“When I had my first taste of war, in Spain, I thought of suicide — it all seemed so vile. But then I saw the ferocity of others, who also believed in the justice of their cause, and offered themselves up to acts of murder, as to a purification.
I watched the soft, effete French shift from terror to toughness, and take up the arms they couldn’t use when they needed them, once we had restored their confidence, and offered them the hand of friendship. In general, human beings don’t accept the unaccustomed. Change frightens and upsets them, and they will fight even to preserve situations they have always detested. But a slick armchair philosopher can easily arouse a rabble to support an abstract proposition — for instance, ‘all men are equal’ — even when the differences between men are obviously as great as the differences between cows and roosters. Then those exhausted societies, drained by their ‘liberty,’ begin to bellow about their ‘convictions’ and become a threat to us and to peace. It’s basic wisdom to keep people like that well fed and content, if one wishes to extract even a tenth of the possible return.
“Something of this kind is happening on the other side. As a people, we are fortunate in being somewhat less indolent than they. If someone tells us to examine ourselves, we at least have the courage to do it. Our condition is not absolutely perfect, but at least we agree to look at other things, and take chances. We are now embarked on a risky enterprise, with no assurance of safety. We are advancing an idea of unity which is neither rich nor easily digestible, but the vast majority of the German people accept it and adhere to it, forging and forming it in an admirable collective effort.
This is where we are now risking everything. We are trying, taking due account of the attitudes of society, to change the face of the world, hoping to revive the ancient virtues buried under the layers of filth bequeathed to us by our forebears. We can expect no reward for this effort. We are loathed everywhere: if we should lose tomorrow those of us still alive after so much suffering will be judged without justice. We shall be accused of an infinity of murder, as if everywhere, and at all times, men at war did not behave in the same way. Those who have an interest in putting an end to our ideals will ridicule everything we believe in. We shall be spared nothing. Even the tombs of our heroes will be destroyed, only preserving — as a gesture of respect toward the dead — a few which contain figures of doubtful heroism, who were never fully committed to our cause. With our deaths, all the prodigies of heroism which our daily circumstances bring and the memory of our comrades, dead and alive, and our communion of spirits, our fears and our hopes, will vanish, and our history will never be told. Future generations will speak only of an idiotic, unqualified sacrifice. Whether you wanted it or not, you are now part of this undertaking, and nothing which follows can equal the efforts you have made, if you must sleep tomorrow under the quieter skies of the opposite camp. In that case, you will never be forgiven for having survived. You will either be rejected or preserved like a rare animal which has escaped a cataclysm. With other men, you will be as cats are to dogs and you will never have any real friends.
Do you wish such an end for yourselves?
“Anyone who wishes to go but is hesitating from fear of our authority should speak to me; I will take as many nights as it needs to reassure you. I repeat: those who wish to leave should do so. We cannot count on men who feel that way, and our efforts cannot gain from their presence. Please believe that I understand your sufferings. I feel the cold and fear as you do, and I fire at the enemy as you do, because I feel that my duty as an officer requires at least as much from me as your duty does of you. I wish to stay alive, even if it’s only to continue the struggle somewhere else. I wish my company to be united in thought and in deed. Once the fighting begins, I will not tolerate doubt and defeatism. We shall be suffering not only in the interests of ultimate victory, but in the interests of daily victory against those who hurl themselves at us without respite, and whose only thought is to exterminate us, without any understanding of what is at stake. You can feel certain of me, in return, and certain that I will not expose you to any unnecessary dangers.
“I would burn and destroy entire villages if by so doing I could prevent even one of us from dying of hunger. Here, deep in the wilds of the steppe, we shall be all the more aware of our unity. We are surrounded by hatred and death, and in these circumstances we shall daily oppose our perfect cohesion to the indiscipline and disorder of our enemies. Our group must be as one, and our thoughts must-be identical. Your duty lies in your efforts to achieve that goal, and if we do achieve it, and maintain it, we shall be victors even in death.”
Our conversations with Captain Wesreidau made a deep impression on us. His obvious and passionate sincerity affected even the most hesitant, and seemed of another order than the standard appeals to our sense of sacrifice, which left us stupefied and incredulous. He invited questions, which he answered with intelligence and clarity. He spent his time with us, whenever he was free from other duties. We all loved him, and felt we had a true leader, as well as a friend on whom we could count. Herr Hauptmann Wesreidau was a terror to the enemy, and a friend to his men. Every time we moved, or were sent out on an operation his steiner preceded our vehicles.
The veteran, who had a good sense of men, had pointed him out to us the day after the battle for Belgorod, while we were resting in the rear, nursing our wounds.
“I’ve seen our captain,” he said. “He looks intelligent and wise.”
We fought two more battles before re-crossing the Dnieper in the beginning of the autumn. Several of us had to be re-equipped before these engagements, and the most serious accusations were leveled against anyone who returned without his weapons.
Lindberg, the Sudeten, and Hals, however, were officially recognized as wounded, when they came back the evening of the rout, in rags, without weapons or equipment. It can easily be imagined that equipment has to be abandoned when one is on the run, but in Russia our soldiers were never supposed to abandon their arms. They were supposed to die with them — or live, hanging on to them at all times. I myself had kept my gun without thinking of the consequences, like a blind man who never lets go of his white cane, and the veteran had dragged along his heavy spandau, out of habit or discipline; but I had lost my helmet, my ground sheet, the gas mask we never used, and what remained of the ammunition for the veteran’s spandau.
We met Lensen, who had come out alive too, although he had left behind most of his gear. He was tearing his hair at the thought that this oversight might cost him his rank.
The veteran, who was also an obergefreiter, suggested that next time Lensen think of putting in for a posthumous promotion. Lensen’s anxiety and our laughter were simultaneously drowned a short time later in the samahonka[12] someone found in the cellar of an abandoned house.
It was almost surely because of Wesreidau that we all escaped a court martial, which filled us with just as much terror as Soviet rockets. We had three good weeks of rest behind our lines, in a village of dreary, identical shacks. Luckily, the weather was magnificent. I took advantage of the lull to write often to Paula, but I could never bring myself to tell her of my terror at Belgorod. Hals had made the acquaintance of a Russian girl, with whom he was able to arrange a mutually profitable relationship. It turned out he was not the only one to enjoy the good woman’s favors. One evening he arrived to find himself part of a troika. The other masculine member was the Catholic chaplain, who had survived hell and was indulging a few sins of the flesh as his consciousness of life returned, hoping they would be pardoned because they were so rare. From that moment on, he was never able to intone a psalm without an accompanying chorus of laughter, at which he would blush furiously, and laugh as loudly as the rest of us.