“You certainly have a long face,” Hals said, commiserating with me.
But I didn’t feel like talking. Hals quickly understood, and left me to myself. We were sprawled on the straw like animals, trying to sleep. Each piercing jolt of the wheels passing over the joints in the rails seemed to be adding to the barrier separating Paula from me. We passed through villages and towns and forests, all as dark as the night, and distances which stretched into infinity. The train seemed indefatigable, unending. At daybreak we were still rolling, and three hours later we were in lower Poland, crossing the Pinsk marshes, parallel to the rough, rutted roads pockmarked by war, and washed with sadness, and with the sweat of the armies that had tramped along them. The sky seemed inordinately large, and filled with the summer which the earth was denied. I fell asleep several times. Each time I woke the jolting wheels were still striking the same two notes: CLANG glang, CLANG, glang, CLANG, glang.
Finally, the train slowed down and stopped. The locomotive was re-supplied with coal and water at a pitiful hovel which passed for a station. We all jumped down onto the ballast, which was made of God knows what, to relieve ourselves. There was no question of official nourishment. German troop transports at that period were officially considered to be without that category of need, and no food would be distributed before Korosten. Luckily, nearly everyone had brought supplies from home — which is what the quartermaster general was counting on.
The train resumed its eastward journey. Hals tried to engage me in conversation several times, but always without success. I would have liked to tell him about Paula, but was afraid he’d treat it as a joke. We reached Korosten at nightfall, and were ordered to disembark, and line up beside a mess truck, which produced a revolting gruel. I felt very far from the excellent cooking of Frau X. When we had eaten, we all went to rinse our tins and drink at the tank which held water for the locomotives.
Then we set out again on a Russian train, which was no more comfortable than the one we’d just left, and into another eternity eastward. Trains were moving non-stop toward the front, both day and night. We had nearly reached our sector in less than three days. The Southern Front, where fierce fighting was under way at Kremenchug, had shifted, but our sector seemed almost unchanged. Our exhausting railway journey came to an end at Romny, where we had met with so many difficulties on the way out. From the train we were herded straight to the canteen, where we were given food and drink to quiet us as if we were frantic sheep on the way to the slaughterhouse. Then, with a haste which gave us no time to think, the military police called us out for our various units. It was very hot, and we would have been glad of a chance to sleep. A great many idle Russians stood and watched us, as though they were watching a fairground being prepared for a fair. When our group for the Gross Deutschland was called out, we were told to follow a sidecar, which led us to the edge of town. Instead of staying in first, or slowing down his machine, the bastard forced us onto the double. Heavily loaded, in that heat, we were nearly choking when we arrived at our designated position.
The stabsfeldwebel climbed down from his sidecar, called the other noncoms, to whom he distributed our marching orders, and divided up our group. In sections of forty or fifty at a time we marched off to our new camp. As we were commanded by fellows who were also just back from leave, and none too anxious to return to the firing line, we made numerous stops before arriving at Camp F of the Gross Deutschland Division, about twenty miles from Romny and over a hundred from Belgorod — out in the country, like Akhtyrka.
In this training camp for an elite division — all divisions with names instead of numbers were considered elite — one sweated blood and water. One was either hospitalized after a week of almost insane effort or incorporated into the division and marched off to the war, which was even worse.
We entered the camp through a large symbolic gateway cut into the trees of the forest which stretched away thickly to the northeast. Although we were marching in step, as we’d been ordered to do, and singing “Die Wolken Ziehn” at the tops of our lungs, we were still able to read the slogan which decorated the impressive entrance in large black letters, against a white ground: WE ARE BORN TO DIE.
I don’t think anyone could pass through that gate without a swallow of fear. A little further on another sign bore the words ICH DIENE (I serve).
Our noncoms marched us in impeccable order to the right-hand side of the rough courtyard, and ordered us to halt. A huge hauptmann walked over to us, flanked by two feldwebels.
“Stillgestanden!” shouted our group leader.
The giant captain saluted us with a slow but definitive gesture. Then he walked up and down our ranks, giving each of us a long stare. He was at least a head taller than anybody else. Even Hals seemed small beside this impressive personage. When he had petrified each of us with his astonishingly hard stare, he stepped back and rejoined the two felds, who were standing as still as the cedars of Jussieu.
“GOOD MORNING GENTLEMEN.” His words sounded like stakes being driven into the earth.
“I CAN SEE ON YOUR FACES THAT YOU’VE ALL BEEN ENJOYING YOUR LEAVES, AND I’M VERY GLAD TO SEE IT.”
Even the birds seemed to have been stilled by the sound of that voice.
“HOWEVER, TOMORROW YOU SHALL HAVE TO THINK OF THE WORK WHICH MUST ABSORB ALL OF US.”
A dust-covered company had marched up to the gateway, but had stopped short, in order not to interrupt the captain’s speech.
“TOMORROW A PERIOD OF TRAINING BEGINS FOR YOU, WHICH WILL TURN YOU INTO THE BEST FIGHTING MEN IN THE WORLD. FELDWEBEL,” he shouted in a voice which was even louder, “REVEILLE AT SUNRISE FOR THE NEW SECTION.”
“Jawohl, Herr Hauptmann.”
“GOOD EVENING, GENTLEMEN.”
He turned on his heel, then changed his mind, gesturing with one finger for the group of men at the gate to come in. When the fellows, stripped to the waist, and gray with dust, drew even with us, he stopped them, with a similar tiny gesture.
“Here are some new friends,” he said, addressing himself to both groups. “Salute each other, please.”
Three hundred men, their faces drawn with exhaustion, made a quarter turn to the right and saluted, shouting, “Thank you, comrades, for joining us.”
We presented arms, and the captain walked off, looking very pleased with himself. As soon as he was gone, the two feldwebels who’d come with him chased us off to the barracks as if they’d suddenly gone mad.
“You’ve got four minutes to settle in!” they shouted.
Forgetting our tiredness, we were presently standing at attention at the feet of our double-decker beds. Our noncoms, who were clearly terrified, called the roll under the baleful eyes of the two camp felds, who then explained what they expected of us in the way of order, cleanliness, and discipline. They also advised us to sleep, although it was still early, as we would need all our strength tomorrow. We knew that in the German army words of that sort often had a significance far greater than their literal meaning. The word “exhaustion,” for instance, had nothing to do with the “exhaustion” I’ve encountered since the war. At that time and place, it meant a power which could strip a strong man of fifteen pounds of weight in a few days. When the felds had gone, slamming the door behind them, we stared at each other in perplexity.
“It seems that life here won’t be a joke,” Hals said, from his bed beneath mine.
“God, no! Did you see that captain?”
“He’s all I saw, and I dread the day I get his foot in my backside.”
Outside, a section was leaving in camouflaged combat uniform probably on some night exercise.