by Roy Jacobsen
14
Markus did his own personal countdown in the early hours of December 12. He left the sleeping Yadviga and returned to H.Q. at a little after three o’clock in the morning, slept soundly for about an hour and got up feeling refreshed. But while the rest of the staff were sitting with all their lines open, trembling with restrained tension and fear of the battlefield ticking in their ears, Markus’ thoughts were still focused on the cauldron, on his own little mission which would have to be carried out in the very near future if they were to have any hope of bringing Paulus under the only command which could order him to break out – Manstein’s.
Kuntnagel sat at his side reflecting aloud on why in heaven’s name it was that all attacks had to start when the Lord sent His first rays of light over the earth, when the enemy was expecting them, even though they didn’t know which morning; however, this couldn’t be said of Manstein’s modus operandi, he knew from France that evenings also have their advantages, those hours when the enemy expects you to take a break, to lick your wounds, which so elegantly expresses how mutilated comrades are dragged out of pools of blood to be counted and to determine whether it is possible to add one more horrific day to the war. “Evenings are like rivers,” the General used to intone in fine company, with reference to how a unit in retreat will without fail speed up when it approaches a river in the hope of crossing it unscathed, burning the bridges and forming a new front as quickly as possible; and all the pursuer can do is the same, whether it is midday or evening when he arrives at the river, unless he wants new positions to contend with the following morning; it is the unorthodoxy of evening attacks that occasionally allows them to bear fruit, for war needs light and soldiers need sleep, both sides are agreed on this, and some things have to be more common than others for them to have the advantage of surprise …“Sleep, you said, they haven’t had a wink of sleep all night – Markus, are you listening?” Kuntnagel said.
Markus looked him in the eye.
“Yes. No.”
He was and he wasn’t.
“Not that I’ve heard any voices though,” Kuntnagel continued. “There must be a ban on radio contact, but don’t you reckon the Russians will think all this silence is suspicious?”
Some minutes after half past four in the morning Richthofen and Fiebig dispatched everything they had that could fly, from Tatsinskaya, Morosovsk and Salsk. Shortly before five Hoth gave his artillery the signal and a purple cardinal’s sash began to vibrate on the icy blue horizon east of Novocherkassk – in Markus’ black field of vision. Only a few minutes later a terrified Kuntnagel picked up a message that “the advance over the bridge north of Kotelnikovo was going more slowly than anticipated”, but at 0520 hours a clear announcement came from Hoth himself to say that all 230 tanks were across, and were storming northwards in a massive frontal attack as the plan prescribed; Raus’ 6th Panzer Division was in the middle, the 23rd Panzer Division was on his right flank, Battle Groups Zollenkopf and Unrein on the left, and Markus understood from the din in his earphones – and the staff’s reactions – that the attack must have caught the Russians completely off guard, and advances were being made that not even he in his wildest dreams had envisaged: resistance and furious fighting around trenches and anti-tank positions, “total wipe-out”, and further progress with every obstacle in their path pulverised. Fiebig even reported – full of enthusiasm from a surveillance plane in the airspace over the battle area – that the “Russians are fleeing, just like in the old days!” And so it went on for the rest of the morning until the more sober members of Manstein’s staff felt they had to compose themselves and dampen their euphoric mood: “Where are they?” they murmured. “Have they made a tactical retreat in order to build a new front along the ravines or gullies, or beyond the next river, the Aksay …?”
Markus was told about a new plan that Manstein was working on, which, in line with the army’s invocatory christening rituals, had been given the name “Donnerschlag” – Thunderclap; at some yet to be defined moment it would replace Winter Storm and include an order to Paulus to break out!
In other words, the gloomy H.Q. atmosphere was beginning to lighten. Markus didn’t receive any signals from his son, for which he was grateful, but he couldn’t help thinking that it was Peter who was behind the exhilarating messages which now began to tick in from the cauldron, as it became clear that Hoth’s tanks really were on the move, a confidence without bounds, childish and expectant: “Manstein’s on the way!”, “We’ll be able to celebrate Christmas!”, “We’re going home!” and so on.
Markus made a courageous attempt to regard these outbursts of enthusiasm as a sign that their brains were still working properly. “Manstein’s on the way!” must have been carefully chosen words, calculated to scare the wits out of the enemy if they were listening, as they probably were, or perhaps they were spurring on the Feldmarschall to surpass himself; what low-ranking soldier wouldn’t take recourse to this kind of ploy? – with some justification, with the same justification one has for exaggerating casualties, to stay alive; it is the same with communications as it is everywhere else, the most objective message is the most heartless and unproductive, people say that truth is the first casualty of war, and that is fine because what on earth are we going to do with number eighteen? I repeat, eighteen, what do you associate with the number eighteen, Robert? Not a thing, I presume, at most a bag of apples, a feckless stage in our lives when we make mistakes we would prefer not to repeat, whereas for me the number conjures up eighteen dead soldiers, in the same way as I see sixty-nine soldiers when I encounter this number, according to the same linguistic principle which stipulates that the name “Hoth” does not connote to me “an ice-cold Generaloberst pulling off what seemed to be the Second World War’s most hopeless relief operation” but rather a living symbol of approximately 100,000 men charging across the frozen Steppes north of Kotelnikovo; and a normal person doesn’t think like that, there is peace now and there has been for ages, there is oblivion and sun-filled activity everywhere, but I am still in the war, so where others are completely blind to the mathematical figure of 2,991, to me it represents vivid memories of the faces of the 2,991 wounded soldiers we had to leave behind in the field hospital at Feodosia, whom not even the Russians could be bothered to kill off with hand grenades, as they usually did, instead they preferred to drag them into the Black Sea so they would freeze to death, slowly but surely …and I could just as easily have mentioned some of the atrocities we committed, not so much the Wehrmacht but the S.S. and the S.A., I might add, so for a brief moment we can drop this ridiculous nationalism, which has nothing to do with numbers, for the simple reason that wars are not waged by nations but by people, stupid, self-important idiots who think they are defending themselves when they attack and are blind to the brutal fact that war scorns everything it purports to defend and tramples over everything it conquers, thereby making us all equal before God, mark my words.
“You’re getting carried away, Markus,” Robert said.
“Yes, and you would have done the same in my place.”
“I’ve already admitted that. Everyone would have done the same in your shoes, but we weren’t in your shoes. That makes us better people than you, freer people, it is peace that has made us, not war. But tell me something. Why did you never write to Nella in all those months? Not a single letter. Didn’t you get any from her, either?”
“What do you mean?”
“You’re flummoxed whenever I ask that question. And how many times have we been through this? You can never give me an answer even though the question is so simple.”
“In order to keep going you have to believe that those at home are safe and sound, Robert. At any rate, that was what ate away at my friend Beber, that his sons were fighting at a different front. No-one can be on two fronts at the same time. We can choose to send letters or not, we can choose to build bridges or not, see or not see, speak or be silent, both alternatives have their uses but they will always
be irreconcilable. That’s why I didn’t write to Nella and she didn’t write to me. We don’t like to lie to each other and we don’t like to hear the truth either. Is that not an answer?”
“Well, I really don’t know.”
15
By lunchtime on the 13th, Raus’ spearhead had not only advanced forty kilometres through enemy terrain but also crossed the River Aksay near the village of Salivsky and from there pushed further north to Verkhne Kumsky, a depressing, half-buried clump of houses midway between the two rivers: “Kampfgruppe Hünersdorff – 11th Regiment – has advanced more than twenty-five kilometres in the last seven hours and established a ten-kilometre-deep bridgehead north of the Aksay. The Kampfgruppe has left the 23rd Division on the right-hand flank far behind. It also appears to have enemy-free territory ahead – towards Stalingrad.”
Markus could scarcely believe his eyes. Nor, evidently, could the operation’s supreme commander, Hoth; at any rate he sent off a nervous question straight afterwards: “What’s happened to the mysterious Russian Third Army? Aerial reconnaissance?” But before Eismann could compose a sensible reply a report came in to say that the bridge had collapsed under the lead panzer at Salivsky, blocking the crossing for the rest – “a new bridge has to be built”.
Kuntnagel looked askance at Markus, who read the message again and again and finally mumbled:
“That must mean this Hünersdorff has gone on alone? And that he’s isolated at Verkhne Kumsky ten kilometres into enemy territory?”
Kuntnagel laughed nervously, stood up and sat down again.
“There aren’t any enemy troops in the area, are there …?”
“There are troops,” Markus said, and told him to be quiet so that he could catch the next message, which informed them that Salivsky “was under heavy fire from anti-tank guns and artillery”. A minute later Chief of Operations Fiebig also reported “extensive enemy troop movements” further north, moving south towards Verkhne Kumsky. Eismann grabbed the piece of paper and said with an inappropriate whistle that this was in fact the “mysterious Third Army” that Hoth had asked about, the first sign that Stalin had woken up, to give the devil his due, for behind the Third, the Second Guards Army was regrouping, they now heard, by the nearest river, the Myshkova, the last geographical obstacle on Hünersdorff’s route to Stalingrad.
But everything was going more slowly now, for both defence and attack, Markus could see from the small flagged pins Jakob was pressing with surgical precision into the speck-like dots on the operation maps. Then a full-blown snowstorm set in, which held up Richthofen’s Stukas and the 17th Panzer Division, which was meant to be coming to Hoth’s aid from the Upper Don – it wasn’t even over the river yet! In addition, reports were coming in throughout the day that Hollidt’s Chir Front was in danger of collapsing again, the front which was supposed to cover Nizhne Chirskaya where the 17th Panzer Division was to cross the Don and where also wild fantasies abounded that Paulus’ liberated army would be able to make their way “home”. And if that wasn’t enough, the Italian Command on the Upper Don added its own contribution to the chorus of laments: “Enemy troop build-up in the sector north of the Don…”
“A terrible day,” Markus said, summing up December 13, despite the early advances and Hünersdorff’s hazardous push to Verkhne Kumsky, which was enough to make anyone believe in miracles. Markus was also inclined to call it “one of the worst in all my long life”. He sent a telegram to his son, and it was no longer a clean break with Calvin that was “imperative” but some tiny sign of life, and while he continued to eavesdrop on Hünersdorff with the increasingly frenetic Kuntnagel, all through the 13th he also had to attend to the 17th Panzer Division, then in the early hours of the 14th there were a few moments of manic silence which Markus grabbed with both hands: he sneaked out and, full of shame, listened to the distant thunder and the idiotic pounding of his own heart.
But, true to form, there was Jaromil, standing at the ready like a tin soldier. He passed Markus a bottle of vodka without a word being spoken and at the same time thrust a Russian Orthodox cross into his hand, a piece of jewellery, Markus saw – made of gold? The Cossack pulled an inscrutable leer, and Markus punched him with all his strength, with the fist holding the crucifix, whereby the man let out a stunned groan, fell backwards and lay writhing in the snow.
Markus took a swig from the bottle until his vision was blurred by tears and noticed Yadviga and the pony. They had camped down in the shelter of a windbreak which Jaromil must have built for her using wooden boards and some old tarpaulins. The Cossack got up as if nothing had happened, pulled another foolish grimace, half turned to Yadviga, before giving a sly smile and triggering another outburst of anger in Markus, who realised that the cross had to be in return for the rosary he had given the old woman a few days ago (which he now claims he never did) – he would find comfort in this crucifix, the Cossack said, a gesture which seemed to imply the man wanted something back, so he dug out a packet of cigarettes, offered him one and they got stuck into the vodka while Markus excitedly held forth:
“Blessed are those who are at the front, Jaromil, who don’t have to rot away here sitting on their fat arses – can you hear anything? Have you heard anything today apart from the sound of planes and artillery? It must be the weather…” And Jaromil nodded pensively and shuffled his foot, which he continued to do as Markus told him that in his younger years he had, so to speak, read his way out of the midden on his father’s farm at home in the Ardennes because a teacher had led him to believe that he was a genius and could achieve whatever he wanted in life. “And all I have ever done is invent a kind of glue, Jaromil, a vulcanised solution that can bond two rubber surfaces, which I took a patent out on and which is in huge demand on the battlefield, to patch up the Wehrmacht’s shredded tyres. I made a packet, Jaromil, and the glue is probably also the reason they let me keep this stupid rank of Leutnant from the Belgian Royal Engineers, because I’m not a Leutnant, Jaromil, I’m a common soldier like you, a nonentity, and believe me, you can’t take your rank with you into peacetime or heaven, it’s a millstone around your neck, a bad joke and a shady past that will cling to your stupid name for the whole of the short period anyone can be bothered to concern themselves with who you are, because you are living at a time when all the options are wrong, my friend, I could have touched the stars with my fingertips if I wanted and then I decided to be everything, I almost became a priest and I invented a magnifying glass which could be hung around the necks of old people so that they could read the Bible even when their eyes were failing and some special clips to keep your trouser legs up when you are cycling, plus I’ve also invented a shoe polish which waterproofs leather, but because of the high rubber content it doesn’t shine and so can only be used by foot soldiers, I’ve got a patent on that too, a certificate, only a certificate, so I am a nothing just like you – how can you be such a proud people, Jaromil, when you are not even a people but Russians and Poles and Crimean Tartars all mixed up, you have neither your own names, land, language nor religion, you borrow the lot from others, like gypsies, no, at least they have their own language, but what has this got to do with me, I’m a Belgian, not even that, so I know what I am talking about, I’ve got two mother-tongues, Jaromil, but only one mother, and on top of that I have Latin and Flemish and the broken Russian I’m tormenting you with right now, which I learned in the trenches, from Cossacks by the way, so I know how you all think, it’s your horses, Jaromil, which turn you into the brothers and sisters of the wind and constantly take you away from wherever you are, you have to settle down somewhere, don’t you agree, you should cling to the roots of the earth like beetles and maggots and farm your own land, only then can you become a people, a nation, something to go to war for…”
“We do farm our own land,” Jaromil protests languidly. “I’ve got fruit trees. I gave you some apples…”
“Yes, yes, you did give me some apples. You were probably afraid you wouldn’t be paid for
them. Is that all you think about? Why didn’t you give Yadviga apples?”
“She’s got no teeth.”
“You don’t say – stew the apples for her then, you numbskull, use your imagination, and why didn’t you put up a tent for her instead of those stupid boards, they only keep the wind off while the frost is just as hard on both sides, there is something fleeting and temporary about everything you do, Jaromil. If only you had been a pilgrim with a spiritual aim to guide you.”
16
“Hebel! Leutnant Hebel, can you hear me?”
“Yes, yes, of course I can hear you. What is it?”
Markus had already sat up. And once again he was staring into Fatty Beber’s grimy mug, which didn’t appear to have seen soap or water since the first day of Operation Barbarossa, but this time it wasn’t about mysterious and ambiguous letters from home.
“The General would like to talk to you – at once!”
Markus got up in panic and asked:
“What’s the time? How long have I been asleep?”
“We’re approaching 1943, I hope,” Beber mumbled, then disappeared with that peculiar side-to-side transportation of flesh that is typical of fat men’s running while Markus put on his uniform, noticed that a few rays of sunlight were peeping in through the gap in the curtains and ran over to Command H.Q. There, he was informed that Manstein was in the officers’ mess, so he rushed over and saw the General standing outside, talking to the head of the guard, the Cossack who had refused to speak Russian to Markus in the first days of the Don campaign and had insisted on German, of which neither he nor anyone else understood a word, the same gobbledygook that he was now entertaining Manstein with.