Both armies had gone underground. Cellars, culverts, tunnels, and a seemingly endless network of shallow trenches called “rat runs,” like scratches over the city’s frozen skin, now made up the contours of the battlefield under the gathering winter sky. The foot soldiers of the Wehrmacht called it Rattenkrieg. War of the rats.
Nikki lowered his binoculars to scribble hurried memos in his notebook. This was his new assignment: forward observer, assigned to German intelligence. His charge was to watch frontline infantry action and report on tactics and casualty counts.
After Captain Mercker and his unit were buried in the debris, Nikki had led his nine fellow survivors to a Command forward headquarters. There he’d encountered an intense young lieutenant, Karl Ostarhild. He told Ostarhild of the disaster while the officer poured him a cup of coffee. Ostarhild rolled out a map for him to locate the blown-up building where Mercker and his company had died. Hovering over the map, Nikki pointed out what he knew about the Red positions, strong points and weaknesses. Ostarhild had been impressed not only by the breadth of Nikki’s observations and knowledge but by how hard he’d won them. The lieutenant asked Nikki to stay on under his command as an intelligence observer. Nikki accepted gladly.
Since then, he’d followed the sounds of rattling tanks and chattering automatic weapons across the city. He had not himself fired a weapon or thrown a grenade in twelve days. He did not even carry his rifle any longer.
Ostarhild was growing nervous about the information he was getting. He’d spent weeks compiling data from reconnaissance planes, visual observations, prisoner interrogations, and radio intercepts. He had no doubt that something very big was in the works on the Russian side. He didn’t know what, but the signs told him it was of titanic scale.
The day before, on November seventh, Ostarhild had taken his data plus his preliminary conclusions to brief his superiors in Golubinka, several kilometers west on the safety of the steppe. He laid out his reports of a massive buildup of men and materiel in the northern, Kletskaya region. The lieutenant presented his theory that this might be a Russian attack army, armed and mobile, primed for a counter-offensive. He gave the assembled generals details about each Red unit, where they came from, even the names of their commanders.
Ostarhild related that the Russian Sixty-second Army, under General Chuikov, had been forced by STAVKA, the Russian high command, to suffer through a severe reduction in ammunition. Where was the ammo going? That morning, which happened to be the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution, Stalin had made a surprisingly jubilant speech, monitored by shortwave from Moscow. Referring to the battle for Stalingrad, Stalin offered the cryptic reference that “soon there’s going to be a holiday in our street, too.”
Drawing partially on Nikki’s observations and frontline savvy, Ostarhild presented a vivid picture of the current status of the battle. The attack on Stalingrad had become a series of violent, personal battles. The Germans, in small groups, might occasionally grab a block of ruins or even reach the Volga in or around the factory district. Once they’d consolidated their gains by digging in, the units often found themselves cut off by Russians who moved back across the narrow corridors the Germans had cut. The wounded were frequently unreachable; the dead were left to stiffen in gruesome postures on the ground. The men were losing all hope of personal survival. They continued to fight, but too often their strength was the result of alcohol or contraband amphetamines. Ostarhild depicted the Nazi soldier as unshaven, weary from lack of sleep or relief, ridden with lice, fearful of spending another Russian winter in battle, and having lost all sense of the Reich’s greater purpose in bleeding for this city. Now, they fought—Ostarhild quoted the words of a battlefield reporter—”only for the ultimate obsession: to get at one another’s throats.”
The Russian position in the city was equally perilous. Along a three-mile stretch, the Reds clung desperately to their diminishing portion. In some places the riverbank was less than a hundred meters from their backs. Along with a throttled reserve of ammunition and a fantastic casualty rate, the Russians’ looming problem was that the Volga—the Red Army’s only link to its supply lines—was quickly growing unnavigable. The huge ice floes from the north that annually clogged the river had begun to tighten, but the Volga would not freeze solid enough to permit ground transport over it for another four or five weeks. Until then, the Reds’ reinforcements and supplies would be drastically reduced, if not cut off altogether.
The young lieutenant was asked by his commanding officers if this, then, was not a good time to mount one more large offensive. Ostarhild had anticipated the question: he knew the instant he heard it that he couldn’t answer honestly. A true response would not have been what the staff wanted to hear nor what they were prepared to pass on to General Paulus, the head of the Sixth Army. In his heart, Ostarhild felt the common soldiers had grown too disorganized, too cold in the shadow of their own doom to take part effectively in any more major assaults. As an intelligence officer, he’d censored hundreds of letters from the troops addressed to loved ones back home. Without exception, the letters displayed a deep brooding over their bleak prospects for returning to Germany alive. Command had responded by ordering all such letters intercepted and impounded. No sense depressing the home front with defeatist claptrap, they’d said.
Instead of laying before the officers the naked truth, Ostarhild spoke carefully, choosing terms he knew would be politic for their ears. The German soldier will fight bravely, he said, regardless of the assignment. But the generals had to act quickly before the window of opportunity closed. Ostarhild kept to himself his dread that the window had slammed shut weeks ago. Another offensive might be successful, he said, especially while the Russians’ supply lines were threatened by the river. But Germany faced several new obstacles here in early November. The weather, the men’s physical condition, and low morale certainly had to be addressed, but equally dangerous to the Reich’s presence in Stalingrad was the growing number of enemy snipers.
The Red sharpshooters had adapted to the destroyed urban terrain far better than the Germans had, Ostarhild observed. They were rapidly becoming very effective. The enemy snipers were responsible for untold casualties, including many among the officer corps. A conservative estimate ranged between one and two hundred wounded or dead per day.
The casualties came in such a terrible way, too—from a distance, from an unseen rifleman who crawled off and escaped detection. The snipers delivered death always as an awful, bloody shock. The men in the trenches had come to believe there was no haven from them. Any movement, even while smoking or relieving themselves, could draw a sniper’s attention. The thought of being hunted through a telescopic sight, of being marked unknowingly with invisible black crosshairs and then selected for a bullet in the brain and instant death, was a chilling, ugly prospect. The men were demoralized. Worse, they were becoming paralyzed.
Ostarhild showed the generals a file folder of clippings from the Russian military newspaper Red Army and the locally printed trench news sheet In Our Country’s Defense. Attached were translations prepared by his staff. He brought their attention to the articles under the heading “From the Front” by a Russian commissar, I. S. Danilov. These were stories of a newly formed Russian sniper school in the 284th Division under Colonel Batyuk. “Obviously,” he concluded, “the Russian command has seen the value of just such a sniper movement. But I doubt even they could have foreseen just how troublesome their snipers would become.”
General Schmidt, Paulus’s aide-de-camp and the ranking officer in the meeting, nodded while he scanned the translations.
“These articles,” he said, “make a very big show over this sniper Zaitsev, the one they call the Hare. He appears to be the brains behind this sniper school.”
Ostarhild agreed. “Yes, sir. He’s Siberian, a hunter from the Urals. Their press is building him up as their prototypical sniper, a great hero.”
Schmidt tapped the papers with the back o
f his hand.
“Then I think it would be very good for the morale of our men to catch this hero Zaitsev and blow his goddammed head off.”
Schmidt read a few moments longer. The general looked up and beamed around the room with a fat smile.
“And from the looks of things, this fellow Danilov has been quite a help to us.” He held up the sheaves of In Our Country’s Defense, shaking them at Ostarhild. “What we have here, gentlemen, is a catalog of all of Herr Zaitsev’s tactics. It seems to be quite lengthy and complete, wouldn’t you say, Lieutenant? How he thinks, what ruses he prefers, and so on. Tell me: in your opinion, will these help us catch this Russian son of a bitch? This little Red rabbit?”
The other generals in the room sniggered. Ostarhild nodded and said, “Yes, sir, they should.”
“Then wire back to Berlin on my orders,” Schmidt said, standing to conclude the interview. “Tell them we want to kill the best sniper in the whole Russian army. Send me the best German sniper. The very best. Immediately.”
* * * *
TWO DAYS AFTER OSTARHILD’S MEETING WITH THE General staff, on the afternoon of November ninth, Nikki stood in a swirling snowfall at Gumrak airfield, fifteen kilometers west of the city center. Gumrak’s single landing strip and lone blockhouse formed the closest air link between Germany and Stalingrad. In the last months, the name Gumrak had taken on both joyful and dire connotations among the soldiers of the Wehrmacht embattled in Stalingrad. Gumrak meant you were going home, perhaps bouncing in a seat, safely watching Russia grow small and fade into the mist; perhaps, and all too likely, in the darkness of a canvas bag. They’ve surely run out of pine boxes by now.
Nikki squinted through the whipping whiteness of the snow. He watched the Heinkel He-111 bomber roll to a stop on the runway forty meters from his staff car. This was the first snow of the winter. It came a full month before the early dustings Nikki remembered from home in Westphalia.
The roar of the bomber’s engines peaked and cut back. The blades flipped to a halt. The plane brooded in its own silence for several minutes. No one came to meet it or stepped out of it. Nikki bounced on his toes to stay warm, his hands buried deep in his pockets, the flakes catching on his eyelashes.
The door in the plane’s midsection opened. A duffel bag was tossed out. A man jumped down behind it and landed heavily. He picked up the bag and walked through the slashing snowfall.
The plane’s motors spit and the propellers whirled to life. The figure approached. He wore a long, black woolen coat without insignia. His hat was ebony felt, broad-brimmed and stiff, new. A brown muffler crossed his face below his nose. The hat’s brim guarded his eyes.
To the rising sound of the engines, the man handed his bag to Nikki, then strode past him to the waiting staff car.
Through the bulk of the stranger’s coat, Nikki gauged him to be rather round, no taller than himself. This is the supersniper from Berlin, he thought. I expected to meet a titan, a rock-jawed veteran with eyes of blue granite. Oh, well, that was my own romance. This seems to be a soft man hurrying past me to get into the car and out of the cold. He must be very, very good.
Nikki started the car and steered off the runway. He did not slide the heater knob out, deciding to let the engine warm up before bringing in the air.
“Where’s the heat?” the man asked through his scarf. “You could have let the car idle while you waited. It could have been warm when I got in.”
“Yes, sir. I apologize.” Nikki looked in the mirror. “Your plane was delayed, sir. I didn’t want to waste fuel.”
Nikki pulled out the knob to let cool air flow into the cab. The two rode in silence along the dirt road leading to Ostarhild’s headquarters. Nikki stole glances in the mirror at the stranger. Only after the cabin had warmed did the man uncoil the scarf and push up the brim of his hat.
He smiled, catching Nikki’s eyes on him in the mirror. “What’s your name, Corporal?”
“Nikolas Mond, sir. From Westphalia.”
“Ah, yes.” The man nodded and looked out the fogged window at the gripping snow. “I’ve hunted there many times. Geese mainly, but wonderful ducks, too.”
The man seemed to want conversation. The blue-gray eyes in the mirror waited for a reply.
“My family has a farm there,” Nikki said. “Every harvest, we throw corn on the open fields. The ducks practically fly into the house and land on the supper table.”
“Yes.” The man laughed. “I love the taste of stupid ducks better than the smart ones.”
He took off his hat and gloves and laid them across his lap. His hair was cut short, light brown like the winter-dead steppe whisking by the car windows. His skin, cream pale, was stretched taut over pads of fat about the neck and ears that softened the angles of his face. Nikki noted the smallness of his ears, nose, and mouth, and how his eyes dominated his face as if they were two blue ponds and the rest simply gathered there to drink. When he blinked, it was slow and deliberate, but his head moved quickly, in staccato bursts. It made Nikki remember barn owls on the farm.
Nikki guided the staff car onto the paved road. A swastika fluttered on the front left fender to mark the passenger as important. Nikki drove slowly, guiding the car through droves of soldiers on foot. The men appeared to be ambling aimlessly, huddled against the snow. Some were wrapped in blankets. Many had stuffed newspaper under their helmets and inside their coats, evoking the image of scarecrows.
A horse-drawn cart stopped in front of Nikki. He brought the staff car to a halt. The soldiers on either side would not give way. Nikki did not want to blow the horn at the shuffling men, but he had to get through.
“It’s all right, Corporal,” the man in the backseat said. “Wait a moment.”
Nikki looked at the load in the rear of the cart. Piled high against the rails were bodies, stiffened, clutching at nothing. Their heads were bent at violent angles. Bare feet protruded from the tangled mass of gray-green uniforms; boots and socks had been reclaimed by the cold hands of the living. A delicate shroud of snow nestled and built in the crevices of their crooked elbows and bent legs, unmelting white filling in eye sockets and open mouths.
An officer spotted the staff car waiting behind the cart. He ordered the men walking along the shoulder to make way. The officer waved Nikki around the cart. Nikki saluted the officer and turned onto the shoulder. The officer did not take notice.
In the mirror, the man’s great eyes were closed, his eyelids like drawn curtains. He said, “You know who I am?”
“Yes, sir,” Nikki replied. “You’re SS Colonel Heinz Thorvald from Berlin.”
The colonel opened his eyes. “From Gnössen, actually. I’ve been there for the past year teaching. Berlin is close, though. I go in for the theater every so often. Do you like the opera, Corporal? They have it in Westphalia, I know. I’ve been there.”
“No, sir. There’s never time on the farm.”
The eyes closed again. “No, I don’t suppose there is. The British bombed the State Opera House in Berlin. The Führer had it rebuilt. They’re opening it at the end of this month. Wagner’s Die Meistersinger. I want to be home for that.”
Nikki concentrated on the road. Now that it had cleared, he stepped on the gas, speeding his passenger, the most dangerous longdistance killer in the entire German army, the supersniper Heinz Thorvald, to Lieutenant Ostarhild’s offices.
* * * *
OSTARHILD WALKED INTO THE SNOW TO GREET THORVALD. He came to attention and saluted. Nikki opened the rear door of the car. The colonel returned the salute and followed the young officer into the office. Nikki came with the colonel’s bag.
Ostarhild poured the colonel a cup of coffee and offered a seat beside a coal brazier. Nikki hadn’t seen the stove or the coal before. The lieutenant had scrounged them up for Thorvald’s visit.
The two officers exchanged pleasantries about Berlin and Stuttgart, Ostarhild’s home. The pheasant hunting around Stuttgart, it seemed, was wonderful.
The
lieutenant warmed Thorvald’s coffee. He used the break in the conversation to shift to the colonel’s assignment.
Ostarhild took from the top of his desk a collection of articles with translations attached by paper clips. The articles were from In Our Country’s Defense. That morning, Ostarhild had let Nikki read them. The lieutenant handed them now to the Berlin master sniper.
“Colonel, these were written by a Red Army commissar. They directly concern your target, Chief Master Sergeant Vasily Zaitsev. It seems a simple hunter from Siberia has become quite a hero for the Russians.”
Thorvald looked into his coffee.
“And quite a problem for you, yes?”
Ostarhild folded his hands. “More so than even these clippings tell. Zaitsev, nicknamed ‘the Hare,’ has become the head of a sort of impromptu Russian sniper school. In the past two weeks, more and more names have appeared in these articles, all students of his. You’ll see them marked in the translations. Medvedev. Chekov. Shaikin. Chernova. The commissar believes some of the pupils rival their teacher in audacity, but none has surpassed him in skill. The Hare has taught three dozen snipers to work directly along the front lines. With their average range of three hundred to four hundred meters, they’re doing no small amount of damage deep behind our lines. We’re losing men to these snipers, yes, but worse, we’re losing morale at a fearsome rate.”
War of The Rats - A Novel of Stalingrad - [World War II 01] Page 16