‘Turn the wireless on, would you, Eva dear?’ Frau Helgers said. ‘Maybe there’s something sensible on by now. Goebbels will have stopped handing out Christmas presents to children.’
The radio was broadcasting the Christmas hook-up with German forces on various fronts. From the loudspeaker came the sounds of singing and accordion playing. Reporters at the fronts gave colourful accounts of how the troops were spending Christmas: on Crete, in Narvik and North Africa and on the high seas. The same happy festive mood came across from all these far-flung locations. But all of a sudden, the presenter announced in sombre tones:
‘Attention, attention – we’re now going over to Stalingrad!’
Then came the sound of someone talking. His voice sounded distant and muffled, like he was speaking from a cellar.
‘There’s no Christmas spirit or Christmas tree in evidence here. The only things lighting up the sky are the glow of flares and the flash of shell bursts. There’s no lull or relief for the men here, just relentless, intense fighting that places an enormous strain on our hard-pressed troops…’
‘That’s quite enough of that, thank you – Eva, turn it off, would you please?’ Frau Helgers said quietly. ‘It’s so awful. Those poor, poor men… Ah, this dreadful war! When will it ever end?’
Eva went up to her fiancé and took his head in her hands. Her eyes scanned his face intently.
‘Tell me honestly, my love,’ she implored him, ‘you’re not really going back to Stalingrad, are you?’
Captain Gedig gently removed her hands. He avoided looking directly at her.
‘Absolutely not, Eva,’ he replied tensely. ‘I’ve already told you. Whatever gave you that idea?’
Eva Helgers and Werner Gedig stood on the station platform under the dim bluish light cast by a few cowled blackout lamps. Dressed in his flowing greatcoat and officer’s peaked cap, he once more exuded the atmosphere of the front. The two of them remained silent. They still had much to talk about – so much, in fact, that words alone were not enough. Acting on a sudden whim, the captain felt in the inner pocket of his coat.
‘It’s just occurred to me… Here, Evi, take this cash. There’s eight hundred marks there. I was going to pay it into the bank, but I forgot.’
Eva hesitantly took the banknotes.
‘Why don’t you take them with you?’ she asked in surprise. ‘You can pay the money into your account from there.’
‘No, no, please just take the money… I might lose it.’
The train snorted its way into the station. Brakes screeched, doors slammed and the darkened platform was filled with rushing people.
‘Werner,’ the girl said, and her voice sounded strangely muted. ‘Werner, I’m begging you, please don’t lie to me… not now, just when we’re about to part. You… you’re going to Stalingrad, I know it!’
The captain took her hands in his. He said nothing. He gazed deep into her desperate eyes. The look he gave her was full of hurt. And of love. And of parting: a painful, painful parting. He bent down and tenderly kissed away two shining tears that had appeared on her cheeks. There was a sharp blast of a whistle, and the train began to pull slowly out of the station. The captain swung round, leaped up on to the running board and gave her one last wave.
‘Werner!’ the girl cried, her voice choked with tears, and she stretched out her hands to him. Then, whispering, she uttered his name once more before letting her arms drop, forlornly. The train rumbled off into the darkness.
‘To Stalingrad,’ she thought, and felt the blood surge to her heart. ‘To Stalingrad – I’ll never see him again.’
A figure tramps with long strides through the bright, moonlit night. The mammoth’s footprints he leaves behind in the encrusted blanket of snow, from the heavy felt boots he is wearing, are instantly filled in again by the biting east wind. It assails the solitary traveller time and again, its incessant gusts tugging at his heavy overcoat and trapping it between his legs, and piercing his clothes and balaclava with its icy needle-jabs. The glimmer of the stars has been extinguished by the milky light of the moon, but an invisible star is guiding the traveller. The figure is Padre Peters. Behind him, he is dragging a little sled with equipment. He is making for the head of the remote gorge where the main field dressing station is located. Since the order came through that the wounded and sick could only be flown out with the express permission of the chief medical officer, field dressing stations and hospitals have become full to bursting. The number of men dying of cold and hunger grows by the day. But still the big transport planes, each of which can evacuate around thirty-five wounded, regularly return to the airfields they set out from with empty spaces. The padre has been working his way up the long gorge for several minutes now. He knows the way; he has been here many times before. But today he appears to have gone astray, despite it being almost as bright as day. Then, momentarily, a strip of light flashes somewhere off to the side. Ah, yes, there it is at last! That must be the mobile operating theatre. From the large vehicle, parked in a hollow excavated from the slope of the ravine as if in a garage, a medical NCO emerges and walks towards him. He is carrying a large pail, from which something naked and bloody is protruding, surrounded by stained bandages and torn scraps of uniform – a freshly amputated leg.
‘Good evening to you, Padre,’ the man greets him, his voice trembling from the cold. ‘It’s been all go here today again… what a great Christmas!’
Padre Peters climbs the steps up into the lorry, pulls aside the tarpaulin, and opens the wide door. For a few seconds, he’s dazzled by the bright reflection of the creamy white walls inside. The acrid smell of disinfectant stings his nostrils. The head doctor, identifiable by the peaked cap he’s wearing, is just completing the final stitches under the intense glare of the operating lamp.
‘Evening all!’ says the padre. ‘You ought to signpost your dressing station better, doctor! It would have been a shame if I’d missed you today.’
‘Signpost!’ With a hollow laugh, the surgeon chokes back the reproach he was about to utter, and instead repeats the padre’s word. ‘That’s all we need! So we can become even more overrun than we are now, eh? As it is, I’ve no idea how we’ll ever manage to treat all these patients. The place is jam-packed. Fifteen to twenty deaths on the operating table and, if we’re lucky, thirty to forty men evacuated is all we can get through in any one day – yet a hundred new patients show up daily! Day and night, it goes on. We’re barely getting any sleep nowadays…’
He passes his surgical assistant the instruments and wipes his damp brow with the back of his hand.
‘It’s a bottomless pit, I tell you. It can’t go on like this.’
His face is grey and haggard. The assistant drapes his fur jacket round his shoulders and goes outside, with the padre following. In the middle of the gorge is a large marquee housing the wounded. It has not, as is customary elsewhere, been sunk into the ground as protection against the cold and flying shrapnel. The fierce wind is shaking at its canvas sides and blowing drifts of snow in through the gaps at the bottom. Inside lie the injured men, tightly packed together. Even the narrow passageways are crammed with stretchers. A little trench oven in the middle of the marquee is crackling away busily, but it only manages to warm those in its immediate vicinity. Two storm lanterns, hung from the tent poles, emit a guttering light that doesn’t reach the far corners. Next to one of the lamps stands a construction of wooden battens roughly nailed together, which is meant to represent a Christmas tree. Three candle stubs are burning on it.