The little fellow thinks long and hard about this.
‘There was this soldier there,’ he says at length, ‘a little ginger guy. He was only allowed to say a few words to us, and the commissar watched him like a hawk. He said we should say hello from him to our comrades when we got back and tell them they should all defect, and that Hitler’s to blame for everything, and the Red Army has only our best interests at heart.’
Hollow laughter breaks out all around.
‘Oh yeah, I’m sure that’s what they’ve got planned for us!’
‘Us defect? Yeah, right, that’d suit them very nicely, the dozy idiots! Reckon we’d rather wait till Adolf gets us out of here!’
‘So this bloke was a German soldier, you say? There’s no way!’
‘It must have been a Russian in disguise! They’ll try anything, those devils!’
‘Or maybe a Jew! They can all speak German.’
‘Red hair, you say? And bandy legs and jug ears too, right? I knew a bloke like that once. Used to peddle mousetraps round Finkenwerder before ’33.’
‘Pipe down, will ya! Let him finish his story!’
‘So then,’ the little soldier continues, ‘this guy that looked like a German soldier says we should ask this German sergeant major who’s mentioned somewhere in the reports and who’d been over with the Russians once. Says that he knew exactly what the score was with the Russians, but that we’d have to grill him to get the truth out of him… Don’t you remember the story, Lieutenant, sir? There was a lot of talk going round about it one time. What was he called again? Had a name like a dog!’
‘Will you lot just shut up!’ yelled the paymaster over the general hubbub. ‘Zip it right now, or I’ll chuck you all out! You can’t hear yourself think with all this bloody chatter going on!’
Grumbling resentfully, the troops lapsed into silence. At the back, though, someone said in a stage whisper: ‘Fat ponce!’
A few of the men keep on whispering, quizzing the extraordinary messenger.
Harras feels a chill run down his spine. Who on earth might that ginger-haired scoundrel be who had such a vivid memory of him? That was all he needed, for stupid rumours about his escapade to become common knowledge here! Nor did it seem like a good idea to fall into the Russians’ hands for a second time. He was really up shit creek now! He had always been a conscientious, keen and spirited soldier, exactly the type that officers loved. And it had been solely down to his courage and his resourcefulness that he’d been made an officer and had been personally commended by the CO. In normal times, he’d have been made for life, but here… They couldn’t expect him to allow himself to be shot like a dog, or starve or freeze to death for sweet FA! He had to get out of here as quickly as he could… But how? Nothing had come of the fact that, when the Russians launched their big offensive, the initial shock had caused Harras’s Luger to go off and the bullet to go right through his left hand, of all the rotten luck (he was far from acknowledging that this had been anything but an unfortunate accident). As if they’d fly someone out with an injury of that kind when they were even keeping people here who’d lost an entire leg! Harras groaned quietly to himself. Perhaps he ought to try going back to the aerodrome once more, despite the constant air raids. He could lend a hand there loading up the severely wounded… maybe one time have a quiet word with one of the pilots… Harras keeps turning the idea over in his mind until he finally lapses from sheer hunger and tiredness into a fitful half-sleep.
Hours pass. A few shells explode outside. Harras’s subconsciousness registers ‘air raid’ but lets his exhausted body sleep on. Suddenly the hatch to the bunker flies open. Along with gusts of icy wind and snow flurries, piercing shouts penetrate the room.
‘Alarm! Everybody out! The Russians are coming! Russian tanks!’
The paymaster is the first to leap up.
‘Oh Christ,’ he shouts. ‘The stores!’
He grabs his fur jacket and makes for the exit hatch, but then quickly turns back and crams some tins and loaves into his pockets before clambering out of the bunker.
‘Good idea!’ thinks Harras, still half-asleep. ‘Smart move. That’s one way of clearing out the bunker, at least!’ So he sits there calmly while everyone stumbles over him, shouting and swearing. But after the yelling and shooting continues for a while outside, he too struggles to his feet. The table has been overturned and the lantern extinguished. In the glow of the overheated stove he can still see some men crouching round the walls.
‘Hey! Don’t you want to leave? It’s not a drill! The Russians are here!’
No one answers, no one moves. Behind the table, a man is crawling on the ground scraping together bits of spilt fat from the dirty puddles on the floor.
Harras struggles out into the cold. A grotesque sight meets his eyes. All round him, people are emerging out of the ground! All of a sudden, he finds himself whisked up in a wild maelstrom of fleeing men and carried away. Images of blind panic flit past him: running and screaming figures carrying pieces of clothing, weapons and equipment or desperately trying to start frozen engines. With a dull roar, some vehicles spring into life and, bumping into one another, roar off, ploughing into the heaving mass of humanity ahead of them. He sees burning lorries glowing white-hot, the wide-open, yelling mouths of officers frantically and fruitlessly trying to stem the tide of retreat, and men grasping at the fleeing vehicles, attempting to get a handhold on radiator grilles, tarpaulin sides or gun barrels as they pass. As some soldiers try to climb on to tracked vehicles, they get trapped in the moving tracks and fall to the ground with lacerated hands. As he listens, the general cacophony of shouting, with some sharp cries repeatedly ringing above it, the rattling and barking of engines that haven’t yet warmed up, and the dry chattering of machine-gun bursts, which in the crystal-clear frosty air sound uncannily close at hand, all merge into a single, terrible din. Anti-tank shells come whizzing over their heads in a flattened arc. Beneath their flaming tails, the whimpering huddle of people pause and flinch like they’ve been whipped before rushing crazily on.
The seething Cauldron is finally boiling over. A single notion, hatched in several desperate individuals’ minds, lends the flow a direction and an objective: Stalingrad! Gumrak, Pitomnik, that was all a fraud. Stalingrad, though, that can’t possibly be an illusion. There, they’ll find thick walls, deep cellars, and warmth, warmth! There they’ll finally reach their destination and won’t have to keep on running through the night and the snow. There they can crawl into a hole and wait for either a miracle or the end. So, onward to Stalingrad!
The seething human tide rolls on to the east. It is a bright, clear night beneath a velvet-black sky sprinkled with points of light. A deadly cold descends from this vastness of space. The air itself seems to solidify, trembling and shimmering in a glittering dance of ice crystals as fine as dust.
The firing has ceased. Gradually the feverish flow begins to cool down into a viscous lava of vehicles and people, flowing on incessantly but now ever more sluggishly, creeping forward metre by metre. The lorries and cars advance several vehicles abreast, bumping and nudging past each other or grinding one another into immobility. The snow squeaks sharply under the pressure of their turning wheels. Heavy tracked vehicles come rumbling and rattling along, turning jerkily and making the hard ground rumble as they pass. Steadily, the clusters of men begin to drop off the canvas sides, mudguards, running boards and bonnets. One by one they fall off, frozen stiff, into the carriageway, where they are run over, mangled and crushed.
Harras trots along between the vehicles. That’s the only way of making any headway. On the verges the snow is lying knee-deep. By now his clothes have lost the last vestiges of the warmth from the bunker. An icy band of cold grips him ever tighter. The frost creeps up his arms, seeps through his felt boots and up his legs and gnaws at his entrails. He feels like his eyeballs are embedded in dishes of ice, that his nostrils are clogged up with frozen threads, and that every breath he takes is laced with sharp needles. A walrus moustache of ice is slowly forming on his balaclava. His brain feels like it has been paralysed. He hardly notices the people who are creeping along beside him, the horde of lost souls who have no more energy or willpower left to clamber on to a vehicle. Wrapped in blankets, their hands buried in their coat pockets and their heads shrouded in cloths and scarves, they haul themselves onward, supporting their wounded or frostbitten limbs on sticks and crutches or taking painful, staggering steps, one at a time, on feet wrapped in formless bundles of rags or straw overshoes. As they go, they leave elephants’ tracks behind them in the slushy snow. Hardly anyone is carrying a weapon any more; even through gloves, hands would freeze hard to metal barrels on a night like this. One or two of them are pulling along little sleds piled with bags or equipment, and paying no heed to anything that falls off. Cold and hunger have killed stone dead all thoughts and feelings, any glimmer of obedience or sense of duty or camaraderie, any last vestiges of helpfulness or even of pity. Somewhere deep within them there still glows a tiny spark of life, which drives them on. It is just enough to sustain the naked urge for self-preservation, and the impulse to find food and warmth. They creep along mechanically and ghostlike, on the edge of dying of exposure. Here and there, one of them topples over this edge, falling down silently. He makes one final effort to lift his torso from the snow, and falls back; slowly his hand tries to support his heavy head, but slips off. Then his body moves no more. The others stumble over him and go on their way.