How did you serve the front?

POSTER SLOGAN

Some time after his deployment to Crimea, Andro Eristavi fetched up in a Georgian Legion combat battalion in Poland. As a radio operator in Lvov he was responsible for safeguarding rail services. Later, he was transferred to the division with the patriotic name ‘Queen Tamar’ and sent to France. During this time he learned German and French. In the Pyrenees, he was charged with decoding enemy communications. In the last year of the war, he was posted to Haarlem in the Netherlands, where he again worked as a radio operator in charge of railway security.

Unfortunately, I have little information about Andro’s state of mind at the time. I don’t know whether he realised while he was still in Crimea what it was he had got caught up in, or whether he regretted his decision; bit by bit his hopeless situation must gradually have become clear to him. He must have understood that Vienna was slipping further and further away as, at the same time, the possibility of returning to his homeland also faded. From 1944 onwards many Georgian Legion battalions began to desert, and the Wehrmacht disbanded the unit. The dream of a free Georgia had died long ago, and from this point on it was down to each individual to try to secure his own survival.

Andro didn’t desert: he stayed with the Queen Tamar. Quite simply, he could see no way out for himself — he knew of no alternative. Looking back, I think in the end it was this paralysis that saved his life. The staunch pacifist Andro Eristavi found himself on Europe’s last battlefield: he became one of the insurgents on the island of Texel.

*

Following the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands in early 1940, this Dutch island in the North Sea became a German military base. The Queen Tamar Battalion was responsible for, among other things, protecting the Haarlem–Amsterdam railway. In early 1945, Andro received orders to go to Texel. There was a camp on the island where many Georgians who had been taken prisoner on the Eastern Front were being held; the Wehrmacht was now using them as auxiliaries. In the night of 5 April, an uprising was organised in the camp after news spread of a Wehrmacht order to send them back to the front. The Georgians managed to gain control of the whole island, with the exception of the naval batteries. Even after the German capitulation in Denmark and the Netherlands, the bitter fight for the island continued.

I don’t know when exactly Andro reached the decision to join the uprising, but I presume he saw this rebellion as his only chance of making amends for his disastrous past and ensuring his own survival.

Andro hid in the fields for days. He saw the farms go up in flames. Heard screams, a lot of gunfire. Heard the battleships’ horns. Heard sentences in Georgian and German; his brain could no longer keep the two languages apart. It no longer made any difference who was killed and who survived. More shots. Which side were they coming from? Where should he run? And what should he shoot at? His rifle felt so heavy; it would take such effort to pull the trigger. He saw something lying in the field, not far away. Andro crawled in its direction, then ducked down: more gunfire, very close this time. He crawled on, belly to the ground. He could smell the spring.

It was a man. A soldier in a Wehrmacht uniform. He had lost his helmet somewhere. Was he still breathing? No. His face was already discoloured. How old might he be? The German rifle lay beside him like a faithful friend. His leg was twisted; he was lying in an unnatural position. Andro lay down beside the dead soldier and stared up at the sky. Soft white clouds were dancing around each other, dispersed by a gentle wind.

Shots.

One, two, three.

Andro whispered to himself: Maman. But his mother didn’t answer. Nor did the sky, and nor did the dead soldier.

Four, five, six.

He heard shots, again and again.

Seven, eight, nine.

He watched a cloud fly away. He smiled. He counted and waited for a reply. Or for death. Perhaps he should envy the German soldier: he couldn’t hear the shooting now, it was all behind him. He had nothing more to do with any of it.

Ten. And another shot. Then a deep, spreading silence that was far from reassuring.

Two weeks after the end of the Second World War, Canadian troops put a stop to the bloodshed on the island, which came to be referred to as Europe’s last battlefield.

Andro Eristavi survived, along with two hundred and thirty other Georgians.

Andro remained on the island until the summer, living with five other Georgian survivors on one of the burnt-out farmsteads.

He never made it to Vienna.