Forgotten Soldier (75 page)

This groaning crowd of men, clinging to a last hope of evacuation, was divided into two categories. The most severely wounded-those whose chances of survival were doubtful, who would at best be hideously mutilated-were not embarked. For them, everything was over. The rest, who might still have some hope of a decent life, were eligible for the boats, which, with any luck, would carry them to the West, to that region we still imagined as a zone of relative quiet.

For every thousand persons embarked, some three thousand more arrived from the East, swelling the ranks of the mob which had turned to us for help.

If the fighting should reach us here, it would be the hell of Memel all over again, only worse. There were many more people here, and the numbers were continuously growing. People were coming in from the south, having crossed the Frisches Haff on anything that would float. They came from Heiligensbeil, Pomehrendorf, Elbing, and even from Preussisch Holland. They had been told that at Pillau they might be able to get on a boat.

We spoke to several of these wretched people. Almost everyone had lost one or two relatives on the way, and described in trembling voices scenes like the ones we had witnessed at Memel. We learned from them that the flight toward Danzig had been cut in two, and that the Russians had reached the Haff at several points. It sounded as if the horror of Memel was duplicated in almost every Prussian coastal town.

Swaying on our unsteady legs, we stared at the vast flood of human misery slowly washing toward the safety which had been promised. In spite of the most prodigious efforts it was clear that these people could not receive even a tenth of what they were expecting. If their prayers had been heard, heaven would have opened to succor their misery. But nothing happened, and misery subsided only for moments at a time, as on the tear-streaked face of a child who has collapsed into a passing sleep.

As winter closed in, the thermometer sank toward five degrees below zero, only aggravating the plight of the refugees and accelerating the death rate.

A crowd stretched as far as the eye could see, in front of a large building crammed with people. From the building a faint smell of the gruel cooking in large caldrons washed over the tightly compressed mass of people, who stood stamping their feet to keep from freezing. The thudding of their feet against the pavement sounded like a dull roll of muffled drums. The children were the most heart-wringing. Many were lost. When they tired of calling for their mothers, they collapsed into floods of tears which nothing and no one could console. These were the smallest ones, too young to grasp any explanations. Their faces, dabbed with tears which instantly froze, remain one of the most pathetic images of that time. We tried to gather them inside, near the caldrons, where they might feel some of the heat. We questioned them, hoping for some identifying information we could broadcast over loudspeakers, but they could only reply with tears and sobs.

Further on, a large metal cross, which stood on a slight elevation, glittered with frost. It looked like a huge sword, thrust into the breast of catastrophe. Another part of the crowd had collected here to listen to the prayers and encouragement of a priest.

The cold grew so intense that the Frisches Haff froze, creating new difficulties for the boats still coming into Pillau. The Frisches Haff froze, and despite the desperate consequences of such cold the fact was put to use. Hundreds of thousands, on forced marches across the ice, were able to reach the narrow strip of land at Nehrung, and Kahlberg, and finally, Danzig. People also left from the pocket at Heiligenbeil. They experienced every sort of hardship, including attacks from Soviet fighter-bombers, which tried to break the ice with strings of bombs, and often succeeded. Private cars and other vehicles of every kind frequently disappeared into crevasses covered over by thin films of ice.

However, nothing could hold back the flood of refugees, who were prepared to endure the most severe hardships. As the Russians grew increasingly active throughout the sector, large numbers of people left Pillau by this providential route. Russian planes were flying over Pillau every day, and it appeared that the defense of Konigsberg had given way.

As the work at Pillau had become less intense, we planned to evacuate everyone who wasn't strictly essential. It was barely twelve miles from Konigsberg to Pillau. The front at Cranz had also been shortened, and before long we too would probably be directly involved in the fighting. We were part of an inadequate reserve composed principally of fragments of broken or annihilated units, from which a certain standard of performance was still expected. No one knew any longer where the rest of the Gross Deutschland might be, but we still wore our divisional flashes on our worn and discolored tunics, and there were still a few familiar names near me-principally, Lieutenant Wollers, with a dirty dressing on his right hand, which had lost two fingers; Pferham, our disillusioned pastor; Schlesser; Lindberg, who had survived his fear; and our cook, Grandsk, who had long ago exchanged his caldrons for an F.M.

There were also my friend Hals, whom I will never be able to forget, and I, who have consecrated the rest of my life to bearing witness. Then there were seven or eight others, whose names I never knew, who, with us, made up what was left of the Gross Deutschland Division in that area. Had our division been scratched off the list? Not yet, it seemed. An officer hailed us and ordered us to attention. Our eyes, which had already seen so much, studied this gray-faced hauptmann, who still clung to his sense of disciplinary strength.

This discipline, which had so often annoyed us in the past, touched us now like a soothing balm. Its demands were those made of living beings, of creatures still worthy of life. We analyzed no further than that; for us, accustomed as we were to thinking only of the moment, this realization was a kind of dividend. The captain spoke to us, and through his firm, official voice we caught the intense emotion of the crushing load which weighed on all of us: officers and troops, men, women, and children. The time of boasting and gratuitous bullying was so far behind us that no attitude incompatible with the gravity of the circumstances was possible. A man was speaking to us as men; no one could evade the situation.

However, this man still wore the vestiges of a military uniform, and was still trying to impose some semblance of order in a situation of cataclysm which had swept an entire nation into a devastating retreat. This man, who knew that everything was lost, was still trying to save the moment. He told us that we would have to withdraw; that we too would have to cross the ice of the Frisches Haff, and get to Danzig, where several sizable fragments of our division still remained. He tried to tell us, in a tone which was not peremptory, that there was still work for us to do as part of a particular organization which could be found where he had indicated. He was not trying to spare us a worse disaster when he gave us those orders; the worst was everywhere, and there was no escape. The hauptmann was already walking toward another group of men, saluting as he withdrew.

So we started to walk. A violent wind swept the snow from the mirror like expanse of ice. In the distance we could hear the gentle purr of the sea, behind us, the steady roar of war.

In the evening, we reached the Frische Nehrung, and the first anti-aircraft bunkers, which barely rose above the long grasses, bent over beneath their burden of snow. To crown my personal difficulties, I fell and injured my foot. It was forty miles across the Nehrung. I would have to make it anyway. For a long time now, I had known that fate was against me.

I found a broken broomstick to use as a crutch. So many people had suffered and died in this place that my minor discomfort seemed almost indecently trivial. We progressed very slowly. The hollow of a battered, overturned boat sheltered us for a few hours. We were not the only ones to use it; a group of shivering civilians were already inside, groaning as they tried to sleep. I buried my head against Hals's shoulder, hoping to pass out, despite our wretchedness.

We reached Kahlberg toward the middle of the next day. The small town was overflowing with starving refugees. People with the faces of madmen were wolfing down the flour which was the only food distributed to them. Cans of condensed milk were reserved for the children. Soldiers also had to stand in interminable lines, to receive, finally, two handfuls of flour apiece, and a cup of hot water infused with a minute portion of tea.

Our exhausting march resumed amid the pitiable swarms of faltering refugees. Twice we were attacked by Soviet planes, swooping low and scattering missiles which had been designed to destroy tanks. Each impact tore long, bloody furrows in the dense mass, and for a moment the wind was tinged with the warm smell of disemboweled bodies. Above all, I feared for the children, who could no longer understand anything about their situation. They didn't know that the planes were enemy aircraft, or how urgently they were faced with cold and hunger. Everything was a misery for them, and each step a trap. The sky could make them suffer, and the earth hurt them. Their hands and feet made them bite their lips with pain. They were lost in a state of constant fear, which was justified by a world of horror which never let them forget their pitiable weakness. They stared about them with unseeing eyes at their swollen hands, which they wished were no longer attached to their bodies; at the people around them, who should no longer exist; and at the frozen grasses trembling in the wind, which they would never again enjoy as part of an innocent game.

I feared for these children, who were being punished before they had committed any crime, for whom the idea of existence would become synonymous with vengeance. I could do nothing but watch this tragic procession; even my life would be no help to them. I was not a redeeming Christ, and in any case I had discovered very good reasons for dying.

We reached Danzig three days after crossing the ice of the Frisches Haff. Everything was calm in the city, despite the tragic spectacle of hundreds of thousands of refugees. The war was to the south of us, so that we even escaped its noise, although frequent air raids struck at the heart of the crowded city. Danzig had become the terminal point of the Prussian exodus, and, although huge crowds were living day and night without shelter, there was nonetheless a substantial and organized effort to help them. It was still possible to leave for the West by rail, and the port was still open to maritime traffic. We waited down by the docks, in a dense mass of vagabonds.

Wollers went to a center which should have been able to give us some information about reintegrating with our group. He waited for several hours under its flattened glass roof. I myself was in no hurry to move on, as the stiff folds of my boot pressed painfully against my swollen ankle.

A large ship had come into Neufahrwasser, and the crowd had flowed toward the pier. The ship had not yet cast off its mooring lines, and everyone would have to wait for several hours before they were loosed again, but in Danzig then time counted for nothing. Each aim was stubbornly pursued, even at the cost of maximum patience, endurance, and suffering.

As always, there were children, with their small faces twisted by emotion, staring and hating without comprehension, and without looking for any explanations. When sleep overwhelmed them, they slept where they were, without any release from trouble. I, immobilized by exhaustion and by my sense of solitude, tried to see no more than the seagulls did, as they flew overhead, seemingly part of another world.

For two days now, we had been waiting for some information, or some instructions, under the shattered glass structure of the station. A wind which made the inside as cold as the outdoors shook the metal frame, loosening and scattering the remaining glass fragments. We had to keep walking and waving our arms to avoid freezing on the spot. As it was very hard for me to walk, my comrades gave me a permanent place inside, while they took turns walking through the rubble of the port. Finally a piece of negative information reached us: there were no Gross Deutschland units in Danzig; perhaps they had moved on to Gotenhafen. Gotenhafen was several miles to the north, on the bay only a short walk, if my foot would support me.

With the aid of Hals and my broomstick crutch, I managed to cross part of the town. On the way, Providence intervened to help us. Some civilians who had been watching us from their house came out to meet us, and took us back indoors. The house was warm, and it seemed as if the gates of Paradise had opened to receive us. There was already a crowd of people in the house-refugees from the East, including large numbers of silent children, who seemed to relish the wall bench on which they were sitting as if it were a marvelous toy.

There was water in the house, and our hosts offered us the opportunity to wash. Wollers knew that soldiers had no right to the privileges reserved for fleeing civilians. But his dressing was a mass of putrefaction, and his body was so exhausted he didn't know how to refuse. Even I was able to soak my swollen ankle in a basin of hot water. The owners of the house insisted that we rest there overnight and, in the evening, produced something for us to eat.

We spent the night in the warmth of the cellar. Unfortunately, we were so unused to being warm that we couldn't appreciate it as much as we should have. We shook uncontrollably for seconds at a time, as if some form of warning system were on continuous alert inside our heads. Our exhaustion, which we had been keeping more or less suppressed, broke out during this period of unaccustomed rest. Lindberg trembled for minutes at a time. Hals felt so lost if he fell asleep lying down that he spent the night propped against the wall, whimpering. As for me, I was racked down the length of my body with pains which seemed to rise and fall as I breathed.

Were we no longer able to function like normal human beings? This was certainly possible. However, one development struck me as extremely favorable. The three hot soakings I was able to give my foot put an end to the trouble in record time. Perhaps, when our bodies have been deprived of practically everything, they react favorably to the most elementary care. Then, the most desperately wounded clung to life after a glass of schnapps and a promise; today, a simple cold can flatten a healthy man for several days. Then, we were certainly not supermen, but men, in the most real and complete sense in the world.