Russia at war 1941-1945

She was now faced with a complicated family situation—strangely reminiscent of the

turbulent years of the civil war in the Ukraine, when so many families were divided

against themselves. Her brother Kiril had been a machine-gunner in the Red Army; he

was taken prisoner by the Germans but escaped, and later turned up as a civilian in his native village where he set up shop again as a watchmaker. He had a wife who, before the war, was an active member of the Komsomol. "Three months ago she was arrested and taken away, and rumour had it she was shot", Galina said. "The strange thing was that the starosta had denounced her to the Germans, and when they came, they knew exactly where to find her; for she had been hiding in a cellar for the last month. And from what I have heard from my brother Kiril and also from my mother, there's little doubt that the starosta had learned from my other brother, Fedor, where Kiril's wife was in hiding. For Fedor, though my brother, is a thoroughly bad lot. He was a member of the Ukrainian

polizai, and he must have told the starosta. This bad brother is probably still in hiding in our village; and, if it hasn't been done already, I shall denounce him myself to the Red Commandant... "

(6) The Wail of the German stomach

The German prisoners I saw near Uman were a very mixed bunch. All of them were

bitterly disappointed at having been caught, when most of the Germans had got away

beyond the Bug. The Austrians were already claiming to be "quite different from the Germans", though one I saw had obviously been brought up in the best Nazi tradition.

Then there was one German optimist, a deserter, who had a Ukrainian girl friend who had hidden him during the German withdrawal from Uman. He was now hopefully

wondering whether the Russians wouldn't allow him to settle here in the Ukraine, which he thought a lovely country, and he was also most devoted to his Freundin. Such things do happen even in the best of regiments. But depressed and bewildered though they were by their defeats in the Ukraine, and, of course, personally upset at being taken prisoner by the Russians, with only the remotest prospect of seeing Germany again soon, there was still much fighting spirit left in many of the German soldiers I saw. They were hoping for something—they did not quite know what. Those from the Rhineland were more precise

than the others. The allied bombing had made them angry, rather than downhearted. I

remember a sergeant, Willi Jerschagen, from Remscheid on the Rhine. The town had

been bombed to blazes, and yet his wife and parents were still living there among the ruins. His wife had a job in a steel mill, and had no intention of going away to any other part of Germany. "It'll be the same everywhere, so I might as well stay here," she had written recently.

And the great hope of this woman, and of Willi himself, and of other people of Western Germany was— Vergeltung. The Führer had promised this revenge on England; but they were growing impatient, and the people in Western Germany were now saying: "What about these weapons?" The V-1's over London were, indeed, not to start until a little later.

As the Germans were being pushed out of the Ukraine the songs the Wehrmacht sang

began to have a mournful note. These ditties were very similar, though every regiment seemed to have its own variant. They went like this:—

Nema kurka, nema yaika,

Dosvidania khozyaika; or

Nema pivo, nema vino,

Dosvidania Ukraina; or

Nema kurka, nema brot,

Dosvidania Belgorod; or

Nema kurka, nema soup,

Dosvidania Kremenchug,

which, in this mixture of German, pidgin Russian and pidgin Ukrainian, means—"No more chicken, no more eggs, good-bye, landlady; No more beer and no more wine, goodbye, Ukraine; No more chicken, no more bread, good-bye, Belgorod; No more chicken,

no more soup, good-bye Kremcnchug". And many more on the same lines. And, more

generally, the bitter disappointment and disillusionment was expressed in these lines, known to every German soldier:

"Es ist alles vorueber, es ist alles vorbei,

Drei Jahre in Russland und nix ponimai",—

"It is all over, it is all gone; three years in Russia, and can't understand anything".

Chapter III CLOSE-UP II: ODESSA, CAPITAL OF RUMANIAN

TRANSNIESTRIA