By now the harassed officer is a bundle of nerves.
‘Shit on your eye injury!’ he yells. Even so, he gives Breuer a shove that propels him into the midst of the little cluster of chosen ones. The major’s approach, on the other hand, is to have a word on the q.t. with the officer. He must have a silver tongue, because he too finds himself joining the select ranks of passengers. The crowd of men who have been passed over seethe and yell angrily.
Darkness starts to fall. To the north, artillery fire lights up the milky sky with red flashes. The plane is still circling overhead. The pilot has switched on his navigation lights. He seems to be having second thoughts about landing. Little wonder; if he crash-lands, then he and his crew will be caught in the mousetrap, too. Suddenly, a small parachute drops from the fuselage and begins its slow, rocking descent. A few solid objects also plummet to earth, where the guard detail immediately pounces on them. The aircraft makes one final turn before disappearing into the gathering gloom.
Anger, disappointment and rancour seep through the waiting crowd. Their pent-up fury threatens to break over the head of the dispatch officer. He spots the danger in time and seeks to head it off.
‘Hey, just hold your horses there!’ he croaks. ‘There’ll be plenty more planes along! Lots more are on their way! See? There’s another one already!’
It’s true; somewhere in the sea of grey cloud a new droning noise can be heard. The aircraft begins to corkscrew down. Is this one going to land? Yes, it’s dropping all the time – no, wait a minute – yes, yes, it’s touched down, a textbook landing on the rapidly darkening airfield. The engines are throttled back and tick over lazily; the big bird waits there, shuddering, ready to take off again and depart at any moment. The doors fly open and the ladder shoots down; a few provisions are unloaded, and then the crew, like cats on a hot tin roof, are urging everyone to hurry it up. To a man, the twelve chosen ones are seized by a terror of being left behind. They lunge forward to the plane like shipwrecked men grasping at lifeboats, pushing and shoving to be the first to board. Reason dictates that every one of them is certain of a seat. But reason flies out of the window at times like this! The dispatch officer couldn’t care less about the mayhem; he’s done his duty, and the ones left behind are causing him enough headaches as it is.
Breuer finds himself trapped in a tangle of shouting people and is crushed against the short set of steps up to the plane.
‘Go on, go on!’ urges the major from behind. He can already see into the plane’s cabin through the legs of the man who’s gone before him, and looks directly into the face of the radio operator…
Then something unforeseen occurs. Something truly absurd, a horrible twist of fate. It happens so fast, in a split second, that, even when he looks back on it later, Breuer can never fully fathom quite what happened. With his impaired vision, did he perhaps miss his footing on the smooth metal steps of the ladder? Or was the furious red face of the radio operator to blame for the whole incident – that face whose passing resemblance to Wiese’s caused him to hesitate momentarily? And did that brief hesitation of his prompt the swearing major to shove him in the side? Or was he simply overcome by a fit of giddiness? Or maybe his nerves failed him in the final, critical moment? Perhaps his body had somehow instinctively refused to carry out the instructions it was being given by a none-too-certain will?
By the time the slipstream from the propellers rouses him from where he is lying on the ground – he had fallen hard, hitting his chin on the metal steps and presumably knocking himself out for a few moments – it is too late. No one takes any notice of him. The ladder has long since been pulled up, the door closed, and the plane is lumbering off down the airstrip, clumsy as a fleeing chicken. Off to one side, the crowd of men left behind are still roaring and bellowing.
Unnoticed by them (their self-interest leaves them no time or inclination for mockery or scorn), Breuer stands there and watches the plane recede into the distance. Dazed, he feels his bruised limbs. His sick pass is lying at his feet. And as he bends down to pick it up, he suddenly realizes that there’s no point now. There was no repairing the damage. No more planes were going to land in Stalingrad. A decision had been made, and it was irrevocable…
Despair rages through Breuer’s brain like a centrifuge that threatens any minute to reduce his body to atoms. Hot blood surges through his head and limbs, and the dizzying whirl forces clear thoughts and feelings to the surface once more. And suddenly an image reappears that had been erased during the last few hours of high emotion. This image grows ever clearer and firmer and becomes, so to speak, the axis around which everything else rotates: it is the picture of his dying friend in a snow hole in Gumrak. And he knows now for sure that there is no way back!
Little by little he calms down, until finally there is nothing left except an infinite expanse of emptiness. It is as if all the hopes and yearnings that were rekindled over the preceding hours – indeed, as if everything that once existed – have flown away for ever with that last aircraft. What does he actually want? He knows the truth – yes, deep in his heart he’s known it for a long time: there’s no way back now! The only way is forward. Who can say where that road leads? Into darkness, into the unknown. And maybe also into humiliation and self-sacrifice. And perhaps also – no, definitely – to death. But what did that matter? Let the twenty-fourth of the month claim its victim after all! To him that’s not the bogeyman it once was; its sting has been drawn. And even his death here in the killing fields around Stalingrad will ultimately have a point: a fitting conclusion to a misguided life. And what if he doesn’t die? Well, that would also have a purpose that would one day become apparent… Breuer firmly believes that his fate will have a meaning one way or another.
Darkness is already falling. Shells are falling on the airfield with increasing frequency. To the north, the reddish glow of the barrage, shot through every now and then with bright flashes and accompanied by the faint noise of fighting, swells up ever more clearly and ominously. The dispatch officer is nowhere to be seen. Yet the throng of waiting men keeps pushing and shoving amid sporadic yells and outbreaks of violent anger. Breuer stumbles over a kitbag half-buried in the snow. He picks it up. It contains nothing edible, only socks and some other clothes. Breuer takes it all the same. These things have a purpose once more. He walks unconcernedly past the seething mob. As he passes, he picks up snatches of conversation.
‘Of course!’ – ‘He said so!’ – ‘Nothing else is coming! It’s a load of bollocks, as usual!’ – ‘What if I tell you fifty Ju 52s are supposed to be arriving this evening?’ – ‘Then you don’t need to keep pushing like that, do you?’
Someone tumbles over in front of Breuer. He grabs hold of the fallen man to pull him to his feet. Someone else comes over to help.
‘Lieutenant, sir!’ the other soldier urges the man who’s tripped. ‘Don’t give up, Lieutenant! Not now we’ve made it so far!’
Breuer’s gaze is transfixed by the lieutenant’s felt boots; slowly he raises his eyes to the man’s face. My God, yes, it really is him!
‘Dierk!’ he shouts, grabbing the officer’s shoulders.
‘Dierk, lad, it’s me!
But his young comrade is all in. His head is lolling helplessly this way and that and he seems incapable of speaking. ‘Come on!’ Breuer quietly tells the man who seems to know the lieutenant. ‘There’s no point hanging round here any more… We need to get to Stalingrad!’
The man looks at him, dumbfounded.