In the afternoon, Unold called all the staff officers to a meeting in his bunker. On this occasion he was not lying in bed with a bottle of cognac beside him, as he had been wont to do since their arrival in Stalingradski, but received his fellow officers dressed in his grey leather coat, ready to go out. He was even freshly shaven.
‘Gentlemen!’
Unold’s voice, which was soft to begin with, was muffled so much by the woollen blankets hung up all round the walls as to be virtually inaudible.
‘Well, gentlemen, I approached the general staff again and asked them whether they really wanted, in all seriousness, to needlessly sacrifice an entire well-qualified divisional staff, which has no further use here, by sticking its officers in the front line and wasting them as simple pistol shooters. I might as well have banged my head against a brick wall. “No further use here, you say?” Schmidt laughed when I said that. “We’ve got plenty of tasks lined up for you!”’
Breuer cast his eye over the wall cladding, installed just to spare Unold’s nerves when shelling started, and thought of all the men outside freezing for lack of blankets.
‘And now I must take my leave of you,’ said Unold. ‘I’ve been ordered to go to Army High Command with Captain Engelhard to receive new orders. I’ve no idea what they are, or whether it’s a long- or a short-term assignment. In any event, though… Farewell!’
‘So, what do you make of that?’ Siebel asked Breuer as they trudged back through the ice-bound gorge to their quarters.
‘He just never lets up!’ continued the major, ‘but you mark my words, one day he’ll just up and get a flight out of here!’
When Lieutenant Wiese paid a visit to the commandant of the headquarters, Captain Stegen, to say his goodbyes, a young officer unknown to him was already there, and in the midst of a very animated anecdote. The captain stood up and shook Wiese’s hand.
‘So, all the best to you, dear Wiese, and please give our best regards to Germany!’
Gesturing towards the unknown officer, who had also stood up, Stegen announced: ‘Your replacement is here already. First Lieutenant Tausend has just flown in. He needs to get back to his battery without delay.’
Wiese glanced back and forth between the two officers. He estimated they were around the same age. And yet what a difference! On the one hand the thin, pallid intelligence officer in his threadbare uniform, tired, stooped and with a grey, drained-looking face. And on the other, the fresh-faced artilleryman, bursting with vigour and with the fresh air of home still clinging to him.
‘So, you’re flying out?’ Tausend enquired with a disparaging look.
‘That’s right, as an army messenger,’ replied Wiese.
‘Aha, I see. Still, not a very enviable task, eh?’
Wiese shrugged his shoulders and swiftly took his leave. Captain Stegen shook his head sadly as he left. There was a group of staff officers (made up of those who secretly envied Wiese) who expected him to act outraged or at least feign regret at the task he had been assigned. It was only seemly for him to do so. When all was said and done, he was a German officer, after all! Equally, there were many others who would have been delighted if he’d been openly overjoyed at the prospect. But no one could understand the profound, detached indifference that Wiese displayed. This indifference was not put on, it was quite genuine. It arose from the feeling that he would never be able to escape Stalingrad come what may, however long he lived. The terrible events here in the Cauldron, condensed for him in that gruesome experience in Dubininsky (the full horror of which a kind providence had still kept hidden from him), would follow him wherever his path might lead him. And this same indifference was also no doubt to blame for the fact that Lieutenant Wiese, official army messenger, never reached the airfield at Pitomnik – that gateway to the outside world that was the focus of so many fevered fantasies of the dying and so many secret hopes and yearnings of the living. On a road in Gumrak pitted with reddish-brown bomb craters, he failed to heed the alarmed warning shouts of bystanders and the ominous drone overhead and drove straight into the path of a stick of bombs dropped by a Russian plane. The third explosion blew his Kübelwagen off the road, hurling it on to the verge and peppering it full of holes like a sieve.
The young first lieutenant, the man by the name of Tausend, is sitting in front of Colonel von Hermann and explaining his circumstances. News reached him of the encirclement of the Sixth Army while he was on an artillery training course in France. He immediately announces his withdrawal; he wants to get back to his regiment. On the return journey, he leaves himself barely any time to visit his young wife. The military authorities in Millerovo order him to take command of a new operational company assembled from soldiers back from leave. However, he refuses to give up his quest, writes countless transfer requests and keeps badgering his superiors. Finally, with a bewildered shrug, he’s granted leave to fly back into the Cauldron. So now here he is! His eyes twinkle, and he’s laughing like he’s just pulled off a schoolboy prank.
The colonel stares earnestly at Tausend’s carefree face.
‘You do know the predicament we’re in here, don’t you?’
‘Yes, sir, Colonel!’ the lieutenant smiles. ‘But things could be worse. Everyone back home’s full of confidence. Tanks in their droves are underway here. It’s an awesome sight! Give it four or five weeks and we’ll be liberated. There’s no other possible outcome, Colonel!’
The colonel says nothing. Looking into the eyes of the young man, he catches a glimpse of the old world of soldiering in which he was raised. Parades, flags flying, sparkling uniforms, the crunch of marching boots. A lot of this was superficial and hollow, nothing but ossified ritual. But how much genuine enthusiasm and honest belief there was too, and how much pride in German military might and readiness on the part of the country’s youth to make sacrifices! Like a reflection of his own earlier life, this all comes shining over to the colonel from the dim and distant past, across an abyss over which hangs a banner with the name ‘Stalingrad’ – Stalingrad, the graveyard of the German Army. Here it had met its end, dishonoured in body and soul, abused and trampled in the mud by scoundrels. This is how the colonel sees things right now, and it’s quite an epiphany for an old soldier. And he continues to hold his peace. He gets up and accompanies the lieutenant to the door.
And the young soldier who does everything by the book is disconcerted to feel the divisional commander put his arm gently around his shoulders.
A clear, bitterly cold January. Across the crackling expanse of snowy wasteland west of Gumrak, shimmering in the glow of the yellowish winter sun, a four-wheel-drive Kübelwagen made its laborious way to a distant line of snow ramparts, topped with radio masts. This location was home to the Sixth Army’s General Staff.