Unlikely Warrior (15 page)

“Hey, you two with the wireless, over here,” called a colonel to Konrad and me. A sergeant gave us ammunition and directed us to a column of about five hundred men who were already waiting to depart, bazookas and machine guns in hand.

“Column march!” rang out the command, and we were on our way. No one had any idea what our destination was. It was a sorry heap of hungry, battle-weary men who didn’t seem to care where they were headed, just as long as there was still someone to give orders and at least an impression that they knew why they were giving them.

The rain poured down steadily as we marched past huge amounts of war matériel, some shot up and some still in good condition. In a few minutes we had passed the last houses and ruins on the outskirts of town and were headed out into the flat, marshy fields.

There thousands of vehicles had been left standing up to their axles in the mire. Stinking horse cadavers with legs pointing stiffly toward the sky lay next to artillery cannons and mountains of ammunition crates that stretched as far as we could see. Bomb craters filled with water were everywhere.

A tremendous battle must have been waged in the section, but the Russians had evidently waived their right to this strip along the west side of the river, at least for now. It was obvious that all this equipment would fall into their hands sooner or later.

The ranks broke for a few minutes when we came up to an overturned truck. Crates full of canned foods lay open on the ground, and the eager soldiers helped themselves at will. Even the officers, as hungry as the rest of us, stooped to filling their pockets and bags. No one could say when circumstances would improve enough so that we could once again have a field kitchen and regular meals.

Back on the march, most of us opened one or two of the tins and gobbled up the contents: cold, greasy meat. At our backs I could hear the noise of continuing battle within the city. The Russians had brought in bombers and heavy artillery by now. No matter where I was headed, I felt very lucky to be walking along this far side of the river.

A series of heavy explosions made me glance back. Great chunks of steel were flying through the air in a huge black cloud—they had blown up the bridge.

Konrad made a face. “Certainly made it out of that one just in time.”

I nodded, thinking of Baby Schmidt and Moser, whom I hadn’t seen since we entered the city.

The officers urged us to more speed. After another half hour we reached our destination: a soggy airfield containing a few shot-up buildings. A troop carrier with its motors running stood a short distance away. The front portion of our column was ordered into the plane, while the remainder was told to keep ready; another aircraft would come later to pick us up.

Overcome by exhaustion and hopelessness, I stood watching as the plane began moving faster along the bumpy runway, finally leaving the ground to disappear in the rain clouds. I had very little hope of seeing another one.

We stood in the rain and waited. Konrad wandered to another group of soldiers and returned. “They claim the Russians have not only taken the city, but they’ve also built a larger circle around the entire area, including this airport, or what’s left of it. Could be just a rumor, though.”

I hadn’t expected any good news at this point. When Konrad didn’t get a response from me, he set off again on his search for news.

Looking around, I saw huge piles of crates and suitcases of every size, shape, and style stacked as high as small buildings. I sat down on one of the crates. Some soldiers had begun breaking open a few of the suitcases and were rummaging around in the contents. After listening for a while to amazed shouts, I became curious and shuffled over to see the reason for all the excitement.

What I saw was incredible. The suitcases were stuffed with French perfume and condoms; bottles of the most expensive cognacs and champagnes; elegant clothing for men and women, including tuxedos and French designer dresses; Russian icons of inestimable value; and old books bound in leather and gilt. There was also a thick roll of pure silk cloth and several dozen pairs of silk stockings, still in the original packaging.

We foot soldiers never owned more than the absolute essentials, and usually not even those. But the motorized branches of the service seldom came near the front lines. If the front disintegrated, those soldiers, and especially their officers, always had plenty of time to send their luggage back to the rear. As we now could see, this luggage contained not only priceless booty but also treasures brought from France and elsewhere, enabling the officers to maintain the good life, even on the Russian front.

This time the poor generals had miscalculated. The usual transport system hadn’t functioned in Pervomaysk. Everything had happened too quickly, and now those higher-ranking gentlemen’s only hope was to bring everything out by air.

I hadn’t seen anything civilized for six months. I had just escaped a very close encounter with the Russian bullets, and for weeks previous to this I had been unwashed, unshaven, covered with muck, and wet through to the skin, my tattered socks sticking to legs oozing pus. My surroundings had consisted primarily of blood, filth, and lice.

In such a state of mind and body, what an experience to open a suitcase and be assailed by the aroma of forgotten cleanliness and elegance. I stretched out my mud-encrusted hands to feel the unbelievable softness of pure silk. I reached into a completely different world and, almost without knowing what I was doing, I tore a strip from the roll of silk, wrapped it around a pair of stockings, and stuck the small package in my rear pants pocket.

At the sound of a low hum, I whirled around. A shadow appeared out of the heavy gray skies; a plane was coming in to land. “It’s a Ju 52,” somebody yelled.

An officer shouted, “Form ranks.”

We hurriedly grabbed a few more of the bottles lying around, and I snatched up a large hunk of smoked ham at the last second before running toward the plane.

I was more or less shoved into the aircraft. It was grotesque to see all that the soldiers were trying to carry or drag with them. Loud commands forced the majority to drop most of their loot before being permitted inside:

“No more. Move back. The rest of you will be picked up later.”

The motors whined; we bumped and rattled for half a mile and were at last airborne. I had begun the first airplane flight of my life, but whatever fear I might have felt was far outweighed by the wonder of having escaped the deadly situation below.

Russia, March 22, 1944

Dear Papi,

Right now I’m sitting in a warm hut again. I have slept a whole night and eaten my fill. My clothes are still full of mud, but otherwise I’m fine. Seven of us are waiting for the rest of the battalion, which should already have landed here in Balta by plane twelve hours ago. Eight empty bottles are standing on the table in front of me: two bottles French red wine, one bottle Cru Saint-Georges-Montagne, one bottle Weinbrand, one bottle Bordeaux Medoc, one bottle Jamaican rum, one bottle Stock egg cognac, and one bottle gin. We have consumed all of that since yesterday evening!

The days at the bridgehead in Pervomaysk were very hot. I’m not all that impressed by the war events, but you can believe I would rather not have experienced those three days. And then, all of a sudden we were flown to Balta. Here it feels as though the Germans are definitely beginning to lose control. I don’t know exactly what is ahead of me. It is still raining day and night.

I had to leave everything behind again. Now I have only my clothes and a few little things in my pockets. I organized a jacket, and in my breast pocket is a pair of silk stockings. I still have my wireless set, too. So now we’re waiting to see what the future will bring.

Communications squad, with Sergeant Konrad and Karl Haas in center of back row and me seated in front in the
vakja
(sledge).

I heard from a pilot that Vienna has been bombed. Please write me more details about this. It is important to me. Otherwise don’t worry. The war will be over soon, because it can’t go on much longer like this. Then I’ll come home again, and everything will be better. Give everyone my love, and please take care that at least everything remains okay at home. Many loving greetings.

Your Georg

The transport plane with the third group never arrived. We sat around for two more days, eating and drinking all the goodies the soldiers had managed to carry away from the Pervomaysk airport. Even Konrad got a little drunk, something I would never have thought possible.

“What regiment are you from?” was a common question. We were a mixture of thirty men from all sorts of branches, and not even half had any frontline experience. The rest were from transport, artillery, staff, engineer corps, and so on. Almost nobody knew anyone else from before, and I considered myself lucky to have Konrad nearby. He was sometimes gone for hours, trying to find out what was going to happen, but without success.

All of a sudden we were ordered to walk to a tiny railroad station, where we boarded a train with only five cars, and off we went. I caught the name of Birsula at one small station through which we passed. The ride finally ended in Slobodka, thirty kilometers farther southwest.

Immediately upon descending from the train, we hiked in groups of fifty men into the falling night. Some had light machine guns; a few others lugged lightweight mortars.

“I don’t like it,” said Konrad. “I don’t see any supply equipment whatsoever.”

“And as far as I can tell, you and I have the only wireless,” I replied.

It snowed the whole night. The temperature sank lower and lower, and the wind reached blizzard proportions. After the recent springlike temperatures, no one had his padded pants or jacket any longer. It was now the end of March, after all. We froze pitifully.

At daybreak, confronted with the sort of winter landscape we hadn’t seen for weeks, we dug ourselves in for the day. Konrad went spying.

When he returned he said, “No one has any idea of where we’re going or why. The unit that we were supposed to reinforce doesn’t exist, and the Russians seem to be all over the place.”

After the following day’s hike we reached an evacuated village. It huddled silently in the snow, empty of people and even chickens, but we did find some coverings to protect us from the biting cold. When we moved on, we resembled more than anything a group of armed beggars. Some had wrapped themselves up in colorful curtains, others had discovered some of the bright rugs typical of the region, and lucky were the men who had turned up a
pabacha
, a tall sheepskin wool cap. Various rags wrapped around our hands took the place of gloves.

In a letter to my parents I wrote,

We took eleven days for the stretch from Slobodka to somewhere near Tiraspol on the Dniester, all in night marches. The Russians were continually all around us. At night we kept looking for a hole, for a way out of the sack. In the mornings we were surrounded again. And all the time terrible cold and snowstorms so bad that we often had to lie flat on the ground so as not to be blown away. And absolutely nothing to eat.

I thought,
I wish the powers that be could see their German soldiers now, wrapped in old carpets, muffled up in rags, unshaven, not having slept for days, on their knees begging the few locals for a piece of corn bread, too weak even to search the huts for food.
As we came through one village, half the group stormed up to a woman who was carrying a pot of milk and fought over it. Very quickly we became fewer, the ammunition ran very low, and the cold became worse.

On our tenth day as a lost group behind the Russian lines, we were reduced to one hundred men. The highest ranking was a sergeant. Then scouts discovered a river ten kilometers to the west that might be our salvation, and we headed off in that direction without even waiting for nightfall.

The sun was already low in the west when I caught sight of an airplane headed in our direction. At almost the same moment the command rang out, “Low flyer, take full cover!” Everyone threw himself into the snow, but a minute later Konrad was up again waving his arms and shouting, “It’s a Fieseler Storch, a Storch!”

By the time the German light reconnaissance plane passed over us at a very low altitude, we were all on our feet and waving, full of hope. The plane made a loop and, when it was above us again, the pilot threw down six bags, two containing ammunition and the others filled with emergency rations. Each of us received two packages, neat little cardboard boxes about the size of a large book. The printed inscription read:

EMERGENCY RATIONS—FRUIT BREAD. IF COOKED WITH A LITTLE WATER MAKES PUDDING. WITH MORE WATER SOUP.