Heinrich Gerlach - Breakout at Stalingrad

A new spasm of unrest convulses the heaving mass of those who have been thrown together here from all over the place, men who have been wrenched from their final moorings and stripped of their last bit of security. But no one makes a dash for the aircraft; order hasn’t yet broken down to that extent. The dispatch officer has shot down two men already today. There’s a tussle among the group to try to form an orderly queue, and to secure a place at the head of it. One man has detached himself from the crowd. Egotism impels him to appoint himself leader. ‘Line up in ranks of three!’ he shouts. ‘There are more planes coming! Either we all get out of here or none of us will!’ But it’s all to no avail. The men are beyond the reach of reason. They start pushing forward again on the right – five, six, ten abreast. This enrages those on the left. ‘Shove off! Get back in line!’ they yell.

Pandemonium ensues. ‘What? Whaaat?… I was here long before you…’ – ‘I’m a colonel, sir! A colonel!’ – ‘Smack the bastard in the mouth!’ A flurry of punches are thrown. Yells of fury and pain. The sounds of splintering wood and of groaning bodies thudding into the snow. ‘Ow! Ow! … Aaaargh…!’ Boot heels stamp on the fallen as they lie on the ground, crushing the life out of them.

Stalingradski airfield has become an arena for combat between wild beasts. What price humanity now? Or comradeship, discipline and honour? Or sympathy or brotherly love? Are people nothing but animals? Though even animals have a sense of loyalty and gratitude. What is man?

Surreptitiously, meanwhile, another phalanx of men, three abreast, has formed to one side. The dispatch officer selects a dozen or more soldiers from their ranks. They can’t believe their luck. They run pell-mell like some deranged mob for the plane, which has started to rev its engines. They tug, shove, tumble and scramble their way up the ladder. The radio operator, who is standing in the cabin door, lays into the knot of men with his fists.

‘Get back there, you pack of filthy swine! You’ll tear this old crate apart if you’re not careful! The pilots are officers, I’ll have you know…’

The dispatch officer has rushed up too. Swearing volubly, he tugs apart the tangle of men at the aircraft steps. Breuer gives a sudden start. The person in the leather coat there, isn’t that…? But by now all twelve of the men have vanished into the aircraft cabin. Their faces appear, one by one, in the murky windows. Two soldiers from the unit detailed to pick up air-dropped food deliveries trot up. The dispatch officer points to the man lying in the snow with his head on his kitbag. By now, he’s stopped screaming. They lift him up and carry him over to the aircraft. The radio operator bends down.

‘What’s all this then?’ he asks, nonplussed. ‘Since when do we fly corpses out?’ Only now do the soldiers take a closer look at their burden. Then they glance up at one another. ‘Oh shit!’ one of them murmurs. The dead man arcs through the air into the snow as they fling him aside. He doesn’t need to fly out; he’s gone home already.

The plane’s engines roar, its propellers whipping up clouds of snow as the big machine shudders and starts to roll forward on its splayed undercarriage. Suddenly a man bursts out from the crowd and bounds forward. What’s his game? Has he lost his mind? At full stretch, he lunges desperately at the departing aircraft’s tail end, and somehow finds a handhold. His legs flail wildly in the air. The dispatch officer’s hoarse cry of rage mingles with the howl of the engines. He chases after the lumbering machine, which hasn’t lifted off yet, stops and raises his pistol, and then fires – once, twice. Up ahead, a soldier on the back of a truck unshoulders his rifle and shoots… The man falls from the aircraft and is hit by the passing tailplane; his body somersaults a couple of times and then comes to rest, motionless.

Even though he’s still sitting down, Breuer feels his legs starting to shake. And that’s not just the result of the frost that’s slowly creeping up his body. The euphoric feeling of hope he once had has fallen away, flaked off him like a substandard paint job. Had he really imagined that he’d simply be able to board a plane here like he was getting on a train? That he’d be able to walk out of the catastrophe at Stalingrad like he was leaving a bad play? He can feel all the energy draining out of his limbs. But behind this impotence, he has the first inkling, albeit still only slight, that ‘Stalingrad’ has already transcended space and time, that there’s no longer any escape from it even if one went to the ends of the earth, and that unbreakable bonds now tie him to the hundreds of thousands still here – those who are still alive and suffering, the mistreated and the betrayed, and the dead. Anyone who survives these gruesome events unfolding on the snowy fields beside the Volga will henceforth carry Stalingrad with them throughout their entire lives. Minutes spent in the arms of their beloved wife – Stalingrad! The sight of their children’s sparkling eyes – Stalingrad! There’ll be no happiness and no tears without Stalingrad; no achievements, no work and no striving without Stalingrad. No rest, no sleep, no more dreams that don’t involve Stalingrad! And when this life finally comes to be weighed in the balance at the End of Days, the dead of Stalingrad will also pass judgement. And every thought and every deed that was not aimed at overcoming that ludicrous, destructive spirit that insisted upon the mass slaughter of Stalingrad as some ghastly ritual of a barbarian cult of idolatry would be repudiated.

As yet, Breuer only has a faint inkling of all this. And he struggles to fight back this thought and summon up his strength for the fight that still awaits him.

‘Total bloody shambles!’ says the major next to him again. ‘This morning about twenty planes took off from here. Almost all of them empty. There was hardly anyone here for them to take. But still the idiots wouldn’t let you through without a countersigned chit.’

‘Is that a bad injury?’ Breuer enquires absent-mindedly, keeping a lookout all the while for the doctor. If only he’d come back! Assuming he was planning on returning at all, that is. What would happen if he didn’t? There are hundreds of men massing there now.

‘Oh, it’s still just about working,’ replies the major, smiling complacently. ‘Whole arm got ripped open. Real bloody mess, I can tell you!’

Wheeeeuw— whumm! Jesus, what was that? Artillery fire! That’s all they need! The sky grows ever more dull and grey. Snowflakes drift over the airfield. Another droning noise overhead. An aircraft looms up, large and grey, out of the mist, and banks several times over the landing strip, tighter and tighter each time… Everyone is staring up at it intently. Is it going to land? Breuer leaps to his feet. Where the hell has that bloke with the passes got to? There, the plane has lowered its landing gear and is coming in to land! With its engines roaring, it thunders low over their heads. The marshals on the ground wave their flags to direct it in. Up ahead, one of the ‘bodies’ lying in the snow suddenly raises himself up and staggers across the airfield, waving his arms. The aircraft, which is seconds from touching down, hurtles towards him. Everyone on the airfield is yelling in horror. One of the plane’s main wheels clips the man; he spins round a couple of times before slamming to the ground. The aircraft, thrown off course by the impact, makes far too heavy a landing, breaking off its undercarriage. It pancakes onto the landing strip, its fuselage screeching as it ploughs into the snow. A crash-landing. End of story.

Gumrak’s days are numbered. Now that artillery fire is raining down on the area from the west as well, and columns of men and vehicles are streaming out of the village, there can be little doubt on the matter. Anyone who still has the use of his legs, even if only very approximately, has set off on the hopeless journey to Stalingrad. The rest have no choice but to stay behind. In the final days, some thirty to forty men have still been flown out daily. Yet fifteen hundred troops remain holed up in the bunkers, railway carriages and houses there, as well as in the POW camp on the outskirts and the barracks and tents in the nearby balka . What will become of them when the medical personnel also pull out someday soon? The doctors shrug their shoulders and say nothing. Their silence is answer enough.