Hals could not resist temptation. He held out his big hands, which looked like dead wood, and begged for charity. The shopkeeper tried to pretend that he hadn’t noticed, but Hals persisted. Finally, the baker put a stale cake into those filthy hands. Hals divided it into four pieces and we tasted a substance which had become unknown to us. We thanked the man, and tried to smile, but the rotting teeth in our gray faces must have produced an effect of grotesque grimace, and made the baker think we were mocking him. He turned on his heel, and disappeared into the back of his shop. He couldn’t know bow long it had been since we’d had the chance to laugh, and that we would need a little while to learn how again.
A less sumptuous boat took us on to Kiel, where we found a more familiar atmosphere, with no more bakeries and no more occasion to smile. In a setting of ruins, we were reincorporated, with alarmingly precipitate haste, into a scratch battalion. Hals asked if he might be given a leave to visit his home in Dortmund. An enlisted man of about fifty put a hand on his shoulder and told him that with a little courage and a little luck, if he managed to infiltrate the American and British lines, he might perhaps get there.
My friend’s face reflected astonishment, stupefaction, and sadness.
“The American and British lines!”
In the West, which we had dreamed of and longed for so often, which we had finally reached, we were assaulted by the most overwhelming and terrible news. We were astounded. The West, the paradise we had been counting on in our icy holes at Memel, on the Dnieper, and on the Don; that chimerical paradise which should have taken us in and soothed our sufferings, the West, which had been our sole reason for surviving, was only a small country more or less thickly covered with buildings; a country where the silence was broken by the roar of planes, where terrified people crawled and ran. The West was also three dirty gray trucks carrying at high speed a reduced battalion of soldiers in gray toward another encounter with death; it was the place where my last illusions would crumble in conditions of inhuman grief.
The West was the other half of the vise tightening on our misery. Several armies were challenging our exhausted arms — several, among them the French Army. I cannot describe the emotions which this news produced in me. France, which in my thoughts had never abandoned me, “la douce France,” had abused my naïveté. In the trenches of the steppe, I had loved France as much as any young man does as he talks revolution in the back room of a Paris café.
Most of my efforts had been for France, which I had made my comrades-in-arms appreciate and love. What could have happened, which had not been explained to us?
France had turned against me, when I was expecting her help. Perhaps I would have to fire at my French brothers — which I could no more do than I could fire at Hals or Lindberg.
What had happened? What had they kept from us? I no longer knew, or understood. My brain refused to take in any more, and the hope which the West had revived in all of us died in me.
We would have to fight again. Against whom and what? We knew that we no longer had any courage, and that nothing could lead us to hope any more. Despite Anglo-American cries of victory, there was no longer any opposition to the imposing materiel they had fabricated for nothing. No victory is possible over men who have died toward everything.
We had reached the banks of the Elbe, and were lying stretched out on the grass beside a small road which led to Lauenburg. British troops were in the sector, and we were supposed to try to react.
An older man was devouring the substance which fate still saw fit to deposit in our mess tins. Hals was a short way off, his eyes vacant, as he pondered imponderables. The older fellow did not seem too depressed. He muttered some barely audible words to me: “With a little luck, the war should be over for us in a few days.”
What did he mean? I knew that when a war ended for soldiers on the side that lost it usually meant a small brownish hole in the head or the chest.
“I don’t mean that,” the other said. “We’ll be prisoners — you’ll see. That’s not so grand either, but it’s better than bombing and starvation. You’ll see. These fellows aren’t muzhiks. They’re really not so bad.”
The night passed. It was mild, almost warm. We sat on the damp grass of the bank beside the road. Massive flights of planes growled invisibly through the starry sky. But nothing could interfere with our habit of half sleep, which we had perfected during three years of enforced watchfulness.
Toward three o’clock in the morning, we heard the roar of artillery somewhere to the north, and the sky was lit by flashes of light. The whole episode lasted for about forty-five minutes, during which our half sleep continued without interruption.
Daybreak came early, and a light spring sun rose over the horizon. A small battered car appeared on the road, bumping over the broken surface. The car was brown, and was occupied by three fellows whose uniforms were quite different from ours.
We watched as three brick-red faces beneath unusually large helmets drew closer to us. The owners of the faces appeared to be enjoying their morning outing.
It was my first encounter with Englishmen — the first three. To have fired at these cheerful individuals would have been a criminal act; however, some bastard in our group did fire — twice — at their heads. The car — a jeep — skidded into a panicky half turn which was slow enough to give us ample time to wipe them out.
The old man beside me roared with anger at the young fellow who had just done his duty, explaining that this ill-considered gesture risked bringing in motorized troops to attack us, against which we would have no defense. A startled hauptmann almost intervened, but saw that there was no point, and went back to stand beside his gunner.
An hour later, we heard the sound of several motors to the north of us: the old man’s prediction was coming true. A reconnaissance plane flew over, directing the fire with considerable precision to the road beneath our bank. Clinging to the ground like treads, we crawled up the hollow of a small valley, thus escaping some fifty mortar shells, which would have inflicted heavy losses.
The English must have decided that further resistance would be limited to a few isolated shots, and sent four half-tracks after us. We watched with a certain anguish as they climbed over the bank. Two of our men stood up, with their hands raised. The Eastern Front had never seen anything like that. We wondered what would happen next. Would English machine guns cut them down? Would our leader shoot them himself, for giving up like that? But nothing happened. The old man, who was still beside me, took me by the arm, and whispered: “Come on. Let’s go.”
We stood up together. Others quickly followed us. Hals came over and stood by me without even thinking of raising his hands. We walked towards the victors with pounding hearts and dry mouths. This was the only time I was ever afraid of the Western Allies, and I had provoked the fear myself.
We were roughly jostled together, and shoved into place by English soldiers with vindictive faces. However, we had seen worse in our own army, particularly in training under Captain Fink. The roughness with which the English handled us seemed comparatively insignificant, and even marked by a certain kindness.
In this way, I laid down the arms and insignia of my second country, and the war ended for me and for my comrades.
To humiliate us, they made us stand in the sturdy trucks which brought the relief of their victory to our faltering ranks. The closed, flushed faces of the English continued to reflect their non-comprehension of the smiling remarks which emerged from our famished faces. Hals even received a slap in the face from an English noncom, without much of an idea of what had happened to him. He had simply been comparing our easy ride as prisoners to our forced marches in the East.