However, our mobility depended on the vehicles I have already described, which we gradually abandoned, continuing on horseback or on bicycles, whose tires were often stuffed with grass. We requisitioned the horses, bicycles, and other vehicles from the thousands of refugees — Ukrainians, gypsies, Polish colonists and others who were fleeing the Red tide in a vast throng. Sometimes partisans infiltrated these crowds, posing as simple peasants who were also fleeing the Bolsheviks. Then, at a given moment, they would shoot some of our men in the back, sowing general confusion. These maneuvers were supposed to crack our self-control, and provoke us to acts of reprisal, which would then turn the refugees against us. From their point of view, any means were justified.
Toward the end of May, we trapped a large band of rebels in a piece of wooded country. There were about four hundred heavily armed men. On our side, we had three companies to draw in the noose around the enemy.
The air was filled with woodland smells, and nothing seemed appropriate to the bloody events about to occur. The morning was splendid. Birds and small animals of every kind were running and fluttering through the branches, to get out of our way.
Wild animals, even ferocious ones, always flee armed men. This time the hunters were tracking far more dangerous game. The birds fearing and fleeing us could never have imagined that the masters of the world, who should have feared nothing, had created enemies of a size and ferocity which equaled their own. Human beings, rulers of the animal world, had created their own destruction. A process of natural selection, often very badly organized, periodically topples our crown.
We all felt extremely nervous. Despite the resignation which had once again taken hold of us, the moment of truth as always revealed who was afraid, who was a coward, and who still hoped to live. The soft leaves brushing against our heads weighted down with steel reminded us that life could be good — especially in such marvelous weather. For us, this was no baptism of fire, but almost a routine — a dangerous routine, in which medals for heroism were generally posthumous. We had already experienced most of its horrors, and had seen the upturned eyes of those who had won the medals. There was no longer much we could learn about that aspect of things. We deliberately maintained an attitude of morbid fatalism, — which we punctuated with bursts of harsh, forced laughter, like machine-gun fire. Some of the very strong had even managed to persuade themselves that since no man is immortal, and everyone dies sooner or later, the hour of death was unimportant. Those men, the strong ones, walked along thinking of other things. Others strong, but not that strong-lived to delay that final moment, watching through pupils as dark as the holes at the ends of their gunbarrels. The rest — which is to say the majority — were pouring with a cold sweat which ran down their bodies beneath their synthetic tunics, into their boots, and into the creases of their damp hands.
Those men were afraid, with an intense fear that reduced every conviction to nothing, and which no routine could soften. They were afraid before every operation, when time seemed to stand almost still. Even those who managed to stop thinking were still assailed by fear, as persistent as the daylight, which illuminates treetops one is still unaware of.
Contact with the enemy puts an end to this sort of fear. The opening shots raise the curtain on a drama which will fully occupy every sense. It is a pity that soldiers can think. When the first men have fallen, the tension slackens, and no one any longer pays attention to anything except the dry twigs crackling underfoot.
Feldwebel Sperlovski, who was leading our group, pointed to the signs of passage of a large number of men. The heavily trampled brush and the numerous empty gun emplacements indicated that we were approaching a large partisan camp. We had to watch carefully for mines — to watch each step, in addition to everything else. Sweat trickled down our temples, attracting clouds of belligerent flies. The brush under the trees and the low branches offered a thousand opportunities for concealed trip wires. Every yard required a desperate concentration. A plane passed over level with the treetops, and the throb of its engines made us all hold our breaths for fear the vibrations might be enough to set off the whole area. At last, there was a short blast on the whistle, and we all fell flat. A small fort of logs driven deep into the ground stood at the end of a vague foot path. At the far end of our group, fighting had already begun.
Sperlovski designated two men — Ballers and Prinz — to throw grenades at the fort. Prinz was one of the men in Lensen’s Panzerfaust team. Today, however, the anti-tank group wasn’t needed, so Prinz was just another Panzergrenadier, panting as he crawled forward with his lethal burden. Ballers, more dead than alive, was crawling along the other side of the path, identically laden. We all watched, trembling with tension.
Who were Ballers and Prinz?
Two men from anywhere. Were they good men or bad? Were they hateful? Was God with them, or had He condemned them? They were simply two men who had become our comrades in this group of madmen; men whose acquaintance we would probably have avoided in the ordinary circumstances of civilian life. Here, every step they took accelerated the beating of our hearts, and keyed up our pulse rate to equal theirs. Those two anonymous beings, both of them our men, were suddenly more important to every one of us than even our closest relatives — an egotistical transformation in which we all knew that we saw ourselves; had the circumstances fallen slightly differently, they would have been watching us. Motive seemed totally unimportant — if only they lived. They were already quite far from us, and perhaps very close to death, hidden from many of us by leaves. I could still see them. Prinz suddenly stood up and heaved his load toward the log fort. Then he plunged down again.
The entire woods felt the violence of the explosion. Its thunder echoed interminably under the trees. In the patches of sky visible through the branches we could see the birds shooting away from us like arrows. Prinz’s bundle had fallen short, and had made a large crater crowned with broken branches some seven or eight meters from the partisan hideout.
“Scheisse,” muttered our sergeant.
“There’s nobody there,” someone else said.
Then I saw Ballers running forward in turn. As he ran, I felt myself dying in his shoes. He too threw his packet of explosives, and then dived down as the trees all around us bent against a flash of light. The forest seemed to groan with the shock. This time there weren’t any fleeing birds — only our mimetic uniforms, which confounded us with nature. Ballers had just stood up again. So had Prinz, a short distance ahead of him. Their figures were sharply outlined against the broken earth. Behind them, all that had formerly been visible of the fort had disappeared.
“This way, comrades,” shouted Ballers, proud of his exploit. “There’s nobody in there.”
We all stood up, prepared to join him. He was laughing nervously. A crisp detonation whistled through the leaves, followed by two more. Prinz was running toward us, but Ballers wasn’t. He was walking hesitantly, stretching one hand toward us. Then he fell.
A short hour later, four hundred partisans were fighting like devils inside the circle we had drawn around them and were slowly tightening. Three companies almost at full strength — about eight or nine hundred men — were trying to knock out the circle of fire, which was produced by a variety of weapons of every caliber, and amounted to a serious destructive force. The partisan position was so well organized that any approach to it was almost suicidal.
During this hour, two of our men stepped on mines, and their shattered bodies were blown into the budding branches.