Heinrich Gerlach - Breakout at Stalingrad

‘Colonel… General, sir! We can’t go on like this! They’re laying down heavy artillery and mortar fire on us up on the hill… it’s never-ending! We’ve taken twenty per cent casualties already. If we stay up there for another two hours, the whole battalion’ll be wiped out!’

‘I thought as much. I knew we’d have no joy trying to hold that position,’ the general replied, not without a hint of schadenfreude. ‘No one can hold out for long up on that bleak hill. First the Russians take it, then we do. And every time the enterprise costs unsustainable losses – but there’s no telling the army that, oh no!’ he added, finally remembering that they were all in this together. ‘I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve tried suggesting – and the Corps backs me up on this – that the front line should be moved back down to the bottom of the hill. Nothing doing! comes the answer. Hitler’s orders! I can hardly go to the High Command and make the same request.’

‘Look, Eichert, I’ll get on to the army right away and see what can be done,’ Colonel von Hermann, himself very shocked, told the captain, before ordering him back to his post. But before he could deliver on his promise, a message arrived from the combat group: ‘Hill 124.5 has had to be abandoned in the face of overwhelming enemy infantry forces. Unable to evacuate all of our wounded!’

Unold’s hands started shaking, all his sense of superiority suddenly dissipated and his composure blown away like chaff in the wind. He telephoned the Wehrmacht and asked to speak to the chief of staff. He gave a detailed account of the situation and proposed moving the front line back down to the base of the hill.

Then he put the general on the line: ‘…No, the Russians won’t gain any advantage from it! They couldn’t hold it either… Any time we like we can just blow them off it with artillery, just like they did to us… Yes, we’ve still got plenty of ammunition for that!’

He then handed back to Colonel Unold. Presently, on the other end of the line, it was none other than General Schmidt, the army’s chief of staff, to whom Unold found himself speaking.

‘Yes, sir,’ the colonel said, and the others in the room saw the colour slowly drain from his face, ‘Yes, sir, General!’ He reinforced this last ‘Yes, sir’ with a brief, tense bow as he stood there holding the phone. After a few minutes, he put down the receiver. Taking a deep breath, he turned to Major Kallweit, who had just come in to report that they’d taken out the last of the Russian tanks that had broken through.

‘So, Kallweit,’ he announced breezily, ‘new orders for you straight from the top! At nightfall, your tanks are to take Hill 124.5 and hold it until the infantry arrives at first light.’

For an instant, the major stood there as if thunderstruck. And then Kallweit, the imperturbable Kallweit of all people, found his nerves failing him for the very first time.

‘What!?’ he roared. ‘That’s sheer bloody madness! At night ? We’re not bloody cats; we can’t see in the dark! And when the morning comes, they’ll pick us off before we even realize what’s happening!’

The colonel shrugged his shoulders.

‘It’s no use getting upset,’ he said. ‘Orders are orders.’

By now, though, the major was in full flight.

‘Fuck orders!’ he screamed, abandoning all propriety. ‘The top brass has no idea about tank ops! Letting a bunch of infantry tossers wank around with tanks is like… Look, you could afford to do that on manoeuvres, maybe, but not here in this shitstorm!’

He stormed out without saluting and slammed the door behind him.

By nightfall, First Lieutenant Welfe, who had been with the battalion on his left flank during the attack, was able to report that he’d reached the former main defensive line. Flushed with this success, he immediately called the commander of his division to inform him. ‘Yes, General, sir, a complete success! The First Battalion was particularly brave. The battalion commander led the charge, holding his baton… He was killed, unfortunately… Shot through the hand, then when he was being transported back on a tank, they got him in the stomach too. He died at the dressing station. Yes, indeed, a great shame… Otherwise? Around six per cent dead, ten per cent wounded. Yes, sir, thank you! Why’s that, General? Oh, right! Right… Very well, then… All the best… General, sir!’

The lieutenant replaced the receiver and, removing the monocle from his eye, polished it absent-mindedly and blinked as he stared into space. His face was pale. Colonel von Hermann was keen to learn the latest.

‘So, Welfe – what does your CO have to say? Is he happy?’

‘Yes, very,’ replied the lieutenant in a deadpan voice. ‘He said how much he appreciated all we’ve done, and wished us farewell and all the best.’

‘Farewell?’

‘Yes, he’s leaving. The staff’s being flown out! On the eighth – for redeployment elsewhere!’

During the night, the tanks captured the high ground. And by the morning of the following day it was back in Russian hands again. The Panzer regiment had five total losses, while eight more tanks were severely damaged but capable of being salvaged. The Eichert Battalion suffered forty per cent losses, either dead or wounded, and another fifteen per cent disabled by frostbite. The only success of the day was that the army top brass now adopted the division’s suggestion and moved the front line down to the base of the hill. The Austrian general expressed his heartfelt thanks to Colonel von Hermann for having achieved that.

Mission accomplished for von Hermann’s division.

Lakosch sat agonizing over a letter. In front of him lay a pile of banknotes. This time, he’d decided to send his mother all his ready cash. After all, what was he supposed to do with money out here? There wasn’t anything to buy. Lieutenant Wiese, meanwhile, had his nose in a book that Padre Peters had brought him. It was Tolstoy’s Resurrection . First Lieutenant Breuer was playing the mouth organ. Every time he picked up the little instrument, he remembered his leave-taking that time, during his last spell of leave, at the blackout-darkened station in the small town in East Prussia he called home. His young son, Joachim, seven years old, had shyly pressed the little brown cardboard box into his hand at the last minute. ‘Take it with you, Daddy, so you can play music in Russia and make the soldiers happy. I can’t play it!’ ‘Go on, take it!’ his wife whispered to him. ‘Otherwise he’ll cry his eyes out.’ Smiling, Breuer had taken the box and slipped it into his greatcoat pocket. And there it had lain, forgotten, until now, the dark days leading up to Christmas. One evening, he’d pulled it out and tried playing it. And now nothing on earth could have persuaded him to part with the shiny little instrument.

He was playing an étude by Chopin. He only knew it by the title ‘Tristesse’. It was a favourite of his. He had it at home on a record, sung by a tenor in French:

The wartime winter of 1940–41 in Paris. From every café and bar came the sound of chanteuses singing this melancholic air and weeping. But for German soldiers back then, life was still a bed of roses. All past now, gone for ever… Lieutenant Wiese hummed along softly with the melody. The lamp swayed gently on its thin wire. Its flickering glow flitted over the decorations on the bunker wall, momentarily illuminating the golden light radiating down from joyous heaven onto the tranquil Madonna in Grünewald’s picture. The run-up to Christmas…