Authors: Sven Hassel
Behind him, we stood in a cluster, waiting to be told what to do. The lieutenant rose to his feet. Around his neck he was wearing a blue woollen muffler. I wondered who had knitted it for him. Mother, wife, sweetheart? Growing maudlin, I imagined the loving hands settling it about his neck as they saw him off for the very last time at the station, and I felt suddenly sorry for the young lieutenant who was going to die. No older than me, and he was going to die--we were all going to die . . .
Somewhere behind me a man burst into anguished sobs. General Augsberg settled his monocle into his eye, adjusted his face into its familiar set lines and stood up. "All right! What are we waiting for? Let's press on!"
We crossed the Shchir as we had crossed the Don. Another river behind us.
"The next one's the Kalitva," said the Old Man. "Somehow I don't think we're going to find anything there."
"Don't worry," said the Legionnaire with a hard smile. "There's always another after that--the Oskol, if I remember rightly. And from the Oskol to the Donets it can't be more than seventy or eighty miles."
"And what happens after that?" I asked bitterly. "What happens if we still haven't found them?"
The Old Man shrugged. "I suppose we just go straight on until we come to the Dnieper."
"The Dnieper!" I snorted. "Who the hell do you think's going to get that far?"
"No one, but it gives you something to think about," said the Legionnaire amiably.
Not far away, limping badly and in obvious pain, was a sergeant major from one of the crack units of the German Army. He was their last survivor. Shortly before the battle of Krasny Oktyabr, their padre had delivered a sermon in which he had stated very firmly that whatever happened, it would be the will of God. The padre himself had not survived to explain to the sergeant major why it was that God had willed the whole of the unit to be wiped out by Russian flamethrowers. The sergeant major had been a gloomy, introspective fellow ever since.
Behind us, small but determined, trotting through the snow with his head down, came the paymaster from the "Greater Germany" Division. Back home in Vienna, the paymaster owned a hotel, and there had been a time when he was far too proud to speak to his inferiors unless it were to give an order. Since Stalingrad, however, he had been only too pleased to talk to anyone who would stop and listen to him, and he had even been known to hold long conversations with Porta, who was anxious to discover why he did not abandon the idea of a conventional hotel and set up a high-class brothel instead. The paymaster was himself growing quite interested in the idea. He would walk for miles lost in silent daydreams of the girls he would have and the services he would offer.
We spent a few hours at night resting in a deserted village, where the huts were no more than blackened ruins. In the charred remains of a stable, we found a dead horse. The flesh had been preserved by the low temperature, and when Porta had defrosted it and sliced it up, we cooked it over an open fire and dished it out as steak. One man declared it was the juiciest meat he had ever tasted.
"They do say," remarked Gregor, thoughtfully sucking the blood off his fingers, "that human flesh is the best of the lot."
"Some people swear by it," agreed Porta cheerfully. "In the Russian prison camp near Paderborn you used to be able to get human liver on the black market."
"You ever try it?" I asked.
"No, but I guess I would have, if I'd been starving enough."
We set off again at dawn, on our long march to nowhere, but now the P-4 was acting up and refused to start. The engine was iced up and we had to abandon it in the village. Some of us were secretly a little glad that Porta now had to join the rest of us on foot, but it was the end of the road for those who were too badly wounded to walk.
As we marched, we strained our ears for the sounds of battle, but all we heard was the whining of the wind and the crunching of boots in the snow. Porta gave it as his opinion that the front had moved from Russia and that the last battle was now being fought on the Rhine itself. He could well have been right, but no one really cared any more.
And so the weary retreat continued, mile after desperate mile across the howling steppe. We were fewer than three hundred now. Behind us lay the stiffened remains of over five hundred men, dead from frostbite, typhoid, dysentery, exhaustion and despair.
We stopped for another rest. We were able to cover less ground each day. Our resistance was very low and we could no longer cope with the bitter Russian winter. Defying any NKVD who might be within striking distance, we lit a fire and huddled around it, holding out our hands to the blaze and feeling the warmth of the flames as they flickered over our feeble bodies. Porta lit an opium cigarette, but it had barely gone once around the group when the familiar order to be on our way was shouted across to us. One of the baggagemasters, an elderly sergeant who had been through World War I, remained on the ground, crumpled up with his hands pressed hard into his guts.
"Come on!" I said, putting a hand under his elbow. "Time to go--you can't stay here like that."
"Leave me be," he muttered. "Just leave me be."
"Get up and march, Grandpa!" Gregor dug him none too gently in the ribs with his rifle. "We can't afford to lose any more men."
"You surely haven't come all this way just to lie down and die in the snow?" I said. "Not now, when we're almost there."
"Where?" He looked up at me, his face gray and leathery. "Where are we?"
"Almost there," I repeated helplessly. "Can't you hear the guns?"
"No. I can't hear any guns." He drew his legs up to his chin, sweating with the agony of some tearing internal pain. "Go away, son, and let me be. I've had my day. You're young enough to make it, but I'm not--I'm old and tired and I'm going to die."
"What are you men still doing here?" The lieutenant came running up to us. He jerked a thumb over his shoulder. "Fall in with the rest of the column!"
Gregor moved off. I pointed silently at the old man, doubled up in the snow.
"Dysentery," the lieutenant immediately diagnosed. "Leave him, he wouldn't last out the day even if we took him with us. He should never have come in the first place. He should have stayed in Stalingrad and waited for the Russians." He took out his revolver, leveled it, hesitated a moment, then swore and pushed it back into its holster. "Get a move on!" he shouted, as he ran after the column.
I took one last look at the old man. He turned his face Up to me, and with a shaking, clawlike hand held out a dogeared envelope. "If you get through--if you ever get home --send this to my wife, and tell her--tell her I couldn't help it. Tell her how they betrayed us. I didn't mean to die, but I--couldn't help it."
I took the envelope and put it in my pocket.
"I'll tell her," I said. "I'll tell everyone, don't you worry! I'll tell the whole damn world what the bastards have done to us--"
"Sven!" It was Heide's voice. He was running toward me across the snow. "What the hell are you doing? I've been sent back to look for you."
I gestured toward the old fellow. "He's on his last legs."
"So what? There's nothing you can do about it." Heide scarcely glanced at him. "He's not the first and he won't be the last. Christ almighty, you're a soldier, not a priest! Take this and come on!"
He picked up my submachine gun and thrust it at me. He was right, of course: there was nothing I could do about it. I couldn't sit by the old codger's side and wait for him to die. I couldn't carry him on my back for the next thousand miles. I bent down and whispered in his ear, "Don't worry, Grandpa--I'll get through! I'll deliver your letter for you."
We marched all through the night, with only a couple of short rests. We marched all through the next day, and the day after that. Our numbers thinned out still further. Only the toughest and the most determined were now left to carry on with the retreat. We floundered through the snow, fought against the tearing wind, crossed innumerable rivers, lost our way in immense forests.
At one point I was marching behind a man who quite suddenly collapsed at my feet. He was a tall man, he swayed forward like a felled pine tree, stiff and straight, but as he hit the ground, he crumpled up and lay in a heap. I had been marching behind him for several hours and he had given no signs of an impending collapse, but now he came crashing down so fast I had no time to avoid him, and I tripped headlong into the snow at his side. I turned him over; his face was red and feverish, his mouth open, the throat covered in pink spots. His breath was foul-smelling. I shook him by the shoulder, but he only moaned and writhed.
"So what?" echoed Heide's voice in my memory. "There's nothing you can do about it."
There wasn't. Out here, on the frozen steppe, with no medication and no possibility of rest or treatment, typhoid was a death sentence. I took the man's revolver from his holster and put it in his hand, closing the fingers around it. I had scarcely regained my place in the column when a shot rang out.
That night we bivouacked in a wood. All the others dug themselves deep into the snow, curled up and fell into an exhausted sleep, but our group lit a fire and sat around it, cooking the remains of the frozen horse meat, which we had carried with us. The Old Man produced some soft and wrinkled potatoes from the depths of his pack, and Gregor had a twist of salt. Grilled steak and roast potatoes, a few drags of an opium cigarette and the leaping flames of a camp-fire--it was almost enough to make a man believe he was at peace with the world.
We lay in a circle, our feet upturned to the glowing embers. The soles of Porta's boots began to smell of burning, and he sat up and took the boots off, and then removed his socks for the first time in weeks. The big toe on his right foot was turning blue. It served as a warning to the rest of us. We tore off our own boots and socks and examined ourselves carefully, and wherever we suspected trouble, rubbed the affected spot with snow. The pain was agonizing, but it brought back the circulation and restored life to flesh that would otherwise have died. Nothing is as treacherous as a frozen limb. Porta could have walked around for days, never knowing anything was wrong, until gangrene set in and it was too late.
Next morning, shortly before dawn, we reported our findings to the doctor and he at once ordered a general inspection of hands and feet. One man was found to have a leg that was blue almost up to the knee. He could feel no pain and had never suspected what was happening, not having had cause to look at his legs for many weeks past. The doctor took General Augsberg aside and told him the news. "There's only one way to save him, and that's to take the leg off. But how the devil do we transport him after that?"
"We don't," said Augsberg shortly.
Before the doctor could protest at this only possible answer, Tiny came bounding across to us from the trees. "Something's moving over there!"
Everyone fell silent. We stood listening, frozen limbs and gangrene forgotten.
"Can't hear a thing," said Porta. "You're imagining it." Nevertheless, he stamped on the fire. It never did to take Tiny's warnings lightly. His brain may not have been too sharp, but his hearing was more acute than anyone's.
And now we heard it ourselves. A faint cracking and crackling, as of twigs being snapped underfoot. Tiny was already flat on the ground, with the MPI ready to fire. The rest of us scattered, crouched in dugouts and behind trees and bushes, straining our eyes in the darkness of the wood. Again we heard the sound of twigs, the sound of rustling undergrowth. It was quite clear now, and it was almost certainly a man, or men. Animals moved silently through the dark forest.
"It's Ivan!"
The word was passed swiftly, in a whisper, from hole to hole, from tree to tree. Everywhere, men stiffened and pressed their fingers against triggers. Those of us who seconds before had been doubled up with the pangs of dysentery, those of us who had lain exhausted in the snow, those of us who thought they no longer cared for life, were suddenly reunited in tacit agreement that whatever else befell us we were not going to be taken alive by the NKVD. We had seen the tortured corpses of too many German soldiers to expect any mercy at their hands.
The noise grew sharper in outline. And then we heard voices, rough and coarse, conversing in undertones. The only word I caught clearly was
"Germanski."
I guessed they were Siberians. They must have picked up our traces a long way back and been following us ever since. They were known for their tenacity, they would stay on the trail for miles and never give up.
"NKVD," hissed Tiny, making a preliminary movement. "Let's get the hell out!"
"Too late." The Legionnaire stretched out a restraining hand and pressed him down again. "Now they've got wind of us they'll never let go."
We had no alternative but to stay and fight. Out of the trees glided a line of white phantoms. We could hear the faint swish of their skis in the snow, knew that behind their white masks, glittering dark eyes were peering through the gloom in search of us. We lay hidden, watching as they moved forward. My throat contracted with terror, and only the habit of years, the hard habit of Prussian discipline, kept me hidden in my snow dugout. At the head of the group was a commissar. I saw the hammer and sickle and the red star on his helmet. He pointed in our direction. Straight at us, it seemed to me.
"Over there!"
From his position behind the MPI, Tiny turned and rolled despairing eyes at me. I caught his panic and made a slight, involuntary movement. Quick as lightning, the Legionnaire laid his hand over mine. He winked at me, warning, reproving, encouraging. I swallowed a mouthful of air and my panic subsided.
A sudden shot rang out. The commissar clutched both hands to his heart and slowly collapsed into the snow. Someone else had lost his head and had not had the comforting pressure of the Legionnaire's steady hand to reassure him. Thank God, at least, he had not lost his aim as well as his head.
I heard the general's whistle blow. There was a sound as of thunder, and a billowing sea of flame swept forward and engulfed the six white phantoms.