“God!” shouted the veteran through a spasm of coughing. “Where the hell’s our artillery?”
Lindberg had begun to tremble again. Then the Russian fire stopped. The veteran peered carefully out, and after him our seven heads rose above the rampart. We stared at the plain, which was still scattered with trailing clouds of dust. In the distance, besides the wood, someone was howling.
“They must be running short of shells,” said the stabs, grinning. “Otherwise, they wouldn’t have stopped so quickly.”
The veteran looked at him with his habitual resigned expression.
“I was just thinking the same thing about our artillery, stabsfeldwebel. I was wondering why they weren’t firing.”
“We’re preparing an offensive — that’s why our side is quiet. Soon we’ll see our tanks…”
The veteran stared at the horizon.
“I’m sure,” the stabs went on, “that our offensive will begin again, any minute now….”
But we were watching the veteran: his eyes were growing wider and wider, and so was his mouth, which seemed ready to howl.
The stabs had shut up too; we all followed the direction of our gunner’s eyes.
In the remote distance, a thin black line stretched from one end of the horizon to the other, and was moving toward us like a wave rolling toward the shore. We stood watching for a moment: the line was dense, and somehow unreal. Then the veteran shouted in a voice which paralyzed us with fear: “It’s the Siberians! They’re here! There must be at least a million of them!”
He gripped the butt of his F.M., and a demented laugh burst through his clenched teeth. In the distance, a confused tumult of thousands of roaring voices swelled like a hurricane wind.
“Every man to his post,” shouted the stabs, whose eyes remained fixed, as if hypnotized, on the irresistible Soviet tide.
We had all picked up our guns like automatons, and braced our elbows against the parapet. Hals was trembling like a leaf, and Lindberg, his number-two man, seemed unable to handle the belt of 7.7s.
“Get closer to me,” Hals shouted. “Get closer or I’ll kill you!”
Lindberg’s face was quivering, as if he were about to burst into tears. The veteran wasn’t shouting any more. His gun was on the crook of his shoulder, his finger was on the trigger, and his teeth were clenched tightly enough to break. The Soviet war cry was growing continuously louder and more distinct. It was like a long shout, muffled by its great volume.
We remained frozen by the danger, unable to judge its magnitude. Our stupor was too great; we were like paralyzed mice facing a snake. Then Lindberg broke down. He began to cry and shout, and left his post, throwing himself down on the trench floor.
“They’ll kill us! They’ll kill us! We’ll all be killed!”
“Get up!” shouted the stabs. “Get back to your post or I’ll shoot you right now!”
He dragged him to his feet, but Lindberg had gone as limp as a rag, and was streaming with tears.
“You bastard!” shouted Hals.
“Get killed then. I’ll take care of this damned thing myself.”
By now we could hear the Russian cries distinctly — a huge, continuous Ourrah!
“Maman!” I thought to myself. “Maman!”
“Ourrah! Ourrah pobieda!” muttered the veteran. “Just get a little closer.”
The human wave was now about four hundred yards from us. We could also hear the throb of engines, and see three planes, high in the brightening sky.
“Planes,” said the Sudeten. But we’d all noticed them already.
Our anxious eyes left the Russian horde for a moment. The airplane engines were screaming, as the planes dived down at top speed. “Messerschmitts!” shouted the stabs. “What guts!”
“Hurrah!” we all shouted. “Hurrah for the Luftwaffe!”
The three planes were strung out over the huge Russian thrust, spraying it with death. This seemed to be a signal for our mortars to open fire. They were hidden in the brush, and had lengthened their range. The spandaus which had survived the bombardment began to fire too, while the planes dived down, stimulating our troops to a feverish pitch of courage. I could feel the F.M. cartridges running through my hand at a dizzying speed. One clip was emptied, and we started another. Some of the big Wehrmacht guns had also opened fire, which must have had a lethal effect on the ranks of Bolsheviks, who were charging as in the days of Napoleon.
However, the human tide continued to roll toward us, making our scalps crawl. Only the weight of our helmets kept our filthy hair from standing straight up on our heads, although the idea of death itself no longer terrified us. My eyes remained fixed on the smoking metal of the F.M. in the steady hands of the veteran. The trembling belt of cartridges moved forward into the machine, shaken as if by a titanic frenzy.
“Prepare the grenades!” shouted the stabs, who was firing with his Luger braced on his left arm.
“It’s useless!” shouted the veteran even louder. “We haven’t got enough ammunition. We can’t stop them. Order the retreat, stabsfeldwebel, while there’s still time.”
Our frantic eyes moved from the lips of one man to the other. The Russian war cry, “Ourrah pobieda!” roared closer and closer.
The men were firing from their hips as they ran, and the air shook with the rushing flight of their bullets.
“You’re crazy,” answered the stabs. “No one can get away from here, and our boys should be coming any minute now — so keep firing, for the love of God.”
But the veteran had already loaded his F.M. and picked up the last magazine.
“You’re the one who’s crazy. ‘Any minute now’ is too late. But you go ahead and die right here, if that’s what you want.”
“No! No!” shouted the stabs.
The veteran had just jumped from the trench and was galloping toward the woods, bent over as far as he could, and calling to us as he ran. We grabbed our guns in frantic haste.
“Run!” shouted the Sudeten.
We all followed him. For a moment we were almost mad with terror, racing toward the shattered trees with our lungs on fire, while Russian bullets whistled through the air all around us. There were still seven of us, which seemed astonishing. The stabs had finally followed everyone else, but was still protesting and shouting: “Cowards! Shoot back! You’ll all be killed! Put up a fight!”
But we continued to run for the trees.
“Halt!” the stabs shouted. “Halt, you cowards!”
We had just caught up with the veteran, who had stopped for a minute behind what was left of a tree. I was right beside him.
“You bastard!” the stabs yelled. “I’ll report you for this!”
“I know,” the veteran said gasping, almost laughing. “But I’d take one of our firing squads over Ivan’s bayonet any day.”
We began to run again, climbing a pock-marked hillside stripped of its brush.
“Ai-ee,” howled the veteran, as Russian bullets struck the earth bank with hollow thuds.
“Hurry, stabs! Quick!” he shouted to our leader, who was still climbing the bank and would never complete his ascent.
“You’ll see. We’ll stop them when we get to our lines.”
The veteran had barely finished speaking when our noncom suddenly cried out and stood up, flapping his arms in an almost comical way. Then he ran back down the little hill and collapsed, with his face pressed into the ground.
“Damned stabs,” said the veteran. “I told him to hurry up.” Stripped of a leader for the second time, our 8th group continued its flight through the brush, staggering under our load of weapons. “Let’s stop for a second,” I said. “I can’t breathe.”