by Roy Jacobsen
“1315 hours: Hünersdorff to Raus. Enemy strength increasing all the time. However, no new attacks. Still not been able to get the two companies through to the bridgehead. Zollenkopf must be instructed to take buildings by the bridge to allow passage.”
Beber’s chin fell with disappointment.
“If we only hear something every five hours I won’t be able to stand this, especially if things get worse.”
“You’re used to it, Beber.”
“I am not! He’s been in there for eight days. In Kerch it only took us three!”
“Kerch was a frontal assault, and if you can’t shut up you’d better go and have another bath. You already stink like…”
“Fine by me, ha ha.”
“What would you give, Beber, to be there with Hünersdorff instead of sitting here?”
“I don’t know, an arm maybe, ha ha…”
One of Eismann’s communications officers came and asked Markus for some help deciphering the aerial photos Fiebig had sent from Tatsinskaya. He went along, somewhat irritated, and became even more annoyed when he realised that the man was incompetent and just needed someone to hide behind. But then he was happy to accept the irritation and the interruption and the incompetence and he started counting Vatutin’s tanks crossing the Don Bend – heading straight for Command H.Q. in Novocherkassk! The young man had trouble distinguishing them from half-tracks, truck-mounted artillery and other military vehicles.
“Tanks,” Markus said laconically. “They’re all tanks. T-34s. They wouldn’t move in with their supply vehicles at the front!”
“Thank you,” the officer said, causing Markus to think of his son again, reminding him that he hadn’t thought about Peter for a few hours and making him wonder why he had given him up or left his fate to more competent powers, to Manstein and God: it was because he no longer had any ideas, solutions, and he remembered what his son had said about his grandfather – “Grandad” – who turned his back on Moltke’s ideas, the great Prussian warrior who knew that a general has only one free choice, whether to go to war or not, after that everything is a crisis solution. But it wasn’t Moltke Markus dwelt on but his own father, who couldn’t settle in the idyllic Ardennes, he voluntarily sought out the family’s roots and thereby his death, and hence the strange fact that he – Markus – had only one photograph of him, taken when the man was a child; Markus’ father hung on the sitting-room wall at home in Clervaux, in a picture taken when he was no older than his own son, Peter, who smiled from the frame next to him, while Markus stood, a tower of maturity between them, a rock of experience, wiser and wearier, perhaps also the only one of them still alive. He went to change his clothes.
23
Markus returned to the radio room at half past one in the afternoon, it was still December 20, and at roughly the same time Kuntnagel picked up a message from General Raus to the wild men of the Myshkova:
“Oberst von Hünersdorff. I take my hat off to you and all your panzer gunners and grenadiers and I thank you for your resilience and your resolve. General Raus.”
The three of them exchanged glances.
“Is that normal?” Beber wondered aloud.
“It can happen,” Markus said absent-mindedly, because of course there was also an internal “battle” going on between Hünersdorff and Raus, and between Raus and Hoth and Manstein, all the higher-ranking officers, as to who should carry the responsibility – or blame – for any collapse that might occur. Hünersdorff, as mentioned, could only be acquitted by the court of history if he died or was ordered to retreat by his superiors. While his superiors could only be found not guilty if Hünersdorff died or was victorious – ordering him back was not an option. Markus had never seen it more clearly than this. “It can happen,” he repeated to Beber, “under special circumstances. Manstein sent the same kind of message yesterday, even though it was followed by an order to push on.”
“So they want to get the last drop of blood out of him. Because this can’t work, can it? Everyone can see that.”
“That’s enough of that!” Kuntnagel interrupted. “What would you do in Raus’ shoes?”
“No idea. Probably stay out of it and keep my mouth shut.”
“But that’s what he’s doing.”
“He could order him back.”
“No, he can’t!” Markus broke in, gesticulating. “Hünersdorff can only go one way, and that’s towards Stalingrad.”
“1415 hours: Hünersdorff to Raus. Still confronted by enemy advances and heavy fire. Can’t count on Hauschild before 1700 hours. Request reinforcements in order to advance. Can’t go on like this; troops exhausted.”
“He wants to advance,” Beber said with a hollow laugh. “Well, that’s something.”
“If he gets what he wants, that is.”
“What do you mean?”
“There’s not much else he can say, he needs help, you numbskull, and it’s a general he’s talking to!”
A good hour passed:
“1530 hours: Hünersdorff to Raus. The enemy’s broken through from the north-west. Impossible to contain them without help.”
Full stop.
Kuntnagel wrote down this last message twice to be sure and turned to Markus, the sweat pouring off him, his wavy hair plastered to his scalp like motionless breakers on a black sea. Markus grinned and screwed up his nose, then he had to turn away and close his eyes, cover his head and his eyes and the world with his hands, while Kuntnagel got up and pulled down the blinds. The day was over.
“Is this the end?” he asked, with his back turned to Markus.
“No, no …or rather I don’t know.”
Markus had leant forward in the chair and was clasping his knees with his hands. “You’ll have to ask someone else. I have no idea…”
“1615 hours: Raus to Hünersdorff. Zollenkopf has been sent. Will take Vassilyevka shortly.”
“That’s impossible!”
“1645 hours: Hünersdorff to Raus. Hauschild has arrived (Panzergrenadier Regiment 114) but not many soldiers. Clean-up starting.”
Now Beber had got to his feet as well. He looked as if he was going to make a speech, but was unable to find the words in his huge body, it rumbled like a tombola drum, his eyes were blurred and his mouth gaped like Yadviga’s at the moment of death. Markus gave a stiff smile and tried to get the man to sit down again, but Beber had other ideas, his thoughts were elsewhere:
“I’ve never believed that Erich was in Italy,” he said, shaking his head. “I believe he’s at home …Hebel, will we ever be going home?”
“What’s up with him?”
“Sit down, Beber, or go and have a lie-down. Do something else…”
Markus got up, took him by the arm and softened his tone: “You have to sleep, Erich. Why did you call your son after you?”
“It’s not something you think about,” Beber said dreamily. “He’s got a savings book. Both of them have, of course. This is not the end of the line, is it? She didn’t object anyway. He’s the eldest…”
“Who’s been reading your letters?” Kuntnagel asked out of the blue.
“I don’t know.”
“Yes, you do. You don’t trust anyone anymore. Anyone would think you’d turned Catholic. Was it Hebel?”
“But I can’t write,” Beber shouted. “You have to help me!”
“OK …but go and get some rest now. We’ll have to take turns to sleep.”
Beber didn’t leave, he just stood there panting and the next moment Markus was gripped by homesickness, a longing which drained the last drops of life from him, the two absurd children’s photographs at home on the sitting-room wall, then it struck him that he had never really understood his beloved Nella, her face disappeared behind thick, green glass long before he had a chance to ask his vital question. “When I met her she was a quiet, innocent soul from the forest, but she sat down beside me with a self-confidence and trust that said: ‘I’m your gift from God, take me, but then I’m also your responsi
bility for the rest of my life’ – that was what I needed answering: why me? It doesn’t matter who you choose unless you are chosen – I don’t know why this question should come up just now, I’m not blaming Léon either for my regarding him as another lost son, but the thing is, he is like Peter, not so much in character but in appearance, like a twin, I thought I was seeing things in Enscherange, Peter has come home, I thought, it was my blindness. Sympathy by the way is not God’s work, it is something we have to sort out ourselves, cultivate as best we can in the borderlands between ourselves and the poor children we put on this earth, and the fact that I couldn’t do anything for Léon either, not for him or Peter, that is my destiny, and had it not been for this war I wouldn’t have known who I am, not that this has been of any benefit to me, that was what I wanted to say about Clausewitz and those notions of his, about war being the mother of all things, that is both true and correct, even if it isn’t much of a mother.”
“1840 hours: Hünersdorff to Raus. Two of Battalion Hauschild’s supply trains have reached the bridgehead. It wasn’t possible to get reconnaissance vehicles through the southern front. New attempts will be made during the night. Therefore not possible to do clean-up after enemy breakthrough from north-west. At dawn Hauschild will attack the hills to the north, Remlinger the enemy-occupied southern sector, supported by newly arrived tanks. Plan: extend bridgehead, organise units, replenish ammunition and fuel. Only then can other jobs be done. Need fuel to charge batteries. Otherwise no radio communication. Troops under enormous pressure, no rest, no food, no quarters…”
Then the casualties, which Markus simply ignored or left to Kuntnagel, who noted down the figures with an unsteady pen, blotching the paper and cursing, but his eye was caught by “Panzer count: 0/4/2/0/1”, which meant that Hünersdorff had only seven tanks left, that he had lost twenty-five in the last twenty-four hours and presumably could be wiped out at any moment, whether he got these reinforcements through or not, they were not nearly enough whichever way you looked at it. And then at last they would be free, Hünersdorff, Raus, Hoth, Manstein – Markus too? I can’t imagine it.
24
December 21 had begun. It was just past midnight, 0005 hours in military parlance, German time. In the Soviet Union it was 0205 hours. And Markus, who made it a point of the little honour he had left to keep going as long as Hünersdorff, was on the verge of collapse. Beber, having put the Bible aside, was slumped over the table asleep, snoring like a warthog, and was woken by his body’s own exertions. He shook like a holy epileptic and thereby injected new life into Markus too; he gazed at the fat farmer’s broad Pomeranian smile, a twinkling naive eye that could never be eclipsed and which actually Markus loved, it reminded him of his father’s, even though he would never admit it.
But it wasn’t Beber who had called him back to reality, but a distant, audible crackling contact between Hünersdorff and Raus. He rubbed Clervaux from his eyes – it was snowing at home as well – and looked at the clock, it was 0025, December 21, and Beber’s soothing smile died as though at the sight of a failed crop.
“Hünersdorff to Raus. Situation even more critical at the bridgehead. Soon out of ammo, enemy attacking concentrically and can only be repulsed in hand-to-hand fighting. Round midnight, Russians in same places, no more than fifteen metres from the centre of the bridgehead. Have dug in under the tanks. Commander has to drive on each and every single one of the completely over-extended, fatigued soldiers to fight back and not give up. Fuel so low that radio has to be used sparingly …Have nowhere to put the wounded. Troops are at the end of their tether due to relentless fighting, lack of rest, food, water, heat, quarters, increasingly harsh frosts…”
A long series of crackles, the hiss of electric rain, then absolute silence. That was the last they heard from Hünersdorff.
“Raus to Hünersdorff,” they heard a few seconds later from somewhere far away in the Kalmyk ether. General Raus was calling his lost regimental commander: “Hünersdorff …Can you hear me? …Hünersdorff…”
Then he, too, was gone.
Beber banged his head against the tabletop and cried like a baby. Then he fell asleep again with a weary sniffle and slumped to the floor.
Markus claims he saw the signs of the inevitable tragedy in the fact that Raus had dropped the formality when addressing his subordinate officer at the moment of death, this is about as far as an Austrian general can go in adapting social conventions. Then came the awful relief, the liberating nausea, the freedom to do what his conscience would not allow him. His heart was pounding like a machine gun, but his pulse plummeted, in sudden jerks, until it subsided into a barely perceptible ticking.
He manoeuvred Beber onto the divan and threw a blanket over him, went out into the cold, starry stillness and pressed his face down into the snow until the flames had engulfed his face, while trying to decide whether he should tell Manstein that Hünersdorff had met his Maker, so that the Marschall and Meister of the battlefield could carry out those plans which all this month he had sacrificed on the altar of conscience, or “necessity”, but the Feldmarschall was probably asleep, although a light was on in his railway carriage, there always was, and would he even want this information, unofficial as it was, so Markus made another politic decision to leave it to Raus, or possibly Hoth, woke Kuntnagel and told him the news.
But although his heart was now able to sleep in its own bed, he followed his comrade back to the radio room, rolled out a mattress and dutifully lay down beside a snorting Beber and, in a slow downward spiral, relinquished his resentment towards Paulus, Hitler, Manstein and his son.
But he was woken only three minutes later:
“He’s alive! He’s alive, Hebel! You’ve got to wake up! He’s alive!”
Markus was up in a flash and at Kuntnagel’s side, vaguely sensing that this was too much for him, a new flicker of life now, there must be limits, and what kind of hope is it that is kindled in this pitch-black night sky, a hope for a slower and even more painful death? He hadn’t slept for more than a couple of minutes either, that was what his body was telling him, the round clock above the Enigma machines showed it was the beginning of a new day, December 21, seven minutes past five…
“Division radio conversation – Raus to Hünersdorff,” Kuntnagel repeated with a dry mouth and noted down in large block letters, like Beber at his most clumsy: “Zollenkopf launching attack on Vassilyevka at 0530 hours. Further offensives on designated targets after clean-up at bridgehead.”
Markus listened and read, listened and read, staring around him wildly.
“Have you gone out of your mind?!’ he screamed. “That’s Raus!”
“I heard Hünersdorff as well!” Kuntnagel protested, but feebly.
“How could you do that? His batteries are flat!”
“What do you mean?”
“He’s got no fuel, he can’t run his generators, he can’t communicate even if he’s alive!”
“No, no or …well, yes,” Kuntnagel said helplessly, trying to avoid Markus’ gaze, “I heard him! Raus doesn’t order people to keep going if they’re dead!”
“The order is to Zollenkopf, you buffoon! He’s asking Zollenkopf to clean up the ruins by the bridgehead…”
“On Hünersdorff’s frequency?!”
Markus yawned. Kuntnagel had got to his feet and was wafting the sheet of paper with the ridiculous block letters as if he had found the ultimate proof of God’s existence: “Raus doesn’t give Zollendorff orders on Hünersdorff’s frequency!” he shrieked. “He gives Hünersdorff orders on Hünersdorff’s frequency – because he knows he’s alive!”
Beber was still snoring on the divan with a trickle of saliva running from the right-hand corner of his mouth down under his filthy shirt collar. A tremor ran through him, a gentle breeze, and Markus stared at him with vacant eyes and thought about the winds the Lord occasionally sent across the flat cornfields of Pomerania.
“Who’s been listening in to Hoth tonight?” Markus aske
d suddenly, and turned to study Kuntnagel’s reaction.
“I…”
“You’ve been listening in on the division and regiment frequencies!”
“Yes, and Jakob’s been here for a couple of hours, while I was writing the report, but I swear…”
Markus got up and ran into the H.Q., found an atmosphere there which as usual he had no idea how to interpret, which expressed neither excited expectation nor tragedy, only the same massive, concentrated solemnity that had filled the place the day before and the day before that, no sign of calling off the operation, nor a flicker of hope – necessity; Manstein in an immaculate, freshly ironed uniform, shaven, with a swagger stick lying in front of him on the chart, Eismann in shirtsleeves with his collar undone, leaning over the same chart, Stahlberg with his head in a filing cabinet and Busse with a cup of steaming hot coffee under his good-natured double chin, a team, the war’s foremost team, and probably that was how they were sitting and standing on the other side too: Zhukov, Rokossovsky, Yermenkov …with their own Hünersdorff in the field, with their own double chins, traditions and cups of coffee; this was a team too, a mirror image which consigned the conflict between Napoleon and Kutuzov to a sideshow in history and likewise the war between Charles XII and Peter the Great to a picnic in eternity.
“Well, Hebel,” Busse said, standing in front of him, legs akimbo, “how can we help you?”
Neither Manstein nor Eismann looked up from the chart of the Myshkova region, as far as he could see over Busse’s shoulder.
“I’m looking for Jakob Spitz, Herr Oberst. I need some details for the report.”
Busse grimaced.
“Is something up, Hebel? You don’t look right.”
“I’ve still got my wits about me if that’s what you’re implying.”
“And what have you done to your face?”
Markus was taken aback and ran his fingertips across his swollen cheeks, there was no sensation in them, only this dull, throbbing pain somewhere inside his skull which he had thought was his heartbeat.