Forgotten Soldier (60 page)

Das schonste auf der Welt

Ist mein Tirolerland.. . .

However, instead of the Alps, the Carpathians witnessed their compulsory gaiety.

The instructors, intent on inspection, were insensible to the poetry of the scene. One of them stopped short in front of a gefreiter whose coat ended in a fringe as full of holes as a piece of Alencon lace. At last the stabsfeldwebel could unload a little rage in front of his sarcastic audience. Our heads turned slightly, scarcely noticeably, to the right, toward the fellow accused of negligence. We rolled our eyes as far as we could, trying to see who was getting it.

"Name and number!" shouted the stabs, stiffening his neck.

Even if we couldn't see anything, we could hear it!

"Frosch, Herr Stabsfeldwebel," the accused shouted, adding the number which each of us was supposed to know by heart.

Frosch ... The name stirred an echo in my memory: Frosch?

And then the barracks the day after we crossed the Dnieper came back to me. Hot water, and a foolish-looking fellow of angelic good will. What was the stabs going to pin on him?

In the third row of men, some ten or twelve yards from me, Frosch was standing at attention, while abuse rained down on him. He was staring straight ahead, as required by convention. His gaunt, hollow face was partly hidden by his heavy steel helmet. Unfortunately his stupidity was obvious enough to give the stabs a sudden sense of confident superiority over this soldier, who had clearly seen a lot. Two large hands, red with chilblains, emerged from his ragged sleeves to press for warmth against the folds of filthy cloth. The coat no longer had any buttons. Frosch had fastened it at each buttonhole with a short piece of wire. With a touching sense of aesthetics, he had bent in the ends of each wire, as if to demonstrate his good intentions. Unfortunately, he had linked a lower buttonhole to a higher one, which produced an improper and all-too-visible crease. This anomaly leaped to the eye of the inspecting noncom, who couldn't let such a golden opportunity slip. However, in complete disregard of normal practice, the company officer intervened, reminding the stabsfeldwebel that our detachment had just survived an extremely difficult experience.

"Your supply report specifically stated that you possessed the necessary materials for keeping your clothes in good repair, Herr Leutnant, and specifically mentioned buttons."

The lieutenant didn't know how to answer.

"In addition, Herr Leutnant, Gefreiter Frosch hasn't even bothered to line up the buttonholes correctly."

There was a moment of charged silence. The lieutenant threw Frosch a look of despairing compassion. Couldn't he have spared himself all this and deprived the instructor of this ludicrous opening? But the facts were as they were, and the lieutenant, despite all his good will, couldn't alter them. He resumed his former position with an impassive air. A wave of irritation seemed to run through the company.

"Stillgestanden!" the feld shouted.

In a flood of gratuitous invective, Frosch was given twenty days' detention and a series of punitive fatigues. Without flinching, Frosch left his position to stand in the ranks of the guilty. He was the only one. The inspection was over. Quarter turn, left, left. Our companies went on to march around the camp. Frosch remained where he was, staring straight ahead. As the only man to be punished, he seemed a symbol of injustice, alone in his punishment as he had always been in life. He had found some comradeship in the Wehrmacht, but the exigencies of military life exacted a high price. Ten days later, when the rest of the unit drew new clothes, Frosch kept his rags. He had in truth become a symbol. He didn't know how to hate, and always wore his expression of touching stupidity and banal good will.

Later the veteran said of him: "He's as humble as Diogenes. If he doesn't deserve victory, at least he deserves Paradise."

Section forward! . . . On the ground! . . . On your feet! . . . Run! . . . Forward! . . . On the ground! . . . On your feet, facing me! . . . The hard, frozen ground scraped our hands and knees, and the sharp twigs of the leafless scrub finished off our threadbare uniforms. They had put us through a series of exercises with concussion bombs. We, who had faced the fire of Russian Katushas, just laughed. Then we had made ourselves as flat as the Ukrainian soil. Now we lay propped on one elbow, half amused, half exasperated. Our attitude provoked torrents of abuse and a collective punishment for the whole company. We had to crawl along the entire perimeter of the camp. The ground, three or four inches beneath our eyes, soaked up the muttered curses of our progress. The instructor-noncoms were working hard, running along the carpet of soldiers.

A short way off, Wesreidau was watching this bad joke and arguing with the officers responsible for the camp. But he might as well have saved his breath. Orders from higher up had put an end to the coddling of troops just back from the front. We had to reinstate the rigidity of '40-'41, and wage war to the death.

We went on long marches, carrying all our gear. We tramped through villages in step, singing. These demonstrations were intended to impress the local population, who, in fact, greeted us as we went by-the boys waving and the girls smiling. The routine never let up. We even had to practice retreating in a series of backward leaps-a skill which might always come in handy.

Every fourth day, we were free from 5 to 10 P.M. We flooded into Nevotoretchy and Sueka, two villages near the camp, where the peasants often invited us into their houses and gave us something to drink, and sometimes even to eat. Our soldiers quickly amused themselves with the girls, who were not shy. These few hours of liberty, used to the utmost, made us forget the rest.

The following day we would return to the training routine. Despite the boredom, we cooperated, thinking that perhaps these were necessary measures. We were still inclined to believe in the validity of orders. Perhaps these exercises would help us bring the war to a quicker end. At last we were issued new clothes. Some of the uniforms were quite different from the ones we'd always known, with blouses like those worn in the French army today, and trousers tucked into short, thick spats, looking like a grotesque parody of a golfing costume. This new design was for the most part distributed to new troops. The Gross Deutschland, as an elite division, kept the old design. We were even given new boots-a further sign of privilege.

However, the cloth of the uniforms was of very inferior quality, much more brittle than formerly. It reminded us of specially treated cardboard. The new boots were also markedly inferior, of rough, stiff, fourth-quality leather, which cracked at the ankle instead of forming the usual creases. The underclothes were the worst of all; they were made of a cloth which seemed to have substance only where it was doubled-at the hem and the seams. The new socks, which we appreciated immensely, also seemed curiously synthetic.

"If this is what we're getting," Hals said, "I'll keep my Russian socks."

In fact, the new socks wore a great deal longer than the old ones. However, they were less warm. They were among the first to be made with nylon, which was still largely unknown.

We slapped a great deal of black polish from the store onto the boots, to make them lose their look of cardboard paste. We all felt better to be out of our stinking, tattered rags, and in new clothes, despite the synthetic fabrics. Our brightened appearance also had its effect on the local inhabitants, who decided that all must be well with the Wehrmacht.

Hals, in his fresh and dashing uniform, had fallen in love once more-this time with a pretty young Polish girl. With him, falling in love was compulsive. He really couldn't help himself, and lost a piece of his heart every time we stopped in a rest zone. This time, as always, he was ardently wooing a girl during our short periods of free time, and we all had to hear about it constantly.

"You're driving us all up the wall with your tart," Lensen complained.

"Why can't you just kiss and run like everybody else?" Lindberg grinned. He was remembering his last outing with Lensen, Pferham, and Solma. The four of them had trapped a Polish woman of about forty in a barn. She had yielded to their ardor, which had lasted the four hours remaining.

"Her husband came home while we were at it," Solma remembered joyfully. "He laughed with us, and said, `Mama too old for me now-for you!' " Later they'd all had a drink with the husband, who seemed perfectly content that they'd done him that service.

"She's nothing but a sow, your Polska," Hals said. "And you're just a bunch of pigs. No poetry at all . . ."

The barracks shook with our laughter. Pastor Pferham laughed too, because he couldn't do anything else, but all the same he was somewhat troubled. Our company's love life was doing far too well.

I myself didn't have any particular adventures. I had pawed one or two girls, but matters had never progressed any further than that. Of course, I was in love with Paula and wrote to her often. Above all, I longed for a leave, and lived on that hope. For the rest, strange bodies made me uneasy, almost sick. As soon as I saw naked flesh, I braced myself for a torrent of entrails, remembering countless wartime scenes, with smoking, stinking corpses pouring out their vitals. All things considered, I preferred platonic love by mail. To me, Paula was in an entirely separate category from all these other women-something delicate and marvelous, which could not be eviscerated-or so I tried to think.

Then I was involved in an episode which gave everyone else a laugh at my expense.

We were on leave at Sueka. It was a beautiful day, with only a light trace of frost. We all felt like a spree, but were also extremely interested in food. Our rations were now so small that we were always hungry when we left the mess halls. The peasants would usually sell us something to eat in exchange for the paper currency which looked as though the Rentenbank was printing notes in excess of its reserves. We had, in fact, been given these notes as supplementary pay, in addition to the special tickets issued to occupation troops. Eggs were the easiest form of food to come by. At Sueka we divided the job. There were three of us: Hoth, Schlesser, and me. We had left Hals with his Polska at Nevotoretchy. Nevotoretchy was right beside the camp, and the soldiers had already stripped it of all extra food. We decided to go three miles farther, to Sueka, which was also on the Dniester, taking separate routes through the countryside to try our luck at the farmhouses whose location every man in the company had by heart.

I set off along a road which ran downhill between two walls of snow. I can see it still. At the bottom of the hill there was a frozen pond which pink-and-yellow ducks were tapping with their bills, apparently mystified by its solidity. I turned to the right. Ahead of me were two low columns twined round with what looked like lifeless Virginia creeper, and beyond them, an enormous pile of wood which almost hid the low, thatched house. To the left, with their backs to the river, was a group of squat, irregular buildings, made of rough wooden planks. The whole scene was inescapably rustic, but there was also a rudimentary sense of style, which was noticeable here even in the poorest, roughest setting.

I was walking toward the cottage when I saw a woman coming from one of the outbuildings. Her clothes might have belonged to a medieval peasant. We both smiled. She said something unintelligible.

"Guten Tag, Frau. Ei, bitte." (I was sure she wouldn't understand French, but she might very well know the German for "egg".)

"Ei ... ei, bitte."

She came closer, still smiling and pleasant, speaking and making gestures I couldn't understand. I contented myself with returning her smile. She signaled that I should follow her, which I did. We walked over to a ladder, and she began to climb, signing me to hold it steady.

As she went up, laughing and talking, my eyes naturally followed her ascent toward a loft bulging with hay. My astonished gaze struck her rump, which was of very dubious charm, and a pair of enormous, meaty thighs. Her buttocks seemed to fill the view with a curious obstinacy. Her drawers had the texture of a loosely knit sweater. I stared at them as I might have stared at some medieval monument of the twelfth century. The Polska, who saw that I was watching, finally stopped by the false window of the loft, and waved at me to follow her. I felt awkward and uneasy. I had often watched a tank trying to outmaneuver a machine gun, but this type of maneuver was beyond me. I was used to going straight ahead, and climbed the ladder as if it were an assault wall which I had to scale under the eye of an officer. Then I was bent double in the piled-up hay, beside the Polska, whose thighs must have been a half yard round. She was laughing and clucking as if she herself were about to lay an egg. My gun caught on everything, and I felt once again as if I were crawling down a trench. The hay was full of chickens. The Polska chased them off and collected a few eggs. She turned back to me, still laughing. Her teeth were somewhat too widely spaced, but were dazzlingly white. She came toward me, holding out the warm eggs, which, in a manner of speaking, she had collected for me.

I felt her breath and the warmth of her body. As she thrust the eggs and her hands deep into the pockets of my tunic, her fingers pressed against my hips. My startled eyes rolled in my head, as I waited for the order to disengage. But the order didn't come, and the bold fingers of the enemy kneaded my flesh through the double folds of my pockets.

"For the love of God! Danke schon . . . Danke schon!"

I wanted to make the quickest possible departure no matter what she thought of me.

She was now so close an embrace seemed inescapable. Her smile was one of certain anticipation, and her eyes were rolling feverishly.

Mein Gott!

I braced myself for her cry of "Ourrah pobieda." There were two possible courses of action, as I saw it. I could withdraw in a hurry and risk cracking my skull at the bottom of the ladder, or counterattack, rolling my adversary into the hay.

However, these calculations came too late. The woman, who must have weighed at least twenty pounds more than I did, suddenly enlaced me, adroitly pushing me to the left, so that I lost my balance. I found myself gesticulating in vain desperation beneath a massive enemy. One of her hands was already busy with the fly of my new synthetic trousers. The eggs in both pockets were broken, and my gun, which was slung behind my back, was no use to me.