One of the peasants they’d robbed put us on their trail, and afterward invited us to his place and gave us a regular feast.”
I wasted no time in telling him my adventures; talking this way made us both feel better. We had just run into Lensen and Olensheim. Our sense of happiness and relief at meeting again was so great that quite spontaneously we grabbed each other by the shoulders and mimed an exaggerated polonaise, shouting with laughter. Some of the older men stared at us in astonishment, unable to see any reason for this burst of gaiety, so inconsistent with the gray and icy atmosphere.
“Where’s Fahrstein?” I asked.
“Ouf,” roared Lensen, still laughing. “He’s snug and warm in his truck. He sprained his ankle, and it’s so swollen he can’t take his boot off, so he’s waiting for it to deflate.”
“He’s making the most of it,” Hals remarked. “If I carried on like that every time I turned my ankle…”
Our conversation was interrupted by the order for departure, and we returned to our posts. Knowing that my friends were there, with only a few trucks between us, made me feel a great deal better, and I almost forgot that each turn of the wheels was taking me closer to the front. It was still so far away. We were traveling on bad roads covered with snow and ice. On either side, a wall of snow thrown back by road-clearing operations hid the countryside. Through the occasional gaps we were able to see traces of the terrible fighting which had overrun this part of the country the year before. The hastily patched road was so rough that we had to crawl through several hundred miles of this ruined countryside.
The troops of von Wichs, Guderian, von Reichenau and von Stulpnagel had wrenched this territory from the Soviets after weeks of heavy fighting, and held several hundreds of thousands of prisoners between Kiev and Kharkov. The amount of Russian war materiel strewn about under the snow made me wonder how they could possibly have much left.
Rising temperatures brought fresh snowfalls which made it necessary for us to bring out our shovels again. Fortunately, a section of the armored column which was supposed to accompany us joined us two days later. We were able to attach four or five trucks to the back of a tank so that, with their engines going, the trucks were able to manage a slipping, sliding advance despite the snow and ice.
However, the low clouds soon vanished, leaving a pale blue sky. The thermometer plunged sharply, and we were caught once more by a biting cold, on that accursed Russian plain. Occasionally a group of German airplanes would pass over our column with throbbing engines. We waved wildly at the pilots, who responded by dipping their wings. Higher up, squadrons of JU-52s passed slowly over us, flying east. Our hot meals no longer warmed us, and frostbite was eating into my hands once again. Fortunately, this time our convoy included a doctor. Each time we stopped to eat, we lined up beside his truck. He coated my hands with a greasy, curative ointment which I tried to keep on as long as possible as it reduced the pain in my cracked skin and preserved it from the cold. I kept my hands buried in the depths of my giant overcoat pockets unless absolutely forced to pull them out, and then I was very careful not to rub off the ointment against the rough cloth.
I spent long hours in the cab of a three-and-a-half-ton Renault, jolting from rut to rut. From time to time we had to remove the snow which accumulated between the mudguard and the tire, or help another machine which had skidded and gotten stuck.
Otherwise, we avoided everything which obliged us to step outside. So far I had escaped guard duty at night. When darkness made further advance impossible, we stopped where we were. The driver had the right to the seat. I usually slept on the floor, with my legs wedged in beside the pedals and my nose on the engine, which gave off a sickening stench of hot oil. We always woke up stiff and numb with cold.
Well before daybreak we began the exhausting struggle of starting our frozen engines. Hals had come to see me several times, but my driver always protested that three was too many for our tiny cab. He advised me to go and see my friend instead, but that always came to the same thing, and there was certainly no question of standing outside for a chat.
One day, just after we had passed a large town with a Luftwaffe airfield beside it, we were joined by a reconnaissance plane, which entered into radio communication with the Kommandergruppe of the armored section accompanying us. A moment later, the plane left the convoy and veered to the north. The tanks in our column disappeared in whirlwinds of snow thrown up by their treads. We went on as before, without feeling any special anxiety. A few hours later we heard the booming sound of distant explosions. This stopped, began again a few minutes later, then stopped, then began again. At eleven o’clock the convoy halted in a village covered with snow. The sun was shining, and its gleam on the snow made us squint. The cold, although intense, was bearable.
We walked over to the soup truck, whose two stoves were belching smoke. The first arrivals were sent by the cook to fetch the kettles. This cook was not at all a bad sort, and his skill was adequate at least to prevent insurrection. The dishes he prepared really weren’t bad at all. The only oddity of his cooking style was that everything without exception was served with the same thick flour sauce. I joined Hals and Lensen, and we were walking back to our trucks, bent over our steaming mess tins. Suddenly a series of more or less distant explosions shook the icy air. We stopped for a moment and listened. Everyone else seemed to be doing the same thing. The explosions began again. Some of them were obviously far away. Instinctively we began to hurry.
“What’s going on?” Lensen asked an older soldier who was climbing into his truck.
“Guns, fellows. We’re getting closer,” he said.
We had all guessed this already, but we needed confirmation.
“Ha!” said Hals. “I’m going to get my gun.”
Personally, I didn’t take any of this too seriously. There were a few more explosions, some separate and distinct, others overlapping each other.
The departure whistle blew, and we climbed back into our trucks. The convoy jolted into motion. An hour later, as we reached the top of a hill, the gunfire brought us to a complete stop. It was coming from much closer. Each explosion literally shook the air, which was a very strange sensation. Some nervous drivers had stepped on their brakes much too quickly. Their trucks had skidded on the ice, and the drivers were racing the engines, trying unsuccessfully to straighten their machines. I had opened our door, and was looking down the line of trucks. A Volkswagen was driving from the rear at top speed, and a lieutenant was shouting through its open door: “Hurry up, get going, keep moving! You… help that idiot out of the rut.”
I jumped down from our Renault and joined a group of soldiers trying to pull an Opel Blitz back onto the road. The firing had begun again. It seemed to be quite close and coming from the north. Slowly, and with difficulty, the convoy began to move. As we had jammed on our brakes in the middle of an ascent, my driver had a particularly hard time starting up our truck. We descended slowly into a rolling, wooded countryside. The dull sound of explosions continued. Suddenly, the trucks at the head of the column stopped again, and we heard the blast of a whistle. We quickly jumped to the ground. Soldiers were running to the head of the convoy. What was happening?
The lieutenant of a while ago was running too, collecting a group of soldiers as he went by. I was one of them. Carrying our Mausers, and running as fast as we could, we reached the front of the column. The big Kommandergruppe half-track seemed to have driven deliberately into the thick snow at the side of the road.