Enemy at the Gates (43 page)

For over a week, Brunnert and his friend Gunter Gehlert had shared a bunker and adjusted to the presence of the enemy nearby. On January 7, just as Gunter came to relieve Brunnert at the machine gun, a shell burst only yards away. Brunnert screamed and fell face down into the trench. He stared dumbly at one of his fingers, split open like a blossoming rosebud.

His legs were hit, too, and he lay in a spreading pool of blood but remained conscious while Gunter brought a medic. In shock, Brunnert watched wordlessly as they frantically fashioned a dressing. When darkness came, Gunter put Brunnert on a sled, pressed money into his hand and asked him to give it to his own parents when he got home.

The sled rocked gently through the snow and except for his freezing feet, Brunnert enjoyed the ride to Gumrak Airfield hospital. In an operating room suffused with bright lights, he relaxed as his clothing, that filth-caked armor, was taken off. After receiving a local anesthetic, he began to dream of good food and sleep without worrying about Russians creeping up on him during the night. That thought brought back the image of poor Gunter alone at the bunker, watching now for the enemy until his eyes watered and he saw mirages on the snow. Brunnert suddenly felt very sorry for his comrade.

Still on the operating table, he turned his head. Only a few feet away, on another table, he saw the convoluted windings of a man's brain. Fascinated, he carefully examined the various folds, some pink, others grayish blue, while doctors probed his own body for pieces of metal. Shortly afterward, Ekkehart Brunnert left the
Kessel
on a plane bound for home.

"Every seven seconds, a German dies in Russia. Stalingrad is a mass grave. Every seven seconds, a German dies…."

The loudspeaker's words assaulted Gunter Gehlert, alone now in his bunker without Brunnert. They assailed Gottlieb Slotta and Hubert Wirkner as they crouched in their icy holes on the steppe. The message twanged taut the nerves of two hundred thousand men trapped on the steppe. Hour by hour, the
politrook
bombarded the Germans with announcements, threats, inducements, and prophecies. In some sectors, Russian speakers even called out the names of company and battalion commanders.

Capt. Gerhard Meunch learned this when a commissar engaged him in a personal war. Near the Red October Plant, the loudspeakers blared over and over: "German soldiers, drop your weapons. It makes no sense to continue. Your Captain Meunch will also realize one day what is going on. What this 'super-Fascist' tells you isn't right anyway. He will recognize it. One day we'll seize him."

Every time the enemy mentioned his name, Meunch immediately went out and spent time with his troops. Joking about the personal comments, he watched closely for any adverse reactions from the men. But though the tactic was meant to be unnerving, they never seemed intimidated by the Russian ploy.

Less than two miles southwest of Meunch's outpost in the Red October Plant, Ignacy Changar gulped down a full ration of vodka and wondered where he could find another. The commando captain had been relying more and more on liquor to forget the daily nightmare in which he lived. His awful memories of the past had not faded and with dynamite, rifle, and knife he had blown up, shot, or stabbed more than two hundred of the enemy. Still he was not satisfied.

As a result, his one-man war had taken its toll on him. His face was drawn, the eyes haunted. His hands trembled. His only relief from inner tension was alcohol and, after finishing his vodka ration on the night of January 7, he led his men up the eastern slope of Mamaev Hill, carefully threading a path through Russian trenches and minefields to the final rolls of barbed wire. Crawling into no-man's-land, Changar tried to gauge whether the Germans sensed his approach, but the crown of Mamaev Hill remained tranquil. Reaching an open stretch where shellbursts had blown away the snow, he stood up and waited for his unit to gather around him.

Several brilliant white flares quickly popped overhead. As he screamed, "Drop!" a German shell exploded a few feet away. Changar felt a terrible pain in the right side of his head, then crumpled to the ground. His men carried him back down the slope to an aid station, where doctors worked carefully to extract the metal fragment lodged against the brain. Evacuated quickly for further surgery, the still unconscious Changar was not expected to live.

West of Mamaev Hill, at Gumrak Airfield, Paulus learned that three Red Army representatives planned to enter German lines with an ultimatum for Sixth Army. The Russians proposed a rendezvous at 10:00
A.M.
Moscow time, on January 8. Though Paulus ignored the request, at the appointed hour the Russian parliamentarians walked under a white flag into German lines and delivered Marshal Rokossovsky's offer to an astonished but polite Captain Willig.

Rokossovsky offered guarantees of safety to all who "ceased to resist," plus their return at the end of the war to Germany. He also assured Paulus that all personnel might retain their "belongings and valuables, and in the case of high-ranking officers, their swords." The general went on to offer a most tempting argument to soldiers about to starve to death, "All officers…and men who surrender will immediately receive normal rations… [the] wounded, sick or frostbitten will be given medical treatment." The Red Army ultimatum demanded an affirmative answer within twenty-four hours, or else the Germans would suffer total "destruction."

Friedrich von Paulus submitted the proposal to Hitler and asked for "freedom of action."

Rokossovsky's offer of good treatment and guarantees of safety had been voiced earlier in January by the Soviet government. In a document extraordinary for its seeming compassion during a brutal war, guidelines were laid down for the proper care of enemy captives.

TREATMENT OF POW IN THE SOVIET UNION: ORDER OF THE

PEOPLES COMMISSARIAT FOR THE DEFENCE OF THE USSR

January 2, 1943            No. 001           Moscow

The manner of return-conveyance and security of POW on the front and on the way to the collection camp
shows a number of serious shortcomings:

The POW remain too long inside the units of the Red Army. From the time of capture to the loading the prisoners have to cover 200-300 km on foot. Often they receive no food. Therefore they arrive quite exhausted and sick….

In order to energetically discontinue such shortcomings while taking care of POW and to make them available as work forces . . . the following order [is issued]…to the commanders at the front: …according to POW regulations, give timely medical attention to wounded or sick POW….

Categorically discontinue
sending on a march wounded, sick, exhausted or frozen prisoners…such prisoners are to be attended to in a field hospital and forwarded when transportation is available…also sick prisoners are to be fed according to regulations for these….

…Limit the daily marching time to 25-30 km. Install stopping places for overnight stays. Give out warm food and water to the POW, and have ready a heating facility,

…Leave the POW their clothes, shoes, underwear, bedding and eating utensils. If a prisoner lacks any of these, it is a duty to replace the missing objects from loot, or from effects of killed or dead enemy soldiers or officers….

To the chief of sanitary inspection of the Red Army:

…at check points have a control station. for marching POW and give medical attention to the sick . . . such POW who cannot continue the march due to illness are to be taken out of the column and sent to a field hospital close by. . . .

Forbid that POW be forwarded in cars not suitable for human transport….

Sent on to Russian commanders by telegram, the document was ignored. The reasons were twofold: Hobbled by acute shortages of rail cars, medical supplies, and food, Russian officials could not cope with the enormous influx of Axis prisoners during December and January. Furthermore, the prison personnel allowed their hatred for the invaders to influence their actions. Thus, as the POWs walked and rode to internment, many Red Army officers responsible for their well-being tacitly condoned their deaths.

“Vodi! Vodi!”
The plaintive cry for water irritated Felice Bracci as some of the thirty-five men riding in his freight car shouted their desperate plea. Bracci had no idea of their destination and, after listening to this pitiful lament for three days, he was beginning to lose his temper. Conditions were frightful enough for everyone without the constant whining from the weak.

Bracci and his fellow officers were barely alive. Twenty-four slept in shifts on the ice-covered floor, where they curled up in embraces to draw heat from each other. To pass the time, some men whispered stories of previous days and future dreams. Martini, Branco, and Giordano agreed to set up a restaurant in Rome with their savings. Franco Fusco wanted to go into business. Fasanotti talked about continuing his career as a public prosecutor.

One officer refused to talk of what might be. Instead, he announced that the trip was merely an exquisite torture conceived by the Russians, who would keep the train going endlessly until all its passengers died. It seemed that way. Just once a day, guards pulled the door open to give them a hunk of black bread and a bucket of water.

While the thirstiest howled for more than their share, Bracci and his friends carefully watched a soldier whittle the frozen bread into equal portions. The men never took their eyes off the knife as it shaved and jabbed the rock-like meal. Carefully handed out to groups of five, the bread was consumed immediately and then, in the dim light that seeped through cracks, the Italians rocked along in contemplative silence.

As the miles and days passed, each man attended to his bodily needs in a corner and a cone-shaped mound of excrement rose slowly, a daily calendar recording the length of the trip. The excrement was always gray, the color of the bread, their only sustenance.

Bracci slept as much as he could. But when he was awake, he thought often about his captors and he was torn by his feelings toward the Russian guards. In their strange dress, they looked like big wicked apes. Boisterous, crude, they showed no trace of sensitivity. Yet, Bracci knew that out on the lonely steppe of southern Russia, their women and children suffered, too. Like him, they loved and laughed, cried and bled. But the men who guarded the trail from Kalmikov and rode the train to prison camp as jailers were not the same, could not be related to those Russians who generously gave him food during the march. To these guards, the Italians were "mere objects"; not men, not slaves. They were nothing.

The prisoners' train moved due north, toward Moscow and beyond. Behind it, on the road Bracci had marched along earlier, lay thousands of frozen corpses. Some had bullet holes in the torso. Most had gunshot wounds in the back of the neck.

Baggage peculiar to the Italian Army lay on the crusted snowtrail. Crucifixes, mass cards, pictures of Jesus Christ and the saints, had fallen near the dead. One victim sat placidly in a drift. Eyes wide open, a smile creasing his face, he held a black rosary in his hands. The soldier had begun the second decade of the beads when a Russian guard shot him.

Cristoforo Capone came along this same trail several days behind Bracci. The doctor saw the ravens Bracci had noticed circling and he heard the same shouts:
"Davai bistre!" "Davai bistre!"
as Russian guards robbed the prisoners of their warm clothing and beat them when they protested. Capone, too, watched the weak fall down and winced at the sharp cracks of rifle fire as they died. Like Bracci, he huddled for many nights in below-zero weather with soldiers who screamed from the pain of frostbite or wailed to God about their cruel fate. The doctor pitied these men in their misery, but he had decided to live. Some unknown inner strength brought him to a railroad station and a section of floor in a freight car, where he now sprawled to rest.

While an Arctic wind whistled outside and the men clutched each other to transmit body heat, the train sped north. Capone began to lick the icicled walls to quench his raging thirst. Men died beside him each night and, in the morning, Russian guards opened the doors and screamed:
"Skolco kaput?"
("How many dead?") That was all they cared about, the number of corpses they had to pull out and discard in the snow.

On the evening of January 8, Field Marshal Erich von Manstein entertained guests at Novocherkassk. Among them were Gen. Hans Hube,
"Der Mensch,"
who had just returned from East Prussia. On the way back he traveled with Col. Günter von Below, who had been invalided out of Stalingrad in September with jaundice, and was returning to duty at a time when most German soldiers were praying to leave the pocket.

During their flight, Below had learned from Hube that the Führer was planning another attempt to extricate the Sixth Army. Three panzer divisions were supposedly coming from France and would be ready to attack by the middle of February. It was apparent to Below that the aggressive Hube had succumbed to Hitler's mesmerizing personality and believed implicitly in this new rescue expedition.

At dinner that night Hube continued to talk about the promised panzers. But each time he tried to solicit Erich von Manstein's opinions, the field marshal changed the subject. Throughout the meal, in fact, Manstein avoided any comment about the army inside the
Kessel.

Later, over drinks with staff officers of Army Group Don, Below found one reason for Manstein's negative responses when his companions told him that less than a hundred tons a day had been airlifted to Stalingrad. Without making any definite admissions about the
Kessel
being a hopeless trap, they convinced Below that he was "a condemned man having a last meal" before going to his death. The chastened colonel drank until a late hour.

The next day, January 9, he and Hube touched down at Pitomnik and went on to the crowded interior of the headquarters bunker at Gumrak, where Paulus and Schmidt awaited them. Extremely agitated, Paulus quickly told his visitors it was impossible for Sixth Army to hold out much longer. When Hube broke in to mention the tanks coming from France, Paulus merely shrugged in resignation. Still, as Hube kept insisting on the need to hold out until the panzer force arrived at the perimeter, Paulus began to show a spark of interest in the idea. A desperate man, stripped of options by the higher authority he would never disobey, Paulus had to force himself to believe in a miracle.