One of our shells must have hit a gasoline dump. The resulting inferno routed the panic-stricken enemy, who paid dearly for having concentrated so many men beside such a volcano. Their men rushed through the confusion with their hands in the air, occasionally remembering the way to other Russian entrenchments.
Our Paks were now concentrating their fire on the area immediately surrounding the factory, and the job of cleaning up the people running from the gasoline dump was left to us. The fore-sight of my gun often disappeared in a swiftly moving Russian silhouette. A light pressure on the trigger, a puff of smoke, which for an instant veiled the end of my weapon, and my Mauser looked for another victim. Will I be forgiven? Was I responsible? That young muzhik, already wounded several times, more bewildered than anything else by the lethal uproar whose purpose was as obscure to him as it was to me, who stayed in my sights a moment too long and then turned ashen and clutched his breast with both hands before making a half turn and falling face down onto the ground — shall I ever deserve pardon for that? Can I ever forget?
But the almost drunken exhilaration which follows fear induces the most innocent youths on whatever side to commit inconceivable atrocities. Suddenly, for us, as it had been for Ivan a moment before, everything that moved through the din and the smoke became hateful, and overwhelmed us with a desire for destruction, a desire which led many soldiers to their deaths as they pursued the panic-stricken enemy.
Our big guns pulverized the top end of the village, where the Russian artillery had dug in. In the general flight, the few wretched hovels which had not been burned fell, one by one, into our young, criminal hands. We ran full speed over ground which might have been mined; nothing could stop us. Nothing stopped my good friend Hals from jumping across a stable threshold and shooting the Russian gunners who were desperately trying to fire their jammed weapon. Nothing could stop the glorious 8th and 14th companies of German infantry. As the communiqués later observed: “With an irresistible thrust, our valiant troops retook the town of X this morning….” Nothing could stop our demoniac assault, not even the rending cries of obergefreiter Woortenbeck, who clenched his trembling hands on an iron grille and stiffened himself against the death which flooded from the bloody pulp which had once held his entrails.
A few more of our comrades were destroyed before we reached the factory. At that point, the Paks stopped firing to spare our own troops, who were right beside the Soviet defenders. The Russians clung stubbornly to what they still had, particularly to the sector immediately around the factory.
I no longer remember exactly what happened. My group joined the veteran and his men, who were snatching a few moments of rest in a large cement settling tank. We all emptied our water bottles without quenching our thirst. Everyone was covered with dust. A telephone operator settled down beside us, and spoke with Group Commandant Wesreidau. The fighting had died down somewhat, and the German troops were regrouping for the final assault. The veteran’s section had a mortar as well as its two F.M.s. Ours consisted of grenadiers armed with machine guns and rifles. Our sergeant placed us down the length of the cistern, specifying the points we should try to reach once the attack had started. We agreed to do as he asked before there was time for our terror to grow uncontrollable. These moments of waiting were often the hardest of all.
A group of Russians suddenly appeared, climbing through some dismantled scaffolding near the factory, waving a white cloth. There must have been at least sixty of them — all civilians — probably factory workers. Maybe they were partisans, and afraid of execution. They walked up to the veteran’s men, and turned themselves in; the anxiety stamped across every man’s face lent great pathos to the moment.
The veteran, who was fluent in Russian, talked to them. Protected by the white cloth, four of our men took the prisoners to the rear. It was one of those odd moments of calm, when it almost seemed as if a few friendly words between the adversaries might produce a settlement which would have allowed all of us to sit down and have a drink.
But in the madness of our existence the most simple things eluded us.
Everyone was absorbed by immediate necessities; most of us never even thought of the symbolic value of the steps those men had just taken — first steps back to the essentials of life. Even the exceptions to this general insensibility kept their wild eyes glued to the metallic wreckage of the factory, which we would soon be obliged to attack and enter. Animals, which have a stronger instinctive sense than human beings, turn and run from a fire. But we, the elect among living creatures, press forward, like moths to a candle. That is what we call courage — a quality I lack. Fear knotted my throat, and I felt like a sheep at the threshold of the slaughterhouse.
I’m sure I wasn’t the only one who had this feeling. The fellow beside me stared at me for a moment from his blackened face and murmured: “If only those bastards would give up!”
But our feelings, of course, were unimportant. The trench telephone rang and crackled out an order: “One-third of the men forward. Count off by threes.”
One, two, three… One, two, three… Like a miracle from heaven, I drew a “one,” and could stay in that splendid cement hole, which at that moment seemed to me as magnificent as any palace. It was a secure refuge in which I would have spent my days in gratitude so long as death was stalking outside. I cut off a smile, in case the sergeant should notice and send me onto the field, but inwardly thanked God, and Allah, and Buddha, and heaven, earth, water, fire, trees, anything I could think of, that I was in that cement depression, which had held God knows what kind of filth before it sheltered me.
The fellow beside me had number three. He was looking at me, with a long, desperate face, but I kept my eyes turned front, so he wouldn’t notice my joy and relief, and stared at the factory as if it were I who was going to leap forward, as if I were number three. But, in fact, everything was normal. “Drei” was my neighbor; he was going to inspect the factory. Then the sergeant made his fatal gesture, and the brave German soldier beside me sprang from his shelter with a hundred others.
Immediately, we heard the sound of Russian automatic weapons. Before vanishing to the bottom of my hole I saw the impact of the bullets raising little fountains of dust all along the route of my recent companion, who would never again contemplate the implications of number three. The noise of guns and grenades was deafening and almost drowned the cries of the fellows who’d been hit.
“Achtung! Nummer zwei, voraus!”
The veteran and his spandau ran up in turn.
Next, it was going to be me, along with everybody else who’d counted “one.” While everything outside was flashing and exploding, I thought for a moment about numbers. Usually, people begin counting with “one.” Why had they started with “three” this time? But I could only pose the question. Before there was time to consider it, my turn had come.
“Nummer eins, nachgehen, los!”
After a moment of hesitation, I sprang from my shelter like a jack-in-the-box, into madness. Everything looked gray, through a thick fog of whirling, choking dust, except for the glimmering flashes of light. In a few jumps I had reached the foundation of a shattered hut where a German soldier had died staring at the open breech of his machine gun. It’s strange how often human beings die without any kind of style. Two years before I had seen a woman run over by a milk truck, and had nearly fainted at the sight of her mangled body. Now, after two years in Russia, visible death meant nothing at all, and the tragic element of even the best murder novels seemed petty and frivolous.