Alexander tossed the knife on the ground and leaned back against the wall. His deep breaths grew softer until his head slouched. His chest heaved up and down but much more relaxed now that he had fallen comatose. Wilhelm’s senses dulled. He could no longer smell smoke or the rotting corpses of the city. His hearing was next. Everything was distorted and slow. His vision was blurry, and the black dots in the corners grew until they covered his entire sight. When he woke, he had no idea how long he had passed out for. To him, it had been a blink, but it was no longer night, telling Wilhelm at least four hours must have gone by.
Alexander was awake too, and judging by his face, he had been waiting for Wilhelm to wake. He used his hand to mimic writing. Wilhelm nodded and removed his journal from his knapsack. He offered the journal and the pencil to Alexander. He took it and said what Wilhelm assumed was thank you. Alexander had poor penmanship, and the words were all connected in a singular line. At the end of the page of a long letter, he signed his name.
“Helen,” Alexander said and returned the journal.
Wilhelm nodded. Even not being able to read a single word of the letter, he knew what it was. It was a goodbye. If Alexander died, if the Soviets lost the battle, he wanted to give his beloved Helen closure. Wilhelm wanted the same for Hannah. He wrote Hannah’s name on the top of a new page. As the words flowed from pencil to page, tears filled the corners of his eyes. He wrote memories, promises, and wishes. Conveying his feelings for her on one page was an impossible task. But most of all, he wanted Hannah to know how much she had changed his life. Being able to be with her for as long as he had been made him feel much older than the twenty-three years he was. The years with Hannah had meant more to him than twenty or thirty years without her ever could.
“Look to the stars and you will find me there.”
Wilhelm signed his name and stared at the letter. He tore the page from his journal and wrote his address far more legible than any word in the letter. It would go nowhere if no one could decipher where to send it. The Soviet and the German exchanged letters, locking eyes. They had made a solemn vow to seek out the other’s spouse.
They ran short of food rations, and the water they drank from the dripping ceiling was far from sanitary. The cauterization of their wounds had worked, and they were no longer bleeding, but they had exponentially increased their chances of contracting an infection. The deck was stacked against them, and neither Stalingrad nor death fell for bluffs. They examined their wounds every hour for signs of infection. The gun and artillery fire were now nothing more than annoying houseflies. It was the buzzing of the Luftwaffe aircraft, like a swarm of hornets, that truly paralyzed them with fear. The bombs they dropped destroyed entire buildings. The swarming came. Wilhelm and Alexander braced themselves, sheer terror in their eyes. Bombs exploded close by. The floor and the entire building they had taken refuge in shook. The planes were close. Wilhelm and Alexander covered their heads and braced for the explosions.
The neighboring building exploded and sent a fresh wave of concrete dust that filled their lungs. The ceiling of their building broke, varying in size from pebbles to slabs, and crashed down through the floors below. The floor gave way at an angle. The structural integrity of the building was decimated.
Alexander and Wilhelm slid down into the apartment building a level and a room beneath the one they were in and crashed to the floor. The ceiling of the room was on fire, and they would have suffocated had it not been for the massive opening in the outside wall. They crawled like mice through a tight opening. The flames roared and engulfed the wall. They threw their knapsacks through the hole. Alexander crawled through and offered his hand to help Wilhelm. The flames roared with frustration for the two escaping its wrath. They hurried to their feet. The flames shot through the opening in the wall. The opposite wall was open near the top of the 2.4-meter tall room. Alexander tossed both of their knapsacks over and reached for the wall. His cauterized wound stretched as he pulled himself up. Again, he offered his hand and yanked Wilhelm up. The two fell over the other side and landed on a pile of concrete rubble.
They were anything but comfortable and worried the flames would spread, the ceiling would collapse or a bomb would drop right on the building. It was hard to believe the room had once been someone’s home and, in a lot of instances, had become a grave. In the corner, weeks into decay, was a family of four. The apartment was filled with their possessions. With no place to go, they had elected to stay in their home. The smell was putrid, and Wilhelm and Alexander vomited. The refrigerator had been knocked down, and all the food inside had spoiled past the point of stomaching it. They found a mattress covered with blood and bullet holes and dragged it into the fridge. They were able to rest on the mattress with their heads safe from any falling debris. Three years ago, the rotting meat and moldy vegetables would have made Wilhelm puke, but they were nothing in comparison to the corpses in the corner.
The ceiling of the room, as well as the two floors above it, was gone. Rain fell and soaked their clothes. The water burned when it pelted their wounds, the color of which had been a bright pink but was now blotched with disgustingly yellowish-white pus. Its meaning was clear to both. Their wounds were infected, and if they remained untreated, they would die. They were left with nothing but silence and the awful smell of decay. How long he and Alexander had been in the apartments neither knew. But the food rations were long gone and the water too. Dysentery was sure to come from the grime-covered water they had resorted to drinking. Everything they had done only delayed death. But, now, time was up.
Both were deep in memories, but the silence was broken by gunfire from the floor below them. They shifted from the fridge and sat up in heightened alert. They looked at one another. The approaching soldiers meant fatal news for one of them. The muffled voices couldn’t be distinguished as German or Soviet, but the gunshots that followed were a known language to every man. Even quieter than the voices, which had fallen silent, were the footsteps outside the door. Doors on the floor were kicked open. Wilhelm’s pulse quickened. Alexander breathed heavy and quickly, but it offered no relief. They had but seconds until the door was kicked in.
Alexander spoke, but Wilhelm only understood the words “Soviet” and “me.” Wilhelm repeated similar words. If they were Soviet, Alexander would try to stop them from shooting Wilhelm and Wilhelm, the same. “Helen,” Alexander said. Both he and Wilhelm raised their hands in surrender. The door opened. The men wore gray uniforms, not military green. They were German.
“Don’t shoot!” Wilhelm screamed.
But it was too late. A shot fired. The bullet pierced through and out Alexander’s forehead. His head snapped back and fell limp against the fridge—his eyes still open. In a fraction of a second, a life had ended. A second ago, Alexander’s hope of seeing his wife and infant child was alive, but in the next second, Helen had become a widow and Viktor, fatherless. Wilhelm could not take his eyes off him as the Germans cleared the room.
“Are you injured?” a medic asked.
Wilhelm had not cried a single time during his years fighting. He had lost friends and acquaintances, but none had brought him to tears. But with Alexander’s death, he had lost a reflection of himself. The ability to be a human being in an arena of beasts designed to strip compassion, mercy, and empathy seemed an impossible feat. It could have been the Soviets to advance from the firefight below. It could have been Wilhelm dead against an overturned fridge. How many moments of seconds had influenced what had happened? How many missed and hit bullets had brought the series of events that had transpired to being?
Two men grabbed Wilhelm at the elbow and forced him to his feet. Others patted Alexander’s body for supplies and ammunition—grave robbing. Wilhelm had done it, but to him, they had been nameless, almost faceless men. He cocked his head back to look at his fallen friend and comrade one last time. His tears fell freely. Alexander deserved better than to die in some dilapidated wasteland. He did not deserve to have his body rot
against a pile of rubble. A lightheadedness descended upon Wilhelm, and the pain in his chest and shoulder returned. The sunlight blinded him as he was dragged out of the building.
“He needs medical attention,” the medic said to the driver of a truck filled with wounded and perished soldiers.
Wilhelm was lifted onto the truck. Bodies were haphazardly tossed beside him. Arms and legs protruded off the edge. The truck left the damaged and destroyed building and Alexander behind. Wilhelm watched before the pain became too great and he fell to darkness.
Back into the Fray
Wilhelm’s cauterization of his wound had saved his life. The doctors had told him as much. But his fear of getting an infection was well founded, and for the next three weeks, he drifted in and out of consciousness. Each time he awoke, there were different people on the bunks beside him. He was given things to drink, food to eat, pills to swallow, and ointments to rub on his wound. Each day, the pain in his chest and shoulder lessened. After a month, Wilhelm was cleared to return to combat. The devil atop the buildings snickered at his misfortune. There were no empty beds at the aid station. Hundreds had been cleared for combat, and the last thing any returning soldier wanted to see was the truckloads of injured or dead soldiers.
The initial blitzkrieg success that had been the staple of the German advance had, for the first time, failed them. The Soviets had chosen Stalingrad as the city they would defend to the last Russian. Stalin’s words were not an empty threat. During the initial three months of the battle, the Germans had captured ninety percent of the city, but the Soviets stood fast and stout. They also proved to be much more cunning than General Paulus had expected. The heart of winter was upon them, and the freezing winds swept through the city like a fog. The Germans were not prepared for such weather. The battle had started in late August, and none of the Sixth Army nor the others who fought wore clothing to match temperatures that dropped well into the negatives, and with their supply lines cut off, there would be no winter gear coming.
Wilhelm loved winter walks but only when dressed for it. His ears and hands were frozen, yet not numb to the pain the cold brought. He kept his hands buried under his armpits and switched from left to right in pressing his ear against his shoulder. Wilhelm and four other men were shoulder-to-shoulder in a foxhole. Hardly comfortable, it at least blocked the wind.
“They will send reinforcements,” a soldier said.
Whether it was to someone in particular or to himself was unclear.
“No one is coming. We’re cut off,” a soldier said, his mouth exhaling a cloud.
“What do you mean?” the soldier asked.
The desperation in his voice told Wilhelm his first comment had been a pep talk to himself.
“Our supply lines have been cut off. While we charged forward dick first, the Soviets went around the back and, now, they are fucking us in the ass,” the soldier said.
“We need food, winter clothes,” another said.
The pissed-off soldier pointed behind them. “There isn’t anything coming from that way but death,” he said before pausing, “We are in the cauldron now.”
The phrase stuck, and the area they were encircled in became known simply as the cauldron, and it was not a great moniker for the Germans. The pot was cooking. Somewhere, hopefully, Höring was telling Jonas a massive “I fucking told you.” Wilhelm had not seen either of them since August. The foxhole had become home. The four other men crammed inside all looked the same. Most of the time, their faces were buried in their jackets. Throughout random bits of conversation, Wilhelm only picked up last names. There was Schneider, Keller, Bergmann, and Sauer.
“We are in hell,” Schneider said.
“Hell? I think hell is a bit warmer than this,” Keller snapped back.
“Well, give me a ticket,” Sauer said, his face buried in his jacket.
“Your soul is nothing to joke about,” Schneider said.
Schneider was an awful guy to be in a foxhole with. Facing mortality every day was hard, but Schneider took every joke too seriously and threatened people with damnation.
“The devil can have my soul for a Goddamn jacket,” Keller said, letting out an exhale that created a mushroom cloud.
“Keller, you will be sadly mistaken if he takes that offer,” Schneider said.
“Yeah, well, I’ll be mistaken and you’ll still be freezing your ass off,” Keller retorted.
“What about you, Schreiber?” Schneider asked.
He also had the annoying habit of making others choose sides.
“Yeah, I’d sell his soul for a jacket,” Wilhelm joked.
The others laughed, but it quickly turned into coughs.
Wilhelm’s face was past numb, and sitting on the cold, hard ground made his ass grow colder every second. His lips were so chapped that every time he smiled, luckily not often, they split open, and his runny nose had frozen around his nostrils.
“Screw this. Start a fire,” Keller demanded.
“You are not putting a bullseye on my back, asshole,” Bergmann said, lifting his head to look at Keller.
“The explosion will at least be warm, Bergmann,” Keller said.
Such a cruelty to have the means to warm themselves with a fire but could not.
“I’m pissing icicles,” Bergmann said from out of the foxhole with his back to them.
“Don’t piss into the wind, asshole,” Keller said.
“You still go that picture of your wife?” Bergmann asked.
“Why?” Keller asked.
“I need to get hard to piss,” Bergmann said.
“I would sell my soul for that,” Sauer teased.
“Eat shit, Sauer,” Bergmann said as loud as he dared to.
The foxhole filled with laughter, but each time morale increased, the temperature dropped even further. Wilhelm and the Germans no longer fought just the Soviets. They fought winter, and winter was born to Russian parents. The Soviets were raised in it and, more importantly, were dressed for it. The number of soldiers who froze to death was startling. Every morning, fifty or more would be found to have perished overnight. Those living ransacked through the dead for food and clothing. Bodies were stripped naked, and after the ten thousand horses were killed for meat—a sound Wilhelm would never forget—the dead were eaten. No one could judge, for only with your life on the line do you know the depths you would go to save it. The highlight of one night had been Bergmann coming into possession of a blanket large enough to cover the foxhole.
Inside the foxhole, Wilhelm stared at the medal his father had given him—the blood pump of the world.
“What is that?” Sauer asked.
“It is my father’s medal from Verdun,” Wilhelm said.
“Why do you keep looking at it?” Bergmann asked.
“We are in Verdun,” Wilhelm said.
The hole took a solemn turn.
“The meat grinder,” Schneider stated.
“Frozen meat,” Keller corrected.
All the horrific sights, sounds, and smells Wilhelm’s father had seen he now had too.
“Where the hell is our resupply? We have no food! I can’t even find any Goddamn snow that is not covered in blood or urine to melt down!” Keller yelled, kicking the frozen wall.
No one wanted to venture out from the small pockets of safety if not needed. Their time to fight again would come, and each day, the noose the Soviets had wrapped around their necks pulled tighter. Each week, the foxhole grew smaller. Sauer died in his sleep. Schneider came down with such a deep cough that he started puking blood. He was taken out of the fight but died days later. Bergmann was hit by a mortar round and bled out on a pile of concrete and wooden rubble. Keller died eight days later when he found himself in the scope of a sniper.
Each day, bits of humanity were stripped away in order to survive. Wilhelm no longer asked fellow Germans their names. There was a hundred-percent chance one or the other would be dead in the next few hours. One such unfortunate soldier had ha
d to remove his jacket when it caught on fire. By the time he had wandered into the apartment building Wilhelm and twenty others were defending, there was nothing that could be done for him. But morbidly, the fire was welcomed, and they huddled around the eighteen-year-old as his body burned.
Wilhelm and the Germans waited in silence for the Red Army to advance down the destroyed and beaten road in front of the apartment building. When they finally came, they were riddled with lead. But without any time to react, the wall was blasted apart, and Wilhelm was thrusted backward. Those closest to the wall were killed, and those who survived did so with varying degrees of shrapnel.
“Soviets!” one soldier yelled before he was shot down.
Wilhelm’s rifle was too far away for him to reach. His only option was the flamethrower on the dead German’s back. He grabbed it and squeezed the handle. The fury of hell came surging from it. It spread nearly twenty-five meters and scorched the seven Soviets with the flame. Their screams completely overpowered the sound of the roaring flame. Wilhelm had grown accustomed to the cries of war, but there was none more terrifying than a man on fire. Wilhelm had burned seven men to death. It was at that moment Wilhelm realized the devil’s greatest trick of all. War turned soldiers, both Soviet and German, into his minions and demons who did his bidding.
After the bodies stopped squirming, Wilhelm dropped the flamethrower in horror at what he had done. He was the only one alive in the room or on the road. He dashed out of the apartment building and ran back to rejoin the German force. Inside the cauldron, it was clear Stalingrad had been won by the Soviets. It was known by all—from the soldiers to the officers—all the way up to General Paulus.
Forever Fleeting Page 29