Pages

Praetorium Honoris

Tuesday, August 1, 2023

Zum Ost¹

(Source)
Schütze Manfred Sauer thought that he'd never been this cold in his entire life. As he shivered in his issued greatcoat, one of the other men laughed and pointed out that the weather wasn't as bad as it had been the week before. Sauer shook his head, the man was obviously a city boy and Sauer, a pig farmer, put little credence in the man's comment.

Sauer had arrived by train only two days before with seventy-seven other replacements meant for the 223. Infanterie-Division of the German Wehrmacht. He had met up with the other men of his new platoon somewhere outside Leningrad and they had marched into the lines the night before.

While marching had kept him warm, spending the night in an unheated dugout had let the cold seep into his very bones. He was used to the outdoors, pig farming requires a lot of time outside in all weathers, but this was something altogether different from what he was used to.

The cold was intense, water froze quickly and some of the men had joked that if you weren't quick, "your piss will freeze before it hits the ground."

Sauer didn't really believe that, but again, this was nothing he had experienced before, not even in the coldest of Saxon winters. One of the old hands, Oberschütze Max Kimmel stepped into the dugout as Sauer was slapping his arms across his chest and stomping his feet to try and get the blood flowing.

"Here kid, take these and stuff them inside your clothing. Boots too if you have room."

Sauer stared at the man, he was handing him a newspaper, Goebbels' rag, Das Reich,² which the men read for news from home, though it was clearly a propaganda tool of the regime.

"I don't understand ..." Sauer began, but then it struck him, more insulation. He opened his greatcoat and unbuttoned his tunic, then began stuffing individual pages from the newspaper into his clothing.

Kimmel nodded and said, "You're a fast learner, kid. Keep it up and you might survive."

Sauer looked at the man for a moment, the idea of his not going home after the war had never crossed his mind. Now it did. He resolved at that point to become the best soldier in 3rd Platoon, that should help keep him, and his fellow soldiers, alive. He hoped.


Not 500 meters from Sauer's 3rd Platoon was the 1st Platoon of the 5th Kompanie, 2nd Battalion, 344th Infanterie-Regiment, Leutnant Jürgen von Lüttwitz commanding.

Von Lüttwitz was coming back to the German lines with a patrol of four men and a single Russian prisoner. They had gone out in the freezing night with the intent of gathering intelligence for the battalion. Von Lüttwitz reasoned that a prisoner might be a source of information.

The Russian was a junior officer, he had been sheltering with two other men in a shelter close to the front lines. They had been too preoccupied with staying warm to notice the Germans as they crept closer. Two of those men were quickly dispatched by the Germans as they leapt into the Russian dugout.

The men von Lüttwitz had taken with him were veterans, they all knew that an officer prisoner was their best bet, often the lower ranked Russians didn't have a clue as to what was going on. Sometimes they didn't even know what part of Russia they were in!

The Russian had feigned ignorance of German when they had captured him. Once they had bundled him off into no man's land, von Lüttwitz had complied when his senior runner (Melder), Oberschütze Otto Wandesleben, had gestured for a halt.

Raising an eyebrow, visible in the flickering light from a nearby burning Soviet Panzer, von Lüttwitz looked at his man, who leaned over and began whispering to their prisoner, in German.

"So Ivan, do you speak German? I'm betting you do, which would be very helpful for us."

The Russian shook his head and acted as if he hadn't understood a word, other than "Ivan," which is what the Germans called all Russians.

Turning to his platoon leader, Wandesleben hissed, "He doesn't understand a word, Chef, I say we cut his throat, if he can't speak German he's probably a Party member or some other useless species of Soviet."

At the words "cut his throat," the Russian held his hands out in a gesture of supplication, "My name is Kablukov, Rustem Artemovich Kablukov, I speak a little German."

Wandesleben smiled and whispered, "Enough for us to keep you alive, Kablukov?" As he said that he drew his fighting knife from inside his greatcoat.

When the Russian saw that he realized the game was up, "Yes, I learned at university in Moscow. I just haven't had the chance to speak it much." Kablukov looked worried as he spoke.

Von Lüttwitz nodded and whispered at the Russian, "Smart move, Ivan, perhaps you might live to see another day."

Wandesleben nudged his platoon leader, "We should be moving Chef, it will start getting light soon."

Von Lüttwitz nodded and said, "Ja, lass uns umziehen.³"




¹ To the East
² Literally, "The Empire," though Reich could also mean the country of Germany and Austria combined.
³ Yes, let's move.

26 comments:

  1. Back to that cold meat grinder, reading this as the day is supposed to climb into the high eighties. Jackboots.........how many frozen toes were amputated?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Lots of frozen toes. Leather boots with hobnails.

      Delete
  2. Reading of the campaigns in Russia, I cannot envision that kind of cold for weeks on end. I am cold just thinking about it in my Face of Sun Summer heat. Well written, Sarge.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Remembering back to my four years in Nebraska, there were two weeks out of every winter where the temperature would go below zero and stay there. Northern Russia is actually colder than that, for far longer.

      Delete
    2. https://www.introducingmoscow.com/weather
      with AVERAGE well below freezing, and extreme running where Celsius and Fahrenheit are close to same
      yes it is THAT bad

      Delete
  3. Cold, heat, wet ... the undesired enemies, especially for the unprepared, who can find them intractable foes.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Worse is very hot and humid. You can put extra clothes on, to a point. You can't undress past a certain point. Especially if there's mosquitoes and flies.

      Delete
    2. Hot and humid is bad, but it won't kill you as quickly as extreme cold can. It's not solely about being comfortable.

      Delete
    3. Hot & humid are uncomfortable, a real winter will kill you if you don't take the necessary precautions. If I NEVER see a minus zero (f) temperature again it will be all right with me!

      Delete
    4. I agree, to a point. But extreme heat and humidity is a deadly thing, lulls people into false stupidity and death.

      But, for the most part, warm-hot (like Florida) is survivable, like after a hurricane. Very uncomfortable but survivable.

      Delete
    5. Yes, it can. Our lab right now is around 82 degrees, surrounded by computer equipment, I'm losing my mind. Not into false stupidity yet, but I am freaking groggy.

      Delete
    6. Rob - Totally agree! (Fortunately Little Rhody near the coast seldom gets that cold.)

      Delete
    7. The military penalty for sleeping on watch is death. In the Russian winter it was ruthlessly enforced by nature. A weary sentry that dozed off was likely never to wake again.

      Delete
    8. He might doze off as he dies of exposure. The urge to lie down and sleep is very strong in Arctic conditions. (DAMHIK)

      Delete
  4. I'm always amazed at how old those men in their early 20s look. Or maybe "mature" or "seasoned" or "experienced" would describe it better. Some undefined age, but much older than their years.

    And, thinking of it, more so in European armies than American. The photo of the young Marine, Pvt T.M. Miller, being helped back aboard that's the epitome "The Thousand Yard Stare" https://i.redd.it/1udhjw27tkk51.jpg or the young Marine, Faris Tuohy, standing drinking coffee aboard ship after action https://static01.nyt.com/images/2013/08/15/world/atwar_coffee2/atwar_coffee2-blog480.jpg. Oh, a lot of Americans do look "seasoned" and much older than they are, but a goodly number still have that "golly-gee" look to them that is rare, so far as I've seen, in European armies in the field.

    Too cold, too hot....is there anything in between in the military?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. War ages a fellow, that's for sure.

      Nope, it's always too cold or too hot. That's how I remember my days on the flightline anyway.

      Delete
    2. Look at 20 somethings during the Depression. Lack of food and lots of worry ages a person. Take the worry off and add the food on and there's a magical transformation, a de-aging.

      What you're seeing in a lot of war photos is exhaustion, lack of food, lack of safety. Front lines age people. There's usually a noticable difference between front-line folk and rear area folk, no matter what army one is in. I read about a lot of Soviet soldiers complaining that they were fighting for fat commissars while they and their families starved. Same in Germany.

      Thems that gots, thems that sits, they stay fat. Thems that work and thems that fight, they get lean and old.

      Delete
    3. Precisely. As to the difference between front line and rear area men, they always look different. At least in my experience.

      Delete
  5. So our pig farmer and his future commander were on the Eastern Front, so close but not yet together. Very interesting...

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. In the original book, in the chapter Sieben Männer von Sachsen, all seven men were from the same company, 5th Company. They still are, so close but, as you say, not yet together. And Sauer, as a green recruit/draftee. would be more or less ignored by the veterans until he proved himself.

      Delete
  6. I never saw pee freeze when it was really really cold, but I never tested it either, too cold! I have seen spit bounce
    Nope, don't miss northern Minnesota at all.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Hey Old AFSarge,

    Man its like seeing "Old Friends" again....

    ReplyDelete

Just be polite... that's all I ask. (For Buck)
Can't be nice, go somewhere else...

NOTE: Comments on posts over 5 days old go into moderation, automatically.