by Georg Rauch
Dear Mutti, it’s so hard to write today—the heat, the full stomach. You know I’m still alive and am doing fine, and with that the purpose of this letter has been accomplished. If you could dig up a few watercolor paints and some glue (Uhu, Sintetikon, but not Pelikanol), I’d be very grateful. I have brushes, etc. Loving greetings to Papi and Vroni.
Your Georg
One day during this very hot, dry period I was sitting listlessly in my bunker on a wobbly stool in front of the wireless. I was bored and surrounded by thousands of flies. There was nothing to read, no one to talk to, and I had already written a letter home.
I pulled a piece of bread out of my sack and spread it with some of the softened artificial honey. A drop of the sugary syrup fell on the top sheet of the tablet of forms for recording incoming messages, and a fly immediately landed next to the drop and began eating. Still bored, I sat and watched as a second fly landed next to the first, and very soon the honey drop was completely surrounded by flies.
With my index finger, I lengthened the drop of honey across half the page. Barely a minute passed before the borders around the finger-thick strip of honey were fully occupied. I counted forty flies, and then I started to wake up and become interested. It was beginning to dawn on me how I might become master of the plague of flies.
I took a fresh page, made ten parallel honey lines with my finger, and then waited. It definitely wasn’t more than ten minutes before 800 flies had taken their places in an orderly fashion around each of the lines, just like guests seated around a long banquet table. Slowly I stood up and carefully reached for a large piece of cardboard. Raising it in the air, I took careful aim and, wham, brought it down on the feast. Far surpassing the little tailor in the old folktale, I had slain 800 at one blow. Not a very pretty sight though, to say the least. After I had repeated this procedure two more times, the fly population had sunk so drastically that I had difficulty in my fourth and final attempt even to lure fifteen flies to the paper. With that the plague of flies in our bunker ceased, until there was a change in our diet and a kind of liverwurst was substituted for the artificial honey.
I tried using sugar water as bait for a while, but the results didn’t begin to compare with those previous. Evidently the Romanian flies had developed a special fondness for the National Socialistic brand of artificial honey.
The East, June 30, 1944
My dear folks,
I’m up front with the company again. I received quite a bit of mail from you during the past few days and was glad to hear that everything turned out all right with Vroni and baby. Tonight the company chief and I went swimming in the river. It is only fifteen meters wide, with Ivan situated on the opposite bank, but the weather is so unbearably hot and humid.
We had two machine guns set up on the bank, plus five men armed with hand grenades. They shot a little bit at first, and then we dived in. It was simply wonderful! Soon afterward a lovely rain, the first in almost two months, began falling. We all breathed a sigh of relief. When it first warmed up last spring, we used to lie in the sun, but now we avoid every sunbeam. One can become quite stupid and the brain dries up completely in this heat.
There are so many cherries and giant mulberries. Runny bowels are the order of the day. I hear the Wehrmacht’s report daily, so I’m always up to date. Thus I know immediately whenever Vienna has been bombed. It takes a long time, though, until you get to hear just what all was destroyed.
Except for that worry, I’m fine. Ivan isn’t stirring at all, just a shot now and then. It doesn’t upset me at all anymore. It is very funny the way the others are constantly bellyaching if they are lying uncomfortably, or if they haven’t had enough sleep, or if the food is bad, or if the Russian artillery sends off a round. That’s because 95 percent of those with me now are newly arrived and have never been in Russia.
As for me, if I’m not feeling so great, I just draw upon a memory of a day from last winter by comparison, and immediately I can see how fantastic everything is right now. Last winter did have one advantage. If I should ever be very badly off sometime in the coming years, I now know exactly how to manage with a hunk of bread for half a week and a newspaper for a blanket. I understand now that I don’t need a house all year long or regular meals, to say nothing of a bed or other such luxuries. All of this has a very comforting effect, because I’m not convinced that the situation is going to be all that rosy in the years following the war.
Am running out of paper and I have to be thrifty with it. I am waiting longingly for the math book pages. Many loving greetings,
Your Georg
July 2, 1944
Dear Mutti,
The days pass by very monotonously. Always the same activities, the same weather, the same too little to eat (beans, peas, lentils, beans, peas, etc.), and hardly ever any cause for laughter.
I’m working now on the art of being happy and taking delight in very small things. The average person lives here completely without joy. And if there is an occasion for happiness, when it’s repeated it has already lost its effect. Thus, everyone rejoices the first time he sits in a tree full of cherries, but the next time such an experience is sullenly taken for granted. Tempers can even flare up if everything isn’t exactly the same.
The radio is another case in point. I remember it seemed a miracle after three or four months to hear music again for the first time. Now we have a radio that plays half the day, but everyone is so indifferent, no longer capable of rejoicing.
Recently I’ve been trying, with increasing success, to submerge myself into even the least important things and thereby to seize great happiness. Thus, with the necessary concentration and love, you can be transported into the heights of rapture simply at the sight of a tiny bug on the lid of your mess kit. Others perhaps might have thrown him away or squashed him, with a bitter twist of the mouth.
With practice, one can so intensify this feeling that afterward the big things such as war, death, hunger seem very tiny and unimportant. So one doesn’t necessarily have to have a whole pair of pants or a full butter jar. The disagreeable things that bring the monotony so crassly into consciousness every day become so unimportant that it is truly a pleasure to observe how one can defend oneself against those chapters of life. I think the haiku poets are the masters in this, but I can see that it is not impossible to learn. I don’t know whether it also couldn’t have something to do even with religion.
Maybe these lines will seem completely unintelligible to you. In that case, I just haven’t managed to catch hold of the right words. If you do understand, however, what I mean by all this, then you have every reason to be happy that your son is on the point of learning a way never again to be bored, bad-humored, or sad while sitting in a hole in the ground. In this spirit,
Your Georg
ROMANIAN RESPITE
On one of my returns from the battalion to the company something happened that I couldn’t write home about. The details were simply too unsavory, too disgusting.
It was raining when my replacement arrived. I shouldered the wireless, picked up my rifle, and started on my way back. As usual I didn’t walk inside the narrow zigzag trenches but rather up top, through the hip-high grass. I didn’t enjoy having to maneuver my wireless through those cramped subterranean passageways, and I hoped that the Russians on the other side of the river wouldn’t notice me, what with the rain and the falling dusk.
At first all went well, and I was making good time. When I had put approximately three of the six kilometers’ distance behind me, a few scattered shots flew in my direction, but not so close that I considered seeking cover. Shortly thereafter, though, a machine gun set its sights on me, and I sprang as fast as I could into an artillery crater.
Because of the heavy wireless on my back, I fell facedown into a horrible stinking mass—a rotting horse cadaver.
At first I couldn’t find a hold in the soft mush threaded with bones. The heavy box on my back pushed me down yet deeper, and, seized by an a
lmost hysterical panic, I began flailing and thrashing around like a madman until I managed to right myself.
I worked my way out of the hellhole as best I could, and when finally I made it up over the edge, dragging the wireless behind me, I threw up. But I had to go back down once more to fish out the rifle that I had let fall.
Normal people, in the course of a typical ordered life, never find themselves in the position of having to inhale such a pestilential stench in such overwhelming concentration. I tore off my clothing and rolled around naked in the wet grass, always staying low enough not to attract the attention of that Russian machine gun. I tried to wash my face and hands in a rain puddle and also to rinse off my pants as much as possible.
Long after dark, without shirt or jacket and still stinking something fierce, I finally reached the battalion, where I was given fresh clothing. I spent the next morning cleaning my putrid wireless and rifle, during which process I again vomited. My comrades responded to my plight with malicious and gloating jokes. As long as it hadn’t happened to them, it provided them with a great distraction and a much-needed change of scene.
July 8, 1944
Dear Mutti,
The weather is wonderful again today. After the continuous rain of the last few days, the sun is shining beautifully and the temperature is blessedly cooler. The water is standing in the trenches, though, and we still can’t think of dry feet for a few days.
It is a few minutes past 6 a.m. The others have just gone to bed and are snoring their best. I can’t do that today, because I’ve been plagued for three days with shingles. These are endless little blisters about ten centimeters wide, beginning at the spine and continuing around the left side at breast height until exactly the middle in front. It is quite painful. I can’t lie down, and I also have a fever. What’s more, it hurts to breathe, and I don’t feel at all well.
The medic here at the company has never seen anything like it and was doubtful whether he should heal it with powder, salves, and bandages or with pills from the inside out. I’ve decided, therefore, to forgo his cures and walk the two kilometers back to the battalion tonight, so that the doctor there can take a look at me. I don’t mind, because the path runs along the top of the west bank of the Dniester. To walk with this bright moon through unharvested cornfields, with a view of the silver band of the river, the village houses glowing white in the moonlight, plus the rocket and parachute flares in different colors and shades, is all very pretty.
Your packages are wonderful. Yesterday I cooked a pudding with vanilla sugar, and that wonderful marmalade was a festival for me. The food is really miserable, and everyone’s getting sick from it. The menu for the past few days looked more or less like this:
Sunday: fried potatoes, beans, meat (warm, canned), cheese, butter, and bread
Monday: bean casserole, canned meat, artificial honey, and bread
Tuesday: pea casserole, cheese, margarine, and bread
Wednesday: bean casserole, canned liverwurst, jam, and bread
Thursday: bean stew, cheese, butter, bread, and stewed cherries
Friday: dried vegetable stew, canned meat, margarine, and bread
Saturday: for sure beans or peas again!
Otherwise I’m fine. The flies and mosquitoes are annoying, but you get used to them. It doesn’t matter anymore if five or ten flies are constantly running around on your face. Man is a creature of habit. Hopefully also in relation to the beans. Many kisses,
Your Georg
July 9, 1944
Dear Mutti,
Right now I’m lying at the main dressing station, thirty kilometers behind the front, with a high-grade case of shingles. I’m in a lot of pain and can’t lie down, but standing or walking doesn’t suit me either, so I don’t know what to do. Added to that are the unbearable heat, fever, and the endless flies. I long for my cool bunker at the front and no pain. I’ll have to stay here for a few days though.
They try to do everything to make life a little easier for us. We receive excellent light meals, sweet tea, pudding, wine, etc. There are no beds, and one cannot really undress since the sick and wounded lie on blankets on the straw-covered floor. I’m bathed in perspiration. My lungs and heart have been affected somehow also. Breathing is very difficult, and it hurts. My heart is beating very irregularly. But it’s not enough to get me into the hospital because, in comparison to the head and belly wounds there, I’m in pretty good shape.
Today I saw four German women for the first time since I left home last November. It was a strange feeling, sitting in the recreation room with a fever while up on the stage, four women, accompanied by a piano, were singing songs from Italian opera, Mozart, etc. All the appropriate costumes and commentary were included. Such a change from the coarse women I have been seeing for the past half year.
They are running a movie the day after tomorrow. That’s really great. We receive a portion of our pay in lei, Romanian money, so I can also buy cherries, peaches, milk, and wine here at fairly cheap prices.
Mui, it’s such an effort. When I feel better I’ll write again. For the time being, my address remains the same. Many kisses,
Your Georg
I spent seven sweltering days at the main dressing station. While I was there, a request that I had filled out months earlier for orthopedic arch supports was approved. When my general condition had improved slightly, I was sent by Red Cross truck to Kishinev, the largest city in the area, to get the arch supports made and to receive additional treatment for my shingles.
Three-quarters of Kishinev was in ruins, but the streetcars were still running. Not a shot could be heard, and I began to feel as though I were on vacation. Kishinev boasted movie houses everywhere, as well as swimming pools, restaurants, and markets. I could see, for the first time, how good the soldiers had it who were stationed just a few extra kilometers away from the front.
I spent the mornings running around to various doctors, but my afternoons and evenings were free. The city street scenes struck me as very strange, sometimes even humorous. The remnants of the population were going about their business through the ruins, some clothed quite properly for the city, others in rags and tatters. Anything could be purchased in the markets or bazaars for lei—rusty watch springs, fruits, trouser buttons, wagon wheels, fabrics, even a sick horse with three legs. The sellers simply spread everything out on a rug in the middle of the street.
Bargaining was loud and fierce. I saw two women giving each other bloody noses, while nearby someone fiddled Oriental tunes on a violin and two drunks clutched each other in a dusty dance. The local costumes and fiery temperament of the people combined to make the setting very colorful.
The dour-faced Germans, exhausted from fighting, provided quite a contrast. Some, like me, admired every little thing as though they were coming from another world, as though they had just escaped from hell. Others looked indifferent or disgusted—repelled, evidently. Finally there were the sick and wounded, who merely observed the entire passing scene as the first station on the lovely trip home.
After a few days it was decided that although the arch supports could be made in Kishinev, there was no place to attend to my shingles, so I was ordered to take a 150-kilometer train ride to Galatz, the next big city, still farther to the rear. My vacation was becoming even longer than expected, and that was certainly fine with me. I enjoyed the train ride and the beautiful summer weather, while I tried to ignore the pain I still had and the pus-saturated bandages around my chest.
In Galatz I discovered a hospital bed but no orthopedic station for the arch supports, so my journey rearward continued for twenty additional kilometers, until I finally reached the beautiful city of Braila on the delta of the Danube.
July 24, 1944
Dear Mutti,
I’ve been here in Braila now for three days, and I am forgetting the war. Nobody reminds you here. It is a very pretty little city, directly on the Danube, with a large and beautiful harbor, streetcars, parks, movies, variety
shows, etc. Everything, everything can be found here.
The most beautiful cars are steered by a variety of males (young and civilian), the type that are dying out at home. Add to those the pretty, well-dressed women and a sense of gaiety that we don’t know at all anymore.
In the stores you can get whatever you want: cars, refrigerators, clothing, everything, everything, everything, but only for lei. I managed to exchange a few, so I’m living like a god.
I’m systematically enjoying all the things I’ve always revered. After eight and a half months, what a delight to partake once again of ice cream, Cremeschnitten, movies. I bought a piccolo harmonica for 360 lei (my old one was already battered), a neck scarf, pocketknife, and flashlight.
The men and women are completely different from those at home. Everybody deals in everything, even if his profession doesn’t have anything to do with commerce. If you are talking with someone, he will ask you, seemingly offhand, “Do you have anything to sell?” In this way many used items, for high prices or low, end up in the hands of the Romanians. The soldiers like to sell their blankets, shirts, whatever they have, but this is severely punished. Because of Frau Blaschke, I’ve never done this. [Author’s note: See explanation here.]
I also bought a phrase book, and I cause a lot of amusement everywhere with my few scraps of Romanian. Eighty percent of the soldiers don’t understand a word. Right away, on my first day here, I managed to find a cute little girlfriend who has a good deal of sympathy for my limited finances. So I’m able to have a good time while acquiring my fruit and ice cream inexpensively.