by Gert Ledig
The Runner picked up a stone and flung it at the face of the dead Corporal Schute. And now he wanted to take another look at the puffy face down in the foxhole, with the buck teeth and the wound to the hip. He crawled backwards down the passage. He slithered over moist soil. Kicked open the chest-lid door. His hands groped in the darkness over the papered walls. Then he found the door to the main room. In front of him, in the dim candlelight, a gurgling bundle. The replacement with the horse face and the laid-open hip. The baker. Red-rimmed eyes looked at him.
‘It seems the story you told was true after all,’ the Runner growled maliciously to him. ‘You slept with soldiers’ wives and paid them with bread. You gave the local Commandant a car. You paid off the Mayor. You and your mill! But it was no good to you in the end.’ The horse face looked at him in astonishment. ‘You blabbed it all in your fever, you sonofabitch!’ The Runner yelled in triumph: ‘Now you’ve got your just deserts. We’re surrounded. You’ll never get out of this shithole.’
He spat against the wall, and reeled out. He was deaf to the howls of the wounded. And to the mortar that could tear him in pieces any second. He didn’t see the shellbursts, or dead Schute either. He took his rifle, and smashed the stock off it. He tossed the broken weapon into the foxhole, and pulled himself up the wall of the passage. Before he straightened up, he pulled his crumpled pass out of his pocket. Then he jumped up and ran. With arms aloft, and the scrap of paper in his right hand.
The Russian rifle fire stopped in surprise. He found himself at the centre of an eerie stillness. All he heard was his breath, the smacking sound of his boots when he trod in puddles. Suddenly he sank down. Any moment he was waiting for the whiplash of a gunshot, in front of him or behind him. Nothing happened. Only his boots got heavier. Every step took him closer to the line of swamp. He hadn’t thought of that. The morass clung to his feet like lead. Impressions blurred in front of his eyes. Crazy faces started dancing in front of him: now it was the hill, now it was his two kids, holding out their hands to him, and finally a couple of fireballs. His feet were up past the ankles in porridge. A few yards on, and it was calf-high. He lost one boot, then the other. Ran on barefooted. Waved the pink scrap of paper like a lunatic. The bandage started to come off his thumb, waved above him like a white flag. Finally the barbed wire. His uniform was shredded. His skin ripped, limbs ached. Dead Russians dangled in the barbed wire. Contorted faces under battered helmets. Now . . .
Now the shot had to come. From one side or the other. Why did it not come? As if they couldn’t see him. Or were they all watching? Saw his cowardice, and reckoned he wasn’t worth a bullet? The voice of the NCO: You coward! His own voice: I’m not a coward. A deserter, jeered the NCO. No one had called out. He was hearing things. The barbed wire was behind him. He dropped exhausted into a pit. Quaking with fear, he held out the pink slip to a pair of slitty eyes.
Two, three brown-clad forms launched themselves at him. Pinned him to the ground. Went through his pockets. Let him go. An unambiguous gesture gave him to understand he was to crawl on along the pit. A guard came after him. Above him, twittering bullets. From the German lines. At last he dared to stand up. The short tube of a trench mortar pointed to the sky. Hostile glances were directed at him. On the flat terrain, a tank, its gun pointing west. Soldiers hunkered down in the lee of it. No one paid any attention to the pink slip the Runner was still holding out in his hand. Even though he showed it to everyone he saw.
A leather-clad figure climbed out of the tank, jumped down beside him in the trench. The Commissar wore a pistol on a string around his neck. He went up to him, smacked him hard across the face. The blow burned his cheek. He felt miserable. He began to pant for breath, and his bare feet hurt him. He tried the might of the free pass once more. The man ripped it out of his hand, and trampled it into the mud. He felt he had lost his most valuable possession. The Commissar screamed at him, but he couldn’t understand a word. More blows. Rough hands tore at his pockets. The photo of his children, the photo of his wife, torn in pieces and scattered over the ground. Tears came to the Runner’s eyes. The Commissar spat in his face. He screamed out a command. One of the Red Guards grabbed him by the arm and dragged him away. Kicks lit into his back, a parting cuff knocked his head. He fell down. His hand groped for a shred of a photograph. He tumbled into a ditch after his guard. The ditch led back from the line. They tripped over dead Russians. One of them bore a resemblance to Corporal Schute, and suddenly all the others looked familiar as well. Pale and lifeless – a waxworks. Skin velvety like peach skin. The lips seemed to move. He saw a mocking, leering grin . . .
‘Let me go,’ he screamed in rage. His escort smashed him in the chest with a rifle butt. His last word turned into a gurgle. He tottered on. They came to the foot of a west-facing slope. Innumerable holes dug in it. The Runner was shoved into one of these. A group of Red Guards took him over. They led him along a passageway that had water dripping off the ceiling. Just like the foxhole, thought the Runner, only more extensive and damper. They came to a cave. He saw a wobbly table. The interrogation began. He stood barefoot in a puddle of water. A candle leaked wax on the table. He was falling over tired. A chill crept up his legs. A mild voice the other side of the candle asked questions. He couldn’t make out the face, couldn’t see through the trembling candle flame. Behind it, everything melted into darkness, but he wasn’t allowed to move. Beside his face a hand was toying with a pistol. When he didn’t want to answer the first question, he felt a cold muzzle against his neck. The voice reeled off question after question. He had to answer fast, and without hesitation. If he hesitated, the pistol butt smashed him on the back of the head. They had surely broken his skull. He didn’t know where the answers came from. They flew to him from somewhere. Company? Battalion? Commanding officer? Strength of the unit? Artillery positioned where? He answered every one. He wanted to add that he was a deserter; that it said on the pass that he would be well treated. The voice didn’t give him the time to say any of that. It was an unfeeling machine that was confronting him. The chill from the puddle was creating an icy fire in his belly. His head ached with fever. Even his thumb began to hurt. He was swaying. The candle slid towards him, retreated. They had no pity. He was spouting nonsense. They beat him. Kicked him in the stomach. His knees were bleeding. His tongue licked across his gums. His teeth lay on the ground, hard pieces of dirt with blood on them. They kicked him in the testicles until he doubled up. As he fell, he whimpered for mercy. His vocal cords failed. With his hands he tried to convey that he was a deserter. They dragged him out to the exit. Rolled him down the steep slope. He somersaulted down. His battered face brushed the earth. A rock hit him on the forehead. He opened his eyes. They saw a new tormentor. He no longer felt the blows that pulled him to his feet and drove him forward. He tumbled through the ditch, past guns, equipment and Red Guards. They watched him pass, as if he’d come up from the Underworld. He spat blood. His ragged trousers were like a loincloth. Shreds of fabric clung to his bloodied filthy thighs. His legs quaked like steel rods. Sinew and bone. He ran in the sun. His shadow skipped after him like an imp. He was like a shy cave-dwelling beast that had lost its way in the daylight and was looking in dazzlement for somewhere to hide.
He would have fallen over a stretcher, had not his escort caught him by the arm. The Red Guard forced him to pick up one end. The other fellow, a Russian, he only ever saw the back of. They were carrying a casualty. His guard could no longer drive him forward, but the weight of the stretcher threatened to pull him down at any moment. He was as stiff as a piece of wood. Every step was a jab in the spine, every unevenness of the ground a burning pain in his chest. He pressed his smashed gums together. He had to cough. He spat. A gobbet of blood flew into the grass.
The wounded man on the stretcher stared up at him. He was terrified the battered specimen of humanity would drop him. Dimly the Runner saw the imploring eyes resting on him. Strange sounds clicked in his ears. Like a hammer striking tree trunks. When
air-pressure swatted him aside, he saw the guns point their gaping maws to the heavens. He no longer heard. He was deaf.
At some spot swarming with men in white bandages, he was allowed to set down the stretcher. He was buffeted this way and that. Soldiers elbowed him aside. Red Guards, wearing the same filthy rags as he was. His own guard was lost in the crush. Strange sounds reached his ears as though through a fog. A white coat surfaced. Two hands carefully pulled off his tunic. A needle pierced his right upper arm. Immediately, a sweetish stream of warmth and serenity flowed into his veins. The drumming at the back of his head abated. His muscles relaxed. He sank to the ground with leaden exhaustion. He watched as someone bandaged up his thumb, daubed his gums with a styptic liquid. He was given a space on the grass, was covered with a coat that smelled of camphor, and sank in a sea of dull indifference. In the noisy confusion of the dressing-station, he thought he had finally found the best spot in the world.
11
The tide came from the forests at Podrova, streamed past the walls of the barn and burst crashing against the station at Emga. They were coming out of the dip behind the hill. From the swamps, from the crossroads, from all over, anywhere there were intact positions east of Emga in the dawn. As with any panic, the cause was relatively trivial: a herd of tanks that was slowly advancing along the tarmac from Podrova to Emga. The olive-green beasts had to proceed in single file on the narrow roadway. The machine gun of the lead tank drove hundreds of soldiers ahead of it, and broke loose everything that still wanted to adhere to organization and command structure: the healthy and the wounded, officers and men. Artillerymen abandoned their loaded pieces. Companies of untried reservists tossed their rifles away. They joined the fleeing mass stampede. The swamp kept spitting out more units, either side of the tarmac. An officer who tried to oppose the tide was simply dropped into the swamp. By the time he had freed himself of its sticky embrace, the human tide had already stampeded past. All that were left to him were the last rows, where Death was reaping his harvest. Here staggered the wounded and the weaklings. The machine gun mowed them down like a scythe. The tail-end kept growing back. There were always more.
At around noon, they reached Emga. They poured on to the station platform. Threw themselves stupidly onto a train without a locomotive. Hundreds fought over places in carriages that were not coupled together. Whoever had gained a place defended it to the death. Rifle butts smashed down on fingers that clung on to iron handholds. Kicks and punches were dealt out. Fearful faces, imploring hands, burst-open wounds. Hatred and enmity. Duels over standing room in wagons with uncoupled chassis. The tracks swarmed with the beaten-back, the desperate, the amputees and the feverish, men with no hands to grab hold of anywhere. The train was the destination for all of them. The train that wasn’t a train. The Fata Morgana on the siding. Wagons stood on blocks. Wheels that could no longer turn.
The jeep speeding towards Emga only grazed the edge of the chaos. The Judge Advocate sitting beside the driver watched the panic impassively. He wasn’t interested in troop movements. Undisciplined units, he thought. All he was interested in was jurisprudence.
It wasn’t until the main square in Emga that the driver encountered any difficulties. The jeep was jammed tight. The Colonel had to get out, had to force his way through troops to get to Battalion HQ. The physical proximity of so many dirty and unkempt men made the Colonel feel sick. With half-closed eyes, he allowed himself to drift up to the HQ building. What had necessitated his journey through this human sludge was an order he had received to proceed to Emga and deliver sentence on a deserter. He was to report back to the army the instant the sentence had been carried out. He had known clearer orders. A deserter in Emga – which one?! Deliver a sentence – which sentence? This sort of thing required preparations, reports, meetings. The Colonel, a prosecuting counsel in civilian life, was used to the law. The law was always clear, it was lapidary, unambiguous sentences, each with its individual meaning. With this army command, the principal matter seemed to reside somewhere between the lines. Something in the order of: exceptional circumstances require exceptional measures. At least, so it appeared to him. He shivered a little, like a conscientious bookkeeper sitting in a drafty office. This wasn’t his remit. He liked to go by the rules. These sort of insinuations were like black ice. Anyway, the order said he was to be responsible for the process. That meant legal process. Therefore, he had to obey. If need be, he could always appeal to that. Whatever might be between the lines was no affair of his.
Amidst all the confusion, the local headquarters was like a lifeboat in a flood. It was where all those assembled, with their guilty consciences, who had already left the sinking ship. Everyone tried to mask his personal failure with some sort of claim or complaint. But the local commandant, a fat little Major, had nothing, only forms. He ran around with a flushed face and plenty of responsibility. He listened to all kinds of stories. Very little of it, if any, was true. ‘My battery needs ammunition, otherwise I can take no further responsibility for it!’ The guns of that battery had been deserted next to the tarmac. The artillerymen were squabbling over seats in the ghost-train. It was widely known that headquarters had no ammunition. ‘If my unit doesn’t get any more petrol, I shall have to dynamite the vehicles!’ The vehicles only existed on paper. Fully laden with equipment and petrol for three days, they were ablaze in the forest. The unit commander had personally torched the staff car. ‘At least give me a jeep for the dressing station! I’ve got to relocate!’ The staff surgeon and his limousine had sunk in the swamp. The man urgently needed the jeep for himself. ‘Require written confirmation that my battalion is no longer combat-available . . . need rations . . . cartridges . . . urgent replacements . . . regret, without anti-tank weapons, impossible . . . can take no further responsibility . . . can take no responsibility . . . no responsibility . . .’ The Major, who for the past half-hour had also been acting Commander-in-Chief at Emga, had heard this sentence a hundred times already. In addition, there were the sounds from outside, the engine noise of the Russian fighter planes, the crash of ack-ack gunnery, the bleeping of telephones. Luftwaffe Command: ‘Where is the front line as of this moment?’ Army Corps: ‘Special powers for acting C-in-C at Emga!’ Commissariat: ‘Am making you personally responsible for local supply situation.’ Divisional command: ‘Require situation report!’ Those morons!
The Judge Advocate with rank of Colonel was forced to chase the Major through his rooms, as he flitted here and there like a weasel. The atmosphere was familiar to him. When they recognized him – and they all recognized him – then there followed the chill breath of his title, which he mistook for respect. It was almost like being at home: apprehension, anxious waiting, furtive glances – just like what he got as he strode through the halls of justice. Decked out in gown and dignity, stepping confidently and nimbly from paragraph to paragraph: the attorney-general. An obsequious greeting to him was required as part of the urge to survive . . .
They all greeted him. He was pleasantly aware of the fact that they bowed ever so slightly. Only the NCO of the Military Police remained stiff and upright. The effort of a court servant to appropriate some of the general attention to himself. In any case, order prevailed here. Maybe it wasn’t so bad outside. Still, exceptional circumstances: and that was what he was doing here. Finally he managed to run the Major to ground: ‘Would you kindly make it possible for me to arrange a court martial, in accordance with the terms of my order!’ In fact, he could just as well have done it himself. He enjoyed the full backing of the army. But among his peers, he took care always to observe the formalities.
The Major, who all along had been hopelessly unequal to the situation, suddenly saw the funny side of it: ‘Any of the officers who are assembled here are as of this moment under your command!’ He looked at the Colonel like a clown looking into a mirror. Waited for the grin that was bound to come. Unexpectedly, there was no grin.
‘Are these officers disposable, then?’ came the surprised
question.
‘Every bit!’ Even an acting C-in-C has some gallows humour. If the clown from HQ wanted to put on his three-ring circus – well, be my guest! The words ‘acting C-in-C’ affected the Major like nitrous oxide anyway. Who cares, he thought, gurgling to himself. Let these deserters sit in judgement over those other ones! He felt like a hero in underclothes. ‘Take anyone you want,’ he offered, magnanimously. He had to laugh. His Adjutant appeared behind him:
‘Divisional HQ on the phone!’
Just in time. The Major disappeared, before the Colonel could launch into any explanations.
The Colonel surveyed the room. He had always hated disorder. In order to feel in charge, he needed an appropriate setting. That table to the middle of the room. Those boxes out. The floor could do with a sweep. Shame that you couldn’t press a broom into an officer’s hands. He selected a couple from among those present. The others vanished in no time. The room was suddenly empty.
‘What’s all that noise outside?’ he asked. ‘I had to battle my way through here. There was no respect for my rank!’
