Unlikely Warrior

by Georg Rauch

  Suddenly Konrad flew toward me and knocked me to the ground. At the same second the machine-gun fire whooshed around us. If the tank was immobilized, the gun turrets definitely weren’t! We lay on our stomachs and waited. Then we began, very slowly, without disturbing a twig, to creep away. Only when we had finally reached a field of high corn did I stand up and ask over my shoulder, “Konrad, you idiot, was that really necessary?” But Konrad wasn’t there. I called his name a few more times, cautiously, but no one answered. Was he wounded or dead, or had he lost sight of me and taken another direction? There was no way of knowing, and no way to find him now.

  As night fell, I could hear only a faint thundering of distant artillery. One might have taken it for a summer storm. I made myself a den of grass in the middle of the cornfield and gathered together a pile of fruit. The stars and moon bathed everything in a soft light. I drew a few deep breaths and experienced very consciously the awareness of still being alive, if now alone.

  At dawn I began to walk. During the next few hours more and more soldiers came into my vicinity, all headed for the river. Since no one attempted to stop us, an optimistic euphoria regarding the future began to take over. Perhaps we would only have to swim the river and then, hurrah, we’d be on the other side, with new clothes, hot food, and decorations, clasped once again to the military bosom of the thousand-year Reich.

  I paused from time to time to conserve my energy. The last few days had weakened me considerably. The overgrown hills to my left and right became higher, and I walked through a wide valley. It ended where a small but thick stand of trees formed a sort of barricade. Beyond the little forest stretched an enormous completely flat area of white sand. It was a few kilometers long, not very wide, and looked as though it might be a dry lake.

  As I neared the woods, I could see that they were full of Germans. Several hundred already milled about, and more were constantly arriving. I also noticed that the first hundred meters of the sandy plain were scattered with riddled military vehicles and dead horses. One of the earlier arrivals explained the situation.

  “This forest is the end of the line. Every truck, every man who tries to cross the plain is fired upon from the hills by machine guns, mortars, and antitank guns. A few have tried, but no one has succeeded.”

  From the direction I had just come, we could hear once again the distant rumbling of motors. I was looking into the faces of hundreds of desperate men. Hardly anyone considered the possibility of surrendering in the woods to the Russians. The official word had always been that the Russians took no prisoners.

  A group of officers passed down an order that all, of course, were expected to obey. In a few minutes a flare would go up. Three minutes later, when the second flare was fired, everyone would begin to run, all at the same time, across the plain. It was the only hope.

  But without me, I thought. I won’t let myself be slaughtered like an animal. I’d rather stay here alone in the woods. Or maybe something else will turn up.

  I calculated my life within the given factors. I walked past all those nervous soldiers to the edge of the woods, right to where the white sand began. I waited, gauged distances, and figured. The first three hundred meters were filled with shot-up vehicles. They would provide good cover. I could sense that another of those situations that entailed minimum chances for survival was fast approaching, and I wanted at least to be able to steer these few possibilities. I wanted to decide for myself whether I would rot out there as a dead piece of flesh or continue to live at least a little while longer.

  The first flare flew into the sky. I began to count the seconds. In three minutes all of these hundreds of men would start running into the volleys of the Russian machine guns. I counted to sixty. Then I began counting again with one. When I reached sixty, I began to run, all alone and one minute before all the rest. That was my plan.

  I ran as never before in my life, with nothing on my head and only my rifle in my hand. I ran among the riddled wagons and cadavers. They shot at me; I don’t know from where or how many, but the shots ricocheted against the trucks and tore into the ground around me, spraying the sand into my face. I ran in a wild pattern, always keeping to where the wrecks were thickest.

  The hits around me decreased, and I heard mortar fire behind me. The third minute must have elapsed. The great mass of Germans had begun running, and the Russian weapons turned away from me toward them, while I continued to run for my life. I would have to cross the remainder of the flat area swiftly enough to keep the others from gaining on me, keeping my distance from even the fastest runners.

  Now I was on the open plain. There was no more cover, but hardly anyone was shooting at me now. My calculations seemed to be working. Until now I had never run such a distance without pausing. The motivation, however—my life—gave me incredible strength to put this stretch behind me, and when I glanced back over my shoulder to see where the others were, I felt an enormous sense of relief, much like what a gazelle must feel upon escaping a panther.

  Finally I reached the bushes at the far side. Gasping for breath, I sank to my knees, my body slumping over from exhaustion until my head touched the ground. I didn’t count the few who came after me. For certain, some remained behind in the woods. But the majority died. It was one of those situations for which even the best strategists and sandbox theoreticians couldn’t have found the solution. My survival was made possible only by the death of the others.

  I had to go on. I stumbled over grass-covered clearings, pushed myself between bushes, past trees. Mortars were starting up. A shell hit a few meters away, and I was thrown to the ground by the blast. I got up and kept running. Suddenly, directly in front of me, I saw a man leaning against a tree, supporting with both hands a heavy pistol and pointing it straight at me. He fired twice from not four meters away.

  I saw the gun flash, heard the reports. At the same instant I pulled my trigger, reloaded, and fired again. The man crumpled, and I stood, waiting for my senses to fade, expecting also to keel over. I had heard that you often didn’t feel anything at first, at the most something like a punch. I stood and waited. It didn’t seem possible that he could have missed. I began touching myself, checking my head, stomach, legs—but nothing! No pain, no blood.

  The man had no cap, the same as me. He wore only a nondescript, filthy jacket and tattered trousers. As I finally ran on, I knew only that I had shot a man to death, a man who had fired at me because I came running at him with a rifle. Perhaps he had been wounded. I had no idea whether he had been a Russian, a German, or a Romanian partisan. And he would never know who had killed him.

  The sun was high and hot when I arrived at the river. I staggered and slid down the embankment, throwing myself into the muddy brown water. Gratefully, I drank it and rubbed it over me. Then I became aware of all the other Germans, hundreds of them up and down the river. One of them told me that the Russians were already on the opposite bank.

  With that, the last hope ended. Our weapons had lost their value, and we threw them away, wondering what would happen now.

  The afternoon sun had tinted the heavens red when the tanks appeared on the bank behind us and began firing. We threw ourselves back into the water and swam toward the reeds that divided the river in half. Many died before they reached the water; many drowned. The remainder of us made it to the reeds, where we stood in the muck with the water up to our chests. The shots whipped through the thin blades and splashed off the surface of the water.

  Darkness fell. I stood there all night, with nothing to lean against and water up to my shoulders, surrounded by the spindly stalks of the reeds. Again and again I began to fall asleep, waking up with a start when my head hit the water. My skin became sodden, and I pulled my boots from my swollen feet. I began to feel sorry for myself and tears came into my eyes. In my mind I formulated a last letter …

  Dear Mutti, It looks as though it’s over. Everything has fallen apart. The situations kept getting more and more difficult. I needed more and more
luck just to stay alive. My strength is exhausted. My nerves and senses are also losing their clarity. I wandered alone, against my will, through a country I didn’t know, whose language I didn’t speak, whose enemy I didn’t want to be. They shot at me, and I shot at everyone who stood in my way. I fed myself on stolen food. I ran past the wounded who cried out to me without helping them. I ceased being a human, following the things you had taught me. I can’t help myself anymore. And I’m so terribly tired.

  Another day dawned, and they shot at us again. A few hours later something came floating slowly toward me through the reeds. As the dark shape approached, I first thought it was a dead soldier, but then I realized it was a two-meter-long piece of wood, a nice, thick portion of a fallen tree. I needed only to reach out my hand in order to grasp it. Gratefully I hung my exhausted upper body over the log and was able to rest. I must have fallen asleep in this position, for when I awoke the firing had stopped. A voice kept calling out in German from the far bank, “Give yourselves up. Come out. You won’t be shot.”

  Slowly I pushed my tree trunk through the reeds into the open water. Carefully I peeked through the last stems that were shielding me. I could see some Russians with submachine guns standing on the other bank. They were searching the pockets of several soaking-wet Germans who had already crawled out of the river. I hesitated a minute longer and then, pushing the trunk in front of me, I swam to the other side.

  As I pulled myself onto the bank, a clean young Russian soldier was already standing in front of me, his submachine gun pointed at my chest. Holding my hands in the air, I tottered up the slope and forward into a highly uncertain future.

  PART 2

  Endless journey

  IN RUSSIAN HANDS

  As I crawled up onto the bank, I was aware that my situation on this side of the river was going to be very different. I was leaving behind me the German military organization and everything connected with it. From now on I would no longer be expected to execute military orders or devote a large percentage of my time to the care of weapons and equipment. I would no longer have to be always on the alert for the approaching enemy, constantly aware that the slightest slacking off or relaxing of my guard could mean my imminent death.

  That prior existence, however unpleasant, had become at least a known quantity. Now, facing the utterly unknown, it seemed almost natural for me to be coming up out of the water like a newborn, not naked, but dressed in the barest sense.

  The Russian soldier simply stood there with his finger on the trigger of his submachine gun, waiting until I finally came to stand in front of him. My new master. I could imagine that my rights were few, if any. I was guilty of entering the country as a member of the century’s most aggressive army, one whose sole intent was to kill the inhabitants and destroy the government. It obviously wasn’t the moment to mention my Jewish blood or the fact that I had never wanted to be part of the German war machine.

  Wordlessly, the soldier searched my pockets, made me turn around, and jabbed the barrel of his gun into my spine, pushing me in the direction of some other German prisoners. We were all herded to a nearby farm and locked up in an empty barn. Quite a few others were already inside. They lay on the little bit of straw that barely covered the floor, shivering in their wet clothing and worrying about the uncertainty of their future. The experiences of the past several days were written on their faces; they were hungry, dirty, and very tired. I pulled out my mouth organ, the last of my possessions, and played a few songs. The music seemed to have a calming effect, and many fell asleep.

  Around midday, a Russian soldier came in, pointing at me and beckoning me to follow him. He led me to the adjoining farmhouse, where he knocked on a door and then pushed me in ahead of him toward a table where a Russian officer was seated, eating.

  The officer interrupted his meal, indicated that I should sit down, and then, with more gestures, his hands waving back and forth in front of his mouth, he called upon me to play. I obeyed, beginning to feel safe for the first time in days. A man who has someone play dinner music for him isn’t likely to get up afterward and shoot the musician.

  Now and then he hummed a few bars of a song, and if it was one I knew, I played it. At one point he gave his orderly a command, and the latter left the room. He returned shortly with a mess kit full of food and a large piece of bread that he placed, oh wonder, in front of me. Motioning with his spoon and a corresponding movement of his head, the officer told me to eat. It was my first cooked meal in many days, and I ate reverently and slowly, soaking up the final drops with the last little piece of bread.

  I was taken back to the barn, where I sat down next to a young infantryman who was dressed in a ragged bloody jacket and had a wet, bloodstained bandage around his neck. Pointing to his neck, I asked, “Is it very bad?”

  “It’s not so much the pain as the loss of blood that worries me,” he answered weakly. By the way he twisted his whole upper body in my direction I could tell that his neck was very stiff. His white-blond hair was also sticky with dried blood. I could read in his eyes the same fear that we all knew so well by now: the fear that a life that hadn’t even really begun was about to come to an end.

  Fresh blood ran from the wet gauze down his neck and into his jacket. Carefully I began to remove the bandage, exposing a large wound. I could see no splintered bone, however, nor the strong gushing that would have indicated rapid and extreme blood loss. It looked like a flesh wound to one side of the spine, near the shoulder. Some of the other soldiers glanced almost shyly over at us, but no one spoke a word. Bright red blood flowing from an open wound produced a respectful silence.

  But then one of the others called softly, “Hey.” When I looked in his direction he tossed me an unopened package of gauze. It was soaked with river water and thereby assuredly no longer sterile, but by using it and the old bandage, I was able to apply an improvised pressure dressing.

  When I had finished, the young soldier lay down on his side and asked in a heavy Berlin accent, “What did they want with you inside?”

  “They wanted me to play the harmonica for the captain while he was eating,” I answered, purposely failing to mention what I had received as a reward. I noticed that the wound had stopped bleeding.

  The next morning we set out. Russian soldiers, who usually rode on small horses and were never without a submachine gun in their hands, organized our departure. We were completely searched again and again, and everything but family photos and German money was taken away. Most of those who still had boots were also relieved of them. I wore only a lightweight blue jacket and a torn pair of pants.

  Only a few hundred of us marched away at first, a column of weary, barefoot men, five to a row, many with wounds of varying degrees that had not been properly bandaged. Russian soldiers rode at both sides of the column, their weapons ready to fire.

  Slowly we wound our way along a hot and dusty country road that curved through gentle hills. Another column of a few hundred was added to the first some hours later. In the course of the day, this sad procession of defeated warriors continued to grow until it numbered at least two thousand. The guards, constantly riding up and down the lines, would not tolerate the slightest disorder in our ranks. Whoever stepped out of line was immediately thrust back with a blow from the butt end of a rifle.

  The hills in this eastern part of Romania were completely overgrown with corn, grapevines, and trees still laden with fruit. The houses appearing from time to time along the side of the road were surrounded by lush vegetable gardens. When we trudged through the town of Iasi, the people came out to watch. Many spit at us, and some threw stones. I couldn’t blame them.

  Around noon the guards directed us into a cornfield and permitted us to pull off a few half-ripe ears. We drank water, like cattle, from a muddy pond.

  I was limping because my left heel had festered under the thick and hardened skin. The boy with the neck wound was walking next to me. I called him simply Berliner, and he addressed me as Austria
n. It was simpler that way. Why should we introduce ourselves with complete names when we probably would lose sight of each other again within a few hours or days?

  “Why are you limping, Austrian?” he asked.

  “I have an infection under the callus on my heel. Walking on it hurts.”

  The Berliner pulled a straight pin from his jacket collar and offered it to me. “Pierce the skin and let the pus out. You’ll see, it won’t hurt so much when the pressure is released.”

  The hours seemed to drag out longer and longer. From time to time I used the needle to release the pus. Each time I stopped the Berliner stayed with me, and we ended up toward the rear of the column. I could already see the end, consisting mostly of the wounded who couldn’t walk any faster.

  I happened to look back just as one of them collapsed. He cowered in a curve in the road. Next to him a Russian stood holding his horse by the reins. We had already rounded another curve when I heard the brief burst from a submachine gun. Soon the Russian soldier came galloping to catch up with us.

  Prisoners’ march. Three hundred kilometers without shoes or proper food.

  “So, that will be our fate when we can’t go on anymore,” I murmured. “I’m taking off.”

  A minute or two later the Berliner replied, “I’m coming, too.”

  We studied the landscape, the mounted guard, and the road, which was paved now and was winding and slightly ascending. The slopes, covered with corn and fruit trees, offered good possibilities for cover. The Berliner moved ahead of me into the right-hand row of the column. We saw a deep cement-lined hole next to us on the roadside. Perhaps we could jump down and hide in the thick pipe intended for directing the rainwater to the other side of the road. But the guard was right behind us. We passed by a second such cavity and then another, but the Russian remained in the same location, just to our rear. I kept expecting that each drainage hole would be the last. Up ahead I could see the landscape flattening out.