Unlikely Warrior

In my dress uniform in Vienna before departing for Russia.

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To Phyllis

For steering me away from mediocrity

and sharing forty years of dreams

CONTENTS

Title Page

Copyright Notice

Dedication

List of Illustrations

Foreword

Major Events on the Eastern Front

Map

Prologue

Part One

Secrets in the Attic

The Journey East

Introduction to the Trenches

The Hardest Thing

Marianovka—The First Battle

According to Haas

A True Russian Winter

Into Romania

Long Hot Summer on the Dniester

Romanian Respite

The Iron Cross

The Last Battle

Part Two

In Russian Hands

The Events at Balti

Kiev—Pushkin’s Request

Encounter with a Spoon

The Reluctant Spy

The German Plot

Part Three

Homeward

Vienna

End of the Odyssey

Author’s Note

Glossary of German Words

Glossary of Russian/Ukrainian Words

About the Translator

Copyright

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

All drawings by the author are from his wartime letters, unless otherwise noted.

In Vienna before departure to Russia

Map of Campaigns and Captivity

“Marching to battle” (drawing by the author)

The author shortly before being drafted

With fellow recruits

The author’s mother at seventeen

The author with Mutti in 1933

The author’s great-great-grandfather

Luise Tauber, Moses’s daughter and author’s great-grandmother

Luise Tauber and husband, Josef Samuel Tauber

Melanie Tauber with her two sisters in Vienna

Author’s grandmother Melanie Amalie Tauber

Melanie Tauber Wieser with author’s mother in 1891

Maximilian Rauch, “Papi”

Map of the Ukraine, hand-drawn by author’s father

“Russian village hut interior” (drawing by the author)

“Two socks, two holes” (drawing by the author)

“A holiday in Russia” (drawing by the author)

The communications squad

Konrad, Baby Schmidt, and the author

“Endless journey” (drawing by the author)

“Prisoners’ march” (drawing by the author)

“Sleeping methods” at a POW camp (drawing by the author)

“Self-portrait” (drawing by the author)

“Marching west” (drawing by the author)

“Man with bird” (drawing by the author, 1989)

FOREWORD

In 1984, exactly forty years after my husband’s Russian experience, he began writing this memoir. A chance event led to Georg’s opening the letters that he had written to his mother all those years before. Soon thereafter, Georg left his art studio (a rare event) and began to write. He wrote seven days a week, by hand on yellow legal pads, and read each day’s pages to me as we sat on the terrace of our home in Mexico, overlooking Lake Chapala, every afternoon. The next day I translated them into English.

Georg was a total extrovert who loved to laugh and joke. He was a tireless raconteur and easily the center of attention at most social gatherings. Some of his war experiences also figured in his dinner party stories. I had heard the tale related in the early chapter “The Hardest Thing” a number of times before. But the afternoon he read this part of the book aloud to me on the terrace, he began to sob. It may have been the only time I ever saw him cry.

Obviously, the ten years he spent after the war creating expressionist paintings featuring sad men, clowns, and harlequins had not quite achieved the cathartic results he had believed. There were still memories as well as feelings of grief, shame, guilt, and despair to be confronted and dealt with—this time not on a canvas, but in words. Only in retrospect do I understand that Georg’s intense days of writing were not just another example of his disciplined nature. He had to get it out. And he had to get it over with.

Had I understood this more fully, I might not have chafed so much under his constant demands to see the English translation. Although I am fluent in German, I purchased two fat German dictionaries in order to deal with a completely new vocabulary, words about battles and weapons, uniforms and ranks. It was slogging, intense work, and sometimes we quarreled when he told me I wasn’t translating fast enough. Now, more than thirty years later, I understand much better what was fueling his demands.

Georg sometimes gave an additional explanation for why he wrote the book. Many of his art collectors were Jewish. When we met these people, conversations often led to Georg’s history. He sensed that some people were perplexed, or worse, when they heard that he had been in Hitler’s army. He said he hoped by writing the book, he could set the record straight. Georg identified as Jewish. He knew and often quoted the fact that Jews adhere to the maternal line—which in his case was unbroken. His family members were treated as second-class citizens, and it was only the fact of his Aryan father’s prior war service that kept him and his mother out of the camps.

The book in manuscript form was passed on to scores of friends and visitors to our B&B in Mexico. Many told us that Georg’s story needed telling more widely. We finally agreed, and in July of 2006, twenty-two years after he wrote the manuscript, we self-published a first edition of it ourselves. Georg lived another four months, until November.

Seven years later, on the exact date of his passing, I was lighting the candles on my Mexican Day of the Dead altar, when the phone rang. It was my amazing, indefatigable literary agent, Emmanuelle Morgen. I heard her voice for the first time as she said, “I have some news for you.” I replied, “It has to be good.” Thus I learned that thanks to Emmanuelle, my thirty-year dream had come true. Our book was on its way to the world and the readership it deserved. My affection for my editor, Wesley Adams, began with his wholehearted (and continuing) enthusiasm for Georg’s book. I have come to appreciate his perfectionism, but also his willingness to compromise. He is a true gentleman, but best of all, he makes me smile. Could an author be any luckier?

Georg Rauch believed that as long as you could laugh at something, its power to harm you was reduced. In his letters home from Russia, he often tried to find the funny side of things in what were, in reality, very unfunny situations. He takes the same approach in these pages, and the result is a unique tale of one clever, multitalented nineteen-year-old who rose above his situations, put his many wits to use, and survived to tell it all.

—Phyllis Rauch

MAJOR EVENTS ON THE EASTERN FRONT