SS General (34 page)

The lieutenant crawled toward the Old Man. "Feldwebel, take your men and get out there after the rest of 'em!"

"Us again," grumbled Porta. "I tell you, if it weren't for mugs like us we'd have lost this lousy war years ago!"

"Then why, I wonder, do we prolong the agony?" murmured the Legionnaire, already slipping a knife between his teeth and moving forward after the Old Man.

We made our way through the trees, sweeping around in a semicircle to come out on the far side of the Russians. Tiny suddenly held up a hand and pointed ahead. How he knew they were there, I haven't the faintest idea. He claimed afterward that he had heard a Russian fart, and with Tiny's strange gift, that could well have been true. In any event, we caught them in the middle of a clearing, only a few yards away from us. Their attention was still turned in the opposite direction, where we had left the main body of the troops.

Silently, with infinite care, I fitted my bayonet to my rifle. The Legionnaire was the first to move. He darted forward through the bushes, caught the sentry around the neck with one arm and plunged his knife deep into the man's back. The sentry fell forward with a grunt of surprise, and his comrades turned in stupefaction as the rest of us charged in.

We slaughtered them mercilessly, as they would have slaughtered us had not Tiny's sharp ears caught them out in their first stealthy approach. Two of them attempted to surrender, their brawny arms held high above their heads, almond eyes imploring in big, shapeless faces.

"Sorry, pal," said Porta. "Didn't no one ever tell you there was a war on?"

He shot them both, quite calmly and with no emotion. Tiny, meanwhile, was jubilantly capering about the clearing with a fistful of gold teeth and gold fillings. He had a little leather bag which he kept somewhere about his person. It was bulging with plundered teeth, and every now and again he would bring it out and send the tiny pieces of gold winking and flashing across the palm of his hand, much as a jeweler pours out his diamonds and rubies for approval.

We rejoined the rest of the column and moved on across the steppe. The wind had died down and the midmorning sky was a piercing blue against the dazzling white expanse of snow. The sun hung in a great blood-red ball high above our heads. It hadn't much warmth, but it spread a little optimism among us and it caught the crystals of snow for miles around and made a thousand winking pinpoints of light. Porta brought out his flute and we marched quite jauntily as he played.

Before we had gone more than a mile or so, my eyes began hurting again. They bothered me some part of every day, but when the skies were gray and overcast the pain was bearable, only a dull ache and the occasional sharp stab, to which I had grown almost reconciled. But today, with the piercing azure sky and the dazzling crystals, it became a tormenting agony. Red-hot needles plunged through my retina and straight on to the back of my head. The clear blinding white of the snow was gradually blurred into a gray mass of spongy cotton. Black circles began dancing in front of me. My head was full of bright flashes and sparks and my footsteps began wandering.

"Don't do that," I heard the Legionnaire saying. "You'll only make it worse."

And I felt my mittened hands being firmly removed from my eyes, where they had been vigorously attempting to knead my eyeballs out of their sockets. I turned my head blindly toward the sound of the voice. The Legionnaire was no more than a shadow. I began shambling and stumbling, and the Old Man put an arm around my shoulders to keep me from falling. I moved along in a delirium of pain, muttering and moaning to myself, and when we stopped for the first short break, I was quite willing for them to shoot me on the spot as we had shot so many other helplessly suffering ones.

I lay with my head cradled in my arms, neither knowing nor caring what was going on around me. I heard Tiny say, "Kill him! Finish him off! What's it matter? He's on his last legs, anyway!" I thought he was talking about me, and had I had the strength, I would have lifted up my head and screamed, "Yes, yes, I'm on my last legs, get on with it!" But as it turned out, they were not discussing me but the sole survivor of the First Cavalry Division, who had been wracked with dysentery for several days and was now slowly dying in the snow only a few yards away from me. He was wearing a pair of dark glasses. Special glasses, designed to cut out the penetrating ultraviolet rays of the snow.

"They'd be just right for Sven," said Gregor. I rolled over and half opened an eye. "What would?" I demanded feebly. "What's going on?" There was a pause.

"If he doesn't kick the bucket before we move on," said Tiny, "I'm going to shoot the bastard."

There was another pause. I believe I must have lost consciousness, because the next thing I remember, they were hauling me to my feet and pushing a pair of dark glasses onto my nose. The relief was immediate. The mists cleared, the stabbing pains began to recede, I was able to stand up unaided.

"Did he--" I turned to look at the body of the dead cavalryman. "What happened to him?" "He died," said the Old Man grimly. "Just in time," added Tiny.

We went off in search of the MO, who, according to the regulations, had to approve the issue of the glasses and record it in my passbook. It was purely a formality, but regulations being regulations, and the German Army still being the German Army, even if it was torn to shreds, it seemed wise to be on the safe side.

It was such a relief to be able to look the world in the face again that I felt capable of marching another thousand miles. It was a shock when the doctor refused to approve my wearing the glasses.

"More than my life's worth," he said. "Special glasses are only issued after a rigorous examination of the eyes."

"Then examine his goddamn eyes!" cried the lieutenant testily.

"I can't do that," said the doctor. "I'm not an eye specialist--besides, I don't have the proper instruments. I'm sorry, I'm afraid I can't possibly approve the issue of dark glasses to this man."

"For crying out loud!" exclaimed the lieutenant. "He's as blind as a bat without them! Any fool can see that, it doesn't need a specialist!"

"I can't help what any fool can see," said the doctor, growing angry in turn. "I'm only going according to regulations."

"Regulations! Regulations!" The lieutenant strode up and down in the snow in a fine rage. I stood gratefully watching him with my new eyes. "God help the German nation if it can't do anything without regulations! Here's a man who's suffering, and there's a pair of dark glasses that no one else wants, and here's a goddamn quack saying he can't approve of it because of regulations--regulations, my ass! What do you suggest we do with the fucking glasses? Carry them all the way back to Germany in a waterproof bag?" He suddenly pulled out his revolver and faced the trembling doctor. "You just sign that man's papers or we'll be leaving you behind!"

The doctor signed; I wore my dark glasses; the column moved on and the body of my dead benefactor from the First Cavalry Division was left behind in the snow. I had never known his name and I had already forgotten him.

If a stone should fall on the jug, that's unfortunate for the jug. If the jug should fall on a stone, that's unfortunate for the jug. It's always unfortunate for the jug.

The Talmud

Order of the day sent to all divisions by the Commander in Chief of the Sixth Army, Generaloberst Friedrich Paulus:

As a soldier, I wish to remind all other soldiers that it is an act of dishonor to fall into the hands of the enemy. It is therefore the duty of an officer to take his own life rather than suffer such a fate. If he allows himself to be taken prisoner, he is no longer worthy of the uniform he wears. He will be considered as a deserter and a traitor to his country and will be tried as such when the hostilities are at an end.

The above should be taken to apply equally to noncommissioned officers and other ranks. To surrender is an act of cowardice! Our Fuhrer Adolf Hitler demands of us that we fight to the last man, the last bullet. Be worthy of his trust!

Heil Hitler!

On the same day as this order was issued, four high-ranking officers left Stalingrad. General Jaenecke had had his skull cracked open by a falling roof beam and was evacuated by airplane. Generals Pitkert and Hube were flown back to Germany on the orders of Army Personnel. Major General Berger left on his own initiative. He was arrested on the airfield at Warnapol and was shot behind the hangars two hours later.

Just outside Stalingrad a quartermaster general blew himself and his staff up shortly before Russian troops overran their position.

In the hospital at Baburkin, a surgeon and his four assistants were preparing to operate when a column of T-34s appeared in the road outside. The surgeon had just time to snatch up a handful of grenades before the Russians walked in. The hospital was largely destroyed, and not a single living person was found inside.

Near Katlovska, four hundred Russian tanks crushed the tattered remnants of a German division. A lieutenant and five of his men succeeded in escaping the carnage, but they were picked up by a police patrol less than an hour later and shot for having sabotaged the Fuhrer's orders.

The last man, the last bullet. Be worthy of his trust!

Prisoners of the NKVD

A new and even more violent tempest was now blowing up from the Siberian deeps. It battered us relentlessly, day and night. It was almost impossible to walk upright and we staggered along bent double, now and again dropping on all fours like animals. Sometimes an extra strong blast would pick a man up and carry him several yards before dumping him back in the snow like a discarded package. The cold had also intensified. The temperature had sunk so low that the constant tears which streamed from men's eyes were at once transformed into hard crystal droplets.

It became at last impossible to go on, and we dug ourselves into the snow and stayed buried for four days while the tempest raged all about us and whipped the drifts into great shining mountains. Struggling trees and bushes were torn from the ground and borne past us on invisible currents. On two occasions we saw wolf packs running before the wind, streaming past our snowholes with their scrawny necks extended and their yellow eyes gleaming. They took no notice of us, nor we of them. We were all too occupied keeping ourselves alive.

We grew so accustomed to the whining of the wind that during the rare intervals of peace we were frightened by the unnatural silence and dared scarcely breathe for fear of giving away our positions to the enemy.

The Russians could have been sheltering only half a mile away, in the next dip of the landscape, for all we knew. The falling snowflakes were so thick, and were whipped into such patterns of frenzy, that visibility was cut to a few yards. On the morning of the fifth day the wind had subsided to its normal pretempest level, which now, in comparison, seemed like a mild spring zephyr. We dug ourselves out of our icy prisons and fought our way through the drifts in the wake of General Augsberg. After his one moment of unguarded weakness when we had crossed the Shchir, he had closed in again on himself and was once more the determined officer, grimly leading a pack of terrified and half-starved men across the Russian wastes in search of a phantom German army.

"Ivan," said the Old Man suddenly, as we marched. He pointed across the plain. Way off in the distance we could see a long column of heavy tanks moving across the landscape.

"They're heading west," said Heide. "That's where the front is."

"That's where Germany is," I said. "Germany!" cried Gregor scornfully. "Why not France? Why not America? You could even get all the way to Japan and back if you kept on long enough--why Germany? Why not the fucking moon?"

"If that's the way you feel about it," I said indifferently. "Don't you kid yourself we're ever going to get back to Germany! You'll be lucky if you reach the next river!"

"That's defeatist talk!" screamed Heide, snatching out his revolver. "You could be shot for that!"

Within seconds the two of them were rolling about in the snow with their hands around each other's throats. I distinctly heard Gregor threaten to bite Heide's head off. Heide's one aim was to blow Gregor's brains out. We had come to such a pass that not even the Old Man or the Legionnaire could be bothered to put a stop to it. They spared one disinterested glance for the fighting pair, and walked on. Tiny and Porta stood halfheartedly cheering, and I found myself thinking, If they kill each other, it'll be more rations for the rest of us.

In the end, the lieutenant appeared and clobbered them both, and they staggered back into the column bowlegged and dazed. We had been on the march for fifty-six days by now and were scarcely recognizable as civilized human beings. We had far more in common with the wolf packs we had seen.

The retreat continued. Early one morning we reached the next river, the Oskol. There was no sign of German troops, but since the last flicker of hope had burned itself out long before now, we felt no great disappointment. On the opposite bank of the river was the small market town of Kubyansk. There we should find the rest and the warmth and the fresh supplies of food we so badly needed; but there, also, we might find the enemy.

"Oberfeldwebel!"

The general came striding up to the Old Man, and I saw Porta catch Tiny's eye. Here we go again--always us! Take your section and go have a scout around . . .

For once, Porta was wrong. It was General Augsberg who was going to lead the column across the river and into Kubyansk, while the Old Man and the rest of us were to stay behind and await the outcome.

"We'll give you the OK when we've cleaned the place up--if it needs cleaning up. If they start firing on us before we get there, just stay put and wait to see what happens."

"Only too pleased," muttered Tiny as we watched the general sliding down the bank followed by the lieutenant and the rest of the men. Suddenly, as they approached the village, a volley of shots rang out.