(Poor Frösch! How many officers decided to hang you?)
“We shall be victorious here, or be covered with shame. No Bolshevik must ever, I repeat, ever, set foot on German soil. And now, my friends, I have some good news for you. There is mail for some of you, and citations, and promotions. But, before giving free reign to your joy, you must present yourselves at the store for fresh rations and ammunition. Dismiss. Heil Hitler!”
We broke ranks without any clear idea of our situation. “Things are looking up,” I said.
“A bastard who’d be glad to see us all killed,” muttered Hals.
We were standing in a long line in front of a large wooden building. “So that’s what we get instead of Wesreidau. Something tells me we’ll be having a few eye openers, Prinz.”
“Impossible. We’ve already seen everything there is to see.”
“He’s another one of these madmen,” said Hals.
“He’s not. He’s perfectly right,” said another voice behind us. We turned around in surprise.
“He’s right. It has to be here, or not at all. I can’t explain why without taking too long… but he’s right.”
More and more disconcerted, we stared at Wiener without saying a word, unable to grasp his attitude, which suddenly seemed so changed. “I’ll tell you why some other time,” Wiener said. “For now, you’re too thick to get it.”
Paula,
As I write, I’m looking at the letter I’ve longed for so much, and as I read your lines, I forget the icy ground, and the East, which is still so filled with menace.
Your letter, which is in my hand, seems like a miracle from heaven.
I don’t expect anything more from the ordinary world, from which we seem entirely cut off. I read your lines as our comrade Smellens, who is lucky enough to believe in God, recites his prayers.
Nothing can help us any more, Paula. Prayers seem like vodka — they blunt the cold for a moment.
Happiness has become entirely relative, and can mean simply daybreak, because darkness makes us think of death.
I have been promoted to obergefreiter, and although the stripes are still in my left pocket, I already feel that much more important.
I think these extraordinary and difficult moments have made us into men.
I can hear a roar in the east, Paula, but maybe it’s only the wind.
I look forward so much to reading another letter….
For several days now, we had been fighting again as we retreated. The Bolsheviks must never set foot on German soil. However, three powerful Soviet armies had already crossed the German frontier at five or six points, penetrating to a depth of some thirty miles. These three armies had rolled over our defending troops, whose survivors were dragging with them through the autumn countryside the last weapons which supported their claim to be part of an army.
To my regret, I am unable to retrace in detail the chaos of those bitter moments. But I can outline the ends of my friends, like Prinz, Sperlovski, and Solma, and of Lensen, who, in spite of everything, was really a friend. And it is Lensen I wish to salute now, by describing the tragedy of his death, which I can still see clearly, through the memories of so many other deaths. Whatever Lensen may have thought of me at times, I am certain that for all of us, and for his country, he was a brave man, who would have sacrificed his life without hesitation to help the most insignificant fellow soldier. The manner of his death fully supports this view of him, and it is perhaps because of him that I am sitting here now, writing these lines.
Lensen could never have accepted life as it is lived today, with all the concessions the former troops of the Eastern Front are obliged to make. Like the order for which he died, he was irreversible. Men who have embraced one idea can live only by and for that idea. Beyond it, they have nothing but their memories.
Our attempt to save the Courland front failed, and the overpowering Russian thrust reached the Baltic at several points, which I can no longer locate with any precision. The Northern Front was cut in two — the far north, around the Bay of Riga, as far as Libau; and the sector to which we were sent, a continuously shrinking front to the west of Libau, in Prussia and Lithuania, clinging farther south to the Vistula, which was the scene of hideous carnage.
The division was split into several small groups which attempted to throw the enemy off balance by attacking simultaneously at many points.
For the most part, these attacks were unsuccessful, and were hastily transformed into defensive actions. At that time, the division was precipitately attempting to regroup, in order to establish a defensive front some forty miles to the northwest. The bad roads, lack of fuel, mud, and faltering communications combined to slow down an operation which, under good conditions, wouldn’t have lost us any time. In addition to our other difficulties, we had to contend with enemy aircraft, which had become increasingly active. Each over-flight spread fresh disorder through our already weakened columns. When the order to regroup came through, our officers decided that the retreat should be spread out, and divided into small groups. This idea made sense in that we offered less of a target to planes. However, when an enemy armored unit ran into two or three widely dispersed companies, our chances of survival were at best problematical. It was under these conditions, in a village of scattered houses, that an encounter took place which almost erased our group from the divisional list.
“I’m sure I’ve been here before,” said Lensen, who was shocked by the misery of the country.
“Everything looks so different now that I don’t recognize any details, but I’m sure that over that way there are some villages I know. My own village is about sixty miles from here,” he gestured toward the southwest.
“Königsberg is over that way. I’ve been there several times, and once I went to Cranz, too. It was raining cats and dogs, but we went swimming anyway.”
He laughed, and we listened.
Despite the crushing retreat and numbing cold, Lensen seemed to have revived on his native soil. But he felt the anguished silence of this village, whose inhabitants had fled the day before, more intensely than the rest of us. Three hundred of us, exhausted by a march, which had begun at dawn, of twelve miles over waterlogged ground, were sitting doubled up for warmth, waiting for an uncertain eleven-o’clock distribution of food. Only Lensen was on his feet, pacing up and down the length of the stable wall, which the rest of us were leaning against, sheltering from the incessant rain. We heard his voice against a background of explosions which were more or less loud, more or less distant, coming from the southeast. We scarcely noticed the sounds of war any more. They had become so much the ordinary background of our lives that we no longer paid any attention to them unless they were inside a perimeter small enough to threaten immediate danger. Except for the noise to the east, everything was quiet. We were somewhat like people these days who cannot enjoy peace and quiet without a phonograph — who need noise before they can relax. Perhaps they are simply afraid of true silence. Unfortunately for us, we had no control over the volume of noise, and in fact would have been much happier without it.
Except for Lensen’s harangue, nothing was happening.
Some twenty-five yards from us, six men were preparing lunch. Somewhat further off, another group were seriously engaged in attending to personal needs. Others were resting, with their eyes half closed, or staring into space, dizzy with exhaustion. The melancholy autumn weather brushed our faces with its damp freshness. We had been through so much misery that we were unable to appreciate conditions which ordinarily would have moved us to pity.