The paymaster, the officer who had entered the bunker with the captain, breathes a heavy sigh. ‘That’s not possible, I’m afraid, General.’
‘What? Not possible? It must be! That’s what you’re there for!’
‘I don’t have any more rations, General! For weeks now, all we’ve been handing out are the hundred and fifty grams of bread a day per man that we’re given. I really don’t have anything more than that – no extra bread, no tinned meat. I could provision three or four men now at a pinch, but two hundred…’
The general lapses into a sudden state of apathy. His hands make a helpless gesture. Quietly, he says, ‘Oh well, they’ll just have to deploy as they are, then.’
He comes up to the silent captain and takes both of his hands in his. There are tears in his eyes again. He whispers, ‘It’s dreadful, I know. But there’s nothing I can do to help you.’
After a considerable wait, in response to an appeal by the Corps, the High Command revokes the order given to Colonel von Hermann. The general can scarcely find the time to take his leave of the visitors; he has long since returned to poring over the maps with his adjutant.
Under cover of the pitch-black night, the staff car jolts its way back to the old command post. An icy wind howls through the gaps in the bodywork and gnaws at the men’s limbs even through the blankets and greatcoats. The three officers travel in silence. Captain Gedig can feel his teeth chattering uncontrollably from the fierce cold. He was prepared for a lot of things, but hadn’t envisaged his return would be remotely like this. What had become of the happy times in Berlin, and the Christmas he’d spent in Gotha? What had once been a shining reality was suddenly submerged, extinguished. Through his feverish brain, like a film, rolls a sequence of images of that procession of the dead, setting out from somewhere beyond the Cauldron perimeter to liberate the Sixth Army.
There they go, dragging themselves through the darkness in their thin coats, their field caps perched on their heads. Some of them have wrapped rags around their ears to protect them from the frost. Their rifles are carelessly slung over their backs, and rattling in their greatcoat pockets are the ten bullets they’ve each been issued with. Hungry and shivering from cold, they trudge on through the knee-deep snow. Every so often, one of them keels over with a loud groan, picks himself up and then, after staggering on for a few more steps, finally collapses, never to rise again.
Their leader’s hand motions indistinctly forward. Up there is the hill, the position they’ve been ordered to take. Their faces, emaciated by illness and hunger, stare into the distant darkness illuminated only by the muzzle flare of the Russian guns. There are no trenches or bunkers up there. Before them, the white expanse stretches out endlessly, with flurries of powdered snow sweeping across it. There is no going back on the road they have come by. Anyone who is spared from being killed by enemy bullets will surely succumb to the biting cold of this icy January night.
The column disperses and fans out across the plain. One after another, they slip to the ground and are slowly enveloped by the white shroud as tracer bullets from Russian machine guns whistle over their heads. There’s no shouting, no questions, no noise at all. That kind of deathly hush can only come from people who have given up on everything. But this terrible silence rises up to the heavens like a single painfully pressing question, to which no answer comes: ‘What is the point of these sacrifices, what are they for?’
In a blinding insight born of all that he has experienced over the past few days, the truth now dawns on Captain Gedig: the High Command… Army Group Manstein… No, these two hundred sacrificial lambs won’t save the Sixth Army. No one can save it now. It too is going to be put to the sword, pointlessly, senselessly. It is all over.
‘It’s nothing short of criminal!’
The two officers sitting at the back of the bunker give a start. What was that? Did someone speak? Or are some thoughts so distressing and urgent that they can miraculously express themselves? The colonel up front there can’t possibly have said anything so outrageous. It’s just not possible! But then the two of them hear quite clearly what Colonel von Hermann says next:
‘And the worst thing is, there’s no way out now… and woe betide anyone who tries to save his own skin after he’s had to demand this of his men!’
‘So, there’s no escape from here?’ thinks Breuer desperately. ‘Is there such a thing as a “must”? Is there really and truly no way out?’
And he is at a loss to explain why the image of Lance Corporal Lakosch pops into his head.
When Colonel von Hermann got back to his bunker, Unold pushed a note under his nose.
‘High Command just called,’ he said. ‘You’re to be transferred with immediate effect, as per your wish.’
The colonel glanced at the note, giving a couple of thoughtful nods.
‘But that’s Calmus’s division they want me to take command of! What’s happened to Calmus?’
‘Nervous breakdown… apparently!’
‘My, my! Is that division in the northern sector of our eastern front?’
The lieutenant colonel cast an eye over the map.
‘It covers the sector from the tractor factory to Rynok,’ he replied briefly.
‘And what’s going to happen about the formation of fortress battalions?’
‘The CO of the rocket regiment will take over responsibility for that.’
‘Hmm,’ said the colonel, casting a searching look at his chief of operation’s inscrutable face. ‘So that now makes you and the rest of the divisional staff redundant, so to speak?’
Unold did not reply; at the corners of his mouth, little creases started to form.
‘Well, my dear Unold,’ the colonel went on, and his choice of words came across like he was trying to expunge the man from his life once and for alclass="underline" ‘then I wish you all the very best for your life hereafter and for your career!’
Breuer found his men in a state of considerable uproar.
‘Is it true, Lieutenant, that we’re shifting command posts this evening already?’
‘People are saying that the planned breakthrough is going to happen after all!’
‘Are our advance Panzer units really just outside Kalach already?’
‘Gentlemen, please!’ Breuer told them irritably. ‘That’s all a load of rubbish. We’re staying put, and everything stays the same – for the time being, anyhow.’
The men sat back down, deflated. Corporal Herbert handed the first lieutenant a small pile of filled-out telephone message forms.
‘It’s the communiqués from the Corps,’ he said eagerly. ‘I’ve put them all together.’ Breuer skimmed through the slips. Their content was the same as that of all reports over the past few days: the Russians were reinforcing along the whole of the Cauldron front. And a report of an enemy breakthrough at Zybenko? Well, he’d just experienced that at first hand. Suddenly, something in the pile caught his eye and made him pause.
‘What’s this nonsense! “At one location, one hundred and twenty Stalin organs are believed to be massed.” That’s got to be an error! They must mean twelve!’
He reached for a pencil to strike out the zero. But Herbert assured him, ‘No, no, Lieutenant, sir, that’s right. It struck me as odd, too, so I queried it straight away. Eighty have been reported at another site!’
Breuer blanched. He did some quick mental arithmetic: a hundred and twenty multiple rocket launchers, each mounted on a simple lorry with an operating crew of four or five men, 8-centimetre calibre… that made a total of three thousand, eight hundred and forty rounds. Or maybe they had some of the heavier-calibre launchers too, the 13-centimetre ones – that would mean almost two thousand rounds in a single salvo. Two thousand 13-centimetre rockets landing on a single spot, on this open plain, which offered no cover or protection whatsoever for the men. Every living thing would be wiped out in an instant! He continued with his calculations: one German unit of heavy field howitzers of 10-centimetre calibre, which required a complement of more than six hundred soldiers and the same number of horses, could fire just forty-eight rounds in any one salvo…