On 22.12, two Russian deserters appeared in the sector of a division on the southern front of the Cauldron. They explained that they were well aware that German forces were encircled, but that the rations and treatment on the Russian side were so bad and the outlook for Russia in the war so hopeless that they preferred to desert.
‘You see!’ cried Fröhlich triumphantly. ‘That’s what I’m always saying!’ A chorus of derisive laughter silenced him. Offended, he slunk away to sulk in the corner.
‘And here’s another,’ continued Breuer. ‘This one’s not bad either.’
A sergeant and a private, both members of a motorized division, who spent over a week undetected behind enemy lines, have returned with some valuable intelligence. Among other things, they claim that the Russian forces encircling the Cauldron are actually very weak. According to them, there is a palpable shortage of tanks and heavy weapons, and the Russian soldiers’ morale is poor. Complaints about war-weariness and inadequate food are rife. These two brave men were personally decorated by the commanding general.
‘So, what do you say to that?’
‘There is just one thing, First Lieutenant, sir,’ Corporal Herbert piped up. ‘How do they explain how those two managed to chat with the Russian troops over there about all this stuff?’
‘I’ve no intention of passing on any of this crap to the men,’ Breuer told Herbert by way of reply. ‘As far as I’m concerned, you can cut up all this bumph right now for bog paper! Just don’t go using it right outside the entrance to the bunker, d’you hear, Lakosch?’
And with that, the men of the Intelligence Section got down to the humdrum business of everyday life in the Cauldron once more.
4
Faint Outlines in the Fog
Ever more frequently, spells of unrelenting gloom with flurries of snow were beginning to alternate with the clear, silent, frosty days of the depths of winter. On days like these, the Russian morning dawned in a riot of colour like virtually nowhere else. In the east stood a deep-violet wall of cloud. Above it, in the most delicate shade of sea-green, a narrow band of the clear vault of heaven gradually appeared as the sun rose; the shafts of light it radiated danced in the bright white smoke wafting up from the bunkers, made the myriad ice crystals of the snowfield sparkle and glitter like diamonds, and finally spilled out like a string of tiny purple lanterns across the endless white expanse of snow, where it seemed the fleeting wave pattern of a gentle sea swell had taken on a frozen permanence. The soldiers trapped in the Cauldron watched awestruck as these beautiful mirages played out over the pitiless icy wasteland, as if in mockery of their plight – a spectacle of frozen splendour concealing death a thousand times over. This cruel play of nature seemed positively to encourage that self-deception, that mystical faith in miracles to which the men abandoned themselves ever more freely the more hopeless and desperate their situation became. The military leadership, in deference to the official line of optimism, kept stoking this belief in miracles despite knowing better, until they too fell prey to their own delusion. No one wanted to recognize the truth any more, so they simply refused to see it. Like a person freezing to death who knows full well he is in the grip of an icy demise yet who persists in entertaining paralysing fantasies of good fortune, so the three hundred thousand – emaciated, gnawed at by the cold, betrayed and abandoned – grew drunk on fanciful overestimates of their own might and options and clung on in the hope that the magician of Berchtesgaden might perform new signs and wonders. A spectral otherworld of dazzling dreams, hopes and wishes settled over the grisly reality of Stalingrad, sapping everyone’s vitality.
One of those who did not fall victim to this dream world was Lance Corporal Lakosch. The experiences of the past few weeks had rained down on him like an artillery barrage, destroying the edifice that his upbringing and propaganda had built within him. Yet beneath the ruins of this structure something long suppressed was now stirring, impelling him to action.
In the days following Christmas, another link to his former life had been severed. His beloved little Volkswagen, his faithful companion through the long, arduous years of war, finally gave up the ghost. On the orders of the NCO in charge of the motor pool, Lakosch had taken it to the division’s workshops, where they’d promised to get it back to him within three weeks. Lakosch knew only too well what that meant. Three weeks… who could say what might have happened within three weeks? He was sure he was saying goodbye to his car for good. Sunk in melancholy, he trudged his way back through the balka. The snow crunched and squeaked beneath his feet, and behind him the hissing sound of welding and the thumping and hammering noises from the workshop gradually died away. From a cloudless sky, a feeble sun cast its rays across the shimmering snow and threw blue wedges of shade into the jagged-sided gorge. Thin ribbons of smoke snaked up from the black oven chimneys on top of the bunkers. Ragged Romanians were shovelling soil into the reddish-brown bomb craters that pockmarked the road. A group of heavily muffled German infantrymen were jostling and stamping their feet in dirty grey puddles around a steaming field kitchen. Outside a bunker entrance curtained with sacking, a soldier was hastily shovelling snow into various cooking utensils. As Lakosch passed by, he lifted his head.
‘Hey, Karl! What brings you here, mate?’
Lakosch stopped in his tracks. He knew that voice! He peered over towards the speaker. Yes, indeed, it really was him – Seliger, the old mess orderly.
‘Well, blow me down,’ said Lakosch in a deadpan voice, ‘and there was me thinking you were a goner.’
Seliger came over to the little driver, swinging the clanking cooking pots.
‘Oh, you think so!’ he laughed. ‘No way, old son, you know what they say – “bad weeds grow tall”! Come inside for a bit, why don’t you! It’s cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey out here.’
Lakosch hesitated, but Seliger took him by the arm and steered him towards the bunker.
‘We’ve got a bottle on the go! Our CO’s off somewhere and won’t be back for another couple of hours. I’m Captain Korn’s batman for the time being here, see, while I recuperate.’
Down in the cramped, frowsty bunker, he produced a bottle of vodka from underneath a camp bed and placed two mugs on the table. Lakosch’s gaze wandered to the Iron Cross ribbon that shone spick and span from Seliger’s tattered battledress jacket. His thoughts were still on his car.
‘How’s things with you, then?’ he enquired somewhat indifferently. ‘At ours they told us you’d bought it.’
Seliger looked at him in amazement. He was clearly put out.
‘Don’t you know anything, mate? Me and Harras gave the Russians a run for their money! Haven’t you read about us in dispatches, then?’
‘What! – that was you?’ exclaimed Lakosch, suddenly shaken from his torpor. ‘You’re the two who went roaming around behind Russian lines? Come on then, spill the beans!’
Seliger was duly assuaged, so he didn’t need much prompting to start telling his story. Boy, oh boy – all the things they’d seen and done! After their way back had been cut off by a Russian reconnaissance unit, they’d taken their courage in their hands and decided to work their way through enemy lines. They’d spent two nights hiding in an abandoned bunker. Then, under cover of darkness, they’d nicked bread and jam from a food truck, killed two lone Russian sentries, taken their coats and weapons, and thus equipped had moved undetected through villages and Red Army encampments. Lakosch, who had started by interposing questions now and then, had grown increasingly quiet. He knew Seliger of old: all mouth and trousers! And here he was trying to tell him… what tosh!