Stuka Pilot

The last glow of evening yields to blue, feebly twin kling stars appear. My compass has no phosphorescent dial, but there is still light enough to read it. My general direction must remain the south. I see in that quarter of the sky a conspicuous and easily recognizable star, with a little neighbor. I decide to adopt it as my lodestar. What constellation in the Russian firmament can it be? It is growing dark and I can no longer see anybody. I stand up, stiff, aching, hungry, thirsty. I remember my chocolate—but I left it in my fur jacket on the bank of the Dniester. Avoiding all roads, footpaths, villages, as Ivan is sure to have sentries posted there, I simply follow my star across country, up hill and down dale, over streams, bogs, marshes and stubbly harvested maize fields. My bare feet are cut to ribbons. Again and again in the open fields I stub my toes against big stones. Gradually I lose all feeling in my feet. The will to live, to keep my freedom, urges me on; they are indivisible; life without freedom is a hollow fruit. How deep is Ivan’s penetration of our front? How far have I still to travel? Wherever I hear a dog bark I make a detour, for the hamlets hereabouts are certainly not inhabited by friends. Every now and again I can see gun-flashes on the distant horizon and hear a dull rumble; evidently our boys have started an artillery bombardment. But that means the Russian break-through has gone far. In the gullies which cut through the occasionally rising ground I often lose my footing in the darkness and slump into a ditch where the gluey mud stands knee-deep. It sucks me in so tightly that I have no longer the strength to pull myself out, and flop with the upper part of my body sprawled on the bank of the ditch—my legs deep in slime. Thus I be exhausted, feeling like a battery gone dead.

After lying there for five minutes I am faintly recharged and summon up the strength to crawl up the sloping bank. But remorselessly the same mishap is repeated very soon, at latest at the next uneven ground. So it goes on till 9 p.m. Now I am done in. Even after longish rests I cannot recover my strength. Without water and food and a pause for sleep it is impossible to carry on. I decide to look for an isolated house.

I hear a dog barking in the distance and follow the sound. Presumably I am not too far from a village. So after a while I come to a lonely farmhouse and have considerable difficulty in evading the yelping dog. I do not like its barking at all as I am afraid it will alarm some picket in the near-by village. No one opens the door to my knocking; perhaps there is no one there. The same thing happens at a second farmhouse. I go on to a third. When again nobody answers impatience overcomes me and I break a window in order to climb in. At this moment an old woman carrying a smoky oil lamp opens the door. I am already half way through the window, but now I jump out again and put my foot in the door. The old woman tries to shove me out. I push resolutely past her. Turning round I point in the direction of the village and ask: “Bolshewisti?” She nods. Therefore I conclude that Ivan has occupied the village. The dim lamplight only vaguely illumines the room: a table, a bench, an ancient cupboard. In the comer a grey-headed man is snoring on a rather lopsided trestle bed. He must be seventy. The couple share this wooden couch. In silence I cross the room and lay myself down on it. What can I say? I know no Russian. Meanwhile they have probably seen that I mean no harm. Barefoot and in rags, the tatters of my shirt sticky with coagulated blood, I am more likely to be a hunted quarry than a burglar. So I lie there. The old woman has gone back to bed beside me. Above our heads the feeble glimmer of the lamp. It does not occur to me to ask them whether they have anything to dress my shoulder or my lacerated feet. All I want is rest.