Forgotten Soldier (70 page)

I could hear the shouts of my men. They were unable to fix their sights on the huge machine, which drove at the ruins of the house and skidded over them, probably in the belief that they were crushing us beneath their tracks. I could hear the grinding from my hole-a sound I shall never forget.

The monster stopped short and turned back toward its original route, along the road.

Lower down, the David and Goliath battle between Lensen's group and four more tanks, all firing with all their guns, continued.

We heard the final crash of Lensen's Panzerfaust. The tank closest to them turned back on its tracks, bumping the tank behind it. We could hear horrible screams through the demented confusion of smoke and flame. A T-34 drove straight over the hole which sheltered Lensen and his companion. Then it reversed, and leveled the place. So Lensen died, on the soil of Prussia, where he had wished to die.

For us, the nightmare went on. If the tanks left us to continue their advance, we would be in terror of the infantry, which must be right behind them. In a state of indescribable fear, we looked about us. By "we" I mean myself and my companion in our hole, and the two others, who remained as motionless as the roots that sheltered them.

What had happened to Lindberg and to the sixth man in my group? They had probably been crushed in the debris of the building knocked down by the tank. For the moment, that was the only possible conclusion. I also knew that the group on the road had been knocked out, and that Lensen had died a horrible death. Where were the rest of his men? Perhaps they too were lying under the rubble of the farm. Probabilities and possibilities poured through my head. It was most unlikely that any of us could remain unseen against that pale gray soil, where every protuberance was marked by a dark shadow. I thought of making a break for it, but quickly realized that every way out was in fact impossible. I might head for the pine woods to the left, but that meant at least three hundred yards entirely in the open. The Popovs would be sure to see me before I had gone even halfway. There was still a lot of smoke, but most of it was rising vertically and wouldn't hide anything.

Suddenly, in a spasm of egotism, I felt myself caught in a trap from which there was no escape. I was so sure of this that I ordered my companion to shoot me. He was feeling much as I was, and stared at me with anguish.

"No," he said. "I could never do that. But I wish you would kill me. Please kill me."

Caught in our grotesque dilemma, we stared at each other, full of mistrust and rancor-each trying to hand over sole responsibility to the other.

"We're going to die here, you bastard," I snarled. "So shoot me. That's an order."

"No. No, I can't," he sobbed.

"You're afraid of being left alone, that's all."

"Yes. And so are you."

"But don't you see there's nothing else we can do?"

We could hear the sound of fighting. It was coming from the north from behind us.

"Those bastards must have caught up with the company," I said.

The noise continued. We stared at each other, motionless and silent. There was no more to say, because everything had already been said a long time ago.

Then my two forward men appeared, and a few moments later Lindberg, dragging along with him a fellow with a badly swollen face. We all squatted down, and then someone noticed some men whose moving figures blotted out the ruins of the farm. They were moving forward by cautious leaps, toward the woods, some 150 yards to the left.

"We should get over there too," pleaded Lindberg. "The Russians are nearly here."

"That's easy enough to say," I answered. "But look at the open ground we'd have to cross. The Russians would see us right away."

No one could argue with that. Everyone looked from the woods to the edge of the village to me. If only, at that moment, I had possessed the conviction and the decisiveness to impose on the others an idea of what to do, to take responsibility for the men entrusted to me. I remained as I was, incapable of dealing with either the circumstances or the men, who were looking to me for some sort of initiative. The damning appraisal Lensen had once made of me seemed crushingly true: I was unworthy of command, incapable of leading.

And it was here, a hundred yards from the site of Lensen's heroic death, that my incapacity manifested itself.

I remained where I was, overwhelmed by the thousand miseries of our situation, internally sobbing with despair.

I felt that my companions would make for themselves the decision I was unable to impose on them with any authority. Was I a simple coward? Wasn't I really as bad as Lindberg, whose all too obvious fear had so often disheartened us? I no longer wished for death, but simply cursed my existence, which had become a series of nightmares.

On that day, at a critical moment, I failed. I failed in everything I had hoped for, from others and from myself.

My head wobbled on my neck like the head of a drunk at the moment when his condition changes over from hilarity to despair. I was there, fully conscious, aware of everything, but paralyzed by insurmountable panic. I shall never forgive myself for that instant, when reality touched the deepest recesses of my being.

Minutes went by, and my condition remained unchanged-minutes I should have been putting to good use. Fear nailed me where I was, in the midst of five other human beings who were all on the brink of madness. I was no longer trying to see where our danger might be coming from, but was turned inward, on myself. I found nothing but despair.

We could hear more tanks-the grinding of tracks and the roar of engines. I began to tremble uncontrollably, unable to tear myself from my obsession. The others were clinging to each other, their faces distorted with fear, ready to scream.

Lindberg stood up, in spite of himself. He wanted to see what was happening. He had lost his gun and was no longer thinking of defending himself. A wild thought had entered his stunned mind. He fell forward, across the edge of the hole, trembling convulsively, like me. He had just clenched his fists around two stick grenades.

Death was stalking us, approaching with giant steps. This time, with a horrible shudder, I could feel its presence.

Once again, from all sides, we heard the firing of big guns. The explosions nearest us destroyed what was left of our lucidity. We were no longer in a state to understand anything, except that we could also hear the sound of a truck, quite nearby. Then we heard the barking of light machine guns. We stared at each other, without words. The sound of a voice speaking German fell on our incredulous ears. Behind the shattered building, beside a truck with a throbbing engine, some men were speaking German. We heard more tanks and automatic weapons, and stayed where we were, stiff with fear. A man leaned over our hole: a German officer. We observed his presence without really seeing him. Perhaps he thought we were dead. He went away again. But a few minutes later two Panzergrenadiers led us from that hole, and we followed meekly.

The anticipated German counter-attack had taken place, led by two S.S. armored regiments, and had caught the Russians on the flank, inflicting heavy losses. We even took back the village for a few days, before continuing our retreat.

MEMEL

We moved back to the north, as a junction with the Courland front was no longer possible. What was left of the division gradually regrouped. The attempt to reunite the front had inflicted terrible losses. During this time, in a desperate lunge further to the south, the Russians reached the Baltic. Fighting of unequaled ferocity had taken place at many points through and around the swarms of terrified refugees, who made it very difficult for our troops to defend themselves.

The entire Prussian civilian population was fleeing toward the coast, in a tragic tide. We ourselves had two choices. We could turn south, opening a route through several advanced Soviet positions, or move back to the north, toward the newly established front at Memel. However, the divisional command quickly realized that we no longer had the means to move south, toward Konigsberg, or even Elbing. Both towns were equally threatened, and the closest was some one hundred miles away. We would have to fight for every mile, with little chance of success and almost no possibility of picking up any food along this route of mass exodus.

So Memel was chosen: a short front which had been practically surrounded since the autumn. We would have to fight our way through, to make a passage for ourselves and for the flood of refugees moving with us, constantly slowing us down and often nearly paralyzing us-a pitiful, imploring procession, dragging on foot through the bitter cold and the slush of the first snows. In spite of orders, we had to help, reassure, and support this chaotic wash of human beings. Everyone with an engine which would still run--even for an hour-carried a swarm of terrified children, trembling with cold and fear and God knows what else, while their families ran alongside, mixed in with the soldiers who were their last hope of protection.

We passed through towns and villages where the inhabitants had still been living a more or less normal life until four or five days earlier, although they had realized that their danger might become imminent at any time. Now, for the last two days, old men, women, and children had been desperately digging out the trenches, gun pits, and anti-tank ditches which were to stop the waves of enemy tanks. This pathetic and heroic effort before the infernal debacle which would sweep them into the flux of terrorized civilians was a preliminary shock for these virtuous civilians, who saw the front coming toward them in the form of exhausted, half-starved troops, tired of fighting and of living, who brushed aside human pawns without a qualm, as if they were pieces in a losing game of chess.

Every time a defense seemed possible, it was undertaken. The enemy at our heels were slaughtering the civilian population, who watched their approaching end in mute horror; the enemy had to be slowed down. The groups impressed into this effort accepted their fate in the ludicrous hope of putting out fires which were already raging. Their situation and sentiments were understood and their misery measured and valued by those who came to bid them farewell. These men had reached the point beyond which death seemed desirable, and still the war went on, like a blazing fire which no sentiment, however realized, could stop. Those who broke through and reached Memel would probably die at Memel. Death at Memel would seem a relief and release, and a more orderly end than death in a place which would never be distinguished by any military operation.

At this time and place, the absolute would be resolved by the absurd-unless, perhaps, they were already the same thing.

Finally, our division-which is to say, a third of it-broke through, and the command at Memel was able to include it in their strength. The division had broken through, and the fifteen hundred men it cost us simply represented another figure to swell the note of heroism. For those who had been in the fighting, besides the men who were killed, the losses included some twenty names which had to be scrubbed from the company lists, including Siemenleis and Wienke.

We might perhaps have fought our way into a trap. We even thought that perhaps the Russians had, deliberately loosened their grip to let us through. We had brought along with us as many civilians as we could, but many others had stayed behind, and for them the game was nearly over. They had to dodge the tanks pursuing them, and multiple barrages of howitzers and quadruple machine guns, and Ivan's bayonets-all of which is very difficult for a mother with an infant at her breast and a small child hanging on to her skirts. But after all everyone is born to die.

We arrived in Memel with trucks pulled by men, and tanks serving as locomotives to trains of incredible length. We had reached the absolute limit of our capacities. Everything which still possessed a shred of human or mechanical life was moving, suppressing misery to a sense of gratitude that so much, at least, was still allowed them. Bombings stopped only those who were definitively dead. The rest-the merely wounded or dying-kept on, with burning eyes, pushing past the collapsing and the collapsed, whose bodies lay strewn along the road.

The town of Memel was still alive, in ruins beneath the flames, the smoke-darkened sky, the throb of Russian fighter-bombers, the heavy artillery, the terror, and the whirling snow.

Once again, I cannot find the words to describe what I saw.

My impression is that all words and syllables were perfected to describe unimportant things. Words cannot describe the end of the war in Prussia.

I was part of the exodus in France, fleeing the German troops which I later joined, and I saw mothers asking for milk at quiet farms. I also saw overturned cars, and was once even machine-gunned near Montargis. But my memories of all that are touched with only a small degree of anxiety, which is even somewhat intoxicating, like the memory of a trip on which one was not alone. Also, in France, the weather was beautiful. In Prussia, it was snowing and everything had been destroyed all around us. Refugees were dying by the thousands, and no one was able to help them. The Russians, when they were not fighting our troops, pushed the tide of civilians along in front of them, firing at them and driving tanks through the terrified mob. Anyone with a little imagination can try to conceive what I am talking about. Cruelty has never been more fully realized, nor can the word "horror" ever adequately express what happened.

We had reached the Memel cul-de-sac, a half circle about fifteen miles across, backing onto the Baltic, whose cold, gray swells rolled in under a thick blanket of fog. We held this constantly shrinking space by some inexplicable miracle for most of the winter, harassed by continuous bombardment and permanent attack from the Russians, whose strength grew steadily as ours dwindled, overrun by thousands upon thousands of refugees. The extreme of misery to which these people were reduced can never be adequately described. They waited at Memel to be evacuated by sea, before the troops were taken off in mid-December.