Heinrich Gerlach - Breakout at Stalingrad

‘Gentlemen.’ Breuer’s voice took on an imploring tone. ‘Gentlemen! In two days’ time, a front line of defence is going to be drawn immediately to your rear, just a few metres away – that is, if a front even exists by then!’

Yes, yes, they were well aware of that. They had taken note of it, like something one hears but doesn’t really comprehend.

Where the Talovoy Gorge opened out into a flat depression resembling a broad square – the sides of the ravine were at this point only some three or four metres high – the windows and doors of a line of bunkers with a wooden walkway in front of them, partitioned off by a balustrade, mimicked a row of houses on a street. The scene in some measure reminded Breuer of a corner he knew in the bazaar quarter of Sarajevo. This was the site of the quarters that the Corps had assigned to the ‘Fortress Construction Group Siebel’. Breuer and Siebel entered one of the two rooms. Plywood-panelled walls with built-in cupboards and seating recesses, a large cooking range, curtains and some stylish peasant furniture! The officers looked at one another. They opened the door to the second room and stood there, dumbstruck. They found themselves standing in a – bar! Sideboards, bar stools, drinks’ cabinets, a pendant light with a red silk shade. On the walls, which were a deep shade of pink, someone had painted a series of racy murals showing young men in tuxedos embracing half-naked girls. In one corner stood an iron stove, a proper heavy old German one with a manufacturer’s nameplate.

‘I think I’m going crazy!’ exclaimed Major Siebel, momentarily distracted from his cares and worries by the unlikely sight before his eyes.

‘What on earth is this place?’

‘It was the 79th military police division’s HQ.’

‘Never knew such a place existed. How is it even possible? People are lying out there in the open, and here…’

The only person who found no reason to be amazed was the unfortunate lieutenant colonel. Grumpily, he picked out for himself the best-sprung mattress in the sleeping bay and started complaining about the fact that they hadn’t been supplied with any blankets. Other cares were weighing down on him as well, as it turned out. ‘I’ve got to find out what’s happened to my columns tomorrow,’ he muttered. ‘How stupid to deploy gunners as infantrymen – who ever heard of such a thing! Outstanding leadership here, I must say. And who knows where the hell our vehicles have got to by now! If anything’s out of order, I’ll be the one who carries the can for it later.’

Breuer looked at the lined face sporting the pince-nez, which struck him as so curiously familiar, and shook his head in despair. Did the man have any idea of the situation he was in? On the other hand, how could he? Well, he’d find out soon enough.

Siebel paid not the slightest heed to the lieutenant colonel. He paced up and down the room with long strides, raking his good hand through his tousled hair and nervously plucking at the leather glove on the hand of his false arm. He was struggling with a sense of duty on the one hand and a feeling of outrage on the other. He kept cursing under his breath: ‘What total madness! It’s all so pointless… fantasies, criminal fantasies, the whole thing!’

All of a sudden, he threw himself into a nervous flurry of activity. Rudely, and none too gently, wrenching the lieutenant colonel from his new-found cosiness, he announced that the two of them were going to go off there and then and inspect the planned defensive line.

Breuer stayed behind to keep an eye on their quarters. A few steps further on there was a supplies bunker, where a friendly and innocent paymaster handed out four days’ worth of rations up front: fresh-baked bread, crispbreads, cheese, butter (Breuer wondered where in heaven they’d got that!), tins of potted meat, sardines, dried coffee, and last but not least three pounds of home-made horse sausage. It was like being in a fairy tale. Before long, logs were blazing in the stove and thick slices of sausage were sizzling in billycan lids. Breuer was as happy as a sandboy. If they only had a short while left to live, then they might as well live well! Out of the blue, as if by magic, a reflection of the old comfortable, peaceful feeling of well-being had come to life once more in the midst of chaos and destruction, a final salutation from the past, as it were, before everything finally came to an end.

It was getting dark outside. Breuer drew the curtains and got out the candles they’d brought with them. Just then, the prettily carved wooden candelabra above his head flickered into life and the room was bathed in electric light, courtesy of a quiet and efficient generator nearby. Breuer jumped up and went over to the switch near the door. He switched the light on and off, on and off, over and over again, laughing like a small boy and with tears running down his face.

After several hours, the major and his companion returned. The lieutenant colonel was still unsuspecting, while Siebel’s downcast face revealed that no progress had been made on the defences. He brightened up, however, when he saw the cheerfully lit room and all the wonderful food on offer.

‘Good heavens!’ he cried, ‘I’m bowled over! It’s a real Land of Plenty here! Okay, let’s forget about all the crap for now! Let’s just live for once in our lives. In three days, we’re all going straight to hell anyhow… Haven’t we got anything to drink, though?’

They most certainly did. For a small consideration, and with due deference to the major’s Knight’s Cross and wooden arm – which the first lieutenant told him about – the paymaster had let Breuer have a couple of bottles of Hennessy cognac.

By January 1943 the village of Pitomnik, formerly situated southeast of the aerodrome, only continued to exist on the map. Where rows of wooden farmhouses may once have stood (two or three broken-down shacks and a few charred remains of fireplaces were the only remaining signs of habitation), a huge collection of vehicles had now assembled. Lorries, cars, tractors, buses and self-propelled howitzers of all types were parked up there, camouflaged with whitewash or still asphalt-grey, covered with snow, immobile and dead. All the life of Pitomnik had fled beneath the ground, which was tunnelled through and riddled with excavations like those of giant moles. In the days following the tenth of January, a constant influx of troops arriving from the west boosted the numbers of people living this troglodytic existence.

The scene is one such bunker, identical to countless others; it lies buried deep underground, is warmed by the glow of a small cylindrical stove, and is crammed full of men. They squat on the floor or squeeze together in a standing position, surrendering themselves gratefully to the little bit of warmth and shivering whenever the entrance hatch opens for a moment and the winter night pokes its icy fingers into the room. And the hatch is opened frequently. New figures flow down the steps in a steady stream, and their frozen rigidity slowly melts as the heat radiating from the stove thaws them out.

Jammed between stinking, silent bodies crouches Lieutenant Harras. His head, shrouded in a field-grey balaclava, is leaning against the tacky earth wall, and his fur cap has slipped down over his eyes. He dozes fitfully, and his breathing is laboured in the stuffy miasma produced by damp clothes and boots, frostbitten limbs and suppurating wounds. His wounded hand, which he’s rested on his drawn-up knees, is causing him intense stabbing pain under its filthy dressing. Some terrible days lay behind him, since he’d been cut off from the rest of his unit in the wake of the big Russian offensive.

The rightful owner of the bunker, a paymaster who has been shoved to a corner of the table by this unwelcome invasion of his space, is sitting by candlelight and feverishly totting up long lists of figures with the help of two soldiers. Once again, the sums don’t add up. Hardly a day goes by when provisions aren’t pilfered from the supplies bunker. His piggy little eyes skim suspiciously over the dull faces all around him before returning to check on the piles of tinned goods, loaves of bread and the large portion of fat that he has piled up in front of himself on the table as a precaution. Every time Harras’s gaze lighted on this table, he found himself seized anew by blind fury. The moment he arrived here he’d asked the paymaster for some food. The man had looked him up and down.