A noncom woke me from my bad sleep at around six o’clock. The mess was cold and almost empty; I didn’t taste the bitterness of the tea, but concentrated on its warmth, with both my hands around the tin cup. Then they led us with our kit to a freezing hangar where they made us wait for a long time, stamping our feet in the midst of oily machinery and crates of spare parts. My breath formed heavy condensation in front of my face, suspended in the moist air. Finally the pilot came and introduced himself: “We’ll fill up and get going,” he said. “Unfortunately, I don’t have any parachutes for you.”—“Are they of any use?” I asked. He laughed: “Theoretically, if we get shot down by a Soviet fighter plane, we might have time to jump. In practice, you can forget it.” He led us to a little truck that took us to a Junker-52 parked at the end of the runway. During the night the sky had become overcast; to the east, the cottony mass was clearing up. Some men were finishing loading small crates into the aircraft; the pilot had us climb in and showed us how to buckle down on a narrow seat. A thickset mechanic came and sat down opposite us; he flashed us a sardonic smile, then ignored us. Bursts of static and chatter came from the radio. The pilot slipped back out of the cockpit to check something in the rear, climbing over the pile of crates and bags tied down with cable mesh. “It is a good thing you’re leaving today,” he said as he returned. “The Reds are almost in Skassirskaya, just to the north. Soon we’ll close up shop here.”—“Are you going to evacuate the aerodrome?” I asked. He made a face and returned to his post. “You know our traditions, Hauptsturmführer,” Hohenegg commented. “We’ll only evacuate when everyone’s gotten killed.” One by one, the engines coughed and started up. A high throbbing sound filled the cabin; everything vibrated, the seat beneath me, the metal wall to my back; a monkey wrench left on the floor trembled. Slowly, the plane began to taxi to the runway, U-turned, picked up speed; the tail lifted; then the whole mass tore itself off the ground. Our bags, which hadn’t been tied down, slipped to the back; Hohenegg fell against me. I looked out the window: we were lost in the fog and the clouds; I could barely see the engine. The vibrations penetrated my body in an unpleasant way. Then the plane climbed beyond the cloud cover and the sky was a metallic blue; the dawning sun stretched its cold light over the immense landscape of clouds, undulating with balki like the steppe. The air was biting, the cabin wall icy; I wrapped myself in my coat and huddled down. Hohenegg seemed to be sleeping, his hands in his pockets, his head leaning forward; the plane’s vibrations and jolts disturbed me, I couldn’t do the same. Finally the plane began its descent; skimming over the summit of clouds, it dove, and once again everything was gray and dark. Through the monotonous buzzing of the propellers I thought I heard a muffled explosion, but I couldn’t be sure. A few minutes later, the pilot shouted into the cabin: “Pitomnik!” I shook Hohenegg, who woke up without any surprise, and wiped the condensation off the window. We had just passed beneath the clouds and the white steppe, almost shapeless, stretched beneath the wing. In front, everything was drastically changed: brown craters spattered the snow in large dirty spots; heaps of scrapped metal lay in tangles, powdered with white. The plane was coming down quickly, but I still couldn’t see the runway. Then it suddenly touched the ground, bounced, landed. The mechanic was already unbuckling his strap: “Quick, quick!” he shouted. I heard an explosion and a spray of snow struck the window and the wall of the cabin. I unbuckled frantically. The plane had slewed a little sideways and the mechanic opened the door and threw down the ladder. The pilot hadn’t cut the engines. The mechanic took our bags, tossed them unceremoniously out the opening, then motioned to us energetically to get out. A howling wind, loaded with fine, hard snow, struck me in the face. Some bundled-up men were busy around the plane, setting blocks in place, opening the hold. I slid down the ladder and gathered up my kit. A Feldgendarm armed with a submachine gun saluted me and gestured for me to follow him; I shouted out, “Wait, wait!” Hohenegg was getting out. A shell burst in the snow a few dozen meters away, but no one seemed to pay any attention to it. At the end of the runway rose a mound of swept snow; a group of men was waiting there, guarded by several armed Feldgendarmen, their sinister metal plates hanging over the coats. Hohenegg and I, behind our escort, approached them; closer up, I saw that most of these men were bandaged or holding makeshift crutches; two of them were lying on stretchers; all of them had the tag of the wounded pinned visibly on their greatcoats. At a signal, they rushed toward the plane. Behind them was a melee: Feldgendarmen were blocking an opening in the barbed wire, beyond which a mass of haggard men were pushing each other; they were shouting, begging, waving bandaged limbs, pressing against the Feldgendarmen who were also shouting and brandishing their submachine guns. Another detonation, closer this time, made some snow rain down; several of the wounded had thrown themselves to the ground, but the Feldgendarmen remained unruffled; behind us there was shouting; some of the men who were unloading the plane seemed to have been hit, they lay on the ground and others were pulling them aside, the wounded who were being allowed to board were shoving each other to climb up the ladder, still other men were finishing unloading the plane and tossing bags and crates to the ground. The Feldgendarm accompanying us fired a brief volley into the air and then dove forward into the hysterical, imploring crowd, hitting out with his elbows; I followed him as well as I could, dragging Hohenegg behind me. Beyond were rows of tents covered with frost, the brown openings of bunkers; farther on, radio trucks were parked in a tight group, in the midst of a forest of poles, antennas, wires; at the end of the runway began a vast dumping ground of metal wrecks, planes that had been blown up or split in half, burned trucks, tanks, smashed vehicles piled on top of each other, half hidden beneath the snow. Some officers were coming toward us; we exchanged salutes. Two military doctors welcomed Hohenegg; my interlocutor was a young Leutnant from the Abwehr, who introduced himself and bade me welcome: “I have to look after you and find you a vehicle to take you into the city.” Hohenegg was walking away: “Doktor!” I shook his hand. “We’ll surely see each other again,” he said kindly. “The
Kessel isn’t so big. When you’re feeling sad, come find me and we’ll drink my Cognac.” I made a wide gesture with my hand: “In my opinion, Doktor, your Cognac won’t last long.” I followed the Leutnant. Near the tents I noticed a series of large heaps powdered with snow. From time to time, a muffled explosion would resound all through the aerodrome. Already the Junker that had brought us was slowly taxiing toward the end of the runway. I paused to watch it take off and the Leutnant watched with me. The wind was blowing quite hard, you had to blink your eyes so as not to be blinded by the fine snow raised from the surface of the ground. Having reached the far point, the plane swung round and, without pausing the slightest bit, accelerated. It swerved once, then again, dangerously close to the snowy embankment; then the wheels left the ground and it rose up groaning, swaying, with great juddering, before vanishing into the opaque cloud bank. I looked again at the snowy pile beside me and saw that it was made up of corpses, piled like logs to form long cords, their frozen faces the color of bronze gone slightly green, studded with dense beards, and with ice crystals at the corners of their mouths, in their nostrils, their eye sockets. There must have been hundreds of them. I asked the Leutnant: “You don’t bury them?” He stamped his foot: “How are we supposed to bury them? The ground is hard as iron. We don’t have any explosives to waste. We can’t even dig trenches.” We walked on; where traffic had made paths, the ground was slick, slippery; you had to walk to the side, through the snowdrifts. The Leutnant led me to a long low line covered with snow. I thought they were bunkers, but when I approached I saw that they were in fact half-buried train cars, their walls and roofs covered with sandbags, with steps dug into the ground leading to the doors. The Leutnant brought me in; inside, some officers were bustling about in the hallway; the train compartments had been transformed into offices; a few weak lightbulbs spread a dirty, yellowish light, and they must have had a stove going somewhere, it wasn’t all that cold. The Leutnant invited me to sit down in a compartment, after clearing the seat of the papers piled on it. I noticed some Christmas decorations, coarsely cut out of colored paper, hanging in the window, behind which were piled up the earth and snow and the frozen sandbags. “Would you like some tea?” the Leutnant asked. “I can’t offer you anything else.” I accepted, and he went out. I took off my shapka and unfastened my coat, then collapsed into the seat. The Leutnant returned with two cups of ersatz and held one out to me; he drank his own standing in the entrance to the compartment. “Hard luck for you,” he said timidly, “being sent here like this just before Christmas.” I shrugged my shoulders and blew on my scalding tea: “Christmas doesn’t mean that much to me, really.”—“For us, here, it’s very important.” He gestured at the decorations. “The men are very attached to it. I hope the Reds will leave us in peace. But you can’t count on it.” I found this strange: Hoth, in principle, was advancing to make his junction; it seemed to me that the officers should have been in the process of preparing their retreat rather than getting ready for Christmas. The Leutnant looked at his watch: “Movements are strictly limited and we can’t take you into the city right away. There will be a liaison this afternoon.”—“Fine. Do you know where I have to go?” He looked surprised: “To the city Kommandantur, I guess. All the SP officers are there.”—“I have to present myself to Feldpolizeikommissar Möritz.”—“Yes, that’s right.” He hesitated: “Have some rest. I’ll come and get you.” He left. A little later, another officer came in, greeted me absently, and began vigorously working at a typewriter. I went into the hallway, but it was too crowded. I began to feel hungry; they hadn’t offered me anything, and I didn’t want to ask. I went to smoke a cigarette outside, you could hear the droning of the planes, some explosions from time to time, then I went back in to wait, in the monotonous clacking of the typewriter.