareness of the misery that weighed on the world. Sleep, on the other hand helped in many ways: it blotted out the present, and revived one’s strength. It seemed most unfortunate that one couldn’t store up a surplus of its benefits to use in future emergencies when sleep would be impossible.

We spent most of that night and the next twenty-four hours asleep or dozing, interrupting our rest only for meals. During the second night, we were finally dragged from our torpor by a noncom who led us to the trucks which were to take us to our positions. The brutal winter cold fell onto our backs with the shock of a poorly regulated shower. Winter had arrived in full strength, coating everything with a bluish glitter. Roll was called, and we boarded the trucks.

Before daybreak, we arrived at a village of huts which had been built by the engineers. We were ordered out of the trucks and offered an ersatz drink which was kept hot through the day in three large kettles. The cold was piercing, and revived all our memories of the previous winter: the shivering mornings, the cold, which became an almost unbearable torture, the impossibility of washing, the lice, and the thousand other elements which made life insupportable. Everything smelled of the war, and every face was stamped with urgent anxiety. Large holes, which suggested air raids, also implied that matters were not entirely under control in this sector.

About fifty of us were rejoining units in sectors separated by as much as forty or fifty miles. We were divided into four groups, each of which was given mail and the supplies requested by particular companies. Then we were shown our approximate routes, and a noncom informed us in a tone of triumph that we would have to cover at least twenty miles.

We began our march, through a chain of long snowy valleys. A network of heavy defenses extended for about a half mile around the center we had just left: anti-tank guns, minefields, which we were careful to avoid, and innumerable nests of machine guns. Beyond us, wild, empty country stretched out into infinity, hardened by winter, and favorable to any kind of hostile surprise. As soon as we left the last line of defenses, we knew we were on ground which belonged to whoever was walking across it at any moment, and which could change hands from day to day. The front in this sector was never precisely drawn, but was more like a piece of lace embroidery, with a multitude of recesses which sheltered ambushes, and encounters more or less foreseen, and unpredictable clashes.

One of the men in our group was a new recruit, very young and tall and stringy, like a weed that has grown too fast in a spell of damp weather. His enormous gazelle-like eyes stared at the anonymous vastness of the landscape, which he was clearly incapable of absorbing. He was visibly affected by the loss of his native dimensions: the short vistas of the Rhineland had never led him to suspect that such a huge scale was possible.

A year ago, I had felt the same way.

The cold, which had turned dry after ten days of snow and cloudy skies, made the landscape into a white screen against which darker objects were startlingly visible. The wind of the preceding days had swept across the snow, piling it up against every barrier, filling in hollows, and leaving brown patches of bare soil in other places, like great stains. As long as we didn’t have to make any excessive detours, we preferred to follow the bare patches. Every hour, we stopped for a short rest.

Five or six planes flew by to the south. We froze for a minute, trying to discern their purpose, but they vanished over the horizon before we were able to distinguish whether they were Yaks or ME-109’s.

By lunchtime, we were still unsure of our bearings. The noncom responsible for getting us to our destinations claimed that we were moving in the right direction, but his face and voice betrayed his panic.

Country on such a vast scale cannot be trifled with.

One can play explorer in the forest of Fontainebleau, but not on the tundra, where one feels too small and trivial for games. The hostile indifference of nature seems so overwhelming it is almost necessary to believe in God.

We walked for a long time, and finally came to a line of telegraph poles stuck unevenly into the ground. They were following the edge of a road which we could see was in use, as it was deeply marked by fresh ruts.

The noncom decided we should take the road to the south, as the quickest way of finding our units. This seemed odd, as it was clear that we would be proceeding perpendicular to our previous direction. However, no one hesitated. We had long ago learned that it was useless to argue points which had lost all meaning. We also felt heavily oppressed by the prospect of a night in the open — the first of a long series which would require all the patience and endurance we could muster. For a fraction of a second the thought of my wrecked leave flared through my consciousness like a shooting star in the night sky. I swallowed hard, and everything sank back into uniform gray.

The weedy young recruit remained speechless. His astonished eyes moved from the snowy steppe to the faces of the experienced veterans we seemed to be. Trusting us as a shepherd trusts the stars, he plodded dutifully on.

We suddenly caught sight of a massive object buried in the snow about five hundred yards ahead of us. A long gun barrel poked through the white crust, and we realized we were facing a camouflaged tank. Of course, it was one of ours, otherwise we would all have been dead. The Panther was buried up to its turret, and behind it two or three bulges indicated bunkers. Suddenly a fellow appeared on top of the tank, wearing a sheepskin vest over his black tank-corps uniform. He jumped down and walked out to meet us, shouting his name. We did the same, according to the custom of the times. He told us that when his tank had broken down he had been ordered to half bury it and turn it into a blockhouse. With considerable difficulty, he and the eight other men with him had carried out the order. Separated from their armored unit by the force of circumstances, they had been standing guard over this vast, empty panorama for three weeks now. Once in that time some Russians had come by, but the tank’s two S.M.G.s had forced them to pass far to one side. This accident had transformed them into an official surveillance post, and they were due to be relieved in two weeks’ time. They had been there for three weeks already, and admitted that it was difficult to sleep really soundly at night.

“Where is the front?” our noncom asked.

“More or less everywhere,” the other said. “And mostly mobile units. In the evenings, convoys come through on the track. They never have their lights on, and every time it scares us to death. A plane knocked our radio out, so we’re completely cut off. It’s enough to drive a fellow mad.”

“We’re supposed to be rejoining our units,” the noncom explained. “Do you think we’ve still got far to go?”

“Well, the front is certainly five or ten miles east of here. But it’s very fluid. It’s impossible to be exact.”

We all felt extremely perplexed.

“Let’s go along that way,” our guide said finally. “We’re bound to find something.”

The tank crew watched us go with regret. With darkness, which fell earlier than we had expected, accompanied by a heavy fog, we arrived at the precarious approximation of a front which existed in that sector. A few arbitrarily disposed Paks emerged from the darkness, and a sentry, green with terror, shouted, “Wer da?” in a trembling voice. The same terror made our noncom squeak an incomprehensible reply. Our preservation from the guns of our own men could only be laid to a simple collapse of vigilance. A frozen, ill-tempered soldier led us to the company commander.

“The Russians come through this way from any direction,” he said as we walked along.

“It’s pretty demoralizing, and unless the front is stabilized again, it’ll go on this way, as far as I can see. Anyway, the regiment you’re looking for isn’t around here.”

We ran into the company commander, a captain, coming up from a candle-lit hole. He looked old and ill. His long overcoat was thrown carelessly over his shoulders, and his chest was covered by a thick, pale scarf which stood out against the gray green of his uniform. He wore a forage cap instead of a helmet. We snapped to attention out of habit. The officer studied our map, trying to find some helpful directions he might give us. He seemed bewildered. The map included very few details, which made it almost as easy to get lost on paper as it was on the ground. He made some deductions in the light of a pocket flashlight, and decided to send us to the northeast. As the regiments were disposed, ours must be in that direction. This seemed a long way from the orderly procedures of the Gross Deutschland office in Vinnitsa.

Despite the exhaustion of the long, painful march on which we had been engaged since dawn, we set off again, into the icy, foggy darkness. Three-quarters of an hour later, some fellows in a company buried in that white desert huddled a little closer in their shelter to make room for us. We had to stop, or we might have been lost for good. The acid, almost palpable fog burned our throats and made every effort excessively painful. We managed to fall asleep despite the cold, which, as always, was much harder to bear at the beginning of the season, before our bodies were used to it. Outside, in the trenches, the sentries were stamping up and down to keep from freezing on their feet. The veil of fog wrapped them round completely, cutting them off from everything that lay beyond their parapets.

We spent a harassed night of half sleep. Despite the lamp-heaters and the canvas stretched across the mouth of our shelter, the cold, still only relative at the beginning of the season, was severe enough to make us feel half frozen. The thermometer must have fallen to as low as fifteen degrees, and the fog poured in, almost as thick as outdoors. The troops passed the time as best they could, either sunk in sleep despite the discomfort, or playing Skat, or writing home with a pen precariously balanced between numbed fingers. The candles, on which they had been ordered to economize as much as possible, were stuck into empty tins which caught the melting wax, prolonging their lives by as much as four or five times. The memory of those bunkers buried in the wildness of the steppe still haunts my memory, like a legendary tale heard in childhood.

The demoralizing dawn cold greeted us as we left the hole. Silently, we resumed our march and our search. Everything was quiet, as if paralyzed by the cold, as dangerous an enemy as the Red Army. For a long time, we walked parallel to a frieze of barbed wire, coated with frost. The fog, which had not yet lifted, clung to the wire in minute drops which froze instantly.

Toward the end of the morning, two-thirds of our group at last found their regiment, whose officers were able to tell us the approximate positions of the other two regiments we still had to find. More precisely, for the sixteen of us still at loose ends, we were looking for two regiments and three companies — the young recruit and I, for example, belonged to separate companies — and the weather was no help. The inescapable necessity of trial and error added a considerable number of miles to our progress. We grew increasingly angry. How could our instructions have been so vague? Organizational failure of this kind were particularly hard on German troops, who were accustomed to the utmost efficiency. In fact, the centers of responsibility had practically ceased to exist. The extraordinarily tight army organization, which had functioned so superbly in Poland and France and all the smaller countries invaded by the Wehrmacht, was lost in the immensity of Russia, where the front was nearly fifteen hundred miles long. Our rapidly dwindling transport capability further complicated the situation during the terrible winter, which was to be followed by only one more.

Our group of sixteen men was made up of fourteen fellows belonging to one unit; myself, attached to another; and the tall young recruit, who was looking for still a third. To be exact, he and I belonged to two separate companies in the same regiment.

Just before dark, the main group of fourteen ran into their unit unexpectedly, as had the others. The young fellow and I were left to fend for ourselves on the icy track already packed hard by endless comings and goings. Feverish with anxiety, we pursued our tentative route, passing through a half-deserted hamlet. The few soldiers occupying it, dressed as they pleased, or as they could, stared at us in silence. We felt embarrassed and frightened.

According to our instructions, we were to keep on to the northeast. As long as there was any light, we tried to fix reference points on the slightest hollow or hump in the ground, on features more imaginary than real, which we projected onto the infinite monotony. We kept the earthworks and trenches of the front on our right. However, the fog soon reduced the possibilities of navigation to nil.

Despite my youth, it seemed that circumstances required me to assert myself. The other fellow was looking at me with wild, questioning eyes. I suggested digging a hole deep enough to cover with our two canvases to make a shelter for the night. This idea terrified my companion, who wanted to keep going.

“Our regiment must be quite close now,” he said.

“You’re crazy,” I said. “We can’t keep on like this. We’ll only get completely lost, and then the wolves will eat us.”

“Wolves?”

“Yes, wolves. And there are plenty of other things about Russia even worse than that.”

“But they could come after us right here, too.”

“Of course — if we’re in the open. But once we’re under canvas they’ll leave us alone. And then if they do come, we’ll shoot them.”

“Well, then it comes to the same thing. And by tomorrow, we won’t remember any of the directions.”

“We’re following a sort of track, aren’t we? We’ll keep on with it tomorrow, and that’s that. Believe me, it’s the best thing to do.”

I finally persuaded him to do as I said. We had just begun to attack the rock-hard ground with our picks when we heard the sound of an engine.

“A truck!” the young fellow shouted.

“A truck? You’re crazy! Don’t you hear the treads?” He stared at me. “A tank? Is it a German tank?”

“How the hell would I know?”

“But we’re behind our lines, aren’t we?”

“Oh, for God’s sake… of course… I hope so.”

People who need long explanations at moments when everything depends on instinct have always irritated me.

“What are we going to do?” he asked.

“Get the hell off the track, and try to hide in the snow.”

I was already moving back. The noise had grown terrible. The tank was nearly on top of us, and was still totally invisible. I know of no other experience which twists the guts harder than that. We waited for what seemed an eternity before we perceived a squat silhouette sliding smoothly over the ground. The noise was overwhelming. I stared through the darkness, trying to catch some distinguishing details. Finally, drawn by an inexplicable force, I got up, and moved forward cautiously, leaving my astonished companion to his own devices. After a moment, he joined me, staring at me with anguished, questioning eyes.

“It’s a Tiger — one of ours. We’ve got to try and catch it.”

“Let’s run after it!”

“We have to be careful, though. They might think we’re Russians.”

“But if we catch up with them they could take us along.”

“Exactly.”

We began to shout like madmen, running after the tank with some anxiety, but as hard as we could. The noise of its engines drowned our voices, and it passed us by.

“Grab your things,” I yelled at the recruit. “We’ve got to gallop behind them. We’ve got to catch them.”

We began to run along the ruts left by the treads. Although the tank was moving slowly, it was still going faster than we could run. We were already gasping for breath. I quickly realized that we were never going to catch it, and that we would have to take a chance. I grabbed my Mauser and fired into the fog, into which the tank had almost disappeared. This, of course, was extremely dangerous. The tank crew might think they were being attacked and let us have it with their machine guns.

The tank stopped. They must have heard the shot. We shouted, “Kamerad!” as loudly as we could. The engine was idling, and was making much less noise. We heard someone from the turret: “Was ist das?”

We rushed forward, drawing on all our strength. We were now very close. The fellow in the turret must surely have had his finger on the trigger.

“Only two of you?” he yelled when he could see us.

“What the hell are you doing here?”

“We’re trying to find our unit, Kamerad. We’re lost.”

“I’m not surprised. We’re lost too.”

We noticed with relief that he was wearing a white helmet stenciled with tiger stripes — which meant that he belonged to the Gross Deutschland. We explained our situation, and they pulled us into the tank. “You’re both Gross Deutschland?”

“Yes.”

The interior of the tank, which seemed to be painted with orange lead, was filled with the dim, yellowish light of a metal mechanic’s lamp which hung from the ceiling. There were two fellows in the turret, and probably a couple more up front. The engine made so much noise that it was almost impossible to talk, but it warmed the air agreeably, and filled it with the smell of hot oil and exhaust.

Despite the ample dimensions of the turret, the steering gear and ammunition cases took up so much room it was a squeeze to fit us in. The tank commander was keeping his eyes and ears open, thrusting his head from the turret at closely spaced intervals. He wore a thick winter hat which looked quite Russian.

The tank crew told us that they too were looking for their unit. Some engine trouble had held them up for nearly two days. Now they were trying to orient themselves by the batteries and companies they passed a dangerous business, because a solitary tank is like a blinded animal. They didn’t have a radio, and their group leader seemed to be doing nothing about them. Maybe he had already classified them as missing.

They also told us that the new Panzers were coated with a magnetic anti-mine paste, and exterior fire extinguishers. The most dangerous weapon for them was still the rocket launchers which the Russians had perfected after encountering our Panzerfaust.

They said that none of the Russian tanks could stand up to our Tigers. In the spring, on the Rumanian frontier, we would see the Tigers in action for ourselves. The T-37s and KW-85s discovered the Tiger’s superiority for themselves, the hard way.

An hour later, the tank stopped.

“A signpost!” shouted the commander. “There must be a camp near here!”

It had begun to snow — large, feathery flakes which clung to every surface. A post bristling with signs loomed unexpectedly out of the darkness. One of the crew brushed the snow off the signs with his gloved hand, and read out the directions. It seemed that the company the young recruit was looking for, along with three or four others, was somewhere to the east. The rest of the regiment was to the northeast, which was the way the tank was headed.

The young soldier who was arriving at the front for the first time had to say goodbye, and walk off alone into the darkness. I can still see the expression of terror on his white face.

Twenty minutes later, we ran into my unit, and the tank crew decided to stop for the night. I jumped down, and went over to a cluster of wretched isbas to ask directions. The long, peaked roofs rose from the ground like large tents. In the command hut, a noncom was sitting at a rough desk made of a couple of boards propped up on boxes, and lit by three candles. As there was no heat, he had thrown a blanket over his coat. He was able to tell me roughly where I could find my company. I found myself moving through a succession of bunkers, foxholes, and trenches, as on my first visit to the front, only these were far more precarious and much shallower than the ones on the Don. The engineers, who were spread very thin on the ground in this sector, had done what they could, but most of the work had been left to the picks of the exhausted infantry. Winter had begun in earnest. The ground was frozen hard, and from now on things could only get worse.

I kept asking questions, and finally a fellow from liaison took me to our officers’ bunker. The sentry at the entrance inspected me narrowly before pulling back the canvas, astonished to see an ordinary soldier escorted like an officer.

Wesreidau was not asleep. A short pipe which had gone out jutted from the high collar which hid most of his face. He was bare-headed, and seemed to be studying a map. Two lamp-heaters lit the hole, but didn’t have much of an effect on the cold. At the back of the dugout, a man was lying on the ground, dead asleep. A lieutenant, sitting on a pack, was also sleeping, with his head in his hands. Captain Wesreidau looked up, to see who had come in. I was about to announce myself when the telephone rang — probably some unimportant report.

A moment later, I began again: “Gefreiter Sajer, Herr Hauptmann.”

“Back from leave, my boy?”

“Not exactly, Herr Hauptmann. My leave was canceled.”

“Ah. But you’re well now? How do you feel?”

I wanted to tell him how disappointed I was, and how much I still hoped to have at least a few days off, but the words stuck in my throat. I suddenly felt the full strength of my attachment to all the friends who must have been very nearby, an emotion which struck me as both idiotic and profound.

“I’m all right, Herr Hauptmann. I can wait until my next leave.” Wesreidau stood up. Although I couldn’t really see his face, I thought he was smiling. He put one hand on my shoulder, and I felt myself tremble at his touch.

“I’ll take you to your friends. I know that being with friends can make up for the lack of a comfortable bed, even for the lack of food.”

I felt stunned. Herr Hauptmann led the way out, and I followed him.

“I always try to group my men as friends,” he explained. “Wiener, Hals, Lensen, and Lindberg are covering a Pak position. They’ll be glad to see you again.”

Wesreidau’s tall figure strode through the ghostly fog, which drifted against the darkness in white patches. As we passed, fellows stupefied by sleep stumbled to their feet, and noncoms signaled that everything was calm.

We came to a hole which was somewhat deeper than the others, and which seemed to be occupied by three hunched-up sacks, and two figures leaning against the parapet. I recognized the veteran’s voice immediately.

“Welcome to our hole, Herr Hauptmann. We’ll be able to talk tonight. Everything’s quiet.”

The familiarity of that voice astonished me.

Wesreidau said: “Here’s Sajer, who’s just come back.”

“Sajer! I don’t believe it! I thought he was living it up in Berlin.”

“I felt lonesome for you fellows,” I said.

“That’s a good boy,” the veteran answered. “You’re quite right, too. Here we sometimes even have fireworks, and in Berlin it’s total blackout. I remember that from the last time I was there, over a year and a half ago.”

I could hear Hals grumbling sleepily: “What the hell’s going on up there?”

“Wake up, steppe boy,” Wiener shouted even louder than before.

“Herr Hauptmann is here with our dear friend Sajer.”

Hals jumped up as if he’d been shot.

“Sajer!” he said. “But he’s crazy to come back here!”

Wesreidau felt obliged to make a formal intervention. “If I wasn’t aware of your courage in combat, I should be forced to assign you to a penal battalion, Gefreiter Hals.”

Hals was suddenly fully awake.

“Please excuse me, Herr Hauptmann. I was half asleep.”

“Your sleep is pessimistic, Gefreiter Hals.”

The veteran answered for him. “The day before yesterday, the Don; yesterday, the Donets; this morning, the Dnieper… You must admit, Herr Hauptmann, that even an elephant hide would find that somewhat discouraging.”

“I know,” Wesreidau answered. “It’s just what I’ve been afraid of ever since we came to Russia. But if we lose our confidence everything will be much harder.”

“It’s territory and men that we’re losing, Herr Hauptmann, much faster than confidence.”

“The Russians will not be able to cross the Pripet, for absolute geographical reasons. Believe me.”

“Where could we retreat to after that?” Lindberg asked stupidly. “To the Oder,” the veteran said.

The cold seemed to strike all of us in the vitals.

“God keep us from such a catastrophe,” murmured Herr Hauptmann. “I would rather be dead than see that day.”

Probably Wesreidau believed in God. In any case, his prayer was granted.

12. RED TANKS

It was now ten days since my return, which we had celebrated according to the circumstances. In the windowless isba we were assigned for rest periods, we had emptied a five-quart container of ersatz — no vodka, no biscuits, but then, that’s war.

In any case, we had reserved the ersatz for me and my friends. The rest of the company might as well have been in limbo. Beyond the boundary of our friendship, and indifferent to it, they washed their dirty feet in large dishes of faintly warmed water or attacked their lice or organized lice races to pass the time. For a brief moment, we felt a sense of occasion, but that quickly faded. One can tell the same stories only a certain number of times. We very soon sank back into the torpor characteristic of soldiers at the front. Nothing was new to us; we had been through it all before — and even on days when our morale was relatively high, we felt constrained by the inevitable anxieties of the front.

For ten days we shuttled back and forth between our hole in the ground and the isba where we rested. Every twelve hours, we tramped the half mile which lay between our outpost and the shattered remnants of a village overrun by war. During the day, we stared vacantly at the empty, frozen country beyond our hole. At night, the fog limited our vision to ten or fifteen yards at most. We weren’t yet trying to stop the enemy; their front was still extremely fluid.

From time to time, a few attempts at penetration, always motorized, forced us to open fire. And once, since my return, enemy tanks had appeared and fired at our frozen batteries. Otherwise, we had all the time in the world to observe the crystal structure of snowflakes against our infantry half boots, which became as hard as wood during our twelve hours of duty, and softened again in the stable-like warmth of sixty bodies huddled together in the isba during our twelve hours off. Fires, of course, were streng verboten, as smoke would give away our position.

Wesreidau often visited us.

I think he felt especially warm toward our group, and with the veteran, able to speak directly, as man to man. We young ones listened to them talking, the way boys listen to their elders, and what we heard was always alarming. Our exhausted troops had abandoned Kiev, which, in spite of everything, remained a center of combat. We were still trying to hold the Dnieper — but even that famous barrage seemed to be doing us very little good. From Cherkassy to Kremenchug, the Russians were on both banks of the river. They also held both banks of the Desna. At Nedrigailov, victory was no longer a possibility for us, and our men were faced with a choice of captivity or death.

Fortunately, as our front was extremely precarious and shallow, we were only supposed to be covering the southern wing of the fighting. The area we were holding was as flat as a billiard table, and a strong defense would have been difficult even with adequate supplies. On the twelfth day after my return, we were attacked by Russian planes, which cost us many casualties. Later that day, a column of German soldiers straggled over the horizon, partially made up of troops pushed from Cherkassy. Seven or eight ragged, famished regiments, overloaded with wounded, descended on us like a plague of locusts, ravaging and plundering our reserves. The intensity of the battle they had just survived could easily be read on their shaggy, exhausted faces. This fragment of the Wehrmacht, with worn out boots, empty packs, and eyes glittering with fever, preceded by four days the Russian thrust which began at Kherson and pushed through to the west bank of the Dnieper. At precisely this moment, winter also began to attack in earnest. The thermometer suddenly plunged to five degrees below zero.

On an evening of savage cold, the enemy reached our lines. The noise of their arrival preceded them, carried on the wind to the shivering bundles of rugs and blankets waiting behind frozen parapets. We listened, as animals at bay listen to the pack closing in. For at least two hours, we lay with straining ears, our enormous eyes staring fixedly through frozen films of protective tears.

Although we could see nothing, voices kept announcing: “Here they are!”

Our tense imaginations invested the visible edge of our defenses with a thousand imaginary movements, and a thousand thoughts and visions whirled through our heads: our distant homelands, our families and friends, and our desperate, passionate loves. We imagined every possible outcome to the imminent fighting: surrender, captivity, flight… flight, or death… a quick death, to be done with it all. Some grasped their weapons all the more firmly, dreaming of a heroic defense which would push the Russians back, and hold the line. But most of us were resigned to death — a resignation which often created the most glorious heroes of the war. Simple cowards or pacifists, who had been opposed to Hitler from the start, often saved their lives and the lives of many others in a delirium of terror provoked by the accident of an overwhelming situation.

Faced with the Russian hurricane, we ran whenever we could. But often we had no choice, and became heroes without glory, who were somehow able to conjure up a strength superior to the enemy’s. We no longer fought for Hitler, or for National Socialism, or for the Third Reich — or even for our fiancées or mothers or families trapped in bomb-ravaged towns. We fought from simple fear, which was our motivating power. The idea of death, even when we accepted it, made us howl with powerless rage. We fought for reasons which are perhaps shameful, but are, in the end, stronger than any doctrine. We fought for ourselves, so that we wouldn’t die in holes filled with mud and snow; we fought like rats, which do not hesitate to spring with all their teeth bared when they are cornered by a man infinitely larger than they are.

Although we were already beaten ten times over, our terror became a fortress of despair, which the Russians found difficult to breach. We lay huddled against the frozen soil, and listened, to the growing tumult of their approach.

We began to hear distinct, separable sounds. The black potato sack which was Hals changed shape and moved toward me.

“Do you hear that?” he whispered. “They’ve got tanks.”

At first I heard nothing but tanks. Then there was the sound of singing too: a Russian victory song. It was their turn now to feel the infectious enthusiasm of advancing troops.

“A year and a half ago, we were marching on Moscow, and I was singing just like that,” muttered the veteran.

The night wore on. The noise of the Russian advance changed in quality and intensity, but never stopped. The men who had been resting in the isbas came back to their forward positions. Everyone was now in the line. Even the auxiliary services had been organized to defend the village. The front was long and thin; our division alone held some sixty miles, with the regiments standing elbow to elbow. There were a great many of us, but at least thirty times as many of them.

Our anxiety hovered over us like a pessimistic exhalation trapped by our heavy steel helmets. Our breath condensed on our nostrils and lips, and on the upturned collars of our coats. For a long time now, our hands and feet had been hurting us. For the moment, stiffened by cold, they seemed detached and separate from our general nervous tension. On other evenings, the fellows moved about in their holes to keep from freezing. This evening, however, our cumbersome overshoes had been tossed aside, and everyone was still. The biting cold passed over us like a silent dream, depositing a film of frost on the earth and on us. Periodically, we had to clear our weapons, and every time the touch of the icy metal struck us like an electric shock. To the east, the Russian troops were silent. All we heard from their side was the disquieting roar of their engines.

Occasionally, we heard a horse whinnying: one of our starving beasts protesting the onset of death. The desire for sleep weighed on us as heavily and oppressively as our fear and the cold, and kept over whelming us for five and even ten minutes at a time, despite our wide-open eyes. Then we would jolt back to reality, to wait for the first hours of morning — a time when men and animals often die of cold.

The Russians were taking their time. Since we had caught the first sounds of their new front, a full day had gone by, but nothing more had happened. Had we possessed sufficient strength and equipment, a counter-attack would almost surely have been successful. But our orders were simply to resist and hang on. We were operating on a system of four hours on and four hours off, organized so that a maximum number of men was in the line at any given moment. Many men fell asleep beside their guns, to wake suddenly, badly frozen. We were steadily losing sick and wounded men, who withdrew on foot or on horseback — and no reinforcements were arriving to fill the gaps.

“It’s a racket,” grumbled the veteran.

At dusk, we found Lindberg naked from the waist down. He had gone off a short distance, supposedly to crap, and had stayed that way for nearly three-quarters of an hour. By the time we found him, he was crying like a baby, and he wouldn’t have lasted much longer. Hals blew up at him, and let him have it on the backside and thighs with the strap of his gas mask.

By the next morning, the Russians had still not attacked. We had grown steadily colder and more nervous, and it was difficult to seem calm.

One of our planes flew over, and dropped four sacks of mail. I had four letters: two from my family, and two from Paula. All were very out of date — particularly one of the letters from France, which was more than a month old. I devoured Paula’s letters, which seemed filled with sadness. She had been sent to a small factory out in the country some forty miles from Berlin. She said that life in the capital was no longer possible.

What was I supposed to think? What could I imagine?

My parents’ letter, with the standard two-line refrain from my father, irritated me by its tone of unjustified complaint. I mentioned this to Wiener, who replied: “That’s all the French know how to do — complain.”

My mother’s last letter astounded me by its lack of realism. The poor woman begged me to take care of myself, to avoid showing off, to do my duty, but nothing more — to protect myself from meaningless risks. This sort of advice seemed so irrelevant that for the moment I was staggered. I looked up from the letter, yellow against the snow, to the whiteness which veiled the appalling danger threatening us from the east. The pathetic futility of my mother’s attitude made my eyes fill with tears.

Everyone seemed to be reading a letter whose contents were so unexpected that fellows far older than I were overcome by tears. Others jumped to their feet, screaming like madmen: a close relative or friend had been killed in an air raid.

“This mail is only upsetting everyone,” said a tall fellow next to me, as he looked at a friend who was weeping like a child.

It seemed we were to be spared nothing.

In the afternoon, some patrols were sent out into the whirling snow. Our command had grown tired of waiting and had decided to test the enemy. We heard a few shots, and then the patrols came back, reporting that they’d seen a heavy concentration of Russian materiel.

I and my comrades were wakened just before nightfall. With pounding hearts, we ran to our forward positions. The Russian tanks were rolling through the storm, and we could feel the vibration of their treads against the frozen ground.

Our anti-tank gunners and men with Panzerfausts kept their eyes glued to their telescopic sights, which they had to wipe continually. A few anti-tank trenches had been dug, but these were ludicrously inadequate both in number and size. We knew that if our anti-tank defenses gave way, we were lost, and we nervously clenched our fingers around the anti-tank grenades and magnetic mines which had been distributed.

At the Pak we were protecting, Olensheim, Ballers, Freivitch and others were ready to work the gun. Our visibility had been seriously reduced by falling snow. To the north of us, an S.M.G. had just opened fire. The rumbling of tanks was louder than ever, but the tanks themselves were still invisible. To the north, fighting had already begun, and we could see flashes of light despite the thickly whirling snow and the rapidly growing darkness. Short bursts of anti-tank fire lashed the plain, producing a curious muffled echo. As the roar of tanks grew louder, we felt our lungs lift. Long flames ran the length of the horizon, while others rose vertically, illuminating at different levels the whirling masses of falling snow. Then the sound of tank engines in full acceleration, shattered the night and our eardrums. Five vaguely defined monsters loomed out of the darkness, rolling parallel to our line of defense. Our anti-tank crew was already firing. Wiener calmly steadied the butt of his F.M. against his shoulder, and I felt myself stiffen with a thousand indescribable terrors. Flashes of yellow light burst against the lead tank in the group of T-34s, whose turrets were pointed toward our line. Five shells had already left white traces on the huge machine, which otherwise appeared to be unaffected by the efforts of our anti-tank gunners.

A tank was roaring past us, at a distance of about ten yards. We heard a howling sound, and a shell from a Panzerfaust burst against its side. The monster immediately reduced its speed, and thick black smoke began to seep from every joint, to be lashed to the ground by the wind. The hatches opened, clanging back against the heavy metal plates. We could hear shouts and cries, which were quickly drowned by a powerful explosion. The turret disintegrated, leaving fragments of human beings suspended from the shattered metal in colors ranging from purple to gold. But there were no cries of triumph from our position — only the barking voice of our Pak. One of our shells hit a joint on the back of a second tank, and it too began to pour smoke. Then the cartridges were running through my fingers. Everyone who escaped from the immobilized tank was shot down without mercy. For a moment, we breathed more easily. By now, our surroundings were lit by flames and we were able to see the Russian tanks before they got so close. One of them had actually crossed our lines, and as it drew near us, we could feel our hair stiffening with terror. The anti-tank crew were working as fast as they could. Within three seconds, their gun was facing this new threat, and a shell, fired at the earliest possible instant, was bursting against the enemy’s front apron. At the moment of impact, the engine stopped, and then began to scream, as if it had been thrown out of gear. Simultaneously, somewhere to our right, we were aware of two brilliant flashes, and heard a long-drawn-out explosion. Another tank began to fire at us, and large pieces of frozen earth hurtled into the air.

I no longer knew what was happening. The tank to our right burst into flames, groaning at all its seams.

“Für den Panzerfaust: Sieg Heil! Heil!” someone shouted.

Our gunners were now firing at the second tank which had penetrated to our rear, and which seemed to be having mechanical difficulties. Then its left side disintegrated in a prolonged explosion. But our attention was drawn to a hallucinating spectacle farther to the rear. A T-34 had driven over one of our positions, crushing our men under its treads. One of our half-tracks, armed with an anti-tank machine gun was chasing it from behind, firing as rapidly as it could. Our anti-tank crew were in trouble. Freivitch was wounded, perhaps even dead. We fired our machine guns at the Russian monster, which never slackened its speed but continued to make for its lines as fast as possible. Two shells fired by other tanks exploded beside our half-track, and a third disintegrated it right in front of us. But the enemy tank, believing it was still pursued, vanished into the whirling snow.

The Russian armored assault was over. It had lasted for about half an hour, and had clearly been testing our defenses. A certain number of tanks had been disabled or destroyed; their losses were visibly greater than ours. Unfortunately, these losses counted for nothing compared to the vast armada regrouping opposite us. For us, although quantitively our losses were smaller, the destruction of four anti-tank positions in our sector was extremely serious.

For the moment, the tension dropped somewhat. Trench telephones rang, asking for reports, and voices shouted for the stretcher-bearers who were running and sliding across the icy ground. The veteran slid to the bottom of our hole and lit a cigarette, despite the ban. Hals jumped down and joined us.

“I just heard that Wesreidau’s bunker was crushed by a T-34,” he said, gasping.

We gaped at him, waiting for more information.

“Stay here,” the veteran said finally. “I’ll go and see.”

“Achtung! Zigaretten!” warned Hals.

“Danke.”

The veteran extinguished his butt, and tucked it into the cuff of his sleeve. He reappeared half an hour later.

“We had to dig for ten minutes before we could get Wesreidau out,” he told us. “He’s all right, and so are the two other officers — just a few scratches. But the fellow from liaison outside was killed. He must have panicked and tried to get inside. We found his body in the rubble.”

We quickly suppressed that mangled vision to rejoice that our hauptmann was safe. We all felt very attached to him, and dependent on his survival.

By next morning, the snow had stopped. The plain was strewn with the carcasses of wrecked tanks, which the storm had not entirely covered — at least twenty in the immediate vicinity of our position. Parts of these huge black cadavers, still warm from the fires which had burned over and through them, had turned red in the intensity of the flames. It seemed that the Russians had attacked our line at four points, separated by intervals of fifteen miles. One of those had been centered directly on our position, which was held by six companies. The other three were farther to the north.

We went back into the line at eight o’clock. Everything was motionless and muffled, under a low, dark sky, as opaque and heavy as a lead roof. Nowhere else have I seen skies quite like the skies of Russian winter. We used to stare up, amazed by the oppressive solidity. The diffused light seeping slowly downward made everything look unreal. Our reversible winter overalls stood out against the immaculate new snow a dingy piss yellow. A great many men were already wearing all the winter clothes we’d been issued: coat, vest, sheepskin, etc., which made their movements slow and clumsy. As the overalls had not been cut to cover so much bulk, they often tore. We looked like a collection of filthy, tattered pillows.

Despite our sense of inferiority, we all felt much less tense. The carcasses of the Russian tanks looked to our otherwise pessimistic eyes like the slaughtered beasts of a triumphant hunting scene. We all knew that it had not been a serious attack; nonetheless, we had managed to hold off the enemy’s most dangerous machines. The possibility that the Russian tanks had been ordered not to advance any further occurred only to the veterans among us. All the younger men preferred to believe that we had stopped them. A few bottles of alcohol theoretically reserved for wounded men were opened by the captain himself, and that evening we celebrated in the isbas. In our hut we particularly honored our Panzerfaust team.

In the dim, wavering light of seven or eight candles, we drank to the healths of Obergefreiters Lensen, Kellermann, and Dunde. Grenadiers Smellens and Prinz touched glasses with Herr Hauptmann Wesreidau, who wore a large dressing on his left hand, and two others on his face. There were also two wounded men lying on stretchers, to whom we gave as many cigarettes as they wished.

Hals, exuberant as always, was describing the battle, miming certain scenes with sweeping gestures of his left arm and hand, which held his glass, while with his right he vigorously scratched his arm pits, which swarmed with lice. Lindberg, as always when things were going well for us, was in a state of high excitement. Cowardice had affected him more than anybody else, and his face, although it looked as young as ever, bore the traces.

Several men had fallen asleep, despite the noise. Everyone who stayed awake was soon quite drunk. As always at a German celebration, several fellows began to sing — marching songs, because we knew hardly any others. In the shadowy light of the isba, the scene looked fantastic and unreal.

The veteran began a Russian song. None of the rest of us understood him. We didn’t know whether we were listening to a Revolutionary song or a song from the friendly Ukraine — although the distinction no longer mattered, as our Ukrainian days were over.

Everyone was singing whatever he liked, as part of a continuously increasing uproar. Hals had been twisting my arm to sing something in French, and I obliged, despite a growing desire to vomit, adding the “Sambre et Meuse” and a series of more or less obscene songs to the general discord.

Hals, who was as tight as a drum, burst out laughing and shouted: “Here come the Franzosen to the rescue: Ourrah pobieda!”

Then something disagreeable happened. Lensen stood up, stiff with drunkenness.

“Who the hell is talking about the Franzosen? What can anyone expect from a bunch of lousy milquetoasts like that?”

He was shouting at Hals, who was dancing heavily, like a bear. Hals grabbed him by the arm, and tried to pull him into a waltz.

“Shut up, you idiot!” Lensen yelled. “Go stick your head in the snow instead of belching out such crap.”

Hals, who was almost a head taller, went right on dancing. Then Lensen let him have it with his fists, shouting at him louder than his minuscule superiority of rank gave him any right to do.

“Stillgestanden, gefreiter!” he yelled.

“Who the hell do you think you are? Are you telling me to shut up?” Hals was trying to stare at Lensen through eyes clouded by drink. “Stillgestanden!” Lensen repeated. “Or I’ll give you something you won’t like.”

“But you’re forgetting Sajer!” Hals shouted, waving at me. By now he was purple-faced too.

“He’s half French, and he’s lived in France all his life. And anyway the French are with us now.”

He’d obviously been reading the same stories I had.

“You damned fool. Where the hell did you get that?”

“But it’s true!” someone else shouted.

“I read it in Ost Front.”

I no longer knew which way to look.

“Wake up, you dummkopf. So what if a handful of those milksops have come over to us? It doesn’t mean a damn thing. And anyone who thinks anything different is no better than they are — goddamned black-haired guitarists whining over their goddamned love gongs.”

I knew that Lensen was talking about the fundamental discord which has always existed between South Germany and Prussia.

“You’re forgetting, Lensen, that my mother grew up just outside Berlin,” I said.

“Well, then, you’ve got to choose. Either you’re German like us, or you’re one of those worthless, feckless Frogs.”

I was on the point of saying that after all I didn’t really have much choice.

“And you were asked to make just that choice in Poland, even at Chemnitz. I remember. I was there.”

“But he did choose!” Hals shouted. “And here he is, in the same boat as you and me and all the rest of us.”

“So — he doesn’t have any more goddamn connection with the French.”

Lensen, who was unquestionably brave, had been awarded the Iron Cross after destroying his seventh tank.

I suddenly felt overwhelmingly depressed and vulnerable, and incapable of ever attaining anything like Lensen’s record. As always, I found the war almost totally paralyzing — probably because of my soft French blood, which Lensen despised so much. I was really almost as bad as Lindberg. He wasn’t a true German either, but came from somewhere near Lake Constance — one of Lensen’s typical “black-hairs.”

A joyous group had begun to sing “Marienka,” and general drunken revelry took over again. This time, though, I stayed on the sidelines, sunk in thought. All the pride I had felt when I had sworn my oath at Camp F, all my joy in feeling that at last I was the equal of my companions, for whom I felt an unquestioning respect, all the struggles and miseries undertaken and endured with the burning faith of a true believer — all of these had been once again cast into doubt by Lensen’s drunken outburst. I had always sensed a certain scorn on his part. However, once in Poland he had come to my defense, and I had jumped to the conclusion that he held nothing against me on account of my origins. Now I knew the truth. Despite all my efforts, and all the suffering we bad been through together, my comrades rejected me. Would they ever think me worthy of bearing German arms? Inwardly, I cursed my parents for having brought me into the world at their particular crossroads.

I felt angry and sad and incredibly alone. I knew that I could count on Hals and Wiener and maybe a few others; but even they had started drinking and singing again, beside their blood brothers.

I would never again be able to sing with a light, casual spirit those German songs I enjoyed so much. And someday, maybe very soon, I might die, in a position not much better than that of an adoring black slave at his master’s side. This vision of things was unbearable, and increased the nausea brought on by alcohol. I went outside to vomit and take a few breaths of icy air. My drunkenness prevented any further thought, and when I returned to the hut, I collapsed onto a heap of packs, to scratch at the lice biting me under my belt.

The next morning, the Russian front began to move again. First they sent over a few rounds of artillery. They had been keeping us in a state of expectation for several days now, undoubtedly preparing a definitive offensive with the slowness characteristic of their organization. During the day, we were reinforced by an artillery column which meant digging new trenches, and blistered hands for all of us. All along the front, our troops were ordered to break up the Russian positions.

That afternoon, we pounded the enemy with our big guns. They remained obstinately quiet. As soon as it was dark, certain sections loaded with ammunition left our trenches and advanced across the snowy ground. We had resumed our push to the east.

Scheisse! In a state of considerable apprehension, these groups fell on a motorized Soviet regiment, whose mass of vehicles seemed immobilized for all eternity. The night stillness was broken by the sound of our F.M.s and grenades, the cries of the Russians, surprised by this sudden and unexpected display of aggressiveness, and the roar of incendiary bombs, which must have consumed a costly quantity of materiel.

Then our men made a half turn, before the Russians were able to muster an organized reaction, and ran back to our trenches, bathed in transitory glory.

We had, in fact, aroused the anger of the Russians, who decided to retaliate as soon as it was light.

As at Belgorod, the whole horizon burst into flame, with the sudden, total involvement of the opening bars of a Wagner opera. Our frantic dash to our positions assumed a tragic quality, as the rain of fire was so dense that a quarter of our men fell before they’d reached the line. Then, we relived scenes and experiences very like what we’d known before. The sight of comrades screaming and writhing through final moments of agony had become no more bearable with familiarity, and I, despite my longing to live or die a worthy hero of the Wehrmacht, was no less of an animal stiff with uncontrollable terror.

Fortunately for us, the Luftwaffe, on which we could no longer rely, made an unexpected appearance, and somewhat reduced the force of the Russian blow. But the next day this intervention was answered in kind, and Russian planes did what they could to knock out our artillery. As a result, our artillery was withdrawn during the night, leaving us to do the honors unsupported.

We held our positions for four more terrible days, in spite of continuous infantry attacks supported by armor. Whenever possible, we buried our dead in the holes where they fell. Eighty-three names were scratched off the company list — among these, Olensheim, who had re covered from a serious wound at Belgorod, to receive his coup-de grace here, on the west bank of the Dnieper, where tranquility was to have been assured.

The Russians had finally regrouped for their supreme effort, and were delaying only to complete last-minute preparations. Their artillery, which seemed to be growing stronger by the hour, pounded our positions and the countryside for a long way back. The veteran had just been wounded, and was waiting, along with some hundred other men, for evacuation to a hospital, or at least to a quieter zone in the rear. A brusque sergeant had taken Wiener’s place, and I continued to feed ammunition into the spandau, operated by someone considerably less expert than my friend.

The night which followed was so horrible that I retain only a confused and fragmented memory of it. Fresh supplies of ammunition were often slung into a length of canvas and carried across the trenches by two or four fellows.

The “night” of which I speak was, of course, total by five in the evening. Time in Russia is like that: in the summer there is almost no night, and in the winter, no day.

We had just withstood two or three major assaults. From the screams of anguish to our left, we concluded that a great many of our men had been killed. We had emptied five magazines, and were warming our fingers on the hot metal of the machine gun. Our sixth and last magazine had been attached, and we were anxiously waiting for fresh supplies. The night was continuously lit by the explosions of thousands of Russian shells, which made movement extremely difficult. Our trenches, which in any case were not deep enough, extended only to certain positions. The others had to be reached by leaps and bounds, alternating with plunges to the ground, and writhing on our stomachs across dozens of yards of snow mixed with chunks of frozen earth.

From time to time, we could see four figures moving toward us, jumping from crater to crater, carrying shells for our 50-mm. mortar, and magazines for the spandau. They were still about forty yards away, when their shadowy mass was surrounded by a flash of white light. We never heard any cries. A few minutes later, I was sent out to crawl to the point of impact. The sergeant ordered me to bring back at least two magazines. I had just arrived at my destination when I heard the Russian assault cry, followed by a shower of grenades and mortar shells. The ground shook beneath me in a manner which defied all prediction. I felt like a pea inside a ferociously beaten drum. I was lying flat on the ground among the bodies of comrades killed only a few minutes before, unable to see any of the supplies I’d been sent to fetch. Then I heard the sound of a tank. The darkness all around me was broken by streaks of light and large pink and yellow explosions. In a momentary beam from some headlight, I could see a small sign marked S. 157. I opened my mouth wide, as prescribed, because I could hardly breathe, and lay where I was, frantically groping for something to hang on to in that diabolical setting, where horizontal and vertical alternated to the rhythm of the lights which slashed the darkness. I thought that I could recognize through the uproar the crackle of the weapon I had operated with Wiener and had left only a moment before, and felt that my sanity might be close to collapse. I could see no escape from my situation, and lay glued to the ground with my head down, like a trussed animal, waiting for the butcher’s axe.

A hundred yards to my left, the Pak, with its barrel marked for eleven kills, was fleeing into the striped darkness with its ammunition and gun crew. I heard the terrifying roar of a tank rising above the general tumult, and a headlight wavered and leaped through the undulating darkness. It had obviously driven through our defenses and was now passing within twenty yards of where I lay. I saw it suddenly burst into flame, and despite the intense cold a wave of hot air almost asphyxiated me. Half unconscious, I could hear the trample of running feet all around me, and, despite the noise of guns and explosions, cries which sounded more like curses than anything else, and were certainly neither French nor German.

I thought I could distinguish three or four pairs of boots thumping past me. Everything happened so quickly at that moment that I am no longer sure of what in fact I did see. I could still hear the sound of a machine gun, and then there were hundreds of shouting voices. The tank exploded a second time, showering steel fragments all around me. Some of our soldiers must still have been firing.

Then there was a period of relative calm, which lasted for about three-quarters of an hour. Exhausted by nervous tension, I managed to pull myself out of my torpor enough to take a few steps toward the position I had left twenty minutes earlier. But nothing remained of it except smoke and motionless bodies. Furthermore, the entire sector, as far as I could see, was veiled in smoke. I turned back again, heading for our rear lines, and, too late to stop myself, tripped over a corpse. I realized that I had no weapon, and grabbed the dead man’s gun, which was lying beside him. Then I began to run.

I heard four or five shots. The whistling flight of the balls made me think of hell. I knew that I might faint at any moment, and between two spasms of nausea fell into a hole where three fellows in roughly the same state as myself were staring fixedly at the dark, somber east. Literally crumpled into the bottom of the hole, I attempted to order my thoughts. My retina still bore the imprint of a thousand darting, luminous points, which prolonged my sense of vertigo.

For a long moment, I stayed where I was, wondering where to head for next. Then I heard the other fellows in the hole exclaiming with astonishment. Far to the south, the earth seemed to have caught on fire, and the sky rang with the sound of thunder.

Twenty miles to the south, the second Dnieper front had given way in the face of irresistible Russian pressure, and thousands of German and Rumanian soldiers met an apocalyptic end. Some twenty regiments had been unable to disengage in time, and had laid down their arms, to be rewarded for their bravery by captivity and degradation. For the rest of us, the war continued. In a rush, I decided to leave the hole which had received me a few moments before. Doubled over, I ran like a madman to another defensive position, where a group of soldiers were clustered around a motionless figure who was being bandaged. A fellow I didn’t recognize hailed me by name: “Where’ve you come from, Sajer?”

My head was still pounding to the rhythm of the bombardment. I stared at him.

“I don’t know…. I don’t know any more…. Everyone back there is dead…. I ran away, through all the Russians.”

Behind us, we could hear the roar of an engine. A tractor was pulling a heavy anti-tank gun into position. Then we heard the burst of the exhaust a moment before each shell exploded. Our overwhelming weariness was now affecting us like a drug. Russian shells were coming over in profusion. For a moment, we watched the storm closing in. Then, with a cry of despair and a prayer for mercy, we dived to the bottom of our hole, trembling as the earth shook and the intensity of our fear grew. The shocks, whose center seemed closer each time, were of an extraordinary violence. Torrents of snow and frozen earth poured down on us. A white flash, accompanied by an extraordinary displacement of air, and an intensity of noise which deafened us, lifted the edge of the trench. None of us immediately grasped what had happened. We were thrown in a heap against the far wall of the hole, wounded and intact together. Then, with a roar, the earth poured in and covered us.

In that moment, so close to death, I was seized by a rush of terror so powerful that I felt my mind was cracking. Trapped by the weight of earth, I began to howl like a madman. The memory of that moment terrifies me still. The sense that one has been buried alive is horrible beyond the powers of ordinary language. Dirt had run down my neck and into my mouth and eyes, and my whole body was gripped by a heavy and astonishingly inert substance which only held me more tightly the harder I struggled. Under my thigh I felt a leg kicking with the desperation of a horse between the shafts of a heavy cart. Something else was rubbing against my shoulder. With a sudden jerk, I pulled my head free of the dirt and of my helmet, whose strap was cutting into my windpipe, nearly strangling me. Some two feet from my face a horrible mask pouring blood was howling like a demon. My body was still entirely trapped. I knew that I was either going to die or lose my reason.

My throat burst with screams of rage and despair. No nightmare could possibly reach such a pitch of horror. At that moment, I suddenly understood the meaning of all the cries and shrieks I had heard on every battlefield. And I also understood the marching songs, which so often begin with a ringing description of a soldier dying in glory and then suddenly turn somber:

Once again I learned how hard it is to watch a comrade die: almost as hard as dying oneself.

During the night, the Russians made nine attempts to break through our lines, and failed. If they had persevered once, or maybe twice more, they would surely have been successful. I watched, three quarters buried, for about twenty minutes, while a hurricane of fire broke over our rear, destroying what was left of the village, and killing something like 700 men in our regiment alone, which, at the beginning of the offensive had numbered about 2,800 men. I scratched at the ground with my hands, and somehow managed to free myself. Two men were lying beside me in pools of blood. The dying man had been buried under more than a yard of earth, and could no longer hope for anything but the mercy of heaven. A fellow beside me, who had been wounded, was groaning with pain. He was buried almost as deeply as I had been. I dug him out as fast as I could, and helped him to crawl through the explosions toward the rear. On the way, I saw a gun lying on the ground and picked it up.

The rest of the night was consumed by a series of almost insuperably difficult problems, as if we were caught in a terrible game with all the odds against us and our lives at stake.

At dawn, in the first faint light of a dark winter day, the front grew quiet.

The scattered remnants of our regiments collected as they met among the craters and shell holes. A cloud of stale smoke hung over the snowy ground, which was littered with Russian and German dead. The wounded who had not yet succumbed to the bitter cold were still groaning, filling the air with a chorus of misery which our exhausted ears heard as they might have heard a winter wind howling over the roof of an isba in an isolated hamlet on the steppe. Sections were organized to help the stretcher-bearers with a job of impossible magnitude.

As always, the Russians left all rescue efforts to us. Their wounded were left lying where they fell, with a possibility of either dying on the spot or of being picked up by one of our first-aid teams. Their supplies of materiel seemed to be increasing daily in quantity and quality, but their medical services barely functioned. As our army grew more and more disorganized by retreat, we became increasingly unable to care for the thousands of wounded soldiers, whose number was continuously growing. The Russian wounded could hope for very little from us.

While the medical service tried to deal with the wounded, some twelve of us settled into a half-covered bunker back of our former sleeping quarters, which had been entirely destroyed. Herr Hauptmann Wesreidau, who had just arrived, was one of the group. Despite a general sense of foreboding in the face of disaster, we all felt a surge of joy whenever a particular friend appeared. Hals, Lensen, and Lindberg were all there. I was helping a wounded corporal bandage his severely burned right hand when the captain announced that we would retreat. He sent us out to help the noncoms count off and regroup our decimated company before moving camp at dawn. I went with Lensen, to help him find what was left of his section. The Russians, who had also taken a beating, were catching a moment’s rest before demolishing what remained of our front. For the moment, everything was quiet in the eerie half light of December.

Lensen couldn’t quite grasp what had happened to me.

For him, the simple fact that I had survived the Soviet thrust was extraordinary. My explanations that at the time I had understood nothing made no difference to him; he simply supplied his own scenario.

My winter overalls had entirely disappeared, leaving me with nothing but my singed overcoat. During my flight, I had picked up a gun which proved to be Russian. For Lensen, it was all clear. The Russians had overrun my position, and had either failed to notice me or had taken me for dead. In a desperate man-to-man struggle, I had managed to wrest a weapon from one of them and, with his gun, had fought my way to our lines.

“You’re still stunned,” he insisted. “But I’m sure you’ll remember later. I don’t see any other explanation.”

Lensen’s version certainly had its advantages.

I myself retained nothing but a chaotic impression of flashing lights and thunderous noises over a sense of such total disorientation that I had no longer been capable of distinguishing east from west or up from down. Perhaps Lensen was only trying to compensate for his attitude during our evening of celebration.

At dusk, which fell in the middle of the afternoon, the German Army abandoned the second Dnieper front. While the immense Russian thrust whose fringe had swept over us was pressing with its principal strength against German and Rumanian units further to the south, our depleted columns withdrew from their positions, abandoning all materiel which was no longer usable or transportable. Our Gross Deutschland regiments, half of us on foot, left in relative silence, our backs bent by the weight of our burdens, hoping that the gray skies would hold back for a while longer the rain of metal and fire which the pursuing enemy was bound to send after us.

13. THE THIRD RETREAT

Our prayers were granted and we were able to march for thirty miles undisturbed.

We were unpleasantly surprised to find no reserve positions in that distance. Except for a few surveillance posts, where the fellows to their astonishment were told to pack up and leave with us, we encountered no serious defensive efforts. The Russians could easily have continued their advance without firing a shot.

On the second day of this third retreat, the most mobile portion of our battalion stopped and settled in to act as a covering force while the rest continued westward. Some two thousand men, among them myself, were stationed near a village which was not marked on any of the staff maps. As we arrived, the inhabitants fled into the thick forest. We established ourselves with light but motorized weapons. We had four minuscule tanks, which had been effective in Poland but were like toys compared to the T-34s. Their armament consisted of a double-barreled machine gun and a grenade thrower, and we used them principally as tractors, to pull the twelve sleighs which made up our train. Four half-tracks doubled as anti-tank machine-gun posts, and as a source of emergency power for our six trucks when they stuck in the deep snowdrifts.

Three enormous Zundapp-Russland sidecars skated through the powdery snow, which often plugged the space between the front mudguard and tire, preventing that wheel from turning. Their engines were powerful enough to free the back wheel and the wheel of the sidecar, which was also motorized, and send the whole machine zigzagging forward, roaring from its twin exhausts, while the blocked driving wheel skated over the surface like the runner of a sleigh. Three Paks completed our defense. With these weapons, which were suitable for chasing partisans, and the classic infantry weapons — P.M.s, mortars, F.M.s and grenades — we had been ordered to stop three Russian divisions, including several armored regiments, for at least twenty-four hours. Lastly, our orders were to withdraw, even if our efforts should be triumphantly successful.

Throughout our sector, whose front was roughly sixty miles long, groups analogous to ours were left behind, while the main body of troops withdrew to the west in a series of forced marches.

The Russians, who had broken through further south, neglected our sector. There was no need for them to take any more losses pursuing an enemy who was withdrawing anyway. The Red Army left our harassment to the partisans, whose numbers were continuously increasing, and which soon reached proportions astonishing in a country nominally under our control. On Stalin’s orders, they intensified the desperation of our retreat with sudden ambushes; shells with delayed action fuses; booby-trapped and mutilated bodies of men from interior positions; attacks on supply trains, isolated groups, and rallying points; hideous mutilation of prisoners; and a constant refusal of contact with units capable of fighting.

The partisans — or terrorists, a name they richly deserved — always took on easy victims, and greatly intensified the usual cruelties of wartime. By these means, they achieved an effect which the regular army was never able to equal.

The Wehrmacht bent before the power of an incomparably greater enemy. The unbearable harassment by partisans was added to the overwhelming and heroic rigors of the front, while our territories in the rear no longer guaranteed any repose to our exhausted troops. The Ukraine, which had shown some sympathy for us, was itself pillaged by partisan bands — on orders from Moscow. The Ukrainian population had to choose, and be actively for one side or another. The partisans either killed or enlisted the young Ukrainians who had until then been so respectful to us. The invisible war triumphed: war which no longer offered any retreat, or calm, or pity. Wars of subversion have no face, and like revolutions create their own martyrs, innocent victims, and hostages, and provoke confused judgments of ill-considered actions. Men kill for revenge, in reprisal for what has happened or might happen.

The partisans were pouring oil onto a huge conflagration.

In the name of Marxist liberty, the Ukraine was forced to alter its attitude. German and Ukrainian alike grew bitter and full of hate. The war became a total war, a war of scorched earth, offering the towns and villages in its path no more relief than we would eventually receive when we became the vanquished. In this period, as the war attained the most violent paroxysms of an already unbearable conflict, our unit sat out its sentence of round-the-clock guard duty in the murderous cold.

Over the snow-covered ground silence hung, unbroken except for the occasional howl of a gray taiga wolf deep in the forests, which were still largely unexplored. A quarter of our men were always on guard, watching from the shelter of ludicrously inadequate fortifications or frost-covered tank turrets, or mounting hurried patrols at the edge of the forest. The rest waited in the abandoned isbas.

The stoves in these huts had been systematically destroyed before we arrived — no doubt by partisans, who hoped that without shelter we would die of cold. Some of the isbas were open to the sky, with their roofs burned or pulled off. Probably the partisans had not had time to destroy the village completely before we arrived. There were far too many of us for the number of buildings still standing, and hundreds of men were reduced to finding what shelter they could, huddled behind gutted walls whose only roof was the heavy, opaque fog. Inside the walls, these men burned everything they could find. In the better isbas, the intense flames threatened to set fire at any moment to the structures themselves. Our exhausted troops no longer bothered to collect deadwood from the forest, and burned every combustible fitting left in the huts. Cursing at the smoke which blinded them, and which in the roofed isbas escaped only through the open doors, our soldiers packed closely together for warmth, tried to sleep on their feet, despite the coughs which shook their bodies. In the isbas without roofs smoke was never a difficulty, but the men were never warm. Those closest to the fires rapidly grew so hot they had to move, while others, only four or five yards away, felt only the faintest warming of the air, whose temperature rose to fifteen or sixteen degrees above zero.

Every two hours another quarter of the men went back to the dugouts to make room in our precarious sleeping quarters for those who would return white with cold. The winter was now serious: fifteen degrees below zero, according to the thermometer of our radio group. As before, our general state of filth aggravated the situation. Any desire to piss was announced to all present, so that hands swollen by chilblains could be held out under the warm urine, which often infected our cracked fingers.

I was taking my first tour of guard duty in the early-morning hours of polar darkness, and my second began at one o’clock, in the diffused light of midday, which was veiled by a sky as dark as the sky over Tempelhof the day it was destroyed. Toward the end of my patrol, the day would turn an unusual pink. By three o’clock, when I returned to the smokehouse, there was nothing further to report.

My eyes hurt me, and my nose was so enflamed by frostbite I could no longer bear to leave it uncovered. We hid our faces like Chicago gangsters, with our collars raised and tied around our faces with scarves or strings. An hour later, the pink light turned violet, and then gray. The snow turned gray too, and then it was dark — from mid-afternoon until nine the next morning. With darkness, the temperature always plunged sharply — often to thirty-five or forty degrees below zero. Our materiel was paralyzed: gasoline froze, and oil became first a paste and then a glue, which entirely blocked the mechanism. The forest rang with strange sounds: the bark of trees bursting under the pressure of the freezing. Stones cracked only when the temperature fell to sixty degrees below zero. For us, the horror we had been dreading for so long had arrived.

Winter at war — a reality we had almost forgotten — fell on us like the die of a gigantic press ready to crush us.

Everything combustible was burned. A lieutenant defended two of our sleighs with a gun against some forty landser, whose breath rattled through their congested lungs. The nose of every face cover developed a block of ice which grew larger as each fresh breath condensed and froze.

“We want the sleighs for wood!” the men shouted.

“Get back!” the lieutenant screamed in reply. “The forest is full of wood.”

The landser stared at him, wondering what good the sleighs would do them if they all froze.

A party sent out to fetch wood from the forest ran to the shelter of the trees. Faceless specters returned with bundles which they threw down onto the dying fires. The fires had to be kept alive, which made rest impossible. We prayed that the Russians wouldn’t attack: all attempts at defense had been abandoned.

Guard duty was the hardest of all. To stand still one seriously risked being frozen alive. At nine o’clock it was my turn again. Fifteen of us were standing watch in the ruins of a building crusted with hard snow which cracked like glass. We got through the first half hour beating each other to keep our blood moving. The second half hour was torture. Two men fainted. We thrust our stiffened hands from our sleeves and clumsily tried to help them. Our gloves, part wool and part leather, were already full of holes and good for nothing. The pain in our hands and feet seemed to travel through our bodies and clutch at our hearts. Four men carried the unconscious soldiers to the fires which gleamed in the darkness. If the Russians had come, they could easily have wiped us out. One man was running round and round in small circles, crying like a baby. The pain in my feet made me scream aloud. Despite orders, I abandoned my post and ran to the nearest isba. Shoving my way through a compact mass of soldiers, I stopped just short of the fire, and fell grimacing to my knees. Then I thrust my boots right into the coals. They immediately began to crackle and hiss, and at the pain of contact between hot and cold I burst into loud sobs. I was not the only one to cry, and there were others whose screams and moans were far louder than mine.

The hour of release finally came, and we prepared to leave. The Russians had not swarmed down on us, and the steel of our frosted weapons, which had not been heated by explosions, glimmered bluer than ever in the horrible cold, and looked as brittle as glass. Our men assembled listlessly, torn by a conflict of disloyalties which brought them close to madness. Although no one had covered himself with glory fighting against the Russians, another fight, which was equally formidable, had been fought against the cold and our exhaustion and filth and the lice we scarcely felt, they had become so much a part of our everyday condition. The cold had also claimed its victims. Three times, detachments of the last group on guard had returned to the fires carrying inert bodies Pneumonia, generalized frostbite, and physical weakness had been unable to resist the overwhelming cold. For three men, their return to the fire came too late. Five others were revived by flagellation and alcohol.

In the motionless cold of the polar night, we covered the rigid corpses with snow, marking each improvised grave with a stick and a helmet. There was no time for sentiment or reflection. Those who were still — to their astonishment — among the living were trying to shake off the general numbness enough to start our solidly frozen engines. The situation seemed desperate. Not one of the engines turned over.

Feldwebel Sperlovski stamped down on the pedals of his Zundapp, which resisted the pressure his 190 pounds of flesh and bone could still bring to bear and then cracked like a piece of dead wood. The metal itself seemed to be affected. We lit fires under the Panzers, to try to thaw them slowly before making any attempt to start them. For the cursing, gasping landser, the effort was immense, straining our congested lungs, which whistled and rattled. Wesreidau himself was impatient. He had wrapped his boots in rags picked up during the retreat.

We should have kept at least one engine running all night,” he exclaimed. “It’s elementary. This sort of carelessness could ruin all of us.”

We listened to him with expressionless faces. Undoubtedly several among us would have regarded death as a deliverance.

An hour or so later, we heard the asthmatic backfire of an engine. Someone had managed to start one of the half-tracks. The driver let it warm up for a while, and set to work on the gear box, which had not yet thawed. After two hours of intense effort, our column set out, under orders to maintain the lowest possible speed. Until the machines had reached a certain minimum temperature, we had to limp after them on foot.

At midday, there were several breakdowns, and the convoy had to stop. The radiator hoses of several vehicles had been damaged by the pure alcohol in the radiators, and we had to repair them, using spare parts if we were fortunate enough to have them. Otherwise, we patched them up as best we could. While the work was in progress, we opened some cans of solidly frozen food: meat which could be chopped with an axe, a puree of peas and soya with the consistency of cement, and a solid brick of wine. Our enforced stop cost us an hour. According to radio instructions, we had one more hour to rejoin the main body of troops.

We were crossing the territory of one of our interior defense posts: two round blockhouses and three or four huts built into the ground. No one came out to meet us, and the place seemed deserted. However, a plume of smoke was rising from one of the blockhouses. No doubt the men inside were asleep beside a warm fire. We sent a small group over to investigate. Five minutes later, one of them ran back to the column, his breath spreading around his face in white clouds. When he reached us, he stopped, gasping.

“Everything in there has been destroyed, Herr Hauptmann, and everyone is dead. It’s terrible!”

Every gray face filled with anxiety. Looking more closely, we saw that the doors of the isbas had all been knocked in, and that four or five bodies lay beside one of the huts.

“Partisans!” someone shouted. “Six men recently killed!”

“There’s been fighting here recently, Herr Hauptmann. Those bandits must still be holding their guns.”

Another detachment went into the second blockhouse. There was a long, echoing explosion, and a geyser of earth and snow and fragments of wood shot into the air over the building. Wesreidau cursed aloud, and ran toward the smoking bunker. We followed him. Three men had just been torn to pieces. Two were unrecognizable, while the third was gasping his last breath, rattling as the blood spurted from his body. Mixed into the rubble lay the bodies of four German soldiers who had been killed before we arrived.

“Watch out for mines!” Wesreidau shouted.

The word passed from mouth to mouth. Soldiers stopped at the door of the second blockhouse and looked in without daring to enter. Six men, who had been stripped almost naked and hideously mutilated, were lying in pools of black, congealed blood. Some of the mutilations were so horrible that we couldn’t look at them. Two soldiers — men who had fought outside of Moscow, at Kursk, Briansk, and Belgorod, and seen appalling horrors — hid their faces in their hands and walked away. None of us had ever seen anything so gratuitously horrible.

Taking infinite precautions, a section removed the cadavers. Two of them had been booby-trapped. We covered their bodies with debris, as we had neither the means nor the time to dig graves.

To all of us, the tactics of the partisans seemed more ignoble and senseless than anything else we’d seen. Wesreidau led a ceremony of final farewell to the eighteen massacred men. We removed our hats and caps and helmets, and stood bareheaded in the snow.

Our funeral song rang through the stone-age setting of Russian winter with the discordant sonorities of thousands of voices. There were no flags or fanfares — only profound consternation.

The spirit of revenge motivating the terrorists further destroyed the fragments of understanding so far spared by the war. Our men could not accept it. If they could still bear the torment of the trenches with heroic resolution they could not accept the treachery of the partisans.

Our column set out again. As we passed the center blockhouse we saw the coarse placard thrust into the snowy mound. Across it, scrawled in charcoal, we read the word “Revenge.”

We drove on for another hour. The snow, which deadened the noise of our vehicles, also intensified distant sounds. Suddenly we heard the crackle of automatic weapons. Wesreidau, together with our two other officers, ordered us to halt. Immediately, we heard the noise of firing more distinctly. Some five miles to the west, fighting was in progress. We were ordered forward on the double. The tank crews wanted to go on ahead and rush to the scene of combat, but our officers couldn’t allow them to leave the column. We had to stay together, with our tank-tractors each pulling three Russian sleighs loaded with men and equipment. The half-tracks helped the trucks, which would never have been able to make it alone. I was riding on the third sleigh of one of these trains. Behind us was a large sidecar whose transmission was failing. The tanks were pulling with full power, to the great peril of their own mechanisms. The crackle of guns grew continuously louder. Suddenly, Wesreidau stopped the convoy and jumped down to check his maps. Everyone on the sleighs was ordered to follow him, and I found myself going into action once again. The Panzers detached themselves from their trains and drove toward the noise. We followed, running as fast as we could, waved forward by Wesreidau, who came with us in a large B.M.W. sidecar. A steiner with an 80-mm. mortar skidded past us in a cloud of whirling snow.

Gasping for breath, we ran along the track made by the tanks. They had pulled far ahead of us and entered into combat with the enemy some ten minutes before we reached the scene of fighting. We could hear their machine guns ripping into the air, sounding much louder than usual. The sidecar came back toward us and suddenly spun round.

“Spread out into the forest.”

We carried out the order, some of us remaining behind to pull out the sidecar, which was stuck in a drift, before running on through the trees, standing up as straight as the masts of ships. The virgin snow rasped and cracked in great sheets under our weight. We could no longer see the tanks, which seemed to be pursuing an enemy in flight. We didn’t meet any partisans ourselves. Twenty minutes later, a flare called us to the nearby blockhouse, which was like every other. It was supposed to guard the track, which in normal times was heavily used.

The post had been attacked by partisans — which, of course, we had to expect — probably the same band that had massacred the men we’d found earlier. Here, fortunately, there had been time for the defense to react. Of the twenty-two men holding the post, six had been wounded and two killed. Some twenty enemy dead or wounded lay on the trampled snow. There were also several guns: Russian and German and some American. A few wounded partisans were trying to crawl into the forest. No order could have stopped our men. They fired at the Russians and put an end to their suffering. Two shaggy prisoners had fallen into our hands. Their eyes rolled wildly like the eyes of trapped wolves, and they answered our questions with absurd, repetitive replies: “We… not… Communists.” What did they take us for? Or did they really know nothing? That, of course, was possible. They looked like beasts being dragged to slaughter. No talk was possible, and our men were muttering for revenge.

Wesreidau looked at the partisans, and then at us. He tried a little longer to get something from the prisoners, but his efforts were unavailing. Finally, his patience exhausted, he raised his arm with feigned indifference. Our men grabbed the two prisoners and pushed them along in front of them. The human wolves looked back, snarling. But the sight of our guns made them lose their heads. They began to run, and ran until the first volley caught them and knocked them to the ground.

The post had been saved at the last possible moment. According to the men who’d been there, at least four hundred partisans had attacked them, and the fighting had lasted for over two hours. The men greeted us with bear hugs. They were overjoyed to hear that we had brought an evacuation order with us. For the moment, we seemed to be acting as the last broom of the Wehrmacht, making a clean sweep.

To crown the misery of the day, a hideous incident occurred within ten minutes of our departure from that place. The sidecar at the head of the column, preceding the first tank by some thirty to forty yards, drove back onto the track, moving through the snow with considerable difficulty. A tank followed it, rolling over the same ground. Suddenly an explosion shook the earth and reverberated through the air. Frozen snow showered down with a crystalline sound from the heavily laden branches all around us. The tank had been blown off its tracks and torn open from below. We could hear the roar of the flames as fat plumes of smoke rolled out from beneath the machine, spreading over the icy ground. The men on the sleighs which followed reacted immediately. One of the junior officers jumped onto the turret of the tank to try to free the frantic men inside, who were probably seriously wounded. Others ran to help, while the infantry spread out on either side of the road, to be ready for any eventuality. By now the tank was wrapped in thick black smoke, and we could do nothing to help the trapped men. We emptied three extinguishers onto the blackened metal, but the flames inside only increased in violence. The sleighs were hastily drawn back, as the tank’s reservoir poured out forty gallons of flaming gasoline, which spread across the snow. In panic, the scorched landser yielded to the fire whose black plumes of smoke were climbing into the dark sky. In helpless anger, officers and men alike watched the immolation of three men. The smell of burned flesh mingled ignominiously with the smell of gas and oil. The two men in the lead sidecar had passed over the same spot a few seconds before the tank. Their tires must have missed the detonator of the partisans’ mine by only an inch or two. They also watched the hideous scene with cold sweat running down their spines.

The column abandoned the burning tank, whose flames had begun to make its ammunition explode. We also abandoned three heavy sleighs, and some of our materiel, which we burned. The men who had ridden on those sleighs found places on other vehicles. We all made a wide detour to avoid the exploding machine-gun bullets. We left behind the tomb of two men who had been killed without a chance to defend themselves, two men who had three years of fighting behind them and who deserved Valhalla.

We abandoned the territory to the Red waves that followed us. This was the final passage of the last European crusade — in the complete sense of the word.

The piercing cold was a continuous element we could never forget, even during moments of strong emotion, as in our recent clash with the partisans. A short time later, we rejoined the division in a town of a certain size and importance called Boporoeivska, if I remember correctly. Between the trenches and the barbed wire, the engineers and the Todt organization were busy mining the area. Other infantry regiments and an armored unit equipped with Tiger-panzers had also reached this point. A dozen of these motionless monsters seemed to be grinning at us as they watched the passage of our battered equipment. The presence of the Tigers reassured everyone. They were like steel fortresses, and no Russian tank could equal them.

Several Wehrmacht civil servants had been billeted at Boporoeivska. These gentlemen were surprised and displeased to find themselves suddenly at the center of a battlefield. They all seemed to be in an extremely bad humor, and their attitude toward us seemed tinged with a certain distrust. Perhaps their bureaucratic minds resented our fighting as we retreated. For them Russia meant this organized town where one could shelter from the cold and eat one’s fill, provided one had established the proper connections with Supply. Perhaps there were also charming evenings with the charming Ukrainian women who seemed to abound in these parts. These ladies and girls seemed to be preparing for a hasty departure in the company of their gentlemen friends, to look for a distant and more tranquil spot. We, it seemed, would be given the honor of defending these bureaucratic love nests. This attitude infuriated us, and many brawls began, but were quickly stifled. In the end, we were too exhausted and hungry to bother with these people, and occupied the warm isbas we were given with the greatest satisfaction. In the isbas we found food and drink and the opportunity to wash. Our cabins were rarely equipped with candles or lamps, but the flames in the fireplaces, which we fed with every combustible substance we could find, brilliantly lit these fragments of paradise. Within a few tours of our arrival, several cubic yards of snow had been melted in each billet, and we were all stripped naked, scrubbing off our filth as best we could. We soaked our trousers, underwear, shirts, and tunics with feverish, almost panicky haste. Our opportunity would certainly be brief, and everyone wished to make the most of it. Someone had even found a box full of small cakes of toilet soap. These were mixed into the water of the largest tubs.

In turn, timed by a stop watch, we plunged into the warm, foaming bath: two minutes each and. no overtime. We joked and larked as we hadn’t done for months. The water spilled over the edge of the tub, and flooded the big room, where some thirty shadowy figures cavorted. We kept pouring water into the tubs, to keep the level up. The dim light prevented us from noticing that the foam which so delighted us had turned gray with filth. However, our lice died a scented death: Marie Rose.

When we had finished washing, we emptied the tubs into a hole we had dug inside the isba. There was no question of going outside. The thermometer registered twenty degrees below zero, and everyone was naked. When the water was gone, we broke up the tubs and burned them. The fire had a voracious appetite, which was difficult to satisfy. Hals was exultantly chewing a fragment of soap, laughing and shouting that he had to clean his innards too, as they were probably just as filthy and overrun with lice as his skin.

“Now the Popovs can come whenever they like,” he shouted. “I feel like a new man.”

The door suddenly opened, letting in a blast of astonishing cold. Everyone howled in protest. Two soldiers stood on the threshold, their arms loaded with delicacies for the table. We gaped at this gift from heaven as the soldiers laid down their burden on a pile of damp overcoats: a string of spicy wurst, several loaves of gingerbread, several boxes of Norwegian sardines, a brick of smoked bacon. There were also eight or ten bottles — schnapps, cognac, Rhine wine — and cigars. The fellows kept right on emptying the huge pockets of their coats, and our shouts of astounded delight seemed to shake the flimsy walls.

“Wh… where did you find it?” someone asked, almost sobbing with joy.

“Those goddamn bureaucrats were really living it up: Grandsk [our company cook] never saw anything like this. Those bastards were keeping it all here. They were ready to run off with it, too. This is just a small sample, but they’re all as mad as hornets; said they’d report us for stealing personal possessions. Who the hell do they think they’re fooling? They can take their goddamn report, and any time they like I’ll tell them what they can do with it. To hell with them!”

Everyone plunged into that astonishing mound of delicacies. Hals’s eyes were starting out of his head.

“Keep my share for a minute,” he said, pulling on his damp clothes. “I’ve got to have a look for myself, and bring back some more. Those bastards think they’re going to leave us to take care of the front while they clear out with all this delicatessen, for God’s sake!”

Hals wrapped himself in a Soviet eiderdown and rushed out into the cold. Solma — a young fellow who was half Hungarian and had joined the regiment under more or less the same circumstances as I had — went with him. When they had gone, Pastor Pferham, aided by Obergefreiter Lensen, and Hoth, Lensen’s number-two man at the Panzerfaust, divided up the food. We had to hack the bacon with our picks, because our bayonets were too blunt. Pferham, who must have left some of his religious convictions on the east bank of the Dnieper along with his virginity, was swearing like a pagan.

“To think that this damned thing which has already poked holes in plenty of guts should be stopped by a goddamned piece of bacon!”

“Borrow some dynamite from the Todt if you have to — but hurry up with it!”

No one was cheated; the amazing sense of comradeship and unity of the Wehrmacht held, and everyone received a fair share. The war had brought together men from many different regions and walks of life, who would probably have mistrusted each other under any other circumstances; but the circumstances of war united us in a symphony of heroism, in which each man felt himself to a certain extent responsible for all of his fellows. The bureaucratic attitude which had been preserved in this relatively peaceful atmosphere astonished rather than shocked us. We felt that it was perfectly legitimate to plunder these stockpiles of hoarded goods. The sense of order which was part of National Socialism was still very much alive among the troops who were fighting for it. Those who appropriated delicacies for themselves while combat troops were dying of hunger seemed to belong to another species. Pferham spoke of all this as he ate, comparing these officials to the bourgeoisie Hitler speaks of in Mein Kampf. Combat troops have immediate concerns. For men living the lives of hunted beasts, all leisurely conversation is a waste of time. We had to eat and drink what and when we could, and make love when we could, without taking any time for eloquence over the girl’s hair or eyes. Every moment was precious; every hour might be our last.

Hals’s and Solma’s shares waited for them inside their helmets, which were turned upside down. We sang as we emptied the bottles. Our friends who’d gone out for more didn’t come back, and later Hals cursed that impulse. He and Solma had been caught pinching some cognac from one of the bureaucrats — which meant six days of detention for both of them.

Christmas night, 1943. The wind howled through the labyrinth of trenches north of Boporoeivska. Two companies occupied the positions prepared by the security division and the Todt organization, which had since withdrawn to the west, beyond the Bessarabian frontier. We had settled into these ice-coated molehills two days earlier. The front seemed solid, and we would almost certainly be fighting soon. The collapse of our southern front had forced this last retreat and regrouping along this line. The vast Soviet thrust was moving inexorably and slowly toward us, like a steamroller. We were well aware of this, and the continuous buildup of reinforcements in our sector led us to foresee a violent clash.

The country immediately around us was hilly and wooded. Tanks and mobile artillery waited in the frozen underbrush and terrible cold, which stripped the bark off the trees. The stocks of provisions in Boporoeivska had been repeatedly plundered; our commandant had tacitly consented to a few days of carousal, as if to compensate for the impending holocaust.

It was Christmas night. Despite our miserable circumstances, we were filled with emotion, like children who have been deprived of joy for a long time. Under our steel helmets and behind our silent faces moved a crowd of glittering memories. Some men talked of peace, others of childhoods which were still very close, trying to hide their feelings and hopeless, ludicrous dreams by hardening their voices. Wesreidau made his round of the trenches, talking to the men, but his words seemed only to be disturbing private reflections, and he soon withdrew into his own. He too undoubtedly had children and wished to be with them. Sometimes he stopped for a moment, and looked up at the sky, which had cleared. The frost glittered on his long coat like spangles on a Christmas tree.

For four days we had to endure nothing more severe than the cold. The sections in the line were relieved continually, and the unbearable nights were divided into two parts. Each day brought fresh cases of pneumonia. Frostbite had become commonplace. Twice, I was carried into an isba and brought back to consciousness and life from the brink of death. Our faces were badly cracked, particularly at the corners of the lips. Fortunately, we had enough to eat. The cooks had been given special orders to prepare our food with as much fat as possible. Supplies arrived regularly, which enabled Grandsk to produce gluey soups, full of margarine.

These concoctions were nauseating but effective. Our cooks had learned something about cold-weather cooking from the ingredients of Russian soups. We also took saunas — a horse-doctor treatment which didn’t coddle any weaklings. We moved straight from the hot steam into cold showers, a transition so violent that our hearts often threatened to stop beating. Like Grandsk’s greasy soups, however, these shocks were effective, and we always felt better afterward.

“Make the most of it,” Grandsk told us. “Eat up and enjoy it. In Germany, kids are going without dessert, so you can have this.”

Alas, Grandsk’s words were too accurate. As Paula explained in a letter which reached me in only six days, rationing bad become very strict. We were getting much closer to our own frontier, and every day the distance from home seemed smaller. Soon Germany at bay would no longer be able to send us even margarine.

One morning the feldwebels’ whistles drove us from the overheated isba where we slept. A patrol of Soviet tanks was just over a mile from Boporoeivska. The cold as we ran outside was like a blow from the butcher’s axe. Each man galloped to a precise point.

We had not yet reached our positions when the sound of heavy explosions shook the thin air to the west of us. Russian tanks, charging like maddened bulls, had driven onto our minefield. Now it was the turn of Russian tank crews to go up in smoke. Our observers were watching through their field glasses. Almost all the tanks were trying to withdraw the way they’d come. Our artillery remained silent, leaving the tanks to the mines. Firing might even set off these traps.

However, three Stalin tanks had managed to cross the minefield and were driving toward the town in a roar of chains and exhaust. With extraordinary courage, they took the fire of our thirty-seven anti tank guns without slowing down, only to be hit by our camouflaged Tigers, with their terrible 88s. In a sequence as unreal as anything Hollywood could contrive, all three tanks were hit by the first salvo. One turned over and exploded. Another stopped dead like a boar hit behind the shoulder. The third, although hit, turned without stopping, exposing its flank to our anti-tank machine guns, which ripped off all its protruding guns. It continued in a circle broken by a series of banking turns, trying to execute a half turn. This dramatic attempt left us gasping with admiration. In his will to survive, the Russian driver headed straight for our minefield. A series of explosions ripped the tracks off his left side, and the tank slowly settled, like a vanquished beast. As the thick black smoke began to pour from its entrails, two dark figures climbed out. But our cold-stiffened fingers did not fire. Both Russians were holding their pistols, prepared to defend themselves. When they didn’t hear any guns, they took a few steps toward our lines, then threw down their guns and raised their hands. A moment later, they were crossing our front line. The landser, who considered them heroes, grinned, and the Russians grinned back, their teeth gleaming very white, like Negroes’ teeth, in their smoke-blackened faces. Our men took them to an isba and gave them some schnapps. Their attitude and performance seemed so far removed from those of the partisans that we felt no hate for them. Lensen watched them for a moment and said: “If Wiener were here, he’d probably drink a toast with them.”

During the following night, we sent out patrols to re-lay the minefield. Our defensive fighting was relying increasingly on mines to take the place of weakened or missing lines. The next day there was a general reinforcement of the front. Two Rumanian regiments and a Hungarian battalion were sent to join us. We were told that we would also have the support of a squadron of fighter-bombers based somewhere near Vinnitsa.

“It seems we’re getting ready for a big show,” Pferham observed. “I don’t like it.”

Obergefreiter Lensen took the opposite view, rejoicing in our increased strength. As he saw it, the Red tide must be stopped here. The idea that Prussia itself would soon fall into enemy hands never even crossed his mind. But then, that was true of all of us.

One night, the Russians sent a human wave of Mongols in a direct assault against our positions. Their function was to knock out the minefield, by crossing it. As the Russians preferred to economize on tanks, and as their human stockpile was enormous, they usually sent out men for jobs of this kind.

The Soviet attack failed, but Stalin hadn’t been looking for success. The minefield exploded under the howling mob, and we sent out a curtain of yellow and white fire to obliterate anyone who had survived. The fragmented cadavers froze very quickly, sparing us the stench which would otherwise have polluted the air over a vast area.

The Russians had not even used any of their artillery to help the Mongols, which seemed to confirm our estimate of the situation. We sent out patrols to try to re-mine the field, but the Russians were ready to fire on anything that moved. We were able to put down only a light sprinkling of mines, with regrettably heavy losses. It was clearly no longer possible to rely on mines to protect our front lines.

On another evening, when the cold had attained a dramatic intensity, the Russians attacked again. We were manning our positions in a temperature which had dropped to 45° below zero. Some men fainted as the cold struck them, paralyzed before they even had a chance to scream. Survival seemed almost impossible. Our hands and faces were coated with engine grease, and when our worn gloves were pulled over this gluey mixture, every gesture became extremely difficult. Our tanks, whose engines would no longer start, swept the spaces in front of them with their long tubes, like elephants caught in a trap.

The muzhiks preparing to attack us were suffering in the same way, freezing where they stood before there was time for even one “Ourrah pobieda.” The men on both sides, suffering a common martyrdom, were longing to call it quits. Metal broke with astonishing ease. The Soviet tanks were advancing blindly through the pale light of flares, which intensified the bluish glitter of the scene. These tanks were destroyed by the mines which lay parallel to our trenches some thirty yards from our front lines, or by our Tigers, which fired without moving. The Russian troops, with frozen hands and feet, faltered and withdrew in confusion in the face of the fire we kept steady, despite our tortured hands. Their officers, who had hoped to find us paralyzed by cold and incapable of defense, were unconcerned about the condition of their own troops. They were ready to make any sacrifice, so long as our lines were attacked.

I managed to keep my hands from freezing by thrusting them, in their gloves, into two empty ammunition boxes, when the cartridges had run into the spandau. Our gunners, and everyone forced to use his hands, sooner or later turned up at the medical service with severe cases of freezing. There were a great many amputations.

The intense cold lasted for three weeks, during which the Russians restricted themselves to sending over music calculated to make us homesick, and speeches inviting us to surrender.

Toward the end of January, the cold lessened somewhat, and became tolerable. At times during the day the thermometer rose as high as five degrees above zero. The nights were still murderous, but with frequent shifts of duty we managed to get through them. We knew that the Russian offensive would soon resume. One night, or rather one morning, toward four or five o’clock, blasts of the whistle sent us out once again to our interception posts.

A mass of T-34 and Sherman tanks were moving forward in a loud roar. An artillery bombardment had preceded them, inflicting heavy damage on Boporoeivska, and provoking a mass evacuation by the civilian population, which had been waiting for the fighting in terrified apprehension. Our tanks — about fifteen Tigers, ten Panthers, and a dozen Mark-4s and -3s — had managed to start their engines, which had been heated continuously the day before. At the beginning of the offensive, two Mark-4s had been destroyed side by side in the Russian bombardment. The front was once again threatening to give way. We lay in our trenches, our eyes reduced to slits, waiting for the hordes of Red infantry which would surely be coming soon. For the moment our machine guns and Panzerfausts were quiet, leaving the way clear for our heavy artillery and our tanks.

Adroitly camouflaged, the Tigers lay waiting, with their engines idling. Almost every time a Russian tank came into range, a sharp, strident burst set it on fire. The Russians were moving toward us slowly, sure of themselves, firing at random. Their tactic of demoralization would have worked if there had not been so many plumes of black smoke rising against the pale February sky. Our 37s and Panzerfausts, designed to be used at almost point-blank range, were scarcely called on. The first wave of Soviet armor was consumed five hundred yards from our first positions, nailed down by the concentrated fire of our Tigers and Panthers and heavy anti-tank guns.

The Tiger was an astonishing fortress. Enemy fire seemed to have almost no effect on its shell, which, at the front was five and a half inches thick. Its only weakness was its relative immobility.

A second Russian wave followed closely after the first, more dense than the first, and accompanied by a swarm of infantry which posed a serious threat.

We waited, dry-mouthed, our guns jammed against our shoulders and our grenades in easy reach. Our hearts were pounding.

Suddenly, like a miracle, thirty of our planes flew over. As promised, the squadron from Vinnitsa was attacking. This particular job was easy for them, and every bomb hit home.

A cry of “Sieg Heil, der Luftwaffe,” rang so loudly from our trenches that the pilots might almost have heard it. We opened fire with everything we had, but the Russian offensive kept coming, despite over whelming losses. Our tanks drove at the stricken enemy with an ardor worthy of 1941.

The noise became unbearable. The air was thick with bitter fumes and smoke, and the smells of gunpowder and burned gasoline. Our shouts mingled with the shouts of the Russians, who were reeling under the unexpected resistance.

We were able to watch the magnificent progress of our Tigers, pulverizing the enemy tanks before they were able to complete a half turn. The Luftwaffe attacked again with rockets and 20-mm. cannons. The Russian rout was hidden by a thick curtain of luminous smoke.

The Russian artillery kept on firing at our lines, causing several deaths which we scarcely noticed. However, their guns were soon overrun by their own retreating troops, and fell silent.

A second wave of German planes, an undreamed — of extra luxury, completed the Russian debacle. We hugged each other in excitement, bursting with joy. For a year now, we had been retreating before an enemy whose numerical superiority was constantly increasing. Lensen was shouting like a man possessed by demons: “I told you we’d do it! I told you we’d do it!”

Our achievement was mentioned in special bulletins. The front on the Rumanian border had held. After months of sustained attack and terrible cold German and Rumanian troops had once again pushed back the Russian offensive and destroyed quantities of enemy materiel.

The mass of broken, twisted metal strewn with corpses which lay in front of us was visible proof of what we’d done. Along a front of two hundred miles, the Red Army had launched sixteen attacks inside of a month. Taking into account the three weeks of inactivity during which all operations were impossible, these sixteen attacks had all occurred inside the space of one week. Five points had borne the brunt of the Russian effort, and at only one had the Russians come close to success.

The front was broken to the south, but this thrust was cut off, and the Russian troops were either annihilated or taken prisoner.

In our sector all the lines had held, and we felt very proud. We had proved once again that with adequate materiel and a certain minimum preparation we could hold off an enemy of greatly superior size, whose frenzied efforts were never intelligently employed.

The veteran, Wiener, had often remarked on this Russian failing at difficult moments. At the sight of an enemy tank in flames, he would bare his teeth in a wide, wolfish grin.

“What a damned fool,” he would say, “to let himself get caught like that. It’s only their numbers that will get us someday.”

There were thirty Iron Crosses for the Gross Deutschland, and as many for the small tank regiment, which also earned the honor.

14. RETURN TO POLAND

The division had been routed several times, and had sustained serious losses. Units believed to be intact were often borrowed from us, and sent to bolster some faltering position. When they arrived they would be found short by about two-thirds of their strength. There was nothing to be done about it.

Our own group was enjoying a much-needed spell of relative calm. Our existence would have been almost idyllic except for the depressing and infuriating quality of barracks life. The exercises we were given, as if we were green troops in for basic training, brought us close to open revolt.

We had moved 250 miles, to a position in Poland, far from the front. Our camp was on the banks of the Dniester, some fifty miles from Lvov, in the foothills of the Carpathians. The river is quite narrow at this point, and its waters, when we arrived, were swift and tumultuous, running through a network of small islands loaded with snow and ice. On any wide stretch the river was frozen to a considerable depth, and the current ran beneath the ice, giving off a strange, muffled noise.

Our view was magnificent: a pale blue sky and a horizon marked by snow peaks, against which we could watch flights of eagles. For two months we enjoyed the agreeable change from the black and gray of a Ukrainian winter to the sportive landscape of eastern Galicia. Galician snows were also very heavy, and the cold was severe, but we slept in clean, heated barracks. Although an exaggerated sense of economy kept the heat at some fifty degrees or so, this at least enabled us to be fully alert when we were awake. Our camp was huge and organized with all the Prussian rigor of an army on the eve of battle. About 150 wooden buildings without floors had been built in blocks, carrying numbers and letters. Nearby, in the snow-covered woods, we could see a large stone building, which must have been part of the village beside the camp, and which housed our secretariat and principal officers. All our materiel had been repainted and overhauled. In these conditions of order and apparent abundance, none of us dreamed that Germany had reached the limit of its capacities. After the chaos of the front, the atmosphere of efficient organization, with its requirement that every move be registered in writing, made us feel like wild beasts suddenly caged.

The camp was built around a large central square for reviews and drills, in which young recruits were instructed in the art of manipulating arms, so useful in parades and so useless at the front.

The young recruits seemed to enjoy these exercises. Others, like Hals and me, were seeing ourselves as we had been a year and a half ago, back in Poland, where we had handled explosives for the first time. The memory of those days seemed at least ten years old — one ages quickly in wartime. Our world-weary attitude did not escape the attention of the young recruits, who responded by holding themselves even more stiffly, as if to show us that the war was now their affair.

This healthy enthusiasm of schoolboys suddenly transformed into soldiers was destined to weaken somewhat after a few nights in the mud and the shock of seeing a field hospital for the first time. We had been through all that. They would soon learn that war. does not always create the same exaltation as the intoxicating explosion of the plaster grenades in the war games of training camp.

The Fuhrer, who was now scraping the bottom of the barrel, had been forced to send his arrogant Polizei off to war. These elderly new recruits were having a hard time of it. The sight of policemen crawling through the mud on their bellies delighted us enough so that we almost forgot our sufferings. Police officers, whose competence in war was limited, handed over their men to officers of the Wehrmacht, who put them through the works. This spectacle, which gave us so much pleasure, was hard on the eager young recruits, directly exposed to the bad humor of those bastards who did everything they could to keep the younger men in a state of inferiority.

For us, life was also very far from perfect. Before settling into our new quarters, there had been a long and difficult journey. We had begun by tramping more than thirty miles on bad Russian roads, deeply rutted and coated with ice. Then we were loaded onto trucks, and driven as far as Mogilev, an oriental-looking town, where we boarded two trains, both in very bad condition, for the remainder of the journey, along the Bessarabian frontier, to Lvov, in Poland. From Lvov, trucks had brought us to the camp, where we had stumbled out, exhausted and filthy, under the suspicious gaze of polished, healthy officer-instructors.

We were allowed forty-eight hours to rest, before our clothes and equipment had to be in perfect order. At our first inspection, the condition of our uniforms shocked the inspectors, although we had brushed and beaten them as hard as we could. They had completely lost their original color and appearance. Gray-green had become greenish piss yellow, decorated by tears and holes and reddish-brown burns. Our worn and crumpled boots had lost their black finish, and many were without heels or laces. We looked like a bunch of tramps, and the inspectors were ready to jump at the slightest sign of negligence. These evident traces of the battlefield struck them like slaps in the face, to which there was no answer. Those fops should, in fact, have been honoring us.

They knew it too, and the knowledge irritated them. They persisted in picking on details to try to save face. A short way off, sections of police and students in camouflage uniforms were marching to their daily sweat baths, singing gaily in the dry, cold air, which had brought out the color in their cheeks.

However, instead of the Alps, the Carpathians witnessed their compulsory gaiety.

The instructors, intent on inspection, were insensible to the poetry of the scene. One of them stopped short in front of a gefreiter whose coat ended in a fringe as full of holes as a piece of Alencon lace. At last the stabsfeldwebel could unload a little rage in front of his sarcastic audience. Our heads turned slightly, scarcely noticeably, to the right, toward the fellow accused of negligence. We rolled our eyes as far as we could, trying to see who was getting it.

“Name and number!” shouted the stabs, stiffening his neck.

Even if we couldn’t see anything, we could hear it!

“Frösch, Herr Stabsfeldwebel,” the accused shouted, adding the number which each of us was supposed to know by heart.

Frösch… The name stirred an echo in my memory: Frösch?

And then the barracks the day after we crossed the Dnieper came back to me. Hot water, and a foolish-looking fellow of angelic good will. What was the stabs going to pin on him?

In the third row of men, some ten or twelve yards from me, Frösch was standing at attention, while abuse rained down on him. He was staring straight ahead, as required by convention. His gaunt, hollow face was partly hidden by his heavy steel helmet. Unfortunately his stupidity was obvious enough to give the stabs a sudden sense of confident superiority over this soldier, who had clearly seen a lot. Two large hands, red with chilblains, emerged from his ragged sleeves to press for warmth against the folds of filthy cloth. The coat no longer had any buttons. Frösch had fastened it at each buttonhole with a short piece of wire. With a touching sense of aesthetics, he had bent in the ends of each wire, as if to demonstrate his good intentions. Unfortunately, he had linked a lower buttonhole to a higher one, which produced an improper and all-too-visible crease. This anomaly leaped to the eye of the inspecting noncom, who couldn’t let such a golden opportunity slip. However, in complete disregard of normal practice, the company officer intervened, reminding the stabsfeldwebel that our detachment had just survived an extremely difficult experience.

“Your supply report specifically stated that you possessed the necessary materials for keeping your clothes in good repair, Herr Leutnant, and specifically mentioned buttons.”

The lieutenant didn’t know how to answer.

“In addition, Herr Leutnant, Gefreiter Frösch hasn’t even bothered to line up the buttonholes correctly.”

There was a moment of charged silence. The lieutenant threw Frösch a look of despairing compassion. Couldn’t he have spared himself all this and deprived the instructor of this ludicrous opening? But the facts were as they were, and the lieutenant, despite all his good will, couldn’t alter them. He resumed his former position with an impassive air. A wave of irritation seemed to run through the company.

“Stillgestanden!” the feld shouted.

In a flood of gratuitous invective, Frösch was given twenty days’ detention and a series of punitive fatigues. Without flinching, Frösch left his position to stand in the ranks of the guilty. He was the only one. The inspection was over. Quarter turn, left, left. Our companies went on to march around the camp. Frösch remained where he was, staring straight ahead. As the only man to be punished, he seemed a symbol of injustice, alone in his punishment as he had always been in life. He had found some comradeship in the Wehrmacht, but the exigencies of military life exacted a high price. Ten days later, when the rest of the unit drew new clothes, Frösch kept his rags. He had in truth become a symbol. He didn’t know how to hate, and always wore his expression of touching stupidity and banal good will.

Later the veteran said of him: “He’s as humble as Diogenes. If he doesn’t deserve victory, at least he deserves Paradise.”

Section forward!… On the ground!… On your feet!… Run!… Forward!… On the ground!… On your feet, facing me!… The hard, frozen ground scraped our hands and knees, and the sharp twigs of the leafless scrub finished off our threadbare uniforms. They had put us through a series of exercises with concussion bombs. We, who had faced the fire of Russian Katushas, just laughed. Then we had made ourselves as flat as the Ukrainian soil. Now we lay propped on one elbow, half amused, half exasperated. Our attitude provoked torrents of abuse and a collective punishment for the whole company. We had to crawl along the entire perimeter of the camp. The ground, three or four inches beneath our eyes, soaked up the muttered curses of our progress. The instructor-noncoms were working hard, running along the carpet of soldiers.

A short way off, Wesreidau was watching this bad joke and arguing with the officers responsible for the camp. But he might as well have saved his breath. Orders from higher up had put an end to the coddling of troops just back from the front. We had to reinstate the rigidity of ’40–’41, and wage war to the death.

We went on long marches, carrying all our gear. We tramped through villages in step, singing. These demonstrations were intended to impress the local population, who, in fact, greeted us as we went by — the boys waving and the girls smiling. The routine never let up. We even had to practice retreating in a series of backward leaps — a skill which might always come in handy.

Every fourth day, we were free from 5 to 10 P.M. We flooded into Nevotoretchy and Sueka, two villages near the camp, where the peasants often invited us into their houses and gave us something to drink, and sometimes even to eat. Our soldiers quickly amused themselves with the girls, who were not shy. These few hours of liberty, used to the utmost, made us forget the rest.

The following day we would return to the training routine. Despite the boredom, we cooperated, thinking that perhaps these were necessary measures. We were still inclined to believe in the validity of orders. Perhaps these exercises would help us bring the war to a quicker end. At last we were issued new clothes. Some of the uniforms were quite different from the ones we’d always known, with blouses like those worn in the French army today, and trousers tucked into short, thick spats, looking like a grotesque parody of a golfing costume. This new design was for the most part distributed to new troops. The Gross Deutschland, as an elite division, kept the old design. We were even given new boots — a further sign of privilege.

However, the cloth of the uniforms was of very inferior quality, much more brittle than formerly. It reminded us of specially treated cardboard. The new boots were also markedly inferior, of rough, stiff, fourth-quality leather, which cracked at the ankle instead of forming the usual creases. The underclothes were the worst of all; they were made of a cloth which seemed to have substance only where it was doubled — at the hem and the seams. The new socks, which we appreciated immensely, also seemed curiously synthetic.

“If this is what we’re getting,” Hals said, “I’ll keep my Russian socks.”

In fact, the new socks wore a great deal longer than the old ones. However, they were less warm. They were among the first to be made with nylon, which was still largely unknown.

We slapped a great deal of black polish from the store onto the boots, to make them lose their look of cardboard paste. We all felt better to be out of our stinking, tattered rags, and in new clothes, despite the synthetic fabrics. Our brightened appearance also had its effect on the local inhabitants, who decided that all must be well with the Wehrmacht.

Hals, in his fresh and dashing uniform, had fallen in love once more — this time with a pretty young Polish girl. With him, falling in love was compulsive. He really couldn’t help himself, and lost a piece of his heart every time we stopped in a rest zone. This time, as always, he was ardently wooing a girl during our short periods of free time, and we all had to hear about it constantly.

“You’re driving us all up the wall with your tart,” Lensen complained.

“Why can’t you just kiss and run like everybody else?” Lindberg grinned. He was remembering his last outing with Lensen, Pferham, and Solma. The four of them had trapped a Polish woman of about forty in a barn. She had yielded to their ardor, which had lasted the four hours remaining.

“Her husband came home while we were at it,” Solma remembered joyfully. “He laughed with us, and said, ‘Mama too old for me now — for you!’” Later they’d all had a drink with the husband, who seemed perfectly content that they’d done him that service.

“She’s nothing but a sow, your Polska,” Hals said. “And you’re just a bunch of pigs. No poetry at all…”

The barracks shook with our laughter. Pastor Pferham laughed too, because he couldn’t do anything else, but all the same he was somewhat troubled. Our company’s love life was doing far too well.

I myself didn’t have any particular adventures. I had pawed one or two girls, but matters had never progressed any further than that. Of course, I was in love with Paula and wrote to her often. Above all, I longed for a leave, and lived on that hope. For the rest, strange bodies made me uneasy, almost sick. As soon as I saw naked flesh, I braced myself for a torrent of entrails, remembering countless wartime scenes, with smoking, stinking corpses pouring out their vitals. All things considered, I preferred platonic love by mail. To me, Paula was in an entirely separate category from all these other women — something delicate and marvelous, which could not be eviscerated — or so I tried to think.

Then I was involved in an episode which gave everyone else a laugh at my expense.

We were on leave at Sueka. It was a beautiful day, with only a light trace of frost. We all felt like a spree, but were also extremely interested in food. Our rations were now so small that we were always hungry when we left the mess halls. The peasants would usually sell us something to eat in exchange for the paper currency which looked as though the Rentenbank was printing notes in excess of its reserves. We had, in fact, been given these notes as supplementary pay, in addition to the special tickets issued to occupation troops. Eggs were the easiest form of food to come by. At Sueka we divided the job. There were three of us: Hoth, Schlesser, and me. We had left Hals with his Polska at Nevotoretchy. Nevotoretchy was right beside the camp, and the soldiers had already stripped it of all extra food. We decided to go three miles farther, to Sueka, which was also on the Dniester, taking separate routes through the countryside to try our luck at the farmhouses whose location every man in the company had by heart.

I set off along a road which ran downhill between two walls of snow. I can see it still. At the bottom of the hill there was a frozen pond which pink-and-yellow ducks were tapping with their bills, apparently mystified by its solidity. I turned to the right. Ahead of me were two low columns twined round with what looked like lifeless Virginia creeper, and beyond them, an enormous pile of wood which almost hid the low, thatched house. To the left, with their backs to the river, was a group of squat, irregular buildings, made of rough wooden planks. The whole scene was inescapably rustic, but there was also a rudimentary sense of style, which was noticeable here even in the poorest, roughest setting.

I was walking toward the cottage when I saw a woman coming from one of the outbuildings. Her clothes might have belonged to a medieval peasant. We both smiled. She said something unintelligible.

“Guten Tag, Frau. Ei, bitte.” (I was sure she wouldn’t understand French, but she might very well know the German for “egg”.) “Ei… ei, bitte.”

She came closer, still smiling and pleasant, speaking and making gestures I couldn’t understand. I contented myself with returning her smile. She signaled that I should follow her, which I did. We walked over to a ladder, and she began to climb, signing me to hold it steady.

As she went up, laughing and talking, my eyes naturally followed her ascent toward a loft bulging with hay. My astonished gaze struck her rump, which was of very dubious charm, and a pair of enormous, meaty thighs. Her buttocks seemed to fill the view with a curious obstinacy. Her drawers had the texture of a loosely knit sweater. I stared at them as I might have stared at some medieval monument of the twelfth century. The Polska, who saw that I was watching, finally stopped by the false window of the loft, and waved at me to follow her. I felt awkward and uneasy. I had often watched a tank trying to outmaneuver a machine gun, but this type of maneuver was beyond me. I was used to going straight ahead, and climbed the ladder as if it were an assault wall which I had to scale under the eye of an officer. Then I was bent double in the piled-up hay, beside the Polska, whose thighs must have been a half yard round. She was laughing and clucking as if she herself were about to lay an egg. My gun caught on everything, and I felt once again as if I were crawling down a trench. The hay was full of chickens. The Polska chased them off and collected a few eggs. She turned back to me, still laughing. Her teeth were somewhat too widely spaced, but were dazzlingly white. She came toward me, holding out the warm eggs, which, in a manner of speaking, she had collected for me.

I felt her breath and the warmth of her body. As she thrust the eggs and her hands deep into the pockets of my tunic, her fingers pressed against my hips. My startled eyes rolled in my head, as I waited for the order to disengage. But the order didn’t come, and the bold fingers of the enemy kneaded my flesh through the double folds of my pockets.

“For the love of God! Danke schön… Danke schön!”

I wanted to make the quickest possible departure no matter what she thought of me.

She was now so close an embrace seemed inescapable. Her smile was one of certain anticipation, and her eyes were rolling feverishly.

Mein Gott!

I braced myself for her cry of “Ourrah pobieda.” There were two possible courses of action, as I saw it. I could withdraw in a hurry and risk cracking my skull at the bottom of the ladder, or counterattack, rolling my adversary into the hay.

However, these calculations came too late. The woman, who must have weighed at least twenty pounds more than I did, suddenly enlaced me, adroitly pushing me to the left, so that I lost my balance. I found myself gesticulating in vain desperation beneath a massive enemy. One of her hands was already busy with the fly of my new synthetic trousers. The eggs in both pockets were broken, and my gun, which was slung behind my back, was no use to me.

If the Fuhrer ever saw me like that, I’d be thrown out of the Gross Deutschland for good, shipped off to one of the Brandenburg disciplinary battalions. To complete my downfall, my ravisher, who was clearly more accustomed to manipulating an axe handle than the personal appendage in question, had grabbed me, and was making me jerk and shudder like an invalid with a severe case of hiccoughs. I might perhaps have been able to oblige her, if the Polska, in the height of her frenzy, hadn’t suddenly flung up her petticoats over the obese folds of her stomach and thighs. This spectacle destroyed the minimal desire my predicament might have aroused in me, and the delicious memory of Paula offered a contrast which was too absurd. With a brusque twist of my body, I freed myself from this female in rut, who was exciting herself without any cooperation from me. Her somewhat porcine face, in which, a few moments before, I might have found a certain charm, now wore an expression of bovine ecstasy. I stood up and turned out my pockets, which were filled with liquid egg and broken shell. My companion regained some measure of self-control and tried to laugh, suddenly afraid that her audacity might provoke severe consequences. In a flash, I was at the bottom of the ladder, gesturing to the women to bring me something to clean off my jacket. I myself was worried about the consequences the stains on my uniform might bring down on me. I tried to look furious, but an overpowering sense of inadequacy made me flush hotly instead.

The Polska, half smiling, half uneasy, led me over to the house. We went through a door which opened outward, down a few steps, and then through a second door which opened inward.

The house was built into the ground to a depth of about two and a half feet. We came into a dark, low-ceilinged room with a single tiny window, whose yellowish panes admitted very little light. The building was divided by a heavy wooden grate — one side was for people, the other for animals. This explained the fetid smell which I noticed as soon as the door was open. A couple of pigs were being fattened just beyond the grate. The wide benches built against the grate and covered with straw ticks were obviously the beds. An old woman turned toward us as we came in. She smiled with the indifference of a sphinx, I doubt if the idea of “a German” even existed for her. Two children were playing on a woodpile which stood in the middle of the room. The Polska brought me some water in a wooden dipper, like the ones used in Russia for measuring millet. I had to take off my tunic, and reveal the extent of my deprivation. The pullover my mother had sent me over a year and a half before no longer had any sleeves below the elbow, and the waistband had become a scant, lacelike fringe.

I was preparing to wash my tunic when the Polska took it from me. She rubbed the stains between a round stone and a stiff straw implement shaped like a large cork. With a graciousness which almost excused her excesses of a few minutes earlier, she returned my tunic, which was clean once more. I didn’t dare smile lest I rekindle her amorous fury. However, all of that seemed to have been forgotten. These Polish peasants seemed curiously primitive, living wholly in the present, unburdened by any thoughts of the past or the future. I said goodbye, thrusting out my stiffened arm in a regulation salute.

While the old woman on the bench smiled — a smile which seemed to cross a gulf of several millennia — the younger one rummaged through a heap of cooking pots which stood on the table. She found an egg and held it out to me.

I accepted it, not knowing what expression to put on to disguise my embarrassment. The egg recalled the loft of recent history. I could feel myself blushing as I went through my pockets for the correct change. However, the woman gestured to me that I need not pay. Still embarrassed, I withdrew in a flurry of “danke schöns.”

I had already taken a few strides away from the house when the door behind me opened again. The woman stood there calling me, holding out the gun which I had left propped against the table.

How humiliating!

I recovered myself with another sequence of voluminous thanks, and feeling ridiculous, straightened my back and tried to look stern, to make up for what had happened. I knew that this episode was destined to lighten the evening hours of these people, and found it hard to forgive myself. What an idiot — to survive the battle of Belgorod, only to get my pants torn off by a fat Polish mama! I might be a proud member of a proud regiment, but all I had to show for it was a single egg, and an experience I wasn’t going to disclose in a hurry for fear my friends would rip off my pants again, to make sure she hadn’t stolen anything.

“Why didn’t you tell us right away?” they asked me later.

“We would all have gone there, and all insisted on it. Reprisals, you know!” Spring burst out with sudden brutality. On the Eastern Front, things were going from bad to worse, but our training continued in the spirit of an athletic team preparing for a competition. Even more extraordinary, our schedule of exercises was markedly reduced, and we were often given free half days. These were in fact necessary, to give us time to forage and keep adequately fed. Our official rations had been cut back again, and now amounted to a starvation diet. The two villages closest to the camp had almost nothing left to give us, and we had to go farther afield in search of the calories which were largely consumed by our comings and goings. We took up fishing in the Dniester. Unfortunately, we had neither the proper equipment nor any local knowledge. Three times, Herr Hauptmann Wesreidau went with us. As an officer, he had appropriated a certain number of explosive devices, which made the operation profitable. Some pools produced giant fish.

There was also an accident. Two fellows who went out to look for food disappeared. Their friends said they’d gone toward the mountains. Two days went by without any news of them. No one knew anything about them in the villages where we asked. It sounded like partisans. We sent out two search parties, which did, in fact, run into partisans, and suffered five stupid deaths without finding a trace of the missing men.

While the Red Army pushed into Poland toward our camp, which would soon be in the battle zone, we lay in the sun as much as we could, and waited for orders. Hals was daily more deeply in love, and spent as much time as he could with the girl he considered his fiancée. I often went with him, but never found a girl for myself. We had many pleasant times together, and Hals repeatedly told me that I must be due for a leave soon, and would surely see Paula. Sometimes, the two of them plainly wished to be alone, and I would take myself off.

The war seemed to have forgotten us in this enchanted place. But one morning our tranquillity and dreams of love came to an end. The camp hummed with activity, as companies packed up and prepared for action before our incredulous eyes. As motors hummed, the barracks were destroyed. Our amazement was complete.

“What’s going on?”

“Los! Los! Schnell! We’re clearing out!”

Before we had quite realized it, we were loaded onto dull gray blue trucks, which bumped off to the north. In the beautiful fullness of germinating spring, the settled, organized camp went up in flames behind us. The convolutions of smoke rising into the pure, still air seemed like a sinister presage of things to come.

In the trucks, everyone was talking. What was happening? Why were they destroying the camp? Where was the front now anyway?

Toward ten o’clock the Gross Deutschland column suddenly stopped, on a road dappled by the knobby shadows of branches loaded with thousands of buds bursting from the irresistible pressure of thousands of plump leaves still barely touched with green.

The birds, as unprepared as we for what was coming, were singing, and swooping down low over the trucks. A sidecar from liaison delivered orders to the officers’ Volkswagen. Then the noncoms told us to make a half turn.

Through the bursts of backfiring, we could hear the hum of a flight of planes. Then the whistles blew.

“Achtung! Enemy planes coming for us! Achtung!”

In a general rush, we jumped from the slowly moving trucks.

In fact, the Ilyushin fighter-bombers which had spotted us took their time. About fifteen of them were turning in the sky some four or five hundred yards above us. Some trucks had been precipitately abandoned, and were lying across the road. Our officers ran shouting at the drivers, who, caught between two fires, didn’t know what to do. Finally, they jumped back into their machines, started them up again and crashed them into the bank at the last possible moment, as the flight of vultures swooped down on us.

First, there were bombs, which we watched fall until the first explosions. They looked like fat darts, with their long shafts, which allowed them to explode just above the ground. The planes had divided into two groups; the second unloaded at about the same spot as the first.

The shock was extraordinarily violent. Everything flew into the air and fell onto our heads. An overturned truck flew toward us, stopping some ten yards short of where we lay. The flames spread quickly in our direction, forcing us to move farther back. We no longer had any doubts about what was happening, and ran as far as we could from the road, which was attacked again with rockets and machine guns.

The running men, intent on getting away, hadn’t noticed the second wave of planes and were cut down by the machine-gun fire, which passed over them like a pitiless reaper. Men were jolted off the ground as they ran, to fall back again in pieces, like puppets whose strings are broken.

When the enemy withdrew, eighteen of our machines were sending plumes of black smoke up into the sky. The attack had been so sudden and overwhelming that none of us quite grasped what had happened. We returned to the scene of the disaster with one eye on the sky; the enemy might only have pretended to leave, and might still be waiting to attack us again.

The road, still gluey from the recent thaw and the spring rains, was strewn with debris and shattered bodies. The violence of the impact had smashed some of the victims wide open, scattering their entrails over distances of seven or eight yards. The peaceful roadway, which had been filled with the sounds of twittering birds only fifteen minutes before, looked defiled.

Within fifteen minutes our column, made up of thirty trucks transporting three companies, had lost twenty men and eighteen trucks. There were also three wounded men in critical condition.

We collected the remains of our dead, and dug graves. Among the victims were Hoth and Dunde, who had both received Iron Crosses for their bravery on the second Dnieper front. They were both friends with whom we had been laughing and joking barely twenty-four hours before. After the event, the tragic impact of what had happened crushed and overwhelmed us.

We piled onto the remaining trucks, which seemed to buckle under the extra weight. There were men on the running boards, fenders, hoods, and bumpers. Budding twigs clung to these human swarms bumping forward at twenty-five miles per hour. Two of the trucks quickly died under the extra load, and the men they carried had to continue on foot. They joined us six hours later, on the Rumanian frontier, as we were getting ready to join the carnage at Vinnitsa, between the central front, which had been broken, and the southern front, which still seemed to be holding. On the way, these men had been attacked by Russo-Polish partisans; however, they were fortunately able to turn the encounter to their own advantage. They had taken the partisans’ horses, and a few more still left on neighboring farms, and had joined us looking like an apparition of chivalric fantasy. The weather was warm and sunny we were returning to Russia just after the period of melting ice. We requisitioned a few Rumanian trucks which had been left for civilian use, to replace the ones destroyed in the attack. These were old machines, bearing the names of private firms, which we didn’t have time to paint out. Our section drove off in an English moving van which must have left the factory sometime around 1930.

15. RETURN TO THE UKRAINE

After a rushed, jolting journey, we re-entered the Ukraine, where the ground had not yet entirely absorbed the spring runoff. There were long stretches of gluey mud which we were able to cross only with great difficulty. The weather was beautiful, even hot, and we often stripped to the waist.

On the road we received new orders. We were no longer to proceed to Vinnitsa. Instead, we were to re-establish communications between the rear and the front, which were continually harassed by partisans. We were ordered to annihilate these bands. Their attacks had grown increasingly virulent, and often paralyzed the already uncertain flow of supplies. The Vinnitsa bridgehead had to be maintained as a starting point for new German offensives which would break up the wedge the Russians had driven into Poland before Lvov, and re-establish a connection with the North, which appeared to be holding.

Our detachments, together with other units, had been given the job of engaging the partisans in a contest of ambush, in which the advantage belonged to whichever side surprised the other. Once again, the division was broken up. The largest section was sent to fight north of Lvov and in the northern sector of White Russia. Other units like ours were scattered throughout the rear areas of the south and central sectors before rejoining the division a few weeks later. Our zone of operations extended through Bessarabia as far as the Russian frontier. As before, we were a strong mobile unit designed to move quickly to the support of particular points in imminent danger.

However, our mobility depended on the vehicles I have already described, which we gradually abandoned, continuing on horseback or on bicycles, whose tires were often stuffed with grass. We requisitioned the horses, bicycles, and other vehicles from the thousands of refugees — Ukrainians, gypsies, Polish colonists and others who were fleeing the Red tide in a vast throng. Sometimes partisans infiltrated these crowds, posing as simple peasants who were also fleeing the Bolsheviks. Then, at a given moment, they would shoot some of our men in the back, sowing general confusion. These maneuvers were supposed to crack our self-control, and provoke us to acts of reprisal, which would then turn the refugees against us. From their point of view, any means were justified.

Toward the end of May, we trapped a large band of rebels in a piece of wooded country. There were about four hundred heavily armed men. On our side, we had three companies to draw in the noose around the enemy.

The air was filled with woodland smells, and nothing seemed appropriate to the bloody events about to occur. The morning was splendid. Birds and small animals of every kind were running and fluttering through the branches, to get out of our way.

Wild animals, even ferocious ones, always flee armed men. This time the hunters were tracking far more dangerous game. The birds fearing and fleeing us could never have imagined that the masters of the world, who should have feared nothing, had created enemies of a size and ferocity which equaled their own. Human beings, rulers of the animal world, had created their own destruction. A process of natural selection, often very badly organized, periodically topples our crown.

We all felt extremely nervous. Despite the resignation which had once again taken hold of us, the moment of truth as always revealed who was afraid, who was a coward, and who still hoped to live. The soft leaves brushing against our heads weighted down with steel reminded us that life could be good — especially in such marvelous weather. For us, this was no baptism of fire, but almost a routine — a dangerous routine, in which medals for heroism were generally posthumous. We had already experienced most of its horrors, and had seen the upturned eyes of those who had won the medals. There was no longer much we could learn about that aspect of things. We deliberately maintained an attitude of morbid fatalism, — which we punctuated with bursts of harsh, forced laughter, like machine-gun fire. Some of the very strong had even managed to persuade themselves that since no man is immortal, and everyone dies sooner or later, the hour of death was unimportant. Those men, the strong ones, walked along thinking of other things. Others strong, but not that strong-lived to delay that final moment, watching through pupils as dark as the holes at the ends of their gunbarrels. The rest — which is to say the majority — were pouring with a cold sweat which ran down their bodies beneath their synthetic tunics, into their boots, and into the creases of their damp hands.

Those men were afraid, with an intense fear that reduced every conviction to nothing, and which no routine could soften. They were afraid before every operation, when time seemed to stand almost still. Even those who managed to stop thinking were still assailed by fear, as persistent as the daylight, which illuminates treetops one is still unaware of.

Contact with the enemy puts an end to this sort of fear. The opening shots raise the curtain on a drama which will fully occupy every sense. It is a pity that soldiers can think. When the first men have fallen, the tension slackens, and no one any longer pays attention to anything except the dry twigs crackling underfoot.

Feldwebel Sperlovski, who was leading our group, pointed to the signs of passage of a large number of men. The heavily trampled brush and the numerous empty gun emplacements indicated that we were approaching a large partisan camp. We had to watch carefully for mines — to watch each step, in addition to everything else. Sweat trickled down our temples, attracting clouds of belligerent flies. The brush under the trees and the low branches offered a thousand opportunities for concealed trip wires. Every yard required a desperate concentration. A plane passed over level with the treetops, and the throb of its engines made us all hold our breaths for fear the vibrations might be enough to set off the whole area. At last, there was a short blast on the whistle, and we all fell flat. A small fort of logs driven deep into the ground stood at the end of a vague foot path. At the far end of our group, fighting had already begun.

Sperlovski designated two men — Ballers and Prinz — to throw grenades at the fort. Prinz was one of the men in Lensen’s Panzerfaust team. Today, however, the anti-tank group wasn’t needed, so Prinz was just another Panzergrenadier, panting as he crawled forward with his lethal burden. Ballers, more dead than alive, was crawling along the other side of the path, identically laden. We all watched, trembling with tension.

Who were Ballers and Prinz?

Two men from anywhere. Were they good men or bad? Were they hateful? Was God with them, or had He condemned them? They were simply two men who had become our comrades in this group of madmen; men whose acquaintance we would probably have avoided in the ordinary circumstances of civilian life. Here, every step they took accelerated the beating of our hearts, and keyed up our pulse rate to equal theirs. Those two anonymous beings, both of them our men, were suddenly more important to every one of us than even our closest relatives — an egotistical transformation in which we all knew that we saw ourselves; had the circumstances fallen slightly differently, they would have been watching us. Motive seemed totally unimportant — if only they lived. They were already quite far from us, and perhaps very close to death, hidden from many of us by leaves. I could still see them. Prinz suddenly stood up and heaved his load toward the log fort. Then he plunged down again.

The entire woods felt the violence of the explosion. Its thunder echoed interminably under the trees. In the patches of sky visible through the branches we could see the birds shooting away from us like arrows. Prinz’s bundle had fallen short, and had made a large crater crowned with broken branches some seven or eight meters from the partisan hideout.

“Scheisse,” muttered our sergeant.

“There’s nobody there,” someone else said.

Then I saw Ballers running forward in turn. As he ran, I felt myself dying in his shoes. He too threw his packet of explosives, and then dived down as the trees all around us bent against a flash of light. The forest seemed to groan with the shock. This time there weren’t any fleeing birds — only our mimetic uniforms, which confounded us with nature. Ballers had just stood up again. So had Prinz, a short distance ahead of him. Their figures were sharply outlined against the broken earth. Behind them, all that had formerly been visible of the fort had disappeared.

“This way, comrades,” shouted Ballers, proud of his exploit. “There’s nobody in there.”

We all stood up, prepared to join him. He was laughing nervously. A crisp detonation whistled through the leaves, followed by two more. Prinz was running toward us, but Ballers wasn’t. He was walking hesitantly, stretching one hand toward us. Then he fell.

A short hour later, four hundred partisans were fighting like devils inside the circle we had drawn around them and were slowly tightening. Three companies almost at full strength — about eight or nine hundred men — were trying to knock out the circle of fire, which was produced by a variety of weapons of every caliber, and amounted to a serious destructive force. The partisan position was so well organized that any approach to it was almost suicidal.

During this hour, two of our men stepped on mines, and their shattered bodies were blown into the budding branches.

We were under uninterrupted fire from a four-barreled machine gun, and setting up a spandau was very risky. We tried to dig foxholes, but the earth was such a tangle of ineradicable roots that our position of attack was transformed into one of defense, which would be difficult to hold against an enemy breakout.

Only our light mortars, with their almost vertical fire, could touch the enemy position. Unfortunately, the partisans seemed able to absorb our fire without any apparent loss of strength. Two or three heavy howitzers — probably captured German equipment — were shooting at our encircling forces; the impact of the projectiles uprooted trees. The discharge of these guns was invisible, which made their destruction extremely difficult. Ten times we sent assault groups to attack the terrorist position. Each time, they were obliged to make a half turn, leaving some of their men screaming on the ground. Later we learned that Wesreidau had been moving heaven and earth to try to get some armored and motorized support, but none was available in that area and we had to do without it. Everything that remained had been sent to the support of our crumbling front.

After an hour of waiting, and attempted assaults that came to nothing, our commander decided to risk everything once and for all. Leaving only a handful of isolated men in the ring around the fort, he shifted the rest of us, taking every precaution, so that the enemy would believe they were still surrounded by a strong force. In this way, he was able to mass five hundred men and send them all at once against the enemy’s weakest point — a V-shaped trench held by forty men armed with rifles and one machine gun. At his order, five hundred men rushed the enemy position, attacking with grenade throwers. The enemy reeled under the force of this blow, and was unable to maintain an accurate fire.

Seven or eight of our men fell during this assault, but the maneuver was so magnificent that for the moment no one paid much attention to them. I was part of the second wave; two others followed us. When we reached the enemy position the job was already done. Some forty partisans had tried to resist, but our rain of grenades annihilated two thirds of them. The remainder had died on the bayonets of the first Germans to reach the fortress. We followed hard on their heels. Another wave was right behind us. The underbrush rang with hideous screams, and smelled of powder and smoke and blood. I saw more partisans pouring from their log fort, and firing point blank at our men, who were exhilarated by the success of our action. In the general confusion, I opened fire along with everyone else. A tall Russian fired at me three times without hitting me, although I made no effort to dodge him. Then he rushed at me, shouting and waving his gun, holding the butt in the air. Two of our men joined me and fired at the Russian. He fell and tried to reload his gun, but we jumped him immediately, battering him with our butts. He died under our blows.

At the foot of the blockhouse, a desperate hand-to-hand struggle was in progress. Something exploded in the midst of the fighting, sending shattered fragments of German and partisan bodies flying through the air. Other men ran up to continue the fighting, surrounded by the dead and dying. Cries and curses mingled with the sharp crack of rifle fire. A moment later, we were in the thick of the fighting. One of the fellows with me had his arm broken by an exploding mine. Pressed against the wooden wall, men were fighting hand to hand with knives, shovels, feet, and stones. An obergefreiter had just hit a Russian in the face with his shovel, opening a hideous gash. The wounded man fell writhing to the ground. Kellerman was firing in short bursts at the partisans hidden behind the two howitzers which had given us so much trouble. Many Russians got away — at least half of them. Those who couldn’t added to the numbers of the dead.

We collected all the stray guns and reserves of food, destroyed the howitzers, which we couldn’t take with us, and buried seventy of our men. Then we left the place, carrying out the wounded on stretchers made of branches. In the evening we arrived at a kolkhoz, where we drank everything we could get hold of, trying to blot out the memory of a hideous day.

Spring in the Ukraine: endless days of almost unbroken light. A luminous darkness fell toward eleven at night, to yield to a pink dawn a few hours later. The weather was perfect: a warm, reviving wind, before the crushing heat of summer. Unfortunately, although the season made us dream of peace, the monster of war was finally able to emerge from the paralysis of winter and the thaw. The pale blue sky belonged to the Russians, whose air power had grown enormously. The Luftwaffe, whose numbers had been seriously reduced by the necessity of defending German cities and dealing with the increasing demands of the Western front, flew daily sorties which amounted to suicide flights against overwhelming enemy strength on the ground and in the air. Our few victories were the product of absolute heroism. The sky and the front belonged to the enemy. The rear areas were contested by two nearly equal opponents: the German army and the partisans. We continually sent out patrols. Almost every sortie produced a clash. Every hill and hedge and cottage held a mine, or hid an ambush. We had almost no vehicles of any kind, no gas, and no spare parts. We were also not receiving any fresh supplies. The odd, ill-assorted convoys still pressing through continuous air attacks were not destined for us but for the faltering, collapsing front. When they arrived in the forward zone, they were able to find the correct units only by accident. More often than not, their cargoes were absorbed by the hordes of starving men retreating under a deluge of fire.

We ourselves received at the greatest risk about a tenth of what we needed. We were obliged to live off the local inhabitants, who were very hard-pressed themselves and more than reluctant in their attitude toward us. The problem of food had become extremely serious. As it was spring, there were still very few fruits, and hunting was more dangerous for us than for the game.

A small hamlet sheltered what remained of our three companies. Between operations men slept almost naked on the ground. Those who sleep dine, says the proverb. For us, it was vitally important that this become the reality.

When planes came over, everyone took cover, and when they were gone, we laid our bony bodies out in the sun again. This helped to heal our winter louse bites. Half asleep, with our eyes half closed, we stared into the sky, apparently thinking of nothing. What was the use? We seemed to have broken completely with the past. Memories of peace floated up like fragments of books we might have read. The war had taught us to appreciate every minuscule good. Today, the sun took the place of our goulash and wurst and millet, and the mail which no longer came. We lay stretched on the Ukrainian soil, apparently calm and at peace. Tomorrow, perhaps, some food would arrive — and perhaps some gas, and some spare parts. Perhaps even some mail — a letter from Paula… But perhaps, too, there would only be ourselves and the earth and the sky and the sun…. What was the use of thinking about it?

One day, our radio crackled out an S.O.S. from a territorial post on the Rumanian frontier. It was surrounded by a band of partisans.

In the eyes of the Wehrmacht, we were still officially considered part of a motorized unit standing by, and therefore available. In consequence, we were always moving, and had to be ready to leave at a moment’s notice for points anywhere within a radius of 150 miles. The post calling us was some 100 miles away, and had appealed to us because its officers had been told that in emergencies they could rely on our mobility. In fact, we had four trucks in bad condition, a small civilian van, a sidecar, and the C.O.’s steiner. Wesreidau tore his hair and cursed.

As quickly as possible, a hundred of us left to answer the S.O.S. We took along as many automatic weapons as we could to make up for our small number. Each truck carried two spandaus ready to fire. Above all else, we feared planes. We drove as quickly as we could along the terrible Russian roads, raising a thick cloud of dust. About 30 miles from our starting point, we hurtled through a village which could have be longed to prehistory. The inhabitants ran as fast as they could to get out of our way. We were bristling with weapons and black with dust, and we must have looked far from reassuring. As we left the village, a group of terrified residents scattered ahead of us. The steiner went through, and then the first truck, which crushed a dog. The second truck bumped a black pig, which ran out from nowhere and threw itself under the wheels.

I was in the third truck, and saw the whole sequence: the sudden braking ahead, the shrieking villagers running to the side of the road, the screaming pig, dragging itself through the dust. Five or six landser jumped off the truck to chase the pig, trying to kill it as it squealed in agony. Finally, they stabbed it with their bayonets. It was still kicking, spattering its executioners with blood, as they tied its feet with belts and ropes, and hung its 150 pounds from the tailgate of their truck.

Then we started off again, to catch up with the others, leaving the village in a squeal of gears. The pig too was soon covered with dust, which mingled with its streaming blood. We no longer objected to details like that; for those who survived, there would be fresh meat this evening. Sieg Heil!

We were now driving through a strange landscape of smooth black hills, almost like enormous boulders, scattered with a few stunted trees. Wherever the ground was broken, the soil was black and seemed as hard as stone. I wished that I knew something of geology; our route took us through this curious terrain for about fifteen miles.

We had just left that strange district when a group of planes was reported. One of our spotters confirmed that he had seen them through the treetops, slightly to our left. Our trucks pulled over to the side of the road, where they were screened by leaves. Wesreidau stared at the sky through his field glasses, but couldn’t see anything. It seemed wise to wait for a few minutes. The landser in the third truck put the time to good account, slitting open the pig and getting rid of its guts with lightning speed. As the job wasn’t quite finished when we started out again, they finished it on the back of the truck.

A few miles farther on, as we bumped through a chaotic landscape, two planes came over very low. We shouted at the drivers, who jammed on the brakes. There were no thick trees anywhere near us. As the planes passed directly overhead, we were all gripped by an insane, hopeless panic. Some men wet their pants. As the planes vanished into the distance, we lifted our heads and saw two ME-109Fs, which must have been the survivors of some squadron. No one thought of cheering the Luftwaffe; we had all been too afraid.

Toward four, we approached the zone of operations. Our trucks were following a winding track through mountainous country, driving very slowly for fear of ambush. Wesreidau’s steiner was in the lead. Two observers, hunched on the hood, kept their eyes riveted on the dust along the way, and on the heights surrounding us. Nothing we could see was in any way reassuring. Suddenly, we were looking down into an open valley. We stopped, cutting off our engines, and immediately heard the distant sound of machine guns. Beyond all doubt, we had arrived. In the distance, through the heat haze, we could see what looked like a village. We kept the trucks a hundred yards apart, and maintained a moderate speed, as the men clung onto the outside of the railings. Once again our stomachs clenched at the approach of danger, and we wondered when we would begin to be adult men.

Naturally, the enemy knew we were coming. The first truck suddenly saw the commander’s steiner driving backward at breakneck speed from a turn in the road. The vehicle was rolling down a slope when a sharp explosion burst on the track some ten yards ahead of it. Everyone plunged to the ground, and the trucks took whatever shelter they could. A second explosion tore a hole in the road, lifting a large cloud of dust. They were plastering us with shells from a 37-mm. gun. Then a burst of machine-gun fire riddled the first truck. Luckily, everyone was already out. The driver must have watched in a cold sweat.

The enemy was hidden by the undulations of the country, and was very hard to see. Nonetheless, the men in the steiner knew they’d been lucky. It was miraculous that the 37-mm. gun hidden behind the tees to the right of the turning hadn’t opened fire the moment the steiner appeared. The partisans had felled a tree across the road, right after the turn.

We set up two light mortars, and shelled the enemy gun, which soon fell silent.

“Probably amateurs,” Wesreidau remarked.

We deployed a dozen F.M.s, which made movement very difficult for the partisans firing from the mountainside. Our group slid through the brush and climbed the first rocky outcrops, while our mortars rained a hail of projectiles, more terrifying than destructive, onto any point that seemed to harbor opposition. We had just uncovered an enemy post-real Johnny-come-latelys giving Fritz a hard time in order to reap a reward from their grateful country.

“What bastards,” muttered Prinz to Smellens, “coming to shoot at us just for the bell of it. We’ll fix them.”

Our group attacked the partisans with grenade throwers. In that enclosed bowl of hills, the explosions made an overwhelming noise. Then someone raked the edges of the enemy ambush with a spandau, which we recognized by the sound of its fire. After two more grenades, the apprentice sharpshooters were ready to give up. A figure ran out, attempting a desperate flight. He was quickly cut down by the spandau.

“What a bastard!” Prinz shouted. “It’s horrible to shoot down idiots like that. Why can’t they stay home and wait until the war ends, for the love of God! If I was in their shoes, no one could twist my arm — and you’d be the same, wouldn’t you, Sajer?”

Home! The thought went to my head like a gulp of wine. Home, to wait for the war to end…

“Yes,” I said finally.

“And now we have to shoot them,” he said. “It’s disgusting.”

We could hear plaintive cries from the enemy entrenchment. To our left, spandaus and grenade throwers were destroying the tranquility of the spring. Suddenly, one of the Russian boys in an excess of zeal stood up, exposing half his body, and raked us with a burst of machinegun fire. His loose, approximate fire wounded one of our men in the right hand, and then another, undoubtedly on the ricochet, in the calf. The Russian was shot down by our spandau, while our wounded man began to groan in a shaded corner.

“God damn it!” someone shouted. “Will you stop this bullshit!” Two figures climbed from the partisan position and, without any apparent hurry, began to run. Our F.M. sent them rolling in the dust too.

“Did you see that?” Smellens said to the gunner. “You just got a girl.”

“A girl? Are you sure? If women are getting mixed up in this mess now, that’s the last straw.”

A few minutes later we counted the bodies of the partisans: six young people about our age. Among them were two pretty girls, bathed in blood and covered with a swarm of blue flies.

We stared down at our victims, sickened by the sight. Why had they thrown themselves across the route of our misery? Their amateur barrier was quickly dismantled. We cleared the road, and marched to the village. The trucks followed slowly behind us.

Had the enemy been misinformed? Had they received exaggerated estimates of our minuscule capacity? Were they afraid? Whatever the reason, they abandoned their grip on the post which was almost theirs, and came out to meet us.

The sun was shining brightly on the narrow, dusty road. At the head of the column, our men were in contact with the enemy, who had taken refuge in the town cemetery. It was a typical Russian cemetery — blue and gold and white, with no suggestion of sadness about it. The day was perfect, the spring of late June turning into summer. We could almost have been fighting for a lark. Each plume of smoke was immediately carried away by a gentle breeze. We would certainly have been satisfied by a light exchange of fire, but our commander saw things differently; we couldn’t let the enemy think we were too weak to attack. So our grenade throwers and light mortars destroyed the blue cemetery. Two groups chased the partisans out, and occupied the cemetery gardens. The partisans had taken refuge in a nearby wooden building where the crops were stored. On the door, the enemy had just daubed the Marxist slogan: “Workers of the World, Unite.”

This hasty scrawl, with dripping letters, gave a tearful impression of Marxist beliefs.

To dispose as quickly as possible of this flimsy, improvised fortress, we loaded the spandau with explosive incendiary bullets. The thatched roof caught on fire almost at once. The enemy, who were defending themselves with automatic weapons, did not spare their fire.

A salvo of mortar shells knocked the roof into the building, and the partisans had to abandon an untenable position. Our two groups ran toward the burning building to harass the Russians as they fled. An old bearded man was leaning against a pile of stones, shouting curses at us. His right hand rested on the head of a dead comrade who lay on the ground beside him. The old man was wounded himself, and his clothes were torn and burned. We walked past him at a distance of no more than three yards. The sight of our guns didn’t silence him. He shook his fist at us, and cursed us. We all saw him through the smoke and sparks of the burning barn, but no one thought of shooting him. He showered maledictions at us until the collapse of the building buried him. A column of sparks rose into the azure sky. The first elements of our group were already in the village streets, firing on anything that moved.

The last of the partisans were running toward the mountains. For a moment, they were directly exposed to our fire, and we shot down twenty of them on the dusty road and among the junipers on the hillside.

The spandau, which had been fitted with a special magazine, took a horrible toll of the fleeing groups of partisans. Then we stopped firing, and the men from the German post came out and joined us. Many of them were wounded, and twelve were dead. We gave the wounded first aid, and drove the local residents from their huts. Fires were spreading everywhere, and had to be put out.

Men, women, and children joined us in fighting the flames. It took almost an hour to put the fires out. Then everyone, ourselves included, dragged the bodies of the dead to a central point. Women screamed and cried as they recognized a husband or son or lover. It looked as if most of the partisans had lived in this place.

Soon, however, the tears and sobs became threats and curses. We collected our own dead and wounded with the usual mute sentiment established by habit. The day was so beautiful it was hard to believe that any of this was really serious. Our eyes, disillusioned by so much accumulated fear and anxiety, no longer distinguished the tragedies of any particular moment.

Hals was staring at the magnificent mountain scenery, as he carried along a comrade whose tunic was blotched with brown stains. The birds had regained their sense of spring joy and were flying once again through the blue sky, which was faintly marked by smoke from the smoldering fires. For us, in the eastern armies, this joyousness of nature almost excused what had just happened. After the mud and the cold, we were like wild animals, overjoyed by the spring sun, and the knowledge that shelter for the night was no longer a serious problem.

We deplored what had just happened as a disturbance of the peace and quiet we so much appreciated.

The villagers were still caught in a crisis of tearful despair, and insults which were comprehensible simply by their tone shook our sense of well-being.

Someone threw a stone, which hit one of our wounded men in the face. Two landser spun around, brandishing their machine guns.

“Break it up, you pigs, or we’ll drill you full of holes.”

But the shouted curses kept right on. We were ringed by faces, especially feminine faces, distorted by rage, spitting and cursing, and by shaking fists. Suddenly, six planes flying wing to wing appeared in that marvelous sky-six Soviet fighters, looking for one of our convoys. This sign heartened the Russians, who shouted, “Ourrah Stalin,” and pointed at the planes, which blindly continued their search.

We could see such hatred on all these faces that we shivered, despite the fine spring day. We were all thinking of our tortured, mutilated comrades, murdered by men who were mixing themselves into a fight that had left them on the sidelines. We remembered once again the tragic deaths at the territorial posts all along our line of retreat during the winter: faces smashed open with axes, so that the gold teeth could be pulled out; the hideous agony of wounded men tied with their heads inside the gaping bellies of dead comrades; amputated genitals; Ellers’ section, whom we had found tied up and naked, on a day when the temperature had dropped to thirty degrees below zero, with their feet thrust into a drinking trough which had frozen solid; and the faces of tortured men under the dark winter sky….

With dry mouths, we listened to the mounting rage of these peasants, who were now paying a price they could have avoided for all time. If anyone had ordered us to fire, we would have obeyed without hesitation. I could see the gun shaking in the filthy, nervous hands of the man nearest me. A little way off, another of our men was no longer able to control the trembling of his face muscles. We had all stopped working, and our anger was rising like a storm.

A tall, slim figure strode between the two groups. We saw that it was Wesreidau, and that he was white with fury. He stopped five yards from the Russians, and threw them a look so terrible that silence fell at once. He had learned Russian during the long course of the campaign. He told the villagers to bury their dead with the same silence and respect he required of his troops. He said that the war would soon be over for them, and that they should wait for the end, keeping to the sidelines. He said that he had never imagined the war would bring him to shoot civilians, who had been misled into arming by false propaganda, and excused himself for what he had been forced to do. Then his voice became as hard as death. He said that he would not tolerate any further hostile manifestations; that he intended to return to camp with all his men still alive, and that the entire village would be held responsible if he did not.

Wesreidau’s words had the effect of a soothing balm. Everything returned to a state of unexpected order. The dead were buried and sobs were stifled.

We found enough gas for our return in the stores of the outpost. The men there entertained us with a few bottles they had put aside several months before. Then we returned to the road, leaving eight wounded men behind at the post, where the medical service would pick them up the next day. Six others failed to answer the roll call, and remained in the Ukrainian soil forever.

“Not so crowded this time,” someone said.

We acquiesced without speaking. Our eyes lingered on the village disappearing behind clouds of dust raised by the trucks. The beautiful spring light glowed all around our blackened, steel-capped faces, which seemed irrevocably cut off from the season. Our awareness of everything was similarly split. Our thoughts, like our eyes, couldn’t settle on anything that seemed definite, or restful, and a sense of well-being had no place in the convoy.

The whirling dust hid the bursting spring. All we could see were the trucks, and the grotesque, dangling cadaver of the pig, covered with blood and flies.

The trucks lurched along the narrow mountain road, whose illogical course might have been traced by some wandering goat; obstacles like stone outcrops were included without modification, and natural, shaded ridges were avoided. Sometimes the track plunged into the bed of an unexpected stream, or through a temporary pond. At other times, we crossed deserts of dust, where the dryness seemed eternal. The trucks slowly pursued the twists and turns, carrying us along, penned between the rattling railings.

We seemed to be wandering endlessly toward new horizons on which we never had time to gaze, through an oversized, over-intense spring which would not allow us to forget that we were at war. Our expressionless faces stared at the spring with the unhappiness of paupers staring into a shop window decorated for Christmas.

We too wanted the war to stop and dreamed of peace, like the seriously ill for whom the first sight of spring buds kindles a spark of life.

But the fighting didn’t stop; there was never more than a semblance of peace, and always someone to fan the flames of war. These people — on both sides — perhaps had perfectly good reasons for what they did. On that day, one of them crossed the road as we climbed up the long slope. He had seen us coming, and quickly, perhaps inside of ten minutes, laid his trap, hiding it in one of the dozens of potholes that pitted the surface. Then he hid, perhaps waiting to see what happened. Perhaps he too saw the yellow flash that tore apart our lead car. As always, there was a loud noise and a great deal of smoke climbing in black plumes toward the desperately smiling sky. Six bloodstained men were slowly dying in the shadows of those plumes. The front of the steiner was gone. The rest of the machine was knocked over onto its side.

A few men pulled the victims from the flaming wreckage, while the rest assumed a defensive position. We laid Wesreidau and the five other occupants of the car against the bank of red earth. Two of them were already dead. Another had a leg torn open in several places by metal fragments; his thigh looked like a mille-feuille pastry. Wesreidau was covered with wounds, and his body seemed to be broken by multiple fractures. We did everything we could for him. The whole company thought of him as a friend. With everyone helping, we managed to bring him back to consciousness.

Unlike everyone else we had watched, our captain did not have a face twisted by the revulsion or agony of death. His swollen face even managed to smile. We thought we had saved him. In a very weak voice he spoke to us of our collective adventure, stressing our unity, which must hold in the face of everything to come. He pointed to one of his pockets, from which Feldwebel Sperlovski pulled an envelope, undoubtedly addressed to his family. After that, for nearly a minute, we watched our chief die. Our faces, used to such spectacles, remained impassive. But the silence was terrible.

We were able to save two of the men from the car, loading them carefully onto the vehicles which remained. Lieutenant Wollers took command, and organized a decent burial for our venerated leader. We walked past his grave one by one, saluting. We felt that we had just lost the man on whom the well-being of the whole company depended.

We felt abandoned.

That night we returned to the isolated village where our comrades were anxiously waiting for our return. The announcement of our commander’s death provoked stupefied consternation. We were all in danger of death, but the annihilation of Wesreidau seemed as impossible to us as life without their parents seems to small children.

We were prepared for every other death, but no one was ready to concede that fate for our leader.

Guard duty that night seemed more uncertain than before; our three companies seemed more vulnerable than ever. We all turned toward a source of strength which remained silent.

Who would our new leader be? On whom would the destiny of our group depend?

At the first light of dawn, after our radio message had reached headquarters, a DO-217 flew over, releasing a smoke signal. This told us that our three motorized companies should proceed quickly to a key position at the front, to the north of us.

We were ordered to destroy our base and most of the village. Nothing should be left which would aid or shelter the enemy. As we had no incendiary material, we limited ourselves to burning the thatched roofs of the cottages.

Then our motorized company left on foot, with our materiel loaded into the four ancient trucks we had left. The radio truck and sidecar preceded them. Every ten or fifteen miles, the trucks and sidecar stopped and waited for us. We would arrive at the front together or not at all.

Our orders made no sense. The officers issuing them seemed to be completely unaware of the actual condition of mobile units allegedly standing by. We were limited to doing the best we could.

Food was our most difficult problem. For a long time now, we had received no supplies, and our meals were produced by some kind of magic. We became hunters and trappers and nest robbers, and experimented with wild plants whose leaves looked like salad greens. After a long chase, we were sometimes able to catch an abandoned horse. But eight hundred men require substantial quantities of food, and every day we were faced with the same difficulties. Every day we called for help on the radio, and every day received the same reply: “Supplies en route. Should have reached you.” The Army Postal Service seemed to have vanished too: no letters or packages — no news of any kind.

Despite the warm summer sun, which was now, in fact, somewhat too warm, the situation had become desperate.

Yesterday’s pig had been grilled and boiled and devoured the night before, along with a hundred and fifty quarts of hot water which we elevated to the status of “pork bouillon.”

Today we were leaving for the front. Our eyes gleamed, like the eyes of famished wolves. Our stomachs were empty, our mess tins were empty, and the horizon was devoid of any hope. Murderous sentiments lurked behind our eyes, which glittered with hunger. Hunger produces a curious frame of mind. It is impossible to imagine dying of hunger. For a long time now, we had been used to living on very little. Our stomachs digested substances which would kill a comfortable bourgeois citizen in a few weeks. No one had any spare fat left — no bellies or double chins, and our long muscles stood out in relief, as though we’d been flayed. As our fast continued, our senses grew more acute. We looked like the bony animals with blazing eyes one might encounter in the desert. It would take days of marching and dust to extinguish that blaze. For the moment, despite the hollows in our bellies, everything still seemed possible. We would simply march until we found food. After all, Russia was not an empty desert. The immense prairie around us looked fertile, and we would surely come across a village we could ransack.

Sperlovski and Lensen checked the map. There were a great many villages in our sector; therefore, the situation wasn’t too serious. The trouble was that our rectangle of paper represented an area as large as all of France. Between any two villages, there might be hundreds of absolutely empty miles. The smallest digression to reach one of the names on the map could mean several more days of marching.

“There’s nothing really to worry about,” said Lensen, who didn’t like to concede defeat. “There are plenty of villages lost in the steppe which aren’t marked on the map. And then there are the kolkhozes, too.”

We had been ordered to march north. There could be no more delay. In any case, there was nothing left to eat where we were. Our long file set out: “Kompanie, marsch! marsch!”

Hour after hour, at two or three miles an hour, we tramped in growing desperation through the uncultivated prairie.

“Somebody could make money farming here,” remarked a Hannover country boy.

There were large fields of wheat near each village. Beyond these, over spaces as broad as a French department, there was nothing but wild grass and gray or red dust and thick forest, much of which was probably virgin. We had grown used to great distances. Above all, we thought of them as possible battlefields. Other reactions still lay in the future for those who returned to their native countries, with their suffocating densities and horizons which seemed close enough to touch, always marked by commonplace structures of public utility, stones arranged in some dubious style. These men, who had grown used to stretches of ground as vast as the sky, no longer knew how to sit on grass which always belonged to someone.

For us, at the moment, there was only limitless space, where our boots raised a cloud of multicolored dust that settled on everything that disturbed it. We belonged to the earth far more than it belonged to us. Except for the war, we felt a vast, limitless pleasure in our surroundings, in a kind of plenitude for which, in later years, we would always feel nostalgia.

If only there had been something to eat!

After our eleven-o’clock break, our march began again. We had gulped down like a dose of medicine the cooked sprouts of young wheat which had been prepared two days earlier. As a last resort, we had some millet, cooked in water. The weather was very hot. Fortunately, our exceedingly light meals did not produce after-dinner somnolence.

We drank the warm water from our water bottles with a certain apprehension. Running streams were quite widely spaced, and water from ponds carried the risk of malaria, typhoid, and other diseases, like cholera. To keep up our spirits, we sang as we marched: “Ein Heller and ein Batzen.” The words, like the tune, were carried into the emptiness by the light summer wind, losing all meaning — which no longer seemed strange to ears once accustomed to hearing them echo between the walls of flag-decked towns:

Not that we had any choice-there was no wine and the water had to be drunk sparingly and with caution.

Kompanie, marsch, marsch. We marched, singing for no one but ourselves, and all of us already knew the tune.

Then it grew dark. Darkness fell very late on our bivouac and across the plain, on which it seemed we had hardly moved, on our dust-covered faces and aching muscles. We were already asleep on our feet. The silence seemed to have a special quality, as though it had come from the end of the world.

At daybreak, our march resumed. For hours the long row of hills on the horizon seemed to remain at the same distance from us. We were walking through a rocky plain where the highest rise in the ground was scarcely the height of a man. Small stands of trees, which reminded me of photographs of Africa, were scattered across the landscape. The trees were short and scrubby, curiously like the trees of high altitudes. The wind blew the red dust everywhere, as if we were tramping through a universe of powdered brick. For a long time now, we had given up marching in threes — the regulation order for marching troops — in favor of the system used by partisans. We were broken up into more or less compact groups, in which a man was ahead only until someone else caught up with him. Everyone was tired, and our pace was slackening.

We had given up all unnecessary conversations, keeping all our breath and strength to continue putting one foot in front of the other. How many thousands of steps did we still have to take? Our boots, the color of the dusty universe, kept on across the rocky plain, which seemed to be leading us nowhere. The light wind filled our long, unkempt hair with dust; our position in relation to certain reference points on the horizon seemed unchanging; and the rhythm of our steps, the sounds of our progress, and the wind itself became overwhelmingly monotonous. From time to time we could hear a rumble from the great hollow of emptiness which filled our stomachs.

Just after the eleven-o’clock halt, during which we consumed the last of our millet, an incident disturbed the general monotony. Two twin-engined planes, which we had fortunately been able to see a long way off, appeared in the hot, blue sky. The horizon was so vast that anything which crossed it was visible for at least five minutes before it reached us. We scattered as usual, and assumed a position of anti-aircraft defense. Some of us were going to die…. The planes were either light bombers or reconnaissance planes — but unmistakably Russian.

The two planes flew over us at an altitude of about fifteen hundred feet. The snore of their engines pierced the gentle breeze and seemed to echo in the depths of our tense stomachs.

The two Popovs took our fire without sending down anything in return. They flew in a large circle, which we followed with anguished eyes. The second time around, they would surely let us have it.

However, their second swoop produced nothing but a swarm of white butterflies, flashing and fluttering against the blue of the sky.

As soon as the planes were gone, some of our men went out to pick up the leaflets. A fellow came over to me waving a dozen.

“Ivan doesn’t seem to understand: if we can’t eat, we can’t crap. He’s gone and sent us a lot of paper.”

We read the Communist tracts.

Then, to raise our morale, we were shown some bad photographs of anonymous ruins, which, it was claimed, were German cities flattened by bombs. Also, there were photographs of smiling German prisoners. Under each of these photographs was a short caption:

And so it went on.

One fellow, who had managed to escape from Tomvos, was shouting with rage. “The bastards! For all I know, I’m the only survivor from that damned place.”

In disgust, he tore the leaflet to shreds, and scattered it into the wind.

We resumed our march. The leaflets were still circulating from hand to hand, and their words and phrases “the war is lost,” “treason,” “cities destroyed” echoed in our minds like a gloomy round.

Of course, it was Communist propaganda. All we had to do was talk to the fellow who’d escaped from Tomvos to understand that. But then anyone who’d been home on leave had seen the bombed German cities. And then there was our continuous and painful retreat, and our daily existence, with its total lack of transport, gas, food, mail, everything. Perhaps the war really was lost. But that couldn’t be possible.

Here we were walking across the Russian plain. Was it still ours? Or was it simply witnessing our slow death?

But that, too, was impossible. We had to dismiss these black thoughts. We were simply living through a difficult period which was bound to pass.

Tomorrow, surely, we would get some supplies, and everything would once more make some kind of sense. We had to shake our heads and dispel our dark reveries. Today the sun was shining, and we had to press on.

We began to sing one of our marching songs with deliberate vehemence:

This was the second time Hals had shaken me awake.

Despite the exhaustion which rapidly returned us to unconsciousness, it was annoying to be torn from such deep sleep.

“I’m telling you, I can hear guns,” he said.

I listened, but was aware of nothing except the pale, glittering night.

“Leave me alone, Hals, for the love of God. Don’t wake me for anything. We’ll be marching again tomorrow, and I’m so tired I could die.”

“I’m telling you that off and on we can hear guns. If you’ll look around, you’ll see that other fellows are standing up and listening too.” I listened again, but still heard nothing except the gently blowing wind.

“Well, it’s possible. But so what? This isn’t the first time. Go back to sleep. You’ll be better off.”

“I can’t sleep on an empty stomach. I’m sick of this. I’ve got to find something to eat.”

“So that’s why you wake me up?”

Someone walked over to us. It was Schlesser, who was on guard duty.

“Did you hear that, fellows? Guns.”

“That’s what I was trying to tell this blockhead,” said Hals, nudging me.

Despite the sleep stagnating in me so that I was only half conscious, I felt obliged to listen to what my companion was saying.

“All we need here is a Soviet breakthrough,” Schlesser said.

“That would be the end of us,” said Hals, his voice suddenly hoarse.

“We can still fight, though,” said someone else who’d just come up.

“Fight!” said Hals, hideously objective. “With what? Seven or eight hundred anemic, half-starved men armed with light infantry weapons. You must be joking. It would be the end of us, I tell you. We haven’t even got the strength to run.”

But the newcomer wasn’t joking. His name was Kellerman. Although he was exactly twenty years old, he already had the lucidity of a much older man and an instant grasp of reality. This reality lifted the veil of fear, and exposed the anguish deeply inscribed on his face, whose hardened features seemed incompatible with his youth.

Then we all heard a distant rumble, carried to us on the wind…. We stared at each other. The noise stopped, began again, stopped again.

“Artillery,” said Schlesser. The rest of us were silent.

I had heard the noise, like everyone else, but my exhaustion had produced the sensation of two simultaneous lives. Sleep and reality had become confused. I felt as though I were deeply asleep, dreaming of artillery fire, lost somewhere in time. My comrades went right on talking. I listened to them without really hearing what they were saying. Sergeant Sperlovski had joined us, and seemed to be making some deductions.

“It’s still far off,” he said, “but it’s the front. We’ll be arriving in a day, or a day and a half.”

“That would be an hour or two in a car,” Hals remarked.

Sperlovski looked at him. “In a hurry? So sorry we’re not motorized any more.”

“That’s not what I meant,” Hals growled. “I was thinking of Ivan, who must have gas and tanks. If he breaks through, he could be on top of us just like that.”

Sperlovski stalked off without another word. What business had he to be discouraged — a noncom in the Gross Deutschland?

“Let’s go to sleep,” Kellerman said. “There’s nothing better to do.”

“It’s a nice lookout,” I couldn’t help saying. “Here we are, like animals in a slaughterhouse, waiting for dawn, when the butchers will come.”

“Are we going to be killed with empty stomachs?” Hals roared. Despite our hunger and fear, we managed to fall asleep again, and stayed asleep until daybreak — which arrived at what would be considered the middle of the night in any organized civilian life.

Here we had no bells or bugles, or even a whistle. The gentle commotion made by our group leaders was enough to drag us from the heavy sleep which, paradoxically, was very easily penetrated by sound and movement. According to the custom of troops approaching a combat zone, movement at night, or before full daylight, was preferred. The docile Wehrmacht, even in its death agony, clung to its professionalism and woke its soldiers at the customary hour, leading them in disciplined order to the field of glory.

The rules did not envisage that soldiers without food could avoid this or that trial, but stated that in all cases everything still possible should be accomplished with maximum efficiency. Time is measured out in equal quantities for the poor and the old and the underfed alike.

Our faded uniforms looked gray in the first faintly white light of day. Familiar silhouettes which had walked beside me for nearly two years now were advancing on either side of me in a rhythm that was also mine, and that has remained indelibly stamped on my memory. Whenever I think of those days, I can see again with absolute clarity details which are pointless in themselves: familiar profiles in a diffused light, the loose cloth of trousers improperly tucked into boots, belts loosened by their dangling load of heavy objects, and helmets hanging from one of our straps, always knocking against some other metallic object, with a dull sound I can still hear, without resonance, like a padded bell. And the smells, and the backs, hunched over in a thousand different ways, each one with its own expression, and its own arrangement of creases. The very anonymity of our uniforms created its own kind of individuality. No one uniform was precisely like any other, although no other uniform is so deliberately designed as the German to turn a man into a soldier, absolute and united with his fellows, and not just a civilian in special clothes. For the rest of the world, there are German soldiers with no distinction between them, but for us, the word “Kamerad,” meaning one soldier just like any other, was exaggerated. Beyond the uniform and the formula, we were individuals.

That back over there, the same color as thousands of others, is not just any back. It belongs to Schlesser, and over there, on the right, is Solma. Somewhat closer, that’s Lensen, and his helmet. It’s his helmet, unlike any other among the hundreds of thousands issued in the same series. Then there are Prinz and Hals and Lindberg and Kellerman and Frösch… Frösch, whom I’d recognize in any crowd. Through our sameness, our individualism emerged, as it must have from all men stripped to essentials, since the beginning of time.

All our helmets were the same gray-green, covered with dust. But none stayed for long at a regulation angle, or moved in the same way, and all were distinctive and distinguishable. One thing above all remains more or less indescribable: the contagious anguish of soldiers stripped of everything, whom each step is carrying closer to an incomprehensible danger. There were also our resignation and our equally profound and violent desire to live.

Apart from these three sentiments in common, everything else was personal. But this was apparent only to us. To anyone else, all Huns were alike.

We saw them when we were still five hundred yards away.

They were swarming around the three or four vehicles which had stopped to wait for us. There must have been at least ten thousand of them. Ten thousand men seems like nothing on the Ukrainian plain, but it is still a considerable number. Ten or twelve thousand soldiers in a pitiful state, storming our wretched trucks, rummaging through them again and again in search of some food or medicine. They had thrown themselves onto our battered machines as if they were revenging themselves for their abandonment. Then, as we arrived and they became aware of our miserable state, they collapsed into a torpor which was close to suicide.

Those wretched men, collected from several infantry regiments, were retreating after several days of fighting an implacable enemy who had toyed with them, decimating them as and when he chose. They were on foot, in rags, their faces livid after so much suffering, dragging along with them nauseatingly wounded men on litters made of branches, like the litters of the Sioux.

These men, numbed by too much disaster, were no longer fighting for any spiritual motive, but were more like wolves, terrified of starvation.

To oppose their sole and legitimate reason for living was to risk one’s own life. These men, who no longer distinguished between enemies and friends, were ready to commit murder for less than a quarter of a meal. They were to demonstrate this a few days later, in a horrible phase of the confused flux of the war. These martyrs to hunger massacred two villages to carry off their supplies of food, but thirty of their men died of starvation anyway, near the Rumanian frontier.

Our shock at meeting combat troops in such a state was equal to theirs at finding us as we were.

“Where do you think you’re going?” sneered a tall, emaciated lieutenant, swimming in a curious conglomerate uniform which was far too big for him.

He was talking to our lieutenant, who had led us since the death of Wesreidau. Our lieutenant pointed on the map to the position we were supposed to reach. He cited names, numbers, latitudes. The other listened, swaying stiffly, like a dead tree in the wind.

“What are you talking about? What sector? What hill? Are you dreaming? There’s nothing left, nothing — do you hear me — but mass graves, which are blowing apart in the wind.”

The man talking like this still wore the 1935 commemorative National Socialist decoration pinned to his scorched tunic, which was marked by a thousand stains. He was tall and dark, and a heavy bundle of grenades hung from his belt.

“You can’t be serious,” our lieutenant answered in a pleading tone. “You’ve had a hard time, you’re a little light in the head, and you’re hungry. We too have been keeping ourselves alive by miracles.”

The other drew closer. His eyes were filled with such a hateful, disquieting light that we would gladly have killed him, as if he were a sick animal.

“Yes, I’m hungry,” he roared. “Hungry in a way the saints could never have imagined. I’m hungry, and I’m sick, and I’m afraid, to such a point that I want to live to revenge myself for all mankind. I feel like devouring you, Leutnant. There were cases of cannibalism at Stalingrad, and soon there will be here, too.”

“You’re crazy! If worse comes to worst, we can eat the grass, and there’s all of occupied Russia, with plenty of reserves for the troops. For God’s sake, pull yourself together. You keep going, and we’ll cover your retreat.”

The other made a noise more like a hiccup than a laugh.

“You’ll cover us, and we can take ourselves quietly away! Tell that to the men you see there. They’ve been fighting for five months, and have lost four-fifths of their comrades. They’ve been waiting for reinforcements, ammunition, vitamins, food, medicine, God knows what! They’ve hoped a thousand times, and survived a thousand times. You won’t be able to tell them anything, Leutnant, but you can try…”

We tried to shift some of the materiel from our decrepit vehicles the last vestige of our motorization — onto our backs, to make room for some of the seriously wounded men among the retreating troops. They left first, driving past the rest of us, who were left to that extent less mobile than before on the great Ukrainian plain. We watched the trucks disappearing into the distance, envying the fate of the wounded, who might be going to escape the oppression of that immensity.

Then our motley collection of troops continued their retreat — a vain and empty march. We seemed to be tramping along a huge carpet on rollers, which unwound beneath our feet, leaving us always in the same place. How many hours, and days, and nights went by? I can no longer remember. Our groups spread out, and separated. Some stayed where they were, and slept. No order or threat was strong enough to move them. Others — small groups of men who were particularly strong, or who still had enough food to keep going — went on ahead. There were also many suicides. I remember two villages stripped of every scrap of food, and more than one massacre. Men were ready to commit murder for a quart of goat’s milk, a few potatoes, a pound of millet. Starving wolves on the run don’t have time to stop and talk.

There were still a few human beings left in the wolf pack: soldiers who died to save a can of sour milk — the last reserve of a pair of infants. Others died at the hands of their fellows for protesting against the savagery produced by famine, or were beaten to death because they were suspected of hiding food. Usually, these men were found to have nothing. There were a few exceptions: an Austrian had his head kicked in, and a few handfuls of crumbled vitamin biscuit were found at the bottom of his sack. He had probably collected them by shaking out the provision sacks of some commissariat which had ceased to exist several weeks before. Men died for very little — for the possibility of a day’s food. When everything had been eaten, down to the last sprout in the meager gardens, twelve thousand soldiers stared at the village, which had been abandoned by its terrified inhabitants.

Living corpses wandered here and there, staring at the tragic shreds of existence which remained to them. They stared at the scene of pillage, looking for some understanding of the past which might shed some light on the future. They stayed where they were until dusk. Then three or four armored cars from the advancing Russian troops arrived, peppered with machine-gun fire the crowd of men, who didn’t even try to escape, made a half-turn, and left. The desperate, ravening men scattered across the steppe.

Everyone fled, running for the west because the west drew them irresistibly, as the north attracts the needle of a compass. The steppe absorbed and obliterated them, leaving only small, scattered groups tramping toward the Rumanian frontier, which was very close, but still out of sight. I belonged to one such group. There were nine of us: Hals and me — inseparable as always — Sperlovski, Frösch, Prinz, an older fellow called Siemenleis, who must have been an incorruptible civil servant before the war, and three Hungarians, with whom all conversation was impossible. Were they volunteers, or had they been enrolled in circumstances similar to mine? No one knew. They looked at us with eyes full of hate, as if we were responsible for the misadventure of the Third Reich in which they had been involved. Yet they clung to us as if we were their last hope of ever returning to their distant firesides.

One day there was a line of trees, or a hedge of saplings, which I can still see, as in a drunken dream, and beyond it, the wide, very wide field which we planned to cross. We could see some buildings on the crest of a small hill, and had decided to search them for food.

Halfway across the field the sound of planes made us look up. Two Yabos were seeking some prey.

Seven of us melted into that enormous stretch of ground, and two ran — Frösch and myself.

Like hunted animals intent on self-preservation, each man thought only of himself, and no one shouted to us. The two Russian aviators spotted our wild gallop, and dived down at us. Although we had nothing left but our skins, we still represented the enemy to them, and had to be wiped out.

When the noise reached a certain pitch, we instinctively threw ourselves down on the thick grass. The bullets passed over our heads and landed far beyond us. When we lifted our heads, we could see the planes completing a graceful arabesque against the stormy blue and black summer sky. Gasping for breath, we ran desperately until the two vultures once again filled the air with overwhelming noise. The planes made two more passes after that, peppering the ground with bullets, each time twenty or thirty yards wide of the mark. Like a terrible joke, the planes roared gown a fourth time at the trembling, sweating grasshoppers which were ourselves. Suddenly, as if by a miracle, we came to a ditch, and fell into it.

Without seeing them, we distinctly heard the roar of the Russian rockets, which turned both banks of our ditch into ridges of broken earth. Our friends were sure we were dead. The planes made one more pass, and flew off, undoubtedly convinced that they had brought our wanderings to an end. When we walked out through the whirling dust, our companions greeted us with shouts of incredulous delight.

At the farm, which the inhabitants had abandoned some fifteen minutes before our arrival, we found a kettle full of steaming Jerusalem artichokes, which had undoubtedly been left to distract us. We went on our way, gorging on this unexpected windfall. Two days later, during which we twice collected potatoes from Russians at gun point, we ran into an interminable convoy retreating into Rumania, and were inescapably absorbed into it.

Then we experienced Rumania and its population, which seemed stunned by the sequence of events, by the route of their army, and by the painful disintegration of the Wehrmacht.

Civilian life was in a state of panic, with Rumanian and foreign partisans, daily over — flights of foreign planes, raids for food and supplies, and Rumanian prostitutes who flocked around the troops in such numbers that it seemed as if most of the women in Rumania must be prostitutes.

We marched twenty, twenty-five, even thirty miles a day, pouring with sweat and stunned by disillusion. Our tortured feet were alternately bare in the dust of narrow, twisting roads, then back in our boots, and then naked and bleeding once more. Our hollow stomachs rumbled with hunger. There were raiding parties, re-formation of units, and a lunatic rabble, whose fringes and surface were skimmed by military police intent on discipline, and as always alert for the possibility of exemplary executions.

The landscape was profoundly romantic, but we had been transformed into ravening wolves, and thought of nothing but food.

A particular episode emerges from my memories of disorder — a tragic paroxysm which still seems to me a symbol of humanity gone mad. We were in the mountains and had just been through a town called Reghin, which at that time was known as Arlau, or Erlau. We were tramping along, gray with dust and pouring with sweat. We had miraculously escaped incorporation into several scratch formations, and our interminable, wretched column was twisting through what seemed like an infinite chain of mountains. The column was broken up into groups of varying size, in which unkempt soldiers pushed along every kind of transport to move our basic necessities.

We requisitioned the most extraordinary vehicles. Anyone who found a bicycle grabbed it, even if it had no tires, and went on ahead of the rest to skim off anything even remotely digestible. In this district of jagged peaks and crags, we were free of enemy aircraft, but the terrain was ideal for partisans, and there were many battles to the death between them and our men, who were now fighting simply to save their skins.

In this district, one group among many others of men in a motley conglomeration of clothes was struggling to reach the mother country. Behind our glittering eyes, deeply sunk into shadowy sockets, one belief sustained us. This was that, if we managed to survive, the mother country would receive us with tenderness, and try to help us forget the unimaginable trial which was nearly over. We thought that, once we reached home, the war would be over, and that in the worst imaginable case the army would be reorganized, so that no enemy would enter Germany itself. We held to this as the one final idea which would justify our sufferings and banish the solution of suicide which others had already accepted.

Yesterday’s landser, members of elite units, Panzergrenadiers who had confronted a thousand deaths to live for a chimera, clung to the idea that we had to live to be able to hope, and we had to hope passionately to be able to live as we were. We had to fight against daily ambush, and keep going no matter what, to get away from the Russians, who were hard on our heels. And we had to eat a certain minimum, which wasn’t easy to do.

There were twelve in our group — many of them familiar companions: Schlesser, Frösch, Lieutenant Wollers, Lensen, Kellerman, and then Hals and me, kept together by a miracle of silent fraternity. Hals, who had grown startlingly thin, was forcing his large bony body along the narrow mountain road some four or five yards ahead of me. He often walked ahead of me, which gave me a certain sense of security, although his large body was seriously reduced. He was stripped to the waist, wearing a leather belt and a band of cartridges for the spandau across his chest. A Russian blouse, in anticipation of the cool evenings at this altitude, floated from the leather pouch that held his few possessions along with four or five grenades. His heavy steel helmet seemed to be riveted to his head, and the lice in his filthy hair must have died for lack of light.

Many men had thrown away their heavy helmets, but Hals felt his was a last link with the German Army, and that during this terrible trial we should try to remain soldiers, rather than degenerate into tramps. I kept mine too, as a sign of solidarity, dangling from my belt.

Someone up ahead shouted for us to come and see. We looked down into a leafy ravine. A camouflaged truck bearing the inscription “WH” had crashed to the bottom. Lensen was already running down to have a closer look.

“Watch out!” someone shouted. “It might be a trap!”

Lieutenant Wollers had joined Lensen. We drew back, certain that the partisans had arranged a booby trap, and that we would see our two companions blown to pieces any minute. However, a reassuring shout floated up from the gulf.

“A windfall! Mein Gott, it’s like a whole commissary!”

Within seconds we were all running toward the miracle.

“Look at that! Chocolate, cigarettes, wurst…”

“Good God! And here are three bottles, too!”

“Shut up,” shouted Schlesser, “or you’ll have the whole army down here! It’s a miracle no one found this before.”

“So many delicious things,” said Frösch in an almost tender voice. “Let’s all grab everything we can. We can share it out later, on the road.” Frösch and another fellow loaded themselves heavily, and climbed back to the road to keep watch. Thousands of men were wandering very close to us; we would try to take everything. We had almost completed the job when our two lookouts shouted: “Achtung!”

We ran into the brush and heard the distant roar of a motorcycle. The engine slowed down and seemed to stop. We ran off through the thorny growth, clutching our precious cargoes. We were used to getting out of the way in a hurry and melting into the ground when an unfriendly eye might become too interested in our existence. We could hear some noncoms shouting, and supposed that our two companions had been caught by a military patrol, perhaps even by the military police.

“Those two sods were caught with bottles under their arms,” muttered Wollers.

“Let’s get out of here as fast as we can,” said Lindberg, who had just run up.

“Someone’s coming down,” whispered Lensen. “An M.P. — I saw his badge.”

“Hell, let’s get out of here.”

Everybody ran, scattering into the bushes as if Ivan himself were at his heels. We regrouped after five or six hundred yards, hiding behind a rocky outcrop.

“I’ve lost enough breath because of those bastards,” said Hals. “If they want to chase us this far, I’ll take care of them.”

“You’re crazy,” said Lindberg. “Don’t talk like that. What are you trying to do to us?”

“Shut up!” Hals said. “You’ll never make it home anyway. Ivan’s going to get you for sure. Why don’t you think for a minute of Frösch and the other fellow who’ve been caught?”

“We might as well eat,” said Wollers. “I’ve had enough of giving orders, and sweating, and shitting in my pants like a baby when I’m scared. So let’s get started. If we’re going to die for it, all the more reason to fill our bellies while we can.”

Like hungry beasts, we wolfed down the contents of the tins and the other provisions, masticating loudly.

“We’d better eat it all,” Lensen said. “If we’re caught with anything in our sacks that wasn’t handed out, we’ll be in trouble.”

“You’re right. Let’s eat it all. They won’t slit us open to see what’s inside, although it would be just like those bastards to check our shit.” For an hour we gorged ourselves until we were almost sick. When it grew dark, we returned to the road by a devious route. Lensen stepped out of the brush first.

“Come on, the coast is clear.”

We went on for three or four hundred yards, passing once again the hole with its unexpected windfall which had allowed us to fill our famished stomachs for a moment. There was no one in sight. We went on for another two or three miles, and collapsed at the side of the road.

“I can’t go any further,” said Schlesser. “We’re not used to eating any more, and this is what happens.”

“Why don’t we go to sleep right here?” someone said. “That will help our digestions.”

Toward two o’clock in the morning, a large group of German soldiers came by and woke us up.

“On your feet,” shouted an old feldwebel. “Get going, or Ivan will be in Berlin before you.”

We resumed our trek. This bunch had collected several horse-drawn wagons, and for a while, we were able to ride. At daybreak, we arrived at a town built on the mountainside. Some men were splashing in an icy bathing place. Others were sleeping on the ground or on terrace walls. Farther on, still others had begun their march again, toward safety, the west, the mother country, waiting to receive them, whose true condition they couldn’t begin to guess.

And then there was a tree, a majestic tree, whose branches seemed to be supporting the sky.

Two sacks were dangling from those branches, two empty scarecrows swinging in the wind, suspended by two short lengths of rope. We walked under them, and saw the gray, bloodless faces of hanged men, and recognized our wretched friend Frösch and his companion.

“Don’t worry, Frösch,” whispered Hals. “We ate it all.”

Lindberg hid his face in his hands and wept. I managed with difficulty to read the message scribbled on the sign tied to Frösch’s broken neck.

A short way off, some ten policemen in regulation uniform were standing beside a sidecar and a Volkswagen. As we walked by them, our eyes met theirs.