Unlikely Warrior (22 page)

The vacationers slowly came to life. “Get out? What for?”

“Hurry up, get going, no exceptions!”

A master sergeant jumped into the truck and bellowed, “That’s an order! Can’t you hear? Everyone out at once.”

Someone stuttered, “But, but I’m going on fur—”

“Not interested. Fall in, three to a row.” We jumped down and lined up into columns consisting of soldiers from every branch of the service and every possible rank.

“Ready … march!”

Grumbling, the column began to move. They led us to a point where we were given ammunition, machine-gun belts, and a few bazookas. Then we marched cross-country toward a gently rolling chain of hills. No one knew who his superior officers were or whether anything would be provided to eat. What’s more, I couldn’t see any heavy weapons anywhere, just a few machine guns and mortars. We were a mixed-up mass of wildly thrown-together soldiers. It was chaotic, and I had a distinctly uneasy feeling in the pit of my stomach.

I swore, giving vent to my frustrations and fear.

Konrad nodded and replied, “At least we’re not at the far end of the sack anymore.”

“And no longer deserters, either,” I added.

THE LAST BATTLE

Dusk was falling as we marched up the slope. Ripe grapes hung from the bushes around us, and fat melons lay on the ground. I could hear artillery fire up ahead. Night fell, but we hadn’t yet reached our destination.

Now the racket of machine-gun fire was blending into the din of the artillery. The flashes of the shots and bomb hits became visible. After we crested a final hill, we were ordered to halt. Other columns continued on to our left and right. We were distributed along the top of the ridge, two men every thirty meters or so, and ordered to dig ourselves in.

Konrad and I had just one spade between us. The ground was covered with low grasses, and the dirt was soft. By the light of the night sky and the flashes from the artillery, we took turns digging a deep trench for the two of us. We threw the dirt onto a piece of canvas. The one who wasn’t digging dragged the dirt away and scattered it about, making the trench a less visible target.

When we had almost finished, a half-moon crept over the horizon, and we could see grape bushes not far from us. I was sleepy and stretched out on the ground. Konrad disappeared, but after a while he returned with a giant watermelon. That was one of the reasons I had considered our chances good for deserting at this time of year. Everything was ripe: grapes, plums, corn, and melons. The nights were warm. We could have walked during the nights and slept through the days, hidden in a haystack. But now, obviously, all that was out of the question. We ate the melon in silence and then lay down to sleep.

I slept very poorly. The trench was tight and damp, and I had nightmares. Again and again I woke up, climbed out of the ditch, and walked up and down. It was quiet. Once an officer came by but said nothing. Then I remembered what Konrad had talked about back in the camp before we deserted: massive tank concentration. And he had seen where they were located on the map.

Konrad got up and smoked a cigarette. I gestured toward his map pocket and asked, “Is this the area where the large tank concentration was reported?”

He nodded apathetically. It seemed to me as though he had lost his momentum, his confidence. He looked like a man with no hope.

I hated tanks! They made me feel so utterly powerless. What could one man possibly do, faced with a steel colossus? I remembered something that we had been told back in officers’ training regarding tank strategy and defense. “Dig a hole as narrow, short, and deep as possible. Make it just large enough to contain one man, so that the tanks can roll over it if necessary.”

According to those instructions, our foxhole was obviously too large and too shallow. I picked up the spade and began shoveling again by moonlight, digging another hole, a few meters closer to the grapevines this time. I felt fresher again and wanted to assure myself the best chance of survival. Working like one faced with his imminent demise, I dragged the dirt away, distributing it carefully. Finally, though sweaty and tired, I was satisfied. The new hole was very tight.
Like a pair of too-tight-fitting pants,
I thought with a rare touch of humor.

*   *   *

When the first streaks of morning light appeared in the east, the Russian artillery began shooting. Gradually the firing became more intense, and the shells hit closer. The explosions, combined with the dawning light of the approaching day, lent an almost theatrical illumination to the surrounding landscape. The stage manager was going all out to provide a worthy setting for this, the final act.

The mortar hits were now uncomfortably close, so I crawled into my hole and placed some extra ammunition within reach. The Russians were doing a fine job of systematically battering down this range of hills. Pressed deep in the bottom of my hole, I let the clods of dirt fly through the air around and on top of me. The din was deafening and frightful. The ground shook; soon my nose was filled with the smells of gunpowder and my own sweat.

I listened to each salvo, praying it would be the last, but yet another would follow, and the dirt kept raining down into my hole. I was afraid that the next would tear me out of my hole and into the air. It was a counting of the minutes, as one might do while waiting for a migraine to subside after taking a strong pill.
What wouldn’t I give to be still alive tonight?
I thought.

With increasing daylight the mortar firing intensified, and I could hear quite clearly among the artillery hits the
bloop bloop
of their discharges. Now they were aiming at each individual hole.

I hope mine isn’t too close to the front … good that I dragged the dirt away … I think I dug this one a little farther back than the first … you can’t think of everything!

Actually, it’s a wonder I could think of anything sensible at all under the circumstances. Normally one could count to twenty-two or twenty-three from the moment of discharge until the mortar hit, but now there were too many. The Russians were masters of this weapon. Three or four men could carry the things anywhere they were needed, and they certainly had enough of them.

Another hit came fearfully close, loosening the dirt from the walls of my hole. It was impossible to guess how long the bombardment lasted. After a time, a feeling of lethargy set in, and I submitted to the situation, resolving to go on living again only after the status quo had changed.

Then it became strangely quiet. The only sounds were the cries of the wounded and a distant low rumbling. I stuck my head out of the hole, straining to hear better. The sound was deep and full, and I listened with a sinking heart. It was the faraway thundering of heavy diesel motors, of a great many motors—the motors of tanks.

The human ear is an incredibly sensitive organ. I could discern that these motors were slowly, but oh so steadily, coming closer, heading directly for me. Konrad’s head poked out of his hole. His nod in my direction was full of meaning. Eventually I perceived yet another sound, a cacophony of shrill tones, the sinister squeaking of hundreds of tank chains. Fear began creeping up inside me again. I had known for a long time that eventually I would have to face this assembly of iron monsters. Now that hour had arrived, I knew no one could hold them back.

In my panic, my imagination turned morbid and perverse. First they would shell everything left worth shooting at; then they would pulverize whatever remained with those many-tonned steel bodies. They had the ability to pause on top of each hole, fill it in with a quarter turn, and roll on, leaving a grave behind.
When the first wave is past
, I thought,
the next and the next will come, and only thereafter, the moment for which we were brought here: the hordes of accompanying Russian infantry
.

If I’m still in one piece by then, I might have a chance. If there are still enough of us alive in these holes, and if all of us shoot fast enough and aim well enough, a lot of us might just make it. First, shoot fast and well. And if they are too many, throw hand grenades, and whoever yet comes closer can still be stabbed with our bayonets. Or, as that officer so poetically expressed it the day I took my oath, we can split the Russians’ skulls with our spades. Jewish blood in my veins or not, that’s exactly what I’ll do, because
I want to live.
I’m only twenty years old.

All of this I thought as I stared out of that hole toward the opposite slope. I knew if I were still alive an hour from now, what I had experienced would influence the rest of my life. Either I would be dead, or nothing would ever be able to frighten me again!

Thin black stripes, etched against the sky, rose from behind the hills. They were the slim gun turrets of the creeping tanks, followed by the obscenely fat blobs of their bodies. I couldn’t count them; there were too many. The German artillery opened fire. The mortar shells gurgled over my head, followed by the detonations. I dived down in my hole once more. Again the ground trembled and shook in the inferno of explosions. I lay, eyes squeezed shut, pressed to the floor of my hole. My hands were cramped tightly to my rifle, its safety catch released. Eternities passed, endured only by the humble hope of surviving.

I could feel and hear, above the noise of the shrieking chains, the continuous working of the heavy diesel motors. The uproar intensified to an atrocious pitch, and yet I knew the exact moment when one of those motors detached itself from the general orchestration of the attack. I could tell it was heading directly for me.

Squashing myself a few last centimeters deeper into my hole, I felt like some fragile underground animal, crouched and waiting for the hunter’s mortal blow. Then he was there. The earth wall to my left pressed down, and my subterranean chamber embraced me even more tightly. One of the tank’s chains sprayed the dirt from the edge of the hole over me. The noise was nearly unendurable.

They rolled away over us. It was a span of time that could not be measured with clocks. In their wake they left a plowed-up terrain planted with the dead, the half dead, and the survivors.

An eternity had trickled by, and an entire war machine continued rolling on to the rear to destroy the German wagon columns, but back on our battlefield, the last act hadn’t yet taken place. As the departing tanks faded into the distance, all was quiet. I sat, waiting for the familiar screams of the Russian infantry, but the silence lengthened. No massacre followed. We had been rolled over and forgotten. We were no longer of the least strategic significance for the closing of the giant sack.

Timidly I raised myself. I heard the moans and cries of the wounded. Then I went to Konrad’s hole. In the crushed and turned-over sod, it was no longer recognizable. I called out, “Konrad!” and something moved.

Slowly Konrad raised himself up, an ancient, dirt-encrusted troll, like a piece of the earth itself. He shook himself a few times and reeled away in the direction of the grapevines, dragging his rifle behind him by the sling.

I followed, and we sat for a long time under a grapevine, eating with dirty, trembling fingers those wonderful, dark blue grapes, the ones with the whitish shimmer that taste a little like wild strawberries. I looked at Konrad, twisting my mouth into the semblance of a smile that fell just short, and said, “The burial didn’t take place after all.”

More Germans came into the vineyard. An oberstleutnant staggered past, acting as though he hadn’t even seen us. It was a strange situation: no front, no superiors, wounded without help, and no rations. Everyone was left to his own devices.

We studied the map. The river Prut, on whose other side the next German defense line lay, was approximately twenty kilometers away, twenty kilometers of uncertainty. The sun was already high as Konrad and I tramped through the fields over rolling hills toward the west. Many others were on the march, alone or in small groups, but all with the same goal: “To the river.”

The landscape was so lovely. It reminded me of the midsummer meadows in the Austrian Alps. I thought of my parents and wondered what they must be doing now. What would I write them today if I had any paper, or any chance of sending a letter?

My dear folks,
I would write.
It’s now August the twenty-second. I haven’t had the chance to write the last few days. So much has been happening. We’re on our way somewhere all the time, and the mail isn’t functioning. The Russians are attacking very heavily, but I’m still in one piece. Don’t worry; nothing will happen to me. You won’t get any mail from me for a while because … because we are shortening the front right now. I would so much rather be with you. Many kisses, Your Georg.

Or,
My dear parents. The situation here is miserable. But I promise I will use all my senses, powers, and brains to try to get out of here alive. Just in case I don’t succeed, I want to tell you something more. It was so wonderful being your son. I want to thank you for teaching me to have respect for people and ideas and to understand that the most beautiful things in life can’t be purchased.

And thank you, Mutti, for explaining to my father, that time I was lying on the sofa staring into space, that it wasn’t laziness but rather a state of “creative inactivity.” Thank you for having so much confidence in me, for telling me I could never starve to death and that, as in your story about the Kaiser’s place at table, wherever I was would always be “the top” …

I didn’t get any further in my thoughts, for we suddenly heard shooting not far away. Also, once more, the motors of tanks. We just had time to duck under a large bush before they rolled over the crest. Peeking through the branches, I could see them coming in a row, spaced at intervals, shooting down the fleeing Germans. They were combing the territory for soldiers.

“Just don’t run away,” I said to Konrad, “or they will shoot us down like rabbits. As long as we stay under our bush and out of sight, they won’t shoot at us. At the worst they can roll over us, but we can still throw ourselves to the side at the last minute.”