These concoctions were nauseating but effective. Our cooks had learned something about cold-weather cooking from the ingredients of Russian soups. We also took saunas — a horse-doctor treatment which didn’t coddle any weaklings. We moved straight from the hot steam into cold showers, a transition so violent that our hearts often threatened to stop beating. Like Grandsk’s greasy soups, however, these shocks were effective, and we always felt better afterward.
“Make the most of it,” Grandsk told us. “Eat up and enjoy it. In Germany, kids are going without dessert, so you can have this.”
Alas, Grandsk’s words were too accurate. As Paula explained in a letter which reached me in only six days, rationing bad become very strict. We were getting much closer to our own frontier, and every day the distance from home seemed smaller. Soon Germany at bay would no longer be able to send us even margarine.
One morning the feldwebels’ whistles drove us from the overheated isba where we slept. A patrol of Soviet tanks was just over a mile from Boporoeivska. The cold as we ran outside was like a blow from the butcher’s axe. Each man galloped to a precise point.
We had not yet reached our positions when the sound of heavy explosions shook the thin air to the west of us. Russian tanks, charging like maddened bulls, had driven onto our minefield. Now it was the turn of Russian tank crews to go up in smoke. Our observers were watching through their field glasses. Almost all the tanks were trying to withdraw the way they’d come. Our artillery remained silent, leaving the tanks to the mines. Firing might even set off these traps.
However, three Stalin tanks had managed to cross the minefield and were driving toward the town in a roar of chains and exhaust. With extraordinary courage, they took the fire of our thirty-seven anti tank guns without slowing down, only to be hit by our camouflaged Tigers, with their terrible 88s. In a sequence as unreal as anything Hollywood could contrive, all three tanks were hit by the first salvo. One turned over and exploded. Another stopped dead like a boar hit behind the shoulder. The third, although hit, turned without stopping, exposing its flank to our anti-tank machine guns, which ripped off all its protruding guns. It continued in a circle broken by a series of banking turns, trying to execute a half turn. This dramatic attempt left us gasping with admiration. In his will to survive, the Russian driver headed straight for our minefield. A series of explosions ripped the tracks off his left side, and the tank slowly settled, like a vanquished beast. As the thick black smoke began to pour from its entrails, two dark figures climbed out. But our cold-stiffened fingers did not fire. Both Russians were holding their pistols, prepared to defend themselves. When they didn’t hear any guns, they took a few steps toward our lines, then threw down their guns and raised their hands. A moment later, they were crossing our front line. The landser, who considered them heroes, grinned, and the Russians grinned back, their teeth gleaming very white, like Negroes’ teeth, in their smoke-blackened faces. Our men took them to an isba and gave them some schnapps. Their attitude and performance seemed so far removed from those of the partisans that we felt no hate for them. Lensen watched them for a moment and said: “If Wiener were here, he’d probably drink a toast with them.”
During the following night, we sent out patrols to re-lay the minefield. Our defensive fighting was relying increasingly on mines to take the place of weakened or missing lines. The next day there was a general reinforcement of the front. Two Rumanian regiments and a Hungarian battalion were sent to join us. We were told that we would also have the support of a squadron of fighter-bombers based somewhere near Vinnitsa.
“It seems we’re getting ready for a big show,” Pferham observed. “I don’t like it.”
Obergefreiter Lensen took the opposite view, rejoicing in our increased strength. As he saw it, the Red tide must be stopped here. The idea that Prussia itself would soon fall into enemy hands never even crossed his mind. But then, that was true of all of us.
One night, the Russians sent a human wave of Mongols in a direct assault against our positions. Their function was to knock out the minefield, by crossing it. As the Russians preferred to economize on tanks, and as their human stockpile was enormous, they usually sent out men for jobs of this kind.
The Soviet attack failed, but Stalin hadn’t been looking for success. The minefield exploded under the howling mob, and we sent out a curtain of yellow and white fire to obliterate anyone who had survived. The fragmented cadavers froze very quickly, sparing us the stench which would otherwise have polluted the air over a vast area.
The Russians had not even used any of their artillery to help the Mongols, which seemed to confirm our estimate of the situation. We sent out patrols to try to re-mine the field, but the Russians were ready to fire on anything that moved. We were able to put down only a light sprinkling of mines, with regrettably heavy losses. It was clearly no longer possible to rely on mines to protect our front lines.
On another evening, when the cold had attained a dramatic intensity, the Russians attacked again. We were manning our positions in a temperature which had dropped to 45° below zero. Some men fainted as the cold struck them, paralyzed before they even had a chance to scream. Survival seemed almost impossible. Our hands and faces were coated with engine grease, and when our worn gloves were pulled over this gluey mixture, every gesture became extremely difficult. Our tanks, whose engines would no longer start, swept the spaces in front of them with their long tubes, like elephants caught in a trap.
The muzhiks preparing to attack us were suffering in the same way, freezing where they stood before there was time for even one “Ourrah pobieda.” The men on both sides, suffering a common martyrdom, were longing to call it quits. Metal broke with astonishing ease. The Soviet tanks were advancing blindly through the pale light of flares, which intensified the bluish glitter of the scene. These tanks were destroyed by the mines which lay parallel to our trenches some thirty yards from our front lines, or by our Tigers, which fired without moving. The Russian troops, with frozen hands and feet, faltered and withdrew in confusion in the face of the fire we kept steady, despite our tortured hands. Their officers, who had hoped to find us paralyzed by cold and incapable of defense, were unconcerned about the condition of their own troops. They were ready to make any sacrifice, so long as our lines were attacked.
I managed to keep my hands from freezing by thrusting them, in their gloves, into two empty ammunition boxes, when the cartridges had run into the spandau. Our gunners, and everyone forced to use his hands, sooner or later turned up at the medical service with severe cases of freezing. There were a great many amputations.
The intense cold lasted for three weeks, during which the Russians restricted themselves to sending over music calculated to make us homesick, and speeches inviting us to surrender.
Toward the end of January, the cold lessened somewhat, and became tolerable. At times during the day the thermometer rose as high as five degrees above zero. The nights were still murderous, but with frequent shifts of duty we managed to get through them. We knew that the Russian offensive would soon resume. One night, or rather one morning, toward four or five o’clock, blasts of the whistle sent us out once again to our interception posts.