Legion of the Damned (31 page)

I could never make out how crazy Stolpe really was; but there was certainly nothing wrong with his appreciation of the pleasant and the useful; and Barbara was overjoyed that he took me under his wing and cheered me up with his crazy ideas, which had an incredible habit of resulting in our wangling some hospital spirit.

Once I was able to get up I was given a wheel chair, for I was still almost paralyzed, and Stolpe delighted in wheeling me about. That wheel chair proved most useful, especially when we went to the theater or some other place where you were supposed to queue; for Stolpe just wheeled me in to one of the gangways and then came and sat beside me, there being just room for two.

We also got much amusement out of having a third person wheel us both about the smart streets of Eger or Prague while we sat side by side, smilingly accepting the sympathetic glances of the young ladies. This led to our being invited one day to a very grand party at which some elderly German and Slovakian garrison officers were present. They and the society ladies of Prague were moved almost to tears by the sight of us sitting sweetly in the one wheel chair, Stolpe in gray green jager uniform with a large edelweiss in his cap, and I in my black tank uniform with beret set aslant. There was no limit to what they wanted to do for us and we had our pockets stuffed with all sorts of delicacies, which we later shared with the others at the hospital. They even photographed us so as to have a memento of when the jager and the tank soldier were united in one wheel chair.

What was not so fortunate was when a couple of these kindly matrons caught Stolpe and me in an improvised wheel chair race, on which occasion Stolpe was not in the chair but running with it down the street as hard as he could go. After that we were invited to no more parties.

When we needed money and diversion Stolpe rang up his girl friend, wife of an SS Standartenfuhrer, in Nuremberg.

"Hallo, my old luxury lass," he crowed into the telephone, making everyone in the post office turn round. "How's the beggar? Is he at home? No? Caught up in Russia, is he? A good place for him! Listen, old mare, I have learned a new position, so, if you're interested, you had better come. But it's a very strenuous position, so unless you have something very strengthening to bring, you needn't bother. And don't bring that port, you know; I've always said it was a bad lot the beggar bought. I don't want to see port until you've drunk all that stuff you have now. Well, I can't stand here gossiping with you all day. I'll expect you on the two thirty-two."

Thereupon he dropped the receiver without replacing it, so that it hung dangling and laughed protestingly for a few seconds before it fell silent. A couple of young girls laughed and there was general ill-concealed merriment in that otherwise boring place. We then stood in a line and bought a stamp, which Stolpe stuck on the forehead of a policeman farther back. He took it good humoredly.

To my surprise the middle-aged wife of the Standartenfuhrer really did arrive the next day, bringing a load of black-market goods. Ernst and she spent a couple of hours in a hotel room, after which he sent her back to Nuremberg, making the excuse that he had very little time. When she had gone the whole ward drank itself tight on the wines and liqueurs she had brought.

One day Stolpe was missing. He had been sent to a special hospital. A week later I received a post card from him:

Somersault Factory, Nuremberg, 18 April 1944.

Dear Sven,

What muck I've landed in! Smoking forbidden. Going out forbidden. I do go in great secrecy to the lay, and am hellish afraid that one day I'll find that that's forbidden too. Up to yesterday I ate my food under the bed, but then a nurse explained that eating wasn't forbidden. All the doors are locked, except the lay, and that's wide open. There are iron bars in front of all the windows, but whether that's to keep us who are here from making off or to prevent anyone coming in and taking us, I just don't know.

Greetings, Ernst the Mad.

"Darling!"

"Darling! Oh, how good it is to see you again, Sven. I have longed so for you."

"And I, too, Barbara. Come, let me take one of those cases. I have a car waiting. Are you hungry?"

"You bet I am."

When we had eaten we went to her hotel, where she had a bath and rested for half an hour. Strangely enough we did not fall into each other's arms. We were simply too moved, and it was so nice and secure as we were. I was calmer than I had been for the last several nerve-racking months. We had plenty to tell each other. The other thing would not run away. We went out to Potsdam and had dinner there and walked hand in hand in the park at Sans Souci.

One of the great raids was rumbling and roaring over Berlin. Barbara nervously squeezed close to me as we stood watching the smoke and flames above Neukolln. Wave after wave of bombers came soaring in over the city to drop their loads.

Suddenly there was a high-pitched whine. Like lightning I pulled Barbara down and flung myself beside her. Another bomb came screeching down. Barbara jumped up and ran screaming down the road, quite beside herself with panic fear.

I leaped up and ran after her, shouting: "Barbara, fling yourself down! Barbara! Barbara!"

A screaming whine made me fling myself into the ditch. Earth rained down over me. I remained lying there for a few seconds before I got to my feet. Barbara had disappeared.

Two hundred yards farther on I found her. Her body lay on the road in a pool of blood.

I sensed nothing, saw nothing, never heard the "all clear" go. A car stopped. A man in uniform took me to it. A rug was put in the back and in it my Barbara.

They undressed me. A doctor said something about shock. A hand took me by the wrist, a soft hand that gripped me in the same light, sensitive way as Barbara's--Barbara whom they had killed.

I was sent back to my regiment as oberleutnant and commander of my old company. Von Barring had become oberstleutnant and battalion commander. Of the old lot there were only Oberst Hinka, von Barring, The Old Un and I left. The Old Un was now oberfeldwebel.

One cold, gray, rainy day The Old Un and I were on our way back from the front line. For the last stretch to our villiage we walked upon some railway track. We had almost reached a temporary station, where there was a huge ammunition dump when there was a horrible, familiar whizzing in the air. The Old Un gave me a push that sent me headfirst into the ditch, and he followed.

For the next half-hour it was as though the whole world were coming to an end. There was a continuous howling, banging, rumbling and thundering from a never ending succession of explosions. Dazzling white flames shot up into the air with noises like cracking whips. Whole bundles of shells were flung, exploding, in all directions. Two railway cars soared through the air and dropped one hundred and fifty yards out in the fields. The entire undercarriage of a heavy boxcar smashed through a shed and fell with a crash not far from us. Two tall factory chimneys fell. One seemed to break at several points simultaneously; the other heeled slowly over and ended in a cloud of mortar dust on the ground. All the houses for a wide radius were razed to the ground.

The subsequent silence was ghastly. Slowly I recovered myself, stood up and looked around me. The Old Un was lying a couple of yards from me.

"Well, Old Un, I suppose we ought to get on? That was pretty grim, wasn't it?"

There was no reply.

Both legs broken, left hip a pulp and the shoulder very much the same.

I took his head on my lap and with my scarf wiped the sweat from his forehead.

"Old Un, old chap," I whispered; "do you think you can get as far as the dressing station if I carry you?"

He opened his eyes for a moment.

"The Old Un's done for, Sven. Let's rather stay here and hold hands. It won't be long. Pop me in a cigarette, if you have one."

I lit a cigarette and stuck it between his lips. It hurt him to talk.

"When I've gone, you'll write to the wife and kids, won't you? You know the recipe: shot in the temple and no pain... I haven't much pain anyway, apart from a tugging in the back when I talk. My old pipe and pocket knife are for you; the rest you'll send home together with the two letters in my wallet."

For a short while he lay silent, his eyes closed, while pangs thrust through his body. I held my canteen to his lips.

"Old Un, here's some schnapps. Try if you can drink a bit."

He managed a couple of gulps and opened his eyes again. Hoarsely he whispered:

"What hurts most is that I'm leaving you quite alone. I hope that you will be able to get back to that little country where you feel at home and which you have told me so many nice things about."

When it was all over I lifted him onto my shoulder and trudged heavily off through the slush in which my boots kept slipping. I wept and ground my teeth in helpless fury each time I slipped, while the sweat ran down my neck and my hissing breath was hot.

The Russians stared in amazement as I came staggering into the room with my dead comrade and laid him on the bed. Then I went across to von Barring.

"Now he too," groaned von Barring. "I can't stand much more." He seized me by the shoulder and shouted: "Sven, I'm going mad. I feel like a butcher each time I have to give orders to attack."

He was shaken by sobs, flung himself wildly into a chair and let his head drop on his arms, which he stretched out in front of him across the table.

"Oh, God in heaven, let this soon be over! Let it soon be over!"

He poured vodka into two glasses till it splashed over, then handed me one of the glasses. We drained them at a draught. He filled them again, but as he made to pick his up I stayed his hand.

"Erich," said I, "let's leave the glasses till we've buried The Old Un. You must come with me and bury him now. Only we two must do it, for we knew him. After that I'll gladly drink myself to death with you."

We tore the swastika off the flag in which we wound him.

As I tighten my chin strap and settle my helmet I let my gaze travel along the company, whose commander I am.

In the space right in front of me once stood Hauptfeldwebel Edel. He died of typhoid in 1943.

Behind him once stood tall, good-natured Feldwebel Bielendorf, buried alive with the whole of No. 4 Platoon during the fighting at the Kuban bridgehead.

On the right of the second platoon stood The Old Un, smashed by shells the day before yesterday.

Behind him Stabsgefreiter Joseph Porta, who went to his eternal rest with his belly ripped open with a knife.

Beside him Titch, fate unknown.

Pluto was decapitated by a bomb in the forest at Rogilev.

Hugo Stege, unteroffizier, burned in his tank with his side ripped open by a shell splinter.

Asmus Braun, the ever cheerful; both legs and one arm torn off in February 1942.

Unteroffizier Bernhard Fleischmann, disappeared in Moscow after escaping from a prisoner of war camp in Siberia.

Gefreiter Hans Breuer, degraded police lieutenant, executed after letting one foot be crushed in the track of a tank.

Down by No. 5 Platoon Leutnant Huber, only nineteen years old, a real friend to his men. One morning in April 1943 both his legs were blown off and be bled to death on the barbed wire calling for his sister Hilde.

Tank gunner Kurt Breiting, sixteen years old, died in the torments of hell after a phosphorus shell had exploded between his hands while we were manning the armored train in June 1943.

Obergefreiter Willy Pallas, short and always smiling, killed on the same occasion.

Gunner Ernst Valkas, head smashed in same armored train. It was his brains I got over me.

Oberleutnant von Sandra. Disemboweled, with an HE shell in his stomach.

Leutnant Bruno Haller, thirty-five. Jumped out of a burning tank with his badly burned brother, Unteroffizier Paul Haller, in his arms, himself to die of phosphorus burns. The two brothers were buried with linked arms at Berditchev. Together they went through Hitler's concentration camps and penal regiments, and together they rest in the cold earth of the Russian steppe.

God, if You exist, then I pray that You will let this mighty army of the dead for all eternity march before the eyes of the field marshals responsible! Let them never have peace from the booted tramp of dead soldiers! Make them stare into those hundreds of thousands of accusing eyes. Let mothers, wives and sisters stand forth and hurl their accusations against them and their staff officers, who planned mass murders in order to please an untalented little bourgeois, a hysterical journeyman painter.

With a start I come to and realize that the Hauptfeldwebel has just made his report to me. I salute and give the command:

"No. 5 Company. Company--shoulder--arms!"

The movements of the badly trained men are appallingly sluggish. So many of them have only had three weeks' training as recruits.

"Company--by the right--right turn--quick march!"

Squelching in the bottomless slush, two hundred pieces of cannon fodder march out onto the road and up to their positions.

Oberstleutnant von Barring and I were sitting in my company dugout by the flickering light of a Hindenburg candle. We were drinking.

In front of us stood a whole battery of empty and half-empty bottles of vodka and cognac.

Von Barring's nerves had been worn threadbare and he could no longer bear to be sober. If he was, he fell into such a rage that we had to tie him up to prevent him doing an injury to himself or to us. To have him more or less under control Hinka and I had to take it in turn to drink with him. One of us alone could not possibly have kept pace with his consumption. Kept in a perpetual state of dead drunkenness, he was more or less normal.

"Sven, what bloody filth the whole thing is," said he and filled a large mug with vodka, which he drank as though it had been beer. "When you think what Adolf and that liar Goebbels have stuffed us with, it's incredible! Are we dreaming? Is it really true that so much lying and contradiction is accepted and swallowed by an entire nation? What's wrong with us Germans? We all know that we're going straight to hell, and we've known that the whole time. Are we suicides, the whole lot of us? Or are we as stupid as we appear? As blind and crazy for power, and as dull-witted? I believe we are mad. . - . I know I am."