THE ROAD TO STALINGRAD

By

BENNO ZIESER

Translated from the German by Alec Brown

Grade Level and Copyright 

Grade Level is 4.4 using the Flesch-Kincaid readability test with sample chapters.

First edition published by Ballantine Books,Inc.1956.

Electronic edition published by Ebooks for Students, Ltd., 2023.

This ebook is in the public domain, and is free of all copyright restrictions. It is also free of digital rights management protection so you can distribute copies to your students, their parents, and other prospective readers. 

See our other biographies, novels and popular history at ebooksforstudents.org. See our titles on Amazon at https://amzn.to/3brofzU.

Comments  or questions to support@ebooksforstudents.org or (202) 464-9126.

ONE

THE DRILL ground echoed with sharp commands. Legs straddled, fists on hips, the sergeants bellowed their orders. We trainees wore gray fatigues, steel helmets and boots. Around and around we pranced, like mad dogs, oblivious of the blazing sun as we crawled through the red dust or kicked our heels high. Right, quick-march! We might have been ballet dancers practicing for hours on end, Sundays excepted. This kind of exercise was known as footwork in the training schedule. Our own platoon leader was sick, and a pockmarked corporal had taken over.

“About turn!...Quick-march...Halt!...In line, quick-march!...Straighten that line!...Eyes front...You’re no better than a bunch of old women...Make it snappy...Right wheel!...Hey there, what’s the idea?”

Pille, that dope, had done it again—he would turn left.

“All of you one step to the rear, march!...On your bellies!...Up...and down...and up...Right dress!”

Pille blinked guiltily, first at Franzl, then at me, while Pockmark yelled: “Hey there! What’s your name?” When he got no answer he yelled again: “Yes, that’s the one I mean! The lanky, swarthy one with the hooked nose!”

“Gahlen,” said Pille. He looked bewildered.

“Oh Lord!” Franzl muttered. We all knew what was coming.

“Gahlen?” Pockmark hollered. “What the hell does that mean? A brand of soap, or something? Private Gahlen, Herr Korporal—that’s the proper way to answer. Got that? Come on,” he bellowed. “What’s your name?”

“Private Gahlen, Herr Korporal!”

“Would you mind pulling yourself together when you address me?” Pockmark said. “One step forward...march!”

Hesitantly, Pille did as he was told, and blushed to his ears.

“Occupation?” barked Pockmark.

“College graduate,” Pille said.

Pockmark grinned as if he’d heard a good joke.

“So you’re one of the brainy ones, eh? I might have known. Now get this straight. Our term for college students here is Ig-no-ra-mus! Got that? Now come on, speak up, man! Occupation?”

We could see that Pille was thinking hard.

“Lost your voice?” Pockmark snarled.

“College graduate, Herr Korporal,” Pille repeated. The kid had guts.

“On your belly!” Pockmark shouted, and in a flash there was Pille stretched on the ground, doing twenty push-ups.

“I’ll teach you who I am!” hollered the corporal. They were all past masters at such tricks, like bending your knees ten times with your rifle held up before you. Their main concern was to break the young recruits.

“Now do you know what your occupation is?”

“Ignoramus, Herr Korporal,” Pille panted.

“That’s better. Now once again, but louder.”

And at last Pille shouted hoarsely: “Ignoramus, Herr Korporal!”

“Step back! Any other ignoramuses here?”

Just to humor the man, I called out my name. Then I heard Franzl mutter nearby: “He won’t do that to me.”

Pockmark had heard him, though. “Stop that muttering! What are you?” He’d already guessed that the three of us were friends.

But Franzl didn’t answer right away. Franzl was over six feet tall, and tough. If you riled him, his gentle brown eyes would turn to slits and he looked like a panther about to leap. Finally, in a voice that rang with determination, he shouted: “Private Pille and I were in the same grade, Herr Korporal!” And that settled the matter.

During dinner break when we got back from the canteen we noticed a little waif of a fellow, obviously much older than ourselves, sitting hunched up on a bench nearby. “Look at him,” Pille said. “What’s the matter with him?” When we came closer, the little man raised his head and we saw he wore thick, horn-rimmed spectacles. His cap, much too big for him, was pulled down over his ears. He would have been a laughable sight if he hadn’t looked so pathetically lost.

“Almighty! He’s crying!”

“They’ve really got him cowed,” Franzl said.

Willi joined us in our barracks, and a couple of minutes later the Sheikh came in. Flatfooted and on the plumpish side, he lumbered over to a chair and slumped down with a gasp, wiping the sweat from his forehead.

“Oh my aching back,” he groaned, fanning the air with his handkerchief. “What a scorcher! My shirt’s way up around my well-developed bust.” When Pille laughed, the Sheikh shouted: “You shut up, you gangling lout! If you’d been through the mill the way we have, your old man would have to look for another heir.”

It was Pille who first called him “the Sheikh,” because he was without doubt the laziest kid in our class. He always copied his homework off somebody else, preferably Pille—a practice that used to burn him up. So whenever he referred to Kurt Juengling he always called him “that damned Sheikh.”

Now the Sheikh turned to Willi for confirmation. “Let’s face it. That bastard Meier’s knocked the bottom out of us, am I right?”

Willi gave a weary shrug of the shoulders, and said softly: “It’s true. We’ve all had about enough.”

Willi’s nature was too sensitive for life in the army. His features were delicate, almost like a girl’s. They’d kidded him unmercifully at school because of his soft auburn hair. He was top of the class, but never a teacher’s pet: the friendship of his classmates was more important to him. Willi wore horn-rimmed glasses, just like the fellow we’d seen crying.

“Who exactly is that elderly guy with the thick specs in your platoon?” I asked the Sheikh.

“I suppose you mean Modal,” he said. “Schoolteacher, has a couple of kids.” A few moments later he added: “Meier’s got it in for him, all right. The little guy’s kind of helpless, and awfully vulnerable. Of course it didn’t take Meier long to catch on, so now he bullies him like the devil. Believe you me, that bastard’s a regular sadist.”

I suddenly remembered that I was due to report to the top sergeant, so I ran down the hall to his office. The recruits had to do everything on the double; the very first day our top sergeant had hammered that point home. “Everything in the barracks and on the drill ground,” he said, “must be done on the double. If I catch any of you walking, I’ll teach him a lesson.”

I gave my tunic another tug and laid my hand edgewise against my nose to make sure my cap was on straight. Then I knocked. Inside, I heard a grunting sound, so I asked as crisply as I could if I might come in.

“Come in!” the voice bellowed, and I reported.

The top sergeant was leaning over the table, his back toward me. It was some time before he turned around, his arms folded.

“There you are, Santa Claus,” he said. “Would you mind holding your hands a little straighter down your trouser seams? And don’t look so goddamn supercilious! You’re too recalcitrant for my money. Four weeks should have been enough to turn you into a soldier, but you’re still no better than a bloody civilian in uniform. You don’t seem to be able to appreciate what a German army uniform means. But you just wait, I’ll teach you—and no mistake about it. The same goes for your pals, by the way. You can tell ‘em that from me. But first of all I’ll put you in another group. Now scram! But smartly, if you don’t mind.”

Once outside, I ran into Lieutenant Straub. I was going to slip past with a salute, but he stopped me. “Been in to see the top sergeant? What have you been up to?”

“It all depends on how you look at it, Lieutenant,” I said. “But the sergeant says he’ll put me and my pals in different platoons, to take the starch out of us.”

The officer laughed. “We’ll see about that,” he said. “That can be straightened out.” Decent fellow, our platoon commander.

We were out on field maneuvers, practicing attack and defense. The third platoon had dug in on the edge of a forest, and we were to attack. The leader of the second platoon, a potbellied man in a ridiculously tight-fitting uniform, rattled off last-minute instructions.

“Imagine you’re in the front line,” he said, “and they’re peppering you with bullets. So conduct yourselves accordingly.”

What did we know about the front line? We knew there would be medals, and the enemy surrendering in droves. Our boys had grabbed Poland, then France. Our guys at the front must hay. been damn good: never so much as a hint of fear, and always the great goal before their eyes.

What they had done we could match any time. Did that mean we were sticking our necks out? Of course not—we were not afraid. If we were at the front, it would be the lion Cross and the praises of a proud homeland. Promotions, too. For bravery under enemy fire. Once that happened, a guy like Pockmark could go hang himself—he, and the top sergeant, and the whole damn bunch of them.

There would probably be war with the Soviet Union, and that meant we would at least see early action.

Our machine guns banged away merrily. We advanced by leaps and bounds. Now we were real soldiers, proud to be in the army. A wave of enthusiasm swept over us. One of the men suddenly cheered, and then another, and soon we were all bellowing like lunatics. Let the enemy sharp-shoot away, let the mortars burst all around us—what difference did it make? Any fool expected there would be losses—you can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs—but we were going to fight on to victory.

Besides, if any of us did stop a bullet, he’d die a hero’s death. So hurrah, over the top and charge...hurrah!

“Fall out for boot inspection.”

Precisely how many inspections were there? Rifle inspection, mess-kit inspection, locker inspection—there was no end to inspections. And one of us was always in hot water, either getting KP, or extra drill, or a furlough canceled. Most of the time it was auburn-haired Willi. No matter how hard he tried, as soon as he got his stuff lined up he always looked guilty. That was enough for the top kick to poke around till he found something to harp on.

Another man who was continually in trouble was Moehl, the little schoolteacher. The army drill was gradually getting him down. Willi said the man was the melancholy type and often talked in a strange way.

We lined up our boots—we’d spent two hours polishing them. But the top sergeant scarcely glanced at the gleaming leather and everyone seemed to be in the clear. We were just beginning to breathe more freely when we heard the command: “Field tunics—strip!” We weren’t prepared for that and this time I, too, got it in the neck: I wore no suspenders—I never could stand the damned things.

Then I saw the top sergeant browbeating the teacher. A loose button was enough to set him off, and so he bawled him out. Moehl trembled and swallowed all this abuse, standing at attention. But the longer the sergeant ranted on, the more Moehl seemed to shrink. The bully would have never dared giving anyone else such a dressing down. He wouldn’t have picked on the Sheikh, for instance, because that sort of thing left the Sheikh ice cold and the sergeant sensed that. But with the teacher he could see that every word hurt him like the stroke of a whip, and so he really gave him the works. All of us were sorry for Moehl.

Training continued, high-pressure training, an endless grind. Willi came to see us as often as he could. He felt a great need for our company; we gave him a feeling of security. The barracks filled him with fear—a fear caused by Meier and others like him—and he was frightened of the many orders. Franzl would shake his massive fists menacingly and mutter something about what he’d do if that bastard Meier ever fell into his hands.

One day during morning roll call the top sergeant announced that someone who knew English was wanted as an interpreter for a special assignment: anyone who qualified could apply. Suddenly there was a loud, enthusiastic “Here!” We turned around. It was that teacher, Moehl. Hopefully he raised himself on his toes, waving his spectacles in the air, and the excitement drove a flush of color to his cheeks.

“Who said here?” the sergeant demanded.

“Private Moehl, Sergeant.”

The bully tossed his head. “No kidding! You, of all people?” he sneered. “A half-baked soldier like you? Why, you’d put the whole company to shame! You’re so incompetent you wouldn’t last more than three days. Besides, we want someone who’s suited for service in the tropics, and I don’t see how you’d fit in.”

Moehl was shattered. Slowly he replaced his thick-lensed glasses. He must have been very near-sighted.

That afternoon, during target practice, he put a bullet through his head. He was dead on the spot, his spectacles dangling from one ear. The blood was dripping on the glass. The company commander referred to it as a regrettable accident: the non-com on duty would be charged with negligence. It was Meier who’d been in charge. Moehl had fired twice and both shots went wide of the mark. Meier didn’t spare his scorn and promised Moehl to teach him a special lesson. For one long moment the teacher looked him squarely in the eye—and before Meier could stop him he’d turned the gun on himself.

Franzl was beside himself. “The sonuvabitch ought to be beaten to death,” he raged.

“Must have been the drill,” I said, “that brutal training.”

“Must have been Moehl’s character, too,” Willi said, much to our astonishment. “I told you he was the melancholy type. Sooner or later he probably would have done it anyway, even without the barracks or without a brute like Meier.”

Several days later Meier was transferred to our field regiment, a motorized unit, and we were officially informed that he’d volunteered for the front.

We had a new front—we were at war with Soviet Russia.

Orders came down from the High Command to speed up our training-replacements were needed for the eastern front.

We were told to get ready for a forced march to reach a training center, fifty-four miles distant, in two days. In full regalia, equipment and all, we marched off. Ahead of us strutted the regimental band, all gleaming brass. The township had started to celebrate our heroism in advance.

Then we sang—new-fangled martial songs we’d learned without enthusiasm—but now we blared them at the top of our lungs.

After a mile or so the band turned back to the town. With it went all our self-confidence, all our young pride. The glamour was over. All that remained was a crowd of miserable recruits who’d have to march fifty-four miles in two days.

“It won’t be so bad,” Franzl said, unbuttoning his collar. It was a field day for us: discipline was slackened, we were allowed to talk on the march, undo our collars and sling or shoulder our rifles as we pleased.

Behind us, someone was telling spicy stories. We listened and joined in the laughs. Pille produced a couple of pretty dirty jokes himself. Each time he got to the punch line he ran ahead, poking his hooked nose over our shoulders to make sure we hadn’t missed any of it. I thought of Willi, who was bound to blush violently and then blame it on the sun.

After three hours we began to find the blazing sun acutely unpleasant. Our shirts were drenched with sweat, our tongues stuck to our palates, the rifles chafed our shoulders and all talk died down.

We slogged on and on—left, right, left, right—our eyes fixed on the dusty boot heels of the man in front, hour after hour. There’d be many more hours to go before we reached the day’s destination. The heat was terrific. Soon the first men were dropping out from sunstroke. Medical orderlies hurried along and held some stuff under their noses, and as soon as the victims came to they had to go on marching. No one was to stay behind: those were the orders.

Toward dusk we were at last allowed to collapse in the hangars of some airfield. Almost no one was interested in food—all we wanted was sleep.

The next day, the men were dropping like flies. Peasant women were lining the road with their buckets of water. We lapped it up like so many dogs, soaked our handkerchiefs and tied them around our necks. Soon we had to ask the women to pour the water right over us.

On and on we went, our feet a mass of blisters, some of us limping badly. I could barely drag myself along. It wasn’t the blisters that finished me off, though: I must have sprained my right foot. I was absolutely bushed—I couldn’t go on. Without a word Franzl took my pack and Pille carried my rifle. Then Lieutenant Straub came limping along.

“What’s the trouble? You’re not going to conk out, are you? Do you think you can make it?”

“I guess I can, Lieutenant,” I said, hobbling along wearily and dragging the injured foot.

At last we had arrived—and now I collapsed. When I came to, I was lying on a cot, with Franzl and Pille beside me. I pulled off my boots. There was a greenish-brown mark on the instep, but scarcely any swelling.

Franzl slung me on his back and carried me to the regimental doctor. Half the battalion was there. The young medic touched the discolored mark. “Looks to me like a classical metatarsal fracture,” he said, but he looked as if he couldn’t believe it. “How on earth did that ever happen?”

It was not easy, parting from the others. We’d wanted to be together when we got detailed to the front, and now I had to go to hospital. But Pille reassured me: “Take it easy, Benno, old man, we’ll keep your place open for you.”

Franzl urged me to make the most of my time. “God alone knows what’s in store for us,” he said.

There were dozens of men from our battalion in the hospital. Our forced march continued to be the main topic. Some of the fellows thought it was meant to toughen us up for the advance into Russia, but others believed the whole business would be over in three or four weeks. A few were more cautious and gave it two or three months. There was even one who said it would take a whole year, but we laughed right in his face.

“How long did it take us in Poland, or in France, for that matter?”

There was never any question we’d beat the Russians: even the blackest pessimist never suspected defeat.

The radio triumphantly announced one smashing success after another. The Reds were in headlong flight. At every mention of our advancing victorious armies I swelled with pride.

However, we didn’t have to wait long for the first disillusionment. A hospital train arrived, the first from Russia, and the orderlies began bringing in men with missing limbs, blood-streaked uniforms, blood-soaked bandages on legs, arms, heads and chests, and we looked at the pale, distorted faces with their sunken eyes.

One of the wounded from Russia, a swarthy, thick-lipped fellow, told us all about it. According to him, it was pretty grim. The Reds were fighting desperately and we’d suffered heavy losses. The advance was continuing swiftly, but at a price which in the long run we might not be able to pay. But above all else, the Russians had vastly greater numbers of men under arms.

I spent six peaceful weeks in hospital. By that time the fracture was healed and I went off to join my company, wondering anxiously whether I’d be able to catch up with my pals. At long last I reached the barracks where my platoon was quartered.

I opened the door, and dropped into an ant heap, with men scurrying in all directions. They were packing. The Sheikh saw me first. His eyes narrowed in sheer astonishment. Then he waved his plump arms, cracking his knuckles like castanets. “Oh my aching back!” he cried. “Is that really you, Benno? Come to my bosom, apple of my eye!”

In a moment they were all around me, Franzl shaking my hand till it ached and lanky Pille almost breaking my back as he slapped me on the shoulder. Willi’s eyes glowed as he looked at me through his glasses. He seemed frailer than ever.

Pille laughed. “Why, man,” he said, “we were talking about you this very minute. You’re just in the nick of time. Did you see the marching orders? We’re off this very evening!”

Franzl said: “Go see if you can come along. It would be grand if we could all of us stick together.”

We had a new company commander, a captain with grizzled temples. He left me the choice to do another training course or go straight to the front with the others.

“I wonder,” he said, “if you’ve really thought this out. Do you really want to give up your convalescent leave? And...what was I going to say?...I wonder if you haven’t got the wrong notions about this Russian campaign.”

I stared in astonishment. The questions were put sharply, like commands, but there was something in his voice that seemed to convey a different meaning. He was a decent man, not a bastard like Meier; stern, but human. Did he think I was one of those fools itching to come to grips with the enemy? No, whatever illusions we might have had at one time, the NCOs in camp had knocked them out of us. No, we’d merely promised each other to stick together—that was all.

“Come on,” the captain barked. “Can’t you make up your mind?”

There were many things I could have told him. But all I said was that I’d like to go with the others—I’d thought it over carefully—and then I thanked him, and left.

We set out that evening at seven. A passenger train took us to a little town teeming with troops ready to move. In a long column we marched to the railway junction, where an endless train of freight cars stood waiting. The vast concreted yard was thick with field-gray uniforms, packs and rifles. In the front cars were field howitzers; then came a number of field kitchens, and 2 cm. ack-ack guns and double-barreled antiaircraft machine guns were placed at regular intervals throughout the train against low-flying planes.

At ten the train was packed to the last comer and about midnight, after two ineffectual attempts, the unwieldy monster was slowly set in motion. Where to—the northern, southern or central section of the eastern front? We didn’t know. We weren’t even sure whether we were headed for Russia at all.

We were forty in our car. Eventually we reached Breslau and entered Poland. Children and women surrounded the train begging for bread. They spoke a foreign language, but their gestures were understandable enough. We gave them food—we could spare it then.

We crossed the Soviet frontier at Przemysl, and saw the first bomb damage. The formerly Russian part of the place had been badly hit. This was where the attack had begun. We were silent as we saw all this destruction, oppressed by the great misery this war was going to inflict. Piles of ruins; chimneys sticking out of the rubble; houses cut in two, revealing the secrets of each floor; iron girders snapped like matches; shattered beams, collapsed walls, utter chaos where once had been normal life—the labors of centuries turned to ashes in a few short hours.

We traveled on, past more ruins, crashed trees and shell craters. Here and there were the first disabled tanks, death-dealing monsters now shattered by steel. The farther we traveled, the greater the wreckage. Over there was a tank bogged down in a marsh; another was overturned, like a dead bug. Tanks with their giant tracks ripped off by mines...tanks without their conning towers, decapitated .. .

We began to feel gloomy and depressed. Our thoughts turned toward home and we wondered what was lying ahead of us.

“Everybody out! Line up in front of your cars!”

We’d been traveling for two weeks, and could hardly believe that the train had stopped for good. We gathered our stuff and leaped out, moving awkwardly on stiff legs.

We lined up, rifles piled high, packs in front of us. The company commanders were summoned to the CO. We were allowed to walk about, provided we kept in sight.

Our train stood at a loading ramp. Pille set out to have a look at the nearby station. On the way, Willi remarked dejectedly: “So this is as far as the German trains go. This is our last link with home.”

Vinnitza was the name of the town, hastily scrawled in German underneath the Russian characters. The station was big and quite modern and almost untouched. A single bomb had stripped a patch of roof and scarred the front. Of course all the windows were blown out.

Near the station, a long train of open freight cars was waiting. Seeing some men of another regiment hanging around, the Sheikh asked them what the transport was for. One of them turned his head. “Are you blind?” he growled. “Look over there—here they come.”

We suddenly saw a long, earth-brown snake slowly winding its way toward us. From it came a subdued hum, like that from a beehive. Prisoners of war. Russians, six deep. We couldn’t see the end of the column. As they drew nearer the terrible stench which met us made us heave; it was like the biting stench of caged lions combined with the filthy odor of monkeys in a zoo.

But these were not animals—they were men. We wanted to get away from the foul-smelling cloud which enveloped them, but what we saw held us transfixed where we stood and we forgot about our nausea. Were they really human beings, these gray-brown figures, these shadows lurching toward us, stumbling and staggering, creatures with nothing left but a last flicker of will that enabled them to keep on marching? All the misery in the world seemed to be concentrated here in this group. As if this were not enough, there was a gruesome barrage of screams and wails, groans, lamentations and curses, which intermingled with the brutal orders of the guards.

As one man shuffled away from the ranks a rifle butt came crashing down between his shoulder blades. and drove him gasping back into place. Another with a head wound ran a few steps ahead, his gestures almost grotesque in their persuasiveness, and begged one of the horrified local inhabitants for a scrap of bread. A leather whip lashed around his shoulders and yanked him back into line. A lanky fellow stepped aside to urinate, and when he, too, was forced back he kept passing water anyway, but he never stopped marching.

Very few among them wore regular boots; the majority had rags tied around their feet with string. How many miles had they marched? We looked into faces that were more dead than alive. Often the eyes were burning with such hatred that they seemed to consume themselves; but the next instant, after the strange fashion of this people, they were all humility, anxiously eyeing the guards and their swishing whips.

The head of this mass of humanity had now reached the cars, and like cattle they were driven in. One man was so exhausted that he couldn’t climb in but fell back onto the tracks. There was the crack of a pistol, and as if struck by lightning the Russki crumpled in a heap, blood oozing from his half-opened lips.

When the brute who had shot him passed us Franzl leaped at him. “I’ll kill you, you swine!” he shouted. “Who ordered you to murder this man?” But the other just gaped, uncomprehending. “Pull yourself together, man,” he said. “Fresh out, I suppose? This is no kindergarten. You’ll soon get that baby talk knocked out of you!” We stood paralyzed.

Franzl clenched his fists. “The bastard talks German,” he said. “He wears the same uniform as we do.”

“And that’s the scum we’ll have to call Kamerad from now on,” Pille muttered grimly.

We were on the move. Only a few more miles, we were told. It was always the same: only a few more miles. To pass the time, we sang old marching songs or argued about God and the world. But we couldn’t get those prisoners out of our heads. Whatever we talked about, we always got back to that subject.

“Did you see the uniformed women?” somebody asked. “There was a whole flock of them in that group.”

The speaker was an older man, a corporal, with broad shoulders and a big head. He had a deep, ponderous voice, and he’d nod with each word as if to underline it. We called him Kovak, though that was only the first part of his long name: an unpronounceable mouthful if there ever was one. He’d been here before, in the very first days of the campaign, and we found him good company. “More fanatical than the worst commissars, their women,” he continued, hammering out the words. “Got the very devil inside them.”

“Do you mean to say they handle a gun?”

“You bet they do, man. Did you think they spent their time making doilies?”

The sun was scorching and we were dripping with sweat. Fortunately we had only our field packs to carry. Behind us came a column of loaded horse-drawn wagons, piled high with our gear.

Soon we had the first foot casualties, wearily limping along, striving to keep up with us. Then somebody had the idea of waiting for one of the baggage wagons and clambering on top of the load. Others followed suit. Two days later all the wagons were overloaded, and when at last one of them collapsed under the weight all riding was strictly forbidden. Now the limpers hung on to the sides, and only a few with a special medical certificate continued to ride.

We shuffled on and on, day after day. We were so exhausted we could hardly speak. We plodded along in complete apathy, eyes fixed on the heels of the man in front. We scarcely wasted a glance on the many destroyed Soviet tanks. But here and there when we came upon shattered hulks baring the black cross of the Swastika, or when we saw the wreckage of German aircraft lying in the fields, we began to exchange uneasy glances. Those wrecks seemed to spell a warning.

The Sheikh was all in, waddling on his flat feet like a lame duck. “Go to the medic and get yourself a certificate,” I said.

“What’s the use? Look at those wagons—they’re all full up.”

The next morning, there was no sign of him or his rifle and pack. When we finally spotted him we could scarcely believe our eyes: there was that crafty sonuvabitch triumphantly riding in a damned horse cart of his own!

The animal was an old mare, practically on her last leg, but she managed to pull him along. He’d spent the whole night foraging around till he found a peasant who “sold” him the vehicle and horse. Must have been quite a transaction, I thought.

The mileage we covered in a day dwindled rapidly; there was scarcely an able-footed man among us. And no way of telling how long this would go on!

Then the marching, quite unexpectedly, came to an end. We came up with an endless column of trucks waiting for us.

Now we moved much faster east, a cool breeze whistling about our ears Our faces were unrecognizable, covered thickly with grime and dust. But our morale improved rapidly, especially when we were given some coffee and schnapps. As far as we were concerned, this ride could go on till doomsday. But our pleasure was short-lived: we soon arrived.

Companies were broken up. We were asked what we’d done in civilian life, what training we’d had, any engineering? Kovak told us: “You’ve got to tell them you’ve held a driver’s license. Then you’ll get into a mechanized unit, maybe a supply column. That’s the job. No more footslogging.”

It seemed our luck held out: they needed drivers. Franzl was the only one, except for myself, who had actually passed the test; Pille and Willi had at least a notion about driving. But the Sheikh, though he’d once owned a motor bike, had never sat behind the steering wheel of a car. Bold as brass, he told the top sergeant he had all the peacetime licenses in the world—let them check with his family if they liked. The sergeant of course had other things to worry about and took the Sheikh’s word for it: he needed another driver.

The next day, we were transferred to a transport unit—Kovak, the five of us, and eleven others.

The Sheikh was my co-driver. They gave us a dilapidated old Opel, Franzl got a Ford, and he and Pille spent the whole day tinkering with it. Willi was now top dog: personal chauffeur to our CO.

We became the rear-guard for the engineers, a pretty cushy job. Only bombers and low-flying planes were bothering us from time to time. True, there was some talk of partisans. They were supposed to be specialists for trapping cars.

The actual driving was pretty tough work. After a rainfall the trucks would skid all over the road; sometimes they’d tip right over.

Our CO, Lieutenant Ziebland, was a decent guy. He had no objection to our growing a mustache. The Sheikh grew a beard. No one would have believed we were barely nineteen.

The food was excellent. We had our own mobile kitchen and a damn good cook, from Hamburg. Whenever we spotted anything edible we requisitioned it; and Pille, being a terrific eater, could always be counted on to find something.

On one occasion he managed to requisition a pig. Its outraged owner, a wrinkled old woman, ran after him and in language that was quite obviously unprintable demanded her property back. The Sheikh, a diplomat from way back, appeased her with a bar of chocolate and let her share in the roast. After all, it was her pig.

Kovak was from Upper Silesia. He spoke fluent Polish and could get by in Russian, so Lieutenant Ziebland made him billeting officer. Kovak took the job seriously and performed miracles, requisitioning the best beds as well as feminine companionship for those who wanted it.

But the finest four-poster loses its charm when it’s crawling with bed bugs. At one time I tossed all night trying to escape from the greedy little pests.

Kovak was disconsolate. He said this sort of thing hurt his reputation. He cheered up considerably when the Sheikh suggested: “Why don’t we turn that fine bed over to Wurm, that no-good non-com who doles out our rations?”

It was a brilliant idea. Sergeant Wurm, an arrogant bully who’d been pushing us around, for once agreed with us. He just loved that elegant billet Kovak got for him.

When Wurm emerged the next morning, he was unrecognizable. He looked as if he’d slept with his head in a beehive.

We reached the Ukrainian town of Mariupol, on the Sea of Azov. Kovak billeted us in a very nice house with a pleasant elderly couple. We were given a hearty welcome and felt quite at home. Our hosts spoke rather good German. On the mantelpiece was the photograph of a young man in Soviet naval uniform. Yes, that was one of their three sons—the other two were in the infantry—but since the war began nothing had been heard of them.

It was only then that we realized for the first time that this whole war was utter madness. These old people treated us as if we’d been their own sons—and in return for their hospitality we might find ourselves shooting at their boys, doing our best to kill them.

We planned to go to the movies, but the town was teeming with troops and the theater was packed. We decided to do some pub-crawling. Kovak was in good form and told us off-color stories. The Sheikh accosted every girl he met, but that’s as far as he got. Willi kept talking about his folks and was homesick.

Soon it was evening and the stars came out. Slowly we made our way back. In the distance there was some hectic air activity. Then the kites came nearer and we saw their red and green navigation lights. Franzl shook his head. “Flying around as if it was peacetime,” he grumbled. There were three of them.

Suddenly Kovak looked up in alarm. “Say, those aren’t ours! They’re Russkies.”

“No kidding! What would they have lights for?”

“Camouflage, I reckon.”

As if to confirm his words, suddenly all hell broke loose. We flung ourselves headlong to the ground. Then more bombs dropped, but this time farther off. The house nearest to us had received a direct hit. Smoke was rising from the rubble. Two hundred yards off, a bomb had ripped up the street and caught three of our regulars. Two were unrecognizable. A moment ago they’d been men like ourselves; now they were just a messy pulp. The third had his right foot torn off. He was quite a young guy, faintly groaning in a pool of blood which was spreading rapidly.

Kovak ran over and gave him first aid. Kovak had a medical course to his credit. Then the youngster was taken to the hospital, unconscious.

The air attacks were now coming in regular waves. We were roused several times that night. The next day our unit suffered its first losses. The commander had ordered a clean-up of the camouflaged trucks. The moment it happened we were lined up beside them. I counted sixteen bombers flying in relays. The aircraft in the lead dropped a stick each. I shouted to Franzl to take cover, and leaped into the ditch by the roadside. The Sheikh followed me. The very earth shuddered and I thought my eardrums would burst.

Our truck was in flames, another minus its canopy—the kitchen truck. Two men sprawled nearby, one of them our cook from Hamburg. You’d have thought he was still alive: only a tiny splinter was sticking out of his skull. At first I couldn’t recognize the other—his face was down-ward—then I saw it was Wurm, the NCO, the back of his head a bloody pulp.

Close by we dug two holes. Ziebland said a few words—about the fate of a soldier, and about our fatherland. But the words obviously meant nothing to him; he was just going through a routine speech. And two bodies were wrapped in shelter halves and lowered into the ground.

The easy life was over. That night, it turned cold. Driving was an ordeal, particularly since we were often day and night on the road. Twice we had a skirmish with partisans—we came out of it all right—but now it was safer to carry automatic pistols instead of carbines.

We were ordered to take two trucks to Zaporozhe with rubber dinghies and materiel for the sappers. The commander picked me, and I asked for Franz’ and his Ford to go with me. The Sheikh and Pille went along as co-drivers.

On the way back, just before dark, Franzl’s Ford conked out. I went on ahead with the Sheikh to find a billet for the night. We soon located a farmhouse. As it stood back from the road, we left our truck and walked the rest of the way, leaving our weapons behind.

The gate was at the back. No one seemed to be home. All we found was a dying cow on a manure heap, bellowing to high heaven. “That bloody animal’s getting on my nerves,” the Sheikh was saying. “I’ll go get a shooting iron to finish her off.”

I said quickly: “You stay right where you are. We’ll see to that later. Can’t you see the old woman at the window?”

At that moment the face vanished. We tried to get inside the house, but the doors were locked. The Sheikh rapped on the window. “Come on, sweetheart,” he shouted. “Open up!”

The door was suddenly unbolted—but it wasn’t the old woman who came out. Two men emerged. They were followed by others, till there were seven of them. Pretty shady-looking customers: dirty, unshaven, tousled, in rags. Bandits? The Sheikh’s face dropped. “Oh my aching back,” he muttered. “Where on earth did they spring from?”

We were instantly surrounded. “Papyrossa,” one of them said. Nothing unusual about their wanting cigarettes; every Russkie asked for them. The only surprise was the threat in the man’s tone.

The Sheikh gave me a meaningful glance and took out a pack of cigarettes. Clearly these men were partisans, though apparently unarmed. No doubt they’d noticed that we had no weapons, either. Damn ticklish situation. The Sheikh smiled, pretending he suspected no harm, and held out his pack. He meant to gain time till the others came up—surely Franzl and Pille couldn’t be far off. But the Russian didn’t take just one cigarette: he took the whole pack.

The Sheikh laughed as if he were vastly amused, and said to me: “A kick in the guts and back to the truck!” From his tone, it might have been a humorous request to the Russian to return his cigarettes. But the Russian swore violently, took a step forward and tried to put his hand in my pocket. I turned to prevent this. Then he grabbed hold of my greatcoat.

The rest happened like lightning. The Sheikh dropped all pretense. He swung around and shouted: “Look back there!” One of the gang was running toward our truck. God Almighty! Suppose he got hold of those automatics! The men around us exchanged hasty words. One of them stooped down, picked up a heavy club, and brought it down on the Sheikh’s shoulders. The Sheikh stumbled forward, and I caught a blow in the face that seemed to take my head off. Then they came crashing down on us.

Now a little 635 pistol is a pretty thing. It looks nice and harmless and you can conceal it in your hand. I’d acquired one of these only a few days before from a regular, carrying it around in the pocket of my greatcoat. The Sheikh had no idea what a trump I held. While he was taking out his cigarettes, my hand was already in my pocket trying to slip the safety catch off that little pistol—which was not so simple because from time to time it got stuck —but I managed it at the last moment. Then I whipped out the little weapon and pressed the trigger four times. One of the scoundrels collapsed and doubled up on top of me. Another got it in the arm, and roaring with pain he and the rest of them started racing for shelter to a nearby copse, while I was trying to hit them on the run.

The Sheikh got to his feet. “Oh my poor bloody skull!” he groaned. “God damn those bastards...”

That’s when I thought of the rascal who’d gone off toward our truck. I still had one shot left, and set out after him. But at the same instant there was a whole volley of shots, with the familiar ring of a German automatic. But who on earth was the Russki shooting at? More shots—and then I knew they couldn’t come from our truck.

It was Franzl. There was the old Ford chugging along toward us, with Franzl on the running board, pistol at the ready. He was firing at my Opel. The Russki who’d got there was now trying to escape. Franzl leaped off the running board, aimed carefully and emptied the magazine. The Russki flopped on his face. I ran up to him—he was dead.

Franzl reached me. “Say,” he hollered, “that was a close call! Where’s old Sheikh?”

“Behind the house. He’s taken quite a beating, but I guess he’ll be all right.”

Pille came running with a new load of ammo. Franzl reloaded and slung the gun over his shoulder.

“It didn’t take us long to get the old Ford going,” he said. “We were on our way when we heard the shooting. Was that you?”

“Sure,” I said. “You know my little six-three-five.”

“First rate,” he said. “I must get one for myself. So, hearing those shots I said to myself, something’s cooking. Then I saw that bastard running for your truck. A good thing he was wearing that sheepskin, or I might have thought it was one of you.”

We combed the house, but all we found was the old woman, who was now jabbering away something fierce. We discussed our next step. Pointless to hunt up the partisans. It was now dark and the neighborhood was full of hideouts. So I said: “Let’s clear out.”

That dying cow was still bellowing outside, so Franzl gave her the coup de grâce. The young fellow with my bullet in him lay huddled up, groaning faintly. We bandaged him up and heaved him into the Opel.

“Doesn’t make much sense,” Franzl remarked. “As a partisan he’ll be shot anyway. Might as well finish him off here.”

But we knew that was empty talk: who was going to do the job? None of us was up to it—not yet.

That evening we handed our wounded prisoner over to the commandant of a little town, a young lieutenant. We were given a first-class supper and comfortable billets, and slept well into the next day.

Our unit was broken up. We had to hand over our trucks. I was sorry to lose my old Opel: I’d grown rather fond of it. But with the intense cold, driving was no longer a pleasure. No mittens were warm enough to keep your fingers from getting numb, you could hardly hold the wheel and your feet ached with the frost.

Twenty men were transferred to a special service company; the five of us and Kovak and a few others from our old battalion were among them. Lieutenant Ziebland made a short farewell speech and shook hands all around. When he got to the Sheikh, he grinned and said: “Rather scraggly, isn’t it?”, referring to that beard. (The Sheikh was so peeved that he shaved it off that same night.) His farewell to Willi, who’d been his personal driver, was specially cordial. “Keep a stiff upper lip, my boy,” he said to him. “Even this show will someday be over.”

A truck took us to Kremenchug. Our new commander was a little captain, a real stuffed shirt, who greeted us with a lecture on discipline and duty; not a very promising start. However, his bark was worse than his bite, and in a couple of days we had him tagged. Captain Krebs was a showoff and a real stinker for spit and polish, but we soon learned to handle him.

The top sergeant was an elderly fellow, all sweetness and light, and looking after his men like a hen after her chicks. The NCOs were all guys like ourselves and we got along fine. But we were struck by the fact that their average age was rather high: most of them were family men with grown children.

As I said, old man Krebs was no trouble. We played up to his vanity, and became his “illustrious company.” Besides, thanks to his vanity we had a couple of capacious buses—a luxury that made other units go green with envy. For his own use Krebs had requisitioned a magnificent car, which in spite of the muddy Russian roads had to be kept in shining splendor at all times. But for all his shortcomings Krebs looked after everything—food, family allowances, and morale.

Over night the temperature dropped to ten below zero. We huddled in our buses, our teeth chattering. A new munitions dump had been set up at Stalino and we were to take over guard duty there. We were hoping against hope that at least we’d be moving to warm quarters.

But we found neither warmth nor even quarters. Blue-lipped and shivering like aspens we lined up one evening outside a couple of sheds without doors or windows. No trace of a stove. The last occupants must have been Russkies, and they’d certainly stripped those buildings! These were supposed to be our sleeping quarters—at ten below zero.

“This is going to be a lot of fun,” Franzl said. The Sheikh used every cussword in his rich vocabulary. Kovak and Franzl started a fist fight, just to get warm.

Since we had no alternative we began to settle down. At least we had enough room. A single storm lantern cast a miserable light, but it was enough to spot a wire stretched across the shed a foot from the ground. Otherwise we might have come a cropper. But we didn’t bother to remove it. We just huddled together like a litter of puppies and tried to sleep. But the frost was like a poisonous reptile wriggling in through our clothes and blankets, biting at our toes and fingers, creeping over our arms and thighs and down our backs. I set myself a deadline: if I wasn’t asleep in a quarter of an hour I’d go outside and run around all night.

The next minute, however, there was one hell of an explosion. After the first moment of fright I realized I was still alive and the shed was still standing. But we had to get out of there in a hurry. So that was it—the other shed was gone, plain vanished. In its place was a jumbled pile of planks and writhing arms and legs. Most of the guys, however, got out from under without help, though quite a few were hurt, only one of them badly.

What had happened? There’d been a suspicious wire in their shed, too. They’d spotted it, but when one of the fellows stepped out to go to the latrine he forgot about the wire and his foot caught in it. The wire was connected to a land mine intended to destroy a tank, so the explosion was directional, a circumstance to which the men owed their lives.

The wire in our shed also turned out to be a booby trap, which we now cautiously deactivated. Then followed a painstaking search with flashlights and matches for other booby traps. We now suspected them behind every loosened slat or protruding nail.

But there was more dirty work to come. The next morning, after a night in which we died a thousand deaths from cold and the tea froze in our thermoses, we found a smaller shed near the barracks, with a magnificent iron stove in it. In a jiffy, Kovak got some paper and kindling and was just going to light up when he noticed a strange metal object inside—and to our consternation he fished out a bomb. There was another one in the ash can. “Those are Russki heavy mortar stuff,” Kovak said with a frown.

By now we were so alarmed that we suspected bombs under every pile of rubbish. Pille stepped high like an old hen, just to be on the safe side—a rather funny sight considering his long, spindly legs. But not even the Sheikh laughed; there was m fact nothing to laugh about—only the Devil would have felt at home here.

We soon fitted out the remaining shed and in a week or so we’d made it quite comfortable. We managed to requisition three stoves, and kept them going night and day. But the mercury dropped still lower. Sentry duty became a torture, no matter how heavily you dressed. We looked like teddy bears: two pairs of underpants, two pairs of trousers, two sweaters, army fatigues, field uniform, and the heavy fur coat issued specially for sentry duty. Our headgear was fitted with earmuffs. Only eyes and nose were uncovered. The keen wind penetrated the cloth around our chins and thrust thousands of needles into the skin. Not a day passed without someone’s nose getting frostbitten.

Sentry duty lasted two hours at a time, followed by two hours of warming up. At night, we got four hours’ rest.

“This is a hell of a note,” said Kovak. “But think of the poor bastards out there in the trenches!”

We often caught the rumble of the front line east of us. Once some Russian aircraft roared overhead, blasting away with all they had—short, sharp bursts, and bullets whirling up the snow all over the place. Small cannon. We threw ourselves down in the snow, scared stiff because of all that ammo around us, but nothing happened.

A few hours later the sentries discovered something peculiar: a small dump of shells that looked more like bombs; like tadpoles, in fact, with a big head and a long, narrow tail. They were sizable blockbusters, each one of them in its own packing case. These particular missiles were the object of much loving care on our part; fantastic stories were told about their striking power, and the regulars called them “Stukas on foot.” The tail contained rocket material which propelled the things. Now the astounding fact was that one of these monsters had actually been hit by one of the Russkies’ wing cannons, but it never went off. The guard reported this to Captain Krebs.

The following day, an artillery man came around to check the detonator. Afterwards he congratulated us on missing our chance of a one-way ticket to Paradise—all the rocket stuff had been put out of action by the extreme cold.

For days there had been such a fierce snowstorm that when we went out to take up our sentry posts we could hardly fight our way through it. The ammo dumps, scattered over the ruins of a mammoth factory, turned into snow hummocks, the outlines of the ruined walls merged with the gray sky, the whole scene was blurred and eerie.

Sentry duty under such conditions is a constant war with time. You set out and make your rounds a couple of times, but after half an hour you start listening to your watch, wondering if it hasn’t stopped after all.

Willi was with me, his head bent and bracing himself against the wind. We stomped around in the snow, trying to warm our feet, till we ached all over.

I shouted to Willi: “Let’s get close to that wall, come on, there’ll be some shelter.”

I crawled to a spot, from where I could keep an eye on the ammo dump, and Willi pressed after me. From what little I could see of his face he looked like a teenager.

“Tell me,” I said, “was that your twentieth, or your nineteenth?” He’d just had a birthday.

“Nineteenth,” he said. He was the youngest of our group.

We’d wished him happy birthday and planned to give him a present, but all we had was cigarettes and he didn’t smoke.

“What’s the news from home?”

His mother had sent him a very nice birthday parcel—socks, handkerchiefs, mittens, also a pair of slippers tied with a pink ribbon (there were quite a lot of wisecracks on account of that pink ribbon) .

“From home?” said Will, “That won’t interest you much. Just another letter from my mother—the things mothers always say.”

“Come on now, out with it! Why shouldn’t I be interested?”

“Oh, it’s mostly about my birthday.”

“What did she say about your birthday?” I blew into my mittens to warm my hands.

“She says she celebrated it at home with my two aunts. They talked about me all the time. They’re sorry for me.” He looked embarrassed.

Calmly, I brushed the snow off the barrel of my carbine. “What else?”

“She gave me some advice—never to be rash, never to volunteer for anything. She says there’s no need for me to get the Iron Cross. She thinks it’s all humbug.”

My feet were icy. It was absolutely scandalous that we were still without felt boots. Things always turned out different from what mothers at home imagined they’d be: here, behind the lines, and at the front.

“She also says I ought to keep away from women and not do anything foolish.” Willi rubbed his nose and smiled uneasily.

Little by little, Willi became more communicative and I could see he was glad to unburden himself to someone.

“Mother prays a lot for me. She says I ought to keep up my prayers, too. But I don’t pray very often these days. There isn’t much chance for it in all this turmoil now, is there?”

When, I wondered, had I prayed last? It must have been years ago. Willi gave me a friendly nudge. “Another thing she says is I should stick to you guys, you and Franzl, and tell you to keep an eye on me. Now isn’t that really something?”

I laughed into the howling wind, but I was far from feeling cheerful. What on earth could I possibly do to keep this kid out of trouble? I changed the subject:

“What do you plan to take up when the war’s over?”

“Teaching. I mean to take a degree in history, geography and German, and my uncle will give me the money.”

He’d lost his father years back. Now he took off one of his mittens and fished a handkerchief from his pocket. Then he asked me abruptly:

“How long do you think the war will last?”

I strained my eyes into the gray veil before us. It seemed to me I could see something moving out there. A dog, perhaps?

“Willi,” I said quickly, “look over there, near that girder —see anything?”

“Yes, I do. It’s somebody crawling.”

I slipped back the safety catch on my rifle, pulled my right hand out of its glove and leaped forward at the moving target—a man! When he saw me, he jumped to his feet and made off. “Halt! Stay where you are!” I shouted. “Stoi!”

He ran as hard as he could. I fired a shot over his head. He zigzagged, then stumbled straight into a snowdrift. He got bogged down, made an effort to get out, went down again, then leaped like a goat, still without making any headway. Quietly I took aim. The distance wasn’t great even though visibility was poor. I couldn’t miss. But Willi laid his hand on the gun.

“Don’t shoot,” he pleaded.

I lowered the barrel in utter astonishment. “What on earth has come over you?”

He looked like a worried bird. “Perhaps he’ll surrender,” he said. “In any case, Le can’t get away.”

Rather annoyed, I ran toward the drift, with Willi at my heels. But by this time the man had got through to firmer ground. He doubled back, raced along a fence, and straight into the arms of the next sentry. There was a sudden shot —and down he went.

He died three hours later in our shed, without regaining consciousness. From the papers that were found on him—Captain Krebs ordered Kovak to translate them—it was clear that the man had been a spy.

Willi was very upset about the whole incident. I tried to argue with him. “Look here, Willi, if that man had got through it might have cost a lot of our men at the front their lives.”

Willi nodded—he knew anyway what I meant. But I was sure that in spite of this he’d try to prevent me from firing if anything like that happened again.

We now moved on farther east in our buses, vastly relieved that another unit had taken over that wretched guard duty. But we’d counted our chickens before they were hatched. An important supply distribution center was waiting for new guards. The special unit to which we were attached had orders at once, before daylight, to make its way to a Russian prisoner-of-war camp, to take working parties back to the distribution center for loading and unloading.

When we first marched into that camp, we could barely catch our breath. Behind twelve-foot-high barbed-wire fences with watchtowers and machine guns and searchlight emplacements at intervals were thousands upon thousands of Russians, housed in primitive barracks. Each individual barrack was surrounded by barbed wire. The setup resembled a bear pit, and this impression was strengthened by the murderous big dogs which the guards held on short leads. The whole place exuded the same revolting, nauseating stink we’d smelled before when we saw our first transport of prisoners.

One of the camp guards opened the door to one of the barracks and shouted something. The prisoners came pouring out, falling all over one another. A sharp word of command lined them up three deep in front of us. A German-speaking prisoner, the barrack leader appointed by the guards, strove with incredible brutality to get some order into their ranks. The camp guard counted off fifty men, and sent the others back inside. Some of them tried to smuggle their way into the working party, but the Russkies who’d already been picked for the job fought back their rivals, yelling for the barrack leader. And he let the culprits have it, lashing out with a whip right and left, hollering and cursing, without a trace of pity for his own people.

All this was taking too long for the guard, so he slipped the leash of his quivering hound. With one leap the dog was in the thick of it and the next thing we knew he had the barrack leader’s arm fast between his teeth. The camp guard watched all this with utter indifference; it never occurred to him to call off his dog. Meanwhile the barrack leader was trying desperately to shake the animal off. He looked pleadingly toward the camp guard. But when one of the beaten-up Russians tried to run back to the barracks, the dog dropped the barrack leader’s arm. It was after the other man like lightning and got a good grip on his buttocks. The new victim started bawling like a baby, but with a final frantic effort he managed to reach the barracks door, leaving patches of trouser seat and underpants between the jaws of the hound. I never saw a more befuddled animal in my life. The camp guard roared with laughter. We could hear his coarse guffaw even after we’d set out with our fifty living skeletons.

When we left that place of misery behind we drew a deep breath. Our prisoners swayed like drunken men. Many didn’t even have overcoats. Their uniforms were in tatters hanging loosely over their bones. They carried with them all they possessed—an empty meat can with a bit of wire around it for a handle, a twisted iron spoon. Only a few had a small bundle on their backs, containing perhaps some extra rags to wrap around their feet or a battered water canteen which they dared not carry openly for fear of the envy it might arouse in the others.

The supply distribution center was a level patch of ground, fenced off and housing a few drafty sheds. It was divided into three sections: an ammo dump, a fuel store and a food store. Trucks were continually coming and going, and the prisoners’ job was to load and unload them.

We guards were supposed to help as little as possible, but it wasn’t long before we, too, were hard at work. There was a lot to be done; besides, while working we didn’t feel the cold quite so much.

The Russkies were completely debilitated. They could hardly keep on their feet, let alone perform the physical effort required of them. A team of four could scarcely lift a crate, a job that was child’s play to Franzl and me. But they certainly did their utmost. Every one of them was out to curry favors. They vied with one another, they egged each other on. Then they’d peer over to see if we had noticed their zeal. That way, they hoped to earn better treatment, and perhaps a hunk of bread.

We felt sorry for .hose emaciated creatures. Among them were mere kids, not fully grown, as well as bearded old men who could have been our grandfathers. Without exception, they all begged for a scrap of food or a cigarette. They whined and groveled before us to wheedle something out of us, they were like whipped dogs. And if pity and disgust became too much for us and we did give them something, they’d kneel and kiss our hands and babble words of thanks which must have come from their rich religious vocabulary—and then we just stood there: we simply couldn’t believe it.

These were human beings in whom there was no longer a trace of anything human; these were men who really had turned into animals. We found it nauseating, utterly repulsive. Yet—did we have any right to judge, since we’d never been forced to barter the last vestige of our pride for a crust of bread?

We gave them whatever we could spare. There were strict orders never to give any food to prisoners, but to hell with that! What we did give them was like a drop in the bucket. Nearly every day men died from exhaustion. The survivors, indifferent to all this dying, would cart their dead back to camp, to bury them there. There must have been more prisoners under the ground than there were alive.

One day, behind an ammo case, we found three dead Russians, their faces purple. Frozen to death. For some reason, they’d failed to join up for the march back to camp and had been put down as escapees. Yes, there were men who escaped—but only very, very few. It was tempting enough to slip away while on outside work, but only rarely did a man take advantage of the chance. Given the circumstances, any one of us would have clutched at the slightest opportunity to get away, but the Russian is a different sort of man.

Stray dogs were legion, among them the most extraordinary mongrels; the only thing they had in common was that they were indescribably scrawny. That made no difference to the prisoners. They were hungry—so why not eat roast dog? They were forever trying to catch the wary beasts. They’d also beg us with gestures and bow-wows and bang-bangs to kill a dog for them. There it was—shoot it! And we almost invariably did. It provided some sport for us, and also gave a modicum of pleasure to those human skeletons. Besides, those wild dogs were a regular plague.

When we brought one down, there followed a spectacle that could make a man puke. Yelling like mad, the Russkies would fall on the animal and tear it to pieces with their bare hands even before it was dead. The intestines they’d stuff in their pockets—a sort of iron ration. Then they’d light a fire, skewer bits of dog’s meat on sticks and roast it. There were always fights over the bigger hunks. The burned flesh stank frightfully; there was almost no fat in it.

But they didn’t have roast dog every day. Behind the barracks there was a big midden, a regular mountain of stinking waste, and if we didn’t watch out they’d poke about in it and eat such things as decaying onions, the mere sight of which was enough to turn one’s stomach.

One day, during the loading of provisions, a couple of bottles of vodka were broken and the liquor spilled out on the floor of the truck. The Russians clambered in and licked it up like cats. On the march back to camp three of them collapsed dead drunk.

That’s when Franzl went berserk. He was suddenly like a madman, whacking one of the poor devils with his rifle butt, and the man’s pitiable whimper only made him madder. He snarled with rage, like a great cat, and lashed about him relentlessly, till I leaped at him and grabbed his shoulder.

“God Almighty, Franzl!” I cried. “What on earth has come over you? Pull yourself together. Leave the poor devils alone! They’ll kick the bucket without your help!”

But he shook me off, roaring like a bull. “I can’t bear any more of it! Stop looking at me like that! I’m going crazy! I’m off my rocker! Nothing but this goddamn misery all the time. Nothing but these creatures, these wretched worms! Look at them wriggling on the ground! Can’t you hear them whimpering? They ought to be stamped out once and for all, the foul brutes, just wiped out....”

After this outburst he gradually calmed down, and the strange blaze in his eyes flickered out. “Benno,” he muttered, “you must understand...I simply can’t take this any longer.”

On the march back he was very silent. That night when we turned in he said: “I’m sorry, old man, about this afternoon. I want to get away from here. I’m going to volunteer for the front. Are you with me?”

We had clothes inspection. All men of the special unit had to line up and produce their underwear. Captain Krebs made the inspection himself, but now there was no chicanery. Besides, there was good reason for the inspection: we all had body lice and they were multiplying at a fantastic rate.

The speed at which those parasites can reproduce must be one of the marvels of biology. Every night we sat bent over the oil lamp hunting out the unwanted little visitors. We worked through every piece of clothing, right up to our greatcoats, savagely nipping the creatures between our thumbnails till they popped, or else dropping them on the glowing stove.

The top sergeant now told us to get ready: we were off somewhere else early the next day. The company was being transferred again.

But what about our linen? We’d just rounded up all our dirty things and one of the local girls had agreed to wash them. Who would go to get the laundry? No volunteers. “Let’s toss for it!” I lost. When at last I set out it was already dark.

I knocked. No response. I waited a while and knocked again, this time louder. Then I heard a bed creak. There was the sound of shuffling bare feet; then someone was striking a match. The door opened, and I saw the woman standing there, wrapped in a blanket, her dark hair falling loosely over her shoulders.

“I’ve come for the laundry,” I said. She nodded as if she understood, said something in Russian and motioned me to come in. On the table was a lighted candle. The bed was rumpled. A cat jumped on a chair, humped its back and gazed at me with gleaming green eyes.

The laundry was ready and nicely ironed. While she put the bundle together with one hand, holding up her blanket with the other, I put the loaf of bread I’d brought on the table and added some rubles. One of them fell on the floor. I stopped to pick it up and so did she, and our heads bumped together. I laughed; she laughed, too. But my laugh stuck in my throat, because when she straightened up she forgot to keep hold of her blanket, and it fell. I saw her bare shoulders, her full bosom, the strong thighs. The pungent smell of her hair drove me out of my mind. I seized her hands as they reached down to grab the blanket; I gripped her wrists so hard that she cried out. Her large eyes pleaded, full of fear. It was a young face, with high cheekbones and placid, regular features. She whispered something in her language—I have no idea what.

“Komm,” I said, then almost shouted it: “Komm!”

She gave me an embarrassed smile, but the fear had gone out of her eyes. Then suddenly she nodded and, still smiling, repeated the word—“Komm!”

Deep in the night when I took the laundry back to camp I felt as if I’d been on a three-day binge.

Our next assignment was at a railway junction, the last station before the front line, where the fighting units picked up replacements and supplies.

There was something reassuring about a railway, even though the locomotives and rolling stock were Russian; it reminded us of home, and peacetime. But appearances were deceptive. We soon wished we were out of that place. It was subject to round-the-clock Russian bombing, and there weren’t any air raid warnings, either. After all, what was the point of it when scarcely an hour went by without the crash of bombs?

We were soon reduced to a bundle of nerves. We always had one ear on the alert, and our eyes strained skyward. Then there would be the drone of aircraft we couldn’t see and we’d wait for the rush of bombs as they came down, only to breathe more freely when they didn’t drop too close. We were gradually going to pieces under the strain.

At the same time, there was no break in our duties. I found myself working as an operator in a small telephone exchange. The job itself was quite amusing. Talking to top-ranking officers all the time, you soon take on the crisp accents of a man used to giving orders, and it isn’t long before you find yourself being addressed with real respect. It’s only when the voice at the other end of the line asks if you’re “Major Edelweiss” or “Captain Tannenbaum” that you have to watch your step so they won’t call your bluff.

All names, of course, were cover names near the front; every damned thing was camouflaged. Nor were these anti-spy precautions without foundation, as we were soon to find out.

Nor did the rain of bombs cease a single day. There were never more than three aircraft swooping down, but no sooner were they gone than the next team would be coming up. True, we now had an ack-ack battery to protect us, but they never seemed to start firing till the Russian planes were well away. We suspected that the gunners were scared of revealing their own position—they didn’t want to be bombed themselves—but their idiotic shooting in between raids unnerved us completely.

Only once did a fighter put in an appearance, and that was a clumsy little kite, an Italian. The Russkies were not fast, but they could have given that ramshackle crate a handicap any time. Quite possibly, of course, the guy up there wasn’t too keen on catching up with the Reds. But suddenly he did find himself right in their line of flight, and then he gave them all he had. One of the Russkies spurted smoke and went down in flames. But when the Italian made for another Russian plane he got some of his own medicine. Now it was he who was belching smoke and going down in a spin. Finis. That exhausted our fighter reserves for the time being. All we had left was that phony ack-ack.

I shared a room with Franzl. His bed was up against the wall, opposite the window. Suddenly in the middle of the night there was the familiar drone. Before I could warn Franzl, hell broke loose. The fireworks made such a din that I stuck my head under the blankets and held my hands to my ears. With a tremendous crash our window was blown out, the doors went flying and big chunks of ceiling came down. I struggled out of bed, completely groggy. Franzl was still lying there, tight against the wall. Then I heard him cursing in his characteristic manner. Thank God, he was alive!

Whirring away with my hand-operated dynamo lamp, I played the light over him. There was a hole in the wall as big as a kid’s head. Franzl turned toward me, white as a sheet. Right through his tousled mop of hair ran a straight furrow where a bomb splinter had shaved him clean, with only a red scratch showing on his scalp.

He sat there on the edge of the bed, his head in his hands. “Christ,” he said. “Am I in a bloody funk!”

I could well believe it.

A few nights later we were suddenly roused from bed. “Fall in at the station!”

An ammo train had to be unloaded at top speed. A long column of trucks was ready, to make sure there was no break in the flow of shells. The whole of our special company was roped in, with all ranks on the job. Though the thermometer was at about zero, the sweat stood out on our foreheads. We lugged that stuff around like lunatics. Hardly a word was spoken. If Ivan caught us now, God help us all! We scouted around for some sort of cover, just in case. Kovak found a concrete dugout big enough for all of us.

Those 15-cm. shells made our knees wobbly. Back and forth we went—from train to truck, from truck to train—with Captain Krebs blustering about, keeping things moving, showering orders, cursing. He was the only man who didn’t do a stroke of work.

Then, along came the Russkies. We could hear them droning overhead, searching out their target. There was a flare on the far side of the town, followed by a couple of explosions. The droning receded, again we worked like slaves, and one after another the loaded trucks moved off toward the front.

An hour later, the enemy aircraft were back, dropping more bombs at the other side of the town.

“What the hell are they after?” Pille asked anxiously. “Shut your trap! They’ll ferret us out soon enough!” We were getting more and more jumpy.

The Reds kept circling overhead. For minutes on end nerves were strained to the utmost. Would they discover us? Then suddenly, quite near, we saw two red flares, fired in such a way that they crossed diagonally overhead. More flares came down from the other side—and the cars that were still unloaded stood dead in between! Franzl was livid.

“The bastards!” he yelled. “They must have their spies around here!”

“Quick—down into that dugout!” Kovak hollered. “The curtain’s going up any moment!”

We raced toward the shelter, couldn’t find it right away in the darkness, started to panic, and then at last scrambled down the hole. But nothing happened.

The aircraft went on circling. There seemed to be more of them now. And then the real inferno began—the shattering explosions, the clang of flying metal, the nerve-racking sound of heavy timbers splintering. We huddled close together and ducked our heads.

The ack-ack began to stutter. Through the thunder of exploding bombs we could catch the sound of the barrage of flak high up in the air. The reek of fires was in our nostrils. The whole countryside was lit up. Some bombers were now flying in quite low, their propellers whining like sirens.

The next explosion made the very earth quiver under our feet. That ammo! Metal splinters whizzed over our heads. Beams and chunks of masonry were flying about. All around us the ground seemed to burst asunder.

When at last there was a lull we poked our heads out. The railroad station had collapsed like a deck of cards. The whole area was a mass of smoke and flame. The ammo train was blown to smithereens. The former fuel depot was now one giant crater.

Then the whole show started all over again, the deep drone of the bombers muffled by the thunder of explosions, and the new wave of planes leveled anything that had escaped destruction the first time.

When at last it was all over we crept out of our hole. There was a painful pressure in our ears. Where were the others? One by one, they came crawling out from their hideouts. But many were missing. We started searching. We found many wounded and dead. Then we came upon a crater big enough to hold a dozen; inside it was a mass of blood-stained clothing and torn human flesh. Some men were still groaning. It was so dreadful I began to retch. So that was the true face of war! The company lost nineteen men, and many more were severely wounded that night.

Captain Krebs was a broken man. He wanted to give us brusque orders, but all we could make out was the chattering of his teeth. You would have thought the man had shriveled. I was pretty jittery myself, and so were all the others. But Krebs was so crushed that the very sight of him made me snap out of it. Somehow his agonized tone of voice restored my self-confidence.

Altogether, the wretched life we were leading was beginning to get me down. I had to get away from it. Things couldn’t be any worse at the front—and there, at least, you could strike back. Killing others might drown the fear of getting killed.

I’d already discussed with Franzl the idea of asking for a transfer to the front. Now we all agreed to apply jointly —Pille, the Sheikh, Willi and myself. When Kovak said he’d come with us we could have hugged him. Anyway, the decision wasn’t a hard one to make: orders had come through that the younger men were to be transferred to the front.

We looked for new billets. In the meantime I carried on with my telephone exchange duty. A few days later two bombs fell in the street directly outside the exchange. I dived down instinctively. The window pane went flying over my head and the whole framework came crashing down on my back. The heavy switchboard was punctured with splinters. I clambered out over the nibble into the street.

Two horses were lying beside an overturned wagon. One of the animals was dead; the other was screaming as only a dying horse can scream. Further ahead lay a Ukrainian in his last agony; he was ripped open from belly to chin. His hands kept folding around his quivering intestines as they spilled out, as if he meant to push them back inside. His breath was coming in gasps, and blood-stained foam oozed through his teeth. His eyes, wide open, rolled steadily from left to right, endlessly, as if he were following the pendulum of a clock.

Franzl broke down when he saw the drunken Russian POWs. Now it was my turn to crack. We were going to pot, slowly but surely—one by one. God damn it, if we had to die, at least we wanted to go down fighting! Yes, we’d go to the front and fight for our lives. Perhaps, by becoming murderers ourselves, we might escape being murdered.

I reported to Captain Krebs.

“Oh, there you are,” he said. “I was just going to send for you. Your application has been granted. You’ll be transferred to a combat unit tomorrow. You and the others.”

TWO

PILLE’S TEETH were chattering so badly that the Sheikh said he’d better watch out, or else he’d crack his jaw. We shivered like aspens. To get some life into our icy limbs we stomped on the bed of the truck till we were out of breath. The diesel engine of our Mercedes truck droned on. We envied the driver sitting out front, protected by the cab of the truck. We let off steam by muttering one foul oath after another about the infernal cold.

There we were in March. It ought to be spring by now, but instead a new winter had started; a merciless, bitter winter so icy that everything was frozen brittle. The blue-white snow crunched like ground glass. Muffled up in the open trucks, we fell to pummeling each other in a general scrimmage to get warmer. But it was no good. We shivered just the same and hardly spoke, because our lips were frozen stiff. We kept pressing our mittened hands against our noses that ached with every intake of breath.

That afternoon, for the first time, we caught the rumble of the front line, and all at once the fear of that savage monster made our skin crawl and ran along every nerve. Now we froze inside as well as out. Under the leaden ceiling of unbroken clouds the landscape was cold, monotonous, absolutely pitiless. Wherever you looked there was nothing but snow—a limitless expanse of snow.

We came to a patch of woodland, and passed the charred timbers of a cottage. Beside the ruins stood the bare, blackened skeleton of a tree, and from that tree—like giant fruits out of season—hung three bodies, stark naked, frozen to stone. Chins pressed against unnaturally long necks, the bodies dangled from the ropes, turning in the wind. One of them was a woman. The icy blast played in her flaxen hair which reached right down to her hips and concealed her breasts. She was dangling from a stout branch overhanging the road. Horrified, we stared at the bluish feet, and our throats tightened. I had to duck my head to avoid colliding with those feet.

Toward evening we reached a partly destroyed small village, but there were a few undamaged houses that would serve as billets. Baggage cars and sleighs could be seen everywhere, and some of our men in fur greatcoats were doing guard duty.

We clambered down, stiff as boards. A lieutenant came up, and our immediate superior, a wiry little sergeant, reported. The lieutenant gave us a brief glance. “So you’re the new men. Over there, that bunch of cottages. Report to the top sergeant. He’ll billet you somewhere along with the others. And don’t waste any time turning in! We’re moving up to positions at daybreak.”

The cottage assigned to us was packed, and stank of sweat and peppermint tea. You could have cut the air with a knife. But at least it was warm, even sickeningly warm. There was no sign of the former tenants: either they’d got away, or else they’d been put to death.

We found a place for ourselves among the rest and huddled on the floor; there wasn’t enough room to stretch out. The others paid scarcely any attention to us. A couple of thick sausage sandwiches, which were left over from our marching rations, and a mug of hot tea were our supper. The tea had a sweetish taste of peppermint and God knows what else.

Outside it was pitch dark, but over the front line there were constant stabs and flashes of light, like tremendous fireworks. The rumble never ceased, the window panes rattled faintly all the time and the sooty flame of our candles flickered uneasily.

I was beginning to be obsessed with the morning to come, with the witches’ cauldron ahead of me, and also with my own utter fatigue. With my forehead on my doubled-up knees I tried hard to drop off, but it was no good: I needed to stretch out. Even old Franzl kept fidgeting. Apparently Pille had given it up as a hopeless job; he was deep in a hushed conversation with Willi. But most of the other fellows were fast asleep, some of them in the most back-breaking postures. Clearly these front-line veterans were used to much worse conditions than that. But now we belonged to them, we were among those who back home were called “our heroes.” So we were going to be heroes. An enticing word, even glamorous. We storm a town, and a few hours later the whole world knows all about it and the folks back home can say: “Our Benno’s out there, he was in that show.” And suppose I get a decoration everyone will whisper reverently: “See that fellow over there? He’s a man if ever there was one.” And if I were to die, it would be a glorious death: Death of a Hero on the Field of Honor.

Besides, a man can’t live forever, and no real man ever dies in bed. Think of the obituary—proudly mourned...Why, my parents would be able to say they “sacrificed their son” for the Fatherland.

I knew there wasn’t a word of truth to all this. My parents would be deeply grieved, and not at all proud. And what about that Death of a Hero, etcetera? My mind turned to Sergeant Wurm and that cook from Hamburg lying in the road, and to that ghastly mess of bodies in the hole only a few hours back: they had to be shoveled up, bit by bit, in order to be buried. What about those three people hanging by the neck that very afternoon? The way they swung on their ropes, the girl’s fair hair about her naked body, and the purple legs and feet.... God Almighty, why did we all have to become heros? But we had no choice in the matter. Most of us were sure to be killed.

But which of us? Perhaps that dark-haired regular there, scratching his nose in sleep, or that grunting bullet-headed fellow with a four-day beard, or that sergeant with flap ears? Perhaps it might even be auburn-haired Willi? Or even myself? But who, who, who?

Enough, I said to myself, enough of such tormenting thoughts. What did the Sheikh say in moments like this? “If it stinks, man, hold your damn nose!”

There he squatted, the rascal, and to all appearances he was sound asleep. His cap had slipped down over his nose and his fingers were clasped like a buckle over his sizable paunch. The man next to him turned over and bumped him. The Sheikh muttered angrily and jabbed at the guy, but the veteran went right on snoring, though at a different pitch. Then the Sheikh sat bolt upright, blinking, and yawned till the tears came. Nodding in the direction of the front line, he looked at me significantly and said: “What a goddamn racket!”

Only then did I notice how much noisier it had become out there. The rumble was unbroken now. With the heavier crumps our candles shuddered as if they, too, were scared.

“Night attack,” said a man with a dirty bandage around his head. The Sheikh leaned forward. “How far is it from here?” he asked in a whisper.

“Oh, about a mile and a half, I guess,” the man drawled. “But if those boys break through, we might as well take up positions right where we are.”

Pille turned around. “What sort of outfit is this, anyway?” he wanted to know.

The other man made himself more comfortable. Leisurely, he fished out a short pipe with a well-gnawed mouthpiece. “What sort of outfit? Believe it or not: this is the base of a motorized regiment. We belong to the Third Battalion.” He paused. “I suppose you’re wondering where the bloody trucks are. Well, they’re kaput. The Russkies shot ‘em all up. We have horse sleighs now. Matter of fact, we like ‘em better, too.”

He had the same slow speech that Kovak had.

Pille cocked his thumb toward the window. “What are things really like out there? Is it always like that?”

The man with the bandage gave a brittle laugh and peered at each of us in turn.

“You fellows never been at the front before? Well, all I say is, I hope you’ll have a damn good time.”

He eyed his little pipe thoughtfully, and resumed: “No, there’s no point in getting scared stiff. You’ll soon be used to it. And it’s not nearly as bad as it sounds from here.”

A lean, rather pop-eyed corporal with a wild growth of beard hitched himself up and leaned on his long, bony hands.

“What’s that, you nitwit? Not so bad? I—Never knew, you were a comedian. Listen to him—not so bad! Why don’t you tell ‘em why you’ve got that bit of rag on your thick skull?” And when the other man said nothing, he went on: “Very well, then let me tell it. It was a direct hit. Korten there got away with only a scratch, but five men of our company were wiped out. Ohlke was among them, a veteran if there ever was one. Always said he’d never get hit. Couldn’t afford to—he had his old mother to look after.”

“Finished, Sander?” growled the man with the bandage. But Popeye went on talking.

“Last summer, we had Ivan licked all right—it was almost a game. Then came the cold and the snow and he was in his element. Now he’s the one who does the attacking while we huddle out there in our snow huts all day and weep for sheer cold. We’ve been doing that for months now. We’ve had losses upon losses. Listen to that racket out there. Night attacks—that’s the Russkies’ specialty. But I tell you, it’s like fighting shadows, and before you know it you may have a knife between your ribs. And then, their tanks ...”

Korten wanted to speak up, but Sander shook his head indignantly and raised his voice.

“Have you ever seen a tank with the Soviet star on the move? Well, you’ve got something to look forward to! And when you hear the clatter of their tracks and fling yourself down in the snow, you just think of me. And think, too, of this jerk here who says it’s not so bad. You can’t help feeling the monster is coming straight at you, that its guns are firing at you, and only at you. The thing crawls ahead very slowly, only a yard at a time, but it’s coming straight at you and there’s nothing in the world you can do about it. Your rifle is useless—you might as well spit in your hand. Besides, you never think of shooting. You just keep quiet as a mouse, though you feel like screaming with terror. You won’t stir a finger for fear of annoying the beast. You tell yourself maybe you’re lucky, maybe it hasn’t spotted you, maybe its attention has turned to something else. But then again maybe your luck has run out and the thing comes crawling right over your foxhole, till you no longer know whether you’re coming-of-going. That’s when you need nerves as strong as steel cables. I saw Hansmann of the Ninth get under the tracks of a T34. He hadn’t dug his hole deep enough—he’d been too damn tired to shovel. The tank turned slightly off its course, just enough to rip some earth away. It nailed him there and then. The next minute he was flattened out like so much dirt.”

The window shuddered slightly. In the sudden silence Korten, the fellow with the bandaged head, puffed at his pipe. Then he asked: “Where do you fellows come from?”

“Supply base, rear-guard.”

“They transferred you?”

Pille gulped with embarrassment. “We asked to be transferred,” he said at last.

That remark really brought Sander to life.

“What’s that I hear? You asked to come here? Jesus Christ, I’ll laugh myself sick!” He guffawed—a raucous, cynical laugh—fiercely stroking the bristles on his face. “Some of those goddamn red-hot idealists, I suppose? Want to be killed for the Fatherland, is that the idea? Or is it just laurels you’re after? Play the hero, maybe? How would ‘he Iron Cross, Second Class, do? A pretty little ribbon! Or perhaps you’d rather have the First Class? Wouldn’t your daddies be pleased! Take it easy, you’ll get it all right...I’ll fix it....”

Sandder leaned forward, flapping over the left side of his unbuttoned tunic, and only now did we see several decorations above the left breast pocket, the Iron Cross, First Class, in the center. Sander yanked the medal off and, with  a scornful twist of the lips, flung it into Pille’s lap.

“Here you are,” he said. “You can take turns at wearing it.”

Stunned, we looked first at Sander, and then at Pille. Pille sat there, motionless, staring at the medal as if it were something out of this world. God Almighty, what sort of a man was this Sander? Then Kovak picked up the cross and tossed it back to Sander.

“Watch out, you cock-eyed saint,” he grumbled in his deep voice. “Leave those kids alone, They’re the best, take it from me. You might get your Tigers burned....”

But Sander only grinned, and lay down again.

At this point the flap-eared sergeant snapped from the other side of the room: “It’s high time you dumb bastards kept your traps shut! Your croaking’s enough to get on a man’s nerves. Why the hell don’t you all go to sleep?”

We huddled down again. The Sheikh belched loudly. Franzl stretched and snorted. The thunder of heavy guns wasn’t far away. I thought I could feel the floor heaving. For a moment, Sander sat up again and scrutinized us with a frown. Then somebody blew out the last candle.

Suddenly something struck me: it had become quieter. The rumble out there had died down, the window panes were no longer rattling. All I heard was isolated detonations. I held my watch to my ear. It was three o’clock. I must have slept soundly.

Somebody opened the door. The fresh air flooded in, keen as a knife. A bundled-up figure armed with an automatic pistol shouted: “Everybody fall in at once outside!”

It didn’t ring like the brutal “Get up!” of the NCOs in the barracks; it sounded more like the maid letting us know dinner was served. All the same, everybody was up at once, putting on greatcoats and gear. The full ammo pouches dragged like lumps of lead.

The ice-cold wind swept the sleep from our eyes. We lined up in columns of three. Crisp orders rang but. “Right turn! At ease, quick-march!”

The night was pitch black. The wind cut right down to our bones. Freezing, we pulled up our collars. Not a word was spoken. The only sounds were the crunching of the snow and the clatter of bayonets against trenching spades. Then the word was whispered down the line: “They’ve broken through!” There was a tangible threat in the air.

Ahead, white flares kept rising into the sky, and flickered like burning stars overhead. A machine gun rapped out a short burst. Isolated rifle shots.

We marched as far as those flares, then turned and strung out along the edge of a wood. Down the line came the order: “Dig in!”

One of the old hands showed us how deep the hole had to be. “Shovel the snow into a rampart,” he said.

There was no proper way of digging in: the ground was frozen top hard. I took turns with Franzl, one of us shoveling, the other on watch, rifle at the ready. Soon we had a low wall of hard snow in front of us. But there was no sign of any Russians—not that we were overanxious to have our baptism of fire.

The isolated shots died down, but the flares kept going up almost without interruption. They were fired from short, stubby pistols. A dull thud, and the dazzling light of the flare hissed up into the air, hovered an instant at its maximum altitude, and sank slowly earthward again. The whole area in front of us was flooded with light. The wavering shadows suggested a world of ghosts. Again and again I thought I saw something stirring, caught sight of a shadowy outline. But it always turned out to be a tree stump or a bush. All shapes were so unreal that they might have come out of a bizarre, frightening dream.

Hours passed. In the east it was beginning to be light. Worn out by staring so long into the darkness, we found our attention gradually slackening, so I was scared stiff when we suddenly saw somebody approaching us from the side. “Halt!” I shouted and had my gun up in a flash. “Who goes there?”

“Hey!” shouted the tall figure. “Hold your fire!”

The NCO was a giant of a man, with enormous bushy eyebrows and a neatly trimmed mustache.

“Are you with the new men that arrived last night?”

“Yessir!” Under the circumstances my answer sounded unnecessarily crisp—we were no longer on the drill ground.

The giant grinned. “Take it easy! Come along with me, I’ve got a job for you at the CO’s observation post.”

We picked up Kovak, Willi, Pille and the Sheikh. A number of regulars were already waiting. Among them I recognized Sander. An officer came up and said Sergeant Vogt would show us the way. We were told to move with the utmost caution: no one knew the exact location of the Russian positions.

We made our way, Indian file, with the giant Vogt in the lead. The front was acting up again. Enemy artillery was combing the terrain. A couple of machine guns were stuttering. The day promised to be bright and clear. “Flying weather,” someone said disgustedly.

We had to pass by a howitzer battery manned by Croat gunners. They waved at us cheerfully and sent a sudden salvo over our heads. The din put the fear of God into us; we pressed our fists to our ears and opened our mouths. Then we cursed those Croats up and down till they were all convulsed with laughter.

A few moments later, all of a sudden some heavy stuff came whining over toward us. Like lightning we flung ourselves down in the snow. But it hit some distance to our rear, and was clearly meant for those gunners. We “new fellows” were the only ones to take cover. The others, evidently all front-line veterans, were unruffled. Sander was full of scorn. “What’s the idea? Morning prayers?” he drawled. But the big fellow, Vogt, gave us a smile. “The stuff that whines overhead like that is no danger,” he said quietly. “It comes down well behind our lines.”

It wasn’t long before it started again. This time, I kept on my feet, but it took all the will power I had, and Willi dashed headlong into the snow. The shrapnel burst pretty near that Croat battery. Those boys were on the point of moving to new positions when a third shell burst killed a couple of them. Now the whole outfit made off at top speed. The next shell that came over hit right in the center of the site they had occupied.

A few German fighters were cruising overhead. Later, we also saw some Russian aircraft.

“Those are Ratas,” the tall NCO informed us.

Just then a Messerschmitt came in sight. “Why on earth don’t they take a shot at each other?” Pille wondered.

“That’s what you think,” Vogt said as he tramped on. “But the Russki is glad not to be pestered, and our fighters aren’t anxious to start a looping match with a Rata. Our kites are faster, but the Rata’s a damn sight more maneuverable.” The Ratas left us unmolested. They apparently had a more profitable target in view.

Down a slope we saw several small homesteads, scarcely damaged. Vogt told us to wait, while he disappeared in a house with the shield of the Tenth Company over the door.

“Inside, everybody!”

We filed in. There were about twenty regulars squatting or lying on the floor, some cleaning their rifles or playing cards, others taking a catnap. On a rough bedstead sat a gaunt man in a gray sweater. He had rimless spectacles, short-cropped hair, a long face with a pointed chin, and he was in his mid-thirties. This was our new CO, and Vogt addressed him as Herr Oberleutnant.

The gaunt man eyed us critically. We stood at attention and rattled off our names, but we didn’t seem to make a favorable impression. Without stirring from the bed he snapped: “If you don’t mind, I’d like to see a little more vigor. You come in here as if you were tired veterans, and you haven’t accomplished a damn thing so far. You’ll find there’s a different wind blowing out here. By the way, how long have you been in the service?”

That was too much for us. I couldn’t quite keep the anger out of my voice when I said: “We put in six months with Supplies, sir. Then we volunteered for the front.”

“Volunteered, did you say?” His tone lost some of its harshness. “Under these circumstances you don’t need to be told what’s going on out here. The fate of Germany hinges on units like this! This is not a question of what happens to us. This involves our whole nation!” Apparently he’d meant to say a lot more along these lines, but instead he gulped and stared at us hard. “So you’re volunteers?” he resumed.

“Yessir, volunteers, sir.”

“Decent of you. Then I needn’t say another word. I hope we’re going to get on well together, you and me. I’ll tell you one thing right off: I won’t tolerate any slackness.... All right, then, Sander and you three stay here for the moment, you’ll be in Platoon One. Sander can brief you about everything. The next four to report at the next cottage to Sergeant Hegelberg. The rest—Platoon Three. Dismiss the men, Vogt, and take over the company, as before.”

I risked a request. “Sir,” I said, “I wonder if perhaps the six of us might stay together, because...“

“What, you young idiot?” the gaunt lieutenant shouted furiously. “Special favors at this early stage? Consider yourself lucky you’re in the same company. Not another word! Now scram!”

Franzl and Kovak remained with me; Pille and the Sheikh found themselves in the second platoon; Willi, in the third. I caught Willi’s troubled eyes seeking mine. I shrugged. For the time being, there was nothing to be done about it.

The gaunt lieutenant asked me if I knew how to handle a machine gun. “Yes, sir,” I said. “Then go and relieve the man on the ack-ack machine gun out there!” I was off to a hell of a start.

The old-timer was pleased as Punch when he saw me. “Relief? Grand! Now I’ll have time for some sleep. But who the heck are you? Never seen you before.” I told him who I was and said we were replacements, just arrived.

“Replacements? That’s what we need. My name’s Brodenfeld. Did the old man send you out here?”

“Yes. Rather bad-tempered, isn’t he?”

Brodenfeld laughed without moving his lips. “Wasted no time dressing you down, I guess. He always does that to the new ones. He’s the stern type, old Welty. Nobody can stand him.”

Brodenfeld peered up into the sky. “On the other hand,” he said, “the lieutenant is a damn nice guy. He’s our company commander. Stick to him if you want anything. I’ll be off now. Better keep your eye on the ball—the Russkies are sure to be over any minute now.”

Without particular enthusiasm, I examined the MG. It was fitted with aircraft sights and mounted on a tripod. A long time since I’d handled one of those. This one was equipped with drums instead of belts. I checked the parts and tested the aiming mechanism. As far as I was concerned, Ivan could come along.

But hours passed without a Russian machine showing up. A whole squadron of Stukas glistened high in the sky. Bomber after bomber was on its way to the enemy lines. Messerschmitts and Heinkels whined over. It was a grand day for the Luftwaffe, but Ivan seemed loath to risk an appearance.

Despite the sun, which had now reached its zenith, I was miserably cold all over, so I kept running around and stamping my feet. It was about time, I thought, that somebody relieved me. I hoped the old man hadn’t forgotten about me. Besides, I was getting hungry.

I heard the drone of aircraft. Another squadron of Stukas? Damn it, these seemed to be Russians. A considerable number of fighters. The clumsy crates lumbered steadily on as if they were having a good time up there. Should I take a crack at them? Better not—they mightn’t think it was funny. They didn’t seem to be aiming for us anyway.

But when they were almost dead overhead, a single machine peeled off from the rest, banked, and dived steeply, all barrels blazing away, right down on our cottages. I was trembling with fear and excitement. I even toyed with the idea of taking shelter inside when somewhere nearby another ack-ack spat out. So I wasn’t altogether alone—a reassuring thought. Still jittery I slipped the catch and took aim.

The fighter climbed steeply, then banked and in no time was rushing down on us once more. This time he did single me out, his propellers whining like a savage hornet. I could see his guns flashing—and the next instant there was a whistling and sputtering and thudding all around me. Had he got me? My knees were shaking. There he was in the crosshairs of my sights—press!—now!

That gun had a terrific recoil, but as the bullets were hammered out I forgot my fears and the pain in my shoulder. Now I had only one thought: to wipe out that fire-spitting insect. I hung on to the bucking gun and fought back against that blasted plane with everything I had.

Then the weapon jammed—or did it? No, the cartridge drum was empty. The enemy kite almost grazed the top of my head and vanished beyond the slope. Wasn’t that a faint trail of smoke coming out of it?

Now that the nightmare was over, I took a deep breath. My knees suddenly turned to water. After all, this had been no joke. But at least I hadn’t failed. Perhaps the plane had crashed way beyond, out of sight? At least I’d shown the men here that I could hold my ground. They would have watched it from the windows and I could picture them congratulating me.

Then another guy came up to me, hunched over like an old man. “You can go,” he said curtly. “I’m your relief.”

I was surprised he didn’t say anything about my shooting, so I said as casually as I could: “Guess I hit him somewhere. He was belching smoke....”

The man made no comment. Finally, he growled: “What the hell did you leave the empty drum in for? Think the bloody thing reloads itself?”

I walked back to our billets feeling rather deflated.

Franzl told me that when I fired he was the only one who took any notice. “Oh yes, there was another guy. He kept on sleeping right through the whole business, but when that Russki peppered the roof the impact brought some plaster down on his face. That woke him up. He saw you from the window, and he said it would be a damn sight better if you had a belt to work with, because those lousy drums don’t have enough rounds in them.”

I thought I’d conducted myself like a hero. Now it dawned on me I’d been an ass.

“Well, here we go again....”

There was somebody in the doorway, trampling to shake the snow off his boots. First I saw the boots, then the snowy greatcoat, then the face under the officer’s cap—and I leaped up as if I’d received an electric shock. “Herr Leutnant!”

He spotted me and Franzl. “God damn it...Am I seeing things? Upon my word, how on earth did you manage to turn up here? Give me your hands, you crazy bastards!”

It was Straub, Lieutenant Straub, who’d been our officer back at the training camp.

“Herr Leutnant,” I said. “Gahlen, Juengling and Scholz are here, too. Unfortunately, they’ve been put in different platoons. I wonder if we couldn’t somehow all be together in your platoon?”

“I reckon we’ll soon get that straightened out! Just think —the Five Musketeers! How on earth did you ever pull that off?”

We went to another cottage, partly damaged but empty, so we could have a quiet talk. Franzl ran to pick up the others. It was a great reunion. Straub told us he’d been transferred to this company with a good many trainees and recruits of our old outfit, but a lot of them had already been killed in combat. In turn, we told him what had happened to us. Straub put in a word here and there; for the most part he listened with great interest.

When we spoke of the sufferings of the Russian prisoners he said: “There’s much that cannot be prevented, but, frankly, there’ve been many times that I’ve blushed to think that I’m a German.”

That evening we received orders to be ready; another company was to be relieved. We were now in Straub’s platoon—he’d fixed that with Welty. We also had popeyed Sander with us. When Straub saw Sander, there was a tempestuous reunion. Apparently they were old buddies, and Straub seemed to have a high opinion of Sander. We were rather surprised to find a professional pessimist like Sander and the level-headed, spirited Straub hitting it off so well together.

I was given a machine gun, and Franzl was made second gunner. The Sheikh blew his top when he got the job of lugging the ammo around. We were just getting ready to move when the Russkies began an artillery barrage on our cottages, so we got out of there on the double. Only the company HQ stayed behind. We wouldn’t have changed places with them for anything.

There followed half an hour’s march, Indian file, and then we were right in the front line. The terrain fell away and formed a ravine; the Russkies had their nests on the opposite ridge. In groups of two we were detailed to one of the dugouts placed at intervals of about twenty yards along the ridge on our side. With mixed feelings we took up our positions in the unprotected little trenches, which were only hip-deep, when we were met by some regulars, frozen blue with the cold. They were glad to be relieved. “You crafty devils,” they said. “What’s the idea—not turning up before this?”

A diminutive moon dipped the snowy landscape into a pale, cold light. On the other side of the ravine we saw the flashes of a machine gun. The bullets were whining close over our heads.

“If they think that’ll scare us, they’re barking up the wrong tree,” Franzl said.

We estimated the range, adjusted our sights, and answered back with our MG34. Every fifth round was a tracer and the trail of fire pointed directly to the spot where we’d seen the enemy flashes. The Russian machine gun barked back angrily and a desperate duel began. Every time it was their turn we had to duck our heads: they were shooting damn straight.

Gradually, we lost interest in the duel and gave up. They stopped, too. I covered our gun with a tarpaulin to protect it from the snow, which a nippy wind was beginning to whirl about.

About one o’clock we tried to get warm by beating each other up, as we’d done on previous occasions. At three, we cursed the ironical glitter of the stars, the icy moon, the Russians and this filthy war that kept us out of our warm beds. At five, we were rigid with cold, and so tired we could scarcely keep awake.

Two hours later, Lieutenant Straub jumped into our trench. “How about doing some reconnaissance?”

“God, yes! That would warm us up. Anything to get out of this trench.”

“Fine,” said Straub. “In half an hour’s time, at company HQ. You’ll find hot coffee there, too.”

We trudged stiff-legged to the shelter. There we met Sander and the Sheikh with Vogt, the giant NCO, and three men I didn’t know. We sipped the hot coffee and our spirits rose. We put on white outfits as camouflage against the snow. And when we followed the lieutenant on our way out we had already forgotten about the cold, hellish night.

We trudged the whole length of the ridge, then clambered down the slope of the ravine into no man’s land. There was no sign of the enemy lines or of ours. Only isolated shells were feeling out the area. It was a very uncomfortable sensation, being between the lines like that and wondering how soon the enemy would spot you.

The lieutenant pointed to a ravine that branched off and in a whisper explained our assignment. At the end of that other ravine was a village. We were to find out if it was in Russian hands, and, if so, how strong a force was holding it. All senses alert and guns ready at the hip, we inched along listening for the slightest sound.

Then suddenly the village was right under our noses. We took cover and tried to get the lay of the land before making any other move.

Sander began belly-aching. “I don’t know,” he said. “I’ve got a queer feeling—” But before he could say another word, the Sheikh interrupted. “I know what you mean,” he said. “Damn unpleasant. I had it once when I drank a lot of beer on top of cucumbers.”

Vogt wrinkled his nose as if he were about to sneeze, but he was just laughing. We all laughed, and that released the tension; we felt better now. Only Sander went on lamenting just as if he’d never been interrupted. And his words rang %in my ears. “A queer feeling inside me, boys,” he said. “Today we’re going to catch it. I’m sure they’ve cut off our retreat. Want to bet we’re in a trap?”

Nobody answered, but nobody laughed, either. The lieutenant took his binoculars and peered over toward the village.

“Sander,” he said, “you take a peep up ahead there. Is that a dog or a man lying in the road?”

Sander raised his own glasses to his eyes.

“You ought to wear specs,” he said. “That’s a man, plain enough; on his back, too. Must be dead.”

“We’ll have to go into the village,” said Straub.

“Into that village?” Sander cried scornfully. “Do you think I’m crazy? What’s the idea, looking for a nice corner in a mass grave, or are you after a free trip to Siberia?”

Unruffled, the lieutenant went on peering through his glasses. After some time, as if the notion had just occurred to him, he said: “Shut up, Sander, that’s mutinous talk. Besides, you’re beginning to get under my skin. You can damn well stay here if you’re jittery.”

Sander stroked his long bristles with the back of his hand, his lips twisted in a spiteful grin.

Cautiously we worked our way to the edge of the village. Ready for any eventuality, we inspected the first cottage. Empty, abandoned. Not a living creature around. We probed farther. The same picture everywhere. The inhabitants seemed to have all cleared out together in one sudden exodus. In many cottages we noticed half-eaten meals on the tables. Pots of stew hung cold over burned-out fires. Most of the doors were wide open. It was an eerie sight.

Sander had been right. The man lying in the road was dead. A civilian. His skull smashed in, his features distorted with terror. Farther on, we found two more dead.

Then, in a cottage, we came upon a woman bent over a table, as if she were taking a little nap. She’d been shot through the head. Beside her lay a half-eaten piece of bread and butter with a fleck of blood on it, like jam.

What tragedy had been enacted in this place? The deep silence weighed on us. It was as if we had entered a forbidden land. Instinctively we began to speak in whispers„ and our voices sounded husky.

We now made our way to a homestead standing back from the road. Sander and the Sheikh went ahead to search it. The lieutenant said we’d soon be moving back, our job done. There was not much point, he said, in going through all the other houses. I was just making up my mind to follow the other two into the farmhouse when suddenly Franzl nudged me in great excitement. “Say...look over there....” At the same instant the lieutenant whispered: “Take cover, quick. Behind that house, come on!”

Russians! I raced toward the cottage as fast as I could. There I was, breathless, behind a protective wall, my heart pounding.

It was clear that the Bolshies had discovered us and were taking cover behind some nearby cottages. A scout party like ourselves, no doubt. Cautiously, inch by inch, I pushed my gun forward.

Then the Sheikh and Sander appeared at the door, unsuspecting. “Look out,” I yelled to them. “Over here, quick!”

The Sheikh was so startled that he hesitated for a moment, but Sander sized up the situation in a flash and was flat on the ground, taking the Sheikh with him. Bullets were already spraying the wall, evidently from automatic pistols.

Wriggling like a weasel, Sander got over to us, but before the easy-going Sheikh could reach the wall he doubled up and with a groan clutched his leg. Franzl was after him like a streak of lightning, got his arm around him and lugged him over to us, while a regular rain of bullets smashed into the wall and whistled overhead.

The Sheikh was wounded in the upper thigh. One of our regulars was a first-aider. He slit up the Sheikh’s trouser leg and ripped open his pants. The wound was a nasty sight. The snow turned red. Calmly, the first-aider bandaged up the Sheikh. The Sheikh grunted with pain and his face twisted. Then all at once he was calm. “What a bloody mess,” he said. “Those goddamn bastards!” Thank God, he was his old self again. He’d be all right. The first-aider went on with his job, merely grinning whenever the Sheikh’s language got out of hand.

Meanwhile I’d rigged my gun and was ready to fire. “Hold it!” the lieutenant motioned to me. “It may be a good thing not to let them know right now that we’ve got a machine gun.”

The Russkies were fanning out in a great arc around us. They meant to get us in the flank. Our position was growing more precarious every minute. We were forced to stay put in a compact heap, and the poor cover gave us no chance to break away. On top of that, we had a wounded man with us. And the Russians were watching us like hawks. Franzl put his steel helmet on a stick and poked it around the corner—and in a flash there was a regular hail of lead. Now bullets were coming in from the side, whistling damn close to our ears. If this kept up, they’d have us in a crossfire.

Straub exchanged a few words with Sander and Sergeant Vogt. Then he turned to me. “Listen carefully: the three of us are going to try to get around the Russians. You give us fire cover. And the rest of you: give ‘em all you’ve got. If the plan comes off, we’ll be able to drive them into your arms. But for God’s sake, see that you shoot at the right party! Meanwhile, Corporal, you take over the command here.”

Sander collected all our hand grenades and gave Vogt and the lieutenant their share. We sighted our guns on the points where we suspected the Russians to be.

“Ready?” asked the lieutenant.

“Yes, sir.”

Suddenly, Sander seemed a different man. His voice rang firm and clear, his shoulders were no longer drooping. The scornful twist to his lips was gone. The lieutenant gave his last-minute instructions. “All right, off we go! Let’s have continuous fire....”

There was one hell of a din. I put two whole belts through the gun without a single jam. The others were raising their heads just enough to fire their carbines like lunatics. Even the wounded Sheikh was bellowing at the top of his voice: “Now you’re talking! Give ‘em hell, the lousy stinkers, give ‘em hell!”

The Russians had vanished. They no longer dared take a risk. The sudden assault had taken them by surprise. Chunks of plaster fell from the cottages and the snow in the road whirled up where the bullets struck.

Unnoticed, Straub, Sander and Vogt had reached the last cottages and vanished from sight. Franzl snatched up the substitute barrel we’d brought along, and we swiftly exchanged it for the red-hot barrel in the gun. Just as I took aim again, I saw a Russian race across the road, but with a burst of fire I dropped him halfway. Another cautiously raised himself, but before he was out of cover I placed a short burst just in front of his nose and he dropped back. Then I gave them continuous fire, Franz’ handing me belt after belt.

The corporal laid his hand on my shoulder. “Steady!” he said. “I’ve just spotted one of our men over there. I think they’re on the Russkies’ tails all right.”

But meanwhile the Russians had reorganized, and now they showered us with bullets and forced us to withdraw behind the wall. Minutes of anxious tension followed, and we wondered if our men were making any headway.

Suddenly, there came a dull thud, and then another, almost like a single explosion—hand grenades! Then the savage, frantic tattoo of automatic pistols. They sounded like our own. Two Russians ran dead into my line of fire. A short squeeze of the trigger, and they were writhing in the snow. We heard the high-pitched buzz of a Russian submachine gun, and a second, then again the bursting of hand grenades.

All at once there was complete silence, then a scream, followed by an isolated shot. Next we saw our giant NCO in the middle of the road waving his helmet in our direction.

There had been fourteen Russians, each with a submachine gun. Three were dead, five wounded. One lay groaning in the reddened snow. At each breath the blood spurted from his shattered chest. He was beyond help.

The unharmed Russians had thrown their guns away, and stood waiting with raised hands, anxiously following our movements. Straub let them tend their wounded and distributed their weapons among us. We began to march back; at the head was Sergeant Vogt, who had a minor bullet wound. Next came the prisoners, dragging their own wounded. We’d left the dying man behind us.

Despite his protests, Franzl and the first-aider had put the Sheikh on an improvised stretcher and were carrying him. The Sheikh argued that he could walk, if they supported him.

“You moron,” cried Franzl, “you’ve got no say in the matter! Lie still and keep your trap shut.”

Lieutenant Straub let us go ahead. A moment later, we heard a pistol shot. I had expected it—I knew he’d do the decent thing. Slowly he caught up with us.

That afternoon the whole company set out in a long, winding column to occupy the village. Only the third platoon was left behind in the old position. Straub said Franzl and I could stay behind too, and follow later. But we wanted to be with our buddies, and said we’d do without the respite.

It wasn’t easy saying good-by to old Sheikh. We shook hands and didn’t know what to say. “All the best to the folks back home....Go easy on the skirts, old man.”

For Pille, the parting seemed hardest—he’d miss his old sparring partner. “Scram,” Pille growled. “Damn good thing I won’t see any more of you.” But he gripped his hand so hard that the Sheikh winced.

Occupation of the village met with unexpected difficulties. Leading the way, Lieutenant Welty discovered that it was by no means clear of the enemy. The Russians had preceded us.

Welty ordered the attack. But the deployment wasn’t so easy. We had to clamber up the steep slopes on either side. It was essential to take the Russians in a pincer movement. At last we advanced.

They met us with a savage small-arms fire. A couple of machine guns joined in. The second platoon was the first to suffer casualties. Without cover—and with mixed feelings —we scuttled across the snow, continually flinging ourselves down, crawling along on our bellies. Once we reached the houses, the going would be easier.

The heavy machine guns detailed to us now took the village in a barrage of fire. The moment they opened up, a fiery hurricane was coming down on that place. I kept up a steady fire myself. The kick of the gun and the terrific din kept up our spirits. It gave us a feeling of power and confidence. The outer ring of cottages began to look like sieves; there were gaps in the walls; the windows were smashed.

The Russkies began to withdraw. We leaped up to the first houses, searched them, and occupied every one of them in a house-to-house struggle. Though several times we came up against strong resistance, we made steady progress.

There were losses; on our side, too. I saw Kovak haul one of our men into cover, his belly ripped open. A corporal collapsed beside his machine gun, streaming with blood. Hand grenades were exploding. Straub was pointing to one of the bigger buildings. I fired into the windows and doors. Then rifles were flung out into the road, as a sign of surrender, and five Russkies came out with their hands up. Lieutenant Welty rushed all over the place, brandishing his pistol and bellowing orders. The roof of one cottage was on fire.

More and more Bolshies surrendered. Here and there we still encountered some resistance, but at last the village fell into our hands.

The lieutenant at once posted sentries on the ridges. Welty gave orders to assemble all prisoners in the little market place. Many were whining for mercy; they were convinced they would be shot. But Welty sent them off with a small guard down the ravine to the rear, and they staggered off, a beaten crowd, heads hanging, and carrying or supporting their wounded.

We squatted on our gas-mask containers and waited for further orders.

One of the outposts came pelting down. “Where’s the lieutenant?”

“At HQ, up there, ahead. What’s the trouble?”

“The Russkies...they’re marching up the valley, this way. At least a battalion, and two tanks”—and he was gone.

“Tanks,” muttered Kovak. “That’s the last straw. And not one anti-tank gun. We’ll have to withdraw again.”

“Do you mean all this has been for nothing?” Willi moaned.

“You’ll get used to that,” snarled an older soldier. “The whole damn campaign makes no sense anyway.”

“What we ought to do is knock out those tanks by concentrated fire,” Pille said thoughtfully.

Sander spoke up scornfully. “Oh yeah? I suggest you try it. That’ll be the day....”

But somehow his sarcasm didn’t come off—it had lost its bite. I had the sudden impression that it was only a mask to conceal Sander’s real nature, and that the man was getting tired of wearing that mask.

The lieutenant came up. “Come on, men, follow me! The village is going to be defended. CO’s orders.”

“In that case,” sighed an elderly corporal, “we might as well prepare ourselves for the worst.”

In little groups we dug in on the outskirts of the village and on the surrounding ridges. Lieutenant Welty hurried past. “Not one man is to withdraw—or I’ll have him court-martialed!”

Franzl, more astonished than angry, just stared. “Did that maniac really say court-martialed?” he asked.

The Russians were coming on in large unorganized groups. The whole valley was dotted with them. The two tanks, apparently T34s, were creeping slowly but surely toward the village. For the moment they looked no bigger than matchboxes.

Sergeant Bakes selected the sites for his heavy machine guns, dashing excitedly from one to the other, giving final instructions. These guns were to open our fire. Nobody else was to shoot until then.

I was lying behind a clump of bushes that afforded fair cover. Franzl handed me the cartridge belts and with Sander’s glasses Kovak kept a sharp watch on the approaching enemy. The Russkies were regrouping for the attack. But Sander no longer seemed interested in the proceedings. He was leaning against a tree, lost in thoughts, and I saw he was staring into the western sky, where the setting sun was flooding the towering black mass of storm clouds with a scarlet light.

“Hey there, Sander!” I called, but I had to repeat it before he heard me. “For Christ’s sake, wake up! What’s the matter with you?”

Sander started up and give me a troubled look.

“Why? What’s up?” he demanded. When I didn’t answer right away, he nodded toward the sun and said reverently, as if he’d just made a remarkable discovery: “Look at that glowing sunset....When we were kids we used to think it was the angels baking bread... .”

I couldn’t believe my ears. Was this really the same Sander, cynical Sander?

Cavalry! It was unbelievable. What a suicidal idea! Dozens of mounted Reds suddenly appeared and made a frontal charge. That opened the Russian attack. The next instant, our heavy guns began banging away. There was one hell of a noise and the attackers were showered with metal. Their horses were splendid targets—shying, bucking, collapsing or bolting, their riders shot from the saddle, some of them dangling by one foot from the stirrups and the panicking animals dragging them through the snow.

The attack collapsed as suddenly as it had begun. The few Russians who survived the first rounds slipped to the ground and tried to take cover behind their horses’ backs. Apparently they’d never reckoned with any resistance on our part.

But then their infantry got going, and Russian machine guns began hammering away like mad. The air was thick with whining bullets and whirring projectiles. The bundled-up figures were inexorably snaking their way toward us. I got the ones closest to me in my sights and clung to the bucking gun. If anybody got a dose of my stuff he wasn’t going to get up again. You thought you could hear the bullets plonk into a man’s body; yet you didn’t quite realize you were killing, destroying, human lives. On the contrary, you even got quite a kick out of it. I’d always thought killing would be more difficult than that....

Suddenly we found ourselves under flank fire. Damn it, the Russians had occupied the ridges. I heard someone yell quite near me. It was the corporal who’d joined our reconnaissance platoon. I swung my MG around and fired up the slope. The lieutenant shouted: “Retreat cautiously! Get behind the houses!”

There was an ear-splitting detonation. We looked at each other, terrified. What in the name of God was that?

“Watch out! The tanks are firing!” Sander shouted.

God Almighty—the tanks! They’d got within a few hundred yards of us. Franzl hastily clipped in a new cartridge belt. Again we were firing up the ridges, but the men up there were taking cover. The fellows next to us—including Pille, Kovak and Willi—took advantage of the lull and ran over toward the houses.

Then the gun jammed. I tore open the apron and wrenched at the belt. With sure fingers, Franzl removed the jammed cartridge from the belt. There was a shrapnel explosion, and the trunk of a nearby tree snapped like a matchstick. One of the machine gunners near me doubled up and fell face forward into the snow. A ricochet came warbling near my helmet. I raced another belt through the gun, then hurried at Franzl’s heels toward the cottages.

There I found the corporal I’d seen early that morning. He didn’t move.

“What’s the matter with him?” I asked Sander.

Calmly, Sander recharged his gun. He didn’t even trouble to glance up. “Curtains,” he grunted. “Lung shot.”

Now the shrapnel explosions came faster. Our second heavy MG was knocked out. Thick smoke was rising from one of the houses. Like prehistoric monsters, the two tanks came swaying heavily down the road toward us, and sheltering behind their impregnable steel pressed the infantry in thick columns. Our two remaining heavy guns went on spitting bullets, but they just bounced off harmlessly, like a spray of water on a hard surface. All we accomplished was to force the men behind the Panzers to close their ranks.

We had to give up the first fringe of houses. Ivan was establishing a foothold in the village. This started the second house-to-house battle of that day, but this time the fighting was a lot more stubborn and the losses on both sides were heavier. Our men were lying dead all over the place and the stretcher bearers were working overtime dragging off the wounded, with bullets whipping up the snow all around them. The Russians came storming down the ridges, attacking from the flank, conquering house after house. With the tanks approaching, we were steadily losing ground. The air was constantly shuddering with explosions. At every crash we winced. Our heads seemed to be bursting. I felt like abandoning my gun and burying myself deep in the earth.

“We’ve got to finish off those Panzers,” the lieutenant muttered through clenched teeth. “That’s our only hope.”

Sander lowered his automatic and leaned around the corner of the house, his helmet shoved back, and picking up a couple of hand grenades. “Concentrated charge,” he said. “A bunch of these tied to a pole. Not much chance —but shall we try?” He spoke as if he’d been thinking it over for a long time.

“All right, let’s get going,” Straub decided. They found two poles and fastened a bunch of hand grenades to the end of each, making a reasonable approximation of a Molotov cocktail. There was a sly grin on Sander’s face. “That’ll give the armored bastards something to write home about,” he muttered.

“Come on, you give us fire cover,” the lieutenant ordered.

Franzl had taken my place at the gun and kept his finger triggered for continuous fire. A number of Russians who were straying too far from behind their tank cover got it in the neck. Another heavy gun over to the left supported us. It was a favorable moment. Sander and the lieutenant raced toward the tanks, balancing their long poles in front of them. I clipped belt after belt into the gun, and opened a new ammo case. Then the thing jammed. We changed barrels, and off she went again.

It was getting dark, everything became blurred. It was hard to distinguish friend from foe, but the battle rolled on uninterruptedly and the din never let up for a moment.

There were machine gun bursts, quite close. Apparently the tanks had got us in their sights. Then a direct hit on a heavy gun. The tripod turned a somersault and came down across the body of the dead gunner, his buddy groaning and shouting for help. The clatter of the tank tracks drew mercilessly closer. Some of the houses were now ablaze.

Suddenly the earth heaved as if it had been hit by a blockbuster and a pillar of flame shot up into the air. Straub and Sander were on the job. A moment later came the crash of the second bundle of grenades.

For an instant everything seemed to quiet down, as if both sides were taking stock of the situation. But suddenly the clatter of tank tracks began again, and one of the enemy gunners got his infernal sights on us.

“God. Almighty, Franzl! For Christ’s sake, shoot! Shoot with all you’ve got! We’ve got to get the two of them back safe!”

Franzl’s body seemed to become one with the gun. One of our men staggered past, leaving a trail of blood. Shrapnel had torn off one of his hands. He was holding the stump in front of him, staring at it as if he couldn’t believe what had happened to him. There was a blinding flash and a burst right in front of our eyes, and hot iron seared my upper arm.

“Come on!” yelled Franzl. I leaped up, and together we managed to reach the nearest house.

There was Sander, loping with huge strides across the road. He stopped and looked around, trying to spot us. “Here, Sander, here!” we yelled. Another burst—and Sander spun on his heels, his knees buckling under him, and he slipped to the ground.

When I reached him I saw he was dead. His protruding eyes were glassy, but the expression on his face was almost peaceful, the half-opened mouth seemed to be smiling. There was a hole in his helmet. Its razor-like edge was bent inward, into his skull.

Lieutenant Straub made it back. One of the tanks was out of commission, but the other didn’t seem badly damaged. “I couldn’t get close enough,” he said. “Where’s Sander?”

“Sander is dead,” I said, and there was a lump in my throat. “He’s in there, in the cottage.”

Straub was stunned. Then he turned stiffly and walked inside.

We were running short of ammo and could fire only short bursts now. Trench mortars were beginning to feel us out. Lieutenant Welty ordered the march back to our old position. “Platoon One—in the lead!” Slowly we made our way back down the ravine. Only a small rear-guard remained behind. The shooting gradually receded into the distance. Even the shrapnel was beginning to sound harmless.

We didn’t speak a word, but the groaning and gasping of the wounded remained with us. The dead, we left behind. Only the lieutenant was dragging something over the frozen snow—a shapeless figure wrapped in a shelter half.

Exhausted, we dropped into our old trenches. The relief, so we learned, wouldn’t arrive for several hours. Till then we had to stick it out. New ammo supplies came up. Mechanically we filled the magazines, cleaned the guns, kept the grenades handy. We were dead tired. And the night grew cold, as ice cold as the preceding night.

Was it really true that only a day had passed since we reached these trenches and anxiously awaited our baptism of fire? Personally, I felt we’d always been “front swine,” as everybody in the army called the men who’d been through it. This single day had been so packed with fighting that we already accepted it as normal and were completely resigned to our fate. Yet, where was that feeling of proud awareness that we were fighting in the front lines? All we knew was this: for the moment, at least, we were out of it—and damn glad of it. Now we were frightened of the morning, and of the mornings to come.

The cold was merciless. It folded impenetrably all around us, and we gave in to it. We were too tired to move. We just crouched in the snow and stared blankly ahead, trying to keep our eyes open, fighting against the fatal mistake of falling asleep.

My legs gradually turned to ice and lost all sensation. I knew I ought to do something about it, but it was so infinitely comforting to stay quiet. No more shrapnel bursting, no more whining bullets, no more groaning of the wounded, and when I put my head on my knees and erased all thought from my mind the cold wasn’t so painful. Of course I wasn’t going to sleep—I was only going to doze. Our relief ought to arrive soon. The distant village was burning....Why were the tanks still firing? We’d blown them up, hadn’t we? The men sprawling about were dead—dead as a doornail....Sander’s glassy eyes…Another blasted jamming of the gun...Look out, Franzl, there they come! What is that thing the lieutenant’s dragging behind him?...It’s a big doll shedding real tears...

I woke with a start. Franzl muttered something in his sleep, his body twitching. He, too, seemed to be dreaming about yesterday’s horror.

“Franzl, for Christ’s sake, wake up!”

I had to shake him with all my strength. Even so, it took him a long time to come to.

“Asleep, was I? Jesus, that might have been the end of me!”

We staggered to our feet and tried to get some warmth into our limbs, but to no avail. I felt like walking on stilts.

At daybreak we were relieved. When we received orders to march off, three of our group were missing. Kovak heard from Sergeant Hofmeister that they’d frozen to death that night. They were stripped naked and massaged with snow, but it had been too late.

Someone remarked: “Damn good way of dying, if you ask me. Simply freeze out like that. You doze off, you have a nice dream, and all of a sudden it’s over. You’ll never know the difference.”

“It isn’t so messy, either,” another man added.

“I wish to Christ I’d freeze to death too,” came a weary voice.

Then I could hear Vogt’s bass rumbling: “I’d like to see your silly mug if you suddenly found yourself in a deep freeze, and no place to go.”

We laughed. Slowly, our spirits rose. We were glad to be marching off—toward some peace and quiet.

Back at base we discovered that the billet of the heavy machine gun platoon attached to us had suffered a direct hit. As the destruction was complete—all the guns were disabled—the group was to be split up and the men transferred to our three platoons; but in spite of this increase our over-all numbers had dwindled.

There was hot bean soup and we fell over it like a pack of wolves. It tasted wonderful. I had two extra helpings, but when Pille held out his mess kit the fourth time the cook said there was none left. “Come on,” good-natured Vogt grumbled, “give the kid another spoonful, you potbellied s.o.b.”

“But I tell you there isn’t any more,” the cook moaned.

A corporal snarled: “You bloody well cooked for the whole company. Don’t tell me you knew all along we’d lose a third of our men!”

“Is it my fault that you gorge yourselves like pigs?”

“Well, if there aren’t any more beans, what about some chocolate?” said Vogt. “We’re due for our chocolate rations anyway.”

“That’s none of my business,” the cook grunted. “You’ll have to ask the supply sergeant about that.”

A little later came the supply sergeant, a bad-tempered character with a face like a nutcracker, announcing we could have our chocolate.

“But only one bar each—and don’t think you’ll also get the rations of the casualties!”

There was a good deal of subdued bitching on that score, but as soon as the sergeant’s back was turned tempers were rising in earnest.

“Same damn story all over again. Whenever we have casualties that swine keeps their rations back.”

“Same thing with the chocolate and cigarettes.”

“And what do you think these gluttons do with them? Fill their bellies back here while we’re out in the trenches.”

“No use getting your hackles up,” stammered the cook. “If the old man heard you there’d be hell to pay.”

“You shut your trap, you stuffed pig! Next time if you don’t cook enough, you’ll wind up in the pot yourself. You’ve been fattening up long enough.”

That afternoon a field surgeon came around and asked if anyone was reporting sick. I put my name down: there was something wrong with my foot.

We were taken by horse sleigh to battalion HQ. The place was jammed and we had to wait a long time.

After several attempts, I managed to get my boots off. When I stripped my socks off, big patches of skin stuck to them. My toes were a mass of blisters, and my heels—God Almighty, what a sight! A raw, open wound, almost black, but with no blood coming out.

The man next to me held his nose.

“Man!” he exclaimed. “You’re already rotting away! Boy, what a stink!”

Then the assistant medic examined me. Bit by bit, very carefully, he plucked the rest of the skin off my feet. “What’s your job?” he asked me.

“I joined up straight from school, sir,” I replied. “Hmm,” was his only comment. What was he doing, I wondered, diving his forceps deep into my heel?

“Feel anything?” he asked.

“Just a little.”

“Well, you may be lucky after all,” he muttered.

Now I was really getting worried. There was only one comfort: at least I’d be out of that rat race for some time.

The medic told me he’d bring my pack the next day—

I wouldn’t be leaving before that, anyway.

“Tell Franzl Ullmer, will you?” I called after him.

The field hospital being overcrowded, they took me to the billet of a small base unit. The first man I saw there was Korten, the guy with the bandaged head. He was looking at some photographs and talking to a fellow with straw-colored hair, who looked like a movie star.

“What on earth are you doing here?” he shouted. “I thought you were up at the front!” I told him about my frostbite, and said I’d have to be hospitalized.

When I got around to telling him about Sander he shook his head mournfully. “So he’s finally caught it,” he said. “We thought he was as good as bullet-proof. If you ask me, old Sander had a notion his number was up. He acted rather peculiar in the last few days.”

“And who’s that Sander?” asked the fair-haired guy. “Do you mean the fellow with the Iron Cross, First Class, the one the Russians captured along with Lieutenant Straub?”

“What’s that?” I cried. “Those two were prisoners of the Russians?”

“That’s right,” said Korten. “For a couple of days. Then they made a break and fought their way back to our lines. Must have been a hair-raising experience.”

“What sort of a fellow was that Sander?” I asked.

“I could never make him out,” Korten replied. “This much is clear, though: he was never the kind of sop you’d think he was from his constant belly-aching. The way he made you newcomers all jittery, that was very typical of him. Strange sense of humor.”

“Didn’t he save Straub’s life at one time?” Movie Face remarked.

“Right. But that’s just the point, you see. When the chips were down, you could always count on old Sander.

He did plenty of other brave things. There’s a crowd of fellows who’ll swear by Sander.”

“What was his job—before this bloody war, I mean?”

“You won’t believe it, but he was a goddamn artist. Once he showed me some pictures he’d painted. Pictures with dead men all over the place, horribly mutilated, enough to give you the creeps. I was really shaken, but when I told him so he just grinned. One thing I know, though: old Sander hated war—a damn sight more than any one of us here.”

Our talk turned to furloughs and girls. Korten showed me a photograph: a real honey of a girl, in Red Cross uniform.

“That’s Rall’s fiancée.” The handsome Rall proudly displayed his white, even teeth. “You’d think she was a very pretty girl, wouldn’t you?” Korten resumed. “And yet this ornery bastard runs after every skirt he sees.”

There were some Russians living in our cottage. Man and wife. He must have been about fifty, a little on the stupid side, and he had a long graying beard. His wife was as round as a barrel, with the face of a gorilla. They both slept on a bench near the stove. It was long and narrow, so they couldn’t lie side by side but head to heel.

During the night, I had to go to the latrine. It was pitch dark, so I struck a match. The men were lying in all directions and you had to be careful not to step on anybody. Another match—and what did I see?

There, locked in a tight embrace, were that tubby little female and old Rall. He was hanging on to the old girl for dear life so he wouldn’t fall off the narrow bench. And there was the old beaver at their feet, sleeping the sleep of the just... .

Toward morning I heard a noise: the two Russkies were having an argument. At last the woman took a basket, stuffed some things into it, gave an embarrassed grin, and cleared out.

“He’s kicked out the old bitch,” said a man who knew some Russian.

“What did he say to her?”

“Oh, a lot of dribble about some dirty business.”

“What dirty business?”

“I got no idea. He didn’t say what it was.”

So the old fellow hadn’t been so fast asleep after all! Of course I kept my mouth shut. As for Rall, he was the picture of innocence.

Franzl looked in to say good-by to me.

“Pille and Kovak and Willi send their best,” he said. “Willi’s sent you those slippers of his. Says he expects you’ll find them useful in hospital. But mind you don’t mess ‘em up too much. You know how Willi loves those slippers his mama made for him with her own hands.”

I was rather hesitant about taking those slippers. That Willi was a real nice guy.

“Maybe you’ll run into the Sheikh,” Franzl said. “Drop us a line and tell us how you’re getting on.”

I didn’t know what to say; I just shook his hand. “We expect to have you back soon,” Franzl said. “Don’t forget we’ll need you here, you know.”

A little later Lieutenant Straub turned up. “Heard about your frostbite,” he said. “Bad business—take it from me. I don’t envy you. But who knows, it may be all for the best. But if you do get sent back to the front, see that you join our company.”

That evening a huge sleigh with some lightly wounded and some sick-bed cases set out to take us to field hospital, and I clambered aboard, wrapped in blankets.

Suddenly, there was that little gorilla again, basket on her arm, a shamefaced grin on her face. The old man blinked at her in sheer astonishment. Then they were talking to each other calmly enough, and before long they were making their way indoors, arm in arm, the picture of wedded bliss. Apparently, the nocturnal interlude had been forgiven and forgotten.

The sleigh glided into the evening sunset. The sun was going down in magnificent colors. “The angels in heaven baking bread,” Sander would have said. Now Sander was dead, and the rest of the men were getting ready for a new battle. In a way I was glad I wasn’t with them. I now had some peace ahead of me. It was a gift from the gods and I’d know how to make the most of it....

THREE

THE DAY I got my feet frostbitten was March 25, 1942. The green-edged progress chart in the hospital was explicit: Toes second degree, left heel third degree, right heel second to third degree. I learned only later how near I got to losing my feet. “You may be lucky,” the field surgeon had said —and I was.

When the sun was beginning to thaw the snow and the hard-frozen earth, and when the whole country turned into an incredible morass, my feet slowly returned to life. The doctors had cut out the rotting flesh and prescribed ointments that stank to high heaven. The numbness gradually gave way to pain, and then the changing of dressings —the slightest touch—was hell. I kept my feet high, so as not to feel the blood pulsing in them. It wasn’t for some weeks that the pain began to subside. And when the roads at last became usable one day, together with some wounded, scarlet fever and jaundice cases I was bundled into an ambulance and taken to a hospital farther to the rear. Here I met the Sheikh again.

The term hospital was somewhat exaggerated, suggesting as it did snow-white linen and neat Red Cross nurses, whereas we just lay in our underwear and sweaters in long rows on dusty mattresses on the floor and our only attendants were the peasant-faced regulars. The medic, a young physician with a Prussian manner, used to make his rounds once a day to register our complaints. Even while we were flat on our backs, he insisted on military bearing and discipline. But his main concern was to pick those men he could pack off back to the front.

The Sheikh was just beginning to get on his feet again. I, too, had recovered far enough, so we spent our days hobbling around together trying to kill time. At first we played chess with a vengeance, but soon it palled on us, so we were full of enthusiasm when on the first floor we found a little gambling den.

Outwardly indifferent, a man picks up the cards; outwardly indifferent, he makes his contribution to the pool; outwardly indifferent the banker shows his cards. But if you looked closer, you could see the glitter of eyes, the jerky movements of hands and the voracious way the winner grabbed his pile. You could catch the quiver in the men’s voices and feel the excitement which triumphed over the numbness that comes with a long service in the army.

At first we played it safe, then it got hold of us. The excitement gradually entered our blood. The first evening the Sheikh lost two months’ pay, but the next day he won back twice as much. We became regulars and for hours would be lost to the world.

One evening while we were gambling a medical NCO came in and asked whether we’d all taken our smears. “What the hell does he mean?” I asked one of the men. “You innocent bastard,” he said with a grin. “Don’t tell me you hadn’t noticed that most of the guys here got VD?”

“And what’s VD?” I asked.

“For Christ’s sake, the clap, man, the clap!”

“It’s not half as bad,” another man said. “Nowadays it’s just a joke. Why, they’ve got some dope now that’s first class; it hardly lasts a fortnight, and then it’s all over, but it means a fortnight’s leave.”

“You mean, since it’s so harmless, the thing to do is to get it on purpose?”

“Why, of course, you damn fool! What’ll you give me if I let you in on a whore near here who’s absolutely surefire? All she wants is some cigarettes, and you’ve got it. Best thing to do is to get a dose just before they discharge you. Only, don’t report it the very first day, or all you’ll get is a shot and all your trouble’s been for nothing.”

“But don’t you get three days in solitary if you report it too late?”

“Of course! So you spend three days in the doghouse, which means three days less at the front.”

I said thanks, I would think it over. It’s a wonder, I said to myself, what some people will dream up. But the Sheikh turned like a shot to the fellow who’d given me such disinterested advice. “I suppose you wouldn’t know of any other tarts within reach,” he said. “One that hasn’t got the clap but also doesn’t look like an animated broomstick. It’s worth ten cigarettes to me.”

“You don’t want much, do you?” said the other. “You get the doctor to write you out a prescription.”

Besides the Croats, who were the most persistent gamblers, there were also a few young Walloons in the hospital. They kept to themselves and would often carry on whispered debates for hours. Only one of them was wounded. The others were down with Volhynia fever, which was widespread, a little-known variety of trench fever with periodical rise and fall of temperature coupled with severe headaches and pains in the limbs.

I decided to talk to them, and the Sheikh joined me. We sat down beside them and with our school French tried to carry on a conversation. First we talked about our ailments, then about the terrible cold of the past winter and the new German offensive which was in the offing. Then the Sheikh put it to them straight: why on earth had they, as Belgians, volunteered to fight on the eastern front?

They seemed surprised he should ask the question. Why were we here? they asked. Why, that was obvious—to keep Bolshevism at a good distance from our homeland! Wasn’t all Europe doing its best to that end?

The Sheikh wanted to know what they thought of the war in Russia. Yes, they admitted, they’d expected it to be quite different. Most of all they’d underestimated the mental strain. They made no bones about the fact that their initial enthusiasm had given way to a more fatalistic attitude. But they would go on fighting, that was their duty as they saw it. They knew very well why they were here, they said, but they felt the average German soldier wasn’t at all clear about it. And a dark-haired fellow with intelligent eyes and pallid, sunken cheeks said: “You Germans are strong because you’re united and have a strong man at the helm. For that, we envy you. But you’re strong only as a mass. You fight like the devil, but the individual does it without conviction. He fights only because he’s learned to obey orders.”

Later, when we stretched out on our mattresses, the Sheikh said: “Poor loonies, volunteering to go through all this mess just for the fun of it!”

I said they were real idealists.

“Yes, I suppose that’s one way of looking at it.”

Gambling was of course prohibited. If we were caught at it every penny on the table would be confiscated. For this reason one of us always stood guard, in case the chief physician or the paymaster turned up. All the same, one day we were taken by surprise. The warning whistle sounded at the last moment. Like lightning everybody grabbed his money and tried to rush off when the potbellied paymaster appeared in the doorway.

“Gambling again, you hypocritical bastards!” he bellowed, his face flushed scarlet. “Let me catch you red-handed, just once!”

Then his eyes lit on the Sheikh. “What in the name of God are you doing up here? Don’t you belong on the ground floor?”

The Sheikh was so rattled that for once his presence of mind failed him; he just stammered. The paymaster was thoroughly mad, because he’d raced up those stairs for nothing, so now he was letting off steam.

“Is that the proper way to speak to me?” he demanded. “Stand at attention! You don’t seem to be aware of the respect due an officer.”

Though he was only a damned clerk, he held officer’s rank and he particularly emphasized that magic word, Offizier. He had the Sheikh bubbling all over with “Yessirs” and “Nosirs,” and all seething inside.

“Get down where you belong!” bellowed Potbelly. It irked the Sheikh to see his gloating roommates peering up the stairs. All he could think of was revenge. “You just wait,” he said. “I’ll get even with this bastard if it’s the last thing I do.”

A few days later, that’s precisely what he did. It was a unique revenge. Only someone like the Sheikh could have dreamed it up.

Senta was the paymaster’s pure-blooded Alsatian bitch; he just adored that animal, and talked to her as if she were human. The Sheikh discovered that Senta was in heat. Then the fun began. All he needed to carry out his sinister plan was someone who could talk Russian. He soon found a man who was only too happy to cooperate. The two of them put their heads together at the window of our billet and called to a young Ukrainian who happened to pass. There was a brief confab, the boy scratched his head a moment, accepted some tobacco the Sheikh offered him and made off, grinning.

An hour later the young fellow was back, dragging a reluctant mangy hound on a leash.

“That will do,” the Sheikh said authoritatively. “Finest mongrel I ever saw.” He ran to the paymaster’s room, where Senta usually was locked up. The key was outside. Out came Senta, tail-wagging and slobbering all over her liberator. “Come along, old girl,” said the Sheikh. “Why shouldn’t you have a bit of fun for once!”

That bitch didn’t have to be told twice. Nor did the mongrel. When he scented her, there was no holding him. The Ukrainian slipped the line, and the dog leaped at Senta. Now the Sheikh was off to the paymaster’s office.

“Quick, sir,” he cried. “It’s your bitch! She’s going to be in trouble!”

Out rushed the paymaster, all puffing and blowing.

“Senta! In the name of heaven, what do you think you’re doing, Senta? Here, I tell you, come here!” he hollered.

But Senta no longer gave a damn. The desperate paymaster yelled for a bucket of water. But before this could be brought, he seized the stump of the hound’s tail with both hands, tugging hard to terminate the shameful proceedings. The hound growled and snapped at him, but without letting go his grip. Cursing, the paymaster rushed to meet the medical orderly with the bucket and sluiced its contents over both sinners. The startled mongrel ducked, shook his coat, looked around suspiciously and ambled off. The whole hospital was at the windows, hysterical with laughter. The Sheikh turned to the men around him. “Now we’ve got to get that dog’s name and find out where he lives,” he said dryly.

“What for?”

“Slow on the uptake, eh? For alimony, of course!”

The hospital roared.

The weather was fine now. The sun was blazing down on the dusty streets. There was an uninterrupted flow of men and munitions to the front. The big new German offensive had begun. The whole of that tremendous front was set in motion.

A bomb fell in the street in front of the hospital. The window panes splintered all over the place. The blast swept us back against the walls. Half across the deep crater was an army officer’s car, front wheels hanging over the rim, but apparently undamaged. Two dazed officers clambered out, a colonel and a lieutenant, both white as a sheet.

At one go fifty men were discharged from hospital. The Sheikh and I were among them. With heavy hearts we made our way back to the front.

We hitchhiked on army trucks, gradually feeling our way from one front-line position to another. We were told our division was somewhere near Kharkov. That didn’t cheer us particularly, seeing that Kharkov always seemed to be in the news as being in the thick of the fighting.

Behind our truck trailed a cloud of dust, and in no time there was a thin gray coating on uniform, hair and face. The dust clogged up our noses and mouths, and parched our throats. Everything was shimmering with the heat.

There was a dead man lying beside the road. A Russian, in his earth-brown uniform. Since we were still a long way from the front, we wondered how he’d got there. A few minutes later the Sheikh pointed to the other side of the road—”But there’s another!” After that we saw more and more corpses. For many miles the bodies were lining the road at regular intervals, often in groups, like piles of so much rubbish swept aside. Wide open eyes were staring at us, petrified hands stretched out to us. And over all that half-naked, blood-encrusted human flesh the sun poured down and filled the air with the sweetish stench of putrefaction.

Without a word we looked left and right at those motionless figures by the roadside.

Later we met one of our men, who explained it all. “There was a long column of prisoners came this way the other day,” he said.

Never before had we felt quite so bitter.

Franzl, Willi and Kovak welcomed us noisily. Pille was absent; he’d caught a bullet in his arm, but, they said, he’d soon be back with us. We now saw almost nothing but new faces. Many reserves had been called up to fill the gaps while we were away. The company had suffered heavy losses; it had been particularly bad in the last few days.

Sergeant Hegelberg and Sergeant Bakes, who commanded the second platoon and the heavy machine gun platoon, had both been killed. Many others were dead. Welty had been wounded, but unfortunately not badly enough to detach him from the company.

Then Franzl surprised us with another bit of news. “Who do you think has joined us, boys? You, Sheikh, you know him particularly well.”

The Sheikh tried to think hard.

“He’ll never guess!” Franzl shouted. “Well, I’ll tell you: it’s your friend Meier, of all people. You and Willi were in his group, weren’t you?”

“What?” I cried. “That bastard, with that teacher Moehl on his conscience?”

“None other. He wangled a cushy job for himself all winter long at regimental base.”

Willi rubbed his nose. “I tell you,” he said, “you could have knocked me over with a feather when I saw him, but I just walked straight past him and pretended I’d never seen the son-of-a-bitch. He was on me like a shot. `Hello, you there, isn’t your name Scholz?’ ‘That’s right, Herr Unteroffizier,’ I said. Then he waited to see if I hadn’t anything else to say. But I wasn’t talking. So off he goes, just like he used to on the drill ground. Hadn’t he taught me how to salute? Why then had I not saluted, and all the rest of the old rigmarole. I might have been back in training. Right then, along comes Vogt, that seven-footer, and didn’t he just raise hell with Meier! Told him straight to his face not to make an ass of himself, and called me over to come along with him.”

“The lousy bastard!” said the Sheikh, and that settled it.

Two days later the company was back in the fighting. The trucks brought us right up to the enemy by way of a gully which gave us cover. We clambered up the slope and started fanning out for the attack. Then, with rifles at the ready, we moved slowly forward.

Fierce rifle fire met us. In a flash we were on our bellies, wriggling into the slightest dip in the ground for cover.

The order was passed down the line to work our way forward in spurts. It sounded simple enough. All you had to do was jump up, run a couple of paces, then lie down again. But it took a lot of guts to offer yourself as a target, give up your protective cover and trust to luck. Nobody wanted to be the first to jump up and draw the attention of a watchful enemy. At the same time, nobody wanted to lag behind and perhaps be called a coward. You pressed yourself against the ground, fired a couple of haphazard shots and squinted at your buddies to see how far ahead they were and if it was your turn next.

The counter-fire grew fiercer. The Russians brought in light mortars, and began to give us a lot of trouble. Our leaps grew shorter, and the intervals between them longer. Losses increased. Many a man doubled up and dropped down, forever, and on all sides you could hear the yells of the wounded. The attack slowed down.

At that point we got unexpected help. Three Stukas came roaring along, flying low, banked two or three times at increasingly sharp angles. Then suddenly they came diving down, blazing away with all they had, and whined past just above our heads. Hundreds of tiny death-dealing flames spurted from their gun muzzles. The roar of the engines, the savage rattle of the MGs and the vicious flow of fire from the wing cannon mingled in one hellish hurricane of destruction.

Involuntarily, we pressed our faces into the soil. Our nerves were strained to the breaking point. Did they take us for Russians? But then we saw the tracers, striking home precisely where we reckoned the enemy would be. Our aircraft climbed high, hovered for a few moments like birds of prey, then again swooped down on the Russkies. Finally they soared off, back to their bases.

The shooting opposite us ceased. The Russians had obviously retreated deep into the nearby woods.

Again, we were ordered to advance, but this time it did not strike the same terror in our hearts.

Suddenly there was a big crump to our left, a few moments later another. Down the line came the quick shrill warning: “Mines! Watch out for mines!”

“Medical orderlies, this way!”

Another explosion and a stifled cry, a man’s wail for aid, a crossfire of sharp orders and drawn-out groans.

“Stretcher bearers!” the cry went up, first here, then there. “Stretcher bearers this way!”

“There’s a fellow up there’ll bleed to death. Where the hell are those stretchermen?”

Yet another mine, very close, and a scream from Kovak: “It’s Vogt! Vogt’s caught it!”

Cautiously we stalked over to Vogt. God Almighty! It had ripped off both his legs! There he lay gasping faintly in a sea of blood. His eyes, unnaturally big, fastened on Franzl; his hand, blood-stained, was raised, pleading. “Ull-mer...give me your pistol...please...I’m finished .. please...or do it yourself.”

He groaned, and his head sank slowly back, his face distorted with pain.

A medical orderly crept up, but cast only a momentary glance at the mutilated body. He shook his head and crawled on. They were shouting for him from all sides. “Ullmer,” pleaded Vogt, but his voice had grown weaker, “please shoot me...you...you...friend ...”

Franzl gave me a helpless look. Should he? Vogt was lost, there was no hope for him. Was it not our duty to put him out of his misery? We both thought so, Franzl and I. Yet neither of us had the guts. My thoughts were in a whirl. As if hypnotized, I stared at the smashed thighs and the ripped-open belly, which were all one single mass of torn flesh, one big wound.

“Franzl, do it,” I stammered, in a whisper. “Or shall I...?”

There was one last, dying gasp and the white face nestled slowly against the earth. Vogt’s sufferings were over.

On the edge of the wood near an overturned Russian motorcycle lay a dead woman in uniform. She had apparently driven into one of their own mines. I felt something close to satisfaction. All that could be seen of the infernal machines was a sliver of metal sticking out of the ground. It was a hopeless job trying to spot them. Yet every step might bring death, a devilish gamble.

With a deep breath of relief we thrust into the coolness of the wood. Here there was little likelihood of mines. Lieutenant Straub came along from the flank, all in a sweat: “Any of you fellows wounded?”

“No, none of us, sir, except—Sergeant Vogt.”

“I know about him. Damn sorry, too. Another day or two and he would have been on his way home for a special course.... Maintain contact up on your left flank, watch out for tree snipers—the third platoon has already caught some.”

Slowly we forced our way through the thick undergrowth. Branches clanged against our helmets, lashed faces and hands. Our boots caught in the thorny maze. But through the foliage the sun thrust golden rays of light, caressing the luxuriant green of ferns and moss. It was a romantic setting, but not for us.

All at once, there were three Russians facing us, hands raised. Their uniform was a perfect camouflage. They could easily have knocked us off. What on earth were we to do with them? Kovak suggested they could carry our ammo, and with excessive eagerness they hoisted the cases on their shoulders. We put them in the middle of our group. Then, calling to the next man not to lose touch, we cautiously continued.

Next came a couple of rifle shots from our left, then some from our right, and the sudden stutter of a submachine gun. Suspiciously we halted. One of the prisoners ran excitedly over to Kovak. “I am!” he cried. “Over there.” Those Russians had better sight than we had. I followed his outstretched arm, but could distinguish nothing. Kovak fired. Gun on his hip, Franzl sprayed the thicket with his automatic. Then we heard shrill voices, and four Bolshies crept out and surrendered. One was wounded in the arm. They pointed to another one, dead. The bullet had bored right through his helmet.

Straub came up again and said we would soon come out into a clearing where we should wait. He took over the prisoners and Kovak went along.

It grew dark. Two Russian bombers cruised overhead. We thought we didn’t have to fear them; they would never dare drop their bombs as they were bound to hit their own people. Yet, bomb they did. The detonations, however, came from far in our rear. They sounded as if a hundred trees had been smashed to splinterwood; a grim sound, but no more dangerous to us than a distant storm.

We spent the night on the edge of that clearing, an unpleasant night. Every other man was on sentry duty, but even those who were supposed to get some sleep could scarcely close their eyes. The slightest rustle made us start up in alarm. Yet absolutely nothing happened.

The following day we came on a vast ammo dump. Thousands of shells of all calibers were piled up under the cover of the trees. We were suspicious because the enemy hadn’t destroyed this lot when they withdrew. We were apprehensive of time or long-distance fuses and pressed on rapidly. Already the broad, well-trodden paths leading away from the dump suggested that the wood was coming to an end.

We were right. Without meeting any resistance we soon reached the last fringe of trees. We had combed right through the whole primeval forest.

The man next to us called over: “CO’s orders: wait on the edge of the wood and keep under cover. Pass it on!”

A few hundred yards in front of us was a village of sorts, which seemed to be occupied by the Russians. Away over to the right they were still fighting for a small town. Heavy black clouds of smoke were rising over it. The artillery hits were clearly visible. We could hear the thunder of the guns.

“The men over there,” cried Franzl in astonishment “are a damn long way ahead of us!”

“What’s the meaning of ahead of us?” asked Kovak, who’d joined up with us. “There’s no precise front or rear in this crazy battle. You’ll soon see what I mean!”

Franzl stared hard into the disputed territory. “Something is coming here,” he said. “Looks like an armored car. Reconnaissance, I bet!” I took the glasses he passed me. “Looks like a German car to me.” It was bearing across toward us, bucking over the rough terrain.

“Just what we need,” Kovak “He’ll help us mop up the village.”

Kovak was right. Orders were given to advance on the village, and the light armored tank peppered the space between the houses with its 2-cm. rapid-fire gun and pressed steadily forward, with half a platoon behind it. We attacked the village from both flanks. The Russkies surrendered.

We inspected the armored car with much interest. It had certainly saved many lives. The driver pointed to a small tell-tale hole on either side of the turret. “Shot clean through,” he said. “A Russian anti-tank gun.”

That evening the company was ordered to fall out. Up rolled an officer’s car, and our regimental CO, a lieutenant-colonel covered with decorations, pompously strode forward.

“Atten-tion!” ordered Welty. “Eyes—right!” With military precision he reported.

The CO thanked him cordially and asked the men to stand at ease. Then he informed us that we were great guys who’d put up a good fight. He thundered on in windy sentences, lost his thread time and again, hemmed and hawed his way through. We heard a lot about our sacred Fatherland and of our sacrifices not being in vain.

“Shut up,” muttered the Sheikh. “What we want is a square meal!”

At that moment, ping went a rifle shot, and a man in the front row folded up. The rest of us leaped for cover. The lieutenant-colonel was behind the armored car in a jiffy. His silver-braided cap fell off. He began cautiously fishing for it.

“Look at him,” I said to Franzl. “And these jerks are our COs nowadays.”

“Oh, let the bastard be,” said Franzl. He was sorry for the man. “His best days are behind him.”

A second bullet came whizzing our way. “Back there!” cried a number of men, pointing to a house which was set back from the road. “Tak-tak-tak-tak” began the rapid-fire gun of the armored car, and the tracers burst through the wall of the house and through the window. The tank took a couple of men aboard and rattled off toward the suspicious house. A NCO cursed under his breath. “Whoever combed that damn place did a lousy job.”

Medical orderlies carried the wounded man to the CO’s car.

“See how concerned the old boy is! You’d think he had something on his conscience.”

The armored car clattered back. It had done its job of mopping up.

The CO continued his address. “Comrades, your losses have been heavy, but we’re making progress and soon the Russians will be licked for good. Back home they’re proud of you. Bear that in mind and carry on doing your duty as you’ve done so far. For my part, I’m going to do all I can to see that some of you get a furlough soon....”

“Do you believe that?” Kovak was bitching. “I don’t.”

The monotonous beat of the diesel engine of our truck had so gotten into our bones that we could scarcely hear it, just as you get used to the ticking of a clock. We were often the whole day on the road; yet it seemed we were going around in circles. We stopped thinking about it. Totally indifferent, we squatted on the benches and all we wanted was to go on and on like that: just the pleasant feeling of having to make no effort, with no immediate danger threatening us.

There was ample room on the plank seating; it was only when reserves came up that we were packed tight, but it wasn’t long before there was another encounter and our ranks thinned out again.

Our faces grew gaunt, covered with stubble. There were many rows, our nerves were at the breaking point. Whenever there was a tough engagement in the offing—and we all developed a sixth sense for it—the atmosphere became so charged that the slightest remark was enough to touch off a fight. Only the rare prospect of a couple of days of peace brought any relief, something like a week-end feeling, and whenever that happened the stalest jokes provoked roars of laughter. Then we were all at once conscious of belonging together, even proud of our team spirit. But such moments were more like the light of a dying candle which flares up before going out altogether.

The fact is, we were afraid. There wasn’t a single man among us who wasn’t afraid. And even when at last we were used to it and hardly conscious of it any more, that fear was a constant nightmare. Nor would any man reveal what was going on inside him; nobody wanted to look like a coward. When you felt like hell you just swore, but nobody thought swearing meant you were afraid.

Before an engagement, when shrapnel was whizzing all around, nobody wanted to be the first to put on his helmet. You tried to wait till somebody else did, and even then you didn’t hurry; anything to avoid revealing your fear. Whenever you saw a buddy being mutilated you referred to it casually, as if you thought of it casually. You pretended to be indifferent. But that was only a desperate attempt to deceive yourself.

But the nightmare couldn’t be shaken off, and it grew worse with every dead man you remembered, every groan of a dying man, and every trifling wound that might destroy the illusion of your invulnerability. Our fear was at its worst before an engagement, worse than during the actual battle. It was equally bad afterward, when tension yielded to complete exhaustion. The only counterbalance was hope—frail, groundless, rumor-fed hope—hope that at last we’d be ordered to march back—back home... .

The trucks assembled behind a hill. Lieutenant Welty ordered the company to line up.

“At sunset we march. The mobile kitchen will give you a hot meal and two days’ rations will be issued. All weapons are to be cleaned. Platoon leaders, check iron rations. Before we leave, extra hand grenades and ammunition will be issued. And remember: whatever happens don’t drink any well water. Most of the wells in these parts have been poisoned. That’s all. Dis-miss!”

We marched at dusk for about an hour, then the order was given to dig in. We strung out on a broad front with our trenching tools and began scooping out individual holes for tank cover. As usual, I worked together with Franzl.

Trenching tools are convenient little things; you can hardly feel their weight on your belt, but they’re often more important than your helmet. Almost every day we had to burrow into the ground with them because of bullets and shrapnel splinters. Everywhere we went it was the same; we dug in. Some of the men had managed to get hold of a long-handled spade or shovel and dragged that around with them wherever they went. Tiring, true; in spite of all our motorization we had to do a hell of a lot of marching. But many times our lives depended on the speed with which we could sink ourselves into the ground. What’s more, we had to dig lying down and could hardly risk showing the tip of our noses. But little by little we got the knack of it. Now we no longer got blisters as we did at first. Now we knew exactly how best to use our tools, without tiring, to get the best hole possible.

“Let’s step on it,” said Franzl. “I’ll be glad to knock off. Last night I hardly got a wink.”

Our little trench was just knee-deep when along came Welty.

“What are you trying to do? You’re much too far back! Your platoon should be farther forward. Get out! Dig in a hundred yards closer up!”

Franzl swore.

“The bloody fool! He could have said so in the first place, couldn’t he? Now we’ve got to start all over again.”

The second trench was nearly ready when the bastard again came to say that to straighten out the front we had to go farther ahead.

We could have burst with rage. Cursing, we took up the new position and began to dig our third hole. That one was very shallow; we were all in, and we wanted no more surprises from Welty.

All around us flares rose high in the sky. The Russkies fired red flares. There was now such a confusion of flares over a very wide expanse that it was practically impossible to make out where any line ran. Far away a white flare rose —over there another, and yet another. Everywhere our comrades were on the watch.

In the daytime those flares looked Eke toys, but by night their glow was to every man—friend or foe—the expression of his tense expectation and preparedness.

On our right flank we were in contact with the Second Battalion. We had a notion that the whole regiment must be engaged. That meant there must be powerful Russian forces against us.

How strong those forces were, we only began to realize in the thin light of morning, when a tremendous shrapnel shell burst over us, filling the whole air with its hellish din. The steel thrust straight into the earth, till the very soil under our bodies, huddled together in the hole, throbbed rhythmically. Fragments whirred a few inches over our heads. Others fell freely back to earth from a great height and clanged on our helmets, on our ammo cases and our gun, and the earth spurted up in clumps over us. We pressed our fists against our ears and opened our mouths wide. Then we strained to hear the next near hit.

The massed barrage of artillery and heavy mortars lasted nearly an hour. Then the infernal din suddenly ceased. Half-deaf, we raised our heads and stretched our cramped limbs. Were we still alive?

There was a sudden yell. Franzl looked at me. “I heard something about tanks!” he said.

We leaped up and stared over toward the Russian lines.

There they were, moving toward us, tanks, on a wide front, a whole phalanx of monsters, T34s, and we were paralyzed with terror.

“My God,” groaned Franzl. “There must be forty of them! Now we can make our wills.”

Left, right—everywhere—violet-colored flares now filled the sky, bursting as they fell into strings of flame; violet for tanks, violet for alert! Then green flares; green for artillery support. Violet, green, violet, green, without end. A desperate cry for help.

The tanks drew nearer. Behind them marched Russian infantry, in packed ranks, the whole countryside covered with brownish shapes.

Mechanically I lifted the MG out of the shallow trench and set it up in front of me. I was beginning to realize that what was coming toward us now was going to be worse by far than any previous barrage.

“If only we’d dug in deeper! They’ll scrub us out of here like fees.”

“Too late to dig now,” Franzl said calmly. As if to reassure me, he lined up his ammo cases and clipped a belt into the gun.

We ought to pull out of this, I kept thinking; there would still be time. But I couldn’t see a single man leave his little trench; not one ran back.

I, too, shook off those fear-born thoughts like pestering flies, got the MG ready and mounted the sights.

Shrapnel continued to whine over our heads, but now firing in another direction. Our guns began to drop a curtain fire. A couple of anti-tank guns came up at high speed and quickly poured in volley after volley at the huge machines. Our MGs rattled on. I, too, sprayed tracers into that mass of metal rolling down on us.

Then Ivan, who had certainly not counted on quite such a tough resistance, put in a powerful response. The guns of his forty tanks thundered out, supported by mortars and countless smaller automatic weapons in a death-dealing chorus. We crouched low in our trenches.

Now there was no use deceiving ourselves; this battle we were going to lose. Our chances of coming out of it alive and free were very small. We might have been a match for their infantry, though they had vastly greater numbers, but we were powerless against those savage T34s. What use were our little 3.7 anti-tank guns against such giants? And the only heavier weapon we had to help us was a single 7.5 cm. long-barreled gun. Those steel monsters, fully aware of their invulnerability, would wipe us out of existence.

The nearer the avalanche came, the greater the nervous strain. At last I found the terrified crouching in the trench, the inactive wait for destruction, absolutely unbearable. I rose to my full height, seized my MG and fired. Nearby, one of our anti-tank guns lay battered beneath a cloud of smoke and dust. A shrapnel splinter ricocheted off my helmet. The stunning blow made me dizzy and I let go my gun. I saw a jagged hole in one of the ammo cases. Franzl was dragging me back down into our trench.

Only a miracle could save us from utter catastrophe— and the miracle happened’ Suddenly the skies were filled with a mutter which rapidly grew into a roar, and because it never ceased it was even more impressive than the chaotic whining and crumping of the guns engaged in the battle. Scarcely daring to hope, we looked up and saw waves upon waves of Stukas bearing down in wedge formation. Before we fully grasped their reality, they’d swept overhead. Then they sharply dipped their right wings and with a nerve-shattering screech of their sirens came down on the tanks.

Black as pitch, mushrooms of smoke uncoiled into the sky. One of the tank monsters, after a direct hit, disintegrated. Another slithered over on its back like a cockroach and its tracks clanked in the alt. Others spun wildly on their own axes. The whole earth quivered under the weight of bombs.

On came further squadrons of Stukas, and they too, one after another, heeled over and roared earthward. They pulled in just before they reached the ground, then zoomed straight up into the air, hovered a few moments choosing another victim, then down again, their undercarriages thrust forward like the hungry searching talons of birds of prey. Air and earth were transformed into one hellish cauldron seething with fire and destruction.

Now those mammoth tanks, for all their threatening appearance, swerved left and right in an attempt to escape. The wall of metal dissolved in panic. Clouds of Messerschmitt and Heinkel fighters were now strafing the infantry with fragmentation bombs. They rushed only a few feet above the heads of the Bolshies, who were leaping in all directions in utter terror.

We climbed out of our foxholes and stood staring at that tremendous show which might so nearly have been our funeral. After the nervous tension of the last few hours, which had penetrated our very bones, we suddenly felt dazed and slightly hysterical. Men long hardened to battle embraced each other, laughing till the tears came. Others were dancing and slapping their sides in sheer exuberance. Willi was crying with emotion. The Sheikh and Kovak began a sparring match. Franzl suddenly punched me hard in the ribs.

“Give ‘em hell!” a man yelled into the sky.

“Keep it up! Drop those eggs!” cried another.

“Let ‘em have it!”

“Look out! There’s a couple of the bloody beetles trying to sneak away! That’s the way, crack down on ‘em!”

This was no longer a war. This was a breathtaking demonstration of controlled destruction, controlled and conquered.

What came next was a frontal onslaught, a regular chase. It was like an organized jungle hunt, complete with beaters. Only here and there did any of the enemy, in isolated groups, try to put up any resistance. The Russkies surrendered in droves. Many were shaking all over, stammering, almost weeping. We couldn’t understand a word, but the terror in their eyes told of the hell they’d been through. The country all around us was strewn with fragments of tanks, contorted, blackened debris. The Russian artillery was silent. Their batteries had also had a dose.

Our victory was complete, as complete as any victory could ever be. We roped in hundreds of prisoners and took vast quantities of material. When this eventful day was over, we were buoyed up with new hope and confidence. In that moment I don’t think there was one of us who wasn’t convinced that we were winning the war. We were in a state of intoxication. We had completely forgotten the preceding hours spent under that terrible barrage, or the minutes of desperation when we were faced with what seemed the inexorable onslaught of armored steel. Yes, we’d forgotten all that—for today.

But the pulverizing existence of life at the front remained the same. The following day, when the trucks were transporting us up to the next action, we felt the same terror. It all came back to us when some bloody fool remarked that now we finally had enough room to sit comfortably. Then we suddenly realized, for the first time, that there had never been so few of us in our company before.

We were stationed on a small lake, a long narrow strip of water. I guess a good athlete could have thrown a hand grenade from one bank to the other. The water was dark-green and murky, though not nearly so scummy as the average village pond. There was a broad belt of reeds concealing the shore, and a couple of broad-branched trees cast a pleasant shade and rustled in the breeze. It was an idyllic spot, ideal for a week’s recuperation.

The atmosphere was peaceful. For once we could relax and recover from the strain of the past few weeks. No more shattering shrapnel, no more bullets pinking by, no more stench of corpses—and not a thing to remind you of the sight of blood. It seemed almost peculiar, this life with merely the occasional mutter of distant guns carried by the wind—like a muted warning of things to come.

New reserves had come up to fill the gaps in our ranks. There were quite a lot of youngsters among them, some of them two or three years our juniors. Most of them had come straight from a spell of brief training. They’d address us respectfully, as if we were officers. At first, we could hardly believe our ears; then we got a real kick out of it, and several fellows put on commanding airs ordering the poor young devils about like hell. But when one of the men picked on such a greenhorn and practically made him his valet, Kovak told him off in no uncertain terms.

Then the Sheikh buttonholed this particular newcomer. “Hello, there!” he shouted. “Wait a minute! I want to talk to you!”

The sop obediently walked over to the Sheikh.

“A little more vigor, if you don’t mind, my good man! After all, you’re young enough! What’s your name?”

“Rifleman Naegele, Herr...” And the youngster gaped at the Sheikh’s left sleeve trying to decipher his rank. But of course there was no rank, and that had the boy thoroughly rattled. But just to be on the safe side, he smartened up.

The Sheikh acted as if he hadn’t noticed it, and patted the boy’s shoulder in a patronizing way.

“So you’re Rifleman Naegele?” he said. “Going to be a brave soldier, I hope?”

The answer came rather hesitantly. “Of c-c-course,” the boy stammered. At least he no longer tried to discover the Sheikh’s non-existent rank, so now the Sheikh pretended to be really mad.

“Don’t seem to have drilled much into you back home,” he snarled. “You know as much about being a soldier as a cow knows about laying eggs. For the last time, will you try to listen?”

The boy blushed a bright scarlet.

“Now see here, son,” the Sheikh said authoritatively. “I’ll tell you this for your own good! If you ever again get the notion of addressing us here as officers I’ll teach you who I am! I’ll make you fall in three deep, you cock-eyed little sap!”

More relieved than embarrassed, Naegele joined in the general laughter. We all shook hands with him and told him our names.

Our own days on the drill ground were pretty nearly a year behind us, and whenever we mentioned this period in our lives it was with a rather supercilious smile. We’d thought that a week of rest was a week of rest. Period. This turned out to be an illusion. For exactly two days we were allowed to laze about. On the third day, Lieutenant Welty made us fall out and told us what he had in mind for us: three hours’ daily drill, cleaning of equipment, pack repair, inspections. Everything as usual.

“I’ll undertake all inspections in person,” he said. “In addition, let me emphasize that I’m not going to permit the slightest slackening or failure in observing routine regulations. Platoon leaders and NCOs must see to the maintenance of the most rigid discipline, in particular the proper saluting. And don’t let me find group leaders on familiar back-slapping terms with their men! If I see any of that, I’ll mete out the maximum punishment! Dis-miss!”

All of us were tremendously burned up, but all we could do was to relieve our minds by cursing to high heaven. Franzl, in particular, worked himself into a fury.

“A fellow lies out there in the dirt, where he might pop off any moment, day and night, till he’s just a bundle of nerves—and then that stinkbomb has to come and ball up our leave!”

“Mark my word! That goddamn stinker’s after the Night’s Cross. What’s more, he’ll probably get it—for pushing us around!”

When we’d all let off some steam, the Sheikh planted himself in front of Kovak and clicked his heels. “If you please, Herr Korporal,” he hollered at the top of his voice, “may I ask for permission to urinate?”

Kovak, who’d been our group leader for some time, spat right in front of the Sheikh’s toes.

So now we had to drill in the blazing sun in full marching order; what’s more, with our gas masks. Nor was Lieutenant Welty willing to delegate authority: he loved to give orders. “On your belly! On your feet! About turn! On your belly! Work your way forward!”

We practiced armed assault over and over with our MGs, and were shown the technique of dropping to the ground—as if we didn’t know it! But that wasn’t all. Welty also put us through the goose step, parade-ground style. Next came saluting practice. God Almighty! Only a mile or two ahead men were being killed in the trenches—and we were being trained, spit-and-polish style!

Kovak took our group off to some cover where that bastard of a lieutenant couldn’t see us so well. “For Christ’s sake,” said Kovak, “let’s have a couple of contortions, to humor the man!”

Like puppets we jerked our hands up and down, saluting away; and whenever the lieutenant showed up, Kovak cut in at the top of his voice. “Scholz, make a sharper angle with that elbow, will you? That’s better! Brodenfeld and Naegele, heads up! Juengling, I want to see you straighten those greasy fingers of yours!”

“Greasy, my eye,” the Sheikh muttered; and the rest of his tirade, thank God, was inaudible.

Then Welty took over and told everyone how to do all this properly. There wasn’t a single one of us who pleased him. In fact, the only ones that pleased him were three of his NCOs, real bastards and slave-drivers from way back. Two of them were fresh out with the latest batch of reserves. Only a few weeks earlier they’d been bullying raw recruits—not combat veterans—and one of them was that bull-necked Meier, who’d been in command of a section when Vogt was killed. You could tell by the tone of his blaring voice that he was once more in his element. So far we’d kept out of his way, to avoid a major row. Now he was really mad at us, particularly because we made no secret of what we thought of him. At the same time, he was afraid of everybody except Willi, so he took it out on him, knowing that by getting Willi down he was getting at us.

The next day, Meier had his opportunity. Willi was walking past him, lost in thoughts.

“Scholz, why don’t you salute me? You refuse—is that it?”

There and then he made Willi salute him five times in a row. Willi was so rattled that he forgot what he’d wanted to do in the first place.

That evening, when the call came to get the rations, it was Willi’s turn. One of the men called after him: `Be a good boy, Scholz, and bring ours along, too. We can’t get off right now.”

Willi got back with a full load and handed out our stuff, and then took the rest to the company section. A minute later we could hear Meier’s raucous voice:

“And where are the cigarettes?”

Willi had forgotten the cigarettes. I don’t know what he answered; all we could hear was Meier’s voice: “What? Didn’t get any? Don’t tell me such a barefaced lie! You bring those cigarettes—but on the double!”

Once more Willi went off to the supply truck, and I followed. The supply sergeant—the guy with a face like a nutcracker—wouldn’t listen.

“I already gave you your issue! Take better care next time! Clear out!”

“But he never did get the cigarettes!” I protested.

“You scram!” the man said fiercely. “None of your damn business!”

The way back was like the road to Canossa for Willi. Meier jumped on him, his face scarlet.

“What nonsense is this—the supply sergeant won’t give you your rations? Do you mean to suggest that he’s holding the cigarettes back? Why don’t you answer, you little squirt? I bet I know who’s got them!” And after a significant pause he added slyly: “Those rascals you hobnob with—Ullmer and the rest. They’ll hear about this!”

I looked for Franzl, and also found the Sheikh. Franzl didn’t say a word—just clenched his teeth—but the Sheikh flew right off the handle. “Now we’ve had it,” he raged. “Now we’ll show the bastard where he gets off!”

When Meier saw us coming, he immediately stopped bullying Willi. The kid looked pale as death.

“What do you want?” Meier demanded. “Get lost!”

Without a word we ranged ourselves facing him squarely. Then I said calmly: “Sergeant Meier, it so happened I heard you casting suspicion on us.”

And Franzl added with a threat: “You mentioned my name as someone knowing where those cigarettes have gone.”

“And I’m one of those rascals that Willi hobnobs with,” the Sheikh interrupted.

Meier pretended to be indignant. “How dare you speak to me like this? Besides—what’s going on here? A conspiracy? I’ll report this—depend on that! And now, get the hell out of here!”

Franzl’s features twitched, and he whispered: “But what about those cigarettes?”

“Are you deaf?” Meier shouted. “I told you to get the hell out of here. I’ll find out what happened to those cigarettes.”

“The supply sergeant’s got them,” I said. “Scholz has already told you that.”

But Franzl couldn’t keep his temper any longer—he just boiled over. “We’ll find out all right!” he screamed. “Damn dirty trick, casting suspicion on us. You can louse us up on duty, Meier, but this is something we’re not going to take lying down!”

Meier put his fists on his hips, and thrust out his massive chin. “Did you say louse you up? Did you really say louse you up? Who...Who ever ...” He began to stammer with rage.

“You know damn well who louses up the men, Meier!” Franzl said. “Or have you forgotten about that little man called Moehl? Back in camp? You got him cowed, didn’t you? You’ve got Moehl on your conscience, Meier! But I’ll have you know that you’re not going to do the same thing to Scholz!”

Meier was beside himself. He couldn’t find words to express himself; instead, he grabbed Franzl’s hands. “Are you threatening me?” he finally got out. “You little puppy...you squirt...you...”

“Take your hands off me,” Franzl said calmly.

“You crazy little jerk...I’ll show you...”

“For the last time, Meier—take your hands off me!”

But Meier paid no attention. He pulled Franzl closer and began shaking him like a walnut tree. “Do you think you’re going to tell me what to do and what not to do?” he bellowed.

Franzl’s fist shot out, a straight right. It plunged into Meier’s ugly mug like a battering ram. Gasping, Meier stumbled backward, raising his hands to protect himself. But Franzl followed through with a regular hurricane of blows. Meier didn’t know whether he was coming or going, and staggered back in a groggy spin, till he sank to his knees.

“Oh no!” Franzl cried. “Steady, Meier! We haven’t finished with you yet!”

With one heave, he got Meier to his feet and shook him savagely, as if he were annoyed that the bully didn’t put up a fight. Then he hit him straight on the temple. Two guys from Meier’s section were looking on, slapping their sides with enthusiasm. There wasn’t a single man in the whole crowd who wasn’t glad to see Meier get what he deserved.

At last, Meier staggered off and sank beaten to the ground. He was a mess, his beefy face looking beefier than ever.

“Corporal Ullmer begs to inform Sergeant Meier he may go now,” Franzl said, his voice charged with scorn, while he wiped his knuckles gingerly on his trousers.

Meier staggered to his feet, pressed his handkerchief to his bleeding nose and, muttering threats, stalked off.

At this crucial moment, Lieutenant Straub came on the scene. “What the hell’s going on here?” he wanted to know.

I told him the whole story, and he groaned. “For God’s sake, children, what a damn mess this is! We can only hope for the best. But really, Ullmer, you sonuvabitch, I honestly wouldn’t like to be in your shoes!”

Later, we were summoned to the CO, who gave us a dirty look. Straub was along.

“Very well, Meier,” the CO said. “Tell your story again, please.”

Meier reported in a somewhat muffled voice—his nose had gotten quite a beating—but he didn’t say a word about the cigarettes. Welty turned to Franzl. “What do you have to say, Ullmer?”

There wasn’t a word from Franzl. He just stared at Meier, as if ready to spring at him again. Welty rose to his feet, and then he said: “Men, what you’ve done—and you know it—is open mutiny. Corporal Ullmer, you stay here for the moment and come with me to battalion headquarters. The others are to wait with their sections for further orders.”

Now Straub spoke up. He took Franzl’s part: this was one of his best men and he couldn’t spare him. He admitted that Ullmer had behaved in a reprehensible manner, but he’d been goaded on by Meier. And Straub went on to tell the story of the cigarettes exactly as we’d related it.

“Is this true?” Welty asked sternly, clearly annoyed that Meier should have concealed this fact.

Meier drew himself up more stiffly. “Herr Oberleutnant,” he said, “I only said...I mean, the cigarettes, that is, Scholz, I mean ...” Then he stopped short and fussed with his handkerchief.

“By casting suspicion on him, Meier certainly gave Ullmer great provocation,” said Straub. He added that Meier wasn’t popular with the men: his own section had often complained about him.

With a toss of his head, Welty dismissed this statement. Meier’s unpopularity, he said, didn’t alter the fact that we were guilty of insubordination, or worse. Nevertheless, Welty let us all go, though of course he said a good many harsh words, also for Straub’s benefit. “And don’t think the matter has ended here,” he concluded.

A few minutes later we heard a terrific row going on near the supply trucks. We strained our ears and clearly caught Straub’s voice. He was shouting as we’d never heard him shout before. Not long after that, the supply sergeant came up, frowning and worried, and brought us the overdue issue of cigarettes.

We were lice-ridden, like everybody else in the front lines. We’d finally got used to the parasites and made only occasional raids on them. For one thing, we had to boil our underwear to destroy the pests. But the Sheikh, always inventive, had a better idea. He got a driver to give him a can of gasoline, and soaked his stuff in that. The result was phenomenal, and after that we all copied his example.

The soaking began as soon as we were off duty. We then gave ourselves a thorough rubdown—didn’t we have our little lake, so inviting for a swim? Gloriously naked, we’d dive in, yodeling with delight, splashing one another and snorting through the water like porpoises. In other words, we did our best trying to be young and carefree again. In those few moments, I think, we were really happy. No orders to compel conformity, no infernal din of destruction, no thought of the Meiers or the Weltys—no thought of the awful past nor the hopeless future. In those few moments we were completely human, marvelously aware of our unique existence, our unique personalities.

With sudden powerful strokes Franzl swam to my side and gripped my arm. I thought he meant to duck me under, but when I saw his face I noticed he looked rather grim. He said something that made my blood run cold. “What’s that?” I cried. But he said quickly: “Pretend you’ve noticed nothing. Pretend we’re just having a good time.”

I was still too startled fully to realize what was happening. Franzl gave a little nod indicating the opposite shore, and said: “Take a good look up there, over to the left, near the other shore. See anything?”

I said I couldn’t.

“Well, I can see a gun barrel. And just now the reeds stirred. There’s somebody in there.”

God Almighty! He was right—I could see it myself now. The barrel was pointing straight at us.

“Out of the water, as quietly as you can!”

“Had enough?” asked the Sheikh, panting alongside us. “Come along,” I shouted to everybody. “Let’s go have a look how our lice are coming along!”

In the thick cover of the reeds Franzl told the others what we’d seen. Kovak thought we needn’t alert the whole company for two measly Russian snipers. “We’ll fix this ourselves,” he said.

So we took the nearest automatics and grenades and, stark naked, starting creeping around the pond, covered by the reeds. Some of the other men thought we were acting mighty peculiar, and suggested that maybe the water had gone to our heads. But one of our sentries was cautious enough to follow.

Again, something was stirring in the reeds.

“Ruki kverkh!” Kovak shouted. “Hands up!” added the sentry. But nothing happened.

Then Franzl tossed in a hand grenade—and the whole reed bed came alive.

“Oh my aching back!” the Sheikh yelled, thunderstruck. There we stood, in the raw, pistols at the ready, and couldn’t believe our eyes. Eighteen Russians, all armed to the teeth, crept out—and raised their hands! Kovak lined them up. By now half the company came running, carbines ready at the hip.

As soon as they saw that the danger was over, we had to listen to a good deal of wisecracking. “Look at the frogmen! Why don’t you go into a tribal dance? New secret weapon apparently, walking around stark naked!”

The Sheikh was indignant. “You can all go shove it up...you know where! What are you bitching about? We served them up on a silver platter, didn’t we?”

When Lieutenant Straub saw us he was aghast. “For God’s sake, what’s going on here? Go get dressed at once and report to the CO immediately!”

We handed over our weapons and swam back across the pond. We had to report in our gym outfits because our uniforms were still sodden with gasoline. Welty of course insisted on knowing the whole story, and Kovak reported in his best style.

“And why didn’t you give the alert at once?” came the stern demand.

“We thought there were only a few of them and wanted to take them by surprise.”

“In the future, kindly leave all the thinking to me.”

Then Kovak had to turn interpreter. It seemed these Russians were stragglers who’d been cut off and moving around the neighborhood for days. They’d managed to get close to the reeds and planned to attack us at night, but our superior numbers had made them hesitate.

The interrogation was by no means easy. Welty had to force every word out of them at pistol point. He insisted on knowing who their leader was, but they wouldn’t answer. Even brandishing his pistol produced no results.

Then one of the men brought in a badge he’d found in the reeds—the badge of a political commissar. Welty was foaming at the mouth. He gave them five minutes to make up their minds; if the leader refused to identify himself, Welty would have them all shot. That shook the Russians. Some began pleading for mercy, but Welty remained adamant. Three minutes passed. The lieutenant ordered a firing squad to get ready.

Hasty words were being exchanged among the Russians. Welty looked at his wrist watch. “One minute to go,” he said.

Suddenly one man stepped forward; he had the face of a good-natured peasant. His mouth was twitching. Without a word he turned around and pointed to a sullen towheaded young fellow, who reacted to this betrayal with a derisive grin.

“Search the scoundrel!” Welty ordered.

A compass, a pencil, a piece of string—nothing of importance. Nevertheless, out rang the sharp command: “Shoot him!”

There were two men of the third platoon who stood closest to Welty. One of them I knew—Corporal Habacher. The other one was a newcomer. Habacher stared hard at the ground, and didn’t stir. He was a front-line veteran, and this kind of job went against his grain. The youngster blanched to the roots of his hair and stared at Welty in horror, as if he couldn’t believe that the order was addressed to him. The commissar was still grinning, but now the grin was a frozen mask on his face.

“Make it snappy,” Welty said coldly. “I’ll have no insubordination! There’s a trench back there!”

With a weary shrug Habacher motioned to the commissar to step out and precede him. The young recruit followed, his knees shaking.

Then we heard a shot, hastily followed by another. The sun was going down in a blood-red ball of fire.

Another hour, and everyone was astonished by the sudden orders to get ready. It might mean a lull in the fighting, or combat. This time it clearly meant another battle, and my first thought was: which one of us would no longer hear this command the next time?

Our uniforms were still reeking with gasoline.

Near our trench lay a dead horse, swollen with gases. The whole air smelled of sweetish decay; it was so strong you could taste it. The only thing that helped was smoking, and since we’d used up our cigarette rations we scrounged around for pipes and tobacco and puffed away till our throats were raw.

Enemy artillery was continuously bombarding the railway embankment behind which we were entrenched, and the heavy stuff was screaming about our ears.

The field kitchen came around at night to issue rations. Every man got a tumbler of schnapps. But bitter experience had taught us to take a dim view of such extravagance: it was invariably a bad sign. We didn’t have to wait long: word was given that we were to attack the next morning at six. We slept poorly that night.

At five-thirty sharp, against a background of perpetual bombardment, our guns started firing away and countless smoke-throwers were sending howling rockets overhead. The enemy positions were drowned in an ocean of fiery explosions, of dust and sulphurous smoke. For us, it was a tremendously inspiring spectacle and helped allay our fears.

We got ready for the attack. As our MG had to be overhauled, we’d been given carbines instead. We were pleased: this gave us greater mobility and we didn’t have to lug the heavy ammo cases.

Just before six, the order “Fix bayonets!” was given. As the time drew nearer, an oppressive silence descended on us. There were only a few more seconds to go....

Three or four steps brought us into the dangers of no man’s land. The Soviet artillery left us alone, but instead we were being sniped at from all directions—and those Russkies were shooting damn straight. The Russian trenches were so perfectly camouflaged that we were unable to spot them, and our shooting was mere guesswork.

The wounded were screaming, and the stretcher bearers were dashing about from one place to another to give what help they could. We didn’t envy those men. They often had to have more guts than we had—after all, we could always fling ourselves down behind some sort of cover. If ever any men out there in the front line deserved a decoration, these were the men. And yet, if they failed to be on the spot the minute someone needed them, they were called yellow, and also had to put up with a great deal of other abuse, merely because they were not butchers, like ourselves.

As a rule, our medical orderlies were attached to specific platoons. Ours was a man named Hoermann, one of the few who’d belonged to our unit since the Russian war began. He gave the impression of being the nervous type, but he was regarded as a good man for the job and he had quite a number of medals. But though he was neither unfriendly nor standoffish, we never really got to know him: he was a loner.

We were gathering courage for a new leap forward, protected by a slight rise in the ground, when I shot a cautious glance around to see if Hoermann was nearby, somewhere over to the right. I just about concluded that he must be busy elsewhere when I suddenly saw him lying on his back, rather far to the rear. He was motionless. Could it be that Hoermann was dead?

“Hey, Franzl!” I called, “take a look back there—” Franzl was firing away uninterruptedly, like an automaton. “There’s Hoermann lying on his back. Has he caught it?”

Franzl raised himself and turned his head. Kovak began to look back, too. Now we saw Hoermann moving, but we felt sure something was wrong. Was he wounded? Then we saw him hold up his left arm and stare at it, without the slightest concern for the turmoil going on around him. There seemed to be something peculiar about his arm. Before we realized what was happening, Hoermann was pointing his pistol at his own arm, and fired. That single shot was of course lost in the general noise of the battle. We saw Hoermann throwing the gun away and crawling ahead. Then, doubled up, he started running to the rear, his blood-stained arm dangling from his shoulder.

We gaped at each other in utter amazement. Kovak shook his head and got ready for another leap. Franzl shrugged. “Stupid bastard,” he muttered. “Hope nobody noticed.”

Self-mutilation was a very serious business. But whichever way you looked at it, Hoermann couldn’t win: if the wound was a trifling one, he’d be back at the front in a few weeks; on the other hand, he might be maimed for life —by his own hand.

I took my carbine and fired like a lunatic, still thinking about Hoermann. I somehow couldn’t imagine any one of us resorting to this kind of stunt, no matter how filthy the job we were condemned to do.

Slowly we worked our way forward. The nearer we drew to the invisible marksmen sniping at us, the angrier we got. They were picking us off like so many rabbits, and we still didn’t know where they were hiding. We were almost relieved when the order came to open the attack.

Quite a number of men doubled up at once and fell headlong, as if struck by lightning. But at least we could see those enemy positions—they were only a stone’s throw away! Hand grenades, quick! More and more Russians clambered out of their trenches and tried to get away. They had little chance. Now we had targets we could aim at.

The Russian slit trenches were so well camouflaged that as a rule we noticed them only when we nearly fell into them. That’s how I suddenly saw a Russian right under my feet. He was scarcely above ground. The nose under the helmet was broad as a boxer’s. And he hadn’t even seen me yet. With amazing calm he raised his rifle and took aim at somebody. Suddenly I realized he was aiming at Franzl, who stood there, unsuspecting, firing at the Russkies who were on the run.

With one leap, I was on the man in the trench. With a jerk the green helmet swung around and I looked into a bearded peasant face gaping at me in real terror as I reached for him. I thought: watch out for that bayonet...anywhere but not in his face...the top button of his uniform, just under his Adam’s apple…that’s the spot! I stopped thinking. All I could see was that button and I thrust at it with all my strength, straight into the earth-colored cloth. The bayonet bored deep into the flesh, and my momentum carried me right on down into the trench. I let the carbine go as I fell, and landed on top of the Russian, who folded up under me. His hands feebly tried to beat me off; then he clutched at my belt and hung on to it. Slowly, his head sank lower and lower; the helmet gradually slipped forward, till the whole blood-smeared face was covered and the faint rattle of death was sealed off.

For some time I felt absolutely drained of all energy, incapable of a single thought. Then I pulled out the bayonet, which was streaming with blood, and scrambled out of that hole like a lunatic to get away from the dead man.

When I finally saw the familiar faces of my buddies I gradually calmed down and my heart stopped pounding. I thrust the blade into the soft earth to clean off the blood.

Once the first resistance was broken our advance was greatly speeded up. The sun blazed down, merciless. We undid our tunics and tilted back our helmets. The scorching air pressed shimmering on the parched steppe, and there was an all-pervading smell of blood mingled with the reek of explosives that made IA sick.

Toward evening there was a sudden flank machine-gun fire, and with a high-pitched yell Willi fell forward. Instantly, the Sheikh was beside him, but Willi staggered to his feet.

“Hit?” Franzl asked anxiously.

The Sheikh touched Willi’s back. Then, seeing us all around him, Willi began to laugh hysterically. He was as white as a sheet. The bullet had merely grazed him, but it had been too close for comfort.

The Russian machine gun was silent for a few minutes; then it started firing again, but the bullets seemed to come from all directions. It was enough to drive a man out of his mind. For a moment we thought it was the fools of the third platoon potting at the enemy right across our positions. But no, once again there it was, that damned Russian machine-gun fire. It had changed positions again and we couldn’t tell where the fire was coming from.

Darkness put an end to any further action. Straub passed the word along: “Dig in!” The firing died away and all was quiet. We set to work shoveling.

Two men were making their way to the rear with a wounded man in a shelter half tied to either end of a pole. The man inside was huddled up like a bundle. At the bottom of the bundle was a dark patch, from which something was dripping sluggishly, like water from a leaky tap.

“Who is it?” I asked.

“Kraemer. Bowel shot.”

From the shelter half came the whimpering of a child. I felt my whole insides tighten. I’d often heard dying men whimper, but never so poignantly childlike as this. It was so infinitely helpless that I clapped my hands to my ears to close out the sound. Kraemer! Another one of those raw young recruits. Only a few weeks back he was still home with his parents. The kid must have been a good two or three years younger than any of us. Not much difference in age, but suddenly I felt very old.

Black clouds were towering in the sky, followed by the first flashes of lightning and the roll of thunder. The storm broke. The thunder was so loud it reminded us of a heavy artillery barrage with air support. Then the rain came down in torrents. In a matter of minutes we were soaked to the skin. The ground turned into a quagmire.

We drew our shelter halves close around us and crouched exhausted in the muck. The rain kept pouring down the whole night long.

“God Almighty!” Franzl muttered. “Think of being back home, in a warm bed, and sleeping—just sleeping around the clock!”

“By God, yes,” I said when I’d thought the startling idea over. “And when you wake up, crisp rolls thick with butter and jam.”

“Apricot jam.”

“Apricot jam, if you insist. And coffee.”

“Piping hot.”

“And the morning papers. And soft music on the radio.”

“And at night a show, or the movies, or a saloon.”

“In civvies, of course...”

Civvies—what a sweet word! Would we ever wear civilian clothes again?

The next morning, the clouds had cleared and the sun was blazing down on the steaming earth. Then someone spotted the Russian MG that had given us so much trouble.

“Don’t shoot,” Lieutenant Straub said. “We’ll manage this little job without bloodshed.”

His automatic stuck in his holster, Straub strolled over toward the Russians and their gun. We held our breath. This was sheer lunacy! But Straub apparently knew what he was doing. Though we could clearly see two helmets moving in the cover, the Russian weapon remained silent. I suppose the Reds couldn’t make out what our man was up to.

Then Straub called something across to them. It sounded like a friendly greeting. He repeated it, drawing nearer all the time. Rather hesitantly, one of the Russians stood up and raised his hands. Another followed suit, and then a third one appeared.

Straub brought the men back with the casual air of someone returning from a morning stroll. “You go pick up their gun,” he said casually.

An elderly corporal fingered his chin thoughtfully. “Jesus Christ!” he said. “There’s real guts for you!”

The siege of Kharkov was nearing its culmination. The front was completely in flux, zigzagging back and forth. We attacked, we withdrew, we outflanked and was fought in all directions. Our losses were mounting, but Russian losses were higher still. We could see from the rapidly increasing numbers of prisoners and deserters that we weren’t doing too badly. Many times at daybreak we’d find a party of Russians squatting calmly right under our noses: they’d stolen away from their positions under cover of darkness, ready to surrender.

Sometimes the steppes would be white with the leaflets our airmen had dropped, asking the Russians to give up their senseless resistance and come over to us. The bottom part of the leaflet was detachable and served as a “Pass for Officers or men up to fifty in number.” There was the promise, in German and Russian, of “good treatment and an early return to your homeland after the war is over.”

Most deserters showed us these passes when they surrendered. Even those who put up a fierce resistance before they were captured would suddenly pull out one of the crumpled passes, as if they thought that this would mean the end of their troubles.

However, the passes brought them no advantage whatsoever. They were only a propaganda trick of psychological warfare. ‘Birdlime,” the Sheikh said, “to catch stupid peasants.” Actually all prisoners, without distinction, were marched to the nearest assembly camp, where nobody cared a hoot whether they were genuine deserters or had fought us to the last. A number of deserters were kept at base for menial tasks. They were well treated, and better off than we were.

One night we heard somebody poking about near our trenches. Guns at the ready, we listened. Before we knew what was happening, we heard a clear, calm voice: “Friends! Don’t shoot!” Whoever it was kept on repeating these words till one of us answered. Franzl then climbed out and went up to the man.

He was a deserter, though of a rather special sort. In a strained voice, and in fairly good German, he said he’d been waiting for this moment for a long time. The Reds had shot his father and his brothers for alleged sabotage, and now he had only one desire: revenge. We’d never regret it if we’d let him fight on our side, he added.

“You’ll have to explain that to our CO,” Franzl said. “We can’t do anything about it.”

We didn’t quite know what to think of him. But Franzl took him to company HQ, and a couple of days later he was assigned to our platoon. At base they’d fitted him out with a German uniform and a carbine. Straub said we were going to test him; we had orders never to leave him out of sight.

He was a dark-skinned, slit-eyed Tartar, and he never let us down. We called him Seph. He turned out to be a regular daredevil, always the first to volunteer for any dangerous assignment, and when it came to hand-to-hand fighting he was at the enemy like a wild beast.

At one time we came upon an endless column of prisoners on their way to an assembly camp. Without warning Seph leaped forward: he’d spotted a man he knew. Before we could say Ivan, he’d beaten the man’s head to pulp with his rifle.

When Lieutenant Straub heard about this, he yelled at Seph: “If that happens again I’ll pack you off to a POW camp!”

Later, Seph explained that he’d recognized the prisoner —one of the worst butchers who ever walked the earth—and he had no regrets about the killing.

Nevertheless, this incident seemed to have cooled off his thirst for revenge; after that, Seph acted more normal; his fanatical vindictiveness was gone and he fought like any other regular soldier, though with great stubbornness. His attitude toward us changed, too. Hitherto he’d kept much to himself, while we regarded him more with distrust than with sympathy. Now he opened up and was anxious to make friends, and we finally accepted him. He didn’t talk much, but when he did have something to say you could depend on it. Many men among us owed their lives to Seph’s keen eyes and his sense of impending danger.

The weather being clear, German bombers roared overhead in a steady stream to the enemy rear. New types of Russian kites turned up in the sky, but not many bombs were dropped on either side. The front line was fluctuating all the time and it was hard to distinguish from the air exactly who was on the ground.

Once a German biplane came along, flying extremely low. We waved at the plane as it cruised over us, shouting up wisecracks to the pilot, when suddenly cries went up all along our line: “Take cover!” The next moment, the bombs were whining down.

We flung ourselves down in the nick of time. There were three explosions in quick succession, and heavy clumps of earth whirled skyward. We soon knew that the bombs had hit their target. Like a cry of rage, ten white flares hissed together into the sky. We rapidly spread our yellow and red recognition marks. A number of men were so mad that they started firing at the bomber. I, too, was on the point of giving him what he deserved—it wouldn’t have been too hard to bring him down.

Then the pilot dropped some of his own flares, to show he had identified us. It was like a gesture of apology—but three men in the third platoon were killed, and seven badly wounded by those bombs.

Pille was with us again. Looking tanned and well-fed, he greeted us noisily: “Hi there, you lousy battle-crawlers! It’s good to see you again. I thought you’d all gone to the devil long ago. I tell you, I nearly died of homesickness!”

He told us that his wound—an upper-arm flesh wound—kept festering and had been slow to heal. Unfortunately, they hadn’t sent him home; he’d stayed in the hospital deep in the rear.

“But I’m telling you—it was good! Good grub, first-rate treatment, plenty of movies, even a theater. They put on some damn fine shows specially for us. And the girls! Dandy, I tell you—simply dandy!”

Pille’s eyes gleamed with sheer delight at the mere thought of it. We hung on his lips, listening and laughing all the time. It wasn’t so much what he said but the way he said it. He was bubbling over with a vitality we didn’t think any longer existed, and we wanted to absorb as much of it as we could. Gradually our spirits were rising and we were trying hard to shake off the feeling of resignation that had eaten deep into our bones.

But our effort was short-lived. Suddenly we heard the same old command to be ready for action, and that flicked out the delicate little flame of normal life in us. It was not long, either, before Pille too had sunk back into the destructive fatalism of the front line.

The battalion began a new engagement. This time we were to capture a sprawling, sizable village. Behind it the country rose sharply to a higher-level plateau. We could see long columns of trucks creeping forward like beetles, a few tremendous mechanized objects—apparently Panzers—maneuvering on either side, and the whole scene was teeming with Russian infantry.

We moved up on a wide front. That heavy shrapnel fire was a clear indication that they had no intention of letting us take that village without a struggle. With uneasy feelings we noticed the way they were stepping up that artillery fire. The shells they were using had a wide fragmentation area. They detonated with sharp bursts of flame. The blast was tremendous. Curtain fire. The whole countryside was cratered. What’s more, we soon began to feel our losses.

I happened to be watching when a man leaped up, ran a couple of paces, then all at once vanished in a burst of flame. Afterwards, I couldn’t find a trace of him, not even a boot, just one tremendous circular stain. I thought how wonderful it would be to have an end as quick as that.

Crawling, rolling, or bounding with huge strides we pressed forward to the outer edge of the village. Then Russian machine guns began their jerky stutter. Flares went up, the artillery quieted down, and there we were, in a man-to-man fight.

I set up my MG and planted a good burst in a clump of trees where an enemy squad seemed to be entrenched. When everything there was still, I made my way cautiously forward. Kovak threw in hand grenades. Almost at once a number of Russians broke cover and ran. As they ran they were mowed down. We were hitting our targets pretty well. Pille yanked three of them out of a trench.

I heard an automatic pistol popping; it was our lieutenant. “Get that big building over there in your sights,” he shouted to me—then, to Kovak: “You and your pal try to get at it from that side.”

Franzl clipped in a new belt. The MG shuddered, and plaster sprayed from the walls of the house. Kovak’s men had scarcely anything to hold them up. In through the windows went their grenades, and clouds of smoke belched out. A couple of blows with a rifle butt, and a door shattered. Shortly after that the building was in our hands.

Russian resistance was weakening. The other companies were also making good progress. The enemy seemed to be abandoning the whole place.

Three of the prisoners we’d taken were wounded; one had to be supported by his comrades. He had an ugly neck wound, and his ripped-up tunic showed there was another wound in his chest. The deathlike face under the loose-fitting helmet was smeared with blood. This man begged Fanzl to shoot him.

“Ich nix lieben,” he said in broken German. “Ich kaputt.” He was doubled up with weakness. He pointed to his wounds. But Franzl only shook his head, as you shake your head when a child asks for something it is not allowed to have.

Franzl indicated to the Russians that they could sit down. The wounded man now tried to persuade me to finish him off. Through his glasses, which had slipped halfway down his nose, he looked at me with a terrible sadness in his eyes. Still babbling something, he took off his helmet. I couldn’t help staring; he looked almost like our Willi. The same short auburn hair, the same delicate, almost girlish features, and the same way of peering over his spectacles.

Quite likely, just like Willi, he’d come here straight from the school bench. Perhaps he, too, had been head of his class. Perhaps he, too, had no idea why he had to be shot down, and equally hated all this senseless slaughter of man by man....I felt I ought to go up to him and tell him we were comrades—we both wanted to end this fighting, we all had an equal right to live.

Kovak came running, wet with perspiration, his helmet dangling on his shoulder. I shouted after him: “You’re a doc! Put a dressing on this Russki.”

Kovak mopped the sweat off his face. He was breathless. He shot one glance at the wounded man.

“Solicitous, aren’t you?” he said. “Send him back to the rear; they’ll soon deal with him there.”

But when I begged him a second time, Kovak took out his first-aid kit without another word and knelt down to look at the groaning man’s wounds.

I took my machine gun and followed Franzl, who had gone on ahead with the ammo.

The Sheikh welcomed us with a huge chunk of magnificent bacon. Heaven alone knew where he’d found it. We crammed it into our bags. Just then Straub called out we were to take the greatest care when we entered any of the houses; most of them were mined.

“The hell with the mines!” said the Sheikh.

“It isn’t you we worry about,” said Pille dryly, “but we might have missed out on that bacon.”

Without meeting any serious opposition, we came out at a dirty little creek which cut through the heart of the village. The Russians seemed to have taken up new positions on the other side of it. We entrenched ourselves behind some cottages.

Lower down, where the creek curved, was the only bridge across it. The eleventh company was stationed there. Their wild shooting showed they were trying to establish a bridgehead. A mobile porn-porn was giving them fire cover. The four automatically coupled 2-cm. barrels were pumping tracer shells rhythmically into the little copse on the far side. Heavy and light MGs were firing furiously, and there were also some mortars engaged in this preliminary softening up. The Russians were weakening.

Rifles held high over their heads, the men of the eleventh entered the water. Many were killed. They folded up and drowned. But the majority managed to reach the other bank, the bridgehead was established, and further advance was made easier.

Caught in the flank, the enemy facing us also began to fall back. Without hesitation we leaped into the creek. The muddy brown water reached to our thighs, then our chests. Though the current was not fast, every step was hard going. But I scarcely noticed my sodden uniform or the mud at the bottom sucking at my boots. Nor did I notice the pain in my arms from holding the heavy MG over my head. All I could see was the countless little pockets of water all around me where the bullets were hitting. I didn’t like it at all. I did my utmost to take longer steps or to leap. It was no use, I could scarcely move. Faster...faster...only a few more yards! I had to shut my eyes and blot out all sounds; had to imagine we’d managed it and were already in cover and could take a breather.

We’d just reached the bank when Kovak clutched at his chest with both hands and folded up. He collapsed into the water, gurgling.

“Kovak, Kovak, old man!”

Pille dropped his gun and pulled Kovak back up on the bank.

“Brodenfeld!” I cried to the fellow next to me. “You take over this MG a minute.”

But Straub was already beside us.

“Give it to me!” he cried.

While the others clambered up on the bank and began shooting all they had to give us cover, Pille and I picked up Kovak, who was unconscious, and carried him back across the stream. We no longer thought about the bullets, which were still hitting the water; we could only think of our pal Kovak, and wonder whether he was still alive. His uniform had darkened with blood. But perhaps his constitution would save him. And if he was still alive, he’d certainly be sent back home now. He’d write us, he’d tell us he was getting on fine. He’d tell his folks at home all about us. He would go back to his old job and be glad it was no longer his duty to kill other men.

But what had been Kovak’s job? Oh yes, didn’t he say once he’d made films? A nice job, I wouldn’t mind taking it up, too. As a matter of fact, old Kovak had never had much to say about himself. We hadn’t even known his full name. We’d been together so long. Now we would have to do without him. How well we had all got on together, despite the fact that he was so much our senior. We were going to miss him.

At last we were out of the water, and reached the company’s first-aid station. As carefully as we could, we put him down between someone, who apparently had a stomach wound, and a man of the second platoon, who’d caught it in the head and was lashing about wildly.

A thickset medical orderly felt Kovak’s pulse, nodded as if he were pleased with it, then unbuttoned his tunic. His shirt was dripping with blood. The orderly quickly cut it away and started dealing with a gaping wound, which looked frightful. Kovak gave a deep breath and opened his eyes. With a groan he tried to touch his chest, but the orderly wrenched his hands down. “Keep still,” he rumbled in a deep bass. “A bit of infection’s just what you need now, isn’t it!”

Anxiously I inquired when the wounded were going to be taken down to the field hospital. Without turning, the orderly said: “The CO’s car’s running back and forth all the damn time; it’ll be here any minute now.”

When Kovak recognized us, he tried to raise his head, then fell back helplessly. His bright eyes, which suddenly seemed very large, switched from Pille to me. Then, with a faint, agonized smile, he whispered: “Thanks, thanks a lot, gents.”

Red bubbles frothed between his lips.

“You shut your trap!” Pille interrupted him, but so gently that the rough words were like a caress. It was obvious that Pille was trying to hide his feelings, and Kovak smiled again. “You’re the best....” he murmured.

The orderly was furious. “For Christ’s sake, man, if you value your life, stop talking,” he said. The red foam was getting thicker.

Nevertheless Kovak spoke again. “All the best to the others from me and ...” But his speech suddenly turned into mere gurgling. The orderly pressed the dressing against the wound. Kovak’s features twisted with agony. Then he lost consciousness again. A thin red trickle of blood was now dribbling down his chin.

Pille passed his hand over his forehead and wiped his eyes.

“Hope he makes it,” I said, and gulped. We turned and made our way back to join the others.

Exhausted, I flung myself down next to Franzl, who turned to me questioningly. Squeezing the water from my uniform, I shrugged my shoulders. “The orderly thinks with luck he may pull through.”

Lost in his own thoughts, Franzl stared at me for some moments. Then the detonation of a shrapnel shell startled me.

“That’s a tank that’s come up,” Franzl explained without ceasing to fire our gun, “but it hasn’t dared come out in the open.”

While I handed up belt after belt, the MG sprayed the fleeing Russians. Close by, the lieutenant leaped up and rushed to the next cover, followed by Seph and a number of others. We, too, made a couple of leaps forward.

With small-arms fire and grenades, step by step we were gaining new ground. There were dead and wounded Russians everywhere. Seph kicked each one in turn, to see if there was any fight left in them. But we had to be prudent; often enough they pretended to be dead and then at the first opportunity shot us in the back. There were masses of abandoned weapons; we hadn’t time to collect or destroy them.

A second Panzer came in. Shrapnel flew all around us and forced us to take cover. The enemy saw their chance and made their way forward again, and grenades were now exploding almost uninterruptedly. We had no choice but to fall back.

Angel-Face Naegele—the guy who addressed us as officers when he first arrived with a batch of reserves from home—stopped a bullet. Bang in the neck it hit him; he was dead on the spot.

Orderlies were getting the wounded to the rear at top speed. The third section’s MG was blown to smithereens under a direct hit. I dragged its ammo over to our gun. The cases were spattered with blood.

Slowly at first, then faster and faster, we were now forced to yield ground. The Russians were pressing on with all they had. In desperation we called in an anti-tank unit. Straub sent a runner back.

Then to our great astonishment one of the tanks went up in a sheet of flame. The other got scared and withdrew in good time. The oncoming Russians saw their support vanish. They lost their fighting spirit and now we were on top. In less than no time the company had passed its former position and was pressing straight on. At one stroke the ticklish situation had turned to our advantage.

Seph, our Tartar, tossed a small grenade into a hole, but before the thing went off a regular giant of a Russian leaped out as if a tarantula had bitten him, flung himself on the ground and covered his head with his hands. After the explosion he raised his head and blinked, obviously amazed that he was still in the land of the living. Then he raised his hands in surrender.

A Russian automatic in one hand, Seph searched the man’s pockets with a practiced hand. The next instant something unbelievable happened. The prisoner grabbed Seph by the tunic and gave him a resounding slap in the face. That knocked Seph sideways a couple of paces. Seph gaped at the fellow, particularly as the Russki had again raised his hands. Then Seph gave him a long burst of lead, firing point-blank, and the massive figure collapsed like an empty sack.

I picked up my ammo cases and made off as fast as I could to catch up with Franzl, who’d got ahead of me while this was happening. When I turned around, there was Seph, still in a fury, staring at the dead man.

Toward dusk we’d cleared the village of the enemy; then we took up positions along the edge of the upper plateau and dug the usual slit trenches.

At this point Sergeant Meier turned up to report to Lieutenant Straub with four other man as reinforcements for our platoon, because we had the biggest losses. The Sheikh swore like a trooper.

The business of beating up Meier had passed off without consequences, despite Welty’s threats, and since then Meier kept out of our way. But the Sheikh was not happy with Meier’s presence.

As the sun went down, the shooting died and welcome peace descended on us. The Russians had crept away somewhere; not a man was to be seen. To have more room we lay down outside our trenches and tried to get forty winks.

I awoke suddenly and thought I was in another world. In the diamond-studded night sky was the moon, smiling dreamily and watching over us, flooding the landscape with a soft, pale light. The winding waters of the creek below us, with little clumps of trees `sere and there, might well have been painted by a sentimental artist. The village seemed to be sleeping so peacefully that for a moment I was tempted to take the grim future before me as merely the last phase of a nightmare.

However, that savage beast, Warfare, was far from dead; it was merely slumbering. When the moon was momentarily covered by sweeping clouds and flares soared into the sky, one could clearly see it lying there and hear its foul breath come and go.

Franzl and the Sheikh were deep in whispered conversation.

“Anything wrong?” I asked them.

The Sheikh came over to me, and held his canteen to my nose.

“Look at this,” he said. “Have a shot?”

I took a good sip, but spat it out damn quick; it bit my tongue.

“What on earth is it?”

The Sheikh grinned. “That, my dear fellow, is vodka, high-proof vodka. Surprised, are you?”

“I should say I am. Where on earth is that on sale?”

“See over there?” he said. “That dark hump. That’s a farm wagon that caught a hit. But in that wagon there was a barrel and that barrel didn’t burst. It’s almost full of the stuff.”

Without another word, we all made our way across with the idea of getting the barrel, but it was so tightly wedged in by the crushed timbers of the wagon that we came back to get all the men we could find and took them along to fill up. While we did this we saw somebody a couple of trenches away eying us suspiciously. It was Meier.

When we had pretty well drained that vodka barrel and walked back there was Meier. He’d come around the other way with two canteens.

“We should have drained off the rest,” said the Sheikh.

A general binge followed, with much clinking of glasses —or what served as glasses—and hilarious toasts. Pille suddenly sighed.

“Oh boys!” he cried, “if only we could go on a really good drunk! I mean, a regular spree, get pie-eyed, forget the whole mess, forget all this ...”

The temptation was great. All the same, Pille was one of the first to suggest perhaps we’d better not drink too much of the booze. Franzl, too, thought we ought to take it easy; it wouldn’t do to pass out and the Russkies deciding to attack before we were sober.

“Perhaps they left that vodka there on purpose....” “And supposed it’s poisoned....”

That was certainly not to be ruled out. We stopped drinking at once. The Sheikh peered into his canteen, took another mouthful and tasted it carefully.

“I don’t know,” he said, “tastes all right to me. But I don’t see why we shouldn’t try it out on Meier.”

We looked around. No sign of Meier. Where was the man?

“Maybe he’s already back.”

Then Willi had an idea. “We’ve still got that fat bacon,” he said. “Wouldn’t that help?”

Quite right, the bacon. It would slow down the effect of the alcohol. We got our teeth into it. We had some bread to go with it. The only thing was, the bacon was damn salty and we got one hell of a thirst.

“I’m going to get plastered,” the Sheikh announced. “We’ll go under anyway, so what’s the difference?”

We all took up our canteens and drank, till sleep overcame us. Just before we passed out we saw Meier staggering out of his trench.

“So he’s still alive,” the Sheikh said contentedly. “Our goddamn guinea pig is alive all right.”

It wasn’t yet morning when I suddenly awoke. It was the long-dreaded noise of shrapnel flying overhead that wakened me. I heard dull thuds, but—no explosions. Surely all those shells couldn’t be duds? Then I saw they were incendiaries raining down on the village. It was heavy stuff whirring overhead, and pitched plumb in the heart of the village; enormous spurts of flame burst in all directions. The village, which had seemed quite dead, was brought back to life by the flames.

Lieutenant Straub ordered us to get ready for action and meanwhile direct our fire over to the left.

Ready for action....That meant either advance or retreat. I stood up and stretched my limbs. Confound that hooch—I felt lousy. With both fists I hammered on my swimming head, as if that might clear it.

The others were in no better shape. Willi was pressing his forehead into the cool earth, while the Sheikh stood over him, swaying and explaining he’d have to throw up to feel better.

It was Pille who noticed it first. All of a sudden he cried: “Am I sozzled as bad as that, or what the hell? Look back there!”

He pointed to where we’d come from, where we’d started our attack yesterday. Heavens, red flares! Franzl leaped to his feet. “It’s the Russians. But how on earth ...”

Pille, who apparently was less affected by the liquor than the rest of us, was already pointing in other directions. “They’re there, too! And over there! Gentlemen, I’ve an idea we’re surrounded!”

We were sober in a jiffy. That word surrounded was evil magic to any of us who’d been through it. Surrounded spelled death, or what was perhaps worse, a Russian POW camp. Surrounded? It was like a noose around your neck.

We buckled on our belts, shouldered our gear and ammo and with another critical glance at those suspicious flares all around behind us joined up with the main body of the company.

On the way we overtook the company HQ. Two of them were leading, or rather, dragging what looked like a wounded man. Then we saw it was Meier. “The bastard’s blind drunk.” The man who said it could scarcely keep on his feet himself. Meier was dangling between those on either side of him. His limp knees were buckling under him, and he was babbling incoherently. The Sheikh couldn’t resist bellowing the news in his ear that we were surrounded! Meier was beyond response. But the others were startled. “Is this true?” Franzl shrugged. “Check it for yourselves.” He thrust his thumb over his shoulder.

Then they really got the jitters.

“But what are we going to do with Meier?” they wanted to know. We continued on our way. Why should we worry about that? Franzl did turn around once.

“As far as I’m concerned,” he growled, “you can let him lie there; the Russians’ll soon sober up the bastard.”

They didn’t abandon him, but they weren’t so gentle with him now as they hurried him along.

When Lieutenant Straub saw the cortege he was livid.

“Drunken fool! At a moment like this! Take the bastard along to the CO’s truck and get him out of the way. But hurry!”

The two men returned just as we were marching off. “What did he say?” I asked one of them.

“Who? The old man? He tore off Meier’s stripes. It’s a court-martial for him.”

We strung out, Indian file, and made our way along the creek through the blazing village. The hours went by. We marched south, we marched west, then we marched east. We marched in fact in a circle. Twice there were brief skirmishes, with a few shots exchanged, and each time we withdrew at once. Why the hell didn’t they hurry up and give the order to try a break-through?

Straub confirmed that we were surrounded and marching for our very lives. But even he had no idea how it would end.

Gradually a murderous thirst took possession of us, and we sipped the vodka from our canteens. That helped a while, but soon it got worse than ever. We munched our iron ration biscuits and the rest of the bacon. The MG on my shoulder was like a sack of coals, and it was no help either when Franzl took over and I carried his cases of ammo: they, too, were heavy as lead. The liquor made my knees wobbly, my brain had gone numb and my legs were working automatically, like a machine. When the fellow in front of me changed step, I did too; and when he stumbled, I stumbled too. When there was a shot somewhere and the whole column halted, I was totally indifferent and didn’t even raise my head. I merely tried to pick out the pair of heels ahead of me so as to be able to march in step with him. Was I drunk? I really don’t know. Our lives were at stake, but I failed to grasp it. I didn’t give a damn.

The night brought cooler air. The long file of men came to a standstill and lay down for a rest, for how long nobody knew. I slept exactly where I dropped.

Somebody was shaking me, but I paid no attention. “Damn you, you dumb jerk, wake up, I tell you!”

It was Franzl, bending over me.

“We’re making up a reconnaissance party, coming along?”

I told him to go to hell, and rolled over.

“Look, there’s somebody firing white flares over there, must be some of ours. We want to find out if there are any Russians in between,” said Franzl.

I leaped up and blinked at the flares. Straub was shouting: “Come on, get a move on!”

The others were ready to move off. On stiff legs I stumbled after them.

The lieutenant led us across open country. Though we took advantage of all the cover the hummocky ground afforded, we must surely have stood out clearly in that moonlight. If there were Russians in the patch of woodland we were headed for they could easily let us come right up and then mow us down wholesale. The nearer we got to those trees, the more hesitantly we crept forward.

But our luck seemed to hold. We reached the wood undetected. Were the Russians leading us into a trap? They must have spotted us long ago and were merely biding their time to come down on us from all sides. A snapping branch made us halt and wait. Suddenly a huge night bird flapped just above our heads.

Half an hour of extreme tension, and we got through the wood, without any misadventure. It was enemy-free. Then we saw white flares immediately in front of us. We were seen. “Halt, who’s that?” cried a German voice.

Straub called out the password and ran forward out of the woods. We were soon surrounded by troops giving us a noisy welcome. It was a Viennese division. Never did the soft lilt of their speech sound so sweet in my ears.

Straub took a flare pistol and fired three white flares in quick succession. They went up straight as candles, far above the treetops, then slowly dropped back to earth. Now the others knew the road was clear.

The following day I was absolutely busted and had no appetite. Then I noticed that my urine was dark brown, and that puzzled me. Franzl said my face was yellow. When the medic told me it was jaundice, I was not surprised.

FOUR

EVERYTHING WAS SO STRANGE, so unreal; I was lying in a real bed, between snow-white linen sheets. The room was dazzling with cleanliness and there were blue curtains with a white design on the Luge windows. There was a round table in the center of the room with bright-colored flowers in a vase. Everything breathed profound peace, and I stared a very, very long time at those gay flowers, at the vase and the prettily embroidered tablecloth; I wanted to take in all that wonderful peacefulness. When I turned over I heard the bedsprings creak just as mine did at home long ago, and the gentleness which surrounded me on all sides had something so calming in it that it seemed a protection in itself. I could sleep as much as I liked, without any shrapnel to waken me or anybody to order me to make ready to move off. What had I done to be so wonderfully treated? I had got jaundice! What were decorations or promotion compared with that triumph?

The hospital was situated in a Ukrainian metropolis, Dniepropetrovsk, a town which the war had not left untouched. Whole blocks of ruins and vacant streets told of fierce fighting having passed this way. At the same time other blocks were untouched.

For a whole week I couldn’t get up at all. I slept and slept and tried to make up all I’d missed in the past several weeks. I closed my eyes with the precious feeling of being protected and awoke gloriously aware that my sole duty now was to look after myself. The fresh scent of the flowers filled my nostrils and I noticed that it even mastered the odor of ether, without which no hospital seems complete. I spent whole hours just staring at the ceiling and the dancing flies and thinking of the fellows out there; of Kovak and that thin trickle of blood from the corner of his mouth, of that boy in the shelter half, of the wounded Russian who looked like Willi, of Franzl and the others. I thought of how they must already be in the fighting again, ducking their heads out of the way of the blizzard of metal. I also thought of how this fairyland business could not last long for me, merely long enough for the jaundice to subside and the chief medical officer to scribble on my papers the fateful letters k.v.—“Fit for active service.”

My first walking-out pass I used up wandering through the town. It was like a trip into the distant past. The streets were full of people, the shops had reopened, though there wasn’t too much to be bought in them. There were crowds hurrying to work or just strolling around, women with big shopping bags fussily greeting one another and having a little gossip, and half-grown boys leaning against the fences with their hands in their pockets and cigarettes between their lips. There were cafés and restaurants, in which the food wasn’t at all bad, also a magnificent theater and a number of movie houses. I strolled around taking stock of it all; I couldn’t drink in enough of it, it so reminded me of home and life without machine suns or trenching tools—life without uniform.

In a well-cared-for little park I sat on a bench and watched some children playing in a sandpit, fighting like Trojans, pouring sand down each other’s necks and sticking out their tongues. I couldn’t help laughing and all at once feeling cheerful all through. I gave one close-cropped little rascal a piece of chocolate and thought how I would like to have youngsters of my own.

It grew dark and I made my way happily back home. Back home, that is to say, to the hospital.

As a rule, male orderlies looked after us, but in some other wards, those with severely wounded men, there were also Ukrainian girls. There were even a couple of German Red Cross nurses m the hospital, and one of these was Ullie. Her proper name was Ursula, which she emphasized from time to time. But even the doctors called her Ullie.

One evening I’d dozed off, but was still only half asleep, waiting for the others to stop their endless chatter and the slowpoke of an orderly to put out the lights, when suddenly a cheerful, refreshing voice throbbed through the room. All it said was: “Good night, boys, sleep well.” “Good night, Nurse Ullie!” I heard them all cry in answer, and with a special warmth, it seemed to me.

That was all, but with one jerk I sat up and saw a girl standing in the doorway who made me gasp. She was slender, almost frail, as fair as fair could be. From under her white nurse’s cap billowed luxuriant golden hair, in vivid contrast to her warm brown eyes under brows as cleanly drawn as a pencil line. And then her lips—those terribly, terribly tempting lips.

“Good night, Nurse Ullie,” I couldn’t help calling out, though by now she had switched off the lights and was gone.

“Quite a dish, isn’t she?” whispered the guy next to me, and then the stupid cluck said something about the doctor’s prescribing a diet like that....

After that I couldn’t get Nurse Ullie out of my thoughts. I did all I could to be near her, if only for an instant, and I schemed endlessly to get her to go out with me. Now and then I managed to have a brief talk with her and pay her compliments, which she accepted with a little laugh, but she always found an excuse to get away quickly, and the worst thing was that she had exactly the same gay little laugh for everybody else. She was equally nice to us all. I couldn’t seem to make any progress.

But one day in the hospital gardens I was talking with a group of men. The subject, inevitably, was women and, equally inevitably, Ullie’s name came up. One foul-mouth went too far and I told him to shut up. A fight developed in which I had the satisfaction of giving him a pretty thorough beating—partly because of my anger and partly because of my longer reach. I also had the satisfaction of seeing that most of the others were on my side, out of respect for Ullie.

Somebody must have told her about the fight, because the next time she saw me she spoke about it and said I’d been wrong. But it was easy to see that she really wanted to tell me quite the opposite. I overplayed the part of a repentant sinner so thoroughly that she couldn’t keep up her scolding—and all at once laughed. Then I said she should never scold, her laugh was so much nicer. Besides, she didn’t know how hard it was not to fall in love with her. At that she blushed a little, but also smiled.

After this, scarcely a day passed without our meeting for a stroll in the hospital gardens. Ullie was from the Rhineland and twenty, like me; after two terms of medical studies she had volunteered for military hospital service. Her father was a doctor, also in the army, and both her brothers were at the front. Cologne, her home town, was being shattered by bombs; there had been many killed, old folk, women and children. Her own home had been leveled.

But we also talked about pleasant things that brought laughter. It was lovely, sauntering down the shaded paths with her, hearing her sweet voice that rang so clear with its faint Rhineland accent. I could hardly bear to wait for the evenings.

Then the day carne when she had an afternoon off. Hand in hand, we wandered out of the town, along lonely byroads, and finally found a good, green patch of grass sheltered by trees where we could rest. I pillowed my head in her lap and gazed up into the rustling foliage overhead and her glorious hair glinting where the sun caught it. Now I told her what had been depressing me all day.

“Ullie,” I said, “I must be leaving soon. The medical officer said this morning that I’m up for discharge.”

She bent over me and softly drew her fingers through my hair, but at first said nothing. At last, in a whisper and hesitantly, she murmured: “Is it very awful out there—at the front?”

Lost in thought, I played with a wavy mesh of hair that had fallen over her forehead. What was I to say? In my mind’s eye I saw NCO Vogt, face white as death, legs ripped off at the trunk, begging Franzl for a mercy bullet; I saw Franzl gaping helplessly at him, not knowing whether or not to do it; then I saw the stretcher bearer coming up and going on again at once because to do anything for Vogt would be merely wasting a dressing. I thought of all the dead out there, and the dying; I thought of all the fear, the unceasing fear.

“It’s no joke,” I said so softly she might not have heard me.

“You see, Nurse Ullie,” I went on, “the dying is horrible, when you hear them groaning and shrieking and there’s nothing you can do to help. But that’s not all that’s horrible. Perhaps you can’t really see what I mean, you don’t know what it’s like. It’s something more than the actual dying that gets you down.... I’ve never forgotten the first dead man I saw, a Russian. I had a good look at him and thought, only such a short time before he’d been a living human being. Somehow that got under my skin. Then I saw more and more dead, and it wasn’t long before I found myself feeling they were only lumps of soil that belonged to the earth they lay on: they’d never been alive at all.

“Yes, you get hardened to death. Not long ago we were riding in trucks up a narrow, sunken road—too narrow for the drivers to turn out for anything. In the middle of one rut lay a dead Russian, and after all the heavily loaded trucks ahead of us had passed over him he was squashed as flat as a pancake. We were sitting at the back of our truck with one soldier telling a funny story. We saw the dead Russian after our truck, too, had run over him, but the soldier went right on telling his story, without a break, and we all laughed in the right places.

“Even that sort of death isn’t as bad as the first time you see a dead German soldier, and you stare at him, lying there in the same uniform you wear yourself, and you think that he, too, had a mother and father, perhaps sisters, may even have come from your own town.

“But you get used to this, too, and come to look at yourself on a level with all those others, Russians and Germans alike, lying dead in their different uniforms. You’re just another lump of earth.

“Then one day you’re right up against it. You’re talking with one of your friends when he suddenly folds up, just settles down in a heap, and is stone dead. That’s the real horror. You see the others stepping over him like a stone, and you suddenly realize that your friend’s not dead any differently from the others—those, I mean, you’ve learned to think of as never really having lived, as being just lumps of earth. But you know for certain this man lived: you were talking to him only a minute before. And now you know, for the first time with full awareness, that it might be you, yourself, lying there. That’s when you get the real horrors, and after that it’s always a nightmare; it never stops, the real fear of being wiped out, the fear of merciless nothingness, the fear of thinking any moment you’ll be one of those who never were living creatures.”

I stopped suddenly. Tears were streaming down Ullie’s cheeks. I bent over and dried them away. “It was stupid of me ever to start telling you.”

“Don’t talk about it any more,” she said.

I explained that I wasn’t alone out there. I had friends I could rely on, and we had fun. I told her about our flatfooted Sheikh and the crazy things he thought up and in the end she began laughing.

“There, Ullie,” I said. “I like you better this way.”

She drew her fingers through my hair and gently pulled my head toward her. Through her thin blouse I could see her breasts, small, firm, erect. I nestled against her.

“No...” In alarm, she tried to fend me off. “Please, you mustn’t...no, no, no!”

She pleaded, shivering, but I gently persisted, and soon she stopped struggling and stared at me with wide-open eyes. Then, all at once, her arms linked themselves around my neck and she began shyly to kiss me, my forehead first, my cheeks, then my lips.

“My darling,” she whispered. “You really do love me?”

“Ach, Ullie dearest!”

The sun had now dipped below the horizon and it was cooler. Ullie pressed close to me. Through the network of trees the sky glowed red. “The angels are baking their bread today,” she murmured softly.

Where had I heard those words so recently? But of course—from Sander, the evening he was killed.

Again I was strolling through the town. Somebody began yelling at me from the other side of the street. “Don’t you know how to salute?”

Parade-ground voice. A wiry little major with a first-class good service medal polished smooth.

“I beg your pardon, Herr Major,” I said, perhaps rather as if it didn’t matter. “I didn’t see you.”

“How dare you address an officer like that?”

I nearly laughed at the midget martinet, but he was serious.

“Is that the way to stand? Put those knees together.”

I now saw he meant it and stood to attention, turning red. The dapper little squirt stared at me with gimlet eyes, then said: “Now go back to where you were and salute me as you’ve been taught to salute.” The dirty little chairbome bastard.

“Come on, come on,” he nagged. “What are you waiting for now? It’s high time you were back in the lines.”

I looked at that shiny little service medal and wondered how long the polish would last in a slit trench. High time I was back at the front!

“What are you gaping at me like that for? Do what I told you.”

I could have throttled him, but instead I stepped back a couple of paces and marched stiffly by, saluting him according to regulations. I caught looks of sympathy from the civilians on the street.

Next day I was off. I stood on the dusty highway and waited for a truck that would take me toward the front. I was so miserable I could have cried aloud. All I could think of was Ullie.

When I said good-by she tried to smile, but her eyes were full of tears. “Auf Wiedersehen!” I mumbled and walked off like an automaton. In my hand I unconsciously clutched a little chain with a medallion she’d given me at the moment of parting. “I love you,” was all I could think of, “I love you.” When I turned a last time she was still staring transfixed after me, her snow-white nursing cap bright in the sunshine.

With each step that took me farther away from her I felt closer to death.

From one front-line base to another I groped my way toward my own division—a long, hard road. The trucks that picked me up never went very far. But after some days I got on a truck belonging to my own regiment. The driver was looking for his company, too.

We found billets in the cottages along our route. In one of them a white-haired old lady welcomed us in broken German and spent the whole evening talking about Germany. Once she began to cry.

“Out there,” she said, listening for a moment to the distant rumble of artillery, “so many are dying, and you are still so young. My son is on the other side. I don’t know if he’s still alive. Is there no end to all this?”

But now, so close to the front, I was unmoved. I cut myself another piece of white bread and the driver said: “How about opening a can of sardines?”

The following day we had to cross a small river. The bridge was narrow and there was a long line of infantry and army trucks waiting. Flying quietly, up came a Russian fighter aircraft and dropped fragmentation bombs on our troops and strafed them with cannon. There were some light ack-ack guns near the bridge, and they fired, but the fighter took no notice. Then a Heinkel whined up and shot at the Russkie’s tail. The enemy let go with his rear guns, climbed steeply and vanished behind his own lines.

Two army trucks came from the bridge. They were full of wounded to take back—all blood, groans and fresh bandages—foretaste of the front. Off we went again.

We spent the night in a village only a few miles from the shifting front. It swarmed with trucks and supply troops, and every building was full to the rafters, so we bedded down under our truck. Some time before, two Russian aircraft raided the place. Under a rain of incendiaries and HEs the village was soon ablaze and we crawled as far under the truck as we could.

Then a high-pitched whine sounded over the deep roar of the bombers—German fighters. Through the crash of bombs we could hear the tattoo of duels high in the air and see tracers flickering either way. Three enemy machines fluttered down together like blazing torches, and then the others fled.

Just as we sighed our relief, along came a light car with a lieutenant yelling into a megaphone that Russian tanks had broken through and all non-combatant forces were to withdraw without delay. Heavy anti-tank guns were moving down against the tanks, while columns of men marched up to the edge of the village to dig into defense positions. Here and there roadblocks developed, and the confusion mounted. The air rang with sharp commands, cursing, Russian women’s shrieking, the motorized stuff grinding away —all punctuated by the harsh popping of the heavy antitank guns, brought up to reinforce the defenses.

First sign of the oncoming tanks was fragmentation shells in the forward outskirts of the village. Half-track armored cars, dragging their long-barreled guns behind them, pitching and tossing over the uneven ground, drove madly across the scene to take up defense positions. A truck loaded with ammo caught fragments of a burning roof and suddenly went sky-high, along with a fuel truck that came by at the same moment. The latter shot up in a single, incredible sheet of flame.

Heavy-caliber shrapnel, dangerous even for tanks, now found the heart of the village and stirred up the whole confusion of blazing homes and tangled street traffic like a poker in a wood fire. A truck full of wounded caught a direct hit, tipped sideways and for an instant the glare around clearly lit the limp bundles of tossed human bodies with their fresh white bandages.

Locked helplessly in the traffic jam that was the center of this bedlam, the truck driver and I took a dim view of the outcome. We sat and smoked. But finally the shrapnel began to thin out. I could hardly believe my ears. Then, sure enough, the mutter of our anti-tank stuff became uninterrupted. Clearly, we were getting the upper hand.

“Good guns, our ack-ack,” was all the driver said.

Toward evening we reached the regiment, found the right road to our battalions and made off in the dusk along narrow lanes. When we reached the direction sign of my company I got down, very stiff, and shook hands with the driver, each of us wishing the other good luck.

Storm clouds were threatening and the sky was uneasy with summer lightning. I was miserable, no doubt partly because of the weather, but also because I’d lost the little medallion Lillie had given me. It must have slipped out of my pocket when we rolled under the truck to take cover. I no longer had her little amulet and she was so far away she might have been on another planet. The thunder rolled up nearer. Perhaps now I was going to be killed.

The cart track led past the charred remains of a cottage. In places it was still smoldering. A few paces farther on, I saw some military graves, the earth freshly turned, the crosses new. Tenth Company, I read—and my heart shrank. My own company. Rifleman Georg Haunstein. Didn’t know him. Must have been a replacement. NCO Karl Mansch. A stranger. Then a lot more I didn’t know. But Habacher I knew and Strangel, a bubbling, high-spirited kid from my platoon.

Anxiously I ran through the names on the remaining crosses, and found another and yet another I knew. Then my breath caught. I bent low to make sure. It couldn’t be! Corporal Willi Scholz.

The helmet set on the cross was a little crooked, precisely the way he’d always worn it. I took it down, hands shaking. On the leather band inside was scratched W. Scholz in Willi’s own hand. It wasn’t easy to read under the dark brown blood stains, but I read it. And I found the hole at the side of the helmet, with the usual sharp, bent-in edges, and they, too, were dark brown. Our Willi—the lazy, handsome, quizzical youngster whose glasses were always slipping down his nose. A little guy, I thought; they probably dug the grave even shallower than usual.

I crouched down on the soft soil heaped over him, feeling infinitely lonely. This friend of mine, of ours, wiped out.

The storm rolled up on me in a great black cloud. There was a tremendous crash of thunder. Then, of all things, a small kitten appeared from the ruins and rubbed itself against a cross. It came up to me and nuzzled against my hand, and I stroked it. It was a very tiny, thin little kitten, nothing but skin and bones. Staring at me, it suddenly began to purr.

With a sudden gale the storm broke. Helmets clanged hollowly on their crosses and the charred timbers sticking up out of the ruins creaked and groaned like an old staircase. Slowly I pulled myself together and took the path that led to the Tenth’s HQ. The kitten miaowed. It sounded like a baby.

An army truck without headlights carrying reserves combed out of base personnel came along and picked me up. Deserters had reported that the Russians were going to attack the next morning, so there was a big push to get all units up to full strength. That suited me. I wanted to get back to my friends.

The air was wonderfully clear now that the storm had passed over. We caught a glimpse of a vast silvery sheet of water ahead—the Don River. We were in a great loop of that famous waterway.

Most of the men in the truck were almost straight from the homeland and apparently had just finished training. There was one who particularly struck me. He was scarcely more than a boy. He gazed at the moon as if lost in dreams. When a shrapnel shell exploded nearby he jumped as if shot, then anxiously leaned his head back into his helmet, which—like everyone else—he was carrying slung. He was ashamed to put it on, for fear of seeming afraid.

“Your first engagement?” I asked to encourage him. “How old are you?”

“Eighteen soon,” he replied. There was another explosion nearby and he flinched.

“Where are you from?” I asked.

Whatever he answered was drowned by the clanking of the ammo chests in the truck. We were zigzagging up a steep rise of ground, and the gears were growling in low. The shell bursts were much nearer now.

“It seems to me,” a soldier said with reasonably well acted nonchalance, “we might begin putting on our helmets.”

In a flash they were all on.

Our truck pulled up on the edge of a broad plain.

“All change!” yelled the driver, and jumped down himself.

We grabbed our equipment and took off fast. The dreamy youngster was trying to get himself down, his thin, overgrown body stretched to its lankiest. He was halfway down when, with a sharp whine, something came straight at us. There was a flash and an ear-shattering crash. I had automatically ducked. A split second later I heard the dull thud of something falling among the ammo cases at my feet. It was the tall youngster.

“Come on, get a move on, everybody!” shouted the driver. So I gave the youngster a push. But he didn’t move. I bent down and tugged at his bony shoulder. It was sticky and wet. Then I saw what had happened—his head was hanging to his trunk by no more than a shred of skin.

He never knew what happened to him, that was sure. And at not quite eighteen that was probably all to the good.

A sergeant issued ammo to us. We got ready to move off. Isolated heavy stuff coming over more than once made us take cover. A swarm of rockets swept like fiery comets into the night sky and made the jagged upland ahead look ghostly.

A lanky figure came slouching up, wearing his helmet on his shoulders and an automatic pistol loosely slung across his chest. Even in the dark, his gait was familiar. The next moment I caught the profile, the hatchet nose that the Sheikh used to call “the gable” or “the ski-jump.”

“Pille!” I cried.

“Man alive, not really you?”

His hand was hard on my shoulder. “Damned good to have you back.”

The sergeant was pushing our way, but Pille paid no attention.

“Tough going here lately,” he said. “Did you know...about Willi?”

I nodded and stared at the ground. The sergeant was impatient. “Well, what about it, are you going to pilot us or aren’t you?”

“Okay.” Pille finally noticed him, and signaled to go forward.

As we moved ahead he told me about the heavy fighting there had been lately, what old friends were killed or wounded, and the latest rumors. For some days now, against his will, Pille had been the CO’s orderly, but hoped soon to be transferred back to us. I got the impression there was less zest in his voice, his features had grown sharper, his lips more bitter.

Pille led us through a gully in the foothills. And there was Welty, standing in front of a tent, with no word of welcome for any of us, plunging straight into field orders. He put me in Platoon 2, Franzl and the Sheikh in No. 1.

But there, at the usual right moment, was Lieutenant Straub, and when he picked me out he came over and shook my hand.

“Of course you’re going to be in my platoon again,” he said. “Give your carbine to what’s his name—whatever you call him—the Sheikh, is it?—and take over that machine gun again with Ullmer.”

A few minutes later I jumped down into a trench. After the first instant of astonishment the welcome wasn’t exactly a gentle one. While Franzl got my arms in a vise, the Sheikh bruised my chest black and blue. And I suddenly realized how much we belonged together.

Then it got going. At one the artillery barrage—the whole chain of hills seeming to go up in flame. Heavy stuff, then smaller shrapnel shells, then the screeching, shattering mortars of all sizes bursting on the ground. And finally what we called Stalin’s church organ—the Russkies called them Katies—rockets that soared up comet-like from way behind the lines—as many as two dozen in a bundle—curving over in a great parabola, to come down in our narrow ravine with a massed explosion that ricocheted back and forth from the walls and was multiplied a hundred times. Even the earth, with its countless wounds, seemed to rear up in agony.

There we were, three miserable little human bodies, huddling in our tiny shelter, our fists pressed to our ears, our mouths wide open against the blasts, waiting for one of those thousands of shells to strike us dead. We were absorbed by a fear for which there was no possible relief. We didn’t try for a moment to conceal the fear. All we tried to do was hope.

After an eternity the barrage ceased as suddenly as it had begun. Our ears ached with the silence. As we raised our heads above the rim of our trench we saw a gray mist of acrid powder and smoke slowly rising in the air over the whole upland, blotting out moon and stars. We thought we were the last of all living creatures—then suddenly, all over that chain of hills, our own white flares soared high and flooded the steep slope before us and the belt of level ground beyond with dazzling light.

We knew we weren’t alone, but we also knew the Russians would soon attack—they’d never wait till daylight. So we got our machine gun ready and peered down to the flats below, looking for the slightest shadow that moved.

Nervously, one of our machine guns stuttered somewhere, and provoked others, though there was still nothing of the enemy to be seen. There was only a low-pitched, unidentifiable growl, as if some great beast were crouching somewhere out of sight, preparing to spring.

Then—red flares: that terrifying signal that warned of an enemy attack. Now the Russians were out of cover, and the battle flared up a few hundred yards to our left. We saw shadowy forms creeping over the level ground and up the slope toward us like lizards. Then Franzl, too, fired a flare and I got my finger on the trigger.

Almost in unison our machine guns spat out their chains of tracer-linked fire against the ghostly attackers.

The shapes drew nearer. They sprang up, rushed forward, then dropped and were part of the earth again. We couldn’t pick them out; our fury grew, and with it our panic. I thought I’d go out of my mind when I had to change a belt or a round jammed. I used up belt after belt. Our tracers, flashing in a chain, every fifth round, marked out the center of the slope and crept forward nosing out the level ground. And now enemy tracers were probing our own dugouts, spattering against stones and whining away up toward the stars. But those shadows drew nearer and nearer, despite all the machine guns.

Now, nerve-racked beyond endurance, we got up out of our trenches and threw hand grenades into the air ahead, one after another, as fast as we could pull the cords and swing our arms. I got so worked up I threw a trenching tool. Franzl stopped shooting his white flares up for visibility, and aimed them on the ground against the enemy.

Our ammunition began to run out and it was only then we noticed that the shadows had stopped getting nearer, were in fact scurrying and stumbling away into the vast dark space of the plain below.

The unbearable tension gave way for a moment. Then we saw through the Russian trick; now they were concentrating on our left flank. In a few minutes our defense points became conspicuous by intersections of enemy crossfire. An anti-tank gun went on firing like clockwork to the last moment, but machine guns were being silenced one by ore and rifle fire was dying down, too. Then we caught the sharp little cracks of pistol shots that meant hand-to-hand fighting. And pretty soon bullets were whistling along our own ridge from those positions. In the light of a flare we saw the plain below us again, with a vast number of Russians advancing. The Sheikh saw them creeping up the slope.

“Close down the shop,” said Franzl. “If we don’t pull out now, we’ll be too late.”

We took our guns and the little ammo left. Picking a relatively quiet momer.t, we scrambled out of the trench, leaping and stumbling through bursts of machine-gun fire slicing at the ground around our feet, ricocheting and whizzing over and between us. It was about as literal a race with death as any human being ever won. With a last few tremendous leaps that I couldn’t ordinarily imagine making I did win it—fell into the gully we’d aimed for and crouched exhausted against its wall, for the moment safe.

A little later, with Russian fire whipping ineffectively above us we made our way under the cold clear light of the stars between the high walls of the gully. Remnants of the company joined us, including wounded. All had succumbed to utter depression. Many a time the immediate situation had been worse and our misery no less, but seldom had we been so low.

At the end of a ride we found the wretched remainder of our unit. They were limping around, or lying in small groups, asleep—on the wet ground as they’d arrived, without even using their shelter halves. Scarcely a man spoke —it took too much effort.

At dawn, in the cold, a corporal dragged himself in, filthy as we all were, his trousers torn and blood-stained, his rifle gone, even his belt. Questioned, he said: “The CO? He’s dead. I just tripped over him.” But he didn’t know about Lieutenant Straub or our friend Pille.

Near us the Eleventh Company was waiting to go in again. They’d come out of the first part pretty lightly. There was also a unit with armored transport trucks and a couple of stumpy, multi-barreled smoke projectors.

The smoke projectors began to whine, their rockets rising steeply before they curved and fell. A heavy mortar joined in.

Caring little now what happened to us, we joined the Eleventh and began moving up the same gully which had been our means of escape before dawn.

A man spoke to Franzl, he said Pille was killed. We refused to believe it. “Are you absolutely sure?” demanded Franzl, and the man stared in a puzzled way. “What’s the excitement?” he wanted to know. “You can’t change it; besides, he isn’t the only one, is he?”

We stood blocking the narrow track and didn’t even notice the last stragglers overtaking us till Sergeant Birnbaum yelled back: “Come on there, get going!”

We were so preoccupied that for a while we didn’t realize how still it was, that the Russians were showing no signs of life. Not a single shot met us as we climbed the ridge and took the summit. We continued without cover. Nothing happened. They’d captured the position in a hell of a battle, then abandoned it without firing a round.

We found old Pille, face downward, stretched out at full length in front of a dugout. One step more and he would have been all right. His helmet had slipped and was wedged between his chin and the ground. You couldn’t help feeling the hard rim must hurt him.

The Sheikh brushed the earth from his nose.

“What use is all the money to the old boy now?” he whispered, as if to himself.

Perhaps I was next on the list. Perhaps tomorrow, next week, in a month or so, I would be lying somewhere like Pille, just as stiff, ¡last as yellow, with just the same half-open eyes. And for what?

On the other hand, as we all thought, there was a chance we might come through. Yes, definitely, there was that chance. And if it should happen to me, I’d always be thankful for the luck to be alive. I’d plunge into the whirlpool of real existence. I’d taste life—glorious life—to the very fullest, till it had no more to offer me. And when a proper end came, I’d be able to say: “I’ve lived. I’ve had enough.” And I’d be grateful.

How long I stood over Pille I don’t ;mow. I was jolted out of my daze by the CO’s car coming up. I saw Franzl and the Sheikh talking quietly to another soldier. Across the floor of the car lay the bodies of men killed during the night’s battle—men who had “made history.” Two and three deep they lay on the floor. The driver and a man from base got out. From the mount of human flesh two legs in puttees stuck out. For anyone who’d known him, they had to be Lieutenant Welty’s legs.

“Is that the CO?”

The driver nodded. “Poor old Welty’s like a sieve. It must have been a mortar.”

I also noticed the fat NCO who was there when Pille got his. Another man had his belly torn open, intestines slopping out. I asked who it was.

“That one there? Let me see. Oh yes, that’s Straub. Lieutenant Straub.”

The Sheikh heaved a deep sigh. “Hell, Straub, too. He was all right.”

The driver called his companion to help put Pille in.

The Sheikh pushed him aside. “Go see the chaplain,” he said—though in different wording—”we’ll do this.”

We carried Pille to the heap. The driver pitched a young fellow on top of them all, then said to the base corporal: “Get hold of the lieutenant’s head, will you? His feet’re sticking out too far. We’ll have the whole load sliding out if we don’t move him.”

The car moved off, and the dead men settled down on each other. A hand suddenly stuck out of the heap. It might have been Pille’s, or old Welty’s, or anyone else’s, for that matter.

German divisions thrust out of the great loop of the Don River toward an industrial city on the Volga—Stalingrad.

The Russians were so thoroughly surprised that there was almost no opposition. We took vast quantities of materiel and countless prisoners. Or so we were told. And we saw beside the broad highway long columns of wrecked Russian tractors, guns, and those old-fashioned-looking green Ford trucks at which we used to laugh so hard before we learned their durability.

But we also saw the wrecks of our own tanks and charred skeletons of German army trucks that gave every veteran a melancholy idea of the cost of the advance.

As a motorized, highly mobile unit, we always caught the hot points of battles. Now, barely recovered from the worst we’d known so far, we were sent into a new sector where things were far above boiling point. We dug into the ruins of Stalingrad’s suburbs, on the sand dunes of the Volga country, as flank support to a wedge thrusting forward into the endless steppes.

Division after division streamed up from the Don loop across the narrow strip of territory we had captured, toward Stalingrad. There were endless columns of marching infantry, horse-drawn and motorized artillery, field guns of all calibers, light and heavy ack-ack, armored vehicles of every description, supply trucks and motorcycles—all pressing forward and overtaking one another till the roads were completely blocked, while the air was almost equally clogged with Stukas, bombers, fighters, fighter-bombers and transport planes—all bound for Stalingrad. It was a concentration of everything we had.

But the Russians, too, were finding fresh troops and staggering amounts of materiel. They were spotting battle-tried divisions where the front was quiet and digging in for keeps all along the line. With every day their resistance grew stronger.

This is how the bitterest, most tremendous battle of the whole war fell on the Volga city. Stalingrad, with its up-to-date factories, tall office buildings and modern apartment houses, was collapsing in ruins. Losses on both sides were colossal. The day was long past when ten Russians fell for every German; it wasn’t five now, not even two. We were no longer up against half-grown youngsters or old men, but almost always crack troops with the finest equipment. The number of artillery batteries and those fearsome Stalin church organs had multiplied many times, and their firing kept up night and day without any apparent need to spare the ammunition.

True, our men succeeded in taking the greater part of the city. True, they widened the wedge here and there and thrust the Russians back a little more. But all efforts to link up with the German forces pushing up from the Caucasus, or to establish contact with the army to the north of us, remained, as the war correspondents say, fruitless.

Finally, the whop front, in a sense, solidified. Our countless attacks brought unappreciable gains, and the invariable counterattacks always drove us back to where we started.

To put it bluntly, the Russians had succeeded in bringing the German advance to a standstill.

Gradually now on both sides combat activity slackened off and gave way to expectancy, a tension that grew daily and a fear that the final outcome would be terrible beyond foreseeing.

Every night the kitchen truck came to within a few hundred yards of our position and brought food. While antique Russian biplanes—we called them Singers because we thought their motors sounded like ancient sewing machines —while these old crates cruised overhead dropping fragmentation bombs as much on their own lines as ours, we’d send a man from each group to bring back the warm chow in mess kits.

One night it was my bad luck to get sent—and my worse luck to get lost on the way back. After wandering in what must have been circles for what must have been hours, in deep black night, with only those Singers overhead, I stood unarmed in the middle of those measureless steppes, with a can of soup in each hand, long since cold. I didn’t know if I was between the lines, behind my own, or behind the enemy’s.

I had to do something, so I crept cautiously forward, every sense strained. Soon I had an idea of something in the way—something dark with a brighter patch on it. Moving carefully closer, I put it down as a dead horse, with something half-erect on its back. Even closer, I saw that it was a dead man on the horse’s back, and what I’d hoped was the branch of a tree was the upraised arm of the dead man. In horror that blotted out my predicament, I paused a moment.

Then an eerie sort of gurgle seemed to come out of the ground and the tableau got into motion. That upraised arm of the dead man was moving. The bent fingers were coming toward my throat! And the dead man was laughing, rocking with laughter....

While I waited, transfixed like a silly rabbit for the blow, the truth came. The horse was not quite dead, merely in the last throes, and its convulsive movements had moved the dead man.

The Russians I escaped that night were not so frightening as the dead man and his steed, but I was glad to get back to camp.

Our deserter Seph, whom few of the company, now consisting almost entirely of replacements, knew to have been on the other side only a few months before, one day found a rifle with a telescopic sight on one of our dead, so to while away the time we used to crouch behind an embankment and take turns sniping. The rules were that the guy due to fire picked his victim and pointed him out to the others. We all had field glasses, so we could follow what happened.

“That one there,” Franzl pointed, “a couple of inches to the left of the dead horse.”

It was a Russki all right. Hall-reclining, he was having a pull at his field flask. Franzl took careful aim and fired. The Russian doubled up and didn’t stir again.

“Dead!” cried Franzl.

“Dead,” said Seph.

“Okay,” agreed the Sheikh and I, and the Sheikh noted down two points for Franzl.

I got one just as he was climbing out of his trench to visit a neighbor.

“Got him,” I claimed.

“No, no, look more carefully, he’s still moving,” insisted the Sheikh.

“Yes, he is moving,” Franzl thought, and so did Seph.

“One point only,” said the Sheikh, and noted it down.

Once the Sheikh hit a pile of Molotov cocktails laid out in front of a trench. These, of course, were bottles full of inflammable material used mostly against tanks. The shot set off quite a fireworks display and a Russki dancing around near the trench, trying to clean the blazing stuff off his hands, got quite a laugh from us.

This potting at Russians made a welcome pastime. We never thought of it as cold-blooded murder. It was just a sport—the same sport to which Kovak, Willi and Pille had already sacrificed their lives. We didn’t shoot to do our country a service. Nor did we even think of it as something we had to do. Perhaps I could say most truthfully that we did it simply because we had happened to find a rifle with telescopic sights, and we knew how to use it.

On the other hand, when we moved a dead man, dead and living often went up in the air—Ivan had set a little bomb under the man’s jacket.

Now the nights were disturbed by shadowy, heavy-laden figures moving around in front of our trenches; the scraping and clatter of shovels could be heard till dawn. These were our engineers, laying mines. Spring mines. When you touched them they first bounced up, then exploded. They were fine protection for us. Only, whenever they were laid, it meant a Russian attack in the offing.

Once a mine went off, we figured it a surprise attack and grabbed our guns. But under the flares all there was to fire at was a poor little pony that had cantered accidentally across the battlefield, kicked up one mine and then, badly injured and screaming, lashed out its legs till it set off another, which finished the job of murder.

We felt sorry for that pony. It wasn’t in uniform, it wasn’t in anybody’s army. It was just a poor, miserable, little pony. For once we were really sorry.

Once again we had a temporary success against the Russians. We broke through their lines on a narrow sector. And this was the Sheikh’s time to call the turn. While we were pushing on, pretty well exhausted, through the old Russian positions, without finding any real opposition, he kept looking around at all the dead and wounded and saying: “I bet a lot of these bastards are only pretending.”

We had to be wary. The Russkies obviously had become more dangerous, with all their crack troops now lined up against us. But, though there were plenty of fanatics among them, all it took usually was a glance at a man’s eyes or his wound to tell if there was anything to be feared from him.

The Sheikh came on a Russian lying face down. He gave a shove and the Russian moved a little and groaned. The Sheikh was going to turn the man over to make sure what was wrong with him.

“Oh, let him be,” said Franzl. “Look at the blood.”

We went on, nobody thought of casting a glance at the fallen Russian.

Then it happened. From behind us came a sharp pok-pok-pok. Franzl shouted and clutched his ear. I turned around and saw that the man with his big bloodstain had sat up and was banging away with a pistol.

“Sheikh!” screamed Franzl, forgetting his own wound.

But the Sheikh had crumpled up, dug his fingers into the ground, given one spasmodic jerk, and was now forever still.

After a long look at our dead friend, Franzl crucified himself. “And me saying let the beast be!”

His face changed as if he had drawn on a mask, a brutal mask with twisted features, chin thrust forward, lips thin and bitterly upturned at the corners, eyes that were as dangerously slitted as a pillbox.

He turned and walked, ignoring the fire still coming his way from the other side. Hoping to escape, the Russian had lain down as he was before, face in the earth, pretending he’d had nothing to do with anything. But when we got close he understood. He whimpered, begged, pulled down his trousers to show a gruesome upper thigh wound, said he was done anyway and cried: Kamerad. Franzl was undeterred.

His hands came down in a vise grip around the treacherous neck, and Franzl kept his stranglehold firm till the last spasmodic remnant of life had left the body of the Russian. He dropped the body then and walked like an automaton back to his gun. Not to be outdone, Seph raised his trenching tool and smashed in the dead Russian’s skull.

After the Sheikh’s death, Franzl was a changed man. He became quieter. I often caught him staring into nothingness. When we exchanged glances, I seemed to be looking into the eyes of a stranger. It was hopeless trying to interest him in anything. He was merely existing. You had the impression he’d abandoned all hope.

I asked him straight one day and he said wearily: “Oh, Benno, let me be. It’s nothing.” But after a few moments he added: “Benno, old man, when I...well, say if anything happens to me...you’ll drop my old folks a line, won’t you? Only be a bit careful how you put it. I mean, don’t blurt it out. My old lady’s got a groggy heart.”

Another thing, he’d take out a photograph he carried around with him now and sit looking at it, as if he were reading a book. It was a picture of a soldier with a wine glass in one hand, surrounded by his family, and they were all laughing—men, women and children. Franzl hadn’t the remotest idea who any of the people were. As a matter of fact, he’d found it a few days after the Sheikh was killed somewhere out in steppes where the ground was strewn with dead German soldiers. Probably they had been prisoners of war. But close by one of the dead men lay a black wallet, open, as if someone had run through it, then thrown it away as rubbish. It was empty, except for this little yellowed photograph.

One night the big freeze-up began and our second winter in that accursed country faced us grimly. A supply truck brought heavy overcoats, gloves and caps with earmuffs. But we froze miserably in our holes. Even the detonations of shells had a new, hard resonance, and the clods of earth they threw up were like slabs of granite.

It was an unwritten promise of the army that every man should get home after service abroad for more than a year, but we all knew they didn’t dare send us back. Nevertheless, every day had a new crop of rumors—we were to be sent to France, to Greece, to Africa. But first, of course, a little time at home.

We in the ranks knew how spurious these rumors were —but how stubbornly we tried to-believe them! Our one overmastering desire drove us to credulity—the desire to get somehow to the end of the dragged-out death we lived in.

There was always one way out, a practical way. This was for heaven in its mercy to send us a wound not severe enough to kill us but serious enough to take us home. A flesh wound—no good. They’d take care of that in a field hospital. The best thing was a bad fracture, if possible not one that made you a total cripple, nor too painful, but certainly one that meant a long period of recuperation. You needed luck, though—all the luck in the world—and there wasn’t much to spread around.

Thinking such thoughts, we faced the Russkies’ monster barrage that winter and the big-scale attack on our wedge between the Don and the Volga. They broke through.

A day came when we realized it was quite a while since a single truck had dared travel from our front to a rear base. Russian units had occupied every approach. At first they attacked vehicles only at night, then continuously both day and night. For a time our supply columns were linked up and moved in convoy, flanked by armor and motorcycle units. But even this the Russians became too strong for.

Reckless counterattacks, with huge losses, got nowhere. Slowly but surely the Soviet wedges in the sides of our wedge grew broader, and the German divisions were thrown back, on the one side far beyond the Don, the other eastward, back to that great mass of ruins, the city of Stalingrad.

In short, we were surrounded. Stalingrad became a great cauldron in which we were destined to simmer.

Now the tragedy began in earnest. A whole army was ground down to pulp. A battle with no prospect of success for the Germans went down a drain clogged with blood. The end approached fast—but it wasn’t the one we’d all counted on less than two years before.

At first it seemed incredible that Germans could let themselves be caught like mice in such a giant trap. But in the Soviet Union the new word “cauldron battle”—Kesselschlacht—was soon a powerful slogan.

Among us the idea was presented—and momentarily prevailed—that it wasn’t all a disaster, but another masterly stroke of the High Command. New tanks were mentioned, an offensive from the north, a pulverizing secret weapon.

We believed for awhile, but none of it was true, and slowly we began to realize the horror of the word a soldier fears most: surrounded.

The truth was borne in on us as remnants of division after division fell back defeated from all sides, away from the on-pressing enemy, crowding into the heart of Stalin-grad’s cauldron. Gradually the columns of converging transport blocked all roads. Guns were blown up, and weapons of all kinds, tanks included, that had stopped for want of fuel. Loaded trucks, bogged in the snow, burned up. Huge dumps of clothing and food were burned to escape enemy hands. Installations erected at enormous effort were destroyed.

Cut off, the men in field gray slouched on, filthy and louse-ridden, their weary shoulders sagging, from one untenable defense position to another. The icy winds of those great white wastes burned their skin to crumpled leather, lashed tears from sunken eyes that over-fatigue had almost sealed, penetrated through all uniforms and added rags to the very bone marrow. For those who could do no more there was always a kindly shroud of snow.

Less than 2,000 miles to the west was another world. There, people slept in soft warm beds; there, at midday, they sat down to eat as much as they liked from clean white table linen. Children laughed and even men were allowed to be happy.

But here, bereft of initiative, we let ourselves be driven, crawling ever onward or backward, obeying senseless orders to take up new positions and offer a resistance devoid of military meaning. It was a matter of indifference when the night sorties of the Luftwaffe to bring us in supplies became rarer, when the only warm food became a thin broth with infrequent cubes of horsemeat, or when we had to do with a couple of slices of bread all day.

We still couldn’t help hearing the sound of enemy mortars, by old habit counting seconds before the bursts. We felt the earth shudder under HEs and watched the countless rockets of the Stalin organs.

Despite everything, it still seemed astonishing that we weren’t the only ones left alive—that there were still red and violet flares splaying the heavens, warnings of infantry attack, warnings of tanks and urgent cries for help—from the other side. And then we fired into the yelling mass of Bolsheviks, fired as automatically as robots until at last their mammoth tanks, bearing down on us, forced yet another withdrawal back into the cauldron—which every day grew smaller and hotter.

My unit had shrunk pitiably. One man after another had dropped out, in his own blood or frozen in the unrelenting ocean of whiteness.

Franzl was a broken man, all hope abandoned that he might see his home again. But sometimes, when it was a little quiet and we crouched in our trench waiting for what would come next, he took the photographs from his wallet, the one of the unknown soldier and others of himself, his family and friends. Then I’d pull out a dog-eared picture of my home town and we’d get to talking of such things. These were the only times he seemed to waken.

But suddenly resumption of the barrage would jerk us back into reality and we’d realize with sharpened poignance the treasures that were lost.

Next to me in the trench, leaning on the rampart, he suddenly collapsed, knees giving way and his whole body settling like a spent balloon. “Franzl!” I shouted, unbelieving.

Even when, with horror, I saw one eye had been shot out, I couldn’t believe the awful truth.

Then a scream shrilled inside my head—louder than any the military scientists had ever invented. The sky and snowy waste and everything else that had ruined our lives made an insane dance around me. And I grabbed my machine gun, scrambled out of the trench and ran toward whoever, whatever had fired that shot. In the morning mist I saw dark outlines of men, and the steel thing bucking madly at my hip mowed them down. I ran farther and farther, firing and firing, till like the blow of a cudgel something struck my arm.

“Hey, you! You asleep, or what? Come on, get in, you’re not the only one here.”

It was a dream, and in the dream I climbed up to join the others in the car. Wounded kept crowding in, more and more and more of us.

A heavy load hung from my shoulder. I saw it was my arm, hugely swollen. I couldn’t move the fingers at all. The whole right side of my overcoat was dark brown and stiff with congealed blood. But everything, including this, was sheer unreality.

I had staggered back to our lines after being hit, a swarm of bullets around my ears and warm blood streaming out of my sleeve. There was a hazy recollection of coarse peasant hands dressing the wound and giving me injections. Then I saw the main dressing station. Dim electric light bulbs flickered, and there was a stench of ether, sweat and corruption. A generator droned as impersonal background for the cries of pain, the curses, groans and shrieks of men with arms or legs torn off, with shattered jaws, with chests crushed, with bowels spilling out, with faces burned away. Amidst them all was a pale surgeon in blood-stained rubber coat, working at top speed with his gleaming tools, his saw ready at hand and every minute or two a tense cry to the orderlies: “Next!”

I saw a young NCO with red-stained head bandage who for an instant impelled absolute silence on everybody—even the surgeon stopped working—when he rose from his stretcher, spread his bony arms wide and began singing Deutschland über alles. He clearly wanted to go on, but his voice faded and he collapsed, whimpering.

And there was the moment when an officer in a fur coat glanced at me as he passed and snapped out: “Take him too, he can sit.”

For my last bad dream, I saw the fiery tails of the rockets fly through the pitch-black night sky, and the flashes where shrapnel hit the earth. Up went red flares to signal another attack. Yet another artillery barrage rumbled like thunder.

Then the roar of the aircraft’s engines drowned everything out. We raced at increasing speed over the snow. By a faint swaying I knew we had taken off and I was being flown away from a place accursed.