Forgotten Soldier (31 page)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Hilfe, kameraden!"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Quick, a shovel," shouted the Sudeten. "We've got to dig in, or they'll slaughter us."

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

"God," said the veteran. "If they've got those damned things, we've had it."

"We ought to dig," sniveled Lindberg.

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

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

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

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

"Don't make a sound," said the veteran, putting his hand on the boy's forearm. "Be strong."

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

"Quiet," insisted the veteran.

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

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

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

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

"I don't, sergeant. I think we should get out."

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

Hals and Lindberg slid off like snakes.

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

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

"I can't move," he said. "Something hurts here." He touched his hip.

"A splinter. Don't move. We'll send someone to help you." "Yes," said the boy, thrusting his face back into the dirt.

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

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

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

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

"Exactly," said the veteran, laughing.

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

"At least they don't seem worried," the Czech remarked.

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

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

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

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

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

"Look!" he said, in almost full voice.

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

"They're ours!" said the veteran, and a faint smile crossed his face.

"Get ready to fire, if anyone moves in Ivan's hole," our leader added.

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

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

"Fire!" shouted the noncom. "Wipe them out!"

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

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