When Arno became the head of his platoon in 1943 he had made a speech about getting used to death. Now he spoke in the same vein to Lenz, face to face, deciding to give this absolute beginner a part of his accumulated wisdom, the wisdom of living in the Valley of the Shadow of Death. In camp just south of Warsaw, in a barn where the platoon was quartered, Arno led Lenz into a side chamber furnished with a table, some chairs and a dirty window looking out over lush greenery. When they had seated themselves Arno said:
“I’ve already welcomed you to the platoon. And it’ll probably be fine like it is, with you leading the MG Squad. We’ll see…! Well, I trust you. But a tip to you is to get used to the idea of death. Don’t live in hope. Be factual. We are in hell, you know that, huh…?”
Lenz nodded slowly. Arno tried to see if the other paled at hearing this, if he was terrified. Was this the first time he had been brought to think about death? Or was he already familiar with it? If only in theory? Lenz merely displayed a collected, freckled face, with a lively but relaxed look in his blue eyes.
“Death is stalking us all,” Arno said. “Face it.”
“Indeed,” Lenz said. “I’ll remember that.”
“Fine,” Arno said. “And by all means, don’t become a death worshipper now or something like that. But you’ve got to have a healthy respect for death.”
Battalion Wolf, including Arno’s platoon, was thrown into the mopping up of Warsaw. They fought around the Water Works and Polyteknikum. They broke in and retook parts of the areas the Poles possessed, homing in on General Bor’s bases. They called in artillery strikes on particularly stubborn blocks, and also let Stukas and Ju 88s hammer them from the air. They also received support from assault guns, type StuG IV. Then the infantry had to go in with automatic weapons and hand grenades; retaking the houses, cleaning them up room by room. And during all of this the clouds in the sky drifted by and the wind rustled in the maples.
The fighting was intense. The heat was strong. Everything became a hurricane of violence, explosive gases, stone dust, broken rock and burning rubber. Among other things Arno remembered how, on one occasion, headlights swept across a darkening land of rubble and ruins, the headlight beams running here and there and throwing long shadows. A stray dog howled in the distance.
The Warsaw battle became an impressionistic, ferocious canvas. Like: with empty eye sockets, blackened skin fragments and uniform in rags a skeleton sat leaning against a brick wall, the bones shimmering in green, the skeleton holding his rifle in a solidified grip.
Clear the ground floor. Cut off Winiarski Street. Fire signalling ceases, attention. Ammunition report from the right.
There were bushes in a park, a burning SPW wreck and shadows on the ground – and black clouds in a grey sky, a murmour over the land, a roar and impact detonations in the distance. There were concepts, words, hieroglyphs and symbols, symbols such as:
• explosion cloud
• explosive gases
• shell cases
• blood
• bile
• turbine
• sandbag
• amassing along the street with armour, infantrymen dashing into houses, artillery towards suspected points
• a cloud shadow that glides over the terrain, going over a barricade, a backyard, a ruin
• a soldier pressing his finger on a wound to the carotid artery, the blood pumping out, hard to stop
• shell shocked but still alive, as in a trance directing assault guns, fire towards the Energy Office
• sunset, evening sun against a firewall, on the yard broken rock and lumber
• an SPW conquered by the Poles, the Polish coat of arms painted on the front plate
• steel helmet
• fabric cover
• cartridge belt
• skeletal shot
• flesh wound
• explosive bullet
• gas turbine
Bombers thundered in the sky, allied units bringing supplies to the beleaguered Poles, dropping parachute canisters with weapons, ammunition and canned food. Most of it ended up with the Germans.
The horizon bathed in a heat haze. Signal wire laid out. Pioneers having chow. An MG opened up, empty cases thrown out from a hatch in the bottom of the box. Burns, gunshot wound, leg torn off by a mine –
INDUSTRIAL BUILDING
They fought over an industrial building. The enemy lit up petrol he had spilled out. The platoon lost seven men in a sea of fire, four injured by burns and three disappearing completely in the inferno. They lost the entire 2nd Squad: Karnow, Gans, Emostas, Ditter, Sachs and Wuchs. Screaming.
IMPRESSION
Arno stood on a street and took in the sights, noting the impressions: fire smoke from a Sturmhaubitze wreck halfway up on a sidewalk, flames from the hatch licking the armour plating. Quiet, dull-yellow façades looked down on him, broken rubble in the street, warm blue skies and a blazing sun. Time had stopped, they lived in a virtual “movement as a state”:
- A horse on the loose
- Grey soldiers advancing over a vacant lot
- Flies around a corpse
- Bombers buzzing in the upper atmosphere
- A door slamming, a curtain fluttering
- A haggard little cat sneaking by
WAREHOUSE HALL
They broke into the warehouse hall. They fired against sounds, not against objects. Everything was hidden in veils of dust and smoke. Everything except the familiar, metallic smell of fresh blood.
HEAT HAZE
Late summer heat haze, explosive gases and stone dust, sand and particles making everything wrapped up as in a veil – it could make you think of Stalingrad, apart from the fact that it wasn’t deadly cold, the same strange haze prevailed, a veil of mystery over this vortex of violence and death, a Wagnerian theme of pathos and destruction.
BARRACKS
Beyond a park, in a pause in the fighting, he saw some grey barracks with red window frames. He thought: The barracks of my old Swedish Regiment, I 14, were better looking, they were yellow, the yellow turning to gold in the evening sun – and these barracks are grey – how ugly, how flat. – Standing in Warsaw, looking at these grey barracks, Arno became sentimental over his time in the Swedish Army. The tattoo at dusk, trooping the colours, shoulder rifle, avdelning framåt, lägg gevär, rättning mittåt, 6.5 mm Mauser, white sheepskin coat, grey uniform M/23.
He was jerked back to the present by the clatter of tracks, steel against cobblestones. A StuG III passed and turned right, the steering brake drawing sparks out of the road like flint against a tinderbox. And so it continued with a storm of further impressions: An Opel Blitz in flames, fire smoke and dust in the summer haze – telephone wires across the street, a fluttering curtain, a slamming door, chalk white clothes, MG belts – a torn helmet cover, a column of civilians trudging away with pathetic bundles and battered suitcases, white clouds in the sky – a brief nod from a passing soldier, face sooty under his helmet rim.
EMERGING TARGETS
The Sturmhaubitze fired on a massive concrete building while Focke Wulf 190s flew in for the attack, peeling off and diving down one after another from the sky, dropping 250 kg bombs. You saw Poles escaping along a ditch, you saw a column of army horses, you saw a vacant lot with piles of broken rock and rubble and you saw maples in a park, lush green.
STONE HOUSES
The stone houses of Warsaw were solidly built. Despite being bombed and slammed by artillery they still were good enough to group in. The Poles held a number of such blocks in the central part of the city. The buildings were heavily battered but they still stood. But when it was all over the whole town would be razed to the ground by German demolition squads. A statement: “Thus to all who dare rebel against The Reich!”