Forgotten Soldier (10 page)

Another moment went by, and then a sergeant ran down the length of the convoy, blowing the whistle for assembly. While everyone was collecting, the sidecar, which had started up again, drove by in front of me. There were two soldiers in it, wearing what looked like diving suits. The captain came over to us, followed by his two lieutenants and three feldwebels. He didn't lift his eyes from the ground, and his expression was one of despair.

A shiver of anxiety ran across our shaggy and exhausted faces.

"Achtung! Stillgestanden!" shouted a feldwebel.

We stood at attention. The captain gave us a long look. Then slowly, in his gloved hand, he lifted a paper to the level of his eyes.

"Soldiers," he said. "I have some very serious news for you; serious for you, for all the fighting men of the Axis, for our people, and for everything our faith and sacrifice represents. Wherever this news will be heard this evening, it will be received with emotion and profound grief. Everywhere along our vast front, and in the heart of our fatherland, we will find it difficult to contain our emotion."

"Stillgestanden!" insisted the feldwebel.

"Stalingrad has fallen!" the captain continued.

"Marshal von Paulus and his Sixth Army, driven to the ultimate sacrifice, have been obliged to lay down their arms unconditionally."

We felt stunned and profoundly anxious. The captain continued after a moment of silence.

"Marshal von Paulus, in the next to last message he sent, informed the Fuhrer that he was awarding the Cross for bravery with exceptional

merit to every one of his soldiers. The Marshal added that the Calvary of these unfortunate combatants had reached a peak, and that after the hell of this battle, which lasted for months, the halo of glory has never been more truly deserved. I have here the last message picked up by short wave from the ruins of the tractor factory Red October. The High Command requests that I read it to you.

"It was sent by one of the last fighting soldiers of the Sixth Army, Heinrich Stoda. Heinrich states in this message that in the southwest district of Stalingrad he could still hear the sound of fighting. Here is the message:

"We are the last seven survivors in this place. Four of us are wounded. We have been entrenched in the wreckage of the tractor factory for four days. We have not had any food for four days. I have just opened the last magazine for my automatic. In ten minutes the Bolsheviks will overrun us. Tell my father that I have done my duty, and that I shall know how to die. Long live Germany! Heil Hitler!"'

Heinrich Stoda was the son of Doctor of Medicine Adolph Stoda of Munich. There was an impressive silence, broken only by a few blasts of wind. I thought of my uncle there, whom I had never met because of the rupture between our two families. I had only seen his photograph, and they had told me he was a poet. I felt very keenly that I had lost a friend. A man in the ranks began to whimper. His white temples made him look like an old man. Then he quit his rigid posture and began to walk toward the officers, crying and shouting at the same time.

"My two sons are dead. It was bound to happen. It's all your fault -you officers. It's fatal. We'll never be able to stand up to the Russian winter." He bowed almost double, and burst into tears. "My two children have died there ... my poor children . . ."

"At ease," ordered the feldwebel.

"No. Kill me if you like. It doesn't matter. Nothing matters...... Two soldiers stepped forward and took the poor man by the arms, trying to lead him back to his place before anything worse happened. Hadn't he just insulted the officers? Unfortunately he struggled, like someone possessed by demons.

"Take him to the infirmary," the captain said. "Give him a sedative." I thought he was going to add something else, but his expression remained fixed. Perhaps he too had lost a relative.

"At ease."

We returned to our trucks in small, silent groups. By now it was full night. The rolling white horizon was tinged with a cold bluish gray. I shivered.

"It's getting colder and colder," I said to the fellow walking beside me.

"Yes. Colder and colder," he answered, staring into the distance.

For the first time I was strongly impressed by the dismal vastness of Russia. I felt quite distinctly that the huge, heavy gray horizon was closing in around us, and shivered more violently than ever. Three quarters of an hour later, we were rolling through the ravaged outskirts of Kharkov. We couldn't see very much by our dim headlights but everything that appeared in the path of the light was damaged.

The next day, after one more night on the floor of the Renault, I was able to look at the chaos which was all that remained of Kharkov, a city of considerable importance, despite the devastation of war.

During the years 1941, 1942, and 1943 it was taken by our army, retaken by the Russians, taken back by the Germans, and then finally retaken by the Russians. At this particular moment, our troops were holding it for the first time. But the town looked like a jumble of burnt-out wreckage. Acres of total destruction had been used as dumps for the piles of wrecked machinery of every kind which the occupying troops had collected in their efforts to clear the roads. This mass of twisted, torn metal reflected the ferocious violence of the battle. It was all too easy to imagine the fate of the combatants. Now, motionless beneath the shroud of snow which only partially covered them, these steel cadavers marked a stage of the war: the battles of Kharkov.

The Wehrmacht had organized itself in the few sections of the city which were more or less standing. The sanitary service, ingeniously installed in a large building, was a bath of rejuvenation for us. When we were clean we were taken to a series of cellar rooms which made up a large basement filled with every conceivable kind of bed. We were advised to try to sleep, and despite the hour-it was the middle of the afternoon we almost all fell into leaden unconsciousness. We were wakened by a sergeant, who led us to the canteen. There I found Hals, Lensen, and Olensheim. We talked about everything; particularly about the fall of Stalingrad.

Hals maintained that it wasn't possible: "The Sixth Army! My God! They couldn't be beaten by the Soviets!"

"But since the communiqué said they were surrounded, that they didn't have anything more to fight with, what else could they do? They were forced to surrender."

"Well, then we'll have to try and rescue them," someone else said.

"It's too late," remarked one of the older men.

"It's all over...... "Shit, shit, shit!" Hals clenched his fists. "I just can't believe it!"

If for some the fall of Stalingrad was a staggering blow, for others it provoked a spirit of revenge which rekindled faltering spirits. In our group, given the wide range of ages, opinion was divided. The older men were, generally speaking, defeatist, while the younger ones were determined to liberate their comrades. We were walking back to our dormitory when a fight broke out for which I was mainly responsible.

The fellow with the broken knee, my companion in that damned Renault, had just fallen into step with me.

"Well, you must be pleased," he said. "It sounds as if we'll be going back tomorrow."

I could see a certain irony on his face, and felt myself turning red with anger.

"That's enough from you," I shouted. "I hope you're satisfied. We're going back, and it's at least partly your fault if my uncle is dead in Stalingrad."

He turned pale.

"Who told you he's dead?"

"If he's not dead that's even worse,"

I went on shouting. "You're nothing but a coward. It's you who told me we ought to leave them to their fate."

My companion was astonished, and looked around for reactions. Then he grabbed my collar. "Shut up!" he ordered, lifting his fist.

I kicked him in the shin. He was going to hit me when Hals grabbed his arm.

"That's enough," he said calmly. "Stop it, or you'll get yourselves thrown in jail."

"So. You're another young fellow who wants what's coming to him?"

My antagonist was now carried away with rage. "I'm going to give it to all of you, you . . ."

"Drop it," Hals insisted. "Shit."

He didn't say anything more. A blow from Hal's fist caught him on the chin. He spun round and fell onto his backside in the snow. By now Lensen had come up too.

"You bunch of kid shits," shouted my driver. He tried to get up to return to the attack.

Lensen, short and thick-set, kicked him in the face with his metaled boot before he'd regained his balance. He fell onto his knees with a cry of pain, lifting his hands to his bloody face.

"Savage," somebody shouted.

We didn't persist further, and rejoined the group, swearing under our breath. The others looked at us blackly, and two of them helped my driver to his feet. He was still groaning.

"We'll have to look out for that one," Hals warned.

"He might very well shoot one of us in the back the next time we're attacked."

Reveille the next day was later than usual. We went out for company roll call and were greeted by a whirlwind of snow. With our heads muffled in our upturned collars to escape the stinging ice fragments in the wind, we heard some good news. Feldwebel Laus, whom we hadn't seen in an eternity, was standing in front of us holding a piece of paper with both hands. He too was having trouble with the wind.

"Soldiers!" he read, in the lull between two gusts.

"The High Command, aware of your condition, grants you a leave of twenty-four hours. Nevertheless, given the present situation, a counter order could come at any time. You will, therefore, present yourselves at your billets every two hours. Needless to say, this will not give you time to call on lady friends or visit your families," he added, laughing. "But at least you'll be able to write to them."

Laus sent two men to fetch the mail, which was then distributed. There were four letters and a package for me. We would have liked to look at Kharkov, but the appalling weather kept us indoors. We spent a restful day, preparing for the return journey. We were therefore astonished to be told next day that we would re-supply with food and weapons a unit stationed in the combat zone. We were even given more or less precisely the location of our new destination. We were to proceed to a sector somewhere to the south of Voronezh. We received this news without enthusiasm.

"Bah!" said Hals. "Whether we tramp through the snow to Kiev or to Voronezh, it's all the same thing."

"Yes," said Olensheim somewhat cautiously. "But Voronezh is at the front."

"I know," said Hals. "But we'll have to see it sometime."

As for me, I didn't know what to think. What really happened on a battlefield? I felt torn by curiosity and fear.

THE FRONT

South of Voronezh - The Don

Winter seemed endless. It snowed every day, almost without a break.

At the end of February or beginning of March-1 no longer remember which-we were taken by rail to a town used as a major supply center, some fifty miles from Kharkov. Food, blankets, medicines, and other supplies were stored in big sheds, and every cellar and hole in the ground was jammed with munitions. There were also repair shops some indoors, others in the open air. Soldiers perching on tanks blew on their fingers when they grew too numb to hold a wrench. A system of trenches and strongpoints had been organized on the outskirts of the town. This part of the country suffered from frequent partisan attacks, often by large groups of men. Whenever this happened, every mechanic and warehouseman abandoned his tools and inventories for a machine gun, to protect the supplies and himself.

"The only advantage we have here," one of the soldiers said to me, "is that we're very well fed. There's an awful lot of work. We have to organize our own defense-we take turns standing guard-and things can get pretty tough with the partisans. They've given us some hard times, even with all of us fighting, and they've already destroyed a lot. Several times the C.O. has asked for an infantry unit to help him out-but it's only happened once. An S.S. company came, but three days later they were sent on to the Sixth Army. We've already had forty killed, which is a lot for one company."

That afternoon, we organized an odd-looking convoy using four wheeled Russian carts to which runners could be attached, transforming them into sleighs. There were also some real sleighs-a few eidekas and even two or three troikas covered with decorations-all requisitioned from Russian civilians. As we started off, I remember wondering where we were taking this convoy, which looked so like Christmas, but whose load of shells and grenades was of such a different character.

We set off towards the northwest, and a sector somewhere near Voronezh. We had been given special rations for the cold, new first-aid kits, and a two-day supply of precooked dinners. We took a track more or less blocked with snow-which crossed the line of defenses that cut off the steppe. A bulky, hooded soldier, who was the only sentry in sight, waved to us as we slowly went by him. His round shape looked enormously vulnerable as he stood there, puffing on a huge covered pipe, with his feet planted in the snow.

After an hour or so on the trail, which grew increasingly snowy, we fastened the runners to the wheels. Our leather boots, although they were remarkably waterproof, were not the ideal foot gear For tramping through nearly two feet of snow. We tired quickly, and hung on to the horses' harnesses or the edges of the sleighs with the desperation of cripples clinging to their canes. I myself twisted my fingers into the long hair of one of those shaggy ponies whose pelts are thick and tufted, like sheep's wool. However, the horses' pace was too quick, and forced us into an exhausting rhythm which made us pour with sweat despite the cold. From time to time one of the leaders of a column would stop and watch the long convoy going by, catching his breath under the pretext of checking the line of march. When they rejoined the column, it was always at the end of the line: I never saw anyone run back to the front.

Hals, who had become a real friend, was holding on to the other side of my horse. Although he was much bigger and stronger than I, he also looked as though he were nearly through. His face was almost hidden between his upturned collar and his cap, which had been pulled down as far as it could go. His red nose, like everyone else's, was producing a plume of white vapor.