Enemy at the Gates (46 page)

The only field capable of handling heavy traffic, Gumrak was an ugly scar across the pristine snow. A magnet to retreating troops, it drew long lines of trucks and men to it from the west, then spewed them out on the eastern side toward the Volga and Stalingrad. It had become a charnel house, a depository for the dead and dying, who littered the roads and fields around the runways.

Very few of the Germans in the
Kessel
retained any hope of rescue. Some perked up with the sound of firing to the south and wondered whether Manstein had actually arrived. Others clung to stories of mythical divisions breaking into the
Kessel
from Kalach to the west. Realists like Emil Metzger ignored such rumors. With all ammunition gone and his guns blown up to deny them to the enemy, the lieutenant had taken his men into the line of march toward Gum rak and the Volga. As he waded through the drifts, his thoughts wandered back to Kaethe in Frankfurt. He tried hard to remember every detail of her face. It seemed certain that he would die on this godforsaken plain without ever getting the chance to hold her again.

As the wind tore at him, Metzger began to toy with the thought of breaking out of the
Kessel—
all by himself if necessary.

Like Metzger, Gottlieb Slotta was determined to live. He was already at Gumrak, where he hobbled toward a trainload of wounded, parked at a siding. When a Russian plane dove and released a stick of bombs, bricks and other debris landed on Slotta's head. Shouting, "I'm not going to die like this!" he began running madly toward Stalingrad, five miles away. On both sides of the road, he saw heaps of men who had given up and died. But Slotta had no intention of relinquishing his fragile hold on life that way.

Cpl. Franz Deifel was not sure life was worth fighting for anymore. Until this moment, he had been one of the few Germans inside the
Kessel
who pursued a relatively normal routine. He still hauled ammunition up the back slopes of Mamaev Hill and though his load was limited to only a few shells, he went up the hill almost every day.

By late January, Russian planes had begun to stalk individual trucks and men, and they finally found Deifel as he drove back to the ammunition dump outside the city. A bomb landed twenty feet away; shrapnel sprayed the vehicle and tore into his legs. He fell out of the cab and crawled into a house, where he pulled off his pants and tried to staunch the flow of blood. Another bomb exploded and the walls fell out, so he ran to a nearby trench, hid until dark, then stole back to the truck. By some miracle the engine started on the first try and heavy shellfire followed him down the road until he stopped at a dispensary.

Ordered on to a hospital, Deifel found it to be a dimly lit bunker. At the entrance, he froze in horror at a pyramid of bodies which blocked the door. Nauseated, he broke away and limped back to his own quarters.

A general withdrawal had been ordered, and Deifel hitched a ride on a truck headed back to Stalingrad. Just as the convoy started up, Russian shells exploded on the lead vehicles and blew them apart. Horns blared and drivers raged at the delay while Deifel wandered down the road. Dazed and frustrated, he sank down heavily on the corpse of a comrade and muttered: "Kiss my ass." For the first time in his life, he thought of committing suicide.

Behind the utterly depressed corporal, Gumrak Airport had become bedlam. On January 18, two days after Pitomnik had fallen, it was crammed with thousands of wounded from all around the
Kessel.
Doctors worked eighteen-hour tours of duty treating patients lying on cots, on floors, and outside in the snow. Delirious and pain-wracked soldiers bellowed in torment as medics jabbed needles into arms crawling with gray lice, then stripped the patients for surgery.

Trucks bulging with torn and mutilated men pulled up at the hospitals but when drivers were waved off because of lack of space, they left their cargoes unattended. The temperature fell to twenty degrees below zero and the wounded cried feebly for help. When no one responded, they froze to death within a few yards of the operating table.

At his bunker a mile away, Gen. Friedrich von Paulus filled the airwaves with messages to Manstein: "Airfield at Gumrak usable since the 15th of January, landing ground available for night landings. …Request quickest possible intervention. Gravest danger."

The Luftwaffe rejected Paulus's claim about Gumrak. Declaring the field almost totally unfit for use, it insisted that adequate safety measures were needed to insure proper deliveries.

Paulus was furious: "Objections raised by Luftwaffe regarded here as mere excuses….Landing ground has been substantially extended. Fully competent ground organization with all necessary installations….Commander in chief has directly requested the Führer to intervene…."

The reality of the situation, however, was that neither Paulus nor Schmidt understood that there was an almost total operational breakdown at the airport. The so-called "fully competent ground organization," which had performed admirably at Pitomnik, was no longer a cohesive group. Though Col. Lothar Rosenfeld now tried to clear Gumrak for an intensive shuttle service, he was working with men exhausted beyond recall.

When a Luftwaffe officer landed in Gumrak on the morning of January 19, he recognized these symptoms immediately. Major Thiel, who had come to the
Kessel
to reconcile differences between Sixth Army and the Luftwaffe, was appalled at the condition of the runways. The wrecks of thirteen planes littered the landing cross, forcing incoming pilots to touch down within a tight eightyyard radius. Bomb craters pocked the concrete. Newly fallen snow had not yet been cleared.

Thiel descended into the cramped, brightly lit command bunker where he was quickly surrounded by Generals Schmidt, Paulus, Heitz, and other aides, all of whom began to insult him about the Luftwaffe.

"If your aircraft cannot land, my army is doomed," roared Paulus, who was particularly bitter as he unleashed his fury on the startled Thiel. "Every machine that does so can save the lives of one thousand men. An air drop is no use at all. Many of the canisters are never found because the men are too weak to look for them and we have no fuel to collect them. I cannot even withdraw my lines a few miles because the men would fall out from exhaustion. It is four days since they have had anything to eat. . . . The last horses have been eaten up."

While Thiel stood mute, someone else shouted, "Can you imagine what it is like to see soldiers fall on an old carcass, beat open the head and swallow the brains raw?"

Paulus picked up the conversation again, "What should I, as commander in chief of an army, say when a simple soldier comes up to me and begs, 'Herr General Oberst, can you spare me one piece of bread?' "

"Why on earth did the Luftwaffe ever promise to keep us supplied? Who is the man responsible for declaring that it was possible? Had someone told me it was not possible, I should not have held it against the Luftwaffe. I could have broken out. When I was strong enough to do so. Now it is too late…."

In his frustration and sorrow, Paulus ignored the fact that in November, his Luftwaffe friends Richthofen and Fiebig had warned him that the air force could not supply him. But now it was January, and the commanding general of Sixth Army needed to blame someone, so Major Thiel bore the brunt of his rage.

"The Führer gave me his firm assurance that he and the whole German people felt responsible for this army and now the annals of German arms are besmirched by this fearful tragedy, just because the Luftwaffe has let us down. . . ." Disdainfully waving aside Thiel's attempts to explain the Luftwaffe's terrible difficulties, Paulus continued, "We already speak from a different world than yours, for you are talking to dead men. From now on our only existence will be in the history books…."

That night Major Thiel went back to his plane and found proof for the Luftwaffe's charge that Gumrak was not "efficiently managed." No one had unloaded the supplies from the Heinkel bomber, even though it had been on the ground for nine hours. Thiel left the
Kessel
to report his conviction that Sixth Army was beyond help.

West and north of Gumrak, German detachments paused in their flight to hold back Soviet T-34 tanks that were close enough to shell the airfield's runways. At the Gumrak railroad station, thousands of weary troops asked for information about their units. Almost everyone received the same answer: "Go into Stalingrad. You'll find them there."

Sgt. Ernst Wohlfahrt wandered through this uproar in a mood of suppressed anger. He had just found an abandoned corps headquarters and inside the bunkers he picked through empty champagne and cognac bottles, plus canned meat delicacies which he had never dreamed were available during the encirclement. Wohlfahrt seethed at the thought that his leaders had been eating well while he starved.

A short time later, he passed a half-burned shed. In disbelief, he counted huge stocks of new uniforms, overcoats, felt boots, and meat rations stacked from floor to ceiling. Wohlfahrt was now almost sick with rage. Besides his own need for warm clothing, he had seen hundreds of men clutching shawls or thin blankets to protect their shivering bodies from the cruel winds. Yet German quartermasters still guarded the supply depots with criminal disregard for the suffering around them. No German soldier was allowed to touch a single item.

Private First Class Josef Metzler had already taken matters into his own hands. For weeks he had begged for warm footwear, and for weeks he had been told none was available. When his toes began to burn fiercely from frostbite, he stole a pair of felt boots from a hospital and ran off. A scrupulous man, who never before had stolen anything, Metzler felt no remorse. He was now desperate, and desperation encouraged rationalization for his misdeeds.

Intent on survival, Metzler stopped at another field station to seek some food and treatment for his feet. Meeting a soldier carrying two mess tins, he asked him for one. When the man refused, Metzler waited patiently until his antagonist's attention was diverted, then stole a tin and walked away. Unrepentant, the righteous Metzler stayed on at the hospital to care for his feet.

One mile west of Gumrak, beneath timbered roofs and tons of snow, the staff of Sixth Army worked in semi-isolation from the procession of death moving past them into Stalingrad. Radio operators in the underground bunkers maintained close communications with Manstein at Taganrog over the single thousand -watt transmitter. Their commentary recorded the now commonplace mention of heroic deeds, and the transfer of key men:

Oberst Dingier flew out yesterday, report arrival.

Have left: Sickenius, Major Seidel,…Obertleutnant Langkeit….

Proposal of knight's cross Oberstleutnant Spangenburg. Spangenburg held on own initiative from 10 to 15 January the flank of the Seventy-sixth Inf[antry] Division against the great enemy attack at Baburkin….

Proposal of knight's cross, iron, to Oberleutnant Sascha….Sascha repelled enemy attacks repeatedly on January 16 with only four usable tanks…in spite of heavy enemy fire Sascha left his vehicle to make the infantry get back into position without regard to his personal safety…. without his positive action an enemy entry into Gumrak would have been unavoidable. Signed Deboi [general]

And the radio operators recorded other indications of behavior: "Oberleutnant Billert missing in action….Later: Oberleutnant Billert left without permission by air. Request court martialling procedures."

Beside the few officers who abdicated their responsibilities, some of the wounded flying out of the
Kessel
did so under false pretenses. They had shot themselves in order to reach safety and surgeons who operated on them failed to detect evidence of their self-inflicted injuries. The reasons were twofold. First, the malingerers had fired through a loaf of bread to eliminate close-range powder burns. Secondly, none of them followed patterns normally associated with such cases. Instead of aiming into a leg or arm, areas less dangerous as well as less painful, these men blasted holes in their stomachs and chests to guarantee a successful escape. Since no doctor dared accuse a man of inflicting so grievous a wound on himself, the offenders flew unpunished from Gumrak to hospital beds and a hero's welcome at home.

Knowing that each transport touching down at Gumrak might be the last, the walking wounded thronging the runways eyed each other suspiciously and jockeyed for elbowroom in anticipation of where the aircraft would roll to a stop. The ensuing rush to hatch doors brought death to many who were trampled by half-crazed men.

Now, with time at a premium, Paulus was stepping up the evacuation of specialists, ordering them out to form new divisions for the Wehrmacht. Armed with passes, this elite filtered through the wounded, who glared at them in open hostility.

Gen. Hans Hube left; so did Maj. Coelestin von Zitzewitz, carrying some of Paulus's medals. Gen. Erwin Jaenecke, commander of the Fourth Corps, departed with sixteen shrapnel holes in his body. Capt. Eberhard Wagemann flew out clutching General Schmidt's last will and testament. From each division came officers and hand-picked enlisted men to form the cadre of a new Sixth Army that would fight again someday, somewhere.

On the morning of January 21, Gerhard Meunch answered the field telephone in the basement of a house near the bread factory, and was told to go immediately to 51st Corps Headquarters.

Puzzled by the summons, the captain reported to Colonel Clausius, General Seydlitz-Kurzbach's chief of staff and heard the incredible words, "Captain Meunch, you will fly out this day."

"This cannot be true. I cannot leave my soldiers in the lurch," he protested, but Clausius stopped him, saying that because he was a specialist in infantry tactics he was needed elsewhere. Then the colonel brusquely said good-bye.