Heinrich Gerlach - Breakout at Stalingrad

‘Not directly west, though,’ he exclaimed breathlessly. ‘That’s not a wise move; they’ll be watching that sector. We should go southwest – here, look – towards Rostov. No one would expect us to head there. Besides, I know my way around that area!’

Suddenly all the colour drained from his face.

‘Oh no,’ he gasped, crestfallen, ‘I’ve just realized – it won’t work. We’ve been dreaming… We’d need identity cards, Fröhlich. Papers!’

‘I’ve already discussed that with the lieutenant colonel,’ replied Fröhlich, unperturbed. ‘He’ll prepare them for us. He knows what they have to look like. One set for the POW escort to the Russian Staff GHQ on the Don front, and another for the reinforcement order. We’ll fake the official stamps with indelible pencil.’

Breuer looked mistrustfully at Nasarov, who was sitting on his bench as unconcerned as ever and staring at his hands.

‘What does he reckon to all this? Is he willing to go along with it?’

‘Of course he is! After all, he’s got nothing to lose and everything to gain… And he thinks it’ll work.’

The first lieutenant was growing more exhilarated by the minute. The room started spinning around him, and he could scarcely get his words out. The thought of the world beyond, which he’d already renounced for ever, assailed him again like a turbulent current that swept away all misgivings, all inhibitions, and all obligations of duty and comradeship. He seized the Sonderführer by the shoulders.

‘Fröhlich,’ he stammered, ‘Oh, Fröhlich… Freedom, getting out of this hellhole… Living again… Yes, we’re going to live again!’

Only one thing still troubled him – that they wouldn’t get the preparations done in time. So he immediately set to work with an indelible pencil, mocking up a Russian stamp. As a template he used the reverse of a Russian coin. Then he transferred the design to a piece of moistened blotting paper. The test printings from this ‘negative’ looked extremely genuine.

Geibel and Herbert returned and were informed of the plan. They listened to it with uncomprehending credulity. When Geibel heard that it would mean ambushing and killing people and robbing them of their weapons and clothes, his childish eyes grew large and round and his whole body started shaking. Major Siebel, who was also going to be part of the group and whom Fröhlich had already apprised of the plan, put in an appearance too.

‘Gentlemen,’ he announced, ‘if we pull this off, I’ll give this fellow’ – here he pointed at Nasarov – ‘a job for life on my estate. Tell him that, will you, Fröhlich!’

Siebel went over and clapped the Russian heartily on the shoulder with his real hand. Nasarov gave the major a look of devoted loyalty, like a Newfoundland dog, and smiled mutely.

The days passed at breakneck speed. The men’s faces became ashen grey and their eyes large and sunken, like people facing the executioner’s axe.

Lieutenant Colonel Unold, whose secondment to Army High Command was now at an end, was occasionally seized by a fit of nervous energy that saw him rush from bunker to bunker, treating all and sundry to a vitriolic and wholly undeserved tongue-lashing. For the most part, though, he lay dozing on his camp bed, with his pistol next to him, along with the inevitable bottle of brandy and a photograph of his wife, which he gazed at adoringly and moist-eyed. For a while he experienced a resurgence of hope. A miracle had occurred. A front had once more been established in the west, running along the Gontchara Gorge and the railway embankment down to Pestshanka. The Cauldron had shrunk by two-thirds of its original total area, but for a brief spell it was at least a cauldron once more, with secure borders. The Russians, who pursued the remnants of the western units as they retreated through Dubininsky and Pitomnik (they conducted this operation at a leisurely pace and were rather surprised at the fierce resistance they encountered in parts from certain scattered detachments), were astonished when, on the seventeenth of January, they came across this new front. In the main, the defenders were elements of divisions from the Volga that had been stood down, and who now felt the enemy breathing down their necks for the first time. There were no fixed positions – Unold’s belated mission had come to nought – but the terrain was favourable and the well-equipped and still reasonably well-fed units fought with a courage born of desperation. For two days, they drove back the enemy infantry. Then the Russians lost patience. They brought up armour and artillery in great numbers, sent in squadron upon squadron of ground-attack aircraft, and pounded a gap in the front. Now they were already outside of Yeshovka. Even this brief dream of supremacy had faded for the Germans. Unold knew that, and others on the divisional staff also suspected as much. Only in the Intelligence Section’s bunker did a feverish optimism still hold sway, of the kind that is wont to affect consumptives in the final days of their terminal illness.

One morning, the twenty-first of January, Geibel came back from collecting their rations. The customary expression of dumb loyalty on his face had been enlivened by an exciting piece of news.

‘The balloon’s going up today, Lieutenant, sir! Captain Fackelmann is to assemble a task force from the remnants of the staff! We’ll be picked up at midday by lorry. Everyone’s coming along; only the cook’s staying here along with the lieutenant colonel’s batman and Sergeant Schneider.’

This news broke the tension like the first clap of thunder breaking the sultry atmosphere just before an impending storm. Breuer and Fröhlich looked at one another. This was their chance!

‘What about the officers?’ asked Breuer. ‘Are they going along as well?’

‘I don’t know about that, Lieutenant, sir,’ murmured Geibel anxiously.

Breuer rushed out. Discussions were taking place in the chief of staff’s bunker. He flung the door open without knocking. At the table, poring over the map, stood Unold, Colonel Dr Steinmeier, Major Kallweit and Siebel. They started up like counterfeiters caught in the act at Breuer’s abrupt entrance.

‘What? What’s the meaning of this?’ rasped Unold. ‘Is it something urgent? If it isn’t, please come back later!’

Breuer elected to go outside and wait. His fingers drummed impatiently on the wooden wall. From the bunker came the sound of agitated whispering. Finally, the door flew open. The tight-fisted divisional medical officer rushed past with a curt nod, followed by Kallweit and Siebel. Kallweit’s face had by now lost all trace of its former freshness and nonchalance; he seemed to be deep in thought and failed to acknowledge Breuer’s salute, though surely not maliciously. Only Siebel stopped to talk. He was chewing on his top lip and looked up at the lieutenant from the bottom of the bunker steps.

‘Well, Breuer,’ he said, ‘that’s just the way it is. Nothing to be done about it, I’m afraid.’

‘What’s going on exactly, Major?’

‘What’s going on?’ Siebel gave a nervous little laugh. ‘We’re flying out… that is, the senior MO, Kallweit and myself. On the orders of High Command.’

With trembling lips, he gave a truculent sideways glance, like a boy scolded for being naughty. There he stood, this young soldier, already a major, with his wooden arm and his Knight’s Cross. His broad face with a slightly turned-up nose had a faint redness about it, while his unruly mop of hair poked out from beneath his forage cap. In his furious set-to with Engelhard, he had vowed to stage a ‘reckoning’, to have ‘payback’ when he returned to Germany. He certainly had the necessary gumption. But would it even occur to him, now that things had turned out so differently for him? Or would he just step up meekly to the microphone and talk about the ‘heroic struggle we put up at Stalingrad, confident in our Führer’s leadership’ and then take command of a battalion and return to the front line somewhere – and forget all about Stalingrad?