He had already taken the tureens off the fire and replaced them with the big serving dishes, which were filled with hissing water coming to the boil.
“Hurry up and eat,” he said, plunging his gloved hand armed with a big spoon into the depths of one of the tureens. “I have to boil this water for the surgeon. He’s busy carving up the wounded.”
We were bolting our tepid meal, still wearing our ragged gloves, when a lieutenant arrived.
“Is the water nearly ready?”
“Just now, Leutnant. It’s just boiling.”
“Good.” The lieutenant’s eye fell on us. “You two: take the water to the doctor.” He pointed to the lighted doorway of one of the houses. We closed our mess tins, still half full of food, and hooked them onto our belts. I grabbed one of the steaming basins, taking care not to empty its contents onto my feet, and walked toward the improvised operating room.
The sole advantage of being inside this house was its temperature. It had been a long time since any of us had experienced indoor warmth. The doctor had requisitioned the large common room of a Soviet farmer, and was busy with the leg of a poor fellow stretched out on the central table. Two other soldiers were holding the patient, who was jerking spasmodically and moaning with pain. Everywhere — on benches, on the floor, on the big storage chests — wounded soldiers were lying or sitting, groaning as they waited. Two orderlies were tending to them. The floor was littered with bloody bandages.
Two Russian women were washing the surgical instruments in basins of hot water. The room was extremely badly lit. The doctor had put the farmer’s big gas lamp beside the operating table. The farmer himself was holding another lamp over the surgeon’s head. A lieutenant and a sergeant were each holding another lamp.
In an angle of the room made by the big comer chimney, a young Russian was crying. He looked about seventeen, like me.
I put my basin down beside the doctor, who plunged a thick wad of dressing into it.
I stayed where I was, transfixed by the terrible sight in front of me. I couldn’t lift my eyes from that naked thigh inside which the surgeon was working. The skin around the wound seemed to have been crushed, and everything was soaked with blood. New streams of blood, of a brighter, clearer red, kept running from the enormous hole in which the doctor was working, with what looked like a pair of flat-bladed scissors. My head began to swim, and I felt sick at my stomach, but I couldn’t look away. The patient was tossing his head from one side to the other. He was being held down firmly by two other soldiers. His face was completely drained of color, and streaming with sweat. They had stuffed a bandage into his mouth, perhaps to keep him from crying out. It was one of the soldiers from the armored column. I couldn’t move.
“Hold his leg,” the doctor said softly to me.
I hesitated, and he looked at me again. My trembling hands took hold of the mangled leg. As they touched the skin, I could feel myself shaking.
“Gently,” murmured the doctor.
I saw the scalpel cut even more deeply into the wound, and I could feel the muscles of the leg tensing and relaxing. Then I closed my eyes. I could hear the sounds made by the surgical instruments, and the heavy, panting breath of the patient, who kept moving in agony, despite the partial anesthetic.
Then, although I could hardly bear to recognize it, I heard the sound of a saw. A moment later, the leg was heavier in my hand unbelievably heavy and I saw that it was supported five inches above the table only by my anguished hands. The surgeon had just detached it from the body.
I remained for a moment in a ludicrous and tragic attitude, holding my hideous burden. I thought I was going to faint. Finally, I put it down on a pile of bandages beside the table. I shall never forget that leg, even if I live a hundred years.
My driver had managed to leave, and I waited for a moment of general inattention to do the same thing. Unfortunately, such a moment did not arrive until very late that night. I had to do a great many other things almost as troubling as the amputation. It was nearly one o’clock in the morning when I finally opened the double doors of the house. As the cold struck me, it seemed more violent than ever. I hesitated, but the thought of returning to those dying men and those streams of blood turned me resolutely back into the night. The sky was clear and light, and the air seemed absolutely still. The shadows of the houses and the trucks were stamped with precise outlines on the hard, gleaming snow. I couldn’t see a living soul.
I walked through the village looking for my Renault; the whole convoy could have been destroyed before anyone gave the alarm. The door of an isba flew open and a bundle of blankets with a Mauser slung across it ventured a few faltering steps onto the snow. When the man inside the blankets caught sight of me he mumbled a few words. “You go in now. It’s my turn.”
“Go where?”
“To warm up. Unless you feel like taking another round.”
“But I’m not on guard. I’ve just been helping the surgeon, and now I’m going to get some sleep.”
“I see. I thought you were…” He mumbled a name. “Did you say there was somewhere to get warm?”
“Yes. You go on in there. They’ve made it headquarters for the guard. We take shifts every fifteen or twenty minutes. Of course, you don’t get any sleep that way, but it’s better than freezing for two hours.”
“Yes. Thank you. I’ll go in.”
I pushed open the heavy door and went inside. A big fire was blazing in the fireplace. Four soldiers, one of whom was Hals, were roasting potatoes and other vegetables under the ashes. The light from the fire was the only light in the room. Another fellow came in right after me, probably the guard I had been mistaken for. I warmed up the rest of the food in my mess tin, ate without appetite, and stretched out on the floor in front of the fireplace to sleep as best I could. Every fifteen or twenty minutes, one of the guards would shake awake some poor fellow flattened by sleep. From time to time the voice of someone protesting his fate would waken me. It was still dark when the reveille whistle shrilled in my ears.
Slowly we stood up on the floor which had served as our bed. We were rather stiff, but it had been a long time since any of us had slept without feeling cold. A young Russian woman was coming toward us from the shadows in the corner of the room. She was carrying a steaming pot which she held out to us, smiling. It was hot milk. For a moment I wondered if the milk might not be poisoned, but Hals, who preferred to die with a full stomach, had already grabbed the pot and helped himself to a generous swig. We passed the milk around among the four of us, then Hals laughed and returned it to the Russian woman. Neither of them could understand a word the other said. Hals went up to her and kissed her on both cheeks. She blushed a deep red. We bowed, and left.
Immediately, the cold fell on us like an icy shower. There was roll call, and distribution of lukewarm ersatz coffee. As on every other morning, we needed a good half hour to warm up the engines and get them started. Well before daybreak, the 19th Kompanie Rollbahn was jolting along the glare ice of that damned Soviet highway, the “Third International.”
Several times, we had to make way for convoys driving to the rear. We stopped for lunch in a squalid hamlet where the column of tanks which preceded us had also stopped, and we learned that we were only fifty miles from Kharkov.
We were all jubilant to hear that we were so close to our destination. Our convoy should arrive in two or three hours. We tried to imagine our quarters in Kharkov.
“What do you think it will be like?” Lensen asked.
The fellow who’d been with me for this interminable trip, the one without a kneecap, was not one to jump for joy.