“What’s the matter?” he said. “Are you sick?”
I was too numb to think of a suitable answer, so I told him the truth.
“I was just beginning a convalescence leave, Herr Stabsfeldwebel, and it was canceled at Lublin.”
“The fatherland is living through a time of serious trial, young man,” he answered after a short pause.
“You are not the only one to be deprived of a well-earned rest. The men who have gone through here before you and those coming after you are all in your situation.”
I was about to remark that this was in fact my official convalescence when he came on the paper from the S.S. hauptmann.
“I see that you recently distinguished yourself in an encounter with partisans,” he said. “My congratulations. I shall include that information in your dossier, and your company commander will undoubtedly promote you.”
Despite my nervous exhaustion, I smiled for a moment.
“I am very pleased, Herr Stabsfeldwebel,” I said in a semi-sincere, semi-official tone.
“And I am equally pleased for you,” he answered, holding out his hand.
I left with some thirty others in the same plight as myself, my mind torn by conflicting thoughts and feelings.
However, we were sent to spend the night in a warm and comfortable house which had been turned into a military dormitory. There weren’t enough beds, but every room was heated, and the floors were thickly carpeted. We all slept well, despite our anxiety about the immediate future.
We had all learned to use waiting periods for sleep whenever we could, simply to stop thinking and lapse into unconsciousness. Reflection added nothing to such times except increased awareness of the misery that weighed on the world. Sleep, on the other hand helped in many ways: it blotted out the present, and revived one’s strength. It seemed most unfortunate that one couldn’t store up a surplus of its benefits to use in future emergencies when sleep would be impossible.
We spent most of that night and the next twenty-four hours asleep or dozing, interrupting our rest only for meals. During the second night, we were finally dragged from our torpor by a noncom who led us to the trucks which were to take us to our positions. The brutal winter cold fell onto our backs with the shock of a poorly regulated shower. Winter had arrived in full strength, coating everything with a bluish glitter. Roll was called, and we boarded the trucks.
Before daybreak, we arrived at a village of huts which had been built by the engineers. We were ordered out of the trucks and offered an ersatz drink which was kept hot through the day in three large kettles. The cold was piercing, and revived all our memories of the previous winter: the shivering mornings, the cold, which became an almost unbearable torture, the impossibility of washing, the lice, and the thousand other elements which made life insupportable. Everything smelled of the war, and every face was stamped with urgent anxiety. Large holes, which suggested air raids, also implied that matters were not entirely under control in this sector.
About fifty of us were rejoining units in sectors separated by as much as forty or fifty miles. We were divided into four groups, each of which was given mail and the supplies requested by particular companies. Then we were shown our approximate routes, and a noncom informed us in a tone of triumph that we would have to cover at least twenty miles.
We began our march, through a chain of long snowy valleys. A network of heavy defenses extended for about a half mile around the center we had just left: anti-tank guns, minefields, which we were careful to avoid, and innumerable nests of machine guns. Beyond us, wild, empty country stretched out into infinity, hardened by winter, and favorable to any kind of hostile surprise. As soon as we left the last line of defenses, we knew we were on ground which belonged to whoever was walking across it at any moment, and which could change hands from day to day. The front in this sector was never precisely drawn, but was more like a piece of lace embroidery, with a multitude of recesses which sheltered ambushes, and encounters more or less foreseen, and unpredictable clashes.
One of the men in our group was a new recruit, very young and tall and stringy, like a weed that has grown too fast in a spell of damp weather. His enormous gazelle-like eyes stared at the anonymous vastness of the landscape, which he was clearly incapable of absorbing. He was visibly affected by the loss of his native dimensions: the short vistas of the Rhineland had never led him to suspect that such a huge scale was possible.
A year ago, I had felt the same way.
The cold, which had turned dry after ten days of snow and cloudy skies, made the landscape into a white screen against which darker objects were startlingly visible. The wind of the preceding days had swept across the snow, piling it up against every barrier, filling in hollows, and leaving brown patches of bare soil in other places, like great stains. As long as we didn’t have to make any excessive detours, we preferred to follow the bare patches. Every hour, we stopped for a short rest.
Five or six planes flew by to the south. We froze for a minute, trying to discern their purpose, but they vanished over the horizon before we were able to distinguish whether they were Yaks or ME-109’s.
By lunchtime, we were still unsure of our bearings. The noncom responsible for getting us to our destinations claimed that we were moving in the right direction, but his face and voice betrayed his panic.
Country on such a vast scale cannot be trifled with.
One can play explorer in the forest of Fontainebleau, but not on the tundra, where one feels too small and trivial for games. The hostile indifference of nature seems so overwhelming it is almost necessary to believe in God.
We walked for a long time, and finally came to a line of telegraph poles stuck unevenly into the ground. They were following the edge of a road which we could see was in use, as it was deeply marked by fresh ruts.
The noncom decided we should take the road to the south, as the quickest way of finding our units. This seemed odd, as it was clear that we would be proceeding perpendicular to our previous direction. However, no one hesitated. We had long ago learned that it was useless to argue points which had lost all meaning. We also felt heavily oppressed by the prospect of a night in the open — the first of a long series which would require all the patience and endurance we could muster. For a fraction of a second the thought of my wrecked leave flared through my consciousness like a shooting star in the night sky. I swallowed hard, and everything sank back into uniform gray.
The weedy young recruit remained speechless. His astonished eyes moved from the snowy steppe to the faces of the experienced veterans we seemed to be. Trusting us as a shepherd trusts the stars, he plodded dutifully on.
We suddenly caught sight of a massive object buried in the snow about five hundred yards ahead of us. A long gun barrel poked through the white crust, and we realized we were facing a camouflaged tank. Of course, it was one of ours, otherwise we would all have been dead. The Panther was buried up to its turret, and behind it two or three bulges indicated bunkers. Suddenly a fellow appeared on top of the tank, wearing a sheepskin vest over his black tank-corps uniform. He jumped down and walked out to meet us, shouting his name. We did the same, according to the custom of the times. He told us that when his tank had broken down he had been ordered to half bury it and turn it into a blockhouse. With considerable difficulty, he and the eight other men with him had carried out the order. Separated from their armored unit by the force of circumstances, they had been standing guard over this vast, empty panorama for three weeks now. Once in that time some Russians had come by, but the tank’s two S.M.G.s had forced them to pass far to one side. This accident had transformed them into an official surveillance post, and they were due to be relieved in two weeks’ time. They had been there for three weeks already, and admitted that it was difficult to sleep really soundly at night.