Vehicles are also giving up the ghost during this night, dying of lack of fuel and of the snow, in which they stick fast. Three five-ton tractor units pulling light howitzers have stopped dead in the middle of the road. Several men are busy removing the breechblocks from the guns and fetching their few belongings down from the trucks. A lieutenant stands and supervises them; he should have blown up the guns back in Dubininsky. But he hadn’t been able to bring himself to do it; instead he’d secretly siphoned off fuel from the tanks of some fully laden staff trucks. It has taken him and his guns as far as this, but now the games’s up… He stands there staring vacantly, his arm resting on one of the gun barrels. Staff cars sway past him, along with lorries piled high with crates, mattresses and bed frames. The transport section of a staff corps. One of the lorries is towing a car with a dismantled engine… The driver of a three-ton Opel truck stands beside his vehicle, clutching two loaves of army bread.
‘Bread for petrol!’ he whispers to the drivers of passing vehicles. ‘Anyone swap some fuel for a loaf?’ Someone knocks the bread from his hand as they drive by. With a cry of rage, the man leaps forward to retrieve it, but slips over and gets caught in the tracks of a self-propelled gun. The heavy vehicle rocks slightly as it lumbers over the obstacle. A short death scream is drowned out by the grinding rattle of the broad tracks. In the meantime, men have clambered into the back of the abandoned Opel and are silently rifling through its cargo for anything edible or for warm clothing. Crates are tipped out, presently followed by suitcases, items of uniform, boots, radio equipment and bundles of official documents. Down below, others are standing around, sorting through the plunder, rejecting some items but pointlessly encumbering themselves with others, only to cast them off, one by one, after just a few steps.
A VW Kübelwagen that was trying to get past the truck sticks fast in the verge. Its tyres, wrapped with snow chains, spin wildly, kicking up dirty snow behind it. An officer paces back and forth beside the car. His long fur coat is unbuttoned and his sheepskin cap has tipped back on his head. It is Colonel Steigmann.
‘Stop!’ he shouts. ‘Lend a hand here, will you? Come on, someone give us a push!’
He shouts himself hoarse. No one is listening to him. He leaps over to the line of figures shambling past, tugging at their sleeves and staring into their expressionless faces. They casually shrug him off, push him aside. He shrinks visibly, all the determination drains from his face and his eyes narrow and moisten. The giant of a man shivers with impotent rage.
Harras lets himself be carried onward. Mechanically he moves his stiff feet: one – two, one – two. The road appears endless to him, and time infinite. He is bemused by the unreality of this grim night. It is as though he has been transported to some dead planet in the outer realms of the universe. Is this still the Earth, then, this awful, silent, icy wasteland surrounding him here? Are these still human beings, these grimacing, unfeeling wraiths? In his state of utter exhaustion, tantalizing images start to swim before his consciousness, images full of light, warmth and life. Spring meadows full of flowers, sunshine, the scent of lilac, and soft music…
Once more the column grinds to a halt. Half-frozen bodies slip down from the lorries and try to instil some warmth into frozen limbs by shaking their arms jerkily and stamping up and down. Meantime, others on foot who still have some energy and hope left crowd around the trucks to see if they can find themselves a free space, but are pushed away fiercely by those sitting up back. Harras gropes his way along the line of stationary vehicles. He knows he could keel over at any moment and he doesn’t even fight against it any longer. He is brought up with a jolt as he walks into the back of another person. A pair of eyes looks at him from above a heavily frosted scarf. From their depths there suddenly comes a flicker of recognition.
‘Is that you, Lieutenant, sir?’ says the figure. ‘Are you still alive?’
Saying this, he tugs aside the scarf. It is his batman.
‘Hey, Franz, Karl! Give me a hand here! It’s our lieutenant!’
Hands are extended towards Harras, hauling him up into the back of a lorry. He sinks down between crates and barrels and densely packed figures dusted with snow. Men from his company are among them. The truck is one from the battalion’s transport unit. Someone pulls a sheepskin from the back of the lorry and blankets are thrown over him. The truck moves slowly forward.
Somewhere further back in the stream of vehicles, Colonel Steigmann’s VW is on the move again. A colonel without a regiment – a head without a body. Can a head keep on living when the body has been torn to pieces? At one point, there’s a bang somewhere at the rear. Damn it, thinks the driver, a puncture! But the car trundles on at the same slow tempo. Just a backfire!
Harras is unable to provide any answers to the brief questions his men ask him. An overpowering feeling is welling up within him and stifling his ability to speak. He looks up to the pitch-black night sky, where the bright stars once more seem close and familiar to him. People! This is the one thought that comes into his head: these are people, after all! He drags the sheepskin over his head and nestles his frost-stiffened face in the woolly pelt. He feels small and safe, like a child back in the arms of his mother. Her deep voice is ringing in his ears. ‘My boy, my boy!’ That’s what she always used to say to him. She’d been so proud of him, and had shown such faith in him. Tears are running down his face. ‘What have they done to us?’ he thinks. ‘My God, what have they done to us?’
Colonel Steigmann’s car finally noses its way into the mayhem of the Talovoy Gorge. The divisional staff must be somewhere around here! The driver switches off the engine. There’s no movement in the back of the car. The driver turns round and sees that the colonel is lying dead, his pistol still clutched in his hand. The blood on his face is frozen. So, it hadn’t been the car backfiring after all…