A moment later, I began again: “Gefreiter Sajer, Herr Hauptmann.”
“Back from leave, my boy?”
“Not exactly, Herr Hauptmann. My leave was canceled.”
“Ah. But you’re well now? How do you feel?”
I wanted to tell him how disappointed I was, and how much I still hoped to have at least a few days off, but the words stuck in my throat. I suddenly felt the full strength of my attachment to all the friends who must have been very nearby, an emotion which struck me as both idiotic and profound.
“I’m all right, Herr Hauptmann. I can wait until my next leave.” Wesreidau stood up. Although I couldn’t really see his face, I thought he was smiling. He put one hand on my shoulder, and I felt myself tremble at his touch.
“I’ll take you to your friends. I know that being with friends can make up for the lack of a comfortable bed, even for the lack of food.”
I felt stunned. Herr Hauptmann led the way out, and I followed him.
“I always try to group my men as friends,” he explained. “Wiener, Hals, Lensen, and Lindberg are covering a Pak position. They’ll be glad to see you again.”
Wesreidau’s tall figure strode through the ghostly fog, which drifted against the darkness in white patches. As we passed, fellows stupefied by sleep stumbled to their feet, and noncoms signaled that everything was calm.
We came to a hole which was somewhat deeper than the others, and which seemed to be occupied by three hunched-up sacks, and two figures leaning against the parapet. I recognized the veteran’s voice immediately.
“Welcome to our hole, Herr Hauptmann. We’ll be able to talk tonight. Everything’s quiet.”
The familiarity of that voice astonished me.
Wesreidau said: “Here’s Sajer, who’s just come back.”
“Sajer! I don’t believe it! I thought he was living it up in Berlin.”
“I felt lonesome for you fellows,” I said.
“That’s a good boy,” the veteran answered. “You’re quite right, too. Here we sometimes even have fireworks, and in Berlin it’s total blackout. I remember that from the last time I was there, over a year and a half ago.”
I could hear Hals grumbling sleepily: “What the hell’s going on up there?”
“Wake up, steppe boy,” Wiener shouted even louder than before.
“Herr Hauptmann is here with our dear friend Sajer.”
Hals jumped up as if he’d been shot.
“Sajer!” he said. “But he’s crazy to come back here!”
Wesreidau felt obliged to make a formal intervention. “If I wasn’t aware of your courage in combat, I should be forced to assign you to a penal battalion, Gefreiter Hals.”
Hals was suddenly fully awake.
“Please excuse me, Herr Hauptmann. I was half asleep.”
“Your sleep is pessimistic, Gefreiter Hals.”
The veteran answered for him. “The day before yesterday, the Don; yesterday, the Donets; this morning, the Dnieper… You must admit, Herr Hauptmann, that even an elephant hide would find that somewhat discouraging.”
“I know,” Wesreidau answered. “It’s just what I’ve been afraid of ever since we came to Russia. But if we lose our confidence everything will be much harder.”
“It’s territory and men that we’re losing, Herr Hauptmann, much faster than confidence.”
“The Russians will not be able to cross the Pripet, for absolute geographical reasons. Believe me.”
“Where could we retreat to after that?” Lindberg asked stupidly. “To the Oder,” the veteran said.
The cold seemed to strike all of us in the vitals.
“God keep us from such a catastrophe,” murmured Herr Hauptmann. “I would rather be dead than see that day.”
Probably Wesreidau believed in God. In any case, his prayer was granted.
12. RED TANKS
It was now ten days since my return, which we had celebrated according to the circumstances. In the windowless isba we were assigned for rest periods, we had emptied a five-quart container of ersatz — no vodka, no biscuits, but then, that’s war.
In any case, we had reserved the ersatz for me and my friends. The rest of the company might as well have been in limbo. Beyond the boundary of our friendship, and indifferent to it, they washed their dirty feet in large dishes of faintly warmed water or attacked their lice or organized lice races to pass the time. For a brief moment, we felt a sense of occasion, but that quickly faded. One can tell the same stories only a certain number of times. We very soon sank back into the torpor characteristic of soldiers at the front. Nothing was new to us; we had been through it all before — and even on days when our morale was relatively high, we felt constrained by the inevitable anxieties of the front.
For ten days we shuttled back and forth between our hole in the ground and the isba where we rested. Every twelve hours, we tramped the half mile which lay between our outpost and the shattered remnants of a village overrun by war. During the day, we stared vacantly at the empty, frozen country beyond our hole. At night, the fog limited our vision to ten or fifteen yards at most. We weren’t yet trying to stop the enemy; their front was still extremely fluid.
From time to time, a few attempts at penetration, always motorized, forced us to open fire. And once, since my return, enemy tanks had appeared and fired at our frozen batteries. Otherwise, we had all the time in the world to observe the crystal structure of snowflakes against our infantry half boots, which became as hard as wood during our twelve hours of duty, and softened again in the stable-like warmth of sixty bodies huddled together in the isba during our twelve hours off. Fires, of course, were streng verboten, as smoke would give away our position.
Wesreidau often visited us.
I think he felt especially warm toward our group, and with the veteran, able to speak directly, as man to man. We young ones listened to them talking, the way boys listen to their elders, and what we heard was always alarming. Our exhausted troops had abandoned Kiev, which, in spite of everything, remained a center of combat. We were still trying to hold the Dnieper — but even that famous barrage seemed to be doing us very little good. From Cherkassy to Kremenchug, the Russians were on both banks of the river. They also held both banks of the Desna. At Nedrigailov, victory was no longer a possibility for us, and our men were faced with a choice of captivity or death.
Fortunately, as our front was extremely precarious and shallow, we were only supposed to be covering the southern wing of the fighting. The area we were holding was as flat as a billiard table, and a strong defense would have been difficult even with adequate supplies. On the twelfth day after my return, we were attacked by Russian planes, which cost us many casualties. Later that day, a column of German soldiers straggled over the horizon, partially made up of troops pushed from Cherkassy. Seven or eight ragged, famished regiments, overloaded with wounded, descended on us like a plague of locusts, ravaging and plundering our reserves. The intensity of the battle they had just survived could easily be read on their shaggy, exhausted faces. This fragment of the Wehrmacht, with worn out boots, empty packs, and eyes glittering with fever, preceded by four days the Russian thrust which began at Kherson and pushed through to the west bank of the Dnieper. At precisely this moment, winter also began to attack in earnest. The thermometer suddenly plunged to five degrees below zero.
On an evening of savage cold, the enemy reached our lines. The noise of their arrival preceded them, carried on the wind to the shivering bundles of rugs and blankets waiting behind frozen parapets. We listened, as animals at bay listen to the pack closing in. For at least two hours, we lay with straining ears, our enormous eyes staring fixedly through frozen films of protective tears.