Winter Men

by Jesper Bugge Kold

  The drivers started the vehicles’ engines every couple of hours throughout the night to ensure that they could retreat if necessary. In the morning the frostbitten soldiers crawled into the trucks and drove across snow-covered marshlands. Four days later they found themselves in a village more than fifty miles from Moscow. On the way, two drivers had panicked when a Russian fighter plane began circling above their heads. One had driven his truck into a river and the other into a ditch, where the truck burst into flames. They had lost four men and were now down to just eight of the original twenty-two vehicles.

  Karl ordered his men to remove families from a few of the village’s houses, so the company could be billeted in them and warm themselves around the large fireplaces. Other families had just been ordered to cook supper for the column—under surveillance, of course—when a noise erupted.

  The men who came running past them through the snowstorm looked like ghosts. Some fell into other soldiers’ arms, while others continued running. They glanced feverishly over their shoulders like hunted animals. A knot formed in Karl’s belly as he read the fear in their eyes. Whatever was causing the men to flee had frightened them out of their wits. A bearded corporal collapsed in Karl’s arms, sobbing like an inconsolable child. Karl was just patting him on the head when he heard a truck topple onto its side close by; it was filled with wounded men, all of whom began shouting and moaning. The corporal stood up in alarm and took off running again. Karl turned and saw a mortar shell rip the man’s body in half.

  A captain pulled out his service revolver and fired into the air. He shouted orders to one side, then the other, but no one paid him any mind. Mortar shells began raining down on them, and Karl’s men were caught up in the chaos. They fled just as a T-34 tank emerged from the swirling snow and started shooting at the column’s trucks. Bongartz and a few others crawled into an Opel Blitz. His hands trembling, Bongartz tried starting the car but got only a hoarse splutter. A 76-mm grenade slammed against the truck, lifting it several feet off the ground. Then it dropped back to the frozen ground like a heap of scrap iron.

  More tanks appeared, with Russian soldiers in white winter uniforms looming above and between them. Karl and the captain looked at each other. The officer gave Karl a despairing smile, and together they started running. They passed a major, who stood, paralyzed, watching the advancing Russians. He doffed his cap, greeting them in the same friendly way you might say hello on the street. Over his shoulder, Karl watched the man draw his pistol. With painstaking precision, he fired eight shots at the Russian tanks. The magazine’s last bullet he planted in his own temple.

  Only as darkness began to fall in the afternoon did they dare slow down. The captain, a man by the name of Julius Kruppke, was from one of the First Panzer Division’s reconnaissance units; he came from Zwickau and spoke with a thick Saxon accent. Several men joined him and Karl, and the small group now consisted of fourteen soldiers. They spent the night at the edge of a forest. By the following morning, two had frozen to death. They made no attempt to bury the dead in the impenetrable ground but just covered them with snow, knowing full well that come spring they would be visible again.

  The group, which had grown to twenty-seven men despite an additional six deaths, struggled through the snow for several days. They navigated by the sun and the trail of burning cities and bridges left by the engineer troops. They spent one night in a pigsty that had remained intact. Everyone was sullen, absorbed in their own dark ruminations whenever they rested. Karl sat with his knees pulled up underneath himself, rocking back and forth to keep warm. He looked at the others. There was no trace of their former confidence; gone was their certainty of victory. The bitterness had crept in, and they were close to cracking, physically and psychologically. Beside him sat a young soldier. His lips and eyes were blue, his cheeks red. He thought of Kleist, his lieutenant in the Great War: the same soldier, a different war.

  Kruppke broke the silence.

  “Fifteen miles. That’s how close we were to Moscow. And look at us now.” He spat.

  “Were we that close?” Karl’s voice shivered with cold.

  “I saw the road sign myself. Moscow, fifteen miles.” Kruppke grinned apologetically. “And while we’re dying here, Hitler has found himself a new war.”

  “Shut your mouth.” A canteen flew across the barn and clanked against the wall behind Kruppke, who leaped on the culprit and pounded the other man’s face with his fist, breaking his nose with a loud crack. The captain had just raised his fist for another powerful punch when the others pulled him back.

  Karl saw Kruppke shaking as he sat down. Everyone had reached the breaking point.

  “What do you mean, a new war?”

  “Haven’t you heard? Hitler declared war against America.” Kruppke scrutinized his knuckles.

  The news took him by surprise. The last thing they needed was another enemy.

  The next day they continued west. Many of them got frostbite, and the locals eyed them with disgust whenever the men warmed themselves by the flames of their houses. Karl knew that he should feel bad for the locals, but he no longer felt anything. For a long time now, he had felt only a pervasive emptiness. Everything had become meaningless, trivial. All he had to do was his duty. Do his duty and then go home. The only time he ever felt a hint of warmth was when he thought of his family back home. He had received letters from Ingrid after lengthy delays, but no one knew where he was right now, so it had been a while since he’d had any news from home. The last he’d heard, everyone was doing well, including Gerhard. He knew that August was in Army Group South somewhere in the Ukraine.

  Karl recalled only occasional moments in recent months when he’d felt anything at all. Two weeks earlier, they’d found shelter for the night at a village school, which their army had cleared out to use as a field hospital. The classroom was remade into a sickroom with beds and mattresses, and on the blackboard Karl noticed what he presumed to be a priority list of who would require an operation first. The teacher’s desk had functioned as an operating table, and an unbearable stench still lingered in the room. When Karl had opened the window, the sight outside the window had made him vomit. A towering heap of amputated legs, arms, hands, and feet lay entangled in the blood-red snow.

  By Christmas, they had retreated back to Volokolamsk, only a month and a half after they’d optimistically departed the city. They were weak and irritable, sick and tired of the war. Karl couldn’t stop thinking of Hamburg, of the house by the Alster, of Ingrid, and he often imagined how wonderful it would be to return home. At the same time he feared the thought. Would he be the same man? He pushed the thought aside, unable to stomach it.

  Volokolamsk was a paradise after the last few weeks. Although the cold was still intense, the living conditions in the city were quite different. There were showers, and Karl shaved off his lengthy beard. Most of all he looked forward to being free of the lice. The small mites that sought out his body heat were driving him mad.

  A large group of bedraggled men stood outside a house set up for bathing and delousing. The delousing took place in a kind of sauna where the temperature rose to over 140 degrees Fahrenheit. The men’s faces were emaciated, and they all looked exhausted, with black circles under their eyes. No one smiled. Karl wandered among them on his way to the entrance. A broad, flat-nosed private, scratching at his lice, stared absently at him. Karl pointed at his stripes, hoping the man would step aside, but he was met with a defiant glare. The private puffed himself up. Karl didn’t want a confrontation. His delousing would have to wait. A hand fell on the man’s shoulder just then, and he moved promptly out of the way. A smile appeared in a dark, filthy, weather-beaten face, and Karl recognized Paul Piroska. The two men embraced. A few days later Thomas Remmel came strutting into the mess tent as if he’d just been outside taking a leak. He patted Karl on the shoulder and went right on talking as if they’d never been separated. Karl, Piroska, Remmel, and the rest of the supply column celebrated Christmas toge
ther.

  Suddenly the holiday meant everything to Karl. Dönselmann found a tree, and they decorated it with whatever they could find and sang “O Tannenbaum” and “Silent Night, Holy Night.” Karl wasn’t the only one fighting back tears, and each man withdrew into himself as he was flooded with emotion. They thought not only of their families at home but also of the fact that they’d been to hell and survived.

  The winter was endless, and it snowed daily. The division regrouped, and the supply column was given new vehicles. In March the Seventh Panzer Division was transferred to Rzhev.

  Artemovsk, Ukraine, March 12, 1942

  Lorelei, so called because he was about the same size as the cliff that towered above the Rhine, gestured for them to stop. Reichel moved to the head of the company, conferred with Lorelei, and drew his binoculars to his eyes. He called for the young Baumann, who ambled nervously through the ranks with his map case slung over his shoulder. Zollner and Falkendorf joined them. August couldn’t hear what the lieutenant and his two subordinates were saying, but judging by their gestures and body language, they weren’t in agreement. Reichel pointed eagerly away from the forest, while Zollner pointed in the opposite direction and Falkendorf listened with his arms crossed, nodding occasionally. Reichel eventually turned his back on the two men and studied the terrain beyond the woods through his binoculars for some time.

  August made eye contact with Stanislav, who stood closer to them. He sensed August’s question, but shrugged. Everyone was tense after a hectic morning of heavy Russian bombardments, and their discovery of an entire platoon of disfigured dead compatriots along the road had further disheartened them. Men like Mertz and Falkendorf didn’t notice such things, but August couldn’t get accustomed to death’s daily sweep across the countryside. Like a destructive whirlwind, it sucked the life out of even the best soldiers in a split second.

  August was sick. He’d been sick for weeks now, and it was only getting worse. Martin Wander had listened to his chest and confirmed he had the first signs of pneumonia. August had been his last patient. Wander had been killed that same afternoon. It had been an otherwise quiet day, and they’d finally gotten a bit of rest—and yet they’d still lost two men before it was over. One man had been kicked in the head by a horse, leaving a clear imprint of a horseshoe in his swollen forehead. Ironically, it was this very Austrian, Lustenberger, who’d spoken proudly of the Spanish Riding School in Vienna. But he’d become the victim of a breed of horse far inferior to the Lipizzaner in grace and elegance. Wander had been just as unlucky. An inattentive driver from the supply column had overlooked the poor medical soldier, who was dragged for twelve feet underneath the heavy vehicle before the truck came to a halt. Falkendorf had yanked the unsuspecting driver out of the cab and beaten and kicked him until he bled. No one stopped him.

  Eduard Hülsmann and August buried the two men, hammering up a cross made of two wooden planks and draping each man’s helmet on the cross. Hülsmann used the tip of his bayonet to carve Martin Wander’s name into the wood. When he reached his year of birth, they looked at each other quizzically. Hülsmann insisted, saying it was undignified not to include it. August’s stomach churned as they dug him up. With one hand to his mouth and the other fumbling over Wander’s body, Hülsmann finally located his pay book in his breast pocket. The cross now carried the inscription: “Martin Wander 1919-1942.”

  August’s throat ached, and he wheezed whenever he coughed. The fever made him sore and stiff. His head was hot, and the steel helmet—which felt a great deal heavier than it once had—now felt like it had fallen down over his ears. He heard next to nothing. He had retreated into his own world, and when people spoke to him, he frequently had to guess what they were saying.

  He watched Gildehaus blowing into his hands and kicking indifferently at a frozen puddle. With his heel he pierced the thin layer of ice under which a pocket of air was trapped.

  Just then Reichel barked an order that soon spread through the column like wildfire. The men formed a row along the edge of the woods. August could see the top of a church steeple in the distance. Before them stretched an open field that offered no cover. About 1,300 feet ahead, there was a hedgerow of bushes and small trees, and to his right was a stone dike that bordered it.

  “A machine gun sniper in those trees could rip the entire company apart,” Carstens said.

  Gildehaus nodded. “It’d be safer to lead us up along the dike.” He glanced at August, who was studying the terrain ahead. He didn’t care. Not one bit. If he had a lung infection, as Wander had said, then he deserved to rest at a field hospital. Soon. And if it meant that he would have to run across that field, so be it. He would run across that field, Russians or not.

  Snow had begun to fall. The tiny snowflakes descended gently onto the ground, as if every single one of them knew exactly where to land to form a perfect surface. Why destroy such a picturesque scene? What were they supposed to do when they got to the village? Wasn’t it just a village like all the rest? What would happen if they left it alone, if the residents were allowed to live in peace, allowed to stay in their homes instead of being thrown out by freezing-cold Germans? He didn’t feel the cold, though. The fever warmed his body from within like an oven. At the signal, they started running.

  The soldiers’ fear was palpable as the platoon moved away from the edge of the woods. Everyone was waiting for all hell to break loose. August heard his own heavy breathing, and each time his boots crunched the new snow, his head throbbed. He was already out of breath, and his body grew weaker with every step. His legs went out from under him. His chin struck his gun, and he tasted blood in his mouth. He wiped the snow from his face. He could see the others’ backs, but a lone figure was moving in the opposite direction, toward him.

  “If it were up to me, I would fucking let you lie there.” Mertz pulled him to his feet with excessive force. “Can you run?”

  “Yes. I think so.”

  “You damn well need to. I’m not going to carry you.”

  August’s chest hurt as he started running again. His ears popped and he gasped for breath. Several times Mertz slowed down to keep pace with him. The others had reached the hedgerow. August and Mertz still had 150 feet to go when August fell.

  This time he had enough foresight to hold his weapon out, away from his body, as he fell. He heard the shot the instant he hit the snow. It didn’t sound like a shot, more like an echo, but he knew it was nearby, as if the sniper were right behind him.

  Instinctively he looked up at Mertz. Blood was squirting from his temple, and a fine cloud of red mist had formed in the air. Mertz collapsed on the ground. Blood ran from between his yellow teeth, and the snow reddened under his head.

  August gaped in terror at the others. Reichel crawled over to the fallen man. He put two fingers to the artery in Mertz’s throat, then gestured to August, confirming what he already knew. Mertz was dead.

  “Where did the shot come from?” he whispered.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Goddamn it.” The lieutenant shook his head and called for Gildehaus. Together they dragged Mertz’s lifeless body into the bushes that served as cover for the rest of the platoon.

  “Sniper?”

  Reichel shrugged and gave August, who was shaking with cold, an inquisitive look.

  Carstens whispered, “It would have been safer to lead us up along the stone dike.”

  Two days later August lay in a field hospital in Kramatorsk. His body had been close to giving up, and now it consented to all the rest it could get. He slept for three days straight. The place was a cabinet of horrors. At night the hospital was filled with tears, wailing, shouting, and roars of pain, a nightmarish soundtrack. The man in the bed next to August lamented the pain in one of his legs, which was no longer there. Another man looked as though he had turned to liquid and only the mattress and the bed frame held him together. With their vacant expressions, empty eye sockets, and sunken cheeks, they resembled wax figures, like t
he ones August had seen at Panoptikum in St. Pauli. He not only heard their screams but sensed their silent shrieks of pain, the ones that never emerged from their mouths. He wondered every day whether he was one of them. Had he already stopped being a human? Did he scream at night without realizing it? Maybe he had yet to recognize that he was already dead. Would he ever be able to go home after the war? Would he ever look at Karin and feel the same desire as before? Would he be capable of enjoying his father’s piano playing again?

  One day a staff officer appeared. A kind-looking man with a narrow blond mustache, he introduced himself as First Lieutenant Wasner from Stuttgart. He awarded August a black medal. August tried to explain that he hadn’t been wounded, but the man insisted there’d been no mistake. He was to deliver the medal to August Friedrich Strangl, and that’s what he’d done. Wasner said that he had a similar medal himself, but in silver, because he’d been wounded three times in battle. The first time was in Holland and the second thanks to an indignant Parisian prostitute, he explained, patting his derriere with a grin. August was just about to ask about the episode in Paris when the lieutenant mentioned the Seventh Panzer Division.

  “Seventh Panzer Division?” he asked, amazed.

  “I was transferred to the division just before it left for Russia. It almost cost me my life.” He pulled up his shirt so August could see the long, cigarette-shaped scar next to his navel.

  “My father’s in that division. Karl Strangl.”

  “You’re Karl Strangl’s son?” Wasner said, stuffing his shirt into his pants. He turned his head when a patient hoarsely roared in pain from one of the other beds.

  August didn’t even notice; he wanted to hear about his father. “Do you know him?’