Heinrich Gerlach - Breakout at Stalingrad

‘See, Bonte, what did I tell you?’ he said. ‘It’s “do this one minute and do that the next”! But at last, here’s our order to go into action!’ The lieutenant was taken aback. The battalion had only been formed two days ago, with seventy per cent of the men seconded from other units and with no infantry experience. And as of yesterday it had been placed, as a reserve detachment, under the command of the hard-pressed infantry division that was defending a difficult sector of the western front of the Cauldron. And today they were expected to deploy?

‘Where are we headed, then, Captain?’ he enquired apprehensively. The captain’s lacklustre eyes shot him a searching look.

‘Kazatchi Hill,’ came the reply. ‘But don’t tell the men just yet.’

A shock ran through the lieutenant. Kazatchi Hill! Almost every foot soldier in the Cauldron knew and feared that name. It virtually amounted to a death sentence.

‘So, I want the battalion ready to move within the hour,’ the captain went on. ‘And send the company leaders to me straight away.’

On his way back to the stables, the lieutenant came across two soldiers who were using their sidearms to try to detach the swollen joints from the legs of a horse carcass. As the officer walked by, one of them got to his feet. He approached the lieutenant sheepishly, nervously fingering his camouflage jacket.

‘Begging your pardon, Lieutenant, sir,’ he muttered. ‘We’ve… that is, we’d like to… Could you give us a bite to eat by any chance?’

‘What are you doing here, then?’ asked Bonte suspiciously.

‘We’re all on our tod here. Our captain left us behind with his stores.’ The other soldier now stood up too.

‘It’s been a fortnight since we heard anything from the battalion. Who knows what might have happened to them? And our rations have run out…’

Bonte felt a pang of sympathy. Anyone who became detached from their unit here was a goner.

‘Yes, that’s bad news, guys. Let’s see if we can’t rustle up something for you. Where was your battalion headed?’

Two pairs of hooded eyes flashed at the lieutenant.

‘To the front, Lieutenant, sir. To Kazatchi Hill.’

An hour later, the battalion, loaded onto lorries, is bumping along towards the front, passing shot-up vehicles and the wrecks of downed planes. Sections of the broad, well-used track are obscured by drifting snow. When the trucks are forced to swing round the lips of bomb craters, they wallow about wildly, causing their cargoes to clatter and crash about in the back. The men, wrapped in blankets, sway to and fro on the bench seats; the cold and hunger have made them oblivious to the discomfort. The wind whistles through the lorries’ tarpaulin sides. Clasped in frozen hands, the troops’ rifles sway between their knees. Occasionally, one of them is woken from drowsy semi-consciousness by the muffled bang of one of the trucks backfiring. Extraordinary sights loom up on both sides of the road: severed horses’ legs sticking upright out of the earth, bleached ribs, curved as Turkish scimitars, and horses’ heads arranged in a neat pyramid. And over there… my God, what’s that? Yes, it really is: a person, a dead person – to judge from the brownish uniform, either a Russian or a Romanian. Like a tin soldier, the man’s corpse, frozen stiff, has been rammed head-first into the ground with its legs in the air. There is a light dusting of snow on the dirty grey soles of its feet.

‘The Bone Road!’ the driver tells Captain Eichert. ‘We had to mark where the roadway went somehow, ’cos it’s always getting covered by snowdrifts. And there was no wood to hand; people keep nicking it.’

The captain is an old stager. But a shiver runs down even his spine at the sight.

The lorries struggle up an incline. From the top, a small cluster of wooden huts comes into view. That must be the place where they’re hoping to find the regimental Staff HQ. The column stops by the first of the shacks, and the men climb out, stiff-legged. Light disruptive enemy artillery fire is being directed at the northern exit to the village. The ‘greenhorns’ huddle together like sheep and cast nervous glances at the sky when they hear a mortar burbling towards them. Some throw themselves to the ground, only to get to their feet again shamefacedly when the round explodes some way off. Lieutenant Dierk, commanding the second company, is at his wits’ end. He really wants to give them a rocket, but faced with this abject helplessness, clearly not meant maliciously, he hasn’t the heart to. His gaze wanders over to the eight men from his former unit, who are busy unhitching the four-barrelled flak guns from the trucks. Corporal Härtel is issuing orders as calmly as ever. Everything’s running like clockwork. He’s fortunate to have these guys on board still. They can provide some stability for the greenhorns until they’ve got over their first few days of stage fright.

The bunker on the edge of the village housing the regimental Staff HQ is full of officers. Captain Eichert reports for duty. A giant of a man detaches himself from the group and comes over. It’s Colonel Steigmann. His face looks tired, but his gaze radiates energy and determination.

‘Good that you’re here,’ he says, giving the captain’s hand a forceful shake. ‘We’ve been eagerly anticipating your arrival.’ He goes over to the map, laid out on the table. ‘The battalion here is… it’s taken heavy losses, so we’re replacing it. So, this area here will be your sector. It’s an exposed, windy corner right on the border between divisions. The Russians like to try to exploit that… Where are you from, incidentally?’

‘Pomerania, Colonel, sir!’

‘Oh right, a Pomeranian, eh? That means we have pretty much the whole of Germany represented here. I’m mostly surrounded by totally unfamiliar faces now; there’s hardly anyone left from my old regiment. The heavy fighting during the retreat and then trying to defend this position here have taken their toll. The Russians keep shooting us to pieces with their artillery and rocket launchers in this open terrain. Not to mention the frostbite… yes, it’s fair to say the attrition’s been high. What kind of signals equipment have you brought with you, by the way?’

‘Very little, Colonel – in fact, nothing! We’re a “fortress battalion” and we’ve only just been assembled recently on a shoestring.’

‘That’s bad news, very bad,’ the colonel replies gloomily. ‘Our entire ability to fend off the Russians here depends first and foremost on a smoothly functioning intelligence network.’

He turns to the map once more. ‘Look, see these here, that’s “Max” and “Moritz”: two large hulks of knocked-out tanks. You’ll recognize them straight away out in the field. They mark where the Russian line runs. Then there’s the depression over here, and after that some fields we can cover with curtain fire – we’ve called them “Platinum”, “Silver” and “Gold” – and then the areas with flower code names. And up here are the infantry’s observation posts. See – it’s a really tight network. And all the positions are connected by ’phone, so everyone knows what’s going on across the entire sector. And if a single Russian dares to show his head anywhere, he gets the whole of the division’s artillery down on his head like a ton of bricks.’

Eichert finds himself delighted and terrified at the same time by this masterly mechanism, which can only operate if every cog turns exactly as it should. And here he is with his men, this bunch of hopeless bumblers… He feels like a stable boy who’s been sent to service a steam locomotive.

‘I can see you’re surprised, right?’ laughed the colonel. ‘Without all this, the Russians would long since have broken through and overwhelmed our little force here!’