Winter of the World

But Weiss said: ‘You’re right, Braun – but our artillery ammunition is gridlocked in the Ardennes Forest. We’ve only got forty-eight shells.’

A red-faced major came running past, yelling: ‘Move out! Move out!’

Major Weiss pointed and said: ‘We’ll set up our field dressing station over to the east, where you see that farmhouse.’ Erik made out a low grey roof about eight hundred yards from the river. ‘All right, get moving!’

They jumped into the truck and roared down the hill. When they reached level ground they swerved left along a farm track. Erik wondered what they would do with the family that presumably lived in the building that was about to become an army hospital. Throw them out of their home, he guessed, and shoot them if they made trouble. But where would they go? They were in the middle of a battlefield.

He need not have worried: they had already left.

The building was half a mile from the worst of the fighting, Erik observed. He guessed there was no point setting up a dressing station within range of enemy guns.

‘Stretcher bearers, get going,’ Weiss shouted. ‘By the time you get back here we’ll be ready.’

Erik and Hermann took a rolled-up stretcher and first aid kit from the medical supply truck and headed towards the battle. Christof and Manfred were just ahead of them, and a dozen of their comrades followed. This is it, Erik thought exultantly; this is our chance to be heroes. Who will keep his nerve under fire, and who will lose control and crawl into a hole and hide?

They ran across the fields to the river. It was a long jog, and it was going to seem longer coming back, carrying a wounded man.

They passed burned-out tanks but there were no survivors, and Erik averted his eyes from the scorched human remains smeared across the twisted metal. Shells fell around them, though not many: the river was lightly defended, and many of the guns had been taken out by the air attack. All the same, it was the first time in his life Erik had been shot at, and he felt the absurd, childish impulse to cover his eyes with his hands; but he kept running forward.

Then a shell landed right in front of them.

There was a terrific thud, and the earth shook as if a giant had stamped his foot. Christof and Manfred were hit directly, and Erik saw their bodies fly up into the air as if weightless. The blast threw Erik off his feet. As he lay on the ground, face up, he was showered with dirt from the explosion, but he was not injured. He struggled to his feet. Right in front of him were the mangled bodies of Christof and Manfred. Christof lay like a broken doll, as if all his limbs were disjointed. Manfred’s head had somehow been severed from his body and lay next to his booted feet.

Erik was paralysed with horror. In medical school he had not had to deal with maimed and bleeding bodies. He was used to corpses in anatomy class – they had had one between two students, and he and Hermann had shared the cadaver of a shrivelled old woman – and he had watched living people being cut open on the operating table. But none of that had prepared him for this.

He wanted nothing but to run away.

He turned around. His mind was blank of every thought but fear. He started to walk back the way they had come, towards the forest, away from the battle, taking long, determined strides.

Hermann saved him. He stood in front of Erik and said: ‘Where are you going? Don’t be a fool!’ Erik kept moving, and tried to walk past him. Hermann punched him in the stomach, really hard, and Erik folded over and fell to his knees.

‘Don’t run away!’ Hermann said urgently. ‘You’ll be shot for desertion! Pull yourself together!’

While Erik was trying to catch his breath he came to his senses. He could not run away, he must not desert, he had to stay here, he realized. Slowly his willpower overcame his terror. Eventually he got to his feet.

Hermann looked at him warily.

‘Sorry,’ said Erik. ‘I panicked. I’m all right now.’

‘Then pick up the stretcher and keep going.’

Erik picked up the rolled stretcher, balanced it on his shoulder, turned around and ran on.

Closer to the river, Erik and Hermann found themselves among infantry. Some were manhandling inflated rubber dinghies out of the backs of trucks and carrying them to the water’s edge, while the tanks tried to cover them by firing at the French defences. But Erik, rapidly recovering his mental powers, soon saw that it was a losing battle: the French were behind walls and inside buildings, while the German infantry were exposed on the bank of the river. As soon as they got a dinghy into the water, it came under intense machine-gun fire.

Upstream, the river turned a right-angled bend, so the infantry could not move out of range of the French without retreating a long distance.

There were already many dead and wounded men on the ground.