by Roy Jacobsen
Thereafter Paulus, his A.D.C. and Chief Quartermaster, backed Schmidt’s, in principle, correct line and turned a deaf ear to Eismann’s continued warnings. As this news was imparted, Markus caught a despairing, half-stifled sigh from Manstein:
“Can we expect Paulus to succeed in such a difficult and dangerous operation when he himself has no faith in it?”
Under normal circumstances the Feldmarschall would be able to remove such a defeatist general, but these circumstances were not normal, a new man would need time to settle in, furthermore Hitler would object, and Paulus shared the Führer’s thinking, obeyed his orders and was living as the acclaimed hero amid the valiant spirit of Fortress Stalingrad, and was clearly also prepared to die there.
In other words, Eismann’s mission had been a failure. This was now affirmed by Manstein himself, and Markus once again lost his bearings, that is, he saw that it was all over, but still spent a few confused minutes wondering why the Feldmarschall did not immediately call off Thunderclap and recall Hünersdorff; instead he sat there looking at his manicured hands, in his characteristic wait-and-see posture which Markus knew so well from Kerch and the Crimea and which actually meant that nothing was over yet, it was on the cusp, it could go either way, and only when Kuntnagel had taken Markus to one side and insisted with a patronising grimace that the Command could still continue trying to open a corridor, as ordered, did Markus regain some of his composure; the corridor would force a breakout, whether Paulus wanted it or not, the corridor would open all the floodgates of history and empty Stalingrad of its wretched souls, send them helter-skelter across the Steppes into the hot baths, back to their cosy hearths.
Markus saw to his tremulous delight that Manstein now rose to his feet and ordered some new offensives on the Chir Front, in the name of flexibility, as he called it. And only half an hour later Hoth sent in confirmation that the clean-up operation around Verkhny Kumsky had really begun. Not only that, the next target – the village of Vassilyevka on the Myshkova – would in all probability be in Hünersdorff’s hands within the next couple of days – may God be with them! It is incredible! Once they had got to the Myshkova over a hundred kilometres of the encirclement would have been traversed, both rivers would have been crossed and there were only forty-eight kilometres of flat terrain and gorges to cover.
“The race for life and death is entering its final phase,” Manstein mumbled, drumming his fingers tentatively on the golden cigarette case lying in front of him on the chart, a gift he received when he was promoted to Feldmarschall. It was now 1435 hours on December 19, and a new appeal was dispatched to Hitler: “Since the last four weeks have shown that it is impossible to maintain the supply lines for the Sixth Army …I now consider a breakout by the army – southwards – as the last chance to save the lives of most of the soldiers and whatever equipment is still movable…” Manstein emphasised once more the tactical advantages a breakout would provide – it would sandwich the Russians between two fronts – and he ended with a cauldron update: “All the horses have perished, some have been consumed, rations are down to 200 grammes of bread a day while the other supplies – medicines! – will only last until 22.12.”
“The case” was addressed to Zeitzler, but was “to be presented to the Führer immediately”. And, as usual, no answer was forthcoming.
Nonetheless, at 1800 hours the same evening an order was sent to Paulus to conduct a graduated retreat all along the northern front of the cauldron, to hold the airstrip at Pitomnik at all costs, to fill up whatever was left of the mobile materiel with fuel and wait for the signal, “Thunderclap”. But no answer was forthcoming here, either.
On the other hand, Manstein came to Markus with a handwritten note, a message which was to be sent to Hünersdorff in person, via the division, at once.
“Hünersdorff. Congratulations on today’s success,” Markus read with tears in his eyes. “Expect full follow-up over night. Signed von Manstein.”
He sent it, and consulted Jakob afterwards to find the exact location of Hünersdorff A new push on his own would isolate him again, a new Verkhne Kumsky? And indeed the Oberst’s flanks were already lagging a long way behind, in addition to his grenadier regiments under Zollenkopf, Niemann and Küper, it appeared from the charts.
After considerable trouble Markus and Kuntnagel managed to tune directly into the frequency Hünersdorff was using to communicate with his commanding officer, General Raus, who was positioned further south, and Markus decided to spend this “critical night of December 19–20”, as he solemnly termed it, with his headphones on and his awareness heightened, in solidarity with the battling angels.
But all he did was pace to and fro with one of Jaromil’s stones in his hand, barite, mumbling more or less comprehensible invocations while Kuntnagel, who couldn’t sleep either, was listening intently for news and occasionally serving up layman’s observations about the painter Raphael, who exhibited such skilful brush technique in “The Three Graces”, Kuntnagel had to have something to occupy his mind after all, while Fatty Beber was reading aloud from the Bible, a performance which eventually drained Markus of all his energy:
“Listening to a man who can’t read demoralises you, Robert. But we said nothing or we marked time, I don’t know, until four in the morning when I had to go for a stroll outside, it had clouded over, although that didn’t alleviate the brutal temperatures, it was minus twenty, and I admit that I looked for Yadviga, but the Steppes had swallowed her up, the Cossacks also kept away during these days, I only saw Jaromil once, and the duty officer not at all, he must have been finding solace with the woman he wasn’t married to, what do I know…?
The trek northwards from Verkhne Kumsky was unending and unreal, taking place as it did in total silence. The moon rose slowly and the contours of our surroundings were clearly defined. It was a starry night; the snow seemed luminous. Our only worry was that we might lose contact with “the leader”. Now and then we sped up and the spearhead slowed down to find the designated route. Since so many tracks criss-crossed the road, it was difficult to find beneath the even covering of snow, even in daylight, and we kept losing our way in the gorges. On these occasions, in order to save time, the commander of the troops who kept the most accurate course took over the role of leader, while the others had to thread in behind. At length Oberstleutnant Michaelis, with a sure nose, led us to our destination, the village of Vassilyevka, where we hoped to find the crossing over the Myshkova intact.
For the last part I was more or less in the middle of the combat group. More gullies and gorges, deep ravines with icy walls in the greenish gleam from the moon. We were under orders not to fire, and I have to admit I never knew where on the map we were. On both sides of the road we suddenly spotted a network of posts which were obviously manned. I was taken completely by surprise, it was getting more and more eerie and the total silence didn’t help.
Then we had quite a long stop. My watch showed it was just past 2200 hours, which meant it was past midnight by Russian time. We waited panzer to panzer in close column. To the right of us ran a telegraph line, further ahead I saw a dark area, and beyond that a ridge, with a village perched on top. Ahead of us, stretching across the road, there was an anti-tank ditch with a mound behind it, of roughly my height, and gun positions. It was very cold, and suddenly – I don’t know where from – Russian soldiers appeared right next to our tanks – armed! And out of the darkness – to our left and right – more and more of them emerged. We gaped, at least my crew did, hanging out of the open turret hatch, we couldn’t believe our eyes. My gunner told me they had weapons and I had to shut him up – Shhh! They think we’re Russians!
We expected all hell to break loose at any moment. But nothing happened. On the contrary, they leant against our tanks and tried to strike up a conversation. Not a shot was fired. What were they up to? Couldn’t they hear that we didn’t speak Russian, only some foreign babble, and couldn’t they see the swastikas on our tanks? I wrapped my fingers a
round my pistol and grabbed a hand grenade from under the seat. Christ, what should we do? Something had to give. I looked at the vehicles in front and behind: the same strange scene was being enacted there.
I still haven’t managed to work out how we ended up in this situation, so it is pure guesswork, but they must have assumed we were Russians as we had arrived without any firing of guns, at a steady pace, in the middle of the night and drove right up to their positions – and at least twenty kilometres north of the front! As the Russians were still fighting at this time against the remains of Kampfgruppe Küper, and were also still engaged with Kampfgruppe Zollenkopf (around Verkhne Kumksy), it had probably escaped their attention that in the darkness thirty or forty panzers had managed to break through and were roaming around deep behind their lines.
We could have shot them down as easy as pie, but apart from the fact that we were under orders not to fire, it went against the grain simply to mow down these inquisitive Ivans. In this way we fraternised for about a quarter of an hour. Then suddenly the peace was broken – at the head of the column. A shot was fired from the ridge, immediately followed by rapid salvoes of machine-gun fire. We ducked down into the tanks, the Russians vanished into the darkness and soon we were rolling slowly but surely towards the village, which we could now see very clearly.
As I learned later, our lead tank was shot to pieces by a T-34 – from a range of ten metres. The enemy tank soon suffered the same fate, but our exemplary commander, Oberstleutnant Michaelis, died a hero’s death …We stormed the village with our riflemen sitting up top, and at dawn we had taken most of Vassilyevka, and most importantly the critical bridge across the Myshkova, which was still undamaged…
22
Markus put down the note and looked at the clock. It was after half past four on the morning of December 20. He had left his headphones, Kuntnagel and the radio and sought refuge in the empty canteen, along with the reports that had come in during the night. It was cold even though he kept stoking the fire, but his hopes had been reawakened, he didn’t know whether this was due to his trip to the cauldron, Yadviga’s resurrection, Hünersdorff’s push during the night or whether a promising pattern was beginning to emerge in Manstein’s tactical skills, his famous “flexibility”, which made stick-in-the-mud Hitler just as hopeless as the French’s unbending belief in the Maginot Line; now Manstein was not going to let Vatutin cross the bend in the River Don without plans to drive him back at some later point, with forces deployed from elsewhere, perhaps cut off his supplies and starve him out; provided that Hünersdorff accomplished his mission, then the whole situation would be turned on its head!
“Hebel – you have to come. Hünersdorff’s on the line!”
Markus left his cup of coffee and the reports, dashed to the radio room and threw himself onto the chair next to Kuntnagel. They waited. Not a sound, a little hissing interspersed with heavy silence. Markus looked at the clock:
“0450 hours: Hünersdorff to Raus. Constant shelling from tanks and mortars. Have been able to repulse an enemy artillery advance from the north-west. One anti-tank post destroyed. Still aiming for target north of the river. Reckon on heavy enemy attacks on 20th. Only twenty tanks left – no fuel.”
That was all.
Markus glanced cautiously at his comrade.
“What river’s he talking about?” he whispered, in order not to disturb the cosmic silence.
“The Myshkova,” Kuntnagel whispered back, also awestruck.
“Are you sure?”
“Of course. This is the second time I’ve heard him. But what does it all mean?”
“I suppose it means what he says: ‘Heavy enemy attacks’, and then he has ‘no fuel’, so we’ll just have to wait.”
“Do you know what it means to wait, Robert? Of course you don’t, but what I like about you, my boy, is that you listen intently to what we’ve experienced and you don’t just turn your nose up at all this, you have empathy and what more can a blind old man ask for? We waited for over half an hour for the next signal. We didn’t move, we were dead, for now Hünersdorff was under even more pressure.”
“0620 hours: Hünersdorff to Raus. Why’s Niemann not coming? Only have eighteen tanks left. I beg you to give the go-ahead!”
“My God, he’s lost three tanks in little more than an hour.”
Markus put his hands together in prayer, and another hour dragged by until Hünersdorff was back again. 0725 hours: “Still heavy fire from mortars and tanks. Russians surprisingly strong south of the Myshkova, between the German regiment and their support troops; enemy also controls the heights to the north with artillery, anti-tank guns, mortars, machine-gun nests and dug-in tanks. Counterattack impossible, as no fuel. Küper’s Kampfgruppe too weak to extend the bridgehead.”
Ten minutes later: “Request Luftwaffe support against the enemy in the hills north of the bridgehead. State time of attack.” And then Markus had to get up and go for a walk again, away from the trap of field reports, allow yourself to become a slave of the battlefield and you are lost unless at some point you choose not to know, as we have already mentioned several times, cutting the bonds and reading the first book of Genesis, chopping wood, repairing a machine or writing letters for Beber – everything is better than listening, that is like being buried alive. So Markus wandered from radio room to chart table – Jakob had also been up all night listening; how he managed to perform his official duties at this time, God only knows, I don’t, if he had any, that is, maybe that is the question – and had his worst suspicions confirmed by the charts: Hünersdorff was in a hopeless situation, way ahead of his support troops, and the front formations as a whole were looking more and more like a punch-drunk middleweight boxer off balance, a desperate slugger trying to ward off blows with his left arm – the Upper Don and the Chir – so that he can hit with the right – Hünersdorff – but with no strength left for either.
At Command H.Q. Markus had the impression that everyone, from the Feldmarschall down to the nail-biting weather oracle Galileo, walked around waiting for the final signal from eternity, the news of Hünersdorff’s death: “Hünersdorff annihilated”, “Hünersdorff driven back” …Some of them were probably even hoping for this so that abandonment of the cauldron could be justified and the equilibrium restored!
But all of this meant that everything rested in the hands of Hünersdorff, and was Oberst von Hünersdorff aware, in the fury of battle up there by the Myshkova, that he was keeping alive a perception of the war – whereby, if he failed, the whole front would collapse? In addition, he had carried out orders, and much more besides, after his five crazy days at Verkhne Kumsky, he had performed beyond what anyone could have asked, beyond every order or prayer, he was as free as a bird, it must have drained him of energy, tempted him to return home, where he would have been fêted as a hero and decorated up to his eyebrows. Yes, wasn’t Manstein at this moment communicating these very thoughts by telepathy to his wild man at the front? “As long as you keep going you’re tying up the whole army group! Just do what is absolutely necessary for the sake of your honour, duty and conscience, then get out!”
“But how do you interpret the word ‘necessary’, Robert? Didn’t the Feldmarschall send a message a day ago saying: ‘Expect full follow-up overnight’? Could it be because he was afraid that Hünersdorff’s weary brain might tempt him with thoughts of retreat, the irresistible images of made beds and hot baths before the ‘necessary’ was done? Whatever the truth might be, it makes no difference, in my view, you are yourself and everyone else, part of something and yet you aren’t, well, let me repeat myself, Robert – what are we if not small dots of light in the sea of collective consciousness, which light up occasionally and say ‘I’ as loudly as our voice can carry in the clamour before once again we are mixed up in everything else and become ‘he’ in someone else’s distorted mind, a someone who resembles us, that is why we can understand him and draw up rules for what is ‘necessary’, that is why the Feldmarschall now
knows that there’s only one thing that can absolve him, and that is Hünersdorff’s death, the optimal solution which no-one will be able to contest later, neither Hitler, nor Paulus, nor the thousands of relatives and the legions of researchers and historians who through all posterity will dissect these brutal chapters, illuminate them from above and below and behind with the sterile eye of the peacetime observer – they haven’t had the experience, they haven’t experienced the war! So I can find no other explanation than that Hünersdorff – as I have already indicated – was really obsessed with transgressing all borders and caricaturing human action and understanding, with liberating himself, through being a person unlike anyone else and therefore doing as he pleases with the joy of liberty in his steely-blue eyes, dying or going home, supreme and untouchable – by the way it is not surprising that he has been kept a secret for all these years because we don’t want heroes like this, we want them, yet we don’t want them, what use are they and what would we do without them, we can’t decide, Robert, no, we can’t, and some of this same confused thinking was obviously going on in Kuntnagel’s head too – there I go again, thinking others’ thoughts – while Beber was becoming stranger and stranger, he was absent-minded and apathetic and grinning like a simpleton, laughing aloud when a pencil fell to the floor and when a fly woke up behind the woodburner and buzzed through the silence as if it were in its own mini-summer, on top of that he was sweating so profusely that the rest of us had some light relief by forcing him to have a bath. But that didn’t make the morning pass, it was still there, the morning of December 20, even when at a little past midday a new sign of life came in from the last bastion of hope.”