Heinrich Gerlach - Breakout at Stalingrad

‘I’m delighted for you… and for your young wife,’ said Breuer with a weak smile, offering the major his hand. ‘You’re going to have it easier than us now… with our breakout. Farewell, then!’

In response Siebel uttered a bitter laugh, tormented and terrible to hear; it seemed to sum up all the insanity of this world. No, he wouldn’t forget. At least, he would never forget these few seconds. As if by way of reassurance, he grasped Breuer’s hand and gave it a short but firm shake. Then he turned on his heel and walked off.

Unold received his intelligence officer with the cool detachment of a very busy person.

‘How can I help you?’

‘I just wanted to enquire what’s going to happen to me, Lieutenant Colonel?’

‘Why?’ Unold shot back; his tone was sharp and suspicious.

‘Well, will I be staying here with the staff or going out with the task force?’

‘Ah yes, of course…’ Unold seemed only now to take on board the fact that he still had an intelligence officer. ‘I’ll think about it. I’ll let you know in due course.’

On his way back from the bunker, Breuer ran into his adjutant, Captain Gedig.

Gedig’s initial response when the lieutenant quizzed him was unequivocal: ‘You want to know what’s to become of you, my dear Breuer? You’ll be staying with us, naturally! Goes without saying! We have to stand shoulder-to-shoulder over these final few days.’

Then his smile grew distracted. ‘That is, I don’t know yet for sure… The lieutenant colonel said… Well, anyhow, wait and see. We’ll know soon enough.’

Gedig too, it appeared, was much preoccupied with his innermost thoughts about his own situation. The division had fallen apart already and now the rest of the staff was following suit, fragmenting into individual urges and individual destinies. Endrigkeit was dead too, killed at Dubininsky. One of the stragglers had brought the news.

Breuer’s mind was made up. He, too, was only thinking of himself now. He could no longer identify any higher principle or point of fixity that he could cling on to or navigate by.

‘I’m coming with you, Fröhlich!’ he announced to the Sonderführer. ‘This is our chance. We’re no use here any more.’

He stuffed the few items that seemed worth taking along – including his mouth organ and the camera that had accompanied him through three and a half years of campaigning – into the deep pockets of his greatcoat. Everything else – his fine riding boots, his second pair of trousers, the contents of his kitbag – he left behind with no regrets. If the plan succeeded, they’d be over behind German lines within two days and would get all their hearts desired issued to them anew. And if it didn’t – well, then that was that anyhow. In that event, he wouldn’t be needing any socks or shirts either.

As midday approached, the newly formed ‘company’ assembled on the parade ground above the gorge, where three lorries stood waiting. Including clerks, batmen and drivers, predominantly from the quartermaster’s section, a quite respectable band of around sixty men had been scraped together. Dressed in motorcycle jackets or greatcoats, with their heads covered by all manner of caps and balaclavas and hoods, and brandishing a ragbag of weapons, they looked like a band of brigands. Morale was extremely bad. The men were grumbling and swearing quite openly. The batmen and the men from the cookhouse were cutting up especially rough.

‘What the fuck’s going on, then?’

‘They’re wanting rid of us! So they can sneak off nice and quietly!’

‘Unold should be coming with us!’

‘Yeah, that’s right. Where is he? Surely we’re worth at least a final pep talk, aren’t we?’

But there was no sign of Unold. Instead, Captain Fackelmann prowled round the band of grumbling troops like a watchdog.

‘Gentlemen, please!’ He raised his hands beseechingly. ‘The lieutenant colonel has no intention of flying out. He has a new assignment from High Command. He’s incredibly busy right now. He… he sends you all his very best. He’s very proud of you – the last soldiers who will uphold the honour of our division.’

Small groups of unknown, scruffy foot soldiers came sniffing around the division’s vehicles, which were parked up there, for the most part unscathed, and were now to be abandoned for ever. Like hyenas, they circled in a wide arc around the doomed little task force. They could scent unoccupied bunkers and booty. Fackelmann mopped his brow and looked imploringly at Breuer, who at that moment appeared with Fröhlich, Nasarov and the two Hiwis . But the first lieutenant seemed unwilling to get embroiled in anything that called for leadership. The fact that the three Russians were armed and so were clearly determined to fight alongside the Germans helped defuse the atmosphere.

The countryside was shrouded in dank fog. By the time the three lorries drove on to the broad expanse of the former Russian airfield at Gumrak, it was almost dark. They passed a line of wrecked aircraft and burning vehicles. Red and yellow flares were shooting into the sky and from somewhere high up above the drifting banks of fog came the rumble of unseen aircraft. From time to time a plane would suddenly roar down, large and heavy, into the scene of confusion below and taxi to a halt on the runway. Shouts and whistles rang out, interspersed with the thud of artillery shells landing. Disgorged from the trucks, the band of soldiers stood around aimlessly by the entrance to a bunker, into which Captain Fackelmann had disappeared with an officer from an anti-aircraft battery. They had stopped moaning and cursing by now. The sixty men awaited their fate silently and dutifully. After a while Fackelmann reappeared and the detachment marched off into the damp night. The captain came up to Breuer.

‘Unold was in there,’ he said, sotto voce . ‘He’s assigned to Colonel Fuchs, who’s been given charge of defending the airfield. But not a word to our men about it! Really brilliant that he couldn’t even bring himself to say a few words to our lot.’

‘What’s our mission precisely?’ asked Breuer.

‘Securing the eastern perimeter of the airfield.’

‘Hmm—.’ The column was tramping along a muddy track in single file through high banks of snow. There was a light snowfall. A cluster of whitewashed vehicles loomed up out of the fog and, alongside them, the domed roofs of a cluster of earth bunkers. They stumbled on over duckboards and strings of barbed wire. Their guide stopped outside a bunker entrance. They had reached their destination. Muffled gramophone music drifted up from underground. Fackelmann and Breuer went in. In the smoky room, a captain got up as they entered; his jacket was unbuttoned. He sized up the newcomers somewhat disparagingly, his bovine eyes bulging from beneath a low forehead.

‘So, you’re the reinforcements we were promised. How many of you? Fifty-six men and three officers? Okay, let’s see where we can accommodate you.’

A quick discussion with a thickset corporal yielded the intelligence that twenty-five men at most could be shoehorned into the few available bunkers.

‘Well,’ the captain told Fackelmann, ‘up front, about eight hundred metres over there in the gorge, there’s supposed to be a pioneer corps. They must have some free bunkers there, for their transport section and so on. Most of them cleared off yesterday like frightened rabbits; you’ll be bound to find some space there.’

He cast an eye around his own bunker.

‘And one of you gents could doss down here if you fancy it, too.’

Captain Fackelmann, who couldn’t square his romantic conception of life at the front, still untainted despite his experiences, with the conditions on the ground here, chanced a few hesitant questions about the lie of the land and the enemy positions. The young captain jovially clapped Fackelmann, who was at least fifteen years his senior, on the shoulder.