Forgotten Soldier (16 page)

"Hah!" he said. "Our general left us all while we were asleep. Maybe he felt like taking a walk!"

It seemed that the noncom really was gone. He must have managed a ride in one of the trucks that had passed us during our rest.

"That shit has gone to make his report!" shouted the tank driver. "If I catch up with him, I'll drive right over him, flatten him out like a goddamned Bolshevik!"

It took us a while to extricate ourselves from the bank we had driven into. However, two hours later we arrived at a hamlet whose name I no longer remember, some five miles from Belgorod. It was filled with soldiers from every branch of the army. The few streets were perfectly straight, and lined with low houses; the way the roofs sat on the walls reminded me of heads with no foreheads, whose hair grows right into the eyebrows. There were swarms of soldiers, and a multitude of rolling equipment covered with mud, pushing through the shouting mob of soldiers, most of whom were looking for their regiments. The road at this point had been roughly resurfaced, and was much more negotiable.

We unhooked ourselves from the tank, and took on eight or ten of the engineers who had been riding on its back. Somewhat bewildered by this flood of soldiers, I had stopped the truck, and was looking for my company. Two M.Ps told me they thought it had gone on toward Kharkov, but as they weren't sure, they sent me to the redirection center which had been organized in a trailer and was staffed by three officers, who were tearing their hair. When I was finally able to catch their attention through the thousands of shouts and gesticulations besieging them, I was harshly reprimanded for straggling. They probably would have sent me to be court-martialed, if they'd had time. The disorder was incredible, and the landser, half furious, half joking, flooded into the Russian huts.

We might as well sleep while we wait for all this to settle down."

All they wanted was a dry corner where they could lie down, but there were so many men crammed into each isba that there was almost no room left for the Russians who lived in them.

Not knowing what to do with myself, I went to find Ernst, who had gone to look for information. However, he had run into a truck hospital, and had returned to the Tatra with an orderly, who was checking over our wounded.

"They can go on as they are," he said.

"What?" Ernst asked. "But we've already buried two of them. At least we should give them fresh dressings."

"Don't be stubborn and stupid. If I label them `urgent,' they'll have to wait their turn, lying in the street. You'll get to Belgorod quicker than that-and escape the trap that's closing on us."

"Is the situation serious?" Ernst asked.

"Yes."

So Ernst and I found ourselves responsible for twenty wounded men, some of them in critical condition, who had already been waiting several days for essential medical attention. We didn't know what to say when a man grimacing with pain asked us if he would soon be at the hospital.

"Let's get going," Ernst said, frowning anxiously. "Maybe he's right. If I'd ever thought it would be like this . . ."

I had been at the wheel for only a few minutes when Ernst tapped me on the shoulder. "Come on, little one, stop. You'll finish somebody off if it goes on like this. Hand over."

"But I'm supposed to drive, Ernst. I'm the one who's in the drivers' corps."

"Never mind. Let me do it. You'll never get us out of here."

It was true. Despite my best efforts, the truck was jolting and sliding from one side of the road to the other.

We arrived at the village exit point, where there was an interminable line of vehicles waiting for gas. Thousands of soldiers were walking up and down on either side of the road. An M.P. ran over to us.

"Why aren't you waiting like everybody else?"

"We've got to leave right away, Herr Gendarm. We're carrying wounded, and that's what the infirmary told us."

"Wounded? Serious cases?" He spoke in the doubting, disbelieving tone of every policeman in the world.

"Of course," said Ernst, who certainly wasn't exaggerating.

The policeman had to peer under the canvas anyway:

"They don't look so bad to me."

There was a furious outburst of swearing. From time to time, wounded men availed themselves of their special position to abuse the police.

"You sonofabitch," groaned one man, who was missing a piece of his shoulder. "It's shits like you who should be sent to the front. Let us through, or I'll strangle you with the one good hand I have left."

The feverish landser was sitting up in spite of his pain, which made him frighteningly white. He seemed quite capable of putting this threat into action.

The policeman flushed, and his nerve faltered at the sight of these twenty battered wrecks. The position of a big-city policeman roaring at some pathetic bourgeois for going through a red light is a far cry from that of an M.P. behind the lines dealing with a gang of combat veterans who are holding their guts in with their hands, or have just bayoneted the guts out of somebody else. His display of bad temper turned into a set little smile.

"Get out of here," he said, with the air of someone who doesn't give a damn. When the wheels of the truck began to turn, he vented the last of his spleen: "Go and die somewhere else!"

It was hard to get even eight gallons of gas, and when we managed it our tank swallowed them in an instant. But we were glad to take what we could and get out. A feeble attempt had been made at surfacing the road, but there were still long stretches of bare ground which had become deep quagmires, to be avoided at all costs. We proceeded on the highway, or beside it, as circumstances required.

Far to the right, we could see another convoy struggling forward in a line parallel to ours. The men were dressed for battle, and seemed to be prepared for an encounter with the Soviets. We were stopped by a new set of police, who combed our papers to see if they could find any mistakes. They checked the truck, verified our I.D. cards and our destination ... but when it came to the destination, they had to give us directions. One of them looked through the directory hanging around his neck, and told us, in a voice like a barking dog's, that we had to turn off the road a hundred yards ahead and proceed to Kharkov. We followed these instructions with regret, because the new road rapidly deteriorated into a ribbon of mire.

At our speed, we would soon have exhausted our supply of gas.

We kept passing vehicles abandoned in the mud because of mechanical failure, or because they had run out of gas. A short distance along the new road, we were stopped by a group of about fifty landser, on foot, and in a state of unbelievable filth. They took our truck by storm. There were several wounded men among them. Some of them had ripped off their filthy dressings, and were walking with their wounds open to the air.

"Make room for us, fellows," they said, hanging on as hard as they could.

"You can see that we haven't got any room," Ernst answered. "Let go."

But we couldn't get rid of them. They swarmed over the tailgate, trampling on our wounded to try to make them move over. Ernst and I shouted at them, but it didn't do any good: they piled on everywhere.

"Take me," whimpered a poor devil scratching at my door with bloody hands. Another waved a pass which was already almost expired. The arrival of a steiner followed by two trucks restored order.

An S.S. captain climbed out of the steiner.

"What's this ant heap? No wonder you've broken down! It's impossible! There must be at least a hundred men here."

The men scattered immediately, without asking for anything more. Ernst saluted, and explained the situation.

"Very good," said the captain. "You take five more along with your wounded. We'll take another five, and the rest will have to walk until the convoy comes by. Let's get going."

Ernst explained that we would be out of gas in a few minutes. The captain signaled to some soldiers on the steiner, who gave us six gallons. A few minutes later we were on our way again.

We kept passing groups of men wading through the mud who begged us to pick them up, but we didn't stop. Toward noon, with our last drop of gas, we reached a town where a unit was being assembled for the front. I escaped becoming an infantryman before my time by a hair's breadth.

We had to wait until the following day before we could use the reserve of five gallons of gas which Ernst was able to draw. We were about to leave, when an unexpected and unpleasant sound struck our ears. In the distance-still quite far away-we heard the booming of big guns. As we thought we were by now far from the front, we were both astonished and alarmed. We didn't know-and I didn't know until much later-that our course had been taking us parallel to the Belgorod-Kharkov line.

Nonetheless, after unloading two dying men to make room for three more wounded, we set off without delay. In the middle of that afternoon, everything went wrong again.

Our truck was more or less in the middle of a column of ten. We had just passed an armored unit whose tanks looked like a giant version of the slimy creatures that emerge on mud flats at low tide. They must have been on their way to meet the enemy, who seemed to be very close. We could hear artillery on our left, despite the loud laboring noises of the trucks. Ernst and l exchanged anxious looks. We were stopped by some soldiers who were setting up an anti-tank gun.

"Dig in, fellows," shouted an officer as we slowed down. "Ivan's getting pretty close."

This time, at least, they were telling us something. But I wondered how the Russians, who had been left some ninety miles behind, could already be in this district. Ernst, who was driving, stepped on the gas. Two other trucks did the same. Suddenly, five planes appeared in the sky, at a moderate altitude. I pointed them out to Ernst.

"They're Yaks," he shouted. "Take cover!"

We were surrounded by bare mud, with occasional clumps of stunted brush. There was a sound of machine-gun fire from the sky. The column drove more quickly, toward a shallow fold in the ground which might give some protection. I was leaning out the window, trying to see through the flying mud spun by our wheels. Two Focke Wolfs had appeared, and had shot down two of the Yaks, which crashed far to the west.

Until the final stages of the war, Russian aircraft were no match for the Luftwaffe. Even in Prussia, where Russian airpower was its most active, the appearance of one Messerschmitt-109, or one Focke-Wolf would make a dozen armored Ilyushin bombers turn and run. At this period, when German airpower still possessed important reserves, the lot of the Russian pilots was not enviable.

Two of the three remaining Yaks had taken flight, pursued by our planes, when the last dived straight at the convoy. One of the Focke Wulfs was chasing him, and was plainly trying to get him in his sights.

We reached the dip in the road. The Soviet plane had come down very low, to use its machine guns. The trucks ahead of us had stopped short, and the able-bodied were jumping down into the mud. I was already holding the door open, and I jumped, with my feet together, plunging face downward, when I heard the machine guns.

With my nose in the mud, my hands on my head, and my eyes instinctively shut, I heard the machine gun and the two planes through a hellish intensity of noise. The sound of racing engines was followed by a loud explosion. I looked up, to watch the plane with the black crosses on its wings regain altitude. Three or four hundred yards away, where the Yak had crashed, there was a plume of black smoke. Everybody was getting up again.

"One more who won't give any trouble," shouted a fat corporal who was clearly delighted to be still alive.

Several voices joined in a cheer for the Luftwaffe.

"Anybody hit?" one of the noncoms called out. "Let's get going, then."

I walked over to the Tatra, trying to brush off the worst of the mud that clung to my uniform. I noticed two holes in the door I had opened to get out which appeared to have swung shut on its own momentum: two round holes, each outlined by a ring of metal from which the paint had been scraped away. Nervously, I pulled open the door. Inside, I saw a man I shall never forget-a man sitting normally on the seat, whose lower face had been reduced to a bloody pulp.

"Ernst?" I asked in a choking voice. "Ernst!" I threw myself at him. "Ernst! What . . . ? Say something! Ernst!" I looked frantically for some features on that horrible face. "Ernst!" I was nearly crying.

Outside, the column was getting ready to leave. The two trucks behind me were impatiently blowing their horns.

"Hey." I ran toward the first of the trucks. "Stop. Come with me. I've got a wounded man."

I was frantic. The doors of the truck behind me swung open and two soldiers stuck out their heads.

"Well, young fellow, are you going to move, or aren't you?" "Stop!" I shouted louder than ever. "I've got a wounded man." "We have thirty," one of the soldiers shouted back. "Get going. The hospital isn't too far from here."

Their voices rose over mine, and the noise of their trucks, which had pulled out, and were passing me, drowned my cries of desperation. Now I was alone, with a Russian truck loaded with wounded men, and Ernst Neubach, who was dead, or dying.

"You shits! Wait for me! Don't go without us!"

I burst into tears, and gave way to a mad impulse. I grabbed my Mauser, which I'd left in the truck. My eyes were swimming, and I could barely see. I felt for the trigger, and pointing the gun at the sky, fired all five cartridges in the magazine, hoping that to someone in the trucks this would sound like a cry for help. But no one stopped. The trucks continued to roll away from me, sending out a spray of mud on each side. In despair, I returned to the cabin, and ripped open my kit to look for a package of dressings.

"Ernst," I said. "I'm going to bandage you. Don't cry."

I was insane. Ernst wasn't crying: I was. His coat was covered with blood. With the dressings in my hand, I stared at my friend. He

must have been hit in the lower jaw. His teeth were mixed with fragments of bone, and through the gore I could see the muscles of his face contracting, moving what was left of his features.