Forgotten Soldier (34 page)

Abandoned by a God in whom many of us believed, we lay prostrate and dazed in our demi-tomb.

From time to time, one of us would look over the parapet to stare across the dusty plain into the east, from which death might bear down on us at any moment. We felt like lost souls, who had forgotten that men are made for something else, that time exists, and hope, and sentiments other than anguish; that friendship can be more than ephemeral, that love can sometimes occur, that the earth can be productive, and used for something other than burying the dead.

We were madmen, gesturing and moving without thought or hope. Our legs and arms were numbed by hours of crowding and shoving against neighbors, living or dead, who were taking up too much room. The stabsfeldwebel repeated mechanically that we must maintain our position, but each new series of explosions sent us plunging to the bottom of our hole.

Night fell before we realized day had ended, and with darkness our terror returned. Lindberg, whose nervous condition was alarming, had collapsed into a kind of stupor which, for the moment, made him oblivious of hell. The Sudeten was almost as badly affected. He had begun to tremble, like someone in a fit, and to vomit uncontrollably.

Madness had invaded our group, and was gaining ground rapidly.

In a state of semi delirium, I saw a giant, whom I had known in another time as Hals, leap to his machine gun and fire at the sky, which continued to pour down its rain of flame and metal. I also saw the stabs, seized by a kind of dementia, beat the ground with his clenched fist, and then deliberately turn on the surviving grenadier, and pound him. The grenadier, who had seemed to be functioning normally until that moment, simply stared at the stabs, like someone in a trance, and then burst into tears. I could hear the millions of echoes ringing through the ground with an almost infernal precision, and I felt that I was going to faint. I stood up, totally unaware of what I was doing, shouting curses and obscenities at the sky. I had reached the edge of the abyss, like all my companions, and like them I was nearly finished. My rage burned like a straw fire, consuming my last reserves of strength, my head began to swim, and I fell forward against the edge of the trench. My mouth, which was wide open, filled with dirt. I began to vomit, and knew I wouldn't be able to stop until I had emptied myself completely. I waded through my vomit with my trembling hands stretched out in front of me, reaching for the support of the crumbling parapet. A white flash, like an element of a nightmare, lit the darkness which had enveloped us, and kept me from losing consciousness. I slowly raised my eyes above the level of the trench wall, to follow the Russian flare as it fell to the ground. During those moments I felt strangely certain that I was at home, that none of my surroundings existed, and that the descending flare was really a falling star.

I remained in my stupor for a long time, while the explosions continued to compress my lungs. Some men stood in one position for hours, asleep on their feet with their eyes wide open. Finally, toward midnight, everything fell silent. However, no one moved. We all felt so weakened that movement was beyond the limit of possibility. Finally the veteran was able to make us pay attention:

"Don't go to sleep, boys-this is when Ivan will attack."

The stabs stared at him with troubled eyes. He stood up and leaned against the trench wall. A few minutes later, his head fell forward, and he was lost in paralytic sleep.

The veteran continued to exhort us, but the six of us who were left received his pleas with a silence as absolute as the silence of our eight corpses. Sleep was crushing us, as the guns had not quite managed to do. If the Russians had chosen that moment to attack, they would undoubtedly have saved a great many lives on their side. Our advance interception positions were manned only by sleepers and dead men. Although there must have been more noise from the big guns, and more flares, our ears picked up nothing for the next four hours.

The stabsfeldwebel was the first to wake. When we opened our eyes, we found him leaning over the Sudeten, who was sleeping beside him. The Sudeten had just cried out, which must have waked the stabs. We felt so ground down by exhaustion that every gesture made us grimace with pain. The sky once again was turning pink, and we could already see the chaos scattered across the plain. Everything was calm, and we couldn't hear a sound. We stared out at the enormous space surrounding us. The horizon was almost a perfect circle, losing its line only in the hedge of woods to the north and to the south. We got out some tins of food, and tried to eat and talk a little.

"That's right-you should build up your strength," joked the stabs, who was living through his last moments. "I'd be surprised if this quiet lasted."

"Maybe it will, though," someone else said. "That show yesterday must have done in quite a few fellows. We might even get two or three days like this."

"I doubt it," said the stabs. "The Fuhrer has given the order to march east, and nothing can stop our troops now. The offensive will begin as soon as the sun is up."

"Do you really think so?" asked Lindberg, excited as usual when something seemed to be going our way.

"Will our troops be able to knock out those damned Russian guns?"

"If it starts up again," Hals muttered to me, "I'll go right off my rocker."

"Or be killed," I answered. "We can't expect the same luck we had yesterday."

Hals stared at me as he chewed. The stabs, Lindberg, and the surviving grenadier were still talking, while Hals and I traded pessimistic predictions. Only the veteran went on eating in silence, his eyes, red from sleeplessness, fixed on the morning star.

"You two," said the stabs pointing to Hals and me, "you keep your eyes open for another couple of hours, while the rest of us try to get some sleep. But first we have to get rid of these stiffs." He waved at the eight mutilated corpses which were already beginning to swarm with big blue flies.

We watched the dead being stripped of their tags: for once we were not playing undertaker's assistant, and guard duty seemed like a stroke of luck. The same curses and exclamations seemed to occur to survivors every time they had to deal with the remains of their slaughtered comrades.

"Fuck it . . . this fellow weighs a ton."

"My God ... he would have been better off if they'd finished him right away. Look at that!"

And then the metallic click as the identity tags slid off.

"Pach ... he's swimming in shit!"

We looked away with indifference; death had lost any dramatic importance for us; we were used to it. While the others were shifting the carrion, Hals and I continued to discuss our chances of survival.

"Hands and feet hurt more than other places, but aren't really serious."

"I wonder what happened to Olensheim."

"Broken arm, I heard."

"How's your arm?"

"My shoulder hurts like hell."

Behind our backs the others were hard at their filthy work.

"Heinz Veller, 1925, unmarried ... poor fellow."

"Let's see your shoulder," Hals said. "Maybe you're badly hurt."

"I don't think so . . . just a bruise," I said, unfastening my harness.

I was about to pull the cloth away from my shoulder when a roll of thunder shook the pure morning air. A second later, a hail of Russian shells fell all around us, and once again we collapsed in terror at the bottom of our hole.

"My God," someone shouted. "It's starting again."

Hals was moving closer to me, through a shower of flying clods. He had just opened his mouth to say something when a violent explosion very near us drowned the sound of his voice.

"We'll never be able to hold on," he said. "We'd better get out."

A shell fell so close to us that the gray earth wall of the trench glowed red in the light of its flames. A thick cloud of smoke enveloped us, and cubic yards of earth fell into our holes. We could hear cries of fright, and then the voice of the stabs: "Anyone hit?"

"God!" shouted the veteran through a spasm of coughing. "Where the hell's our artillery?"

Lindberg had begun to tremble again. Then the Russian fire stopped. The veteran peered carefully out, and after him our seven heads rose above the rampart. We stared at the plain, which was still scattered with trailing clouds of dust. In the distance, besides the wood, someone was howling.

"They must be running short of shells," said the stabs, grinning. "Otherwise, they wouldn't have stopped so quickly."

The veteran looked at him with his habitual resigned expression.

"I was just thinking the same thing about our artillery, stabsfeldwebel. I was wondering why they weren't firing."

"We're preparing an offensive-that's why our side is quiet. Soon we'll see our tanks......

The veteran stared at the horizon.

"I'm sure," the stabs went on, "that our offensive will begin again, any minute now. . . ."

But we were watching the veteran: his eyes were growing wider and wider, and so was his mouth, which seemed ready to howl.

The stabs had shut up too; we all followed the direction of our gunner's eyes.

In the remote distance, a thin black line stretched from one end of the horizon to the other, and was moving toward us like a wave rolling toward the shore. We stood watching for a moment: the line was dense, and somehow unreal. Then the veteran shouted in a voice which paralyzed us with fear: "It's the Siberians! They're here! There must be at least a million of them!"

He gripped the butt of his F.M., and a demented laugh burst through his clenched teeth. In the distance, a confused tumult of thousands of roaring voices swelled like a hurricane wind.

"Every man to his post," shouted the stabs, whose eyes remained fixed, as if hypnotized, on the irresistible Soviet tide.

We had all picked up our guns like automatons, and braced our elbows against the parapet. Hals was trembling like a leaf, and Lindberg, his number-two man, seemed unable to handle the belt of 7.7s.

"Get closer to me," Hals shouted. "Get closer or I'll kill you!"

Lindberg's face was quivering, as if he were about to burst into tears. The veteran wasn't shouting any more. His gun was on the crook of his shoulder, his finger was on the trigger, and his teeth were clenched tightly enough to break. The Soviet war cry was growing continuously louder and more distinct. It was like a long shout, muffled by its great volume.

We remained frozen by the danger, unable to judge its magnitude. Our stupor was too great; we were like paralyzed mice facing a snake. Then Lindberg broke down. He began to cry and shout, and left his post, throwing himself down on the trench floor.

"They'll kill us! They'll kill us! We'll all be killed!"

"Get up!" shouted the stabs. "Get back to your post or I'll shoot you right now!"

He dragged him to his feet, but Lindberg had gone as limp as a rag, and was streaming with tears.

"You bastard!" shouted Hals.

"Get killed then. I'll take care of this damned thing myself."

By now we could hear the Russian cries distinctly-a huge, continuous Ourrah!

"Maman!" I thought to myself. "Maman!"

"Ourrah! Ourrah pobieda!" muttered the veteran. "Just get a little closer."

The human wave was now about four hundred yards from us. We could also hear the throb of engines, and see three planes, high in the brightening sky.

"Planes," said the Sudeten. But we'd all noticed them already.

Our anxious eyes left the Russian horde for a moment. The airplane engines were screaming, as the planes dived down at top speed. "Messerschmitts!" shouted the stabs. "What guts!"

"Hurrah!" we all shouted. "Hurrah for the Luftwaffe!"

The three planes were strung out over the huge Russian thrust, spraying it with death. This seemed to be a signal for our mortars to open fire. They were hidden in the brush, and had lengthened their range. The spandaus which had survived the bombardment began to fire too, while the planes dived down, stimulating our troops to a feverish pitch of courage. I could feel the F.M. cartridges running through my hand at a dizzying speed. One clip was emptied, and we started another. Some of the big Wehrmacht guns had also opened fire, which must have had a lethal effect on the ranks of Bolsheviks, who were charging as in the days of Napoleon.

However, the human tide continued to roll toward us, making our scalps crawl. Only the weight of our helmets kept our filthy hair from standing straight up on our heads, although the idea of death itself no longer terrified us. My eyes remained fixed on the smoking metal of the F.M. in the steady hands of the veteran. The trembling belt of cartridges moved forward into the machine, shaken as if by a titanic frenzy.

"Prepare the grenades!" shouted the stabs, who was firing with his Luger braced on his left arm.

"It's useless!" shouted the veteran even louder. "We haven't got enough ammunition. We can't stop them. Order the retreat, stabsfeldwebel, while there's still time."

Our frantic eyes moved from the lips of one man to the other. The Russian war cry, "Ourrah pobieda!" roared closer and closer.

The men were firing from their hips as they ran, and the air shook with the rushing flight of their bullets.

"You're crazy," answered the stabs. "No one can get away from here, and our boys should be coming any minute now-so keep firing, for the love of God."

But the veteran had already loaded his F.M. and picked up the last magazine.

"You're the one who's crazy. `Any minute now' is too late. But you go ahead and die right here, if that's what you want."

"No! No!" shouted the stabs.

The veteran had just jumped from the trench and was galloping toward the woods, bent over as far as he could, and calling to us as he ran. We grabbed our guns in frantic haste.

"Run!" shouted the Sudeten.

We all followed him. For a moment we were almost mad with terror, racing toward the shattered trees with our lungs on fire, while Russian bullets whistled through the air all around us. There were still seven of us, which seemed astonishing. The stabs had finally followed everyone else, but was still protesting and shouting: "Cowards! Shoot back! You'll all be killed! Put up a fight!"