This march with the children lasted for several nights. I felt as if I were gradually losing control of myself, I had to make an immense effort not to hit them in turn. Thomas still kept his Olympian calm; he followed our progression on the map and with a compass, conferring with Adam about what direction to take. Before Gollnow, we had to cross the Kammin railroad, then, in several compact groups, the road. Beyond was nothing but an immense, dense forest, deserted but dangerous because of the patrols, which, fortunately, kept to the paths. We also began again meeting, alone or in groups, German soldiers, who like us were headed toward the Oder. Thomas stopped Adam from killing the isolated ones; two of them joined us, including a Belgian SS man, the others went their own way, preferring to try their luck alone. After another road, the forest became a marsh, we weren’t far from the Oder; to the south, according to the map, these swamps led to a tributary, the Ihna. Moving became difficult, we sank up to our knees, sometimes our waists, the children almost drowned in the bogs. It was very warm now, even in the forest the snow had disappeared; I finally got rid of my coat, still wet and heavy. Adam decided to escort us to the Oder with a smaller troupe and left part of his group, the girls and the smallest ones, under the guard of the two wounded children, on a strip of dry land. Crossing these desolate marshes took most of the night; sometimes we had to make considerable detours, but Thomas’s compass helped guide us. Finally we reached the Oder, black and gleaming beneath the moon. A line of long islands seemed to stretch between us and the German shore. We couldn’t find a boat. “No matter,” Thomas said, “we’ll swim across.”—“I don’t know how to swim,” the Belgian said. He was a Walloon, he had known Lippert well in the Caucasus and had told me about his death in Novo Buda. “I’ll help you,” I said. Thomas turned to Adam: “You don’t want to cross with us? Go back to Germany?”—“No,” the boy said. “We have our own mission.” We took off our boots to tuck them into our belts and I shoved my cap inside my tunic; Thomas and the German soldier, whose name was Fritz, kept their submachine guns in case the island wasn’t deserted. At this spot the river must normally have been about three hundred meters wide, but with the thaw, it had risen and the current was strong; the Belgian, whom I held under the chin as I swam on my back, slowed me down, I was soon carried away and almost missed the island; as soon as I managed to get my footing, I let the soldier go and pulled him by the collar, until he could walk on his own in the water. On the bank, I was overcome with fatigue and had to sit down for a while. Opposite, the marshes barely rustled, the children had already disappeared; the island on which we found ourselves was wooded, and I didn’t hear anything here, either, except the murmuring of the water. The Belgian went to find Thomas and the German soldier, who had landed farther up, then came back to tell me that the island seemed deserted. When I could get up I went through the wood with him. On the other side, the shore was also silent and dark. But on the beach, a pole painted red and white indicated the location of a field telephone, protected beneath a tarp, whose wire vanished into the water. Thomas took the receiver and made the call. “Hello,” he said. “Yes, we’re German soldiers.” He gave our names and ranks. Then: “Good.” He hung up, straightened, looked at me with a big smile. “They say we should stand in a row with our arms out.” We scarcely had time to get in place: a powerful spotlight on the German shore came on and aimed at us. We stayed that way for several minutes. “Good idea, their system,” Thomas commented. An engine noise started up in the night. A rubber dinghy approached and landed near us; three soldiers examined us in silence, holding their weapons until they were sure we were indeed German; still without a word, they herded us into the boat and the dinghy set off, bouncing through the black water.
On the bank, in the darkness, Feldgendarmen were waiting. Their big curved neck plates shone in the moonlight. They led us into a bunker to face a police Hauptmann, who asked for our papers; none of us had any. “In that case,” the officer said, “I have to send you under escort to Stettin. I’m sorry, but all kinds of people are trying to infiltrate.” As we waited, they handed out cigarettes and Thomas talked amiably with him: “You have a lot of crossings?”—“Ten or fifteen a night. In our entire sector, dozens. The other day, more than two hundred men arrived all at once, still armed. Most of them end up here because of the swamps, where the Russians don’t patrol much, as you saw.”—“The idea of the telephone is ingenious.”—“Thank you. The water has risen, and a lot of men drowned when they tried to swim across. The telephone spares us bad surprises…at least, so we hope,” he added, smiling. “It seems the Russians have traitors with them.” Around dawn, they had us get into a truck with three other Rückkämpfer and an armed escort of Feldgendarmen. We had crossed the river just above Pölitz; but the city was under Russian artillery fire and our truck made a long detour before we reached Stettin. There too shells were falling, buildings were cheerfully burning; in the streets, from the truck sides, I saw almost no one but soldiers. They took us to a Wehrmacht HQ, where we were immediately separated from the soldiers, then a severe Major interrogated us, soon joined by a representative of the Gestapo in civilian clothes. I let Thomas talk, he told our story in detail; I spoke only when questioned directly. On Thomas’s suggestion, the man from the Gestapo finally agreed to call Berlin. Huppenkothen, Thomas’s superior, wasn’t there, but we were able to reach one of his deputies, who immediately identified us. Right away the attitude of the Major and the Gestapo man changed; they began calling us by our rank and offering us schnapps. The Gestapo functionary left, promising to find us transportation to Berlin; in the meantime, the Major gave us some cigarettes and had us sit on a bench in the hallway. We smoked without talking: since the beginning of the march, we’d hardly smoked at all, and it was intoxicating. A calendar on the Major’s desk bore the date March 21, our adventure had lasted for seventeen days, and it must have been obvious from our appearance: we stank, our faces were bearded, our torn uniforms were coated in mud. But we weren’t the first to arrive in this state, and it didn’t seem to shock anyone. Thomas sat upright, one leg crossed over the other, he seemed very happy with our escapade; I was slumped, my legs spread straight in front of me in a rather unmilitary fashion; a bustling Oberst, passing by with a briefcase under his arm, threw me a look of disdain. I recognized him immediately, leapt up, and greeted him warmly: it was Osnabrugge, the demolisher of bridges. He took a few moments to recognize me, then his eyes opened wide: “Obersturmbannführer! What a state you’re in.” I briefly decribed our adventure to him. “And you? Are you dynamiting German bridges now?” His face felclass="underline" “Yes, unfortunately. I blew up the Stettin bridge two days ago, when we evacuated Altdamm and Finkenwalde. It was horrible, the bridge was covered with hanged men, runaways caught by the Feldgendarmen. Three of them were still hanging after the explosion, right at the entrance to the bridge, all green. But,” he went on, pulling himself together, “we didn’t destroy everything. The Oder in front of Stettin has five branches, and we decided to demolish only the last bridge. That leaves some chance for rebuilding.”—“That’s good,” I remarked, “you’re thinking about the future, you’re keeping up your morale.” We separated at these words: a few bridgeheads, farther south, hadn’t yet fallen back, Osnabrugge had to go inspect the preparations for demolitions. Soon afterward, the man from the local Gestapo returned and had us get into a car with an SS officer who also had to go to Berlin and didn’t seem the least bit bothered by our smell. On the autobahn, the spectacle was even more horrible than in February: a continuous flow of haggard refugees and exhausted, ragged soldiers, trucks loaded with wounded, the debris of the debacle. I fell asleep almost immediately, they had to wake me up during a Sturmovik attack; as soon as I could get back in the car I fell asleep again.