That was the night of the sixteenth of January, 1943. For some time thereafter, long lines of abandoned, looted vehicles, discarded clothes, scattered papers, weapons and equipment, frozen-stiff bodies crouching down in the lee of cars or crushed and splattered to an unrecognizable pulp on the carriageway scarred the route from Pitomnik to Talovoy. In the event, it turned out that all this chaos and panic, and all the many deaths that ensued, had been triggered by nothing more than a Russian raiding party, supported by two or three tanks, which had probed as far as the village of Pitomnik and, after a few firefights, had promptly withdrawn again.
The lieutenant colonel had made himself comfortable at the quarters. Major Siebel had gone out early that morning with Breuer, so he was hoping to spend a pleasant day with no disturbances. A search of their new quarters had turned up a well-thumbed volume bound in linen. Stretched out contentedly on a bench, he carefully polished his pince-nez and then, with raised eyebrows, opened the book. In large red letters on the title page he read the word ‘Bread!’ and underneath it the subtitle ‘The Defence of Tsaritsyn’. What was this – the author’s name was Tolstoy? That was that old Russian count with delusional ideas on religion and social reform! But that Tolstoy’s Christian name was Leo, if memory served, whereas this writer was called Alexei. Ah well, probably a son of the old Tolstoy. Sometimes becoming a writer was a hereditary thing… He started leafing through the book. It was all about this dump here, Stalingrad! The city had once been called Tsaritsyn, had it? Aha… And it turned out that German troops had been here before in numbers, in 1918. Well, well, you learn something new every day! Seems it had been a do-or-die affair for the Bolsheviks back then, too. Well, hadn’t he been saying all along that what happened at Stalingrad would decide the outcome of the war! If the Germans were to succeed this time around, then it’d finally be curtains for Stalin and his comrades. He put the book down and picked at his teeth reflectively. All the same, it had to be said that things weren’t going too well right now. After what he’d witnessed in the past couple of days… The German Army High Command seemed to have no overall grasp of the situation! And there was no order, no discipline! Things wouldn’t have been like that in the ’14–’18 war…
The lieutenant colonel threw the book onto the table and jumped up. Wouldn’t this infernal noise ever cease? A badly tuned engine had been left rattling away outside the bunker for quite some time; every now and then the sound was interrupted by the engine backfiring. The lieutenant colonel flung open the door. Christ Almighty, it was cold out there! From the ridge opposite, a long column was snaking down into the gorge, an unbroken line of lorries and cars. Vehicles were already beginning to crowd into the broad square in front of the bunkers. Immediately outside the door stood an open-topped Kübelwagen, snorting and shuddering like an exhausted horse. A man was looking inside the open bonnet. In his fur greatcoat, which reached almost to the ground and had a broad turned-up collar, he looked like a polar bear.
‘Hey, you! Are you out of your mind, or what? Turn the engine off, will you, or clear off!’
The frost in the air deadened the words to virtual silence. The man didn’t even bother turning round. The cold appeared to have robbed him of all capacity of hearing and speech. It also dissuaded the lieutenant colonel from investigating the matter any further. Coughing, he turned away and slammed the door behind him. He switched the light on, threw a couple more logs into the stove and immersed himself in his book once more. But he was not to be granted any peace. Outside he heard the sound of clumping footsteps. The door flew open and a group of soldiers barged their way into the room. Their bluish-yellow faces, frozen-stiff coats and jackets, and snow-encrusted bundles of rags wrapped around their feet instantly turned the atmosphere into the inside of a refrigerator. The men at the front stopped and blinked stupidly at the unaccustomed brightness. The lieutenant colonel furrowed his brow and peered over his pince-nez at the interlopers.
‘What’s the meaning of this?’ Silence. The lieutenant colonel got to his feet. ‘What do you want?’ he asked sharply. The soldier right at the front took off his cap like a supplicant. Tousled hair was poking out of his balaclava. The left side of his face grimaced in an incessant twitch; it made him look as though someone was constantly jabbing him with a needle. ‘Just wanted to warm up a bit, sir. We’re—’
‘So you thought you’d just burst in here without so much as a by-your-leave, eh? Without knocking? Unbelievable. This is a staff billet, understood? A staff billet! So, about-turn now and out you go!’
The troops hesitated, staring in disbelief at the officer. The lieutenant colonel’s face flushed.
‘Never heard of such a lack of discipline!’ he muttered. He went and stood right in front of the men. ‘Are you hard of hearing or something? Don’t you understand? Make yourselves scarce!’
The men didn’t understand. All they understood was that they had spent weeks on end lying in snow holes with frozen limbs and one hundred and fifty grams a day bread ration each; and that, deserted by the High Command and hounded by the enemy, they’d dragged themselves for hour after hour through terrible cold; and that here was a bunker, a bunker such as they had never set eyes on since they’d begun the siege of Stalingrad, with electric light and a warm stove and benches and tables and beds with mattresses; and that this bunker was virtually unoccupied. That was what they understood. But in ten years of military service, they’d had it dinned into them that the only way of expressing their wishes was to keep shtum and that, when asked, the only reply that was expected of them was ‘Yes, sir!’ And they’d learned that lesson well. The most terrible war of all time had been started with lies and betrayal. They’d kept quiet about that. They had been used as instruments for the oppression and abuse of foreign peoples. They’d kept quiet about that. Foreign countries had been pillaged through their efforts and finally they’d been led deep into the heartland of Russia, as far as Stalingrad, where they’d been ordered to fight, starve and freeze and where, if they’d fallen sick or were wounded, they were left to die in conditions you wouldn’t even leave an animal to die in. They’d kept quiet about that. And when someone who was unsettled by the unspoken questions in their faces spoke to them, they simply replied ‘Yes, sir!’ like they’d been told to. And so it was that they kept quiet again when they were expected to understand that this warm bunker hadn’t been prepared for the likes of them, but for the others – those who had the power to decide over life and death – and that they were destined to die. And even if they didn’t understand that, they still said ‘Yes, sir!’ to it, albeit not in as many words. So, slowly and exhaustedly, they shuffled backwards towards the door, casting a last stolen glance at the wonderful pleasures of this room as they went.
Even so, the lieutenant colonel was not left to savour his victory. The door kept opening time and again, and finally it remained open the whole time. The lieutenant colonel was at his wits’ end. He telephoned the Corps and asked for a military policeman to be dispatched on an urgent service assignment involving the establishment of a new front. And one duly arrived, put on his steel helmet, hung his shiny breastplate round his neck, and with the help of these symbols of authority shooed the unwanted guests out into the darkness.
Meanwhile, it had grown cold in the bunker. In addition, the lights had gone out.