Those wretched men, collected from several infantry regiments, were retreating after several days of fighting an implacable enemy who had toyed with them, decimating them as and when he chose. They were on foot, in rags, their faces livid after so much suffering, dragging along with them nauseatingly wounded men on litters made of branches, like the litters of the Sioux.
These men, numbed by too much disaster, were no longer fighting for any spiritual motive, but were more like wolves, terrified of starvation.
To oppose their sole and legitimate reason for living was to risk one’s own life. These men, who no longer distinguished between enemies and friends, were ready to commit murder for less than a quarter of a meal. They were to demonstrate this a few days later, in a horrible phase of the confused flux of the war. These martyrs to hunger massacred two villages to carry off their supplies of food, but thirty of their men died of starvation anyway, near the Rumanian frontier.
Our shock at meeting combat troops in such a state was equal to theirs at finding us as we were.
“Where do you think you’re going?” sneered a tall, emaciated lieutenant, swimming in a curious conglomerate uniform which was far too big for him.
He was talking to our lieutenant, who had led us since the death of Wesreidau. Our lieutenant pointed on the map to the position we were supposed to reach. He cited names, numbers, latitudes. The other listened, swaying stiffly, like a dead tree in the wind.
“What are you talking about? What sector? What hill? Are you dreaming? There’s nothing left, nothing — do you hear me — but mass graves, which are blowing apart in the wind.”
The man talking like this still wore the 1935 commemorative National Socialist decoration pinned to his scorched tunic, which was marked by a thousand stains. He was tall and dark, and a heavy bundle of grenades hung from his belt.
“You can’t be serious,” our lieutenant answered in a pleading tone. “You’ve had a hard time, you’re a little light in the head, and you’re hungry. We too have been keeping ourselves alive by miracles.”
The other drew closer. His eyes were filled with such a hateful, disquieting light that we would gladly have killed him, as if he were a sick animal.
“Yes, I’m hungry,” he roared. “Hungry in a way the saints could never have imagined. I’m hungry, and I’m sick, and I’m afraid, to such a point that I want to live to revenge myself for all mankind. I feel like devouring you, Leutnant. There were cases of cannibalism at Stalingrad, and soon there will be here, too.”
“You’re crazy! If worse comes to worst, we can eat the grass, and there’s all of occupied Russia, with plenty of reserves for the troops. For God’s sake, pull yourself together. You keep going, and we’ll cover your retreat.”
The other made a noise more like a hiccup than a laugh.
“You’ll cover us, and we can take ourselves quietly away! Tell that to the men you see there. They’ve been fighting for five months, and have lost four-fifths of their comrades. They’ve been waiting for reinforcements, ammunition, vitamins, food, medicine, God knows what! They’ve hoped a thousand times, and survived a thousand times. You won’t be able to tell them anything, Leutnant, but you can try…”
We tried to shift some of the materiel from our decrepit vehicles the last vestige of our motorization — onto our backs, to make room for some of the seriously wounded men among the retreating troops. They left first, driving past the rest of us, who were left to that extent less mobile than before on the great Ukrainian plain. We watched the trucks disappearing into the distance, envying the fate of the wounded, who might be going to escape the oppression of that immensity.
Then our motley collection of troops continued their retreat — a vain and empty march. We seemed to be tramping along a huge carpet on rollers, which unwound beneath our feet, leaving us always in the same place. How many hours, and days, and nights went by? I can no longer remember. Our groups spread out, and separated. Some stayed where they were, and slept. No order or threat was strong enough to move them. Others — small groups of men who were particularly strong, or who still had enough food to keep going — went on ahead. There were also many suicides. I remember two villages stripped of every scrap of food, and more than one massacre. Men were ready to commit murder for a quart of goat’s milk, a few potatoes, a pound of millet. Starving wolves on the run don’t have time to stop and talk.
There were still a few human beings left in the wolf pack: soldiers who died to save a can of sour milk — the last reserve of a pair of infants. Others died at the hands of their fellows for protesting against the savagery produced by famine, or were beaten to death because they were suspected of hiding food. Usually, these men were found to have nothing. There were a few exceptions: an Austrian had his head kicked in, and a few handfuls of crumbled vitamin biscuit were found at the bottom of his sack. He had probably collected them by shaking out the provision sacks of some commissariat which had ceased to exist several weeks before. Men died for very little — for the possibility of a day’s food. When everything had been eaten, down to the last sprout in the meager gardens, twelve thousand soldiers stared at the village, which had been abandoned by its terrified inhabitants.
Living corpses wandered here and there, staring at the tragic shreds of existence which remained to them. They stared at the scene of pillage, looking for some understanding of the past which might shed some light on the future. They stayed where they were until dusk. Then three or four armored cars from the advancing Russian troops arrived, peppered with machine-gun fire the crowd of men, who didn’t even try to escape, made a half-turn, and left. The desperate, ravening men scattered across the steppe.
Everyone fled, running for the west because the west drew them irresistibly, as the north attracts the needle of a compass. The steppe absorbed and obliterated them, leaving only small, scattered groups tramping toward the Rumanian frontier, which was very close, but still out of sight. I belonged to one such group. There were nine of us: Hals and me — inseparable as always — Sperlovski, Frösch, Prinz, an older fellow called Siemenleis, who must have been an incorruptible civil servant before the war, and three Hungarians, with whom all conversation was impossible. Were they volunteers, or had they been enrolled in circumstances similar to mine? No one knew. They looked at us with eyes full of hate, as if we were responsible for the misadventure of the Third Reich in which they had been involved. Yet they clung to us as if we were their last hope of ever returning to their distant firesides.
One day there was a line of trees, or a hedge of saplings, which I can still see, as in a drunken dream, and beyond it, the wide, very wide field which we planned to cross. We could see some buildings on the crest of a small hill, and had decided to search them for food.
Halfway across the field the sound of planes made us look up. Two Yabos were seeking some prey.
Seven of us melted into that enormous stretch of ground, and two ran — Frösch and myself.
Like hunted animals intent on self-preservation, each man thought only of himself, and no one shouted to us. The two Russian aviators spotted our wild gallop, and dived down at us. Although we had nothing left but our skins, we still represented the enemy to them, and had to be wiped out.
When the noise reached a certain pitch, we instinctively threw ourselves down on the thick grass. The bullets passed over our heads and landed far beyond us. When we lifted our heads, we could see the planes completing a graceful arabesque against the stormy blue and black summer sky. Gasping for breath, we ran desperately until the two vultures once again filled the air with overwhelming noise. The planes made two more passes after that, peppering the ground with bullets, each time twenty or thirty yards wide of the mark. Like a terrible joke, the planes roared gown a fourth time at the trembling, sweating grasshoppers which were ourselves. Suddenly, as if by a miracle, we came to a ditch, and fell into it.