by John R Burns
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The rest was hours of scrambling through burnt out buildings, stopping at the first different sounds, waiting as he watched soldiers moving in the shadows, through the snow, listening to the rattle of tank tracks, the cold numbing him, his scar like a new cut frozen into his face and neck.
Finally he was crouching along what was left of streets that had more burnt out houses on either side instead of the usual factories or office blocks. The air here was colder, the snow blowing horizontally as though there had been no obstacles in its path. He knew he was in the suburbs, knew that the city centre was behind him.
Bodies were everywhere, snow covered mounds, German, Russian, a hand, a face, a leg, stuck out of their white blankets. Most of them seemed to be still in uniform as though neither side had had time to take what they needed.
‘The Russians are small, muscular and fast,’ he had been told in Paris, ‘Their general tactics show no concern for casualties. How many soldiers die in their armies is of no significance. They know there are always replacements, boys from the Urals and beyond. They’re poorly trained but they fight hard for their motherland. They know that any defeatism will bring swift retribution from the commissars who are with every unit. The Russian soldier is primitive but determined. He would prefer to drink himself into oblivion every night. But if he can’t have a drink it makes him angry and that makes him fight harder. Their armies are better equipped than they were and since the fight back in Moscow they are more confident. Even Stalin is leaving it more to his generals to make the decisions. They will be your enemy and they will take no prisoners.’
Franz knew he was getting weaker. He rested in the corner of a blown out house and took stock of everything he was suffering like an inventory of pain.
His hunger was becoming unbearable, a tight emptiness into which had drained the last of his strength. His scar felt like it had been reopened by a frozen edged razor. His headache was two fists battering under his helmet. His right arm and leg had stiffened and his feet were not there any longer, numbed off into dead lumps. His whole body was frozen into the bones like a scaffolding of ice. Nothing was functioning. Each movement was instinct. The blizzard blew snow through gaps in the wall where he was sheltering.
As he glimpsed out he could see what looked like German soldiers rolling forward a piece of artillery. From the other end of the street machine gun fire whined bullets through the snow. A shell was released that exploded seconds later.
He crawled to what was left of the back of the house. Three headless Russians had been propped up against the remains of a wooden fence. Further down the lane between the back of the houses were more bodies. He momentarily registered a face that seemed to have been skinned and a body without arms. Explosions travelled on the whining snow that was blinding him as he struggled onwards. Some of the wooden houses were still smouldering, heat giving momentary warmth as he forced himself to keep going.
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Nearing the German artillery there was a whole wall of bodies, stacked up like logs for an everlasting fire. They had been piled so close together to build bunkers for the artillery.
When he climbed over one of these walls of corpses he found himself much closer to the German unit that was defending the end of the street .Snow swirled around them whipping up their winter coats. Some were wearing what looked like ski goggles that were iced over. They were dressed in so many layers, especially around the head, they never heard him approaching.
With his hands held high he appeared from behind a wooden fence and started walking towards them.
The artillery unit paid him no attention. The men with rifles checking the closest houses did not appear interested. They were men trying to fight a battle in sub-zero temperatures against an enemy that kept disappearing so Franz was a ghostly irrelevance, another soldier appearing out of Stalingrad, blackened, hungry, usually wounded, but always silent, always lost to the hell world they had just been through. Nobody tried to speak to him. Franz was set down with a group of seriously wounded. From somewhere appeared a bowl of hot water with a frozen leaf floating on the surface and a handful of cigarettes that Franz quickly grabbed and then spent the next minutes trying to find the matches, knowing he had hidden them somewhere under all the layers that had so many pockets and stitched up compartments. By the time he had found one his hands were so frozen up they could not function. The process was becoming desperate as he could hear planes overhead and the gradually approaching fire of the Russians coming up the street.
He stumbled over to two resting on a stack of artillery shells.
‘I need a light,’ he could hear himself say.
‘Not fucking here you don’t.’
‘Well what about over there?’
‘That’s where one of the bastard snipers is lined up for.’
‘So where is the rest of the regiment?’
‘There isn’t one.’
‘The wounded,’ Franz tried.
One of the soldiers pulled his scarf slightly away from his mouth to speak, ‘They say the wounded are being shipped to Gumrak that sounds like it’s the only airport still in our hands. You have to have a pass that proves you have a serious wound. That’s how it seems to be working if it is still working because the story is that the Ruskies are only a few kilometres from the edge of the airfield.
Franz tried to make sense of what he was being told, tried to understand that he had arrived at the German lines where men were still fighting and had no idea at what was going on in the centre of the city. These suddenly unexpected moments felt unreal. He was lost for a time, lost and exhausted and hungry walking between the lines of wounded, around the walls of the dead. All of it was covered by the intensifying snowstorm, pieces of his mind being blown in all directions. Now all he could think about was the airport at Gumrak as mortar rounds thudded off into the grey flecked sky. Two explosions landed close they had them all automatically hunched over and then just as quickly sat up again. The noise of trucks rattled towards their positions, followed by a couple of tanks.
‘That’s it,’ one of the men muttered to him, ‘That’s all that is fucking left.’
‘So what do you think soldier?’
‘I’d say we’re fucked, should never have come near this fucking place. Stalingrad, it’s just a fucking slaughter house, and you see who you kill, you see them alright, right in the fucking eye balls.’
‘But no way out?
‘Only if you’re wounded badly enough.’
‘And who makes that decision?’
‘You’re wasting your fucking time. You’d have to blow your brains out and then what would be the point?’
Franz came closer, pushing against him, ‘Just don’t fuck about soldier. Just fucking tell me how I get to Gumrak and how I get on a fucking plane.’
When he pushed harder the soldier stepped back and looked at him as well as he could through the small icicles that had formed on his eyelids.
‘I’ve not got this far for all this shit,’ Franz said strongly.
‘So what makes you think you’re anything fucking special?’ were the soldiers last muttered words as a rifle shot split through his neck, the blood swirled in fast patterns over the snow.
‘Get down! Get fucking down!’ somebody was shouting as three more planes passed closely overhead and there were calls that the Russians were moving further up the street.
Franz turned into the full force of the wind, head low down, arms wrapped around him trying to follow the lowering drone of the transport planes, knowing that things must be desperate for planes to be trying to fly in a full Siberian blizzard.
He trudged on sightless, along more streets where all their wooden buildings had been burnt down, across open ground, among other ghosts of soldiers who were trudging forward into the white vastness of the plains, hundreds of them, through the yards of destroyed sm
allholdings. He could see nothing. Now it was the sense that he was walking out into the vastness to die, to let go of everything and accept his end.
It was then he thought he heard the noise of vehicles. He stopped, turned round and tried to peer through the blinding storm. Finally he could just make out the yellow headlights of what he was sure was a German truck.
Explosions were coming from the centre of the city and up on the banks of the Volga, dark clouds billowing into the permanent night sky.
Now the anger was rousing Franz to act. Forcing himself to move he risked everything by pulling off the different levels of gloves he had so he could get a grip on his pistol as the trucks were coming straight towards him.
The plan had been organised in seconds. Its success depended on managing to stay conscious long enough to give him time to put his revolver back into its holster and then clip it shut.
It was into his left shoulder he pushed in the gun’s barrel before pulling the trigger.
The impact knocked him backwards. He half twisted, his hands trailing over the snow as the blood started to flow down the left sleeve of his coat, glistening then in the approaching headlights.
With everything that was left Franz managed to stand long enough in control as he holstered his revolver, clipped it closed before he collapsed onto the snow right in front of the first truck.
MEN OF SNOW
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PART THREE
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CHAPTER 8
‘You never go there, especially by yourself. Are you listening Leon? It’s too dangerous. Far too dangerous,’ his mother had often told him, ‘There are too many stories of people going into the forest and never coming out again. Nobody knows how far it stretches to the East and North. For all we know it could be Finland or Russia. So you keep out of it, out of it.’
But his imagination overcame her warnings. It had allowed the idea to become the plan leaving him with a restless night of broken sleep and strange dreams.
In the morning for once it felt as though nothing had changed. He was still determined to follow the plan through.
After school he walked with his group who as usual were complaining about their teachers. One by one they broke off from the others to go down the side streets to where they lived. Eventually Leon was by himself and the excitement was building, especially when he took the path that lead to the gardens on the edge of town. From there across a farmer’s field he could see the first dense lines of trees shifting slightly in the afternoon breeze.
Now he was having to force himself. He knew the next steps would be the hardest. He glanced about and except for an old man tending his garden some distance away there was nobody else around.
The first thing was the contrast between light and shade. He had crossed the farmer’s field and found a narrow path that led into the forest. Immediately the smells were different as well as the flickered darkness. He was glad of the path because on either side the thin branches of the pine trees came low to the ground which would have meant him having to crawl and stoop to get anywhere. There were bird sounds, creaking branches, the wind fluttering the bright green needles at the top of the trees, the spring’s new growth. Also he could hear his excited breaths as he followed the path littered with old pine cones.
As he went on the trees became taller. He could hardly see their swaying tops above him. The smell of the earth and the sap of the pines filled him with a strange pleasure that made him momentarily think of Lola and the way she had hitched up her skirt and pushed it inside her belt. The smell of the forest was a provocation. His limbs felt heavy and his heart was beating faster.
As he reached the edge of a small clearing where the afternoon light suddenly exposed the stumps of trees and new ferns that were curled into themselves surrounded by light green grass, he heard voices.
For a moment he did not know what to do. He remembered the stories of criminal gangs. The fear started shivering through him. Quickly he glanced around. He could not tell from which direction the
voices were coming. He was suddenly trapped, scared whichever way he took would lead him straight into whoever was approaching.
Leon went up to a tall tree at the edge of the clearing and started to climb. The branches were so close together it made his ascent easier but at the same time he had to push through tight gaps to move up to the next level. His face and body were covered in pine needles and bits of bark. He was sweating and panting with the effort as the voices were coming nearer. The branches cut his hands and knees. He had to have his eyes closed as bark dust showered over him.
Then he stopped. He had broken through the high canopy and could see the tops of other trees moving and swaying in the breeze that forced him to grip as tight as he could, feeling the tree bend from side to side. Looking down made him feel sick. The clearing seemed so far away as did the three men who appeared from the path he had been following.
The first thing he noticed from his high perch was one of the men had his wrists tied with a thick rope. Around that was another rope that the man in front of him was holding so he could pull the other forward. The man following was taller than the other two and had a sack strapped to his back. It seemed to Leon it was this man who was doing the talking as they stopped in the middle of the clearing.
He had no idea what was happening but quickly felt that it was something bad. It was the man who had his wrists tied. The whole time he had his head lowered as though studying the ground in front of him. It was that position more than anything that scared Leon, that and the hope he would not be noticed on his high perch above the three of them.
The man who was tied went down on his knees. The tall one opened the sack and took out an axe. The other one suddenly shouted something to make the man on his knees lower his head, forced further down by the others boot.
Leon had a rush of sickness and panic, gripping hold of the swaying tree so his hands and arms hurt with the effort. He could not hear what was being said beneath him. He wanted to turn away but found himself held by what was happening below.
The man was dragged to one of the tree stumps and had his chin balanced on its edge. Light moved back and forth across the clearing as the tall one moved to the side, lifted the axe and brought it down with full force before raising it a second time and repeating the action.
Leon was suddenly trembling, trying to control his tears. There was a strange silence then. The one with the axe lifted the severed head that was dripping with blood and shoved it into the sack. Then the two of them lifted at either end what was left of the body and carried it off further into the forest.
Tears rolled down Leon’s face. He was grasping for breath. He wanted everything to be alright, to be before he came into the forest, to have never decided to have come here. He knew he had wet himself because the inside of his trousers was warm and sticky. He could not move. He stayed there clinging to the tree until the tall one came back for the sack. Leon watched him walk off into the shadow of the trees.
Evening clouds rolled over the sun. At last Leon felt his arms weakening, crying and muttering to himself he started down the tree. His body was shaking in quick spasms until he crumpled onto the ground and lay there, his sobs sounding out in the forest’s quietness.
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The horse had its four legs blown off below the knees and yet for a few crazy seconds it carried on galloping across the plain, its cavalry rider with half his head missing somehow propped upright with his arms stiffly by his side as the horse careered forward, a wildness in its huge eyes before it crashed to the ground with its rider under it.
Leon had watched the horse galloping forward on its four blooded stumps, the Polish cavalryman tied like
a puppet to its saddle, the spliced off head like a two dimensional cut out of this soldier.
Leon had known that everything was finished the moment he saw it starting, saw the cavalry charging the German tanks over the other side of the river, sabres drawn, flags flying, voices raised as they charged flesh against metal, as most got no closer than a few hundred yards before they were blown to pieces.
From the ditch beside the river bank others from the town of Volnus were watching with him. Nobody spoke, just watched as though Poland was disappearing before their eyes, as though history was smashing into the present in a way that destroyed all of the past in one military exchange.
‘There never has been a Poland. It’s always been a diplomatic fantasy. We’re not here. Poles are like men of snow, always melting,’ his uncle had once said.
Beside him in the ditch were two middle aged women.
‘Mother of God, mother of God, mother of God,’ one of them started repeating as the tanks disappeared to the north and more German troops approached the town.
Leon smelt the dried earth against his face as he crawled back down, smelt the hot haze from the crops in the distance suffused under the stench of the fires that were spreading from the town.
‘The Poles are as anti-Semitic as any nation,’ his father had reminded him, ‘We are the country’s soul, but they would rather live without a soul if it meant getting rid of the Jews.’
He looked along the ditch at all the others hiding there as though they were stuck in another dimension. They were people from yesterday watching the end of what had been their reality, a sudden finish created from the sound of bombs and planes and gun fire and artillery shells and the rumble of tank tracks and the rattle of lorries, all in a few minutes pulled into the vortex of the town until nothing seemed left of it.