The blood-curdling screams have ceased, and the faces have vanished from the windows. The nose of the aircraft is now one vast sea of flame, forcing the onlookers to retreat to a safer distance. Only Lieutenant Wiese stays rooted to the spot. His cap has fallen into the snow and the searing heat is scorching his face. He doesn’t notice it. He stands there like a statue. Slowly, his arm sinks to his side and the pistol drops from his hand. Then he turns around and walks stiffly and with hesitant steps towards the circle of men. His gait is that of a sleepwalker. His staring eyes look as if they are sightless. Silently, the men move aside to let him pass. Breuer stretches out his hand. ‘Wiese,’ he says quietly, ‘come here.’
The lieutenant’s vacant gaze passes straight through him. He staggers past them through the snow with weary steps. Meanwhile, at the rear of the aircraft, disregarding the flames, the soldiers keep returning to fall upon the cremated cubes of dried pea, jostling and fighting with one another and scraping up handfuls of pea-flour mixed with dirty snow into mess tins and cooking pots. One man’s clothes have caught fire. He runs across the field waving his arms and yelling. No one pays him any attention. He hurls himself into a deep snow bank and rolls around in it like a dog, whimpering.
Even after several hours, the wreck of the burned-out plane is still smouldering. Soldiers continue to poke around with sticks in the smoking debris; here and there, men are nibbling on charcoal-crusted lumps of pea-flour that have been welded together. The two dead men have been recovered from the wreckage. They lie in the snow, blackened and unrecognizable, shrivelled by the heat to the size of dwarves, and with a few strips of charred clothing still clinging to their grotesquely twisted limbs. Standing over them is Colonel von Hermann, who has driven out to the crash site with Captain Engelhard. He stares in silence at their desiccated, shrunken faces, which look for all the world like wizened apples. Then he slowly takes off his greatcoat and lays it over the bodies.
Colonel von Hermann sits in his bunker in front of the small trestle table. He rubs his hand a couple of times across his eyes, which he has screwed up like something is dazzling him. There is a knock at the door. The colonel wakes with a start from his reverie.
‘Come in!’
The sergeant from the adjutant’s office enters and gives a brisk salute.
‘Begging your pardon, Colonel, sir,’ he stammers, ‘I wanted… I thought… Lieutenant Colonel Unold isn’t here, is he, sir?’
‘No, he isn’t back from Corps HQ yet. What did you want to speak to him about?’
‘Nothing special, Colonel. It’s to do with the dead pilots’ belongings. I just wanted to know what we should do with them, seeing that their identity papers were burned with them.’
He places a few small objects on the table: the melted remains of a propelling pencil, a charred cigarette lighter, a handful of coins and various other items.
‘Well, Sergeant,’ says the colonel, pensively weighing one of the objects in his hand, a little lump of gold that must once have been a ring. Embedded in this shiny lump is a stone, a burgundy-red, polished stone… and engraved in the stone is a coat of arms.
‘Oh, sweet Jesus, Colonel!’ the sergeant whispers when he catches sight of it.
The colonel himself has gone as white as a sheet. He grips the corner of the table with one hand, and his body is trembling right down to the tiniest muscles in his face, from which all semblance of composure has vanished.
‘Colonel, aren’t you feeling well, sir? Should I…?’
A brusque, dismissive wave of the hand shoos the sergeant from the bunker. He departs, shaking his head and full of unease.
When Lieutenant Colonel Unold returns from his meeting at the Corps, he recoils in shock at the sight of the colonel’s deathly white, mask-like face. He doesn’t dare ask what the matter is, though. This alien countenance seems just too forbidding to him.
‘So, my friend,’ he thinks to himself, ‘it’s finally got to you as well, has it?’ In his own steadily worsening state of nervous exhaustion, it’s something of a pleasant surprise to discover that even people he’d thought were as solid as a rock have their Achilles’ heel. Besides, as the day progresses, the colonel is as calm and matter-of-fact as ever. Only his voice has become harsh and brittle, and his eyes, once so lively, now seem somehow to have turned inwards. Yet Unold is far too wrapped up in his own woes to give much thought to the change in his CO’s demeanour. Nor does he notice that the photograph in the silver frame that has always stood on the desk in front of the colonel’s chair is no longer there.
For several days on the trot, the occupants of the Intelligence Section bunker are treated to a thick pea porridge. It tastes divine. Sonderführer Fröhlich is full of praise, and offers the opinion as he wolfs down the tasty stew that, as far as he’s concerned, a Junkers could crash-land nearby every week. The faint aftertaste of charcoal and smoke seems scarcely to bother the men. Geibel even thinks it adds a certain something. And Corporal Herbert, who has prepared the dish with the utmost care, finds his culinary pride wounded by Lieutenant Wiese’s point-blank refusal to eat so much as a mouthful.
A dense pall of grey hangs over the white wasteland of Stalingrad. The four-wheel-drive staff car makes heavy weather as it ploughs its way through the deep snow covering the roads. Up front, next to the driver, sits Colonel von Hermann, and on the back seat First Lieutenant Breuer and Captain Gedig have hunkered down and made themselves tolerably snug in a cocoon of coats and blankets.
The captain returned from his training course yesterday. On the way back, he was interviewed at Army High Command regarding a request he had put in for promotion some time before. When they learned that he was flying back to Stalingrad, they began to take an interest in him and detained him for an entire day. Gedig’s impressions of the place were not very encouraging. He soon noticed that the attitude of fatherly and condescending optimism that they displayed towards him, a young and inexperienced officer, simply didn’t ring true and that the generals and officials among the top brass who were responsible for the Eastern Front treated the topic of Stalingrad with undisguised scepticism. And he found the atmosphere at Army Group Manstein even more disconcerting. Growing confusion reigned there as a result of the front being pulled ever further back and the rapid Russian advance on Rostov-on-Don. Every moment brought new, urgent and totally insoluble demands, which left scarcely any room for considering the fate of the Sixth Army, let alone for a serious attempt at relieving the Cauldron. Gedig realized with horror that they had clearly already written off the Sixth Army here, once and for all. However, the captain was careful not to recount all this when he got back to his unit. It was essential to display optimism, optimism at all costs, even when you were up to your neck in it. His brief visit to the High Command and the Army Group had taught him that at least. And what would be the point of alarming one’s comrades anyway? Besides, he took the view that things actually weren’t as bad as some people were making out. After all, Hitler must have had good grounds for broadcasting his message: ‘You can rely on me with rock-like confidence!’ Consequently, even now Gedig is perfectly happy to chat away cheerfully about his experiences back home.