Heinrich Gerlach - Breakout at Stalingrad

Lakosch couldn’t get the encounter with Seliger out of his head. A thick curtain, which Nazi propaganda kept painting with lurid images of horror, stood between him and the mysterious ‘opposing side’. The little driver had been granted a fleeting glimpse behind this curtain just the once, that time when they’d interrogated the Russian airman. Ever since, Lakosch had been longing for the curtain to drop. He wanted clarity, and the truth. There wasn’t a scintilla of doubt in his mind any longer that everything that Harras and the private had reported about their time behind the Russian lines was a pack of lies.

One morning he went over to see the former mess orderly again. Seliger was sullen and stand-offish. He appeared to have bad memories of the driver’s first visit and its aftermath. Only when Lakosch openly threatened to report the whole incident did Seliger start to talk, though not before swearing Lakosch to absolute secrecy. What Lakosch ultimately managed to extract from the orderly was basically this: Seliger and Harras, who’d been knocked out for several minutes by a clod of earth thrown up by the explosion, had been surprised by the Russians (‘This is it, now they’re going to kill us!’). In the event, all they suffered were a few blows from rifle butts to force them to their feet. They were taken to a staff headquarters in a village further behind the Russian lines, where they were subjected to a thorough interrogation on conditions in the Cauldron. Their treatment there was remarkably friendly and they were given plenty to eat.

Seliger waxed lyrical on this last point: ‘Oh, mate, I’m telling you – we had lovely white bread with butter and bacon and sausage! And fags and chocolate that they’d filched from the Junkers! That perked up old Lissnup pretty sharpish.’

Lakosch wasn’t interested in all that, so he urged Seliger to tell him more. The following day, it seems, they were left alone with two men who, to their amazement, turned out to be German. These men, writers who had emigrated to the Soviet Union, engaged them in very earnest conversation.

They described the hopeless position the encircled army was in and painted a terrifying picture of the consequences of the massive Russian assault that would soon be unleashed. It would undoubtedly mean the death of the three hundred thousand men unless they surrendered in time. One of the men then touched on the subject of the war being Hitler’s fault, which prompted Harras to claim that he’d always been opposed to Hitler. But Harras turned down the invitation to address their German comrades over the tannoy from the Russian trenches by saying that no one would believe him, and suggested instead that he and Seliger should be sent back into the Cauldron so that they could argue there for a cessation of hostilities. At first, they didn’t receive an answer on this score. But after a few days, they were given sheaves of propaganda material and taken back to the front, where they were spirited through the lines under cover of darkness. Harras was extremely worked up on the return journey. He told Seliger that this was a really big opportunity for them. If they played their cards right, they might not just be in line for a promotion and decorations, but could even get out of the Cauldron. Seliger let Harras talk him round, and Harras then discussed with him in the minutest detail the report that they duly submitted on their return. This account of their escapade, which Seliger divulged only very reluctantly, threw Lakosch into a state of great agitation. He kept on pressing for more details. ‘So, they didn’t shoot you?’

‘No, Karl, see for yourself! Never crossed their minds.’

‘And they were German communists, the people you spoke to?’

‘Yeah, one was a lanky bloke with a grey quiff, and the other one was short, really twitchy and on edge all the time, came from Hamburg I think… Their names? Wait a mo… No, it’s gone, sorry. But they’d already written loads of pamphlets. Lissnup knew them all right. And get this: there are officers over there too! German officers, fighting against Hitler… and all the German POWs have come out against Hitler as well!’

Lakosch found it hard taking this all in.

‘Making out that you’d escaped was a really dirty trick, though, mate! Our commanders ought to hear about what you’ve just told me! If Paulus knew… well, he might act quite differently!’

Seliger was appalled.

‘Are you out of your tiny mind?’ he cried. ‘You think the top brass don’t already know all that? They know a bloody sight more than we do, chum! So just keep your mouth shut if you don’t want to end up getting hanged. I bloody knew it – it’s not safe telling you anything! I couldn’t give a shit about Lissnup, the bastard! But they’ll have my head too if this all comes out!’

Lakosch stood up. In response to Seliger’s fearful entreaties, he hastily repeated his promise not to say anything. In his thoughts, he was already miles away. An urgent resolution had taken root in his mind, born of his experiences over the last few days.

The next morning, Lakosch was gone. The men of the Intelligence Section were faced with a conundrum. They feared at first that something untoward had happened to him. But the fact that his rifle and his other effects were nowhere to be seen either left them in no doubt that he had deliberately taken flight. Breuer, who in retrospect recalled several things about his driver’s recent behaviour that had struck him as odd, reproached himself for not having taken greater care of the lad. Maybe he’d tried to do away with himself? With a heavy heart, he decided to report the incident to Unold. The lieutenant colonel was apoplectic with fury when he heard the news.

‘No question!’ he shouted. ‘The bloke’s done a bunk – deserted! We’ve never had a deserter in our division before, let alone from Staff HQ. What a ghastly bloody mess! The bloke always seemed a bit rum to me, I must say. But naturally you didn’t notice a thing, did you, you dumb bleeding-heart liberal? Don’t you dare breathe a word to the High Command about this! All we need now is to piss away the little bit of credit we have in that quarter with crap like this!’

Everyone in the section was hit hard by the disappearance of their comrade. It sometimes looked as though Geibel had been secretly crying. But for whatever reason – be it the inhibitions that, despite their common fate, still attached to the uniform, or some veiled mistrust of one another or a fear of the abyss that any mention of the event might open up – everyone kept their thoughts to themselves. No one said a thing.

Lieutenant Dr Bonte, the battalion adjutant, a short, dark-haired officer of that unobtrusive yet robust kind that is so beloved of the infantry, walked with short steps towards the bunker where the commanding officer had taken up residence. Bonte was out of sorts. His men were billeted in an unheated horse stable, and despite being crammed together like sardines, were still frozen stiff. Yet all around were paymasters and other desk-jockeys who were holed up in nice warm bunkers. But wasn’t this always the way when you were placed under the command of another unit? God helps those who help themselves! The captain, his CO, would need to raise hell about it at divisional level. Things couldn’t go on like this. His men, who weren’t up to much at the moment anyhow, would go completely to the dogs even before they went into action if they kept on being treated in such a shabby way.

Captain Eichert, the commander of Fortress Battalion I, was studying a map. When the lieutenant came in, he raised his head and combed his wispy hair back from his forehead.