Heinrich Gerlach - Breakout at Stalingrad

They came to the city suburbs. Broad streets full of ragged soldiers drifting about aimlessly. To the right and left stood the dead, windowless façades of five- and six-storey apartment blocks. That was how Warsaw had looked in the winter of ’39. War left the same traces of death and destruction everywhere. The street was cordoned off by a barricade of sandbags, behind which stood sentries with steel helmets and rifles, a very odd sight in the midst of the general confusion. The circular building off to the right here, with people in front of it, was the theatre. Okay, if need be they could try to find some space in there. Breuer’s Romanian guide, a good-natured man with a broad peasant face, turned off into a side street jammed with columns of army vehicles. A ramshackle gateway, the small courtyard of a joinery, piles of rubble, the close-packed remains of vehicles. It was also damned difficult, Breuer found, judging the depth and distance of deep ruts and holes with his one eye. In front of a partially destroyed wall, a set of dangerously rickety wooden steps led down into a second courtyard set on a lower level, surrounded by the ruins of tall, red-brick buildings.

The Romanian disappeared through a cellar entrance half hidden by a heap of debris. After a while he returned, followed by a German officer wearing a sleeveless lambskin jerkin over his uniform jacket.

‘Ah, Herr Breuer – yes, of course I remember! Back in Kletskaya, wasn’t it? Take a seat? If only you’d come yesterday! Everywhere’s jam-packed today. We’re even having to constantly bunk up to make room. The general’s sharing a hole with five others…’

Breuer was bitterly disappointed. Merely in order to say something else, he enquired: ‘So what does your general reckon to the situation? What’s he planning on doing?’

First Lieutenant Schulz shrugged his shoulders.

‘His plan? He’s going to shoot himself! What else are we supposed to do? Hang on, though, something’s just occurred to me – the tank destroyer company that was billeted here yesterday; I think they’re from your division!

He proceeded to lead Breuer down a long corridor to a dimly lit and crowded cellar room. Men with bare torsos or lower bodies were attending to their wounds, getting bandaged up or warming their frostbitten limbs by the glow of a stove. An adjoining room was a little brighter. Here, too, a fire had been lit amid the rubble. Officers were sitting round a table, almost all with visible injuries. From a faded armchair that some staff must have left behind rose a familiar figure – Captain Eichert. He seemed to have aged many years. His face was even more angular than before, while his mop of dull blond hair had grown even more unruly above his bulbous forehead. A brief glimmer of pleasure flashed in his grey eyes.

‘Oh, Breuer, it’s you! Of course, there’s always room for you! I haven’t forgotten how you rescued me from the clutches of the pen-pushers. The gentlemen from the military court’ll be mightily pissed off now, I’ll bet!’

He chuckled mirthlessly, but his laughter soon dissolved into a hacking cough. He then introduced the other officers. There was a junior doctor by the name of Korn, an animated chap with dark hair; Breuer clocked him as a sound-looking bloke. And Chief Paymaster Jankuhn – who, it later transpired, came from Danzig – cut an impressive figure with his clear gaze and firm handshake. Breuer already knew the adjutant, Lieutenant Bonte, from before. As for First Lieutenant Schmid, one of the company commanders, there wasn’t much of him to be seen, since his face was disfigured by several large scabs, the legacy of hand-grenade shrapnel. He couldn’t lie down and could barely sit. The other company commander, First Lieutenant Findeisen, was regarded as some kind of legendary figure. He had been wounded five times in quick succession, and every time he had avoided damage to any vital organs by a whisker. Most recently, a machine-gun bullet had knocked out six of his teeth; his head had swollen to the size of a pumpkin. When he spoke, it looked like he was trying to blow the words out through a straw.

Breuer thanked First Lieutenant Schulz, sent his Romanian guide back to fetch his two companions, threw his belongings into a corner and sat down on the bench-end that was offered to him. When he told them about Dierk, a loud ‘hurrah’ went up; they’d all thought he was dead.

‘You shee!’ Findeisen slurred through his smashed teeth. ‘What am I olways sayig? Bad weeds grow tall!’

And he ought to know, if anyone did. He’d fought his way through from Gumrak single-handed, on foot through the Russian armoured advance, with shrapnel and a bullet lodged in his leg.

‘So, tell us, Breuer,’ said Captain Eichert. ‘What’s your take on all the shit that’s going down here, you old staff warhorse?’

Breuer gave a sketchy account of the events of the past few days. ‘You see, I probably know less than you do,’ he concluded, ‘but for what it’s worth, my opinion is: we’re finished. The game’s up.’

Captain Eichert had rested his chin on his hands.

‘Well, we’re definitely done for, no question about that,’ he said. ‘You can’t imagine what we’ve been through! The cellars round here are full of our people. Old and new, seriously wounded, lightly wounded, and the rest. But they’re all done in. None of them have any fight left in them. Even so, Breuer, I still can’t quite believe it. It’s unheard of for more than an entire army to fall to pieces like this! We hear the official army communiqués on the radio every day. Right now, they keep going on about successful counter-attacks. You just wait, they might well still pull it off! Don’t you remember some of the amazing things we managed back in the day in Belgium and France? If they could only drop one or two airborne divisions back on the River Chir, then we’d have our bridgehead! Look at this: surely Paulus wouldn’t write stuff like this if all hope was lost!’

Breuer took the slip of paper that the captain proffered him. It read:

We all know the threat that looms if the Sixth Army should cease its campaign of resistance. Certain death awaits most of us, either from an enemy bullet or from the hunger and cold and cruel mistreatment in Siberian POW camps. There is only one course open to us, therefore: to fight to the last bullet. We shall continue to hope for our imminent liberation, and operations to this effect are already underway.

Breuer glanced up questioningly and then looked again at the message. The army communiqué was dated the twentieth of January 1943.

‘If there was no truth in that,’ said First Lieutenant Schmid, ‘then surely Paulus would have surrendered long ago, I’m sure of it. Hitler himself would order capitulation – yes, the Führer himself! He’s concerned about the life of every individual. Remember after the Polish campaign, and the war against France, too, how relieved he was that there had been so few German casualties? He wouldn’t go and sacrifice an entire army to complete annihilation. It’s completely out of the question!’

Eichert nodded. ‘Just wait and see,’ he said. ‘Something’s going to happen, right at the eleventh hour: some miracle!’

The others sat around despondently. Breuer did not know what to say in response. He heard their words as if from far away. How alien these people had become to him, with all their fanciful thoughts! Couldn’t they see that a whole world was coming to an end here?

It was getting dark by the time Görz and Dierk finally arrived. The doctor examined the lieutenant and re-dressed his wounds and searched out a quiet sleeping place for him somewhere on the flagstones. Finally, he wanted to take a look at Breuer’s eye injury. He carefully loosened the blood-encrusted emergency dressing.