Forgotten Soldier (58 page)

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.

Stille Nacht ... Heilige Nacht ... Oh! Weihnacht!

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.