Through our condition of near torpor, we were dimly aware of suffering and weeping. The wounded were groaning and dying. But none of that stopped anyone from sleeping whenever there was a chance.
The first part of our meal had been passed out: cellophane sausages stuffed with soybean puree — one for every two men. It goes without saying that these were cold. During the retreat the men in charge of supply, with a stirring display of professional conscience, had collected enough old and wrinkled potatoes to fill a sidecar. They were just handing them round to the men when four soldiers jumped over a wall. They were gasping for breath, and as they ran toward us they made large, sweeping gestures with their arms.
One of them called to us without shouting too loud: “Ivan!”
The sluggish mass of men stood up with a single movement. We knew that the next few minutes could face us with the most appalling danger. With the instinct of hunted beasts, we had already scattered each man running to wherever he saw a possibility of the slightest protection. Those who were lucky enough to have already received their food wolfed it down hastily. Lieutenant Wollers had just joined us in a recess sheltered by a roof. His field radio, which he always kept near him, was already crackling out an alert. We waited in silence for about ten minutes, but nothing happened. The Russians could not have been very far off, as our sentries had announced them. But none of us knew whether we would be dealing with a section or a squad, a regiment or ten men. We hastily organized patrols. We had to find out whether we were going to fight or run as fast as we could.
The six fellows nearest Wollers were sent over toward the wall our two sentries had jumped. I was among them.
Two other groups of about the same size were sent in other directions. To describe my desperation and terror would be repetitive; it was the same as at Outcheni, Belgorod, the sheds where the partisans had hidden, and so on.
Like everyone else, I was resigned to the bad moments of our existence — to the sinking feeling which comes with being ripped from sleep to meet some disagreeable obligation. This was like that, only more so.
We moved along the other side of the stable against which we had been dozing a few moments before, and came out onto a rough piece of ground stacked with old timbers.
We were fully aware of our danger, and a heavy sense of desperation, which no longer accelerated the beating of our hearts, made us alternately hate death and long for it. My Mauser weighed down my hands like an object of no value, on which I could no longer count for anything. Formerly, as we marched through Polish and Russian villages, its weight of wood and metal had given me such a sense of confidence that I had felt almost invulnerable. Today the possibility of organizing any kind of effective defense with these weapons seemed entirely unlikely.
We crossed the waste ground and arrived at a cluster of buildings, where we separated into two groups of three men each, and continued to advance as carefully as if we were carrying explosives. We turned the corner of the building, and were able to see a much larger piece of the horizon, marked by a line of trees which had been almost entirely stripped of branches. Beyond the trees was a road, swarming with men. In the distance, we could see still more approaching.
“There must be at least three or four hundred of them,” whispered the man next to me. “Look over there.”
We walked back past the building where we had been resting earlier. At its far end, a row of tar barrels stood out very black against the chalky soil. Beyond them was a small house. Our steps made a light crunching noise against the fine gravel. Still silent, we stepped into the space beyond the barrels. We took four steps and found ourselves face to face with four Russian soldiers on patrol, who were taking the same precautions and observing the same silence we were. For us, all process of thought froze.
Our gestures were without haste. The Russians opposite us were also moving very slowly, and watching us. It seemed as if, by some miracle, the same calm had been imposed on both sides. No one fired. With deliberate, calculated movements, both Russians and Germans withdrew to the shelter of the building. We stared at each other with enormous eyes.
“We’ve seen enough of them,” muttered Wiener. “Half turn.”
We went back to our starting point, and Wiener made his report. We felt as if we’d been dreaming.
A quarter of an hour later, we had set up our defenses in the northern part of the village and its approaches. According to our intelligence, we were involved with an infantry regiment of some two or three thousand men. There were three hundred of us, but we were not ordered to retreat.
Hours of agonized waiting went by. We were used to lengthy Russian preparations, but we also knew how steady their thrust would be. By the time the first contacts occurred, it was already growing dark. The first Russian assault units moved carefully up to the buildings under cover of dusk. The waves of Russian infantry no longer had the same dash as at Belgorod or on the Dnieper. Such astounding losses had been inflicted on those howling mobs throughout the reconquest of their territory that the Russian High Command had been obliged to conceive a somewhat less heroic tactic. Also, although they were fiercely determined to revenge themselves on us by trampling on German soil, they were fully expecting us to mount a desperate resistance. And they had come to count more heavily on the effectiveness of their tanks and aviation to reduce our smaller, underequipped units.
On our side, the magnificent lines of shouting soldiers were becoming increasingly rare, while the Bolsheviks were increasingly fighting in a “European” style, using techniques more or less learned from us. This shift did not make our position any easier. Our group fired at a Russian patrol leaping toward us, but we saved our mortar for later; we were beginning to run out of shells.
This was only a small encounter, which seemed without importance to men accustomed to tornadoes of fire — a few fragments of brass hurtling through the dusk, breaking a shoulder, crushing a breastbone, or carrying off a life — nothing, in short, which even approximated the pitch of a real battle. Of course, if the same exchange should take place in Paris today, it would be considered sufficiently serious to empty a whole section of the city, and make all the headlines; each time has its own habits and style….
Throughout that black and foggy night, the Russians continued to dig in beside our precarious positions. The thought that they might burst out at any minute was terrifying enough to make us sick. Perhaps this evening would be our last. Ivan would overrun us and put an end to this desperate chase which had lasted for nearly two years and covered thousands of miles marked with fear and blood. Probably tonight would be the night; we no longer knew what to hope for. But the night went by — a night of cold watchfulness broken by flares and distinguished by nothing in particular. The Russians, who seemed to be in no hurry, watched us, as we watched them.
I even managed to sleep, despite the watch we were supposed to keep unbroken. Several others did the same, and it was only the cold that kept us from having a real rest. Finally, dawn broke, and with it our tension increased. The air and ground shook. The rain, which usually muffles noise, seemed to have no effect on the heavy grinding of chains and the percussive exhaust of a large number of armored vehicles. A column of tanks was driving toward the motionless village, where Russian infantry was already waiting, calm and resolute, for our deaths.
We knew that there were not enough of us for any kind of defense against tanks. We had no anti-tank guns, and the few Panzerfausts we had left would never be able to stop that mass of tanks, which we judged from the noise to be quite large. Our hair bristled with cold and fear as we organized our disengagement with the speed that had become familiar. Everyone was on foot except for the drivers of our two sidecars, which were used for liaison between the command group and ourselves. Ten soldiers were harnessed to each gun, as we couldn’t let the Russians hear the sound of engines. The company withdrew in a silence worthy of Hollywood Indians, leaving just enough men to form three interception groups. Each of these was made up of ten men, with two Jägerpanzerfausts, and four covering riflemen.