Heinrich Gerlach - Breakout at Stalingrad

‘There’s been a major breakthrough,’ he explained. ‘They’ve advanced up to the artillery positions at the Vienna division’s sector. This time we have to throw everything we’ve got at them. You’ve been tasked with leading the counter-attack, Colonel, sir. The Welfe Regiment from the next division down the line’s going to support us.’

The colonel nodded. He remembered Lieutenant Colonel Welfe very well from the days of the withdrawal. With the help of his regiment, he felt sure they’d pull it off.

They duly set to work devising their plan of attack. That same evening the Eichert Battalion, which represented almost the entire infantry strength of the division, was dispatched on lorries, to be placed at the immediate disposal of the division that was so hard-pressed.

Breuer and Padre Peters were passengers in the small car that Lakosch was struggling to steer through the slushy snow. The division’s padre, who was bosom buddies with Lieutenant Wiese, was always a welcome guest in the Intelligence Section’s bunker. He would sit there in the corner, smiling serenely and listening to the others’ conversations. He rarely spoke himself, but when he did it carried real weight and made the men sit up and listen. His face wore an expression of calm assurance that remained unshaken by the changing fortunes of war from one day to the next.

‘Tell me, Padre,’ Breuer asked one day, his eye caught by the Iron Cross First Class pinned to the pastor’s coat, ‘as a military chaplain you’re still a soldier, right? But how can you square the business of war with your duties of pastoral care? As a devout Christian, you ought by rights… Well…’

The padre smiled. ‘What, be a pacifist, you mean? Turn my back on the wicked world so as to remain pure? And stop giving succour and spiritual comfort to men who look death in the face every day – just because I have a moral objection to war? No, Lieutenant, that would be a sin – not just against the men, but the German people as well, whom we’re bound to through thick and thin. The world’s an imperfect place, unfortunately. But you can’t make it better by adhering to some rigid theoretical programme. No, my task is to bear witness to my Christian faith in a hostile environment, to lead by example and hopefully change people and the world in the process.’

That was Padre Peters all over. His words were anything but empty rhetoric. He acted on his pronouncements. Because the medical orderlies who had once been attached to the division had been scattered to the four winds, he no longer had much in the way of official duties. But he made work for himself. He accompanied units on operations or went on foot with his sacristan – since Breuer couldn’t let him have a car – to visit other divisions’ field hospitals and dressing stations. So it was only natural that he should be present when his own division launched this major operation.

In Baburkin, an unpleasant dump of a place, pandemonium had broken out. Filthy, unkempt soldiers, some of them without weapons, were standing or lying around, yelling at one another, brawling with Romanian troops in front of a house, or dragging crates, bundles and sacks out of huts and bunkers. Now and then the mayhem was punctuated by a loud crack of gunfire, which made horses rear up, while all the time heavily laden trucks and sleds raced down the road, splashing through thawed puddles. At the edge of the village, the area around the medical bunker, whose entrance faced the front, was peppered with craters where anti-tank shells had exploded, while sulphurous smoke wafted in yellowy streamers across the snowy expanse. They got the wounded men out quickly. Just then, Kallweit’s tanks rumbled into the village. Padre Peters took his leave. He wanted to get over to the field hospital. Because the road was jammed, Lakosch drove the car behind a house to give it some cover. ‘I reckon you must be short of men over at your division,’ Breuer said to an officer who was loitering there, ‘’cos the place is teeming here!’

‘What’s to be done?’ he said disconsolately, casting a jaded eye over the unruly goings-on. ‘They’re all displaced men, remnants of units that don’t exist any more. They’re running wild! We can’t do anything to stop them. When we tried clearing the rabble out of a couple of the houses, see, a firefight almost broke out! If the army doesn’t step in…’

The staff headquarters of the Vienna division was situated northwest of the village of Baburkin in bunkers clinging high up to the side of a gorge, like swallows’ nests. They could only be reached by a treacherous cliff path, protected by railings. When the army’s emissaries arrived in the grey light of dawn, the site was under fire from some Russian tanks that had broken through. The divisional CO – clearly somewhat relieved, though the cares of the previous day were still etched in his face – bade them welcome to his mountain fortress with a piece of good news: during the night, the Eichert Battalion had succeeded in pushing the enemy back on the left flank and capturing the commanding position on Hill 124.5.

‘Great stuff, that’s our job almost done!’ crowed Unold. ‘Welfe can mop up the rest… And I’m sure you can polish off the last few Russian tanks that are roaming around here, Kallweit!’

Major Kallweit, who had driven on ahead of his unit, nodded sullenly. They hadn’t needed to dispatch his entire force just for that! Colonel von Hermann, who was embarrassed by his chief of operation’s high-handed way of going about things, turned to address the commander of the Austrian division, who, feeling redundant in the midst of this sudden burst of activity, had withdrawn in irritation into the corner. ‘Eichert has carried out his mission by taking the heights, General!’ he told him. ‘I suggest your division take over from the battalion without more ado.’

The general muttered something incomprehensible and turned to leave. He seemed less than overjoyed at the prospect of assuming responsibility.

Breuer found the head of the Austrian intelligence section, a portly, asthmatic captain, in a foul mood. He’d been moved out of his bunker to make room for the staff of Colonel von Hermann. Muttering under his breath, he took his plate of sauerkraut and dumplings and went to sit in a corner. He left it to his adjutant, a first lieutenant with the weather-beaten, strong-boned face of a Tyrolean lumberjack, to bring his visitor up to speed on their current position. Breuer was happy to let him give a long-winded account of what was going on.

‘Our position is… how can I put it? Well, we don’t have a position any more! When we arrived here, our general just pointed out over the snowy fields there, see, and told us: “This is where our new defensive line will be, gentlemen!” So, there and then we just banked the snow up into walls and ramparts… and then, when we got hold of some entrenching tools, we dug ourselves some foxholes, one every ten metres, each for two men – up to chest height, right – and we chucked some rags of clothing from dead Russians in for extra warmth, and later we even managed to construct a couple of small bunkers for the battalion and company staff. So then the Russians launched a rolling attack, shouting through loudspeakers that we as Austrians shouldn’t be letting ourselves get killed for the criminal Hitler. We just laughed at that and let them have it, right? Until they bombarded the hell out of us yesterday with their artillery and those damned Stalin organs, that is… And then their infantry stormed us, wave after wave, and they overran us with tanks… and today, we have to find a way of pushing them back again.’

Up to midday, the Welfe Regiment’s attack made excellent progress. The battalion on the right flank had overrun the Russian positions, destroyed a heavy mortar detachment and almost reached their final objective. The men of the Eichert Battalion were still occupying the high ground. The Austrian general kept putting off the moment when his forces would relieve them. During the afternoon, Captain Eichert stumbled into the bunker, with blood seeping through a fresh dressing round his right arm.