By mid-July, Belarus was freed – “freed,” in the sense of “being back under Bolshevik rule.” By then the Red Army had advanced a long way into Poland and had East Prussia contained.
Much else happened in the summer of 1944, in the East and the West, in the tangled, intricate web of World War II. For example, in June the Allies landed in Normandy, France. But one thing at a time now. What part did Battalion Wolf play as Hitler’s grip on Europe slipped away?
In May, the re-equipped battalion was deployed in defense in the neighbourhood of Naksosina, somewhere east of the Dnepr-Dvina gate. Arno’s platoon was detailed to defend a strongpoint in a village. The whole village was a fort surrounded by barbed wire, defended by slit trenches with MG emplacements and firing positions for riflemen. East of the village, in the selfsame defensive arrangement, was a constantly manned Observation Post. Arno had a fire control radio connecting him to a battery deployed some 5 km to the west, enabling him to direct supportive fire on targets east of the village. The plain was measured and booked for salvo points, such as “the road end,” “the copse” and “the promontory”.
They were prepared for everything. But – as it turned out – not much happened to Arno and his platoon while defending Point 31, as the village was called. Not much, in any event, of a military nature. It was an existence beyond time, a being of timelessness, like a state of mind. So to get the feel of this state, let’s look at a random day in the strongpoint, June 2 as it happens.
It was 1400 hours. Arno stood on the main street of the ramshackle village. A door slammed. A faded curtain fluttered at a broken window. At his feet, a column of ants crossed the street. Soldier ants, thought Arno. Tight discipline.
He looked up into the sky: a summery blue sky.
The situation: One squad was busy strengthening the barbed wire barrier to the south. The rest were in their quarters, with Bauer. Arno had nothing to do than other than rest. He had long ago mastered the old soldier’s trick of snatching sleep, anywhere, any time; storing it up for when combat made sleep impossible, but lack of sleep deadly dangerous. So he entered the house where he was billetted, walked down the corridor and entered a darkened room of three by four metres. It had a small window, but the narrow slivers of light that sliced through its closed shutter only accentuated the gloom. Drab wallpaper was peeling off with water damage; there was a floor of rough planks. The only furnishings were a chair, a table and a bed with an army blanket.
He sat down on the chair and lit a cigarette.
He puffed at the cigarette, heroically as only a war hero can do.
He looked up at the ceiling, eyes straining to see the fly he could hear buzzing up there.
He stubbed out his cigarette in an ashtray in the form of the lid of an old jar. Then he took off his pistol belt with his 9 mm Walter HP in the holster, took off his boots and summer tunic, and lay down on the bed for a nap.
The war as a state:
• a unit grouped in a village in the middle of nowhere, forgotten by the world
• a flywheel swinging around in thin air, a connecting rod cranking around
• the journey is the goal, the impossibility of movement; the pleasure of pain, the pain in the pleasure
• pistons working up and down, without purpose, without a goal, movement an end in itself
• clouds drifting across the sky in perpetual succession
Arno walked to the edge of the village, then took a slit trench to reach the Observation Post. The village they guarded was just another point in a line, along with other villages and woods where the Company’s other platoons were deployed; gaps were blocked by mines and salvo points and guarded by patrols.
He reached the post, about two metres deep, lined with sandbags and equipped with a periscope for the forward observer. As expected this was currently a soldier from his platoon, one Düsterberg, who had joined them as they left Germany. He was young, slim in his field grey, his StG neatly on a shelf, and ready to reel off his post report. When Arno had heard it he peered into the periscope. He saw sandy ditches, craters, a potato field, an isolated copse and a forest edge three km away.
Mobile warfare – armour in the night – exchanging signals –
Swaying antennas –
Smoke belching from exhaust pipes –
In under die Feuerglocke, trajectories of artillery projectiles, creating a virtual “bell shape”, Glocke in German meaning “bell” –
Arno went back to the village centre and went into the signals room. On the wall hung a map and in one corner lay a roll of telephone wire. The table was covered by a blue oilcloth. On the table stood a radio and by the radio sat a signaler, Ditter by name. Salutes and as you were.
Life in the strongpoint was monotonous: mount guard, observation post duty, exercises, weapons care and slow hours in the quarters. It was the war as a state: a military zero existence with the front as ever-present reference.
Arno asked the signals man:
“Anything new?”
“No, Sergeant.”
Arno nodded, said that Bauer was in charge of the platoon. If he, Arno, was wanted he would be in his quarters. Then he walked out of the room, wiped the sweat from his brow, put on his side cap and walked across the yard. He sat down to rest in the quiet, grey blue shadow of a barn.
The war was mobile with tanks and all but that didn’t stop the battle from becoming a state. It was the eternal cycle of the battle elements, eternal feedback; battle waves that surged back and forth, fronts that swept hither and thither; battles where they attacked and the enemy counterattacked, like waves that cancel each other out in breakers and everything becomes still again. The front solidifies, the sea is calm.
Arno was leaning against a house wall, watched the sun go down over the plain, smoked his last cigarette butt and thought: When does a cigarette become a butt? By definition? Is it better to knock the ash before or after you take a drag? Does the cigarette paper provide any flavour?
The battle as a state, the relativity of movement: battle smoke, rattling weapons, aircraft noise in the sky and a blazing sun. Patrols, assaults, orders and counter-orders. Steel grey, grey-green and olive green, khaki, desert pink and titanium.
The battle as a state: you win, you lose, you get a draw; feelings of triumph, of desperation, of indifference. One day a court martial, the other day a medal, and the third you’re lying in an impact crater looking up at the clouds in the sky.
He walked back to his quarters, went in and sat down on the bed, smoked a cigarette he found on the floor and looked out the window: golden clouds in the evening sun.
He took off his boots and jacket and lay down to sleep. It was quiet in the room except for a fly buzzing on the ceiling.
Arno turned in his sleep and grunted, then his features smoothed out and he lost himself in a world where the tanks would always advance, antennae waving and exhaust fumes towering out of the exhaust pipes, chasing with high speed in under die Feuerglocke.
Direction: The enemy’s field armies.
Objective: Eternity.