I stood for a long time, transfixed by the unreal vision, gradually noticing that hundreds of lights were springing up on the east bank. With my eye glued to the loophole, I stared at these lights, which seemed to be growing stronger.
“Hey,” I shouted at the two regulars, “something’s happening!” They rushed over to me, pushing me aside so they could see. I stayed where I was, shoving my head between theirs.
“Hell, you really scared us,” one of them said. “That’s nothing; they do it every night. The Popovs like to make us think they’re warming up. Not at all a bad idea, either. Those lights are a damned nuisance. Look how hard it is to see the river now. Even flares make it hard.”
I couldn’t tear myself away from this disquieting vision. All along the vast horizon, the Russians had lit hundreds of braziers, not to warm themselves, because they must certainly have kept their distance from them, but to dazzle our observers. And in fact, when the eye traveled to the east bank, it remained fixed on those fires. Everything else, by contrast, was plunged into darkness, and this enabled the enemy to effect numerous changes which we could deduce only with difficulty. We were able to see a little with flares, but their radiance, although intense, was reduced at least to half strength by the enemy’s arrangement of alternating light and darkness.
I would have stood and stared much longer if our sergeant hadn’t given the signal for departure. We had no trouble returning to the rear. The night, undisturbed by the noises of war, hid our movements perfectly.
Everywhere, soldiers were curled up in their holes. Those who were asleep had covered themselves with everything they could find, leaving no fraction of themselves exposed — not a nose, or the tip of an ear. One needed to be accustomed to this strange mode of existence to know that beneath these mounds of cloth subtle human mechanisms were managing to survive and garner their strength.
Others were playing cards in the depths of their lairs, or writing letters in the flickering light of a candle, or of a lamp-heater. These marvelous objects — and I call them “marvelous” deliberately — were about two feet high, and would operate on gasoline or kerosene: one simply had to regulate the nozzle and the intake of air. A reflector behind a glass projected the light. A story had it that the army was working on an improved model which would also dispense beer.
Those who were neither asleep, on guard, playing cards, or writing letters were absorbing the alcohol which was freely distributed along with our ammunition.
“There’s as much vodka, schnapps and Terek liquor on the front as there are Paks,” I was told later by a wounded infantryman who was waiting for evacuation on the hospital train. “It’s the easiest way to make heroes. Vodka purges the brain and expands the strength. I’ve been doing nothing but drink for two days now. It’s the best way to forget that I’ve got seven pieces of metal in my gut, if you can believe the doctor.”
We got back to our two sleighs without incident.
“Am I dreaming,” Hals said, “or has it grown warmer? I’m sweating like an ox in these clothes. Maybe I’ve got a fever: that’s all I need.”
“Then I’ve got one too,” I said. “I’m soaking wet.”
“That’s because you had the balls scared off you today,” said the fellow who earlier in the afternoon had shouted, “They’ll kill me!”
“Listen to who’s talking,” Hals said. “You’re still as green as your clothes, and you think you can judge us.”
Our sleighs were now carrying six wounded as well as ourselves. Although they were less heavily loaded than they had been, they ran less smoothly. The little horses were clearly having a hard time: we could almost see the snow growing softer as we looked at it. The wind was carrying large flakes of melting snow, which soon changed to rain. This milder air, after such terrible cold, seemed to us like the Côte d’Azur.
It took us two hours to reach our huts in the rear lines, and we needed no urging to fling ourselves onto our rough pallets. However, despite the physical and emotional exhaustion of that wearing day, I wasn’t able to sleep immediately. I kept seeing the banks of the Don, and hearing the whine of enemy projectiles, and the explosions, whose violence I would never have been able to imagine. For me, whose eardrums were shattered by the firing of a Mauser, our Polish exercises now seemed like the most trifling of games.
The infantry on the west bank had to fight as well as survive: that was the difference between them and us. We had been promised that we would be as honored as the infantry, as combat troops, if we distinguished ourselves on our supply missions. This promise, which had been made to us on behalf of our commander at the Wagenlager near Minsk, was clearly addressed to young recruits like Hals, Lensen, Olensheim, and me. We had taken it as an honor, and were proud of the confidence which had been placed in us.
Yet the reports in the front-line journal blamed us squarely, almost making us responsible for the German retreat from the Caucasus, and back beyond Rostov. For lack of supplies these troops had been forced to abandon territories won with great sacrifices, so that they would not suffer the same fate as the defenders of Stalingrad. In their exhortations to us, our officers often asked us to achieve a certain goal despite adverse conditions, at whatever the cost, to do more than was humanly possible, to face the prospect of the worst, including death. We had thought that we had accomplished more than the bare minimum. In fact, despite our unstinted efforts, and all our bitter moments, we had achieved somewhat less than half of what had been expected. Maybe we should have given our lives too.
“Absolute sacrifice” was what the High Command called it. These words made my head spin, as I stared with wide eyes into the impenetrable darkness, sinking gradually into sleep, as into a large black pit.
3. THE MARCH TO THE REAR
For three or four more days, we were involved in occupations of more or less the same kind. The snow was melting everywhere, and the cold was lessening as rapidly as it had increased — which seemed to be the way of Russian seasons. From implacable winter one was shifted into torrid summer, with no spring in between. The thaw did not improve our military situation, but made it worse. The temperature rose from five degrees below zero to forty degrees above, melting the unimaginable ocean of snow which had accumulated all winter.
Enormous pools of water and swampy patches appeared everywhere in the partly melted snow. For the Wehrmacht, which had endured the horrors of five winter months, this softening of the temperature fell like a blessing from heaven. With or without orders, we took off our filthy overcoats and began a general cleanup. Men plunged naked into the icy waters of these temporary ponds for the sake of a wash. No gunfire disturbed the tranquil air, which was sometimes even sunny.
The war itself, whose indefinable presence we still felt, seemed to have grown less savage. I had made the acquaintance of a sympathetic fellow, a noncom in the engineers, whose section was temporarily billeted in the hut opposite ours. He came from Kehl, right across the Rhine from Strasbourg, and knew France better than his own country. He spoke perfect French. My conversations with him, which were always in French, were like rest periods after the painstaking gibberish I was forced into with my other companions. Hals often joined us to improve his French in the same way I tried to improve my German.