Legion of the Damned (16 page)

Now it was the Russians' turn to take the initiative, and we acquired a real respect for their Siberian troops, trained for winter warfare. They hammered away at us unceasingly and without mercy. Our many thousands of tanks were out of action through lack of gas; but even if we had had all the gas in the world it would not have helped, for every single engine was frozen and useless. Steering and gear levers shivered when you touched them, as though they were made of glass.

On December 22nd, 1941, after three weeks during which we were attacked incessantly by day and night, we retreated in a howling snowstorm. We had blown up all our tanks to prevent them falling into the hands of the enemy. Exhausted and halfblinded by the snow, we staggered westward.

I walked between Porta and The Old Un, and I was so ill with the cold, hunger and weakness that they had almost to carry me most of the way. When I fell and remained lying, they hit me and cursed me till they got me going again. It was thanks to their stubborn exertions that Titch and I did not share the fate of the thousands who remained lying in the snow, because it was so lovely just to be there and freeze to death. The Russians were ever at our heels. The cold did not mean anything to them. They were able to fight the whole time.

Being a penal regiment we naturally brought up the rear, as we bad been in front during the attack.

A little to the south of Kalinin we were ordered to dig ourselves in in the snow and hold the position (that was the village of Goradnja) --hold it at all costs. Now followed insufferable days when the Russians literally ran themselves to death on our positions. Thousands and thousands of dead piled up just in front of us, yet stubbornly they threw fresh masses into the battle. It was one of the great mass slaughters.

We had been formed into a section of twelve men, with The Old Un as leader. One night the Russians finally broke through and penetrated over fifteen miles behind our lines.

I was lying behind a machine gun with Asmus and Fleischmann, firing away at the attacking waves. We had to keep our eyes skinned to avoid mowing down our own men, for both the Russians and we wore long, white snow coats with cowls that went over our helmets. We were guided mostly by instinct.

All at once we heard a loud shout in Russian behind us. Gather up machine gun, automatic pistols, hand grenades and run! Away, only get away!

We ran back, all except Asmus, and he, the numskull, ran straight at the Russians.

And so did we, for we were surrounded.

It is with the greatest reluctance that I write this chapter on the period when I was a prisoner. I know that it will be used to support points of view for which I have absolutely no sympathy; while the opposing side will no doubt call me a liar and a swindler, a traitor to the people's cause.

Having read this chapter, the adherents of one view will get busy with red pencil heavily underlining passages and explain triumphantly: There! That's what it's like over there! See for yourself. An eyewitness! Read what an eyewitness says! Listen to the truth about Soviet Russia!

If anyone asks me whether it is "like that" in Russia, I can only reply that I really do not know. USSR is a huge country. I have been there for only quite a short time and seen only very little of it, while the circumstances of my stay were such that it was quite impossible for me to have any proper contact or achieve any kind of overall view, let alone anything as complicated as an evaluation of how "things are."

I came as an enemy to a country that had ample grounds to hate me and maltreat me and otherwise be utterly indifferent to what happened to me. I, after all, was one of those who had helped to burn thousands of villages and ruin existence for millions of people.

I do not share the easy view that Nazism and the People's Democracy were one and the same thing, and that Stalin and Hitler were of the same kidney. One look at their portraits will show that that is nonsense. Hitler was a hysteric, Stalin an obstinate fellow who had sense enough not to play with revolutions but went on his way thoroughly, scientifically and with infinite patience and infinite mistrustful watchfulness. He was no fool, and certainly not one of God's good children. But not knowing him personally, I would rather not guess. But as well as comparing the two men's faces you can also compare their writings, and these will also show that Hitler and Stalin were as far from being alike as two men can be.

This account of the time when I was the Russians' prisoner of war is thus not to be taken and used as an argument either for or against socialism, for or against Stalin, for or against the East. As long as Hitler and his associates, both those who are dead and those who still live here and there about the world, still exert an influence, as they do, it would be a waste of effort to go all the way to Moscow to find the causes of the fears with which the whole world is hagridden. As long as democratic freedom remains no more than a problematical postulate we have no moral right to sweep anywhere but our own dirty front doorsteps.

Besides, you can gladly keep your freedom, as far as I am concerned, as long as I am allowed to retain my peace. My urge for freedom is not in the direction of shooting off rifles. Having tried war, I will willingly submit to even the strictest compulsion if that be necessary in order that we may live our lives in peace, as in fact it is. it is not enough to stand up and say: "We want no more war"--and then think that you have done your bit. There has to be an assertion of will; somebody has to see that all get enough to eat, that all the great humanitarian plans and programs are translated from paper into fact. And it will call for considerable toil, lasting perhaps for several generations; it will call for restraint and strict self-discipline to construct the mighty machinery that will ensure the production and distribution of food enough for all. It will call for the hardest of all compulsions: the need to subordinate oneself to the requirements of the general weal. It will require that one and all renounce comfort and ease and buckle to. It will require that people forget self, that they give up living only for themselves, and the liquidation of that form of individualism that only recognizes the individual's rights--that to collect for himself--but that becomes so tired and wearied and so annoyed when anyone takes it upon himself to remind them of the individual duties. We all talk far too much about freedom with the implication that we wish to exterminate others. Or, what is quite infamous, that we want others to exterminate each other while we look on and profit by it.

There are, however, two associated reasons why I shall write of my time as a prisoner despite my reluctance and fear of being misunderstood: the first is that my account of the war, as I experienced it, would be incomplete without this chapter, and the second that such a chapter is necessary in a book the purpose of which is to oppose all war, which is all but the opposite of showing what "things are like" in the Soviet Union, a vast land which--let me repeat this--I do not know at all, but which I imagine to be just as human and irregular in peacetime as any other human society; in other words: quite ordinary and everyday.

There is nothing that makes you more inclined to despair than being taken prisoner.

Fleischmann and I were locked up in a house in the village of Klin and a Soviet soldier was posted outside our door. Kicks, blows and curses had rained over us all the way back from the front until we had been handed over at the assembly point in this village of Klin. We were interrogated by an officer, who wanted to know how our regiment was made up and all the rest of it. On the way back to the house we saw them dispatching ten SS riflemen by hammering empty cartridge cases into the backs of their necks. Elsewhere, they had crucified a major on a door. Others were being beaten to a pulp with rifle butts and Cossack whips.

The hour of vengeance had struck.

Later in the night we were assembled in a large column of a couple of thousand men and mounted guards drove us eastward. We were not allowed to step out of the ranks, so we had to relieve ourselves in our trousers. Those who fell in the snow were given the whip till they got up again. If they could not get up they were run through with a saber.

After three days we reached the village of Kimry, where we were put into a large barn and given our first meal since leaving Klin. The food was an evil-smelling, indefinable mess, which we were unable to get down despite our screaming hunger.

Fleischmann and I decided to try to escape. Prisoners were permitted to go behind the barn to attend to nature, and on one such trip we saw our opportunity and set off full pelt across the fields. We ran across a frozen pond some three hundred yards from the barn and on and on without feeling in any way tired. Fear was all we felt. We ran all night, taking our direction from the stars, which I knew quite well, having once been interested in astronomy. We ran through a large wood and on across a frozen lake. We had almost reached the other side when a fur-clad soldier shouted at us from behind, but we ran on. He sent a dozen bullets after us; they whistled round our ears, but none hit us. A few minutes later we were lying in the cover of bushes.

That evening we came to some cottages and hid in a stable. There we lay and rested for twenty-four hours. We found a hen and wrung its neck and ate it raw. The next day we moved to the shelter of another stable, where we dug deep down into some old straw piled at one end.

In the afternoon, to our horror, we heard a lot of shouting in the farmyard, and when we peered out cautiously through a hole in the roof we saw five Russian soldiers with two dogs. After a lengthy palaver with the inhabitants of the farm they went away. We lay where we were for a few hours longer, and when dusk fell we thought we would sneak out.

The old man did not seem surprised to see us in his stable. He just asked in awkward German:

"Prisoners of war?"

We nodded.

He took us into his house and gave us food. In the room sat another old man and four women. They greeted us quietly and made room for us at the table. They observed us steathily as we ate their mutton and boiled potatoes. No one spoke.

The old farmer let us sleep there in the room so that we could get properly rested, and in the morning he gave us each a pair of quilted trousers and jacket to match. They were good, warm clothes and had the inestimable advantage of being anonymous, so that we could travel by day without the risk of being recognized by our black uniforms. We took a cordial farewell of those taciturn, kindly people.

For another four days we walked toward the west, but then early one morning misfortune overtook us. As we emerged from a small wood we found ourselves face to face with some Russian soldiers, who might have sprung from the ground. They asked for our papers. I started talking Danish, but they did not understand. Then I tried English and that went better. I told them that we were Danes, that we had been in a German concentration camp and had deserted from a penal regiment. At the Russian unit to which we had reported they told us to go to Moscow, but in making for the railway station we had lost our way.

There was a great confabulation after this from which I gathered that they did not believe me. In the end they took us to their commander. On the way one of them caught sight of my wrist watch, and after that I had no watch. Another took the gold chain Ursula had given me. The unit's commander treated us decently and interrogated us very thoroughly. He asked if we were Communists and we said that we were; but we did not dare pretend that we were members of the Party in case that could be checked. He muttered disapproval of our not having bothered to become members, but the main thing was that we were good Communists.

The following day we were taken to the railway by two soldiers who were to accompany us to Moscow and hand us over to the GPU for further investigation. After thirty-six hours in the train we were delivered to a room in the station at Moscow. It was a big room with close-meshed wire netting at the windows, which looked onto an enormous station hail swarming with soldiers and civilians. Several climbed up and looked in at us. We waited for several hours, then five heavily armed men from GPU arrived and led us to a large, black police van. We drove at a furious pace through the streets to a large prison.

"Now we've had it," whispered Fleischmann. "They'll either shoot us or send us to Siberia."

Fleischmann's whisper cost us a scurry of blows from rifle butts that made us fall half-unconscious off the bench, but a few kicks in the belly soon had us on our feet again. We drove through a maze of prison yards with grills and stopped at a small door, through which we were literally kicked. We were driven along to an office, where a GPU officer received us with well-directed blows of his fist, exactly the same fare as the SS had given me in Lengries.

After entering our particulars in a register--we both said we were Danish citizens--we were taken up to a cell in which twentyfive others were already stuffed. Our fellows had been arrested for every conceivable kind of crime, both political and civil. A Red Army sergeant, who had cut his wife's throat with a bread knife, said with the assurance of the expert:

"You'll be sent to a labor camp in a couple of months. If you go about it in the right way you can get along beautifully there. The chief thing is to do as little as possible, and what you do must be muck. See, too, that you make friends with a GPU chap by 'organizing' things for him from the factory where you work; but that, of course, must be good stuff."

There was a professor who had won a Stalin prize and was now charged with activities hostile to the State. The tariff for that was twenty-five years' hard labor. He told us that we would never get out of Russia legally and advised us to escape as soon as we could.

Only twelve of us could lie down at the same time. In one corner of the cell there was a bucket without a lid. The stench was intolerable and clung to your clothes. Then there were the lice and the hunger. But we were not cold. We sweated day and night, as though we were in a Turkish bath. If we stood on one another's shoulders we could see down into a large yard where they executed scores of prisoners, men and women, every night. The sound I associate with that prison is of volleys and the motors of big trucks. Like all transport work in Moscow, the removal of prisoners was done by night.