The straw hut in the courtyard of the house requisitioned by the Intelligence Section, where the house’s former occupants, the Russian family, now lived, was overrun with Romanians. Breuer had also turned over the entrance hall of his billet to them. He was hoping to glean some information about developments at the front. But it was fruitless. They didn’t even listen to his questions. They just fell to the ground where they stood, utterly exhausted, collapsed on top of one another and started snoring. Latecomers trying to get into the house had to clamber over a mountain of arms and legs; those they trampled on didn’t raise a peep. As they warmed up and thawed, their filthy clothes, boots and bandages gave off an animal stench. Lakosch and Geibel stood outside by the fence to prevent any more people from entering.
‘Nix, nix! Komplett, komplett!’ they called out, using the curious lingua franca that had evolved on the Eastern Front from the constant commingling of Russians, Romanians, Germans, Italians and other nationalities, as they pushed the crush of people pressing forward back on to the street.
‘All guest rooms taken!’ Lakosch added, by way of explanation.
‘You see,’ he told Geibel, ‘this lot are sick to death of the war. They’re all heading back home.’
‘Back home, my arse!’ replied Geibel. ‘And we’re never going to make it back home ourselves, either,’ he added, visibly upset. He thought of his wife, who was now having to look after the shop all on her own. And little Ernst was only one month old!
‘Why ever not?’ enquired Lakosch in astonishment.
‘Well, if this lot here all clear off, someone’s got to plug the gaping hole they leave in the front. And because we’ve only just arrived, they’ll be bound to stick us there!’
‘Blimey!’ said Lakosch. ‘You’ve obviously got the makings of a strategist! Watch out, next thing you know they’ll make you a general! … Hey, look at the jockey there!’ he said, suddenly changing tack and pointing at a Romanian riding by on a cow, barefoot and with his steel helmet set at a jaunty angle. Geibel tore loose a half-rotten sack that had frozen hard on the icy ground and tossed it towards the man, who adeptly caught it in mid-air and bowed chivalrously to them. From the main street below there came the sound of a great disturbance. A string of riderless horses, harnessed together in teams of four or six, led by a stable-hand, came charging down into the crowded village from the north. Hitting the obstruction, the first phalanx of oncoming horses reared up, their eyes wide open in sheer terror, sliding around and smashing car windows with their flailing hooves and dragging the rest along behind them. A knot of animals’ and men’s bodies were left writhing on the ground. The air was filled with the sounds of piercing whinnying, screaming and moaning; then, losing their heads, a group of military policemen started firing their machine-pistols into the air, making the pandemonium complete. The men in their fur hats pressed forward into the building housing the Regional Staff HQ, which exuded a smell of good order and warm food. A sign on the door, in both German and French, read ‘Only limited groups under the command of an officer will get fed!’ But who among this new group could understand that? The plump regional commander was at his wits’ end. He was already completely hoarse from constant shouting.
‘Nix kuschait! Nix manger!’ he croaked. ‘Orderly columns with an officer kuschait! Otherwise nix kuschait!’ A short, dark-skinned officer in a fur jacket, and with highly polished Russian leather boots on his bow legs and his cap set askew on his glossy black hair, beat his way through the gaggle of men with his riding crop.
Reaching the front, he thrust his gloved right hand across the table at the fat captain and announced: ‘My salutations, Cavalry Captain Popescu, if I may be making so bold! I urgently require stabling and oats and hay for my five hundred horses from the First Cavalry Division!’
The captain was rendered speechless. He’d been fed up to the back teeth for some while. Now all he needed was some clown like this waving a riding crop!
‘My dear sir, how do you imagine I’m going to get you that?’ he sputtered. ‘You can see with your own eyes what’s going on here! You think I give two hoots for your nags?’
The cavalry captain waved his crop around and gave vent to a string of Romanian expletives, the gist of which was: ‘So much for our fine upstanding allies: they can talk the talk all right, but when the chips are down, suddenly it’s no business of theirs! He too was long since sick and tired of the whole affair! Yesterday was the final straw!’ Eventually his fury found an outlet in a German of sorts:
‘My horses have fighted! And for whom have they fighted? For Hitler! For Germany! And now they is supposed to starve and freeze to death?’
By now the captain had lost his temper as well.
‘I am the regional commander here, sir! Not some circus manager!’ he barked with all the power his voice could still muster. ‘You’d do better to slaughter your bloody beasts and give your men something to eat!’
The captain could not have known quite how prophetic he was being at that moment. The little cavalry officer’s face turned puce with rage. His valuable horses, those miracles of the bloodstock business – ‘beasts’? Feed these noble creatures, every one of them a thoroughbred, to those grubby peasants of soldiers! The very idea was worse than cannibalism – it was blasphemy, from the mouth of an utter barbarian!
‘Outrageous, sir!’ he shrieked back. ‘Outrageous! I am now using force, you understand? I will requisition everything… everything!’ And with that, he vanished, still cursing, back into the heaving throng.
‘Good luck with that!’ the captain called after him. Like Fröhlich, he was thinking: why are we even dealing with these swineherds?
The general was pacing up and down the office of the chief of staff with long strides. Lieutenant Colonel Unold stood, propping himself up with his fists on the table with the large map, and stared out of the window into the middle distance. His face was even paler than usual, while the deep creases at the corners of his mouth appeared to have grown even more pronounced. Coming to a sudden decision, he swung round to face the room.
‘In my view, the General simply must give the order to retreat, sir!’ he said firmly. ‘The anti-aircraft battery’s up there on the ridge without any infantry support. Before long they’ll have used up all their ammunition and then it’s game over. The ridge is already surrounded on three sides. In half an hour it could all be too late. In fact, it may already be too late,’ he added, nervously.
‘I’m not about to take lessons in soldiering from you, Unold!’ replied the general angrily. ‘I’ve already told you several times that I won’t issue any such order! The ridge must be defended and will be defended. You know what the Führer’s standing orders are!’
‘The order that makes the withdrawal of even the smallest units subject to the Führer’s approval – if that’s the order the General is referring to – came about as a result of the special circumstances of the past winter. We have no reason to feel bound by it any longer.’
‘Is that intended as a criticism?’ the general flared up. ‘For me, every order given by the Führer is Holy Writ, understood? Holy Writ!’ Yet in his realm of authority, Unold, trusting the great generals of history, only acknowledged the iron laws of military tactics. As far as he was concerned, he recognized only the slide rule and good, rational judgement. His lips trembled as he responded: ‘It is my duty as head of operations to state in the strongest possible terms that this pig-headed – yes, pig-headed! – insistence on defending Hill 218 at all costs is militarily insane! It won’t help halt the Russian advance one iota.’