On one of my returns from the battalion to the company something happened that I couldn’t write home about. The details were simply too unsavory, too disgusting.
It was raining when my replacement arrived. I shouldered the wireless, picked up my rifle, and started on my way back. As usual I didn’t walk inside the narrow zigzag trenches but rather up top, through the hip-high grass. I didn’t enjoy having to maneuver my wireless through those cramped subterranean passageways, and I hoped that the Russians on the other side of the river wouldn’t notice me, what with the rain and the falling dusk.
At first all went well, and I was making good time. When I had put approximately three of the six kilometers’ distance behind me, a few scattered shots flew in my direction, but not so close that I considered seeking cover. Shortly thereafter, though, a machine gun set its sights on me, and I sprang as fast as I could into an artillery crater.
Because of the heavy wireless on my back, I fell facedown into a horrible stinking mass—a rotting horse cadaver.
At first I couldn’t find a hold in the soft mush threaded with bones. The heavy box on my back pushed me down yet deeper, and, seized by an almost hysterical panic, I began flailing and thrashing around like a madman until I managed to right myself.
I worked my way out of the hellhole as best I could, and when finally I made it up over the edge, dragging the wireless behind me, I threw up. But I had to go back down once more to fish out the rifle that I had let fall.
Normal people, in the course of a typical ordered life, never find themselves in the position of having to inhale such a pestilential stench in such overwhelming concentration. I tore off my clothing and rolled around naked in the wet grass, always staying low enough not to attract the attention of that Russian machine gun. I tried to wash my face and hands in a rain puddle and also to rinse off my pants as much as possible.
Long after dark, without shirt or jacket and still stinking something fierce, I finally reached the battalion, where I was given fresh clothing. I spent the next morning cleaning my putrid wireless and rifle, during which process I again vomited. My comrades responded to my plight with malicious and gloating jokes. As long as it hadn’t happened to them, it provided them with a great distraction and a much-needed change of scene.
July 8, 1944
Dear Mutti,
The weather is wonderful again today. After the continuous rain of the last few days, the sun is shining beautifully and the temperature is blessedly cooler. The water is standing in the trenches, though, and we still can’t think of dry feet for a few days.
It is a few minutes past 6 a.m. The others have just gone to bed and are snoring their best. I can’t do that today, because I’ve been plagued for three days with shingles. These are endless little blisters about ten centimeters wide, beginning at the spine and continuing around the left side at breast height until exactly the middle in front. It is quite painful. I can’t lie down, and I also have a fever. What’s more, it hurts to breathe, and I don’t feel at all well.
The medic here at the company has never seen anything like it and was doubtful whether he should heal it with powder, salves, and bandages or with pills from the inside out. I’ve decided, therefore, to forgo his cures and walk the two kilometers back to the battalion tonight, so that the doctor there can take a look at me. I don’t mind, because the path runs along the top of the west bank of the Dniester. To walk with this bright moon through unharvested cornfields, with a view of the silver band of the river, the village houses glowing white in the moonlight, plus the rocket and parachute flares in different colors and shades, is all very pretty.
Your packages are wonderful. Yesterday I cooked a pudding with vanilla sugar, and that wonderful marmalade was a festival for me. The food is really miserable, and everyone’s getting sick from it. The menu for the past few days looked more or less like this:
Sunday: fried potatoes, beans, meat (warm, canned), cheese, butter, and bread
Monday: bean casserole, canned meat, artificial honey, and bread
Tuesday: pea casserole, cheese, margarine, and bread
Wednesday: bean casserole, canned liverwurst, jam, and bread
Thursday: bean stew, cheese, butter, bread, and stewed cherries
Friday: dried vegetable stew, canned meat, margarine, and bread
Saturday: for sure beans or peas again!
Otherwise I’m fine. The flies and mosquitoes are annoying, but you get used to them. It doesn’t matter anymore if five or ten flies are constantly running around on your face. Man is a creature of habit. Hopefully also in relation to the beans. Many kisses,
Your Georg
July 9, 1944
Dear Mutti,
Right now I’m lying at the main dressing station, thirty kilometers behind the front, with a high-grade case of shingles. I’m in a lot of pain and can’t lie down, but standing or walking doesn’t suit me either, so I don’t know what to do. Added to that are the unbearable heat, fever, and the endless flies. I long for my cool bunker at the front and no pain. I’ll have to stay here for a few days though.
They try to do everything to make life a little easier for us. We receive excellent light meals, sweet tea, pudding, wine, etc. There are no beds, and one cannot really undress since the sick and wounded lie on blankets on the straw-covered floor. I’m bathed in perspiration. My lungs and heart have been affected somehow also. Breathing is very difficult, and it hurts. My heart is beating very irregularly. But it’s not enough to get me into the hospital because, in comparison to the head and belly wounds there, I’m in pretty good shape.
Today I saw four German women for the first time since I left home last November. It was a strange feeling, sitting in the recreation room with a fever while up on the stage, four women, accompanied by a piano, were singing songs from Italian opera, Mozart, etc. All the appropriate costumes and commentary were included. Such a change from the coarse women I have been seeing for the past half year.
They are running a movie the day after tomorrow. That’s really great. We receive a portion of our pay in lei, Romanian money, so I can also buy cherries, peaches, milk, and wine here at fairly cheap prices.
Mui, it’s such an effort. When I feel better I’ll write again. For the time being, my address remains the same. Many kisses,
Your Georg
I spent seven sweltering days at the main dressing station. While I was there, a request that I had filled out months earlier for orthopedic arch supports was approved. When my general condition had improved slightly, I was sent by Red Cross truck to Kishinev, the largest city in the area, to get the arch supports made and to receive additional treatment for my shingles.
Three-quarters of Kishinev was in ruins, but the streetcars were still running. Not a shot could be heard, and I began to feel as though I were on vacation. Kishinev boasted movie houses everywhere, as well as swimming pools, restaurants, and markets. I could see, for the first time, how good the soldiers had it who were stationed just a few extra kilometers away from the front.
I spent the mornings running around to various doctors, but my afternoons and evenings were free. The city street scenes struck me as very strange, sometimes even humorous. The remnants of the population were going about their business through the ruins, some clothed quite properly for the city, others in rags and tatters. Anything could be purchased in the markets or bazaars for lei—rusty watch springs, fruits, trouser buttons, wagon wheels, fabrics, even a sick horse with three legs. The sellers simply spread everything out on a rug in the middle of the street.
Bargaining was loud and fierce. I saw two women giving each other bloody noses, while nearby someone fiddled Oriental tunes on a violin and two drunks clutched each other in a dusty dance. The local costumes and fiery temperament of the people combined to make the setting very colorful.
The dour-faced Germans, exhausted from fighting, provided quite a contrast. Some, like me, admired every little thing as though they were coming from another world, as though they had just escaped from hell. Others looked indifferent or disgusted—repelled, evidently. Finally there were the sick and wounded, who merely observed the entire passing scene as the first station on the lovely trip home.
After a few days it was decided that although the arch supports could be made in Kishinev, there was no place to attend to my shingles, so I was ordered to take a 150-kilometer train ride to Galatz, the next big city, still farther to the rear. My vacation was becoming even longer than expected, and that was certainly fine with me. I enjoyed the train ride and the beautiful summer weather, while I tried to ignore the pain I still had and the pus-saturated bandages around my chest.
In Galatz I discovered a hospital bed but no orthopedic station for the arch supports, so my journey rearward continued for twenty additional kilometers, until I finally reached the beautiful city of Braila on the delta of the Danube.
July 24, 1944
Dear Mutti,
I’ve been here in Braila now for three days, and I am forgetting the war. Nobody reminds you here. It is a very pretty little city, directly on the Danube, with a large and beautiful harbor, streetcars, parks, movies, variety shows, etc. Everything, everything can be found here.
The most beautiful cars are steered by a variety of males (young and civilian), the type that are dying out at home. Add to those the pretty, well-dressed women and a sense of gaiety that we don’t know at all anymore.
In the stores you can get whatever you want: cars, refrigerators, clothing, everything, everything, everything, but only for lei. I managed to exchange a few, so I’m living like a god.
I’m systematically enjoying all the things I’ve always revered. After eight and a half months, what a delight to partake once again of ice cream, Cremeschnitten, movies. I bought a piccolo harmonica for 360 lei (my old one was already battered), a neck scarf, pocketknife, and flashlight.
The men and women are completely different from those at home. Everybody deals in everything, even if his profession doesn’t have anything to do with commerce. If you are talking with someone, he will ask you, seemingly offhand, “Do you have anything to sell?” In this way many used items, for high prices or low, end up in the hands of the Romanians. The soldiers like to sell their blankets, shirts, whatever they have, but this is severely punished. Because of Frau Blaschke, I’ve never done this. [Author’s note: See explanation here.]
I also bought a phrase book, and I cause a lot of amusement everywhere with my few scraps of Romanian. Eighty percent of the soldiers don’t understand a word. Right away, on my first day here, I managed to find a cute little girlfriend who has a good deal of sympathy for my limited finances. So I’m able to have a good time while acquiring my fruit and ice cream inexpensively.
I’m living at the Recovery Company. Here one is obliged to be in attendance from 4 a.m. until 6 p.m., but by 4:30 p.m. I’m already out of the house (theoretically to have my dressings changed), and I’m not to be seen again until the following morning at 10.
Tomorrow the arch supports will be finished, and so all this splendor will soon be over. Unfortunately. But one mustn’t be presumptuous. When I imagine that I might have spent this period in a hole at the front, I’m certain it wouldn’t have been so lovely.
They are really giving Vienna a good working over it seems. I hope they don’t knock the whole city down. Maybe it will be over soon. But thinking is forbidden.
My movie begins in half an hour. Ich vertraue Dir meine Frau an, with Heinz Ruehmann. Write me about the bombs. My post number is still the same and, when I get up to the front again, I’ll receive my mail. Pardon the writing, but I’m sitting in the park and writing on my knees. Many good kisses,
Your Georg
When someone tells a Viennese a story that he doesn’t believe, one of his answers might be, “You can tell that to Frau Blaschke,” thereby referring to a dumb old gal from the Naschmarkt who believes everything, or at least pretends she does, for business reasons.
When I mentioned Frau Blaschke in connection with selling pieces of my uniform, I wanted to let my parents know that yes, I definitely was selling my things, but of course I couldn’t write this directly because of possible censoring. After nine months in the cold and filth, in a lost war staged by people who first classified me as a member of an inferior race and then forced me to fight on their side, I had no inhibitions whatsoever about selling my uniform or my rifle to the Romanians.
It was pretty clear to me that these things were being purchased for the partisans. If I had wanted to follow the thought to its logical conclusion, the same rifle I was selling might eventually be used to shoot at me. But after three-quarters of a year on the front lines, I now suddenly found myself for ten days in a peaceful city with elegant inhabitants and full stores where, if you had the money, you could buy whatever your heart desired.
So I sold my uniform jacket to the first one who asked. It was summer, and I knew I could get another. For ten days I had everything: the best food, a girl to take out and to hold on to, whatever I wanted to buy. I went by taxi to concerts, knowing that in a few days I’d be back under fire and that I’d possibly never see a city again.
When they stopped me on the street with their “Haben Sie nichts zum verkaufen?” I gave them first whatever parts of my uniform I could get along without, then my bayonet and my blanket. When I found out how much they were willing to pay for my rifle, I could see the seductive delights of Braila becoming even more affordable and hesitated only for a moment.
The money disappeared quickly from my pockets. No problem. I went to the train station, where hundreds of soldiers were sleeping and waiting for the next train to take them home on leave. Their duffel bags lay next to them on the ground; their rifles leaned against the wall. For a while I sat down and also pretended to sleep; then I got up, automatically taking the rifle next to me as though it were mine, and left. The other guy would probably miss it, but I was sure he wouldn’t be needing it on his furlough.
On my last day of wandering through Braila, I stopped in front of a bookstore display and discovered, attached to the inside of the window, a map that aroused my interest. It was one of those beautiful maps published by Freytag & Berndt, and it showed all the countries of southeastern Europe. The mountains were brown, the plains shades of green, lightening in tone as the altitude dropped. The roads, railway lines, rivers, all were drawn in. I was able to pick out the cities I had neared during the retreat and the place where my battalion was probably still holed up.
With my finger I traced a route south from Romania, through Bulgaria, to Greece, all countries occupied by the Germans. Along the very bottom edge snaked the Bosphorus, the channel dividing neutral Turkey from the European continent.
If I could only make it to there, I thought, instinctively looking over my shoulder to see if anyone was observing my traitorish thoughts. Actually, there were masses of people in the streets, but of course no one was paying any attention to me.
I sought the map’s scale and gauged the distance from Braila to Greece at nine hundred kilometers. My fantasy was obviously impossible. I would have to cover most of the route by night, steal my food from the fields, and, above all, not get caught. If captured, I would be shot immediately as a deserter. Definitely too risky, I decided, but during a brief pause, when there were no other clients, I entered the store and bought the map.
It felt bulky in my pocket. Just owning a map of this sort seemed to point me out as a traitor. After all, why should a simple soldier, interested only in a German victory over Europe and the rest of the world, have need of such a map? Later I hid it in the bottom of the cloth shoulder bag where I always carried my personal possessions.