A short while later, after a last look at the newborn child, whose tiny cries sounded like a tinkle of delicate glass through the roar of war, we returned to the flaming street. For the child’s sake, we hoped he would die before he turned twenty. Twenty is the age of ingratitude. It is too hard to be leaving life at the moment when one so much longs for it to flower.
We helped some old people, whom younger ones had left to the mercy of the Soviets. In the darkness lit up by flames, we once again performed our duty. We supported and carried the old people down to the port, where a boat was waiting for them. Planes passed over, and in spite of the blazing fires which lined the street, they once again scattered their load of death.
They killed some fifteen of our number. We had tried to pull the victims down with us on our several rapid plunges to the ground, but the old people were unable to follow us. It didn’t matter though we saved a good many of them anyhow, finally hoisting them onto a trawler, after getting them through the thickly packed crowd. The boat had to slip its lines while loading, to escape an aerial attack.
As we moved away from the shore, Wollers ran back to the stern to see if the gangplank had really been drawn in. Then he came back to us, tramping through the refugees who crowded the deck. He looked at us as if he were about to speak. Then we all turned to stare at the flames.
“Do you still have your embarkation cards?” he asked suddenly.
We all pulled out our tattered, filthy cards.
“I would have lost my head first,” muttered Grandsk.
The water slid quietly by, less than a yard below us. The boat would probably sink if the weight of its human cargo shifted. No one moved so much as a finger. Once again, we had escaped from the Russians and their fury.
19. THE WEST
Before daybreak, we arrived at Hela, without incident. We had passed several ghostly ships, navigating without lights, going back to Hela, or to Gotenhafen, and Danzig, where large numbers of civilians were still waiting for deliverance. Hela, which I had thought of as a large town, proved to be only a village, with a harbor of very secondary importance. Many ships were anchored off shore, and small boats were delivering a steady stream of passengers fleeing to the West.
We had scarcely set foot to the ground when the police, who were still functioning, made us step to one side. We stared at them with desperate unease. Was our good luck, which had brought us this far, going to melt like summer snow and send us back to Danzig, or Gotenhafen? The police turned their backs on us to direct the white-faced civilians. In any event, all of our papers were in order. But wasn’t that the ship which was to take us further? And mightn’t a counter-order arrive any moment? The minutes went slowly by, without giving us any glimpses into our future.
As it grew light, the cumulative exhaustion of many months seemed to crush our shoulders. We were now able to see the numerous gray outlines of ships, including many warships, riding at anchor on both sides of the peninsula. As we looked, the air-raid alarm sounded. Our eyes turned to the sky, as rumors began to circulate through the crowd.
“No panic!” shouted the police. “Our anti-aircraft defenses will hold them off!”
By now, we knew what that meant. All the shelters were filled with wounded, and each of us had to find what protection he could. If the bombs fell near the harbor, there would be an impressive carnage.
We moved toward an old hulk pulled up on the shore, whose tarred timbers might be able to ward off a few blows. We hadn’t quite reached it when the massive crackle of an anti-aircraft barrage burst all around us, fired by our coastal defenses or by one of the warships we had glimpsed earlier. This was my first experience of such a barrage. The falling fragments alone were capable of no small damage.
To the east, the sky was spattered with numberless black spots. The noise of firing was so loud that we couldn’t hear the planes approaching. Finally we saw three of them, flying quite low, parallel to the shore, pursued by the black granules of exploding flak. We heard an explosion to the south, over the water; one of the planes must have been hit. The police had not been exaggerating — not one plane flew over Hela. We felt a wave of confidence and security; finally, the Russians had been stopped.
The police came and checked our cards.
“Be back here for embarkation on the 31 of March,” a noncom told us.
“While you’re waiting, you can make yourselves useful north of town.”
We took ourselves off without any questions.
“What is the date today?” Hals asked.
“Wait a minute,” Wollers said. “There’s a calendar in my diary.” He looked through his pocket, but couldn’t find it.
“In any case, we’re not ahead of ourselves.”
“But we ought to know, all the same,” Hals persisted. “I would like to know exactly how much longer we have to wait.”
We finally learned that it was Sunday, the 28th or 29th of March, and that we would have to wait for two days, as I remember: the last two days of the Ost Front, which had consumed so much of our lives.
We spent those two days in the throng of anxious refugees camping out on the narrow Hela peninsula.
There were two more attempted Russian air raids. The last victim I was to see was a dirty white horse.
A Russian plane had been hit, and was disintegrating above us. We all watched as the forward part of the plane, whose racing engine gave off a long howl, plunged toward the ground. The noise terrified the animal, which slipped its collar and galloped, whinnying, toward the spot where the roaring mass of metal would land. It must have taken about three steps before it was hit. Its flesh was scattered for over fifteen yards in all directions.
On the evening of April 1, during a spell of terrible weather, we boarded a large white ship, which must, at one time, have taken rich people on cruises. Despite the anxiety we all felt, despite the crowd, and the stretchers, and the wounded, with their rattling breath, my eyes gaped at all the magnificent and barely-faded details inside that elegant ship. I was reminded of the shop windows my father had always taken me to admire at Christmastime. But I didn’t have the courage to rejoice; I knew that such feelings always end badly.
In the darkness, our boat pressed forward through the large hollow waves. A short while before, the sound and light which had filled the sky over the other shore of the Bay of Danzig had still reached us. Our comrades were still fighting and dying there. We scarcely dared think of the good fortune that had saved us — and that troubled us. For two days, our boat slid across the sea, toward the unbelievable West, which we had dreamed of for so long, where we could not imagine the war. We learned that our ship was the Pretoria, and although we were allowed only a small space on the bridge, lashed by wind and rain, the sweetness of the moment made us forget food and drink.
Of course, a torpedo could send us to the bottom at any minute, but we didn’t think of that. We also had a battleship escort; everything was going very well.
We arrived in Denmark, where we saw things we had almost forgotten, like pastry shops, which we devoured with enormous eyes, forgetting our filthy faces ravaged by misery. We scarcely noticed the looks of mistrust fixed on us by the shopkeepers, who couldn’t understand us. We had no money, and the wares on display were not free. For a moment, we even thought of our machine guns.