Eastern Inferno: The Journals of a German Panzerjäger on the Eastern Front, 1941-43 (18 page)

There is no Russian attack this evening; the night passes by quietly.

8 October:
It has become lousy cold; heavy snowfall with ice storms from the north. Operations of any kind are impossible in this shitty weather. Nevertheless, we must move forward in our assault detachment during the evening hours.

The roads are rivers of mud; man and machine each give it their best. Without any significant enemy contact, we press on to Nidregaylow. Lying on the roads are dead horses, abandoned cars, burned out tanks, uniforms that have been ripped to shreds, ammunition scattered all over the roads and fields, harvests that have been destroyed and trampled over. Shortly after Nidregaylow, we cross paths with the marching 165th Infantry Division, which has commenced its attack on the neighboring area, and whose open flank we are supposed to protect. When night falls, we form igloos and await an attack from the Bolsheviks. But nothing happens; the enemy must have retreated even further.

9 October:
Chasing the retreating enemy in the direction of Sumy.

10 October:
Relentless snow showers mixed with rain make any further progress impossible. Yesterday evening we arrived in Krawino. The rain has transformed the trenches into lakes all around us; we are trapped pitifully in our nests. On the radio we heard news of the victorious encirclement battle near Vyazma and Bryansk.

The Eastern campaign has been practically decided. The remnants of the Red Army are one step away from annihilation; the Bolshevik leaders have fled from Moscow. Is the end in sight for the East? We hear this and even more over the loudspeakers; surely this will be the headline in the daily papers at home. I grab my head; how is this possible, has our leadership gone mad overnight? All of this is not true, it cannot be true; all of us here see too clearly what is going on. Do these gentlemen have blindfolds over their eyes!?!

What is the homeland supposed to think? Our wives, mothers, and brides will go crazy with happiness when they hear this news; they will cry tears of joy that the horrible bloodshed will be over in a few days, and will expect their men and sons home by Christmas at the latest.

For heaven’s sake, the reality is totally different. The eastern armies are encountering the ultimate test of nerves. We Germans are not used to winter combat in freezing temperatures and all of this mud. Is it really necessary to employ such devices, such poisonous stuff? At home, there will be a terrible awakening from these happy illusions. In a few weeks the newspapers will be full of black crosses like never before.

11 October:
Again, a powerful snowstorm. All of a sudden there is a deep freeze, 7° C below zero! The roads are frozen solid. We would be able to advance if, yes if, there was any fuel! Gas and supply trucks are still far behind, somewhere hopelessly sunk into the mud. About 60% of the cars are somewhere stuck in the mud. That’s right; this is what a victorious march forward looks like! And the muddy season has only just begun, and already after two days of rain we have these losses. All of this does not fit quite well with yesterday’s victory fanfare!

26 October:
For the first time in several days I am without a fever today; a smelly hut and some straw was my hospital bed. This treacherous Russian fever held me in its remarkably strong grip this time. How utterly abandoned I felt in that half-dark deserted room!

27 October:
It is always the same: a dreary leaden sky driven by strong winds and alternating snow and rain showers. The roads and fields are the same: far and wide nothing but mud and muck, sometimes up to a meter in depth. The question of supply has become a huge problem. This shouldn’t imply that we do not have anything to eat; thank God there are plenty of geese and ducks here. But we are missing tobacco, sugar, coffee, and all those wonderful things which have to be supplied to us from behind the lines. This is why Sergeant Roth made for himself today a makeshift cigarette from newspaper and German tea. It actually didn’t taste that bad, and was copied a few times. The craziest of mixtures are tested. Some groups spend their time on producing sugar, others on distilling schnapps from dry bread, which gives them an extract of a pure, dry alcohol. All of this happens inside stinky, small huts. Anyone who does not absolutely have to go outside during this shitty weather stays inside these pathetic shacks, choosing to endure all the repulsiveness of these pig sties.

What does it look like inside one of these huts, which obviously only have a single living space which we share with a family of seven?

In the center of it all is a tremendous stove, which takes up about a third of the whole room; the house is more or less built around it. The wooden cots built right next to it represent the bedroom for the entire family. Underneath the cots, and in the many niches around the stove is storage for their valuables. There are pigs squealing, chickens roosting, and potatoes in storage, along with other supplies.

Hooks have been placed in the ceiling here and there, from which a cradle is suspended; a wooden bowl with a small child hangs by a rope from the ceiling. The
babushka
spends many hours of the day keeping the cradle in perpetual motion by never abandoning the sling tied around her foot, which is also connected to the cradle. She only moves from this spot to sit with the rest of the clan for the never-ending potato suppers. Anyone who is able to hold a spoon sits around a huge pot, and amidst the loud smacking and slurping they “dine” until they are full and burping. All of this only increases the feeling of a prehistoric atmosphere, which one would expect in the huts from early civilization.

Possession of paper indicates education and wealth. Those who have even a small amount to be able to decorate their walls are well aware of this luxury. In our hut as well, there are torn newspaper scraps, pages from old school books, invoices, children’s drawings, and doodling as “decoration” on the walls.

Out of admiration for the children’s paintings, and with all due respect for the attachment to the newspaper and its multiple uses, one is overcome with horror at seeing these “furnished” walls. Not only because of the dirt, smoke, soot and soil, and yellowed paper scraps, no, it’s mainly because of the existence of the small house pets that live their infinite lives behind this paper. We move the benches away from the wall, but at night, when we hear a small creaking and rustling inside the paper, we know that the bell is ringing for them to come out.

There are no handles or locks on the doors, which are nothing more than planks mounted on hinges used to close up a hole in the wall. In some places, so many old rags and pieces of felt have been nailed on top of each other that the planks become jammed. The plank itself is protected from drafts by way of a thick tapestry of straw, old clothes, and other stuff.

The tiny windows are completely sealed during winter; however, they do not open in the summer either. The broken panes have been replaced by the
babushka
with wads of rags and small sacks of straw.

All of our senses have suffered greatly during the war. We have listened to screams and moans; we have witnessed many who have suffered brutal pain, so many images about which we will be silent forever. Our noses have fared quite badly too: the smell of smoke, the stench of corpses in the summer heat, and much more. But one memory will remain permanently in our minds: the heavy, grim atmosphere inside our living quarters.

Just imagine the following: local people of various ages, surrounded by many children, who altogether have not washed themselves for years, other than taking a sip of water into their mouths, spitting this onto their hands, taking another sip, and wetting their faces with it. (How often have we had to fight before we got a decent amount of water with which to clean ourselves? They only put a single cup of it in front of you, not out of malice, but because they don’t know any better.)

And so this is it: indigenous people, with their many small children, pigs under the stove, sheep skins which have not been removed from the stove for generations, gummed up windows, barricaded doors. Add to this fifteen soldiers with their weapons, all joined together for supper around a flickering petroleum lamp. Afterwards, they smoke heavily, countering the smelly haze of the
Machorka
[Russian tobacco smoked by peasants] against the even worse one of the German tea. If this isn’t a recipe for stale air, compound this with the jolly warm stench of bodies! And it is inside this room where twenty-five humans sleep in the narrowest of quarters.

A unique aspect of this atmosphere is the lamp. In the division offices we have generators which produce electricity for the lights, as the officers need to work for hours at night, unlike the common soldier, who uses the darkness mainly for fighting or sleeping. If he wants to carve out a little circle of the darkness for his own business, like I want to do right now, he will sometimes have a carbon lamp or even a candle. He has to rely on the light source of the particular country he is in; here, it is a petroleum lamp in all its glorious perfection.

Without question, the simplest contraptions are the small vodka bottles, suspended from the ceiling by a wire. Suspended in oil dangles a piece of twine, rag, or felt; in especially lucky circumstances there is even a wick. These squeeze through the opening of the bottle and burn at the top with a sooty, flickering, small flame. Such a “smoking candle” is in front of me right now as I am writing these lines.

A step above this is the oil lamp without its protective glass cylinder. The wear and tear of time and its continual movement by the soldiers destroyed the glass long ago. Despite this, it provides enough light for one’s surrounding space and to write one loving letter after another to the folks back home. Croesus [King Croesus of Lydia, 560–546 B.C.] was a man who was able to distribute a beam of light from an oil lamp, with or without its protective glass cylinder.

And where do we currently sleep? I should first mention that the main preoccupation during these days of no combat is sleeping. God knows we have lots to catch up on. Therefore, those who are not writing, eating, or frisking themselves for lice (when searching the seams of our shirts for lice, all “killings” are happily reported), are sleeping. We sleep all over the place. Is there anyone who still asks for a blanket? A wooden bench, the floor, a large table—ultimate bliss is straw! Our sleep is deep and dreamless, but at the same time light, alert for any danger, which holds back the nightmares. We dream just as much of normal sleep with deep, quiet breathing, without any itching lice, as we do of a bed with white sheets and pajamas. But we will have to relearn all that, just as we will have to relearn to undress at night.

Indeed, that is a wonderful image. The most beautiful, however, the most cherished dream, is home, our home. Those who look at photographs of their children, worn out from constant handling, the light eyes of the women and girls in the photos, whom we look at with a quiet smile, know this: out here we only have the strength to endure the hardships and exhausting tasks because of the love from home that embraces us. The dream of a white tablecloth, of a tender kiss, this is the source of our strength. The dream of a good life, the war-drives through France, which have taken on an image of sun and wine here in the East, is the last adventurer’s dream. Yet that adventure no longer has any allure for us. Rather, the quiet of home is the secret sun in all of our hearts. The longed for, blessed army postal service is its messenger.

For fourteen more days we are stuck in Krawino, and then finally the muddy season is over, and on November 10, a strong freeze suddenly sets in. The thermometer falls almost overnight to 12 degrees below zero.

November 15:
It is finally here; the ground is frozen solid. We can start.

November 16:
Sumy falls after a hard battle. The losses are huge. Officer Lader, who went out on a reconnaissance mission with his group, did not return; all are dead.

November 18:
We reach Lebedyn. These past three days have disturbed the division quite a bit. Only 50% of the weapons and vehicles are operational. The division therefore receives orders to vacate Lebedyn until further notice, and to repair the artillery and vehicles as quickly as possible.

Lebedyn, by Russian standards, is a pretty country town and paradise for us after the lice-infested Panje huts of Krawino. The Soviets have erected here large, administrative buildings; on the outskirts of the town are airfields and barracks. Nothing but Potemkin villages! [Reference to an urban legend that originated during the time of Grigory Potemkin, minister to Empress Catherine II. The legend states that facades of villages were constructed along the banks of the Dnepr River in order to impress the empress during her travels of conquest.] From afar they are imposing, with their whitewashed chalk facades. But what a great disappointment when you’re standing right in front of them, or when you even enter them. Meter-long cracks in the ceilings and walls, doors that hang crooked on their hinges, which neither open nor close; staircases that are bent out of shape, swollen window frames, and uneven floors are the least of the problems, all of which astonish us.