Heinrich Gerlach - Breakout at Stalingrad

‘And that’s not the worst of it either. About a week or so ago, they started bringing us the first cases of consumption, men who were emaciated down to the bone and completely exhausted, and who’d given up eating and even speaking. You’ll get to see them by and by. There was nothing we could do to help; they just wasted away and died. We’ve already had more than twenty cases in the division. Recently, we had one of them on the autopsy table, he was one metre eighty tall and weighed just forty kilos. His skin tissue was like it had been desiccated, not an ounce of fat on his entire lanky frame. We reported this case to the High Command. You know what response we got back? “Quite impossible!” was what they replied. “It must be some new, unknown form of disease.” They’d send a specialist, they told us.’

The doctor gets to his feet. He paces up and down the bunker in long strides, a red flush of agitation marking his sallow cheeks.

‘A specialist for the dead of Stalingrad, Padre! A specialist who can peddle a suitable lie to the folks back home about the great charnel house here. No, Padre, anyone who planned on remaining a doctor here would spend all day and night howling with impotence and shame and rage at the fact that all of this is even possible!’

Padre Peters is devastated by what he’s hearing.

‘Doctor,’ he says earnestly and imploringly, ‘please don’t give up on yourself! Think how much more dreadful it would be if you and your colleagues weren’t here! Day after day I see what you all do for our sick and wounded men here. Your readiness to help and make sacrifices is beyond measure! I refuse to believe your work is all in vain, Doctor. And even when you can’t give any medical help, a kind word or a friendly look at the right moment can work wonders. Don’t give up on yourself and your profession, I beg you!’

The doctor stopped in front of Peters and looked at him, his eyes ablaze.

‘What do you know?’ he yelled. ‘Am I even allowed to be a doctor any more? Even if I still had the will and the capacity to be one, I’m not permitted to practise my profession any longer. A few days ago, the Corps’ chief physician was here, and kicked up one hell of a stink. Far too many men being signed off sick, he said! We shouldn’t be making a great big song and dance about every stupid case of frostbite… the men were nothing but malingerers… we needed to be hard, ruthless… we oughtn’t to forget that we were army officers first and foremost, and that we should keep the requirements of the Wehrmacht uppermost in our minds. The army needed every man that could still carry a rifle… So that’s the way things are here, dear sir! We’re required not to give a rat’s arse about suffering, starving, freezing human beings. Our sole focus should be on the man who can shoot. You’ve got it easy, Padre. You’re only called upon to help people when they’re dying. I have to bellow at them to make them go on living. All that’s expected of me is to harangue sick people back to health! Do you imagine I can still grant myself the luxury of a heart, or feelings of pity? Who takes any pity on me ? Your God, maybe, who’s letting us all die in misery here? You’ve still got it so easy, for the present at least. But just you wait: you can see which way the wind’s blowing here! Watch out, ’cos tomorrow you’re just as likely to get an order to raise the dead so they can die one more time for the Führer and the Reich!’

The doctor flings himself down on his camp bed in utter exhaustion. Padre Peters senses that he ought to say something, but words fail him. ‘Waking the dead, yes, that’s it!’ he thinks to himself, and feels the full weight of his own impotence. It strikes him that he couldn’t awaken anyone any more, not even this young doctor, who’s still alive and yet already dead – dead inside from the sickness of Stalingrad.

The long column of the fortress battalion marches towards its forward positions. As they proceed, the front grows ever more lively and more threatening. Bizarre silhouettes of ruined houses, wrecked vehicles and shot-up tanks line their route. The harsh rattle of machine-gun fire drifts over to them, and every so often the fierce explosion of a round from an anti-tank gun splits the air. Yellow and red flares shoot up in a shower of light and sway slowly back to earth. Their evil glow and flicker paints ghostly dancing shadows on the snow. An atmosphere of great tension hangs over the line of marching men. All of their lassitude has been swept away. The agitated thudding and stumbling of their stamping feet mingles with low whispers, terse shouts and commands and the tinny jangle of equipment hanging from their packs, which they try in vain to muffle somehow. The pathfinders at the head of the column warn them in hushed tones to keep quiet and be careful. A little further on, the path divides. This is the fork where the individual companies have to split up. All of a sudden, there are three bright, reddish flashes in swift succession, and three explosions blend into a single dull thud. Mortars – they’ve been spotted! The men have scattered and flung themselves to the ground.

‘Forward! Get to your positions fast before the next salvo comes!’ shouts Captain Eichert. The lines of men vanish quickly into the darkness in single file. Eichert hurries with his adjutant and the battalion doctor to the bunker where the command post is supposed to be. A small stretcher sled is standing in the way, with two wounded men lying on it swaddled in blankets, moaning; the two medical orderlies pulling it have been hit by the mortar rounds. One of them is showing no sign of movement; a piece of shrapnel has pierced his head. The other is crouching on the ground, propping himself up on his hands. He is moaning and can’t get up unassisted. Bonte and the doctor lift the man, who screams in pain, and carry him into the bunker, while the captain drags the sled. Behind them, another salvo of mortar rounds hits home; bomb splinters buzz past them like malevolent insects. A figure approaches from the bunker entrance, an officer. He dispenses with any greeting and bends down to look at the wounded man.

‘Oh Christ, now they’ve got Knippke too!’ he whispers as he helps the others pull the groaning man into the bunker.

‘Poor Knippke!’ he says, clearly distressed. ‘That’s all we need! An old warhorse like you!’ Eichert’s doctor examines the injured soldier.

‘It’s a small splinter in his lower back,’ he says reassuringly. ‘Nothing too serious! You’ll be right as rain again in a fortnight!’

The man’s face has taken on a deadly white pallor, but now he bites his lip stoically. The whites of his eyes are showing prominently.

‘Quick, get moving!’ the officer calls to a dark corner of the bunker. ‘Put Knippke on the stretcher sled! But watch out!’

In the corner two figures stand up, barely still recognizable as soldiers. Their faces and uniforms are caked with filth. They put on their kit without a word and carry their comrade out. Finally now, the officer, a first lieutenant, finds the time to deal with the new arrivals, who are hanging around the bunker, barely tall enough for a man to stand up in, rather self-consciously. The lieutenant’s face, too, is sunken and hollow-eyed. His black hair droops over his forehead; it’s evident that he hasn’t washed or shaved for several days.

‘Those two men I’ve just dispatched were the last survivors of the staff battalion,’ he says. ‘Yes, that’s right, not many of us left now! They pretty much finished us off yesterday. The CO dead, the adjutant seriously wounded… There’s just a couple of sentries out in the forward positions.’

The tall captain, weary of standing hunched over in the cramped space, sits down on an ammo box and takes off his cap.