Men of Snow (18 page)

His mind was registering very little. He was inside a metal and stone upheaval.  Survival depended more on his hearing than anything else, that and his instinct for a change in atmospheres.

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The moment was so slight. It was preceded by a tiny sound, like a stone rubbing against another. He was in a corridor underground that allowed him to hear something in front of him. Very gradually he moved, taking out his knife at the same time.

The next careful step and he could see a vague outline in front of him. Two more steps and the human shape was there against the different light from a doorway. He stopped breathing as he moved into position, jamming his left hand under the soldier’s chin so his neck was forced back and Franz cut with one deep slice, the release of gurgling blood letting him know there would be no other sounds. He held onto the man’s shoulders so he could lower him to the ground as quietly as possible.

A few moments later he knew it was a German he had killed. The smell was recognisable, the feel of the uniform.

He wiped his knife on the sleeve of the dead soldier’s coat before he pushed it back in its sheath and continued along the corridor.

When he emerged snow was still falling out of a vague daylight.

As he kept moving he again considered the disappearance of Hauptmann and the rest of his unit. He had been away no more than hour and had heard nothing from the building where they had been based. It was as though the city had sucked them into its darkness. There was no explanation.

Russian Katushkas screamed from across the Volga and mortar rounds exploded nearby. Again there was more machine gun fire and the sound of a panzer tank letting off a round in what he hoped would be the Western section. The Katushkas sounded again like screams of defiance, splitting the air as they flew to their targets.

With every new sound Franz felt he was going in the right direction. The explosions formed a pattern of noise that he could lay out like a map. The city was outlined by what he heard. He understood that there was no front, no line between the two sides. All of it was a military mess with pockets of soldiers fighting their own battles unseen, unknown by anybody else.

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The first Russians he came across were two young soldiers huddled up asleep in a corner of a underground room he was passing. He was about to go on when he noticed one of them jerk slightly. It was enough for Franz to put several rounds into them, thuds splitting the material of their winter coats followed by a sudden release of blood.

A few hours later he had climbed down into a trench dug beneath a pipeline that had been severed in different places. In a hole off to the side of the trench was a huddle of civilian corpses, the blood from their wounds having frozen immediately on their faces and uncovered hands, a group of women and old men.

At the bottom of steps leading into a basement complex was a woman’s body hanging from an iron beam. Her tongue was stuck out and her clothing had been torn in strips. Her head was swollen into a frozen blue disfigurement like a piece of badly sculptured rock. Franz looked and went on, knowing he was too exhausted to go much further. He had to rest but was worried about stopping, knowing how quickly he could submit to the cold.

Searching for somewhere secure to rest took him another hour as the snow fell heavily, muffling the battle sounds. He had come to what had once been a street crossing. Now there were huge metal beams stuck out over the broken street and severed lampposts in between the mounds of fallen masonry. He ducked down at the sudden sight of soldiers scurrying across the street into another half demolished building. They were immediately followed by three German soldiers. Franz watched as they were hit by rifle fire, the three slumping onto the snow covered road.

By now he had no idea how much time being by himself had passed. He only knew that he could go no further. Whatever was left of his mental will was dissolved in the weakness of his body.

The place he found was behind a boiler where a pile of frozen rags had been stored. He levered himself between a brick wall and the frozen, rusted metal. He understood that he could only rest, that he could not allow himself to fall asleep.  He understood that he had to continue planning, that somehow he had to reach the suburbs.

He pulled himself down to sit on the pile of rags that still stank of diesel, keeping his machine gun in both hands, closing his eyes but forcing himself to keep alert, to keep listening to the rumble and shudders above ground.

Every few minutes he pushed himself up to ease the tension in his muscles before resting back down, closing his eyes to try and concentrate on the map of Stalingrad he hoped the explosions were drawing for him, only confused by the noise from shells he did not recognise.

The forest momentarily appeared, went away and then returned until he could not get it out of his mind. The trees of Poland had dark figures hanging from them. It had been his worst failure, all the Jews who had escaped. He had wanted them all, but the forest had hidden some of them away. Now this city was full of iron trees, creaking and shifting. Their black branches stuck out in all directions. He wished he could climb to the highest metal tree and survey all of Stalingrad, to be high above it and watch what was developing below, to see where his route lay out onto the open steppes.

The cold again started to throb, the hunger like a million open mouths inside him. He forced away the memory of the Jews and pushed himself to stand. He felt dizzy and disorientated, black lines crossing snow falls that dropped between numerous battle sounds and then sudden silences as Stalingrad creaked and groaned like a huge ship out on the frozen sea.

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The rest was hours of scrambling through burnt out buildings, stopping at the first different sounds, waiting as he watched soldiers moving in the shadows, through the snow, listening to the rattle of tank tracks, the cold numbing him, his scar like a new cut frozen into his face and neck.

Finally he was crouching along what was left of streets that had more burnt out houses on either side instead of the usual factories or office blocks. The air here was colder, the snow blowing horizontally as though there had been no obstacles in its path. He knew he was in the suburbs, knew that the city centre was behind him.

Bodies were everywhere, snow covered mounds, German, Russian, a hand, a face, a leg, stuck out of their white blankets. Most of them seemed to be still in uniform as though neither side had had time to take what they needed.

‘The Russians are small, muscular and fast,’ he had been told in Paris, ‘Their general tactics show no concern for casualties. How many soldiers die in their armies is of no significance. They know there are always replacements, boys from the Urals and beyond. They’re poorly trained but they fight hard for their motherland. They know that any defeatism will bring swift retribution from the commissars who are with every unit. The Russian soldier is primitive but determined. He would prefer to drink himself into oblivion every night. But if he can’t have a drink it makes him angry and that makes him fight harder. Their armies are better equipped than they were and since the fight back in Moscow they are more confident. Even Stalin is leaving it more to his generals to make the decisions. They will be your enemy and they will take no prisoners.’

Franz knew he was getting weaker. He rested in the corner of a blown out house and took stock of everything he was suffering like an inventory of pain.

His hunger was becoming unbearable, a tight emptiness into which had drained the last of his strength. His scar felt like it had been reopened by a frozen edged razor. His headache was two fists battering under his helmet. His right arm and leg had stiffened and his feet were not there any longer, numbed off into dead lumps. His whole body was frozen into the bones like a scaffolding of ice. Nothing was functioning. Each movement was instinct. The blizzard blew snow through gaps in the wall where he was sheltering.

As he glimpsed out he could see what looked like German soldiers rolling forward a piece of artillery. From the other end of the street machine gun fire whined bullets through the snow. A shell was released that exploded seconds later.

He crawled to what was left of the back of the house. Three headless Russians had been propped up against the remains of a wooden fence. Further down the lane between the back of the houses were more bodies. He momentarily registered a face that seemed to have been skinned and a body without arms. Explosions travelled on the whining snow that was blinding him as he struggled onwards. Some of the wooden houses were still smouldering, heat giving momentary warmth as he forced himself to keep going.

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Nearing the German artillery there was a whole wall of bodies, stacked up like logs for an everlasting fire. They had been piled so close together to build bunkers for the artillery.

When he climbed over one of these walls of corpses he found himself much closer to the German unit that was defending the end of the street .Snow swirled around them whipping up their winter coats. Some were wearing what looked like ski goggles that were iced over. They were dressed in so many layers, especially around the head, they never heard him approaching.

With his hands held high he appeared from behind a wooden fence and started walking towards them.

The artillery unit paid him no attention. The men with rifles checking the closest houses did not appear interested. They were men trying to fight a battle in sub-zero temperatures against an enemy that kept disappearing so Franz was a ghostly irrelevance, another soldier appearing out of Stalingrad, blackened, hungry, usually wounded, but always silent, always lost to the hell world they had just been through. Nobody tried to speak to him. Franz was set down with a group of seriously wounded. From somewhere appeared a bowl of hot water with a frozen leaf floating on the surface and a handful of cigarettes that Franz quickly grabbed and then spent the next minutes trying to find the matches, knowing he had hidden them somewhere under all the layers that had so many pockets and stitched up compartments. By the time he had found one his hands were so frozen up they could not function. The process was becoming desperate as he could hear planes overhead and the gradually approaching fire of the Russians coming up the street.

He stumbled over to two resting on a stack of artillery shells.

‘I need a light,’ he could hear himself say.

‘Not fucking here you don’t.’

‘Well what about over there?’

‘That’s where one of the bastard snipers is lined up for.’

‘So where is the rest of the regiment?’

‘There isn’t one.’

‘The wounded,’ Franz tried.

One of the soldiers pulled his scarf slightly away from his mouth to speak, ‘They say the wounded are being shipped to Gumrak that sounds like it’s the only airport still in our hands. You have to have a pass that proves you have a serious wound. That’s how it seems to be working if it is still working because the story is that the Ruskies are only a few kilometres from the edge of the airfield.

Franz tried to make sense of what he was being told, tried to understand that he had arrived at the German lines where men were still fighting and had no idea at what was going on in the centre of the city.  These suddenly unexpected moments felt unreal. He was lost for a time, lost and exhausted and hungry walking between the lines of wounded, around the walls of the dead. All of it was covered by the intensifying snowstorm, pieces of his mind being blown in all directions. Now all he could think about was the airport at Gumrak as mortar rounds thudded off into the grey flecked sky. Two explosions landed close they had them all automatically hunched over and then just as quickly sat up again. The noise of trucks rattled towards their positions, followed by a couple of tanks.

‘That’s it,’ one of the men muttered to him, ‘That’s all that is fucking left.’

‘So what do you think soldier?’

‘I’d say we’re fucked, should never have come near this fucking place. Stalingrad, it’s just a fucking slaughter house, and you see who you kill, you see them alright, right in the fucking eye balls.’

‘But no way out?

‘Only if you’re wounded badly enough.’

‘And who makes that decision?’

‘You’re wasting your fucking time. You’d have to blow your brains out and then what would be the point?’

Franz came closer, pushing against him, ‘Just don’t fuck about soldier. Just fucking tell me how I get to Gumrak and how I get on a fucking plane.’

When he pushed harder the soldier stepped back and looked at him as well as he could through the small icicles that had formed on his eyelids. 

‘I’ve not got this far for all this shit,’ Franz said strongly.

‘So what makes you think you’re anything fucking special?’ were the soldiers last muttered words as a rifle shot split through his neck, the blood swirled in fast patterns over the snow.