Forgotten Soldier (37 page)

"That's why you're fighting," Hauptmann Wesreidau, our captain, said to us one day.

"You're nothing more than animals on the defensive, even when you're obligated to take the offensive. So be brave: life is war, and war is life. Liberty doesn't exist."

Captain Wesreidau often helped us to endure the worst. He was always on good terms with his men, and was never one of those officers who are so impressed by their own rank that they treat ordinary soldiers like valueless pawns to be used without scruple. He stood beside us during countless gray watches, and came into our bunkers to talk with us, and make us forget the howling storm outside. I can still see his thin face, faintly lit by a wavering lamp, leaning over, beside one of ours.

"Germany is a great country," he used to tell us. "Today, our difficulties are immense. The system in which we more or less believe is every bit as good as the slogans on the other side. Even if we don't always approve of what we have to do, we must carry out orders for the sake of our country, our comrades, and our families, against whom the other half of the world is fighting in the name of truth and justice. All of you are old enough to understand that. I have done a good deal of traveling-to South America, and even to New Zealand. Since Spain, I have fought in Poland and France, and now Russia-and I can tell you that everywhere there are the same dominating hypocrisies. Life, my father, the example of former times-all of these taught me to sustain my existence with rectitude and loyalty. And I have clung to these principles in spite of all the hardships and follies which have been my lot. Many times, when I could have responded with a thrust of the sword, I only smiled, and blamed myself, assuming that I myself was the cause of all my troubles.

"When I had my first taste of war, in Spain, I thought of suicide-it all seemed so vile. But then I saw the ferocity of others, who also believed in the justice of their cause, and offered themselves up to acts of murder, as to a purification.

I watched the soft, effete French shift from terror to toughness, and take up the arms they couldn't use when they needed them, once we had restored their confidence, and offered them the hand of friendship. In general, human beings don't accept the unaccustomed. Change frightens and upsets them, and they will fight even to preserve situations they have always detested. But a slick armchair philosopher can easily arouse a rabble to support an abstract proposition-for instance, `all men are equal'-even when the differences between men are obviously as great as the differences between cows and roosters. Then those exhausted societies, drained by their `liberty,' begin to bellow about their `convictions' and become a threat to us and to peace. It's basic wisdom to keep people like that well fed and content, if one wishes to extract even a tenth of the possible return.

"Something of this kind is happening on the other side. As a people, we are fortunate in being somewhat less indolent than they. If someone tells us to examine ourselves, we at least have the courage to do it. Our condition is not absolutely perfect, but at least we agree to look at other things, and take chances. We are now embarked on a risky enterprise, with no assurance of safety. We are advancing an idea of unity which is neither rich nor easily digestible, but the vast majority of the German people accept it and adhere to it, forging and forming it in an admirable collective effort.

This is where we are now risking everything. We are trying, taking due account of the attitudes of society, to change the face of the world, hoping to revive the ancient virtues buried under the layers of filth bequeathed to us by our forebears. We can expect no reward for this effort. We are loathed everywhere: if we should lose tomorrow those of us still alive after so much suffering will be judged without justice. We shall be accused of an infinity of murder, as if everywhere, and at all times, men at war did not behave in the same way. Those who have an interest in putting an end to our ideals will ridicule everything we believe in. We shall be spared nothing. Even the tombs of our heroes will be destroyed, only preserving-as a gesture of respect toward the dead-a few which contain figures of doubtful heroism, who were never fully committed to our cause. With our deaths, all the prodigies of heroism which our daily circumstances bring and the memory of our comrades, dead and alive, and          our communion of spirits, our fears and our hopes, will vanish, and our history will never be told. Future generations will speak only of an idiotic, unqualified sacrifice. Whether you wanted it or not, you are now part of this undertaking, and nothing which follows can equal the efforts you have made, if you must sleep tomorrow under the quieter skies of the opposite camp. In that case, you will never be forgiven for having survived. You will either be rejected or preserved like a rare animal which has escaped a cataclysm. With other men, you will be as cats are to dogs and you will never have any real friends.

Do you wish such an end for yourselves?

"Anyone who wishes to go but is hesitating from fear of our authority should speak to me; I will take as many nights as it needs to reassure you. I repeat: those who wish to leave should do so. We cannot count on men who feel that way, and our efforts cannot gain from their presence. Please believe that I understand your sufferings. I feel the cold and fear as you do, and I fire at the enemy as you do, because I feel that my duty as an officer requires at least as much from me as your duty does of you. I wish to stay alive, even if it's only to continue the struggle somewhere else. I wish my company to be united in thought and in deed. Once the fighting begins, I will not tolerate doubt and defeatism. We shall be suffering not only in the interests of ultimate victory, but in the interests of daily victory against those who hurl themselves at us without respite, and whose only thought is to exterminate us, without any understanding of what is at stake. You can feel certain of me, in return, and certain that I will not expose you to any unnecessary dangers.

"I would burn and destroy entire villages if by so doing I could prevent even one of us from dying of hunger. Here, deep in the wilds of the steppe, we shall be all the more aware of our unity. We are surrounded by hatred and death, and in these circumstances we shall daily oppose our perfect cohesion to the indiscipline and disorder of our enemies. Our group must be as one, and our thoughts must-be identical. Your duty lies in your efforts to achieve that goal, and if we do achieve it, and maintain it, we shall be victors even in death."

Our conversations with Captain Wesreidau made a deep impression on us. His obvious and passionate sincerity affected even the most hesitant, and seemed of another order than the standard appeals to our sense of sacrifice, which left us stupefied and incredulous. He invited questions, which he answered with intelligence and clarity. He spent his time with us, whenever he was free from other duties. We all loved him, and felt we had a true leader, as well as a friend on whom we could count. Herr Hauptmann Wesreidau was a terror to the enemy, and a friend to his men. Every time we moved, or were sent out on an operation his steiner preceded our vehicles.

The veteran, who had a good sense of men, had pointed him out to us the day after the battle for Belgorod, while we were resting in the rear, nursing our wounds.

"I've seen our captain," he said. "He looks intelligent and wise."

We fought two more battles before re-crossing the Dnieper in the beginning of the autumn. Several of us had to be re-equipped before these engagements, and the most serious accusations were leveled against anyone who returned without his weapons.

Lindberg, the Sudeten, and Hals, however, were officially recognized as wounded, when they came back the evening of the rout, in rags, without weapons or equipment. It can easily be imagined that equipment has to be abandoned when one is on the run, but in Russia our soldiers were never supposed to abandon their arms. They were supposed to die with them-or live, hanging on to them at all times. I myself had kept my gun without thinking of the consequences, like a blind man who never lets go of his white cane, and the veteran had dragged along his heavy spandau, out of habit or discipline; but I had lost my helmet, my ground sheet, the gas mask we never used, and what remained of the ammunition for the veteran's spandau.

We met Lensen, who had come out alive too, although he had left behind most of his gear. He was tearing his hair at the thought that this oversight might cost him his rank.

The veteran, who was also an obergefreiter, suggested that next time Lensen think of putting in for a posthumous promotion. Lensen's anxiety and our laughter were simultaneously drowned a short time later in the samahonka*(* Home-brewed alcoholic drink) someone found in the cellar of an abandoned house.

It was almost surely because of Wesreidau that we all escaped a court martial, which filled us with just as much terror as Soviet rockets. We had three good weeks of rest behind our lines, in a village of dreary, identical shacks. Luckily, the weather was magnificent. I took advantage of the lull to write often to Paula, but I could never bring myself to tell her of my terror at Belgorod. Hals had made the acquaintance of a Russian girl, with whom he was able to arrange a mutually profitable relationship. It turned out he was not the only one to enjoy the good woman's favors. One evening he arrived to find himself part of a troika. The other masculine member was the Catholic chaplain, who had survived hell and was indulging a few sins of the flesh as his consciousness of life returned, hoping they would be pardoned because they were so rare. From that moment on, he was never able to intone a psalm without an accompanying chorus of laughter, at which he would blush furiously, and laugh as loudly as the rest of us.

All went well until one morning toward the end of September, when the distant rumble of guns reminded us that we had not come to Russia to play. In fact, the Russians had just broken through the front which our troops had managed to re-establish west of Belgorod, and our grand debacle was beginning.

Our generals, who believed that our troops could, if not attack, at least hold the reconstituted front, noticed somewhat belatedly that our regiments were being decimated simply to slow down the irresistible momentum of the strong Russian forces which were attacking all along the central sector.

What we should have done, before even thinking of turning back to the east, now seems like a simple act of realism which should have been recognized while it was still possible. At the time, however, the order to withdraw to the west bank of the Dnieper was given very late. The line of the Dnieper meant Kiev on the central axis, Cherkassy on the south, and Chernigov to the north, on the Desna: a distance of hundreds of miles. We were continuously pursued by an enemy who was fast becoming far more mobile than we, and threatening to overtake us at any moment, filling our ranks with panic and confusion. What might have been possible before Belgorod was no longer so, except at an inordinate price in blood and sweat, with incessant rearguard fighting. The Wehrmacht, adhering strictly to orders, sacrificed many more men on this belated retreat than they had during their advance.

We died by the thousands that autumn on the Ukrainian plain, and our battles, unheralded by any fanfare, consumed many heroes.

The front-line troops, in constant contact with an ever more pressing enemy, had already made up their minds about the future. Even the most hermetically sealed of our men understood that no matter how many hundreds of Russians he killed, or how bravely he fought, the next day hundreds more would appear, and so on for the next day and the day after that. And even the blindest saw that the Russian soldiers were moved by a blind heroism and boldness, so that even a mountain of dead compatriots wouldn't stop them.

We knew that under such circumstances combat often favors simple numerical superiority, and much of the time we felt desperate.

Can anyone blame us?

We knew that we would almost surely be killed, buying time for a large-scale redeployment of troops. We knew that our sacrifice was in a good cause, and if our courage incited us to hours of resignation, the hours and days which followed would find us with dry eyes which were filled with an immense sadness. Then we would fire in a lunatic frenzy, without mercy. We didn't wish to die, and would kill and massacre as if to avenge ourselves in advance for what we knew was going to happen. When we died, it was with fury, because we hadn't been able to exact enough retribution. And, if we survived, it was as madmen, never able to readapt to the peacetime world. Sometimes, we would try to run away; but orders, adroitly worded and spaced, soothed us like shots of morphine.

"On the Dnieper," we were told, "everything will be easier. Ivan won't be able to force the barrage. So courage, and do your best to hold him off, if you want everyone to get through.

The Russian counter-offensive will be crushed on the Dnieper, and then we'll resume our push to the east."

Through our panic and despair, an order became a duty. Our adversaries were astonished by the courage of ordinary German soldiers. A hundred yards at a time, we withdrew to the Dnieper and safety, slowing down the enemy as much as we could, watching our comrades fall all around us. Our desperate efforts sometimes continued for days at a time, across hundreds of miles. When men who had escaped from rearguard units finally reached the river, they were faced with a vast human swarm. Entire armies were waiting beside the few bridges which our engineers had managed to restore, tramping up and down the sandy bank, climbing onto anything that could float. The Russians were right on our heels, pressing against our perimeter of defense, which shrank alarmingly. The Luftwaffe was always somewhere overhead, and partly saved the situation, but our planes were soon outnumbered by Migs, and Yabos. Those of our planes which escaped the long-range anti-aircraft fire had to face a constantly growing swarm of fighters. The men who had not crossed the river were pressed into counter-attacks at odds of a hundred to one. We performed deeds of astonishing heroism, which demonstrated once again the extraordinary resourcefulness of our soldiers. The weather was still good, and we fought many successful battles. However, these are victories which can never be celebrated. An army fighting for its life cannot speak of victory.