‘Making out that you’d escaped was a really dirty trick, though, mate! Our commanders ought to hear about what you’ve just told me! If Paulus knew… well, he might act quite differently!’
Seliger was appalled.
‘Are you out of your tiny mind?’ he cried. ‘You think the top brass don’t already know all that? They know a bloody sight more than we do, chum! So just keep your mouth shut if you don’t want to end up getting hanged. I bloody knew it – it’s not safe telling you anything! I couldn’t give a shit about Lissnup, the bastard! But they’ll have my head too if this all comes out!’
Lakosch stood up. In response to Seliger’s fearful entreaties, he hastily repeated his promise not to say anything. In his thoughts, he was already miles away. An urgent resolution had taken root in his mind, born of his experiences over the last few days.
The next morning, Lakosch was gone. The men of the Intelligence Section were faced with a conundrum. They feared at first that something untoward had happened to him. But the fact that his rifle and his other effects were nowhere to be seen either left them in no doubt that he had deliberately taken flight. Breuer, who in retrospect recalled several things about his driver’s recent behaviour that had struck him as odd, reproached himself for not having taken greater care of the lad. Maybe he’d tried to do away with himself? With a heavy heart, he decided to report the incident to Unold. The lieutenant colonel was apoplectic with fury when he heard the news.
‘No question!’ he shouted. ‘The bloke’s done a bunk – deserted! We’ve never had a deserter in our division before, let alone from Staff HQ. What a ghastly bloody mess! The bloke always seemed a bit rum to me, I must say. But naturally you didn’t notice a thing, did you, you dumb bleeding-heart liberal? Don’t you dare breathe a word to the High Command about this! All we need now is to piss away the little bit of credit we have in that quarter with crap like this!’
Everyone in the section was hit hard by the disappearance of their comrade. It sometimes looked as though Geibel had been secretly crying. But for whatever reason – be it the inhibitions that, despite their common fate, still attached to the uniform, or some veiled mistrust of one another or a fear of the abyss that any mention of the event might open up – everyone kept their thoughts to themselves. No one said a thing.
5
The Bone Road
Lieutenant Dr Bonte, the battalion adjutant, a short, dark-haired officer of that unobtrusive yet robust kind that is so beloved of the infantry, walked with short steps towards the bunker where the commanding officer had taken up residence. Bonte was out of sorts. His men were billeted in an unheated horse stable, and despite being crammed together like sardines, were still frozen stiff. Yet all around were paymasters and other desk-jockeys who were holed up in nice warm bunkers. But wasn’t this always the way when you were placed under the command of another unit? God helps those who help themselves! The captain, his CO, would need to raise hell about it at divisional level. Things couldn’t go on like this. His men, who weren’t up to much at the moment anyhow, would go completely to the dogs even before they went into action if they kept on being treated in such a shabby way.
Captain Eichert, the commander of Fortress Battalion I, was studying a map. When the lieutenant came in, he raised his head and combed his wispy hair back from his forehead.
‘See, Bonte, what did I tell you?’ he said. ‘It’s “do this one minute and do that the next”! But at last, here’s our order to go into action!’ The lieutenant was taken aback. The battalion had only been formed two days ago, with seventy per cent of the men seconded from other units and with no infantry experience. And as of yesterday it had been placed, as a reserve detachment, under the command of the hard-pressed infantry division that was defending a difficult sector of the western front of the Cauldron. And today they were expected to deploy?
‘Where are we headed, then, Captain?’ he enquired apprehensively. The captain’s lacklustre eyes shot him a searching look.
‘Kazatchi Hill,’ came the reply. ‘But don’t tell the men just yet.’
A shock ran through the lieutenant. Kazatchi Hill! Almost every foot soldier in the Cauldron knew and feared that name. It virtually amounted to a death sentence.
‘So, I want the battalion ready to move within the hour,’ the captain went on. ‘And send the company leaders to me straight away.’
On his way back to the stables, the lieutenant came across two soldiers who were using their sidearms to try to detach the swollen joints from the legs of a horse carcass. As the officer walked by, one of them got to his feet. He approached the lieutenant sheepishly, nervously fingering his camouflage jacket.
‘Begging your pardon, Lieutenant, sir,’ he muttered. ‘We’ve… that is, we’d like to… Could you give us a bite to eat by any chance?’
‘What are you doing here, then?’ asked Bonte suspiciously.
‘We’re all on our tod here. Our captain left us behind with his stores.’ The other soldier now stood up too.
‘It’s been a fortnight since we heard anything from the battalion. Who knows what might have happened to them? And our rations have run out…’
Bonte felt a pang of sympathy. Anyone who became detached from their unit here was a goner.
‘Yes, that’s bad news, guys. Let’s see if we can’t rustle up something for you. Where was your battalion headed?’
Two pairs of hooded eyes flashed at the lieutenant.
‘To the front, Lieutenant, sir. To Kazatchi Hill.’
An hour later, the battalion, loaded onto lorries, is bumping along towards the front, passing shot-up vehicles and the wrecks of downed planes. Sections of the broad, well-used track are obscured by drifting snow. When the trucks are forced to swing round the lips of bomb craters, they wallow about wildly, causing their cargoes to clatter and crash about in the back. The men, wrapped in blankets, sway to and fro on the bench seats; the cold and hunger have made them oblivious to the discomfort. The wind whistles through the lorries’ tarpaulin sides. Clasped in frozen hands, the troops’ rifles sway between their knees. Occasionally, one of them is woken from drowsy semi-consciousness by the muffled bang of one of the trucks backfiring. Extraordinary sights loom up on both sides of the road: severed horses’ legs sticking upright out of the earth, bleached ribs, curved as Turkish scimitars, and horses’ heads arranged in a neat pyramid. And over there… my God, what’s that? Yes, it really is: a person, a dead person – to judge from the brownish uniform, either a Russian or a Romanian. Like a tin soldier, the man’s corpse, frozen stiff, has been rammed head-first into the ground with its legs in the air. There is a light dusting of snow on the dirty grey soles of its feet.
‘The Bone Road!’ the driver tells Captain Eichert. ‘We had to mark where the roadway went somehow, ’cos it’s always getting covered by snowdrifts. And there was no wood to hand; people keep nicking it.’
The captain is an old stager. But a shiver runs down even his spine at the sight.
The lorries struggle up an incline. From the top, a small cluster of wooden huts comes into view. That must be the place where they’re hoping to find the regimental Staff HQ. The column stops by the first of the shacks, and the men climb out, stiff-legged. Light disruptive enemy artillery fire is being directed at the northern exit to the village. The ‘greenhorns’ huddle together like sheep and cast nervous glances at the sky when they hear a mortar burbling towards them. Some throw themselves to the ground, only to get to their feet again shamefacedly when the round explodes some way off. Lieutenant Dierk, commanding the second company, is at his wits’ end. He really wants to give them a rocket, but faced with this abject helplessness, clearly not meant maliciously, he hasn’t the heart to. His gaze wanders over to the eight men from his former unit, who are busy unhitching the four-barrelled flak guns from the trucks. Corporal Härtel is issuing orders as calmly as ever. Everything’s running like clockwork. He’s fortunate to have these guys on board still. They can provide some stability for the greenhorns until they’ve got over their first few days of stage fright.