Unlikely Warrior (21 page)

There is quite a bit to do here at the battalion. We hardly have time to sleep, plus the heat and the rain. Wednesday I’m going back up front to the company for one or two weeks. There I can recover, for it is quiet all day long. Take good care.

Kisses, Georg

It all happened so fast. I was with Konrad in the company farthest to the north when the attack began. Russian tanks advanced rapidly to our left and right, followed by massive infantry support. Our setting couldn’t have been worse: a chain of hills backed by a river. In no time at all we were cut off from the main body of the German troops, from our own regiment.

We were thrown together with some of the frontline soldiers from another unit, but mainly with a host of high-ranking officers, supply and mess units, and medical corpsmen. Konrad was ordered to take a platoon of soldiers from the supply lines and show them how to fight in the trenches.

It was clear that the vise finally had snapped shut—around roughly two thousand men with rifles and a few submachine guns, but almost no heavy weapons. The confusion was awful, but the Russian bombardment was worse.

Then they came to me, the officers with those red stripes up the sides of their pants. They ordered my wireless and me down into a deep, stinking cellar filled with barrels of sour tomatoes, beets, and plenty of rats. Above our heads the mortars were bursting, but the sounds of the battle were muted. The order they gave me was brief: “You are the only telegraphist with a wireless in this whole mess. Make contact immediately with Number 282 and give them our position and situation.”

My answer was equally brief: “I can’t do it, Herr Oberstleutnant. My data for wavelengths and decoding ran out last midnight, and I haven’t received the new information.”

They stood there, looking at each other helplessly. One of them snapped, “Then just do something,
Mensch!
That’s what you were trained for, after all.”

Easy for them to say. In order to send a wireless message, we had to have decoding documents, which were changed periodically. Included in these were all the call signs for various telegraph stations, a list of wavelengths, and, finally, a decoding system based on a set of alphabet graphs that changed every two hours. Lacking these papers, I could run up and down the available scale of possible wavelengths for an eternity and hear nothing in my earphones but groups of five unintelligible letters and numbers in Morse code, with no hope of deciphering them.

And that wasn’t all. My set had an ampere meter. When it was turned on and the needle pointed to the right of a little red dot, I could tell that the batteries still had enough juice. The needle pointing left of the dot, however, indicated that the batteries were empty. Right now the needle was pointing just very slightly to the right.

This had been the day I was scheduled to go to the battalion for the new papers and batteries.
That idiot of an officer should try working a miracle himself, if he’s so smart,
I thought.

The officers were upset and making no secret of the fact. In spite of all the medals around their necks, they were quaking in their custom-made boots. High officers usually didn’t find themselves in such a situation. They weren’t used to being confronted with the ideas of capture and death.

And there I sat, feeling pretty sick myself. The shelling would surely continue until all were killed, or, if we were lucky, we might be captured, though no one had any idea of just what that might entail either. As though to justify my existence, I turned the wireless set on from time to time, fiddled with the knobs, and was rewarded with only a meaningless “beep, beep, beep” in my earphones. But then, what else did I expect?

Around noon, while leaning on one elbow and holding part of the earphones to my ear, I turned on the receiver for the fiftieth time. All of a sudden I was jolted to attention. Someone was just beginning a message with the usual abbreviations and call numbers. Nothing out of the ordinary about that. But what had electrified me were the two strange letters on a very special point at the beginning of the message, a
K
and an
H
, two letters which should never have been there because they were strictly forbidden.

Groups of letters like these, which had their own name,
Funkeigenheiten
, consisted usually of the initials of the first and last names of the wireless operators (but in my case were RA). We were accustomed to inserting the initials at a predetermined spot in the message in order to let the man on the receiving end know who was on the wire. The initials saved a great deal of time and effort, letting one know immediately how fast the message could be sent without endless checking back and forth.

These
Funkeigenheiten
were forbidden because, if certain initials repeatedly disappeared and popped up again at different locations on the front, they could possibly aid the Russian interceptors in following the movements of German troops. In spite of those prohibitions, however, the trick was used constantly in the chaos of retreat.

Only one KH existed in my neck of the woods, and that was my old friend from Upper Austria, Karl Hofer, with whom I had completed my basic training in Vienna. Almost automatically I went into action. Without orders, without special permission, and contrary to all the existing rules, I broke in on the same wavelength: “RA to KH, RA to KH. Come in, KH.”

Hofer interrupted his message, and after a brief pause I heard the priceless signal. “KH to RA, KH to RA, come in, RA.” He had heard me, had changed to receiving, and was actually waiting for my message! But I had no coded message, and it was obviously forbidden to send in clear text because of the very active Russian interception.

The dialects of the Austrian provinces are very different from High German.
Wir sind
, for example, would translate in dialect to
Mir san
. Assuming it was most unlikely that a listening Russian would be able to understand Upper Austrian, I began sending the details of our predicament in heaviest dialect, with the fewest number of words possible. Hofer’s reply was immediate. “Answer in two hours, same wavelength.”

The officers had noticed the sudden activity and moved closer. Others came down from upstairs and wanted an explanation. I said only that a message would possibly be coming through in two hours. I think they wanted to keep me in a good mood, because I wasn’t pushed for further explanations or given any orders.

Two nervous hours crept by. Finally, exactly to the second, the message arrived, “KH to RA, nothing new, next contact in two hours.” As I acknowledged this message, the needle on the ampere meter moved to the left of the red dot. The batteries were obviously almost dead. According to my experience, receiving might still be possible under very good conditions, but sending was now out of the question.

I explained this to the officers, and they again gazed back at me helplessly. Obviously something would have to occur to me, since no great idea seemed to be forthcoming from anyone else. I racked my brain while the Russian shells kept raining down. I recalled something I had read while building my first radios as a teenager. Hadn’t there been a theory about warming up empty batteries to create a certain amount of voltage for a brief period? Would it really work? But how warm, and for how long? I hadn’t the foggiest idea, but it was our only hope.

I made a brief search in the house and surroundings for the appropriate materials. Then I lit a few pieces of charcoal, an item that was used for ironing and could be found in almost every house. After improvising a hot plate with a piece of sheet metal and a frying pan, I called for a cup of coffee and couldn’t help feeling a perverse satisfaction as it was served to me, the Jewish corporal, by a German general.

I began to act on instinct. Ten minutes before receiving time the coals had heated to the point where the metal was just hot enough not to burn the bottom of the anode battery. I put it on the sheet and waited. Five minutes before receiving time I turned the set on briefly, but the needle still pointed to the left. Two minutes later it had reached the red dot and, right on time, the Morse numbers began coming through, the first signifying a location on the map, the second standing for 5:00 p.m., all very faint and barely audible. I acknowledged the message with the tiny bit of current that I had fabricated so laboriously. Then I relayed the message to my companions in the cellar.

The officers began to recover their normal confident expressions. Now they knew where and when they had to organize the breakthrough. Once more they were in their element. They shouted, gave orders, and shifted all the men and matériel close to the designated area. The breakout would begin at 5:00 p.m., and we could expect strong German support from the other side.

At 4:00 p.m., we heard the racket of an exceedingly heavy German artillery attack coming from a few kilometers north of the agreed-upon point. I went pale. An hour too early and in the wrong place! On account of the weak reception and my overtaxed nerves, I must have mistaken a dot for a dash, or vice versa, and written down two of the numbers incorrectly. Now there wasn’t a prayer for bringing the two thousand men out of the sack.

Everyone was in an uproar and at a loss once again. If all were to perish now, it would be my fault alone. I couldn’t believe I might have made such a mistake. Under difficult circumstances, I was usually able to receive 90 letters a minute and send up to 120, and a few of those present knew that very well. I packed up the radio set, fished a beet from one of the moldy barrels, and trudged up the stairs, gnawing at it. My function was over. The only thing left was to explode the wireless with a hand grenade so it wouldn’t fall into enemy hands.

For a while I sat in a bunker and thought of all the things I would so much have liked to do with the rest of my life. Then, a few minutes before five, I heard the droning. It was the sound of many swiftly approaching airplanes. I saw the officers raising their binoculars and heard the cry “Stukas!” as they recognized the fast-flying German bombers.

At the point where the breakthrough had been stipulated, the planes tipped from the sky and dropped their bombs, one wave after another. Giant fountains of explosion shot up to the sky, and the German artillery did their part in plowing up the narrow corridor. Shortly thereafter we all marched out of the pocket without firing a shot. The artillery bombardment an hour earlier had been purely a distracting maneuver.

Two days later I was ordered to appear in front of a row of high-ranking officers. One stepped out of the line and walked up to plant himself directly in front of me. He glared at me in silence for a moment, and then he said, “I’ve had a difficult decision to make. One possibility was that of having you court-martialed for the illegal use of
Funkeigenheiten
and for sending in clear text. The other option, thanks to an accomplishment made possible only through your personal courage, talents, and ability to make rapid decisions, was to decorate you with the Iron Cross, First Class. Corporal Rauch, I have decided upon the latter.”

His orderly handed him the medal, and he pinned it to my left breast pocket. We saluted, and I marched away.

Later I removed the medal and stuck it in my jacket pocket along with my other battle ribbons and my good conduct medal. I thought of my mother and wondered whether she still had Jews hidden in our attic. I felt utterly confused, somewhat ashamed, and fairly certain that, according to Hitler’s rule book, I probably never should have been permitted to receive that medal.

*   *   *

A few days later Konrad sat shirtless in front of the bunker, following a Russian reconnaissance plane with his binoculars. Then he polished his boots, picked up his jacket, and went to the rear to attend a staff meeting.

One hour later he returned and asked, “Do you still have that map you showed me once, the one you bought in Braila?”

“Sure,” I replied.

“I’d like to see it,” he said.

When I brought the map, he directed me to a bunker that was half-finished, where nobody could see or hear us. While opening up the map and looking at it he said, “The situation we’re in stinks. We are sitting at the far end of a giant pocket, the entire Sixth Army. Russian tank divisions are moving in fast from the north and the south. If we don’t run soon, none of us are going to get out in time.”

He pointed out the situation on the map and said, “I’m clearing out. Do you want to come along?”

A few other soldiers came into our vicinity. Konrad stood up and walked away. When he turned back to look at me, I nodded.

That same evening he said to another soldier, “Rauch and I are going to the rear tonight to pick up a piece of equipment. You’ll take over meanwhile.”

“Jawohl, Herr Unteroffizier!”

At midnight we rode back to the kitchen area on the cart that had brought our rations. From there an ammunition truck that was just leaving took us farther to the rear, right up to the main
Rollbahn
, where we encountered plenty of brisk traffic. All manner of vehicles were on the move to the south. Up to this point, Konrad had forged our marching orders. From now on we would be on our own. In the event of a paper check, we had no documents and no plausible excuse for our presence. We were deserters, an ugly word.

A truck that was already carrying about twenty other soldiers picked us up. All were in good spirits, since they were on their way to the rear, going on furlough. Everyone was singing, drinking, and yelling over the roar of the motor about what he was going to do when he got home.

The road was bumpy; the hours passed. Suddenly the truck came to an abrupt halt. In front of us a long column of vehicles was stopped, all with their motors turned off. We heard voices shouting orders; officers and MPs came running by. Would they ask to see our orders or our furlough passes? My temperature went up a few degrees, and Konrad was visibly nervous. Up ahead I could see soldiers jumping down from the trucks and cars, and finally it was our turn. “Everybody out! Come on, get a move on.”