by Georg Rauch
I’m living at the Recovery Company. Here one is obliged to be in attendance from 4 a.m. until 6 p.m., but by 4:30 p.m. I’m already out of the house (theoretically to have my dressings changed), and I’m not to be seen again until the following morning at 10.
Tomorrow the arch supports will be finished, and so all this splendor will soon be over. Unfortunately. But one mustn’t be presumptuous. When I imagine that I might have spent this period in a hole at the front, I’m certain it wouldn’t have been so lovely.
They are really giving Vienna a good working over it seems. I hope they don’t knock the whole city down. Maybe it will be over soon. But thinking is forbidden.
My movie begins in half an hour. Ich vertraue Dir meine Frau an, with Heinz Ruehmann. Write me about the bombs. My post number is still the same and, when I get up to the front again, I’ll receive my mail. Pardon the writing, but I’m sitting in the park and writing on my knees. Many good kisses,
Your Georg
When someone tells a Viennese a story that he doesn’t believe, one of his answers might be, “You can tell that to Frau Blaschke,” thereby referring to a dumb old gal from the Naschmarkt who believes everything, or at least pretends she does, for business reasons.
When I mentioned Frau Blaschke in connection with selling pieces of my uniform, I wanted to let my parents know that yes, I definitely was selling my things, but of course I couldn’t write this directly because of possible censoring. After nine months in the cold and filth, in a lost war staged by people who first classified me as a member of an inferior race and then forced me to fight on their side, I had no inhibitions whatsoever about selling my uniform or my rifle to the Romanians.
It was pretty clear to me that these things were being purchased for the partisans. If I had wanted to follow the thought to its logical conclusion, the same rifle I was selling might eventually be used to shoot at me. But after three-quarters of a year on the front lines, I now suddenly found myself for ten days in a peaceful city with elegant inhabitants and full stores where, if you had the money, you could buy whatever your heart desired.
So I sold my uniform jacket to the first one who asked. It was summer, and I knew I could get another. For ten days I had everything: the best food, a girl to take out and to hold on to, whatever I wanted to buy. I went by taxi to concerts, knowing that in a few days I’d be back under fire and that I’d possibly never see a city again.
When they stopped me on the street with their “Haben Sie nichts zum verkaufen?” I gave them first whatever parts of my uniform I could get along without, then my bayonet and my blanket. When I found out how much they were willing to pay for my rifle, I could see the seductive delights of Braila becoming even more affordable and hesitated only for a moment.
The money disappeared quickly from my pockets. No problem. I went to the train station, where hundreds of soldiers were sleeping and waiting for the next train to take them home on leave. Their duffel bags lay next to them on the ground; their rifles leaned against the wall. For a while I sat down and also pretended to sleep; then I got up, automatically taking the rifle next to me as though it were mine, and left. The other guy would probably miss it, but I was sure he wouldn’t be needing it on his furlough.
On my last day of wandering through Braila, I stopped in front of a bookstore display and discovered, attached to the inside of the window, a map that aroused my interest. It was one of those beautiful maps published by Freytag & Berndt, and it showed all the countries of southeastern Europe. The mountains were brown, the plains shades of green, lightening in tone as the altitude dropped. The roads, railway lines, rivers, all were drawn in. I was able to pick out the cities I had neared during the retreat and the place where my battalion was probably still holed up.
With my finger I traced a route south from Romania, through Bulgaria, to Greece, all countries occupied by the Germans. Along the very bottom edge snaked the Bosphorus, the channel dividing neutral Turkey from the European continent.
If I could only make it to there, I thought, instinctively looking over my shoulder to see if anyone was observing my traitorish thoughts. Actually, there were masses of people in the streets, but of course no one was paying any attention to me.
I sought the map’s scale and gauged the distance from Braila to Greece at nine hundred kilometers. My fantasy was obviously impossible. I would have to cover most of the route by night, steal my food from the fields, and, above all, not get caught. If captured, I would be shot immediately as a deserter. Definitely too risky, I decided, but during a brief pause, when there were no other clients, I entered the store and bought the map.
It felt bulky in my pocket. Just owning a map of this sort seemed to point me out as a traitor. After all, why should a simple soldier, interested only in a German victory over Europe and the rest of the world, have need of such a map? Later I hid it in the bottom of the cloth shoulder bag where I always carried my personal possessions.
THE IRON CROSS
The East, July 31, 1944
Dear Mutti,
I’ve been back with my old division for a few hours now, after three very beautiful weeks. The return trip was wonderful. First I traveled by ship down the Danube, which was really blue, then 150 kilometers on the roof of a railway car until Kishinev, and from there by truck. I have the arch supports now, and the shingles are also healing slowly. Yesterday they removed my festering left thumbnail with anesthetic. Now I have four days’ garrison duty. During this past period my knowledge of Romanian increased considerably.
I’m certain the political events are absorbing you the same as us. For us it is, after all, a question of survival, because our little corner here is quite unpleasant. You needn’t worry about me, though. I’ll find the right way. Enough for now. In three days I’m heading up front again. Will write more then. Many loving kisses, also for Papi,
Your Georg
August 2, 1944
Dear Mutti,
I just heard something on the radio about “decisive measures for recruiting pensioners and laborers.” According to that, things should start getting really crazy in the future. Will this affect Papi also?
We are following the course of the war on the radio with great interest, map at hand. Obviously a lot is happening, but here reigns only a ghostly quiet, with not a shot all day long. Deep trenches give us good protection, and we don’t leave them or the bunkers all day long because of possible Russian firing. No one wants to get his at the final hour! A lot of guys are coming down with malaria and spotted fever. I seem to be a type, with my dark skin and hair, who is resistant to that.
Compared to the other German cities, the bombing of Vienna doesn’t seem to be so bad. That reassured me, for one does get a funny feeling when the report of a bombardment comes over the radio.
I have a very nice friend, Konrad, with whom I spend most of my time. He is from Cologne, twenty-five years old, and had begun to study engineering before the war. We play chess, follow the news, and talk about everything imaginable that I haven’t discussed with anyone since last fall. Please excuse the hieroglyphics, but the light is almost nonexistent here in the bunker. Otherwise I’m fine. Many good kisses,
Your Boy
The contents of the following letter, written a few days later, were not of any great import, but they were to be the last words my parents would receive from me for a long time.
Romania, August 6, 1944
Dear Mutti,
I’ve just received my first mail in four weeks. So good to hear that everything at home is fine. The medicines won’t be necessary anymore. The shingles are okay now, except for a few festering spots. I’m sure there will be a lot of scars, because it festered very heavily. My thumb is also getting better slowly, but I’ve had diarrhea for three weeks. I can’t keep anything down; it just comes right back up undigested. For that reason I’ve become pretty weak. But nothing can be done about it since the rations consist solely of bread, cheese, beans, and fruit. It will be all right
again. Right now I’m fasting; maybe that will help.
There is quite a bit to do here at the battalion. We hardly have time to sleep, plus the heat and the rain. Wednesday I’m going back up front to the company for one or two weeks. There I can recover, for it is quiet all day long. Take good care.
Kisses, Georg
It all happened so fast. I was with Konrad in the company farthest to the north when the attack began. Russian tanks advanced rapidly to our left and right, followed by massive infantry support. Our setting couldn’t have been worse: a chain of hills backed by a river. In no time at all we were cut off from the main body of the German troops, from our own regiment.
We were thrown together with some of the frontline soldiers from another unit, but mainly with a host of high-ranking officers, supply and mess units, and medical corpsmen. Konrad was ordered to take a platoon of soldiers from the supply lines and show them how to fight in the trenches.
It was clear that the vise finally had snapped shut—around roughly two thousand men with rifles and a few submachine guns, but almost no heavy weapons. The confusion was awful, but the Russian bombardment was worse.
Then they came to me, the officers with those red stripes up the sides of their pants. They ordered my wireless and me down into a deep, stinking cellar filled with barrels of sour tomatoes, beets, and plenty of rats. Above our heads the mortars were bursting, but the sounds of the battle were muted. The order they gave me was brief: “You are the only telegraphist with a wireless in this whole mess. Make contact immediately with Number 282 and give them our position and situation.”
My answer was equally brief: “I can’t do it, Herr Oberstleutnant. My data for wavelengths and decoding ran out last midnight, and I haven’t received the new information.”
They stood there, looking at each other helplessly. One of them snapped, “Then just do something, Mensch! That’s what you were trained for, after all.”
Easy for them to say. In order to send a wireless message, we had to have decoding documents, which were changed periodically. Included in these were all the call signs for various telegraph stations, a list of wavelengths, and, finally, a decoding system based on a set of alphabet graphs that changed every two hours. Lacking these papers, I could run up and down the available scale of possible wavelengths for an eternity and hear nothing in my earphones but groups of five unintelligible letters and numbers in Morse code, with no hope of deciphering them.
And that wasn’t all. My set had an ampere meter. When it was turned on and the needle pointed to the right of a little red dot, I could tell that the batteries still had enough juice. The needle pointing left of the dot, however, indicated that the batteries were empty. Right now the needle was pointing just very slightly to the right.
This had been the day I was scheduled to go to the battalion for the new papers and batteries. That idiot of an officer should try working a miracle himself, if he’s so smart, I thought.
The officers were upset and making no secret of the fact. In spite of all the medals around their necks, they were quaking in their custom-made boots. High officers usually didn’t find themselves in such a situation. They weren’t used to being confronted with the ideas of capture and death.
And there I sat, feeling pretty sick myself. The shelling would surely continue until all were killed, or, if we were lucky, we might be captured, though no one had any idea of just what that might entail either. As though to justify my existence, I turned the wireless set on from time to time, fiddled with the knobs, and was rewarded with only a meaningless “beep, beep, beep” in my earphones. But then, what else did I expect?
Around noon, while leaning on one elbow and holding part of the earphones to my ear, I turned on the receiver for the fiftieth time. All of a sudden I was jolted to attention. Someone was just beginning a message with the usual abbreviations and call numbers. Nothing out of the ordinary about that. But what had electrified me were the two strange letters on a very special point at the beginning of the message, a K and an H, two letters which should never have been there because they were strictly forbidden.
Groups of letters like these, which had their own name, Funkeigenheiten, consisted usually of the initials of the first and last names of the wireless operators (but in my case were RA). We were accustomed to inserting the initials at a predetermined spot in the message in order to let the man on the receiving end know who was on the wire. The initials saved a great deal of time and effort, letting one know immediately how fast the message could be sent without endless checking back and forth.
These Funkeigenheiten were forbidden because, if certain initials repeatedly disappeared and popped up again at different locations on the front, they could possibly aid the Russian interceptors in following the movements of German troops. In spite of those prohibitions, however, the trick was used constantly in the chaos of retreat.
Only one KH existed in my neck of the woods, and that was my old friend from Upper Austria, Karl Hofer, with whom I had completed my basic training in Vienna. Almost automatically I went into action. Without orders, without special permission, and contrary to all the existing rules, I broke in on the same wavelength: “RA to KH, RA to KH. Come in, KH.”
Hofer interrupted his message, and after a brief pause I heard the priceless signal. “KH to RA, KH to RA, come in, RA.” He had heard me, had changed to receiving, and was actually waiting for my message! But I had no coded message, and it was obviously forbidden to send in clear text because of the very active Russian interception.
The dialects of the Austrian provinces are very different from High German. Wir sind, for example, would translate in dialect to Mir san. Assuming it was most unlikely that a listening Russian would be able to understand Upper Austrian, I began sending the details of our predicament in heaviest dialect, with the fewest number of words possible. Hofer’s reply was immediate. “Answer in two hours, same wavelength.”
The officers had noticed the sudden activity and moved closer. Others came down from upstairs and wanted an explanation. I said only that a message would possibly be coming through in two hours. I think they wanted to keep me in a good mood, because I wasn’t pushed for further explanations or given any orders.
Two nervous hours crept by. Finally, exactly to the second, the message arrived, “KH to RA, nothing new, next contact in two hours.” As I acknowledged this message, the needle on the ampere meter moved to the left of the red dot. The batteries were obviously almost dead. According to my experience, receiving might still be possible under very good conditions, but sending was now out of the question.
I explained this to the officers, and they again gazed back at me helplessly. Obviously something would have to occur to me, since no great idea seemed to be forthcoming from anyone else. I racked my brain while the Russian shells kept raining down. I recalled something I had read while building my first radios as a teenager. Hadn’t there been a theory about warming up empty batteries to create a certain amount of voltage for a brief period? Would it really work? But how warm, and for how long? I hadn’t the foggiest idea, but it was our only hope.
I made a brief search in the house and surroundings for the appropriate materials. Then I lit a few pieces of charcoal, an item that was used for ironing and could be found in almost every house. After improvising a hot plate with a piece of sheet metal and a frying pan, I called for a cup of coffee and couldn’t help feeling a perverse satisfaction as it was served to me, the Jewish corporal, by a German general.
I began to act on instinct. Ten minutes before receiving time the coals had heated to the point where the metal was just hot enough not to burn the bottom of the anode battery. I put it on the sheet and waited. Five minutes before receiving time I turned the set on briefly, but the needle still pointed to the left. Two minutes later it had reached the red dot and, right on time, the Morse numbers began coming through, the first signifying a location on the map, the second standing for 5:00 p.m., all very faint and barely audible. I a
cknowledged the message with the tiny bit of current that I had fabricated so laboriously. Then I relayed the message to my companions in the cellar.
The officers began to recover their normal confident expressions. Now they knew where and when they had to organize the breakthrough. Once more they were in their element. They shouted, gave orders, and shifted all the men and matériel close to the designated area. The breakout would begin at 5:00 p.m., and we could expect strong German support from the other side.
At 4:00 p.m., we heard the racket of an exceedingly heavy German artillery attack coming from a few kilometers north of the agreed-upon point. I went pale. An hour too early and in the wrong place! On account of the weak reception and my overtaxed nerves, I must have mistaken a dot for a dash, or vice versa, and written down two of the numbers incorrectly. Now there wasn’t a prayer for bringing the two thousand men out of the sack.
Everyone was in an uproar and at a loss once again. If all were to perish now, it would be my fault alone. I couldn’t believe I might have made such a mistake. Under difficult circumstances, I was usually able to receive 90 letters a minute and send up to 120, and a few of those present knew that very well. I packed up the radio set, fished a beet from one of the moldy barrels, and trudged up the stairs, gnawing at it. My function was over. The only thing left was to explode the wireless with a hand grenade so it wouldn’t fall into enemy hands.
For a while I sat in a bunker and thought of all the things I would so much have liked to do with the rest of my life. Then, a few minutes before five, I heard the droning. It was the sound of many swiftly approaching airplanes. I saw the officers raising their binoculars and heard the cry “Stukas!” as they recognized the fast-flying German bombers.
At the point where the breakthrough had been stipulated, the planes tipped from the sky and dropped their bombs, one wave after another. Giant fountains of explosion shot up to the sky, and the German artillery did their part in plowing up the narrow corridor. Shortly thereafter we all marched out of the pocket without firing a shot. The artillery bombardment an hour earlier had been purely a distracting maneuver.