Colonel von Hermann stood up on the main road, where a stiff breeze was blowing. He had sent his staff car on ahead, down into the gorge where the command post was located. He wanted to have a few minutes alone to collect his thoughts and take stock of what he had just heard. His gaze wandered past the dome of the church in Gorodishche out to the grey houses down in the east, beyond which the ribbon of the Volga could just be made out. Down there somewhere was where the extreme forward positions of the division he was now in command of were situated. The Volga front had been quiet for some time now. The only activity was the occasional reconnaissance party, aerial attacks by night and sporadic disruptive artillery fire from the far side of the river. Only yesterday the colonel had visited the well-fortified positions out front there and been delighted at the atmosphere of peace and optimism he had encountered. Of course, the effects of the Cauldron were also apparent here, in the reduced rations and the fact that the division had had more and more men ‘combed out’ of it to reinforce other units elsewhere. Occasionally, an entire cohesive unit of the division would disappear to shore up the defences somewhere in the rear, never to return again. In general, though, they remained relatively unaffected by what was going on in the west. Just like his gaze right now, so the eyes of the whole division were turned eastward. That was where the front was, their front, which the men had contested and held at a huge cost in lives, and which they were determined to continue to hold. And now he was expected to tell them that all their sacrifices had been in vain… Would they believe him, would they be able to grasp the enormity of the present situation? Well, they’d have no choice but to believe it, when in just a few days’ time the front rolled up towards their rear, and when the remnants of defeated divisions and columns of marching casualties showed up here. And it would be a good thing if the men were forewarned of this well in advance.
‘So, von Hermann? What does the Corps say? Have you broached the question of fuel for the stoves with them yet?
Colonel von Hermann turned around. In front of him, with the fur collar of his greatcoat turned up against the cold and his hands buried deep in the pockets, stood Major General Calmus, the discharged divisional commander. He waved his hand in the vague direction of the nearby gorge, which was sparsely wooded with alders and poplars. In grateful recognition of this natural wonder, the troops had named this particular balka the ‘forested ravine’.
‘I took another look at the stocks of wood down there,’ Calmus continued. ‘It’s incredible how much timber they’ve felled in such a short time. There’s simply not enough there, old man! There’s no way it’s going to last us until the new year!’
The colonel looked thoughtfully at the general’s frost-reddened, worried face. When the news of the encirclement came through, Major General Calmus had suffered a nervous breakdown. From that point on, he showed not the slightest interest in leadership, but sat in his bunker the whole time calculating when the army would finally starve to death if this or that size of ration was issued daily. Or he spent his time mooning about the staff divisions bemoaning the dreadful situation and seeking reassurance from his colleagues.
In the end, in view of the poor state of his health, the army had relieved him of command of the division. However, he was told in no uncertain terms that he was to remain with the unit, to avoid unsettling the men.
‘Pretty soon we won’t have any more need of firewood, General, sir,’ said the colonel. ‘The western front has been overrun by the Russians. In a few days, our fate here will be decided too.’
Any semblance of composure vanished from the general’s face. His hands dabbed ineffectually at the fur lapels of his coat.
‘Overrun, you say? So, what’s going to happen now? My God, it’s a catastrophe!’
The major general’s expression froze, his mouth gaped and his lower lip trembled slightly. He swung around and ran down the slope, taking short steps as he went. The colonel watched him depart and shook his head. So that was a German officer, one like thousands of others, an educated, refined, cultivated person, a man of spirit, who up till now had in times of both war and peace been the very model of a good soldier. And now a man like him was simply collapsing here, and whining like some old woman. Had Stalingrad changed people so radically? Or was it that they were being revealed in their true colours here, stripped bare of all pretence and fripperies?
Colonel von Hermann mused on all this without any arrogance. After all, what made him any better than this general? A modicum of composure and self-control, that was all. And what lurked behind that façade? Uncertainty, inner turmoil and tortured anguish…
The colonel slowly made his way down the steep path leading to the gorge. He had been weaned on the notions of ‘duty’ and ‘honour’. At the military academy he had taught courses on the honour of an officer and a soldier’s duty. These consisted in obedience, courage and being prepared to lay down your life at any time for the Fatherland. That was clear-cut. No open-ended questions, no complications there. The fact that soldiers fell in battle, that units suffered losses or were wiped out, these were painful but self-evident necessities. And the fact that this death often looked so very different from the heroes’ deaths celebrated in soldiers’ songs and books about war should not… no, really ought not to be allowed to override this necessity. The colonel clenched his teeth, and the muscles in his face tensed. He made a conscious effort to suppress that horrific image he had strenuously succeeded in banishing forever from his waking consciousness, but which haunted him every night in his sleep. And this image was always the same: flames, blood-curdling shrieks, the fresh face of a young man twisted in the most ghastly agonies and ultimately a head, small, black, and with bared teeth… No, any individual, personal concerns should not play any role here! Colonel von Hermann was too much of a soldier to cast doubt on things that he had taught countless times and demanded of others when they happened to hit him with full force.
But there was also something else that was eating him up and it was growing stronger with every day that passed. That was the situation here on the Volga, the death of huge numbers of men, hundreds of thousands in fact, with only a small fraction killed as a direct result of enemy action and by far the greater part dying from hunger and the cold. It could all be ended with just a word, a brief command… yet this command was never issued. Instead, a whole army was being ordered to starve and freeze to death! This was completely beyond the normal bounds of a soldier’s experience, and nothing to do any more with duty or honour. And that in turn prompted the otherwise strictly taboo question for any military man, namely why they were fighting? The colonel had tormented himself with this question, and after a thorough investigation of all the available documents he needed to come to a judgement on the current military situation, he had become convinced that there was no longer any military necessity for maintaining the siege of Stalingrad that could possibly justify such a huge sacrifice. Hitler had promised that they’d be relieved, but he hadn’t been able to keep his promise. Now he needed to take a hands-off approach towards the army, and allow it to act as it saw fit and on its own authority. Yet he wasn’t doing so. Why was that? Could it be that three hundred thousand men were dying here just because one man did not want to admit that he was… No, he must stop himself from thinking! It only opened up a yawning abyss.