Forgotten Soldier (36 page)

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

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

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

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 of the Russians had been replaced by the death rattle of thousands of dying men, which filled the air with a horrible sound.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

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

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

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

"That's your worry. At the radio truck-those fellows usually have something hidden-or anywhere else. Just don't come back with empty hands."

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

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

" thank God' is right!" laughed the grenadier who'd been with us for three days.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Don't let me fall," said Cancan imploringly.

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

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

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

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

"Climb aboard, friends," shouted a kindly soul.

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

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

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

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

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

"Only my shoulder hurts, though."

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

In the distance, the horizon glowed red.

"You've come from that inferno?" one of the artillerymen asked.

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

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

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

"I'm not!" I shouted back.

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

"You in a bad way?" Hals asked. "You're not dying, are you, Sajer?"

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

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

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

"It's all right, boy," he said. "Where are you hurt?" "My shoulder. I can't move it."

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

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

"What about his head?"

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

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

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

"Everyone strip!" shouted a feld.

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

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

"Next time, they'll get me in the head," he said.

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

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

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

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

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

Part Three

The Retreat

Autumn, 1943

The New Front

In September, Kharkov was retaken by the Soviets.

The entire south and central front was seriously shaken, with several major breakthroughs which the enemy poured their tanks, jeopardizing our whole system of defense. A general withdrawal began, during which the Russians often managed to surround entire divisions. Our unit had been re-equipped with new weapons and rapid motor vehicles, and was used to check enemy penetration behind our lines, often achieving prodigies which were cited in the orders of the day. Wherever the Gross Deutschland appeared, our troops took heart and routed the enemy-or so it seemed. Of course, the general difficulties of our situation-our encirclement, and the despair of troops forced to abandon their weapons in a sea of mud-were never mentioned. Nor were such things as the adjutant and his section taken prisoner, and liberated too late, or the profound sense of hopelessness and misery which settled over the adult children we were, facing another winter of war-more human bridges across icy rivers, like the one over the Dnieper; more frozen, abandoned regiments and scorched earth and weeks of terror, like our week at Chernigov; more hands cracked open by chilblains; and more fatal acceptance of the idea of death. Generals have since written accounts of these events, locating particular catastrophes, and summarizing in a sentence, or a few lines, the losses from sickness or freezing. But they never, to my knowledge, give sufficient expression to the wretchedness of soldiers abandoned to a fate one would wish to spare even the most miserable cur. They never evoke the hours upon hours of agony, or the obvious resentment of individuals swamped by the herd, in which each man is lost in his own misery, and oblivious of the sufferings of others. They never mention the common soldier, sometimes covered with glory, sometimes beaten and defeated, burdened by the angry remonstrances of the noncoms and by the hatred of another herd of human beings whom it is officially permissible to hate, confounded by murder and degradation, and later by disillusion, when he realizes that victory will not return him his liberty. In the end, there was only the physical crime of war, and the hypocritical and intellectual crime of peace.