“Of course,” said Ernst, who certainly wasn’t exaggerating.
The policeman had to peer under the canvas anyway:
“They don’t look so bad to me.”
There was a furious outburst of swearing. From time to time, wounded men availed themselves of their special position to abuse the police.
“You sonofabitch,” groaned one man, who was missing a piece of his shoulder. “It’s shits like you who should be sent to the front. Let us through, or I’ll strangle you with the one good hand I have left.”
The feverish landser was sitting up in spite of his pain, which made him frighteningly white. He seemed quite capable of putting this threat into action.
The policeman flushed, and his nerve faltered at the sight of these twenty battered wrecks. The position of a big-city policeman roaring at some pathetic bourgeois for going through a red light is a far cry from that of an M.P. behind the lines dealing with a gang of combat veterans who are holding their guts in with their hands, or have just bayoneted the guts out of somebody else. His display of bad temper turned into a set little smile.
“Get out of here,” he said, with the air of someone who doesn’t give a damn. When the wheels of the truck began to turn, he vented the last of his spleen: “Go and die somewhere else!”
It was hard to get even eight gallons of gas, and when we managed it our tank swallowed them in an instant. But we were glad to take what we could and get out. A feeble attempt had been made at surfacing the road, but there were still long stretches of bare ground which had become deep quagmires, to be avoided at all costs. We proceeded on the highway, or beside it, as circumstances required.
Far to the right, we could see another convoy struggling forward in a line parallel to ours. The men were dressed for battle, and seemed to be prepared for an encounter with the Soviets. We were stopped by a new set of police, who combed our papers to see if they could find any mistakes. They checked the truck, verified our I.D. cards and our destination… but when it came to the destination, they had to give us directions. One of them looked through the directory hanging around his neck, and told us, in a voice like a barking dog’s, that we had to turn off the road a hundred yards ahead and proceed to Kharkov. We followed these instructions with regret, because the new road rapidly deteriorated into a ribbon of mire.
At our speed, we would soon have exhausted our supply of gas.
We kept passing vehicles abandoned in the mud because of mechanical failure, or because they had run out of gas. A short distance along the new road, we were stopped by a group of about fifty landser, on foot, and in a state of unbelievable filth. They took our truck by storm. There were several wounded men among them. Some of them had ripped off their filthy dressings, and were walking with their wounds open to the air.
“Make room for us, fellows,” they said, hanging on as hard as they could.
“You can see that we haven’t got any room,” Ernst answered. “Let go.”
But we couldn’t get rid of them. They swarmed over the tailgate, trampling on our wounded to try to make them move over. Ernst and I shouted at them, but it didn’t do any good: they piled on everywhere.
“Take me,” whimpered a poor devil scratching at my door with bloody hands. Another waved a pass which was already almost expired. The arrival of a steiner followed by two trucks restored order.
An S.S. captain climbed out of the steiner.
“What’s this ant heap? No wonder you’ve broken down! It’s impossible! There must be at least a hundred men here.”
The men scattered immediately, without asking for anything more. Ernst saluted, and explained the situation.
“Very good,” said the captain. “You take five more along with your wounded. We’ll take another five, and the rest will have to walk until the convoy comes by. Let’s get going.”
Ernst explained that we would be out of gas in a few minutes. The captain signaled to some soldiers on the steiner, who gave us six gallons. A few minutes later we were on our way again.
We kept passing groups of men wading through the mud who begged us to pick them up, but we didn’t stop. Toward noon, with our last drop of gas, we reached a town where a unit was being assembled for the front. I escaped becoming an infantryman before my time by a hair’s breadth.
We had to wait until the following day before we could use the reserve of five gallons of gas which Ernst was able to draw. We were about to leave, when an unexpected and unpleasant sound struck our ears. In the distance — still quite far away — we heard the booming of big guns. As we thought we were by now far from the front, we were both astonished and alarmed. We didn’t know — and I didn’t know until much later — that our course had been taking us parallel to the Belgorod — Kharkov line.
Nonetheless, after unloading two dying men to make room for three more wounded, we set off without delay. In the middle of that afternoon, everything went wrong again.
Our truck was more or less in the middle of a column of ten. We had just passed an armored unit whose tanks looked like a giant version of the slimy creatures that emerge on mud flats at low tide. They must have been on their way to meet the enemy, who seemed to be very close. We could hear artillery on our left, despite the loud laboring noises of the trucks. Ernst and l exchanged anxious looks. We were stopped by some soldiers who were setting up an anti-tank gun.
“Dig in, fellows,” shouted an officer as we slowed down. “Ivan’s getting pretty close.”
This time, at least, they were telling us something. But I wondered how the Russians, who had been left some ninety miles behind, could already be in this district. Ernst, who was driving, stepped on the gas. Two other trucks did the same. Suddenly, five planes appeared in the sky, at a moderate altitude. I pointed them out to Ernst.
“They’re Yaks,” he shouted. “Take cover!”
We were surrounded by bare mud, with occasional clumps of stunted brush. There was a sound of machine-gun fire from the sky. The column drove more quickly, toward a shallow fold in the ground which might give some protection. I was leaning out the window, trying to see through the flying mud spun by our wheels. Two Focke Wolfs had appeared, and had shot down two of the Yaks, which crashed far to the west.
Until the final stages of the war, Russian aircraft were no match for the Luftwaffe. Even in Prussia, where Russian airpower was its most active, the appearance of one Messerschmitt-109, or one Focke-Wolf would make a dozen armored Ilyushin bombers turn and run. At this period, when German airpower still possessed important reserves, the lot of the Russian pilots was not enviable.
Two of the three remaining Yaks had taken flight, pursued by our planes, when the last dived straight at the convoy. One of the Focke Wulfs was chasing him, and was plainly trying to get him in his sights.
We reached the dip in the road. The Soviet plane had come down very low, to use its machine guns. The trucks ahead of us had stopped short, and the able-bodied were jumping down into the mud. I was already holding the door open, and I jumped, with my feet together, plunging face downward, when I heard the machine guns.
With my nose in the mud, my hands on my head, and my eyes instinctively shut, I heard the machine gun and the two planes through a hellish intensity of noise. The sound of racing engines was followed by a loud explosion. I looked up, to watch the plane with the black crosses on its wings regain altitude. Three or four hundred yards away, where the Yak had crashed, there was a plume of black smoke. Everybody was getting up again.
“One more who won’t give any trouble,” shouted a fat corporal who was clearly delighted to be still alive.
Several voices joined in a cheer for the Luftwaffe.
“Anybody hit?” one of the noncoms called out. “Let’s get going, then.”