motorized combat troops belonging to Panzerdivision Stulpnagel. They will protect your convoy from the terrorists who will try to impede your advance. As you will see, the Reich is making every effort to facilitate your task."
He saluted, and his orderly immediately shifted into gear.
We joined the two other sections of our company at the selected place to form the 19th Kompanie Rollbahn, under Kommandant Ultraner. My first thought was that now I would surely run into my friends from training camp, if they hadn't been transferred or killed. I didn't know whether they'd left Minsk before or after us, but in fact our old 19th had been re-formed.
We now possessed a rolling kitchen which could serve us hot meals. This made a great difference to us. Immediately before our departure we were served a large hot meal, which produced an almost unbelievable sense of well-being, and raised our spirits to a remarkable degree. The cold seemed to have settled at about four degrees below zero, which was an improvement. But then we had just taken hot showers and changed our clothes.
I had no trouble finding Hals, whose exuberant gestures I recognized easily.
"Well, what do you think of the weather, young one? And of the restaurant, hein? It's ten days since I've swallowed anything hot. We thought we'd die of cold on that damned train."
"You were on a train! If that's not luck . . ."
"Luck! You can talk . . . You should have been there when the locomotive blew up. It made a cloud of steam at least a hundred yards high. Four of the fellows were killed and seven wounded. Morvan was wounded while we were cleaning up the mess. It went on like that for five days. I was with a patrol that went after some terrorists. We caught two of them hiding in a kolkhoz.* (Collective farm).
One of the peasants they'd robbed put us on their trail, and afterward invited us to his place and gave us a regular feast."
I wasted no time in telling him my adventures; talking this way made us both feel better. We had just run into Lensen and Olensheim. Our sense of happiness and relief at meeting again was so great that quite spontaneously we grabbed each other by the shoulders and mimed an exaggerated polonaise, shouting with laughter. Some of the older men stared at us in astonishment, unable to see any reason for this burst of gaiety, so inconsistent with the gray and icy atmosphere.
"Where's Fahrstein?" I asked.
"Ouf," roared Lensen, still laughing. "He's snug and warm in his truck. He sprained his ankle, and it's so swollen he can't take his boot off, so he's waiting for it to deflate."
"He's making the most of it," Hals remarked. "If I carried on like that every time I turned my ankle . . ."
Our conversation was interrupted by the order for departure, and we returned to our posts. Knowing that my friends were there, with only a few trucks between us, made me feel a great deal better, and I almost forgot that each turn of the wheels was taking me closer to the front. It was still so far away. We were traveling on bad roads covered with snow and ice. On either side, a wall of snow thrown back by road-clearing operations hid the countryside. Through the occasional gaps we were able to see traces of the terrible fighting which had overrun this part of the country the year before. The hastily patched road was so rough that we had to crawl through several hundred miles of this ruined countryside.
The troops of von Wichs, Guderian, von Reichenau and von Stulpnagel had wrenched this territory from the Soviets after weeks of heavy fighting, and held several hundreds of thousands of prisoners between Kiev and Kharkov. The amount of Russian war materiel strewn about under the snow made me wonder how they could possibly have much left.
Rising temperatures brought fresh snowfalls which made it necessary for us to bring out our shovels again. Fortunately, a section of the armored column which was supposed to accompany us joined us two days later. We were able to
He saluted, and his orderly immediately shifted into gear.
We joined the two other sections of our company at the selected place to form the 19th Kompanie Rollbahn, under Kommandant Ultraner. My first thought was that now I would surely run into my friends from training camp, if they hadn't been transferred or killed. I didn't know whether they'd left Minsk before or after us, but in fact our old 19th had been re-formed.
We now possessed a rolling kitchen which could serve us hot meals. This made a great difference to us. Immediately before our departure we were served a large hot meal, which produced an almost unbelievable sense of well-being, and raised our spirits to a remarkable degree. The cold seemed to have settled at about four degrees below zero, which was an improvement. But then we had just taken hot showers and changed our clothes.
I had no trouble finding Hals, whose exuberant gestures I recognized easily.
"Well, what do you think of the weather, young one? And of the restaurant, hein? It's ten days since I've swallowed anything hot. We thought we'd die of cold on that damned train."
"You were on a train! If that's not luck . . ."
"Luck! You can talk . . . You should have been there when the locomotive blew up. It made a cloud of steam at least a hundred yards high. Four of the fellows were killed and seven wounded. Morvan was wounded while we were cleaning up the mess. It went on like that for five days. I was with a patrol that went after some terrorists. We caught two of them hiding in a kolkhoz.* (Collective farm).
One of the peasants they'd robbed put us on their trail, and afterward invited us to his place and gave us a regular feast."
I wasted no time in telling him my adventures; talking this way made us both feel better. We had just run into Lensen and Olensheim. Our sense of happiness and relief at meeting again was so great that quite spontaneously we grabbed each other by the shoulders and mimed an exaggerated polonaise, shouting with laughter. Some of the older men stared at us in astonishment, unable to see any reason for this burst of gaiety, so inconsistent with the gray and icy atmosphere.
"Where's Fahrstein?" I asked.
"Ouf," roared Lensen, still laughing. "He's snug and warm in his truck. He sprained his ankle, and it's so swollen he can't take his boot off, so he's waiting for it to deflate."
"He's making the most of it," Hals remarked. "If I carried on like that every time I turned my ankle . . ."
Our conversation was interrupted by the order for departure, and we returned to our posts. Knowing that my friends were there, with only a few trucks between us, made me feel a great deal better, and I almost forgot that each turn of the wheels was taking me closer to the front. It was still so far away. We were traveling on bad roads covered with snow and ice. On either side, a wall of snow thrown back by road-clearing operations hid the countryside. Through the occasional gaps we were able to see traces of the terrible fighting which had overrun this part of the country the year before. The hastily patched road was so rough that we had to crawl through several hundred miles of this ruined countryside.
The troops of von Wichs, Guderian, von Reichenau and von Stulpnagel had wrenched this territory from the Soviets after weeks of heavy fighting, and held several hundreds of thousands of prisoners between Kiev and Kharkov. The amount of Russian war materiel strewn about under the snow made me wonder how they could possibly have much left.
Rising temperatures brought fresh snowfalls which made it necessary for us to bring out our shovels again. Fortunately, a section of the armored column which was supposed to accompany us joined us two days later. We were able to
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