STALINGRAD

Snow was falling on the corpses of the Red Army soldiers. What should I call them? Enemies? Brothers? Dutiful slaves? The world was being annexed by authoritarian regimes while Stalingrad was closing on us.

I was drinking hot water made by Klaus to keep us warm. Life hadn’t been easy in this part of the world with the weather always plaguing your routine. After the initial three months in this weather hardened battleground of Stalingrad, my honour had withered away into petulance. I was looking out of the window of this broken, bombed building, watching the river Volga flow unerringly. Stalingrad, stretched across the river Volga like a ribbon, an adorned jewel in their leader’s ego and ravishes. Just another name on the map for us.

Bomb damage is something you cannot miss. After the initial blitz done by the Luftwaffe on these Soviet lands, the buildings has turned into hideous and incomplete wreckages of solace. I was having hot water in someone’s house, staring down at their rubble and occasionally kicking those bricks out of the smashed windows. I could see the interior of the room battered by the heavy bombing, the furniture burnt and broken into pieces which could be mended if we assimilated the spirit. The bed was torn and the fleece was scattered across the room like white lilies had proliferated to create a shroud. Occasionally when we weren’t under heavy fire, Hans curled on the bed, clutching his wife Elsa’s photo close to his heart and muttering “Home”. The building looked like a doll house tattered under the fury of a child’s tantrum. Maybe the child who was sheepishly resting at Berghof in Obersalzberg of the majestic Alps. The bombed sites have a peculiar smell and I could smell damp plaster here. As the snow fell profusely, I went away from the window, gnawing ennui towards the large and yet intact mantelpiece. So strange is the magnitude of destruction that large structures made of bricks, wood and steel fall while fragile objects such as vase and mirror remain untouched. I touched the green tinged malachite bronze vase lying on the mantelpiece. I had forgotten colour in the last two years, forgotten what tangible meant, forgotten the fragility of this intricately adorned vase because all the reality I knew were 7.92mm caliber, 7.92 x 57mm Mauser round cartridges and patches of red scattered around myself. In trying to usurp foreign lands, somehow I had usurped my human self. In an attempt to convince myself the grim reality of a human life, had I actually lost the essence of living?

The next day, our group leader Otto Albach from the 6th Army decided to launch a counter attack on the Soviet forces in our vicinity with the help of the 4th Panzer army. I wasn’t convinced to get into crossfire nor was my wounded ready to pick up the guns. The Führer’s orders were to continue with our Fall Blau summer offensive. Otto ordered us to gather on the building’s first floor with our uniforms and guns tidied up.

As soon as I reached the first floor of this broken building, I could see a group 30-40 men standing in queues. After many days, I could see the sunlight creeping in through the cracks in the walls and the smashed walls. The dust was settling on the unkempt uniforms of the soldiers. Some of them were looking at their maimed hands and feet while Otto was barking orders to lay siege on Stalingrad. A young soldier, Heinz, a kid just turned 21 was holding onto his friend’s diary and crying. What’s the worst sight in a world fighting for power? A shivering soldier and his constant inner struggle of morality. We were tasked with morphing these world lines with our calloused hands and mortars so our leaders could fold the world map into neat pleats and serve their gluttonous appetite of puissance. And while I was contemplating on our incorrigible state, Otto was doing a neat job of rallying these troops.

At 9:00 am that morning, we began our fight against the Soviet Red army. We had expected stiff resistance and we were pushed to our limits in terms of men, ammunition and food. Otto with ten soldiers created a diversion by opening fire and taking a couple of Panzers with them. We were instructed to wait until the Soviets appeared at point blank range. I was holed up behind a broken Panzer tank with Wolfgang, Klaus, Dieter and Stefan. I was shivering with cold and couldn’t load the cartridges properly. So Klaus handed me a piece of pork he had stashed in his pocket. These last few weeks of gobbling up as much food as we found in the desert homes had disturbed my stomach and I was starting to have painful cramps. Just then I heard a loud blast nearby.

Klaus and Wolfgang ran towards the blast created by the Panzer attack led by Otto and another reserve group sent by General Maximilian von Weichs. Dieter and Stefan started firing from their Schmeisser towards the fleeing Soviet civilians and army. The scared civilians were running away from the monstrous attack launched by the Panzers and coming towards our retreat. Dieter and Stefan started perforating the innocent civilians. I was lying there, clutching my abdomen which was bursting with pain. Stalingrad had turned into a graveyard and there was more carnage to follow.

A day before the attack, the Soviets had called men and women to fortify the area and dig trenches to capture the tanks. They were fighting back today with whatever little ammunition they had: petrol bombs, grenades, rifles and a few armour piercing guns. The tanks were stuck in the trenches and were attacked with petrol bombs. I could see some of the tank men jump out of the tank to escape the fire just to get lacerated by the bolt rifles. Otto on seeing his German group slow down the advance ordered to let hell loose on the civilians to break the Soviet spirit. Some of the German soldiers pulled out a woman from the rubble and one aimed the gun at her head. The other one, laughing at her signalled towards his pants. The woman was crying in agony and had covered her face with her palms. Just then the other soldier lowered his pants and turned the woman over. The soldier with the gun listened to her screams for help while he raped her. This wasn’t the first time the Germans were desecrating the human sanctity. I tried to stand up but I didn’t have the energy to run towards that woman. Just then I saw Wolfgang and Klaus coming out from a nearby complex with a group of children under the muzzle of their rifles. Klaus was nudging a small girl in the back with the bayonet to move fast. The children were moved into our building by the German troops.

The Voyenno-Vozdushnye Sily (VVS), the Soviet Air Force was easily swept aside by the Luftwaffe but there were occasional aerial reinforcements into Stalingrad. Seeing a few VVS planes fly above, we ran towards the building for cover while the Panzers dispersed to reduce casualties. I went into the building sheltering the children, still in pain with Stefan. I was having vision problems and couldn’t stand properly. Just then I saw one of our Panzers blow up causing a huge cry from Otto. Had the VVS caused this casualty? We peaked out of the windows and we saw some young women. They had nullified one Panzer. They were the 1077th Anti Aircraft Regiment, a unit dedicated solely to the ground defences. These were the “Workers Militias” composed of civilians not involved in war production but directly in the battle. Wiping of the sweat from their brows, these women were ruthlessly killing our strongest vectors of the Blitz. I had seen women working as medics, nurses and phone operators but I had never seen them destroy the armoured soldiers. I closed my eyes, still clutching my stomach and imagined these ballerina wearing high heels during combat training. These young women didn’t immediately inspire confidence because they looked so tender, carrying the wounded back from the front line but what if they became the front line?

After the intense day of fighting, Otto’s group had successfully neutralised the pocket of Red army and the brave ladies of 1077th AA Regiment. We had lost 10 soldiers of our own during this carnage. I was looking out for Hans, the man who always talked about his wife Elsa, describing her as the “waitress in red.” I started asking around about Hans. No one seemed to know. Where had he vanished? This place was hell.

When we entered this city, it reeked of hell. After spending a couple of days, I knew it was a thousand times worse than hell. What am I? A rude interjection to your Kraut story? A Soviet in your smooth German sauerkraut? This cold was biting us too, our motherland had turned against us too. My fingers had turned cold but we were always thought of as the Bolshevik plague. How does it affect you when the enemy kills your comrade? It was a duel till death and my commissars died on the battlefield. But how does it affect you when you see a small girl raped? An innocent civilian mutilated? Does it get to you? It has impacted me tremendously. I am Vassily Zaitsev, the sniper under Major General Ivan Burmakov, crouching in the corner of a burnt house in Stalingrad waiting for my 240th target.

We had gathered on the second floor of the building that night. Otto was pacing up and down, scribbling the events of today in his pocket diary. Wolfgang had lit a small fire with the clothes and rags he had found in the building. In the distant, we could still hear the Luftwaffe bombers destroying the city outskirts. I went around talking and helping the injured ones, giving them hot water and rations that we had managed to save. The children had huddled into a corner and were comforting each other. A girl was crying inconsolably and a small boy named Leonid was looking out of the window shooting with his innocent fingers. I looked at the children’s faces and wished them to be safe. Thousands lie dead, hundreds orphaned and homeless so what did our destruction bring to this city under the name of totalitarianism? The Führer wanted to hoist the German flag on the ruins of this city, but would there be any flag large enough to cover the shame of killing these innocent people? Every gun picked up, every rocket fired, every warship launched is a theft from the alms for the unclothed and not fed. These clouds of war will only rain blood and shame. I looked out of the window and watched the sky under heavy smoke. I looked for God with my human fat and he wasn’t there. Cold, suffocating, this world was devoid of compassion. My legs wouldn’t support me now and I sat near the window, looking at the generation ahead of me, trapped within the codex of authority and pandemonium. Slowly, my eyes closed to the darkness.

The next morning, I woke up with the sound of a shrill cry. The cry was heart wrenching and exorcised my worst fears out. I quickly stood up and looked around. There was no one in the building, not even the children. I called out but no one replied. Leaving my rifle, I ran down the stairs out in the open, fearing the worst. And then I saw something which disintegrated me into short intervals of breath and stinging waves of pain. I saw two girls hanging by the ropes on the broken column. I saw two boys lying naked in each other’s arms, their bodies burnt and unrecognisable. Then I saw Leonid. I went close to him and my pain increased further. I wasn’t able to stand and I fell close to his body. I dragged my body close to Leonid. The snow had stopped falling but the extreme chill of the wind was making breathing difficult. I saw his tortured body lying still in the pit created by one of the Stuka bombers. The skins and fingernails on his right hand had been completely torn off. The eye had been burnt out and he had a wound on his left temple made by red hot piece of iron. The right half of his face had been covered with a flammable liquid and ignited. What had these terrifying ordeals in gruelling fight brought out in humanity? How could I possibly salvage rectitude from this heap of a larger waste? If I did, it would be a terrible lie. There is no virtue. There is no morality in war. This war had kept its unyielding and absolute allegiance to obscenity and evil. Just before I could wipe my tears, I felt severe pain in the back of my head. As I turned around, I saw a sniper packing his things after a successful shot.

I was running away from this hell. Running away from this rudderless world, a world not run by metaphysics but absolute monstrosity. The streets stank of fire. Our bombs had created the void which breathed heavy on my heart, making me disillusioned, shattering the ice it created. All I wanted was seeing my Heimat and my waitress in red. I was running away from the grasp of the deception and degeneracy, clutching my humanity by fingernails. Shall I be reunited again with my family? Shall I be born again, free to draw again on this morally blank world? I am Hans, running away from the 6th Army Group.