Heinrich Gerlach - Breakout at Stalingrad

As the half-track clatters on, he can still hear Steigmann’s grim, hollow laugh ringing out.

It’s already dark by the time Breuer gets back. The glow of a fire shines out from the area above the gorge where the staff’s vehicles are parked. As he draws closer, a ghostly scene unfolds: smashed crates, stacks of files, boots, tarpaulins, underwear, oddments of uniforms and books have all been heaped up into a huge pile, out of which tall flames are leaping. All around the bonfire, men are engaged in a whirling frenzy of destruction. A constant round, fetching more and more ‘fuel’ from the lorries. Crockery, commendations for awards, appointment books lie strewn on the ground, all just impediments on this path to annihilation, to oblivion! Chuck the lot! Sergeant Major Harras, bathed in the red glow of the blaze, is the devil orchestrating this witches’ dance.

‘Don’t let me catch anyone trying to hide anything from me!’ he bellows. ‘Everyone only gets to keep the clothes he’s standing up in, understood?’ Unold is also mooning about amid the pandemonium. His head looks like a skull.

‘Get rid of it all!’ he shouts hysterically. ‘Everything off the trucks! Only ammunition goes in the lorries – troops, food and ammo! Just the bare necessities!’

Lakosch watches as a staff clerk drags a crate off into the darkness. He jumps over to lend a hand lugging it to the bonfire, where he breaks it open. Two silk shirts are consigned to the flames, followed by a hood hairdryer… Sergeant Major Harras suddenly swoops down on him like a hawk.

‘What are you thinking of, man! Have you gone mad?’

‘What?’ asks Lakosch in amazement. ‘Didn’t you just tell us, Sergeant Major…’

‘On your bike, you! I’ll sort this myself!’ But Lakosch ignores him and goes on rummaging through the crate.

‘But surely the Sergeant Major wouldn’t want to get his hands dirty!’ he says, feigning friendly solicitude. He hurls Harras’s top boots into the fire, along with his elegant peaked cap, a pair of soft leather gloves and a manicure set… Hullo, what’s that down there? Yes, indeed, it’s an officer’s dagger! Into the fire it goes! By now, a group of men has gathered round to watch the entertainment, grinning with Schadenfreude. The sergeant major stands there with clenched fists, his eyes bulging from their sockets, but says nothing. All at once, he turns on his heel and melts into the night.

Breuer goes to his car. He catches Lakosch in the act of loading a crate into the boot. ‘For Christ’s sake, Lakosch!’ the first lieutenant shouts at him.

‘Well, Lieutenant, sir, I thought…,’ his driver stammers sheepishly. ‘I… I can easily fit it in!’

‘Not there, you don’t!’ Breuer says. ‘Grab hold of the other end!’ Together, they carry the crate over to the funeral pyre of the unit’s belongings and empty the contents into the fire. Breuer stares into the flames, watching letters and photos turn to ashes before his eyes… Inside, he’s on fire as well. Bonfire of the vanities, he muses ruefully. All the things that have a thousand happy memories attached to them, everything that connected him to home, the flames consume the lot, erase it for ever. Farewell to his homeland, farewell to peace, farewell to his past! The thread of life back to that world is cut for all time… Is there any going back now?

In the bunker, Breuer cracks open the last bottle of Cointreau. He’d bought it from a sutler last August, intending to take it home with him on his next leave. An aluminium cup is handed round and a delicate, exquisite aroma fills the room, a throwback to past times. Leave – My God! Would they ever get leave again?

Suddenly the door opens. It’s the clerk from the registry. He gazes wildly round the room before lighting upon Breuer.

‘Lieutenant, sir! What about the operational orders? I… that is, you don’t want me to burn all of them, surely? Do you have any room in your car?’

Breuer can’t believe his ears. ‘What, you want me to… for heaven’s sake, man! Here we are ditching the last of our stuff and you want me to save your stupid files… Burn all that rubbish as fast as you can! No operational orders are any good for the situation we’re in!’

The man appears not to understand. With a vacant expression, he drains the cup as it’s passed to him. As he’s leaving, he mumbles under his breath, ‘But they’re the operational orders… classified papers!’

The telephone rings. Breuer is summoned to the chief of staff’s office again. There, he finds Unold poring over a map with the divisional commander.

‘I want you to get on the move straight away, Breuer,’ says Unold in his customary state of alarm. ‘Look, this road here… it runs for thirty kilometres to the Don. We don’t know if it’s passable or if the Russians have already cut it. You need to find out immediately! Endrigkeit will go with you! Be thorough, mind! There a lot riding on this – everything, in fact.’

It’s half-past midnight. The landscape is shimmering white in the moonlight. It’s bitterly cold. Breuer waits beside his car, ready for the off. He pulls on a woollen balaclava while Lakosch helps him on with his greatcoat. Corporal Herbert suddenly rushes up, his eyes filled with horror.

‘Lieutenant, sir! In the squad bus… he’s lying there! Oh God!’

‘What’s happened? Who’s lying where? Get a grip, man!’

‘On the bus… the registry clerk… he’s just shot himself.’

On the western perimeter of the snow-covered aerodrome at Gumrak, the chimneys of a row of earth bunkers built by the Russians were still smoking. The staff headquarters of the Second Army Corps, the division spearheading the siege of Stalingrad, was situated in the northern sector of this subterranean settlement. On the twenty-second of November, after being driven from its previous command post on the Don by Russian tanks, the High Command of the Sixth Army had moved into a bunker complex just south of here.

In one of the northern bunkers, lit by a small skylight in the roof, sat an officer of the general staff, absorbed in his work. On the trestle table in front of him lay a map on a scale of 1:100,000 showing the region between the Volga and the Don. It was covered with black lines, arrows and symbols. This was the army’s plan for a breakout to the southwest. The officer diligently put the finishing touches to the plan with a few strokes of his charcoal pencil. ‘It must work,’ he murmured to himself. ‘Of course it’ll work!’

Behind him, his batman smoothed down a straw bedding sack on a rough earth bench and laid a brown army-issue blanket over it. He put another couple of logs into the field oven and then began fiddling with a metal implement in the corner.

‘So, Müller, another catch, eh?’ enquired the officer in passing, without glancing up from his work.

‘Three in one fell swoop this time, Colonel!’ replied the batman. His red-cheeked face cracked into a sly smile, as he proudly brandished a knapsack emitting a faint squeaking noise. ‘That’s seven all told in three days!’

‘Now we’re on half rations, the mice’ll be feeling the pinch pretty soon, too,’ grumbled the colonel, adding a new arrow to the map.

‘The little creatures even had a go at the general’s boots yesterday,’ said the batman as he was leaving the room. From the staircase outside came the sound of steps and a large figure eased through the narrow doorway, bringing with it a blast of cold air. It was General von Seydlitz, the commander of the Second Corps. Taking off his cap, he ran his hand over his grizzled white hair, cut short on the sides. Then he took off his camouflage jacket, revealing a tunic bearing a Knight’s Cross with oak leaves. To judge from his lined face, the general was about fifty, though his upright horseman’s bearing, the fruit of a long, binding family tradition of equestrianism, made him appear considerably younger.