Forgotten Soldier (18 page)

"Dig two graves over there," ordered the tall soldier. "We must bury these men."

"We not soldiers," answered the Popov, still smiling.

"You ... dig grave ... two graves," insisted the. German, aiming his gun at the Russians. "Two graves, and quick!"

The Russian's eye gleamed wildly as he stared at the black hollow of the gun barrel. He said a few words in Russian, and the others busied themselves with the job.

We had begun to change the dressings of the wounded when we heard the sound of a motor in the courtyard. Without thinking, we ran out. Several armored vehicles had just driven in, and a gang of German soldiers were running toward the big drinking trough. They were followed by four or five Mark-4s. An officer climbed from a steiner, and we ran to meet him, telling him who we were.

"Alles gut," said the officer. "Help us load up, and leave with us." We tried to get the amphibious V.W. to start, but that proved impossible. We dragged it from the hut, and one of the landser threw a grenade into the engine. A moment later, it blew to pieces. More vehicles arrived. Others left in the direction from which we'd come. We couldn't understand what was happening. The sound of explosions from the southeast was continuous. The road that ran through the kolkhoz was a stream of traffic of every description. Whenever anyone stopped I asked for news of my unit, but no one knew anything. It seemed likely that my companions of the 19th Rollbahn were far to the west by now-far from the front, to which it seemed I was being sent. A little while later, I turned west again, in a company of soldiers drawn from many infantry units. The fact that I was involved with this group caused me considerable difficulty a few days later. We appeared to be taking a line parallel to the front, at right angles to the Russian thrust. Far to the north, the Russians were pushing toward the south, hoping to surround the German forces still in the Voronezh-Kursk-Kharkov triangle. For a day and a half, we followed a muddy rut, on which our only troubles were mechanical. The machines we were using had been in Russia since the German advance of 1941, and had been pushed hard. Our forces were obliged to abandon large numbers of trucks and tractors and tanks.

The tanks in particular had taken a beating, often having been used for work their designers had never imagined. They were almost the only vehicles able to move normally during the winter months, and a tank pulling five trucks along a snowy mule track was not an unusual sight. When they had to face the Russian counter-offensive, this rough usage, coupled with their lightness, which had served us so well until then, made them no match for the famous T-34s, incontestably superior to the Mark-2s and -3s. Later, our Tigers and Panthers stood up to Soviet armor, and played with their T-34s and KW-85s.

Unfortunately, as in the air, our inadequate numbers had to yield to an enemy multitude fighting on two fronts. We were obliged, in effect, to defend a fortress with a circumference of two thousand miles.

To cite a single example: the fighting on the Vistula, north of Krakow, pitted twenty-eight thousand Germans supported by thirty-six Tiger tanks and twenty Panthers against two strong Soviet armies of six hundred thousand men and seven armored regiments disposing of eleven hundred tanks of various kinds.

Toward noon the next day, we arrived at a small village about fifteen miles northeast of Kharkov, with a name like Outcheni. I can no longer remember precisely. The place was filled with smoke, and to judge by the noise fighting was still going on quite nearby.

The steiner of the officer who bad picked us up at the kolkhoz drew ahead, while the rest of us jumped down from our machines. Flickering light a mile or so to the south marked the line of fire. The soldiers who had come with me peed into a hedge or chewed some food, with blank faces. I myself have never been able to achieve a resigned, indifferent attitude in the face of pressing danger; nevertheless, I tried to hide my desperate anxiety. Perhaps the others were doing the same thing. The steiner came back, and two noncoms wrote down our names. Then we were organized into groups of fifteen, led either by a sergeant or an obergefreiter.*( * Senior lance corporal, or acting corporal.)

 The officer climbed onto the seat of the steiner and spoke to us briefly, mincing no words.

"The enemy has cut us off from our line of retreat. To get around them, we would have to turn north, onto the plain, where there are no roads. This could be fatal. Therefore, we will have to break through their barrage to reach our new positions, which are quite close.

"As further elements of the Don army arrive, they will be used to maintain the passage already opened, which will allow all our soldiers to escape the Bolshevik noose. Thereafter, you will proceed to positions which will be announced, and which you will maintain until further orders. Good luck! Heil Hitler!"

I was about to say that I belonged to the transport service, when I suddenly felt ashamed. Munitions boxes were opened, and their contents distributed. My pockets and cartridge pouches were full, and I was given two defensive grenades, which I didn't know how to operate. We moved single file to the edge of the village past houses burning from enemy incendiaries. Groups of men were walking about in the debris; others were tending to the wounded. Some burnt-out German vehicles were still smoking. We were taken over by a lieutenant, who asked five or six of us to follow him down a long street which was still more or less intact. A salvo whistled past us, and we threw ourselves to the ground. It fell somewhere in the center of the village, about seven or eight hundred yards behind us. Enemy shells had dug several holes in the packed earth which lay between two rows of buildings, and occasional mutilated bodies lay sprawled on the street.

We walked for about fifteen minutes, sticking close to the buildings, until we heard the sound of automatic weapons. About a hundred yards ahead of us, the street was swept by mortar fire. We hesitated for a moment. Then we saw some running figures emerging from the wall of dust stirred up by the enemy salvo.

"Achtung!" shouted the lieutenant.

Instantly, we dropped to our knees, or even onto our stomachs, ready to open fire, but stood up again when we saw German uniforms. The other soldiers ran over to us, and threw themselves down by our sides. We could see that still more were coming through the flying dust. Several of them were howling at the tops of their lungs, a sound which combined fear, anger, and pain.

I watched a soldier without a gun, who was trying to run holding his right thigh with both hands. He fell, stood up, and fell again. Two others were staggering slowly after him. I heard someone shout, "A moi!" and was trying to see which of them had used my language, when a fresh salvo struck the group, scattering about ten of them in search of shelter.

Two of the men continued toward us, despite the danger. They ran to a door, which they were able to kick in without much trouble, and stood in its opening, shouting curses in French.

Amazed, and without a thought of danger, I ran across the street, bursting in on them like a whirlwind. They paid no attention to me. "Hey," I said, shaking one of them by his straps. "Are you French?"

They turned toward me and looked at me for a fraction of a second. Then their eyes returned to a cloud of dust and smoke pouring from a house which had just burst into flames.

"No. The Walloon Division," one of them said, without looking back a second time.

A series of explosions made us blink and hunch our shoulders. "Those shits shoot us just like rabbits. They never take prisoners, the bastards."

"I'm French," I said, with an uncertain smile.

"Well then, look out. Volunteers are never prisoners." "But I'm not a volunteer!"

The street was raked by a new salvo of mortar fire, somewhat closer than before. Twenty yards away, a roof disintegrated, and the retreat whistle broke off our conversation. We ran as hard as we could back the way we had just come, followed by a burst of machine-gun fire. Two or three men spun round and doubled up, screaming with pain. We almost ran over two men with a heavy machine gun, which they hadn't been able to fire, because we'd been in the way.

Several groups of men had reached a street at right angles to ours, and had scattered among the ruins. The lieutenant was blowing his whistle again, to regroup us, when two Mark-3s suddenly came into sight. They rolled up to the lieutenant, who stood in the middle of the street waving them forward. After a brief consultation, they moved obliquely into the street we had just left, advancing toward the Bolsheviks. The lieutenant tried to reorganize us again, and we set off in the wake of the tanks, which made an infernal din in the rubble-filled streets. I jumped from the corners of buildings to piles of rubble, in a state of terror, unable to grasp why I was there, or to distinguish anything to fire at.

For seconds at a time, our tanks would disappear from view in the turmoil of dust and smoke and flames, but they always re-emerged, with their guns firing. Soon we had run past the point where our retreat had begun, and into an open space surrounded by wooden peasant houses grouped around a pond. The tanks were driving around the pond, crushing every obstacle. On the far side of the pond we could easily see men running in several directions. We stood on the bank, and opened a concentrated fire. Another German company arrived on our right, and threw grenades at a house in which some of the enemy had taken shelter.

Our tanks were now on the other side of the pond, and were flattening the position just taken from the enemy. At last I had the opportunity to fire at some Russians. They were no more than thirty yards away,: running from the house our soldiers had attacked with grenades. At least ten Mausers fired, and not one of the Russians stood up again. The fact that we were advancing, and that we felt ourselves suddenly in control of the situation, stimulated us in spite of everything. We had just dislodged an enemy numerically stronger than we-as was always the case in Russia-and we felt as if we'd been given wings.

The sound of firing and the groans of the wounded incited us to massacre the Russians, who had inflicted us with so many horrifying wounds. An attacking army is always more enthusiastic than an army on the defensive, and more likely to accomplish prodigies. This was particularly true of the German Army, which was organized to attack, and whose defense consisted of slowing the enemy by counter-attack. A few of our men took over a Russian cannon, and immediately put it into action. A rapid liaison was established between our two tanks and this newly improvised artillery, which poured all the shells just captured from the Russians onto precisely selected targets.

Then the tanks turned back, leaving the defense of the area to us.

Directed by the lieutenant, we placed ourselves as best we could, in readiness for any new surprises. We could hear the sound of continuous firing all around us. A fine rain began to fall.

At dusk, we were still exchanging fire with the enemy, who had grown bolder, and were trying to come back. With darkness, our terror returned, and the firing almost stopped. The lieutenant sent someone to fetch some flares. To the southwest, the horizon lit up in time with sporadic heavy artillery fire. Without knowing it, we had become part of the third battle of Kharkov, whose front extended for some two hundred miles around the city. With darkness and rain, the fighting, for our group, was almost over. Behind us, we could still hear the sound of automatics, which penetrated the noise of engines. Our vehicles were using the darkness to try to get through the Russian barrage. We thought that at any moment we might see the Popovs running toward us through the night. A Volkswagen came up from behind with all its lights out. The driver spoke for a moment with the leader of our group, and then handed some flat mines to four of our men.

With white faces, they went off into the darkness, to place the mines on either side of the pond. Five minutes later, we heard a rough cry from the left, and a short time after that, two of the four came back from the right. After another half hour, we concluded that the two who had gone to the left had run into a Russian knife.

Much later that night, when we were all feeling overwhelmed by sleep, we witnessed a tragedy that froze my blood. We had just thrown about a dozen grenades at random, to forestall some suspected danger, when a prolonged and penetrating cry rose from the hole on my left. It lasted for several minutes, as if it were coming from the throat of someone who was fighting desperately. Then there was a cry for help, which brought us all from our holes and shelters. About ten of us ran toward the sound. The darkness was torn by the white lights of several shots. Fortunately, no one was hit.

We arrived at the edge of a foxhole, where a Russian, who had just thrown down his revolver, was holding his hands in the air. At the bottom of the hole, two men were fighting. One of them, a Russian, was waving a large cutlass, holding a man from our group pinned beneath him. Two of us covered the Russian who had raised his hands, while a young obergefreiter jumped into the hole and struck the other Russian a blow on the back of his neck with a trenching tool. The Russian let go at once, and the German who had been under him, who had just missed having his throat cut, ran up to ground level. He was covered with blood, brandishing the Russian knife with one hand, like a madman, while with the other he tried to stop the flow of blood pouring from his wound.

"Where is he?" he shouted in a fury.

"Where's the other one?"

In a few bounding steps he reached the two men and their prisoner. Before anyone could do anything, he had run his knife into the belly of the petrified Russian.

"Cutthroat," he yelled, looking with wild eyes for another belly to open.

We had to hold him so he wouldn't run past our lines.

"Let me go!" he shrieked.

"I want to show these savages how to use a knife."

"Shut up!" shouted the lieutenant, exasperated by having to deal with such a motley crew.

"Get back into your foxholes before Ivan machine guns the lot of you."

The lunatic, who was losing a lot of blood, was dragged to the rear by two men. I went back to the hole I was sharing with four others. I would gladly have fallen asleep, but nervous exhaustion kept me awake.