Men of Snow

by John R Burns

  Franz stood peeing with his collar pulled up and his cap tilted down over his face, the cold air a relief from inside the train. He could smell the different atmosphere. It had the tang of frosted grass and hard earth and the coming winter.

  The line of soldiers shuffled in the night rain before there was the sound of shots and the whole regiment seemed to twitch into alertness. Men were scrambling up onto the carriage roofs to light up their beam torches and shine them across the sodden ploughed field.

  ‘What is it?’ Franz asked a corporal who was running past.

  ‘Men trying to desert sir,’ he called.

  The shafts of light picked up a group of soldiers returning out of the darkness, two of them with their hands in the air.

  A whistle sounded as the train blew out steam.

  ------------------------------------------------------------------

  It was the next morning when they finally stopped at a station. Everybody on board started to move their stiffened limbs and taste their dry throats.

  The platform was busy with Polish women trundling in samovars and huge baskets of bread and sausages. The soldiers peered out of the filthy windows at them and the ramshackle buildings behind. The women were dressed in their peasant shawls and long coats and boots, peering miserably at the food they were organising.

  From the other side of the carriage soldiers had noticed a long line of cattle trucks that were barred and locked. Through some of the broken slats they could see dark eyes peering out, or the shape of a woman’s thin face in a hole in the wood. There were mutterings for water coming from the trucks, their requests repeated constantly.

  Two carriages at a time were allowed onto the platform for the hot coffee, bread and thick sausages. When it came to his carriage Franz waited and watched as the rest of his men fed themselves. The Polish women always looked the same to him with their miserable, sullen expressions.

  He could hear the drone on the tracks. It was the sound of distances. They were in Poland and so much closer to their destination. A few guards watched what the women were doing as the food was quickly eaten. Then onto the platform marched a small brass band as the soldiers were told to get back on the train.

  The band lined up. The band master jerked out to the front, glanced through some of the carriage windows into the train and in a loud, crisp voice introduced what was going to be played and wished us all an uneventful journey.

  ‘He’s no fucking idea where we’re going,’ sergeant Lohm muttered.

  It was during the second tune that the snow began to fall, just a few flakes to start with. Within minutes it was smearing over the windows until nobody could see anything of the miserable Polish women and the tiny but loud brass band standing on the platform. Steam passed by the carriages as wheels skidded before gripping on the track to move forwards.

  ‘What was that place?’ sergeant Kallack asked.

  Hauptmann pulled out a cigarette from inside his coat as he said, ‘It had no name. The Poles don’t have any country so I’ve been told we are in the process of changing all the names of everywhere, farms, cities, towns so when you look at a map in the future there will be nothing that shows this was ever Poland.’

  ‘Fuck the Polaks,’ somebody shouted from the next line of seats, ‘Just make sure they are what you think they are or you might get a nasty surprise.’

  ‘That sausage will fill this place with farts, strong farts,’ was another comment.

  ‘What happened Brucker to the deserters?’ Hauptmann enquired.

  ‘They will have been shot as they should have been.’

  There was a general reticence for the next few hours as the snowstorm began to intensify. Often now the train would stop it appeared for no reason before slowly setting off again.

  -----------------------------------------------------------------------

  The first sight was a line of bodies laid out along beside the track. The snow crossed the beams of strong lights as they got off the train. There were three large, wooden sheds. A group of trucks was parked up. Behind the sheds the wounded were waiting silently, bandaged figures being covered in the snow. Other troops were crossing the tracks as shouted commands were muffled in the night’s weather. Colonel Strauss appeared for a few moments before going into one of the sheds as two trucks rattled away into the darkness. Another train creaked and shuddered to a stop with more soldiers on board.

  They were all gripped immediately by the coldness. A few were ready, bundled up in extra clothes. Most were still in summer uniform. They were organised into their different companies as another train came in and more trucks appeared. Then they waited. Some of the wounded shuffled from behind the sheds towards one of the waiting trains, a slow, silent line of grey figures. The new soldiers watched them as the snow whipped into their faces.

  In the distance they could hear a deep rumble of detonations followed by sudden bursts of silvered or crimson light, a constant sound away towards what they knew must be the centre of Stalingrad.

  ‘There’s a fucking two and a half thousand mile front across fucking Russia so why the hell has our regiment to finish up in Stalingrad?’ Steinhof had asked when they had come out of one of their first briefings in Paris.

  Now they could smell it through the snow and darkness, the taint of explosives and demolished buildings, the odour of old plaster and smashed concrete and something deeper that smelt acrid and tainted.

  ‘There’s no regiment. There’s nobody else there,’ another wounded sergeant had told them, ‘you feel completely by yourself, and you might be. It’s all cellars and bombed out buildings and getting lost in a maze of shattered streets. That’s what it’s like. You feel on your own as though there’s never been an army or your regiment or your company or anything. The Russians move like rats. They know what they’re doing. They’re just shadows in the night looking how to put a quick bullet in your skull. It’s not a battle. It’s one against one. And there’s nowhere to hide. You think there is to begin with. You think to yourself that you’ll just sit it out, find some cellar corner somewhere, a few rations and keep your head down. But it never happens. One minute there’s nothing and the next the rats are all over the place. And they’ll try and talk to you. They like shouting out their promises and their threats. The Russians do that all the time. They have German speakers trying to get inside your heads. It drove some of our men crazy. They couldn’t stop themselves listening. It got so bad we had one or two started to believe what the Russians were telling them. So don’t listen, don’t ever let your men listen.’

  There was no dawn, only the night merging into a grey clouded snowstorm. Having being moved closer by lorry they were finally on foot into the first obliterated streets of the city.

  Explosions were everywhere, machine gun fire, rifle shots, the rattle of tanks, the push of artillery sound. Noises bounced through their brains as they breathed in dust and the stench of leaking gas and sewerage, huddled over as they moved forward, trying to mentally grasp what was happening, where they were, what they were to do to survive.

  Noise and sights seemed to echo for Franz so the black badge was pinned to his forehead as a jagged pain.

  Somehow he eventually was left with Hauptmann, sergeant Kallack and twelve other soldiers crouched up against pieces of a wall across from what had once between a street where this area’s headquarters was supposed to be. Steinhof and the others had been ordered further in.

  In a cellar lit by small lamps were several desks and radios operators and a colonel Bartsch giving out orders as dust filtered down with every nearby explosion. Franz had joined several officers as the cellar filled with cigarette smoke and the stink of sweat.

  ‘We have no reliable maps because this place is changing shape on an hourly basis. If you’ve just arrived it won’t take you long to understand what we’re up against here, whether that understanding helps. You report back whenever you can. If we don’t see somebody from one of our units every twenty four hours then
as far as we’re concerned that unit no longer exists. You will receive nothing from then on. I need those reports or for all I know we could be stuck in this shithole all by ourselves. Information of where we are and where you think the Russians are is essential.’

  Bartsch’s voice had been automatic, soft words along a monotonous level as though sleep walking through his orders, smoking constantly, eyes bagged to almost closing and a hand brown with nicotine.

  ‘Who are you soldier?’ he had asked Franz who was about to leave as another round smashed close by sending down a fall of plaster and brick dust.

  ‘No,’ the colonel had quickly added, ‘Don’t tell me. Just whatever tricks the Russians try give them the shit back. You fuck them hard or this place is gone and everything else with it. I’ve been saying that for the last months and I’m still repeating myself. Where did you get the scar?’ he asked before being interrupted by a radio operator who needed his weary attention.

  Back with his men Franz lit a cigarette, cupping the match flame. Hauptmann was crouched behind a piece of the wall with the rest of them.

  ‘So we go further,’ was all Franz said, ‘Not far except it could take us three days to get there or never.’

  ---------------------------------------------------------------------

  The office building had only two levels left and they were to take over from a German unit occupying the second floor. After clambering along ditches, over bits of railway track, half demolished buildings and many burnt out vehicles, through the constant barrage of artillery and smaller fire arms, they had managed to find the place.

  The first body had half its head ripped away. The second had part of an arm missing and the contents of the split stomach had congealed on the floor. Two others had bullet holes in the neck and head. There were only four left alive. A corporal was in command. He said nothing when the relief unit appeared.

  ‘You have to report corporal,’ Franz tried.

  The face had been empty, eyes staring as his other men had come up to stand beside him, almost leaning together for support.

  ‘No. I don’t have to do fuck all,’ was his response before starting down what was left of a stone stairway with the other three following.

  His own men had heard. They waited to see what their captain would do until a shell exploded just behind their building.

  Across the shadows of rubble and metal beams was the factory. It too had been left with the front wall of two levels. The other buildings over the street were mounds of brick and cement, some of it still smoking as more snow began to fall through the semi darkness.

  Franz was mentally trying to retrace his route from the colonel’s headquarters. His head was thumping pain and the tension was a bad taste in his mouth. He felt dizzy and disorientated and was already trying to connect his dreams of this place with the utterly different reality which was full of sounds and stench and shapes his thoughts had never approached before. The place was full of the stink of death and silences suddenly ripped by the next shell, the next rifle fire or a few minutes later the appearance of a truck trying to accelerate its way around the debris in the street. Not giving away any position meant the truck passed through without a shot. It unexpectedly reappeared in Franz’s immediate memory, seen again, the unmarked vehicle bouncing along the street with exhaust billowing from the back and then again the memory repeated until he forced himself to concentrate as sergeant Kallack came up.

  ‘Who is the best soldier sergeant?’ Franz asked in a low voice as though they might be heard over all the noise of the city’s battle.

  ‘That would be Mauser sir.’

  Their rations had to last at least three days.

  The dead soldiers’ bodies were naked, stripped of anything that would keep other soldiers warmer. It was too cold for them to decompose. For Franz they quickly became a silent chorus. They would speak to him of the past of this place. He tried to imagine it before the war, tried to see people coming to work, sitting at their Russian desks doing their communist jobs. There were ghosts constantly coming and going on the stairway. He had only been in the city a few hours and already it had begun its haunting.

  His fear was a wire pulled through his stomach and scraped backwards and forwards. His headache was too many fists hitting hard. He stayed crouched for so long he could hardly move anything. Already he knew that few of his men were going to survive. He glanced at them watching from their different positions. Their own fear was the only thing keeping them going.

  ---------------------------------------------------------------------

  The brandy bottle was almost empty. Colonel Bratsch had his cigarette dangling from his mouth as he looked up.

  ‘You’re in the wrong place captain. You’re out of my area whatever that means,’ he said slowly in slurred words.

  Franz tried to concentrate through the smoke and noise and soldiers shouting over each other.

  ‘I could not find the.....’

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ the colonel wearily interrupted, ‘Just try and fucking do something instead of waiting it out.’

  ‘There are Russians across the street.’

  ‘There are Russians everywhere.’

  ‘I plan to take their building.’

  ‘Don’t have plans captain. Just do something. This is Stalingrad and we’re fucked. Do you....do you understand that?’

  ‘Fought in Belgium and northern France,’ he had told Franz.

  Mauser had come with him. The soldier was short, strong, quiet and moved fast in a crouch. He was the only one of his group who had had battle experience.

  ‘Why?’ had been his captain’s question.

  Mauser had frowned before saying, ‘Because we had to defeat the enemy.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because those were our orders.’

  ‘Did you believe in those orders?’

  ‘Yes sir.’

  ‘This is different Mauser. This isn’t like anything else. This is a hell hole and I couldn’t lead you out of it if those were my orders.’

  ---------------------------------------------------------------------

  Snow trailed out of the darkness, out of the greyness for the next days. Their rations were finished.

  The first shot had disintegrated the face of one of his privates who had lifted his head slightly above the wall. Their return of fire had been a gesture. The next soldier had been hit when he had moved across a blown out window section, the bullet splintering his jaw as he had screamed in pain before dying. Two more had been machine gunned going out of the back of a building to look for corpses that might still have some clothing. All of it had happened in the light and shadows from numerous fires burning in different buildings.

  ‘Why do you watch?’ Chantelle had asked, ‘Why don’t you do something. You are a voyeur, not a lover.’

  Hauptmann had urged him to try something.

  ‘We have to move. We can’t just stay here. The eight men we’ve got won’t last long unless they get some warmer clothing and some food.’

  ‘You’re stating the obvious which is no good to me,’ had been the response.

  Snow was flurried with explosions from further down the unseen street as they had heard the rattle of a tank before it had fired off two rounds and then had been silenced.

  Sometimes Franz could not tell who was doing the firing. His sleep lasted minutes before the cold would force him to move position.

  Once they had heard for a few moments a stilted German voice coming from across the street.

  ‘When we get to your country we will fuck all your women and kill......,’ had been all they had heard.

  Fires flickered everywhere. Sometimes explosions blew flames into the snow filled sky. Planes were heard when the weather cleared for a few hours. When he had last gone back to try and find colonel Bartsch’s headquarters the whole area had changed shape with nothing left of the entrance into the HQ cellars.

  ‘Heroes are what the country needs,�
� he could hear his aunt Hildegaard reminding him. Her breath had always smelt so stale.

  It had been Mauser who had suggested and volunteered to go over to get as close to the factory as possible.

  ‘He should try,’ had been Hauptmann’s opinion.

  Franz could only see Mauser’s eyes. He had layers of thick material under his helmet and tied around his lower face.

  Once they had managed to see his shadow moving through the rubble.

  ‘He’s done for,’ Franz had muttered after more than three hours waiting.

  Hauptmann had made no answer.

  The whole city reverberated with more artillery and machine gun fire. Screams and groans came out of the smoke and snow, words urged in German or Russian.

  Franz checked his soldiers, moving from one to the other as quickly as he could. It was the youngest private, a soldier from Hamburg called Fredericks who he heard whimpering as he approached his position.

  The private had rested his face against part of a metal shutter and had dozed off long enough for his cheek to freeze to the metal so he could not move his head.

  ‘Please, please, please,’ he kept on muttering, his shoulders shivering with the cold.

  ‘Just stay easy soldier,’ Franz tried.

  ‘I...I can’t sir. I’m going....going...to....’

  ‘You just shut up. You shut up or they’ll fucking hear you.’

  ‘I can’t move my head.’

  ‘You stop crying.’

  ‘I can’t.’

  ‘Yes you can soldier.’

  ‘I can’t sir. I’m too cold...too cold.’

  They were in the corner where the front wall of what was left of the second storey was highest.

  The private’s helmet had tilted enough for his cheek to have touched the metal.

  ‘Please do...do something....do....’

  ‘Between the explosions they listen.’

  ‘I want to move my head.’

  ‘You’re making too much noise Fredericks. You’re getting hysterical. We’ll do something but you have to stop shouting.’