Forgotten Soldier (62 page)

Toward the end of May, we trapped a large band of rebels in a piece of wooded country. There were about four hundred heavily armed men. On our side, we had three companies to draw in the noose around the enemy.

The air was filled with woodland smells, and nothing seemed appropriate to the bloody events about to occur. The morning was splendid. Birds and small animals of every kind were running and fluttering through the branches, to get out of our way.

Wild animals, even ferocious ones, always flee armed men. This time the hunters were tracking far more dangerous game. The birds fearing and fleeing us could never have imagined that the masters of the world, who should have feared nothing, had created enemies of a size and ferocity which equaled their own. Human beings, rulers of the animal world, had created their own destruction. A process of natural selection, often very badly organized, periodically topples our crown.

We all felt extremely nervous. Despite the resignation which had once again taken hold of us, the moment of truth as always revealed who was afraid, who was a coward, and who still hoped to live. The soft leaves brushing against our heads weighted down with steel reminded us that life could be good-especially in such marvelous weather. For us, this was no baptism of fire, but almost a routine-a dangerous routine, in which medals for heroism were generally posthumous. We had already experienced most of its horrors, and had seen the upturned eyes of those who had won the medals. There was no longer much we could learn about that aspect of things. We deliberately maintained an attitude of morbid fatalism, -which we punctuated with bursts of harsh, forced laughter, like machine-gun fire. Some of the very strong had even managed to persuade themselves that since no man is immortal, and everyone dies sooner or later, the hour of death was unimportant. Those men, the strong ones, walked along thinking of other things. Others strong, but not that strong-lived to delay that final moment, watching through pupils as dark as the holes at the ends of their gunbarrels. The rest-which is to say the majority-were pouring with a cold sweat which ran down their bodies beneath their synthetic tunics, into their boots, and into the creases of their damp hands.

Those men were afraid, with an intense fear that reduced every conviction to nothing, and which no routine could soften. They were afraid before every operation, when time seemed to stand almost still. Even those who managed to stop thinking were still assailed by fear, as persistent as the daylight, which illuminates treetops one is still unaware of.

Contact with the enemy puts an end to this sort of fear. The opening shots raise the curtain on a drama which will fully occupy every sense. It is a pity that soldiers can think. When the first men have fallen, the tension slackens, and no one any longer pays attention to anything except the dry twigs crackling underfoot.

Feldwebel Sperlovski, who was leading our group, pointed to the signs of passage of a large number of men. The heavily trampled brush and the numerous empty gun emplacements indicated that we were approaching a large partisan camp. We had to watch carefully for mines-to watch each step, in addition to everything else. Sweat trickled down our temples, attracting clouds of belligerent flies. The brush under the trees and the low branches offered a thousand opportunities for concealed trip wires. Every yard required a desperate concentration. A plane passed over level with the treetops, and the throb of its engines made us all hold our breaths for fear the vibrations might be enough to set off the whole area. At last, there was a short blast on the whistle, and we all fell flat. A small fort of logs driven deep into the ground stood at the end of a vague foot path. At the far end of our group, fighting had already begun.

Sperlovski designated two men--Ballers and Prinz-to throw grenades at the fort. Prinz was one of the men in Lensen's Panzerfaust team. Today, however, the anti-tank group wasn't needed, so Prinz was just another Panzergrenadier, panting as he crawled forward with his lethal burden. Ballers, more dead than alive, was crawling along the other side of the path, identically laden. We all watched, trembling with tension.

Who were Ballers and Prinz?

Two men from anywhere. Were they good men or bad? Were they hateful? Was God with them, or had He condemned them? They were simply two men who had become our comrades in this group of madmen; men whose acquaintance we would probably have avoided in the ordinary circumstances of civilian life. Here, every step they took accelerated the beating of our hearts, and keyed up our pulse rate to equal theirs. Those two anonymous beings, both of them our men, were suddenly more important to every one of us than even our closest relatives-an egotistical transformation in which we all knew that we saw ourselves; had the circumstances fallen slightly differently, they would have been watching us. Motive seemed totally unimportant-if only they lived. They were already quite far from us, and perhaps very close to death, hidden from many of us by leaves. I could still see them. Prinz suddenly stood up and heaved his load toward the log fort. Then he plunged down again.

The entire woods felt the violence of the explosion. Its thunder echoed interminably under the trees. In the patches of sky visible through the branches we could see the birds shooting away from us like arrows. Prinz's bundle had fallen short, and had made a large crater crowned with broken branches some seven or eight meters from the partisan hideout.

"Scheisse," muttered our sergeant.

"There's nobody there," someone else said.

Then I saw Ballers running forward in turn. As he ran, I felt myself dying in his shoes. He too threw his packet of explosives, and then dived down as the trees all around us bent against a flash of light. The forest seemed to groan with the shock. This time there weren't any fleeing birds-only our mimetic uniforms, which confounded us with nature. Ballers had just stood up again. So had Prinz, a short distance ahead of him. Their figures were sharply outlined against the broken earth. Behind them, all that had formerly been visible of the fort had disappeared.

"This way, comrades," shouted Ballers, proud of his exploit. "There's nobody in there."

We all stood up, prepared to join him. He was laughing nervously. A crisp detonation whistled through the leaves, followed by two more. Prinz was running toward us, but Ballers wasn't. He was walking hesitantly, stretching one hand toward us. Then he fell.

A short hour later, four hundred partisans were fighting like devils inside the circle we had drawn around them and were slowly tightening. Three companies almost at full strength-about eight or nine hundred men-were trying to knock out the circle of fire, which was produced by a variety of weapons of every caliber, and amounted to a serious destructive force. The partisan position was so well organized that any approach to it was almost suicidal.

During this hour, two of our men stepped on mines, and their shattered bodies were blown into the budding branches.

We were under uninterrupted fire from a four-barreled machine gun, and setting up a spandau was very risky. We tried to dig foxholes, but the earth was such a tangle of ineradicable roots that our position of attack was transformed into one of defense, which would be difficult to hold against an enemy breakout.

Only our light mortars, with their almost vertical fire, could touch the enemy position. Unfortunately, the partisans seemed able to absorb our fire without any apparent loss of strength. Two or three heavy howitzers-probably captured German equipment-were shooting at our encircling forces; the impact of the projectiles uprooted trees. The discharge of these guns was invisible, which made their destruction extremely difficult. Ten times we sent assault groups to attack the terrorist position. Each time, they were obliged to make a half turn, leaving some of their men screaming on the ground. Later we learned that Wesreidau had been moving heaven and earth to try to get some armored and motorized support, but none was available in that area and we had to do without it. Everything that remained had been sent to the support of our crumbling front.

After an hour of waiting, and attempted assaults that came to nothing, our commander decided to risk everything once and for all. Leaving only a handful of isolated men in the ring around the fort, he shifted the rest of us, taking every precaution, so that the enemy would believe they were still surrounded by a strong force. In this way, he was able to mass five hundred men and send them all at once against the enemy's weakest point-a V-shaped trench held by forty men armed with rifles and one machine gun. At his order, five hundred men rushed the enemy position, attacking with grenade throwers. The enemy reeled under the force of this blow, and was unable to maintain an accurate fire.

Seven or eight of our men fell during this assault, but the maneuver was so magnificent that for the moment no one paid much attention to them. I was part of the second wave; two others followed us. When we reached the enemy position the job was already done. Some forty partisans had tried to resist, but our rain of grenades annihilated two thirds of them. The remainder had died on the bayonets of the first Germans to reach the fortress. We followed hard on their heels. Another wave was right behind us. The underbrush rang with hideous screams, and smelled of powder and smoke and blood. I saw more partisans pouring from their log fort, and firing point blank at our men, who were exhilarated by the success of our action. In the general confusion, I opened fire along with everyone else. A tall Russian fired at me three times without hitting me, although I made no effort to dodge him. Then he rushed at me, shouting and waving his gun, holding the butt in the air. Two of our men joined me and fired at the Russian. He fell and tried to reload his gun, but we jumped him immediately, battering him with our butts. He died under our blows.

At the foot of the blockhouse, a desperate hand-to-hand struggle was in progress. Something exploded in the midst of the fighting, sending shattered fragments of German and partisan bodies flying through the air. Other men ran up to continue the fighting, surrounded by the dead and dying. Cries and curses mingled with the sharp crack of rifle fire. A moment later, we were in the thick of the fighting. One of the fellows with me had his arm broken by an exploding mine. Pressed against the wooden wall, men were fighting hand to hand with knives, shovels, feet, and stones. An obergefreiter had just hit a Russian in the face with his shovel, opening a hideous gash. The wounded man fell writhing to the ground. Kellerman was firing in short bursts at the partisans hidden behind the two howitzers which had given us so much trouble. Many Russians got away-at least half of them. Those who couldn't added to the numbers of the dead.

We collected all the stray guns and reserves of food, destroyed the howitzers, which we couldn't take with us, and buried seventy of our men. Then we left the place, carrying out the wounded on stretchers made of branches. In the evening we arrived at a kolkhoz, where we drank everything we could get hold of, trying to blot out the memory of a hideous day.

Spring in the Ukraine: endless days of almost unbroken light.

A luminous darkness fell toward eleven at night, to yield to a pink dawn a few hours later. The weather was perfect: a warm, reviving wind, before the crushing heat of summer. Unfortunately, although the season made us dream of peace, the monster of war was finally able to emerge from the paralysis of winter and the thaw. The pale blue sky belonged to the Russians, whose air power had grown enormously. The Luftwaffe, whose numbers had been seriously reduced by the necessity of defending German cities and dealing with the increasing demands of the Western front, flew daily sorties which amounted to suicide flights against overwhelming enemy strength on the ground and in the air. Our few victories were the product of absolute heroism. The sky and the front belonged to the enemy. The rear areas were contested by two nearly equal opponents: the German army and the partisans. We continually sent out patrols. Almost every sortie produced a clash. Every hill and hedge and cottage held a mine, or hid an ambush. We had almost no vehicles of any kind, no gas, and no spare parts. We were also not receiving any fresh supplies. The odd, ill-assorted convoys still pressing through continuous air attacks were not destined for us but for the faltering, collapsing front. When they arrived in the forward zone, they were able to find the correct units only by accident. More often than not, their cargoes were absorbed by the hordes of starving men retreating under a deluge of fire.

We ourselves received at the greatest risk about a tenth of what we needed. We were obliged to live off the local inhabitants, who were very hard-pressed themselves and more than reluctant in their attitude toward us. The problem of food had become extremely serious. As it was spring, there were still very few fruits, and hunting was more dangerous for us than for the game.

A small hamlet sheltered what remained of our three companies. Between operations men slept almost naked on the ground. Those who sleep dine, says the proverb. For us, it was vitally important that this become the reality.

When planes came over, everyone took cover, and when they were gone, we laid our bony bodies out in the sun again. This helped to heal our winter louse bites. Half asleep, with our eyes half closed, we stared into the sky, apparently thinking of nothing. What was the use? We seemed to have broken completely with the past. Memories of peace floated up like fragments of books we might have read. The war had taught us to appreciate every minuscule good. Today, the sun took the place of our goulash and wurst and millet, and the mail which no longer came. We lay stretched on the Ukrainian soil, apparently calm and at peace. Tomorrow, perhaps, some food would arrive-and perhaps some gas, and some spare parts. Perhaps even some mail-a letter from Paula ... But perhaps, too, there would only be ourselves and the earth and the sky and the sun.... What was the use of thinking about it?

One day, our radio crackled out an S.O.S. from a territorial post on the Rumanian frontier. It was surrounded by a band of partisans.