Winter of the World

‘No mercy for cowards,’ Volodya said; but he closed Bobrov’s eyes.

Some of the women unstrapped the piano. The instrument slid off the car roof and hit the ground with a discordant clang. They began gleefully to smash it up with picks and shovels. Others were quarrelling over the scattered valuables, snatching up the cutlery, bundling the bedsheets, tearing the fine underwear as they struggled for possession. Fights broke out. A china teapot came flying through the air and just missed Zoya’s head.

Volodya hurried back to her. ‘This is developing into a full-scale riot,’ he said. ‘I’ve got an army car and a driver. I’ll get you out of here.’

She hesitated only for a second. ‘Thanks,’ she said; and they ran to the car, jumped in, and drove away.

(ii)

Erik von Ulrich’s faith in the Führer was vindicated by the invasion of the Soviet Union. As the German armies raced across the vastness of Russia, sweeping the Red Army aside like chaff, Erik rejoiced in the strategic brilliance of the leader to whom he had given his allegiance.

Not that it was easy. During rainy October the countryside had been a mud bath: they called it the rasputitsa, the time of no roads. Erik’s ambulance had ploughed through a quagmire. A wave of mud built up in front of the vehicle, gradually slowing it, until he and Hermann had to get out and clear it away with shovels before they could drive any farther. It was the same for the entire German army, and the dash for Moscow had slowed to a crawl. Furthermore, the swamped roads meant that supply trucks never caught up. The army was low on ammunition, fuel and food, and Erik’s unit was dangerously short of drugs and other medical necessities.

So Erik had at first rejoiced when the frost had set in at the beginning of November. The freeze seemed a blessing, making the roads hard again and allowing the ambulance to move at normal speed. But Erik shivered in his summer coat and cotton underwear – winter uniforms had not yet arrived from Germany. Nor had the low-temperature lubricants needed to keep the engine of his ambulance operating – and the engines of all the army’s trucks, tanks and artillery. While on the road, Erik got up every two hours in the night to start his engine and run it for five minutes, the only way to keep the oil from congealing and the coolant from freezing solid. Even then he cautiously lit a fire under the vehicle every morning an hour before moving off.

Hundreds of vehicles broke down and were abandoned. The planes of the Luftwaffe, left outside all night on makeshift airfields, froze solid and refused to start, and air cover for the troops simply disappeared.

Despite all that, the Russians were retreating. They fought hard, but they were always pushed back. Erik’s unit stopped continually to clear away Russian bodies, and the frozen dead stacked by the roadside made a grisly embankment. Relentlessly, remorselessly, the German army was closing in on Moscow.

Soon, Erik felt sure, he would see Panzers majestically rolling across Red Square, while swastika banners fluttered jubilantly from the towers of the Kremlin.

Meanwhile, the temperature was minus ten degrees Centigrade, and falling.

Erik’s field hospital unit was in a small town beside a frozen canal, surrounded by spruce forest. Erik did not know the name of the place. The Russians often destroyed everything as they retreated, but this town had survived more or less intact. It had a modern hospital, which the Germans had taken over. Dr Weiss had briskly instructed the local doctors to send their patients home, regardless of condition.

Now Erik studied a frostbite patient, a boy of about eighteen. The skin of his face was a waxy yellow, and frozen hard to the touch. When Erik and Hermann cut away the flimsy summer uniform, they saw that his arms and legs were covered with purple blisters. His torn and broken boots had been stuffed with newspaper in a pathetic attempt to keep out the cold. When Erik took them off he smelled the characteristic rotting stink of gangrene.

Nevertheless, he thought they might yet save the boy from amputation.

They knew what to do. They were treating more men for frostbite than for combat wounds.

He filled a bathtub, then he and Hermann Braun lowered the patient into the warm water.

Erik studied the body as it thawed. He saw the black colour of gangrene on one foot and the toes of the other.

When the water began to cool they took him out, patted him dry, put him in a bed and covered him with blankets. Then they surrounded him with hot stones wrapped in towels.

The patient was conscious and alert. He said: ‘Am I going to lose my foot?’

‘That’s up to the doctor,’ Erik said automatically. ‘We’re just orderlies.’

‘But you see a lot of patients,’ he persisted. ‘What’s your best guess?’