by David Fraser
‘Unfortunately Frido has lost his left foot – the lower left leg has been amputated. He was lucky to survive. The vehicle in which he was travelling drove over a Russian mine.’
Marcia and Lise were appalled. But by winter, 1941 the hospital at which they were working was beginning to fill with cases evacuated from the east, and they had no difficulty in imagining other and grimmer injuries. Frido without his left foot would still be Frido, gentle, enquiring Frido. Some of the men they tended would never be recognizable. Marcia, too, was able to give voice to a sentiment which Kaspar von Arzfeld could not entertain without offending his traditions –
‘It ought to mean, at least, that he won’t have to go back.’
‘Frido will be distressed at any wound that prevents him serving his country,’ said Kaspar sternly.
‘Of course. Still, it would be awfully nice if he didn’t have to go back, wouldn’t it?’
And when Kaspar went to bed that night he reflected on Marcia’s words.
‘What a strange girl,’ he thought. ‘Her ways are not our ways, she only thinks of individuals’ small happinesses, not of the destiny of nations! All women are to some extent like that, but this one –’
He told himself for the hundredth time, with understanding, that Marcia’s position was intolerably difficult. How could one expect her to understand that to a German officer it was the darkest of fates to be prevented from serving in the hour of the Fatherland’s peril? He ruminated on Marcia’s words as he undressed and knelt to pray beside his cold bed. He was fond of her.
‘It would be awfully nice if he didn’t have to go back.’ He saw, as so often, in his mind’s eye the face of his eldest son, who had loved this girl. He sighed, and thought again of Frido, committing him to Divine protection. He prayed to be saved from self-indulgence, from putting self and family before ideals. But –
‘Yes,’ he whispered to himself, ‘yes, it would be – good – if he did not have to go back.’
Chapter 13
It was not until April, 1942, that Frido eventually reached Arzfeld on his eagerly awaited sick leave. There had been ‘complications’ after the original amputation; a battle against gangrene, narrowly won. When he eventually arrived Lise wept for joy: but in the privacy of her room came other tears, of anxiety, of distress for her beloved brother.
For Frido was not only terribly thin. He was like a shell from which the inner creature had been anaesthetized and extracted. Outwardly, in spite of what he quietly assured them had been excellent treatment in hospital (‘I haven’t had such luxury for years!’) he was pale, drawn, praeternaturally silent. Lise, who had always been close to Frido, found that she could establish no contact with him. He seemed without animation and so uninterested in life around him that Lise several times found herself wondering whether his brain had been affected.
His manner to Marcia was so ‘correct’ as to be chilling. She thought, on his first evening home, that she could discern a possible reason – a political, a general rather than a personal reason. By tacit agreement the international situation, the whys and wherefores of the war, were seldom discussed at Arzfeld, and Marcia was grateful for the delicacy with which they shielded her from this. It now appeared, disconcertingly, that Frido only showed life if talk turned to the war. He seemed unable to leave the war alone. On that first evening he stared straight at Marcia after supper. His habitual expression was now so grave that he almost looked accusatory. His father and sister, at least, would have been surprised to learn that as he looked at Marcia his blood was, once again and most painfully, on fire. His words were cold.
‘Well, since I was last here, our war has become world war. Goodbye to any hopes of peace in our time!’
‘You’ve been here since this Russian business started, Frido,’ said his father. ‘You were here briefly last July before you went east, remember?’
‘I didn’t mean that. I meant that now we are also at war with America. We are at war, simultaneously, with the largest land power on earth and the two largest maritime powers. To say nothing of the greatest industrial power in the world. Rather a lot for Germany to take on, don’t you think?’
Kaspar disliked the turn of the conversation. ‘America is chiefly concerned with Japan,’ he muttered. ‘There’s no question but that they forced war on Japan. I can’t imagine why.’
‘I have no doubt,’ said Frido flatly, ‘that there will, nevertheless, be some effort available for use against Germany. Anyway, England now has America and American production behind her. It is a different situation from that a year ago. Completely different.’
His father nodded judiciously. Frido’s voice was unexpressive as he continued.
‘It will be a long war. A very long war. Fought to the death.’ Marcia looked at him.
‘He does not hate us,’ she thought. ‘He can’t hate anybody. But he is in despair.’
Frido had thought for a long time about how much he properly should say to his father about the war. His mind, always ambivalent about the whole business, had been entirely made up by what he had experienced on the Eastern Front. There was now so much that was loathsome, so much that made him shudder as his mind ranged over it, that he had at first decided only to produce a few soldierly reminiscences, perhaps to discuss the ‘general military situation’, insofar as an intelligent but very junior officer and an elderly colonel of the Reserve could do so. Kaspar von Arzfeld was, of course, avid to hear all he could. Second only to his joy at welcoming his younger son was his eager anticipation of hearing at first hand something of the Russian campaign. ‘How I wish I could see it!’ he had grumbled to the girls a hundred times: he had fought in Galicia in the First World War. Now Frido would enable him to see it. This far, Frido had anticipated and would oblige.
But Frido had other memories, dreadful, disturbing memories which it had been his instinct to keep from his father. He felt that the simple patriotism, the traditional habits of mind of the old colonel could be so confused, so shaken by some of Frido’s tales that there might be a collapse of confidence between them. Frido feared that Kaspar, outraged by some of the things Frido had seen and could recount, would tell himself, ‘The boy’s exaggerating!’ It would be easier to avoid excessive frankness, simpler to put certain unspeakable things from his mind, to play a part – a straightforward, modest part – and to tell his father (accurately as far as it went) only the sort of things Kaspar wanted, eagerly, to learn.
Frido, lying in hospital, slowly getting accustomed to the idea of one day being fitted with a replacement leg, managing his crutch, exercizing himself conscientiously and laboriously in the small park beside the hospital – Frido had decided against this prudent course. His relationship with his father had always been a little stiff. He loved and revered Kaspar, but he had always feared him – feared, at least, his disapproval, his incomprehension. Frido had felt himself less satisfactory than Werner, as a von Arzfeld. Yet he wholly respected his father’s standards of morality. And there had come a moment, in hospital, when Frido had said to himself – ‘Of course I can – I must – speak to my father of these things. There can be little hope for mankind, and surely none for Germany if I cannot speak to such a man of these things. But it will be hard.’ He had felt happier thereafter. He felt he had resolved upon a small, hesitant step down a long, dark passage.
‘It looks to me,’ said Kaspar, ‘as if your old comrades are soon going to be pushed off on another big adventure. Southward.’
He was standing over one of the many maps which adorned his study table. Frido was sitting in a chair, pale, crutch beside him, sufficiently attentive. He had given to his enthralled father a full account of the fighting in Southern Russia at the tail end of 1941. After their triumphs in the Ukraine, after the capture of Kiev and the great encirclement of Soviet troops in the Kiev cauldron, after the crossing of the Dnieper river, the German ‘Army Group South’ had advanced south and east towards the Sea of Azov. Field Marshal von Rundstedt’s command for
med thus the northern arm of yet another giant pincer. The southern arm of that pincer was the Rumanian army, advancing eastward from Bessarabia, moving across a great, empty landscape where often for days on end no enemy troops were to be seen.
But as 1941 drew towards its close the Wehrmacht had to admit failure over a large part of the immense front, a front extending more than one thousand miles from north to south. Fresh Russian armies had been drummed up from the eastern regions of the Soviet Union. Field Marshal von Bock’s Army Group Centre, inadequately equipped for winter warfare, freezing, famished, confronted huge counter-attacks, and barely hung on to their positions facing Moscow. The emphasis of the high command, after much acrimony and vacillation, was now on the south: on the Crimean peninsula, the great industrial areas of the Donets, Kharkhov, Rostov, the Don.
‘The Russians counter-attacked, Father, as you know. Immense counter-attacks, huge masses of men advanced from the east against our forces who were battering their way southward into the Crimea.’
Kaspar nodded, ‘Von Manstein,’ he murmured.
‘Exactly. And then the whole of our Panzer Group was sent south and we, in turn, attacked the northern flank of the Russians who were threatening Manstein. But there were enormous gaps throughout the southern front, Father. A lot of Russia is like the sea …’ Frido talked on, the ‘popular’ map of the Eastern Front spread on the table beside him. His father nodded, following every move, digesting his son’s impressions, asking a quiet question now and then.
‘The weather broke in mid-October, of course,’ Frido said. ‘None of us could believe the high command expected decisive results from offensives started so late in the year. On the Central front it even started snowing in October! And the mud! My God, the mud! We’ve got no decent winter equipment, whether against the mud, water or ice. Men are suffering from frostbite in very large numbers – ears, noses, toes – and so forth. Frostbite kills, father.’
Kaspar sighed. An experienced soldier, all his instincts were against criticism. Organizing the supplies of a great Army was inevitably more complex than even the most intelligent youngster generally supposed.
‘At least our battle equipment, I imagine, was superior to anything the Russians could bring against us?’ he said.
‘Not at all. Their best tanks – their T34s – are better than ours.’
‘Better than ours?’
‘Certainly. And whether you’re talking of machine, man or beast, the Russians are better prepared for the winter. They understand it.’
Some Soviet units, Frido said, hardly fought at all, their morale suddenly cracked, their only desire surrender. Others held out with extraordinary, chilling tenacity. Their endurance of hardship was something the German soldier, himself no weakling, found a perennial miracle.
‘They live on grass if they’re cut off from food. They survive in holes in the snow.’
Kaspar looked again at the map. He had, more recently, heard a good deal of which Frido, hospital patient or convalescent, could hardly be aware.
‘Well,’ he said, ‘at least the winter’s now past. As I say, I think your old comrades will soon be on the move again, south. That’s what I believe.’
‘You mean the Caucasus? It’s been rumoured for some time,’ said Frido quietly. ‘It’s mad, of course.’
‘My son –’ said Kaspar von Arzfeld sternly.
‘Mad. I agree that it looks as if that’s where we’ll go next. And it’s mad.’ Frido stood up, took his crutch and started swinging his body about the room.
‘Oh, we’ll advance through the Caucasus all right. That’s not the point. What comes after? When the Army is already so extended that a strong Russian thrust – a really strong Russian thrust – anywhere, could tear the whole front open.’ In a low, unemotional voice, his eyes wide open, remembering, Frido started describing some of the Russian winter attacks.
‘The more he talks the better for him,’ his father thought.
‘They attacked on one occasion across the frozen Don. We saw this great mass of men move down toward the far bank. Our artillery opened up and we heard a fearful wailing and screeching. Then they started coming towards us again, flowing towards us like the sea, and we could see that it was, in most cases, the second wave who had simply taken the places of the first. We saw them climbing over the men in front, yelling and laughing. Laughing! It was a horrible sound, amid all that blood and pain. I don’t think there can have been a sober man there. They were drink-mad, insensible.
‘They came down to the river, to the Don. Their arms were linked. They had neither the ability nor the thought of using their weapons. Something – drink, demons, – was driving them on, a human tide, screaming “Urra”, swaying, thousands followed by other thousands, marching across the great frozen river towards us. Nearer and nearer.
‘We were thin on the ground on the Don front. When they were about half-way across our machine guns opened up – the Don is over a kilometre wide there – and the whole lot came down. We could hear those yells of drunkenness and savagery change to screams of pain and terror as our fire found its mark, brought men down, and others staggered and fell, unable to free themselves from their comrades who’d been killed or wounded next to them in the ranks. The machine gun bullets, where they didn’t strike flesh, threw up a fine white spray from the ice, rather beautiful. We could see men trying to claw at the solid ice as if they could burrow into it. It was like a great dark, obscene pool of blood spreading across a white carpet. The carpet was the icy Don, the pool of blood was a mass of suffering, writhing, bleeding creatures – more animal than human, or so I’m afraid we all felt –’
‘It is shocking,’ said Kaspar von Arzfeld austerely, finding his voice, ‘shocking for any command, of any nation, to commit soldiers to battle in such a way.’
‘Shocking, Father? Perhaps. But it was successful.’
‘Successful?’
‘Oh yes, successful. You see the second wave was immediately followed by a third. And they were protected by the bodies of their predecessors until they were much nearer our bank. And by then, you know, our people were getting low in ammunition. It’s not as if we had huge numbers of machine gun posts; and the Russians were going to keep on advancing. “Urra, Urra!” Of course, the cost to them was immense – horrible. But we pulled our people back. We had to. I know the Russians can’t do that everywhere. Their losses have been unbelievable. But where they decide there is a real operational need to punch a hole they won’t shrink from a terrible casualty bill – they’ll punch that hole. Is that such bad strategy, Father? From their point of view it can surely be argued that an expensive success is still a success: that only failure is really expensive – when there is nothing to put on the credit side of the account.’
Frido was speaking with a sort of chilling irony, as if he could understand certain processes of thought, could even respect them intellectually while finding them entirely odious.
‘They have always held human life lightly,’ muttered his father.
Frido looked at him thoughtfully. Then he started talking of something different. He spoke of the extraordinary hatred, hatred beyond the ordinary stresses and violence of war, which the campaign in the east seemed to have generated. He told Kaspar of many things.
‘The pain and sufferings of war are cruel,’ said Kaspar. ‘We soldiers understand that although we do not speak much of it. It has always been so.’
‘Yes, Father, of course violent death, wounding, the shrieks of men with half their bodies burned away – of course these are terrible, but any soldier who does not expect to see and hear such things, if not to endure them, is a fool. I am not speaking of such things. I am talking of something else.’
Frido told his father of how his company had re-taken a village where a number of German prisoners had been held before being marched to the rear – prisoners taken in one of the first Russian counter-attacks in the summer of 1941. These prisoners, one and all, had been murdered immediately
the German attack was in its turn renewed. There had been a chance, Frido acknowledged, that they might have been liberated – freed to fight against Mother Russia once again. No such risk could be taken by their captors. They had been cut down by machine guns and, in many cases, mutilated. Frido spoke quietly.
‘Their private parts had been cut off and stuffed into their mouths. Their hands were bound. Those who had survived the bullets had been bayoneted. It had all taken a little time. The lucky ones, of course, died when the guns spoke. None of us knew what they had suffered before that. Large numbers had had their eyes gouged out. I don’t think that was done to corpses. There was too much blood. That’s what our men found when they retook the village.’
‘These are primitives, savages,’ said his father grimly. ‘It is like fighting against tribes from darkest Africa, not against a people which, until a few years ago, was a Christian people. This is what Bolshevism has done to them!’ His voice shook.
Frido seemed to consider, dispassionately.
‘I don’t think one should say, Father, “was a Christian people”. In many ways they are still. I have told you frightful things. They were true. But there’s another side. When we first went in, last year, we were often given a warm welcome. We opened up the churches, restored them to worship – you’ve read of that. It was very popular. Religion had been viciously persecuted. We were the people’s liberators from the Bolsheviks.’
Kaspar had indeed read of that. ‘It made me very proud,’ he said. ‘I wish these Americans and English who have allied themselves to the Soviets, I wish they understood this. They think that was German propaganda I suppose.’
‘It certainly wasn’t that. It happened and I saw it. The terrible thing is that the effect is being entirely undone. We had the people as our friends.’ Frido was hopping with his crutch up and down the study, up and down. He spoke in a low voice, pausing often.
