Eastern Inferno

by Christine Alexander

  Bombs strike with a dull, shattering noise, and glowing fragments rain down upon us. Pressed close to the ground, we lie behind rocky rubble or in bomb craters. Some never stand up again; the stiffness in their bodies can’t be undone by the glowing wood embers.

  These are the disturbing images which will forever be part of the memories from the ruins of Woronesh: the faces of the men have become old and grey, like heavy shadows from extreme exertion, sleepless nights and never-ending terror, along with tense anticipation and always re-igniting combat, are drawn on their features.

  We have been spared nothing by this land: the summer fighting commenced in pouring rain, which filled all our holes with muddy water, making the muck greedily hold on to every step and covering our uniforms with a crusty armor of dirt. Then came July with its scorching heat and the fine, flour-like dust; now the dampness of the rainy, fall days is sweeping over the trenches and the crater landscapes, only to be soon again replaced soon by the ice and snow of the merciless Russian winter.

  We are not facing this second year of the Russian campaign as fresh and naïve as we once were. These formerly idealistic daredevils have turned into morose, relentlessly tired soldiers of trench warfare, tough people without a sense of humor. Easily embittered, we view our surroundings with the sharpest criticism. The length of the war has brought with it many changes, to which my comrades react with caustic sarcasm and I with a slight sadness. I am no Renn [Ludwig Renn, German novelist and Nazi opponent] or Remarque [Erich Maria Remarque, German anti-war novelist], therefore no more of it!!

  But there is always one thing that keeps us going: the knowledge of the love that people at home have for us frontline bums. The eyes of the entire country are on us, all of Germany is proud of us. Really, all of Germany? Well, with exception of the duds, who don’t deserve to be called Germans!

  All soldiers at the front have very different fates. There is the lucky one, his unit is deployed in the big offensive operations and as hard as the fighting might be, his engagement is rewarded with changing events and new experiences. He is also rewarded by the knowledge that the whole world at home is excitedly following the course of the action on their maps and through the radio reports of the OKW.

  Much more difficult and draining is our kind of war, the kind that the Frontschweine experience, whose fate is currently leading them into heavy defensive battles. Naturally defensive combat is mentioned only briefly in the army reports. The accomplishments on our front don’t provide a great variety of stories for the war correspondents. The going is tough, and days and nights of heavy fighting follow each other. Here you don’t have the great moments, which compensate for even the worst hardships of the offensive. Embittered, we fight for every meter of space: lieutenant, non-commissioned officer, and soldier are lying in dirty foxholes, or if they are lucky, in bunkers; and for days, sometimes for weeks, we have to endure the enemy’s artillery fire. Each attack is followed by yet another attack; time and again we have to fall in for counterattack.

  When the word heroism is used, it should be for the achievement of the thousands of anonymous trench fighters, who have successfully fought the defensive battles of the last few months.

  A senior chief told me the other day: “You should know that the ac complishments of your soldiers will be written in capital letters on the first page of the immortal book of great deeds of the German soldiers in the year 1942, even when the newspapers report less about them than about the obvious successes of the other fronts.” We are thankful for the kind words.

  It’s snowing slightly, and a sharp wind slaps ice cold water onto our faces. All eyes are staring ahead where all hell could break loose any moment. Since first light we have been expecting the Russians to attack. Thousands are waiting and waiting…. Restless, nervous hands check the hooks on the canister of the gasmask, put the hand grenades from the right side of the foxhole to the left and back again to prepare for the defense, they are doing a thousand things that carry no meaning or purpose.

  Our comrades of the artillery are standing at their guns, waiting and waiting…. Impatient hands turn the greased screws of the Libelle [Lom-57 Libelled, reconnaissance glider]. Damn far ahead stand the heavy howitzers, and here again the shells lie ready everywhere. The rocket artillery is checking their fuses again and again, because their destroyer salvo is supposed to break the Russian attack. Everything has to work right in order not to let the superior force of the Bolsheviks overrun us and take possession of more parts of the death city.

  We crouch in our foxholes, shivering and freezing…. Though it’s not just the cold which makes our teeth shatter! A thousand grey men have their faces turned forward. The success of the defense depends on the good eyes of a handful of men, these advanced position observers, who have to stare through the snow curtain and recognize the danger in time….

  The snow drifts are getting thicker. Through meter-wide mud puddles a messenger approaches. Orders from the division! “The moment the enemy attacks, our own infantry will strike back with an immediate counterattack. Anti-tank gunners will support the attack and will take over the assault of enemy tank forces.” That’s how the message was written on the dirty paper, which means we will have to dodge the enemy fire in order to move into the blind spot of the heavy artillery as quickly as possible.

  We are freezing as we stare into the drifting snow with tearing eyes, waiting….

  Then, all of a sudden an enormous impact makes the earth explode, and the Soviet annihilating fire begins. Their artillery sends their hail of shells our way, PaKs shoot from inside the houses across the street; tanks are shooting from the sides; flight squadrons are showering us with bombs, and intermittently explode the hard impacts of the mortar.

  Storm! Storm through hell! It is hell, the noise and the uproar, the constant detonation of shells of all calibers, the hissing whistle of the bullets in the air, the spray of splinters, the flying dirt from the bursting earth, the constantly quaking ground, the biting and stinking smoke of gunpowder, and amongst all this the hard and fast thuds from the discharges of our own mortar.

  We have to get through this inferno; the infantry is storming in front of us. They always have to be diligent; they have to stay courageous and hard, stubborn and cold blooded, and they are not allowed to think for a second that they could die or lie wounded the next minute.

  The noise of infantry fighting: the clacking of machine gun fire, the discharges of the carbines, the dry popping of the light infantry guns—all of this sounds like the twitter of small piccolo flutes in this thundering war concert. But nevertheless these light weapons and the men who guide them will decide the battle.

  After an hour of bloody close combat the attack is beaten back. The Red storm troopers are finished, at the limits of their strength. Prisoners are stumbling towards us with terrified faces. But with undiminished force, the heavy weapons thunder on, enemy artillery is trying to tear holes for a second or third attack.

  For days it has been bitter cold. Today the mercury shows 25° below zero; a thick white snow cover wipes out the sharp contours of the vast ruins. But there are always new impacts from all size of caliber tearing through the beautiful whiteness of the cover, leaving terrible black and red stains. A difficult period is now starting up again; God only knows what lies ahead in the next weeks. This gentle calm is abruptly torn apart by all the flares from the Soviet bombers. From this moment forward, the sky is not for a single second without these artificial stars.

  It is strangely quiet along the entire Woronesh sector. People are saying that the Soviets have withdrawn large troop contingents in order to deploy them further south for larger offensives. Let’s just wait and see! Our Landser are great at spreading rumors. It is highly unlikely that we would have indeed had a few quiet days! Up to now we have always been in the thick of it. I believe that it will continue just like this after fresh reinforcements arrive.

  Marching orders are here! How many have we already received during this God-f
orsaken campaign? We’re back on our feet and then loaded onto cargo trains, headed up north again for a change. For 48 hours we haven’t looked over the edge of the trench or even across the lightly snow-covered marsh of the front, where underneath its dirty skin hundreds of mines lie. Neither have we looked through the binoculars to watch the Bolsheviks, in their bunkers and deep sap trenches with their machine guns.

  For 48 hours we didn’t need to duck and huddle in the dirt whenever the enemy would extend his long arm of heavy weaponry over the German positions, as if trying to erase everything that sticks out of the plowed earth. We didn’t have to listen to the sound of Stalin’s Organs at night, when the darkness is illuminated by the ghostly light of bright flares and the silence is abruptly pierced by the hissing of grenades and the barking of machine guns, which can bring death a hundredfold just seconds later.

  The following order: “Company to transfer north,” has taken us away from deprivation and the desire to just survive, as well as the constant stress on our nerves, senses and muscles, to the comforting safety of this heated cargo train. We are moving along nice and slowly, kilometer by kilometer to the north. Where to? Nobody knows. It doesn’t matter anyway! Warmly packed into straw, we start to doze off until we finally fall into a calm, restful sleep.

  The following five days and nights are worry-free, sleep-filled travel across the wide and deadly white Russian plain. Then we are unloaded. Forgotten is the gigantic field of rubble of Woronesh, the city of death. We are again in the flatlands and as protection against the cold and the enemy we have to rely on the dirty, stinking Panje huts. Soldiers, soldiers‖! During the icy day we endure snowstorms; during the night short, restless sleep in filthy Ruski sacks. Not that we haven’t rested our occasionally clean bodies in hundreds of European beds. We have dreamed nice dreams in the fancy baroque beds of French Châteaux that had nothing to do with war; we have lain on straw sacks in English bunkers, and with our hearts thumping we have listened to the impacts of fire salvos and caught bedbugs on Moroccan reed mats. We have had inappropriate dreams on the clean, cool sheets of Belgian boarding school beds of innocent girls whose more or less virgin bodies used to lie there. We have wiped off the dust and sweat of the battlefield on down comforters. We have experienced the most stubborn bedbug attacks from the leather sofas of Polish Jews. In the clean pillow mountains, fresh smelling embroidered covers of the western Ukraine we have dreamed of home. And lately we have gotten to know the terrible Russian sacks in the Soviet paradise.

  We have become experts in the hospitality business, and in the future, even the dirtiest and slimiest host will not phase us. We have experienced all degrees of physical humiliation with our own bug-infested bodies. You should see our solemn faces when we find a Panje hut at night before the frighteningly fast approach of darkness which doesn’t yet have a pencil note on its door that reads, “Occupied by unit number, whatever.”

  Even when a full dozen stinking locals already populate the small wooden room, the few of us still fit comfortably inside. A Panje hut eats up people endlessly. We spread out on the floor along with the Russians; whole generations move on top of the wide, expansive stove which takes up almost half of the entire room. Wife and child, man and bugs; eight or ten, or twelve or fifteen are lying up there, but not because we took their space. Even when we are not there they are huddled on top of or behind the stove. For us the archetype of living and comfort is the amount of space. With Russians it’s different: first comes the oven. There are those who have simply thrown a few boards together and a roof on top and have their finished Panje hut. That’s how we live nicely separated, some on top of the oven, and the others in the rest of the hut, while a small lamp on a little shelf below an icon burns all night.

  In spite of the filth and the bugs, we are experiencing a few happy carefree days in these pitiful huts. One or the other even dares to think it possible to celebrate Christmas here in relative safety and respite. But only the absolute idealist would be able to think like that. For me, I act like I always have during this damn campaign. You just put dirty laundry in a water bucket and you look forward to putting on a clean shirt for once—never mind that we just received marching orders. This time we have to deploy especially fast. The wet laundry is stuffed into our backpacks, and 30 minutes later we are marching south toward an unknown destination. Judging by the pace of the march something is on fire somewhere.

  After a record march we reach Kastoruoje. New combat-ready troops are sent our way, and in a few hours the new battalion of army Panzerjägers is ready for action. Despite the great honor—not many units become “Wehrmacht” troops—we are not sure how to feel about this. Things look fishy in the south; the many ambulances we encounter are not exactly elevating the mood.

  After a short visit with our Hungarian brothers-in-arms we reach Rossosch, where the Italian A.O.K [Italienischen Armee-Oberkommando] is located. There I am met by serious faces. In bad French one asks this or that person where things stand; the short conversations are unclear and nervous.

  In the evening, in a biting snow storm, we reach the position of the Alpini-Corps. That same night a tank-supported attack by the Soviets is halted and the enemy is beaten back across the river Don. The young division suffered its first losses.

  In the following clear, freezing cold and moonlit night the enemy pushes across the ice of the Don once again with their giant steel guns. The battle lasts until the morning hours. One can tell, however, that we haven’t known the Russians since just yesterday, that a lot is feigned over there, for the Red schweine are trying to fake large attacks in order to divert us from other positions. This is confirmed by prisoner testimony.

  These observations and predictions are forwarded to the Italian commando stations. Everything is done through the German communications staff. For ours the situation is discussed in bad school French. There is no agreement; the German communications officers are judging the situation differently (probably more accurately) than the Italian gentlemen. More things are translated, the German officers would like to pound their fists on the table, but they have to be courteous toward their brothers in arms and smile politely! Valuable time passes! Nothing happens—poor schweine in the trenches, they have recognized for a while that a catastrophe is approaching. Dark premonitions are blackening the heart. Once again the well-worn photos of sweethearts, wives, and mothers are wandering through the hands of the infantrymen. Not a good sign!

  In the night we are withdrawn from the Alpini position. This happens head over heels this time. At first light we scoot across the frozen swamps of the Kalitwa toward the south while staying close to the front. Here things are volatile! What a bad beginning! In Orobinsky we are meeting up with the first German infantrymen. Run down and bloody, they look at us with grey faces and without saying anything. A real frontline pig knows what’s going on. Even without words we know that a big disaster is looming ahead, as the smell of dead bodies is hanging in the air. Things are looking foul.

  The front rolls and swells, creating a wall of mud behind which I seek shelter from the icy wind drizzling down into the shallow dirty yellow creeks. A wild confusion reigns on the bumpy, frozen village streets. Dangerous nerves have taken over.

  The artilleryman, who is usually an easygoing, animal loving country bumpkin, beats on his poor, skinny horse in a way that is heartbreaking. The tormented animal bucks and the reins get tangled with an oncoming PaK carriage. The usually calm and patient truck driver breaks sharply, and the back of the heavy truck slides sideways and hits an infantry vehicle loaded with small packages. A chaos of vehicles and men, the responsible parties are screaming and swearing and the Italians are barking and yelling in their pitched voices.

  Speaking of Italians! All of a sudden I come to a realization and it becomes frighteningly clear what is going on here. I had already been wondering on the way down why we were encountering so many small and large groups of Italian soldiers in loose packs without any leaders. After exchanging a fe
w words with a comrade who has more information about the situation, it becomes clear to me: those guys are taking off; they are running away just like their officers, who have already saved their own valuable lives. A handful of Germans are left behind to bleed to death faced with a force twenty times superior. These oncoming packs are also blocking the roads for those what want to come to the aid of our condemned comrades. Full of hate and disgust, we look into the faces of those running away. Cowards, you have taken way the faith in comradeship-in-arms forever. You have been and will remain traitors!!

  The German high command is putting pressure on the Italian A.O.K., trying to get them to stop the oncoming flood. And once again, there is translating and negotiating without results, because the panicinducing rumors of the fleeing—today I know it must have been an entire army—causes even the “courageous” Italians in the hinterland to pack their bags. The great comrades of the neighboring Alpini-Corps want to save the honor of their countrymen; feverishly they are trying to establish positions where they can regroup those who are fleeing.

  The ground is frozen too deeply. Too late, everything is too late! It is bitter cold and biting icy wind chills you to the bone. We are therefore glad to get orders at noon to move into our positions. The second company with wonderfully equipped vehicles and guns is withdrawn, to go back into position a few kilometers further south. We never saw them again.

  Our unit has been deployed to Zapkowo, where we try to settle down and get somewhat comfortable in the primitive bunkers. My special attention is on the Italians. If the situation were not so deadly serious, one would have to laugh wholeheartedly. With downcast eyes, like thieves, one after the other is taking off. Their faces are yellow and it probably doesn’t look much better in their pants.