Forgotten Soldier (53 page)

"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.

RED TANKS

The Second Front on the Dnieper

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.