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CAMPAIGN IN RUSSIA 

THE WAFFEN SS ON THE EASTERN FRONT 

by Leon Degrelle 


INSTITUTE FOR HISTORICAL REVIEW 

1985 



CAMPAIGN IN RUSSIA 
THE WAFFEN SS ON THE EASTERN FRONT 












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LEON DEGRELLE 






INTRODUCTION 


With this translation of Leon Degrelle’s Front de I’est one of the great; 
men of this or any century begins to tell his story in English. For the first 
time the majority of English speakers in America, Great Britain, and other 
English-speaking countries will have the chance to make up their own minds 
about a public figure who for over fifty years has been in his native country, 
Belgium, and abroad, one of the most admired as well as one of the most 
reviled and traduced figures of the century. Publicist, political leader, 
soldier, Catholic, man of the West, Leon Degrelle compels our attention: 
long slandered by distortion or omission by the powers which seek to con¬ 
trol our thought, now he speaks to us in our own language. 

In Campaign in Russia Degrelle deals almost exclusively with his service 
on the German Eastern Front in the great European crusade against Com¬ 
munism in Russia, Ukraine, the Baltic states, and the other territories which 
then languished, and still languish, under the despotic rule of the masters of 
the Soviet Empire. A master stylist in French, the author of more than 
twenty books, with an incomparable breadth of life experience and culture," 
Degrelle as actor and chronicler of the anti-Soviet epic needs little assistance 
or elucidation from any chair-bound academic or editor. 

Yet a few preliminary remarks are necessary to set the stage for the great 
drama of the Wallonian heroes in the East. Degrelle’s life story is little 
known in England and America, and the General is often not disposed to 
enlighten us on many salient details. It was not for nothing that his fellow 
Walloon volunteers jokingly referred to him as “Modest the First, Duke of 
^Burgundy,” on the front. Furthermore, both American and English readers 
of the present-day have little feel for, or knowledge of, the essentials of 
Continental history so important for understanding Degrelle and his move¬ 
ment, notwithstanding a vast influx of refugee scholars to American and 
British universities in consequence of national revolutionary developments 
throughout the Europe of the 1930’s and 1940’s. 

Leon Degrelle was bom on IS June 1906 at Bouillon, on the French 
border, in the Belgian province of Luxembourg. His father, Edouard 


vi 


CAMPAIGN IN RUSSIA 


Degrelle, was a prosperous brewer who had immigrated to Belgium from 
France five years earlier, provoked by a French “anti-clerical” govem- 
ments’s expulsion of the Jesuit order. (So many of the Degrelles had 
become Jesuit priests that a friend of the family described the Degrelles as 
“Jesuits from father to son,” ironic indeed in view of Degrelle’s future 
troubles with the Catholic hierarchy of Belgium.) 

Degrelle the boy grew up along the banks of the Semois, overshadowed 
by the great castle of Godfrey de Bouillon, leader of the First Crusade and 
King of Jerusalem, enjoying a relatively untroubled youth despite four 
years of German occupation during the First World War. In 1921 he entered 
the Jesuit college of Notre Dame de la Paix at Namur. His grades were 
average, for the young Degrelle had, from the age of fifteen, commenced an 
ambitious extra-curricular work of reading and writing. At that age he 
published his first newspaper article; many more were to follow. When a 
friend fell seriously ill, young Leon wrote to Cardinal Mercier, the primate 
of Belgium, to ask him to administer personally the last rites of the Church. 
Mercier did so, and entered into a correspondence with the teenager. At 
seventeen, Degrelle published an article on social justice in Les cahiers de la 
jeunesse catholique (Notebooks of Catholic Youth) which so impressed the 
socialist leader Emile Vandervelde that he published it in his paper Le Peu- 
ple (The People) with the regret that the young writer was not a socialist. 
(These details and much other fascinating material can be found in Jean- 
Michel Etienne’s Le Mouvement rexiste jusqu ’en 1940 , a relatively balanced 
account of Degrelle and his political activity before the war, published as 
Number 165 of the Cahiers de la fondation nationale des sciences politi- 
ques, Paris.) 

In 1924 Degrelle left the college to continue his studies at the Catholic 
faculty at Namur. During that time, and even before, Degrelle had fallen 
under the sway of the French writer Charles Maurras, founder and leader of 
Action Francaise, who, together with his close collaborator Leon Daudet, 
expounded brilliantly on French culture and politics in the newspaper that 
bore the name of their movement. It is difficult today to convey the impact 
and influence Maurras exercized over French youth (and French-speaking 
youth in Belgium and Switzerland). Profoundly conservative, with a sweep 
of classical culture which easily encompassed Hellas and Rome as well as 
the French cultural and political achievement, which Maurras, a monarch¬ 
ist, saw as chiefly the work of “forty kings in a thousand years,” Maurras 
played a leading role in the controversies of the day. Reading Action Fran¬ 
caise in Paris was de rigueur for French intellectuals of all political shades, 
from Proust and Gide to Bourget and Mauriac. 

Like many 19th and 20th-century intellectuals , on the side of authority 
and the West, Maurras was not a believing Christian, although he valued' 
the Catholic Church’s historical role and traditions highly. At first this 
didn’t blunt his support among young Catholics, including Degrelle. In 



Introduction 


vii 

1924 the young student responded to a poll conducted by the Cahiers de la 
jeunesse catholique, which posed the question: “Among the writers of the 
past twenty years, whom do you consider to be your master?” by campaign¬ 
ing among his fellows for Maurras, who won the poll in a landslide, mor¬ 
tally offending certain shades of Catholic opinion, particularly among the 
hierarchy, and leading indirectly to the condemnation of Action Francaise 
by Cardinal Andrieu, of Bordeaux, and the placing of Maurras’s writings 
on the index of books prohibited for Catholics. 

Young Degrelle, loyal Catholic, complied readily with the prelate’s in¬ 
junction. Continuing his studies at the great university at Louvain, he ex¬ 
celled in philosophy and literature, was less successful at the study of 
politics and law, by which time he was devoting most of his energies to jour¬ 
nalism. In 1927 he assumed the direction of L’Avant-Garde, the student 
newspaper, which Degrelle revitalized to such an extent that its circulation 
soared to an unprecedented 10,000. 

Degrelle’s prowess as an editor and a Catholic polemicist attracted much 
notice in Belgium. In 1929 Degrelle was offered an editorship, at age 23, of 
the Brussels daily Le XXe siecle (The Twentieth Century), an offer under 
the terms of which he would not have to cease his studies. In 1930 he was 
appointed director of Les editions Rex, a publishing house closely affiliated 
with the Catholic youth movement in Belgium (“Rex” stood for Christus 
Rex, “Christ the King”). 

The twenty-four-year-old publisher immediately embarked on a 
strenuous program of Catholic and nationalist propaganda, supervising 
half a dozen periodicals and churning out a flood of books and pamphlets. 
In 1931, with help from his family and sympathizers, Degrelle was able to 
buy the financially precarious publishing house, attaining an increased in¬ 
dependence from its official Catholic sponsors. 

Soon, thanks to Degrelle’s energy and leadership, an intellectual and 
nascently political movement was beginning to coalesce around Rex. At 
first Degrelle was determined to renew Belgian life from within the 
established framework, meaning, at that time, the official Catholic 
movements and the Church-linked Catholic Party. Unfortunately for 
Belgium and the loftier ethical purposes of the Church, the Catholic Party 
was an integral part of the morally corrupt and spiritually exhausted climate 
which characterized the nation, and so much of the West, then and today. 

The Belgium of the 1930’s, and the preceding century, was a far cry from 
the cultural and economic giant it had been in earlier ages, when it had 
boasted successively a proud chivalry, industrious merchants and en¬ 
trepreneurs, and brilliant artists and scholars. Throughout its history it had 
been a land of proudly independent nobles and townsmen jealous of their 
liberties, a place coveted as the pivot of empire by rulers from the Carol- 
ingians to the Habsburgs to Napoleon Bonaparte. Charlemagne, Godfrey 
de Bouillon, Charles the Bold, Charles the Fifth, the Van Eycks, Bruegel, 



CAMPAIGN IN RUSSIA 


• •• 
vm 

Rubens, Josquin Desprez, Roland de Lassus: the list of men who lived and 
worked in the cities and provinces of what is now Belgium is a roll-call of 
European greatness. 

With the defeat of Napoleon’s quest for a united Europe, however, 
Belgium, an independent state bearing that name for the first time from 
1830, drifted into increasing political and cultural stagnation. Its role as Bri¬ 
tain’s tripwire against French and German “aggression” was established 
definitively by the Belgian Guarantee Treaty, which in effect made the little 
country the strategic catspaw of the balance-of-power manipulators and im¬ 
perialists in London. 

Following the First World War, Belgium drifted farther into France’s or¬ 
bit politically, and its three ruling parties, the Catholics, the Liberals, and 
the Socialists, consolidated the system by which they shared the loot of of¬ 
fice, engaging in an endless round of financial peculations to which the 
mass of the Belgian electorate had long since become insensate. 

Degrelle’s passionate call to rededication and reform was naturally re¬ 
jected by the men he came to call the “old bonzes” of political Catholicism, 
and Degrelle responded with a withering critique of their failings. By late 
1934 the breach with the Catholic Party was an accomplished and public 
fact, and Rex, already a potent force through its publications and its for¬ 
midable mass rallies, was moving steadily in the direction of formal political 
activity. 

Degrelle and his movement launched a brilliant propaganda campaign 
against the established parties, whom Degrelle denounced as the pourris, 
“the corrupt,” before whose offices broom-welding Rexists gathered to 
dramatize their call for a national cleansing. The Rexists were able to make 
great political capital out of the cynical financial manipulations of the par¬ 
ties and their henchmen, the “banksters,” in Degrelle’s memorable 
coinage. Degrelle was able to point to the fact, for instance, that 59 Catholic 
deputies of the national assembly held 245 positions on the boards of 
banking, industrial, and commercial concerns; that 19 Liberal deputies held 
113 such positions; and that 17 Socialists, Marxists to a man, reveled in 53 
like plums. 

Nor did it escape Degrelle and Rex that Belgium’s ruling parties, so 
cooperative when it came to dividing the private spoils of public life, 
survived politically only by sedulously fostering political division and 
strife—economic, linguistic, and religious—throughout Belgium. Degrelle, 
the foremost Belgian orator of the day, flayed the bourgeoisie for the 
betrayal of the workers; chastized the Liberals and Socialists for their aban¬ 
donment of Belgium’s religious heritage; and wooed the Flemish-speakers 
of the north, long estranged by the cultural and political arrogance of the 
dominant Walloons. 

Rex’s first venture into the electoral lists in May 1936 was a stunning suc¬ 
cess: the movement elected 21 deputies and 12 senators, establishing itself in 


I 



Introduction 


ix 


its initial attempt as a serious contender to the established parties. Degrelle 
followed up this success with a series of political hammer blows against the 
parties: he greatly increased his potential support among the workers by 
supporting their aims in several massive strikes which broke out after the 
election (“To break the neck of Communism will get us nowhere if we do 
not also break the neck of the social selfishness that gave it birth,” he pro¬ 
claimed), and he struck an agreement with the Flemish nationalists, whose 
political party was also burgeoning. 

For a time it seemed as if Rex might change radically the nature of politics 
in Belgium, but the forces of the establishment, aware of their peril, united 
in a solid phalanx against Degrelle. When the young leader opposed 
Belgium’s Premier Van Zeeland in a climactic by-election in Brussels in 
1937, “all the forces of conservatism joined against him, from Communist 
advocates of a moderate (sic) Popular Front to the Catholics,” in the 
significant phrase of refugee historian Eugen Weber, no friend to Rex or 
Degrelle On Varieties of Fascism, p. 128). 

The Catholic hierarchy, repeating a mistake it has made many times in 
the last century, condemned its church's most ardent son in the interests of 
a specious moderation and conservatism: Catholics were forbidden by the 
primate of Belgium, Cardinal Van Rooey, to so much as abstain from 
voting for Van Zeeland, who, backed by the massed artillery of the 
banksters, the press, all three major parties, and the Church, won in a land¬ 
slide. (The estimable Van Zeeland was forced from office a year later when 
Degrelle publicized the details of a particularly ripe financial scandal in 
which he had involved himself.) 

After the by-election Rex’s fortunes declined sharply. Although Degrelle 
was subsequently elected to the national assembly (with the highest percen¬ 
tage of any candidate in the nation), Rexist representation dwindled to a 
handful of deputies. As war loomed in Europe, Degrelle devoted himself to 
impressing on his countrymen the need for a principled Belgian neutrality. 

When Belgium was sucked inexorably into the vortex of the European 
war in 1940, Degrelle’s enemies had a chance to settle their scores. Ger¬ 
many’s advance triggered a panic over the alleged activities of “fifth colum¬ 
nists,” (who, as Bradley F. Smith has established in The Shadow Warriors, 
were virtually non-existent in Western Europe), giving a pretext for 
Degrelle’s arrest, in flagrant violation of any parliamentary immunity, on 
10 May 1940. 

Dragged from dungeon to dungeon across Belgium and France, he was 
beaten and tortured, and was several times in imminent danger of being 
killed (Joris Van Severen, Flemish leader and Belgian patriot, was murdered 
by French troops at Abbeville that May). Given up for dead by his family, 
Degrelle ended up at a concentration camp at Vemet in southern France, 
which was commanded by a Frenchman named Bemheim. When German 
officials sympathetic to the young leader discovered his whereabouts, he 



X 


CAMPAIGN IN RUSSIA 


was promptly released. On his return to Belgium, he avoided collaborating 
with the German occupation forces, unlike many of his foes in the pre-war 
political establishment (most of the government, on the other hand, had 
fled pell-mell across the English Channel, appropriating as much gold and 
currency as they could carry). 

As German arms triumphed everywhere on the contiment, and an atten¬ 
dant postwar redrawing of the map of Europe seemed likely, Degrelle 
turned his thoughts to the shape and role of his country in the new order. 
Conscious of the transitory and conditional nature of the nineteenth- 
century political construct that was Belgium, Degrelle envisioned a possible 
new state along the lines of old Lotharingia or historic Burgundy, that an¬ 
cient buffer zone between Germany and France the claims of which have 
never been entirely eclipsed in the 1,100 year course of Western European 
history. When Hitler struck against the Soviet Union in June, 1941, 
Degrelle made his decision. His offer to raise a volunteer battalion of his 
Walloons to ensure a place of honor for French-speaking Belgians in 
Hitler’s new Europe was accepted by the Germans. 

* * * * * 

For the average American, particularly one who didn’t live through the 
1930’s and 40’s, a forty-year barrage of incessant and one-sided propa¬ 
ganda requires a real act of historical imagination to enter into the spirit of 
those days, let alone reconstruct them through historical research. 

In the liberal and capitalist West, the 1930’s were a time of economic 
stagnation, its nations still exhausted by the senseless slaughter of the First 
World War, its leaders mid office holders devoid of ideals, its political and 
moral force on the world stage ebbing rapidly. Communism, despite the 
severe economic and organizational problems of the Soviet Union, was on 
the march. Secure in its eight-million-square-mile Eurasian bastion, thanks 
to the financial and technical aid and political indulgence of its plutocratic 
enemies, it commanded a world-wide conspiratorial apparatus and fostered 
a global propaganda, each of which seemed to gain in strength from year to 
year. 

In Germany, at the start of this period, a powerful Communist movement 
seemed to be readying another thrust at revolution. In Spain the Reds would 
seize control of an anti-Western revolution which, among other atrocities, 
witnessed the murder of over 6,000 priests and nuns (including fourteen 
bishops) and the wholesale liquidation of its erstwhile allies on the left, 
while a large portion of the European and American political leadership and 
intelligentsia looked on in sympathy. In France a “Popular Front*’ was in¬ 
augurated, according Soviet agents entree to the highest councils and most 
secret councils of the nation. As Eugene Lyons demonstrated in his ex¬ 
cellent The Red Decade , a de facto popular front had also come into being 



Introduction 


xi 


in America, the government of which was increasingly infiltrated, to the 
highest policy-making levels, by Soviet agents and sympathizers, and whose 
leaders tolerated and often participated in the Red propaganda. The same 
was true, although to a lesser extent, in a politically played-out Great Bri¬ 
tain, where the signal Communist achievement was the recruitment of a 
number of the nation’s most gifted and privileged youth, at its greatest 
university, to the Soviet spy and terror organization. 

Against this audacious assault, carried on within and without the citadels 
of the West, the men of Europe and America seemed, for the most part, 
powerless, either lulled by its siren songs or paralyzed by indecision and 
fear. Even the “conservatives,” then as now, had little better to offer than 
airy and diffuse theorizing, Aesopian talk of “revolts of the masses,” or 
“conservative revolutions,” usually light-years wide of the mark and 
scarcely powerful enough to confound even their own countries’ worn-out 
leftist literati or rouse their peoples, let alone blunt the disciplined fury of 
the Communists. 

The only effective opponents of this most deadly peril ever to menace the 
civilization of the West were those men and women of Europe variously 
called “Fascist” or “Nazi,” words long since converted to mere smears in 
the opinion mills East and West. Their movements, first in Italy, pre¬ 
eminently in Germany, but active and capable in many European nations, 
were able to displace a doddering liberalism and smash snarling Bolshevism 
wherever they triumphed, not so much by police repression, although they 
didn’t shrink from it, as by fearlessly grappling with the salient economic 
and political issues of the day. Hitler’s and Mussolini’s crushing of the 
Marxists was accomplished by real achievements on behalf of the workers, 
not merely in terms of employment, social security, and prosperity, but by 
earnestly cultivating these tens of millions of men and women as full- 
fledged and honorable members of their nation, in marked contrast to the 
scorn and fear of craftsmen and leaders so deeply engrained in the 
bourgeois caste which dominated liberal circles. 

Germany’s assault on the Soviet, launched in mortal necessity, has been 
to date the only serious attempt to destroy the Communist enemy of 
Western liberties and conscience, despite an unending series of half-hearted 
jabs and feints by the capitalist powers since the end of the First World 
War. It was the mightiest and bloodiest struggle the world has ever seen. 
For Germany and its European allies, it began with an unbroken succession 
of victories. Checked by the Russian winter at the very gates of Moscow, the 
armies of Europe held on and continued their advance to the southeast in 
1942. With the turn of the tide in 1943, thanks to the Soviet’s almost inex¬ 
haustible manpower, lavish aid from Bolshevism’s capitalist allies, and the 
vast spaces of the Russian heartland, the Germans, bolstered by hard- 
fighting European volunteers in the ranks of the Waffen SS, performed 
prodigies of heroism to the bitter end, when the Red tide engulfed Europe as 



CAMPAIGN IN RUSSIA 


xii 

far as Luebeck and Trieste, and the soldiers of the plutocratic Mammon and 
the Bolshevik Moloch clasped hands on the Elbe. 

In this heroic, failed crusade Leon Degrelle and his Wallonian volunteers 
played their role to the utmost measure of their hearts and souls. Of the first 
800 Walloons who left for the Eastern Front, three survived the war, one of 
them Degrelle, who was wounded seven times during the course of his three 
and a half years of combat. All told some 2,500 Walloons fell against the 
Soviets, only after enduring desperate, hand-to-hand combats by the hun¬ 
dred, hurricanes of steel by the thousand. Outnumbered and outgunned but 
never outmanned, the Belgians never wavered and never flinched in a battle 
that was far less tangibly theirs than that of by far the majority of com¬ 
batants. For the honor of their country, for the future of their continent, 
they braved a hundred Alamos, a hundred Thermopylaes, so that it might 
once more be proclaimed, with full justice: Fortissimi omnium Belgae sunt. 

It needs be remarked that the Wallonian troops were most of them 
military novices at the outset of the war. Their organizer Degrelle had been 
rendered quasi-invulnerable by no protective laving in fire or water; no 
Cheiron bred him to arms. When he departed for the front in 1941 at the 
age of 35, he had never fired a gun; although he had been offered high rank 
he chose to Start out as a private, sharing all the burdens of his comrades, 
and rising by his courage and resolve alone through the ranks to the position 
of commander of the unit he raised, at last the 28th SS Division 
“Wallonia.” No foreign soldier in the armies of the Reich was as highly 
honored as Degrelle; none so much merited honor. 

For their heroism in defense of the West, Degrelle and his men received 
nothing but slander and persecution. 

The Belgian political establishment, returned from its sojourn in London 
with breasts glittering from medals and orders of “resistance,” hounded the 
Rexists and their families with pitiless ferocity, to humiliation, imprison¬ 
ment, and even death. This purge, part and parcel of a great bloodbath or¬ 
chestrated by Red leaders throughout Europe, was abetted, as historian 
Bradley Smith has established, by help from a perhaps unexpected quarter: 
with help from the British intelligence establishment a number of officers 
from Stalin’s NKVD were parachuted into Belgium to lend their expertise. 

Needless to say, Degrelle’s family was marked out for especial cruelty. 
His brother was assassinated by terrorists, although he played no active role 
in Degrelle’s movement. His wife and parents were arrested, brutally 
mishandled, and thrown in jail. All of them died there. With a superbly 
refined inhumanity, the votaries of justice and decency rounded up all of 
Degrelle’s children (seven girls and a little boy) and, after changing their 
names, dispersed them in orphanages, reform schools, and homes for the 
retarded all across Europe. Such was the humanity and honor of our 
Western elite, revealed then as it had been revealed many times before, from 
Pearl Harbor to Dresden to Teheran to Yalta to the camps where American 



Introduction 


and British minions rounded up the millions of subjects of the Red empire 
to hand them over to Stalin, to that leader’s boundless stupefaction and 
rejoicing. 

By dint of luck, persistance, and the undying loyalty and friendship of his 
comrades, Degrelle was able to rescue his scattered children and bring them 
to Spain, the epic flight to which he describes in these pages and where, 
thanks to the decency and honor of Generalissimo Francisco Franco, he has 
been able to build a new life. 

Despite his years he remains vigorously and mentally nimble. Sentenced 
to death in 1944 by the leaders of the land he loved and served so well, he 
has spent more than half his life in exile. The smug bourgeois, the ec¬ 
clesiastical Tartuffes, and the bread-and-butter socialists of Belgium still 
sputter and tremble at his name. He keeps the banners of the Wallonian 
Division, which he saved; some day, he hopes, they will be exhibited at a 
war museum in Belgium. Asked by a journalist ten years ago if he had any 
regrets about the war, he answered, “Only that we lost.” 

♦ * ♦ ♦ * 

Besides its merits as an unparalleled military memoir of the Eastern 
Front, Campaign in Russia has considerable literary value as an epic of Ger¬ 
many and Europe’s crusade against Bolshevism. A superb French stylist 
and a man of profound culture, Degrelle is fully conscious of his tale’s 
heroic sweep, which constitutes at once a compact Iliad and Odyssey of 
modern Western courage and resolve. Alive to the classical tradition of 
Western letters, Degrelle frequently alludes to earlier champions against the 
East, from Xenophon to Godfrey de Bouillon to Bonaparte. 

His own values emerge clearly in Campaign in Russia. Not merely valor 
and honor, but humanity and compassion, a tender solicitude for the 
Belgian comrades he led east, a sublime love for beauty, and a forthright 
candor mark his narrative. 

Degrelle is magnanimous even to his Communist foes, paying tribute to 
their courage, even that of their commissars when the occasion arises, 
despite the many brutal atrocities the Comm uni st soldiers carried out 
against his men. How different from victors and the masters of public opin¬ 
ion in our country, who to this day wage a relentless campaign of calumny 
and slander, an as yet unremitting atrocity propaganda against the defeated 
and the fallen. And although Degrelle is mercilessly frank in depicting the 
privation and squalor in which the workers and peasants lived under the 
Bolshevik regime, as a Christian he feels a great compassion for his fellow 
Christians. Some of the most moving passages in the book describe the Or¬ 
thodox services which resumed with the German conquest, and in which 
Degrelle and the Catholic Walloons took part in true ecumenical spirit. 

Love of beauty: time and time again Degrelle paints the splendors of the 



xiv 


CAMPAIGN IN RUSSIA 


landscape and the heavens in inspired prose. The soldier who exclaims 
“Life without beauty is worthless!” has an eye for beauty even amid chaos 
and death, and his matchless descriptions of the carnage of the front evoke 
the terrifying splendor of the canvases of Bosch, Bruegel, and Goya. 

Degrelle has no qualms about telling hard truths and making hard 
judgements. He is quick to praise the Germans and their allies when they are 
worthy, quick to chasten them when they are not. His descriptions of the 
Italians and the Romanians, of Quisling and the German generals are 
unsparing portraits of men who must now forever fear the burden of their 
deeds, for evil and for good. He is not a writer stridulously to carp and 
blame, however. Unlike so many post-war writers who served on the Ger¬ 
man side, Degrelle makes no attempt to curry favor with publishers and 
critics by obligatory condemnations of men like Hitler and Himmler. 
Unafraid to stand up to them face to face (he insisted that his unit have 
Catholic chaplains, even after it entered the SS, and he once told the 
Fuehrer that people often said he [Hitler] was crazy), Degrelle criticizes 
what he deems their errors with a fine discretion, and pays gracious tribute 
to their dedication and bravery. Indeed, Campaign in Russia is a moving 
threnody to his chosen allies, the German leaders and the German people: 
their matchless discipline, their boundless courage, the glory of their flam¬ 
ing cities, the pathos of their defeat and ruin. 

But it is his brave Walloons, above all the rest, whom the writer seeks to 
honor with this book: the bold and self-denying men, young and old, who 
flocked to the standards of their country’s ancient glory, from the mines, 
from the factories, from the schools and shops and offices and universities 
of their land, without hope of personal gain—no mercenaries, but gallant 
patriots like the storied Wild Geese of Ireland, who fought on far-flung bat¬ 
tlefields in alien armies for the freedom of their nation. 2,500 of them lie 
dead, the remainder were proscribed in their native land. Degrelle, always 
more than able to speak for himself, here speaks for them, those not so able 
with tongue and pen and those eternally mute. 

Always, however, the reader returns to Degrelle, the leader, the fighter, 
the creator, veteran of a hundred battles in the most titanic struggle in 
history, author of two dozen books, master of his life and the desperate age 
he lives in. How foreign to Degrelle is the ethic of the “survivor,” the man 
who lives on at any price, the shallow cult of the “winner,” the fair-weather 
glutton for false profit and tawdry fame! What contrast Degrelle’s 
boundless energy for creation, for heroism, for sacrifice, his ineluctible 
good cheer and breadth of spirit, offers to the intellectual and spiritual in¬ 
anition of the men and women of contemporary America! 

After all his trials, after all his deeds, Degrelle lives on, still working, still 
creating, the 20th-century Christian knight, Roland returned in triumph, his 
honor brighter yet, from the pass at Roncesvalles. Always we see him smil¬ 
ing, not from satisfaction at those obscure workings of fate that bring our 



Introduction 


xv 


“happiness,” but in some deeper, enigmatic, joy, the same smile one sees 
on the faces of the sixth century Greek kouroi, so many statues of the 
Buddha, the incomparable Bamberger Reiter : no mere stern-faced warrior 
is he, content to look Death and the Devil hard in the eye, but a man who 
marches to the rhythms and laws of God and the universe. If his brave 
Wallonians teach us how to die, Degrelle will teach us how to live. 


—Ted O’Keefe 




PREFACE 


In 1936 I was the youngest political leader in Europe. At the age of 
twenty-nine, I’d already shaken my country to its very core. Hundreds of 
thousands of men, women, and young people followed me with total faith 
and passion. Our movement had elected dozens of deputies and senators to 
the Belgian parliament. I could have been a minister in the government: I 
had only to say one word to enter into the game of politics. 

I preferred to pursue, outside the official cockpit, the hard struggle for 
order and justice, and against corruption, since I was possessed by an ideal 
which allowed neither for compromises nor for a division of the spoils. 

I wanted to free my country from the dictatorial domination of the 
moneyed interests which corrupted power, undermined our institutions, 
tainted our consciences, and ruined industry and labor. For the anarchical 
regime of the old parties, all of them discredited by leprous political- 
financial scandals, I wanted to substitute, legally, a strong and free State, 
well ordered, responsible, and representative of the true energies of our 
people. 

This was not a question of tyranny nor of “fascism.” It was a question of 
good sense. A country cannot live in disorder, incompetence, irresponsi¬ 
bility, uncertainty, and corruption. 

I called for authority in the State, competence in public offices, continu¬ 
ity in the enterprises of the nation, a real, living contract between the masses 
and the government, an intelligent and productive harmony among the 
citizens who were separated and opposed to one another only by artificial 
struggles: class struggles, religious struggles, linguistic struggles, all 
manufactured and fed with scrupulous care since they were the very life of 
the rival parties which, with an equal hypocrisy, disputed theatrically with 
one another while sharing the advantages of power. 

I swooped down, broom in hand, under the eyes of the corrupt gangs that 
drained away the vigor of my country. I flogged and flagellated them, I 
destroyed, before the eyes of the people, the whited sepulchres under which 
they hid their depravities, their plundering, their lucrative collusions. I 
caused a breath of youth and idealism to pass over my country; I exalted the 



2 


CAMPAIGN IN RUSSIA 


spiritual forces and the lofty recollections of struggle and glory of a deter¬ 
mined, hard-working people with a passion for life. 

The Rexist movement was a reaction against the corruption of an era. It 
was a movement for political renewal and for social justice. It was especially 
a fervent impetus toward greatness, an outpouring of thousands of souls 
who wished to breathe, to shine, to raise themselves above the baseness of a 
regime and an era. 

Such was the struggle up until May, 1940. 

The Second World War—which I had condemned—changed everything, 
in Belgium as elsewhere. Old institutions, old doctrines collapsed like castles 
made of rotten wood, worm-eaten for a long time. 

The Rexist movement was not tied in any manner to the triumphant Third 
Reich: not to its leader, not to its party, not to any one of its leaders or 
propagandists. The Rexist movement was fundamentally an intensely na¬ 
tional movement with absolute independence. All the archives of the Third 
Reich have been seized: no one has been able to And the tiniest trace of any 
attachment whatever, direct or indirect, between Rexism and Hitler before 
the invasion in 1940. Our hands were clean, our hearts were pine, our love 
for our country, bright and burning, was free of all compromise. 

The German onrush overwhelmed our country. 

For 99 percent of the Belgians or the French, the war was over by July 
1940; the predominance of the Reich was a fact to which, moreover, the old 
democratic and financial regime ardently wanted to adapt itself as quickly 
as possible! 

Among those who had insulted Hitler in 1939 were many who would be 
the most eager to throw themselves at the feet of the conqueror in 1940: the 
heads of the great parties of the Left, the financial magnates, the owners of 
the largest newspapers, the Masonic ministers of state, the former govern¬ 
ment, all of them wanted, sought, begged a smile, an opportunity for col¬ 
laboration. 

Was it necessary to surrender the field to the discredited ghosts of the old 
parties, to the gangsters of a financial system whose only allegiance was to 
gold, or to sinister pirates lacking both talent and dignity, eager for the 
meanest tasks of a valet to satisfy their greed and ambition? 

The problem was not only sad: it was urgent. To nearly all observers the 
Germans appeared to be final victors. It was necessary to make up one’s 
mind. Could we, out of fear of taking responsibility, just let our country 
drift? 

For several weeks, I considered the problem. It was only after having 
asked and obtained from the Royal Palace a completely favorable decision 
that I decided to let Le Pays riel (The Real Country), the newspaper of the 
Rexist movement, reappear. 

Belgian collaboration, which began at the end of 1940, took, however, an 
unfortunate direction. From all the evidence, the German authorities were 



Preface 


3 


very much more interested in the capitalist forces than in the idealist forces. 
No one succeeded in finding out exactly what Germany was contemplating. 

The King of the Belgians, Leopold III, wanted to see things more clearly 
and to obtain some precise details. He asked Hitler to receive him. The au¬ 
dience was granted. But King Leopold came back from Berchtesgaden 1 
without having succeeded and without having learned anything new. 

It was clear that our country was going to be made to wait until peace 
returned. By that time it would be too late. We had to win, before the war 
ended, the right to negotiate with Germany on an effective basis. How were 
we to achieve this? 

Collaboration within the country was nothing other than an operation of 
slow encirclement, of nibbling in bits and bites, of endless struggles for in¬ 
fluence carried out against obscure secondary personages. Not only would 
that work not give any prestige to whoever undertook it, but it could only 
discredit him. 

That was a trap I didn’t want to fall into. I watched and waited for a dif¬ 
ferent approach. Suddenly, in June, 1941,1 had my chance: Germany had 
gone to war against the Soviet Union. 

Here was the unique opportunity, the opportunity to command the 
respect of the Reich by means of combat, suffering, and glory. In 1940, we 
had been the conquered, our king a prisoner king. 

All at once, in 1941, we were offered the chance to become the comrades 
and equals of our conquerers. Everything depended on our courage. We 
had, finally, the chance to win the position of prestige which would allow 
us, on the day of the reorganization of Europe, to speak with our heads held 
high, in the name of our heroes, in the name of our dead, in the name of the 
nation, which had offered its blood. 

Through our struggle on the endless Eastern steppes, we wanted indeed to 
do our duty as Europeans and as Christians. But, we say this openly—we 
proclaimed it loud and clear from the first day—we had above all given this 
gift of our youth in order to guarantee the future of our nation in the midst 
of a rescued Europe. It was for that, first of all, that several thousands of 
our comrades fell. It was for that that thousands of men struggled, strug¬ 
gled for four years, suffered for four years, sustained by that hope, driven 
on by that desire, strengthened by the certainty that they were going to suc¬ 
ceed in their purpose. 

The Reich lost the war, but it could just as well have won it. 

Until 1945, victory for Hitler remained possible. 

Hitler as victor would, I am certain, have recognized the right of our na¬ 
tion to live and to be great, a right that it had acquired for itself slowly, with 
difficulty, by the blood of thousands of Belgian volunteers. 

These men endured two years of epic struggle before forcing the attention 
of the Reich. In 1941, the Belgian anti-Bolshevik Wallonian 2 Legion had 


1 See footnotes beginning on page 349. 




4 


CAMPAIGN IN RUSSIA 


gone unnoticed. Our soldiers had to multiply their acts of bravery, to risk 
their lives a hundred times before raising the name of their country to the 
level of legend. In 1943, our legion of volunteers had become celebrated all 
along the Eastern Front for its idealism and its fearlessness. In 1944, it 
reached the height of its fame, at the time of the odyssey of Cherkassy. The 
German people, more than any other people, are sensitive to the glory of 
armed combat. Our moral claim on the German Reich was unique in 
Europe, far superior to that of any other occupied country. 

I saw Hitler at length on two occasions in that year, a soldier’s visit, but a 
visit that showed me clearly that we had won our country. Shaking my hand 
firmly in his two hands at the moment of my departure, Hitler told me with 
stirring affection: “If I had a son, I would want him to be like you.” How, 
after all our battles, could he refuse me the right of my country to live in 
honor? Our volunteers had won their dream: they had, in the event of Ger¬ 
man victory, resoundingly assured the rebirth and the greatness of our 
people. 

The Allied victory temporarily rendered useless that terrible effort of four 
years combat, the sacrifice of our dead, the Calvary of the survivors. 

After the defeat, the world worked unceasingly to mock the vanquished. 
Our soldiers, our wounded, our maimed were condemned to death or 
thrown into unspeakable camps and prisons. Nothing was respected, 
neither the honor of the warrior, nor our parents, nor our homes. 

But greatness is never in vain. The virtues won in sorrow and sacrifice are 
stronger than hatred and death. Like the sun springing from the dark night, 
they will shine forth sooner or later. 

The future will go well beyond that rehabilitation. It will not only render 
homage to the heroism of the soldiers of the Eastern Front in the Second 
World War, but it will also say that they were right: that they were right in a 
negative sense, since Bolshevism is the end of all values; and that they were 
right in a positive sense, since a united Europe, for which they strove, was 
the only—perhaps the last—possibility of survival for a marvelous old con¬ 
tinent, a haven of human joy and fervor, but mangled and mutilated to the 
point of death. 

A day will come, perhaps, when people will regret the defeat in 1945 of 
the defenders and builders of Europe. 

While awaiting that day, let us tell truthfully their epic tale—how they 
fought, what trials they suffered, how they gave their hearts to the struggle. 

Through the epic of the Belgian volunteers—one unit among a hundred 
others—it is the entire Russian front which is going to come into view once 
more, with the sunny days of the great victories, with the still more moving 
days of the great defeats, defeats which were imposed by physical cir¬ 
cumstances, but which the will did not accept. 

Out there, on the endless steppes, lived men. 

You, reader, friend or enemy—watch them come back to life; for we are 



Preface 5 

living in a period when one must look very hard to find real men, and they 
were that, to the very marrow of their bones, as you are going to see. 


L.D. 




Chapter One 

RUSH TO THE UKRAINE 


22 June 1941 began like all the beautiful Sundays of summer. I was 
absent-mindedly turning the dial of my radio, when suddenly some words 
brought me up short: the troops of the Third Reich had crossed the Euro¬ 
pean border of the USSR. 

The campaign in Poland in 1939, the campaign in Norway, the campaign 
in the Netherlands, in Belgium and France in 1940, the campaign in 
Yugoslavia and in Greece in the spring of 1941 had only been preliminary 
operations or blunders. The real war, in which the future of Europe and of 
the world would be decided, had just begun. This was no longer a war over 
frontiers or interests. This was a war of religions. And, like all religious 
wars, it would be unrelenting. 

Before engaging its tanks in the steppes, the Reich had resorted to eva¬ 
sion, like a watchful cat. 

In 1939 National Socialist Germany was carrying out a program without 
precedent. It had rebuilt itself in the midst of such lightning bolts, in the 
thundering and blinding flashes of such cataclysms, that all Europe and all 
the world felt the tremors. If all his enemies to the West swooped down on 
the Rhineland and the Ruhr, and if, at the same time, the Soviets expanded 
toward East Prussia and Berlin, Hitler seriously risked strangulation. He 
liked to say, over and over, that Kaiser Wilhelm II had lost the First World 
War by not having succeeded in avoiding a war on two fronts. He was going 
to do better. But we were to see, one day, side by side, gawking at the ruins 
of the Reich Chancellery in Berlin, not only Scots and muzhiks*, but Blacks 
from Harlem and Kirghiz tribesmen from the deserts of Asia. . . . 

$ $ $ $ $ 

In August of 1939, on the eve of the Polish conflagration, Hitler at the 
last minute had avoided being strangled. 


* See Glossary beginning on page 347. 




8 


CAMPAIGN IN RUSSIA 


Stalin had old accounts to settle with National Socialism; his collabora¬ 
tion with the “democracies” therefore appeared assured in advance. Lon¬ 
don and Paris, with great fanfare, had sent military missions to the Soviet 
tsar. During that same period, in complete secrecy. Hitler had succeeded in 
loosening the noose. 

Stalin had, like Hitler, played very skillfully. He had every interest in let¬ 
ting the plutocratic democracies and National Socialism exhaust each 
other, for he was the enemy of both. The more virulently they sapped each 
other’s strength, the better Communism could in the final account facilitate 
its task. Stalin carried out his game with Asiatic cunning, the leader of an 
international gang, sure of his men. He could even ostensibly ally himself 
with the Third Reich: over the entire world, Communist discipline was 
absolute. 

The effects of that extraordinary solidarity promptly made themselves 
felt. Britain and France had made it a world war after Hitler invaded 
Poland. When Stalin did the same thing IS days later, no one in the Allied 
chancelleries took the risk of reacting 

Thus the Soviet leader was able to stab a vacillating Poland in the back 
with complete impunity, and annex over a third of that unhappy country. 
Britain and France, so solicitous of Poland’s territorial integrity before, 
neglected to declare war on the USSR. 

That moral and military abdication gave an unshakeable confidence to 
the Communist bands spread throughout Europe. The democracies were 
afraid of Stalin! They had recoiled before him! What had been intolerable 
from Hitler had been tolerated coming from the Soviets! 

The “democracies” dispensed with morality, principle, and their own 
self-respect for fear of consolidating Stalin’s alliance with Germany. They 
feared also the sabotage which the Communist parties throughout Europe 
were preparing or had already carried out. As always a short-sighted self- 
interest had prevailed over all other considerations. 

In reality, the alleged “just war” had lasted only fifteen days. From 
September of 1939, the Allies had only one idea: not to offend the USSR, to 
begin a reconciliation with Stalin, in spite of his aggression against their 
Polish allies. 

Stalin was able to multiply his demands, to put an end to the inde¬ 
pendence of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, to snatch Bessarabia from the 
Rumanians. One single thing was important to the Allies: to enable the 
Russians to change sides. In less than two years, that would be achieved. 

* * * * * 

Germany had, in 1939 and in 1940, won the battles of Poland, Norway 
and the Western Front. But it had struggled for more than five hundred 
days without having achieved the essential thing: a victorious landing on 
English soil. 



Rush to the Ukraine 


9 


England, for its part, was likewise unable to set foot on the European 
continent: Churchill was talking about a preparation lasting several years. 

Stalin, therefore, had a clear track. Clear in the direction of the Reich. 
Clear especially in the Balkans. 

The game became more and more cautious. 

The Germans had skillfully advanced their pawns toward Bucharest, 
Sofia, and Belgrade. In March of 1941 Yugoslavia’s impulsive act in its 
breaking a treaty, concluded eight days earlier, with the Reich, led to the 
decisive event. The Soviets, secret instigators of that action, who saw fur¬ 
ther than that plaything of British espionage, the young King Peter, publicly 
wired their sympathy to the Yugoslavian government 1 . 

To be sure, in two weeks German armor swept through Belgrade, Sara¬ 
jevo, Salonika and Athens; the paratroopers of Marshal Goering occupied 
the island of Crete. But the German-Soviet break had been clean. Thus far, 
the alliance with the Reich had served its purpose. It had brought to the 
Soviets all that Stalin could have expected: a very bloody piece of Poland, 
the three Baltic countries, some important positions in Finland, and 
magnificent Bessarabia. 

The Nazi lemon had been squeezed dry. The hour had come to squeeze a 
second lemon: the democratic lemon. We know what kind of juice that 
lemon finally gave to the Soviets in 1945: the occupation of territories in¬ 
habited by two hundred million Europeans and Asians, the Red Army 
established in Thuringia, on the Elbe, at the gates of Luebeck, at Petsamo, 
in Manchuria, in Korea, in the Kurile Islands! 

The Yugoslav turn-about, the stated claims of Molotov on the Balkans, 
the military preparations of the Soviets during the spring of 1941: all these 
left Hitler no doubt about the ambitions of the USSR. The longer he 
waited, the more likely he would be attacked. In order to concentrate his 
forces in the East, he temporarily abandoned his plan to invade England. 
He tried, by various means, to find a peaceful settlement to the conflict be¬ 
tween Germany and the United Kingdom. It was too late for that. The 
British were no longer disposed to cancel the match; once begun, it could no 
longer be stopped. 

For two years, each country had calculated coldly, according to the age- 
old law of national egoism and self-interest. In the end, each had arrived at 
exactly the same conclusions. 

The Russians, skillfully pushed by the English and spurred on by new at¬ 
tractions, sooner or later were going to pounce. The Germans, sensing that 
the die was cast, had to bow to necessity. On 22 June 1941 began a battle to 
the death between the National Socialist Reich and Soviet Russia: two im¬ 
perialisms, two religions, two worlds grappled across the steppes in the 
sands of the East. 

England, isolated from Europe by the sea and with its principal riches 
scattered over distant lands, could not sense exactly the importance of the 



10 


CAMPAIGN IN RUSSIA 


duel. It reacted by thinking more about its immediate interest—the relief of 
its island—than about what the fate of Europe would be were the Soviets 
one day victorious. 

By contrast, for us—the peoples of the European continent—that strug¬ 
gle was a decisive struggle. 

If National Socialist Germany triumphed, it would be the master, in the 
East, of a tremendous area for expansion, right on its border, tied to it 
directly by means of railroads, rivers and canals, open to its genius for 
organization and production. The Greater German Reich, in complete 
rebirth, endowed with a remarkable social structure, enriched by those 
fabulous lands, extending in one block from the North Sea to the Volga, 
would have such power, would have such force of attraction, would offer to 
the twenty peoples crowded onto the old continent such possibilities for 
progress that those territories would constitute the point of departure for 
the indispensable European federation, wished for by Napoleon, con¬ 
templated by Renan, sung of by Victor Hugo. 

If, on the contrary, the Soviets prevailed, who in Europe would resist 
them once the enormous German bastion was dismantled? Poland, drained 
of its blood? The chaotic Balkans, submerged, decayed, occupied, tamed? 
A depopulated France, having only speeches to oppose two hundred million 
muzhiks and the Bolshevik ideology, swollen with its victory? Greece, Italy, 
talkative and charming, with their poor peoples, squatting in the sun like 
lizards? The jigsaw puzzle of the small European nations, the residues of a 
thousand years of civil war, each incapable of paying for more than a hun¬ 
dred tanks? The Soviets defeating the Reich—that would be Stalin mount¬ 
ing the body of a Europe which, its powers of resistance exhausted, was 
ready to be raped. 


~~ * * * * * 

Naturally they would attempt, late in the day, to save that three-quarter- 
Sovietized Europe. The Allies of yesterday would tremble, because the 
USSR no longer contented itself with prey close at hand, but now extended 
its greedy hands, the Second World War scarcely ended, toward the Pacific 
Ocean, China, the Persian Gulf, the Mediterranean, the Suez Canal, 
menacing the colonies, the raw materials, the great multinational trusts. 

But even then the Anglo-Americans did not seek to save Europe for 
Europe: quite simply, they strove to retain in the West a springboard which 
would allow them to protect their imperialism and to react against Soviet 
imperialism—free, if necessary, to transform that springboard, with atomic 
weapons, into an incredible field of ruins. 

We, the sons of Europe, were thinking of the life of Europe. Whatever 
our judgement about the manner in which the war had started, whatever 
our regrets about the past, whatever bitterness there might have been at the 



Rush to the Ukraine 


11 


foreign occupation of our countries, each of us understood that well beyond 
the pleasant or unpleasant things experienced from 1939 to 1941 by our 
various countries, the fate of all of Europe was in the balance. 

This explains the extraordinary, spontaneous movement which aroused 
innumerable young men, from Oslo to Seville, from Antwerp to Budapest. 
They didn’t leave their beloved homes in Jutland or in Beauce, in the 
Ardennes or in the Puszta, in Limburg or in Andalusia to serve the special 
interests of Germany. They left to defend two thousand years of the highest 
civilization. They were inspired by the baptistry in Florence and the 
cathedral at Rheims, by the Alcazar in Toledo and the belfry in Bruges. 
They died out there, in countless numbers, not for some Dienststelle* in 
Berlin, but for their old countries, gilded by the centuries, and for their 
common fatherland, Europe, the Europe of Virgil and Ronsard, the Europe 
of Erasmus and Nietzsche, of Raphael and Duerer, the Europe of St. Ig¬ 
natius and St. Theresa, the Europe of Frederick the Great and Napoleon 
Bonaparte. 

Between that age-old Europe and the Soviet onslaught, its horrible level¬ 
ing, the overflow of its swarming little tribes, they made their choice at 
once. A new generation, all over Europe, took its stand. Blond giants from 
Scandinavia and the Baltic countries, Hungarian dreamers with long 
moustaches, stocky, swarthy Rumanians, enormous Croats with violet 
greatcoats; Italians, whimsical and sentimental; Spaniards with jet black 
eyes; bantering Frenchmen; Danes, Dutch, Swiss: all hastened to the battle 
for Europe. All the nations were there. We even saw some Englishmen 
volunteer, a dozen in all, a dozen nonetheless. 

* * * * * 

Thousands of Belgians enlisted, according to their languages, in a 
Flemish legion and a Wallonian legion. At first they formed two battalions, 
then, in 1943, two brigades, lastly, in 1944, two divisions: the Wallonian 
Division and the Flemish Langemarck Division. 

For a period of 46 months I would be one of those volunteers for Europe 
and would live together with my comrades, the most terrible and grandest 
of epics; would advance on foot for two years to the threshold of Asia, then 
fall back unendingly from the Caucasus to Norway; would pass from the 
ecstasy of the offensives of 1941 and 1942 to the bitter glory of defeat and 
exile, while, over half of an anemic Europe, there streamed the yellow tide 
of the Soviet conquerors. 

The Conquered Ukraine 

In October of 1941 two to three weeks were required to complete the trip 
from the frontier of the Reich to the Russian front. 



12 


CAMPAIGN IN RUSSIA 


We passed through Lemberg, 2 where the streetcars were decked out with 
small blue and white Ukrainian flags waving in the breeze. Scarcely had we 
entered the countryside to the southwest when we were able to judge for 
ourselves the extent of the military disasters which had been inflicted on the 
Soviets. Hundreds of armored cars were strewn along the road. Every 
crossroad was a graveyard of metal. 

The spectacle went on for a half hour, then most traces of combat disap¬ 
peared. We had arrived in the midst of the Ukraine, an undamaged Ukraine 
with hundreds of gigantic hay stacks as long as zeppelins standing on its im¬ 
mense muddy plains. 

Peaceful villages scattered their isbas*, white or pale blue, with roofs 
thick with straw. Each tiny cottage was isolated among groups of young 
cherry trees. 

The walls were made of mud, but the local artists had carved primitive 
wooden sculptures of love birds, flowers, arrows, and shells, which framed 
the small windows. These wooden carvings were painted, like the shutters, 
in vivid colors. The windows were double windows, hermetically sealed, 
separated by a board as wide as your hand, on which rested, in cotton wool, 
small glass wares, oranges or tomatoes made of colored cement. 

Big girls with high cheekbones hurried about in front of small farms. 
Their blond hair was tied up in blue or red scarves. They were dressed in 
dresses of rough cloth which gave them the appearance of Laplanders. In 
high boots of the Cossack type they splashed merrily in the mud among the 
noisy pigs. 

The train would stop for a few hours in the middle of the fields or in front 
of a ruined village. We bought chickens that we cooked in boiling water 
from the locomotive. Some Ukrainian youngsters showed us with pride 
their exercises in the German language. In their notebooks we read on the 
first pages: “Stalin is the greatest man in the world” and then, on the last 
pages, the phrase reviewed and corrected by the prudent teacher: “Hitler is 
the greatest man in the world.” The children did not appear particularly 
troubled by this. 


♦ * * * * 

Certain encounters gave us an idea of the scale of the victories of 
September and October 1941: these were with the trains which transported 
fantastic hordes of prisoners of war toward the Reich. 

At each stop, we ran to look at the railway cars. We stood astounded in 
front of those hairy giants, saffron colored, with small, gleaming, feline 
eyes. Many were Asiatics. They were standing, 80 or even 100 to a car. 

During a station stopover one night, we were awakened by terrible cries. 
We hurried to open the doors of a car full of prisoners: Asiatics, as hungry 
as piranhas, fought each other while snatching pieces of meat. That prized 



Rush to the Ukraine 


13 


meat was human flesh! The prisoners were fighting over the remains of a 
dead Mongol, who had been cut apart with pieces of tin from cans of food. 
Certain prisoners had felt cheated by being left out of the distribution, 
which resulted in the brawl. Gnawed bones had been tossed outside through 
the bars. They were scattered, bloody, alongside the railway car on the 
muddy ground. 

We learned later on that hundreds of thousands of men, packed together 
in that way, remained standing sometimes for three weeks, fed when there 
was food near the tracks. Many of these Asiatics, recruited from their wild 
steppes, preferred to gnaw a Kalmuk or Tatar rib rather than to run the risk 
of dying of hunger. In one station, I saw several of them digging in the 
ground. They extracted some red, wriggling worms, a good six inches long, 
which they gulped down as they might have gulped down an egg. The 
Adam’s apples of these worm-eaters rose and fell with gusto. 

***** 

One morning we arrived at the Bug River, the large metal bridge over 
which lay at the bottom of the river. We had to unload all of our baggage 
and camp in the city of Pervomaisk. 

We were able once more to receive news from the front. The advances 
were not as stupendous as we had been told by the onlookers along the 
railway line. On the contrary, the German thrust was slowing down: 
Moscow had not fallen, nor Leningrad; on the Rostov front the situation 
was not clear. Optimism was still very great, but one noted that certain 
things were passed over in silence. The Germans in Pervomaisk made 
discreet references to the difficulties of divisions hurled forward a thousand 
kilometers beyond the borders of the Reich. 

Looking at the mud, we thought about the sea of mud which separated 
the armies on the offensive from their former bases. One road left Per¬ 
vomaisk toward the Dnieper River. Some trucks were stuck there mired to 
axle level. The mud was black and thick as tar. The strongest engines failed, 
powerless. 

The railway lines were themselves hardly more passable. The tracks must 
not have been touched since the times of the tsars. The trains advanced with 
a torturous slowness; nevertheless, the rails rose and fell like seesaws. The 
traffic was light, although the widening of the tracks had been carried out 
with an extraordinary haste. The transfers from one train to another made 
everything worse. After reaching the Bug, it was necessary to descend on 
foot to the bottom of the valley, then climb up again by way of a muddy 
detour of several kilometers. The trail was a river: men marched in water up 
to their knees. With the bridges down, all aid to the armies of the south had 
to be sent forward in similar fashion. 

Driving eastward, the German armies had made a daring gamble. Had 



14 


CAMPAIGN IN RUSSIA 


Hitler’s bold undertaking achieved a speedy victory, the situation on the 
Eastern Front could have been consolidated very quickly. The Germans, 
with their genius for organizing, could have deployed troops to restore com¬ 
munications with the rear, to repair and improve the rail lines, and to 
rebuild the bridges, all within a few months: that would have forestalled 
disaster. 

Unfortunately for the Reich, the war did not end as quickly as the High 
Command had foreseen. The divisions tried to slog forward, but the 
autumn floods made the steppes totally impassable. The munitions, the 
gasoline, the indispensable reinforcements toiled for weeks across 
dislocated Russia. 

A bogged-down army is a liability. And winter was approaching. In 1812, 
at exactly the same time of year, Napoleon had had to make the anguishing 
decision to retreat from Moscow. 

The armies of the Reich, however, were going to remain in Russia. Here it 
was not a case of remaining at an advanced point as it had been for the 
French Emperor, but rather of maintaining a 3,000-kilometer front running 
from the White to the Black Sea. 

As we looked at the empty stations, the destroyed bridges, the trucks 
sunk in the mud, we couldn’t avoid thinking about the hundreds of 
thousands of men, committed to the depths of Russia, who were going to 
try what Napoleon had not dared to try: to maintain themselves in spite of 
everything in the midst of the steppes, with the enemy in front of them, the 
desert to their backs, the snow falling from the sky, and the ice gnawing 
away at their bodies and their morale. 

Nevertheless, we all had such confidence in the infallibility of the German 
High Command that we didn’t indulge in such thoughts for very long. The 
war could still end before the very coldest weather began. If not, everything 
had been foreseen, this time as always ... 

We boarded another train after crossing the flooded valley of the Bug. 
The countryside remained calm during the day, but at night the trains were 
fired upon. One morning we noted the bodies of Soviet soldiers along the 
track. They had tried an isolated attack. Now their twisted bodies lay there 
in long violet coats. 

The water began to freeze solid, and we had to break the ice in the ditches 
in order to wash in the morning after the train stopped. 

We had been packed in, forty soldiers to a car, for 17 days. On 2 
November, very early, we passed large anti-tank trenches cut into the 
reddish-brown hills. 

The train began to descend past the endless walls of charred factories. 
Then a wonderful sight: a mighty blue stream, a brilliant blue, bathed in the 
sun, suddenly appeared before our eyes: the Dnieper River, more than a 
kilometer wide. 


9 



Rush to the Ukraine 


15 


Dniepropetrovsk 

There had been scarcely any battles between Galicia and the Dnieper. 
Once the city of Lemberg was seized, the battle to surround Balta had deter¬ 
mined the fate of the marvelous Ukrainian plain, covered with com and 
wheat, scattered with large blue and white villages, decked out with 
thousands of cherry trees. The armor of the Reich had pushed on, without 
any other incidents up to Dniepropetrovsk. 

The battles outside the city had been bitterly fought. One cemetery, near 
the station, held more than 600 German graves. Entire streets had been 
burned. Yet the city retained its beautiful appearance. Karl Marx Prospect, 
immediately renamed Adolf Hitler Avenue, went on without end, as wide as 
the Champs-Elysees. 

The war now crossed the river. The appearance it had presented when the 
German troops went into the heavily inhabited sections of town was more 
comical than terrifying. Long rows of men stretched out, dead drunk, 
alongside gutters through which there flowed in torrents three hundred 
liters of vodka, escaping from barrels that the Bolsheviks had smashed in 
their retreat. The drunks had lapped up the alcohol even from the mud; 
then, overcome with bliss, they had awaited, bellies exposed, the arrival of 
the conqueror. 

At Dniepropetrovsk the Stalin regime had made great efforts in construc¬ 
tion. We were at first impressed as we approached the suburbs of the city, 
where we saw outlined the large masonry blocks of the proletarian housing 
erected by the Soviets. Their lines were modern. The buildings were huge 
and there were many of them. Undeniably, the Communist system had done 
something for the people. If the misery of the peasants was great, at least 
the worker seemed to have benefited from the new times. 

Still, it was necessary to visit and examine the buildings. We lived for six 
months in the Donets coalbasin. We had plenty of time to test the conclu¬ 
sions that we had reached at the time of our entrance into Dniepropetrovsk. 
The buildings, so impressive from a distance, were just a gigantic hoax, in¬ 
tended to fool sightseers shepherded by Intourist* and the viewers of 
documentary films. 

Approaching those housing blocks you were sickened by the stench of 
mud and excrement which rose from the quagmires surrounding each of the 
buildings. Around them were neither sidewalks nor gravel nor paving 
stones. The Russian mud was everywhere, and everywhere the walls peeled 
and crumbled. The quality of the construction materials was of the lowest 
order. All the balconies had come loose, and already the cement stairways 
were worn and grooved, although the buildings were only a few years old. 

Each floor had a certain number of apartments that were whitewashed 
and provided with a minuscule kitchen for the use of several families. The 
electric wires hung in clusters. The walls were made of mud and cracked as 
soon as you dared to pound a nail into them. 


16 


CAMPAIGN IN RUSSIA 


Generally there was no running water. The proletarian dwellers, not able 
to use the sanitary facilities, relieved themselves all around the buildings, 
converted as a result into a vast latrine. Cold weather froze the droppings 
which, with each thaw, caused a terrible stench. Altogether those apart¬ 
ments turned out to be more uncomfortable than the miserable isbas in 
which, on the richest soil in Europe, millions of Russian peasants vegetated 
in the midst of a sordid misery, only tattered clothes on their backs, eating 
from a common bowl, using spoons crudely carved from bits of wood. 

Seventy-five percent of our soldiers were manual laborers. Many among 
them had been susceptible, once, to Soviet propaganda. They stood with 
their mouths agape when they saw in what conditions of decay and exhaus¬ 
tion the Russian proletariat existed. They shook their heads, having to look 
twice at the scene before believing it. 

Hitler had tried a dangerous experiment. The hundreds of thousands of 
German workers mobilized and sent to the Eastern Front could have made 
dangerous comparisons if the Soviets had actually achieved great things for 
the working class. 

On the contrary, every German thought back to the delightful workers’ 
housing in the Reich, to its comfort, to the family garden, to the clinics and 
maternity hospitals for the people, the leisure time, the paid vacations, the 
magnificent cruises to Scandinavia or to the Mediterranean. They 
remembered their wives, their children, happy, in good health, well clothed. 
Looking at the ragged Russian people, the miserable isbas, the workers’ 
apartments, gloomy and rickety, they drew clear conclusions. 

Never had a workers’ group made such a study trip. 

Four years later, the comparison worked in the opposite direction: after 
having looted the watches, the jewelry, the clothes from all of Eastern 
Europe, the Soviet soldier returned grumbling to the USSR, astonished at 
the comfort of the non-Communist countries and disgusted with his 
“paradise” of wooden spoons, tattered dresses, and muddy excrement 
stretching around his house-barracks. 

♦ * * * * 

At the end of three days, we received our new marching orders: in the last 
hours of the night, we would cross over to the left bank of the Dnieper, thus 
entering the combat zone. 

At six in the evening our legion gathered on a terrace overlooking the 
river. As the water’s great roar rose up to us, I left the ranks to repeat once 
more to my comrades their duties as Europeans, as patriots and as revolu¬ 
tionaries. A strange emotion overcame us. Who among us would recross 
that river? 

At midnight we formed in columns. 

There was only one means of crossing the Dnieper, across a wooden 



Rush to the Ukraine 


17 


bridge 1300 meters long. It had been cut on several occasions by Soviet ar¬ 
tillery and aircraft. A heavy barrage of flak protected our narrow foot¬ 
bridge, the only link to the southern front. The black mass of the river was 
dotted with hundreds of enormous white ice floes, like the legendary 
lotuses. The skeletons of sunken ships rose above the water. 

We hastened across in silence, moved to have arrived at our rendezvous 
with war. 

The Mud Front 

Whoever does not understand the importance of mud in the Russian 
problem can not understand what took place for four years on the Eastern 
Front in Europe. The Russian mud is not only the wealth through which the 
steppe returns to life: it constitutes also a territorial defense more effective 
than even snow and ice. 

It is still possible to triumph over the cold, to move ahead in 40 degree- 
below-zero weather. The Russian mud is sure of its sway. Nothing prevails 
over it, neither man nor matter. It dominates the steppes for several 
months out of the year. The autumn and the spring belong to it. And even 
in the summer months, when the Eery sun flattens out and cracks open the 
fields, cloudbursts flood them every three weeks. The mud is extraordi¬ 
narily sticky because the soil is permeated with oily residues. The entire 
region is swimming in oil. The water does not flow, it stagnates; the dirt 
clings to the feet of man and beast. 

Disembarking at the Bug River in the month of October we had already 
been astonished at the sight of trucks swallowed up by that blackish mire, 
but we couldn’t really gauge the situation until we ourselves entered the 
quagmire of the southern Ukraine. 

* * * * * 

From Dnepropetrovsk on, the trains no longer ran. The bridges had been 
cut; the rails had been blown up. 

In the month of October 1941, the German troops had raced at full speed 
to the Donets Basin, leaving an immense region to their rear: with the begin¬ 
ning of the rainy season, this had been converted into a dead zone, virtually 
inaccessible. The units which had taken off like a shot had to fight for some 
months separated from Dnepropetrovsk by that three-hundred-kilometer- 
long swamp. 

Stalin escaped disaster by about 15 days. Given 15 more days of sun, the 
supply trains of the conquerors could have reached the front. But Stalin, 
tottering at the brink of defeat, was saved by that all-powerful glue, which 
brought about what his troops and his guns had not been able to 
accomplish. 



18 


CAMPAIGN IN RUSSIA 


Hitler had routed millions of Soviet soldiers, had wiped out their air 
force, their artillery and their tanks, but he could do nothing against the 
blows that fell from the sky, soaking the huge oily sponge which sucked at 
the feet of his soldiers, the tires of his trucks, the treads of his tanks. The 
greatest and the most rapid military victory of all time was stopped in its 
final stage by the mud; nothing but the mud, the primal mud, as old as the 
earth, impassable, more powerful than strategies, than gold, than the minds 
and the pride of men. 


* * * * * 

Our legion had arrived in the Ukraine just in time to fight—or more ex¬ 
actly to struggle—against that enemy. 

A struggle without glory; an exhausting struggle; a struggle bewildering 
and disgusting, but one which gave courage to thousands of Soviet soldiers, 
thrown in all directions by the waves of German tanks which had roared 
through two or three weeks earlier. 

At first they, like the French in June 1940, had believed that all was lost. 
Everything indicated it. They were afraid, so they went into hiding. Then 
the rains came. From the poplar groves and the thatched roofs of the isbas 
in which they’d hidden, the partisans could observe that those marvelous 
troops of the Reich, who had so much impressed them, were no longer in¬ 
vincible: their trucks were beaten, their tanks were beaten. They heard the 
drivers, powerless, swear at their engines. Motorcycle drivers unable to free 
their trapped machines wept with rage. Little by little, the fugitive Soviets 
regained their confidence. 

Thus it was that the resistance sprang from the respite given by the mud, 
reinforced by the spectacle of the German Army’s vulnerability, un¬ 
thinkable only weeks before, when its long armored columns gleamed in the 
sun. The mud was a weapon. The snow would be another. Stalin could 
count on these unexpected sillies. Nothing else decisive would take place for 
six months. Six months of reprieve, after his shoulders had almost been 
pinned to the mat. ... It would be enough, until May of 1942, to contain 
the forces of the Reich which, overwhelmed by the elements, wanted no 
more than to hibernate in peace. The partisans were already organizing 
behind the German divisions, harassing them like mosquitos in a swamp, 
striking quickly, leaving quickly, immediately after the sting. 

We had dreamed of dazzling battles. Now we were to know the real war, 
the war against weariness, the war of the treacherous, sucking mire, of 
sickening living conditions, of endless marches, of nights of driving rain 
and howling winds. 

We arrived at the front after the summer offensive had ended; when 
Hitler’s armies struggled in monstrous swamps; when partisans appeared 
from every grove of hazel trees and set their traps everywhere. 



Rush to the Ukraine 


19 


It was the partisans we fought, just after leaving Dnepropetrovsk. In 
theory, the front was located 200 kilometers east of Dnieper. In fact, it was 
a mere 50 meters from the road. Only a few kilometers from the Dnieper, 
thousands of partisans had settled in a grove of firs straddling a river called 
the Samara. By night the bridges in the vicinity were blown up, isolated 
soldiers were killed, ten mysterious fires had broken out. On the evening of 
our arrival in the big labor center of Novomoskovsk, the garage where 90 of 
our Wehrmacht trucks were sheltered was burned, lighting up the entire 
region. 

These cunning assailants had to be caught and wiped out. Our legion 
received the order to proceed to the areas west, southwest, and south of that 
forest, the thickly wooded lair of the enemy. 

Crossing the belt of mud which separated us from the woods was a 
devilish ordeal; every meter of mud was an obstacle, exacting effort and 
suffering. 

The entire countryside was pitch black, with water everywhere. Not one 
farm lamp flickered. We fell into mudholes, dropping our weapons, then 
groping for them. The water rose to mid-thigh level. The holes were so 
dangerous that we had to tie ourselves together in groups of three so that we 
could quickly pull out anyone who stumbled in. 

We spent nearly 20 hours crossing those hellish kilometers. After falling 
we rose soaked from head to toe. All our equipment and baggage had to be 
abandoned in the water. At last we finally collapsed in some abandoned 
isbas. We made makeshift fires out of straw and planks from the walls. All 
our clothes had to come off. We were sticky from a putrid slime that 
covered our entire bodies; our skin was the gray color of seals. 

We rubbed ourselves down for a long time with hay and, in a disgusting 
stench, as naked as jaybirds, we waited for the return of daylight, amidst 
the billows of acrid smoke. 

* * * * * 

So it was that hundreds of thousands of soldiers struggled, like human 
frogs, along a 3,000-mile front of muck and slime. 

With minds troubled, bodies drained of strength, we had to confront an 
enemy in front of us, behind us, on our flanks. The mud squelched our 
spirits. Our weakest broke down, exhausted. 

During this first phase of combat, one of our men collapsed in the mire, 
his head blown open. His courage at an end, he had shot himself in the 
mouth with his rifle. 

The land also has its defenses. The old Russian earth, trod upon by 
foreigners, used its eternal weapons; it defended itself, avenged itself. 



20 


CAMPAIGN IN RUSSIA 


It had taken its first revenge, in the dripping autumn of 1941, when we 
saw that puddle of red blood in the black mud, slippery, impervious. 

A Village 

The village of Karabinovska, where we spent nearly three weeks keeping 
the partisans under control, was, like all Russian villages, crossed by an 
endless country road, 50 meters wide, lined with isbas, hedgerows, plank 
fences,and cherry orchards. 

The scattered straw huts, weighed down by their heavy roofs of reeds, 
were nearly all the same, except for the color of the paint. They were 
entered through a dark little vestibule, or directly into the common room. A 
stifling heat welcomed us, a smell of dirt, of tomatoes, of breathing, and of 
urine from the young animals which, during the winter, slept scattered 
among the people. 

Throughout winter, the Russians hardly left the small bench and the 
rickety wooden stools of the isba. For the most part, the adults got up only 
to go to the other end of the house to take care of the pig, the cow or an ox. 
They would return with a load of com or sunflower stalks, which they used 
to feed the fire. 

The fireplace fulfilled all functions: cooking, central heating, and bed for 
the entire family. An imposing cube of bricks and mud, it occupied a third 
or a half of the room and rose, in two stages, up to half a meter from the 
ceiling. Two or three times a day someone threw a bunch of reeds or a little 
underbrush into the fireplace. In the evening the entire family climbed up to 
the upper level of the stove. Father, mother, children, tangled together, 
curled up, slept right on the lukewarm mud, covered with cheap clothes and 
a few red quilts, from which emerged a line of bare feet, flat and dirty. Like 
monkeys on top of a barrel organ, the youngsters spent six or seven months 
of the winter on top of their fireplace. Their sole piece of clothing was a 
waist-length shirt. They were dirty and squalid; their noses ran. In Russia, 
infant mortality was enormous: selection took place in the early years, 
without mercy. 

An entire comer of the isba was reserved for the icons. Certain of them, 
particularly beautiful, dated from the 15th or 16th centuries. The 
backgrounds of these miniatures were ravishing: castles in green and white, 
gracefully leaping wild beasts. Often they depicted St. George slaying the 
dragon, or the good-natured, bearded St. Nicholas, or the Virgin, dark- 
complected, with almond-shaped eyes, holding a Christ child painted in the 
style of the Italian Primitives. 

The icons were enthroned among garlands of green or pink paper. The 
peasants made the sign of the cross twenty times a day as they passed in 
front of them. Sometimes they still had a very old, dirty, dog-eared prayer 
book, several pages of which they read with inspiring fervor in the evening, 
by the glimmer of a flickering oil lamp. 



Rush to the Ukraine 


21 


Those people never quarreled with one another, but looked off into the 
distance, blue or gray-green eyes full of dreams. 

Winter plants crowded the isba. They had large oily leaves, and rose to 
two meters in height, almost to the ceiling, lending a jungle atmosphere to 
the stinking hovels. 

The isbas generally had a shed for the animals, built on as an annex. The 
better-off peasants, the kulaks, had left for Siberia by the millions a long 
time ago, there to learn to scorn the goods of this world. 3 Those who had 
escaped deportation contented themselves with one brown cow, one or two 
pigs, a dozen hens, and a few pigeons. 

This was all the property they had. They brooded over it with zealous 
care. The calves and the piglets were taken into the warmth of the single 
family room at the time of the first frost. 

The kolkhoz,* where everyone had to serve the regime, shipped out 
almost all the wheat, corn, and oil of the region. Thanks to that plundering, 
Stalin was able to manufacture armored vehicles and cannons to prepare the 
world revolution. For the peasant, after having sadly devoured his supper 
of potato casseroles or his onion dishes, all that remained was to pray 
before his icons, fatalistic, his eyes pure, his will empty. 

***** 

The autumn passed. The air lost its humidity; the evenings were dry. 
After a few days, the mud hardened. Then it snowed. It froze. So began the 
great Russian winter. The shrub-like trees glistened, speckled with a thou¬ 
sand snowflakes. The sky was painted blue, white and pale gold. The sun 
was soft above the willows that bordered the lakes. One morning, the entire 
population of the village went down to these nearby lakes. 

The lakes were choked with thousands of rushes, like spears, three meters 
tall, topped with brown and pink plumes. The ice had embraced the gray 
stalks. The peasants tested the strength of the dark ice* powdered with 
snow. Finding it solid, they all went off to search for their baskets and 
scythes. 

It was a strange harvest. Under the cold November sun, the villagers cut 
the tall rushes as they cut the wheat in July. The rushes were destined to 
cover the roofs of the ochre-colored isbas. 

The harvest fell in magnificent waves. Thousands of small, plump spar¬ 
rows chirped and rolled over and over on the shore. In three days, the ice- 
ponds were swept bare. The villagers then went home and closed their doors 
for the winter. 

Now was the time for burrowing in, for hibernation. Hail fell, encrusting 
the mud walls of the isbas, shattering the branches of the cherry trees. 






Chapter Two 

WINTER IN THE DONETS 


The Soviet “partisans” formed military units of a special sort. They were 
nowhere, yet they were everywhere. During the day, crouching in a thicket, 
lurking inside a haystack, peeking from the attic window beneath the 
skylight of an isba, their lookouts silently observed the enemy’s every step. 
They noted our supply sheds and equipment, learned our trails and 
pathways, spied on the advance work of the engineers. 

One night they dynamited a bridge and set some trucks on fire. Strong 
bursts of fire came from a slope. We ran, but were too late. In the vicinity 
we found an old lined shapska, * some tracks of felt boots. Nothing else. 
The forest had noiselessly absorbed the fugitives. 

With only one company, we had to cover several kilometers of the 
highway from Dnepropetrovsk to Stalino, as well as few kilometers on the 
edge of the forest, separated from our village by two kilometers of hilly land 
where groves of shrubs rustled in the wind. 

Our posts were located three hundred meters beyond the isbas. We 
mounted a guard there, our noses white with snow, our hands chapped. The 
cold had become biting, and we lacked the least bit of winter equipment. 

It was not enough to lie in wait in our foxholes. The Russians slunk like 
cats between our posts at night. Once they had gotten past them, they could 
carry out their evil work at ease. Half of our forces thus had to patrol con¬ 
stantly in the pasture, from the village up to the forest. 

We went forth to camouflage ourselves in the snowy trenches, on the 
lookout for the least sign of life, our ears to the wind. 

We stumbled into holes covered with snow. Our teeth chattered, 
tormented by those interminable hours of playing hide and seek. We re¬ 
turned frozen to the bone. Our icy weapons steamed for a long time near the 
sunflower-stalk fires. 

From day to day, our grip around the pine grove tightened. 

On two occasions, we made deep inclusions into the woods. The snow 
squeaked beneath our feet. Everywhere we discovered tracks of felt-covered 
boots. But not a branch moved, not a shot was fired. The war the partisans 
fought was a war of cunning blows, of avoiding set battles. 




24 


CAMPAIGN IN RUSSIA 


German troops on our right would make contact with the enemy during 
these dry, star-spangled nights. Then the black frames of the burning isbas 
would stand in silhouette against the golden flames, and the Reds would try 
to flee in our direction. 

One night they came around eleven. Lying in the snow, we fired our 
machine guns. The tracer bullets’ paths bloomed like a bouquet of flowers. 
For an hour, the steppe seemed streaked by blazing arrows. At last, sensing 
the density of our barrage, the Reds returned to their lairs. 

# # * * # 

At the northwest edge of the forest, on the right bank of the Samara, the 
Reds had built solid bunkers. 

Our men were ordered to attack the enemy positions across the frozen 
river. They came under heavy fire as soon as they reached the near bank. 
Our unit had to advance across 25 meters of glassy ice, without cover, 
through the withering fire. We took some bloody losses that day, but the 
bunkers were taken, and the Reds fell in the snow or took to their heels. 

The Russian earth received our dead. How many others were going to 
fall, in the ice, in the mud, or under the golden sun, in the Donets or on the 
Don, in the Caucasus and in Estonia? Those first crimson drops, scattered 
like petals on the snow of the Samara, had the unforgettable purity of the 
first gifts, the first lilacs, the first tears. 

* * * * * 

It was necessary for us to leave their graves behind, for now we had to 
join a division which had rushed to a salient on the front line, in the depths 
of the Donets Basin. At the end of November, without gloves, without 
winter hats, without fur coats, as the icy blasts of winter swept through our 
thin uniforms, we began a 200-kilometer advance. 

Roads of Ice 

At the end of the autumn of 1941, the ice had completely transformed 
every road in the Donets. The river of mud was now a river of bumpy lava. 
The mud had solidified as our hundreds of trucks continued to slash it and 
grind it. It had hardened like stone into a network of rocky ridges, a half 
meter high, like black marble, which, fifty or a hundred feet wide, dipped 
and heaved, gashed by long ruts. 

It was useless to try and send ordinary autos into those ruts. A passenger 
car’s gas tank would be smashed after the first few kilometers. Only heavy 
trucks and cross-country vehicles, with particularly high axles, could take a 
chance on that glazed frost. They alone could straddle the crevasses. 



Winter in the Donets 


25 


For the infantrymen the march was miserable. We almost didn’t dare to 
pick up our feet. We could only slide them. Falls were painful, since the ice 
was as hard as iron. 

We had to keep our weapons ready for combat at the slightest warning. 
At that time a rifleman’s equipment consisted of more than thirty kilos of 
metal, not to mention some three days of rations for the march and all of 
the usual pack. The effort needed to keep our feet inflamed our tendons. 
We had to split the backs of our heavy, hard boots with our knives in order 
to make them a little looser. Each of us clenched his teeth to endure the 
pain. Sometimes a man fell, his nerves broken by the effort. Gasping, his 
face against the ice, he was hoisted into the first truck that passed, onto a 
pile of bread or some ammunition cases. Then the column would resume its 
wobbling path across the black-glazed frost. 

***** 

Nevertheless, the country was still pleasant to see. The great white steppe 
was cross-hatched with hundreds of thousands of gray sunflower stalks. 
Clouds of sparrows, like little balls of fleece, fluttered madly aloft. The sky, 
especially, was admirable, as pure as crystal, pale blue, so clear that each 
tree’s bare branches were outlined against the horizon with a sharpness wor¬ 
thy of the Acropolis in Athens. 

The peasants sometimes showed us a plane tree or a row of old birches, 
the last vestiges of a lord’s domain. From the buildings of former times, 
there remained not a board or a stone, not even the trace of the former 
foundations. Everything was razed to the ground, leveled, covered once 
more with vegetation. 

It had been the same with most of the churches. Some of them were still 
in existence, desecrated long ago, now used as garages, storage places, 
meeting halls, stables, or powerhouses, the beautiful green and gold onion 
dome still gleaming above the white walls. Sometimes we discovered the 
smashed wainscoting or one or two paintings that the whitewasher had not 
been able to reach at the peak of the ceiling. Apart from that, the floors 
were strewn with com or horse manure. Those church-stables, those 
churches for cars, for sunflowers, or for meetings of the local Soviet were, 
however, extremely rare. Over a period of two years we traveled more than 
two thousand kilometers on foot, from Dniepropetrovsk to the threshold of 
Asia: we were able to count on our Angers the number of churches en¬ 
countered en route, all desecrated. 

***** 

At the beginning of December we passed through Pavlograd. Then we 
settled down in some completely empty hamlets. The storm raged. Depar- 



26 


CAMPAIGN IN RUSSIA 


tures took place at four or five in the morning, as the blasts of snow howled 
around our faces, lashed us, blinded us. We spent hours bringing our large 
metal carts, loaded with supplies, up to the road. The horses fell on the glaz¬ 
ed frost, breaking their hooves. The poor beasts would snort vainly in the 
whistling snow, pant, get halfway up, then fall again, thrown into a frenzy. 

The snow fell so heavily that the path and the steppe were completely in¬ 
distinguishable from one another. There was not yet any straw covering the 
high stakes between which the Russians, familiar with their country, mark 
out their roads when winter levels those vast spaces. 

The arrows pointing out directions were covered with piles of snow. The 
troops soon became lost. 

To compound the difficulty, the places we were looking for had generally 
changed their names two or three times during the past 25 years: the old 
maps showed a tsarist name; the 1925 maps showed a name as Red as the 
blood of a bull, the result of the Revolution; the maps of 1935 showed the 
name of a Soviet boss, in imitation, of Stalingrad and Stalino. Sometimes, 
however, the boss in question had, in the meantime, gotten a bullet in the 
nape of his neck, deep in the cellars of the GPU: thus, a fourth, new name! 1 
On the other hand, fifty or a hundred villages on the Russian steppe would 
bear the same names, the names of wives or daughters of the tsars, adopted 
out of sloth, preserved by sloth. 

During the leg of our march which was to lead us to Grichino, we went 
around and around, for a whole day, in the blizzard: we reached the settle¬ 
ment only after having travelled 53 kilometers. Even so, that Grichino was 
not our Grichino. Not only had the place received three different names in 
25 years, but there were two Grichinos: Grichino Station and Grichino 
Village, seven kilometers apart! All typically Russian complications! We 
didn’t arrive at the right Grichino until morning, after wading through 
snow almost waist deep. 

Our company was the first there. It was 48 hours before the others arrived 
except for one which remained lost, wandered about for fifteen days, saw 
all its horses die and rejoined us at the front itself, on Christmas Day, escor¬ 
ting a medieval-looking column of large white oxen hitched to its gray 
trucks. 

Unfortunately, the odyssey was not just a matter of daily changes in 
transport. 

The countryside through which the storms buffeted us bristled with 
Soviet mines. The snow had blanketed them, just as it had the warning 
stakes placed here and there by the first crew of German scouts. 

Lost among blasts of wind which drifted the snow as much as three 
meters high, one of our companies blundered into a Soviet mine field. The 
young commander, a former captain in the Belgian army who bore the 
lovely country name Dupre, was riding ahead when his horse stepped on 
one of those terrible devices. The horse shot two meters straight up in the air 



Winter in the Donets 


27 


and landed, his guts scattered, while the rider lay helpless in the red snow, 
his legs tom to shreds. 

The howling steppe shrieked its victory. Our soldiers had to brace his 
shattered limbs with two pieces of wood and then transport their ill-fated 
captain on some Hr tree branches. After several kilometers they reached a 
deserted isba. 

It took twenty-six hours before an all-weather ambulance could come to 
the aid of the dying captain. He had eleven fractures. Smoking a cigarette in 
quick, avid puffs, he said his good-byes to his men. Great beads of sweat 
poured down his face as he silently endured his agony. He died without a 
word of regret, while taking one last drag on his cigarette. 

***** 

After the Grichinos there came the Aleksandrovskas. There are one or 
two hundred Aleksandrovskas in the USSR, of which we wandered through 
all those in the Donets. 

At last we reached the industrial cities. We had reached our goal. A sud¬ 
den thaw brought us a last stretch of mud. At the end of the muddy fields, 
we saw shining the mushy glazed frost of Cherbinovka, a coal center with 
40,000 inhabitants. They stood motionless, silent, along the walls. Many of 
them gazed at us intently, sharp-eyed, scowling. 

The Bolshevik troops had withdrawn into the steppe, three kilometers 
farther east, but we sensed that, behind us, communist operatives would be 
lying in wait. 

Christmas at Cherbinovka 

The Eastern Front, in December 1941, was constantly shifting, like the 
outlines of a beach. Each army of the Reich had brought its wave as far as 
possible. Each unit had found itself bogged down, at the end of October, in 
a treacherous mire, flanks unguarded left and right, able only vaguely to 
guage the situation and intentions of an enemy which had fled before the 
Germans at top speed, in a disorder often reminiscent of vaudeville. 

With the help of the mud, the Reds had shown a certain ability to 
counterattack; they had reconquered Rostov, which, lacking fuel, the Ger¬ 
mans had had to abandon, burning hundreds of trucks there. 

Emboldened by this local success, the Soviets had resumed nibbling away 
to the east of the Donets, on the left wing of our sector. From Slavyansk to 
Artemovsk, they carried out violent attacks. 

The Soviet pressure made itself felt principally about twenty kilometers to 
the northeast of our bunkers. In front of our positions at Cherbinovka, the 
enemy roused himself little, at first. He was trapped, just as we were, in a 
terrain which melted as if it had been dipped in a hot spring. 



28 


CAMPAIGN IN RUSSIA 


Our resupply took fifty hours or more to negotiate the twenty kilometers 
which separated us from the storehouses in Constantinovska. No more 
motorcyclists could cross. The horses died en route, exhausted, their 
muzzles sunk in the mud. 

***** 

Cherbinovka had become absolutely filthy. Everywhere thawed excre¬ 
ment fouled the air with a noisome stench. 

The dirtiness and the misery of the city illustrated tragically the Soviet 
regime’s failures in the great proletarian centers. The coal installations still 
used the equipment of 1900 or 1905, acquired at the time of easy French 
loans. The mine shafts, dynamited by the retreating Bolsheviks, were no 
longer usable. 

So it was with all of the industrial equipment of occupied Russia. 
Systematically, with diabolical skill, teams of Soviet specialists had 
destroyed the factories, the mines, the warehouses of every industrial 
center, large or small. 

Scorched earth! Scorched underground! 

They had killed even the horses, down in the coal pits. The nauseating 
smell of the rotting animals spread throughout the entire area, since the air 
ducts of the coal mines vented directly onto the streets. These air shafts were 
sloppily sealed with loose planking, through which carbon dioxide gas and 
the asphyxiating stench of the rotting carcasses wafted continuously. 

***** 

The Soviets had carried away or destroyed all of the provisions in the city. 
The people ate anything they could find. The choicest dishes were scraps 
from the dead animals which lay in the mud. The population quarreled over 
them violently, bitterly. 

We had had to kill one incurable horse, horrible to look at, completely 
covered with disgusting pustules. We hadn’t even had time to go to look for 
a cart to take its carcass out of the city. Twenty people had thrown 
themselves on the unspeakable remains, tearing at the skin, grabbing at the 
still steaming flesh. 

In the end, there remained only the intestines, still more disgusting than 
all the rest. Two old women had thrown themselves on the stomach and on 
the bowels, each pulling in opposite directions. The belly burst, covering the 
two women with a yellow-green puree. The winner of the lioness’s share fled 
without even wiping her face, fiercely clasping her prey to her breast. 

The billeting of our troops was of a piece with these prodigies. When we 
returned from our positions, it was to huddle together in the school 
buildings recently built by the State: three long buildings, called modern. 



Winter in the Donets 


29 


exactly in the style of all we had seen since Dnepropetrovsk. The first 
soldier who tried to drive a nail to hang up his weapons split the wall with 
one blow of his hammer. The floor was constructed of disjointed boards 
between which the air rushed in. Under the makeshift floor there was 
nothing, since the building rested only on pilings. 

Between the three buildings there was an open space, so muddy that we 
had to build wooden-plank walkways, supported by heavy trunks, which 
ran from one building to the other. Around the school the smell of C0 2 rose 
constantly, inducing headaches and nausea. 

On about 20 December, the snow and ice returned. We suddenly found 
ourselves once more at 20 degrees below zero. We shivered on our dis¬ 
jointed board floor, each curled up under a single blanket. 

The holidays arrived—holidays for other men. 

On Christman Eve we attended midnight Mass at a church reconsecrated 
by our chaplain. A Russian choir sang in shrill, heart-rending tones. Out¬ 
side the snow fell in large flakes. Lying behind their machine guns, several 
of our soldiers occupied combat positions at the four corners of the 
building. 

But our spirits were chilled from having lazed through those drab weeks, 
in a silence in the depths of which our dreams floated aimlessly. 

***** 

The European legions, popular in the newspapers of the Reich, had been 
greeted with scepticism at the front in 1941. Certain German generals feared 
an intrusion, among their elite divisions, of troops sent to the East solely to 
make propaganda. They did not always take into account the amount of en¬ 
thusiasm and good will which our volunteer units embodied. 

Such misunderstandings weighed on us. 

We eagerly awaited the arrival of an opportunity, even a crisis, which 
would enable our idealism to be valued at its true worth. That hour was 
slow to come. Meanwhile, unknown and misunderstood, we squandered 
our talents in petty, galling duties. 

We spent Christmas and the New Year joylessly, holed up in our smoky 
rooms. A manger scene, drawn in charcoal on the mud mall, recalled for us 
December in our own homes. A few poor votive lamps smoked. Stretched 
out on the straw, we stared into space. At the top of the hill, on wooden 
crosses, the steel helmets of our dead wore clumps of snow, like chrysan¬ 
themums fallen from heaven. 

Italians in the Donets 

Non-German units were very numerous on the anti-Soviet front. 

To the south were ranged the legions from Central Europe and from the 



30 


CAMPAIGN IN RUSSIA 


Balkans. Singular legions, consumed by rivalries. The Hungarians and the 
Rumanians were always ready to tear each other’s eyes out for the sake of a 
grove of beech trees in the Carpathians or for ten meters of lucerne field in 
the Puszta. 2 The Croats, more Slavic than the Ukrainians, were divided be¬ 
tween Muslims and Catholics. 

In 1941 the Italians were the largest foreign unit on all the Eastern Front. 
Sixty thousand of them had come, divided into three divisions and into 
numerous detachments of specialists. One saw them everywhere, from the 
Dnieper to the Donets, small, swarthy, funny-looking in their two-pointed 
forage caps, or looking like birds of paradise under their bersagliere helmets 
from which projected, amidst the gusts of the steppe, a stately crop of 
rooster and pheasant feathers! 

The Italians’ rifles looked like toys. They used them with great skill to kill 
all the chickens in the region. 

We had made their acquaintance as soon as we arrived in Dniepro- 
petrovsk. We soon formed a very high opinion of their spirit of initiative 
and of their craftiness. They had gathered round an enormous cask which 
sat, unguarded, on a railway car. It was brimful with Chianti wine. In the 
side of this mighty tun the Italians had drilled a tiny hole from which the 
wine gushed through a hollow straw. 

The invention proved quite a success with our topers, who went back time 
and time again to that wondrous fount, worthy of the Burgundian weddings 
of Charles the Bold or of Philip the Good! The Italians, sure of their sup¬ 
ply—it was a 2,000-liter cask—amicably traded places with us. From that 
moment on, the Walloon volunteers were extremely enamoured with Italy 
and were delighted with the collaboration it provided on the Eastern Front! 

* * * * * 

The front was not a single, continuous line, but a series of strong points. 
Our posts in Cherbinovka had only snow to their left and right. To reach 
the closest Italians, whose sector extended to the south toward Stalino, we 
had to march for two hours across the steppe. 

We used to go to chat with them during lulls in the fighting. Obviously, 
their lemons and their Chianti were of some importance. But their charm 
also drew us. 

The complication was that they detested the Germans. The latter, in turn, 
couldn’t abide the Italians’ light fingers or their ardent armours in the 
ruined isbas. Neither could they tolerate the Italians’ whimsical demeanor 
and quaint Latin carefreeness, so full of irreverence, indolence, persiflage, 
and natural grace, so different from Prussian stiffness. 

By contrast, the Italians bridled whenever they saw a German snap to at¬ 
tention or cry out orders. That didn’t fit in with having their hands in their 
pockets, wearing their russet plumes, and performing their merry 
escapades. 



Winter in the Donets 


31 


Their brand of nationalism was also different. The Italians loved 
Mussolini and over and over cried out “Du-ce! Du-ce! Du-ce!” until they 
were hoarse. Such outburts were only of a sentimental kind, however. 
Mussolini’s dreams of imperial grandeur did not reach them. They were as 
proud as peacocks, but without ambition. 

One day when they insisted on their desire to have peace again at any 
cost, I had retorted: 

“But if you do not struggle to the very end, you are going to lose your 
colonies!” 

“Bah!,” they answered, “what good is it to kill yourself for some col¬ 
onies? We are happy at home. We don’t need anything. We have the sun. 
We have our fruits. We have love . ..” 

As a philosophy it had its counterparts. Horace had said the same thing, 
but less frankly. 

Likewise, they found it absolutely useless to work too hard. Our idea of 
human labor left them bored. Why work so much? And again they would 
take up their soft, alluring, sing-song litany: the sun, the fruits, love . .. 

“After all,” I continued, “work is a joy! Don’t you other nations love to 
work?” 

Then an Italian from the South, with princely grace, offered me this re¬ 
ply, magnificent in its artlessness and its solemnity: 

“But sir, what good is work?” 

What good is it? When the Germans heard such answers, they choked for 
a week and very nearly had attacks of apoplexy. 

* * * * * 

For the Italians, to their misfortune, the day and night watches provided 
some “good,” as did the thankless duty in the snow and ice. 

Often their gregarious sentries left their posts to bask in the warmth of an 
isba, where they chattered, jested, mooched, and studied very closely the at¬ 
tributes of the local beauties. 

The Russians finally took their measure with a low blow. Our pleasant 
comrades from across the Alps paid dearly for their Latin nonchalance. 

One night, in the southern part of the sector, strong detachments of 
Cossacks glided on their high-strung horses across the deep snow. At dawn, 
they were easily able to encircle three villages occupied by the Italians, but 
unprotected by the guards, who were busy sleeping or making love. They 
were taken completely by surprise. 

The Soviets particularly detested the Italians. They hated them even more 
than they did the Germans, and on the Eastern Front they always treated 
them with an extraordinary cruelty. In the twinkling of an eye they seized 
the three villages. No one had the time to react. The Italians were then 
dragged to the coal pits, where they were completely stripped of their 



32 


CAMPAIGN IN RUSSIA 


clothes. Then the torture began. The Cossacks brought large buckets of icy 
water. Roaring with laughter, they emptied them on the bodies of their vic¬ 
tims in cold which hovered 30 to 35 degrees below zero centigrade. The poor 
wretches in the three villages all died, frozen alive. 

No one escaped, not even the doctors. Not even the chaplain, who, 
stripped like a Roman marble, also suffered the torture of water and ice. 
Two days later, the three villages were recaptured. Naked bodies lay 
everywhere in the snow, twisted, contorted, as if they had died in a fire. 

From that time on, the Italian troops of the Donets were reinforced by 
German armor. All dong their lines heavy German tanks, painted entirely 
white, engines throbbing, lurked in the deep snow. 

* * * * * 


That was a necessity. 

The Reds became more and more active. To our left, to our right, they 
struck violently. Day and night, the steppe shook with gunfire. Soviet 
airplanes appeared. Their bombs dug large gray craters around us. 

The cold became ever more penetrating. In mid-January, the temperature 
dropped to 38 degrees below zero. 

Our little horses’ snouts were all white with ice. From their nostrils, wet 
with blood, spattered, drop after drop, on the trail, hundreds of spots, like 
pink carnations. 

The Howling Steppe 

Life had become unbearable in our lairs at Cherbinovka. 

Using straw, we had more or less filled up the holes in the windows, half 
the panes of which had been broken by the Red troops when they made their 
retreat. But the icy blasts of winter persisted, rushing in, whistling between 
the floorboards. For sleeping we put on all of the poor equipment that we 
had, then thrust our feet into the sleeves of our overcoats. But what good 
were overcoats, light blankets, and a few bits of straw against the winds 
which howled through our huts from the cursed steppe? 

We broke the margarine, the sausages, and the bread, hard as rocks, with 
an axe. The few eggs that our resupply operation delivered reached us 
frozen, nearly gray. 

Such were our hours of relaxation. 

Our advanced positions were located three kilometers from Cherbinovka. 
We went there in squads, across snow which was generally 40 to 50 cen¬ 
timeters deep, in temperatures varying from 25 to 35 degrees below zero. 

Certain companies had dug their small bunkers into the sides of the slag 
heaps of the coal fields. The others were positioned out in the middle of the 
steppe. 



Winter in the Donets 


33 


The snow was nothing. It was the storm which was atrocious. It barked; it 
meowed with long sharp whistles, throwing into our faces thousands of lit¬ 
tle darts that tore us like a stream of pebbles. 

We finally received some winter caps which covered our necks and ears, 
and some very thin knitted gloves, which hardly protected us at all. But we 
still had neither fur coats nor felt boots. 

Anyone who took off his gloves for a moment immediately had his 
fingers frozen. We wore our winter caps pulled up to our noses; our breath, 
passing through them, was frozen into large tufts of ice, at the level of our 
mouths, and into long white moustaches fastened to our eyebrows. Our 
tears themselves froze, becoming large pearls which painfully welded our 
eyelashes together. We separated them only with great pain. At any moment 
a nose or a cheek might become pale yellow, like the skin of a drum. In 
order to avoid frostbite, we had to rub the flesh vigorously with snow. 
Often, it was already too late. 

***** 

The dizzying storms gave the Soviet shock troops an obvious superiority. 

The Russians were used to that weather. Their skis, their dogs, their 
sleighs, their high-strung ponies helped them. They were dressed to resist 
the cold, padded in cotton-wool jackets, shod with felt boots which resisted 
the snow, as dry as crystal powder. They inevitably benefited from the 
unspeakable suffering of thousands of European soldiers thrown by a bold 
offensive into the snows, the winter wind, and the ice, without proper 
equipment and without adequate training. 

The Reds infiltrated everywhere. Their spies, disguised as civilians, crept 
between our posts, reached the worker centers, and found accomplices 
there. The great majority of the peasant population was completely ig¬ 
norant about Communism, except for its demands; but in the industrial 
centers Soviet propaganda had reached the young workers. It was to them 
that the spies of the Red Army, dedicated and courageous leaders, ad¬ 
dressed themselves. 

I was part of an execution squad charged with shooting two of them, who 
had fully confessed before the military tribunal. 

When we reached the middle of the steppe, we lined up in a row. The two 
condemned men, their hands in their pockets, did not say a word. Our 
volley knocked them down. There was an extraordinary moment of silence 
in which the shudder of the rifle shots floated skyward. One of the two com¬ 
munists moved, as if he wanted to summon up a last remnant of life. His 
right hand left his pocket and rose, fist clenched tightly, above the snow. 
And we heard a cry, a last cry, shouted in German so that it would be 
understood by all: “Heil Stalin!” 

The dead man’s clenched fist fell back to his side. 

Those people also had their idealists. 



34 


CAMPAIGN IN RUSSIA 


Generally, the Russians who had been condemned to capital punishment 
accepted their fate with fatalism, their arms at their sides, their faces blank. 

To avoid upsetting their troops and to strike the popular imagination, the 
Germans had decided to hang captured spies. The condemned Russians ap¬ 
proached, depressed, eyes vacant, then climbed up on a chair, which itself 
was perched on a table. They waited there, without protesting, without ask¬ 
ing anything. Above them hung the rope. It was tied around their necks. 
Thus it was, thus it was. They let it happen. A kick upset the chair and 
ended the tragedy. 

One day, the Germans had to carry out the sentences of five condemned 
men all at the same time. One of the hanged men broke his rope and fell to 
the ground. He picked himself up without uttering a word, put the chair 
back on the table, got back up on it and waited, with the greatest 
naturalness, while a new rope was installed. 

In the depths of those hearts there was an oriental fatalism, a childlike in¬ 
nocence and, also, a long habit of taking blows and suffering. They did not 
rebel against death. They passively accepted death as they had accepted 
everything else, the filthy isba, the knout of the aristocrats, and the slavery 
of Communism. 

The second half of January 1942 was much busier. Large numbers of Red 
troops were on the move. Soviet airplanes attacked three or four times per 
day; 

We were still unaware of what had taken place. 

Soviet elite units, brought in from Siberia, had crossed the frozen Donets 
River, to the north of our industrial basin. They had flanked the German 
defenses and reached important railway lines, notably the Kiev-Poltava- 
Slavyansk line. They had pillaged a number of supply depots and then 
moved westward. The Russians and Siberians subsequently made a very 
deep thrust in the direction of the Dnieper. They threatened to cut off the 
whole Army of the South. They had already passed the Samara River. Some 
spearheads of Cossacks had even gotten as far as 12 kilometers from 
Dnepropetrovsk. 

The German commander hastily gathered his available forces for a 
counteroffensive. 

A counteroffensive when the thermometer read between 35 and 40 
degrees below zero! 

We had little doubt about what awaited us when an urgent order put us in 
a state of alert. 

That very night we were relieved. At four in the morning, we trudged 
behind our carts in the midst of a stupendous storm which roiled the snow 
in fury, leaving us utterly blind. 

We were completely unaware of our destination. However, the hour for 
blood and glory had arrived. 



Winter in the Donets 


35 


Cossacks 

If I remember correctly, it was 26 January 1942. 

We did not know exactly how much progress had been made, either by 
the Siberian troops, gliding on their dog sleds, or by the Cossacks, mounted 
on high-spirited little horses which stood up to everything. 

The enemy could not be far away. That was all that we had been able to 
learn. We, the simple soldiers of the line, knew few things, nor did I know 
anything more than my comrades, since I was then an ordinary soldier, liv¬ 
ing strictly the life of the troops and having no contact with the upper 
echelon of my company. 

Our known objective was, for the second time, the area around Grichino, 
located sixty kilometers to the northwest of Cherbinovka. Doubtless we 
would be near the enemy forces throughout the entire march. For the first 
stage, we had orders to occasionally take some shortcuts. 

It took four hours for our column to get ready to move off into the snow¬ 
storm. We could see no more than ten meters in front of us. When we ar¬ 
rived in the countryside, the storm tormented us from all sides. The road 
rose and fell across the low, steep hills. We dragged along with us some 
Stahlwagen, metal wagons weighing hundreds of kilos, excellent for the 
paved or asphalt roads of Europe, but completely impractical in the snow 
and ice of the steppe. The Russian peasants themselves used only sleds or 
wooden vehicles, light, with narrow, very hi c h wheels. Our enormous 
hearses came clattering down at a mad speed on the downgrades, in spite of 
their brakes. Some horses tumbled over; some wagons turned over. On the 
upgrades, we had to push the vehicles, twenty men at a time. At the end of a 
few horns, several Stahlwagen were bogged down or overturned in the snow 
along the steep paths. 

Although the first leg of the march was only twelve kilometers long, we 
had to toil throughout the night. It was not until six o’clock the next evening 
that all our supplies arrived. Reaching a village, we encountered four 
Siberian troops, whom we killed in a brief skirmish. 

* * * * * 

At five o’clock in the morning we resumed our advance. The whirlwinds 
of snow had ceased, but the ice had become even fiercer. Overnight it had 
hardened on the hilly path, which was as slippery as a skating rink 
underneath the snow. The horses could not move forward. Several broke 
their hooves. By noon, we had covered little more than one kilometer. 

Ahead of us lay a secluded valley, which the storm had filled with 
phenomenal quantities of snow. Our entire battalion had to set to work dig¬ 
ging a corridor fifty meters long and three meters deep. Pulling our 
Stahlwagen up the steep slope was a terrible operation. Not until nine 



36 


CAMPAIGN IN RUSSIA 


o’clock that night did we reach the mountain top with the first one. In six¬ 
teen hours we had made only three kilometers! 

We stabled our teams of horses in a shed. Only a few men could And a 
place next to them. A peasant informed us the existence of a hamlet about 
four kilometers away, on one side of a small valley. We got back on the 
road by moonlight. In its deepest points the snow came up to our waists. At 
last we reached some isbas, more miserable than any we had ever seen. 

At ten o’clock we settled down on the hard, packed earth, in the single 
room of one of the huts, filled with civilians who undoubtedly had been 
hiding and waiting for the Siberians. A pregnant girl, as red as a lobster, 
went around from muzhik to muzhik, by the light of an oil lamp. She was 
dressed solely in a long shirt which went down to her waist. She chattered 
vulgarly, constantly, continuing her housework until her rounds were com¬ 
pleted. 

Then she waddled back up to the top of her oven and made some loud 
remarks, but the men, their work done, were already snoring. Some of the 
animals stirred. The stench was sickening. 

At six in the morning, returning to our carts, we plunged into the snow 
again. From the top of the plateau we could see the company that had 
bogged down the night before, wearing itself out pushing its metal vehicles. 
The climb certainly would last until nightfall. 

I was sent on patrol, in search of billeting space, in the direction of a 
sovkhoz* that had been pointed out to us, some four or five kilometers to 
the east. We left at three o’clock, using a troika we had found in a shed. 

The sovkhoz was there all right, swarming with muzhiks. The living 
quarters, with the ever-present earthen floor, were overrun by young calves, 
which sheltered near the family stove, away from the cold. Since the 
familiar pan always arrived too late, they continually doused the ground. 
That made for yet another smell. 

One of my companions left again with the sled, in order to guide the 
troops. The squad member who stayed with me was a mine worker from the 
Borinage, 3 with a thick, sing-song accent, and a first and last name reminis¬ 
cent of epic poetry: Achille Roland. The civilians kept cool heads. A few 
Soviet airplanes flew over the sovkhoz, dropping handbills announcing the 
imminent arrival of the Red Army. Our natives scanned the ridge-line and 
the sky. 

At about two in the afternoon, the silhouettes of several horsemen could 
be seen. The muzhiks gave each other brief, knowing looks. They looked us 
over, sneakily, squinting through almond-shaped eyes. 

* * * * * 

At four in the afternoon, none of our comrades had arrived. 

We expected to see the Cossacks bolt from cover at the edge of the farm. I 



Winter in the Donets 


37 


had set up my machine gun in the entry way. The weapon would do some 
damage. We wore strings of grenades at our belts, with which we could 
quickly restore calm behind us if the muzhiks of the sovkhoz tried to attack 
us. 

They kept quiet, very much impressed. A beautiful young Ukrainian girl, 
who knew some words of German, had sided with us. She was sixteen years 
old, with beautiful hair with glints of brown and gold in it. She had watched 
the doings of our squad and secretly given us some supportive glances. She 
had generously put us on the same level of the oven as the family’s small 
calves and served us, like them, a thick milk, smooth as her skin. 

Outside, the storm had begun howling once more. From time to time I 
went to inspect the area, grenade in hand. It seemed clear that our comrades 
would no longer be able to make their way to our positions. Besides, where 
were they? Had they been put out of commission by an attack of the 
Cossacks or the Siberian infantry, on the plateau where they were 
laboriously dragging up their metal vehicles? 

Night fell. Seven o’clock. Eight o’clock. No one came. The muzhiks were 
still waiting. Obviously, they would have very much liked to slit our throats, 
but the belts of cartridges, feeding into our machine gun, discouraged them. 
They finally lay down on the ground among the young cattle, the pan within 
their reach. 

The wind howled, and with a crash it threw open the wooden door which 
led to the corridor, throwing clumps of snow on us. We asked ourselves 
what would happen when we got up. 

As a last resort, my companion decided to reconnoiter in the direction of 
our company. In the darkness, my watch seemed to show 5:00 A.M. The in¬ 
trepid Achille vanished into the storm. 

He reappeared in an hour, transformed into a Santa Claus beneath a 
cubic meter of snow. Straying in the storm, he had floundered helplessly 
through the snow. “Are you quite sure of the time,” he asked. “It’s still so 
dark out there!” 

We looked. It was only 1:30 in the morning! We had confused 5:00 and 
12:25. Poor Achille snorted, then went to warm himself a little bit against 
the dried-mud stove. There, stretched out near the machine gun, we waited 
for the real break of day. 

It came, but that was all that came. The storm was so fantastic that we 
could no longer imagine that the infantrymen would still be able to catch up 
with us. One day passed, two days passed. When the fury of the steppe 
calmed, the Cossacks could cut the road. Suddenly, at eleven in the morn¬ 
ing, a sled turned sharply in front of the door, kicking snow up to the that¬ 
ched roof. A Walloon non-commissioned officer, my former gardener in 
Brussels, had charged through the storm behind four horses which he had 
whipped to the point of death. One horse expired no sooner than it had 
reached the farm. 



38 


CAMPAIGN IN RUSSIA 


Readjusting the reins, we started the team off at a gallop. The Russians, 
in spite of the whistling snow, had run up to the threshold of the sovkhoz, 
their eyes flashing. But the pretty little Ukrainian girl, behind the backs of 
those wretches, blushingly threw us a kiss. That would have been worth ten 
such adventures. 

One horn later, we rejoined our squad, still blocked at the top of the hill. 
When a man tried to negotiate that bare ridge, he found himself hurled to 
the ground by the storm. The men had all crowded together in the barn up 
against the horses, one as chilled as the other. There was nothing else to do. 
It was necessary to wait. The steppe was more powerful than we were. 

We waited. 


* * * « * 

Next morning the wind subsided, and we sent several platoons out to the 
road. A meter of snow covered the ground, but we couldn’t stay where we 
were any longer. 

Our column was forming for the departure when some gray dots ap¬ 
peared on the horizon. A half-hour later, we were approached by an ex¬ 
traordinary procession: our commander, coming to meet us, had, since the 
previous night, driven 180 Russians before him. Using their shovels they 
had cut a passageway in the vast ocean of the steppe. By that means we were 
able to cover twenty kilometers, using our bayonets to break the clumps of 
snow that continually formed under our boots. By dawn we had traversed a 
corridor four meters deep, to a place called Ekonomiskoye. 

There we had hardly any rest: at midnight, 300 Cossacks were spotted. 
We had to take up our positions in the snow, at the foot of a wonderful 
mill, its large black vanes glimmering in the moonlight. The steppe was a 
blue and white expanse of sparkling crystals. Millions of stars lit up the 
night. They formed a smooth lining undulating across the sky. It was so 
beautiful that we nearly forgot the cold which pierced our bodies with its 
darts. 

At noon, after having covered about fifteen kilometers, we entered 
Grichino. 

For several days the city had undergone aerial bombing of a kind that the 
Russians had never before carried out. All of the squares were smashed to 
smithereens. Cossacks and Siberians were at the gates of the city. If they 
seized it, one of the largest road and railway junctions of the Donets would 
be lost. 

We had to prepare for the impending battle. We made our billets in a 
school hall, of which only one window remained intact. The two thin 
blankets each of us carried afforded little protection against the 40-below- 
zero temperatures. 

One cannot imagine what it is like, in such cold, to rest in a completely 



Winter in the Donets 


39 


open building. It was impossible for us to sleep for a moment. It was not 
even possible to remain seated. 

Nevertheless, we were left with little time to philosophize about our 
misfortunes. At one o’clock in the morning, they formed us in companies: 
we were rising to the counteroffensive. 

Rosa-Luxemburg 

The winter of 1941-1942 was the most terrifying winter that Russia had 
experienced in ISO years. 

A certain number of German units, billeted in relatively calm sectors, 
adapted themselves, as best they could, to those frightfully cold 
temperatures and to the lack of fur clothes. Other units received violent 
shocks when they found themselves in the path of attempted 
breakthroughs. They lived through some extraordinary odysseys, often cut 
off, resisting in small groups, leading heroic counterattacks which lasted for 
weeks. 

The Donets sector was one of the most bitterly contested. There the 
Soviets threw magnificent troops at us, making a deep penetration. It was 
checked, then pushed back, only at the cost of exhausting efforts. But one 
large Soviet pocket remained in the midst of the Donets. It would be mop¬ 
ped up only at the end of May of 1942, at the time of the battle of Kharkov. 

At the beginning of February of 1942, the crisis reached a peak. The Rus¬ 
sians had advanced to within a few kilometers of the Dnieper. The German 
counteroffensive had to be carried out with a fierce energy. It was. 

The High Command rushed its troops to the assault by every means of 
transport at its disposal. 

There were few enough ways to travel that February, however. 

Thus it was that, on 3 February,^e left for combat in several railway cars 
pulled by a snow-plow. The snow was so deep that it slowed down our ad¬ 
vance. The rail line had not been demolished after all. We were going after 
the enemy, pulled along in cattle cars! 


♦ * * * * 

For provisions we were given each a large, round loaf of bread which we 
tied, as best we could, to our packs or against our chests. We had to carry 
all our wordly goods, including weapons and ammunition, on our backs. 
No horses or carts could accompany us, nor could we look forward to hot 
meals. We brought nothing more than we could carry on our own backs. 
For a machine-gunner like me, that meant a load of more than forty 
kilograms, of which thirty was for the machine gun and the cartridge boxes. 

Getting the' snow-plow started and then advancing twenty kilometers 
took fourteen horns. The cars, of course, were unheated. The floor was as 



40 


CAMPAIGN IN RUSSIA 


bare as a rock. The cold intensified; that morning it was 42 degrees below 
zero. Forty-two degrees! So as not to succumb to the cold, we were obliged 
to run continuously, one behind the other, inside the car. 

Everyone was dose to exhaustion from having done this ridiculous dance 
for several hours; however, our lives depended on it. One of our comrades, 
exhausted, dropped out of the race. He stretched out in a comer. Thinking 
that he was sleeping, we shook him; he was frozen. At a stop, we were able 
to gather up some snow. We rubbed him with it from head to toe, for fifty 
minutes. Then he came back to life a little, letting out a frightful moan, like 
a cow being slaughtered. He was confined to a hospital for a year and a 
half, as toothless as an armadillo. 

The locomotive thrust aside masses of snow more than two meters deep. 
At last it stopped in front of a veritable wall of ice, impassable. Besides, the 
Bolsheviks were only three kilometers away. 

When we leaped out onto the steppe, we believed that we were all going to 
die. The whirlwinds slapped us in the face, knocked us over. Officers and 
men fell in the snow. 

The faces of several of our men were hideous: mottled, empurpled, eyes 
bloodshot. I couldn’t slap my cheek, which froze instantly, for my hands 
were full gripping my machine gun, cartridge cases, and ammo belts. Others 
suffered frostbitten feet, which later decomposed into long, blackish strips. 
Some men’s ears froze, soon resembling large apricots, from which oozed 
an orange pus. 

The most unfortunate of our comrades were those who had their sexual 
organs frozen. Unspeakable suffering for those poor boys. They were 
dragged from hospital to hospital throughout the entire war, all in vain. The 
flesh, frightfully swollen, had been binned deeply during that terrible after¬ 
noon. 

The village to be occupied lay in front of us. It bore the name of the 
famous Berlin Jewish political figure, Rosa Luxemburg. 4 The Russians 
must have been as cold as we were because from the moment we came near 
they trussed up their possessions without asking us for long explanations. 
We suffered only one dead, our youngest volunteer, aged 16, who took a 
machine-gun blast in the middle of his stomach. At five o’clock, we oc¬ 
cupied the first isbas, while a stupendous sun, bright red, appeared sud¬ 
denly in the west and sank immediately into the swirling steppe. 

* * * * # 

It was necessary to pitch camp as best we could. 

My group occupied two isbas, which were only huts. One of them was in¬ 
habited by two women and seven children. The youngsters defecated in the 
middle of the room, right on the ground. The mothers would casually push 
the droppings against the mud wall, then scoop up some handfuls of 
sunflower, seeds from the oven, chewing and spitting them out tirelessly. 



Winter in the Donets 


41 


We spent the second half of the night on the steppe, at our lookout posts. 
A return to the offensive by the Russians was possible. How would we 
react? My machine gun was completely jammed with the ice which formed 
at 40 degrees below zero. There was no longer any way to make any of our 
firearms work. The only possible defense remaining was close combat with 
knives and grenades. 

At six o’clock in the morning, a dazzling dawn arose, spreading across 
the sky: gold, orange, purple, reddish purple with some soft mauves, 
bordered with clear silver. As I looked^ait the sky with rapturous eyes at that 
breathtaking tableau, Aurora’s violet bounty festooned above the empty 
steppe, I cast aside my sufferings and felt love! The most important thing is 
beauty, at any cost] I saw, above me, the most beautiful lights in the world. 
THad once contemplated the sky in Athens; my emotion, my joy were even 
greater as I looked at the sumptuousness and clarity of that Russian sky. My 
nose was frozen. My cheek was frozen. My machine gun was all ice. But all 
of my feelings were on fire. In that multi-colored dawn at Rosa- 
LUxemburg, I was happier than Alcibiades looking at the wine dark sea, 
from the height of the terraces of the Acropolis. 

Two days later, a new spring toward the east. 

The cold was relented, but a reddish pus ran from our faces, which were 
chapped by the ice. 

The troops advanced along two hills, very distant from one another, 
deployed in the manner of the armies of Louis XV. It was a beautiful sight. 
In front of us, the Panzers broke through the positions of the Soviets. Pro¬ 
gress was easy. 

We made a stop in a village as dirty as the others, but inhabited by a tribe 
of Gypsies. The women, perched on the oven in the isba, their legs crossed 
in the Turkish manner, puffed silently on large pipes. They had black hair, 
almost blue, wore ragged petticoats, and spat with a vengeance. 

On the next day, we arrived at the city of Blagodach, where a furious 
vanguard battle had just ended. Just in front of us, the ammunition supply 
of a Soviet cannon had taken a direct hit. A naked body lay there, headless. 
In place of its neck there was an enormous, blackish, cracked hole. The fat 
of the thighs had burned, opening long white cracks. 

I looked around for the torso’s head. Suddenly I saw, stuck to a metal 
plate, an extraordinary human mask. The explosion had scalped the poor 
wretch, stripping the skin, the eyes, and a shock of hair from his face. The 
terrible cold had immediately frozen the grisly mask, which had kept its ex¬ 
act shape and color: the eyes, very blue, were staring straight ahead. The 
tuft of blond hair fluttered in the wind. It was so real that I almost cried out 
in fright. 

A few Germans had been able to force their way, firing heavy machine 
guns, into the village. The Russians had fought back, launching a 
counterattack on three sides at once, like children. Some wonderful 



42 


CAMPAIGN IN RUSSIA 


Cossacks had charged from one side, dressed in splendid blue uniforms, 
waving their eagle-hilted sabres. They galloped in, seated proudly on the 
aluminum and willow saddles of their agile horses. All of them were merci¬ 
lessly swept aside. The horses fell dead, their forelegs twisted beneath them; 
the handsome Cossacks rolled in the snow, in all directions, or were frozen 
solid by the cold on their saddles, united in death with their mounts. 

The Siberian infantry had rushed to the attack as naively as the Cossacks, 
storming down two hills and then across the steppe. None had been able to 
come closer than thirty meters from the houses. The bodies of several hun¬ 
dred Siberians lay scattered in the snow. All of them were magnificently 
equipped, dressed in thick flannels of American make under a thin uniform, 
which in turn was covered with a heavy cotton uniform, a cloak and a white 
great coat. 

They had been well armed against the cold, at least. 

They were nearly all Asiatics, with hair as strong as the bristles of a wild 
boar. The ice had preserved them at the very moment they fell. One of them 
had had an eye put out of its socket by a bullet that had entered the center of 
his forehead. The eye had frozen instantly. It had moved forward, as long 
as a finger, under the arch of the eyebrow, like a terrifying optical instru¬ 
ment. The pupil stared at us, as lifelike as if the Mongol still breathed. The 
eyes of the dead, in those forty-below-zero freezes, retained an extraor¬ 
dinary sharpness. 


* * * * * 

The village was in a pitiful state. We spent the night among young cattle 
that had escaped the massacre. In our rooms, along with a small calf and 
some chickens, there were a dozen gentle pigeons which cooed, indifferent 
to the passions of humankind. 

When we got up, a new surprise awaited us: the thaw! Complete thaw! 
The village splashed about in twenty centimeters of water. 

The footsoldier fights in all kinds of weather. We set out again toward the 
enemy amidst bodies which floated on the roads, like boats set adrift. 

Thaw and Freeze 

The Russian thaws take place with extraordinary speed. At the beginning 
of February 1942, it was forty-two degrees below zero. Four days later, the 
roads were rivers thirty centimeters deep. 

We climbed, with great difficulty, a corpse-littered hill over which the 
road out of Blagodach led east. Behind us trailed some sleds we had found 
in the isbas, drawn by several old horses which we had found wandering in 
the snowy fields. We had neither harnesses, nor traces, nor halters; we 
hitched up the animals by means of red telephone wires which broke a hun¬ 
dred times and were repaired as often. 



Winter in the Donets 


43 


We passed a Soviet sledge whose horses and driver had been killed in the 
same explosion: the soldier, a stocky Mongol, nut brown in complexion, 
quite stiff, stared at the road from eyeless sockets. Beside him sat an enor¬ 
mous green bottle, filled with a good twenty pounds of tomato juice. The 
horses and the Mongol were dead, the bottle was intact. 

As we marched downhill again, we found ourselves in the midst of a 
flood. The fields were melting, the water running out through a thousand 
little channels which drained into the road. The ice refused to melt, so water 
rose higher and higher. We marched through those icy rivers, soaked to our 
knees. 

We stopped to spend the night in a tiny hamlet, consisting of exactly two 
isbas. Eighty Croatian volunteers were jammed into the single room of each 
isba, shoulder to shoulder, with no room to sit down. 

It was impossible for one more person to get into those two human rabbit 
hutches. The two small pigsties likewise were crammed with a mass of 
chilled soldiers, unable to dry out. 

All we could do was to climb up into the hayloft, to the small space which 
separated the ceiling and the thatched roof. At the peak of the roof that 
space was one meter high. We had to inch forward from beam to beam, in 
some danger of falling through the dried mud ceiling onto the backs of the 
80 Croats below. More than a hundred of us crawled over to the corners of 
the roof and then settled down helter-skelter on perches in those dark holes. 
It was necessary to stay curled up or crouched dc wn. That position was ex¬ 
hausting. Our feet were chilled, our heavy boots filled with icy water. Since 
the morning we had eaten nothing more than a hunk of our old army bread, 
if that. Many no longer had even a crust. 

* * * * * 

At nine o’clock that night, an electric light shone through the trap door 
from the top of a small ladder. “Get up! We’re leaving!” 

Leaving! In the middle of the night, along roads streaming with icy 
water! We had orders to follow right on the heels of the retreating Reds and 
to occupy, before daybreak, a large kolkhoz* farther to the east. 

None of us could so much as make out the person next to him. We ad¬ 
vanced blindly through the water. The fickle weather had made the road a 
real trap. Beneath water from the melted snow lay a sheet of ice on which 
our men fell constantly. I had my turn as did the others, sprawling face 
down with my machine gun. Then I slipped on my heels, and fell backward, 
gulping down mouthfuls of the road. Soaked to our skins, we struggled 
through such damp and gloom that we stumbled across the Samara River, 
meandering over the ice and spreading out over 25 meters wide, without a 
single soldier noticing that he had crossed a stream! About 1:30 in the 
morning, we finally arrived at the entrance to the kolkhoz. A dozen large 



44 


CAMPAIGN IN RUSSIA 


dead horses lay in piles of melting snow. There no longer remained a single 
inhabitable resting place, except for three stables, which were very small 
and filled with horse manure. 

***** 

We stationed ourselves, a group of forty men, in one of those. 

From the remains of an old flour chest, we made a fire. When the flames 
rose from it, I hastened to hold out toward it my underwear and my shirt, 
using a poker. With my usual clumsiness I did things so well that my clothes 
burst into flames, illuminating the stable magnificently! With only a jacket 
and a threadbare pair of old trousers, I was through with combat until the 
end of the winter offensive. 

We had no nourishment but the smell of horse manure until the evening 
of the next day in that evil kolkhoz. It was there that, ins p ecting the slope 
that went downward toward the Samara, I believed that I could make out a 
body in thejnelting snow. I went down to have a look. To my horror, I 
discovered a young German whose legs the Russians, especially sadistic, had 
sawed off at the k nees. The job had been done with a butcher’s saw, un¬ 
questionably by an expert. The unfortunate German had been part of a 
reconnaissance patrol which had disappeared two days earlier. It was ob-' 
vious that after his mutilation he had still dragged himself fifteen meters, 
with the desperate will of a young man who didn’t want to die. 

# * * ♦ # 

The ice returned as quickly as the thaw had come. In one night, the 
temperature plummeted to 20 degrees below zero. On the next day, the 
Samara was again completely frozen. 

The road along the valley was transformed into a horrifying skating rink, 
horrifying because the bodies of the Russians which had been floating in the 
water two days before had been frozen in place. Out of the ice there would 
emerge a hand, or a boot, or a head. 

The sleds slowly eliminated those obstacles, grinding down noses and 
cheeks, which crumbled like sawdust. At the end of a few days, everything 
was leveled, except for some half-hands and some half-faces which re¬ 
mained level with the white ice, like monstrous fish near the glass of an 
aquarium tank. 


***** 

As soon as the ice was hard enough, we continued our advance. 
Russian airplanes machine-gunned us heavily. After two kilometers, we 
found ourselves close to the Samara. The crossing was slow. Meanwhile, a 
squadron of Soviet airplanes swooped down on us as relentlessly as wasps. 



Winter in the Donets 


45 


They dove, turned, came back again. Together with some comrades I ran 
to free a heavy munitions wagon stuck in the middle of the road, an easy 
target which could go up at any moment. I pushed with all of my strength to 
move it up to the protection of an embankment. The planes swooped down 
again, and the vehicle tipped, pinning me. Everything went black. 

I awoke again a half hour later, lying in a hut. My eyes could distinguish 
only great swirls of mauve, like orchids. My left foot had been fractured in 
two places. 

I understood that they wanted to send me to a hospital. That woke me up 
completely. The ambulance men who had brought me in had at their 
disposal a horse and a narrow sled. I had them lay me out on that. Then 
across the dead bodies encrusted in the ice, I started the animal out in the 
direction of the east. 

After an hour I caught up with the company. Stretched out across three 
planks, I entered Novo-Andrievska, where the Russian fighter planes still 
harrassed us. They killed one man and wounded several others. Despite the 
strafing, the Wallonians held the village that night. 

***** 

We had to go further. My foot looked like a black calf’s head. Searching 
in the snow, a comrade had found one of the enormous felt boots that the 
tank drivers pulled over their usual footgear. It was even a boot for the left 
foot. They put it on my wounded foot, which fit into it perfectly. Lying 
stretched out on my small sled, I set out again with my company. 

For the third time, we had to cross the ice covering the winding Samara 
River. The Soviet airplanes had already resumed the hunt for us. As we 
crossed the frozen river, they skimmed over us, machine guns chattering, 
then dropped three large bombs on us. The bombs fell from so low that they 
did not have time to assume a vertical position and skidded into our ranks 
like three large gray dogs. 

We reached the east bank, but not before several Walloons fell. 

We had orders to seize the heights overlooking the valley, which formed 
the region’s water shed. Who held that high ground commanded the 
Samara Valley. 

On 17 February, at 11:00 A.M., we reached the plateau. There a village 
scattered its isbas along both sides of long, icy ponds. As we crossed the 
frozen ponds, the Russians, to the east, opened up on us with an extremely 
fierce artillery barrage. 

The troops had been able to run up to the isbas to get a little cover. Flat¬ 
tened at the bottom of my sled, incapable of taking a step, I heard the 
shrapnel ricocheting on the sides, against the planks. A Croat who ran up, 
his arms extended, had just fallen on me; he had a monstrous red hole, as 
large as two fists, where his eyes had once been. 



46 


CAMPAIGN IN RUSSIA 


So it was that we entered the village of Gromovaya-Balka, where we were 
to lose half of our legionnaires, killed or wounded. 

Days of Hell 

At Gromovaya-Balka, as everywhere else, there was no continuous front. 
To our left extended an open space of seven kilometers. On our right friend¬ 
ly forces—Waffen SS of the Viking Division—occupied a small village three 
kilometers away. 

The Russians had massed the bulk of their troops a few kilometers to the 
east, but their advance posts were positioned quite close to us, inside the 
haystacks which raised white humps on the steppe. 

Since the village of Gromovaya-Balka was built in a slight depression, we 
set up our positions on the ridge. We weren’t able to dig in—the soil was 
hard as granite—so we constructed our defenses from large blocks of frozen 
snow, hewn with axes. 

Secondary positions were constructed farther back, near some isbas. By 
preference, our volunteers had cut them into the strawy manure heaps, 
which were easier to chop through. That won us some unexpected comforts, 
because our soldiers found amid the dung two magnificent cases of French 
cognac, buried hastily by the retreating Russians. 

Unfortunately, that was the only consolation, for our men were going to 
spend ten days of hell at Gromovaya-Balka. 

* * * * * 

For suitable lodgings we had at our disposal only two or three isbas per 
company. Nearly all of the windows had been broken by the time of our ar¬ 
rival. The Bolsheviks, as usual, had massacred the animals. Their bodies lay 
inside or at the thresholds of the cottages. One horse had died while lying 
across one of our two little windows; he blocked three quarters of it. Two 
other dead horses were stretched out in the cattle shed. 

Since the enemy probed us day and night, one half of our men had to con¬ 
stantly occupy positions in the snow. Because of the cold, the companies 
were split in two to relieve each other every two hours. 

Throughout those ten days our soldiers were never able to sleep more 
than an hour and a half at a time. It was necessary for them to wake up a 
quarter hour before their guard duty. On their return, it took them another 
quarter hour to settle down again. Besides, if more than half of the men had 
been able to rest at the same time, it would have been impossible to get them 
into the single-room huts, so tiny were they. The twenty-five men who 
returned for their two-hour rest couldn’t even stretch out on the ground. 
They had to remain standing or squat on the ground. The cold rushed in, 
unabated, through the broken windows, which we were unable to seal 
completely. 



Winter in the Donets 


47 


I myself, with my broken foot, was able to remain stretched out only on a 
kind of bench attached to the wall, one meter above the floor. It was on that 
perch that I, day and night, frozen and powerless in my plaster cast, 
witnessed the departure and the return of my unfortunate comrades. 

The resupply of food was as simple as possible. The sleds took forty to 
fifty hours to reach us. The enemy artillery implacably carried out their evil 
work on the white foundation of the road for the last kilometers if the sup¬ 
ply people risked the trip during the day. If they tried to reach us at night, 
they got lost in the steppe and would stumble onto one of the Soviet posts. 

We received only just enough so that we did not lose strength: some 
bread, which we cut with our bayonets, and some cans of meat, frozen at 
the factory and refrozen in masterly fashion on the troikas. 

The lack of sleep was killing to the men. Cold is terribly exhausting, and 
requires a struggle by the entire body. Our companies had to stay in holes in 
the ice, twelve horns out of every twenty-four, without moving a meter. The 
men stood on ice. If they tried to lean on something, they leaned on ice. It 
was 20 to 25 degrees below zero at all times. The short rest in the isba allow¬ 
ed them neither to warm themselves up again—it was nearly as cold there as 
it was outside—nor to regain their strength. They were unable to stretch out 
on the ground, nor even to have their minds at peace, since, at every instant, 
a volley of shells fell, damaging the cottages, flattening some of the walls. 

In the space of a few days, the Soviet artillery lobbed us several thousand 
shells. Some isbas caught fire. Others, hit on the roofs, had their thatch 
strewn over an area of twenty meters. Our casualties were heavy. 

One of our heavy machine guns, hit directly, was thrown four meters into 
the air along with the gunner; he fell back untouched, still holding the han¬ 
dle of the weapon; the other two members of the crew were mangled. 

One shell came right through the window of an isba where a dozen of our 
comrades were resting. It was a scene out of a slaughterhouse. One soldier 
was missing among the heap of the dead and wounded who were dragged 
out of the destroyed cottage; the next day they found some fragments of 
flesh and bones, the consistency of porridge, stuck to the rubble, all that re¬ 
mained of our companion. He had taken the shell in the middle of his chest. 

* ♦ # * * 

Our telephone lines were continually cut. 

The forty men who maintained communications between the companies 
and the battalion command post, and then between the battalion and the 
division, had suffered terribly since the beginning of the offensive. Each 
night during our advance, in weather as cold as 40 degrees below zero, 
across veritable rivers created by the thaw, they had to unreel kilometers of 
telephone wire. They came back from the steppe with severe frost bite on 
their hands, their cheeks, their noses, their ears. 



48 


CAMPAIGN IN RUSSIA 


At Gromovaya-Balka, they spent their days and nights crawling on the 
snow and ice, in the midst of machine-gun fire, along their damnable wires, 
which the Reds cut three or four times an hour. 

Maintaining communications was absolutely vital, for those wires were 
the arteries of the battalion. Many of our little telephone men died for those 
wires. 

There was among them an old man, with white hair, always the first on 
duty. He too was hit. He still had the strength to take a little Bible from his 
pocket and to recite two or three short lines from a psalm before he died. 

***** 

The state of utter misery in which we found ourselves was aggravated by 
other afflictions, of a more intimate kind. 

We were, for the most part, covered with mysterious sores that the 
soldiers of the Eastern Front called “the Russian plague.” 

The illness began with incredible itching on the feet and the calves. It was 
almost impossible not to scratch them. But, if you began scratching, the 
complications were not long in coming. Bluish sores formed, as irritating as 
if they were being eaten by salt and pepper. They bled and most of all ran 
with pus. This was disgusting to see. It was necessary not to scratch, but 
men’s nerves snapped as a result of being held back. If during the day you 
had the energy to resist the biting of that venom, at night, while sleeping, 
your hands unconsciously went to your feet and calves, and your fingernails 
dug into those corrosive spots, going deep, bleeding. We had to keep our 
boots on, while asleep, so as not to be overcome by that terrible 
itching. 

Thousands, tens of thousands of soldiers on the Eastern Front were 
removed from the line because those flowing wounds proved so stubborn. 
At Gromovaya-Balka, some of our comrades were affected down to the 
bone itself. Three quarters of the troops, at least, covered their bloody 
calves with dirty rags. But, in spite of the bandages, the violet holes of the 
wounds, eaten by unknown acids, tempted their fingers, lured their nails, 
night and day. 


***** 

Swarms of fleas devoured us. 

We had waged the entire counteroffensive in the Donets without a single 
change of underwear. Each of the unspeakable huts where we were 
quartered had sheltered, before us, hordes of Mongols, Tatars, Siberians, 
teeming with vermin. Our straitened circumstances, with forty or fifty men 
crammed together in squalor, made us easy prey for the greedy, merciless 
vermin. 



Winter in the Donets 


49 


A number of soldiers, running out of strength, did not want to lose yet 
another hour of their scant sleep by indulging in useless flea hunts. Even if 
you eliminated your fleas, your neighbor did not kill his. At the moment he 
woke up, half of his supply moved to your territory. And how could we 
organize a general delousing amidst those crowded conditions with soldiers 
curled up, incapable of even stretching out or moving? 

We had only to thrust our hands under our arms or between our thighs; 
we brought back handfuls of hideous fleas. Some were small, lively and 
whitish; some long, with bodies like darts; some round, with red stomachs 
the size of a pinhead. Their colors were amazingly adapted to the color of 
our clothes. 

The fleas took pleasure in sucking at wounds. They found their way in 
large numbers beneath dressings. I felt them swarming constantly along my 
wounded foot. There was nothing to do, just let them eat you alive, your 
nerves held sternly in check. 

***** 

Each day the Soviets became more aggressive. 

For more than a week, we hardly slept at all. Even when the men came 
back for their two hours of rest in the isba, grenades and shells came clatter¬ 
ing down in such abundance that everyone threw himself to the ground, 
confused, expecting a shell to land in the middle of the room at any mo¬ 
ment. 

There were no cellars, nor had we any other shelters. 

Beginning on 25 February, the Soviet tanks came at nightfall. They would 
approach to within several hundred meters of us; each time, they fired a few 
rounds, then disappeared into the darkness. 

Our patrols engaged in some bloody hand-to-hand battles with the Rus¬ 
sian forward posts. 

The Soviet troops carried out a plan of elementary simplicity: they set 
themselves to eliminating all obstacles, one by one. First they struck in full 
strength at the village held by the SS to our right. If that redoubt fell, we 
would be isolated, the sole defenders of the path to the Samara, the objec¬ 
tive toward which the Soviets had chosen to drive with all available forces. 

The SS were around two hundred in number. They were real heavy- 
weights. Our men who kept contact with their command post could not get 
over their coolness under fire. The Russians were within thirty meters 
machine-gunning_them from house to house. In one day the SS withstood 
ten assaults by an enemy twenty times more numerous. They resisted, im¬ 
movable, playing cards at each respite. 

At the end of a week they held only a narrow passageway, a hundred 
meters wide, leading to the west. Three-fourths of those courageous men 
had fallen in the struggle. 



so 


CAMPAIGN IN RUSSIA 


On 28 February 1942, at five in the morning, several thousand Reds 
pounced on the fifty or so survivors. The Germans suffered an hour’s 
savage massacre. Only a few managed to escape. We saw them running 
toward us across the snow, followed closely by the Bolsheviks. 

They came just in time to help us, for, even as the Viking’s village was be¬ 
ing overrun, hordes of Soviet troops, which had massed to the east of 
Gromovaya-Balka the night before, flooded towards us. 

At six o’clock in the morning, two regiments, consisting of four thousand 
men, attacked us, supported by fourteen tanks. 

There were barely five hundred of us; we had a single tank. 

Gromovaya-Balka 

Throughout that night, our battalion had been in a state of alert. Our 
patrols had spotted important enemy movements. We could tell that the at¬ 
tack was imminent. 

The fall of the village held by the SS had isolated us in the middle of an 
open space fifteen kilometers square. The Reds were eager for revenge and 
they longed to pour down into the valley of the Samara, from which our 
forces had chased them two weeks before. 

They spared no effort to make their success decisive. Their artillery, 
massed on the heights, loomed above us, and their observers relayed our 
every movement in the village, already reduced to a heap of rubble. . 

Our soldiers looked like ghosts. 

At midnight, a first alert had been sounded. At six in the morning, a new 
alert sent our companies to combat positions. Almost immediately a hail of 
machine-gun fire began to fall on all sides. 

* * * * * 

I was stretched out on two planks in our isba, forty meters behind our ice 
forts, which faced east. I listened anxiously to the din of battle. Suddenly 
the roof crackled with flames: the thatch was on fire. 

Hopping on one foot, I reached the window: a tremendous mass of infan¬ 
try was advancing in close order. 

I thought at first that they were the Croatian volunteers: they had on 
nearly the same purplish-blue cloaks. Shells fell all around them; the Ger¬ 
man artillery, which was reinforcing us, was firing nearly point blank at 
those thousands of men. 

They had emerged from a ravine and were marching toward the center of 
the village, taking the positions of our companies from behind. One would 
have thought that they were taking part in a training exercise, so uncon¬ 
cerned were they. They spread out only when they had advanced to about 
one hundred meters from my isba, the first one to the northeast. I then 
caught sight of the 14 Soviet tanks which roared straight ahead. 



Winter in the Donets 


51 


My company, overwhelmed, fell back to the second isba. 

I couldn’t hold back any longer. My metatarsals had had two weeks to 
mend. Kicking off the splint which encased my foot, I limped forward, with 
my rifle as a crutch, across the open ground to join my squad. 

/ 

♦ * * * * 

My pain forgotten, I took my post at my machine gun once again. There 
were twelve of us, pinned down twenty meters in front of the second house. 
I wedged myself between two large, dead horses, hard as rocks, against 
which the bullets smacked with an odd sound. 

The enemy had fanned out from the east to the northeast, facing the two 
lines of isbas in the village. At the same time they attacked us they fell on 
our comrades in the 2nd Company, who were defending the huts on the 
other side of the pond. 

The men of the 2nd performed incredible feats of bravery in their 
defense, but their forward post fell before the onslaught. Together with 
their superb NCO’s they fell almost to the last man, blunting the Red pack’s 
momentum with their stand. 

To the northeast, Soviet troops, Russian and Asiatic, penetrated beyond 
the first isbas. Our brave soldiers and the savage Reds slaughtered one 
another in brutal hand-to-hand combat. 

One of our old Rexist songs wafted above the battle. At that time, early in 
the war, our troops conserved a few uses from a bygone age: they sang as 
they leaped to the attack. The survivors from the 2nd Company counter¬ 
attacked, probing the Russians. Their commander. First Lieutenant Buyds, 
a manufacturer from Brussels, rushed forward, a machine gun in his hands. 
His re-formed company, behind him, at the comers of the houses, reached 
its former positions in the snow. 

But each of our men had to deal with a bunch of Reds. The Soviet tanks 
flattened all the focal points of the struggle. Lieutenant Buyds continued 
firing his machine gun, until the Russians were within a few paces; then he 
caught a bullet in the upper chest and died, his head slumped over his 
weapon. 

The Reds retook the first thatched cottages to the northwest. We saw 
their tanks roar after our wounded, catch them, then crush them under their 
. iron treads. 

Our situation was scarcely any better. The Bolsheviks now occupied the 
smoking rubble of the first isba and had overrun several neighboring out¬ 
buildings. From the northeast, several of their Maxim machine guns raked 
us with fire. An open shed lying between us and the enemy had its roof tiles 
swept off in the firing. They scattered like a fallen house of cards. 

Our men fell, struck by explosive bullets that made tremendous holes in 
them. One of my comrades fell in front of me, his head no more than a 




52 


CAMPAIGN IN RUSSIA 


gruesome doughnut-shaped mass; his eyes, his nose, his cheeks, his mouth 
had disappeared, blown away by the impact. 

The Reds were no longer only in front of us. The isbas on our left flank 
had already fallen; now, the Soviets held our former positions on the 
eastern ridge. From there they poured into the heart of the village. 

Our soldiers were beset by small, fierce knots of Reds, who fought 
savagely, refusing to give ground. 

We fought mainly with our rifles, using our ammunition carefully, felling 
a Bolshevik with each shot. The enemy advanced with mule-like unconcern. 
A beautiful golden sun had risen over the snow, behind our attackers. The 
Russians who occupied our positions in the ice presented, in silhouette, 
perfect black targets. Each head that dared to rise for a moment above our 
former icy outposts caught a bullet. 

But we, too, suffered heavy losses. 

After an hour, I was the only one left from my small group, wedged be¬ 
tween the carcasses of the two frozen horses, real rocks of protection. 
Bullets richocheted everywhere. One of them had cut, near my cheek, a six- 
inch groove in the butt of my rifle. Some Russians had outflanked me on 
the left, and there were at least thirty of them ten meters in front of me. It 
was then that I felt myself pulled from behind by my good foot. A young 
corporal from my squad, named Henri Berkmans, seeing me lost, had 
crawled up to me and thus hauled me away on my stomach, as if he were 
dragging a sled. 

After twenty meters of that unexpected exercise, I reached the threshold 
of the thatched cottage where the rest of our company was defending itself. 
My heroic rescuer, alas, had less luck than I: a volley of grenade bursts 
deeply slashed the soles of his feet; he died after suffering terribly. 

It was perhaps nine o’clock in the morning. The Soviet tanks which had 
invaded the northwest sector now found themselves several hundred meters 
behind us. They carried out a monstrous man hunt, wheeling around the 
isbas, amusing themselves by crushing our comrades one by one, whether 
they were unharmed or wounded or dead. We realized perfectly well that we 
were going to be surrounded and pulverized in our turn by those 
mastodons, all the more since the southeast sector was by then bearing the 
brunt of the Soviet troops swarming from the village where they had exter¬ 
minated the last pockets of SS defenders. 

We were the object of frenzied gunfire. The ice around us flaked off in 
hundreds of little dancing puffs. Each of us took cover as he could, behind 
some peasant sleds, or flush with the balustrades of the windows. 

An old soldier from the First World War, named Steenbruggen, was 
especially eager for combat. Hit with a bullet in the nape of the neck, he col¬ 
lapsed, but, his right hand raised, cried out: “Goodbye, comrades, Rex will 
win!” We thought he had died. Fifteen minutes later, a corpse sat up again: 
“But, in the name of God, I am not dead!” It was our old soldier, come 



Winter in the Donets 


53 


back to life! He was alive in spite of the bullet in his head! He was able to 
drag himself to a first aid post; having been bora with an unusually thick 
neck, he recovered from his wound. 

Our luck was short lived, however. A Soviet tank, determined to seal our 
fate, rumbled across the ice-topped pond, headed straight for our isba. 

* * * * * 

The tank aimed its cannon. We only had time to throw ourselves to the 
floor of the isba. Three shells, aimed perfectly, completely destroyed the 
front wall. We were buried by the rubble from the plaster walls. The 
thatched roof was on fire. Some of the men were streaming with blood; one 
of them had had his left arm cut off. 

Luckily one of the three shells had opened a breach in the wall at the back 
of the dwelling, one meter high. We were able to pull our wounded through 
the hole, and then crawl out ourselves, one after the other. 

In order to reach the next house, we had to cross a space of some thirty 
meters. The men who ran it all in one stretch were mercilessly mowed down. 
To confuse the enemy trying to take aim, it was necessary to cross at most 
five meters, then throw yourself to the ground, then run for four or five 
more meters, and throw yourself to the ground once more. The enemy 
marksmen, confused each time by such tactics, then looked for a less mobile 
target. 

One of our young soldiers had taken cover next to a body. Panic-stricken, 
he wasn’t looking. Suddenly he saw, right beside him, the corpse’s slate- 
blue eyes, staring blankly. The dead man was his father, a brave tailor from 
Brussels. 


* * * * * 

We took shelter in a neighboring isba. In turn, its roof flamed above our 
heads. We set our backs up against the threshold of the house, behind a 
bank of ice, very yellow with frozen urine. 

The tanks were overrunning us. Hundreds of Russians machine-gunned 
us at almost point blank-range. Right behind us, the thatched roof fell in 
like an enormous, fiery torch. 

The tanks had almost ended their sweep behind us. We did not fire our 
rifles anymore, since we knew the value of each cartridge. The end was 
drawing near. Our company commander put his hand on mine: “If you 
die,” he told me simply, “I will not survive you . . .” 

Neither of us was about to die, however. All at once, we heard the roar of 
engines overhead. Red tanks were blowing up! Isbas were exploding! Whole 
bunches of Reds were tossed in the air like ragdolls! 

The Stukas* had arrived! 



54 


CAMPAIGN IN RUSSIA 


With incredible precision, they hit the Soviet tanks dead center, and flat¬ 
tened the attackers, stupidly crowded together in bunches as usual. The 
enemy tanks fled in great haste to escape the diving planes’ cannon fire. The 
infantry took off right behind them. 

Our battalion commander immediately threw the last forces that he had 
into a counterattack. Their wave surged past us. By noon, the Wallonian 
Legion had completely retaken Gromovaya-Balka, reconquering even the 
first isbas, on both sides of the pond. Russian bodies lay everywhere. We 
took a large number of prisoners, Mongols, as ugly as monkeys, Kirghiz, 
Siberians, all astounded at having been bested with such spirit. They con¬ 
stantly repeated: “Belgiski, karoch! Belgiski, karoch!” (“Belgians, 
famous!”) while squinting their little yellow eyes. 

Unfortunately, all of our wounded were dead, deliberately crushed by the 
Soviet tanks or killed with bayonet thrusts. 

After having carried out their providential attack, the German Stukas 
had left. The Russians regrouped, and their tanks started to move again. 
Everything was going to start over again. 

We were powerless against their tanks. At that time, the panzerfaust* did 
not yet exist, nor did we have any anti-tank guns. We even lacked mines. 

From the beginning of this impossible struggle, the German 100th Divi¬ 
sion, on which we depended tactically, had promised to help. A Panzer col¬ 
umn had been dispatched toward our village, but it was intercepted by a 
group of Red tanks. The ensuing battle on the steppe, which lasted several 
hours, barred the lOOth’s reinforcements from coming to help. 

Our me n had to fight once more a defensive battle, isba by isba, barn by 
barn, slope by slope. At three in the afternoon, they stood, their backs to 
the walls of the last houses, before the cherry orchard to the southwest of 
the village. If they were forced out of those last redoubts, they would be 
thrown out onto the steppe, flat, without a bush, where the deep snow ex¬ 
tended for many kilometers. 

We had to react so as not to be pushed to that fatal extreme. Our com¬ 
mander, Captain Pauly, gathered together the remains of all of the com¬ 
panies and, grenade in hand, was the first to rush to the counterattack, 
shouting our old cry: “Rex will win!” Everyone in the battalion still fit for 
service followed him, including the armorers, the cooks, the couriers, the 
truck drivers. It was a frenzied scramble. Reds and Walloons killed each 
other, even in the huts, where, firing revolvers through cracks in the doors, 
they shattered one another’s skulls at point-blank range. 

The Russian tanks, running short of shells, rumbled about trying to crush 
our soldiers, who darted from isba to isba. The Soviet infantrymen, pan¬ 
icked and exhausted, first hesitated and then began to give ground. In the 
thick of the hand-to-hand combat, some German infantry reinforcements 
appeared in the snow to the west. The enemy rout was then complete. For a 
third time, the village was retaken. 



Winter in the Donets 


55 


The Reds again devoted themselves, for some time, to chasing after our 
men. But our tanks, winners in the battle of the steppe, showed up in their 
turn on the hillside. A half-hour later, the Soviet armor and infantry had 
disappeared in the blue snows to the northeast. 

Night was about to fall. The bodies of seven hundred Reds lay across the 
snow, on the ice of the ponds, near the ruins of the houses. But two hundred 
and fifty of our comrades had fallen, killed or wounded, during those 
twelve hours of furious fighting. 

The German tanks left again, one hour later, for another sector that was 
threatened. Of the isbas of Gromovaya-Balka, nothing remained but 
cinders, their dying glow dwindling slowly in the glacial evening. 

Front of Ice 

On the evening of 28 February 1943, the smoking remains of Gromovaya- 
Balka were in our hands. It was necessary, however, to face facts: the posi¬ 
tion was untenable. The village had been demolished. Above all, it was 
located at the bottom of a depression. From the slope to the east, the enemy 
could follow all our movements. 

For ten days, we had gotten our bearings and had worked hard. We had 
held on to the village, in spite of four thousand Soviet soldiers and fourteen 
tanks, only because the honor of our people was at stake. All of us pre¬ 
ferred death to giving ground. 

A burning patriotism inspired our soldiers: they were representing their 
country; for it, half of our men had fallen, frozen in death, bathed in blood. 
Only national pride had enabled the miracle of three counterattacks and the 
reconquest. 

It would have been useless to repeat a similar struggle the next day. 
Wisdom demanded that we abandon the basin and set up our defense on the 
western hillside, which overlooked Gromovaya-Balka. There we would no 
longer be easy targets for the Red gunners. 

The commander of the 100th Division, General Sanne, ordered that our 
battalion take position on the ridge, under cover of night. Our advanced 
posts were maintained until the last minute. The Russians noticed nothing. 
At dawn, they crushed the ruins of Gromovaya-Balka under a hellish bar¬ 
rage, then attacked the empty space. 

It was now our artillery’s turn to make life impossible for them in the 
hollow of the village. They were no more able than we were to keep their 
forces there. Beaten, they drew back a few hundred meters, up the hill to the 
east. 

From then on we glared at each other and machine-gunned each other 
from ridge to ridge. The village became a no-man’s land where only a few 
blackened chimneys rose from the rubble of the isbas and the whiteness of 
winter. 



56 


CAMPAIGN IN RUSSIA 


Our new positions, improvised in the middle of the steppe, while the 
temperature stayed at 30 degrees below zero, were dug deep into the snow 
and ice. 

Several heavy German tanks returned, snorting, firing. Squat, like 
medieval bastions, they laid claim to the crest, while in the meantime the 
German artillery batteries were emplaced in a valley to the west. 

We had not the slightest hut at our disposal, not the weakest fire; nothing 
but white holes in the snow, where our two hundred survivors, lacking any 
winter equipment, had to face the Soviet forces. 

Shells burst in all directions. An ammunition depot blew up. Our men’s 
teeth chattered like castanets, so deeply had the cold gripped them. The 
faces of some of them were almost green. Since the previous night the ice 
had numbed these two hundred unprotected men. Another night followed, 
more bitter yet. Our situation seemed utterly desperate. It was scarcely con¬ 
ceivable that in the middle of the steppe, in such frigid weather, men ex¬ 
hausted by a month of combat still lived, motionless for dozens of hours, 
tormented, exhausted by the terrible cold. 

Our battalion, formed up into a square, had sworn to hold out until the 
end. Only the dead were evacuated. The next day, at dawn, the Wallonian 
Legion was still at its post. Neither the Russians nor the ice could blunt its 
spirit. 


♦ * * * * 

To diminish our own suffering, we compared our troubles to those of the 
ISO wounded whom dozens of sleds had taken away over the steppe. 

At Gromovaya-Balka it had been necessary to wait for nightfall to 
evacuate most of our comrades, because during the day many of our 
wounded had been hit for a second time by Soviet machine-gunners firing 
on medical convoys, black and clear in the bright snow. 

Our sleds were just barely able to travel the seven kilometers from our 
positions to the village of Novo-Andrievska. They deposited their bloody 
loads there and returned quickly. 

We had used, for the first transports, such rare covers as had escaped be¬ 
ing burned in the isbas. Later, it was necessary to make do with dry fodder 
or with the thatch of the last houses in the town. Throughout the wearing 
night the hapless wounded shivered in the snow, protected only by ragged 
clothes, a little straw or a little hay. Their suffering was unspeakable. 

At Novo-Andrievska, the doctors at the first aid post did not know where 
to lodge them. They lay about by the dozens on the bare ground of the huts. 
The village was only a relay station. It was necessary to evacuate the unfor¬ 
tunates across forty kilometers from there to Grichino. The storm had 
returned, stirring the white steppe to a fury of blinding snow. 

The sleds took two or three days to reach Grichino and the field hospital. 



Winter in the Donets 


57 


The wounded, their wounds hastily dressed, their broken bones hastily 
splinted, dying from the cold, with grenade fragments and bullets still in 
their bodies, suffered a horrible martyrdom. 

The pile-up of the wounded at Grichino was unimaginable. Eleven thou¬ 
sand were taken there in five weeks. Some of our gravely wounded men had 
to wait five days before someone removed their temporary dressings, which 
had become black and as hard as iron. They had difficulty explaining their 
needs, since most of them spoke no German. In their distress they could not 
receive a word of comfort from anyone. They reached the depths of 
physical and mental suffering. 

Many never survived the field hospitals; they ended their suffering in the 
long military cemeteries where, below their steel helmets, were blazoned the 
black, yellow and red, the colors of the country for which they so valiantly 
struggled and suffered. 


♦ * * * * 

By the morning of 2 March 1942, the Wallonian Legion had been reduced 
to less than a third of its original strength. Out of 26 officers, there remain¬ 
ed two, one of whom, suffering a nervous breakdown, was evacuated a 
short time later. 

Some German troops were on route and were going to replace us. Our 
scouts dug them some underground shelters which would allow them to sur¬ 
vive, with a little less discomfort, on that storm-swept ridge. Nevertheless, 
despite the construction of those refuges, the battalion which succeeded 
ours on the plateau lost more than thirty percent of its men to the freezing 
weather during the month of March alone. 

We were relieved at noon. 

Our boys, emaciated, unshaven, returned from their posts with proud 
looks on their faces. The heroism they had shown in combat was already a 
watchword all along the Donets front. The commander of the 100th Divi¬ 
sion had just awarded them 33 Iron Crosses. At that time this was, for one 
battalion, an extraordinary number. A still more striking honor came as we 
were especially cited in the Wehrmacht order of the day, in the communique 
from the High Command. 

We settled into an area behind the front lines, at Blagodach. 

The snowy fields had beert cleared of the hundreds of bodies, blue-clad 
Cossacks, Mongols in white greatcoats, by which we had passed a month 
before, at the time of the offensive. 

We found some houses, poor to be sure, miserable to be sure, but houses! 
We no longer had in front of us hordes of Asiatics with tiny flashing eyes, 
leaping like cats for savage hand-to-hand combat. 

We looked at one another, we sought out one another. Our poor dead 
comrades, brothers who had shared our dreams, seemed to move about us, 



58 


CAMPAIGN IN RUSSIA 


dominating our thoughts. Each of us had lost very dear friends. Our legion 
was like a band of brothers: we were united in all things. 

Our hearts were tormented, and the savor of our glory was as a frozen, 
bitter fruit in our mouths. 



Chapter Three 

THE BATTLE OF KHARKOV 


The battle of Gromovaya-Balka had marked the last great effort by the 
Soviets in the Donets during the winter of 1941-1942. Our legion, settled at 
Blagodach, was held in reserve, ready to be called upon at the first danger. 
But the front was no longer seriously endangered. 

At night heavy machine-gun fire could still be heard. From the doorsteps 
of our huts we could watch the muzzles flash and the tracers crisscross 
above the steppe. The blow dealt the Reds on 28 February had been 
decisive, however: their offensive had been halted, then thrown back for 
good. 

Blagodach was still buried under deep snowdrifts. Snowfall alternated 
with ice storms. The winter seemed to last forever. We spent six months in 
whiteness. We ended up being haunted by that whiteness; the white steppe, 
the white roofs, the white sky which slithered above our heads. 

***** 

The village, racked by the fighting, was extremely poor. We slept on 
planks or straw, even on the earth floors of the cottages. The wan brats’ 
squalling assailed our ears. These poor people lived only on potatoes which 
they ate uncooked, seasoned only with salt. All the cows had been killed. 
The villagers had tossed their dead horses, along with the bodies of five 
hundred Soviet soldiers, pell-mell into a large quarry, a grisly abattoir from 
which poked out horses’ hooves and human heads. 

We drew our water from the village well. One day our bucket fell in and 
sank to the bottom. We sent a man armed with a hook attached to a heavy 
rope to search the bottom of the well. The hook soon caught on what we all 
thought was the bucket. It seemed to have become awfully heavy, though, 
and it took the strong arms and backs of several men to haul it up again. At 
last our catch emerged: a Mongol, huge, hideous, half-rotted, his belt 
hooked to our rope. We’d been drinking him for weeks. 

The isbas were nothing more than fleas’ nests. In ours there was a supply 
of seed grain for sowing, which shook with continual rustlings, so abundant 
were the vermin there. 




60 


CAMPAIGN IN RUSSIA 


The majority of us suffered from “flea fever” or volhynian fever, a type 
of malaria, which put us in a severe state of listlessness. In the evenings we 
had fevers of 39 degrees centigrade. Come morning, the fever would decline 
to 35 or 35.5 degrees, at most. We barely picked at our food; we grew pro¬ 
gressively weaker. The isbas, the steppe spun around us. We were incapable 
of working or even going out. 

The crisis, even in its acute stage, lasted for three or four weeks, at the 
end of which we got to our feet again painfully, with heads hanging like 
those of poor, sad, old horses. 

Recovery was rarely permanent. The flea fever recurred time after time, 
like malaria. Against that pandemic of the Eastern Front our doctors had 
no medicine, except for the ever-present aspirin, cure-all of every army in 
the world. 


* * * * * 

We tried to return to our normal habits of hygiene. 

We confiscated, for an hour, the kneading trough from the house, a sort 
of shallow canoe, hewn with an axe from a block of wood. Melting a half¬ 
meter cube of snow in it, we sat down in that tiny, comic boat. At the first 
slightly too vigorous movement, we tipped over on our butts! 

The Russians did not wash their bodies during the entire winter. They had 
picturesque ways of cleaning their faces. Filling up their mouths with water, 
they spat out the liquid, four or five times, into their hands, then rubbed 
them over their cheeks. In the same manner, they sprinkled, the faces of 
their whining brats. 

The sessions for killing fleas were virtual ceremonies. 

The neighbor woman would come by. Squatting down on the ground, 
she’d unbraid her hair on the knees of her crony, who then spent an hour or 
two removing hundreds of little beasts, using a large wooden comb. Then 
she would sit on the ground, while the other one, chattering away, took her 
turn at returning the favor. 

During the summer those operations took place on the door step. It was 
awfully nice: they killed each other’s fleas together, a very decent sort of 
communism. 

As soon as our lightly wounded men recovered, we reorganized our com¬ 
panies, at half their former strength. 

A corporal at the start of the counteroffensive, I had been named a non¬ 
commissioned officer in the middle of the battle of Gromovaya-Balka. I 
supervised the dismantling of the machine guns and the quality of the soup 
with as much diligence as if I were directing a gathering of 50,000 political 
followers. I loved the life of a soldier, simple as could be, free of worldly 
concerns, ambitions, and interests. 

It had been months since I’d received the least bit of news of the scuffles 



The Battle of Kharkov 


61 


of the Forum. The viperous swarm of office seekers, the temptations and 
dishonesties of the political arena sickened me. I preferred my filthy isba to 
the ministerial palaces, my worn trooper’s jacket to the stifling comfort of 
middle class mediocrity. As I looked at the pure eyes of my soldiers, 
cleansed by sacrifice, I felt rising toward me the wholesome gift of their 
ideal. I gave them, from my side, all that burned in my heart. 

***** 

We often received visits from our German comrades. We would even go 
to spend the evening in their shelters. For hours we would discuss the prob¬ 
lems of the post-war period. 

Besides the dead, what would there be? 

The questions about frontiers, about material affairs didn’t interest us 
very much. Living ceaselessly face to face with death, we came to under¬ 
stand to an intense degree the importance of spiritual forces. The front held 
only because at the front there were souls, souls which believed, which 
burned with ardor, which radiated strength. Our victories were won not 
only with weapons, but with virtues. 

The problems of the post-war period would be identical. Economic vic¬ 
tories would not be enough. Political reorganizations would not be enough. 
A great moral redemption would be necessary, which would cleanse away 
the blemishes of our time, which would restore our souls with the fresh air 
of passion and of unconditional service. 

National revolution, yes. Social revolution, yes. European revolution, 
yes. But above all else a spiritual revolution a thousand times more 
necessary than external order, than external justice, than fraternity in words 
alone. 

The world emerging from the killing and the hatred of the war would 
need, first, pure hearts, believing in their mission, dedicating themselves to 
it, pure hearts in whom the masses could believe and to whom they could 
devote themselves. 

Our discussions blazed to life like fires. A paltry little gas lamp empha¬ 
sized the lines in our faces. Those faces radiated. That winter we offered up 
our sufferings for the purification of our dreams. Never had we felt in our 
hearts so much strength, so much clarity, so much joy. 

Once, we had been able to lead commonplace lives, soiled by petty abdi¬ 
cations to daily necessity. The front had given us a taste for privation. We 
were purged of all hatred and of all desire. We had mortified our bodies, 
extinguished our ambition, purified and offered our sacrifice. Death itself 
no longer frightened us. 

The snow remained for a long time. 

On Holy Thursday it fell again, in enormous flakes, for several hours. 
Then the air grew milder. We looked out over the white steppe, where the 



62 


CAMPAIGN IN RUSSIA 


black stalks of the sunflowers reached higher and higher. The hills had the 
gray gleam of the end of winter. The sun came out again. 

The sparrows frolicked wildly in the straw. Each day the sun beat down 
on the plain. Melt water trickled off in rivulets. The peasants, using their 
axes, adzes, and picks, broke up the ice, thirty or forty centimeters deep, 
which surrounded the cottages. After several days of this, the town was 
transformed into an immense cesspool. The fields were like seas of sticky 
molasses. We could only go from one end of the village to the other on 
horseback, making a vast detour by way of the ridges. 

Certain of the boldest among us had built surfboards; they went around 
Blagodach in swim suits, pulled by mules. From isba to isba we built foot¬ 
bridges, thrown across mud a half meter deep. The water, fed by a thousand 
streams, rushed down the slopes with the power of rivers, forty or fifty 
meters wide, forming rumbling cataracts. The first peasant cart that tried to 
cross them was swept away; the woman driving it was carried off, bobbing 
up and sinking down a hundred times in the current. 

* # * # * 

After two weeks of sunshine, we were able to return to the haystacks of 
the previous autumn, at the top of the ridge. There we lay down, cheered 
up, shirts removed, offering our bodies to the warm life-giving spring. 

The place where the village’s ponds had bcm had disappeared; large 
frozen carp floated by the hundreds near the gratings of the dikes. 

One day I rode on horseback far to the west. The river curved. I noticed, 
in the distance, a small forest. It was beginning to green, a soft yellow 
green. I rose up on my stirrups, and breathed in the new springtime in great 
gulps. It felt so good! 

The sun had conquered winter! 

The roads dried out. The windmill turned before a completely blue sky. 

May arrived. On the 10th, we received a secret order. We were changing 
sectors, moving out that very night. Great military events were imminent. 
Joyful, rambunctious, we left our isbas, singing of war, adventure, glory, 
and the warm spring which flowered in our hearts. 

A Cuckoo Cry 

Never during the frightful winter of 1941-1942 had doubt afflicted the 
spirits of the German soldiers or the European volunteers on the Eastern 
Front. Their sufferings had been extraordinary, but they knew that the 
howling blasts of winter, the ice at forty-two degrees below zero, the lack of 
equipment had been the only causes of their misfortunes. Stalin had no 
hand in the matter. At present, the railway lines were beginning to function 
properly; the bridges were rebuilt; letters arrived speedily. Fur coats had 



The Battle of Kharkov 


63 


even been distributed, voluptuous feminine furs or Bavarian herdsmen's old 
goatskins. We received them in the middle of the thaw. We had just enough 
time to amuse ourselves with them and then return them. 

No serious news troubled the spring. America, which had officially 
entered the world war in December 1941, had experienced nothing but 
defeats during the winter. The English, up until then the undisputed world 
champions in evacuation by boat, had evacuated Hong Kong and Singapore 
after having bettered the speed records of cheetahs, panthers, and other cats 
in the jungles of Burma. The army on the Eastern Front firmly believed that 
the English and the Americans, countries deeply involved in Asia, no longer 
represented any danger for the Reich. While they continued to retreat to 
their last Pacific refuges, Germany could calmly give the coup de grace to 
the USSR. 

It was true that Stalin had fought back, that he had regained some ter¬ 
ritory that winter. But of course the armies of the Reich had thrown caution 
to the winds the previous autumn. Sometimes the sectors they held had 
proved impossible to defend. There had been perilous moments, yet despite 
the irregular front, despite the cold, despite the snafus, our situation had 
been restored that same winter to one of impressive strength. 

The Russians in 1941 had suffered enormous losses. Their winter offen¬ 
sive had failed, failed unquestionably. 

This would be the final round. Or so we thought, absolutely certain that 
the struggle’s outcome was a foregone conclusion. 

* * * * * 

Never had the German army been so powerful. 

The Reich had made a prodigious effort to repair the damage of winter 
and to bring its units up to snuff. The regiments were once more at complete 
strength. The divisions had been reinforced, moreover, by reserve bat¬ 
talions comprising up to 1500 men each, replacements for the losses which 
would be incurred as the renewed offensive advanced across the steppe. 

Each unit had been outfitted with new equipment, and bristled with 
weapons in perfect condition. It was a pleasure to see those divisions, made 
up of 15,000 to 17,000 magnificent, lively young men, as straight and strong 
as trees, led by officers and non-commissioned officers the like of which no 
army in the world has ever had. 

The winter was forgotten. We spoke about it no longer except to laugh 
about it. The more one suffers at a given moment in life, the more one 
delights later on in recounting misfortunes overcome. Which man’s nose 
had been frozen most solid, whose isba had been the filthiest, whose bread 
had been the moldiest, whose fleas had been the worst man-eaters: all that 
was grist for amusement. Once they got involved in that kind of conversa¬ 
tion, the men were indefatigable. 



64 


CAMPAIGN IN RUSSIA 


A sensational turn of events suddenly took place, which allowed the Ger¬ 
man command once more to demonstrate its supreme mastery. 

The higher ranking German officers possessed a coolness and placidity 
absolutely without parallel. The generals would sit down in front of their 
maps at headquarters like chess champions at their boards hunched over 
their pawns. They took their time, and made only moves carefully 
calculated in advance. 

On the 10th and 11th of May, 1942, the German High Command had set 
in motion all of its forces in the Donets, in order to attack to the east. While 
all these troop movements were underway, the Soviet Marshal Timoshenko, 
with a formidable thrust, took the offensive at the northernmost point of 
our sector. He broke from cover below Kharkov, hurling several hundred 
thousand men toward Poltava and the Dnieper River. 

Timoshenko’s forces opened a deep breach. Stalin published resounding 
victory bulletins. Radio Moscow and the BBC announced the imminent ar¬ 
rival of the Russians at the Dnieper. Fleeing troops fell back as far as our 
lines, spreading sinister rumors. 

The German High Command had been completely anticipated by the 
Soviets. It suffered the mishap without a wasted word, without a wince of 
pain. Most important, it deviated not at all from its own plan of attack. 
Preparations continued to be carried out according to plan. The High Com¬ 
mand allowed the Russians to advance for five days, thereby creating an 
enormous bulge, the center of which was Poltava. During that time, each 
German battalion took position with the greatest calm. Not a single opera¬ 
tion was advanced by so much as an hour. 

* * * * * 

Our legion had not yet been brought up to strength by new recruits. It 
had, however, been assigned a vast sector, just at a neck of the Donets 
front. 

Our bunkers and trenches were in excellent shape. They wound along the 
crest of large bare hills whose cliffs plunged down to a river valley and a 
place named Yablenskaya. Yablenskaya commanded a pass, and the Reds 
had made of it a powerful barrier. Their artillery had the entire valley in 
range. The shells came pounding down on our positions like bowling balls 
toppling tenpins. 

At night, volunteers from our legion would crawl, lithe as weasels, be¬ 
tween the mines which covered our sector, in order to prowl around the 
Russian sector. Their missions consisted in hiding themselves in the midst of 
the enemy forces and spending a day on the lookout. They studied carefully 
the comings and goings of the Reds and the emplacements of their machine- 
gun nests and artillery. 

At daybreak we’d observe the Soviet hills with our binoculars. From a 



The Battle of Kharkov 


65 


hay stack there would extend a hand, which, just for a moment, shook a 
handkerchief. That was how our men camouflaged themselves. Our 
machine guns would sweep the surrounding area with fire, to cover our 
daredevils in case of a Soviet response. 

Some squads risked these expeditions every night, two men at a time. On 
the following night, we would hear soft rustlings at the appointed rendez¬ 
vous; then we’d crawl to the edge of the minefield to welcome our comrades 
back. They always returned safe and sound, furnished with detailed infor¬ 
mation and risible stories. 

* * * * * 

On the evening of 16 May orders for the attack arrived. 

We did not know where the attack would lead us. As must be the case, the 
objectives are only made known day by day. In the army, it is unnecessary 
to rack your brains uselessly, nor to try to see farther than the immediate. 
For us the war, on 16 May 1942, was the Yablenskaya neck. 

The offensive would began at 2:55 A.M. On our left wing, on the north¬ 
east side of the river, the German armor would attack en masse, roll past 
Yablenskaya, and then turn back toward the small valley. 

We had to engage only part of our volunteers. Their job was to flush out 
the Russian defenders of Yablenskaya by challenging them from the front. 
But our attack would be only a feint. While the Soviet troops were being 
distracted by us, the tanks would carry out the principal assault against their 
northeast flank. The rest of our forces would temporarily hold their posi¬ 
tions on the ridge, waiting to see what would happen. 

* * * * * 

The night of the 16-17 May flowed by, drop by drop, in extraordinary 
silence. 

At 2:30 A.M. the very first rustlings of dawn grew audible. 1 Thousands 
of men, ready for the attack, held their breaths. Not a single rifle report 
broke the peace that accompanied the birth of the day. 

Green and silver streaks spread slowly above the walls of the valley. Sud¬ 
denly an unexpected song arose, in short, passionate, joyous bursts: 
“Cuckoo! Cuckoo!” A cuckoo sang! All for himself, above that valley 
where, at any moment, cannons would thunder and the awful face of Death 
loom forth! 

“Cuckoo!” 

Then the cry fell silent. The rumble of tank treads reverberated through 
the air. 17 May 1942. Five minutes before three in the morning. The Donets- 
Kharkov offensive had been unleashed. 



66 


CAMPAIGN IN RUSSIA 


Yablenskaya 

The beginning of an offensive suddenly drives thousands of men into a 
stupor, as if a hurricane were battering them. 

On the morning of 17 May 1942, at 3:00 A.M., the Soviet troops of the 
Donets basin were obviously expecting nothing. They were all delighted 
about their Kharkov-Poltava offensive and couldn’t imagine that the far¬ 
ther west their divisions raced, the faster they were hurrying to their destruc¬ 
tion! 

From the village of Yablenskaya, at the end of the valley, not a shot had 
been fired for quite some time. A night like any other was ending. 

As soon as the noise of the German tanks spread, however, we saw a line 
of rounded backs moving about feverishly in the trenches of the small 
Soviet forts. 

The tanks’ mighty roar echoed off fields on the plateau. For about ten 
minutes, there was only that dramatic din of iron tank treads, as dawn 
broke, quite cool, orange and green in color. Then the artillery began to 
boom, hundreds of guns simultaneously. 

From our posts on the hillside, we watched, amazed, as the shells hit 
home. The Soviet village was blown apart, turned inside out, blasted to 
smithereens, as if a giant had smashed it with a huge pickaxe. 

Thereupon our men rushed forward into the ’ittle valley. 

$ $ $ 4c $ 

The slopes were bare and steep. At the bottom, the river flowed close to 
the enemy flank and skirted fields scattered with old abandoned haystacks. 
The avenue of attack narrowed, but then the fields widened out along the 
water, for 1500 meters, up to the first houses of Yablenskaya, perched on a 
spur of hill. 

According to the plan, our volunteers were only to keep the enemys’ 
hands full, to pin them down, while the tanks cleared the plateaus. But our 
boys were impetuous. Once thrown into the little valley, instead of stopping 
in time, taking cover in the ravines and harrassing the Russians from a 
distance, they continued to charge ahead, crossing about 1100 meters in a 
single bound. 

We marveled at their courage, but, knowing the importance of the enemy 
position, we sensed an imminent catastrophe. 

It was not slow in coming. The small plain across which our men sped 
was, in an instant, riddled with shells. The unfortunates scarcely slowed 
down in their charge. They had become entangled in lines of barbed wire, 
but they drove on toward Yablenskaya. We saw that, any second, a small 
number of them were going to reach the first houses. 

Then the explosions around them blocked our view. Everywhere the 



The Battle of Kharkov 


67 


ground exploded in large showers of dirt. Our men fell back in all direc¬ 
tions. We thought they had been wiped out. Nearly all of them lay about 
motionless. Only a few wounded were crawling. We saw them, through our 
binoculars, curl themselves up behind a small fold in the terrain and try to 
unroll some bandages. 

To go to their aid was impossible. The entrance to the pass was barred by 
a barrage of shells and grenades so intense that to advance that far would 
have been an unpardonable mistake. 

* * * * * 

Our soldiers were going to extricate themselves on their own, 
magnificently, without breaking and running. It took us quite a while 
before we discovered their stratagem. 

Our binoculars went from one small haystack to the next, searching the 
small valley; it seemed to us that certain of those haystacks were no longer 
in the same place.We decided to focus on one haystack for several minutes. 
It was moving, beyond question: almost imperceptibly, but it was moving. 

Some of our men, under the torrent of fire, had thrown themselves 
behind those piles of hay. They had crept under them; now, like tortoises, 
they were advancing toward the enemy in furtive movements. 

It was a spectacle that was as funny as it was exciting. The Russians could 
not machine-gun the valley indefinitely. With each respite, the haystacks 
moved forward several meters. The movements were so cautious that we 
could only judge the result by establishing some points of reference. 

Our soldier-tortoises must certainly have called softly to their comrades 
who, spread out in the middle of the rolling countryside, were pretending to 
be dead. Certain of them had, for an hour, remained as still as blocks of 
stone. But, when a haystack approached, a slight movement let the sup¬ 
posed corpse slip under the hay to join his comrades! 

There were many haystacks; it was almost impossible for the Russians to 
get their bearings and discover which were those that hid the advance of our 
sly companions. At the end of two hours, the trick had succeeded com¬ 
pletely. Most of our men had been able, under their novel camouflage, to 
reach the foot of the small ridges, a hundred meters from the enemy. Their 
machine guns began to blast the Red positions. 

Throughout the morning, our men carried out out their mission beyond 
all expectations, ceaselessly raking the Russians with fire, forcing them to 
concentrate their forces at the neck, while along the hillside our tanks had 
moved forward several kilometers. 

The German infantry followed the tanks. We saw them slip along the 
northeast embankment, with the admirable caution of German units, so dif¬ 
ferent from the impetuousity of our Walloons, as spontaneous as young 
kids. After several hours, the thin green line of the Wehrmacht extended far 



68 


CAMPAIGN IN RUSSIA 


into the area the Russians held. The Russians’ situation at Yablenskaya 
seemed desperate. 


* # * # * 

They defended themselves with marvelous courage. Our machine guns 
battered their defenses. The German artillery poured hundreds of shells on 
them, with incredible precision, hitting the enemy bunkers dead center. We 
saw the shelters blow up and the isbas collapse. The Russians constantly 
came back, dug themselves into the ruins, reorganized their positions. A 
Soviet battery rushed forward from a village located three kilometers 
behind the lines. The German artillery found the range of their guns and 
caissons, which they pulverized on the road. In spite of that obstacle, Rus¬ 
sian reinforcements came up constantly. 

Then the German Stukas intervened. 

During the winter battles, we had only rarely been supported by the 
Reich’s air power. It appeared only in desperate situations, only a few 
planes at a time. 

Now, in the sparkling sky, more than 60 Stukas wheeled above our heads! 
Sixty-four, to be exact, for our sector alone! It was grand. The whole sky 
sang with man-made power. The planes glided one behind the other, then 
swooped down like lead weights, sirens wailing. They pulled up at the last 
second, as a tremendous column of earth, men, and smashed roofs rose ten 
meters in the air. They came back, in impeccable order, turned magnificent¬ 
ly, and once more began their dive. 

With heroic tenacity, the Russians leaped from their ruins as soon as the 
Stukas had pulled away. Hunkering down, they curled up in new holes and 
resumed their fire. 


* # * # * 

Their incredible resistance ended at three o’clock that afternoon. 

The tanks, followed by the infantry, came down the slopes behind the 
town of Yablenskaya. Our soldiers then leapt from their haystacks,loath to 
accord anyone else the honor of entering the burning town first. They threw 
themselves across the river and rushed the last Russian positions. 

One of our companies, at the same time, surged down from our own posi¬ 
tions and seized a village across from Yablenskaya, on the other side of the 
water. 

The valley was open. 

It was necessary to allow the conquered enemy no respite. 

The fate of Yablenskaya must have spread terror in the Soviet rear 
echelons. The German command intended to profit from the situation at 
once. At eight o’clock in the evening, the second leap forward began. 



The Battle of Kharkov 


69 


Large, burning haystacks lit up the hills as we slipped through the Rus¬ 
sian mine fields. Thousands of men advanced in this way, crawling along, 
since the bright flames drew sharp silhouettes. From time to time a soldier 
hit a mine and was thrown in the air, torn to pieces. In the valley artillery 
teams would be blown up, four or six horses at a time, along with their can¬ 
non. But it was necessary to advance to a new line of heights, eight 
kilometers farther east, before dawn. 

By 4:00 A.M. we had reached our goal, where a dazzling surprise greeted 
us. The previous night the temperature had suddenly soared to over 40 
degrees above zero centigrade; in one night, hundreds of cherry trees had 
burst into bloom in the valley. It was through a marvelous sea of white, 
fresh flowers that several thousand of us plunged toward the enemy. 

Fifty Degrees 

The battle of Yablenskaya had been one component of the battle of 
Kharkov. All over the Donets pocket, the Soviet forces had been flushed 
out of hiding, overwhelmed, and pulverized, in exactly the same manner as 
in our sector. Everywhere the front, stabilized since the beginning of 
March, had been pierced by the tanks and Stukas. The fortifications of the 
Reds were, from then on, swamped under waves of attack. Where and how 
would the Soviets recoup their losses? 

In fact, they were in full retreat throughout the entire Donets basin. On 
18 May 1942, at the time of our morning thrust into the valley, we had only 
the rear guard and a few stragglers to confront. We followed hard on the 
heels of the enemy, dashing forward at full speed into the dusty steppe. 

An annihilating sun had risen, sending the temperature soaring yet 
higher. 

Marching briskly through a cloud of dust, three or four meters high, we 
passed hundreds of women and children in flight, peasant women in blue or 
red kerchiefs, bare-footed youngsters, cows dragging along their little calves 
so they wouldn’t scamper away. They had piled up their meager possessions 
on their light carts, one or two baskets of wheat, a wooden kneading- 
trough, their scarlet quilts, the bucket from the well. We winked at the pret¬ 
tiest girls. The crowd deduced from this that we weren’t cannibals, and it 
stopped. We sent it marching in the other direction again, toward the con¬ 
quered villages, while the small calves snorted comically at the ends of their 
mother’s tails. 

We crossed twenty kilometers at full speed, covered with dust, licking lips 
that stood out, all red, on our black faces. 

A cloud even higher than ours rose above the road. It was the cavalry, 
just as in the wars of the past! One of the Soviets’ magnificent Cossack divi¬ 
sions was in full flight, and now the German cavalry streamed past us at a 
gallop, leading the chase. 



70 


CAMPAIGN IN RUSSIA 


We halted in villages redolent with the perfume of these softly rustling 
spring days. We took Communion under the cherry trees, as the sun’s rays 
peeked playfully through a million fragile blossoms. The temperature rose 
to 55 degrees. That February we had experienced temperatures down to 42 
below in the same region, a range of nearly 100 degrees centigrade! All in 
the same uniform .. . 

The farmhouses gleamed beneath the budding leaves, resplendent with 
color: the grays and yellows of the thatch, the shutters in blue, green, or 
red, carved with doves and wildflowers. Pigs, pink and black, scampered 
through the yards. The women’s eyes shone, glad to fear no more, glad to 
see so many young men. 

After our arrival, we stripped down to our shorts and stretched out our 
pale bodies in the sun. The river was ice-cold, but we plunged in anyway, 
just for the thrill of it. We had conquered winter; now we surged with life! 
Backs offered to the radiant sun, drinking in its heat, we tanned ourselves 
and brimmed with a new vigor. Naked but for our shorts, we leaped on 
horses we had rounded up, exulting in our speed, our strength, and our 
youth, eyes blazing, masters of the steppe! 

In the shadowy gorges of the little valleys, the snow was still piled in white 
clumps, but the sky was blue, the vanes of the windmills turned, the 
warblers chirped, we ate the petals of the cherry blossoms. The enemy was 
in flight. 

We reached the forests. 

Along the trails numerous corpses were rotting away. The battle had been 
fierce at the edge of these strongly defended forests. Pieces of Mongols and 
Tatars lay about, half decomposed, with yellowish larvae swarming from 
every orifice. As we rode forward, we stumbled on an abandoned Soviet 
camp. 

The camp, carefully camouflaged under the trees, was remarkably laid 
out in passages lined with conical huts, like those of the Laplanders. The en¬ 
trances to these simple lairs were tiny. Inside the Reds slept under piles of 
dead leaves. The winter must have been far more bearable there than in our 
battered isbas, their windows blown out by the bursting shells. Accom¬ 
modations for the horses were ingeniously simple. It was nothing more nor 
less than the camp of a small Siberian tribe, men who knew much better 
than we did how to withstand the deadly winter. 

The struggle in Russia was one between barbarians and civilized men. The 
barbarian would bed down anywhere, would eat anything. The civilized 
man was constrained by his habits, by his need for comfort, by his ig¬ 
norance of nature. A pile of leaves is enough for a Tatar, a Samoyed, or a 
Mongol. But we others, we couldn’t do without the toothbrushes which 
took two months to reach us! 

The complicated trappings and the excess baggage of civilization would 
inevitably be beaten. And the man in the leaf piles, after having crossed 



The Battle of Kharkov 


71 


thousands of kilometers having won the battles of the savage over the man 
of refinement, would end up marching, shaggy, overjoyed, under the 
glorious quadriga on Unter den Linden. 2 

***** 

We set up our small green tents in a section of the forest where there were 
not so many dead bodies. 

The weather became chilly and rainy once again. We shivered under our 
soaked canvas. 

Because of the war the forest had resumed the appearance of a jungle. 
Numerous horses, escaping the perils of combat, had reverted to their 
natural state. They lived a wild existence, far from men and isbas, in the 
dark shadows. 

We lay in wait for them at the edge of the black ponds. Our men had 
changed into cowboys and brought off some very entertaining lasso tricks. 
They returned in triumph with prancing horses whose eyes flashed with 
pride and spirit. 

Sometimes they caught a mare. From our tents, we would see a little 
trembling muzzle through the foliage. It would be a handsome colt, perhaps 
eight days old, who was looking for his mother, still unsteady on his long 
legs. 

We adopted several of them. We never had to tie them up. They trotted 
and gamboled nicely along our line of march, their heads tossing, their eyes 
affectionate and unruly. When we stopped, they would stick their large 
necks under their mother’s stomachs, drink for a long time, then look at us 
mischievously, licking their lips, as if to say: “That was awfully good!” 

But the job of being cowboy was dangerous. Our forest stud farm still 
teemed with Soviet soldiers, hiding in the thickets. They had seen our riding 
school and stationed snipers near the ponds. Several men were killed or 
wounded, and we had to give up our new found vocation as tamers of wild 
horses. 


* * * * * 

It was our job to tame the Soviets. 

One night the march began again, over chalky paths, white and damp. 
The vise was closing tighter. The Bolshevik divisions, cornered at Poltava, 
had fallen back to the east, struggling, battering in vain against the iron 
defensive walls of the Wehrmacht. 

The German command feared a desperate thrust toward Izyum, on the 
Donets River, and had ordered us to take position athwart the projected line 
of Soviet attack. We were supplied with trucks so that we could move 
rapidly along the sector. 



72 


CAMPAIGN IN RUSSIA 


The Soviet troops were firmly surrounded, however. A few men tried to 
get through and were mowed down. Marshal Timoshenko’s divisions, 
almost annihilated, fell back one after the other. 

Across from us were two Cossack cavalry divisions. The Cossacks loved 
their mounts, high-strung little horses, ferret-eyed, half wild, with nostrils 
ever on the alert for the smells of the parched steppe. They hadn’t wanted 
their mounts to fall as booty to the conqueror, so they drove them by the 
thousands into a small valley, where each man killed his companion of the 
road; in the end there were more than 12,000 bodies of horses piled up one 
next to the other. 

The Cossacks came back alone. 

The stench of 12,000 rotting carcasses soon became such that we had to 
shun that abattoir thereafter. 

* * * * * 


The battle was over. 

The peasants returned to the fields, the beautiful, black, warm fields. 
They planted corn by hand, thrusting the seeds into the soil one by one. 
They sometimes stopped and launched into a chorus of passionate, quaver¬ 
ing, sad songs. 

New recruits had arrived from Belgium, hundreds of very young lads who 
regarded with curious and laughing eyes, these sunny villages, these vividly 
colored isbas, these robust, simple women and crying children. 

All the squalor of Russia was painted over by spring. 

We had combed the last Russian fugitives from the birch stands, when, 
one evening, in a torrential thunderstorm, we ascended the wooded bank of 
the Donets. 

The Banks of the Donets 

Russian thunderstorms are apocalyptic. 

The days of May and June are scorching. The entire country stifles in 
heat. But, after three days, the sky cracks, opens up and, in a quarter of an 
hour, transforms the fields and roads into ponds and black swamps. 

A large offensive cannot be carried out at times like that. In July, in 
August, in September, the thunderstorms are less frequent, occurring every 
three weeks or so. At that time one can rush ahead, at the risk of stopping 
temporarily when the downpour comes. 

The battle of Kharkov in May 1942 had been quick; the enemy had been 
thrown back to the valley of the Donets, from east of Kharkov to Izyum. 
On its new line it awaited the dry months. 

We advanced to the river at the end of May. We spent half the night free¬ 
ing ourselves from the mud on the road that led to the hills on the right 



The Battle of Kharkov 


73 


bank. The unit strayed in the water-flooded woods. Not one ammunition 
cart could follow; the feet of the animals became mired in cement-like mud. 

At about 1:00 A.M. we reached the top of the hills. From there we had to 
go back down to the steep banks of the Donets. To reach its positions, each 
company had to follow a little footpath in the forest which went up and 
down and back again, in a zig-zag pattern, for three kilometers. No one 
could see a thing; we were guided only by a telephone wire, a real Ariadne’s 
thread which ran through the shadows and which each one held on to for 
dear life. 


***** 

Our positions extended seven kilometers downstream from the town of 
Izyum, whose polished cupolas we saw glistening at the foot of the high, 
whitish cliffs. 

The left wing of our sector was camouflaged by wooded, very steep hills, 
crossed by firebreaks fifty meters wide. To cross the open terrain, con¬ 
tinually swept by Red fire, was almost impossible during the day. 

Our foxholes ran down to the gray-green river, which flowed carelessly 
between banks of white sand. The woods, the steep bank and the path that 
led there were strewn with overturned carts, propaganda leaflets, and bags 
of mail. 

The letters, folded into triangles, written clumsily in pencil, nearly all 
ended with pious advice and appeals for divine protection. 

The soldiers’ letters showed us—as did everything in European 
Russia—that, if the peasantry had suffered from communism, it had not in 
any way been influenced intellectually. Those simple and primitive farmers 
wrote exactly the same letters as in the time of the patriarchs and the czars, 
blessing their families, talking about their villages and their isbas. Not one 
letter-writer mentioned the name of Stalin. 

These unfortunates, driven in herds by the politruky, * did not even know 
why they were fighting and asked only to return to their homes. It was only 
the relentless domination of the secret police in Moscow and the brutal ter¬ 
rorism which its secret agents exercised at the front that kept the muzhiks in 
place, drowned them in rivers of semi-savage Asiatics, drove several 
millions of them to their deaths, and regimented and politically poisoned 
the survivors. 

Nevertheless, in 1942 the Russian peasants were still the peasants of 1912. 

***** 

The sand on the bank was strewn with the bodies of men and horses 
which were rotting in the sun. The horses lay on their sides, ribcages pro¬ 
truding through rotting, grayish hides. Foul rodents swarmed in and out of 



74 


CAMPAIGN IN RUSSIA 


dead soldiers’ guts. The blackened bodies sometimes moved, as if they were 
still alive. At night all the vermin danced a macabre sarabande. 

The Russians were lying in wait, a stone’s throw from us, on the other 
side of the water. The left bank of the Donets was flat, but covered with a 
thick forest. Russian heads appeared and disappeared. The least 
carelessness, among them or among us, would cost a life. A burst of fire 
would flame through the green leaves; a man would fall, face down. They 
would half open his jacket, streaked with blood already drying: too late. 

The river flowed majestically beneath the overhanging branches of the 
trees along the banks; the water shone, sparkled, a wonderful stream of 
clear and solemn life. 

The forest hummed with voracious insects. Although we had received 
some small green mosquito nets which covered our faces, the bugs stung us 
in spite of everything, trembling with greed. Each morning we were 
disfigured by dozens of swellings. 

Millions of pretty white flowers, wild strawberries, bloomed in the under¬ 
brush. Beyond the tall plants of the clearings slept innumerable little blue 
butterflies, very pale and soft in color. Spring thus lavished its beauty and 
its poetry, while at our feet the rapacious field mice rummaged about in the 
rotten entrails of the Soviet corpses. 

We had some noisy neighbors: the Rumanians. Their officers came to 
join us sometimes, wearing caps that looked like tarts. Nearly all of them 
spoke a sing-song and lisping French. 

Their soldiers produced an infernal din. There were more than 20,000 of 
them on our left wing. They fired their guns constantly. But we weren’t 
under attack! We scorned their incessant, careless fire. It merely provoked 
the Russians, bringing needless reaction. In a single night, the Rumanians 
used up as many cartridges as all the rest of the sector did in two weeks. This 
was no longer war. It was a nocturnal disturbance of the peace. 

The European legions ought to have been made up only of volunteers. 
Those who were, whether they were Norwegians, Swedes, Danes, Dutch, 
Swiss, Flemish, Walloons, French or Spaniards, fought magnificently, to 
the very last day. By contrast, involuntary participation brought disasters. 

Thousands of Rumanian soldiers were subverted by communist pro¬ 
paganda. It could be seen clearly at the time of the tragedy of Stalingrad. It 
was against them and against the Italians—who had also come without en¬ 
thusiasm—that Stalin very skillfully launched his attack in November 1942. 
He routed them as if he were bowling over toy soldiers. 

The Rumanian soldiers had unquestionably performed many exploits 
since June 1941. They had liberated Bessarabia and conquered Odessa. 
They had fought gloriously in the Crimea and in the Donets. But they had a 
savage nature and massacred their prisoners, thus bringing about reprisals 
in which everyone suffered. 

Their massacres were not only savage, they were stupid. 



The Battle of Kharkov 


75 


Many Russians asked only to surrender, disgusted as they were with com¬ 
munism, demoralized by a year of defeats. At night, from our little lookout 
posts, we would hear them moving aside the branches on the other side of 
the Donets. Holding our breaths, we would hear the splash of a body enter¬ 
ing the water. As the man drew near, we murmured: “ Suda! Suda!” 
(“Cornel Come!”). Nearly naked, the Russian would emerge from the 
water. Then we’d take him away to warm himself up. A cigarette, and he 
regained the happy eyes of a good animal soothed. One hour later, he would 
tell us in detail everything that was taking place on the other side. He would 
leave with a supply train for the rear then, delighted at having seen the end 
of the war and of Bolshevism! 

One night we fished out a young man who, in order to approach us more 
easily, had kept only his shorts. He held in his teeth one of the safe conduct 
passes which German planes dropped on the Red sector. Those little passes 
guaranteed the deserter’s life, tempting the muzhiks and resulting in 
thousands of desertions. 

The deserter that night had a lively face, with eyes that sparkled, but we 
couldn’t succeed in making ourselves understood by him. Each of us had 
used the four words of Russian that he knew. Nothing 
worked. Finally, out of patience, one of our men spat out a resounding, 
“Merde!” 

“Ah, well then, you are French, you people?” exclaimed the Russian, in 
a matchless Parisian accent. 

He was in interpreter from the Intourist Agency! He had lived in Mont¬ 
martre for several years. The expletive “Merde!” had suddenly brought 
him to the heights of lyricism! His delight was boundless. He had had it up 
to here with Soviet poverty. He told us a thousand priceless stories about 
our opponents. We gave him a shirt and a pair of hobnailed boots. Whistl¬ 
ing to himself, he in turn left, carrying the cooks’ empty kettles, in the direc¬ 
tion of the general’s command post. 

***** 

Unfortunately, the Rumanians, in spite of our pleading, continued to 
massacre all the Russians who presented themselves at their posts. The poor 
devils who splashed about in the water, arms raised, were mowed down 
before they set foot on the bank; or, if they succeeded in getting through the 
bursts of gunfire, they were shot in the morning, amidst great gales of 
laughter. The Danubian assassins threw the bullet-riddled bodies back into 
the water, on which they floated mournfully down the Donets. 

The Russians, squatting behind their branches, could see this macabre 
flotsam go by. After several days, they lost any taste for crossing the river. 
They became enraged, embittered, eager for revenge. We were going spend 
some busy weeks. 



76 


CAMPAIGN IN RUSSIA 


Blood and Traps 

The forest positions we occupied in June 1942 were relatively well 
camouflaged. There were ways of moving under the cover of the trees if you 
were careful. Nevertheless, the bullets whizzed by at random, crashing into 
an oak or drilling the back of an unfortunate soldier seated, for a moment, 
at the entrance to a shelter. 

On the other hand, the closer our positions came to the town of Izyum, 
the barer was the terrain. Then the front spread out widely, for a kilometer, 
across marshes dried and cracking in the sun. Only a few clumps of filthy 
rushes populated these dismal low lands. 

Our platoon of engineers set up in the center of this muddy lagoon, 
building positions in depth, from which our machine guns commanded the 
course of the Donets. These boys, covered with muck, dried by the heat, 
had become as black as moles. They were devoured by swarms of insects. 

It was virtually impossible to approach their small forts during the day. I 
succeeded in doing it, one day at noon, only by running a mad race under 
the Russians* noses. I did it only to give confidence to our couriers. But the 
fire was so infernal that no one else dared trying it. We could only maintain 
liaison at night, after dark. Then several volunteers, loaded with sacks of 
bread, would venture out to the positions in the swamps. The positions were 
continually raked by bursts of fire, and constantly lit up by flares. 

Some men crumpled to their knees. The dry bread was often soaked with 
the blood of a courier they carried back, sallow, his eyes haggard, clutching 
his stomach. 


* * * * # 

To the south of the belt formed by the marshes and the hazle trees there 
was some unused pasture land, then cultivated fields and a village. 

At night our scouts would make their way from the edge of the hamlet to 
the river. They would withdraw just before dawn. It was then necessary, for 
fifteen hours, discreetly to play dead. To cross twenty meters, from one isba 
to another, was to throw away your life. 

The scouts reached the town by crossing a long slope, extraordinarily 
bare. 

Despite the fighting, the peasant women continued to work the soil. Be¬ 
tween the Donets and the small market town, which is to say between the 
enemy and us, stretched two hundred meters of rich fields, bountifully fer¬ 
tile. The Ukrainians did not want to lose their harvest. We let them go to 
their lands and to their homes. The Reds tolerated, as we did, the humble 
labor of the village. 

Between two lines of machine guns, fifty women busied themselves in the 
black fields. They were a distraction for the troops. A beautiful tall girl 



The Battle of Kharkov 


77 


bending over and rising again is always a charming spectacle. We followed 
the movement of their hips, we heard their voices singing, inwardly rejoic¬ 
ing, but with our fingers on the trigger. 

In the evenings, darkness fell at 9:00 P.M. It was necessary to protect 
oneself from the last rays which outlined the silhouettes on the hillside. At 
10:00, our men would sneak out to the forward posts on the river bank. The 
trenches leading to the forward posts passed below some open sheds and 
zig-zagged through the rich fields. At the end, it was necessary to crawl for 
several dozen meters. 

The Russians used various means to illuminate the area. They riddled the 
sky with rockets, a delightful fireworks display. They could not launch 
rockets every thirty seconds all along the sector, so they adopted a much 
simpler system. They fired incendiary bullets at two or three isbas until they 
burst into flames. Then the village burned until morning, like a mirror. 

Those torches completely lit up the warm, clear nights. In order to move, 
we had to drag ourselves slowly along the fences, making long pauses while 
the bullets slapped the boards above our heads or threw clumps of dirt into 
our faces. 

Our soldiers were posted near the Donets embankment, two or three men 
at a time, a hundred meters beyond the burning huts. They were at the mer¬ 
cy of surprise attacks and sometimes they were cut off. Then I would go 
from foxhole to foxhole to say hello. Slipping up to the edge of the water, 
I’d listen for a long time to the slightest sounds from the other bank. Often I 
heard Russians talking quietly, twenty meters away, unaware that someone, 
stretched out on the sand, lay in wait for them. 

***** 

One evening a chaplain came at ten o’clock to say Mass at our command 
post. 

That was fine. The telephone men, the cook, and the couriers were 
delighted. They were not the ones who had the most need of consolation, 
however. I suggested to the good father that he follow me to the forward 
posts. 

He spent the night dragging himself on his stomach through the plowed 
fields. The bullets which snapped all around us affected him terribly. He 
tried to burrow into the ground. I had to come back to him. 

“Chaplain, do you or do you not believe in heaven?” 

“Yes . . .” 

“Then, what worries you so much about going there?” 

The fine man had to reaffirm his passion for celestial voyages and then 
set out once more, crawling right behind me. 

Rockets danced above our heads. We had to hit the dirt. The bullets 
kicked up clumps of soil. We finally arrived at our lookouts’ little foxholes. 



78 


CAMPAIGN IN RUSSIA 


I took over the machine gun from our comrades, who then went to confes¬ 
sion and took communion behind me. I tried not to hear anything when 
their grave sins emerged. Then we departed for another trench, another fox¬ 
hole, another filthy head, secretly transfigured by the little white Host 
which was elevated, for a moment, several dozen meters from the 
Bolsheviks. 

The unfortunate chaplain could do no more, because of fatigue and emo¬ 
tion. We were nearly mowed down ten times. At 2:00 A.M. I led him back 
to the top of the slope. The weather was lovely and the day was already 
beginning to brighten. The priest cleaned himself off, and paid his thanks 
effusively to heaven: “Deo gratias! Deo gratias!” he repeated, tirelessly. 

The saints who were on duty at night must have smiled sweetly from on 
high, at the lookout posts of heaven. 

* * * * * 

Twice, patrols of volunteers left our foxholes at night, crossed the Donets 
and, loaded with explosives, penetrated several kilometers behind the Rus¬ 
sian bunkers to mine the railway which brought in their supplies. 

We guessed that the Russians made identical excursions among us. 

Our posts watched without respite. They were too far apart, so the enemy 
could slip between them. One night I received proof of that. 

I had become the ordinance officer and had to maintain liaison between 
units. It was one in the morning. I was trying, with one of my men, to reach 
the southern extremity of our sector. We had to cross nearly two kilometers 
of clearings and bare hillocks separated by a little valley and a grove of 
trees. The Reds fired rocket after rocket. As one rocket finished burning, I 
told my companion: “Wait here. I’m going to run to the trees. If I make it, 
follow me at full speed.” 

Leaping out, I ran like the wind to the woods. 

No sooner than I was at the wood when I cried out involuntarily. Then, 
throwing myself to the ground, I rolled 30 meters to the other side of the 
hillock. I had sensed a human presence at the very edge of the leafy 
blackness. Every fiber of my being told me, assured me that I had been 
within inches of the enemy. 

I rejoined my comrade again after a long detour. Although I recounted 
the incident to the staff, they didn’t believe me. I was certain, however; I’d 
sensed those spies with all my “electricity,” more surely than if I had seen 
or touched them. Two days later, I was to be proved correct, in tragic 
fashion. 

On that night, a patrol of four men from the 1st Company made an iden¬ 
tical contact while coming from the other direction. Our men had 
unavoidably to pass by the grove. At the moment they reached it, a dozen 
Reds fired on them from ambush. One of our soldiers, whom the Russians 



The Battle of Kharkov 


79 


had grabbed by the hair, succeeded in escaping, but he wrenched himself 
from the hands which held him with such force that he was horribly scalped. 
He ran like a madman, falling in front of one of our posts, where he lay 
motionless, his skull and face sticky with blood. The others, caught in the 
trap, fought in vain. The Reds dragged them to the Donets. 

We heard their cries as they struggled and yelled in the water. But the 
Bolsheviks were three or four times more numerous and they wrestled our 
comrades to the far bank. 

From the Soviet-held woods across the river, our unfortunate comrades 
still cried out. They must have been beaten terribly, but they continued to 
call for help. 

Then the voices grew fainter, and at last died out. 

A small tragedy, among the many others, from one night on the front. 
Soon the silent Donets, its gleaming waters troubled for only an instant, 
streamed silently past once more. 

Toward Asia 

May 1942 had seen the battle of Donets-Kharkov unfold and witnessed 
the annihilation of the forces of Marshal Timoshenko. 

In June 1942, the second great blow of the battering ram which was to 
break the Russian front in two, was struck; the German armies swooped 
down on the city of Voronezh, seized it, crossed the Don, and established a 
bridgehead on the left bank of the river. 

Nearer to us, the Donets were likewise crossed and Kupyansk reached. 
Our front advanced to the other side of the water. Izyum was surrounded 
after a two days’ march across the deep and burning sands. The bases for 
launching the great autu m n offensive were ready. 

The divisions which were to advance across the steppe were sent back to 
the rear areas to enjoy several days of rest (the only week of rest we were 
ever to experience on the eastern front). A brief march led us to our vaca¬ 
tion village, some thirty kilometers to the northwest of Slavyansk. 

)|c ft ft ft ft 

Our relaxation was total. We quite properly had an official ceremony for 
the awarding of Iron Crosses to the heroes of the battles in the Donets. 5 
General Rupp himself came to pin on the decorations. He commanded a 
celebrated division of rangers, the 97th, made up of Tirolians, among 
whom we were to spend some unforgettable months. 

A marvelous reprovision was distributed to us, in great profusion. The 
musicians of the division diverted us with band concerts in the mornings, 
while each evening commodious buses took our men to the movies. 

The village was wealthy, the peasants peaceful, the sky golden. The 



80 


CAMPAIGN IN RUSSIA 


steppe was decked out in dazzling colors. As the women laid out the wheat 
in swaths, the air hummed with the laborious song of millions of bees. 
Above us, rapturous larks sang. 

Keyed-up at the thought of the coming offensive, we breathed deeply of 
the steppe, like the mounts of the Cossacks. I myself had received a gigantic 
brown and white horse, almost unapproachable. Sure of the future, I called 
him Caucasus. He would accompany me there, that brave beast, and die 
there, riddled with twenty bullets, during the battle of Tjerjakov. 

The news of the war was electrifying. 

Marshal Rommel had swept 25,000 Englishmen into his net at the Libyan 
port of Tobruk. His tanks had cleared the shores of Libya, penetrating 
Egypt as far as El Alamein. We waited, crouched by our field radios, for the 
bulletin which would herald the fall of Alexandria. 

Nearer to us, the German noose was tightening around Sevastopol. The 
last Soviet port in the Crimea saw its enormous fortifications annihilated, 
one by one, by the air power and the heavy artillery of the Reich. 

Finally the city fell. The same evening, the sky flashed with hundreds of 
lights, while the whole region trembled with the roar of motors; a fabulous 
aerial flotilla, returning from Sevastopol, had landed in our sector. 

Goering’s Stukas were here. The offensive was imminent. 

* * * * * 

Secret orders informed our commander that the offensive would begin on 
9 July. 

We didn’t have to wait that long because a surprise accelerated the opera¬ 
tion. On the night of 6-7 July, German patrols in the Slavyansk sector, 
scouting out the Soviet lines, were astonished by the lack of activity which 
reigned there. They risked crawling farther forward. Silence was always 
very strange. One man spied out a bunker: it was empty. The entire line was 
empty! Stealing silently away, the Russians had vanished! 

The Reds had to be pursued, caught, engaged, and defeated at all costs. 
Otherwise they could set a trap. 

The order to go over to the attack was immediately communicated to all 
divisions. On the evening of 7 July 1942 the Wallonian Legion moved off 
with the entire army of the southeast front. It would stop again only at the 
threshold of Asia, before Mount Elbrus. 



Chapter Four 

TO THE CAUCASUS 
ON FOOT 


The months of the summer offensive of 1942 were the most exciting 
months of the anti-Soviet war. 

The South! Its dazzling fruits, its semi-tropical vegetation, its African 
sun, its great sparkling rivers! 

Each one of us believed that victory lay at the end of that miraculous 
cavalcade. The Soviets had not even risen to the challenge. They were flee¬ 
ing. At a mad pace, hundreds of thousands of men rushed off in pursuit of 
them. 

By the morning of 8 July, our legion had passed Slavyansk and had 
reached, to the east of that city, a park where gigantic plane trees over¬ 
shadowed the large ruined buildings, formerly sumptuous, of the old im¬ 
perial palaces, in the salons of which the horses killed by the Bolsheviks lay 
about among heaps of dried horse manure. 

The Donets had already been reached to the southeast of Slavyansk and 
the German engineers were busying themselves installing tow lines and fer¬ 
ries. 

The next day we scaled the ridges on the right bank of the river, from 
which the Russians had been able to bar our passage. Their bunkers had 
been cut into the white chalk hills, the raw color of which dazzled the eyes. 
The positions were well constructed, commanding all the avenues of access, 
and were surrounded with dense networks of barbed wire. 

The Reds had not even taken their equipment. They had not blown up a 
single shelter. They had decamped in total mystery. 

At nightfall we descended to the bank of the Donets, but other units took 
priority in crossing. 


***** 

We waited patiently for two days and two nights. The munitions convoys 
for the armored columns, sent as an advance guard, went first. 



82 


CAMPAIGN IN RUSSIA 


The ferries were formed by linking together a half-dozen rubber boats on 
which planks had been fitted. Cables ran from one bank to the other and 
were used to haul the barges. 

It was amusing to watch. Panic-stricken horses and mules would often 
fall between the small boats. Then the towlines had to be cut, since the 
beasts, eyes rolling, would thrash wildly. Once freed, the animals would 
swim to the opposite bank, arriving before the boats, snorting, eyes flashing 
with triumph. 

The sandy cliffs on the other side of the Donets made landing very dif¬ 
ficult. Tractors were needed to pull the vehicles to the top of the ridge. 

We pitched our little tents on the grass and philosophically waited our 
turn, while angling for fish with iridescent scales which rose unwisely to the 
surface. 

At the end of two days, however, we became worried, because our divi¬ 
sion had had the chance to take the principal route, several kilometers 
above the Donets. Time passed. I went to prepare the quarters on the other 
bank, seven kilometers from the ferries. I was horrified. The trail had com¬ 
pletely disappeared! Hundreds of tanks, trucks, and carts had churned up 
the burning sand, up to half a meter or a meter in depth. The tank on which 
I rode took several hours to advance: bogging down, then laboriously work¬ 
ing free, just to cover a short distance. The sand was so fine that, even on 
foot, you sank to your knees in it. 

We were dragging heavily loaded wagons and numerous small iron carts, 
with very low wheels attached to the sides, on which the heavy machine guns 
and the ammo boxes had been fitted. 

I took care of the billeting, then waited at the edge of a village, at a fork 
in the road. I stayed on file lookout for exactly fifty-one hours, dead tired. I 
ended up believing that the battalion had lost its way or had taken another 
direction. But no; at the end of fifty-one hours, the first carts appeared. It 
had taken more than two days and two nights to push the vehicles through 
the sand, after carrying all the ammunition by hand, box by box, a 
kilometer. 

We finally regained the main road, covering twenty kilometers in a fan¬ 
tastic cloud of dust, threading our way through thousands of trucks, gas 
tankers, sections of pontoon-bridges, and wagons of all kinds. When, worn 
out, sticky with sweat, we finally stopped, in the afternoon, we found out 
that we were three days behind. 

At six o’clock in the evening, we started off again. 

***** 

For two weeks we chased after the division. 

We marched by night across an undulating steppe clothed with meter- 
high blue flowers, as white as camellias in the moonlight. Then we reached 



To the Caucasus on Foot 


83 


several small rivers flowing through blasted isbas. The Russians had blown 
up the bridges, so for several kilometers we had to follow the chalky river 
valleys, through the mud of which men and horses danced an exhausting 
waltz. 

Then we plunged into the sands again. The main route was often blocked. 
We often had to make detours on paths that were scarcely marked out, in¬ 
tended only for the high-wheeled and very light carts of the Russian 
peasants. 

We did not go into the isbas, unpleasant stuffy places buzzing with flies. 
We slept on the small terraces of hard-packed soil, curled up in blankets. 

Soon we marched every night, taking a rest only in the middle of the day, 
since the sun then reached 55 degrees centigrade. We’d stretch out under a 
tree at the entrance to the farms, our heads in mosquito netting, our hands 
in our pockets, surrounded with cheeping baby chickens. 

$ $ $ $ $ 

We passed long rows of worker housing, sinister blocks of apartment- 
barracks, and Party headquarters strewn with official papers and broken 
busts of the grandees of the regime. 

According to their customary tactic, the Bolsheviks had demolished or 
put out of commission all industrial installations. And, what especially 
amazed us, those plunderers had destroyed everything some time before. 
The railway tracks had been cut every eight or ten meters. From all the 
evidence, the Soviets had undertaken this colossal sabotage well before the 
German thrust toward Voronezh. 

The most spectacular destructions were the fires in the coal fields. Enor¬ 
mous deposits of coal and slag heaps thirty or forty meters high burned for 
days, a dark red, with deep blue and black reflections. Beneath the sun the 
fires generated a stunning heat. 

It was impossible to stay away from them, since all of the area around the 
roads of sand had been mined by the enemy; numerous broken harnesses, 
and the monstrous carcasses of horses, gray-green, crawling with larvae, 
gave ample indication that the least carelessness would bring death. Our 
horses, in sand up to their hooves, floundered, struggled, snorted. Certain 
of them, whipped in vain, died standing upright, their coats smoking, eyes 
bulging from their heads. 

It had been in vain for us to sweat blood and water, to sleep scarcely or 
not at all, to cross the steppe by moonlight, to pass like a whirlwind through 
the burning industrial basins, the chalky rivers and fords! We had covered 
hundreds of kilometers, left the Ukraine and entered the great bend of the 
Don, just across from Stalingrad. Our infantry division was always gallop¬ 
ing faster then we were! We were now five days’ march behind! 

Two messages reached us simultaneously: first, the division was branch- 



84 


CAMPAIGN IN RUSSIA 


ing off to the southwest in order to participate in the final attack on Rostov; 
secondly, if we did not rejoin it in a very short time, it was going to ask the 
army corps to be relieved of our dead weight! We clung to that division 
because it was famous and because we wanted glory. We made some wild 
dashes and arrived once more at the Donets, an imposing Donets, just 
about to rejoin the Don, at Kamensk. 

There still remained 70 kilometers to cover in order to reach the 97th 
Division. We covered it in a single day’s march. 

But Rostov had just fallen that very day. The 97th received the order to 
go back immediately up the course of the Don. We scarcely had time to 
shave. We were already leaving again, snatched up once more by the burn¬ 
ing steppe. 

The Crossing of the Don 

The triumphal march of the armies of the Reich toward Stalingrad and 
toward the Caucasus was at the cost of superhuman fatigue, but evoked an 
optimism as blazing as the firmament. 

The lands between the Donets and the Don, between the Don and Kuban, 
unfurled such splendors that from dawn our spirits sang before the green 
and orange east. We would cross thirty or thirty-five kilometers on foot 
during the night. The marches were exhausting because we were moving for¬ 
ward in loose sand or on winding roads, two or three columns abreast, 
which constantly risked bumping up against one another. The advance was 
at the tempo of a bicycle race. The darkness couldn’t prevent these 
thousands of men from converging at narrow bridges, thrown up in haste. 
We fell into holes. Our carts tipped over. Sometimes a truck or a tank 
would sweep up a horse which was crushed while neighing desperately. 

But the dawn made up for everything else. 

At about 1:30 in the morning, a few pale green and pale gold rays, as 
delicate as silk, appeared in the east. They rose in the sky, overran it, ex¬ 
panded, becoming fabulous sheets of green, orange, rose, vivid and 
marvelously delicate. 

We witnessed the awakening of fantastic fields of sunflowers. These giant 
daisies, two meters high, had golden petals as long as the fingers of your 
hand and a brown center swollen with several thousand seeds. The same 
field would extend for kilometers; millions of heads rose toward the rising 
sun, turning at the same time it did, as if drawn upward by its strength. We 
felt our bodies seized by that elementary power which linked the soil, the 
sky, and the great efflorescence. The sky was nothing but a golden field. 
The earth was nothing but a golden field. Everything was life, strength, 
splendor, grandeur. With our collars open, breathing in those emanations, 
we hurled our youthful songs, bursting with dreams, toward the sun! 

Sometimes the boundless sunflowers gave way to boundless thistles; 



To the Caucasus on Foot 


85 


thistles to knock your eyes out, not at all our ridiculous little thistles which 
stain and sting, but thistles adorned like prickly pears, as tall as the ponies 
of the steppe, crowned, brimming with pink or violet flowers, the sweet and 
fragile plumes of which wound almost to the ground. 

Crossing the sunflowers, the thistles, the com, as straight and strong as 
lances, we arrived, at about 9:00 A.M., in a village that had glistened for a 
long time before our eyes and where our infantrymen scattered, overwhelm¬ 
ed by the sun. 

The villages of the Don were wealthy. The isbas, more comfortable than 
those in the Donets, included up to three or four poorly furnished rooms, 
sometimes brightened up by a dresser, a sauce-boat, a kneading-trough or 
an old cupboard, magnificently carved. 

Each farm had some hens, a few cattle, and a good ration of wheat, all 
reclaimed from the kolkhoz, whose despotic, ramshackle offices, surround¬ 
ed by plows, haymakers, threshers, and sowing machines, dominated each 
small market town. The peasants had taken revenge on the regime, had 
emptied the cowbams and the sheds; the piglets of the state-owned sows, set 
free, gamboled and frisked in all directions, delighted with this unforeseen 
holiday; everywhere geese honked and young turkeys gobbled. 

The natives received us with obvious joy. Often we were the first troops 
to enter their hamlet. The good people immediately went to the out¬ 
buildings, removed their icons from their former hiding places, and hung 
them once more on their dried mud walls, tears streaming down their faces. 

The greatest gift that one could confer on them was to give them a por¬ 
trait of Hitler. Often they would hang it next to their icons. They would 
even put it between the photos of their boys, dressed in the uniform of the 
Soviet army, red stars on their caps! 

Such photographic fraternization appeared perfectly natural to them. 
They loved their boys very much. They loved Hitler very much for having 
liberated their village. They combined the two. 

Very strict orders had been given that the troops be friendly with the 
population. In 1941, the Germans had believed that they would find every 
Russian to be a Bolshevik. Experience had taught them that the muzhiks, if 
they had been plundered and held for ransom by the Soviets, had not been 
contaminated by them. 

These were the most peaceful people in the world, friendly, very accom¬ 
modating, asking only to work, to live as a family, to be of service. Ger¬ 
mans in high places had finally made a distinction between the peasant 
masses of European Russia, so simple and naive, and the Bolshevik 
mafiosos and police of Moscow. The least abuse of them was stopped im¬ 
mediately; the old pan * and the old mamka* were friends of the troops. 

It was pointless to ask the peasants for anything at all. They led us to the 
henhouses. They would offer us generous amounts of their chickens, their 
potatoes, and their fat geese. They had a thick honey, rich with the strong. 



86 


CAMPAIGN IN RUSSIA 


wild perfumes of the giant flowers on the neighboring steppe. As avid for 
delicacies as gourmets, we whiled away hours in the cherry orchards, gorg¬ 
ing on heart cherries, morellos, and white heart cherries which ran with 
crimson juice. 

We slept for several hours; the sun restored our lost energy. The old 
mamka brought a large stoneware jug full of milk as fresh as spring water. 
Leading us to the threshold of her riches, a storehold, ten meters from the 
isba, she unlatched the trap door. Through the opening we went down a lad¬ 
der into a magnificently cold cellar, a real well where everything perishable 
kept as well as in a refrigerator. 

The stove was located near the door, so that the isba, with its small closed 
windows and its low roof, could stay cool. We ate outdoors under the 
shelter of the poplars or the acacia trees, encouraged by the peasant woman, 
who came back to us ten times, her arms loaded, and helped us truss up and 
brown the poultry. 

Our soldiers, after the wearying night marches, recovered their strength 
with Breughel-like gusto. They were not for nothing the men of the land of 
kermesses. They were able to eat and drink prodigious amounts of food. I 
knew one who, when he arrived at the hamlet, regularly ate for breakfast a 
kilo of fried bacon. I saw two others gulp down a mere 21 chickens, from 
gizzard to tail feathers in three days. Many would devour a whole goose, 
just in case, at 9:00 in the morning. One of my young officers filled his belly 
one morning, before my very eyes, with thirty fried eggs. 

They washed down these morning hunger chasers with a pitcher of milk, 
then slept, replete and unbuttoned, as in the old Flemish paintings. 

At dusk, before we left, our hosts gave us several enormous pans of 
sauteed potatoes, bundles of large radishes, and baskets of vegetables. 

The peasants accompanied us to the road out of the village, as impressed 
by our appetite as by our kindness. 

During our entire offensive, we did not have a single untoward incident. 
We were received as part of the family. Not knowing how to say good-bye 
to us, those good people often blessed us. Protected by the blessings from 
their pure hearts, we set out again, happy, across the great fields of 
sunflowers. 

* * * * * 

Marching at top speed, we sometimes caught up with units of fleeing 
Reds. The battles were short. 

The advance was carried out at such a pace that it was quite impossible to 
bury the remains of the enemy dead after each rout. The roads were littered 
with loathsome corpses. In the 50 °C heat the soldiers mowed down in front 
of us by the Stukas rotted and liquified in two or three days. Then the sun 
began to bake them. The dead horses gave off a dreadful smell. It was 



To the Caucasus on Foot 


87 


necessary to hold your nose for a hundred meters before you got to them. 
Each stomach was a monstrous balloon, often burst. Streams of greenish 
larvae swarmed in and out. The dead Bolsheviks shone blacker than 
Negroes as they putrefied. 

Thousands, tens of thousands of Soviet soldiers surrendered. They could 
do no more. To tell the truth, we carried out the offensive much more with 
our feet than with our rifles. Many of our men, their feet sore, fell out. That 
hardly mattered. They would catch up to us later. The Soviet soldiers just 
let themselves be captured. They sat there by the thousands, sucking their 
bare and bloody toes. 

Most of them were Asiatics. They had the good large heads of cannibals, 
delighted not to be eaten in their turn. They repeated tirelessly: “Stalin 
kaput! Stalin kaput!,” stopping their monologue only to suck the swollen 
corns on their feet. 

We hadn’t the time either to guard or to escort such a caravan. Choosing 
the two most wide-awake fellows from the column, we gave them a rifle. 
Appointed to guard their comrades, they immediately threw out their 
chests. We pointed out to them the name of a town a hundred or two hun¬ 
dred kilometers to the west. Delighted, the simpletons set off, chattering. 

The problem was solved. They were heading for Germany all by 
themselves! 

We were about to cross the Don River. Some days before, we had tried to 
cross, but the access had been blocked, for a distance of two kilometers, by 
such a tangle of materiel and Soviet corpses battered by the Luftwaffe that 
the division couldn’t get its vehicles and equipment across. 

Approaching the legendary river at about two in the morning, we scaled a 
hill on the right bank, at the very moment when dawn was breaking over the 
vast gray-green stream. 

Standing in my stirrups, I filled my eyes with an imposing view. The road 
was strewn with hundreds of Soviet tanks of American manufacture, over¬ 
turned wagons, abandoned equipment. But I had eyes only for the Don, 
vast, tree-lined, glistening beneath the great green, pink, and silver curtains 
which billowed in the sky. 

The Don, like all the great rivers of southern Russia, had a steep right 
bank, while the left bank was almost at water level. When the Reds were 
driven into a valley on the far side, it was impossible to resist whoever held 
the high ground on the right. The left bank of the Don was therefore at our 
mercy. 

Russian planes dropped their bomb-loads into the red-soiled ravine by 
which we made our descent, but inflicted little damage. The burnished ten¬ 
drils of the first vineyards shone amid the ruins of the isbas. Doffing his 
clothes, our commanding general became the first to swim the Don, a sub¬ 
machine gun on his back. We crossed over a hastily constructed pontoon 
bridge. Our hearts were soaring. 



88 


CAMPAIGN IN RUSSIA 


We were now approaching the land of the Kalmuks. A solitary camel 
came up to the road, droll, his nose huge and wet, his hide as shabby look¬ 
ing as the leather of an old armchair. 

We adopted him. He smelled already of the Asia toward which we 
hurried. 

Kuban 

The first week of August of 1942 saw the armies of the Reich fanning out 
from the Don toward the Caucasus. A dazzling sun beat down. The villages, 
several kilometers away, seemed one great smoking torch; you would have 
thought the whole region were ablaze. But the dark columns were only dust, 
stirred up by our advancing armor. 

Our faces were gray-black masks, on which the whites of our eyes shone 
strangely, and which were crossed by our large pink lips. It was impossible 
to escape this “make-up”: the dust rose several meters above our heads. 
Our motorcyclists looked like something out of a comedy film, their faces 
completely painted, as they roared out of clouds of dust bringing new maps. 
Our advance was so rapid that we needed new maps each day. Indeed, 
special trucks had been attached to our column to print maps as quickly as 
the offensive unrolled. 

The smallest details were provided for with superb dispatch. 

Each unit had its objectives, its villages to march through, its resting 
places to settle down in. Towns and hamlets fell by the thousands without 
the enemy being able to establish a single focus of resistance in our rear. We 
had only to pass through the towns, and whatever opposition remained was 
winkled out methodically, without a hitch or an oversight. 

Our losses were insignificant. The thousands of Red soldiers whom we 
passed by were dead tired from having run for a thousand kilometers and 
from having swallowed so many kilos of dust. For a glass of water, they 
would willingly have turned over Stalin, Kalinin, Molotov and ten other 
lords of equally high lineage. 

The most serious problem was, in fact, that of drinking water. 

We would advance for ten or twenty kilometers without finding a liter of 
drinkable water. A few green pools stagnated in the sun. To lap up that foul 
mud, our men would throw themselves flat on their stomachs. We would 
lose our tempers and violently shove the drinkers aside The horses’ long 
tongues hung down and quivered. 

Our column alone consisted of more than 20,000 men. Every ten 
kilometers or so, the road passed through a village. There would be a well, 
or several wells, intended to supply water for the residents and the livestock 
of several dozen isbas. The vanguard of the column soon drank all the 
water. After a while the men had nothing more than mud to quarrel over. 
Behind them, thousands of infantrymen and hundreds of horses found that 
the wells had been drained to the last drop. 



To the Caucasus on Foot 


89 


Here and there a mill drew up water in abundance. But everyone had to 
wait his turn for five hours, for eight hours, ten hours, his tongue swollen at 
the bottom of his throat. The animals consumed fabulous quantities of 
water. My horse Caucasus gulped down five large bucketfuls alone, or forty 
liters without a pause! The men filled themselves up like goatskin bottles, 
and sprinkled their necks, arms and backs, so scorched were they by the 
sun. 

That did no good. The best thing was to drink very little and to be con¬ 
tented with here and there shaking a cherry tree. 

The search for water took us more time than covering the kilometers did. 

***** 

One night we arrived at the Manich, near the land of the Kalmuks, a river 
which forms a string of marvelous lakes, halfway between the Sea of Azov 
and the Caspian Sea. 

Our line of march crossed a great dam built to hold back the waters of 
one of the lakes. The Reds had dynamited it, and water poured through a 
twenty-meter-wide breach across which the German engineers had built a 
wooden footbridge for the infantry and the horses. The heavy equipment 
had to go across by motor boat. 

We spent several hours in front of the dike, waiting our turn. The lake 
was studded with a marvelous field of daisies sown by the moon on the little 
waves. A few Soviet planes tried to break our makeshift bridge, but their 
bombs served only to set fire to the nearby isbas. The burning huts lit red 
and orange torches in the night, which added their pathetic splendor to the 
poetry of the flowered lake and the starry sky. 

Daybreak was at 2:00 A.M. The green sky was reflected by the country¬ 
side, flooded as far as the eye could see by the waters that had 
gushed forth from the dam. The waters bore the pale color of the dawn, a 
fresh aquamarine, laced with gleams of light gold, nearly translucent. 

Who could have dwelt, in the presence of that enchantment, on the ex¬ 
haustion of the night marches, on the mercilessly scorching days? The col¬ 
umns advanced, singing, in magnificent order. The officers marched at the 
front, on foot, to set a good example. Behind them, the stable-attendants 
led the horses. The mounts were used only for maintaining contact between 
units, often a very arduous ordeal. To reach a divisional command post, I 
once crossed a hundred kilometers in one stretch, at breakneck speed across 
the burning steppe. But the normal marches were made on foot, with of¬ 
ficers and soldiers fraternally united in fatigue as in battle. 

♦ * * * # 

The mosquitos became more and more numerous. In the evening, they 
swirled in whirring clusters around the least candle light. 



90 


CAMPAIGN IN RUSSIA 


Other tiny beasts beset our soldiers: ferocious lice, which planted 
themselves in the region of the groin. They dug in in close ranks there, like 
stakes planted in the ground. One could see, just barely, the backs of those 
greedy suckers, the size of pinheads, all black. 

The unfortunates who sustained that attack suffered torture. They had, 
in the bargain, to suffer the gibes of the entire column each time they ran 
out of patience and stopped at the side of the road to try to remove, out in 
the open, their indiscreet parasites! 

On 7 August 1942, in the morning, we neared the Kuban. There still re¬ 
mained twenty kilometers to cross. We were going like the wind. At one in 
the afternoon, we caught sight of the cliffs above the right bank, which 
plunged perpendicularly to the flat steppes. The waters of the river, a 
magnificent green, gushed beside lush woods. 

The Soviet artillery had tried to resist, but after a brief engagement it was 
forced to retreat. 

We were in the heart of the Caucasus! The last great plain before the 
glaciers shone gleaming in the rays of a royal summer! 

At three in the morning, we resumed our advance, marching back up the 
course of the Kuban in order to reach a ford downstream from Armavir. 
We advanced along ledges which fell straight down from a height of 200 
meters to the green river. Thousands of us marched along the edge of those 
cliffs, jostled by hundreds and hundreds of large brown cows driven by 
Slovakian herdsmen with hard and sun-burned faces. 

$ £ £ )|i ft 

We had to mark time for thirty hours before crossing the pontoon foot¬ 
bridge which the engineers had built over the rushing river. The waters 
tossed, throwing green and white spray over the bridge. 

There was a small market town on the other side of the water. There we 
discovered a pretty young girl of 17 who had taken refuge in a supply hole. 
She had wanted to guard the family isba. A bomb had fallen near her, hor¬ 
ribly tearing away one breast. She lay there, feverish, her eyes blazing. Her 
slashed breast was already growing black. We did the impossible to care for 
her. Tears ran down her cheeks, red with fever. The poor little girl wanted 
to live. Looking at her injured chest, we knew however that she was going to 
die. 

To die, when above the perfumed steppe there gleamed a sky divinely 
pure, without blemish, blue as far as the eye could see, crossed with ripples 
of silver and gold. 

Maikop 

The Kuban River plain is the paradise of Russia. Agricultural holdings as 
big as 10,000 hectares produce, beneath the fires of the sun, immensities of 



To the Caucasus on Foot 


91 


com. Millions of stalks, two meters high, thrust their marvelously ordered 
cobs into the burning air, wrapped in glossy husks, rustling as if an electric 
current were passing through them. 

In the shadow of these forests of gilded stalks, we saw green watermelons 
ripening, watermelons as long as your arm. We cut them open with our 
knives. Rejoicing, we drank the fresh juice. The watermelons’ skin was 
banded with green, red, and orange stripes, similar to the mottled dawn on 
the steppe. We marched on with our faces buried in enormous slices of 
those sublime fruits. 

The sun burned in a sky clear to distraction. We gorged ourselves on its 
strength and its poetry. We were taking part in a wonderful exchange of 
strength, warmth and freshness, of colors springing from the soil and fall¬ 
ing from the sky. Everything was new, primitive, pure, grand: the com, 
standing like plumed spears; the melon beds tossed down by the gods like 
innumerable fountains; the bright, metallic clouds; golden earth, fiery sky, 
rainbow of gashed fruits! 

♦ * * * * 

The torrents also gave us inexpressible delights. 

We reached the Laba River, which falls tumultuously from the slopes of 
the Elbrus. We could not yet discern the outline of the mountains, but they 
were sending us, as a first gift, large streams, green and ice-cold, which 
leaped over millions of red and reddish-brown pebbles. 

What mattered the unending waits before crossing these rivers on our 
makeshift bridges! We threw ourselves into the turbulent waves, irresistibly 
strong. We were swept away between the great polished rocks, whipped by a 
current which splashed us with emerald spray. Our bodies loved the rough 
bite of those crystal clear waters. They hugged us, gave us life, purified our 
bodies, stirred our blood! Then we ran in the sun like wild horses! 

Ah life! How magnificent! We hurled ourselves into its luminence, into 
its warmth, into its brilliance, into its spotless colors, as if we were leaping 
into the first days of the world, when base spirits and corrupt matter had 
not yet tarnished any element or any impulse! 

* * * * * 

The flight of the Soviet forces was such that we took hardly any 
prisoners. The steppe was empty, abandoned to the triumphant sun and to 
our victorious march. 

One afternoon we reached the railway line from Maikop. Hundreds of 
Russian trains, abandoned, were lined up over a distance of twenty 
kilometers, car after car, along the two tracks. The Stukas had cut the line 
relentlessly, making it impossible for the trains trapped in that gigantic cul- 



92 


CAMPAIGN IN RUSSIA 


de-sac to move forward or backward. Goods in incredible profusion were 
piled upon thousands of cars on which the Soviets had vainly tried to 
evacuate their goods. There were airplane engines, spare parts, unfinished 
tanks, machines, raw materials of all kinds. Lines of tank cars stretched out 
endlessly, scorched by fire or sticky from the hundreds of thousands of 
liters of gas spilled on the track. 

But, on the whole, this fantastic plunder was nearly intact, except for the 
breaches made here and there by the Stukas. The Reds had not even taken 
the time to set fire to these enormous trains. 

Each division, when it reached the railroad, immediately stuck on labels 
proclaiming its property rights to the spoils. The cars filled with alcohol 
were the object of very special attention. 

We even found a stock of caviar jars. Sitting on the railway embankment, 
each of us spread a half kilo of those spendid eggs on our bread! Vodka was 
employed to ease our digestion; we had captured thirty thousand bottles of 
it, like mineral water in smart little bottles. 

But there could be no question of lingering at these Capuan feasts. 1 Our 
orders were to reach the mountains as soon as possible. We were allowed 
only a few hours to sleep, right on the ground. We were awakened at 3:00 or 
4:00 A.M. by the poultry of the neighborhood, greatly intrigued by all these 
events. 

We reached the first hills, very steep, where, coming down the other side, 
the wagons plunged to the head of the line behind the horses. 

We got under way in the cool of the day, at about one in the morning. At 
dawn, we thought we were dreaming. A slender dark blue thread, to the 
south, festooned the sky. It was the Caucasus! 

The mountains were still fifty kilometers distant, but their summits stood 
out clearly against the sky. We were flooded with a joy which goaded us for¬ 
ward. There they were, the peaks which had lived in our imaginations for 
weeks! 

We quickened our steps through the thick sands. 

Columns of German tanks were heading back in our direction; they had 
completed their work, had tracked the enemy up to the forests. It was for 
us, the infantry, to complete the job. At nine o’clock in the morning, we ar¬ 
rived at long, straight streets: Maikop! 

Our tanks had cleared the town without the Reds even being able to blow 
up the bridge which, in one magnificent leap, spanned a deep valley at the 
bottom of which roared a green river, the Belaya. A few houses were off¬ 
handedly perched at the top of the cliff. We promptly crossed over to the 
other side in order immediately to occupy a mountain which overlooked the 
region. From there, we could prevent an eventual reaction by the defeated 
enemy. 

The slope was steep and heavily wooded. At last we saw trees again! 
Without any fighting we set up our machine guns on the ridges. To the 



To the Caucasus on Foot 


93 


south, there spread out before us a grand panorama of streams, small 
waterfalls, and plum-colored blue mountains. The Caucasus chain stretched 
out along the entire horizon. 

A dense forest surrounded us. Numerous Soviet soldiers were still hidden 
there, watching for an opportunity to surrender. 

The opportunity presented itself in a somewhat Rabelaisian fashion. One 
of our NCO’s had crept off into the shadowy foliage in order to get away by 
himself, safe from prying eyes. With a piece of paper in his hands he set to 
work, at the same time admiring the foliage. He was not very dangerous, 
armed with only his quarter page of an old newspaper. This was the mo¬ 
ment that the Russians had been waiting for. The leaves parted; our com¬ 
rade saw a long line of Soviet soldiers approaching him, their hands up, sure 
of surrendering on the best terms. It only remained for our non¬ 
commissioned officer to hastily readjust a uniform whose prestige risked 
being seriously compromised! 

Several minutes later he returned, snickering, followed by a veritable 
caravan of muzhiks, as solemn as popes in spite of the comical character of 
their surrender. 

That was how we captured the last Russian forces in the oak grove at 
Maikop. It was not very poetic, to be sure, but the forest had been purged at 
the same time as our non-commissioned officer, a little embarrassed at first, 
but soon as proud as Artaban 2 about his adventure. 

In the meantime, the bulk of the division had occupied Maikop. We all 
believed the war was over. Everything had been cleared, and we were about 
to cross the range of the Caucasus. The orders for the division had arrived. 
Objective: Adler, then Sukhumi, not far from the Turkish border. 

We made some bets: Tiflis by Christmas; Babylon in the spring! On the 
banks of those sacred rivers, the Tigris and Euphrates, we would meet Mar¬ 
shal Rommel’s Afrika Korps, advancing from the Suez Canal! The war 
would end in the cradle of civilization! 

In order to celebrate 15 August (the Feast of the Ascension), the com¬ 
mand had distributed to the troops a local drink like wine, in a ration of 
four liters per person. We swigged it, pouring it into our mouths quite con¬ 
fidently. It was alcohol from the fruit of the blackthorn tree, which had a 
terrible smell. Nevertheless the stuff promptly evoked an unparalleled en¬ 
thusiasm. The party lasted until the wee hours of the morning. 

Then, staggering a bit, the 97th Division and the Wallonian Legion mov¬ 
ed off. 16 August 1942. The great mountains of the Caucasus looked down 
on us, blue-black at first, then white and pink, very high in the sky. 
Sukhumi, its coastline and its palm trees! Tiflis and its houses clinging to 
the cliffs of the Transcaucasus! The lunar lakes of Azerbaidzhan! The great 
declivity of the crystalline sand toward the Persian Gulf! Our eyes sparkled 
as we contemplated our mighty epic! 

We arrived at a large green river which surged through the rubble of a 



94 


CAMPAIGN IN RUSSIA 


dynamited bridge. A soldier advanced, straddling the jagged platform. A 
rifle shot rang out from a tree on the other side, the man fell into the river. 

A second man tried. Then a third. They fell, hit in turn. 

The mountains were still twenty kilometers away, but already the 
Caucasus was sending us a warning. 

We had raced south for 1,150 kilometers. We believed that we had con¬ 
quered everything. The three bodies bobbing in the torrents informed us 
suddenly that perhaps the war in the South, rather than ending, was just 
beginning. 

The Trap 

The expectation of the High Command was that the troops taking part in 
the offensive on the Caucasus front would not encounter many obstacles. 
Each division had been assigned a fantastic area of operations. The 97th 
Division, to which we were tactically attached, would cross, with its two 
regiments of infantry and our legion, an area twice the size of Belgium! The 
mountains to be crossed rose to a height of 3,200 meters; the oak forests 
were nearly 200 kilometers deep. 

One of the two regiments advanced immediately toward the west, in the 
direction of Tuapse. The other, the Otte regiment, to which we were at¬ 
tached, advanced through the forests in order to reach Adler on the Black 
Sea. The division commander very boldly advanced between those two 
thrusts, which diverged from one another more and more. He was covered 
only by a general staff company which had more specialists in pen-pushing 
and rubber-stamping than in machine guns and grenades. 

Leap-frogging, the battalions relieved one another. Having been the ad¬ 
vance guard at the time of the fall of Maikop, we were to form the rear 
guard during the first days of the advance into the mountains. 

We skirmished with some Bolshevik soldiers who had returned to a 
market town. The peasants immediately rushed to call us, and the Reds 
were promptly disposed of. 

On 18 August we attacked a village five hundred meters above us where 
the enemy forces, disregarded by the Otte regiment, had barricaded 
themselves. Two of our companies silently climbed up the height and en¬ 
gaged them in hand-to-hand combat. The Reds offered little resistance. 
They soon fled, leaving behind all their equipment 

Everything was going well. 

By dint of incredible boldness the Otte regiment had in three days cleared 
a road of more than 150 kilometers through the jungle, the ravines, and the 
peaks. The news was excellent. The spearhead was no more than three 
kilometers from the road leading down to the Black Sea. Stupendous! 

The fears of the first day had dissipated. Our turn to go to the front was 
coming. In one week, we would be at the threshold of Georgia! 


To the Caucasus on Foot 


95 


That same evening everything changed. 

Our regiment had penetrated very deeply into the mountains and was ap¬ 
proaching its goal. To the rear, however, where the regiment was strung out 
along dozens of kilometers, the Soviets suddenly cut off the roads. 

Lurking in the dark blackthorn trees, the Reds had let 2,000 men pass, 
and then closed the net. They had lain in wait in every ravine. Trying to 
retreat, the regiment fell into one snare after another. Now it risked 
disaster. 

In the center, the general staff company which accompanied General 
Rupp and which advanced unescorted, several dozen kilometers away from 
the two infantry regiments, was cut off in turn. For several hours the 
general was surrounded in the village of Shirvanskaya. The old orderlies, 
the secretaries, the veterinarians, the supply sergeants were fighting as well 
as they could. But the approaches to the village were already in the hands of 
the Soviet troops. 

The Reds also held the road which linked Shirvanskaya to the rear. There 
the Soviets had established a formidable position at the highest crossroads. 

We received an urgent radio message ordering our legion to cover, that 
same night, twenty kilometers of mountains and then hurl itself at the 
enemy, flushing them from ambush and relieving the divisional command 
post at Shirvanskaya. 

The night was as black as a shroud. There wasn’t a star in the sky. After 
an hour of marching, it was impossible to continue. One of our men had 
badly injured his back, and several horses had fallen into precipices hun¬ 
dreds of meters deep. 


* * * * * 

At two in the morning we resumed the march. The dawn ambled up over 
the mountains behind large, threatening white clouds. We skirted very pic¬ 
turesque ravines, then entered forests of giant oaks. Some trees had recently 
been felled across the road. The enemy was on the prowl. We advanced, our 
fingers on our triggers. 

The heat was stifling. A thunder storm rumbled in the sky. At about ten 
in the morning, on the bare side of the mountain opposite us, we caught 
sight of the white village of Prussskaya, our last resting place before contact 
with the enemy. 

Then came the deluge, a thunderous torrent from the firmament which 
fell in sledgehammer blows. In an instant, we were as soaked as if we had 
fallen into a river. After we reached the first isbas, a clayey mud, fifteen 
centimeters deep, virtually barred any forward movement by our column. 

We had to move forward, however. We slogged on ahead. 

Two German officers rushed toward us, on foot. Their cars, together 
with several other vehicles, had blundered into the Russian positions before 



96 


CAMPAIGN IN RUSSIA 


the thunderstorm. They had been able to escape only after a furious hand- 
to-hand struggle. 

The rain stopped. The valleys steamed with mighty vapors swirling from 
the depths, slowly reaching crests where the sun, here and there, gilded the 
newly washed grass. 

We did two more kilometers, our feet encased in large clumps of mud. 
Then we had to take cover. We had arrived before the mountain occupied 
by the Soviets. We watched the road rise, turn, and plunge into the forest. 
The entire summit was wooded. An oak grove descended to the south-east 
and then back up to the summit of an impressive mountain. 

Our commander gave the combat orders to the three columns which were 
about to spring to the attack. We knew very little about the enemy, except 
that he disposed of two infantry battalions and a squadron of cavalry; that 
he had artillery, motorized transport, and some captured anti-tank guns. 
He remained absolutely silent. He doubtless thought that, ignorant of the 
site, we too were going to throw ourselves into his trap. 

When the Reds saw our companies deploying, however, they grasped our 
intentions. 


We were able to descend the slope without difficulty. Not a rifle shot 
broke the strange silence of the valley. Two cars burning at the top of the 
mountain were all that spoiled the scene. 

We wanted to advance up to a thicket on a small knoll. There we would 
find temporary cover. 

I crawled toward the knoll, moving forward through a tangle of 
brushwood, supporting myself on my left elbow, my revolver in my right 
hand. Twenty meters behind me, the men waited. 

I reached the crest of the hillock; one jump away from me, a Russian of¬ 
ficer was crawling forward flat on his stomach, exactly as I was doing! We 
fired simultaneously. His bullet whistled by my ear. Mine hit my luckless 
adversary right in the middle of the face. The battle for Prusskaya was on. 

Prusskaya 

The crossroads that we had to attack, between Prusskaya and Shirvan- 
skaya, on the afternoon of 19 August 1942, was approached by rolling vales 
with only a few trees. We rushed toward the bulk of the enemy, descending 
the slope by throwing ourselves to the ground every fifteen or twenty 
meters, at each fold in the terrain or every plum tree or two. 

Before us, the slope rose again, nearly bare. When the Russians saw we 
were reaching the bottom of the valley, they had a diabolical inspiration. 
Setting fire to some German ammunition wagons they’d gotten hold of. 



To the Caucasus on Foot 


97 


they pushed them down toward us. These monsters rattled down the slope 
at a mad speed, while the burning ammunition exploded in all directions. 
Our noses glued to the ground, we were pinned down by a thousand blazing 
fragments. 

The frontal attack promised to be lethal. Therefore, I took three 
volunteers, all of them expert in combat; while the companies advanced as 
well as they could, I threaded my way along the right flank, reaching some 
holly groves, then the forest, and succeeded in crawling between the first 
Russian posts. My three lads followed me at a distance of ten meters. I 
wanted to flank the enemy. I arrived right behind him: I could see the Soviet 
camp through the branches. 

At that very moment, our men were scaling the slopes to attack the Reds. 
This was it! I leaped out behind the Bolsheviks, raking them with machine 
gun bursts and unleashing bloodcurdling shouts. My companions stormed 
right behind me into the middle of the camp with a similar uproar. 

Panic reigned. The Reds, believing themselves cornered, ran about in 
circles, finally fleeing in utter confusion into the ravine to the southwest. 
They had gone completely mad. The four of us alone had chased them from 
their lair; all their trucks were ours, magnificent Ford trucks, drawn up in a 
square, keys still in the ignition! The cannons which had shelled us were also 
in our hands, as well as ten machine guns! Supplies, equipment, ammuni¬ 
tion, helmets overflowing with fruit, nothing was lacking! Our cries and our 
bursts of fire, exploding suddenly behind them, had been enough to con¬ 
vince several hundred Reds of disaster and to drive them across the plateau! 

We sped after them, howling all the louder and shooting off all our 
machine gun clips. Shortly afterwards, one of our companies, arriving on 
the double, met us at the crossroads. 

♦ * * * * 

We couldn’t let the Soviet troops tumbling down through the forest get 
away. We were ordered to hunt them down and destroy them. 

At first they did us some damage, killing one of our most brilliant com¬ 
rades, a young doctor of philology, who took five bullets through his chest. 
But our elan was irresistible. Tossing grenades, we captured an anti-tank 
gun the Russians were trying to pull into the oak grove, along the muddy 
path. We reached the bottom of the valley, a veritable equatorial jungle. It 
was flooded by the waters of the morning thunderstorm and cut by steep 
ravines, ten or fifteen meters deep, as straight as trees. 

We had to slide down on our heels. To go back up the other slope we 
hung on to stumps and roots. The thick vegetation gave off intoxicating 
aromas. Hundreds of bees, whose swarms had been put to flight in the 
course of the battle, buzzed around, mad with rage. I had exhausted all of 
my machine guns’s ammuntion. For hand-to-hand fighting, I had only my 



98 


CAMPAIGN IN RUSSIA 


revolver and twenty cartridges. We ran from tree to tree, overwhelming the 
enemy in the mud and the brambles. We chased the bulk of his forces back 
up the other side of the mountain, which was very steep, completely bare, 
and split by a wide muddy trail. The Reds rushed there in disorder. 

In the meantime, the German artillery which supported us had reached 
the captured crossroads. It set up its guns just across from the Reds’ road. 
The Russian cavalry, unable to fight in the underbrush and the thick woods, 
tried to save their animals, sliding, falling in the slippery mud. One couldn’t 
have dreamed of a clearer target. The German shells tore into them, ripping 
the fleeing troops and the tumbling animals to shreds. The Bolsheviks were 
running away in all directions, relentlessly plastered by hundreds of shells. 

Our rocket launchers chimed in. The Soviet column was practically wiped 
out. Many Russians however, whom we passed by, remained in the thickets 
and in the dark recesses of the little valleys. 

We had raced too far, caught up in the frenzy of pursuit. Now, almost 
out of ammunition, the fugitives annihilated, we wanted to return to our 
unit. 

But we found ourselves in the middle of a jungle. We had thrown 
ourselves at the enemy without paying much attention to the direction of the 
battle. Scarcely had we gone back a hundred meters when a burst of 
machine gun fire cut our path; the Bolsheviks were in the bushes! We ran in¬ 
to them repeatedly. They fired, thinking they were surrounded. Each time, 
we scattered into the thick groves of blackberry bushes, where we were 
hampered by the spongy ground. 

My clothes were cut to shreds. Of my riding breeches, split from the top 
to the bottom of the crotch, there remained only two muddy skirts. This, 
however, was the only comic aspect of the situation. Dusk had fallen and we 
could no longer make out a thing. Crossing the ravines, which ran perpen¬ 
dicularly, was a terrifying operation. We could see the moment when we 
would be overtaken by night in the labyrinthine holly groves, surrounded by 
Russian ambushes. 

We must have been about two kilometers from the rest of the battalion. I 
gathered together everyone with me and, at the risk of drawing all the 
enemies scattered through the woods, I gave out, in a thundering voice, 
great shouts through woods full of darkness and water. We listened anx¬ 
iously. We heard voices answer, from a distance, almost inaudible. We ad¬ 
vanced towards them. 

The Russians, badly burned, mustn’t have been in any better position 
that we were. They had also been cut off. From time to time we stopped to 
take a breather and to cry out again. We were answered more clearly. The 
direction was right. From ravine to ravine, from mire to mire, we got closer. 
Mixed voices hailed us. It was one of our patrols: we were saved. 

We re-formed in the dark of night. 

The enemy no longer offered the least resistance. Undoubtedly, the 
groups scattered in the forest, or in the mudholes of the little valley were 



To the Caucasus on Foot 


99 


fleeing toward the southwest, trying to rejoin their battalions, decimated by 
our attack. We advanced directly south, marching through muddy water. 
At one o’clock in the morning, our lead column entered Shirvanskaya 
without any difficulties. 

On the next day we buried our dead. We heaped their grave mounds with 
golden sunflowers, flowers of greatness and glory. 

The mud was so bad that no one was any longer able to move, unless by 
horse. For two days I rode nearly naked on my horse, while they tried to 
clean and sew up my clothes, tom to pieces during the hand-to-hand com¬ 
bat. Our soldiers stood guard without shoes, barefoot in twenty centimeters 
of water. Not one motorcyclist could move about in the region. 

On the afternoon of 20 August the sun beat down mercilessly. At dusk it 
ignited great conflagrations of purple and gold. Good weather meant com¬ 
bat; new battles were at hand. 

Tyeryakov 

Our march across the Caucasus resumed on 21 August 1942, early in the 
morning. Over a small bridge that had been hastily built by the engineers we 
crossed a leaping river, then we entered the forest. After several kilometers 
of climbing we saw a clearing and some isbas. A few Soviet soldiers fled 
without firing a rifle shot. The village was called Paparotni. Beautiful vines, 
apple orchards, and blackthorn groves spread out in the sun. 

We had to advance a dozen kilometers to the village of Tyeryakov. At 
Paparotni, a radiotelegram reported the situation to our commander: 
“Tyeryakov strongly occupied by the enemy.” Leaving our supply train 
and our heavy equipment in a clearing, we started cautiously through the 
giant oaks and the brushwood. 

From the top of a ridge we could see, through a gap to our right, a long 
village held by the Russians. We followed a faint path, overgrown with 
grass and weeds. According to our maps Tyeryakov wasn’t much farther. 
We left the trail and moved forward through the foliage, following our 
compass, for twenty minutes. 

We then heard the a cock crow. 

It was Tyeryakov. 


* * * ★ * 

A patrol was sent out to reconnoiter. Creeping under the trees and be¬ 
tween the large brown crags, it neared the edge of the forest. Situated on a 
broad hillock, Tyeryakov shone over the mountain pass. The village was 
spacious, but entirely surrounded by com which, two or three meters high, 
came up to the thatched roofs. A white school was perched on a mountain 
spur. Right below the village, at the edge of our forest, lay the kolkhoz. 



100 


CAMPAIGN IN RUSSIA 


The men of our patrol didn’t miss a detail of the scene. Twenty meters in 
front of them, three Russians were moving back and forth around a field 
kitchen. They were laughing loudly, telling each other jokes, hardly suspect¬ 
ing what was awaiting them. Our men crawled up to the tree line, ap¬ 
proached without being seen and, suddenly, thrust their revolvers under the 
noses of the cooks! 

Not one of the three dared to utter a sound or make a move. Our patrol 
immediately pushed the cooks in front of them as far as the oak grove and 
from there led them to us without a single shot being fired. 

One of the Russians had in his pocket the roster of the men to be fed that 
evening: 304 men. We could not have had better intelligence! We learned 
also that the enemy had artillery and anti-tank guns. 

* * * * * 

We had finished interrogating our three Stalinist Vatels when an outburst 
of gunfire erupted thirty meters from us. 3 The Russians had returned our 
courtesy. 

Unquestionably, one of their men, passing by the roasting spits, had 
found the abandoned kitchen. The alert had been given. Some Reds had 
silently moved forward in search of us at the edge of the woods, in order to 
catch us napping. One of our non-commissioned officers noticed them just 
in time. Firing his machine gun, he was riddled with Soviet bullets. His 
lungs punctured, vomiting large amounts of blood, he nevertheless con¬ 
tinued to fire. There had been a moment of panic among us. The heroism of 
that NCO allowed the men to regroup. The wounded man collapsed only 
after we leaped over him into a hand-to-hand struggle. 

The two companies who had been charged with attacking the village were 
sent into combat without further delay. Since we’d been spotted it was bet¬ 
ter to get it over with immediately. 

As aide-de-camp, it was my job to give encouragement in the places 
where the attack was heavy or where the men were wavering. 

One part of our troops was to attack the village through the kolkhoz, 
while the other would take the long way around so as to overrun Tyeryakov 
from the heights. The men were in a tight spot. For many of the new 
recruits, this was their baptism of fire. We saw that they hesitated to move 
away from the rocks and the trees. 

Six more determined soldiers, armed with submachine guns, had reached 
the corner of a shed in the kolkhoz. With a machine gun in my hands, I ran 
up close to them. In a few minutes, alternating our fire, we got a hundred 
meters inside of Tyeryakov itself. Our anti-tank gun, unfortunately, was 
firing short, and its shells were exploding above our heads. 

The Reds had occupied an isba from which they held the street under fire. 
While my comrades fired their weapons at the hut, I leaped through the 



To the Caucasus on Foot 


101 


com, reaching the west side of the isba. Jumping up to the side window of 
the isba, I broke it completely as I stuck my machine gun through it. My 
burst of fire into the middle of the room had an overwhelming effect. I 
rounded up the survivors, who surrendered. One woman who was fighting 
with the Reds was rolling on the ground, in the middle of an attack of 
hysteria. 

Standing, firing my machine gun, I had stormed into the village in pursuit 
of the Soviet soldiers. Soon I had a veritable mob of prisoners around me. 
Not knowing what to do with them, I distributed to each of them a piece of 
a Brussels newspaper for which I had prosaically devised uses other than the 
nourishment of the mind. " Dokument! Dokument!” I yelled to each of my 
captives. Those heavy-jowled asses believed in the magic of the Dokument. 
With their hands raised, brandishing their papers, they all ran to the rear, 
where people were at first a little surprised to discover so many Mongolian 
readers of the Belgian press, but where they finally understood that they 
must have first been met by some ingenious and efficient Walloons. 

In close combat, it’s best to run in short, speedy bursts. I ran to the end of 
the village, firing into each window as I went. I stopped only beyond the 
town, while my six daredevils flushed out the Bolsheviks who had taken 
refuge in the isbas and the stables. Many others emerged from the fields and 
the com of their own accord. 

My machine gun was well positioned. At the end of the twenty minutes, 
an entire Walloon company was able to reach me. Our comrades attacking 
from the heights joined us in turn. 

Not only were we able to gather up a long line of prisoners, but we cap¬ 
tured the Russians’ cannons and anti-tank weapons in perfect condition, 
supplied with abundant ammunition. 

Wisecracking, we visited the kolkhoz. The mobile kitchens of the Soviets 
were still there, stocked with a magnificent soup, ready to eat, and an enor¬ 
mous vat of porridge. A cart had been left behind, filled with hundreds of 
large pancakes. We returned the cooks to their ovens and to their ladles. 
They were delighted to resume their jobs. Never had they made their soup in 
such lively circumstances! Bolsheviks at one moment, then prisoners being 
slapped around, then promoted to honorary Walloons! All in less than an 
hour! Their soup had not even had time to bum. Their little teeth shone 
with pleasure in their wide saffron-colored faces. How comic life was! 

We were all overjoyed. The village had been conquered merrily, easily, 
colorfully, with a maximum of profit. We drank soup and porridge season¬ 
ed by our latest exploit. We ourselves were astonished that all had gone so 
quickly and so well. 

Too quickly! And too well! Because the bullets began to whine again, a 
few at first, then hundreds. 

We barely had time to hit the dirt, behind some tree trunks, among the 
overturned mess-kits. What was going on? 



102 


CAMPAIGN IN RUSSIA 


We looked at each other, bewildered. 

Dusk was falling. Large black eagles circled, screaming ominously above 
the small valley. A harassing fire was now springing up all along the forest 
which plunged from the south to the cornfields of Tyeryakov. 

Bloody Gorge 

For two hundred men to find themselves at nightfall at the bottom of a 
gorge, to sense themselves boxed in on all sides by the high Caucasian 
mountains, black and violet to the east, edged with reddish gold to the west, 
all equally inhuman and treacherous, being shot at by a thousand invisible 
enemies crouched in the thickly wooded country, all of that was hardly 
comforting to us on 21 August 1942, at eight o’clock in the evening. 

Fortunately, as soon as we took Tyeryakov we had established a 
perimeter at the edge of the com fields, all along the thicket. There our 
pickets valiantly absorbed the first blow. 

We organized ourselves promptly for battle, but the enemy was there in 
force. We were machine-gunned by attackers who dominated the heights. In 
the twinkling of an eye we brought up our anti-tank guns and fired them 
point blank at the Russians fanning out en masse, fifty meters in front of 
us, at the edge of the woods. Our shells came crashing down on the tree line 
like bright red fireballs. The weapons we captured from the enemy joined 
in. That rain of iron blunted the Soviet attack. A savage battle, fought at 
close quarters, raged for the next five hours. Only one of our posts fell; 
there our comrades were massacred at their weapons. The rest held out. 

Finally, at about midnight, the enemy fire tapered off, then stopped. We 
sent some patrols into the trees. Our men stepped over numerous bodies, 
but the Soviet forces had pulled back, had disappeared. 

$ * % $ $ 

At 1:00 in the morning, another firefight broke out, this time to the north 
beyond the kolkhoz, in the forest under the cover of which we had ap¬ 
proached Tyeryakov in the afternoon. There an extremely violent struggle 
was taking place in the vicinity of the crude forest road coming from 
Paparotni. 

We experienced real mental torture. The rest of the legion, including all 
our equipment, had been ordered to join us. It was they who were fighting, 
without a doubt. 

A couple of couriers reached us, wide-eyed. The column had suddenly 
been attacked from behind by hundreds of Russians attempting to cut the 
long line of transport. Both sides machine-gunned each other at point-blank 
range, but on the whole it seemed our people were holding. 

We rushed everything we had in the direction of the brawl. At about 3:00 



To the Caucasus on Foot 


103 


A.M. the battle ended, just as our men and our trucks arrived in a grand 
procession. 

It was a question of who could recount the more extraordinary exploits. 
The wounded were the most voluble, tossing on their blood-red straw, add¬ 
ing a thousand more wry laughable details to the stories of the troops. No 
one understood what could have happened, where the Russians had come 
from, why they had thrown themselves so desperately against our convoy. 

It took the interrogations of the prisoners to enlighten us. They had been 
part of a reinforced regiment which was in retreat. Tyeryakov had been 
pointed out to them as a friendly position. At dusk, with no special care, 
they had approached the village a half-hour after we had finished capturing 
it. They had tried for five hours to force their way through, all in vain. 
Their losses had been heavy. Their regimental command post had been hit, 
point blank, by one of our anti-tank shells. Finally, not able to get through, 
they had disengaged and tried to go around the village to the north. Their 
streak of bad luck continued: they blundered right in to the middle of our 
column of reinforcements and supplies 

At first, they put it in great danger, but there also the tenaciousness of 
our men blocked their passage. Not knowing how large our force was, 
disoriented and exhausted, they fell back a second time in great disorder. 

During the rest of the night, we heard a column jolting along far to the 
south. Those were the remnants of the Soviet regiment moving away with 
their carts over the forest paths. 

At day break we went to repair and put back into action vehicles of which 
the animals had been killed. The scene bespoke the savage violence of the 
melee. Two Russian officers, killed on our horses and riddled with a dozen 
bullets, still held machine guns clasped in their yellowish hands. 

We buried our dead near the school. The piled up earth was covered with 
the usual bright sunflowers. Not one shellburst troubled the peace of the 
valley. 

It was Sunday. The mountain scenery was spectacular. We spent the day 
drinking in the sunlight and the color. An incredible sunset, with long 
gleams of red, gold, and violet beams crossed by pink clouds spread for a 
long time above the ridges while, at the bottom of the gorge, we were 
already sunk in the blue and velvety shadows of evening. 

The night did not last long. 

It was perhaps 3:30 A.M. No one had heard so much as a piece of dead 
wood break. However, gliding on their light sandals made of pig-skin, hun¬ 
dreds of Bolsheviks had arrived quite near the corn below the town. A terri¬ 
ble yelling wrenched us out of our half-sleep: “Ourra! Pobyeda!” (“Hur¬ 
ray! Victory!”) cried the two Soviet battalions which threw themselves at 
our posts. Hundreds of snarling enemies ran through the corn and reached 
the isbas. A terrible fray, illuminated by the tracer rounds, locked our 
soldiers in mortal combat with the attackers. They exchanged bursts of 
machine gun fire in the stables, where the horses fell as if pole-axed. 



104 


CAMPAIGN IN RUSSIA 


Ah! What a terrible hour! When would the dawn break so we could 
regroup? Would we not be overwhelmed before then? 

Firing away, we watched the damnable crests. They finally began to 
brighten and cast pale gleams into the little valley. The enemy was 
everywhere, yet no essential position had given way. Even at the edge of the 
forest our posts were resisting furiously. 

The Red forces trying to throttle the German units engaged in the forests 
of the Caucasus were made up of shock battalions consisting of the most 
fanatical Bolsheviks, who had fallen back from the Donets to the Caucasus. 
They were reinforced by hundreds of cut-throats, common criminals freed 
from the penitentiaries. These were followed by a wave of half-savages 
hastily scraped together by the Soviet authorities in Azerbaidzhan and 
among the Kirghiz. The two battalions which attacked us that night ought 
to have pulverized us. They succeeded only in capturing a few isbas. From 
there they had to clamber up fifty meters if they wanted to reach the ledge 
on which we were perched. Our machine guns swept away each of their 
attacks. 

A third Soviet battalion settled down about noon on the other slope, to 
the east, in the oak groves which completely dominated the village and our 
positions. That battalion had a very special armament: only mortars, no 
larger than a woman’s umbrella. But a hundred such mortars were a 
catastrophe for the fighting men who found themselves at their mercy. 

* * # * # 

Throughout Monday the Russians multiplied their attacks. 

We held out against them only with great difficulty. Dozens of men had 
to leave us to drag themselves to the first-aid post. We were surrounded by 
the bodies of our comrades, disfigured by the abominable explosive bullets 
of the Soviets, which tore off half the head, or blew it off entirely. 

We were almost encircled. In the little valley there remained in our hands 
only the kolkhoz and a gorge to the north through which, at certain 
moments of lull in the battle, we could send our wounded to the rear. 

The Reds had captured the lower part of the village. They occupied all the 
woods which ran down towards us from the south, the east and the west. To 
hem us in for good it remained only for them to seize the kolkhoz and the 
gorge to the north. At five o’clock in the afternoon, several hundred of 
them poured out of the forest and threw themselves at the kolkhoz offices 
located forty meters below our ledge. 

We shot off our machine guns like madmen. But we were not able to pre¬ 
vent the mass of the Reds from bursting into the building. Night was falling. 
If the kolkhoz remained in enemy hands, the night would see the Soviet con¬ 
victs and the hordes from Kirghiz complete our encirclement. 

It was necessary to drive them out, at all costs, before darkness came. We 



To the Caucasus on Foot 


105 


hastily dragged two anti-tank weapons to the very edge of the parapet and, 
in spite of the hail of bullets and grenades from the Russians, we unleashed 
a hailstorm of fire, almost straight down, right onto the roofs of the 
kolkhoz. Ten, twenty, fifty shells flew, blasting in the roof, and throwing 
up enormous swirls of dust and flames. 

The Reds saved themselves by leaping into the com and fleeing towards 
the woods. The kolkhoz was once more in our hands. Our men settled down 
there again, in an extraordinary tangle of Bolshevik bodies, disemboweled 
horses, and fallen beams. 

One Hundred and Twenty-Six Hours 

Our battle for Tyeryakov lasted for 126 hours, 126 hours during which 
hand-to-hand combat was almost ceaseless, except for the several hours 
when the night raised to the very top to the mountains an extraordinary 
orange moon. Its reddish gleams animated the night with fairy-like life. The 
clouds had the grace of flowers and the softness of silk draperies. 

The lights floated between the summits and barely reached our slope, 
boxed in at the bottom of our narrow valley. We benefited from that short 
calm to hastily dig up the chalky soil. We laid there the stiff bodies of 
dozens of our comrades whose arms we had crossed, like the stone tomb 
figures in our old cathedrals. We were tom by grief as we threw the 
shovelfuls of dirt that covered first their legs, then their chests; at last the 
face had to disappear. We did it quickly, for each of the dead was a brother, 
a companion in our suffering, our glory, and our faith. 

We used the rest of the night to cut down the corn between our posts and 
the woods. The heavy husks were a half meter taller than our heads and 
allowed the Reds to approach us without being seen and to surprise us at 
any moment. We crawled through the darkness, armed with pruning knives. 
In several nights we cleared the whole area, meter by meter. 

It was a disagreeable job, because the Reds were also moving around. A 
few meetings took place, disturbing the entire surrounding area. From 4:00 
A.M., however, it was necessary to go to ground in our little bunkers. The 
first green rifts in the night appeared between the notches in the mountains 
and began to caress the golden heads of the sunflowers strewn on the newly 
dug graves from the night before. At that hour there was generally a full 
brawl already in progress. 

***** 

Our plight in Tyeryakov became ever more desperate. Our positions had 
contracted terribly, leaving us no place to fall back further. We had to 
prepare an attempt to break the stranglehold. We decided to strike a heavy 
blow to the southwest, below the village, where the enemy had shown 



106 


CAMPAIGN IN RUSSIA 


himself most aggressive. The kolkhoz was still within reach of his attacks, 
and each night we risked being overwhelmed, then wiped out on our knoll. 

To counterattack the Reds by plunging straight down on them was to 
resign ourselves to losing half of the battalion. The result would be 
minimal, as well: a hundred meters from the isbas, at the end of the corn¬ 
field, there was a river, beyond which the woods sloped up. We could never 
have crossed the water, nor could we have ever cleared that height by a fron¬ 
tal assault. 

We made an appeal for volunteers to sew the skin of the fox to that of the 
lion. The commander of the legion and I had formulated a very bold solu¬ 
tion: to slip through the little defile to the north, then advance far to the 
west, across the woods, behind the Reds, finally to catch them unawares 
and drive them against our lines in Tyeryakov. 

The impossible strokes are those which always succeed, because no one 
thinks of protecting oneself against them. Some lads from the company of 
the Rexist Youth descended into the ravine, penetrating the Reds’ sector 
under cover of the trees. Two hours passed during which we awaited their 
attack. 

It didn’t take place. At the beginning of the afternoon, our lads reap¬ 
peared, exhausted. The terrain was very uneven; Soviet patrols infested the 
forest. Their officer thought that our plan was unrealizable. As was his 
right, he ordered the withdrawal of the expedition. 

* * * * * 

The operation, however, absolutely had to take place. 

The enemy had more and more room to maneuver. If we did not strike a 
decisive blow, we would suffer one. We had to choose: to risk everything or 
to lose everything. I asked once more for volunteers; the expedition, at full 
strength, was about to set out once more. The officer, convinced of the 
necessity of the bold blow, took his men in hand again. In a subdued voice I 
lectured them at the bottom of the gorge. 

The eyes of those boys flashed with magnificent sparks. Some of them 
had received the Iron Cross that very morning and were anxious to do 
honor to it. They set out again. We followed them through our binoculars 
for a fleeting moment. 

Two hours passed once more. It was five o’clock in the afternoon. The 
Reds, eager to seize the kolkhoz a second time, leaped to the assault with the 
usual cries. 

Another cry, shrill, the cry of weaker voices, answered them. The Reds 
had scarcely come into view when our young men, who, hidden behind 
them, had been waiting for just this moment, pounced! They leaped into the 
water and came on like lions! 



To the Caucasus on Foot 


107 


The Bolsheviks believed themselves surrounded. Most of them, not 
knowing where to run, fled into our machine gun fire or hugged the ground 
beneath the thickets. Many of them surrendered, giants with slit eyes, like 
gorillas, whom our tender-skinned lads brought to heel with blows of their 
rifle butts. 

Alas! Half of these child-gladiators had been struck down coming out of 
the thicket or crossing the water. Their thin bodies floated under the water¬ 
falls. We had won, but the price of the victory had been the freshest and 
purest blood. 

Each one of our young heroes was worth more than the rag-bag of shaggy 
prisoners, their flat yellow heads covered with bristles as hard as needles, 
who crouched trembling in the cellars of the school. This brutal contrast 
established exactly the implications of the duel: was it to be Europe, refined 
by twenty centuries of civilization, or the savage hordes of Asia, bestial and 
grimacing behind the red emblems of the Soviets? Our little volunteers had 
chosen. They had died as bravely as any vieux grognards 1 for the ideal 
which shone in their young eyes. 

The Reds, bloodied by this set-to, withdrew back into the forest to the 
west and southwest. They risked no more hand-to-hand fighting in this sec¬ 
tor, littered with the bodies of their compatriots. 

Several disgusting pigs patrolled in front of the Soviet posts, eating 
without scruple the nauseating corpses which rotted rapidly in the sun. The 
Reds enviously watched these porcine flesh eaters as they wallowed, twenty 
meters away, in the greening intestines of their compatriots. Obviously they 
burned with desire to lure the disgusting beasts behind their lines. Finally 
they managed to seize one of them. We heard their shouts of joy. Thus was, 
at Tyeryakov, Soviet anthropophagy practiced through the intermediary of 
an animal. 


* * * * * 

We were able to obtain all the details we wanted on the situation of these 
delicate lovers of pig meat. 

One of our medical orderlies, a certain Brohet, had been taken prisoner 
while trying to save a wounded man who had been hit at the edge of the 
water. The Reds conducted him from post to post. 

Like a great number of soldiers he had learned the Russian language. He 
was amazingly resourceful. He chatted glibly with them until at last he was 
taken to the rear. He had had enough time to locate the enemy positions and 
judge their strength. Darkness fell during the march. The path followed a 
deep ravine. Our medical orderly leaped and rolled into the precipice. Let 
the Russians blaze away as they would, Brohet was in flight! 

He lost his way ten times. At the first light of morning we saw a head 
emerge from a swamp fifty meters in front of us. It was our brave fellow. 



108 


CAMPAIGN IN RUSSIA 


He slithered along and got to us safely, as muddy and green as a hip¬ 
popotamus of the Niger. From that moment on the Reds were completely 
countered in the west, pounded by our Pak all the way to their forest 
hideouts. 

There remained the oak groves which loomed over us on the southeast 
and from which the Soviet mortar battalion menaced us formidably. From 
dawn to dusk we had to entrench ourselves in shelters cut in the chalky soil 
or under the isbas. Our commander, attempting a brief inspection, had nar¬ 
rowly escaped three shellbursts. 

We had to clean up the heights and dislodge the devilish “potato launch¬ 
ers,” as the troops called them, without fail. One of our companies deftly 
encircled the enemy and hammered the Russian battalion with all its might. 

But we paid dearly for this counterattack. A shell had killed the national 
leader of the Rexist Youth, Provost John Hagemans, formerly a communist 
student at the University of Brussels who, converted to our ideal, had 
become the herald of the greatest of our ancient Low Countries and an epic 
guide and enchanter passionately loved by the new generation. 

♦ * * # * 

Tyeryakov had been only partially freed. Each day our sorties drove back 
the enemy, but our soldiers would scarcely return to the isbas before the 
shooting would resume a hundred meters behind them. They had barely 
enough time to dash for the bunkers. The adversary folded in on himself, 
then sprang back again like an accordian of death. Elite Soviet marksmen 
climbed in the trees like jaguars. Sometimes we would make one of them 
out, then take careful aim. The body would topple to the earth or dangle in 
the branches. 

But most of these Bolshevik climbers were invisible. A dozen of them 
would interdict all movement. It was impossible to make ten meters in par¬ 
tially wooded terrain. Tyeryakov was surrounded by marksmen, sparing of 
their cartridges and astoundingly skillful. 

All the same, their harassment could not alter the fact: Tyeryakov was 
saved. The Reds had not been able to retake the pass, which was indispen¬ 
sable to their counterattacks. 

We had been the only ones to retain an advanced position in the Cauca¬ 
sian forests of the southwest. Everywhere else our forces had withdrawn. 
Tyeryakov remained, a battering ram against the Soviet sector. It was from 
there that we mounted the last offensive of the West Caucasus in October. 

Our division slipped further to the south. After having been relieved by 
forces of the SS Viking Division, we took part in this movement. On a 
luminous afternoon at the end of August, we left the graves of our dead and 
set out cautiously, across the oak forests of the west, where the enemy still 
patrolled. Our group almost crossed the path of a long line of Soviet 



To the Caucasus on Foot 


109 


soldiers. They were seven or eight times more numerous than we. They 
passed over a crest several meters above our heads without guessing our 
presence among the bushes where we waited, fingers on our triggers. 

After a two-hour march we came to a little village like a fleck of gold 
among the tall blue peaks. It was Kubano-Armyansky, a hamlet established 
in the Caucasus by a tribe of Armenian refugees in Tsarist days. Strange 
prune-colored youngsters with little owl-heads perched on wooden posts in 
front of the huts, as immobile as fetishes. 

Armenia 

The month of September, 1942, was a month of rest for the divisions in 
the West Caucasus. The German assault of the second half of August had 
failed for want of enough troops to open the way and assure control of the 
zones conquered in the forests. The forces sent ahead would perhaps have 
sufficed if they could have, as in July, mounted an offensive in the open 
spaces. This easy course, however, was no longer open. The enemy had pa¬ 
tiently waited until we had traversed almost twelve hundred kilometers and 
were entangled in the jungle. When we were well bogged down in the passes 
and the ravines, cut off from our rear by kilometers of shadowy forests, 
then the guerrilla unleased his attacks, violent, often invisible, always 
murderous. 

In many places we had to retreat. Furthermore, we had to await the ar¬ 
rival of reinforcements. Without new divisions, any further advance would 
be impossible. 

So we waited. 

The Armenian village of Kubano-Armyansky had been conquered by one 
of our companies the very day that we had taken Tyeryakov by assault. The 
enemy hadn’t responded, had drawn back beyond the open spaces. The 
front stabilized near the outskirts of the woods. 

We had never seen a village like this one. No longer were the isbas built 
on the ground, as in the steppe. On the contrary, they were raised up on 
strong poles, for fear of wild beasts, which would leave the forest in winter 
and come to prowl and feed in the little valley. Atop these pilings the Arme¬ 
nians were safe. The stables perched four or five meters high. The people 
took more precautions for the livestock than for their women and children. 
With great effort they would hoist the cattle to these roosts, where they 
would pass the months of snow in peace, while packs of famished wolves 
howled below them. 


***** 

The inhabitants had carefully preserved the customs of the tribes of Asia 
Minor. The women had the long eyes, coal-black and slanted like almonds, 



110 


CAMPAIGN IN RUSSIA 


one sees on Cretan pottery. They lived among millions of flies, stirring for 
hours and hours with their toes a delicate, slender cask full of milk, which 
hung from the ceiling by a cord. After half a day’s churning, they would 
draw off a semi-liquid butter. The milk was buffalo milk, from the slow 
consorts of the great black bulls whose dewlaps hung like boas, right to the 
ground. 

The village grew the inevitable corn, the shiny kernels of which the pea¬ 
sant women dried on the ground before freeing them from their silky 
envelope. 

The countryside was even more awe-inspiring than at Tyeryakov. When 
we returned from patrol at the end of the day, we had to stop twenty times, 
so gripping was the splendor of the sky and the peaks. The mountains rose 
in ranges, each one a different shade, flowing from gold and red into purple 
and violet. The great rock faces, lighted from behind, would already be 
dark, a soft black-like velvet. Kubano-Armyansky, in the trough of the 
valley, would be sunk in a deep blue twilight, the white scarves of a few 
evening fires still floating above the chimney tops. 

We would go slowly down, never ceasing to watch, through the tree 
trunks, the stunning colors which festooned the rocks and the village 
drowning in the glowing blue shadow. 

To reach the command post of the 97th Division we had to cross about 
fifteen kilometers along the summit of the mountains. I rode a little Russian 
horse which clung like a chamois to the narrov'est ridges above abysses 
carved out by fantastic cliffs. At last an unbelievable panorama spread 
before us, a great lagoon framed by crags a thousand meters high. At the 
very bottom shone a square of yellow light. It was there the village lay. 

It took an hour to reach it. The horse would dig his hooves in like claws 
among the crumbling rocks. Then we’d reach a pale green torrent, ice cold, 
tumultuous. 

Soon liaison became impossible. The Reds, seeing our momentum 
blunted, passed from the defensive to the attack. They didn’t rush us in en¬ 
tire battalions, as at Tyeryakov, but infiltrated in little groups, all across 
wild forests where age-old oaks, storm-blasted, tangled their blackened 
trunks, where a thousand gloomy thickets lent themselves to ambush. 

Our patrols moved with difficulty through this dense, trackless jungle, 
whose secrets no maps disclosed. 

Luckily, the populations of the clearings were ferociously anti-Bolshevik. 
Certain of our Armenian peasants went off about fifteen or twenty 
kilometers away from Kubano-Armyansky. Two days afterwards they reap¬ 
peared, bringing us a long ling of Red Army soldiers. 

The hatred which these peasants felt for the Soviet regime amazed us. 
Poor, even miserable, they ought to have been tempted by Bolshevism. In¬ 
stead they had such a horror of it that they risked their lives every day to 
help us fight it. A grizzled old peasant, whom the Reds had condemned to 



To the Caucasus on Foot 


111 


many years of forced labor, bore witness to a particularly fanatical devo¬ 
tion. Shod in light pigskin sandals, stealing about everywhere, he led our 
daily patrols. 

Several of our Armenian guides fell into the hands of the Bolsheviks and 
were massacred. The ardor of the village diminished not at all. 

♦ * * * * 

Nevertheless our situation grew ever more precarious. The enemy was 
nowhere, yet he was everywhere. We made reconnaissances which lasted en¬ 
tire days. Pushing deep into the enemy sector, we wouldn’t see so much as a 
fleeting shadow. The next day, at the gates of our village, a hail of gunfire 
from a holly thicket would cut down several of our men. 

In the end we were completely surrounded by these invisible enemies, who 
laired under the trees, wherever they could, like wild boars, and who lived 
on crab apples and pillage. 

We could no longer communicate with the division except by radio. Our 
liaisons with the rear required carefully organized expeditions to which we 
had to commit half the battalion each time. We were about to learn to our 
cost the meaning of guerrilla warfare in the Asiatic manner. 

On Watch 

The number of soldiers was of little importance in this war of booby- 
traps waged deep in the forests of the Caucasus. Three ambushers crouched 
among the bushy thorns at a propitious location could massacre a patrol in 
a few seconds. They would flee as soon as they struck, and the next day 
mount another ambush somewhere else. 

We had to bring supplies from the base at Shirvanskaya, a dozen 
kilometers from our positions at Kubano-Armyansky. Twice a week, 
several carts, pulled by great oxen, would advance as far as the village of 
Paparotni, then cross the thick oak forest, a distance of five or six 
kilometers. The path was narrow and choked by weeds. Coming to a little 
steep-banked stream whose wooden bridge had been destroyed, the convoy 
would descend to the pebbly river bed. After following it for about a hun¬ 
dred meters, the supply train would re-enter the majestic oaks and the holly. 

One day the Russians, who lay in ambush, let the oxen approach to 
within two meters of their bush. Their volley mowed down men and oxen. 
Only two of our soldiers were able to take cover in a thicket. The rest of the 
escort had been slaughtered before they could so much as move a muscle. 

From then on, we had to send half our men, twice a week, to meet the 
convoy at Paparotni. The men would methodically comb the forest on both 
sides of the path. 

We would wait anxiously. The convoy generally arrived toward six 



112 


CAMPAIGN IN RUSSIA 


o’clock in the evening. Our eyes wouldn’t leave the clearing which the forest 
path emerged from right at the top of the slope. 

We’d hear the crackle of machine-gun fire and the blast of grenades re¬ 
sounding right to the end of the valley. Then we’d see a cart emerge, then 
others, trundling down the slope. Panting, our men would bring the 
wounded to the infirmary. 

The next day we would have to patrol again toward Paparotni. To stop 
using the path would have been to capitulate. The men were disheartened by 
the ambushes, so I took command of the soldiers who maintained liaison. 
In order to avoid a general carnage, I would walk twenty meters ahead of 
them. We’d heave a great sigh of relief when we finally reached the apple 
and plum orchards of Paparotni, frontier of abundance and tranquility. 

* * ♦ * * 

The Bolsheviks would come and lie in wait for hours, like felines on 
watch for their prey, only several dozen meters from our isbas. We couldn’t 
rest except fully dressed, our machine guns beside us. Our smokers, no mat¬ 
ter how desperate they became, would hesitate before worming their way to 
the fields of Armenian tobacco. One afternoon one of our cooks wanted to 
dig up a few potatoes from a sloping field which bordered the woods. The 
Reds were lying flat in a bramble thicket. They let him come very close. A 
burst of gunfire, and the cook fell, shot in the leg. The Bolsheviks leaped on 
him and dragged him into the foliage. 

With two men, I dashed in pursuit. We could hear the cries of the unlucky 
wounded man as his executioners dragged him over pebbles and roots. The 
Reds had to let him go just as I was on the point of catching them. When I 
bent over our poor comrade, he looked at me with his kind eyes full of 
tears. Out of his mouth came a froth of bloody bubbles. The Soviet patrol, 
before abandoning him, had punctured his chest with some ten knife 
thrusts. He gasped, his wounds palpitating as if they were living things. 

He struggled against death for half an hour. We had to cover his face 
with a mosquito net, the flies buzzed so around his blood-covered mouth. 
The net quivered one last time. “Mama! Mama!’’ he repeated with that 
child’s voice which men have at the moment of dying. 

We buried him near the others at the top of a slope. We had surrounded 
the little graveyard with solid wooden stakes to protect it from wild beasts in 
winter. But who were the more ferocious, the beasts of the woods, or the 
Bolsheviks who, disdaining fair combat, would go to ground like assassins, 
to waylay and knife their victims? 

The preparations for the new German offensive were drawing to close. 
Each day, shortly before nightfall, the Soviet planes would come, three at a 
time, to survey the sector. They never stayed more than a few minutes. One 
or two machines, hit by the flak, would spiral down in flames, while 
parachutists danced above the forest. 



To the Caucasus on Foot 


113 


One morning in early October dozens of German Stukas passed over our 
heads and dove straight down in front of Tyeryakov. They returned from 
hour to hour. The mountains rumbled. The autumn offensive had begun. 

On 8 October, 1942, toward the day’s end we too began to march. We 
looked down at the valley one last time, to where Kubano-Armyansky lay 
blue in the first shadows. Down there our dead rested behind the great black 
stakes around which, in the impending snows, would stalk the famished 
muzzles and the nervous paws of wolves. Here and there the green moun¬ 
tains unfurled red and brown flags, banners of autumn which shone in the 
golden fires of dusk. 

Then night fell. We advanced silently until morning, beneath a canopy of 
majestic oaks, pierced by the silvery and dancing fires of millions of stars. 

Jungles and Mountains 

The October 1942 offensive on the Caucasian front had been long 
awaited. It began in an atmosphere of malaise. 

The previous August the German High Command had attacked the for¬ 
midable massif on two flanks: in the southeast along the Terek River in the 
direction of the Baku oil fields; in the southwest, our sector, in the direction 
of Batumi and the Turkish frontier. 

The battle of Terek had been very arduous, without yielding decisive 
results. The German armored divisions had been stopped near Grozny. In 
October they didn’t advance much farther. Our drive toward Adler had also 
failed. 

The October push no longer had the goal of reaching Georgia and the 
Transcaucasus. It took as its objective Tuapse on the Black Sea, and the 
control of the pipeline which ended at this port. The pipeline was no thicker 
than the body of a child. For this black tube we to battle for weeks and 
weeks. 

The only oil fields we took before the Reds could burn them were the 
Maikop fields. These oil-bearing strata were in fact situated at Neftegorsk, 
between Maikop and Tuapse. The installations had been dynamited by the 
Reds. The oil continued to spread, prevading all the rivers with its thick 
flood, browning the bulrushes and the vegetation. With their genius for 
organization the Germans set about returning these fields to use. The oil 
was extraordinarily rich, and especially suitable for aviation fuel. When we 
arrived at Neftegorsk on the morning of 9 October, we were absolutely 
amazed to see what, in one and a half months, the German engineers had 
accomplished. Great buildings of brick, brand new, stood completely 
finished. 

We had to finish our work by conquering the pipeline as far as Tuapse, so 
that it could pour millions of liters of this precious liquid into the Black Sea 
oil tankers. That was our business as soldiers. The autumn offensive would 



114 


CAMPAIGN IN RUSSIA 


be as much an economic operation as a military one. This wouldn’t be the 
first time, nor doubtless the last, that thousands of soldiers would fall for 
oil fields. 


* * * * * 

The highway and the railroad line from Maikop to Tuapse were strongly 
defended by the Reds, who knew as well as we did the importance of this 
ardently coveted pipeline. In August the tanks of the Reich had stormed the 
Soviet barriers without putting a dent in them. At the beginning of October, 
1942, the German High Command threw its assault divisions, to which we 
were attached, into a very well-planned operation. Across wooded moun¬ 
tains rising to altitudes of a thousand meters or more, devoid of any path, 
tens of thousands of foot-soldiers coming from the east and south would 
hew themselves a passage with axes. Advancing stage by stage, they would 
flank the enemy lines joining to his rear, on the Tuapse road, at twenty, 
then at forty, then at fifty kilometers beyond Neftegorsk. 

Our ranger divisions, specialists in mountain operations, led the way. We 
left the oil-bearing basin in a driving rain. After two days of marching 
through quagmires we confronted the great mountains, freshly gilded by the 
sun. 


* * * * * 

The woods, fantastically tangled, bristled with gigantic oaks which had 
never felt the ax and thousands of crab apple trees which exuded a wonder¬ 
ful, tart perfume. 

We climbed to the summit, where the Reds had occupied a great camp 
still strewn with spoils. Through breaks in the clouds we saw a mighty 
panorama of oak forests, still green, dotted with the golden leaves of crab 
apple trees already vanquished by autumn. 

We rushed down the slopes. The horses would slide on their hooves for 
ten or fifteen meters; we checked ourselves by grabbing at roots. We 
camped under the stars in a miniscule town, drolly named Travalera. More 
than a hundred soldiers had fallen in an attack on these few wretched straw 
huts. 

This was the last hamlet. Afterwards the forest rose, dozens of kilometers 
deep, as wild as the Congolese jungle. 

* * * * * 

The army fought above all with the ax, the saw, and the pick. The 
spearhead would track the enemy, drive him away, kilometer by kilometer. 
Behind them, hundreds of engineers were opening a route chopped bit by 



To the Caucasus on Foot 


115 


bit through terrible obstacles, across the very mountains. It defied belief. 
This path was crowned with tens of thousands of logs, fastened to projec¬ 
tions in the rock perched above vertiginous ravines and reinforced by walls 
of stakes. The most powerful tractors could use these trails perfectly well 
for many kilometers, enabling them to reach the summits. Every two or 
three meters the earthworks curved off to permit crossings. 

As we advanced, passage for vehicles became more difficult and we 
stopped using them. We replaced the tractors with thousands of prisoners 
of war, transformed into porters. We might have believed ourselves in the 
equatorial brush. Each man carried on his shoulders a most cleverly con¬ 
trived wooden container, to which would be fastened perhaps an ammo 
box, perhaps a canteen, possibly a bag of food. Everything, including 
drink, had to be back-packed. The lines of porters advanced, one after 
another, day and night. 

Our division had brought along innumerable mules, magnificently 
packed. We Walloons had kept several horses, but there wasn’t a single 
mountain pasture at these heights. We no longer possessed so much as an 
armful of fodder, nor a grain of oats. Unable to pasture their animals, the 
drivers fed them on birch branches. Ceaselessly their axes hammered the 
trunks, felling the beautiful trees by the hundreds, solely for their branches. 
The beasts browsed avidly on bundles of the green branches, but their 
flanks grew gaunter every day. 

While the engineers carved this access route toward the Tuapse road, 
thousands of mountain troops and muleteers waited, camped in cabins built 
by the troops themselves. 

Veritable forest cities sprang up. Every German has in his soul a moutain 
chalet. Some of these little buildings were masterpieces of grace, comfort, 
and solidity. Each one had a name. The most insignificant was entitled, 
with good humor, “House of German Art.” 

The autumn was beautiful. We would dine in front of our bosky huts 
among the rock plants. We had built tables out of white wood and installed 
rustic benches. Only the sun pierced the boughs. The enemy airplanes 
searched in vain for our campsites. In the evening we could see, far off in 
the valleys, the blazing railway stations of the Maikop-Tuapse line. Burning 
trains glowed fifteen kilometers away. Through our binoculars we could 
make out perfectly the blackened skeletons and the vivid red squares of the 
compartments. Our Stukas were making life untenable for the forces of the 
USSR. 


* # * * * 

At the far end of the forest, the forward troops and the engineers had 
finally reached a forest path which joined, three kilometers farther on, the 
famous Black Sea highway. The Reds defended it furiously. We took the 



116 


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highest rocks only after dramatic hand-to-hand fighting. Numerous bodies, 
half-charred by the fires among the trees, were strewn on the scorched 
earth. 

Our whole division set off to deliver the finishing blow. We marched up 
the ingeniously constructed roadway. At each curve witty placards, painted 
with no small talent, would signal the dangers, for that matter quite evident 
without the signs! Refractory mules, loaded with ammo boxes or kitchen 
stewpots, would topple and fall with an infernal din, smashing themselves 
on rocks a hundred meters beneath our feet. 

We reached the valley and a logging road which ran straight as a ruler be¬ 
tween two rocky hills. The Reds had swept this path mercilessly for the past 
week. Every German patrol that had come near the Soviet positions had 
been annihilated. 

The Stukas pounded the Russian bunkers ceaselessly. On one particular 
day they inflicted so much damage that we were able to seize the enemy 
trenches, which had become a frightful charnel house. 

That evening another officer and I came across heaps of corpses ac¬ 
cumulated during the last week. They were in a monstrous state of putrefac¬ 
tion. I was especially moved at seeing a line of Reds felled by a burst of 
machine-gun fire. They had collapsed one atop the other like a house of 
cards. Each still held his tommy-gun in his rotting fingers. 

At 6:00 A.M. I began to photograph this macabre scene. 

Just as I looked through the viewfinder, I thought I saw one of the 
corpses move slightly. Even though they were crawling with thousands of 
disgusting yellowish maggots, I wanted to put my mind at ease. The body 
which seemed to have quivered had his hood pulled over his head. I ap¬ 
proached, revolver in hand, and suddenly yanked back the clothing. Two 
eyes, frightening in their fury, fixed on me like carbuncles. It was a 
Bolshevik leader. He had lain amid this rot since the evening before, letting 
the larvae cover him over. He had on his person a last will in which he had 
sworn that, as a Jew, he was resolved to do everything to avenge the Jews. 

Men’s fanaticism has no limits. 

* * * ♦ * 

The Stukas had utterly annihilated the junction of the forest path with the 
highway from the sea. Hundreds of Soviet corpses filled the fox-holes. 
Some still grasped, in blackened fingers, bandages unrolled too late. An of¬ 
ficer wounded in the legs had barely had the time to pull down his pants 
when he fell dead into a nest of machine guns, head first. His pale bottom, 
crawling with hundreds of sticky caterpillars, shone from the ground. 

Three young Germans on patrol had managed, at the beginning of the 
operation—which is to say some ten days earlier—to worm their way down 
to the rocky stream bed between the Russian forts. Their bodies lay on the 



To the Caucasus on Foot 


117 


stones, their eyes wide open, their beards red and fine. Their dessicated ribs 
had already punctured their green jackets. 

We reached the famous Tuapse highway. The village at the crossing was 
no longer anything but a series of fabulous craters. Beneath the railway line 
the little tunnels destined for the run-off of the mountain waters had been 
converted by the Reds into narrow hospital rooms. The wounded, aban¬ 
doned for the last two days in these icy corridors, had all perished on their 
stretchers for lack of care. 

A beautiful river spread out above a dam. I began to take a bath there, 
but quickly jumped back out: putrefied bodies, floating at waist height, 
were everywhere. You couldn’t move an arm without bumping into one. 

We passed the night bedded down on the ground amid the stink of these 
slimy charnel houses, which taught us, better than any sermon, the vanity of 
our mortal flesh. 

Storms and Ravines 

The conquest during the month of October, 1942, of a large section of the 
route from Maikop to Tuapse had been an important victory. We had no 
more than a good twenty kilometers to cross to reach the great Black Sea oil 
port. We were approaching our goal. 

We had only one night’s rest. The next morning we again left the highway 
to begin a second flanking operation through the woods. We advanced 
several kilometers across the bottom of a valley, then re-entered the wild 
oak forest. It rained in torrents. The earth, sown with rotted corpses, had 
become horribly viscous. We possessed none of the magnificent equipment 
of the Alpine divisions, neither short jackets nor iron-shod shoes. Our long 
greatcoats dragged miserably in the mud. We skidded on the smooth earth. 
The advance meant, for us, in this chaotic and dripping jungle, nothing but 
constant suffering. Men tumbled into the ravines. 

Reaching the top of a mountain, we saw the famous pipeline. It passed, 
half-way down the slope, from one hill to another, audaciously spanning 
the valley. On the opposite ridge the Russians had built fortifications. Their 
trench lines swept down from on high into the valley. While one group of 
our men advanced along a bend in the valley, I climbed, astride the fat black 
pipe, tommy-gun in my hands. In fits and starts I rode above the pass, 
while, fifty meters below me, precipices yawned one after another. I arrived 
safely on the far slope followed by a whole cavalry of volunteers gladdened 
by this unforeseen exercise on “horseback.” 

***** 

A little before evening we succeeded in climbing to the summit of the 
enemy mountains, which had just been overrun by the advance guard of the 



118 


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German Alpine troops. The Reds had been massacred in place, killed in 
long rows, standing in their narrow trenches. 

We had barely the time to set up our miniscule tents on the crest before 
the first great tempest of autumn broke loose. 

Our tents were made of little triangular canvases, slit in the middle, which 
served individual troops as ponchos. To erect a tent, one had to combine 
four of these canvases, staking them over an area of about two by two 
meters. But four canvases meant four men, so we had to sleep four in a tent 
in a tiny space, as well as shelter a full kit there. 

To complicate matters further, the tent had to be taken down during the 
day so that everyone could have his poncho back to cover himself. 

We had neither straw nor dry leaves to stretch out on, nothing except the 
drenched soil. The storm howled the whole night. We were right at the sum¬ 
mit of the mountain. The torrents of rain, hail, and snow could carry off 
our fragile habitations at any instant. The water streamed in, penetrating 
holes punctured at a dozen places in canvases that had seen a year and a half 
of service, drenching our faces. Men cried out against the tempest. Their 
tent-shelters bowled over, soaked to the skin, they struggled and swore. 

# * * ♦ * 

A number of Soviet soldiers had been captured on the mountain toward 
the end of the afternoon. They had been sent to us during the night. 

They formed a lamentable flock around our bivouac. They were for the 
most part puny urchins from Krasnodar, about sixteen years of age, 
dragooned to Tuapse where they had been quartered exactly four days, just 
the time it took to learn to use a tommy-gun. Their outsized infantry boots 
had tortured their feet. Most of them had thrown away their footgear and 
had gone on, barefoot, in the mud. Without so much as a hut to sleep in, 
they huddled in the storm, one against another, half-drowned and 
exhausted. 

In broad daylight, with the stolid fatalism of the Slav, they began to pick 
over the bodies of compatriots who had been killed in the area. After an 
hour, the bodies were, every one of them, stark naked. The prisoners put on 
not only the greatcoats and jackets of the dead, but their socks and even 
their drawers. When the column of prisoners moved off toward the rear, 
they left us in the company of long lines of white corpses, glistening under 
the heavy rain. 


* * * * # 

The tempest lasted three days. Mingled snow and rain swept down in 
gusts. We tried to light fires under our little tents, but the wood was soaked. 
All we could achieve was an acrid smoke which tore at our eyes and throats. 



To the Caucasus on Foot 


119 


All day, all night, without an instant’s truce, the tempest raged, flattening 
tents, drenching uniforms. A few soldiers hadn’t even any canvases, and 
several would have to squeeze together in one hole. 

The first evening we had managed to hoist our last horses clear up onto 
the mountain tops. Lashed by the rain, they gazed at us despairingly. Draw¬ 
ing aside my awning on the final morning, I saw them collapsed on their 
forelegs, dead of exhaustion and suffering. 

The Russian corpses grew ever more livid. Their bellies had begun to 
green with the tender green of young shoots. The continual presence of 
naked corpses all around us finally maddened us. With kicks we pushed 
them, one after another to splatter from the height of the parapets five hun¬ 
dred meters below in the mud and water of the ravines. 

Our exhausting climb, the days and nights of suffering on these storm- 
swept crests, were of absolutely no avail. We received orders to withdraw to 
the Tuapse route and return to the southern forests by another path. Dazed 
with fatigue, we crossed the pipeline again and set up camp in a valley fac¬ 
ing back the other way. 

The highway from the sea was strewn with the blackened remains of Rus¬ 
sian wagon-teams. Everywhere, dead horses had been flattened by hundreds 
of German tanks and cannons. Nothing remained of them but pools with 
floating skins. The artillery fired steadily; Soviet planes dived at us, drop¬ 
ping their bombs without skill. A powerful watercourse, called the Pshish, 
flowed on our left across great red and grey rocks. We crossed it in dinghies 
fastened to a line stretched across the river, which bore us, like acrobats, to 
the mouth of the Tuapse railroad tunnel. 

The tunnel was about one kilometer long. The Reds had not only blown 
up the bridge spanning the river at the entrance to the tunnel; they had 
created, inside, a wreckage of monumental proportions. Entire trains had 
been crashed one on top of another. At least a hundred cars had been 
junked in this dark corridor. 

The infantry succeeded in slithering into the wreckage with extreme cau¬ 
tion. For a quarter of an hour, they had to advance in the most total 
darkness, keeping their right hands flat against the rock. Then they had to 
crawl under two telescoped railway cars to reach the other wall of the tun¬ 
nel, beginning the same process in the blackness all over again, their left 
hands glued to the damp rock. The men would shout to let the others know 
where they were. After a half hour’s march we could make out a pale glim¬ 
mer. The Reds had dynamited the mouth of the tunnel, opening an immense 
crater which we scaled at the end of this Dantesque corridor. 

The convoy climbed to the summit of the mountain, then descended by a 
path, hastily cut by the engineers, flanking the muddy forest. It took the 
animals an entire day to manage it, at any rate those which didn’t die in the 
muck or fall into a ravine. 

At the mouth of the tunnel we did another balancing act across the debris 



120 


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of a second bridge over the Pshish, and then set out along the railway line. 
We bedded down for the night in a wallow of fetid mud. 

In the end, we counted the mud a blessing, for the enemy had opened fire. 
Shells fell endlessly, lodging harmlessly in the clay with a dull plop. 

The next day we had to cross a valley. The great bridge of the Tuapse 
railroad dangled over the void. The Red artillery was methodically pound¬ 
ing the village that we had to cross to reach the southwestern oak forests. 
All around us isbas were being blown ten meters in the air. Any attempt to 
cross would have been folly. 

We waited for nightfall, then, passing through swampy bottomlands 
thick with cadavers, crouched at the foot of an enormous mountain, as 
sticky with mud as everywhere else. A little before midnight, we began the 
climb, loaded with full kits and all our weapons, light and heavy. 

The slope of the summit we had to climb was as steep as a ladder, rising to 
an altitude of nine hundred meters. The earth was as slippery as shoe polish. 
We skidded on our worn-out and un-nailed shoes. We had only a telephone 
wire which the guide unrolled to guide us through the darkness. At any mo¬ 
ment we risked bumping into the Russians. Had the guide gone the least bit 
astray, the whole column would have foundered. Our young soldiers were 
half dead with exhaustion. The strongest among us had had to load 
themselves down with the arms of the weakest in order to relieve them. I 
carried one tommy gun around my neck, another on my shoulder. A ner¬ 
vous man’s whispered oath could have doomed us all. 

The last few hundred meters were unspeakably hard. Many collapsed, no 
longer able to climb. They would cling to tree trunks to keep from rolling 
into the abyss. The damp darkness was so thick that we could see neither 
stumps nor rocks, nor the bodies of fallen men. 

It was four o’clock in the morning when we reached the crest of the 
mountain. We hurriedly set up machine-gun nests and put automatic 
riflemen on the largest crags. The first gleams of a flat and glaucous 
daylight broke the shadows. We watched, with consternation, the trees 
rustling in the wind above the gray ravines. 

The Indjuc 

Days passed. The sun returned. Although the crests of the Caucasus were 
an uncomfortable roost for soldiers, nature still displayed herself with such 
majesty from the height of these mountains that she consoled us for our 
labors and our sufferings on the slopes. Russets, sumptuous reds, the colors 
descended for kilometers to the white waters leaping across the ravines be¬ 
tween the green rocks. At five o’clock in the morning, dawn reached the top 
of the passes. For a long time the fog continued to clasp the sinuous valleys. 
Dense and milky, it spread from one to another, as clean as the water of a 
rosary of lakes. Over this white sheet the mountains rose like gold and rust- 



To the Caucasus on Foot 


121 


colored islands. For an hour we lived a fairy dream. From the depths of the 
lakes of fog, new islets would emerge, ever lower peaks rising forth in their 
turn, like legendary worlds engulfed long ago by deep waters. 

***** 

With the daylight began the artillery duels. Germans and Russians bom¬ 
barded each other with determination. Our mountain rose between the 
guns, our combat positions fastened like storks’ nests to its summit. 

During the night both we and the Soviet infantrymen made surreptitious 
forays. During the day both kept silent. Then the spoilsport artillerymen 
would again hammer at one another. The protracted wail of the shells, 
sometimes fired at a mad cadence, would deafen us for hours. The projec¬ 
tiles, wherever they came from, would graze our mountain, just over our 
heads. We would hear the shells whistle one behind the other in the treetops. 
Often pieces of branches would fall. 

We were at the mercy of any lazy or haphazard shell. Our troubles began 
immediately: one of our posts was blown up. Another shell—120mm—par¬ 
ticularly whimsical, fell eighty centimeters from me, tossing me through the 
air on a whirlwind of fire. When I regained consciousness, I found myself 
amid heaps of wreakage. Around me, everything had been slashed or razed 
for twenty meters. The right side of my steel helmet had been completely 
caved in and splintered, up to my ear. My canteen had blossomed like a 
flower. My machine gun, set down within arm’s reach, had been blown to 
bits. 

Everyone thought I’d been vaporized. I had, all in all, a shell splinter in 
my right forearm, a perforated eardrum, and a long rent in my stomach. 
This last wound would prove serious later on and mar for a long time my 
life in exile. 


♦ * * # * 

After several days the German troops prepared for the final assault. We 
stole further to the south, always along the crest of the same chain of moun¬ 
tains. Across from us the impressive mass of Mount Indjuc rose 1300 meters 
high, above a formidable oak forest as dense as a thicket, where nothing but 
a few gray rock faces could be distinguished here and there. From up here, 
the prisoners told us, the sea could be seen. 

When the mountain was conquered we would have only to descend 
towards the palm trees and the blue shores of Tuapse. 

About one thousand meters beneath our machine guns, between Mount 
Indjuc and our mountain, flowed the river Pshish. Our sector was cut in 
two by a ravine several hundred meters deep, accessible only with great dif¬ 
ficulty. In the trough of this gorge a torrent streamed over gigantic rocks. 



122 


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Our positions went up the other side without interruption, followed the 
crest for several kilometers, then plunged precipitously toward the main 
river. There we occupied an advanced post, right at the bottom of the 
valley, several meters from the roaring water. 

According to the combat plan, the German Alpine rangers would carry 
the assault to Indjuc, starting from the southern extremity of the sector. To 
begin, they would take the first Soviet positions from the rear, below the 
rocks on the other side of the Pshish. As for us, perched in our eagles’ 
eyries, we had only to reconnoiter the enemy and wait for new orders. 

We didn’t miss a detail of the last great battle of the Caucasus. 

The Stukas opened the dance, just at daybreak. They would plunge 
precipitously toward the golden sea of the valley. Their skill was incredible. 
They never pulled back, in the very depths of the pass, until they were on 
the point of crashing into the trees. 

We could only see a few Soviet soldiers fleeing and running toward some 
rocky crests. The Stukas saw no more than we did. The oak forest was like a 
roof. It was impossible to tell where the Reds* bunkers were. The Stukas 
sought more to frighten than to destroy. 

Then the German Alpine troops charged into the thickets. 

We could hear the firefight, and were able to follow closely the progress 
of our allies by the white flares which rose regularly above the trees. It was a 
moving sight. Their advance was rapid. The flares reached our height, then 
rose closer and closer to the summit of the passes. At the end of two hours, 
flares were bursting from the foliage to almost above Mt. Indjuc. We 
thought, all aquiver, of the first fighters who would reach the summit. We 
remembered the “Thalassa! Thalassa!” of the Anabasis. Like the ten thou¬ 
sand ancient heroes of the retreat narrated by Xenophon, our soldiers were 
about to shout, “The sea! The sea!” 

Alas, they never shouted it. The progress of the flares stopped. The 
machine gun and tommy gun reports came further apart. The Stukas 
stopped diving between the two mountains. Even the artillery fell silent for 
long stretches. 

The indecision lasted for a long time. Several green flares threw up their 
flowers and their spangles, now much lower. We heard a few more frenzied 
splutters, but it was the end. The ranger companies had not been able to 
conquer the enormous forest. Their attack unraveled as it went forward, 
swallowed up by the forest. 

The assault had failed. In the evening, Mount Indjuc seemed to us more 
wild and proud then ever, in the violet fires of dusk. It had definitively 
barred the route to us. 

Autumn blew on the mountains, disheveled them, littered the earth with 
millions of shriveled leaves, light and dry. 

We watched the forest die. 

Our little posts were balconies poised over the valley. The mountainside 



To the Caucasus on Foot 


123 


fell away beneath them, terribly steep for hundreds of meters. At night the 
Russians came on patrol on this sheer flank. We had hung steel wires there 
from which dangled hundreds of old tin cans. They rattled against one 
another on contact with prowlers. Our guns would crack. The next day we 
would see several brown heaps at the foot of the tin shop. 

The German rangers whom we had relieved had dug themselves little in¬ 
dividual shelters a meter under the earth in order to rest there by turns. We 
took our turn, along with the others. We would let ourselves down through 
the mouth of holes just the size of a body. At the bottom, you had to roll in¬ 
to a ball, then crawl into a pit no larger than a coffin. 

There were too few holes. We had to wriggle into them and bed down by 
twos, crushed one against the other, noses scraping the ground. We had the 
horrible feeling of being buried alive, and had to master ourselves to remain 
thus, stretched out like dead men buried a bit too soon. Some preferred to 
roll themselves up in blankets under the trees, despite the bursting shells and 
the fog, so terribly did fear grasp them by the throat in those icy black 
tombs. 


***** 

One night the weather changed. The wind shifted to the north. The 
tempest shook the tops of the great oaks, growing into a hurricane. It 
drowned our tomb-shelters, into which the water gushed along the branch¬ 
ing roots, rising to the level of the holes. 

We tried frantically to bail out the pits with our mess tins, but soon we 
had to declare ourselves beaten. 

The mountainside, swept by the wind and rain, lost its foliage in a few 
days. The Pshish swelled, rolling into the valley in tumultuous torrents, 
carrying off the wooden bridges, cutting off behind us all possibility of re¬ 
supply, of rations as well as munitions. 

The Last 

The great autumn tempests, mastering the mountains of the Caucasus at 
once, put an end to any notion of an offensive. 

We had to dig in in the mud wherever the fate of battle had deposited us. 
At the foot of our mountain the Russians floundered like us in shelters in¬ 
vaded by water. We could hear them yelling in the night. 

The soldiers groped in the darkness, buckets in hand, trying vainly to 
empty their holes. Across both lines, it was an international swearing con¬ 
test. The Germans shouted cries of “Sacrament!” The Russians spewed 
forth “Satana!” We let off steam with a lot of “For God’s sake!” 

The Bolsheviks were luckier than we, for the winter saved them. Thanks 
to it, the forces of the Reich were stopped with only a few kilometers of 



124 


CAMPAIGN IN RUSSIA 


mountains and forests left to conquer between them and the Black Sea at 
Tuapse. 

This halt, within ten kilometers of victory, was crushing. 

There was nothing we could do about it, however, except stabilize the 
front on the bare crests where we had spent three months of fighting and ef¬ 
fort. 


* * * * * 

The most urgent problem was shelter. All our old foxholes were 
overflowing with muddy water. We had neither axes nor saws, nor any of 
the supplies of the engineers. Patrols were sent to dig through the ruins of 
the nearest village in order to pull nails, to search for hatchets. 

With our infantrymen’s spades we had dug sites for huts a few meters 
below the ridge of the mountain, cutting ditches for water drainage. We 
managed to sink posts and to hang three rows of tree trunks over them, 
which we covered with another meter of earth. This makeshift roof could 
muffle the shock of a blast, but the rainwater kept infiltrating between the 
beams. 

Inside these hermit’s cabins we planted stakes a half meter high and 
spread bare branches on top of them to serve us as mattresses. All during 
the night the water would rise in the room. By morning it reached a height 
of twenty or thirty centimeters. We used it to drown our lice. We could find 
handfuls of them any time under our jackets and between our legs. 
Resignedly we threw them into the water which lapped against the boughs. 

For the last two months we had not been changing our underwear. Ver¬ 
min were eating us alive. One morning I undressed myself outdoors and 
killed more than seven hundred lice in a single session. 

Our woolens were completely riddled with them. They were squashed 
together like kernels of corn, interlocked one with another. We succeeded in 
dislodging them only by changing our sweaters over a wood fire. Then we 
would see hundreds of enormous whitish lice climbing toward the upper 
part of the garment. 

We would shake them out onto a sheet of red-hot metal. They would 
sputter and burst in all directions like fire-crackers. Finally the sheet would 
be shiny with their melted grease. 

***** 

The Pshish in flood looked like a major river. It had in one night reached 
the foot of our mountain and converted the meadows into a muddy gulf, 
absolutely unfordable, in which floated the swollen corpses of Bolsheviks, 
washed along at random by the currents. 

Our kitchens were cut off at the foot of the sheer banks. The water 



To the Caucasus on Foot 


125 


submerged them. The next day we could no longer see anything but the 
metal tubes of the chimneys and the heads of a few horses still struggling 
here and there. We saved them, but they died of their privations in the 
foothills. 

Their nauseating carrion was soon the staple of our diet. 

Nothing more came from our supply bases, since the engineers’ bridges 
had been swept off like straws by the water, which attained a height of two 
or three meters. For a week we lived by chewing pieces of the muddy meat 
which we carved with our knives from the skinny haunches of the dead 
mares. We hacked out this unspeakable meat as best we could and swal¬ 
lowed it raw without salt. 

We had saved several bowlfuls of flour, and succeeded in kneading a few 
pancakes with rainwater. 

The tiniest fire would put the whole sector in danger, however. The crest 
had been denuded of almost all foliage. The Russians were on the lookout 
for us. A thin thread of smoke, wafting above the mountain, would 
instantly get us thirty or forty grenades. Besides, the smoke made life 
unbearable in our rude huts. Our eyes would water with huge tears, and we 
had to extinguish the fire instantly. 

Drenched, gnawed by hunger, lying in disgusting watery dens, we were 
soon prey to all sorts of diseases. An epidemic of jaundice had invaded our 
sector. Every morning lines of soldiers would leave their holes, feverish and 
dazed, faces yellow. As soon as a temporary bridge could be built we 
evacuated them in frightening numbers. More than twelve thousand sick 
left the Caucasus in a few weeks. 

With jaundice, pneumonia, and ten other diseases lying in wait for every 
one of us, our manpower melted away. We rapidly lost half our men. 

* * * * * 

Nevertheless we had to soldier on and wear the yoke of suffering right to 
the end. We spent interminable hours keeping watch on the enemy, mowing 
down with machine guns and tommy guns any Russian who sneaked near or 
between our posts, spaced fifty or a hundred meters apart. 

Every night our patrols would go down toward the Russian foxholes, an 
exhausting task. Our soldiers, nevertheless, took these impossible missions 
in their stride. 

One such patrol, surprised at daybreak by the Soviets, and swept by their 
fire, returned without its leader, whose name was Dubois. He had fallen 
near the Pshish. They believed him dead. 

That night, among the sheer rocks which separated us from the enemy, 
we heard calls for help, shouted in French. Two volunteers went down into 
the ravines and brought back Dubois’s “dead” body. 

To tell the truth, he was almost dead. His shoulder smashed by a bullet, 



126 


CAMPAIGN IN RUSSIA 


he had come to long after the battle. It would have been impossible to climb 
back up the mountainside in broad daylight. Besides, he didn’t want to miss 
the chance to carry out in an exceptional manner, the orders he had received 
to locate the Soviet positions. He crossed the river, slipped between two 
bunkers, and spent several hours studying the layout of the whole enemy 
sector. 

He did it all too well. Discovering the telephone line of the Russian com¬ 
mand post, he managed, with great difficulty, for he could no longer use 
one hand, to cut the cable with his knife. 

The Russians, puzzled, came out to reconnoiter. Dubois, tracked by 
them, had to dive into the river again, this time under frenzied firing. He 
was hit several times. An explosive bullet smashed a hole in his leg the size 
of a grapefruit. He dragged himself into the brush, somehow or other made 
a tourniquet, and, when night came, crawled up toward our rocks perched 
nine hundred meters above him. He dragged himself halfway, with the 
energy of a man who is gambling for his life. 

He was brought in almost exsanguinated. The medics would have to take 
him back down the other side of the mountain again through mud and 
darkness. 

Before being chloroformed by the surgeon, he asked for a pencil and 
paper. In front of the German colonel who commanded the sector, he 
sketched, for twenty minutes, a map of the Soviet position, gulping a little 
cognac every time he felt faint. After he’d laid everything out clearly, then 
and only then did he lie down. 

He was a junior officer like the others, one of many. But our boys had 
faith. They knew wherefore they offered their lives. 

* * * * * 

The ideal alone could still sustain our comrades, even in the skeletal state 
to which they were reduced. 

On our icy peak we lived in an atmosphere of madness. Several hundred 
Russian corpses rotted and grimaced several meters from us. 

One night in October, the Russians had tried to re-take the crest. At 
eleven o’clock in the evening they had climbed to the very top of the moun¬ 
tain. They thought no one had heard them, but every machinegunner was at 
his weapon. When the Bolsheviks were a few meters from our guns, a rak¬ 
ing fire roared out. The Soviet battalion was cut to pieces. 

The Reds had been surprised with their fingers clawing at the roots of the 
trees, at the very end of their ascent. They died clinging to the soil. Some 
rolled among the rocks. Others had been able to get several meters farther 
along and died on the plateau. But the most horrible corpses were those 
grimacing under our very noses, still clutching the trunks of the oaks. 

It was impossible to reach these corpses without being swept by the Soviet 



To the Caucasus on Foot 


127 


machine guns and mortars, which, from the other side, watched for the 
tiniest movement on our bare peak. 

For several weeks we had to witness the slow decomposition of the 
corpses stacked up under our very eyes. Finally the heads came loose, fell 
off, one after another, and toppled in among the rocks. Nothing was left 
above the shoulders except the off-white neck vertebrae, spookily super¬ 
posed like African necklaces. 

At three-thirty in the afternoon shadows already clung to the mountain. 
By four o’clock it was completely dark. We had to burrow into black 
dugouts full of water, stretching out on slats made of branches, tormented 
by the innumerable vermin. By eleven at night, we could stand it no longer. 
Shivering, we would wait out the hours for the first pale gleam to pierce the 
sodden dawn. 

The enemy grew more and more surly. The Americans had just landed in 
Morocco and Algeria. The Bolsheviks hadn’t believed in the Yankees until 
this surprise. The fall of North Africa changed everything. 

Before, numerous prisoners would come and surrender. Often, for that 
matter, just as they got to us, the poor devils would be blown up on our 
mines in the night. The panicky survivors would race back to their positions 
where they immediately got themselves shot. From the day after the landing 
at Rabat and Algiers, the Russians came no more. They had regained their 
confidence. 

We had to be on the lookout constantly. Our soldiers relieved one 
another every two hours. These reliefs were ghastly. We kept tumbling into 
our former shelters, now overflowing with water. Men would disappear into 
them completely. We would pull them out drenched right to the bone. Some 
would burst into tears like children. 

We were horrified by the dreadful Russian corpses liquefying between 
our posts even more than by the holes full of water. Feeling our way in the 
dark, we would skid on these putrid sacks, sinking an entire foot into an 
oozing belly. Then we would be gripped by despair, at a loss to cleanse 
ourselves of this frightful human corruption which clung to our skin and 
sickened us to the point of vomiting. 

We were at the end. The end! 

The end of our physical strength. 

The end of our spiritual resources. 

We struggled on only because our honor as soldiers was on the line. 
Volunteers, we wanted to remain so until the bitter end, until the last beat of 
our exhausted hearts. 

We no longer hoped for anything. 

One morning, reading the orders, we stared with vacant eyes at a 
paragraph which named the hour and conditions for our relief. 



128 


CAMPAIGN IN RUSSIA 


It took us a long time to understand. Nevertheless, it was really true. The 
Wallonian Legion was to return to Belgium. It would receive three weeks 
home leave, and there be reinforced by several thousand Belgian volunteers. 

We went back down the long muddy mountainside we had climbed so 
painfully one night in October. What had become of our wretched com¬ 
panions who, that night, had toiled and suffered while hauling themselves 
silently to the summit of the mountain? Of our legion, decimated by the 
first winter in the Donets, completely rebuilt in June, 1942, before the great 
southern offensive, there still remained, in all, exactly, one hundred eighty- 
seven men when we came again to the little wooden bridge over the Pshish. 

We made our way slowly back towards the crest where we had suffered so 
much. Far above us floated the golden banner of the few trees that the on¬ 
coming winter couldn’t conquer. Like them, our ideal, proud and 
tormented, still fluttered grimly against the hostile sky. 



Chapter Five 

DUG IN ON 
THE DNIEPER 


One evening in December, 1942, our train, packed with soldiers on leave, 
passed the river Kuban. At that time, German engineers were busy building 
an enormous steel bridge across the green waters, a bridge with two lanes, 
the ultimate. 

Yet the front was showing sinister cracks to the north and northwest of 
Stalingrad. 

The Germans, methodical as always, impervious to the slightest doubt, 
continued to bring massive girders to the work-site, which would replace the 
wooden bridges thrown up in haste at the time of the preceding August’s 
victories. 

With equal serenity they had amassed, at Maikop and at Krasnodar, 
stocks of fur-lined boots, padded garments, pairs of skis, cigarettes and 
chocolates. One month later these stores would be scattered over the roofs 
with the help of plenty of dynamite. 

The Germans listened only to the German radio. We, more indiscreet, 
had learned that the Russians were hastening up from the east and planned 
to cut off communications to the Caucasus at Rostov. We knew they were 
coming. 

The region remained perfectly calm. A few sentinels watched the roads 
along the pale green ice-bound lagoons. We heard nothing. We saw 
nothing. Only a few crows animated the cloudy sky. 

***** 

One morning we arrived at the bridges of Rostov, protected against the 
ice floes by huge cutwaters. 

Since the union of the Ukraine with Europe all this hinterland had 
become a fabulous construction yard. Where one year earlier we had found 
nothing but railroad lines, corroded thanks to the Soviet habit of letting 
everything go, and buildings blackened by systematic Soviet arson, we now 
saw modern railway stations with fifteen or twenty lines, dotted with huge 
new buildings of concrete and brick. 


130 


CAMPAIGN IN RUSSIA 


We gazed wide-eyed at this incredible transformation through the half- 
opened door of our car. Hundreds of billboards bearing the names of the 
principal German firms were posted proudly on the factories and hangars, 
honors list of the conquerers in this industrial war. 

We, the soldiers, had conquered a waste land which the Soviets had 
totally annihilated or wrecked piece by piece before retreating toward the 
east. German industry had needed only fourteen months to rebuild, create, 
establish order, to transform everything from the ground up. 

On the Dnieper it was the same as in the Donets basin. A two-story 
bridge, one story for the trains, another for motor vehicles, had been built 
in a few months across this mighty river, more than a kilometer wide. The 
city sparkled with lights as far as the eye could see: at night the lights of 
mighty factories could be seen everywhere. Immense and black, the river 
flowed toward the sea, sprinkled with innumerable reflections which shifted 
in the current like will-o’-the-wisps. 

Beneath the snow stretched the Ukraine, its vast horizons dotted with ice 
and with coppery groves, embroidered with the blue and green shutters of 
white isbas. Everywhere new stations, warehouses, huge sugar refineries 
had been built. We unloaded hundreds of agricultural machines, green and 
red, as smart as Nuremberg toys. In one year Germany had created in 
Russia the richest colony in the world. 

Magnificent work! 

But also magnificent illusion, for the Reich squandered prematurely on 
this work of European peace the strength which, according to the jungle law 
of hatred and self-interest, should have been turned exclusively towards 
warlike works of carnage, of killing, of extermination. 

* * * * * 

In 1943 the war dragged on. More than ever brave spirits were called for. 
In 1941 we had left on the Eastern crusade because our consciences de¬ 
manded it. As the cause remained the same in 1943, so the sacrifice had to 
remain the same. Whatever may have been the risks and torments of the 
struggle, the pain of separation, the lack of understanding with which we 
often felt ourselves surrounded, we had to hold firm in the service of our 
duty. 

Life is worthwhile only to the extent it is illuminated by generous giving. 

Everyone wanted to experience the epic. At the end of January 1943, our 
legion reassembled for a second departure at the Sports Palace in Brussels. 
Tens of thousands of Belgians were there to cheer our soldiers. Then the 
train took us toward Russia. 

Nevertheless we weren’t immediately going to join the anti-Soviet front. 
We still lacked some of our combat groups, who, during the intervening 
months, had reinforced the German troops falling back from the Caucasus. 



Dug in on the Dnieper 


131 


From Maikop they had retreated as far as the Kuban delta, the Isthmus of 
Perekop, and finally the Crimea. By way of Simferopol and Kherson, on 
the Dnieper, they joined us at the Polish frontier after a lengthy round trip 
of nearly four months. 

Our hard battles of 1941 and 1942, far from intimidating the youth of our 
country, had drawn them to the call en masse. Almost two thousand 
Belgian volunteers were in training. Our first task was to form a cohesive 
unit. Most of the recruits were mine-workers. Some had come out of 
distaste for their labor in the coal mines. Many had been attracted by our 
ideal of social justice and dreamed of fairness and decency. A number of of¬ 
ficers and soldiers of the old Belgian army who had been prisoners in the 
Reich camps had asked to enlist. They came to us, several hundred of them, 
in the glorious old uniforms in which they tried to check the German ad¬ 
vance in May 1940. 

Thus the two armies joined together fraternally, the one which had 
heroically defended the integrity of our country in 1940, and the one which, 
overcoming past resentments, had striven, since August 1941, to help save 
the essential: Europe and our fatherlands all across Europe. 

♦ * * * # 

The working-class constituted three-fourths of the strength of our legion, 
but the legion also included numerous young people from the aristocracy 
and the Belgian bourgeois class, gold medallists from Jesuit colleges, sons 
of well-known diplomats, jurists, civil servants, businessmen. 

An identical purpose united us all: to represent our people brilliantly 
among the twenty nations who had joined the struggle; to fulfill, without 
servility, our duty as Europeans, by fighting against the mortal enemy of 
Europe; to obtain for our mother country a strong voice in the continental 
community which would be bom out of the war; and finally, to gird the 
shock troops whose might would guarantee social justice upon our perma¬ 
nent return to our country after the hostilities. 

For this ideal we offered our lives. 

This offering was not mere rhetoric. Of the six thousand Belgian 
volunteers who joined the Wallonian Legion between autumn of 1941 and 
spring of 1945, two thousand five hundred died as heroes. Eighty-three per¬ 
cent of our soldiers received one or more wounds in the course of this 
mighty epic. Of the first eight hundred volunteers, three alone of those who 
had taken part in all the battles reached the end of the war alive: a simple 
soldier, a junior officer who became a captain, wounded three times, and 
the author of these lines, himself wounded on five occasions. 



132 


CAMPAIGN IN RUSSIA 


The Return to the Dnieper 

By November 1943 our legion, now, as the Assault Brigade “Wallonia,” 
a powerful unit of the Waffen SS, disposed of 2,000 combat-ready men and 
354 trucks and armored vehicles. 

Our convoys followed the rivers, the avenues of willows, the yellowing 
poplars, then crossed the leafless woods of Silesia. In 1943 this industrial 
basin was still intact; the coal mines and the synthetic oil refineries were 
working at full capacity. The villages in the small valleys were neat and 
peaceful. 

But already the rumblings of distant thunder, harbinger of great storms, 
could be heard growling in Southern Europe. The Anglo-American troops 
had crossed the Mediterranean in the month of August 1943, a crossing 
definitely helped by the double dealing and the defection of Italy, but also 
by first-class ships and planes. Sicily had been taken by storm. The conti¬ 
nent itself, Calabria on one hand, Naples on the other, found itself invaded. 
The Allies couldn’t have been pushed back, nor even contained, no more at 
the Straits of Messina than at Syracuse or under the palms of Tunisia. 

A massive landing, backed by several thousand airplanes, had been 
quickly and totally successful. That was clear. Could this formula, repeated 
on the shores of the Atlantic, fail when it had been shown to be irresistible 
in the Mediterranean? 


***** 

A second test of strength had taken place on the Ukrainian front, towards 
which our three hundred trucks rolled. 

Until the summer of 1943 we had all believed in the possibility of a Ger¬ 
man resurgence in the East. Stalingrad had been indisputably a painful 
blow. But the counterattack would surely come, as in the spring of 1942. 

The counterattack came. Germany hurled all available forces in the direc¬ 
tion of Voronezh on the Don. The assault failed after tragic battles in which 
several thousand tanks had been destroyed. The Soviets, pressing their ad¬ 
vantage, had driven the German troops as far as Kharkov, then had con¬ 
quered the city. 

Its fall was infinitely more serious than that of Stalingrad, although less 
spectacular. We could no longer chalk it up to accident. What country 
hasn’t had an accident in wartime? It was too systematic. We hadn’t been 
able to drive the Soviet steam-roller back, nor even to block it. From 
Kharkov, the forces of the USSR had driven even to the Dnieper, crossed it, 
advancing beyond Kiev and Dniepropetrovsk. 

But in any case, our own group, anti-Bolshevik volunteers, was com¬ 
mitted. We had resolved to fight to the very last second against the Soviets. 
We knew that each blow struck would one day have its effect. 



Dug in on the Dnieper 


133 


Moreover, in war, as long as everything is not lost, nothing is lost. Ger¬ 
many still had a very large margin of security, from Minsk to Bordeaux, 
from Athens to Narvik. She still disposed of immense material resources, 
and her ingenious inventors might suddenly provide brilliant and terrifying 
surprises against an adversary too sure of himself. Numerous convoys of 
splendid shock troops were joining up with us, notably the famous Adolf 
Hitler and Death’s Head divisions. “In one month we’ll retake Kiev!’’ these 
elite soldiers shouted to us as they passed. 

***** 

Our trains skirted the south of Poland, under a clear sky of pale blue and 
rose. It was Sunday. The women in dark-colored dresses, coif fed in green 
bonnets, left their little mud-walled isbas, walking down dirt paths to reach 
the painted wooden churches. 

We breathed the icy soil’s aroma. 

The next day at dawn we made a short stop at Lemberg, where we re¬ 
ceived an enormous amount of winter gear: clothing lined completely with 
down, padded boots, white greatcoats, fur-lined hoods. 

Under the weight of these clothes we felt huge and clumsy, not knowing 
any longer how to tote all our equipment. We remembered the terrible 
winter of 1941 on the Donets, with our threadbare jackets cut right through 
by the howling north wind. This time the commander had taken every 
precaution. It was almost too much of a good thing, and wiser heads among 
us were asking themselves how they could keep such a phenomenal amount 
of luggage when the day came that they would have to move without trucks. 

But in general our soldiers took a childish pleasure in their padded 
clothing. Each baggage car soon contained a full platoon of Santa Clauses. 

* * * * 

We set out again across Galicia, drenched by the autumn rains. Then the 
long trains turned toward the south. Blue mountains shone far to the west. 
A great muddy river, bordered by thousands of dry bulrushes, slipped 
beneath the cars. Crossing the Dniester, we entered into Bessarabia. 

From then on the lines of communication were so encumbered that it 
took us fifteen or twenty days to make our way, by the direct route, from 
Lemberg to the front. Masses of soldiers on leave who were not overly en¬ 
thusiastic to return to battle looked for ways to avoid duty. Dazzling sleep¬ 
ing coaches and restaurant cars still glided with clockwork regularity in the 
direction of Odessa. From the platforms of the stations where we twiddled 
our thumbs during a forty or fifty hour waits, we would suddenly see long 
luxurious cars, with their orange lamps, parade by. 

But the general traffic became more and more paralyzed. The barmen 



134 


CAMPAIGN IN RUSSIA 


went through, as always, without a hitch, but the army didn’t move at all 
any more except by dribs and drabs. Our trains were shunted across 
Rumania on a one-track line. 

***** 

We had been led to believe that we were going to the Crimea. 

The Crimean Peninsula had just been cut off from the mainland by the 
Soviet offensive, but German reinforcements had been sent to Odessa by 
sea. Thus we saw without astonishment one morning the red ramparts of 
the old fortress of Tiraspol, high on the right bank of the Dniester. 

From the other side of the river we recognized the uniform isbas, the wells 
with long, black, wood handles, the millions of sunflower stalks, gray and 
beheaded, stricken by the nascent winter. We would be at Odessa by 
evening! 

But the train stopped in a gloomy station, then clearly switched over 
towards the east. The trip to the Crimea was over. For two days we as¬ 
cended interminably. Northeast, northeast, northeast. The huge Ukrainian 
stations passed in succession, covered with snow. Happy-looking women, 
strong and buxom in their padded clothing, chewed and spat sunflower 
seeds as they worked as stevedores on the loading docks. 

We were approaching closer and closer to the Dnieper, far to the north of 
Dnepropetrovsk. We could hear the artillery already. 

The last evening we noticed sheaves of brilliant flares to our right, then 
equally brilliant ones to our left. The train advanced for several hours, cut¬ 
ting these weird fireworks in half. We were getting deeper and deeper into a 
bottleneck. Airplanes came down to strafe the road. Before us we saw 
buildings in flames. It was Korsun. 

We detrained there in the middle of the night. 

The Olshanka 

We were to take up our positions about thirty kilometers to the east of 
Korsun. 

It took our three hundred fifty-four motor vehicles three days to com¬ 
plete this stage of the journey, which normally would have taken two hours. 

An enormous river of mud, the awful Russian mud, as thick as melted 
rubber, mired all the roads. It was up to forty or fifty centimeters deep 
across the bottom lands in the hamlets. 

Our new drivers had to make their way through this viscous muck, chop¬ 
ping down cherry orchards to improvise new passages. Just before a forest 
of firs we came to some large marshes. There we had to use a track made of 
thousands of logs, riveted together. We danced across them as though we 
were at the fair. 



Dug in on the Dnieper 


135 


The track which crossed the pine forest was itself shored with thousands 
of tree trunks, no longer because of the mud, but because of the fine sand, 
into which our cars would sink up to their engines. 

The Bolsheviks knew the difficulties of this passage. Consequently the 
forest was infested by prowling partisans who skillfully set mines at night. 
In the morning two or three cars would be blown up. It was our daily toll 
fee. 

Every five hundred meters, enormous wooden redoubts had been built, 
like African forts. Surveillance teams lived there, sheltered by impressive 
stockades. 


***** 

To the east of this pine forest opened out the Dnieper plain. 

The staff of the renowned SS Viking Division was installed in Belozerye, 
a large village stretching out over a radius of several kilometers. We would 
be with them until the summer of 1944. 

Marvelously armed, completely motorized, comprising thousands of ex¬ 
traordinary young men, barrel-chested and as strong as lumberjacks, the 
Viking had been given the mission of defending the Dnieper, already 
flanked on the northeast and to the south by Stalin’s divisions. 

Soviet troops had parachuted onto the right bank of the river, in the 
region of Belozerye, at the moment when the retreating German divisions 
were ebbing back toward the left bank and were awaiting en masse their 
turn to cross the few bridges which were passable. 

The enemy parachutists had been promptly pursued. Many had perished 
during quick skirmishes; the survivors had let themselves be swallowed up 
in the great forest of Cherkassy. There they had linked up with the 
numerous partisans. 


***** 

The zone which had been assigned to us, at the south of the Viking’s sec¬ 
tor, was bordered by the western edge of the forest. The paratroops and 
Ukrainian partisans had flourished for several weeks in this wooded enclave 
on the right bank of the Dnieper. They ended up establishing liaison with 
the main Soviet army, which had crossed the river downstream. 

The forest was hemmed at the west by a river, the Olshanka, fifteen to 
twenty meters wide. Flowing from the south, the stream came to a village 
called Staroselye, veered for a short time towards the northwest, then 
returned along the woods and descended eastward. It passed a village fetch- 
ingly named Baibusy, perched on a hill on the left bank. On the other side 
of the river, hard against the very edge of the forest and occupied by the 
enemy, was a hamlet, Sakrevka. 



136 


CAMPAIGN IN RUSSIA 


The Olshanka twisted and turned between the cliffs. After five or six 
kilometers it reached a fourth village, Moshny. There the Olshanka finally 
left the forest completely. It had grown wider, and here a long wooden 
bridge crossed it. Every isba had wicker fish traps, hoop nets, seines, square 
nets, in bizarre shapes. An admirable church with an oriental dome 
embellished the entire horizon. 

From Moshny the Olshanka flowed towards the east for several 
kilometers more. At the far end of a reedy steppe, a last town, with the 
cavernous name of Losovok, spread out under the dappled November sky. 
High white dunes overlooked the river as it flowed into the muddy Dnieper, 
between the islands of golden sands and the black firs. 

Thus our warlike landscape and villages. 

* * * * * 

We were to occupy first the localities of Moshny and Baibusy. 

The larger part of our brigade went down to Moshny, its fishermen and 
its blackened bridge. 

As commander of the third company I had to defend Baibusy. The com¬ 
pany was made up in great part of future heads of our Youth Movement, 
who had been carefully screened and had completed a long course of train¬ 
ing in leadership. These boys of sixteen and seventeen years old were of a 
crystalline purity and idealism. 

I arrived with them at Baibusy. Two long lines of isbas marked the crest. 
At the foot of these thatched cottages, the terrain sloped gently toward the 
Olshanka for a kilometer. The forest, mysterious, watched us. 

The Russians had fortified themselves at the entrance to the woods, or so 
it would seem, since they didn’t make their existence known. We set up our 
grenade throwers, our artillery, our anti-aircraft guns, and our Paks*. Our 
infantry took up position. 

The village was calm. The woods were calm. Not one back was seen 
crawling among the grey sunflower stalks. I established my command post 
at the first isba on the southwest. 

At eight o’clock a burst of gunfire, a single one, ripped through the 
darkness. „ 

Five minutes later my command post, riddled with incendiary bullets, ex¬ 
ploded in flames at the top of the hill, a golden torch with millions of 
sparkling spangles. 

The whole crest was illuminated. 

Nonetheless, we heard nothing more after the blast, although several 
brown forms must have crept by as they stole slyly back to the rushes on the 
river bank. Down there in the thicket, shining eyes watched the fire. 

The battle between us and the forest had begun. 



Dug in on the Dnieper 

The Silent Forest 


137 


We settled in at our new sector of the Ukrainian front on 21 November 
1943. Several days later, in order to test my recruits and to feel out the ter¬ 
rain, I crossed over to the Soviet bank at the first glimmerings of dawn. 

The wooden Baibusy-Sakrevka bridge was still standing, a narrow span 
that the Russians could have blown up just as well as we, but each of us was 
saving against sudden reversal. 

We turned off toward the south. A dozen men strong, we slithered across 
a field of sunflower stalks and reached the river Olshanka. The water was 
icy and it came up to our waists. I placed a machine-gunner on the other 
bank to cover our passage. Then we crawled for a long time through a bog 
before we reached the forest. 

The tall firs were silent; the golden sand was unmarred. In a clearing we 
found a flock and two shepards. That was all. 

Just to return the Bolsheviks’ compliments of the first evening, we set 
fire, on the way back, to three haystacks which bordered the enemy sector. 

We returned empty-handed. The forest kept its secret. 

When our trenches and barbettes were firmly in place on the eastern and 
southeastern outskirts of the village of Baibusy, the general commanding 
the army corps gave, as might have been expected, the order to change all 
the positions and to move them forward, right up to the bank of the 
Olshanka. 

The troops now had to bivouac in the open country. What’s more, winter 
was coming on. Above Baibusy we would take shelter by turns in the isbas, 
miserable shacks built on the bare earth, their mud walls oozing water. At 
least we had a roof and two small windows. Below, it was the barren plain, 
the mud, or the wet sand of the open river banks. 

We spaced out our firing points over seven kilometers, along the cliffs or 
near the little bridge of Sakrevka. Two hundred meters from the Olshanka 
there was a knoll surmounted by a birch grove. We made it the pivot of our 
defense. Our anti-aircraft guns were hauled there during the night. A net¬ 
work of trenches fronted by barbed wire ran above the contravallations. 

At the end of two weeks our brigade had to expand operations toward the 
south, to the village of Staroselye. The new sector, dropping down in a steep 
slope onto a village called Irdyn, was in the hands of the Soviets. Between 
this town and our bunkers lay a vast spread of mud. Entangled in this 
morass were straggly hazels, brambles, and bulrushes. 

It had snowed. Rabbits would run wiggling their bobtails, poking lines of 
blue and green holes into the crunchy steppe. Rosy evenings fell upon the 
forest. 

Our boys had a hard life. Often when patrols ventured into the bog, the 
icy crust would break. We had lots of frostbitten feet. 

These inconveniences didn’t keep our morale from being as warlike as 



138 


CAMPAIGN IN RUSSIA 


possible. For each patrol of six men, eighty swashbuckling soldiers would 
bluster and shove in hopes of being chosen. 

At the other end of the sector, our comrades at Moshny had dug in along 
the River Olshanka. 

A track skirted the steep river bank. In the enemy zone, below the mauve 
and purple forest, the ruins of a monastery could be seen, and the yellowed 
foliage of the old enclosure. Our men dug and shored up the trenches while 
the guards scanned the right bank, striped with com stalks. 

The Soviets came in the evening to feel out the terrain haphazardly. 

Our soldiers, too, stole into the darkness across the other side of the 
water. 

The fields, sticky with black mud or covered by the first snows were thick 
with mines. We would wait for noises in the night. A flash, a boom, cries, 
and those who escaped would bring back the wounded, warm with blood. 

One of them, a small mine-worker from Charleroi, seventeen years old, 
as slender as a girl, had had both feet and a hand torn to shreds in the course 
of one of these raids. 

He held on for a month on his cot in the field hospital at Korsun. Every 
day be grew frailer, but he smiled at every visit. He found happiness in his 
Iron Cross. He died holding its scarlet ribbon in his hands as if he had been 
stroking a bird of paradise. 

# ft $ ft ft 

The forest was as mysterious as ever. 

Nevertheless, every night men would slip through our posts, as cautious 
as leopards. We would hear soft hooting in the darkness. From far off, 
another hoot would reply. We understood the signs, we felt the presences. 
Sometimes our sentinels would shoot. But in the morning we would 
discover no trace of blood or of footprints. 

We could increase our patrols all we liked. I went out myself and spent 
hours during the nights, crouched with one of my men near the water. We 
didn’t catch a thing. It was enough to drive us to despair, for every morn¬ 
ing, five, ten, or fifteen kilometers behind us, our trucks would blow up on 
new mines. 

The village came alive at dark. Signals were exchanged; partisans were 
harbored. The Reds glided in the shadows in their pigskin sandals. They 
knew every inch of the terrain. They were uncatchable. 

At the end of a month, neither we nor the Viking Division had taken a 
single prisoner. 



Dug in on the Dnieper 

Blood in the Thickets 


139 


We had to know, at any cost, what was going on in that purple and white 
forest. 

The peasants would whisper. We ended up learning from them that about 
ten thousand men were hiding out in this wooded massif of Cherkassy. 

But where? 

They were receiving equipment. We saw, thanks to our forward observa¬ 
tion posts, the Bolsheviks construct numerous bunkers and bring up anti¬ 
tank guns, which they moved frequently. 

But we saw only the first hundred meters. What lay beyond, under the 
immensity of pines and dark oaks stretching clear to the Dnieper on the east 
and to Cherkassy on the southwest? 

Every isba was a mystery. 

Our villagers were friendly, as were almost all the country-folk of the 
Ukraine. They cursed the Communism which had subjugated them, ruined 
them, and sealed their churches. But they had sometimes been tactlessly 
treated by the German administrators. A certain number of families had, 
since then, a father or son in the lairs of the neighboring woods. 

I carefully made sure that my village of Baibusy would be a happy village 
in spite of the war. The Walloon is amiable by nature. He would quickly 
make himself one of the household, do favors, win them over with small 
presents. 

I had re-established worship. A marvelous priest, returned from the 
woods where he had been hiding for twenty-three years, officiated on Sun¬ 
days, from dawn until midday, dressed in purple and gold. The entire 
village attended the ceremonies, prostrating themselves a hundred times, 
kissing the earth a hundred times, intoning for hours melancholy and pas¬ 
sionate chorales which would break your heart. Dozens of icons shone by 
candlelight in their copper and silver shrines. The yellow-bearded priest 
would baptise the week’s babies. He made them kiss the icons interminably, 
one by one. Then he paraded each one of the newborns across the chapel, 
howling their heads off. He held them up at arm’s length towards the con¬ 
gregation, so that the whole village could see and contemplate the arrival of 
new parishioners. He would finally return them, dead tired, to their flat¬ 
cheeked mothers, modest, yet glowing, dressed, like all the women of 
Baibusy, in long monastic capes, brown, decorated with a few ruffles above 
the waist, woven in the village. 

No matter what the combats of the night, I regularly attended the Or¬ 
thodox worship on Sunday mornings, among elderly peasants with bushy 
beards, beside honest mamkas and louse-ridden brats. After hours and 
hours of prayers by the priest, our chaplain would chant the Catholic Mass. 
Not a single member of the Ukrainian congregation would leave. These peo¬ 
ple were starved for religious life, and they would kneel, deeply moved, dur¬ 
ing our Communion. 



140 


CAMPAIGN IN RUSSIA 


While helping the elderly gentleman of my isba, who had lost his right leg 
in the last war, I returned to my command post covered with vermin, but 
moved by the admirable simplicity of manners and the faith of these 
peasants. 

Nevertheless, from the same little houses, every night, the hootings of 
owls would go forth, directed at the partisans. 

We couldn’t be angry with our villagers for having paternal hearts, but 
we watched them vigilantly. 

Their naive goodness quite naturally overcame all our western complex¬ 
ities. They loved their compatriots who were shooting at us from the 
neighboring outskirts of the forest. But they also bore witness to us per¬ 
sonally, who lived in their town and under their roofs, of an equal affec¬ 
tion, simple, strong, and sincere. 

In the evenings, when I put on my white coat and crossed my cartridge 
clips in the Cossack manner, the old mamka would kneel before the icons. 
At dawn, when I returned from combat, the old folks were waiting for me. I 
would put down my arms, steaming with the cold. The old mama would 
cross herself, cry, touch my garments. I wasn’t dead! Poor people, gentle 
and good, who had to pray at the same time for us, taken in as sons of the 
house, and for their own children hiding out across the way. 

* * * * * 

We received the order to go deep into the woods. We absolutely had to 
hunt out the enemy and take some prisoners. 

Twice a platoon of my company crossed the River Olshanka in the 
darkness. I sent fifty skirmishers. They reached the wooded hills beyond 
Sakrevka at daybreak. 

The forest was nothing but a series of crests where it was impossible to 
take up combat positions. Nowhere would our soldiers have been able to 
make themselves masters of the terrain. New crests, covered with bushes, 
kept looming up, from which the enemy could annihilate a company in a 
few minutes. The men advanced two kilometers into the forest. They 
discovered trails, wagon ruts and footprints. But no pistol shot resounded. 
The enemy was staying away, playing dead, or had gone to ground. Our ex¬ 
peditions discovered, in all, two cowards who fled immediately, after hav¬ 
ing shed their shabby coats to run faster. 

These were the only spoils of war which my company brought back. 

The 1st Company received orders in its turn to probe the terrain. At four 
o’clock in the morning fifteen volunteers, led by a young officer with a 
temperament like burning coals, entered silently into the icy water of the 
Olshanka and disappeared across the darkness. 

They reached the old cloister. At that point, the first Soviet watch posts 
had been passed, but no warning hoots had troubled the demise of the 
night. 



Dug in on the Dnieper 


141 


Glimmerings of light touched the tops of the branches. A dove-colored 
dawn was rising above the Dnieper. The lieutenant and his fifteen patrollers 
kept advancing. 

They heard the cattle lowing, saw tracks. Crawling from thicket to 
thicket, they reached the top of a crest. Just a few meters away, two Soviet 
soldiers stood guard! The sought-after prisoners were at their mercy! 

In the twinkling of an eye, they threw themselves upon the two sentinels, 
brought them down, and gagged them. Everything happened without a cry. 
Our men went thirty meters out of their way in order to regain the bottom 
of the little valley on the west and then return. 

There were several icy ponds. One of the two captives suddenly tripped 
his guard and bolted. The fatal gunshot which dropped him gave the alert. 
In a few seconds an unbelievable army fell upon them, an army such as our 
men had never even imagined. 

When capturing the two sentinels our comrades had reached, without 
knowing it, the entrance to a large encampment of partisans, sheltered 
behind the hill. Hundreds of civilian fighters rushed up and surrounded 
them. 

And who were these fighters? Not only men, bronzed by life in the 
woods, but howling bands of disheveled women and packs of grimy boys of 
thirteen or fourteen years old, armed with seventy-two round submachine 
guns. 

Our patrollers immediately formed a circle. But more than four hundred 
Soviet partisans were blazing away at them. 

Our young lieutenant was among the first struck down, a bullet in his 
head. The others had to get out of the trap at all costs, without further 
delay. It was vain to try to go back. Retreat had been cut off. A submachine 
gun spat its ribbon of fire from behind every tree. 

The only possibility of escape was to make a dash straight through the 
Soviet camp, then try to escape later with a circular movement. Through the 
cows, the sheep, the fires, the huts, our soldiers dodged frantically, 
spreading mad panic among the hordes of ragged old women. 

Only two of our comrades escaped the massacre. They wandered for a 
long time in the forest. During the night one of our forward posts picked 
them up, half dead. 


* * * * * 

The most powerful divisions of the Reich had, at the beginning of 
December, 1943, begun a great counteroffensive to reconquer Kiev. At first 
they were successful, breaking through the front at Zhitomir and 
penetrating eighty kilometers beyond the Soviet bridgehead. 

Once again they were stopped by the mud and pushed back, with huge 
losses. 



142 


CAMPAIGN IN RUSSIA 


Instead of reverting to the status quo, the situation had greatly worsened. 
This time it was we who were directly menaced in the north and northwest. 
Elsewhere, in the south and southeast, the divisions of the Russian general 
Koniev were hammering hard, expanding their thrust well beyond the 
Dnieper in the direction of Kirovograd and Uman. We would see the great 
red fires which marked the progress of the enemy against an opaline 
horizon. 

The general staff of the army corps was absolutely determined to learn 
the intentions of the Soviets in the center of the sector. 

The north front was cracking; the south front was cracking. Opposite, in 
the east, in the accursed forest of Cherkassy, what was being prepared? 

Orders came through to undertake an operation on a larger scale, to take 
place at daybreak on the third of December. The plan was extremely 
audacious. Three hundred of our men would cross secretly, during the 
night, the three kilometers of deep marsh which separated the forest of 
Cherkassy from the southwest of Staroselye. 

The column would infiltrate between the Soviet guard posts, then enter 
the forest behind the enemy positions. Then it would advance laterally for 
several kilometers from the southeast to the north as far as the heights near 
Irdyn. 

At H-hour, three hundred men would rush to the assault, falling on the 
Soviets from behind and annihilating them. 

I was to command the operation. On the evening of the 22nd I left my will 
on the little white wooden table of my isba and set off on this new escapade. 

Irdyn 

We were supposed to be at Staroselye at midnight. It was snowing. 

Our trucks took four hours to cross, on a log road, the fifteen kilometers 
which would bring us across the pine woods of the southwest to the staging 
area. We had to make this detour behind the front so that the enemy would 
not be able to discover our plans. 

From Staroselye we descended towards the marshes. We had to approach 
them from south of the positions to be destroyed, so that the Reds of Irdyn, 
too, would suspect nothing. 

The 2nd and 3rd Companies of infantry of the Wallonian Brigade worked 
in tandem. German engineer detachments, well-supplied with mines and 
flame throwers, accompanied us. Their mission would be to destroy every 
fortified building in Irdyn in the wake of our assault. Our infantry com¬ 
panies, once successfully behind the enemy lines, would deploy themselves 
in the woods to the east of Irdyn, across the entire width of the town; then, 
thrusting behind the Russians, they would take possession of the area and 
hold the terrain as long as necessary for the work of annihilation. When this 
probable jumping-off place for a Soviet attack against the center of our line 



Dug in on the Dnieper 


143 


was completely annihilated by mines and by fire, we would have to regain 
our own lines as best we could across the bogs. 

We climbed a steep path in total silence. The march of the column packed 
down the snow. From time to time a man would tumble from the heights of 
the path, losing his machine gun and his helmet and falling to the bottom of 
the ravine. 

The column came to a halt near the swamps. It was almost four o’clock. 
The full moon had just been swallowed up by a propitious fog. 

The black marshes spread mysteriously, more than three kilometers deep, 
full of pitfalls, full of traps. 

A scout went on ahead. The night before he had attempted the crossing 
alone and knew, more or less, the way. I set off behind him, followed by 
three hundred men in single file, silent, fearful of the least noise. 

Almost everywhere the snow had melted into water and slime. 

My soldiers, swathed in their voluminous winter gear, were suffocating. 
Their faces were sticky with sweat under their thick fur hoods. Sometimes 
we had to cross a stream over a log bridge. Their legs would tremble. In the 
profound darkness, soldiers would slip and fall waist-deep into the water. 

It was then that the dismal wail of a siren resounded from the southeast. I 
thought everything was lost. Everyone threw himself down into the mud, 
but the siren kept on wailing. 

Nothing happened. We never found out anything at all about this inci¬ 
dent. Perhaps there was an alarm elsewhere. The wailing dragged on for 
twenty minutes. 

We resumed our march. 

We could make out the indistinct mass of some large bushes in the 
darkness. There lay the bank. But the enemy posts had to be there as well. 

We walked with extreme caution, so as to give not the least sign of our 
presence. What a tragedy if suddenly Soviet shots rang out among ex¬ 
hausted troops who had only watery marshes to retreat to. 

I reached a little thicket. A man joined me, then another. Our three hun¬ 
dred smugglers passed, as furtive as bats. The forest enveloped us. In a 
ghostly silence the troops rested for a few minutes, hidden in the snow. 

We had taken the right approach. The Soviet posts to our left and right 
must have been far enough away, or else the Russians sentinels had slept too 
soundly, confident that no enemy troops would ever cross three kilometers 
of unknown quicksands in force. 

Here we were, a party of several hundred men, behind the Soviet combat 
line. It remained for us to continue cautiously along for four kilometers, to 
where we would be due east of the Russian base at Irdyn. 

In total silence we made a nocturnal march, deep in the enemy sector, 
along a logging road through the Cherkassy forest. Scouts and engineers 
equipped with mine detectors advanced fifty meters in front of our column. 

Fingers on our triggers, we followed them along the shoulders of the 
road, ready to fall back into the woods in case of an attack. 



144 


CAMPAIGN IN RUSSIA 


But it was better not even to think about an attack in such a situation, in 
the very heart of the Soviet sector, without a single possibility of help or 
escape. Had the enemy guessed that three hundred men were strolling 
behind their lines at five o’clock in the morning, they would have sprung the 
trap on us. Sooner or later we would have been wiped out no matter what 
our resistance. 


* * * * * 

The sky was lightening faintly. 

We were nearing our goal. I sent the infantry, guided by compass, to the 
edge of the woods near Irdyn. The 2nd Company had the order to assume 
position for an attack from the southeast. It moved out quickly. The 3rd 
Company would attack driving from east to west. Under cover of the trees, 
it had to recircle the entire outskirts of the town, interminable, like most 
Russian villages. 

The snow fell heavily among the densely packed young fir trees. I spread 
my men out, for I knew nothing of the location of the enemy’s lookout 
posts. At any second the fray might erupt. I wanted to delay it until the very 
last moment. If not, how would we ever get east of Irdyn? We absolutely 
had to succeed in getting there without raising the alarm. 

We crawled for a long time in the snow, a hundred meters from the edge 
of the pine woods. We could see the roofs of Irdyn below us, a few wisps of 
smoke, some fences. 

We had been advancing for twenty minutes when I noticed two Soviet 
soldiers. They must have heard something. They were wearing their thick, 
brown, coarsely padded chapskas. They looked in our direction, worried. 

My men were shrouded in snow. Raising myself slightly, I surveyed the 
terrain. Other Russians loomed, twenty, then thirty, as silent as we, tommy 
guns in their hands. 

We began crawling again. The Reds advanced in a line parallel with ours, 
clearly comprehending nothing of what was going on in the woods, since the 
German front was in the other direction, to the west, not to the east. As far 
as they were concerned, the direction in which we were to be found was 
behind them. Why, then, did the dead wood crack? Why did the fir 
branches tremble? 

Flanked on our left by this strange escort, we were able to cross another 
fifty or so meters. The target was tempting: a few bursts and thirty Reds 
would have been cut down. I made desperate motions for my men to 
restrain their impatience. We weren’t there to kill thirty men, but to take Ir¬ 
dyn. The only thing which counted for the moment was to get as far as 
possible to the east. 

On our left the center of the town came into view. 

Suddenly the blow came. There were two Soviet bunkers twenty meters in 



Dug in on the Dnieper 


145 


front of us, right in the forest. They opened fire. Howling, we threw 
ourselves against them at close quarters. The Russians, hirsute giants, 
defended themselves bitterly. I had my tommy-gun broken in two right in 
my hands. I seized a wounded man’s submachine gun and jumped right into 
the middle of the Soviet fortifications. Our men mowed the Reds down. 
Those among them who survived our assault fell back toward the village. 
We leaped after them. 


***** 

After taking the bunkers we had to confront the entire Soviet garrison, 
temporarily confounded, but still powerful. To the south I could hear the 
noise of the fight begun by the 2nd Company. From bunker to bunker a ter¬ 
rible combat raged. Dozens of houses were in flames, proof that the 
engineers were at work. While waiting for the 2nd Company to join us, we 
had to hold firm, to conquer. 

The Reds struck back at us with their machine guns, their mortars, and 
their artillery. Shells and grenades rained down all around us, starring the 
white snow with gray scars. 

I was wounded in the right hand. Men were falling everywhere. The ter¬ 
rain was absolutely bare, right up to the outskirts of the houses. A few of us 
just made it to the first isba when we had to roll like barrels back down the 
snowy slope, machine guns pinned to our bodies. The soil was spangled 
with small cherry-red flowers sown in the snow with the blood of the 
wounded. 

Our tanks, on the opposite slope, had seen our flares. They moved in to 
support our advance. Their shells opened breaches for us, and we occupied 
the crest of the town, from where our machine guns hammered the enemy. 
Just a few scuffles more, savage but decisive, and the Soviets were driven 
from the whole sector, pushed back toward the woods in the northeast. 

The 2nd Company had demonstrated its prowess, and its most audacious 
combatants joined us with loud enthusiasm. Irdyn was taken. More than 
eighty Soviet corpses, fallen in the hand-to-hand fighting, were littered 
about, legs apart, hands sticky with blood. Numerous wounded men were 
crawling in the snow. One Russian, a single one, had surrendered intact. 

The German engineers proceeded slowly and methodically, as always. 
Luckily the village was empty of civilians. The fortified bunkers, blasted by 
mines, flew into the air, then fell back down as flat as boards. The entire 
kolkhoz waved the great gold and red flags of conflagration against the 
crystalline sky of dawn. One more hour and the Reds’ entire installation 
would be annihilated. 

We soon saw that this hour would be an hour of hell. 

The noise of combat had promptly alerted the whole forest. Soviet rein¬ 
forcements arrived from all sides. The enemy, thrown back into the steep 



146 


CAMPAIGN IN RUSSIA 


woods, poured fire on the village. Picked Russian snipers had scaled the 
trees. We had formed a line just at the edge of the woods, but we were en¬ 
during a withering fire. 

The German engineers hurried: they still had to carry their task through 
to the end. The enemy swirled around us, hemmed us in. What would we do 
when it was time for our column to retreat, to re-enter the sticky mire of the 
marshes and cross those three kilometers out in the open? 

I ordered three quarters of the troop to begin retreating. Meanwhile we 
would carry out counterattack after counterattack. 

At the end of an hour, the greater part of the column was out of firing 
range of the Soviet machine guns. We could see men struggling like flies in 
the glue of the marshes. They, in any case, were saved. 

The engineers finished their titanic work completely. They drew back in 
turn. Nothing was left for us but to get away. 

It would not be easy. 


* * * * * 

It took us three hours to cross the three kilometers of muddy bottomland. 

I had set up positions with several machine guns outside the village along 
a rail track used before the war to transport peat from the marshes. From 
this rampart we did as much shooting as we could to keep the enemy pinned 
down outside the woods. 

The greater part of my rearguard platoon had entered the marshes, carry¬ 
ing the last of the wounded. Some among them knew that they were done 
for. A young Parisian metallurgist (we had about a hundred French 
volunteers in our brigade) had had an arm torn off and his belly opened. 
Mangled as he was, he insisted that we prop him up against a haystack. “I 
want to die standing up watching my buddies fight,” he said simply. 

Most of the wounded could no longer walk. One of my “Youth” had had 
both lungs punctured. Lying, torso naked, against the snow with two little 
pink holes quivering in his sallow skin, his face was absolutely green. We 
felt we must save these poor boys at any price. The strongest among us car¬ 
ried them on our backs, but the mud kept giving way underfoot. When we 
crossed deep streams, the wounded men would fall, disappearing into the 
icy water, from which we pulled them out only with great difficulty. 

We took turns covering this last retreat in two small teams. As we fired, 
the other team would take position a hundred meters behind us. When they 
were ready to open fire we would run round the flanks to take position a 
hundred meters further on. 

One of my last companions had been horribly wounded in the belly. Each 
of us carried him in turn as best we could. Our backs were completely 
drenched with his blood. We were able to drag him along with us until the 
end of the fight, but he died two days later, in pain, but free. 



Dug in on the Dnieper 


147 


At noon we finally reached Staroselye’s hill at the end of the marshes, 
without having abandoned a single wounded man and without losing our 
Soviet prisoner, so important to the High Command. 

We rejoined our Panzers along steep paths, carrying our bleeding 
companions on litters of branches. 

Our success had been complete. Irdyn was annihilated. But our faces 
were strained; our thoughts were elsewhere. We climbed up into our trucks, 
surprised and dispirited at so much room. 

Festivities 

For Christmas of 1943 each hut had set up a Christmas tree, whitened 
with cotton wool taken from the medics. 

At the front I had never seen Christmas be anything but sad. Men would 
drink, sing, joke. For an hour everything was fine. Then each would recall 
Christmas at home: the blushing cheeks, the dazzled children, the tender 
wife, the sweet songs. Eyes would gaze into the distance with a far-away 
look, seeing hamlets and rooms once filled with joy. A soldier would leave, 
and we would find him crying all alone beneath the moon. 

That evening there were fifteen suicides in the division, hearts broken 
from the strain of so many months of separation and suffering. 

I had wanted to visit all our volunteers’ bunkers. Amid the snow and the 
darkness, I made some ten kilometers, entering each smoky shelter. Some 
squads, the young especially, were putting a good face on things and 
whooping it up, but I found a great many more grave faces than smiling 
ones. One soldier who could contain himself no longer had thrown himself 
to the earth and lay sobbing against the ground calling for his parents. 

At exactly midnight, at the moment when those who were still brazening 
it out had just started to intone “O Holy Night,” the sky burst into flames: 
it wasn’t the Herald Angels, nor the trumpets of Bethlehem. It was an at¬ 
tack! The Reds, thinking that by this time our men would be under the 
table, had opened fire with all their artillery and were hastening to the 
combat. 

In fact this was a relief. We leaped up. And in the snow illuminated by 
shells, by tracer bullets, by the flash of cannon fire, by the red, green, and 
white flares of the signalers, we spent our Christmas Eve preventing a rag¬ 
ing enemy from crossing the Olshanka River. 

At dawn the firing let up. Our chaplain gave Communion to the troops, 
who went up from their positions, squad by squad, to the Orthodox chapel 
where our Walloon priest dressed in Feldgrau joined in a truly Christian 
fashion with the old Russian village priest in his purple miter. 

There sad and bitter hearts were soothed. Their parents, wives, and 
beloved children had heard the same Mass back home and received the same 
Eucharist. The soldiers went back down with simple souls, pure as the great 
white steppe which glistened in the Christmas afternoon. 



148 


CAMPAIGN IN RUSSIA 


Around the little isba which I used as an observation and command post, 
the grenades and shells had gashed or blown up all the buildings. My little 
house, with its three bare cherry trees and its iced-up well, was somehow 
still standing after the blitz. The old peasant woman would look with horror 
at the jagged holes in the walls, and then quickly retire into the blackness of 
her shanty, crossing herself several times. 

The two neighbor women had been torn to shreds on Christmas Day, just 
as they were drinking their borscht. The shell had come straight in through a 
little window. 

At the front death is everywhere. One has only to lose one’s head for an 
instant, or step backwards, to be struck down. 

In combat, a frightened man is a dead man. Courage makes a man 
powerful, rather than vulnerable. Death can be intimidated, but it must be 
looked right in the face. 


♦ * * * ♦ 

New Year’s, 1944, arrived. 

We wanted it to be the third or fourth of January, for the year to finally 
be underway, for the days to become just ordinary days again, when you 
don’t think, or think as little as possible. 

But we had to anticipate a new strike from the rascals across the way. 
Wouldn’t they be likely to replay the sudden thrust of Christmas Eve at the 
stroke of midnight? 

We received orders to anticipate the enemy. It was we who would attack 
this New Year’s eve. 

Two platoons of my company entered the darkness of the snowy plain, 
crossed the water, and spread out into the tangled bushes. 

My third platoon had crossed the Olshanka one kilometer to our right. Its 
mission was purely provocative, to go behind the brambles several hundred 
meters to the south of the village of Sakrevka and open heavy fire so that 
the enemy would hasten en masse in that direction. Then my two other pla¬ 
toons would storm the redoubts facing our positions at Baibusy. 

Our soldiers charged. They threw the enemy into total confusion. 

We returned at dawn. I carried on my back a young volunteer who, first 
to charge a Soviet bunker, had run right into a submachine gun blast. 

Although both his knees were crushed, he didn’t so much as moan. His 
hair, fine as a child’s, was stuck in little curls to his moist brow. Poor 
youngster, to suffer atrocious mutilation and martyrdom at the very hour 
when all over the world millions of human beings were finishing a night of 
carousing. 

First of January, five o’clock in the morning. A soft red sun was rising 
above the white and rust-colored forest. The steppe was no longer blue. In 
the valley, the weapons had grown still. Everywhere in the world at this mo- 



Dug in on the Dnieper 


149 


ment, people were dancing; people were drinking; women were laughing; 
and the faces of drunken men bore the stigmata of all the vices which 
burdened them. And in the day slowly rising over the white steppe, a broken 
youngster was going to die because he had believed in something great, 
because an ideal pure and strong had brought him to the sacrifice. 

That morning near my isba I sadly laid upon the diamond-like snow this 
child with his frozen curls. His eyes had ceased to look upon a world whose 
baseness he had been able to measure and for whose salvation he had died. 

Sakrevka 

1944 began badly. 

The Soviet troops were thrusting powerfully to the northeast as well as to 
the southeast of our sector. Their advance was impressive and undeniable. 

Nonetheless, not a trace of anxiety appeared in the orders which we 
received. We were deemed installed at the confluence of the Olshanka and 
the Dnieper until the end of the world. 

Some actresses from Berlin had even arrived a few kilometers behind our 
lines. The motorcycle dispatch riders, who had no more than splashed these 
war-like lovelies as they passed, described their charms with feverish elo¬ 
quence. 

Nevertheless, every day the huge jaws of the Soviet pincer were drawing 
closer and closer behind us. 

But it wasn’t up to us to worry about such contingencies. For a soldier the 
war is his sector. The rest is the business of generals and journalists. 

The Assault Brigade “Wallonia” received orders to proceed, just before 
the dawn of 4 January, to an operation which would include our tanks. Our 
goal was the village of Sakrevka, which we had already overrun during the 
night of 1 January. This time we were supposed to blow up fortifications 
constructed deep in the forest beyond the hamlet. 

Above all, they told us, bring back some prisoners. 

In 1941 and 1942 we didn’t know where to put them all. Now, however, 
the Soviet soldiers were fighting to the death or slipping between our Angers 
like grass snakes. General Gille, commandant of the Viking, wanted at least 
five prisoners so that veriAcation of our intelligence would be possible. 

The 1st Company would cross the Olshanka at three o’clock in the morn¬ 
ing and hide in the enemy-held forest northeast of Sakrevka to prevent 
Soviet reinforcements from arriving during the battle. My company would 
cross the river on inAatable boats at 2:00 A.M. and slip up to the western 
entrance to Sakrevka to await the hour of assault. The 2nd Company would 
attack from the south, coming from Staroselye by the forest route. 



150 


CAMPAIGN IN RUSSIA 


During the night the engineers would discreetly detect any mines in this 
road. At 5:00 A.M. the tanks would start, carrying the mass of our men on 
their armor. They would speed toward Sakrevka. The infantry would then 
attack, deployed between the Panzers. 

It was a chancy operation. 

Our tanks could hit mines and blow up en route, and at the front weapons 
are of primary importance. 

* * * * * 

My company was concealed not far from the Olshanka at about three 
hundred meters to the north of the enemy’s lookouts. Our long white great¬ 
coats blended perfectly with the snow. I moved right down to the waterline 
in the dense darkness and stayed there for more than an hour, my ear glued 
to the ground. Not a step sounded on the frozen earth. No splash disturbed 
the water’s flow. 

The engineers had finished inflating our dinghies. They launched them 
quietly onto the black water. 

We had to stretch a cable, for the current was strong. One hundred men 
passed, boat by boat, to the right bank. 

We still had to cross about a thousand meters before reaching the forest. 
From my little command post, just in front of Sakrevka, I listened to the 
whistling of the wind, every nerve straining. The wind was blowing on the 
steppe, but it brought no other noise, neither the wailing of a vampire 
(either real or false) nor the click of a trigger. 

My men had reached the wooded hills. 

Time passed. Soon we heard the far-off rumble of our tanks entering the 
forest by the southern route. Already our engineers had penetrated the 
Soviet lines, finding the mines and discreetly unearthing them. The forest 
teemed with mute presences. My stomach knotted as I thought of these 
courageous boys who, without dramatics, were advancing in the icy night, 
or working or waiting or crawling in the snow to transmit orders. 

It was almost 5:00 A.M. The tank treads made a rumble and a clatter of 
steel. The Reds occupying the outskirts of the forest to the south hadn’t 
even had time to wake up properly. Our soldiers, leaping from the panzers, 
rushed into the shelters, grenades in hands. 

Dazed, the Russians had hastily seized their submachine guns, but the 
surprise was complete. Everyone was overcome: killed, wounded, or taken 
prisoner. Without stopping, our tanks continued their advance, sowing ter¬ 
ror across the forest. 

I began firing attack flares as soon as the 2nd Company’s flares had sent 
their d azzlin g arcs into the sky. One party of my men rushed across 
Sakrevka from the northeast and the east, behind the enemy, to meet our 
tanks coming from the south. The others flushed and routed the men 
operating the anti-tank weapons on the wooded crests. 



Dug in on the Dnieper 


151 


The hand-to-hand fighting, in which the Walloons were without peer, 
decided the business. The Soviet officer who commanded the artillery bat¬ 
teries blew himself up with a grenade when he saw that his guns were lost. 

Dozens of individual combats took place at the foot of the forest. Men 
were running each other through in the isbas, in the ravines, around the 
haystacks. One of our communications squads was cornered at the eastern 
extremity of the battlefield. In a few seconds the five specialists, burdened 
by their reels and telephones, were overwhelmed and dragged into the 
woods, never to be seen again. 

One of our tanks had been hit, but we were able to repair it without too 
much difficulty. We made an impressive haul: everything which was to be 
found in Sakrevka. 

We brought back more than thirty Soviet prisoners, in tatters as always, 
but as strong as beasts and, for that matter, living like them, bedding in any 
lair, wrapped in grimy rags. 

These crude soldiers would live on what they found in the isbas or in the 
winter fields or what they could take off corpses: moldy heads of 
sunflowers, muddy ears of com, stale bread. 

They had the brute endurance of cavemen, but they possessed, besides 
their brute strength, ultra-modem submachine guns which took clips of 
seventy rounds. In the sticky knapsacks fastened to their backs by a coarse 
cord they kept the wherewithal to fight for a week, two weeks, hidden in the 
brambles at a forest crossing or at the entry to a village. 

These shaggy giants, these lop-eared Mongols with melon-shaped heads, 
scrubby black hair, and cheeks as flat as slices of pork rind, these feline 
Asiatics with bright, beady eyes, unwashed, ragged, indefatigable, looked 
like prehistoric monsters alongside our young soldiers with their slender 
bodies, their greyhound waists, and their fine skin. 

We herded back this rabble as if we had seized wild boars in their 
wallows. Their coarse, savage faces laughed because we hadn’t killed them 
and because we gave them cigarettes. 

But if we had taken thirty savages, there were still ten thousand across the 
way. There were hundreds of thousands to the east, to the northeast, and to 
the southeast. 

These shaggy masses were advancing. 

Already we could feel the pressure of the horde. 

First Cracks 

The Soviet armies pouring down from the north and the Soviet armies 
unleashed in the southeast were coming closer and closer together. In the 
west, eighty kilometers to our rear, an opening of not more than a hundred 
and fifty kilometers remained between the two Soviet wings closing the gap. 

By 7 and 8 January, 1944, we could well believe that everything was lost 



152 


CAMPAIGN IN RUSSIA 


on the Dnieper. Thrusting from the northeast, the Red panzers had dashed 
across the rear lines of the German front, spiking through a hundred 
kilometers in two stages. 

The Soviets’ methods were simple. They stuffed some of their tanks full 
of submachine guns and clips. Then they invaded the towns pell-mell with 
five, six, or ten tanks at once and immediately assembled the civilian 
population. Every available ragamuffin, every barefoot boy received an 
automatic weapon. An hour later, without any other combat training, two 
hundred, three hundred bashibazouks* in rags would accompany the tanks 
of the USSR. 

The Soviet army replenished itself thus without difficulty and without in¬ 
struction as its thrusts progressed. These reserves of human “materiel” 
were in practice inexhaustible. 

Fortunately the Red thrust of 7 and 8 January, 1944, had been only a 
lucky but isolated strike, magnificently audacious. Unaided, a few dozen 
Soviet tanks had forced a passage and without stopping had carried their ex¬ 
traordinary saraband a hundred kilometers deep behind the front. 

The German tanks, hastily redeployed, ended up boxing them in. The 
Russian tank crewman ran out of gas. Then they tried to hide their panzers 
in the copses and thickets, but they were all spotted within two or three days 
and destroyed one after another. 

***** 

But the alert had been sharp. If the Soviets had sent a stronger force, the 
strike would have definitely succeeded. 

To tell the truth our position at point on the Dnieper was untenable. We 
occupied the tip of a long lance. The Viking Division and the Assault 
Brigade “Wallonia” were the only southeast forces still positioned on the 
great Ukrainian river. Sooner or later we were going to be cut off. 

On our arrival in November, 1943, it was already evident that we were 
doomed. At the beginning of January, 1944, the truth of this was more 
overwhelming still. Only the elimination of our salient and a rigorous 
realignment of the front could, if it were done quickly, save us from certain 
encirclement. 

We thought that the higher-ups had understood our situation, for we 
received orders to disengage, to pull back and reposition ourselves on a sec¬ 
ond line drawn twenty kilometers further to the southwest. 

This wasn’t brilliant, but it was doubtless a first step. 

The retreat was supposed to take place at midnight. We had already 
reconnoitered the new positions. Everything was ready. 

At eleven o’clock in the evening a counter-order from the division can¬ 
celed all the arrangements. Hitler himself had vehemently insisted that we 
stay on the Dnieper. To abandon the Dnieper would be to accept a moral 



Dug in on the Dnieper 


153 


defeat. It would also mean losing the last position on the river which might 
one day serve as a point of departure for a German offensive towards 
Kharkov and the Donets. In any case, the countermand was official. 

The soldiers, conservative by nature, and who, for that matter, 
understood little of the situation, got back down from the trucks and 
philosophically took up their positions once again on the confluence of the 
Olshanka and the Dnieper. But we who heard the Soviet communiques on 
the radio every day and who were marking out on the map the two-pronged 
advance of the enemy to the north and southeast, we knew that we were in 
extreme danger. 


***** 

Formidable blows were rocking the whole sector. The Viking Division 
had had to withdraw half its strength from the Dnieper to send them west of 
the city of Cherkassy. 

In this second sector, the forest of Teclino formed a formidable triangle 
which jutted out like a wedge. It had fallen entirely into Soviet hands, and 
all counterattacks had been in vain. 

General Gille decided to send the Walloons to attack this wooded massif. 

On the evening of 13 January 1944, we left the bank of the Olshanka in 
the greatest secrecy. One night’s journey in our heavy trucks took us 
through snow and ice to a few kilometers west of the blue forest of Teclino. 

Teclino 

The assault of Teclino was to take place the very next day, IS January 
1944. 

The officers went to reconnoiter the staging positions before nightfall. 
For several kilometers we followed the highway leading to Cherkassy. We 
turned off to the left onto a rutted path leading to an aspen grove. From 
there we could see the whole region. 

Huge snow fields swept up toward the forest of Teclino. This one, narrow 
enough in the beginning, broadened more and more toward the east. 

Each company commander received his mission and compared his maps 
and the terrain. Dusk fell. The woods were nothing but a huge purple 
tapestry. Deeply worried, we watched these spotless fields, these blue 
ravines, through which our men would climb at night to the forest where the 
enemy lurked, massively fortified, according to German survivors of 
fruitless counterattacks. 

The division’s artillery regiment was to support us. It had been positioned 
at full strength behind the western crests. 

Several days earlier I had become aide-de-camp to the commander of our 
brigade. At three o’clock in the morning he and I met with General Gille. 



154 


CAMPAIGN IN RUSSIA 


We installed ourselves in a little command post connected by telephone to 
each of our companies. 

Since one o’clock in the morning they had been stealing into the ravines 
and mounting cat-footed to occupy their positions for the assault. Light 
white sleds like Finnish sleighs were silently bringing the ammunition 
reserves across the thick snow. Every quarter hour at the other end of the 
wire the almost inaudible voices of the company commanders would report 
on their progress. 


At four o’clock in the morning the artillery barrage crashed onto the out¬ 
skirts of the forest. 

The guns of the Viking Division were old. They had done one and a half 
years of campaign in Russia without an overhaul. We had to perform in¬ 
credibly complicated calculations to regulate our Are, yet the fire was 
magnificently accurate. Four thousand shells swept down onto the enemy, 
pulverized his trenches one by one, cut the oaks to shreds with incredible 
force. 

Our soldiers, bowed under this prodigious roof of shell fire, their ears 
ringing, their eyes wide, rushed to the assault at the precise instant when the 
artillery lengthened its range. 

My old company, the 3rd Company, threw itself into the hand-to-hand 
fighting with such impetuosity that it promptly lost contact with the rest of 
the brigade. After an epic climb it seized two terribly steep hills as bare as 
cliffs, from the heights of which the Russians doggedly continued to fight in 
the overrun trenches despite the bombardment. 

Some young women soldiers were particularly ferocious, howling, mad 
with fury. 

Our soldiers weren’t used to killing women. And these were pretty. One 
especially with a prettily freckled face fought like a tiger. Her small white 
breast had popped out of her khaki tunic in the fury of battle. She died 
thus. The freckles shone on her face like winter heather, and her breast, 
small and frozen, glowed softly. After the battle we covered her with snow 
so that the weight of Death would be light pn her remains. 

Leaping beyond these positions, so bitterly defended, the 3rd Company 
straightaway began an assault on the other bunkers of the forest. These 
were scattered over a breadth of four kilometers. At the end of one 
kilometer our decimated company was holding the terrain with difficulty, 
waiting in vain for the rest of the brigade to align itself on its right wing. 

The other companies had had a hard time of it. 

They had been able to penetrate five hundred kilometers into the hilly 
forest only with great difficulty. The combat was stubborn. The Viking 
Division’s artillery supported the troops’ efforts, flattening the Reds dug in 
beneath the trees at the top of a series of crests. 



Dug in on the Dnieper 


155 


It was then that the counterbatteries of the Soviets intervened. They had, 
to the east of the forest, some “Stalin’s organs”: astonishing paired rocket 
launchers with thirty-six tubes which could riddle a whole sector in an in¬ 
stant under a frightening barrage of explosives. In one hour we had 125 
killed and wounded. 

From the command post we saw our little sleds come down the snowy 
hill, each one carrying a wounded man. The field ambulance was full. 
Dozens of wretches, stretched out on the snow shivering and half-naked, 
their blood caked by the cold, agonizingly waited their turn while the medics 
went back and forth unendingly with their reddened sleds to the bloody 
forest. 


* * * * * 

Then the Soviets counterattacked, repulsing our brigade. Only the 3rd 
Company remained, holding its ridges, cut off from everybody from then 
on. 

We ran, the commander and I, to try to check the retreat. But the Soviet 
push was phenomenally violent. We could foresee the moment when, apart 
from the 3rd Company, lost in the depths of the woods, the entire brigade 
would be chased from its outposts in the forest and pushed back into the 
bare fields, where the rout would become a massacre. 

At rive o’clock in the evening the situation stabilized, but was still tragic 
nonetheless. The forest had not been taken. The brigade held only two hun¬ 
dred meters at the fringe of the woods. The 3rd Company was lost. We 
didn’t know exactly where it was. It could be wiped out at any time. 

We held had an impromptu council of war in an isba at the bottom of the 
valley. Everyone nodded his head dolefully. General Gille, as was his habit, 
waited ten minutes without saying anything. He had prominent cheekbones, 
clenched jaws, and hard eyes when he lifted his face and stood up. 

“The attack will continue,” he said simply. He looked us straight in the 
eye, without a smile. 

“And you will take the forest,” he added. 

* * * * * 


A glacial night fell. 

It was twenty degrees below zero. 

The men, at the edge of the oak forest, had nowhere to lie down and 
couldn’t build a fire. They were freezing to death in spite of their winter 
equipment. They would huddle in a heap in the snow while the sentinels 
kept watch in front of them. 

The engineers unrolled their barbed wire and fastened it from tree to tree, 
then mined the terrain except for narrow passages, almost imperceptibly 
marked, through which our reconnaisance patrols could slip. 



156 


CAMPAIGN IN RUSSIA 


We tried to establish contact with the 3rd Company. A platoon composed 
exclusively of volunteers started into the woods towards the northeast. 

But our information was inaccurate. In fact, the 3rd Company had not 
advanced as far as we thought. Our platoon went too far to the east and ran 
into powerful Soviet positions. There was a monster melee in the night. Our 
platoon leader, a colossus as wide as a house, the life of the party of his 
company, threw himself with all his weight right into the middle of an 
enemy bunker. They brought him back, his guts ripped open by 
submachine-gun fire. At the first-aid post he panted like a locomotive. They 
cared for him without much hope, but he recovered nonetheless. Eight 
months later he returned to our garrison at Breslau, as massive as before, 
his breast decorated with the Iron Cross First Class. 

But the frightful wounds in his lower belly, although scarred over, had 
permanently impaired his health. At the end of a few weeks he realized that 
he could never again live like the others. So he took a one-kilogram mine 
from the armory, went to the bank of the Oder, and blew himself up. 

On the riverbank we found a lung and several vertebrae. That was all. On 
his little table at the barracks he had left these words: “I don’t want to be 
half a man. Farewell my friends! Vive la Legion!” 

* * * * * 

The night attack of this Spartan’s platoon yielded no results. Our 3rd 
Company could not be found. The next morning I tried to look for our 
young comrades alone. 

The armor of our brigade was hidden on the northern edge of the forest. I 
lay down flat on my stomach on the armor of one of the Sturmgeschuetzen* 
and followed the steppe two kilometers east of our staging attack the 
previous evening. It was there, headquarters thought, that the lost company 
must be. 

They were wrong. It was only halfway to this point. I entered the oak 
forest a kilometer too far. Stunned but powerless to do anything, our lost 
soldiers saw the Panzer emerge far in front of them and put me down right 
in the middle of the Soviet sector. 

The fiery welcome I received near the first trees quickly convinced me 
there were few friends to be discovered here. The tank driver brought me 
back with great difficulty amid twenty showers of earth and snow thrown 
up by shell bursts. 

But that afternoon the engineers who were stringing their reels of barbed- 
wire between the oaks as far as possible towards the northeast stumbled on¬ 
to several boys of the 3rd Company who were holding the southeastern end 
of their sector. The poor lads were blue with cold. They were encamped 
amid some twenty Russian corpses. We quickly linked up with them, con¬ 
solidating our liaison with hundreds of mines. By nightfall, finally, we had 
a continuous front. 



Dug in on the Dnieper 


157 


But what a night! 

The 3rd Company was holding the crests it had taken. In the subsoil 
below them they found a sort of tombs, dug before the frost, into which two 
or three men at most might slip. These mole-holes, real Soviet specialties, 
were as high as a coffin. The Soviets would spread dry leaves in them and, 
once inside the den, would close the opening with an old piece of canvas or 
horsehair cloth. In these burrows where no one could enter except by crawl¬ 
ing, Mongols, Tartars, and Siberians clung together one against another, 
making one another comfortable, like the beasts, by means of their animal 
warmth alone. 

Our young people had taken the place of the muzhiks, whose bodies, 
shriveled and hard as stone, were scattered about outside. On these two 
sheer crests alone our volunteers had captured seven Soviet cannons. The 
German artillery had aided them powerfully. The terrain was completely cut 
up, every tree mowed down or split, slashed a hundred times. Clusters of 
bodies were all tangled together, dead hands still clutching bandages, round 
and hairy faces from Kirghizistan, their beards red with frozen blood, girls 
in khaki, fallen on their backs, their hair in the snow. 

For our child-soldiers this macabre cohabitation in the freezing night was 
ghastly. Like the famous Walloon “Greenhorns” of the Empress Maria- 
Theresa, they had among them all barely ten or twelve wisps of blond down 
on their chins. 1 Although their eyes were dark with exhaustion, they 
mounted guard bravely among the stiff corpses they bumped in the night at 
each change of guard. 


The other companies were camped on ground like concrete. We managed 
to build makeshift bunkers there at night only by dragging piles of tree 
trunks across the snow and arranging them as best we could. We huddled 
together, feeling the cold slice through us right to the marrow. 

On 17 January 1944 General Gille came to ascertain the state of the 
sector. 

A tank followed his reconnaissance vehicle. It was full of chocolate, 
cigarettes, and cognac. The soldiers understood perfectly what this distribu¬ 
tion meant: we were going to attack again. 

It was hardly credible. 

The men’s faces were sallow and green as leeks, just like the faces of the 
dead Soviets toppled everywhere in the snow. 

Night, which would cover our preparations, came sharp and crystalline. 

Seven Hundred Bunkers 

To send our entire brigade into the attack on the forest of Teclino, as on 
the first day, would have been to send it to certain death. 


158 


CAMPAIGN IN RUSSIA 


We could no longer count on the effect of surprise. The Soviets were 
holding all the high ground in the heart of the forest. Only the sort of 
audacious strike at which our soldiers exceled might render a new attack 
possible. 

It was agreed that at midnight five groups of Walloons, armed with 
machine guns, would slip through the narrow passages in our mine fields. 
They would infiltrate deeply into the enemy positions. They had orders to 
penetrate at least eight hundred meters. If one of these squads should at¬ 
tract the attention of the Soviets, one man was to sacrifice himself and pre¬ 
tend to flee, so that the enemy would think they had to do only with an 
isolated scout. 

The goal was not to reconnoiter the terrain, but to hide and remain there. 
Under cover of darkness our groups would crouch among or behind the 
enemy positions at points which gave the most command of the terrain. 
From there, at dawn, at the moment when our brigade began the assault, 
they would unleash the full force of their guns in a devastating fire onto the 
Bolsheviks, who would be dazed to find themselves attacked in so many 
places inside their lines and even in their counter-dikes. 

The five groups all comprised highly motivated volunteers. Two 
Walloons would stay among the enemy to man each machine gun. A third 
would try to regain our lines to inform us of the outcome of this extraor¬ 
dinary mission and give us precise reference points. 

* * * * * 

High overhead, crystalline stars trembled here and there, and the ermined 
halo of the moon’s red disk shimmered between the mighty crowns of the 
great oaks. But under the domes of the branches the darkness was thick, 
pierced only by the blue glimmer of a few lunar flowers strewn where a 
fallen tree had torn the black lace of the sky. 

For hours we had been watching the shadows. 

The Soviets, too, were probing all around. Three times Red soldiers were 
blown up on one of our mines in a great red flashes. Our lookouts received a 
shock each time, for the explosions took place within a few meters of our 
log posts. “Another one!” they would mutter, rubbing their frozen noses 
with snow. Then silence would reign once again in the gloomy forest. 

Finally it was midnight. Our boys, carrying their machine guns, advanced 
to the secret corridors which our engineers had left free of mines. 

Two hours, three hours of waiting, and the anxiety diminished. 

The cold was horrible; we were cold if we walked, we were cold if we 
didn’t walk. The woods continued to be shaken from time to time by the 
fiery spray as a muzhik touched the trip wire of one of our mines with his 
padded foot. 

Each of our lookouts scanned the forest until his eyes almost popped out 



Dug in on the Dnieper 


159 


of his head. If the raids had succeeded, our messengers should soon arrive 
in front of our mined barbed-wire. They too were being stalked by death, 
just like the Russians. 

A mine blew up. “Help! Help!” cried a voice. It was the first of our com¬ 
rades, who had touched an enemy mine. 

He dragged himself through the blackness. We could hear him crawling 
toward us, his breath labored. A second explosion shook us, more terrible 
even than the first. The poor wretch had triggered one of our own mines this 
time. 

We had to go and pick him up, a bundle of mangled flesh lying there 
amid his scattered intestines. He still had the strength to tell us that the 
others had succeeded and that all would go well. 

For the sake of the other messengers who had to chance this trip across 
the maze of Soviet mines, we began calling out from time to time. Four 
times we heard a whisper. “Don’t move, someone is coming!” we would 
murmur, and a brave comrade would slip through the narrow mine-free 
passage to guide the messenger and bring him to the command post. 

At four o’clock complete success was confirmed. The five groups had 
posted themselves at least a thousand meters in front of our avenues of at¬ 
tack. One of them was installed thirteen hundred meters ahead, behind the 
second enemy line. 

It was wonderful. 


* * * * * 

At five o’clock, when the woods were beginning to purple with the first 
light of day, each of our companies crossed the mine-free passage of its sec¬ 
tor, marked by two little white ribbons. 

We now had only to charge the enemy. 

It was a well-prepared operation. The field telephone advanced alongside 
the company commanders, so that each one of these knew the general state 
of progress minute by minute. On the right wing the hilltops were promptly 
taken. The groups of machine-gunners, astutely placed, had evidently 
worked miracles from the beginning of the fray. Heaps of Soviet dead were 
piling up on the edge of the hills. 

The center had paralleled the movement across easier terrain. As for the 
left wing, supported by the tanks which advanced along the length of the 
woods and furiously battered the north of the oak forest, its advance was 
very rapid. 

By special invitation I had once more taken command of the 3rd Com¬ 
pany for several hours. I preceded the main body of my cadets by about 
thirty meters in order to avoid any unnecessary casualties. The ground was 
covered by half a meter of snow. The enemy, sure of his trap, was waiting. 

There was a huge explosion. The first three boys who followed twenty' 



160 


CAMPAIGN IN RUSSIA 


meters behind me, practically in the tracks of my boots, had just been 
blown up on a mine field. I had got through without touching a single wire 
among a hundred and fifty explosives strung together in every direction. 
The others had been less lucky, alas! Their legs were horribly slashed. 
Within five minutes their bloody feet were totally frozen, irremediably 
frozen, ivory-colored and as hard as stone. 

The Russian winter was pitiless. A serious wound to any limb meant a 
dead limb. Sleds took away the mutilated men while our advance continued. 

The enemy was strongly barricaded. The fight lasted a long time. We 
fought until evening. The next day, very early, we occupied the forest 
totally. 

Before our assault the German artillery had pulverized the enemy posi¬ 
tions one last time. We had to step over a hardened body every meter, and 
scattered on the earth near it, a brown kepi, a submachine gun, and some 
stale bread. But prior to the final hand-to-hand fighting, the Reds had 
treated their prisoners horribly. One young SS man had been crucified alive. 
Another was lying there, his belly and legs brown with congealed blood: the 
monsters had cut off his sexual organs and stuffed them into his mouth. 

In spite of the victory, this vision of savagery terrified us. 

***** 

In four days of battle we had captured seven hundred bunkers. 

Latvians in long white jackets came to relieve us. 

Two hundred meters below our trenches, the valley shone. The great 
forest at our back was free. Once again it had taken on its peaceful colors: 
white, blue, lilac. The corpses had become as stiff as tree branches. They 
were no longer as frightening as on the first day. 

Our companies disengaged one by one. The big trucks of the brigade were 
waiting for us below the valley. We left by a snowy path which followed 
along the heights, turning back often to look at the triangle of the forest of 
Teclino in the distance. 

An ever-smaller triangle. But already the future was elsewhere. 

The Closed Trap 

Ten days had yet to pass before the great drama. 

We had again taken up our positions along the Olshanka. 

Descending from the north, the Soviet armies had spread irresistibly 
across the whole breadth of the Ukraine. They were even nearing Vinnitsa, 
two hundred kilometers to our rear, and the last great river the Germans 
still held before the Romanian frontier, the Bug. 

The northern armies were no longer seeking to throttle us in a restricted 
encirclement, as at the beginning of January. From now on a gigantic 
operation was in progress. 



Dug in on the Dnieper 


161 


The Soviet armies of the southeast had swept into Kirovograd from their 
side. If they succeeded in linking up with the armies of the southwest a 
phenomenal Kessel* would enclose us all. 

To try to ward off this menace, almost all of the Viking Division was 
posted to the southeastern sector, on our right wing, whereas before it had 
been on our left wing, to the northeast, along the Dnieper for eighty 
kilometers and then coming back up the Olshanka River as far as our posi¬ 
tions at the village of Moshny. 

We had to extend ourselves from Moshny clear to Losovok, then to the 
Dnieper itself, thus supporting the burden of some hundred kilometers of 
front all by ourselves. 

If our complement of artillery, anti-tank weapons, anti-aircraft weapons, 
and engineers was still almost intact, our infantry companies had been 
greatly weakened by two months of raids and battles and had at their 
disposal less than a thousand or so front line troops. Thus in reality we 
would have to face the very worst threats with our men spaced out on the 
average at the rate of twenty per kilometer. 

We spaced out our strongpoints more and more, so that every night they 
risked being choked off or overrun. 

To the northeast of the big bridge at Moshny stretched an irregular 
wilderness: rust-colored scrub, reeds, sand, bogs. After having crossed 
kilometers of somber moors, we reached our positions at Losovok. 

There we had no more than a handful of soldiers, one company in all, 
Captain Derickx’s Second Company, which had been transferred from 
Staroselye. It had to cover the entire east of the sector, in other words the 
steppe, the town of Losovok, several kilometers of bases on the dunes, and 
to complete the picture, a section of the right bank of the Dnieper. 

We were happy to be there and to fly proudly the colors of our country. 
But these pretty sentiments aside, our men felt uneasy on the bank of this 
great muddy river, before these magnificent islands, amidst a countryside 
riddled with pitiless enemies. 

The division headquarters had moved thirty kilometers to the south. We 
had installed the command post of our brigade at Belozerye, which had 
become a central point for us from then on. There, where yesterday the 
commander of the Viking Division had concentrated his telephone installa¬ 
tions, his radio vans, his innumerable vehicles, his Abteilungen* of all 
kinds, his Feldgendarmes* in every comer, our modest signals platoon 
rattled around as in a ghost town. 

On Friday, 28 January 1944,1 was ordered to the division staff office at 
Gorodishche. The countryside, planted with thousands of fruit trees, had 
much charm. On the snowy hills the black or reddish sails of tall windmills 
stood out romantically. 

General Gille had his headquarters near the green and white Orthodox 
church in a modern building that the Soviet aircraft came to machine-gun 
every quarter horn - . 



162 


CAMPAIGN IN RUSSIA 


The superior officers kept making jokes, but the repartee had a false ring. 
I was shown confidentially the text of the radio telegram that the Division 
had just sent to Himmler: “In three hours, the encirclement of the Viking 
will have been achieved.” 

Nevertheless, no one wanted to believe that this was be definitive. Some¬ 
one would surely do something to come to our rescue. General Gille just 
stared silently. The Soviet airplanes reappeared incessantly, bombarding the 
whole quarter furiously. In the midst of all this the Feldgendarmes were 
ransacking the isbas and pulling out clusters of malingerers. The at¬ 
mosphere was bizarre. Despite their assurances, the officers were visibly 
worried, and the soldiers were dead tired. 

I returned to Belozerye, sniffing the dry air, admiring the brilliant blue of 
the marvelously clear sky, moved in spite of all our troubles. 

Back at the command post two hours later, a telephone call from the divi¬ 
sion informed us in one fateful sentence, “The Soviet forces have made 
their junction in the southeast.” 

Eleven German divisions, more or less complete, were surrounded. Ex¬ 
actly one year after the tragedy on the Volga, a second Stalingrad was 
beginning. 



Chapter Six 

SURROUNDED 
AT CHERKASSY 


The knot completing the encirclement of the eleven German divisions in 
the Cherkassy zone was tied on 28 January 1944, eighty kilometers to the 
rear of our lines. 

But the enemy had arrived within fifteen kilometers of Korsun, to the 
west of our command post of Belozerye. We could hear the tanks roaring. 

Day and night, we lived in our boots and clothes and kept submachine 
guns and grenades within reach at all times. The engineers were busy with 
countless demolitions. The nights were filled with sinister noises. 

Three days passed. 

We were beginning to get used to the Kessel. Survivors of a hundred 
traps, on the Donets, on the Don, and in the Caucasus, we felt this was 
scarcely our first crisis. We all wanted to think this encirclement would be 
just one more adventure. The high command wouldn’t abandon us here. 
The counterattack would break the Soviet ring for certain. 

A radio-telegram from the celebrated General Hube had in theory settled 
the business. This telegram was nice and short: “I’m coming.” 

The general came. 

An enormous column of German tanks was coming up from the south. It 
had unceremoniously taken a bite out of the Soviet corridor established in 
our rear. Avidly, we followed the progress of our liberators on the map. 
Dozens of villages were falling. The communique announced the destruc¬ 
tion of one hundred ten Russian tanks. At the end of two days, nothing was 
left but to break through a line of enemy trenches nine kilometers across. 

Those who returned from that sector told us with shining eyes that con¬ 
tact with our rescuers had already been established by way of the little radio 
sets in the battalion command post. Another blow of the German battering 
ram, and the breakthrough and our extrication would be accomplished. 

The blow of the battering ram did indeed take place. It was the Soviets 
who delivered it. They had promptly brought up new armored forces. The 
three hundred German tanks which had managed to come so close to us had 
had to stop, then give ground, then retreat. Soon the Reds had a security 



164 


CAMPAIGN IN RUSSIA 


zone fifty kilometers wide in our rear. Emboldened by their success, the 
Soviet divisions rushed from the southeast and the south toward the interior 
of our Kessel, this time pushing the mass of the surrounded troops back 
toward the north and east, removing them farther and farther from the Ger¬ 
man front from which might eventually come their salvation. Another 
catastrophe was looming. 

Since the beginning of the encirclement, a spring-like warmth had fol¬ 
lowed the freeze. It was like early May. During the winter of 1941-42, dur¬ 
ing the counteroffensive of the Donets, we had seen how two days of sud¬ 
den thaw had turned the paths into a muddy sea. But the cold had returned 
immediately and put things right again. 

Therefore we watched the snow melt with curiosity at first. Fast-moving 
black clouds sailed through the sky. Lashed by a sharp little rain, we 
skidded on an almost impassable shining wet ice. Then the fields became 
brown and yellow again. The forest, thoroughly laved, spread its purple 
spoils on the hills. The clearings cut black screens. The roads softened under 
the weight of incessant traffic, then liquefied. The greyish water rose half¬ 
way up the doors. 

We were still laughing. It was funny. Every one of us was plastered from 
head to toe. 

At the end of four or five days the frost hadn’t returned. Every shelter 
and trench was flooded under its melt water. The soldiers, armed with 
pitchers and mess tins, tried to bail out these bathtubs. 

The fields were so viscous that they became totally impassable. The roads 
sank more and more. Many crossroads became totally unusable, the water- 
level reaching a meter high. The slopes were frightful skating rinks, as sticky 
as resin. The tractors worked night and day to get stuck vehicles going 
again. 

Now there were fifteen thousand motorized vehicles inside the Kessel, fif¬ 
teen thousand vehicles which were beginning to form a circle, squeezed 
closer and closer together by the thrusts of a primitive enemy, indifferent to 
the elements, an enemy whose soldiers just loved to crawl in the mire of the 
interminable marshes. 


* * * * * 

The Soviets had seized several important depots concentrated fifty or six¬ 
ty kilometers to the south of the Cherkassy sector at the point where the Red 
armies had met. Considerable quantities of gasoline and munitions had 
been lost on the first day. 

Thanks to some big Junkers airplanes the German command had im¬ 
mediately sent help to the besieged divisions. 

Korsun had a landing strip. The Ju’s ran the airlift with sublime preci¬ 
sion. Each day about seventy machines would arrive loaded with munitions, 


Surrounded at Cherkassy 


165 


gas, and food. As soon as they unloaded they would be filled with the 
gravely wounded. We were thus able to evacuate all the hospitals in the 
Kessel in the nick of time. 

But the Soviet fighters were watching. They would patrol the drizzling 
sky, circling like hawks above the field. Every day twelve or fifteen of our 
Ju’s, shot down after a few minutes of flight, would fall down in flames 
amid the screams of the wounded, who were being grilled alive. 

It was a frightful spectacle. 

The airlift continued, methodically, heroically, without an instant’s lapse 
until the time when, there too, the monstrous mire made any work 
impossible. 

At the end of a week of thaw and flood, the landing field was completely 
submerged. The engineers tried by every means to drain the mud and con¬ 
solidate the plain. It was useless. The last airplanes capsized in mire a meter 
deep. Thereafter until the end, not a single airplane managed to take off or 
even to land in the Kessel. 

We were left to our own resources. 

***** 

Posted at the easternmost point, the Assault Brigade “Wallonia” escaped 
the worst of the enemy’s clawing during the first few days. 

As expected, the enemy concentrated its thrust south and west of the 
Kessel. The two Soviet spearheads, daringly linked, absorbed the blows of 
the German forces trying to break out. The Soviets threw all their tanks and 
the mass of their infantry and cavalry divisions into this corridor. 

At the Olshanka and the Dnieper, the Red offensive was as yet only by 
radio. A powerful transmitter, installed just opposite our lines, peddled 
propaganda every day in a honeyed French. A speaker with a Parisian ac¬ 
cent charitably informed us of our situation. Then he tried to seduce us, 
vaunting the marvels of friend Stalin’s regime and inviting us to come over 
to General De Gaulle. He would allow us to approach the Russian lines 
holding a white handkerchief in our hands, like sentimental aunties. 

This sugar-coated Soviet propaganda was lacking neither in imagination 
nor in ruse. Two of our soldiers captured at Losovok had been taken to the 
command post of a division general. He invited them to his table, served 
them a royal dinner, toasted them with excellent champagne, and stuffed 
their pockets with chocolate. Then the bespangled hypocrite had them taken 
in his car near the lines. The guards let the two guests go off in our direc¬ 
tion, as one opens the cage door to canaries or nightingales. 

The adventure was a huge success with the troops. Everyone licked his 
chops to think of the champagne and chocolate of those two lucky devils. 
But the philanthropic and Walloon-loving general got nothing out of it. No 
one took the hook, which was a little bit too visible under the lure. 



166 


CAMPAIGN IN RUSSIA 


As the enemy hammered the rear front of the Kessel the Viking Division 
had to pull back the units it was still keeping on the bank of the Dnieper and 
send them to the southeast. After a few days our left flank was almost com¬ 
pletely unprotected. No one was left to defend the eighty kilometers along 
the Dnieper to the northeast of our positions but a detachment of about two 
hundred Germans of the Viking, mounted on little armored cars which 
ceaselessly ploughed back and forth on the mucky trails. 

The Reds sent patrols beyond the river and found the gap. Now nothing 
was left except our weak positions at the confluence of the Dnieper and the 
Olshanka. All the Soviets had to do now to annihilate the last obstacle still 
remaining at the east of the Kessel was to force their way through or attack 
from the rear. 

We were particularly worried about the great wooden bridge built over 
the Olshanka at the west end of Moshny. 

Beyond the river we occupied two strong points defended by about ten 
men armed with two machine guns. If the Reds attacked in force during the 
night they would crush this unlucky post and succeed in taking the bridge 
intact. 

Warned of the danger, the staff office of the Viking Division turned a 
deaf ear. We could not, we were told, either yield one inch of ground or give 
the enemy the impression that we were losing confidence in the outcome of 
the combat. 

The general was far away, whereas we, on the other hand, beheld the im¬ 
minent catastrophe right before our eyes. The German liaison officer ef¬ 
fected the blowing up of the bridge with all possible discretion. By a 
telephone call at 6:00 A.M. he notified the general that a Soviet shell had 
just fallen right in the middle of our explosives, completely destroying the 
bridge. We were, he added, ever so sorry. 

So was the general. 

But the question of the bridge was thus resolved. 

We lost our last scruples that very night. 

At Moshny we had a platoon of about fifty Russian auxiliaries at our 
disposition, former prisoners who had enlisted voluntarily in the ranks of 
the German army. 

Until then they had been very devoted and very disciplined. But sending 
them back to fight in their own country had been an error. Their ancestry 
overcame their new allegiance. At the end of three months their race, their 
precious race, reasserted its claim. 

They used to hold long confabulations with the natives, of which our of¬ 
ficers didn’t understand a word. Finally the partisans got in touch with 
them. The night of 1-2 February 1944, these Russians, who worked the 



Surrounded at Cherkassy 


167 


heavy mortars behind the lines, slipped on cat’s feet toward the Olshanka. 

A brave young Walloon who was standing guard in the darkness was 
killed silently by a knife thrust in the back. The fleeing column stepped over 
his warm corpse, descended the ditch, and crossed the water. 

From then on we had some fifty deserters across from us who had lived at 
Moshny for three months, who knew exactly the placement of our posi¬ 
tions, of our artillery, and of the command, telephone, and radio posts. Fif¬ 
ty guides were at the disposition of the Soviet command. 

* * id * * 

Sure of themselves, the Reds launched their assault at 8:00 A.M., beyond 
Moshny, between Losovok and the Dnieper at the very eastern extremity of 
our sector. 

The few dozen Walloons who were scattered in these sandy moors were 
swamped by grenades and overrun in one hour’s time. On the same morning 
we learned from the brigade command post that Losovok was under attack 
and had fallen. 

The 2nd Company, driven from the last houses, had to recross a water¬ 
course to the south of the village and had even been pushed back a 
kilometer beyond that. They had managed somehow or other to cling to an 
embankment right on the steppe. 

The defense of the Dnieper bank was at an impasse. Losovok, atop of a 
sandy slope, seemed definitively lost. We asked Division to bring the sur¬ 
vivors of Losovok back to Moshny, where the greatest danger imperiled our 
meager strength. 

But the orders were pitiless. Not only was the 2nd Company not to 
withdraw to the south, but it was to make an immediate counterattack and 
retake Losovok regardless of obstacles. 

Far away at the end of the telephone wire an almost inaudible voice told 
us where the 2nd Company had withdrawn to. I knew the Losovok sector 
very well, and succeeded in being put in charge of the counterattack. I 
received two Panzers and ordered a load of husky fellows to climb aboard. 

Through great rivers of mud, along routes flooded with water spreading 
to a breadth of a hundred meters, we pushed eastwards. Overturned 
automobiles and the hooves of dead horses were everywhere, half sunk in 
the slime near the trails. 

Losovok 

Beyond the reddish heather of the steppe rose the smoke from the battle 
for Losovok. We passed Moshny. The company command post was so 
buried in mud that the messengers could no longer reach it except by cross¬ 
ing on foot a makeshift bridge of some twenty isba doors. 



168 


CAMPAIGN IN RUSSIA 


After three kilometers of jolting over mire and bush our tanks reached 
the embankment where the survivors of Losovok were holding out. The 
enemy was pounding the marshes and the swollen river. 

We took up positions for the assault. Division had promised us artillery 
support. After the shelling of Losovok we would advance, reinforced by 
our two Panzers. 

It was three o’clock in the afternoon. After much palaver on the field 
telephone the artillery announced that in twenty minutes it would open fire. 
Crouched in the mire, we surveyed the plain to be crossed, across which a 
few horses galloped in panic. 

Far to the east the signal flares lit the sky, showing us that our troops still 
resisted on the Dnieper, although the Soviet troops had advanced several 
kilometers past them. 

Bullets whistled by endlessly. The enemy had taken roost at the south of 
the village, twenty meters above a stream. It wouldn’t be easy to get back up 
there. 


A first German shell fell. Then, long afterwards, another. 

Eighteen fell. 

That was all. 

We insisted. In vain. It was impossible to help us more than that. Muni¬ 
tions in the Kessel were frightfully low. 

We would just have to make do with this pitiful hors d’oeuvre. Surging 
down the slope, we sprinted across thickets and fields, cut by a swift torrent 
three or four meters wide. 

Shells rained down. No one hesitated before throwing himself into the icy 
water. From copse to copse, we approached the river below Losovok. 

Our two Panzers, riddled by machine gun fire, fired incendiary bullets in¬ 
to the Soviet-occupied isbas. The houses ignited one after another, bursting 
into flames. The Reds fled from hedge to hedge. 

In the heat of battle a handful of Walloons rushed with incredible pluck 
toward the wooden bridge which joined the plain to the sunken path to the 
village. They crossed it and took cover below the cliff. One, armed with a 
machine gun, climbed to the top of the crest, and the others, covered by 
him, crawled through the sand like serpents. Twenty, then thirty Walloons 
made it to the summit. 

The Panzers which seconded the infantry should also have started across 
the bridge. But a placard read, “Three Tons.” The first German tank 
preferred to cross the river, some twenty meters wide. The riverbed was 
sandy. A chain broke. The tank was stuck in the water. 

The second tank didn’t want to attack alone. It fired several more shells 
into the houses, then went to work to dig out the panzer mired in the sand. 



Surrounded at Cherkassy 


169 


Now we couldn’t count on anything but our infantry. House by house, we 
retook the village in hand-to-hand fighting. 

* * * * * 

At six o’clock in the evening a dazzling, pearly twilight blended with the 
orange lights of burning isbas. It was our last look at Losovok, at the white 
and gold dunes beyond the Olshanka’s union with the Dnieper amidst large 
yellow and green islands. 

We would not see another red and purple dawn rise on the sand cliffs 
where for weeks had flown, modest yet proud, the flag of our country. We 
would not again stand pensive on the shore of the huge and shining legen¬ 
dary river flowing down toward Dnepropetrovsk, toward the brown rocks, 
the delta, and the sea. The field telephone had just rung, thin and febrile. 
The division was calling us, dictating new orders: “General retreat from the 
sector!” 

On the left wing, the movement was already completed. The last two hun¬ 
dred German motorized riflemen protecting our flank on the Dnieper had 
been withdrawn. We were to evacuate Losovok by nightfall, rejoin the two 
Walloon companies at Moshny, and withdraw with them in the morning 
toward new, more southerly positions. 

Our assault had been worthless, except perhaps as a proof of courage and 
discipline. But we were the last, the very last, of the armies of the east to 
fight on the bank of the Dnieper. Our hearts pounding, we savored the 
aroma of the river. We watched the grey glimmerings, threaded with silver, 
of the powerful waters in the twilight. Sadly, we lowered our little flag. 

Across the quicksands, the bogs, the muddy trails, we streamed back with 
our wounded. We turned to look back toward the east a hundred times. 
There our hearts had lived. At last Losovok aflame was no more than a red 
ember in the depth of the night. 

Dnieper! Dnieper! Dnieper! 

***** 

The closer we drew to Moshny, the more amazed we were by the violence 
of the sounds of battle. 

We had left one melee only to find another. 

The enemy had just attacked Moshny. The fifty Russian and Asiatic aux¬ 
iliaries who had betrayed us the previous evening were at the head of the 
Soviet troops and had guided them through the darkness to the vital points 
of our sector. 

When we reached the village hundreds of men were battling with a terri¬ 
ble fury around our pieces of artillery, which were shooting point-blank at 
the assailants. On every street, in the courtyard of every isba hand-to-hand 



170 


CAMPAIGN IN RUSSIA 


fighting raged amidst the quagmires and the clammy slopes, in the blinding 
light of millions of sparks from the blazing hovels. 

We had more than fifty trucks at Moshny, numerous pieces of artillery, 
anti-tank weapons, anti-aircraft guns, tractors, field kitchens, communica¬ 
tions equipment, and the offices of several companies. Everywhere men 
were killing one another frenziedly. Drivers, cooks, paymasters, telephone 
operators, everyone was defending his weapon, his equipment, his skin. 

The orders of the Viking Division staff office were categorical. We were 
not to leave Moshny until the end of the night in order to cover the general 
retreat which now stretched across twenty kilometers. 

The tragedy was that the Soviets had attacked in force a few hours before 
the withdrawal was to take place. Therefore we absolutely had to oppose 
them at any price, hanging on in Moshny until morning. 

The night was nothing but an interminable free-for-all, savage, howling, 
amid the blackness and the raw red of the fires. The long village was 
evacuated quarter by quarter, hour by hour, only when all the equipment 
had been hauled to the southern route. 

Our telephone communications weren’t interrupted for a single minute. 
We knew with absolute precision how our equipment was being withdrawn. 
The soldiers fought from isba to isba, their fury mirrored in their eyes, beset 
by waves of Mongols who leaped from bushes, hedges, sheds, and even 
from the filth of the dunghills. 

The killing lasted ten hours. At dawn, covered by one last platoon, the 
haggard defenders of Losovok and Moshny, their uniforms glued to their 
skin, found themselves once more on the southern route, marching on each 
side of the column of trucks, which kept skidding in a half meter of slime. 

The men shielding them were to hold the houses in southwest Moshny the 
whole morning. These orders were followed heroically. Only after noon did 
the Reds finally take the village. They took only two Walloons alive, both 
telephone operators who stood fast, obeying orders to report enemy pro¬ 
gress to our command right to the end. 

They were still calling us when the Reds passed in front of their window. 

But by this time, thanks to the fanatical resistance at Moshny, the Wallo- 
nian Brigade had already been able to regroup at Belozerye, ready for the 
next mission. 

Six kilometers of tar-like mud separated us from an enemy uncertain of 
our intentions. 

Steps 

It was Thursday, 3 February 1944. 

Orders to evacuate Losovok and the last sector of the right bank to the 
east of the Kessel hadn’t been given until the general situation had con¬ 
siderably worsened. 



Surrounded at Cherkassy 


171 


The battering-ram thrusts of the enemy in the south had pushed the sur¬ 
rounded troops more and more to the north. Now the Soviet corridor was 
eighty kilometers wide. Every day the Reich’s divisions lost another five or 
ten kilometers. Another week and the Soviets would be right behind us. 

The High Command had withdrawn all the German forces from the 
Dnieper-Olshanka region. From then on we were the only ones protecting 
this zone and were at the mercy of a drive which in twenty-four hours could 
sweep us away like a straw and skewer the pocket. 

Momentous decisions had been made. The southern and southeastern 
sectors would be progressively abandoned. The troops of the eastern sector 
would then withdraw gradually from east to north. Next, fighting every 
inch of the way, they would fall back towards the western end of the Kessel, 
where eleven divisions would gather. 

German tanks would come up from southwestern Ukraine, outside the 
Kessel, to meet us. Our eleven divisions would rush toward them, risking 
everything. 

There was no longer any other way out. Either this desperate attempt 
would break the encirclement or we would all die. 

* * * * * 

On the 3rd of February, 1944, however, we still had not massed for the 
final assault. Numerous secondary operations had to be carried out to 
evacuate the equipment and depots. 

It was folly, in any case. Although every man was needed to fight, three 
quarters of the encircled forces were diverted from combat to save all this 
hardware. All became targets. 

Already the road from Gorodishche to Korsun, our last chance to break 
out, was jammed by an incredible column. Thousands of trucks, spread 
over twenty kilometers, followed three front vehicles and skated in the 
black frogholes of the road, which had become a prodigious cloaca. The 
most powerful artillery tractors struggled painfully to open a passage. This 
enormous mass of vehicles was an incomparable target for planes. The 
Soviet machines, like strident swarms of wasps, would circle over the Kessel 
and dive down in squadrons every ten minutes onto the bogged-down 
columns. 

Everywhere trucks were burning. 

The mud, churned a thousand times, became so sticky and so bulky that 
it was soon absolutely impossible to cross. 

We had to resort to desperate measures. To venture across the firmer 
ground of the fields would mean foundering within one or two hundred 
meters. The road? It was no longer thinkable. A thousand trucks at least 
were bogged down there for all time, and would have to be set on fire lest 
the enemy retrieve them. The only thing left was the railroad line from 



172 


CAMPAIGN IN RUSSIA 


Gorodishche to Korsun. That was the way we decided to send the endless 
motorized convoys. 

We could guess where the traffic was ten kilometers away by watching the 
Soviet fighters dive. Huge flashes marked this makeshift route. We had to 
keep pushing broken-down trucks and flaming cars down the Embankment. 

In order to protect this unprecedented transfer of more than ten thousand 
vehicles on the bumpy ties of a pitiful railroad line, our troops had to hold 
the Soviet thrust for several days more. 

* * * * * 

From high in the sky the Stalinist pilots would contemplate at their leisure 
our attempts to withdraw the surrounded troops. Everything told them 
where we would gather: like hundreds of torches, burning trucks lit the way 
to Korsun. 

To the south the Soviet assailants were striking the retreating troops hard 
and fast. From the northeast, open since the retreat of the Viking’s last 
tanks, the troops of the USSR were now rushing in. From the north, too, 
the divisions of the Wehrmacht began to retreat faster and faster. 

As for us, we would first have to fight at Belozerye to block the Soviet 
troops coming up from the Dnieper and from Moshny. From Belozerye we 
would have to reach, at the last minute, a line of defense we had constructed 
some fifteen kilometers further south at the beginning of January. 

This line ran from the southwest to the northwest, from the village of 
Staroselye to the village of Derenkovez. 

A third operation would regroup us all on this northwestern line, at 
Derenkovez itself: in concert with other Wehrmacht and Waffen SS units 
we would serve as the final shield. 

Thus protected, fifty to sixty thousand men, withdrawing from all sec¬ 
tors, would reunite around Korsun for the decisive assault toward the west. 

***** 

The first stop for us was therefore Belozerye. The withdrawal plan in¬ 
structed us to resist east of this village for whatever time it would take for all 
the artillery and equipment to reach the line of Staroselye-Derenkovez 
without disaster. 

The removal of our guns and heavy vehicles was being prepared along the 
Olshanka from Baibusy to Staroselye. The departure would take place 
under cover of darkness. 

We were able to keep sending reconnaissance groups as far as Moshny. 
South of Moshny itself we still had a few machine guns hidden in the fir 
groves. Every Soviet patrol which ventured in our direction was received 
with heavy fire. 



Surrounded at Cherkassy 


173 


The night passed. The artillery men worked themselves to exhaustion in 
the quagmires to extract their weapons. At dawn only the infantry and the 
mortars were still in position at the edge of the water. The last vehicles left 
Baibusy shortly after daybreak. 

One team had had a trace broken. The drivers returned to the village to 
repair it. 

A deathly silence reigned everywhere. Dead peasants were sprawled 
across the muddy street, faces to the ground, still wearing on their right 
arms the white armbands marked Deutsche Wehrmacht in black letters. Our 
soldiers had been gone from Baibusy for barely ten minutes, and already the 
partisans had slaughtered all the Ukrainians who had served in the German 
auxiliary formations. 

The village was quiet. Not a single curious face peeped out. But the 
corpses, lying in the mud, were eloquent. 

* * * * * 

The 3rd Company infantry, still holding the Olshanka passage east of 
Baibusy, were to withdraw the following night, worming their way along 
the river to the village of Staroselye. 

As for the 2nd Company, after its odyssey at Losovok it had started 
withdrawal maneuvers on a broad front, heading first towards the north¬ 
west. It was supposed to check enemy pressure against Derenkovez until our 
right wing had finished its two-step maneuver. 

I received orders to effect a liaison with this isolated unit. A muddy desert 
about ten kilometers across separated it from Belozerye. I had at my 
disposal only an old Volkswagen which toiled laboriously through the sand 
and mud. A single soldier accompanied me. We found our comrades at the 
edge of a dark pine forest, a tiny island of resistance lost in an entire coun¬ 
try. We went through another lifeless village. A Soviet patrol was leaving 
the other end just as we entered. In princely fashion, it had left the peasants 
a box of matches bearing the hammer and sickle in exchange for their 
poultry. 

The families were hiding in the rear of their isbas. The entire region was 
infested with enemy advance units. 

We expected to fall into an ambush at any moment. The Volkswagen kept 
coughing, smoking, stalling, visibly disgusted with it all. 

Belozerye at dusk was no longer recognizable. 

My little tan rattletrap was taken for the first Soviet automobile by the 
population. From behind the hedges, a few fearful heads appeared. An in¬ 
credible silence reigned. 

We jolted from pothole to pothole through the watery streets to rejoin the 
last platoon awaiting the hour of evacuation. Guns, trucks, equipment, 
everything had gone. 



174 


CAMPAIGN IN RUSSIA 


Our rear guard was not to leave Belozerye until night, after giving the ap¬ 
pearance of resolute resistance right up to the end. The village was square, 
and we could be overrun from any direction. We still numbered about forty 
soldiers in all. 

The telephone unit had been withdrawn. Evening fell, veiled in mist. 

Finally the men left their dank toad-holes and climbed aboard the last 
two trucks. Not a cry. Not a pistol shot. Not a silhouette. Only a few 
peasants opened their doors a crack to see us leave. 

* * * * * 

The positions that we were to occupy ran along a distance of about thirty 
kilometers from Staroselye to Derenkovez. 

One part of the brigade was to go directly to Derenkovez. That night it 
came upon some groups of partisans who had sneaked from copse to copse 
and had already cut off all escape to the west. Our soldiers had to wage a 
gun battle at point-blank range right in the forest. Two of our weapons were 
lost in the scuffle. 

The southern road to Staroselye was even more dangerous. If our last 
combat units, covering our left along the Olshanka, had shown a moment’s 
weakness, our only line of retreat would have been irremediably cut off. 

We had crossed scarcely two kilometers when we came upon vehicles 
stuck in the mud. The columns we had covered, and which had been 
withdrawing for many hours, had got bogged down. Trucks were stalled in 
the road. Hundreds of men stormed about, sunk in the filthy muck up to 
mid-thigh. Tractors were breaking down trying to pull out the heavy 
vehicles. The Reds might fall upon us at any moment. 

After hours of herculean labor the equipment was put back into working 
order and we reached the forest, then the vast marshlands which came 
before Staroselye. 

It was one o’clock in the morning. 

The road ended in a gigantic puddle. The trucks could only cross it by 
racing through at top speed. 

The left bank of the Olshanka at Staroselye was dominated by a high 
ridge rising vertically from the Derenkovez canal. All the isbas on this hill 
were on fire. Hundreds of women pulling children along or carrying pigs in 
their arms stood out tragically, black against the brilliant background of the 
fires. They kept calling out in shrill voices, crying, pleading, stamping their 
feet in an atmosphere of madness. 

The fire flowed like a fabulous red and yellow mane. It made the viscid 
slope, which not a single truck managed to climb, glow like marble. With 
great labor, enormous artillery tractors hauled the automobiles and the 
trucks up the hill through the slime. 

All night the shrill cries of the women echoed the howling of the beasts 
and the frantic swearing of the drivers, scarlet in the light of the fires. 



Surrounded at Cherkassy 


175 


When day came vehicles were still being towed. 

But to the northeast of the bottomlands, brown points were advancing. 
We could make out lines of men, horses, and gear. 

The Reds were coming. 

Staroselye 

The line of retreat from Staroselye to Derenkovez had been dug by 
thousands of Ukrainians at the beginning of January. At dawn on 5 
February 1944, the Assault Brigade “Wallonia” occupied it. 

The layout of the line had been well chosen. It extended from southeast to 
northwest atop high crests which overlooked the valley, the bogs, and the 
canal from Derenkovez to the Olshanka. Far away we could make out the 
forests by which we had returned from Belozerye. 

The trench, dotted with numerous firing emplacements, extended in a 
zigzag for thirty kilometers. Unluckily it didn’t have any fascines and had 
been dug too deep. It was so deep that, once inside this clayey serpent, we 
could no longer see a thing. 

If the whole line of combat had been strongly held, this inconvenience 
would have been reduced. But we had only three hundred infantry men to 
defend thirty kilometers. 

The 2nd Company was to have taken position fifteen kilometers north of 
Derenkovez. Another of our companies occupied a line facing the east 
which departed Staroselye at a right angle, straight toward the south. 

We were left with three hundred infantrymen to hold the principal line. 
Thus we only had, on the average, a group of ten men to defend each 
kilometer of front. 

The rest of the brigade, the drivers of our three hundred trucks, the ar¬ 
tillery men, the anti-tank men, the anti-aircraft men, and the communica¬ 
tions troops had fallen back behind the line of combat or were defending 
with light weapons the points of the trench which were particularly 
menaced. 


* * * * * 

We were extremely pessimistic. 

It had been impossible to install a complete telephone network along so 
vast a line. It took dozens of kilometers of wire just to connect the company 
posts to the brigade command. 

This trench, so vulnerable, was the only rampart in the northeast which 
could shelter the general withdrawal towards Korsun. If our barrier 
crumbled, it would be every man for himself in the heart of the Kessel. 

Our men were dispersed in tiny groups, each isolated from the others. 
They were exhausted by the recent battles, by the nights of huddling 
together, by the icy mists, by the torturous slogging in pitch-like mud. They 



176 


CAMPAIGN IN RUSSIA 


had no shelter. Filthy, their faces drawn and worried, they watched the 
plain where the Soviet advance guard was bustling about. 

Our artillery had become useless: from Saturday afternoon on, the 
marshes were dotted with a thousand swarming enemies whom neither mud 
nor shells could stop. 


***** 

The next day they penetrated our line before dawn. 

The Reds had scaled the counterscarp during the night. They had had the 
good fortune to jump into an empty trench between two different posts. 
These were cut off, strangled. The Reds reached a mill dominating the hill 
in a few minutes. From there they plunged down toward the Olshanka, at¬ 
tacking a party of our men from behind. At seven o’clock in the morning 
the left bank of the river, in the village of Staroselye, was in the hands of the 
Bolsheviks. 

The enemy now dominated the region from the hills to the west. By eight 
o’clock in the morning they were already spreading out several kilometers to 
the south. 

Our command could just match this thrust. The commander immediately 
decided to go on ahead. I leaped into a Volkswagen with him and, driving 
through a stampede of horse drivers and trucks fleeing in panic, we reached 
the right bank of the Olshanka at Staroselye. 

A heroic group of about thirty men was still resisting on the knolls of the 
left bank. I got into an armored command vehicle, crossed the water, 
climbed the slope, and joined our comrades. We immediately engaged in 
hand-to-hand combat, advancing upwards from isba to isba, rolling pell- 
mell in the mud with the Asiatics. 

After an hour of battle we had liberated the village and reached the 
western end of town. Unluckily we were dominated by the bold mass of the 
crest and the picturesque mill, its wide black sails at rest. The Reds had in¬ 
stalled machine-gun nests there, and their snipers were tracking our every 
move. 

Kneeling in the corner of the last isba, I shot down every head which 
showed itself. But my position was too visible. A bullet had wounded me in 
the finger. Another creased by thigh. Within two minutes, a sixteen-year- 
old volunteer who had started to shoot beside me took a bullet right in the 
mouth. The poor youngster stood up for an instant, horrified, understand¬ 
ing nothing of what had happened to him. He opened his mouth wide, full 
of blood, no longer able to speak but wanting to explain all the same. He 
fell back down, writhed about in the mud, and hiccuped for a few seconds 
before dying. 

Behind us the corpses of our companions, killed during the Soviet attack 
at dawn, had been completely despoiled during the half hour that the enemy 



Surrounded at Cherkassy 


177 


controlled the west of Sakrevka. The bodies were completely nude, yel¬ 
lowed and reddened by the oily mud. 

From the corner of our isba we saw the plain fill up with Soviet rein¬ 
forcements in the north and northeast. Across the marshes lines of 
floundering men dragged anti-tank weapons. The hillside and the mill 
above us seemed impregnable. 

The commander was sending us all the men he could gather in the area. 
But what could we do other than to prevent the Reds from retaking back the 
town? To venture beyond our isba, to attack a hill as smooth as shoe polish 
and without cover, would mean sinking up to our knees and invite a general 
massacre. 

Nevertheless, we had to take back the mill and the summit. If not, the 
following night the enemy would mass all his forces there. 

We had to re-establish the line without delay or else face a definitive 
break in the front, with all the consequences that disaster would bring. 

* * ♦ * * 

I had asked for Panzers. Behind them and under the protection of their 
harassing fire we might just reach the mill and the crest. 

But nothing happened. 

We had to act, confuse the enemy. 

A few volunteers slipped into the big trench and followed it back up 
toward the Reds. They were led by Lieutenant Thyssen, a strapping young 
man two meters tall with a jaw like Femandel and the mischievous eyes of 
an overgrown kid. He tossed back all the grenades that the Reds threw at 
him with ease. A bullet went through his left arm. He carried on, unflap¬ 
pable and laughing heartily, freeing a hundred meters of terrain. 

Finally, at 1400 hours, the German tanks arrived. There were only two of 
them, but their noisy advance was enough to throw the Reds into a panic. 
Many took to their heels. We could see them hastily taking down their 
machine guns, encrusted with the oozing cement of the parapets. 

The tanks rumbled. Our little column rushed to follow them. 

On the plain the Soviets were rolling in like a flood tide, pulling along 
their light artillery. They spotted our two Panzers moving along the bare 
hillside. Immediately, an avalanche of shells rained down from their anti¬ 
tank weapons, boxing in our tanks, cutting off the top of the rampart, kill¬ 
ing our men. 

The mill was our first objective. 

My driver, Leopold Van Daele, a hero of the 1914-1918 war, rushed into 
the open terrain even ahead of the tanks. He was Flemish; a windmill was a 
familiar sight in his homeland. He was the first to reach one of the black 
sails and mow down three Stalinists with his submachine gun. But a Mongol 
hiding close to a buttress at the bottom of the trench took aim at him, his 



178 


CAMPAIGN IN RUSSIA 


gun raised. The bullet slammed into him under the jaw and came back out 
at the top of his skull. Incredibly, he still found the strength to reach into his 
pocket and, like the confirmed Christian he was, grab his chaplet. Then he 
fell dead, his blue eyes wide open, fixed on the large and powerful mill, so 
like the old mills on the ramparts of Bruges in the country of Flanders. 

* * * * * 

By four o’clock in the afternoon we had retaken the whole hill. 

The trench was littered with crude cartridge pouches that had been 
thrown away by the fleeing enemy. They were, as always, stuffed with car¬ 
tridges, with stale and moldy bread, and sunflower seeds. 

We had taken quite a haul of machine guns, but our victory left us skep¬ 
tical. What did we have more than yesterday? Nothing. In fact, we had lost 
a number of our comrades. Killing the Soviets didn’t do any good. They 
multiplied like wood lice, kept on coming back endlessly, ten times, twenty 
times as numerous as we. 

These kilometers of trenches were a laughable protection, defended here 
and there by a few handfuls of Walloons who were hopelessly isolated amid 
the drizzle and the returning darkness. To the left and right of every post 
stretched a kilometer’s gap. 

The trench, trampled in both directions during the battle, had become 
disgustingly mucky. The position was quite clearly untenable. The drama 
would unfold very soon. There was no doubt whatsoever about that. The 
night was full of incessant and furtive sounds. The whole hillside was alive 
with invisible presences. Hundreds of Soviets were crawling, reaching the 
trench, and spreading out along it. 

At dawn the tragedy of the previous evening began again. At seven 
o’clock in the morning, for the second time, the Soviet assault overwhelmed 
and drove out our comrades. 

We knew that from then on, hill, trench, and mill were lost forever. 

Our panzers had been recalled to the south. They wouldn’t be back again. 

Now what? There was no possible question of an early withdrawal. 

Thousands of trucks, thousands of men were hastening toward Korsun. 
The flank which had protected them was now open. 

Skiti 

The whole day of Monday, 7 February 1944, was spent trying to plug the 
breach that the Russians had made in the Staroselye-Derenkovez line. 

At Staroselye itself out troops had regrouped on the right bank of the 
Olshanka river. The positions were good, strongly trenched and stockaded, 
protected by multiple barbed wires and by mines planted on the banks. 

At the other extremity of the line, at Derenkovez, the 1st Company had 
endured numerous assaults, but it had valiantly held off the enemy. 



Surrounded at Cherkassy 


179 


On a right angle fifteen kilometers to the north of Derenkovez, the 2nd 
Company was continuing its interminable maneuver of withdrawal from the 
east to the north, then from the north to the west. They were fighting dif¬ 
ficult rear-guard battles very honorably, losing very few men, and adhering 
scrupulously to the established schedule. 

The devil was the yawning gap to the west of Staroselye. 

The remains of our 4th Company, overrun at dawn, had fallen back in 
the direction of Derenkovez. They had been joined by other forces. Helped 
by elements of the 1st Company they had been counterattacking during the 
whole day. 

But the Soviets were in force. They surged through the breach at 
Staroselye and into the forest, which descended toward the south. 

Our companies at Derenkovez and our troops at Staroselye were given the 
mission of sticking to the flanks of this forest to keep the enemy from com¬ 
ing out. We sent patrols to skirmish in every direction and return. 

Moreover, our artillery had conserved its firepower and was now fighting 
without respite. On the bare crest, the only passageway for Soviet rein¬ 
forcements, it unleashed tremendous firepower: we no longer had any illu¬ 
sions of retrieving our heavy weapons from the mire when the next 
withdrawal came. 

Wrecked automobiles and trucks were everywhere in the muck. The most 
powerful of our tractors, a monster with caterpillar treads, sent from 
Derenkowez to Staroselye to help with the new withdrawal, had spent an en¬ 
tire day and night to cross less than thirty kilometers. 

The railroad line, last road to Korsun, was marked by countless fires. 
Thousands of trucks jolted along in fits and starts under a rain of shells. 

We formed the rear guard to the northeast. The slower the retreat of this 
enormous convoy, the longer we would have to fight. 

The German High Command kept the situation in hand with incom¬ 
parable sang-froid. Despite the frightful situation of the fifty to sixty thou¬ 
sand survivors in the Kessel, we couldn’t detect the least trace of agitation 
or hurry in the orders. The maneuvers were accomplished methodically and 
calmly. Nowhere did the enemy manage to seize the initiative. 

In this terrible trap, the troops and equipment withdrew precisely accord¬ 
ing to the instructions they received. The rear guards and the flank guards 
would fight to the very minute as scheduled, holding the ground until the 
precise instant of redeployment. 

The breaches were immediately closed, regardless of the price. 

Everyone knew that it was best to hold to the plan laid out by the General 
Staff, since any premature withdrawal would infallibly draw counterattacks 
that would be pursued until the abandoned terrain was retaken. 

The orders were hard. But this was not the time for softness. Every 
soldier knew he had to choose: either orderly regrouping with the possibility 
of a final breakthrough, thanks to a methodical withdrawal, or annihilation 
amid the tumult of a general rout. 



180 


CAMPAIGN IN RUSSIA 


We reached the morning of Tuesday, 8 February 1944. 

Staroselye was still holding. 

So was Derenkovez. 

The danger from the opened breach had been more or less neutralized by 
our shock patrols hanging on to the western, southern, and southeastern 
edges of the forest invaded by the Soviets. 

But the enemy was no longer satisfied with this assault. He kept attacking 
furiously all around the Kessel. Wave after wave lashed the south, where the 
German Army was in the midst of its most important withdrawal. The 
whole Soviet empire had been falling on us from the east since 2 February. 

Our sector comprised more than just the thirty kilometer trench from 
Derenkovez to Staroselye and the advanced positions of the 2nd Company 
in the northern sector. We also defended a supplementary line more than a 
league long which left from Staroselye at right angles toward the large 
village of Skiti in the south. 

The enemy’s breach threatened us in front, as well as on our right and left 
flanks. Staroselye was at the end of a long corridor. The enemy forces on 
our eastern flank had only to join the Soviet forces who had just outflanked 
us in the west, and our soldiers would be trapped and destroyed. 

The Walloons covering our right flank had as neighbors the young 
recruits of the Viking, who had arrived at the front in civilian garb one 
month earlier, and who had barely received the rudiments of military in¬ 
struction amid the bustle of January. These unfortunate boys were worn 
out with fatigue and emotion. 

The enemy attacked them the morning of 8 February 1944, dislodged 
them, seized their posts one by one, and completely routed the survivors. 
We saw them drifting back with the current behind our bridgehead. This 
flotsam had nothing left to give. Some of them were crying like children. 

During this rout the Soviets had poured through the breach. They had 
taken our southeast positions, located every hundred meters under the oaks. 
Our men had to abandon the woods and even the little village of Skiti on the 
plateau. They came down into the valley, closely followed by the adversary. 

The enemy forces from the two breaches had almost joined. Only our lit¬ 
tle command post, where we hastily regrouped the fleeing men, remained 
like a tiny islet between the two Soviet battering rams. 

We had to recover quickly and take the pressure off our position im¬ 
mediately. One hour’s hesitation, and any breakout would be impossible. 

The enemy had already occupied Skiti. Our anti-tank weapons climbed 
up the hill. The commander rushed forward, followed by our boys, dead 
tired but yelling just the same. 

At five o’clock in the evening we retook the village. Fighting tooth and 
nail, we pushed the Soviets back into the woods. Once again the situation 
had been temporarily saved. 

Orders came to our brigade command post to start the new withdrawal 
the next day. 



Surrounded at Cherkassy 


181 


We had only to hold firm for a few more hours, one evening, one night, 
and we would have saved not only our honor, but also the mass of friendly 
troops who were withdrawing slowly toward the west under cover of our 
rear guard. 


***** 

Unfortunately the Communists, who could see through our plan, had 
decided to make an all-out attempt to destroy our positions. 

To be effective the Soviet reduction of the Cherkassy Kessel had to be 
made sector by sector. 

That was what the enemy had attempted at Moshny and was attempting 
at the southeast of Staroselye. 

But it was in vain: all around the Kessel a hundred attacks failed. 

Skiti was ours at five o’clock in the evening. The commander returned to 
the command post. In a simple trench of fine sand, one on top of another, 
we laid out the blood-spattered dead of the anguishing afternoon. 

That evening, while we were setting up our next morning’s plan for the 
brigade’s withdrawal toward Derenkovez, a sentinel saw some men through 
the drizzle, covering the descent of our soldiers who had been routed, once 
again, on our eastern flank. 

The enemy had broken cover a second time, had dislodged our boys and 
retaken Skiti. 

Heading for the poplar groves in the valley and the east-west junction, the 
enemy would isolate Staroselye and finally choke off our sector. 

Everything had to be done all over again without delay, with men who 
had been beaten twice in one day, who were worn out and decimated. 

Division ordered me to push the enemy back. We had to reoccupy the hill 
protecting the line of retreat and not let go until six o’clock in the morning, 
when our forces at Staroselye would have been able to get out of the 
bottleneck. 

Darkness had come. 

The hill was covered with firs growing very close together. Some Reds 
were already stealthily starting the descent. We climbed slowly towards the 
plateau, for our weapons were heavy and we had to advance as far as possi¬ 
ble without noise or fighting. 

We were forty in all. 

We crawled for the last hundred meters, then we sprung. 

Our storming the enemy-held ridge provoked momentary confusion. We 
were able to use our machine-guns to the maximum and drive the enemy 
back to Skiti, while two of our anti-tank guns, hoisted to the summit in spite 
of the sand and the mud, supported our assault. 

Faced with this reaction, the Reds chose to slip further south. This was 
even worse for us. 



182 


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This time the operation which had failed abreast of us would be replayed 
in our rear. 

At one o’clock in the morning, two kilometers behind our brigade com¬ 
mand post, Soviets and Germans were battling a few hundred meters from 
the road, our only road. 

Little groups of SS from the Viking, hugging the ground like cammock 
plants, checked the countless Soviet thrusts all by themselves. We heard the 
fracas from dozens of fire fights scattered over several kilometers from the 
east to the south. 

The enemy was in front of us, at our right, at our left, behind our lines. 
The line that we had to follow at dawn was lit by a line of flaming isbas. 
Everywhere men were shouting. 

Our lives, the lives of a thousand men, depended on those shouts. 

Fortunately at five o’clock the sector was still shouting. 

We burned the automobiles, unable to take on thirty kilometers of syrupy 
muck. The greater part of our troops slipped along the Olshanka River 
toward a wooden bridge which our men crossed at the exact place where a 
handful of the Viking’s SS were still holding back the enemy. 

A few of our machine-gunners were supposed to resist until the total 
evacuation of our companies. 

They performed miracles for three hours. 

Then with the suppleness of snakes they made their way through the fir 
stands of the south among the Soviets who had poured in from every 
direction. 

Not a single one of our men was taken prisoner. Not one of our machine 
guns was left behind. In the midst of a diabolical hail of bullets, they 
crossed, last of all, belly to the ground, the wooden bridge of the Olshanka. 
It went up behind us like a geyser. 

In epic mud, our men, our horses, our trucks scaled the opposite bank, as 
sticky as resin. We were separated from the enemy only by the swollen 
waters of the river, which carried a thousand floating remains, blasted into 
the valley by explosions. 

Thirty Kilometers 

The general maneuver of retreat of 9 February 1944 was vast. The sur¬ 
rounded divisions left the south, the southeast, the east, and three-quarters 
of the northeast and the north Cherkassy pocket. 

This pocket had the shape of Africa at the end of January. On 9 February 
1944, “Africa” had shrunk to “Guinea,” keeping only a loop as high as 
Lake Chad. This loop was the village of Derenkovez. 

The capital of our Russian Guinea was Korsun, point of general assembly 
of the troops surrounded since the 28 January. 

Right to the southwest of Korsun, coming from the outside of the Kessel, 



Surrounded at Cherkassy 


183 


several hundred Tigers and Panthers, the most powerful German tanks in 
the armored divisions of southern Russia, were advancing furiously towards 
us in spite of bitter resistance. 

The fifty to sixty thousand men of the Kessel withdrew methodically 
toward Korsun and saved a maximum of equipment. 

Tens of thousands of men were taking their places for the decisive 
assault. They would move toward the Panzers coming up from the south. 
The rear guard forces would contain the pressure of the Soviet mass from 
the north and east or coming up from the southeast and south. 

The most forward point of resistance north of Korsun would be 
Derenkovez, at the left end of our former line. 

All our forces, stretched over thirty kilometers from Derenkovez to 
Staroselye and to the south of Staroselye, had received orders to withdraw 
to Derenkovez during the day of 9 February. Toward this locality our 2nd 
Company was to fall back also, from the north. Since the evacuation of 
Losovok this company had been moving in an arc from the east to the 
northwest. 

Without anyone’s support, our brigade would occupy the key position of 
Derenkovez. 

The Wehrmacht units were deployed on the western flank of the 
Derenkovez-Korsun line. It was their task to resist the enemy thurst to the 
utmost. The eastern flank would be protected by the Nordland Regiment of 
the Viking Division. 

Between these two lateral fronts a country road bordered by a river ran 
from Derenkovez to Korsun. The security zone of this road was about twen¬ 
ty kilometers wide from east to west. 

Inarguably the most exposed position would be ours at the northern ex¬ 
tremity of the corridor. We had to close off the road. Otherwise the enemy, 
surging up from the northeast and the north, would certainly try to reach 
Korsun with the design of finishing off the encircled troops once and for all. 

* * * * * 

The 2nd Company accomplished the last stage of its retreat to 
Derenkovez without incident. 

By contrast, our departure at the other end of the line, taken in extremis 
while the enemy swarms harried us from a thousand directions, was going 
to be an operation full of drama. 

The German units withdrawing from the southeast were flooding back 
toward the west at the same time as we, the Reds right on their heels. 

The Olshanka River, swollen by the thaw, its bridge blown up, gave us a 
few minutes respite. 

According to the High Command’s plans, we were supposed to reach 
Derenkovez by following almost parallel to our old Staroselye-Derenkovez 



184 


CAMPAIGN IN RUSSIA 


line. But this had been penetrated and overrun two days before. The forest 
where the enemy lurked hung like a goiter toward the south. The Soviets 
had been there in force since 9 February and had installed their anti-tank 
weapons. 

The normal line of retreat used the southern end of this forest. The Ger¬ 
man trucks which went ahead of our brigade had just run into a hundred 
Soviet wasp’s nests there. 

One of our staff officers, a manufacturer from Ghent, a serious-minded 
and civilized man, straight as a sword and loyal as a knight, Captain An- 
thonissen, had been sent on a liaison mission to Derenkovez. He advanced 
at the head of the column. When it fell into an ambush he immediately 
regrouped the infantry which accompanied the first German trucks. 

Unluckily he was dealing with exhausted Volksdeutsche* recruits of the 
Viking, in retreat since the Skiti battle. These wrecks seemed to advance 
toward the enemy, then at the first shots broke into a rout. 

Captain Anthonissen knew the traditions of the Wallonian Legion. 

The others were fleeing in every direction but he stayed. 

He fought with his submachine gun right to the end. 

A counterattack organized by the Viking cleared out the road one hour 
later. A body lay near a thicket thirty meters to the east of the road. “It was 
a very tall man bearing the Belgian colors on his left sleeve,” a German of¬ 
ficer told us that evening. 

Why were we fighting, why had Captain Anthonissen fought, if not to 
merit every day the honor of representing on the European front a country 
small but vibrant with glory—the proud Leo belgicus of our forefathers? 1 

$ £ ft ft ft 

At the tail of the column, the only line of retreat was an earthen path cut 
in a clay as viscous as fuel oil. The terrain became very steep and we could 
drag the trucks only with tractors. In the valleys the vehicles would slide and 
skid. 

We had to cross flooded streams, still partly covered with ice. The wheels 
would skid on it, hacking out deeper and deeper gashes. Every crossing of 
these diabolical watercourses would cost us one or two vehicles. 

We arrived on a plateau facing the forest just as the Viking Division was 
starting its counterattack. Our columns had to use a cart track which turned 
back to the south. At the end a few kilometers we veered eastward again. 
Once part of the immense automobile-snake there was no getting out. The 
path was narrow and bordered by a deep ravine. One clumsy turn of the 
wheel and the vehicle would tumble into the abyss. 

At the base of the mountain a village was stagnating in the marshes near a 
glimmering pond. The path followed the water. It soon turned into a thick 
carbon black paste almost half a meter deep, absolutely impassable. We had 



Surrounded at Cherkassy 


185 


to resort to extreme measures. We threw all the hay and straw stacks into 
the sinkhole, then added the thatch from the isbas and on top of that the 
doors, the shutters, the partitions, and even the tables, whose legs we cut 
off. 

The entire village went into it. 

The enemy was two kilometers away. It was no time to be soft-hearted. 

And on these pitiful ruins, among the stunned peasants, a hundred trucks 
were able to haul themselves out, go back up toward high ground, and 
finally reach the crossroads of the Derenkovez road. 

* * * * * 

At five o’clock in the evening we were certain that we had saved almost all 
our men and, best of all, a good part of our transport. 

We dared not wait any longer. The planes were machine-gunning the 
isbas at the crossroads. We had a store of flares there. The Soviet fighters 
hit it. Hundreds of red, green, white, and violet sprays streaked about in a 
frenzy, fell at our feet, and maddened our last horses. 

To reach Derenkovez we had to approach the western border of the 
enemy-occupied forest. Our column skirted it at a distance of two 
kilometers. 

The advance was nerve-wrackingly slow. Everywhere, all the time, half a 
meter of sticky mud. German trucks going to Derenkovez to get to Korsun 
and trucks of the Wallonian Brigade were mixed up in a long narrow line. 
Every minute or so a bogged-down vehicle would block everything. 

We had to uproot and cut down the little fruit trees of the neighboring 
countryside in order to help firm up the road. A number of cars had been 
abandoned and overturned, their motors burned out. We went on foot for 
the most part, our muscles strained by the clumps of mud clinging to our 
feet. 

Night was coming. Our nervousness grew. 

We were being shot at from the edge of the woods. The Soviet airplanes 
were harassing us almost without respite. 

Suddenly a huge red ball burst out of the forest, then another. “Panzers! 
Panzers!” yelled the foreign drivers as they threw themselves beneath their 
machines and set them on fire before fleeing. 

No, it was the Soviet anti-tank weapons which were firing on our 
column. 

This was no big crisis. We had seen it all before. But some of the burning 
trucks instantly forbade all movement. There were stocks of thousands of 
shells and grenades in the convoy. 

The explosions began. Everyone had to throw himself flat in the muddy 
fields. I managed to jump onto a horse tried to regroup some of the men 
and try to save a few more vehicles. 



186 


CAMPAIGN IN RUSSIA 


But it was too late. The whole road was on fire. More than a hundred 
trucks were burning against the gray-violet sky, a long red and pink ribbon 
perforated with black spurts. 

All our records were destroyed, all our papers, all our equipment. Only 
our glorious flags escaped. Those the company commanders had carried 
draped around their bodies under their jackets since the first day of the 
retreat. 


£ * * * * 

That night several hundred men, their legs shaky with fatigue, harassed 
by Soviet fire, entered the sunken road of Derenkovez. 

Mud, like a river of lava, flowed down in enormous ribbons to the little 
valley, cut off by the lake. 

The bridge had been destroyed. The pond ice had melted. We had to cross 
this shadowy stretch in water up to our waists. 

East of Derenkovez the enemy had been very aggressive for two days: 
harassing the 2nd Company in the north, it burst into the refuge as we arriv¬ 
ed there. In the southeast it bombarded us with anti-tank shellbursts. 

A torrential rain had begun to fall. During a night streaked with bursts 
from Soviet machine guns, we streamed in, half-blinded, falling in the mire, 
hampered by our weapons, drained of strength and almost of hope. 

The Bridgehead 

The Assault Brigade “Wallonia” had achieved the tour de force of 
regrouping itself in its entirety at the bridgehead of Derenkovez. 

Our situation would almost immediately become hellish. 

We were positioned in a horseshoe around the village, facing north, 
northeast, and east. 

From within the Korsun horseshoe the Korsun road started off behind us 
towards the south. The security zone of this highway was diminishing from 
hour to hour. Soviet tanks were harassing the positions of the Wehrmacht 
at the west of the corridor. Soviet snipers had sneaked in everywhere. Since 
Thursday morning the Reds had been able to machine-gun the convoy 
hurrying from Derenkovez to Korsun. 

The twenty kilometers of relative security had become, in less than a day, 
one to two kilometers. 

The southeastern and eastern flanks were in theory largely protected. The 
SS Nordland Regiment was to contain the enemy in this direction, about ten 
kilometers from the valley. Thanks to this cover, our bridgehead at the 
northern end of the corridor would be able to hold out as long as necessary. 
The general regrouping at Korsun could then be made smoothly. 

Unfortunately the Nordland Regiment, since Thursday, had been badly 



Surrounded at Cherkassy 


187 


knocked about. An enemy tidal wave had thrown it back to the last hill 
covering our road between Derenkovez and Korsun, some seven kilometers 
behind us. 

We nearly lost everything then. The corridor was no longer more than a 
few hundred meters wide in all. Bullets were crossing it in both directions. 

At this news General Gille became terribly angry. The Nordland’s com¬ 
mander received a hurricane of imprecations over the field telephone and 
was ordered to take back the lost ground instantly. 

But in the meantime the victorious Soviet troops were rushing towards 
Derenkovez in order to attack us from behind. At the beginning of the 
afternoon they appeared at the southeast near the most elevated isbas. 

Derenkovez was an extended town, its houses set very far apart. From a 
strategic point of view, the Reds had just reached the most important loca¬ 
tion. That evening their equipment would be set up and we would be caught 
in a the crossfire of Soviet grenades and artillery. 

We still had a few troops. 

Every stroke of bad luck brings its own consolation. The hundreds of 
truckless drivers and weaponless artillerymen constituted growing reserves 
as the mire swallowed up our materiel. We immediately turned them into in¬ 
fantrymen who very usefully reinforced our decimated companies. 

An artillery officer, Lieutenant Graff, was sent to retake the Derenkovez 
slope at the head of about fifty of his former men. 

Pride entered into it. The artillerymen, whom the front line soldiers often 
teased, wanted to give them an eyeful. They gave the Reds such a beating 
that they withdrew two kilometers to the southeast. They took numerous 
prisoners, and as a finishing touch, took a mill and an agricultural complex 
by storming a knoll. 

The men of the Nordland were somewhat embarrassed when, labori¬ 
ously, in the course of their counterattack, they reached the sector they had 
lost several hours before. A handful of muddy and gleeful Belgians were 
already plucking chickens, cutting bacon, slicing pickles, preparing, their 
grenades on their belts, a discreetly heroic kermess. 

They held this position unshakably. Our artillerymen were proud. And 
the produce was good. 

But everywhere else danger was drawing its noose tighter again, bloodily. 
The east of Derenkovez was savagely harassed. Hordes of Mongols were 
surging in from all sides and throwing themselves in howling bands onto our 
little posts. We were pushed back right outside town. 

In the evening the situation was this: the bridgehead at Derenkovez was 
practically choked off. Behind us at the mid-route between Derenkovez and 
Korsun, the corridor had only a tiny zone of protection left at the village of 



188 


CAMPAIGN IN RUSSIA 


Arbusino. It could be cut off at any moment, in which case, surrounded at 
Derenkovez, our fate would be sealed. 

Moreover the enemy would then be able to break through from Arbusino 
to Korsun, where fifty thousand men, ensnared in the mire along with their 
equipment, were just beginning to regroup, expecting help from the 
southwest. 

Now this help was looking more and more problematical. The column of 
German tanks which was supposed to liberate us was still forty kilometers 
away from Korsun. It, too, was sinking in seas of mud. Things looked grim 
everywhere. The news was all disastrous. 

The encircled troops were at the end of their strength. 

There were almost no more munitions or food. 

The men were half dead from fatigue. 

How much longer could we check the thrust of an enemy who knew we 
were on our knees? Would the tanks from the west muster enough strength 
to break through the encirclement and through the incredible mud? 

At the most optimistic, we had no more than a few days before we would 
succumb. 

That night a secret communication from the staff office of the division to 
our brigade commander left no more hope. “We have only four or five 
chances in a hundred of escaping total annihilation.” 

In the little command post, drenched with torrential rain, we looked at 
one another, our blood run cold. 

We saw the faces of our children, far away, as in a mirage. 

The hour was not far off when all would be lost. 

***** 

The night of Thursday, 10 February to Friday, 11 February passed in 
confused and multiple battles. 

We could no longer see a meter ahead. The air was nothing but solid 
water. The ground was a river in which we sank to our knees. 

Like toads the Soviets were swarming everywhere across the black mud. 

Bullets kept coming every minute or two from the same spot. It took us a 
quarter of an hour to find the place where the marksman must have been 
hiding. Nothing was left there but a pool like all the others. He had slipped 
silently away and posted himself in another watery, shadowy hole. We had 
scarcely moved off when bullets began whistling past again, sharp, brutal, 
nerve-wracking. 

All around us the projectiles would criss-cross and explode into the walls, 
the doors, and the roofs. 

Our men, who had not slept for a week, clothes glued to their bodies, felt 
that they would go crazy. 

Division telephoned the command post every half hour. “You must hold! 



Surrounded at Cherkassy 


189 


You must hold!” If we lost a house we had to retake it immediately, in the 
dark. 

The Reds were slipping in among us. We kept catching them in darkness. 
We would take them to the command post, shaggy swamp monsters, 
disgusting with mud, their cheeks flat and red, laughing in their yellow 
teeth. 

They all said that they were ten times stronger then we. Then they would 
gobble up anything, would fall asleep anywhere like animals, snoring and 
mumbling, in a nauseating odor of grease and damp cloth. 

Five to Midnight 

On Friday morning Derenkovez was still holding out. 

The eastern and western flanks of the Korsun road had held, although 
almost everywhere the Soviet riflemen had sneaked in among the brambles 
and thickets alongside the road. 

The Soviets knew far better than we how well they had us hemmed in. For 
several days their airplanes had been dropping us leaflets in which they 
described to us, fully documented, our desperate situation. They gave the 
list of the surrounded units and especially mentioned the so-called “Wallon- 
ian Motorized Brigade.” 

They were becoming more and more innovative in the art of propaganda. 
Regularly a white flag would wave. A Soviet soldier would advance, bring¬ 
ing an envelope addressed personally to the General of the Division or of 
the Army Corps. It would be a hand-written letter from a German general 
taken prisoner who had gone over to the enemy. This agent would insis¬ 
tently propose, in the name of his Soviet masters, the honorable surrender 
of the Kessel. 

Every day photos were sent by the same postal service, photos of 
prisoners taken the preceding day, seated at a table with the general in ques¬ 
tion, perfectly alive and well cared for. 

At eleven o’clock on Friday, 11 February 1944, after the habitual white 
flag had been raised, two very correct Soviet officers appeared bearing a 
message from the Soviet High Command for the commander in chief of the 
encircled forces. 

The message was an ultimatum. 

The two enemy officers passed behind our positions and were received 
with courtesy. The Soviet ultimatum was clear and plain: Either you will 
surrender and be treated as courageous soldiers or the attack will be un¬ 
leased at 1300 hours, and you will be exterminated.” 

The ultimatum was rejected instantly and categorically. We escorted the 
two Soviet officers back across the muck to their own lines, riding on a 
vibrating tractor. 

The Soviets did not delay their retort. 



190 


CAMPAIGN IN RUSSIA 


Immediately after noon, all around the terribly contracted Kessel, the 
Red Army broke cover. 

It attacked our bridgehead and the Derenkovez-Korsun road with rage. 
The outcome was precarious. 

The German forces had started reassembling at Korsun two days earlier. 
We knew that the final combat was going to begin, that tens of thousands of 
men were taking position and would throw themselves into the assault with 
the energy of despair. A radiotelegram from the German High Command 
had entreated us to combine our forces. They were going to send, in a last 
effort, all the panzers they had left. 

We would have to risk everything. 

The Soviets believed us irretrievably lost. 

For the last two weeks, their attacks hadn’t succeeded. They wanted to 
hurry and hasten the kill. Their ultimatum having been rejected without 
discussion, their attack broke from all sectors. 

£ * £ ft £ 

That evening the Korsun corridor became narrower and narrower. But at 
Derenkovez our brigade hadn’t lost an inch of garden or a meter of hedge. 

Our soldiers were sunk like posts in the ground. From then on they were 
unmoved by anything. Panzers could have fallen from the sky and they 
would have shown no surprise. 

We had received new orders. The gravity of the situation was such that 
the breakthrough would be moved up. The next day, Saturday, 12 February 
1944, the encircled army would make its last attempt, and would thrust 
through the enemy toward the southwest. At four o’clock in the morning we 
would evacuate Derenkovez and join the assault wave in the south end of 
the Kessel. The Nordland Regiment would establish the rearguard from Ar- 
busino, covering Korsun. 

But it was only seven o’clock in the evening. 

It was an endless wait! 

Almost all the lines were frayed and broken. 

Could we manage to hold out for nine more hours, as ordered? Wouldn’t 
our whole bridgehead suddenly crack and fall back in a terrible 
annihilation? 

Bullets were clattering on the corrugated metal, dripping under the 
downpour. Never on earth had it rained with such violence. 

Everywhere screams split the air. 

At one o’clock in the morning our forward posts on the east withdrew. 
Already the Soviets, like reptiles of mud and night, were slithering into the 
isbas. No longer firing, not breathing a word, our men went down toward 
the rambling pond, several hundred meters wide, which they crossed in 
water up to their waists, their weapons held out at arm’s length. 



Surrounded at Cherkassy 


191 


In the darkness we scanned the black water from which they emerged 
shiny as seals. 

In the northwest and the west the firing intensified. Bullets went shrieking 
by, then died out or flattened themselves against obstacles. 

But suddenly we were stunned by the droning noise of a dull rumble: 
tanks! 

The Soviet tanks had just arrived on the northwest, several hundred 
meters away from us, moving toward the paved road where our last trucks 
were lined up in the shadows. These alone could save us at the last minute. 

It was the sound of death, this great rolling of treads. Not five minutes 
would pass before the catastrophe would be upon us. 

I leaped toward an anti-tank weapon left near the road. Helped by a 
soldier, I turned it around. Other soldiers ran up at my shout, and aimed 
another weapon. We unleashed a hell’s fire of plunging shells, forcing the 
enemy tanks to a halt. 

It was one-thirty in the morning. 

Behind the tanks, the Russian footsoldiers had crept to within several 
dozen meters of us. They fired blindly at the black road. 

We had to keep moving the trucks ceaselessly back and forth, waiting for 
hundreds of our comrades to climb out of the pond. 

As they reached the road they threw themselves onto the vehicles. But at 
each loading some fell back onto the ground, mortally wounded. 

At 4:00 A.M. the men of the last rearguard platoon joined us. We hastily 
loaded our two anti-tank weapons onto the last trucks. 

Our bridgehead of Derenkovez had held out to the end without a hitch 
and right on schedule. 

Arbusino was on fire. The Nordland Regiment had retaken cover behind 
the inferno. Farther on a few airplanes lay sadly, their noses in the mud. 

At dawn we arrived at Korsun. Our brigade made it a point of honor to 
get down from the trucks, to re-form, and to enter the city in strict order, 
heads high, singing as if on parade. 

Departure from Korsun 

Korsun was an admirable city. 

It was brightened on the southeast by a very deep lake, several kilometers 
long. This lake, bordered by green, blue, white, and red isbas, framed by 
hills with coppery shrubs, and hemmed by a sandy road, ended in a gigantic 
dam. The water plunged onto enormous red and green rocks, then veered 
away roaring from the two sides of a glossy island, which bore on its sum¬ 
mit an old white abbey with elegant oriental festoons. 

Fifty meters above the leaping water, the Wagnerian roar of the fall rose 
to a dark and imposing cliff. It was there that all the dead of the Viking 
Division and the Assault Brigade “Wallonia” were buried. 



192 


CAMPAIGN IN RUSSIA 


After each battle we had brought them to this powerful and distant pro¬ 
montory, high place of death and glory. 

From there they would see us leave along the great lake, toward sacrifice 
or deliverance. 


* * * * * 

The Kessel kept shrinking: a few kilometers of front to the north of Kor- 
sun, a few kilometers to the southwest: a double curtain of flank-guard 
protection. 

That was all. 

In the beginning the Kessel was as big as Belgium. Now it was smaller 
than a French department. 

The enemy struck harder than ever. It was indispensable, as the 
withdrawal progressed, to take, in the southwest, the kilometers abandoned 
to the east and north. We had withdrawn from Derenkovez. Seven 
kilometers were therefore lost. The German assault waves would have to 
conquer seven others in the southwest before evening; otherwise the fifty 
thousand men of the Kessel would smother to death for lack of room to 
move. 

Now at eleven o’clock in the morning, while the commander and I were 
receiving orders at Division, we saw General Gille ton red while on his 
telephone. He had received catastrophic news. Arbusino, which was sup¬ 
posed to serve as a barrier until the next day, had just fallen into the hands 
of the Soviets. 

They were advancing at top speed against Korsun itself. 

The General grabbed his thick baton, jumped into a Volkswagen, and 
hurried in the direction of Arbusino. 

It was difficult to resist the anger of General Gille. The village was 
retaken and the barrier re-established. 

Just in time! 

* * * * * 

Our divisions’ attack in the southwest had been underway for several 
hours. It hadn’t succeeded as well as the German commander desired. The 
Reds were fighting bitterly. A village had been taken six kilometers from 
Korsun. We observed several advances on the flanks. 

But the enemy was pressing us very closely. Now we needed quick and 
total success. We had one or two days at the most. 

The troops were being asked to make a superhuman effort. 

Both officers and soldiers hadn’t any rest for ten days. We were sustained 
by the ferocious energy that only the immediate proximity of death gives. 

Since Moshny I hadn’t slept an hour for a week. I fought off sleep only 



Surrounded at Cherkassy 


193 


by swallowing Pervitine pills, a drug furnished to pilots to keep them awake 
during long flights. 

It was in fact impossible to find a minute’s respite. The telephones at the 
command post rang fifty or sixty times a night, whenever the enemy was 
breaking through our positions. I would have to rush to the critical point, 
take all the men I could find, and throw myself body and soul into the 
counterattack with them. 

There was nothing left of us but a bundle of nerves. 

How much longer could our nerves hold out? 

Our ammunition had been used up entirely in the fierce combats of the 
past two weeks. For a week not an airplane had been able to land. It was 
only by parachute drops that the encircled army could still receive the 
wherewithal to fight. 

We had scarcely arrived at Korsun when we heard the purring of 
airplanes in the lowering and rainy sky. A cloud of white parachutes fell 
through the drizzle. 

We thought at first that it was a Soviet landing, the last phase of the 
struggle. 

Then, instead of bodies hanging under the silken domes, we saw thick 
silver cigars. Every one of them contained twenty-five kilos of cartridges or 
little boxes of a bitter chocolate concentrate which helped fight off sleep. 

Thanks to these aerial gifts, each unit could again receive a sensible ration 
of ammo. 

The bakers of Korsun kneaded a last ovenful of ration loaves. This, along 
with the the parachuted chocolate, was the only food that was distributed to 
the troops on 13 February 1944. 

As he took his bread, each soldier knew that it was the last bread he 
would receive before either conquering or dying. 

***** 

Our departure toward the battle in the southwest was fixed for 2300 
hours. 

We still entertained certain illusions, for the German commander was 
deliberately giving false information, that is to say optimistic information. 
It was better, certainly, not to tell everything. If we had known the truth we 
would have given up trying. 

To listen to the superior officers, the next day, Sunday, would see the end 
of our misfortune. There were only a few more kilometers to cross. 

We believed it because man willingly believes the things which correspond 
to his desires. 

Since morning the rain had stopped beating down onto the Kessel. The 
moon rose up in the evening. We saw there a portent. Korsun glowed softly. 

The silvery gleams in the sky were delicate. The air was sharp. With the 
help of a few Pervitine pills, we were about to reach, in the end, victory. 



194 CAMPAIGN IN RUSSIA 

We had lost a lot of trucks. 

Our dead were also many; there was plenty of room on the trucks which 
remained. In the middle of the night our column reached the lake, white and 
blue under the moon. 

The army crossed it on a wooden bridge nearly a kilometer long, built 
audaciously on top of the dam by the engineers. The bridge wasn’t wide 
enough to permit traffic in both directions. The convoys therefore had to be 
interrupted hourly. In spite of the thousands of vehicles from the Kessel 
which took their turn on the bridge, the passage, incredibly, was ac¬ 
complished without accidents. 

The enemy was very close; the men were nervous; but nothing ruffled the 
iron discipline of the Feldgendarmes. 

In spite of our fatigue we couldn’t help admiring this efficient machine, 
this command in total control of itself, this withdrawal as regular as the tim¬ 
ing of a race: the commissariat, the distribution of munitions and gas, the 
flow of traffic, the telephone, the radio, everything worked perfectly during 
these haunting weeks. Not so much as a grain of sand fouled the gears in 
spite of the concentration of disparate troops, harassed day and night, 
despite the loss of considerable materiel, sunk in the muddy thaw. 

Nevertheless that night everything depended on a few dozen cubic meters 
of planks. If a pilot had had the guts to crash his plane into the dam on the 
lake, the wooden bridge would have crumbled. Not another German truck 
would have left Korsun. 

But no enemy aviator tried this sensational coup, or else no Soviet general 
thought of it. 

At two o’clock in the morning we were on the other side of the dam, 
traveling along the soft gleaming lake. We were underway to the assault line 
on the southwest. 


* * * * * 

We managed to advance a few kilometers. The cold was biting. The mud 
was freezing up, which made movement even more difficult. Hundreds of 
trucks broke down in this putty, blocking the way. 

Everywhere we tried to pull out vehicles stuck in the hardening mud or 
push them onto the shoulders. But there were too many. For kilometers, the 
most unlikely vehicles were stopped three or four abreast: great red trucks 
of the Feldpost, * staff cars, self-propelled guns, tanks, hundreds of carts 
drawn by ponies or by oxen. Motorcyclists were revving their engines in 
vain. 

Finally we had to abandon our trucks and go forward on foot in this im¬ 
broglio, wishing our drivers lots of luck and the help of violent and pro¬ 
pitious winds. 

At dawn we reached the first village taken from the Soviets the day 
before. 



Surrounded at Cherkassy 


195 


We were dismayed to hear the news. 

It had been impossible to open a deep breach in the enemy front. In the 
village of Sanderovka, after four kilometers of progress, the German troops 
had met incredible resistance. Only half the villages had been occupied. 

The last three tanks of our brigade had been sent on an assault a little 
before our arrival and had been destroyed. The commander of our tanks, a 
very young captain as handsome as a god, with bright blue mischievous 
eyes, wearing magnificently a high white Cossack shapska topped with the 
death’s head of the SS, had been blown up in his tank, which took a direct 
hit in the munitions reserve. He had been tossed ten meters into the air and 
fallen back, stone dead, his face absolutely intact. 

The attack was about to begin again. 

As for the German panzers which were supposed to come from the out¬ 
side to meet us, we were still waiting for them. The information about them 
was extremely vague. 


* * * * * 

We were scarcely making any progress at all toward the southwest. 

But we were fast retreating in the north. Not only Arbusino—lost in the 
morning, retaken at noon—had been lost again definitively in the evening, 
that is, twelve hours too soon, but the Soviets, refusing to let up on the 
retreating troops, had entered Korsun. 

We had left it at eleven o’clock in the evening. The Soviets stormed it at 
dawn. 

We had to move on to Novo-Buda, which on the map protected 
Sanderovka from the east, the town for which we had fought so hard. 

Novo-Buda: strange name. 

The village dominated a long steep ridge. 

We set off in Indian file. 

All the remaining German artillery was pounding Soviet-occupied 
Sanderovka. 

We veered to the left. German soldiers lay here and there, freshly killed. 

The muck was disgusting. Soviet planes came down on us, hedgehopping. 
We would throw ourselves to the ground, almost completely sinking into 
the mud, until the squadron disappeared. These dives were repeated ten 
times. It took three hours to cross four kilometers of muddy fields. 

Finally we entered Novo-Buda. The village was as quiet as a cemetery. 
Two Wehrmacht regiments had just expelled the Reds in a masterful sur¬ 
prise attack. The enemy had abandoned some powerful guns and about 
twenty Ford trucks, but this unexpected victory didn’t deceive anyone. 

Fifteen Soviet tanks were coming up from the southeast. We could see 
them perfectly as they advanced up the road. 

They stopped eight hundred meters away. 



196 


CAMPAIGN IN RUSSIA 


Novo-Buda 

We were to relieve the two German regiments which had taken Novo- 
Buda the next day, 14 February 1944, before daybreak. Commander Lip- 
pert and I went to confer with the colonel in charge of the sector. 

Passing through Novo-Buda plunged us into bitter reflection. The dirt 
roads of the village—two sunken paths, parallel and deeply em¬ 
banked—were utterly inundated. The water reached a depth of one and a 
half meters or more. We had to keep to the banks, slippery as paste, to cross 
the village. 

At the German colonel’s, the atmosphere was lugubrious. The village had 
fallen without a shot. The two regiments had approached stealthily just 
before dawn and thrown the Soviets, taken from the rear, into panic. The 
enemy had fled leaving even their anti-tank guns. 

The Soviets had quickly regained their composure, however. 

Their counterattack had established a wide arc from the northeast to the 
south of Novo-Buda. 

Novo-Buda had been conquered for a few hours in order to protect the 
column exiting the Kessel, which was to seize Sanderovka and sweep toward 
the southwest. But Sanderovka hadn’t been completely taken yet. Beyond 
Sanderovka, we had to expect stubborn resistance now that the enemy had 
been able to brake the German assault for two days and a night. Novo- 
Buda, position for a single day, had thus become crucial. If Novo-Buda fell, 
the enemy would have only to advance four kilometers west to cut off the 
road behind Sanderovka. Final disaster would be at hand. 

The German colonel feared for the worst. Our sector was down to only 
five Panzers and our last anti-tank guns. These were almost out of ammuni¬ 
tion, and we would scarcely be able to move them, so prodigious was the 
muck. 

The three thousand men of the two regiments from Das Reich, who 
would leave at the end of the night, were to be replaced by a thousand 
Walloon soldiers, and a nondescript army of cooks, accountants, drivers, 
mechanics, quartermasters, and telephonists, flanked by the legal officer, 
the dentist, the pharmacist, and the postman, all transformed into rein¬ 
forcements for our nine skeletal companies. 

***** 

The German staff officers were waiting, elbows on the table, heads in 
their hands. No one breathed a word. 

They were asking themselves whether they would have the luck to get 
through the night without another counterattack. We, on the other hand, 
asked ourselves whether we would have the ill luck to see the attack un¬ 
leashed after the Germans had left. 



Surrounded at Cherkassy 


197 


Night fell. Our companies arrived in the mist, exhausted, having left lag¬ 
gards behind everywhere in the mud of the fields. 

The men went into whatever isba they found in Novo-Buda. Most of 
them collapsed in corners, almost dead. The toughest pulled off their 
jackets and their trousers, streaming with filthy water, in front of the 
orange corn stalk fires. 

At two o’clock in the morning knocking and shouting resounded from 
door to door. Unhappy messengers were slogging through the mud to 
muster the brigade. 

We put our clothes back on. They were as hard as sheet iron. Everyone 
cleaned his gun or submachine gun as well as he could. Hundreds of men 
filed out of the isbas into the cold night, promptly and unavoidably tumbled 
into the water of the sunken path, and advanced stumbling and swearing. 

It took nearly two hours to assemble the companies. Poor boys, dripping 
with mud, exhausted, having eaten nothing, drunk nothing other than the 
filthy water of the road. We had to guide them to the holes from out of 
which tottered the foot soldiers of the Reich Division. “Come on, old man, 
get into position, above all don’t fall asleep, keep your eyes open, they’re 
out there!” 

Yes, they were out there, not only European Russians, but Mongols, 
Tatars, Kalmuks, Kirghiz, having lived for weeks like wild animals in the 
mud. They had slept in thickets and eaten food scrounged from the last 
year’s corn and sunflower fields. 

They were out there, sure of their submachine gun cartridge clips with 
seventy bullets, sure of their grenade throwers, sure of their “Stalin’s 
organs,” whose rocket volleys filled the night with horror. 

They were out there. 

And their fifteen tanks were out there. We waited, apprehensive in the 
darkness, for the sound of their treads. 

£ £ $ £ £ 

The German senior officers, seated before us, waited for five o’clock. 
They had shown us the situation on the map. 

A gap of several kilometers extended to the northeast. It had been im¬ 
possible to establish a liaison in that direction. On the east and southeast the 
positions were spread thinly on the edge of the village to which the enemy 
had fallen back the day before. 

Clearly we lacked a continuous front. We still had our five old tanks. We 
had to make the best of them. 

It was almost five o’clock. 

Suddenly the German colonel ordered us to be silent. A protracted rum¬ 
ble of tank treads rose in the dwindling night. 

The colonel got up, gathered his maps, and made a sign to his staff. His 



198 


CAMPAIGN IN RUSSIA 


troops, relieved by ours, had already left the town. By staying with us in the 
heat of the fray he would have risked being cut off far from his soldiers. An 
instant later he disappeared. 

Commander Lippert, his eyes staring, listened. The noise of the tanks 
stopped. It was silent again. The enemy tanks had moved, that was all. 

Two hours went by without anything happening. 

Our flankers, rubbing their tired eyes, still watched the hill behind which 
the Soviet tanks sheltered. Katyusha rockets pounded the town on and off. 
Our command post was in the thick of it. 

It had to end badly. 

At seven o’clock the great flat rumbling of tanks filled Novo-Buda a sec¬ 
ond time. The five German Panzers backed down to change position. Men 
were running through the mud, seeing nothing, hearing nothing. 

Three tank shells fired point-blank tore through our little isba. 
Everything came tumbling down on our heads; we were half-buried in the 
wreckage. 

I had been hit by a huge piece of rubble right in the belly. I pulled myself 
up with great difficulty, all yellow with dirt from the mud-wall. On both 
sides of the flattened house soldiers rushed by pursued by Soviet tanks. 

One of them had already passed us. 

Two Hundred Dead 

The Soviets surged into Novo-Buda. 

Grabbing two submachine guns, the commander and I rushed to join 
fifty of our men. 

The two parallel roads between which we found ourselves were filled with 
the din of the tanks. 

The fifteen enemy tanks had obliterated our riflemen’s foxholes. The 
men had been crushed in the mud under the treads or massacred by mobs of 
screaming Asiatics following the Red tanks. 

The five German Panzers had withdrawn to the end of the village. One of 
them, returning, found itself nose to nose with a Soviet tank. They 
destroyed one another in a few seconds. 

Another Soviet tank thrust upon us with such rapidity that we hadn’t the 
time to see anything. Thrown into the air, our ears ringing, we fell helter- 
skelter, dead or wounded. 

Our German liaison officer was planted upright like a picket in the thick 
mud, his head submerged, his feet in the air. The tanks continued to 
thunder along the two roads, and to flatten our wretched infantrymen, 
whom they pursued from every direction. 

I had managed to dive into a ditch. A long jagged splinter, very hot, pro¬ 
truded from my jacket. I could tell that I was wounded in the side and in the 
arm, but my legs were still good. 



Surrounded at Cherkassy 


199 


Men were running in panic to the western slopes of the village in the belief 
that all was lost. The tractor of one of our Paks plunged down into their 
midst. A shell from a Soviet tank knocked it for a loop. 

I caught the men at mid-slope. I had one of our officers mount a runaway 
horse to race further ahead and rally all who had fled. 

Our tanks and our anti-tank guns had withdrawn to the south of the 
village. But they were still fighting. It was there a stand would have to be 
made. 


* * * * * 

All along the red fences men were returning to the houses, under intensive 
fire from the “Stalin’s organs.” The effect of these grenade explosions was 
extraordinary. Every one of the thirty-six bursts threw up a spray shaped 
like an apple tree. Gray orchards, phantom orchards which scattered 
bloody fruits of torn human flesh. 

In one isba we had a few panzer fausts,* individual anti-tank weapons just 
introduced to the Eastern front. At that time we had to wait for the tank to 
come within ten or fifteen meters before shooting a large metallic egg 
screwed onto the end of a hollow pipe. A flame four or five meters long 
would burst out the other end of the weapon, braced on the shoulder, at the 
moment of firing. Any man behind the shooter would be instantly carbon¬ 
ized. It was thus impossible to use the panzerfaust from a trench lest the fire 
bounce back and burn the shooter. The best thing was to kneel behind a 
haystack, a tree, or a window, then pull the trigger at the last minute. 

It was very risky. Even if the tank blew up, the flame of the panzerfaust 
would instantly mark you to the other tanks. The riposte would not be long 
in coming. 

But our soldiers relished dangerous games, exploits which asked little 
constancy and lots of audacity. Volunteers sneaked among the isbas, 
panzerfausts in their hands, behind the bundles of branches and the little 
walls. The Soviet tanks were promptly boxed in. The German tanks and our 
anti-tank guns gave everything they had. At the end of an hour the whole 
south of the village was ours once more, and five Soviet tanks were in 
flames. A blazing column of red and black rose ten meters above the slopes. 

The Soviets held the east and the southeast of Novo-Buda. The nine tanks 
which they had left were camouflaged, guarding against any counterattack. 

Our losses had been fearful. In two hours of fighting we had lost around 
two hundred men. 

Groups of soldiers gone astray in the muddy fields the evening before 
toiled painfully toward our heights. I had been undressed and tended to 
behind a bush on the ridge. Two ribs had been broken by the shrapnel, 
which had also struck me in the right arm. 

That wasn’t too important, for my role was above all that of motivator. 



CAMPAIGN IN RUSSIA 


200 

The legs, the voice, the fire were intact. That was enough. I could still rally 
men, instruct officers. 

Yet everyone had met the haggard parade of wounded and heard the 
stretcher-bearers’ tales, always lavish with horrifying details. 

The “Stalin’s organs” rained an infernal fire. At each wave of rockets the 
ravine filled with big gray “apple trees” out of which would explode cries of 
suffering, cries for help, and death rattles. 

Exhausted by a half month of horror, our soldiers’ spirits were far 
heavier than their bodies. This town, where so many corpses lay in the mud, 
terrified them, but one had only to say a few words to chase away their 
anguish and lift their spirits. Then they would smile mud-covered smiles, 
and, readjusting their gear, they would rejoin their comrades in danger. 

***** 

The weather had changed greatly. The rain had stopped falling since the 
full moon at Korsun. The cold, timid at first, had become quite biting. The 
wind whistled sharp as needles. 

During two weeks of exhausting marches across phenomenal mud 
wallows, the men, streaming with sweat, had abandoned the greater part of 
their winter equipment. Sheepskins, padded tunics, napped trousers, all had 
been thrown away piece by piece, march by march. Most of the soldiers no 
long had even a coat. 

In the great free-for-all of the morning no one had felt the freeze. But 
now it whipped their faces, gnawed their bodies under the lightweight 
uniforms caked with mud. 

The enemy air force took immediate advantage of the clear sky. The 
planes descended in clamorous waves, skimming our bare hill. Each time, 
we had to cling to the ground, still soft while bullets fell all around us, 
breaking stones and twigs. 

In the town, attacks and counterattacks followed one another without 
cease. We had hardly any more ammunition. The machine guns had an 
average of fifty cartridges per weapon remaining, enough to fire a burst of a 
few seconds. 


***** 

Several resolute squads then tried to better our position by daring hand- 
to-hand forays. 

Our commander, Lieutenant Colonel Lucien Lippert, who alone of all 
our staff officers was still unharmed, led the assault himself. 

A young Belgian officer who graduated from the Military Academy in 
Brussels at the head of his class, he had come to the anti-Communist 
crusade as a true Christian knight. He had an admirably pure face, a clear 



Surrounded at Cherkassy 


201 


complexion, and serious blue eyes. Lieutenant Colonel at twenty-nine, he 
lived only for his faith. 

On that day Lucien Lippert, a natural hero, displayed a heroism such as 
to make one shiver. He was nonetheless a very calm young man who never 
spoke or acted out of measure. 

Now he felt that it was all or nothing. 

With a handful of Walloons he crossed the center of Novo-Buda and 
retook a group of isbas which plunged toward the southeast. The enemy 
would hide, then reappear in ten places, in any corner of a hovel, behind 
any tree or any knoll. Snipers mowed down our soldiers. 

They had to cross several more meters to reach a house. Lucien Lippert 
rushed forward and made it to the door. 

At that second he gave a terrifying scream, heard everywhere, the 
superhuman scream of a man whose life is suddenly tom from him. His 
chest ravaged by the enormous hole of an explosive bullet, Lucien Lippert 
fell to his knees like a stone. 

He placed his hand across his forehead. He still had the extraordinary 
lucidity to pick up his kepi from the ground and put it back onto his head so 
as to die fittingly. 


* * * * ♦ 

The isba near which he had succumbed was defended furiously until our 
tearful soldiers had finished burying him inside. The enemy retook the area, 
but the Wallonian Legion didn’t want to leave its dead commander in the 
hands of the Communists. During the night Lieutenant Thyssen, his arm 
shot through by a bullet on February 6th and streaming with pus, crawled 
along with the volunteers, rushed the enemy, recaptured the isba, dug up 
the corpse, and brought it back, through machine-gun Are, to our positions. 

We laid him out between some boards. We decided to make the 
breakthrough carrying his corpse with us. If we didn’t make it, faithful to 
his memory, we would die on his coffin. 

Sanderovka 

The noose kept tightening around the Kessel. 

On Tuesday morning, IS February 1944, the situation had not improved. 

Sanderovka had been taken after three days and two nights of frightful 
hand-to-hand combat but that changed little. 

The burning necessity was to break through the Soviet lines. The German 
Panzers were coming to our rescue from the southwest and we had to reach 
them. 

Our divisions hadn’t advanced more than three kilometers south of 
Sanderovka. In contrast, the enemy had taken Korsun. 12 February we had 



202 


CAMPAIGN IN RUSSIA 


lost three times more ground in the north of the Kessel than the Soviets had 
in the south. 

We were reduced to an area no greater than sixty square kilometers, into 
which a human tidal wave flowed. For every man who was fighting, seven 
or eight men were waiting, crammed into this last valley. There were the 
drivers of thousands of trucks, sunk into the mud during the withdrawal. 
There were the personnel of the auxiliary services: administration, supply, 
hospitals, motor pools, the Feldpost. 

TTie village of Sanderovka was the capital of this army, hunted for the 
last eighteen days. This microscopic capital, pounded by sixty hours of 
fighting, had been reduced to crumbling isbas and broken windows. The 
isbas were the headquarters of the Viking Division, of each of its regiments, 
and of our brigade. Our H.Q., without fire or windowpanes, consisted of 
two small rooms without floors. About eighty people were packed into it, a 
few survivors of the staff office, the messengers, the dying, and numerous 
Germans separated from their units. 

My wound burned. I had a fever of 40° centigrade. Stretched out in a cor¬ 
ner, covered with a sheepskin, I had to direct the Wallonian Brigade, whose 
command I had been given the evening before. There was no longer an ad¬ 
jutant or an aide-de-camp. At every hour of the day and night catastrophic 
news would arrive along with NCOs at their limit, staggering men falling 
like lead weights or crying like children. 

The orders were implacable. Our brigade was to hang onto Novo-Buda as 
a flank guard as long as the penetration in the southwest had not yet 
reached its final phase. 

The companies, ten times repulsed and ten times returned to the 
counterattack, were occupying positions improvised according to the luck 
of battle. We had platoons engaged far to the east. Half the messengers who 
carried orders to them were picked off by Mongols in ambush. The officers 
kept sending me panicky notes announcing that everything was all over. 
Everyone would see ten tanks where there were two. I had to get angry, and 
send back formal orders and stinging comments. 

The Viking’s commander was in the next isba. He kept receiving a con¬ 
tinual stream of pessimistic messages from units fighting near ours. 
Evidently, as is the custom in the army, everyone blamed his neighbor for 
the reverses of his own sector. 

I was summoned by General Gille. With steely eyes, his teeth clenched, he 
gave me orders hard as iron. “Forbidden to retreat! The officers are respon¬ 
sible for the troops, you are responsible for the officers!” 

The man was right to issue curt commands. Only an iron will could save 
us now. 

It was no lark. 

My orders to the officers were firm. Poor boys, all so devoted and so 
courageous, their skin sallow, gray, their hair unkempt, their eyes hollow. 



Surrounded at Cherkassy 


203 


their nerves raw, they had to keep sending hundreds of men back into com¬ 
bat. They really had come to the limit of human endurance. 

I had been able to obtain another fifty thousand cartridges. The brave 
Ju’s still kept on delivering us ammunition, but the boundaries of the Kessel 
were so tenuous that a special way of parachuting had been initiated. At a 
given hour, while the airplanes circled above us, flares would rise from the 
four sides of the Kessel. They marked the limits of our miniscule territory 
exactly. The big silver cigars full of cartridges would be dropped. We would 
be saved for several hours more. 

The worst hardship was the lack of food. There was not another forkful 
of meat or a thin slice of bread. There was nothing. The division had ex¬ 
hausted its last supplies at Korsun. The shivering sleepless men had not been 
fed for three days. The youngest would faint, their faces on their sub¬ 
machine guns. 


***** 

Waiting in Novo-Buda, we had thought the thrust would take place on 
Monday. 

It still hadn’t happened on Tuesday. 

When would it happen? 

Would we starve to death if the bullets spared us? 

I borrowed the horses which had hauled carts of wounded men to 
Sanderovka. I asked my most resourceful Walloons to ride them: “Get go¬ 
ing! Look everywhere! Go to the farthest isbas! Sneak right under the 
Soviets’ noses if you have to! But bring back something to make bread 
with! And do it quickly!” 

I found some bakers among the troops. Our isba had a half-destroyed 
oven, which they put it back into shape. Several hours later our horsemen 
returned with bags of flour thrown across their saddles. 

Did we still need leaven? No one had a gram. Our foragers went off 
again, looked everywhere, and finally found a little bag of sugar. With 
bread and sugar we could bake something. The fire flared up at once. 

By the end of the afternoon. I sent some round loaves, flat as plates, and 
with a bizarre taste, to the positions. Everyone got a quarter of one. 

Some other soldiers brought me a few stray cows. They were immediately 
butchered, and cut up into a hundred crude pieces with makeshift cleavers. 
It was impossible to find pans. We made huge fires from planking outside. 
The wounded and the handicapped each received a pike or a bayonet. It was 
their job to roast the meat. We had neither salt nor spices. But twice a day 
each man received his chunk of beef, more or less cooked, which he tore 
with his teeth like a tiger. 

I even tried to give the brigade soup. 

A stove was found two kilometers north of Sanderovka, sunken in the 



204 


CAMPAIGN IN RUSSIA 


mud amidst hundreds of bogged trucks. Our cooks pulled it out with im¬ 
mense effort and made a sensational stew with whatever they found. 

Finding two barrels to transport this choice gruel, we loaded them on a 
dump-truck. It took eight hours to cross the three kilometers of mud, now 
becoming very sticky in the cold. When the vehicle reached Novo-Buda at 
the end of the night, the casks, jostled about in all directions, were three- 
quarters empty. The rest had become filthy and frozen. 

After that we stuck to bread and sugar and braised beef. 

ft ft ft ♦ ft 

Wherever we took position we were met by enemy fire. Sanderovka was 
riddled day and night by the constant fire of the “Stalin’s organs.” 
Everywhere we had to step over dead horses, broken carts, and dead bodies 
that we could no longer bury. 

We had converted the kolkhoz into a field hospital, open on all sides, but 
where our bleeding soldiers had at least a roof. 

We had run out of medicine. There wasn’t a single bandage in the whole 
Kessel. To bind our men’s wounds the medics had to turn the peasant 
women upside down and yank off their long drawers, gifts of the Don Juans 
of the German Army. 

They would shriek and run away with their hands pressed to their skirts. 

Thus two or three horribly wounded men would receive a pitiful bandage. 

The grotesque was blending with the tragic and the horrible. 

ft ft ft ft ft 

Rocket volleys from the “Stalin’s organs” began to pound the kolkhoz. 
The roof collaped. Dozens of wounded men died in bloody bundles. Others, 
gone mad, let out horrified screams. We had to evacuate. Our wounded 
would have to remain outdoors. 

More than twelve hundred wounded men from the other units had 
already been stretched out under the stars for several days and nights on 
hundreds of village carts, sleeping on straw, drenched to the bone by the 
preceding week’s rains, now shivering with cold. 

Since Tuesday the temperature had stayed at twenty degrees below zero. 
Hundreds of wounded men, faces nothing but a frightful purplish pulp, am¬ 
putees with one leg or arm, dying men with convulsive eyes, were exposed to 
atrocious conditions. 

Twenty-Three Hundred Hours 

That night snow fell interminably on Sanderovka, reaching a depth of a 
quarter of a meter. The twenty or thirty thousand men who were waiting in 



Surrounded at Cherkassy 


205 


our village for a military solution to the drama hadn’t a single place to lie 
down. One might have thought oneself at the Beresina River, with the 
Napoleon’s retreating army. 

Everywhere, in spite of the danger, the men gathered around fires started 
in the snow. It was impossible to sleep. To lie down in the open air would 
mean an icy death. 

Isbas were burning in vast conflagrations. In the valley hundreds of little 
brush fires flickered, around which crouching shadows, soldiers with red¬ 
dened eyes, with ten-day beards, were holding out their sallow fingers over 
the flames. 

They were waiting, but nothing was happening. Morning found them 
silent, not even searching for food. Their eyes looked toward the southwest. 
No one even bothered to listen to rumors. 

The “Stalin’s organs” would brutally break our wait. Everyone would 
throw himself in the snow, then rise painfully. 

Wounded men cried out. The doctors cared for them only as a matter of 
conscience. 


***** 

The twelve hundred wounded were still lying stretched out on their carts. 
Many of them had quit asking for anything, stopped wanting to know 
anything. They were huddled up in thin blankets, exerting all their energy in 
not dying. 

Hundreds of teams were mixed up among them, their skeletal horses 
gnawing the planks of the carts in front of them. Here and there a wounded 
man would cry out or give a long drawn-out shudder. Men gone mad would 
rise to their feet, bleeding, their hair full of snow. 

It was useless to try to feed all these wretches. They kept their heads 
buried under their covers. From time to time the drivers would brush away 
the snow that had accumulated on the inert bodies with their hands. 

Many had been lying on these carts for ten days. They felt themselves rot¬ 
ting away. We couldn’t numb the pain of their wounds, even the most horri¬ 
ble, with a single shot. We had nothing left. Nothing. We just had to wait, 
to wait for death or a miracle. The row of ivory cadavers next to the carts 
was growing longer. 

Nothing astonished us or moved us. We had seen too much. The worst 
horrors left us numb. 


***** 

Above Novo-Buda the enemy was still attacking. 

The tanks, all muddy, were outlined against the white sky. 

The men held on because they couldn’t do anything else. On this bald 



206 


CAMPAIGN IN RUSSIA 


mountain retreat would inevitably mean being cut down by the Soviet 
machine guns. 

Our companies were sectioned over several kilometers, five men here, 
twenty men there. 

No telephone. No radio. 

We had to wait for darkness to drag the wounded and the dozens of boys 
with frozen wax-like feet across the snow. Their shoes, torn, soles sprung by 
the marshes and the mud, gave no protection any more, and with the water 
oozing in everywhere, they had by now become blocks of ice. 

We took these wretches down as far as the valley. At daybreak we laid 
them out on carts in place of the stiff corpses, which we put down beside the 
wheels or on the snow banks. 

Their beards frozen as hard as darts, shivering or indignant, they watched 
us with glassy eyes. What could we do? What could we say? Our deliverance 
was yet to come. 

They knew it as well as we did, and in the end they would curl up again in 
silence. 


***** 

Wednesday afternoon it became obvious that the tanks coming toward us 
from the southwest either wouldn’t reach us or would find us dead. For the 
last two days they had made no progress at all. 

Why? We didn’t know. 

We were supposed to have made the breakthrough across the Soviet lines 
on Saturday, 12 February. 

Then Sunday. 

Then Monday. 

Five days had elapsed. 

By now everyone could see that our efforts were either insufficient or in 
vain. The electrifying telegrams had been nothing but fictions. The tanks 
hadn’t come. 

The surrounded troops had held out as long as there was hope. Now 
everything was falling to pieces. We were down to our last cartridges. Since 
Sunday the quartermasters hadn’t any food. The wounded were dying by 
the hundreds from exposure and loss of blood. We were suffocating under 
the enemy pressure. 

In the north the Communist forces coming from Korsun had overrun our 
outposts. On 16 February they were three kilometers from Sanderovka. 

At Novo-Buda our resistance was in its death throes. Huddled in the nar¬ 
row valley, the German divisions were subjected to increasingly terrifying 
avalanches of shells and grenades. 

Optimistic rumors were still making the rounds of the troops, tossed to 
them out of charity so that they would continue to hope. 



Surrounded at Cherkassy 


207 


But our leaders were dispirited before the specter of disaster. 

We had to have a solution, an immediate solution. 

$ ♦ $ ♦ ♦ 

I was summoned by General Gille. All the superior of fleers of the 
Sanderovka sector were there. 

There was no lengthy discussion. “Only a desperate effort can still save 
us. It’s no good waiting. Tomorrow morning at five o’clock the fifty thou¬ 
sand men in the Kessel must charge toward the southwest. We must either 
break through or die. We have no other choice. This evening at 2300 hours 
the movement of troops will begin.” 

The two generals of the army corps and General Gille had taken great 
care not to describe the situation too realistically. To hear them tell it, all we 
had to do was cross a zone of five and a half kilometers to reach the 
liberating army. This, they said, had advanced since the day before, and 
tomorrow would advance again toward us. Our fifty thousand men all 
charging at once would be able to overrun the enemy. 

Everyone’s nerves, whether leader or soldier, had been strained to the 
limit. Now hope rose in us in burning waves. We went back to give the 
orders and pass the sacred fire of inspiration to the troops. 

* * * * * 

The orders of the Assault Brigade “Wallonia” wouldn’t be easy to carry 
out. We had to remain as rear guards atop Novo-Buda until the very end. 

At eleven o’clock in the evening I sent all the walking wounded on their 
way toward the southwest. At one o’clock in the morning the Walloon in¬ 
fantry forces began to disengage from the east and west. We would have to 
hold firmly to the positions of Novo-Buda until four o’clock in the 
morning. 

By this time the tens of thousands of men massed in the valley should be 
three kilometers to the southwest of Sanderovka. Then and only then could 
our rearguard withdraw, taking care to mislead the enemy with heavy fire 
right at the last minute. 

The Wallonian Brigade would re-form while on the march and pass to the 
head of the column, at that time integrating itself with the advance guard of 
the troops for the breakthrough. 

$ # 41 £ ft 

We had come to the point where anything was better than stagnation. The 
troops knew that they would be done for if they stood about any longer. 
They couldn’t go on with their stomachs knotted with hunger, their bodies 
shaky with fatigue, and their minds tortured by worry. 



208 


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The announcement that the following dawn we would break through 
galvanized the whole army. The weakest felt a spurt of new life. Exhausted, 
almost in tears, we were all sick with exultation. 

Our eyes empty, our bodies limp, we kept repeating over and over to 
ourselves, “Tomorrow we’ll be free! Free! Free!” 

The Last Night 

One way or another the Cherkassy Kessel was coming to an end. 

As soon as darkness hid the valley the German columns began their 
march toward the southwest. They had to pass through the village of 
Sanderovka, then cross a bridge. Beyond the bridge the open steppe ex¬ 
tended as far as two villages situated a good three kilometers apart in the 
south and west. 

These two towns had just been taken in a pitched battle. At five o’clock in 
the morning our divisions would launch their attack from there. 

Our train was to assemble at the west of these two towns before 
daybreak. These vehicles were a source of hourly torment. From the first 
day of the Kessel, we should have lightened the army of the dead weight of 
these fifteen thousand trucks. Then the fifty to sixty thousand encircled 
men, able to move freely and organized in solid infantry columns, would 
have been able to break the enemy stranglehold easily enough. 

But at first we had wanted to hold the terrain. Later the High Command 
had treated the saving of this fabulous caravansary as an affair of state. 

General Gille had received a sharp dressing down for proposing that we 
burn them. We had spent three weeks towing these thousands of magnifi¬ 
cent vehicles—radio cars, medical cars, command cars, enormous and im¬ 
practical trucks loaded with millions of kilos of heterogeneous objects, bits 
of old paper, all sorts of trunks, reserves of survival rations, personal ef¬ 
fects, dishes, armchairs, mattresses, even stocks of accordians, mouth 
organs, hygienic instruments, and parlor games. 

From Petsamo to the Black Sea the German Army suffocated under the 
weight of overabundant equipment and baggage, a weight which grew 
greater every year. 

We should have blown three quarters of it into the air and fought like the 
Asiatics, slept like the Asiatics, eaten like the Asiatics, advanced like the 
Asiatics, as roughly as they, as simply as they, without comfort and without 
useless burdens. 

We dragged the handicap of civilization with us across impossible terrain. 
The horde on our tail had the mobility and the toughness of barbarians. The 
brute conquered the truck because the brute could go where the truck could 
not. 

The German defeat in the snows and muck of Russia in 1943 and 1944 
was in large part the defeat of a well-supplied army entangled in its 
impedimenta. 



Surrounded at Cherkassy 


209 


It was useless to discuss these problems in the midst of the Kessel with a 
command that was already tearing out its hair. The orders were to save the 
equipment. We lost precious days, therefore, in dragging thousands of 
doomed trucks through horrible mud wallows, nevertheless to end up sink¬ 
ing in the boggy trails or being demolished in a barrage of shells from the 
Soviet tanks and light artillery. 

On the evening of 16 February 1944 we still had about twenty Panzers, 
something more than a thousand motorized vehicles (out of fifteen thou¬ 
sand), and hundreds of light carts requisitioned in the villages, on which lay 
about twelve hundred wounded. 

These wounded men were sacred. The troops made a box around this sor¬ 
rowful column and protected it during the drive toward the southwest. We 
had to try everything to save these wretches, whose suffering had surpassed 
anything that a man’s mind could imagine. If tomorrow evening these men 
were across the infernal barrier, what overwhelming joy in our hearts! What 
relief to lay them in ambulances, to see these poor torn and frozen bodies 
Anally receive care, to see these hearts that beat painfully under covers 
heavy with snow once again And the peaceful rhythm of men who can suffer 
with hope. 


* * * ♦ ♦ 

By nine o’clock in the evening the bottleneck in Sanderovka was 
unimaginable. At that time I was to regulate the withdrawal of my brigade 
at Novo-Buda methodically, platoon by platoon, sector by sector. One 
mishap at our rearguard positions and the whole maneuver of Sanderovka 
would have foundered. 

Both boots set in the snow, racked by a fever of 40 °C which I couldn’t 
shake off, I dispatched messengers, received reports, and attended to every 
detail. 

All the hills were illuminated by the combat. 

At eleven o’clock in the evening I tried to cross Sanderovka to help move 
the wounded of my brigade and to verify the positions that had been 
ordered for our soldiers’ reassembly at daybreak. After Afty meters I had to 
abandon our last all-terrain vehicle. A phenomenal column obstructed the 
sunken road and the village. Trucks, telegas,* droshkies* were vainly trying 
to advance, four or Ave vehicles abreast. 

I hurried to the carts of Walloon wounded and urged those of our com¬ 
rades who could still use their legs to summon their last energy and take 
their chances on foot, whatever their wounds and their suffering. Gathering 
about Afty, I slipped between the baggage train and the trucks with them. 

We were about to watch a horrible spectacle. The enemy, driving from 
the north, had been able to move his tanks and artillery up close to 
Sanderovka. Since ten o’clock in the evening the Soviet batteries had 



210 


CAMPAIGN IN RUSSIA 


poured a rolling fire into the center of the town. Some isbas had gone up in 
flames, completely lighting the movement in progress. 

From this time on the Soviet gunners had a field day. Their shells were 
falling implacably, with mathematical precision, onto the enormous col¬ 
umn. The “Stalin’s organs” were inundating this flood of every sort of 
vehicle with rockets. Gasoline trucks were blazing. All along the narrow 
road cars were burning. We had to keep constantly throwing ourselves into 
the snow, so violent was the fire from the “Stalin’s organs.” 

Among the dozens of burning vehicles, horses struck down in the snow 
sounded their death rattles am id fearful convulsions. Near them clusters of 
soldiers hit by the machine gun fire were coughing, flat on their bellies, or 
lying on their backs. The flames made their faces particularly haunting, red 
with blood, a shining coppery red that filled one with horror. Some still 
tried to crawl. The others, disabled, writhed in pain, mouths gaping 
horribly. 

The column was nothing but a frightful butchery, illuminated by fires 
which glowed red against a landscape of thick snow. 

The trucks burning between the palisaded banks made progress almost 
impossible. Harassed by machine-gun fire, the infantry men could hardly 
move among those enormous torches, those bodies of dying men, those 
disembowelled horses whose intestines slithered about on the ice like great 
brown and green serpents. 

The drivers gunned their motors in vain. A few big trucks advanced in 
spite of everything, crushing the horses struggling or dying among the 
flames. This savage expenditure of energy was nevertheless useless. The 
bottleneck grew ever more monstrous, aggravated by the noise of the 
motors, the explosions, the furious cries and implorings. 

We finally saw the cause of this fantastic congestion. The entire army of 
Sanderovka had to cross a wooden bridge in order to leave the valley. An 
enormous German Panzer had fallen through right on the bridge, smashing 
it and completely cutting off the movement of traffic toward the southwest. 
When we saw that monster overturned amidst the rubbish of the planks we 
thought that this time everything was lost. 

The river banks were steep and absolutely impassable. The bridge had 
been dynamited by the Communists at the time of their expulsion two days 
earlier. The Germans had reconstructed it hastily. The light tanks had been 
able to get out of Sanderovka. A heavy tank had then passed without dif¬ 
ficulty. The second heavy tank had smashed everything in. 

Two days of work by the engineers had been brought to nothing in one 
minute by this forty-ton mass of iron now planted like a stake in the middle 
of the bridge. 

It was as bright as day. The wounded and the infantry wriggled by as best 
they could past the fatal Panzer. From atop the ravine we could see all 
Sanderovka, red and gold amid the shining snow. Screams rose up, un- 



Surrounded at Cherkassy 


211 


countable. Out of the horror of the screams and the flickering flames rose a 
burning welter of madness. 

When our wounded were across the bridge I turned them over to one of 
our doctors, with orders to stick with the troops three kilometers ahead of 
us, who formed the spearhead. They set out across the steppe, where the 
shadows weren’t broken by the flames of the burning trucks. 

At the end of two hours of unspeakable effort in this atmosphere of 
disaster, the German engineers managed to tip the tank into the precipice 
and to throw some massive beams across the gaping hole. The traffic started 
again under an increasingly terrible bombardment. 

We were advancing over the dead and dying. But we were advancing. The 
men would have trampled over anyone in order to advance: they wanted to 
live. 


* * * * * 

To the northwest, on the icy hill of Novo-Buda, our Walloons, faithful to 
the orders they had been given, were still fearlessly resisting and returning 
the attack. They saw the burning of the blocked and broken columns in 
Sanderowka. To their ears came the fearful clamor of the thousands of men 
struggling amid the shellbursts and the flames. 

From one o’clock until five in the morning our platoons disengaged one 
by one. They slipped silently away over the snow and the hard ground. They 
reached a small valley in the southeast and regrouped with still three 
kilometers to cross to reach Sanderovka. No need to look for the trail. 
Flaming orange torches danced above the brilliantly lighted village. 

Our men passed as best they could between the burning trucks, the dead 
horses, and the contorted cadavers, bursting or burning away. 

Throughout night the Walloons went down thus through the hurricane, 
in small fast-moving groups. 

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ 

Unshakeable, our rear guard stayed at its post in Novo-Buda. It machine- 
gunned the enemy without respite, pinning him to the ridge. At five o’clock 
in the morning, carrying out the last phase of the plan, they adroitly slipped 
out of sight and forged ahead to rejoin the last line of SS, installed at the 
northern exit of Sanderovka. Then, following the last vehicles, they crossed 
the now notorious bridge to the south. 

A column of trucks and carts two kilometers long and fifty meters wide 
had pushed up very close to the line of attack. I had climbed onto a load of 
munitions from which, as they passed, I hailed and regrouped my 
Walloons. They were still alert in spite of everything. 

There was a fantastic jumble of units and transport. The sky was just 



212 


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beginning to lighten above this inextricable mass of tanks, automobiles, 
horse-drawn vehicles, combined battalions, Ukrainian civilians, and Soviet 
prisoners. 

Suddenly a shell fell right in the middle of the throng. Then ten shells. 
Then a hundred shells. 

The tanks and the enemy guns had reached the hillsides of Sanderovka 
across from us. 

The last twenty German Panzers burst out of the column and rushed 
toward a gully, flattening everything in their path like straw. Truck drivers 
and cart drivers raced headlong in every direction. Horses fled, crazed. 
Others, their hooves crushed by the tanks, whinnied wildly. Thousands of 
explosions stirred gray and black whirlwinds, riddling the snow with rose- 
colored sparks. 

Through It All 

The orders instructed the Assault Brigade “Wallonia” to spearhead the 
dawn attack that would decide our safety or our extermination. Amid the 
incredible confusion unleashed by the Soviet tanks bursting in among the 
last thousand German vehicles we thrust swiftly toward the southwest. 

Behind us the noise was deafening. Sanderovka hadn’t held out more 
than an hour. The Reds had already overrun the village. Their tanks were 
driving forward in our direction for the final strike. 

^The German panzers had been sent to the counterattack as a sacrifice 
unit, one against ten, just like the cavalry of Marshal Ney east of the 
Beresina a century earlier.* 

I saw them just before they threw themselves against the enemy. The 
faces of those young tankers were admirable. Clothed in short black jackets 
with silver trim, their heads and shoulders protruding from the turrets, they 
knew that they were going to die. 

Several proudly wore the tricolor ribbon and the large black and silver 
Knight’s Cross on their necks, a glittering target for the enemy. 

Not one of those marvelous warriors seemed nervous or even moved. 

They ploughed up the snow with their treads as they departed through the 
tangle of the retreating army. Not one returned. Not one Panzer. Not one 
man. Orders were orders. The sacrifice was total. 

To gain one hour, an hour that might yet save tens of thousands of 
soldiers of the Reich and of Europe, the German tank crews died to the very 
last man south of Sanderovka on the morning of 7 February 1944. 

Shielded by those heroes, the army rushed toward the southwest. 

Snow was falling in huge flakes. The thick snow completely blurred the 
sky down to eye level. In clear weather the enemy aircraft would have an¬ 
nihilated us all. Hidden by this veil of thick flakes we ran, panting. 

The corridor was extremely narrow. The lead troops, who had opened the 
way before us, had made a passage only a few hundred meters wide. 



Surrounded at Cherkassy 


213 


The terrain was hilly. We dashed from one hill to another. The bottom of 
each ravine was a frightful crush of wrecked vehicles and dozens of dead 
soldiers sprawled across the red snow. 

The enemy’s guns hammered these passages savagely. We kept falling 
over wounded and bloody men. We had to take shelter alongside the dead. 
Carts tipped over. Horses flailed their hooves in the air until the machine- 
gun bullets spilled their hot intestines in the soiled snow. 

We would scarcely have crossed a ravine before marksmen posted on 
both flanks would fire upon us. Men would cry out and fall to their knees in 
the snow, holding their guts. The snow quickly dusted the dying. Five 
minutes later we could still see their cheeks, their nose, and a few locks of 
hair. Ten minutes later there would be nothing but white heaps upon which 
other fleeing men would be mowed down. 

The wounded of the Kessel, in their hundreds of carts, were being 
frightfully jarred in this frantic race. Horses bounded into frozen potholes. 
Carts would overturn, throwing the wounded pell-mell onto the ground. 

Nevertheless, on the whole, the column remained fairly orderly. 

It was then that a wave of Soviet tanks passed the last vehicles and 
swallowed up more than half of the transport. The drivers were thrown out 
of their seats. 

We didn’t have a single tank left. We rushed futilely to meet these enemy 
tanks and try to ward off the catastrophe. Nothing stopped them. 

The Soviet tanks advanced through the carts with a horrible savagery, 
crushing them one by one like matchboxes under our very eyes, horses as 
well as wounded and dying men. 

We pushed the walking wounded as quickly as we could. Somehow or 
other we covered the flight of the carts which had escaped the tanks. 

But everywhere men were falling over head first or sinking to their knees, 
their lungs or their bellies punctured by the bullets which whistled in a mad 
pizzicato from both sides of the corridor. 

♦ ♦ * * * 

We had a moment’s respite while the Soviet tanks, bottlenecked in the 
pass, tried to untangle themselves from the tangle of the hundreds of 
broken carts under their treads. We skirted a wood, a beautiful russet and 
violet wood, and reached a little valley. 

We were scarcely starting up the slope when, turning back, we saw hun¬ 
dreds of cavalry racing down a hill to the southeast. We thought at first that 
it was German uhlans.* Looking through my binoculars, I could clearly 
make out the uniform of the cavalry. They were Cossacks. I recognized 
their nervous little brown horses. They were rushing up behind us, swarm¬ 
ing in every direction. 



214 


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We were stupefied. The Soviet infantry was machine-gunning us. The 
Soviet tanks were following us. And now the Cossacks were storming in for 
the kill. 

When? When would the German Panzers coming to meet us from the 
southwest show themselves? 

We had already gone at least ten kilometers and seen nothing. We would 
have to go forward still faster. 

Like many of the wounded, I couldn’t take any more. The fever was sap¬ 
ping my strength. But the race had to be run at all costs. With my Walloons 
I hurried to the head of the column to urge our comrades on. 

The hillside was steep. At our left an enormous crevasse opened, four 
meters wide, fifteen meters deep. We got almost to the top of the hill. 

Then we saw three tanks drive toward us at high speed. We had a second 
of unspeakable joy. “It’s them! Finally! The German Panzers are here!” 
But a volley of shells swooped down on us and mowed down our ranks. 
They were Soviet tanks. 

The enemy tanks were on our heels. The foot soldiers were killing us on 
the flanks. Their Cossacks were driving into our ranks. And now instead of 
salvation, other Soviet tanks were surging up in front of us. We couldn’t 
wait any longer. Caught napping on this naked slope, we were going to be 
swept away in a few seconds. 

I looked at the ravine and cried out to my companions, “Do as I do!” 
Then I let myself fall from fifteen meters high. 

There was a meter of very compressed snow at the bottom of the crevasse. 
I buried myself in it like a torpedo. All my comrades tumbled in one after 
the other. 


# # # # * 

In a flash hundreds of soldiers were massed in the bottom of this fault. At 
any minute we expected to see the Mongols appear atop the declivity and 
throw grenades down on us. Our lot was desperate. 

Perversely, contrarily, some still wanted to try to advance. They followed 
the bottom of the crevasse to its southern extremity, then climbed to the sur¬ 
face. They immediately toppled back in horrible hot lumps, mangled by the 
tank fire. Their corpses formed a mound about two meters high onto which 
the snow again began to fall. 

I had regrouped the Walloons in my vicinity and prepared them for 
disaster. We were huddled against one another so as not to freeze. Everyone 
had thrown away his papers, rings, even wedding rings. I consoled my com¬ 
panions as well as I could. 

What hope did we have left of coming out alive or free from this narrow 
defile, with the enemy tanks barring the south? To turn back would be to 
face the first Soviet tanks, infantry, and cavalry which were rushing down 
from the north and sweeping away the last resistance. 



Surrounded at Cherkassy 


215 


It was then that the unbelievable happened. In our crevasse two ex¬ 
hausted German soldiers came forward, each holding a panzerfaust. They 
were so drained by fatigue that they seemed to understand nothing, and car¬ 
ried their panzerfausts mechanically, the way they carried their heads on 
their shoulders. 

Two panzerfausts! 

We pounced. A German volunteer and a Walloon volunteer seized these 
anti-tank weapons and climbed up to the ridge. They had time to aim 
without being seen. Two fantastic explosions echoed. The two nearest 
enemy tanks, hit almost point-blank, blew up. 

A young German officer who had climbed onto the other bank saw the 
explosion. He gamboled about like a high school boy, shouting cries of 
triumph. I saw him suddenly explode, atomized. He had received a shell 
from the third tank full in the body. 

Several horrible seconds passed. Then countless little bits of flesh no big¬ 
ger than ears fell slowly back down into the snow all around us. 
Plink . .. plonk ... It was all that was left of the joyous lieutenant who 
had been celebrating our momentary victory an instant earlier. 

We couldn’t lose a second. I grabbed my submachine gun and climbed 
onto the enormous heap of dead soldiers at the end of the ravine. I had six 
clips of thirty-two rounds on my belt, six more in my snow boots, and three 
hundred reserve cartridges in my pack. While hundreds of German and 
Walloon soldiers were leaving the crevasse, I could drive back the Cossacks 
already on the plateau with my fire. 

At the shouts, the last carts of wounded men started out from the bottom 
of the slope. There was one more Soviet tank, forty meters away. It would 
ravage us terribly. But there was no other solution. We would have to 
charge straight ahead and salvage what we could. To remain in the crevasse 
was certain disaster. To thrust forward gave us a chance of avoiding death. 

I knew the map of the whole country by heart. I had studied it for weeks 
and would have been able to reach the Romanian frontier, three hundred 
kilometers from Cherkassy, without help from anyone. 

Having made up my mind not to fall into the hands of the Soviets alive, I 
had taken my precautions. I was carrying the wherewithal to fight in the 
forests for months if necessary. 

Leaving the crevasse, I marked a large woods at the other end of the 
plateau, whose existence and location I had learned from the map. There, 
sheltered from the enemy tanks, we would at least be able to catch our 
breath. 

Our soldiers ran toward it from every direction. We had to cross about 
eight hundred meters of flat terrain before reaching it. The remaining carts 
had managed to catch up with us. With them we darted forward. 

The Soviet tank, too, had darted forward, surrounded by a blood¬ 
curdling swarm of Cossacks. We had to fire our submachine guns, all the 



216 


CAMPAIGN IN RUSSIA 


while cutting our way through the enemy, knocked down a dozen times by 
the shells exploding all around us. 

Gasping, our lungs bursting, we couldn’t go on. Right under my horrified 
eyes the Soviet tank drove down upon the carts of wounded, dumped them 
over and flattened them. Horrifying screams resounded, the cries of the dy¬ 
ing and the indescribable shrieks of crushed horses, feverishly shaking their 
hooves. 

We collapsed at the edge of the forest half dead. Behind us, the gray snow 
was littered with corpses. The tank, a horde of Cossacks charging all 
around it, was finishing its mad joust. 

Lysyanka 

It was impossible for the tanks and the numerous cavalry following us to 
penetrate the dense thickets of the forest. A little path descended to a clear¬ 
ing where a fine old staff colonel riding an exhausted horse was vainly try¬ 
ing to make himself heard. 

Several thousand men had collapsed in the snow. The area under the trees 
was being steadily machine-gunned. We couldn’t abandon these thousands 
of soldiers to their fate after the great dangers they had already escaped. 

I identified myself to the old colonel and asked him politely if I might 
direct the combat in the forest. He seemed delighted with my suggestion, 
got down from his mount, and sat down in the snow. 

I found a young German officer who knew French. I had him translate 
the short talk that I gave to the troops one sentence at a time. “I know ex¬ 
actly where we are. We have only three kilometers left to go before reaching 
the southern columns. To rush toward them now is to get ourselves 
massacred. I will take the responsibility of leading everyone to them during 
the night. We will succeed. But while waiting for darkness we must form a 
square around the edge of the forest and not let the Soviet infantry invade 
it.” 

I asked for volunteers. I wanted nobody else. Somewhat dazed, the Ger¬ 
mans advanced in a body. 

I formed combat groups of ten men with a Walloon in each to serve me as 
a messenger. I requisitioned the weapons, munitions, and panzerfausts of 
all those who were no longer capable of fighting, and I quickly posted the 
Germans and Walloons on the rim of the forest. 

The Soviets that we had pushed back to the southeast of the woods were 
firing fiercely. Our men received orders to stay strictly on the defensive 
since it wasn’t in that direction that we would have to disengage in the 
evening. 

The map showed that a town called Lysyanka was to be found three 
kilometers to the southwest. I was absolutely convinced that this town was 
in the hands of German forces coming to meet us. It wasn’t possible that 



Surrounded at Cherkassy 


217 


this large village, which was twenty kilometers beyond the starting point of 
that morning’s assault, could still be occupied by the Soviets. Certainly the 
liberating tanks must have advanced that far. 

I had seen on the map that a river passed through the town. It would 
therefore be enough to get to the first houses. We would then find or im¬ 
provise a makeshift bridge. 

Our forest went down toward Lysyanka. We would use it as long as possi¬ 
ble in our night march. 

Already the couriers were leaving to stealthily reconnoiter the terrain. 

***** 

We ran the most immediate peril to the west of the forest. From the edge 
we saw a daunting column of Soviet tanks on the hill facing us three hun¬ 
dred meters away, the same column which had dispatched the three tanks 
that had very nearly annihilated us an hour earlier. 

These tanks were posted along the route which led to Lysyanka. They 
were watching the entire region from the ridge. They kept the western sec¬ 
tor, where another wave of encircled troops was advancing, under fire, and 
also controlled the little valley which separated them from the forest. 

This absolutely bare valley was a continual temptation. It led to Ly¬ 
syanka. One last bound and we would be free. 

The Red tanks were surrounded by numerous infantry. Anyone who tried 
to charge through this naked valley would be crushed. It was written in the 
terrain. 

I paid a visit to each of my posts to calm my men’s impatience. Unfor¬ 
tunately I could restrain only my own men. 

On our right flank, just at the northwest corner of the forest, a wave of 
several hundred German soldiers who had crossed the plateau after us sud¬ 
denly appeared. They had stolen along the woods instead of entering them. 
A grand and terrifying shout resounded, gripping us right to the marrow. 
“Hurrah, Germania!” They rushed forward at breakneck speed. 

We watched the carnage from the sidelines. Not one man, not a single 
one, got through. The enemy’s tanks poured a withering fire into them. The 
wretches fell in clusters on the snow. It was a massacre. 

Then the Soviet infantry pounced onto the piles of dead and wounded for 
the final pillage. 

We were huddled in our machine-gun nests under the trees a hundred 
meters from the slaughter and didn’t miss a detail of the horrible scene. 
Armed with knives, the Communist looters vied with one another to cut off 
the fingers of the dead and dying. It was too much trouble to take off their 
rings, so they cut off the fingers and stuffed them into their pockets in 
bloody handfuls to move faster. 

Horrified, we had to watch these scenes of atrocity in silence. I had given 



218 


CAMPAIGN IN RUSSIA 


strict orders not to shoot. It wouldn’t have saved a single one of the dying 
men who lay in the valley, but on the contrary would have provoked a 
general attack against the forest from the horde of cutthroats. I wanted to 
save the three thousand men for whom I had taken the responsibility. I 
wouldn’t succeed in this by throwing them blindly to a vain butchery 
without either artillery or tanks, but rather by having the strength to wait 
calmly for night, which would darken the valley and neutralize the hunters 
in the Soviet tanks. 


***** 

In the morning the fifty thousand men of the Kessel had charged straight 
ahead, and all the units had been quickly mixed up. 

As for us, we had managed to shelter several thousand men from the 
enemy tank thrusts, thanks to the tight screen of the forest trees. 

This had not been so for the great mass of the German troops attacking to 
the right and left of us. Amid the noise of the battle we guessed that a major 
wave of Germans was descending to the west of the route occupied by the 
Soviet tanks, which had turned their turrets in the direction of the thrust 
and unleashed an incessant fire. Another even larger German wave had 
broken to the right in the southeast of our forest, trying to reach Lysyanka 
by the steppe. 

Adding to all our difficulties was the crossing of the river. I had painstak¬ 
ingly studied the configuration of this obstacle on the topographic map and 
had decided to avoid it and descend by night directly to the town of 
Lysyanka, built on both sides of the water. Thus I would spare my troops 
having to cross this deep and swift watercourse in the open country in 
weather fifteen or twenty degrees below zero. 

In the confusion we had been lucky enough to take to this providential 
forest in time to slip close to the large village in the darkness. I would wait 
as long as necessary, but I would profit from our privileged situation to the 
maximum when the time was ripe. 

Unfortunately, the others, meaning tens of thousands of soldiers, had to 
face the west and southeast. 

The southeast wing had been commanded by an army corps general who 
had been killed at the head of his men. General Gille immediately replaced 
him. 

Toward one o’clock in the afternoon this wave, with the Soviet tanks on 
its heels, broke against the river. The three weeks of thaw had greatly 
swollen its waters. It was now two meters deep and eight wide. Its waters 
were strewn with huge sharp-edged blocks of ice from the cold of the last 
days, borne along by the rapid current. 

In less than half an hour twenty thousand men found themselves cornered 
on the riverbank. The artillery teams who had escaped destruction were the 



Surrounded at Cherkassy 


219 


first to rush into the waves and ice jams. The bank was steep. The horses 
turned back and were drowned. 

Then some of the men tried to swim across, but they had barely emerged 
on the other side of the river when they turned into blocks of ice, their 
clothes frozen right to their bodies. 

Some fell dead of heart failure. 

Most of the soldiers preferred to strip. But when they tried to throw their 
belongings across the water, often the uniforms would fall into the current. 
Soon hundreds of soldiers, stark naked and red as lobsters, crowded on the 
other bank. 

Inevitably, the enemy tanks fired into the human mass jammed at the 
edge of the watercourse, throwing themselves into the bloody game of 
massacre. 

Many soldiers didn’t know how to swim. Panicky at the approach of the 
Soviet tanks, which were shelling them as they descended the slope, they 
threw themselves pell-mell into the glacial waves. Many escaped death by 
hanging onto trees hastily felled across the water, but hundreds drowned. 

The bank was littered with boots, packs, weapons, belts, and hundreds of 
cameras. The wounded lay everywhere, incapable of crossing the river. But 
the greater part of the army crossed all the same. 

Under the tank fire thousands and thousands of soldiers, half-clothed or 
stark naked, streaming with icy water, were running through the snow 
toward the distant isbas of Lysyanka. 

Three hundred meters away from us on the road, the tanks still kept their 
turrets aimed toward the northwest, second avenue of break-out from the 
Kessel. 

There too the flight was massive. It partially absorbed the activity of the 
Soviet tanks and infantry for several hours. This diversion saved us. 

Night fell on the debacle. Snow was falling in huge slow flakes. In the 
distance, at the very end of the steppe, we could hear the agonizing appeals 
of the wounded men, whose desperate cries tore out our hearts. “Com¬ 
rades, comrades, comrades!” The appeals were unanswered. Poor compan¬ 
ions of the morning, whom the snow and the night were covering up and 
who were still struggling, their hands full of blood, against a horrible death 
in the infinite steppe. 

While waiting for total darkness the non-commissioned officers had 
regrouped the three thousand survivors scattered in our woods. 

Every kind of unit and specialty was intermingled. 

We had even pushed about thirty Soviet prisoners along with us right to 
the end of the Kessel. Numb to everything, they had raced through the shells 
and the Cossacks without trying to flee or giving us the least trouble. 

We were also sheltering a number of civilians in the woods, notably some 
winded young women. These beautiful Ukrainians with pale blue eyes and 
hair the color of the harvest didn’t want to fall back under Soviet domina- 



220 


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tion. They preferred to break through the tempest of the fighting rather 
than return to slavery. 

A number of female fugitives had been struck down by the machine-gun 
fire. One of them, a marvelous big radiant girl with a cheerful blue and 
white scarf, was running among us as supple as a doe as we mounted the last 
hillside. I saw her knocked down like a bowling pin, her head carried right 
off by a tank shell. Some were hugging little blond infants to their breasts, 
absolutely terrified by the horrors and the noise. 

Without any food or drink, we had lived on handfuls of snow since morn¬ 
ing, but that had made us thirstier than ever. The wounded that we had been 
able to save were shivering with fever. We huddled as close together as we 
could in the machine-gun nests in order to warm ourselves up a bit. 

Above all we were waiting with a gnawing anxiety for this tragic day to 
end. Only then, when the tanks on the hill would be unable to track our 
movements, could our column leave its refuge. 

S * * * * * 

10 hours we moved out in strict order. 

sleful cries of the hundreds of dying men scattered on the steppe 
l rising in the distance. From the whole plateau, sealed off by the 
nks, and from the bottom of the valleys which we had crossed only 
uuu uiisining, rose up unendingly the poignant supplications brought to us 
by the snowy night with tragic clarity: “Comrades, comrades, comrades!” 
I What horrible death agonies down there! The hundreds of black spots 
I had been inexorably whitened by the endlessly falling snow. Hundreds of 
j bodies were suffering, hundreds of souls shivering in this invasion of ice, in 
I total desolation. “Comrades, comrades!” took up the far away voices. 
i Prayers, cries of pain, last spurts of hope fell back without an echo in the 
unfeeling steppe. 

Closing our hearts to these frightful moans, we advanced toward 
deliverance, following a little road at the edge of the forest. The night 
became clearer. The column fell silent in the overpowering stillness. From 
this mass of three thousand men not even a hushed voice arose. We didn’t 
hear so much as a whisper. 

* * # * * 

Other haunting cries hailed us in the fading twilight. They came from our 
right. There, the deadly valley which separated us from the Soviet tanks ex¬ 
tended into enormous marshlands. During the breakout that morning, a 
number of German carts had charged through everything, at full gallop, 
toward these marshes. They ended up sinking in deep mud-wallows as thick 
as glue. 



Surrounded at Cherkassy 


221 


The horses sank completely into the mire. In the pale moonlight we could 
see only the heads and necks of the wretched beasts. They were still whinny¬ 
ing, their macabre neighing alternating with the drivers’ maddened shouts 
as they too sank into the muck. They clung to the tops of the wheels, 
already almost entirely swallowed up. 

With a fury born of the instinct of self-preservation, we cursed them for 
yelling so loudly as to attract the Soviets’ attention. They should have 
perished in silence, the poor wretches. 

We had to let these unlucky men sink to a slow death in the nocturnal 
mud just as we had let the heart-rending voices of the wounded on the 
steppe to fade away behind us, cut off from us by the enemy, each and every 
one dying in a loneliness more cruel than the steel that had wounded them, 
the mud that was swallowing them, or the snow which was pitilessly 
blanketing them. 


***** 

Two kilometers farther on, guided by our scouts, we used a trail, marked 
with stakes, which crossed the marshes in a long, circuitous route. Even 
there we walked knee-deep in mud. 

Not a Russian had seen us. 

We climbed a snowy slope. On the other side an arm of water shone in the 
moonlight. We crossed it one by one on a huge, slippery beam. After 
another fifty meters, we had a heart-stopping shock. Three steel-helmeted 
shadows surged up in front of us. We fell into one another’s arms, 
laughing, crying, dancing for joy, as all our worry and pain fell from our 
shoulders. 

It was the first German post in the south. We were no longer hunted prey. 
We were no longer living under a stay of execution. The Kessel was now 
nothing more than a horrible dream. 

Saved! Yes, saved! We were saved! 

The Bottleneck 

After leaving the German forward post at Lysyanka we came to a sunken 
road. The snow swirled about us, flailed us, cutting visibility down to one 
meter. We settled down as well as we could in the neighboring isbas. We 
were still very close to the Soviets, but where could we go in the middle of 
the night, blinded by this whistling tempest? 

Fifty of us entered a hovel and bedded down there. Every so often some¬ 
one would jump up yelling, babbling nonsense, pummeling the air. In the 
months that followed, I myself would have horrible nightmares every night, 
crying out, striking the wall, the furniture, everything near me with my fists 
in the darkness. During the three weeks of encirclement I had personally 



222 


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engaged in seventeen hand-to-hand combats. For a long time, in my 
tormented nights, I would see again the grimacing faces of Tatars, of 
Kirghizes, of Samoyeds, of strangler Mongols against whom I had fought 
for my life almost every day. 

Even now I am seized with a sort of dizziness when I think of those days 
of horror, the mocking grins, the leaping bodies, and the rat-a-tat-tat of my 
hot submachine gun. 


* * * * * 

At five o’clock in the morning I got everybody up. Struggling through the 
deep snow, we headed down the road. In the middle of Lysyanka we came 
to the river. Swollen by the snowfalls, it stretched very wide between its icy 
banks. 

The Reds had destroyed the bridge, so thousands of men were waiting 
their turn to cross over a rickety line of planks thrown across a row of big 
gas barrels, which served as pillars. 

The orders were to leave Lysyanka immediately, then to march as fast as 
we could as long as we could. 

We formed an immense ribbon in the snow. 

About eight thousand men had fallen in the course of the breakthrough, 
but more than forty thousand men had saved their lives. Only shock units 
like the SS Viking Division and the SS Assault Brigade “Wallonia” had suf¬ 
fered heavy losses. We arrived at the Dnieper in November, 1943, with a 
force of about two thousand men. We had exactly six hundred thirty-two 
left after the exit from the Kessel on 18 February 1944. 

Of course, we had been able to evacuate our wounded of December and 
January during the first days of the encirclement, by airplane. Nevertheless 
we had to figure we’d lost half our comrades. This percentage was the 
highest among all the units which participated in the epic of Cherkassy. 

* * * * # 

After the fall of Korsun the Soviets were sure they had us. Their com¬ 
muniques had already announced the victory, which seemed to them to be 
in the bag. By means of an incredible thrust, which had brought to grips as 
many men as at Waterloo, our desperate effort had opened the breach to 
freedom. 

The enemy, cheated, tried to vent its disappointment by subjecting our 
route to a furious bombardment. The Soviet artillery, their weapons lined 
up along both sides of our avenue of retreat, hammered the narrow corridor 
with an almost comic fury. 

We advanced with difficulty in the thick snow. But everyone hastened his 
steps, no matter how exhausted, for the shells were falling every half minute 
or so, piercing the snow, throwing up geysers of earth. 



Surrounded at Cherkassy 


223 


The enemy infantry pursued us as well. The German Panzers of the flank 
guard, protecting our withdrawal, constantly scoured the terrain. We would 
watch the tanks rush to an embankment or a haystack forty or fifty meters 
from the road. The Red soldiers would rise with their hands raised. A tank 
would herd them to our column. They swarmed everywhere in the snow, 
like rats, ready for any mischief. 

Batons in hand, the German generals marched on foot among the men, 
feeding like them on the air of the steppe. We had many kilometers to go 
before seeing the first supply depots. Tlie command had hastily sent mobile 
kitchens to meet us, but they were almost inaccessible. We were more than 
forty thousand, all equally hungary and thirsty. A thousand or two thou¬ 
sand men would besiege one unlucky cook, who risked being tumbled to the 
bottom of his pot at any minute by the surging crowd. 

It was useless to waste time lining up. We could barely fill a few flasks at 
the water fountain. The water was refreshingly icy; for the feverish 
wounded it was, at least temporarily, miraculous. 

But this cold water was impossible to keep. Within five minutes the neck 
of the flask would be choked with ice; the water would ring like a crystal 
bell inside it. 

As we advanced we saw what the progress of the Panzers coming from 
the south to meet us had entailed. The steppe was nothing but a cemetery 
for tanks. Eight hundred Soviet and three hundred German tanks had been 
destroyed during the three weeks’ battle to free us, which almost had failed. 
Some “Stalin’s organs,’’ abandoned in the snow, still brandished their dou¬ 
ble rows of tubes, the color of dead leaves. 

During the thaw many German tanks had bogged down in the spongy 
earth, sinking into it over their treads. The frost had come again, hardening 
and petrifying the mud, locking the Panzers into a formidable icy carapace. 

Once out of the Kessel, it was clear that the corridor opened in our direc¬ 
tion wouldn’t last much longer. We had to free the ice-bound tanks 
promptly if we didn’t want to abandon them to the Soviets. The tankers cut 
snow and ground that was harder than pig iron with axes. They lit great 
fires all around the immobilized tanks, pouring gasoline onto the ground, 
trying everything to thaw the mud and free the jammed treads, but their ef¬ 
forts seemed in vain. 

We felt ourselves well protected by the dozens of Tigers and Panthers, the 
most powerful German tanks, equipped with armor of an elemental 
strength. Endlessly they went off to belabor the enemy who was both press¬ 
ing our flanks and hot on our heels. 

The escape hatch was barely ajar. We had to hurry. 

The forty thousand men would have done better to stop in the night. We 
wandered for a long time. A storm had arisen. Gales of snow riddled us 
with millions of biting little crystals. We were still moving forward, not 
knowing whether we would fall on the left or the right. 



224 


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The second day we still had twenty kilometers to cross. The storm had 
ceased. Although the snow was deep, the sun turned it pink and shining. 
The corridor was widening. The artillery had fallen silent. We could see 
beautiful windmills, blue, lilac, and pale green, which unfurled wide black 
sails against the white fields. 

We reached a large village. There the corridor came to an end. German 
order immediately reasserted itself. Dozens of big fellows from the rear, 
well-fed, their cheeks as appetizing as beefsteaks, held big placards on 
which were inscribed the names of each of the units. It was necessary to re¬ 
form the platoons and the companies. The lifers were already bellowing out 
orders. If the Stabsfeldwebeln* were blustering, it meant the adventure was 
truly over. 


***** 

Somehow or other I reassembled my Walloons, who, less disciplined than 
their Prussian comrades, were enjoying their freedom a little while longer. 

There was a stir. An Army Corps general came toward me. Shaggy and 
caked with frozen mud, I stood to attention. 

“Come,” he said to me. “The Fuehrer has telephoned three times. He is 
waiting for you. We’ve been looking for you everywhere for two days.” 

He led me away. 

At the first light of day a Fieseler Storch appeared in the sky, a tiny little 
reconnaissance plane, a pretty mica cage from which one could study every 
detail of the ground. 

The airplane slid in on its skis. My comrades pushed me into the cockpit 
just as I was, bundled in my big felt boots and my sheepskin. 

With Hitler 

The little Fieseler Storch which had lifted me from the steppe now flew 
over the rear of the front. The interminable ribbons of the retreating army 
were outlined in black against the whiteness of the landscape. Lines of 
trucks and companies of soldiers as tiny as flies were beating back against 
the curent. 

The villages swarmed with troops. It was an admirable scene, with the 
snow shining off into infinity, marked with the russet clusters of the or¬ 
chards, the yellow edges of the thatched roofs, the long fences of black 
wood, the round humps of the wells and, atop the hills, the great mills turn¬ 
ing in the blue and silver sky. 

At Uman I took a place in one of the Fuehrer’s special planes in company 
with General Liebe of the Army Corps and General Gille, glorious com¬ 
mander of the SS Viking. 

The trimotor flew over the steppe for half an hour and then rose very 



Surrounded at Cherkassy 


225 


high, swallowed up completely by the clouds. The Ukraine faded away 
underneath the machine. It was over. Never again would I see the white or 
golden steppe, nor the long villages smothered by the snows of winter or 
buzzing with the songs of the mosquitoes in the summer, nor the white* 
washed isbas with their green and brown shutters decorated with doves, nor 
the sumptuous amaranth sunsets, nor the big girls with high cheekbones, 
flowers of Asia among the millions of gilded sunflowers. 

We passed into the opaline cotton-wool of the sky above the Pripet 
marshes. 

The sky lightened a little bit. Through the holes in the clouds we could 
sometimes make out Hr forests, poplar groves, a village with red roofs. 
Europe was below. 

Finally we saw the blue lakes, flowered with whitening islets like moons in 
the water. We were nearing Lithuania, just north of the main headquarters 
of Hitler’s Army. 


***** 

I was expected first at Himmler’s. In the automobile which drove me 
from the airport I could feel hundreds of lice devouring my body. My 
uniform was filthy. 

They had guessed at headquarters, occupied only by neatly dressed peo¬ 
ple, that the wild men of the front like me might want to freshen up upon 
their arrival. So I entered the bath, where I simmered for an hour like a 
tough old piece of meat. 

Himmler had made me a present of a beautiful green shirt. That spared 
me from having to pick up the old one which, tossed into a corner of the 
bathroom, was surrounded by a tribe of brave Ukrainian lice, flabbergasted 
to find themselves suddenly in so impressive an atmosphere. It seems they 
were talked about for a very long time among the entourage of the 
Reichsfuehrer SS. 

A junior officer mended the collar of my jacket, tom in hand-to-hand 
combat in the Kessel. I kept on my field uniform, which they scraped, 
scrubbed, and brushed. Wearing my big felted boots, I sat down that even¬ 
ing beside Himmler in the big green car which he drove himself for the forty 
kilometers from his camp to the Fuehrer’s command post. 

Hitler’s general headquarters, in the easternmost corner of Prussia, was 
one great construction yard at the beginning of 1944. We arrived there at 
midnight. Floodlights illuminated hundreds of men at work under the firs. 
They were constructing fantastic concrete shelters. A veritable subterranean 
Babylon was arising in the seclusion of this great fir forest. 

The Fuehrer himself lived in a modest wooden barracks. We entered by a 
square vestibule. On the right was the cloakroom. At the end on the left a 
wide door separated us from Hitler’s office. We waited for a little while. 
Himmler happily trotted out the few French words he knew. 



226 


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The double doors opened. I hadn’t time to look at or to think of 
anything. The Fuehrer came toward me, took my right hand in both his 
hands and grasped it affectionately. Magnesium lights lit the room: movie 
cameras were filming the meeting. 

I myself saw nothing but Hitler’s eyes. I felt nothing but his two hands 
pressing mine. I heard only his voice, a bit rough, welcoming me, repeating 
to me, “I’ve been very worried about you ...” 

We sat down in wooden armchairs facing a massive fireplace. I looked at 
the Fuehrer with amazement. There was still the same strange fire in his 
eyes, direct, bewitching. The preoccupations of four years of war had given 
the man an impressive majesty. His hair had whitened. His back was bent 
from studying the maps interminably and from bearing the weight of a 
world. 

The Fuehrer of before the war had disappeared, the fiery Fuehrer with 
the chestnut hair, the trim body, the back as straight as an Alpen pine. He 
held a pair of tortoise-shell glasses in his hand. 

Everything about him radiated thoughtfulness and concern. 

But his energy was still lightning quick. He told me of his will to over¬ 
come, whatever the trials, then had me recount every scene of our tragedy, 
detail by detail. 

He gathered his thoughts for five minutes, not saying a word. Only his 
jaws moved slightly, as if he were grinding down an obstacle in the silence. 
Everyone was quiet. 

Then the Fuehrer ceased his meditation and returned to his questions. 

* * * * # 

He led us to the maps of the front in order to understand the odyssey of 
Cherkassy with complete precision. He had us recount the movements of 
the encircled troops, day by day, following every march on the map. The 
immense room was filled only with his voice, calmly inquiring, and our 
voices answering with poorly suppressed emotion. 

Every detail of his study revealed a life of simplicity and order: the long 
tables of white wood, the bare walls, like those of a monk’s refectory, the 
lamps with green-painted metallic shades, suspended over the maps by 
chromium lazy tongs. 

The Fuehrer worked for entire nights in profound contemplation. He 
would pace the barracks, meditating, preparing his orders. The only things 
moving near him were the fire in the wide hearth, inspired by Germanic 
prehistory, and a beautiful big roan dog which slept in a box at the end of 
the table. The noble beast silently accompanied his master, who paced slow¬ 
ly, bent and grayed, ripening his worries and his dreams in the night. 

Hitler bestowed on me the ribbon of the Knight’s Cross. I had fought like 
a true soldier. The Fuehrer recognized that. I was proud, but what exalted 



Surrounded at Cherkassy 


227 


me above all on this night of great emotion was the prestige that my soldiers 
had gained in the eyes of Hitler. He told me that all my officers of the Kessel 
were promoted one grade and that he was awarding a hundred and fifty 
Iron Crosses to my comrades. 

We had left for the anti-Bolshevik crusade so that the name of our 
mother country, besmirched in May, 1940, would resound, glorious and 
honored, once more. Soldiers of Europe, we wanted our ancient country to 
rise again as brilliant as before in the new Europe which was being so pain¬ 
fully bom. 

We were the men of the country of Charlemagne, of the dukes of Bur¬ 
gundy, and of Charles the Fifth. After twenty centuries of soul-stiring radi¬ 
ance this country could not be allowed to sink into mediocrity or oblivion. 

We had rushed to embrace suffering, so that grandeur and right would 
spring to life anew out of our sacrifice. 

In this barracks, before this genius at the height of his power, I told 
myself that the next day the entire world would know what the Belgians had 
done at Cherkassy. It would know the glittering hommage that the Reich, 
nation of soldiers, had rendered them. 

I felt myself broken, devoured by those terrible weeks. But my soul was 
singing! Glory there was, glory for our heroic legion, glory for our mother 
country, on its way to resurrection. 

* * * # * 

At dawn one of Hitler’s planes took me to Berlin where I spoke to an 
assembly of European journalists. They in turn would report the exploits of 
the Assault Brigade “Wallonia” to the readers of a hundred dailies. Then I 
went to Paris where I talked before ten thousand people at Chaillot Palace. 
The French dailies brimmed with the tale of our odyssey. L’Oeuvre printed 
these simple words in its three column headline: “Leon Degrelle has done 
Belgium proud.” It was true for Belgium. It wasn’t true for me, for victory 
had been paid for with the suffering of all my soldiers and with the sacrifice 
of all our dead. In the storm-tossed sky of 1944, however, the name of our 
people shone once again. 

Brussels 

During the night of 20-21 February, I obtained a promise from the 
Fuehrer that the Assault Brigade “Wallonia” should receive twenty-one 
days of leave. I telegraphed the orders from the GHQ. I knew my boys were 
en route, and I didn’t worry about them too much. 

This leave was a godsend. For hardly had our survivors boarded a train of 
soldiers on leave when the whole Ukrainian front split open like an old oak 
struck by lightning. 



228 


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It came as no surprise to me. I had seen how difficult it was for the 
powerful force of German tanks on the southern front to clear a path to us, 
without even reaching us. We had had to smash our way through the enemy 
in order to cross the last twenty kilometers, before which the tanks of the 
Reich had been powerless. 

The liberated troops of the Kessel had scarcely reached the billets where 
they were to be relieved when the Soviet wave broke, submerging the whole 
Ukraine, overflowed in every direction, and reached the Dniester at the 
Romanian frontier in a few days. It was a tidal wave. 

The entire Ukraine,the beautiful Ukraine with its immense golden fields, 
its blue and white villages set in the middle of the harvests like baskets of 
flowers, the Ukraine overflowing with com and wheat, endowed with hun¬ 
dreds of new factories in the last two years, that Ukraine was drowned 
under the snarling wave of Mongols and Kalmuks with damp moustaches 
and steel teeth, carrying heavy submachine guns with flat rotary magazines, 
dumbfounded to have raced from the Volga to Galicia and Bessarabia in a 
year and a half. Their pockets were full of gold rings, they ate well, and they 
had killed lots of “Fritz.” They were happy men. 

♦ * * * * 

After many difficulties I found my men at the frontier of old Poland, at 
Wlodawa. The Reds were already across from us, streaming from the Pripet 
marshes in a veritable amphibian invasion. 

We made a stop at the Bavarian camp of Wildflecken, from which we had 
departed on 11 November 1943. We returned a mutilated brigade, but once 
again a legion of new Walloon volunteers to take the place of the wounded 
and the dead awaited the conquerors of Cherkassy. In two weeks the new 
Assault Brigade “Wallonia” would be even stronger than the old one and 
would comprise three thousand men, enthusiastic as the veterans, already 
hardened by combat exercies, burning to set off and fight it out. 

Before searching out other battlefields, we had still to march into our 
homeland, where the glory won by the Walloon volunteers at Cherkassy 
had stirred national pride intensely. We weren’t loved, certainly, by the 
Anglophiles and the Communists, but our denigrators themselves couldn’t 
deny that our soldiers had been faithful to military honor and to our 
people’s traditions of courage. 

On 2 April 1944, late in the morning, we arrived at the Dutch-Belgian 
frontier. Our march across the country began there. 

Our armored column was seventeen kilometers long. From atop their 
powerful machines our young soldiers smiled down on our pretty villages 
with their blue roofs. It was for these pleasant towns, this ancient land, that 
they had crossed the steppes, endured such suffering, and challenged 
destiny. 



Surrounded at Cherkassy 


229 


The Brigade made its joyous entry into the industrial city of Charleroi at 
noon and renewed its oath of fidelity to the national socialist ideal there on 
the Grand-Place. Then the hundreds of tanks rolled rapidly across Wallon- 
ian Brabant, the great lion of Waterloo watching us pass from the top of his 
knoll. 

We thought of all the heroes who had fought battles in these rich fields in 
days gone by, like those we had just fought in the Russian mud. That mud 
was far away, however. Our tanks were laden with flowers. Crowns of oak 
branches two meters high decorated the armor. Trains of welcoming young 
girls with vibrant eyes waited for us at the boundary of Brussels. 

The center of the capital was a sea of faces and flags. The Panzers could 
hardly pass among the tens of thousands of people who had hurried to see 
and madly cheer our soldiers. The crowd tossed like the sea, shouting and 
throwing thousands of roses, the first, the sweetest, and the most tender 
roses, heralding the bright days of spring. 

My tank stopped in front of the columns of the Bourse. I lifted all my ex¬ 
cited children into the tank. I felt their little hot hands in mine. I watched 
this wonderful celebration, the communion of my soldiers and this people 
so sensitive to glory. New tanks rumbled without cease onto the flower- 
covered roadway. The Anglo-American tanks would enter Brussels by ex¬ 
actly the same route five months later. 




Chapter Seven 

THE EPIC OF ESTONIA 


In May 1944, our Legion had gone to Poland for reorganization at the 
immense camp of Debika, between Cracow and Lemberg. More than eight 
hundred Belgian workers from the factories of the Reich had voluntarily 
enlisted in our brigade dining the summer after my harangues. 1 

The first contingent, three hundred of these compatriots, had just arrived 
at the camp in July 1944 when the new Soviet offensive was unleashed. 

They swept through Minsk. In two weeks a mighty tidal wave inundated 
the German front, breaking through everywhere and spreading out for three 
hundred kilometers. That very month the Soviet armies reached the fron¬ 
tiers of Lithuania and Prussia and seized half of Poland, reaching the 
suburbs of Warsaw. The route to Berlin was open. 

The Viking Division, with its new tanks not even broken in, was dispatch¬ 
ed to Warsaw, now tom by the uprising of the Polish Home Army. 

A second and terrible blow from the Soviet battering ram struck the 
front. This time it shook the Estonian sector of the eastern front, below the 
Gulf of Finland. The outlying position of Narva was held by a picked corps 
of the SS, the Third Panzer Division, made up of Germanic volunteers from 
many countries, Flanders, Holland, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Estonia, 
Latvia. All had fought valiantly, but they had suffered great losses. 

There too the holes most urgently needed to be plugged up. 

***** 

But plugged up with what? 

Certain offices in Berlin bridled the ass by the tail and sent off unheard-of 
telegrams to the men waiting in the wings. The camp of Debika in particular 
received orders to embark our three hundred new Walloon volunteers who 
had just arrived, and send them to the Estonian front that very day. 

A hundred among them had been enlisted in the regiment for only four 
days. The other two-thirds had been quartered for only two weeks and 
hardly knew how to use a gun. None had ever fired a machine gun. 



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At this time I had been recalled to Belgium, where my brother had just 
been savagely assassinated by terrorists. When a message informed me of 
these crazy instructions, our three hundred boys were already rolling toward 
the Baltic Sea, accompanied by about a hundred veterans who should have 
been their instructors at Debika. Everyone had been loaded up pell-mell. 
They had been given machine guns at the last minute with orders to learn en 
route in the train how to use these complicated weapons. 

At first I didn’t want to believe they had left. I telephoned Berlin. The 
news was confirmed. Other units were in exactly the same situation. The 
Flemish volunteers had been sent off exactly the same way as the Walloons. 

I was floored. These three hundred new soldiers were going to take me for 
a nincompoop. They had come to our legion with confidence in me and, 
barely arrived, expecting in good faith to receive serious military training, 
they were rushed into a lunatic venture. 

What added to my worry was the fact that after Cherkassy Hitler had for¬ 
bidden my return to the front. What could I do to save my new soldiers or at 
least to share their fate with honor? I telegraphed Himmler’s staff office, 
protesting vehemently against this departure, requesting the counter¬ 
manding of this order or, if not, the authorization to rejoin my men. 

No reply. 

I was getting itchy feet. After three days of waiting I sent a new telegram: 
“With or without authorization I will leave tomorrow for the Estonian 
Front.” 

Berlin sent me a curt reply: “This is a court-martial offense.” 

I riposted, “It is also a court-martial offense to send four-days-old 
recruits to combat.” 

That night the final communication came from Berlin: “Do as you 
wish.” 


# * * * * 

At dawn my car was ready. That evening I reached Berlin, which I 
carefully skirted for fear of receiving a personal countermand. I rolled on to 
Danzig. When I arrived there I learned that my soldiers had crossed into 
Lithuanian territory just before the railroad line of Riga was cut by the 
Soviet advance guards. It was no longer possible to reach Estonia by way of 
the Baltic countries. 

There was no airplane available either. 

Finally I discovered a wallowing old tub leaving for Finland at a dock. On 
its return it was supposed to go up to Reval. I parked my old Citroen on the 
bridge after much debate. 

At noon our ship weighed anchor and left the imposing harbor, while 
above the narrow channel a Soviet squadron appeared in the blue and gold 
sky. 



The Epic of Estonia 

Before Narva 


233 


Our ship, an old banana boat from Guinea, set off slowly toward the 
northeast, sticking to the Prussian coast. It was one of the last boats return¬ 
ing to Finland, which a few days later would capitulate. 

There were a thousand men aboard from the most diverse branches of the 
service. 

We scrutinized the calm sea, the color of a pigeon’s breast. Sometimes, 
instead of a mermaid, a periscope would suddenly appear, then a submarine 
dripping like the back of a whale. It was a friendly submersible which was 
standing guard. 

Submarines are like men, however. There are more bad than good ones. 
More than one troop transport had been sunk in the Baltic. We were loaded 
with life belts and slept all over the place, like big penguins, very close to the 
hatches on the bridge. 

We travelled the length of Lithuania and Latvia. The last night, our 
coaster received the order to break its journey and put in at Reval, where 
hundreds of wounded needed to be embarked without delay. 

At five o’clock in the morning we entered a calm steel-blue inlet opposite 
the capital of Estonia, the famous Reval 2 of the Teutonic Knights. Perched 
on a hillside, the glorious city was outlined by pointed steeples and 
dominated by its powerful ramparts. 

Each ancient city of the Baltic countries bore the mark of the past. Each 
had its majestic castle from which Germanic civilization and order had 
radiated during the centimes. Each had its white churches with blue steeples 
rising like arrows, its great stone houses of commerce with the patina of a 
hundred winters, lovingly sculpted, grave and beautiful like their sister cities 
of Luebeck, Bremen, or Bruges, last flowers of the garland of riches and art 
of the Hansa. 3 

The dock of Reval lay in a fairy-tale valley which curved for a league 
around, strewn with enormous reddish stones. In the distance in the golden 
fields were outlined the mossy ruins of a gothic barn such as are still to be 
seen on the coastline of Flanders. 

A general told me where my soldiers ought to be, somewhere before Nar¬ 
va. One hour afterwards I went back across the country along the Gulf of 
Finland by a sandy and rutted road in the direction of Leningrad. 

The countryside was poor—moorlands and hazel copses, pine copses, 
aspen groves, reedy marshes, and wildfiowers like pink birds. From time to 
time I could see the blue and shining sea. The houses were roofed with little 
wooden shingles. The inhabitants were few but the girls were magnificent, 
big strong-legged girls in fresh dresses of thin muslin or organdy. 

After hours of dust I saw a barricade of about forty big oil drums. They 
guarded a huge factory where the German engineers were breaking up schist 
and extracting prodigious quantities of mineral oil. Just as we had fought 



234 


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for airplane fuel in the Caucasus, here we were fighting for oil for the sub¬ 
marines. 

The front was near. The villages that I passed had been reduced to 
cinders. The trees along the route had been split, torn to pieces, or burned. 
The air had a grey color. Violent cannonading could be heard. 

In the end I found my soldiers. They were quartered ten kilometers from 
the lines. The officer who had brought them knew that the Walloons had 
never been in combat without my being with them. Sure of himself, he had 
told the commander of the Army Corps that I would arrive at any moment, 
that the men weren’t ready, and that he declined all responsibility while 
waiting for my arrival. The commander of the Corps was an excellent man, 
General Steiner. We had known one another in the Caucasus. He decided to 
wait. 

I arrived at his command post at dusk. Wearing a white tie like Pierre 
Laval, very modish, still natty and perfumed, he hugged me effusively. That 
night when I returned to my men I had won them three weeks’ respite and 
the pick of the instructors. 

We camped at the top of a sand cliff from which the grandiose panorama 
of the Gulf of Finland could be seen. A hundred meters directly below our 
feet a strange ribbon of black trees clinging to the very edge of the shore 
stretched all along the water. 

In the hot August night we went down to a shining creek. Vigorous and 
naked, we threw ourselves into the water, swimming endlessly in the singing 
sea. 

The Gulf of Finland 

The Estonian front was a gamble. The Reds were at the doors of Warsaw, 
and several tens of thousands of volunteers from all the Germanic countries 
still clung to the ravaged woods near Leningrad. 

Narva marked the boundry of old Europe with the East. The two worlds 
rose up on either side of the little river which cut the town in half. On the 
western bank was the old crenellated castle of the Teutonic Knights. Im¬ 
mediately opposite on the other side of the water the Russian city raised the 
tiers of her Orthodox churches’ green onion domes. 

The Third Germanic Corps, in which Germans were only a minority, 
stood guard over this gate. It had very nearly broken in July, 1944. Hun¬ 
dreds of Soviet tanks had been destroyed in the course of furious battles. 
The legions of European volunteers had been bled white. One of the two 
Dutch regiments had saved only twenty men in all, out of three thousand. 
The others, surrounded for several days, had been massacred where they 
stood. 

The Soviet offensive had failed. The Third Corps had yielded only about 
fifteen kilometers in all. 


The Epic of Estonia 


235 


But new blood was needed. Ours was there, entirely fresh, for the forth¬ 
coming battles. 


♦ * * * * 

Cannon fire thundered ceaselessly. During the night it seemed to come 
strangely closer. Often Soviet ships would appear, turning their sterns 
toward Finland. Our guns would open fire, forcing the crusiers to retreat. 

The coastal batteries were marvelously well-camouflaged. They were 
widely spread out. The troops and the officers nested in perfect shelters dug 
out above the sea. Fifty or eighty meters below these eagles’ aeries the 
waves dashed themselves on the sand and splashed against the trees. The sea 
shone as far as the eye could see. In the distance, when the sun was 
brightest, the line of a white island could be distinguished, as slender as a 
gull’s wing. 

The twilights were an incredible glow of burning orange and huge masses 
of pink and gold clouds. 

These iridescent evenings which died in a tumult of reds and purples, 
these nights spangled with stars which called to one another, the cool 
solitude of the crystalline dawns were doubtless given to us soldiers, dutiful 
witnesses of beauty, to rekindle our spirits before the howling days when 
bodies would be tom apart and souls would gasp on the threshold of great 
departures. 


* * * * * 

In mid-August the Reds started a wide movement to crush Estonia 
definitively. Having failed to break the front between Narva and the 
southern point of Lake Peipus, they unleashed a huge offensive at the 
southern extremity of the lake, starting from the frontier town of Pskov. 

Obviously their goal was to storm the Estonian city of Dorpat, then from 
there Reval, taking the whole sector of the Gulf of Finland from the rear. 

Each day the Reich’s aircraft followed the massive movement of the 
Soviet force from Narva. The Third Corps received the order to copy the 
movement and cling to the enemy. It was to send a powerful Kampfgruppe 
(battle group) to the south immediately, which would position itself athwart 
the Red armies, which, advancing by forced marches toward the northeast, 
were meeting almost no resistance. 

General Steiner drew up his accounts. He had to use everything available, 
us as well as others. He decided to leave our least-trained recruits under in¬ 
struction for a few days. But the three hundred men who were virtually 
ready were entered on the strength charts. 

During the night of 15-16 August I received our marching orders. At five 
o’clock in the morning the trucks took us away. Singing the ancient songs of 



236 


CAMPAIGN IN RUSSIA 


our country we rolled toward the little red dot on the map which in German 
was called Dorpat and in Estonian, Tartu. 

Tartu! The ancient capital of learning in the Baltic countries. Tartu, 
whose famous library, whose nicely painted houses, whose art centers, 
printers, and ancient University we would see go up in flames that very 
month, gigantic black torches floating for a week between the smoking 
earth and the unfeeling sky. 

Face to Face 

Lake Peipus, on both ends of which the life of Estonia hung in the 
balance, had long separated this country from the territory of the USSR. 
The lake was connected to the town of Narva on the Gulf of Finland by the 
Narva River. It formed a true inland sea, crossed by boats whose rust- 
colored hulls could be seen bobbing in the golden waters of August, 1944. 

Lake Peipus could be reached from the north by going through forests of 
fragrant firs, dappled with rosy glimmers, and bursting with wild blue¬ 
berries. The lake was bordered with a dry pebbly beach where spindly plants 
grew. A few large villages nestled in the hollows of shining bays under the 
turquoise sky, but their houses had been demolished by aircraft. Nothing 
was left but a few smashed dinghies and ruins, among which the German 
posts were set up. 

The lake constituted in fact the longest part of the Estonian front. The 
Reds were on the other side of the water. One night’s rowing would have 
been enough to reach them. The defense of our bank was nugatory. Rough 
log bunkers could be seen here and there, and a bit of trench in the sand, but 
troops were almost non-existent. When we were at the extreme southern end 
of the lake our left flank would be at the mercy of a Soviet landing. 

According to the orders of the High Command the principal line of the 
Kampfgruppe was supposed to extend from Lake Wirz, almost in the mid¬ 
dle of Estonia, to the southwest of Lake Peipus. The River Embach, which 
connected the two lakes, would be the natural line of combat if the enemy 
succeeded in approaching the Dorpat region. 

I went to the town hall of the old university city for news. A debate was 
going on among some of the superior officers. The situation was extremely 
confused. The head of the Kampfgruppe, General Wagner of the Waffen 
SS, arrived. The man was a giant, holder of the Knight’s Cross, as usual, 
with a well-established reputation as a fighter as clear-headed as he was dar¬ 
ing, as robust as a Landsknecht, * a true Renaissance condottiere, merry, 
strong, gregarious, tireless, in brief, the man that was needed for the hard 
fight that was coming. 

The column of the Kampfgruppe Wagner was spaced out over thirty 
kilometers, a column of armored reconnaissance cars, Panzers, and 
mechanized shock troops. The general in fact brought few people, but all 
were first-class fighters. 



The Epic of Estonia 


237 


At Dorpat he would have to combine in haste with haggard and disparate 
reinforcements—a ragbag of dispersed German units and Estonian guards 
in civilian clothes, armbands on their sleeves, arriving in disorder, poorly 
armed, their wives alongside them, sweating with fatigue and fear on the 
dusty roads. 

General Wagner prudently decided to halt his column north of Dorpat to 
study the terrain and the list of effectives first. 

* * * * * 

Our trucks stopped at a village called Maria-Magdalena. 

At dawn a messenger awoke me. We were to move out immediately. 

A paved road started out from Dorpat toward the southeast in the direc¬ 
tion of Pskov. Another went toward the southwest in the direction of Riga. 
I sent up six advance posts twenty-five kilometers from Dorpat and the 
River Embach in the triangle formed by these two roads. 

Never had we received a mission so complicated. I asked who would be 
between my posts and the enemy mass on the march. The response was 
disconcerting. Theoretically two friendly divisions were in contact. In prac¬ 
tice no one knew anything about them. They had probably disintegrated 
somewhere over there in the west toward Riga. “At any rate,” they added, 
“Don’t count on them, and be ready.” 

Be ready to close off a sector forty kilometers wide as the crow flies with 
six handfuls of men! 

All the rest of the front had had to be improvised in like manner. The 
Wagner Kampfgruppe sent patrols of armored reconnaissance cars to meet 
the enemy. They were wearing themselves out ploughing back and forth, 
day and night, over the many roads on which the advance guards of the 
Soviets were moving. 

Instead of slipping between the two principal roads the enemy attacked 
straight ahead, never straying far from Lake Peipus and the Pskov-Dorpat 
highway. Searching for the weakest point, he found it east of this route and 
on Monday, 19 August 1944, made a thrust eight kilometers deep and ten 
wide, within rifle range of our left wing. 

Trucks roared up at the same time as a motorcycle messenger brought me 
the order to attack. At five o’clock in the evening I was to charge from west 
to east across the breach opened by the Soviets with all the men I had. 

German troops coming from east to west would meet us at the half-way 
point. We were to make the junction at the village of Patska, high on top of 
a bald hill. Four Panzers would reinforce us. 

It was a fine idea for combat. The enemy was massed in the breach. If our 
counterattack succeeded, his offensive would be broken up for several days. 

Now we needed to gain some time. The German engineers and thousands 
of civilians were hastily building a fortified line in a half-moon about eight 



238 


CAMPAIGN IN RUSSIA 


kilometers south of Dorpat. The Command wanted to form a bridgehead 
there which would bar access to the town. It would be protected on the east 
and west by the River Embach, a deep natural barrier. 

Yet these defenses weren’t finished. Reinforcements were on the way, but 
they wouldn’t be in position for several days. The morning’s thrust had 
brought the enemy to within a few kilometers of the works. Tomorrow or 
the day after the Reds would reach them, unless a violent counterattack 
broke their impetus. 


* * * * * 

At four o’clock in the afternoon the trucks dropped my men off six 
kilometers from Patska. 

I had some marvelous young officers, just out of the military school at 
Bad Toelz, in Bavaria. They were anxious to prove themselves. 

Our Panzers were waiting, hidden in an apple orchard. 

I set the plan of attack. At exactly five o’clock, accompanied by the four 
tanks, we would charge. 

The companies were to take position immediately, without letting 
themselves be seen. The enemy was one kilometer away. I set a starting 
point for the assault for each company commander. 

Our soldiers stole crawling through the ripe wheat, drying in the burning 
afternoon. 

The Mill of Patska 

The minutes just before a hand-to-hand battle always weigh heavily. How 
many of the boys who are waiting will shortly be lying on their backs on the 
ground, eyes staring blankly? How many others will be dragging their 
bleeding bodies along trying to escape the machine-gun fire? 

We could hear the noise of the enemy advance. The Reds must already be 
able to see the towers of Dorpat. The village of Patska, atop the slope, 
seemed to be strongly occupied. 

I slipped behind a holly thicket from which I followed the passage of the 
Soviet forces with my binoculars. Strung out over a distance of five 
kilometers, major Red contingents, supported by artillery, were occupying 
both sides of the road we were to take. 

The plain was totally bare, but the hills occupied by the enemy to the right 
and left were wooded. My soldiers were hidden on the sides of the road and 
in the wheat, as still and silent as dead wood. 

At five o’clock I advanced with the tanks. Our men took position and 
leaped out. At the sound of the Panzers advancing on the plain there was a 
stir among the enemy troops. Red soldiers ran to the trenches, to the ar¬ 
tillery and the mortars. A giant of a Russian officer took his stand out in the 
open on the ridge, giving his orders, braving us all. 



The Epic of Estonia 


239 


The first shells from our tanks made a direct hit on the mill. The Russian 
officer didn’t turn a hair. All the houses in the area blew up one after 
another. The giant remained calm. When the smoke cleared we could see 
him, still standing there like a block of wood. 

Our companies climbed the slope. A deluge of metal rained down on our 
tanks. The Soviet machine guns raked the slope. A Panzer took a direct hit 
but went on anyway. 

Our soldiers ran like the wind up nine hundred meters of gentle slope. 
The mill was bitterly defended. Two of our officers reached it, charging 
through everything. Both fell right at the entrance to the building, one killed 
outright, the other gravely wounded. But the company rushed over their 
bodies; the Russian giant fell in his turn; the mill was ours. 

The other company, which was climbing the right flank, charged into the 
enemy positions with equal impetuosity and at the same price. The com¬ 
mander of this company was wounded three times. No longer able to move, 
he hung onto an anti-tank gun captured from the Reds and turned it against 
them in a final effort. He fired for twenty minutes longer before dying on 
the pile of cartridge cases. 

In fifty minutes our thrust had penetrated five kilometers. Patska was 
taken and cleared. We captured the Soviet artillery. 

* * * * * 

Unfortunately we received no news of the supporting attack which was 
supposed to meet us from the east and join us at the mill. 

We couldn’t let the enemy recover. I led my men beyond Patska, entering 
the five-kilometer zone which had been left for our partners to attack. The 
Patska operation was no good unless we could cut off the enemy spearhead 
completely. If not, it was we who risked being cut off. We crossed seven of 
the ten kilometers in this way. Our losses were cruel. Of my four new of¬ 
ficers from Bad Toelz, three were killed and the fourth gravely wounded. In 
the Waffen SS the average life of an officer at the front was three months. 

My aide-de-camp had been evacuated, his left arm shot through. A hun¬ 
dred of my soldiers had been killed or wounded. 

What had happened to the troops who were supposed to come from the 
east to meet us at the time of our charge? 

We were fighting furiously on both flanks, the enemy trying unceasingly 
to throttle us. If we kept on trying to make headway we were eventually go¬ 
ing to fall into a trap. The fact that the wave from the east hadn’t come wor¬ 
ried me terribly. At eight o’clock in the evening we were still alone. Sum¬ 
moned elsewhere, our tanks had to leave us. 

At nine o’clock I was informed of the complete failure of the supporting 
attack. We were ordered to hold on west of the village of Patska. From 
there we could at least bar passage to new Soviet reinforcements. Never¬ 
theless, the spearhead of the Russian offensive hadn’t been cut off. 



240 


CAMPAIGN IN RUSSIA 


As soon as evening came, this force fell back to pound us. 

Our flanks were guarded only by machine guns. We didn’t have so much 
as a piece of light artillery. Our tanks hadn’t returned. 

The enemy brought up “Stalin’s organs,” which battered us throughout 
the night under thirty-six rockets’ double rain of fire. 

Dawn came. We were freezing in grass wet with dew. I placed a row of 
machine guns at the edge of a birch grove dominating the Soviet route of 
penetration toward Dorpat. The “Stalin’s organs” were hacking up the lit¬ 
tle wood, meter by meter. But, gone to ground in narrow holes, we didn’t 
yield the terrain. The enemy still couldn’t go through Patska. We kept con¬ 
tinually cleaning the bare road with our fire. 

The messengers brought me some odd news. The Reds were already 
several kilometers behind us to the west. They were completely outflanking 
us, swarming out of the edge of the woods everywhere. Several Red soldiers 
had been killed right on the road three kilometers behind us. 

General Wagner sent us enthusiastic congratulations, announcing that we 
would be cited in his communique to the Main Headquarters. But we had to 
keep on fighting while the command put the finishing touches to its 
blockade south of Dorpat. 

We were distracted from our worries by hundreds of silver foxes running 
between our legs. There was a farm of about two thousand of these graceful 
animals to the right of us. The proprietors had opened all the doors of the 
cages before they fled. Wondrously supple, the foxes dashed between the 
explosions, brushing the ground with their long shining tails. 

To the west, the enemy had expanded his assault. That afternoon the 
Pskov road fell. Farther west of the highway, at the very center of the 
Wagner sector, the attackers succeeded in driving a wedge through to a 
village called Kambja. 

In the evening a motorcyclist burst through the enemy-infested forest and 
brought us orders to capture Kambja and its vicinity immediately, where the 
danger of a Red breakthrough was becoming more and more evident. 

We slipped silently from copse to copse. At two o’clock in the morning, 
after a circuit of twenty kilometers, we found ourselves nose to nose with 
the other wave of Reds, already masters of the village of Kambja and ob¬ 
viously determined to press forward to join their victorious forces in the 
east and southeast. 

Kambja 

On the morning of 21 August 1944, the situation at the Estonian front 
was as follows: 

The advanced defense of Dorpat, between Lake Peipus and the Pskov 
road, had been gutted. The Soviets were even landing in force on the west 
bank of the lake. The central position had been violently hit by the Soviet 



The Epic of Estonia 


241 


waves which had seized Kambja. The western wing of the front, from 
Kambja to the Riga-Dorpat route and from this route to Lake Wirz, was 
still peaceful. 

Briefly, when General Wagner looked at the enemy he saw his left wing 
crushed and his center gravely threatened. Only his right wing still enjoyed a 
last respite, since it was farthest from the starting point of the Soviet offen¬ 
sive. 

A country road linked Kambja to the Pskov highway about fifteen 
kilometers south of Dorpat. But the fork itself was threatened by the Soviet 
forces coming from of the southeast. 

I had—first mission—to hold the enemy at Kambja with five hundred in¬ 
fantry men, one mortar platoon, and several pieces of German artillery. I 
was—second mission—to assure the protection of the crossroads of the 
Pskov-Dorpat and the Kambja-Dorpat roads. The conquering enemy had 
come to within a kilometer of this intersection, which was completely flat 
and in the open. The enemy artillery, mortars, and “Stalin’s organs” oc¬ 
cupied the woods to our left. I had only three anti-tank guns with which to 
bar the passage. 

I installed my command post in a small farm beside the crossroads. There 
we were hourly sprayed with machine-gun fire and strafed by Soviet planes. 
During the night we expected the Bolshevik tanks to enter the courtyard any 
minute. Booted, grenades and submachine gun within reach, we slept a 
maximum of ten minutes at a time. 

Three or four times a day or night I sped from the intersection of our 
positions at Kambja, four kilometers to the southwest. The Reds were 
swarming everywhere. My little Volkswagen raced frantically along through 
bullets that whined like mosquitoes. 

If I was at Kambja, I trembled for my anti-tank guns at the intersection. 
If I was at the crossroads I feared a catastrophe at Kambja and watched the 
road with terror, always expecting to see the debris of my unit flock in with 
a frenzied mob of Kirghizes and Kalmuks hot on their heels. 

***** 

Behind us the spectacle was heart-rending. The whole of Estonia was flee¬ 
ing panic-stricken before the Reds. Not a soul stayed in his hut. These peo¬ 
ple had known the Soviets, not those of 1918, but the so-called civilized, im¬ 
proved and democratized Soviets of 1940. They retained a terrible fear of 
them. This general panic taught us more than all the political speeches. 

It wasn’t only the bourgeois who were bolting, but tens of thousands of 
workers, handymen, small farmers, and sawyers fleeing the pine groves. 
The women would exhaust themselves on the roads, dragging along a pig 
and two or three sheep. The poor beasts’ feet would be bleeding. One girl 
was pushing a pig in front of her like a wheelbarrow, holding it by its rear 
feet. The animals were all jumbled together, howling. Many died. 



242 


CAMPAIGN IN RUSSIA 


It was extremely hot. The old women were dead tired. Suddenly the 
Soviet fighter planes arrived, pounced on the columns of civilians, and 
machine-gunned them savagely amidst the horrified cries of the women and 
children and the sharp neighing of the horses, their bellies shot full of holes, 
which had fallen among the broken wheels of the hay wagons. 

Burst comforters, food, all the meager possessions of fifty families lay 
scattered about on the sun-baked road. The wretches mopped at their 
sweat. Women, convulsively hugging their babies, were running toward the 
distant steeples on their cut feet. Old men, gathering copper pans and drag¬ 
ging cows that were at the end of their strength, were shaking their heads. 
Where were they going? Where would they meet? Or, rather, where would 
they die? For the same fleeing throngs were spreading from one end of the 
country to the other. The same fighter planes ravaged them. 

After I had made my report at General Wagner’s in a suburb of Dorpat, 
to get back to my command post I had to drive back through these corteges 
of anguish, the sight of which broke my heart. 

Everything in front of me was in flames: the big square farmhouses with 
hundreds of black and white cows, the rich villages, the beautiful white 
castles near the blue lakes, the fine fir-shingled barn roofs, and even the 
cemetery gardens tiered on the hillsides, dignified by cypress groves and 
furnished with rustic benches from which the living had so often peaceably 
watched the fields while thinking of their dead. 

A country was dying. The marvelous August nights were besmirched with 
the great red torches of villages on fire. Cows, pigs, chickens, and geese: all 
were abandoned on the farms and in the pastures. Not a living soul stirred. 
Everyone preferred the exodus and machine-gun fire to Soviet enslavement. 

***** 

I received a third mission—to blow up the railroad from Pskov to 
Dorpat. 

It was yet another skill for me to learn. An intrepid young German officer 
and a handful of resolute engineers had been sent to help me with the job. 
They mined the line every ten meters, and waited for orders then to blow up 
two hundred or five hundred meters of line. 

I wasn’t to sacrifice the rail except as a last resort. The Command at Dor¬ 
pat was still hoping to begin a counteroffensive one day. So I was to wait 
until the last second. But I mustn’t let it slip by, either, lest the Reds seize 
the rail intact. 

The explosions coming one after another were eerie, especially at night. 
In a few days I blew up enough bridges, lines, stations, grade crossings, 
guard rails, and cuttings to be deafened for the rest of my life. 

But we had to gain time. Always this same little sentence coming over the 
telephone wire—gain time. Gain time by sacrificing wealth beyond count¬ 
ing, and alas, counties human lives. 



The Epic of Estonia 


243 


Ten kilometers behind us the population of Dorpat had finished digging 
its great defense belt. It was just about ready. But I was ill at ease when I 
crossed to see the hordes of defenders that were being pushed into these 
long black trenches. Battalions of rural guards, policemen, and the most 
unlikely civilians, militarized by means of a vague yellow arm badge and an 
old French rifle from the time of Napoleon III. 

We were enduring the pressure of enormous Soviet forces. When would 
serious military forces, real divisions, arrive to resist them? 

***** 

The Soviet tanks feared the Paks, which fired with great accuracy. The 
crossroads held out well. 

I was staying more at Kambja, for our men were hard pressed there. We 
held the ridges above the northern road out of the village, where we endured 
the crushing fire of the “Stalin’s organs.” 

But our men were fighters who wouldn’t let themselves be bested. They 
had positioned their machine guns well. Our mortars, perfectly camou¬ 
flaged in the shocks of wheat, did thorough work. 

Morale was very high. I decorated our most valorous wounded right on 
the ground where they fell. Being hit by explosive bullets which blasted 
frightful holes in them still didn’t prevent them from joking and drawing on 
the cigarettes which their buddies put between their lips, outlined in red 
blood. 

These boys were unbeatable. Wherever they were placed, the Soviets 
stopped. I was deeply moved before their simple and smiling bravery, for if 
their remarks were funny, it was out of modesty, to make fun of themselves 
at the very moment they were rising to pure heroism. The Communists had 
to be stopped. They stopped them. They didn’t let them by on 21 August. 
They didn’t let them by on 22 August either. When our soldiers were re¬ 
lieved on 22 August at noon, the Reds hadn’t been able to gain ten meters of 
ground north of Kambja. They had even had to abandon the village, which 
our mortars and the German artillery at my disposition were cutting to 
pieces. 


♦ * * * * 

The hundred and fifty recruits that we had left under instruction near 
Toila arrived at our supply base. I received orders to reinforce what was left 
of my troops with them. We met at Maria-Magdalena. 

Theoretically it would take a week to rebuild the force and integrate the 
new men into the unit. 

We had scarcely left the central sector, however, before the westernmost 
part of the German right wing was attacked. The Soviets reached and cut 



244 


CAMPAIGN IN RUSSIA 


off the highway from Riga to Dorpat. Our anti-tank platoon didn’t even 
have the time to disengage toward Maria-Magdalena. Already I was being 
ordered to hurry to the critical location. That very evening our guns went in¬ 
to battle at the entry to a town which had a strange name, Noo. 

After supper I went to General Wagner’s command post. His eyes were 
horribly bloodshot. He was constantly sending his light tanks to the sec¬ 
ondary roads overrun by the Soviet onslaught. He had no more suitable in¬ 
fantry worth mentioning, but he was flooded with thousands of Estonians 
of every stamp, who were being sent to him by the truckload, bewildered, 
decked out in plumed or wide-crowned hats, armed with hunting rifles and 
pop-guns, all crazy to get away. 

“Grosse Scheisse! Grosse Scheisse!” the General yelled tirelessly. 

“Grosse Scheisse!” his chief of staff punctuated. 

“Grosse Scheisse!” repeated the equally affirmative aide who brought us 
bread and butter. 

I had the very strong impression that my companies weren’t going to 
grow moldy at Maria-Magdalena. 

I wanted to leave that very night for the Riga road in order to visit the 
crews of my anti-tank guns at Noo. But following my citation in the com¬ 
munique, General Wagner had just received a very stern telegram from 
Himmler making him responsible for my life. He used it as an excuse to for¬ 
mally forbid my proposed nocturnal raid. 

I pretended to obey. But what went for the night didn’t necessarily go for 
the day. Politics had taught me the art of hairsplitting, and it wasn’t for 
nothing that I was nephew and great nephew of six Jesuit fathers. 

I returned quietly to Maria-Magdalena. At five o’clock in the morning I 
finished dictating orders for the immediate reorganization of the battalion. 
At six o’clock, freshly shaved, I drove through Dorpat again toward the 
south. 

To do it right I should have gone to General Wagner’s to find out whether 
the situation had changed during the course of the night. But in that case I 
was sure to be the object of a new interdict, so, not risking a visit, I drove 
my little Volkswagen blindly onto the Riga road. 

But something new had happened. At dawn the Reds had seized Noo. 
They were even well beyond. 

I was on a collision course with them without knowing it. 

Lemnasti 

I will remember the morning of 23 August 1944 until I die. 

As soon as I left Dorpat I was struck by the number of trucks which I saw 
speeding toward the town. Soldiers were hanging on to them every which 
way. 

Then I came across some isolated men running frantically. Bullets 



The Epic of Estonia 


245 


whistled by. One of them burst almost at shoulder height right into the 
windshield. 

I jumped down from my Volkswagen and set myself across the road, sub¬ 
machine gun in my hands. I was wearing the Ritterkreuz ribbon around my 
neck. That always made some slight impression. With the help of the threat 
from the machine gun, the first truck stopped. 

The driver, his eyes popping out of his head, screamed at me, “The Rus¬ 
sians are there! The Russians are there!” 

“Where’s there?” I replied. 

“Five hundred meters away! They’re all over the place!” 

Five hundred meters away. In a flash I saw the disaster. Not only had the 
Reds taken Noo, fifteen kilometers southwest of Dorpat, but they were 
coming full gallop right into Dorpat. The defense line had been conquered 
and already overrun. How? I didn’t know, and I didn’t have the time to 
find out. 

I saw only one thing. It was that Dorpat was filled with hundreds of 
retreating trucks, and nothing had been evacuated for the good reason that 
during the night there hadn’t been any fighting yet even ten kilometers from 
the suburbs. In half an hour the muzhiks would enter Dorpat, seize 
everything, make a surprise crossing of the Embach, and succeed in flank¬ 
ing the entire disordered sector. 

I made all the soldiers get down from the first truck and then from two 
trucks which followed. Luckily there was a German junior officer who 
understood French marvelously. I had him translate my orders. “We are 
going to counterattack immediately. There will be Iron Crosses this very 
evening for those who are bravest. The Reds don’t expect us to react so 
soon. It’s the best time to jump them. You’ll see. Everything depends on 
our daring. Forward, comrades!” 

Bringing back by the scruff of the neck some sixty soldiers who five 
minutes earlier had been in rout, I rushed toward the Reds advancing on the 
road banks. 

According to my old habit, I carried twelve cartridge clips, six at the 
waist, six in my boots, about four hundred cartridges. Enough to fire a few 
nice bursts. After fifteen minutes the Soviet troops, who had been strong 
only because they hadn’t met any obstacles, cleared off in front of us, cut to 
pieces. We reached the belt of fortifications where that morning the 
thousands of civilians with arm badges and feathers had abandoned the 
fight in less than a second. Fiercely we dislodged the Reds in the trenches, 
reoccupying the whole western sector of the Dorpat bridgehead in the 
course of our charge. 

But what a situation! Here I was in the half-kilometer of trench that was 
supposed to have held back an enemy attacking by the Riga road, leading an 
improvised defense by accident, commanding disparate groups of Germans 
and Estonians brought together by the shifting currents of panic. 



246 


CAMPAIGN IN RUSSIA 


I immediately catechized several of the more resourceful men and sent 
them to pursue the Reds through the neighboring pastures and copses. 

I found a beautiful big Russian cannon, perfectly placed five meters to 
the right of the route by the German builders of the fall-back positions. It 
ruthlessly dominated the access to the road. Unfortunately—nothing is ever 
perfect on this earth—it didn’t have a single shell. It was comforting to look 
at, but that was all. 

Some distance away I noticed two cannon scurrying away across the 
fields. I rushed my Volkswagen toward them with the order to come back at 
once. They hastened back. They too were making off because everyone else 
was. I put them in battery; they still had twenty-five rounds. It was 
wonderful. 

What was less wonderful was what had happened. That night the Reds 
had infiltrated between Noo and Dorpat. Then, falling back from the 
north, they had taken Noo from the rear and encircled it, sowing a terrify¬ 
ing disorder among the parked convoys. The drivers were sleeping peace¬ 
fully, thinking themselves protected by the first line. The surprise was 
catastrophic. 

The men came fleeing to us across the marshes and the fir woods, escap¬ 
ing from Noo itself. No doubt was possible. The gate was open. 

It was very hard to know exactly the extent of the disaster. The line that 
we had just recaptured plunged into a little valley with a glistening stream at 
the bottom. No one had thought to blow up the bridge at the time of the 
Soviet breakthrough. Now it was too late. The few little farms, the hedges, 
and the copses all around us were occupied by the enemy. To retake this 
valley in hand-to-hand fighting with my incongruous little troop was im¬ 
possible. I would have sent three quarters of my men to their death only to 
lose the entire line one hour later. 

The road cut the countryside in two. Descending in a wide curve, it 
crossed the river on the white arc of the undamaged bridge, climbed back up 
the hill behind the houses, crossed the fields, and entered a forest across 
from us. 

The Soviets had been put on the defensive near the water. I was still hop¬ 
ing that the retreating troops coming from Noo would come out of the 
woods to the southwest. Together we would then have been able to flatten 
the enemy in the valley. But the survivors told us that it would be impossible 
for the forces at Noo to retreat, that the enemy was everywhere. 

We had to warn General Wagner immediately. Did he know? In any case, 
nothing was coming from Dorpat. 

A soldier found a telephone wire. The artillerymen had everything needed 
to hook up an extension. I got the command post, then the general, utterly 
amazed to learn what was going on and that I was there. I knew as he did 
that the fate of Dorpat hinged on my hill. He didn’t have to explain very 
much to me. I promised that, as long as I lived, the Reds wouldn’t get 
through. 



The Epic of Estonia 


247 


I could be overrun, however. The Soviet tanks could arrive from one 
minute to the next. We needed men and tanks quickly and in force. 

“Hold on! Hold on!” General Wagner yelled into the telephone, pouring 
out floods of “Grosse Scheisse! Grosse Scheisse!” more suitable than ever 
to the occasion. 


* * * * * 

I organized my men without delay. 

Finally, with all the runaways I had scooped up, I had a good hundred 
men. I formed them into two platoons which I positioned across the road. 
The left wing was commanded by a young supply officer who had been 
caught in the whirlwind when, without a care in the world, he was strolling 
in the mid-morning to take hundreds of loaves of bread to Noo. He had 
never fired a gun at the front. A German adjutant commanded the right 
wing. 

I sent two patrols fairly far to the east and west to hide in the thickets and 
the hazel woods protecting our flanks. 

I emptied the trucks and appropriated their machine guns and munitions. 
My soldiers had regained their confidence. I went from one to another, en¬ 
couraging them in jargon half-French and half-German. Most of them had 
seen my photo in the newspapers, and they were getting used to the idea that 
the affair was taking an original turn. 

The Reds were machine-gunning us steadily. I planted myself on the 
parapet of the trench so that none of my boys would lose his head. My life 
wasn’t worth two cents there, but there are days when one knows for certain 
that this isn’t the day when one is going to die. This was my case. They 
could shoot as much as they liked, and they would miss me every time. I 
didn’t have a shadow of a doubt. 

I had picked up an Estonian officer. I would have liked to use him to 
command his compatriots scattered among my troops, but he was con¬ 
sumed by panicky fear. He turned green hearing the bullets whistle past, 
and lay down flat against my boots, as stiff as a board. One bullet, instead 
of hitting me in the foot, struck him full in the face, went through him from 
one end to the other, and came out between his buttocks. 

He twisted about like a worm, spat, cried, defecated. It was too late. He 
had digested the bullet too quickly. Ten minutes later he was dead. 

* * * * * 

The Reds were getting more and more reinforcements, arriving from the 
birch groves of the southeast in little groups, six men, seven men, eight men, 
stealing along the river. I had forbidden unnecessary shooting. We had to 
save our ammunition for a close combat about to begin at any time. Sud- 



248 


CAMPAIGN IN RUSSIA 


denly, at eleven o’clock in the morning, I saw something come out of the 
woods in the south. A Panzer! 

I wanted to think that it was a German Panzer escaped from Noo. 

Behind it a second Panzer was coming on. Then another. Soon there were 
eight. Russian? German? We couldn’t tell at that distance. 

We held our breath. The tanks were moving down the hillside. We would 
soon know what to think. If the Soviet infantry massed in the basin fired on 
them it would prove that they were German tanks. 

The tanks reached the first house behind the water. Not a gunshot! They 
were Soviet tanks. 

Chilling seconds! I had only my two miserable cannon. I let the tanks ap¬ 
proach. They were obviously sure of themselves. Only when they were right 
under my nose on the road in full sunlight, and the first Red tank was a few 
meters from the bridge, did I order my two artillery pieces to shoot full into 
the column. 

The lead tank, struck in the first minute, was stopped instantly. The 
others fled across the little farms as dozens of shells fell on them. One of 
them did a gorgeous flip and landed with its gun stuck in the mire. I didn’t 
stop firing down at them until it was clear that the disoriented enemy was 
only looking for refuge. And even then I let fly a last volley of shells onto 
the houses to show that we had ammunition to spare. 

In actual fact, I had exactly twelve of my hundred and twenty projectiles 
still left. I had played the rich man. If solid help didn’t come soon, it looked 
as though we were lost. 


♦ * * * * 

Of course I was receiving reinforcements. At Dorpat, where the news of 
these happenings had the effect of a V-l, the Staff Office was assembling in 
all haste everything that wore a uniform and sending it on to Riga. I in¬ 
herited an apopleptic collection of old veteran majors, supply officers, 
barrack-keepers, cellarers, one-day marchers, service corps. They squeaked 
in their uniforms, dripping with sweat under their loads, dead-tired to have 
done eight kilometers on foot. A throng of bespectacled clerks and orderlies 
scurried around them. For all that, they were all very courageous and very 
worthy, asking only to do their duty. In spite of this, I couldn’t very well 
imagine these specialists in paper-pushing stopping the six tanks growling 
across from us. 

Thanks to these recruits I strengthened by flanks. I sent them to occupy 
the most distant line possible so as to avoid being taken from behind by the 
Soviet infantry. 

I harried General Wagner on the telephone. 

“Panzers and Stukas, for God’s sake!” 

“We’re doing all we can to help you, but we need time. Hold on! Hold 
on!” he yelled back at me. 



The Epic of Estonia 


249 


Of course we'd hold on. 

But when the twelve last shells had been fired, what would happen then? 

It was 12:30.1 had been standing on the parapet for five hours, marching 
back and forth, encouraging my Germans and Estonians. I stared at the 
several little farms in the valley. The Reds had had more than an hour, 
enough time to notice that we couldn’t be very strong. 

A Soviet tank emerged near the first farm, carrying about twenty 
soldiers. The other five tanks followed. I had just time to shout over the 
telephone to General Wagner, “That’s it! The Russian tanks are coming!’’ 
There they were. They crossed the bridge at full speed and climbed the 
hillside. At thirty meters from us the enemy infantry jumped to the ground. 
It was the final assault. 

There was nothing left to do but to fire all the ammunition we had left, 
then die. Just as my last shells were bursting, a fearful roar shook the sky. 
German Stukas suddenly appeared. Forty Stukas! Forty dived screaming 
toward the earth. Everything flew up into the air. We were thrown in all 
directions, for the enemy tanks were upon us, and the Stukas were bom¬ 
barding the pack like demons. Three Soviet tanks went up in flames. The 
others took off, climbed back up the opposite slope, and fled into the 
woods. Those of our machine guns which had escaped the hurricane mowed 
down the routed Soviet infantry. We yelled like crazy men. We had won the 
match. 


* * * * * 

German panzers, enormous Tigers, arrived in their turn. During the even¬ 
ing the flower of all the sections was there. A German colonel relieved me. I 
was called to General Wagner’s command post. We had had a narrow 
escape. The generals, right to the top of the ranks, had breathlessly fol¬ 
lowed our duel, upon which the fate of Dorpat, the Embach, and Estonia 
depended. 

At midnight a telegram from the Fuehrer’s Main Headquarters an¬ 
nounced that Hitler was awarding me the Oak Leaves. 

Thus ended a casual drive on the highway from Estonia to Latvia on 23 
August 1944. 

The Embach 

What had become of our three anti-tank weapons and the Wallonia pla¬ 
toon which operated them in the set-to at Noo? We presumed those boys 
and those tanks lost. A lone survivor had reached us on the barrier at Lem- 
nasti, having bolted in the middle of a horrifying hand-to-hand battle. 

Nevertheless, our men had not been overwhelmed. They had good 
machine guns and were redoubtable with their three anti-tank guns at point- 



250 


CAMPAIGN IN RUSSIA 


blank range. At dawn on the 24th Lieutenant Gillis, who commanded them, 
let me know that his men and his cannons had broken the Soviet encircle¬ 
ment and that they were in position before the River Embach at the west of 
Dorpat. 

They were very proud of their exploit and were only awaiting the oppor¬ 
tunity to accomplish another. They were quickly gratified. At four o’clock 
in the afternoon, ten of the heaviest-tonnage Soviet tanks, ten Joseph 
Stalins, went for them. Such tanks were almost invulnerable. Gillis, old fox 
of the Russian front, let them approach to within twenty meters. His can¬ 
non were well camouflaged. The Soviets thought themselves already 
masters of the Embach passage. When they were almost iron against iron, 
our three weapons fired. 

It was a savagely violent combat. The Russian tanks pounded our combat 
groups. One of our anti-tank guns was blown-up. Then the second blew up 
amidst the mangled corpses of our men. Lieutenant Gillis was grievously 
burned. But he kept shouting orders. Clinging to the last weapon, the sur¬ 
vivors fired, enraged, determined to sell dearly the few lives still remaining. 

Tanks don’t like prolonged shoot-outs with anti-tank guns. Two Joseph 
Stalins caught fire, a great loss for the enemy. The other tanks broke off the 
combat and headed westward. We didn’t have a single cannon left. Most of 
the operators were on the ground, killed or wounded. But our honor was in¬ 
tact. The Soviet panzers hadn’t conquered. 

When Gillis came out of the hospital several months later, his eyes 
shielded by huge black glasses, he was wearing round his neck the Knight’s 
Cross, which Hitler had awarded him for his exploit. 

# # * # * 

As far as thirty kilometers to the north of Dorpat, life had become infer¬ 
nal. The Soviet Air Force, non-existent in earlier days, was now master of 
the skies. They had American planes in abundance. Their squadrons 
swarmed through the country like wasps, swarming ferociously over every 
road. Everywhere there was nothing but fires, the wreckage of munitions or 
gas trucks, and miserable peasants’ wagons smashed amid horses swollen 
like balloons. 

The smallest village would be attacked ten times a day. Even far from the 
roads in our modest town of Maria-Magdalena, we spent more time flat on 
the ground than standing. The planes swooped acrobatically around the 
steeple, diving like arrows shot from the sky, loosing bursts of incendiary 
bullets, then climbing vertically back up, as quick as swallows in a 
marvelous holiday sun. 

We could tell where the villages were for a radius of twenty kilometers 
just by watching the enormous gray and black columns rising straight up 
against the blue sky. We were so harrassed and there were so many obstacles 



The Epic of Estonia 


251 


that movement was practically impossible. We had to cross sheets of flame. 
Hundreds of shells obstructed the road around the riddled and reddening 
trucks. 

With difficulty I reached General Wagner’s command post. His staff 
trucks were camouflaged in a fir grove behind Dorpat. I realized that the 
situation was going from bad to worse, for the “Grosse Scheisse! Grosse 
Scheisse!” were falling like piles of dishes. 

I was quickly brought up to date. The Soviet tank attack that had been 
broken in the afternoon by the epic resistance of our anti-tank platoon had 
resumed four kilometers farther west. There was an important bridge there 
on the Embach, guarded by more than a thousand Estonians. Two columns 
of Joseph Stalin tanks had suddenly appeared. The thousand men fled 
without even destroying the bridge. The enemy tanks had crossed the river. 
At seven o’clock in the evening they were already occupying a crossroads 
five hundred meters north of the Embach. Two Soviet infantry battalions 
followed them, and from then on formed a protective square around them. 

I was ordered to restore the situation. I was supposed to reach the 
crossroads by night, supported by several German tanks, send my men to 
the bridge, and blow it up. 

“The bridge must be blown up! Understand? Blown up!” 

“Grosse Scheisse! Grosse Scheisse! Grosse Scheisse!” repeated General 
Wagner in a monologue, his eyes redder than ever. 

* * * * * 

It was easier said than done. I had to return to Maria-Magdalena, alert 
the battalion, in the midst of its second day of reorganization, and load it 
onto trucks (which had been promised for ten o’clock in the evening). Only 
then could our column leave for the west. It would be hard to make contact 
with the enemy before midnight or one o’clock in the morning. Where 
would the Reds be then? 

Some time before dusk two battalions and about fifteen Soviet tanks had 
reached an essential crossroads five hundred meters beyond the Embach. 
That was absolutely all we knew. 

The topographic map of the region made it easy to imagine what fol¬ 
lowed, however. A road ran through a fir forest in our direction for ten 
kilometers and through several towns. From seven o’clock in the evening 
until midnight, the enemy would certainly have improved his position by 
boldly seizing these woods and the villages and towns, which could serve as 
a defensive line if need be. It was essential for them to conquer this safety 
zone as early as possible, so as to allow the passage of men and heavy equip¬ 
ment en masse during the whole night. 

I chanced a question to General Wagner. “Has anyone done anything yet 
to stop the Reds? Are there friendly forces which are preventing them from 



252 


CAMPAIGN IN RUSSIA 


enlarging their bridgehead toward the forest?” The only answer I got was a 
new flood of “Grosse Scheisse!” The breach was a gaping hole. The Reds 
were doubtless not wasting any time back there in the great fir forests. 

* * * * * 

At nine o’clock in the evening our battalion was reunited. Many of its 
men were rookies, but they had a fierce desire to join the fray. The veterans 
passed the sacred fire of inspiration to the new men. That night morale was 
particularly electric. 

I had a rather special way of starting a combat, which dumbfounded the 
Germans who accompanied us to operate the radio and maintain liaison. 
First of all I held a meeting. Our men massed on the plain. The day was dy¬ 
ing, but everywhere the flames from the burning villages rose like huge red 
gladioli against the sky. From the top of the bank I exhorted my comrades 
to be worthy of our old Legion. “The Russkies are going to see what a 
Walloon counterattack looks like.” 

Once again we were about to charge into a hand-to-hand battle. This time 
it would be in the middle of the night, across rolling countryside we knew 
nothing about, in darkness in which you couldn’t see a thing. The column 
of trucks started off, and we saw immediately that it wouldn’t be an easy 
job. 

The Night of Noela 

An attack is never an easy operation. While our trucks rolled westward to 
the village of Noela, I tried to lay out my battle plan. I was in absolute ig¬ 
norance of what had happened since the end of the day. Where was the 
enemy poking about? What was his strength now? Total mystery. 

The Soviet Air Force interrupted my reflections. It dropped a string of 
luminescent parachutes all along the road dotted with our big trucks. It was 
light as day. We had ten seconds at the very most to throw ourselves flat on 
our bellies in the fields. Hundreds of bombs fell, wounding men, damaging 
vehicles. Clearly, our movement had been discovered. 

We saw identical parachutes swaying over the whole region. Explosions 
shook the countryside. Villages burned, outlining the roof beams against 
dancing backgrounds of red and gold. 

By eleven o’clock in the evening we met the half-dozen German tanks 
which were to sustain our assault at a fork in the road. I also found an aide- 
de-camp there, very short of breath, whom I had sent to reconnoiter the ter¬ 
rain. He had come upon the Soviets, who had already progressed more than 
ten kilometers beyond the Embach bridge. They had come clear through the 
great fir forest and occupied the three villages along the way. Their tanks, 
very numerous, were moving by night. They had appeared without warning 



The Epic of Estonia 


253 


in the village of Noela, right in front of us. The only thing still holding back 
the drive was the presence of mind of the operators of an anti-aircraft bat¬ 
tery on the road exiting the village, who had immediately lowered their guns 
and fired on the tanks. 

I had a very advanced radio truck. Telegraphing this remarkable news to 
the staff office of the Kampfgruppe, I received shortly afterwards the in¬ 
evitable response, “Attack! Attack immediately!” 

My four companies, each sixty men strong, positioned themselves at the 
entrance of the village. I explained to my officers the immediate objectives. 
First of all we had to retake Noela. Then we would have to take the road 
which lead to the second village. This route entered right into the forest. 
The officers would set the tone and lead the charge at the head of the men. 
It had to be done quickly. 

We attacked. 

It was one o’clock in the morning. Backed up by our six Panzers, our men 
bowled over the first enemy contingents. The Reds’ tanks fell back, not 
really knowing the strength of the counterattack. With their usual speed our 
companies thrust into Noela, seizing the houses with a grenade attack and 
taking numerous prisoners. 

They were gargoyles with gerbil heads, mostly sixteen years old, ex¬ 
hausted by their marches and the lack of sleep. They had come from Pskov 
on foot, crossing two hundred kilometers in four days, struck with the com¬ 
missars’ rifle butts as soon as they slowed their steps. They looked vicious. 
Most were wearing motley German army raincoats. They had slyly put them 
on to mislead the soldiers of the Reich. The treachery was flagrant, but they 
were youngsters and very much afraid. I told them to sleep. They dropped 
like puppies in a heap. 

Our Panzers hammered the enemy tanks hard. Several of them went up in 
flames. The others took off at top speed. We had to make the most of the 
confusion. I gave the order to move on to the second phase of the combat, 
to capture the forest road. 

The Red infantry had a firm hold on the edge of the woods. It was 
frightfully dark. We could just discern the machine guns which were spit¬ 
ting their silver and pink jets from all the thickets. 

Shouting, our soldiers charged the enemy. One of my junior lieutenants, 
a platoon leader whom I had reprimanded the day before, had replied to 
me, “I swear to you I’ll make that up.” He was a giant with a brick-red 
complexion, downy hair, and big blue eyes. He rushed forward like a 
meteor, broke through everything, and swooped down like a conqueror on¬ 
to a Soviet machine gun in the blackness. But he was riddled like a sieve, hit 
in the arm, the chest, and in the legs. He had kept his word and opened the 
breach through which his men now poured. Groping, I fastened the Iron 
Cross to his jacket, all sticky with blood. 

The Reds were fleeing. Our men advanced on the run on both sides of the 



254 


CAMPAIGN IN RUSSIA 


road. Our tanks, assured of their flanks, cleared the road for a long way. At 
three o’clock in the morning we reached the second town, swept through it, 
and dislodged its defenders. 

We had retaken two villages out of the three and captured half the terrain 
from the Soviets. Five kilometers more of effort, one village more to occupy 
with submachine gun and grenade, and we could attack the bridge. 

It could just be done if we exploited our success promptly, but it would 
require at least five hundred men. I had already lost eighty in two hours. I 
had scarcely more than a hundred and fifty left. Twenty Panzers would also 
be required. I had had six to begin with. One of them had blown up during 
the scuffle at Noela, and we were coming to bigger obstacles. 

This nocturnal combat had succeeded only because the enemy, who had 
arrived after a long exertion, had been repulsed in the course of the charge. 

Although we were only a handful, .we might nevertheless have attained 
the objective which had been originally set. Our goal, in effect, was not to 
annihilate the enemy. It was to pass through it and get to the bridge, if only 
with twenty men, if only with ten men. At this point each of our platoons 
was to make the attempt by itself, no matter what happened to the others. I 
gave them the mines necessary for the demolition. 

We knew perfectly well that we were being sacrificed in this task. We were 
ready. There were ten times more volunteers among us than were necessary 
for the final bold stroke. The fury of battle, the darkness, the effect of sur¬ 
prise, or the enemy’s panic could somehow bring us through. 

Unfortunately we got temporarily stuck on the way out of the village. 
Several Soviet anti-tank guns were posted there. They blasted us. We had to 
wage a determined hand-to-hand battle at the threshold of the fir forest 
with its thousand booby traps. Half our officers fell. The others brought up 
the troops for one more go. For half an hour, it was a dramatic free-for- all. 
The Soviet tanks loomed up everywhere. A second German tank exploded. 
The German Command had become very miserly with its equipment. The 
Panzer commanders had orders to be cautious. To succeed here now we had 
to be ready to risk and probably lose the four tanks that we still had left. 
Only then could a few of our men perhaps succeed in getting to the bridge 
and blowing it up. 

We saw with consternation the four German tanks retreating, still firing. 
Our dead were strewn everywhere on the road, our wounded dragged 
themselves along without a whimper. 

The Reds, seeing the retreat of our tanks, took heart again. After the 
child-soldiers of a while ago, we now had to face a special battalion of con¬ 
victed murderers, death-dealing giants with shaven heads. 

Nevertheless, our boys, obstinate as mules, wouldn’t have folded before 
the likes of those. But the Soviet tanks roared up, their savage cadence 
thundering in the air. Again they entered, fifteen of them, the burning 
village. 



The Epic of Estonia 


255 


The German tanks gave no reply. They paused not at all as they left the 
village. They hastened toward Noela, wanting to get off the long and 
perilous road carved between the firs as soon as possible. Already the 
predawn glow was beginning to whiten the firebreaks. 

Our soldiers, whom the enemy tanks had overrun by a long way, had the 
greatest difficulty in getting back through three kilometers of pine woods to 
the village from which our assault had started. The four German tanks 
panted there, doing all they could to contain the thrust of the Red tanks. 
Near them I built a makeshift blockade. 

We had failed. I had only a hundred and ten men left. Our four German 
tanks constituted our only heavy force. I questioned prisoners from diverse 
enemy battalions. They eagerly reported that more than thirty Soviet tanks 
had crossed the River Embach dining the night. 

Some fifteen of them blew up the houses beside which we were fighting 
one by one, as if they were playing skittles. 

Thirty-Two 

The day of 25 August 1944 was the most dramatic of the battle for Dor- 
pat. It was only four-thirty in the morning. Despite our noctural counter¬ 
attack, the men and the equipment of the Soviets had won. They were now 
meting furious battering-ram blows ten kilometers north of the Embach. 
Dorpat lay on the southern bank of the river. 

Everything pointed to unusual difficulties. How were we, a hundred men 
on our improvised Noela line, going to resist? And even if we resisted, 
wouldn’t we be outfl ank ed? Other roads emerged from the forest, far to 
our right. 

I sent radio messages signaling our critical situation to General Wagner. 
No response, and for good reason. The Soviets had just crossed the Embach 
again, to the east of the sector this time. At nine o’clock in the morning 
Dorpat, the center of resistance, had been taken in a flash by the Soviets. 
The Reds charged without stopping to the other side of the river. 

We ourselves were plunged into a fray so brutal that we almost didn’t 
have time to think of the rest of the front. My command post blew up twice 
in two hours. I got out of it with nothing more serious than plaster 
showered on my helmet, but my radio equipment was demolished. My car 
was useless, all four tires riddled with punctures. 

I set myself up in a field, no longer able to direct the remnant of my com¬ 
pany except by means of messengers who scuttled along the length of the 
hedges and firs. 

I saw my poor boys go past one after another, wounded, maimed, 
covered with blood, but smiling nevertheless. The Dorpat-Reval road 
unrolled behind us. They dragged themselves there and climbed onto the 
trucks which were fleeing by hundreds in gray whirlwinds. 



256 


CAMPAIGN IN RUSSIA 


Each company formed a cheval-de-frise* to brake the progress of the 
Reds. They worked like demons, dragging the anti-tank guns through the 
firs by hand to install them in our rear. 

The essential for us was to block the main routes. An army doesn’t haul 
its heavy equipment through pine woods and ravines. Only two Soviet tanks 
were able to get by. They came out like elephants to our left, twenty meters 
away. We let them go without getting too upset, content to isolate them. 
After cutting off the road from Dorpat for a little while, they were finally 
destroyed. 

Afternoon came. We were still fighting all along the ridge controlling the 
road out of Noela, backs against the Dorpat-Reval road. A messenger 
brought me an urgent order to report to General Wagner’s command post. 

The spectacle that I found a kilometer behind our positions was 
apocalyptic. As far as the eye could see there was the most horrible panic. 
All the Estonian soldiers were fleeing along the sandy roads. Thousands of 
men had taken off their shoes and were milling about. Thousands of 
peasants’ carts were mingled among the trucks. The road was on fire 
everywhere. The women were crying and beating their cows, who could go 
no further, with sticks. The roadside was strewn with ammunition bags, 
bundles, zinc pans, tubs, dead sheep, bird cages. Through this jumble the 
haggard human river—civilians, soldiers, Estonians—flowed screaming 
toward Reval. 

Army Corps generals bustled about like young company commanders to 
regroup the last German contingents still able to offer resistance. 

At General Wagner’s, a new dousing was waiting for me. In addition to 
the resistance of Noela, I was instantly to organize a Parna-Lombi-Keerdu 
line on the plateau of Dorpat. The Soviets from the west and those from the 
east were trying to link up. Everyone found at the depot was to be put into 
action on this plateau that very evening. 

I had no one left but the walking wounded and the office personnel. We 
rushed to Maria-Magdalena along beautiful blue lakes sparkling with all the 
fires of the summer, insensible to the rout spreading alongside. I wanted 
only volunteers. All our brave old comrades of the administrative services 
came forward. For that matter, what use was there for an administration at 
the moment? The accountants closed their ledgers. Legionnaires more than 
sixty years old, who had been cutting sausages and counting loaves of bread 
since 1941, left their cleavers and their books to take up panzerfausts. 

Their quiet coinage brought tears to my eyes. All our wounded who still 
could walk lined up in front of the rectory. Of the only two officers left to 
me, one had had his arm shot through by a bullet, the other had been hit by 
a grenade in the chest. But both stepped to the first row of this heroic little 
troop. 

There were sixty in all. I led them away. Two hours later they were in con¬ 
tact with the Soviets, hastily digging fox holes, hiding themselves behind 
haystacks. Night was almost here. They were ready. 



The Epic of Estonia 


257 


In the afternoon everything foretold a quick and total collapse on the 
ridge of Noela. After enlisting our wounded, our quartermaster-sergeants, 
and our accountants, I rushed in all haste to the hill where we had had such 
a terrible morning. My soldiers of the line, frightfully decimated, were still 
holding on. 

Darkness came. Our barrier remained unshakable. In the meantime the 
Command had been able to send fresh troops to our two wings. From Reval 
everything that the capital of Estonia held in the way of German com¬ 
batants rushed up in trucks. 

In the night the situation incontestably improved. The Soviets themselves 
seemed exhausted. Certainly there was no longer any question of our mak¬ 
ing it to the famous bridge of the Embach, but a catastrophe had been 
averted. 

The struggle had cost everyone dearly, the Reds who had been mowed 
down in heaps, the Germans, and our soldiers, who had contained the 
enemy only by letting themselves be mauled for more than twenty hours. 

* * * # * 

What was left of my four companies at Noela clung on for eight days and 
nights atop this hillside. At last only thirty-two men remained, thirty-two 
men out of the two hundred sixty whom at one o’clock in the morning on 25 
August I had dragged to the assault through the treacherous night. 

It was impossible for the positions of the machine-gunners and riflemen 
to be overrun during the day. They had faces the color of earth, bristling 
with hair as hard as darts. They were dug into holes full of hay gleaned from 
neighboring haystacks during the darkness; one might have said nests 
peopled with frightening nocturnal birds. 

The general commanding the Army Corps, amazed at their exploits, 
awarded them all, en masse—a gesture almost unique at the front—the Iron 
Cross. 

Crawling all along the ridge, I carried it to them one rainy night. I slipped 
into each hole. The man would be on watch, shivering in the wet straw. The 
Reds were ten meters away. I fastened the ribbon and the cross. I kissed the 
bristly cheeks. They would whisper in my ear that they would hold on as 
long as necessary, that I didn’t have to worry, that the Reds wouldn’t get 
past. 

Ten kilometers away the other crippled company of wounded, old cooks, 
supply clerks, and accountants, down to the strength of a little platoon, 
kept watch with the same faith and with the radiant eyes of men who have 
conquered others but who, above all, have conquered themselves. 



258 


CAMPAIGN IN RUSSIA 


Rommel and Montgomery 

At the end of a hard battle, generally, the one who will win and the one 
who will lose are both close to falling on their knees. He wins then who 
clenches his teeth with the greatest energy, who strains his nerves in a last 
effort. 

It was thus on the plateau of Dorpat in the last days of August 1944. The 
Bolsheviks had taken the village; they had crossed the Embach; they had oc¬ 
cupied an area some ten kilometers deep to the north of this river. But this 
wasn’t the objective of their campaign. Their goal—their propaganda tracts 
had proclaimed it often enough—was to storm into Reval, to skirt the front 
of Narva, to throw the German armies unceremoniously into the sea or to 
force them to surrender. During the day of 25 August 1944 all this had been 
possible. The Estonian troops had given ground and scattered in a 
memorable stampede. The Soviet tanks swarmed. Thousands of Red 
soldiers were climbing the hills, reaching the communications centers. They 
were winning by a long chalk. 

Nevertheless, in fact, they lost—because they were blocked. They had to 
deal with an incomparable German Command, absolute master of itself, 
never making a move in haste, never flagging for an instant, despite its 
meager resources. 

At the headquarters of General Wagner no one had slept for a week. The 
staff trucks were ranged under the the firs. The enemy was half a kilometer 
away. Volleys of rockets from the “Stalin’s organs” were falling 
everywhere around the command post. 

The trucks stayed. 

The general stayed. 

And finally victory stayed, in the hands of the most intelligent and the 
most tenacious. 


a|t >|c ft ft ft 

The German forces were numerically weak, but of a very high quality. 
The infantry units, now skeletal, were scattered like us and, like us, exposed 
to brutish assaults. Admirably operated heavy equipment seconded us. 

Panzers and armored reconnaissance cars had been in combat day and 
night throughout the whole week, racing eastward, returning to the north¬ 
west, in contact ceaselessly in little groups of four or six against fifteen or 
twenty adversaries. 

Half of the German armored equipment had been destroyed or put out of 
action by rolling from peak to valley. But the other half didn’t leave an in¬ 
stant’s respite to the less prudent, less skillful adversary, whose losses had 
been enormous. The battlefield of Dorpat was littered with the blackened 
carcasses of Soviet tanks. The enemy’s armored units were completely scat¬ 
tered and disorganized. That counted for a lot in the defeat of the Soviets. 



The Epic of Estonia 


259 


Our dauntless men still hadn’t had enough. They loved jumping onto the 
German tanks, slicing their way through the Soviet positions, and wiping 
them all out with grenades. 

The cautious crews of the Reich’s Panzers and the dynamic Walloon in¬ 
fantrymen shared a great comradeship: the Germans all knew that the 
Walloons were the most ardent volunteers on the Eastern front. They made 
themselves understood to one another with droll mimicry, held long discus¬ 
sions about girls and rogues. They jabbered fluently, using an improbably 
Russo-Germanic Volapuek,* the new Esperanto of the Eastern front. 

Each combat reinforced this fraternal amity. 

***** 

While every kilometer of the Dorpat front was holding out, fairly con¬ 
siderable German forces had been able to come down from the north. 

We had to hold out for another week. Then the counteroffensive was 
ready and passed us by. Fresh troops knifed through the Soviets, pushing 
them back within a few days to the River Embach. They drove the Soviet 
bands back across the water in full flight. Despite their initial success, the 
Reds had well and truly lost the battle of Dorpat. 

Later the Germans evacuated Estonia on the order of Hitler, who wanted 
to regroup his overly dispersed forces. But they retreated at their leisure, 
taking a month to re-embark divisions and heavy weapons destined for the 
Reich front and the Lithuanian front. 

The Kampfgruppe Wagner gave way to new units. It had fulfilled its mis¬ 
sion gloriously, saving Estonia at a moment when its sudden fall—with an 
attendant capitulation of troops and loss of equipment—would have been 
an overwhelming reverse for the German Army. 

There wasn’t much left, alas, of our heroic companies of the beginning of 
August. Looking for the last time at the Dorpat plateau, the low firs, the 
fields turning gray, the still-smoking town with its broken spires, I saw only 
a handful of comrades still at my side. I had lost eighty percent of my 
soldiers in killed and in wounded evacuated to the hospitals, without even 
speaking of the numerous superficially wounded who had refused to be 
taken to the rear. In fact, in a few weeks ninety-six percent of our men had 
been hit by enemy fire. 

Their courage had covered our name with honor. Colonel-General 
Steiner, who during these epic weeks had cited them three times in the order 
of the day of the Army Corps, had awarded them almost two hundred Iron 
Crosses. He wanted to decorate the troops himself. He ended his speech 
with this solemn declaration: “A Walloon is worth a thousand other 
soldiers.” It was a bit overstated. But for four hundred and fifty men, our 
volunteers had done a mighty work. 

They didn’t pride themselves on it. They had only done what the 



260 


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Walloons on the Donets, at Kharkov, on the Don, in the Caucasus, in the 
Crimea, and at Cherkassy had done. 

Already forgetting their suffering and their glory, they were playing 
pranks like children, asking General Steiner if he knew the names of the two 
last soldiers that he had just decorated. One was named Rommel. The 
forebears of the German marshal had originated in our great Low Coun¬ 
tries. Their monument, bearing their arms of the Lion of Flanders, is still at 
Bruges. The other one was named Montgomery, like the English marshal. 
They were the two celebrities of the hour in the Legion, Rommel and Mont¬ 
gomery, Walloon volunteers, receiving the Iron Cross Second Gass side by 
side at the Eastern front. 


***** 

Our soldiers went back down toward Reval. The newspapers of Estonia 
were full of their exploits. They were loaded down with bottles of cham¬ 
pagne, which they happily drank on the boat as they sailed back to the 
Reich. 

Hitler summoned me to receive the Oak Leaves from his hands, as well as 
the gold Insignia of Gose Combat, the highest infantry honor, accorded to 
holders of fifty hand-to-hand combat accreditations. 

I took off in a little Fieseler Storch near Toila. I saw—final adieu—the 
white cliffs and the pale blue waters of the Gulf of Finland shining in the 
dawn. The sad and infinite pine woods, the silver flames of the birch groves, 
the broom thickets, the great menhirs, the cabins lost in the green and russet 
landscape, and the wooden shingles of a few solitary farms slipped away 
under the tiny plane. Sometimes a big brown spot and a metallic carcass 
recalled the tormenting presence of the enemy fighters. The airplane flew 
low, hopping across the little hills like a hare. 

Then it was Riga, the Fuehrer’s plane, the curve around the coasts of a 
Lithuania almost entirely occupied by the Soviets, and finally, the airport of 
the Main Headquarters. 

Back there, at the far end of the Baltic countries, our dead remained, to 
bear eternal witness that in the tragic, life-and-death struggle for Europe the 
sons of our people had done their duty, asking nothing and expecting 
nothing. 

We had no land to win, no material interests to assure back there. We 
were misunderstood by many, but resolute and happy. We knew that a pure 
and burning ideal is a marvelous good, for which a young man with a strong 
heart should know how to yearn, to struggle, and to die. 


Chapter Eight 

THE SAFETY VALVE 
OF THE ARDENNES 


In August and September 1944, while the battle for Estonia was raging, 
the entire Western front had crumbled. At our little field posts we listened 
to the radio bulletins: Battle of the Seine; the capture of Paris; the drive of 
the American tanks toward the Somme and Reims. Then Belgium had been 
hit: Toumai, Mons, Brussels. Every one of our soldiers thought of his 
home. What had become of our families back there? 

Then Liege was overrun. When I came before the Fuehrer the Allies were 
massing in Holland, in Alsace-Lorraine, and before Aachen. I found 
everybody expansive nevertheless. Himmler made jokes at the table, and 
during the ten minutes precisely which it took him to eat a spartan dinner 
and a few pretzels, washed down with a glass of water in one gulp, he con¬ 
cerned himself with three dozen points of detail. 

The Fuehrer’s lieutenant, Martin Bormann, round, plump, and pasty- 
faced, debated noisily with General Sepp Dietrich of the SS, who had ar 
rived in a glider from the Western front. His legs set wide apart, his face red 
as a turnip, Sepp expatiated at length on the strength of the Anglo- 
American air force and on the ravages of the Tieffliegers. * But he wasn’t 
especially worried. He gave everyone great thumps on the back, drank 
cognac with every breath, and went back to his room at five o’clock in the 
morning, vigorously supported by four giants of the guard. 

Himmler was preparing some twenty new divisions of Waffen SS. He 
gave me the command of the Wallonia Division—the 28th SS Divi¬ 
sion—which would include, besides our shock brigade, thousands of Rex- 
ists who had fled the Allied occupation and were wandering around the 
Reich. 

In general, Hitler’s entourage agreed that the withdrawal in the West had 
been hard. A counterstroke was being prepared in secrecy and silence. 

That evening Himmler withdrew to do his interminable nocturnal work 
and receive the fifteen or twenty persons who waited—sometimes until 
morning—their turn for an audience. Then the superior officers conversed 
with me in low voices about the surprises in store from the new weapons. 




262 


CAMPAIGN IN RUSSIA 


They stuck to affirmations like, “Two or three months from now, Germany 
will strike a great blow.” The atmosphere was one of faith. 

* * * * * 

I was particularly surprised to see how Hitler had regained new vigor in 
six months. His step was calm and assured, his features rested and 
astonishingly young. Since the war he had grayed a lot, and his back had 
become bent. But everything about him radiated life, a moderate and 
disciplined life. 

He decorated me. Then he guided me toward a little round table. He gave 
the impression that no sharp or urgent worry agitated him. Not a disillu¬ 
sioned word led one to infer that he had the slightest doubt in the world of a 
final rectification. He quickly left military considerations and passed to the 
question of bourgeois liberalism. With a marvelous lucidity he explained to 
me why its fall was inevitable. 

His eyes shone with good humor. He threw himself with passion into a 
debate on the future of socialism. His face, admirably cared for, quivered. 
He made simple but ardent gestures with his slender and perfect hands, 
lively companions to the orator. 

This discussion gave me confidence. If Hitler was haunted by social prob¬ 
lems to the point that he lived them and expounded on them with such clar¬ 
ity for an entire hour of the afternoon, it was because he had serious 
assurances about everything else. Nevertheless, that week Churchill’s air¬ 
borne divisions tried to set foot in Holland near Arnhem. 

Just as he was leaving, as if he wanted to engrave a more personal remem¬ 
brance forever in my heart, Hitler came back and took my hand in both of 
his. “If I had a son,” he said to me slowly and affectionately, “I would 
want him to be like you. ” I looked into his clear eyes, so sensitive, with their 
simple and radiant flame. He went away under the firs by a road strewn 
with twigs. I looked after him for a long time. 

Coup de theatre 

In the flat and muddy villages of Hanover, thousands of Belgian refugees 
who had fled before the Anglo-American tanks had been installed after a 
fashion. I had seen to it that my new division did its training in this province 
of the Reich so that each of my soldiers could give, besides his service, a 
maximum of comfort to his family in exile. 

Suddenly there was a sensational development. I had just spoken to the 
final session of the Congress of the European Press at Vienna. A week 
earlier I had met lengthily with the foreign minister, von Ribbentrop, who, 
particularly cordial, had confided to me in a mysterious tone, “Remember 
well what I say to you. Never have we been so close to victory.” 


The Safety Valve of the Ardennes 


263 


I thought he was joking. There was nothing at all that would lead one to 
expect an imminent change in the situation. I remembered, certainly, what I 
had been told in the entourage of the Fuehrer two months earlier. But 
winter was here. It was snowing. What new development was likely? 

On my return from Vienna I put up at the Hotel Adlon at Berlin. That 
evening I ran across a high official from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. He 
was radiant. 

“You don’t know?” he said to me. “We’re right in the midst of an 
offensive.” 

“Offensive? An offensive where?” 

“Why, at your home! In Belgium! Our troops are already in the middle 
of the Ardennes.” 


# * * ♦ * 

The next day the centers of Berlin officialdom were in an extraordinary 
effervescence. Unbelievable details were being given out: Liege had fallen. 
Eight thousand new German planes were attacking. 

I was brought a telegram from Himmler. It was an order to leave for 
Belgium with my division that very instant. We passed under the tactical 
command of Marshal Model, who directed the offensive, and of General 
Sepp Dietrich of the Waffen SS, who commanded an army group. 

It was officially forbidden to send us into combat on our own territory. 
We were going in order to avoid the errors of the German occupation of 
1940-44. Flemings and Walloons would have the task of reorganizing 
Belgium. 

My car rolled all night. In the morning trucks from Hanover loaded a 
first contigent of soldiers, who were to accompany me immediately toward 
the frontier. The rest of the division would follow in express trains. 

Our refugees rushed to their doorsteps, crying with happiness at the 
thought of returning to their country soon. Poor people! What condition 
they would find it in six months later! 

At dawn we rode through Cologne. 

Christmas in Belgium 

In the month of December 1944, there was nothing left of Cologne but a 
field of ruins. I met Gauleiter Grohe inside a bunker on the outskirts of 
town in a park where trees had been ravaged and hacked into a thousand 
pieces. The optimism in these undergrounds was less lively than at Berlin in 
the Wilhelmstrasse. 

“The Anglo-Americans? Why, they’re thirty-two kilometers away!” 

And it was exactly so. The Allied pocket of Aachen extended to a few 
kilometers west of the Rhine. The Gauleiter stuck to reality. Another thrust 



264 


CAMPAIGN IN RUSSIA 


in his sector, and the Yankee tanks could very well be in front of his little 
concrete staircase that same day. 

Everyone thinks the threshold of his doorway is the threshold of the 
whole world. Nevertheless, if the Allied jeeps were thirty minutes to the 
northwest of Cologne Cathedral on 4 December 1944, the Americans and 
British were also sweeping in from the west and southwestern Rhineland in 
the direction of the Meuse and the Semois rivers. 

The Gauleiter told us where Sepp Dietrich’s command post was to be 
found, almost at the edge of the Belgian frontier. Our hearts thumping, we 
began our march. We had only brief glimpses of the sun. We could hear the 
purring motors of the British Tiefflieger, but, sheltered by the overcast sky, 
we made good time toward the southwest. 

We approached the Eifel hills. The route glided through a ravishingly 
beautiful valley. The towns along the stream with their old houses, their 
medieval walls, their massive gates and watchtowers were still relatively in¬ 
tact. The little public squares, squeezed between the corbelled cottages 
displaying signs with long gilded scrolls, were dignified by town halls with 
thick arcades of bold hewn stone. 

In the hollows of the valleys shone violet slate roofs and blue clock 
towers. The snow was clean and shining in the fields. Every hill dominating 
the road was topped with powerful anti-aircraft batteries. We were 
favorably impressed. The columns of trucks advanced without trouble. 

At four o’clock in the afternoon we arrived at Sepp Dietrich’s. He was 
returning from inspection. Sepp was far from confirming the dazzling 
rumors which were running through Berlin like will-o’-the-wisps. Lifcge had 
definitely not been retaken, but the German tanks had reached Libramont 
and Saint-Hubert. They had taken La Roche and Marche. Well beyond 
these towns, having cleared the Ardennes, they were within a few kilometers 
of Namur and Dinant. They had crossed the whole Ardennes plateau in 
three days. The Ourthe had been crossed without firing a shot. The rush 
toward the Meuse had been as quick as in May, 1940. 

I slept in an ice-cold house, above which the long red-tailed comets of the 
German V-l rockets kept passing constantly, with a sinister whine. 

There had been a hard frost. I attended Christmas Mass at ten o’clock in 
the morning. We came out all intermingled, elderly farmers, kids with red 
noses, daydreaming soldiers. We barely had time to throw ourselves down 
in the snow. Anglo-American fighters were circling around the stepple. The 
bombers were streaking the cold air with long white trails over the humble 
country cottages, crushing the families. Farms were burning. Women and 
little girls, yellow with plaster and dripping with blood and dirt, were being 
dug out. 

The Allied counterattack had just begun. Not on the ground, but in the 
sky, in a crystalline light. For the next ten days the same royal sun would 
shine from dawn until dusk. The nights were limpid, sharply lining every 



The Safety Valve of the Ardennes 


265 


wall and every cottage in bright cubes, white as clean laundry drying in the 
meadows. 

The sun would be more deadly for the Germans than two thousand tanks 
mounting a counteroffensive. Thanks to it, thousands of Allied planes 
could systematically pound the roads, the villages, the crossroads, and the 
anti-aircraft weapons which tried to stop them. 

* * * * * 

On Christmas Day Sepp Dietrich’s command post moved off between 
Malmedy and Saint-Vith. We, too, got underway. The sun had been up for 
only a few hours. Already the devastation was incalculable. 

Certainly most of the bombs fell beside their targets, resulting only in 
enormous gray craters in the snowy Helds, or flattening lines of firs. 
Nonetheless so many bombs were falling that hundreds were hitting the 
right places anyway. Automobiles were going up in flames. Gaping holes 
had tom up the road along the cliff. Houses, folded up like accordians, 
completely barred the road. 

The bombing had been anticipated. Flocks of Russian and Italian 
prisoners had been sent to all the critical points. They cleared the rubbish 
and filled in the holes, but it took time. The columns of trucks were im¬ 
mobilized. Tiefflieger dove down on them, setting Are to numerous trucks, 
which added even more to our troubles. From that day on we had to figure 
that transports couldn’t be made without difficulty. 

I was using a big all-terrain command car. It was especially powerful, 
climbing over everything like a tank, but it drank seventy liters of gas to a 
hundred kilometers. In an argument to get a can of benzine at a Ailing sta¬ 
tion, I lost five minutes. The delay saved my life. Without it I would have 
been in Saint-Vith just at the instant when the whole town blew sky-high. 

I was still about three hundred meters from this beautiful little city. I was 
coming out of the woods, descending the hairpin curves of the steep slope 
when I saw the Allied squadrons in the airspace above us. It might have 
been four-thirty in the afternoon. 

It looked like a scene from the end of the end of the world. A flare had 
scarcely been shot when all of a sudden an entire street blew into the air. 
Not a house. No geysers of debris. But the whole street, all at once. It rose 
up in a block, then fell back down in a horrible roar. 

For twenty minutes the squadrons followed one another. In the distance 
men were galloping through the fields, little blue points in the snow. Then 
the great humming turned away toward the setting sun, which was just 
skimming the tops of the firs. 

Feet, heads, and torsos of women or soldiers could be seen sticking out of 
the jumbled beams. Whole lines of houses lay on the ground like lines of 
cards flicked over. 



266 


CAMPAIGN IN RUSSIA 


We managed to saw off several big trees that had fallen across the pave¬ 
ment opposite the first houses, but it was soon clear that our efforts were in 
vain. Everything had collapsed into a jumbled wreck. It was impossible for 
anybody, no matter who, to get through. My all-terrain car had to give up 
like the rest. These twenty minutes had so ravaged the town of Saint-Vith 
that it would remain impassable for the whole offensive. 

***** 

We tried to go around these apocalyptic ruins through the fields. My 
automobile bounced through the hedgerows, toiling in the snow. I ended up 
at a trench on the west ridge of Saint-Vith. There was a row of young 
Americans there, dead. They were still perfectly lined up. They still had the 
handsome bronze complexion of well-fed boys who have been tanned by the 
open air. They had been mowed down by tank fire. Two of their faces had 
been flattened like envelopes, but these two-dimensional faces still had an 
impressive nobility. 

There was not an empty space in the trench. Every one of these boys had 
stayed firmly at his post in spite of the wave of fifty or a hundred tanks 
charging them; the chain tracks could still be traced in the thick snow. 

We wanted to reach the northern road out of Saint-Vith to get to 
Malmddy, but all the exits were blocked. The Feldgendarmes were over¬ 
whelmed, and didn't know a single secondary road by which the columns 
could be detoured. We spent the night using forest paths encumbered with 
trucks under cover. The delay seemed endless. 

Only at dawn did we finally arrive in a lost hamlet at the end of a valley 
about eight kilometers from Saint-Vith. The little church, built on a knoll, 
was surrounded by simple peasants’ graves marked with beautiful blue 
crosses carved from slate. 

The northern front was close. We could hear the violent roar of the can¬ 
non. In the night American artillery came and fired from the edge of the 
woods. 

Sepp Dietrich was in an isolated white house above the town. I met Mar¬ 
shal Model there. He was a stocky, lively, red-faced little man with sprightly 
eyes. His courage was legendary. He committed suicide in 1945 so as not to 
survive his country’s defeat. 

The resistance in the north, from Malmedy to Monschau, turned out to 
be tough. The famous Colonel Skorzeny, who had freed Mussolini in 
August 1943 and borne him off in an airplane, had tried to enter Malmldy 
by surprise with a few hundred men he had specially trained for hard 
fighting. He lost a great number of his soldiers in this fray, without much 
results, and was wounded. He was grazed across the forehead. A horrible 
black eye gave an even more macabre look to his battered face, seamed with 
duelling scars. 



The Safety Valve of the Ardennes 


267 


The V-l’s screamed past tirelessly day and night, unfurling their long tails 
of red fire. One of them turned twice above the village in a fit of madness, 
then, disgusted with it all, dove nose-first into a neighboring field. 

On the maps, the situation hadn’t evolved much in three days. It was 
always the same names: Bastogne, Saint-Hubert, Marche, Dinant, Gney. 
The German plans were on a large scale. They might have completely 
reversed the situation in the west, at least for several months. 

It was a triple maneuver. Moving rapidly to the Meuse and the North Sea 
was not its only aim, although that was one of the planned operations. A 
second operation aimed to take from behind and encircle the Allied forces 
which were concentrated to the east of Liege, in the bridgehead of Aachen. 
This would be the task of Sepp Dietrich’s forces, aligned to the north of the 
Ardennes. A third operation consisted of subduing the Allied army in 
Alsace. 

There also the German front was ready for the assault. Himmler was at 
the Rhine in person, awaiting the success of the thrust to Liege and Sedan in 
repeating the maneuver of 1940 at the Maginot line. 

The push toward Liege (operation number two) had known no decisive 
success in the first days. The line from Lifcge to Aachen had resisted. 

Sepp Dietrich’s forces were going to repeat the operation further upriver 
on the Meuse. The river had to be crossed at Huy. Only after that would the 
real battle take place, which would cut the two hundred thousand Anglo- 
Americans of the Aachen region off from their rear troops and encircle 
them with their equipment. 

Sepp Dietrich showed me the Tongres-Saint-Trond area on the map, west 
of Li&ge. “See! he said, “It’s here that I’ll corner them! ” Then, with glitter¬ 
ing eyes, he put his big thumb under the name of Aachen, the holy city of 
the Empire. “Aachen!” he exclaimed, “Aachen! In the month of January I 
will be in Aachen.” 

That very evening the shock divisions of the Waffen SS slipped toward 
the northwest and spread out opposite Barvaux and Lierneux. The com¬ 
mand post of Sepp Dietrich was installed in the mill of a large village on a 
secondary road between Houffalize and La Roche. 

***** 

We were at the match as excited as spectators. We passed through our 
two Ardennais villages with their white farms, on whose walls “REX” 
could still be read in tall letters, painted in the vibrant days of our great 
political combats. 

We went down as far as the village of Steinbach, a few kilometers to the 
northeast of Houffalize. An ancient castle was there, frigid and deserted, at 
which we halted our little column. The Ardennais farmers came out of their 
houses and welcomed us with a touching simplicity. Everyone remembered 



268 


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my grandparents, who had lived in this region, or recalled the meetings I 
had given. They took us to eat in their low-roofed farms lit by ancient gas 
lamps. Potatoes fried in lard were steaming on pretty flowered plates, as at 
the meals of our childhood. 

These hard and noble faces, shaped by the work of the Helds, were the 
beloved faces of our own people. We breathed freely. Our spirits were ra¬ 
diant. In the warm farms, full of shadows, near the wood fire crackling 
around the andirons, we surrendered ourselves to the sweetness of having 
found our land again and our people again. 

The Lost Routes 

A fabulous sun continued to pour out its golden light onto the little white 
valleys and the big russet, blue, and violet woods which climbed the flanks 
of the hills. The Allied air force came to pound every country road, every 
narrow crossroads with ever-increasing violence. The bombers maneuvered 
by the hundreds, glistening like fish. 

The German Army had made a sensational breakthrough, but it hadn’t 
seized either of the two principal lines of communication to the north and 
south, the roads from Aachen to Li&ge and from Trier to Arlon. 

The nine hundred tanks and the three hundred thousand men who took 
part in the German offensive had made a drive straight ahead by secondary 
roads, fairly slow for traffic. These routes had been torn up by the treads of 
the tanks, then covered up by very heavy snow. Crossing the little villages 
was difficult. There were numerous bends between the cottages, piled 
almost atop one another. Thousands of bombs fell onto these roads, mak¬ 
ing a hundred holes in them and demolishing them at every slope. 

Then the villages and the adorable little Ardennais towns were blown up. 
Houffalize, which had remained absolutely intact at the back of its steep 
valley among the great rocks near its singing river, was twice attacked and 
crushed. After the first raid the principal street could still be used. The 
houses were gaping holes, but trails through the ruins had been cleared 
fairly quickly. The Allied bombers returned another morning, and the car¬ 
nage was total. The road which came down from the east in a curve high 
above the valley was swept from the rock. It hung above the precipice. 

In the hollow of the little valley, an isolated cottage surrounded with 
fabulous shell-holes had had its roof covered with earth like a garden. The 
firs had become gray and dirty. Houffalize was flattened. It was no longer 
possible to get through it. 

At La Roche the fleeing American troops had left the bridge intact. The 
Allied planes came afterward to correct this small oversight. Their bombs 
tinned the ravishing town into a monstrous heap of ruins, with mounds of 
dead civilians beneath them. 

The Ardennes was flattened in a few days. Not a town on a road to 
somewhere else, not a crossroads escaped. 



The Safety Valve of the Ardennes 


269 


It was a terrible way to wage war, at the expense of women and children 
crushed in their cellars. But this means, which the Anglo-Americans used 
without any restraint, quickly proved to be decisive. At the end of a week all 
roads used by the columns of the Reich had become almost impassable. 

Immense columns of rations, munitions, and gas had to take their 
chances on logging roads, narrow roads where the trucks skidded in the 
snow, causing endless bottlenecks. In one night the columns advanced five 
or six kilometers. 

The Germans lost the battle of the Ardennes, not on the approaches to 
the Meuse or at Bastogne, but in these Hr and beech woods crowded with 
thousands of blocked vehicles. An army can triumph only when the equip¬ 
ment, food, munitions, and fuel follow rapidly and regularly. 

♦ * * * * 

A first defeat illustrated this elementary truth, right at the beginning. The 
tanks which had penetrated toward Dinant and which should have con¬ 
quered the town easily had to stop at the village of Celles, eight kilometers 
from the Meuse, not, as the ridiculous story goes, because a scold wearing 
glasses stopped them, but because they ran completely out of gas. The Ger¬ 
man tanks waited two days. Their radios sent appeal after appeal in vain. 
Not so much as a drop of gasoline came. In the end they had to set fire to 
their magnificent Panzers. 

Every day the problem got worse. Taking advantage of the surprise, they 
should have broken through like Rommel in 1940. The fruit was ripe. The 
Allied rear was empty: there wasn’t a single barrier, once past the Ardennes. 
The tanks of the Reich would have taken Sedan and Charleroi in forty-eight 
horns. 

The gas didn’t come even though there was an overabundance of it at the 
border. There were depots of several millions of liters not far from Saint- 
Vith. The victorious spearhead divisions found themselves isolated and 
deprived of fuel because the d azzli ng sun which flooded the Ardennes from 
morning til night for ten days let a fantastic flotilla of American bombers 
crush all the centers of communication. 

Ten days of fog, which is normal in the misty Ardennes, would have been 
enough for the Germans to change their bad luck. The food, the munitions, 
and the millions of liters of fuel would have got through. But luck had 
abandoned the Reich. And an August sun never left the snowy landscapes 
of December 


* * * * * 


Even communication by messenger and isolated transports had become 
virtually impossible during the day. Scarcely was one on a road before Tief- 



270 


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flieger would dive at the vehicle. They would prowl in pairs, followed by 
two more, then two more again to finish the work. Every kilometer of road 
was watched. The routes were littered with burned trucks and automobiles. 
It was a frightful sight. 

Having had no news from the German command for several days, I tried 
to reach the command post of General Dietrich by road. I barely had time 
to behold the marvelous blue, brown, and white panorama of the plateau of 
the Ardennes, half-way between Houffalize and Baraque-Fraiture, when a 
Tiefflieger came down on us, charging almost at head-height. Two bullets 
as big as my thumb passed through the motor; another slashed my helmet; a 
fourth punctured my documents, passing exactly between my ribs and my 
left arm. A truck which we met did a crazy pirouette on the bank and turned 
into a torch. 

We were able to pull one soldier out of the wreckage more or less whole. 
The others, crushed under the weight of the car, were burned alive. We 
could see their thighs crackle. For a quarter of an hour the Tiefflieger kept 
coming back and forth with ferocious hatred, hitting us with incendiary 
bombs at point blank range each time. 

All along the roads it was the same hunt of man and vehicle. 

Days of Waiting 

We passed New Year’s Eve among our Ardennais at Steinbach. 

Everywhere my soldiers were part of the family. The farmers called them 
by their first names. They shared everything. 

These worthy men asked only one thing, peace. To be allowed to work! 
Not to hear any more about politics! To be left in peace at home to take care 
of their family, their animals, and their fields! They were quite right, and 
were just repeating in their own soft drawling tongue the complaints and 
aspirations of all farmers since antiquity. 

I went to eat New Year’s Eve waffles with them. Everyone kissed at mid¬ 
night without ceremony, rough kisses of tanned farmers and womenfolk 
with whiskers. 

But I watched my companions singing with a heavy heart. I was thinking 
of the snows where men were fighting back there before Bastogne, all along 
the Ourthe, in the Lierneux and Stavelot woods. I thought of the Ardennes, 
tom and burning in the white and pink night. 

Where would this new year lead us? 

* * * * * 

The next day we had to give our icy castle to a field hospital that didn’t 
know where else to go. The wounded flowed in from the Bastogne sector. 
We moved to a village three kilometers away named Limerle. 



The Safety Valve of the Ardennes 


271 


Theoretically I was to have taken over the administrative reorganization 
of these regions. The commander-in-chief of military operations, Marshal 
Model, had officially transferred to me in writing all political power in the 
Belgian territory retaken from the Allies. 

But everywhere the civil authorities had fled. The parish priests had done 
the same. Terrorized by the Anglo-American bombardments, the families 
had been living since the beginning of January as best they could, most 
often burrowed in the back of their cellars. This was not the moment to 
make decrees and reform the constitution. 

All I did was to give the inhabitants of Limerle and Steinbach the con¬ 
solation of the Mass. Our SS chaplain, a holy Trappist of the abbey of 
Forges-les-Chimay, the Reverend Father Stockmans, was with us. And, 
despite the Tiefflieger, the village church bells rang to gather civilians and 
soldiers in the same love at the foot of the altar of the God of peace and 
mercy. 


* * # * * 

I had sent couriers in all directions to inform themselves of the situation 
in the districts, to set our imprisoned compatriots free, and to gather files of 
the Moniteur' and other newspapers. 

The reports of our freed comrades made our blood run cold. They 
described to us the savage treatment that thousands of men and women 
throughout Belgium had been made to endure in the name of 
“democracy”: incarcerated in abominable conditions, jeered at, beaten, 
tortured, loaded down with infamy, as well as murdered, because they had 
different political ideas than those of the “liberators” of September 1944. 

The newspapers of Brussels, Li&ge, and Arlon which our emissaries 
brought back to us were nothing more than hate-filled and savage appeals 
to the lowest instinct of mobs. They delivered up as fodder to their readers 
interminable lists of decent people locked in the cells of the victorious politi¬ 
cians only for having once shared our opinions, whether closely or from a 
distance, or for having subscribed to our papers. They were crowded pell- 
mell into prisons and barracks in the number of about a hundred thousand 
and handed over to the bellowing brutalities of frenzied guards. Totally il¬ 
legally more than half a million Belgians were thus officially persecuted. 

The most moving spectacle that it was given to us to witness then was the 
arrival of about fifteen very young boys escaped from the penitentiary at 
the town of Saint-Hubert. This house of correction for criminals and 
juvenile delinquents had a sinister reputation throughout the Ardennes. It 
was there nevertheless that a certain number of children of Rexist families 
were infamously locked up. The fathers and mothers were thrown into 
prison. The children were torn from the family environment, treated as 
mentally retarded children, and sent to mingle with the most vicious 
delinquents. 



272 


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Having political ideas different from the ideas of those in power had 
become a crime punishable by persecution and death. Young women were 
herded into jail to be shaved, beaten, and often raped. Mothers of large 
families were torn from their children and savagely thrown into over¬ 
crowded jails. Old men were thrown into cells for the crime of paternity and 
perished there of want and grief. But it was the children who were punished 
in the most iniquitous way. In the name of democracy vengeance was taken 
on the families by trying to turn their children, who knew nothing of 
politics, into dirty, corrupt, and vicious creatures. All that in the name of 
justice and civilization! 

We could have risen against this outrage and made them expiate these 
crimes, which cried out for retribution. But we swear before God, we were 
above anger. We didn’t spill a single drop of blood during these weeks 
when, nevertheless, our souls were roiling with indignation. Everything that 
smear artists may have told since then about alleged executions carried out 
in the Belgian Ardennes by us or with our consent point to a police plot and 
the most repugnant calumny. 

We witnessed the suffering of our compatriots crushed beneath Allied 
bombardments and surrounded by fighting. We didn’t want to add to so 
much misfortune. 

We knew also that nothing great can be built on vengeance. We wanted to 
reconcile the diverse elements of our people, to calm the hatreds instead of 
prolonging them by bloody reprisals. Not a single one among us violated 
these orders of fraternity. 

One Morning 

The essential thing for the Germans at the end of December 1944 was to 
cut off, promptly surround, and crush Allied military potential on the 
Western front. The battle of annihilation eluded the German command by 
the end of a week. 

Sixty hours had been enough for the motorized troops of the Reich to 
achieve a stunning penetration through the whole Ardennes plateau. They 
had reached the great Luxemburg-Brussels railroad line at Jemelle. Facing 
west, they had crossed the forests and the mountains from one end to the 
other. The German divisions had poured into the vast plains of Condroz 
and La Famenne. 

The Allied rout was still at its height after three days. If the Germans had 
been able to resupply their Panzers and their machanized divisions with fuel 
and munitions, they could have easily followed up their advantage at full 
speed. 

Even at the end of 1944 these divisions were remarkably equipped. Of 
course there were fill-in units for the ordinary work, notably stop-gap 
troops of gray-uniformed Mongols who were mowed down in confusion in 
the snows of Bastogne. 



The Safety Valve of the Ardennes 


273 


The tanks of General Manteuffel, however, which had advanced to the 
threshold of Dinant, the Tigers of Sepp Dietrich, the brand new trucks of 
the motorized troops: all were still capable of bringing off a daring and sen¬ 
sational raid. 

There were only nine hundred assault tanks in all, it is true. But how 
many did Rommel have at Abbeville in 1940 and at El Alamein in 1942? 
How many did the British-Americans have upon entering Brussels and An¬ 
twerp on the 3rd and 4th of September, 1944? 

The surprise of the Allies in the Ardennes had been total. The roads were 
wide open. Fifty thousand mechanized troops thrusting on Namur, 
Andenne and Huy on the 6th or 7th of December would immediately have 
been able to assure the crossing of the Meuse. 

It was at precisely this time that the Allied air force, under a blistering 
sun, smashed the possibility of massive movements and transport of fuel 
into the earth. 

The difficulty got worse every day. Germany lost the use of her motors. 
She could no longer even manage to assure sufficient provisions to the 
troops sent a hundred and fifty kilometers ahead of the Siegfried line. The 
situation of these divisions would very rapidly become desperate. 

If Sepp Dietrich hadn’t been able to crush the northern pocket in his iron 
fist, neither had General Manteuffel been able to clear his left flank to the 
south of Bastogne. They would have had to occupy Arlon and Virton 
without striking a blow, to enlarge the security zone. 

There, as at Malm6dy, were found several thousand obstinate Allies who 
faced them with a courage to which every soldier is sensitive. Instead of flee¬ 
ing, he takes example from the many others. They let themselves be sur¬ 
rounded, withstood the blow, and won the days they needed. 

The resistance at Bastogne burdened the entire left wing of the Reich’s of¬ 
fensive. Bastogne, like Malmldy, could have been taken easily if the ar¬ 
mored divisions, resupplied in time, had been able to exploit the initial 
thrust, to move far, sowing confusion, seizing depots, eliminating potential 
regroupment and counterattacks. Because the sun put the Germans in a 
disastrous situation from the third day onward, Malmedy and Bastogne, 
isolated points of resistance which would have been doomed in the normal 
course of events, were able to play a dominant role. 

By the end of scarcely a week, life had become absolutely untenable for 
Marshal Model. His divisions were engaged in the southwest at the end of a 
passage a hundred and fifty kilometers long, which could be supplied only 
by secondary roads, now being methodically pounded, or by snowy trails 
which were indescribable bottlenecks. Along the sides of this deadend far 
behind the lead German troops, the Anglo-American Malmldy-Bastogne 
vise was gripping tighter every day. 

The Allied plan for a double lateral counteroffensive in the near future 
was visible to the naked eye. There was no longer any doubt as to the out¬ 
come of the duel. 



274 


CAMPAIGN IN RUSSIA 


Germans are realists. The withdrawal movement began immediately. 

It was accompanied by the meticulous precision and perfect calm which 
always characterized the orders of the Reich’s High Command. 

The Waffen SS Divisions were placed on both flanks at the most disputed 
points while the victors of Christmas disengaged methodically, in stages, 
from the Mosane region, then from Saint-Hubert and Marche, then from 
the valley of the Ourthe. 

The American forces coming up from the south and the British forces 
coming down from the north were drawing closer and closer together, con¬ 
tinually threatening to cut in two, right in the middle, the ribbon of three 
hundred thousand retreating German soldiers that stretched from the 
Ourthe to the Eifel. 

At the beginning of the second week of January only a corridor about 
twenty kilometers wide remained between the two waves of assailants, the 
British and the American forces. 

At last only a single road remained by which the German maneuver could 
continue. 

We lived through days and nights of unbearable tension. But the feeling 
which dominated us was admiration. Not one battalion became dispirited. 
The troops, schooled in the incomparable ethic of discipline of the German 
people, accepted this withdrawal with the same even disposition that they 
had shown two weeks earlier in the drive past the banks of the Ourthe. 

Through the glacial nights, while the countless Yankee and British ar¬ 
tillery boomed all around, thousands of German soldiers slipped eastward. 
Watchful tanks were posted at each branch of the road like huge guard dogs 
in the dark. Panting, they shot their tongues of fire to the rear. The columns 
advanced in the snow, bent over, silent, orderly. 

It was over. 

We had tried. We had failed. 

The soldiers left as they had come, toward new battles, God alone knew 
where, toward new suffering, God alone knew how great. 

Not a murmur was heard. 

Duty was duty. Dienst ist Dienst. 

* * * * * 

While Marshal Model was maneuvering his excellent Wehrmacht and 
Waffen SS divisions in the Ardennes, other equally seasoned and equally 
well-equipped divisions waited in vain across from Alsace for the order to 
march through the eastern part of the French territory. 

Himmler held to this plan. He stuck to it until the last, even after the 
retreat from the Ardennes had begun. For every disturbance of the adver¬ 
sary’s plans, even at great price, every disorder in the elaboration of his pro¬ 
jected offensives offered an incalculable advantage for the Reich, now more 



The Safety Val\e of the Ardennes 


275 


than ever. If we could win two or three months’ respite, we might still be 
able to make and use the new weapons in time to turn the situation around. 
With a superhuman heroism, Germany tried everything, driven by this last 
hope. 

Thus the Alsace offensive stayed on the program. Its launching was set 
for mid-January, 1945. At this very moment a tidal wave of Soviets leaped 
over Warsaw and hurled themselves against Danzig, Posen, and Breslau. 
Berlin was in mortal danger. 

The great dream of liberating the West crumbled. And the divisions 
returning from the Ardennes, as well as those waiting for action in Alsace, 
left hastily for the atrocious carnage of the East. 

We stayed at Limerle until the Allied tanks were near. For the last three 
days, the German command had been reinstalled on the Reich’s territory. 

As for us, it was our native soil that we had to leave, our country, our 
people. We couldn’t tear ourselves away from this last village. Nevertheless, 
there was absolutely nothing left for us to do there. All hope of rescuing the 
situation was dead. 

We wandered around the house in the snow to look at the whitening 
fields, the smoke rising in the distance from the roofs of the little farms, the 
slate steeple, like the blue steeples of our childhood. 

We had to make the decision. We kissed the good old Ardennais maman 
who lodged us. It was the last kiss of our country. We went around one 
more long pink farm and along the black firs. The border was close. Sons of 
Europe, we were also the sons of our own little fatherland. Our hearts torn, 
we closed our eyes so as not to see any more. 





Chapter Nine 

FIGHT TO THE 
DEATH IN POMERANIA 


The powerful Soviet drive in mid-January 1945 marked the end of the 
war in the West. There was still fighting. There were desperate struggles be¬ 
tween Aachen and the Rhine when the Allies, recovered from the 
memorable shove of December 1944, advanced forward again. But the 
danger to the east was such that the German High Command had to choose. 
It sacrificed the Western front, which it stripped of its strongest divisions 
and an important part of its tanks. 

There was nothing left on the left bank of the Rhine but a curtain of 
troops. Everything that counted was thrown into the merciless struggle be¬ 
ing waged between the Vistula and the Oder. 

The Soviets had never sent such a force into battle, nor such a prodigious 
amount of equipment. Everything cracked like rotten wood at their 
passage. Lodz fell. Posen fell. The Russian panzers rolled by the thousands 
toward Bromberg and Breslau. East Prussia was crushed. The remains of 
President Hindenburg were hastily saved before the famous Tannenberg 
monument was blown up. 

Everywhere the tidal wave expanded. Thousands of villages burned, and 
the savage growl of the tanks resounded even inside the territory of the 
Reich, sowing terror. 

The winter was particularly hard that month. Before the Communists, 
whose cruelty every German feared, the inhabitants of the threatened 
regions fled in millions. Survivors who had seen the beginnings of the Soviet 
occupation recounted the abominations that had been committed to villages 
as yet untouched. Entire provinces fled. 

The populations of the large centers were loaded onto all the rolling stock 
still left in'* the stations. Tens of thousands of women and children had to 
stay out in the storm for days and nights at a time, fifty or eighty persons 
standing on flatcars. Many died of cold on the way. In every convoy babies 
froze against the breasts of their mothers. The banks of the railroad lines 
were strewn with stiffened corpses, thrown from the trains to make a bit of 
room for other gasping runaways. 




278 


CAMPAIGN IN RUSSIA 


On one line near Bresleu a train had been abandoned. One hundred forty- 
two bodies of little boys and girls lay frozen on the uncovered wagons. 

The ghastly caravans which had been on the road for a week or two were 
taken past Berlin by the outer highway so as not to terrify the population of 
the capital. 


♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ 

At the end of January 1945, our division also received the order to leave 
for the Eastern Front via Stettin. 

The great Autobahn from Berlin to Stettin was nothing but a gigantic 
trail of suffering. There were perhaps two or three hundred thousand 
women and children on it, disheveled, their faces ravaged by the biting cold. 

The columns of thousands of carts could use only the right side of the 
highway, for a war was going on. It was going on to such an extent that 
ferocious squadrons of Soviet airplanes kept constantly coming to scourge 
these pitiful ranks, disregarding their obvious defenselessness. 

The carts were so close together that every stick of bombs caused a 
sickening massacre. The horses floundered among the overturned carts, 
their hot intestines scattered in the snow. Women and youngsters clung to 
the debris, brown holes in their backs. The blood fell in big drops onto their 
black stockings. Blood-red eiderdown fluttered through the air. 

These martyred people were about to descend from month to month into 
the very depths of the worst of tragedies, more horrible than any the world 
had known. 

They had endured years of privations and incredible bombarding. They 
had learned of the death of a son, of two sons, of their father, fallen who 
knows where in the Russian snows. Now they were being hunted into the 
roads by millions, having lost everything, freezing to death. Now bursts of 
incendiary bullets finished the work of tracking them down, persecuting 
them, mutilating them. 

If only they had at least come to the end of their suffering. But as we 
watched their tragic procession spreading endlessly, we thought of the 
thousands of Soviet tanks hot on their heels. We knew that one day or 
another they would end up falling into the hands of the barbarians just the 
same, that these young girls, so clean and healthy, would be raped, soiled, 
contaminated, that thousands of babies would die for lack of milk, that 
these grandmothers who struggled against the north wind would one day be 
only lifeless black bundles at the end of all misery and privation. 

What good did it do to run? You had to stop and wait, wait for the Soviet 
savage who would force your legs open, wait to see your roof burning. 

The instinct for survival, however, drove them stubborn and crying into 
the chaotic roads. 

I crossed the Oder and took the road east on the right. Above the banks 



Fight to the Death in Pomerania 


279 


and the hills kilometers of trenches were being feverishly built in sand that 
immediately caved in. Trucks were unloading thousands of new shovels to 
thousands of mobilized women. 

I began to pass my soldiers, detrained at Stettin Station, who were mak¬ 
ing their own way to Stargard. And a very poor way it was. They drew their 
vehicles like draft animals. Our horses had not arrived in time. The troops 
had taken their coinage in both hands, yoked themselves up, laughing, and 
that way covered the thirty-five kilometers of snow that still separated us 
from the enemy. 

The soldiers cheered my Volkswagen as I passed, happy to arrive at the 
fighting and knowing I was with them. 

I followed along Lake Madue, which extended quite far toward the 
south, then saw the majestic towers, square and red, of the churches of 
Stargard. The ancient gates of the city, also in brick, had a magnificent 
grace and majesty. 

The city dated from the High Middle Ages. This whole country of 
Pomerania had a charm that was profound, strong, and sad, with its lovely 
weathered walls, its dappled sky, its fir-covered moors, its pale ponds where 
boats splashed. 

The whole population was in the process of fleeing. Stargard was like a 
humming marketplace. People were rushing everywhere. 

I ended up in a school at the command post of the general charged with 
defending the region. “There you are!” he cried. 

In all, he had two tanks, the leftovers of some ill-assorted troops and a 
few battalions of elderly gentlemen of the Volkssturm . 1 That morning the 
Soviets were fifteen kilometers away. 

Before Stargard 

In the second half of January, 1945, the armies of the USSR burst into 
the German province of Pomerania with the violence of a hurricane. We 
thought them still at Bromberg when one of their reconnaissance tanks, 
pressing madly ahead, appeared at the Schneidemuehl Station. 

The Soviet attack had three spearheads, soon thrust like lances into the 
ancient Pomeranian soil: one toward the east to separate Danzig from the 
Reich; another toward the celebrated city of Kolberg, on the Baltic; the 
third toward Stettin. 

Stargard was the last large town still to be captured on the Stettin route, 
only thirty-six kilometers from the lower Oder. When we arrived at 
Stargard on the morning of 6 February 1945, the situation was almost 
desperate. The Soviet tanks had penetrated deeply to the south, southeast, 
and southwest of the town. 

The defense was just about nil, having been put into the hands of the 
courageous old “papas” of the Volkssturm, who did everything they could, 
but garnered more of bronchitis than of victory. 



280 


CAMPAIGN IN RUSSIA 


It was important to plug the gaping hole in the south. We were im¬ 
mediately sent to Kremzow and Repplin, towns situated ten kilometers from 
Stargard on the Amswalde road. 

This road crossed a stretch of very gently rolling meadows only a few 
kilometers wide and populated by six villages between the two Ihna 
Rivers—the regular Ihna which went stodgily along its way without a single 
burst of spirit, and the much more likable Lazy Ihna, which daydreamed 
along the way and made gracious curves, either out of absent-mindedness or 
because it had noticed a little spot prettier than the others. Despite their 
diversity of character the two Ihnas came back together at the end of their 
course like a couple reconciled late in life. The single Ihna then flowed 
through Stargard and then through the northern forests to empty itself into 
the Stettiner Haff. 

I had received explicit orders. They were counting on us. In a few days the 
German tanks would be there. In the meantime Stargard had to be saved. If 
we were to yield, the Soviet tanks would sweep into the village within the 
hour. 

From the very first minute I sent men to the extreme limit of the sector at 
the village of Repplin. A Soviet detachment arrived there shortly after we 
did. 

The position was good for both them and us, for it dominated all its sur¬ 
roundings. A patrol of Communists was supposed to have secured it several 
hours earlier, while the town was still empty. Thus the enemy contingent 
strolled up confidently. Our men let the vehicles and the troops penetrate 
deeply into the hamlet, then attacked them from every direction. A single 
Red soldier got away across the cemetery. 

This first skirmish got my daredevils into shape and gave us forty-eight 
hours to organize ourselves. 

The fog became thicker. It began to rain. A mud like mastic stuck and 
sucked at our boots. We barricaded ourselves into long silos of beetroots to 
avoid the water collecting in the foxholes. 

The Communists were making dangerous progress in the southwest, oc¬ 
cupying large villages on our right wing. The fires made dirty pink splotches 
in the rainy nights. 

The audacity of the Soviet panzers was unbelievable. Returning from 
Stargard where I had gone for orders, I saw one bearing right down on me. 
Now at this moment I was seven kilometers behind our positions. The tank 
had come cross-country right to our paved road. It was advancing in the 
open, absolutely alone. A German who was luckily carrying a panzerfaust 
hid himself in a thicket and blew it up as it passed. 

In the wallet of the young Russian officer who had perished with the tank 
I found a letter which he must have only just written. He wrote trium¬ 
phantly to his family, “These last days I’ve crushed lots of Fritzes under my 
treads. Soon the Red flag will fly over Berlin!” Then he added this moving 
conclusion, “Then we can go back to our villages.” 



Fight to the Death in Pomerania 


281 


A few German Panzers finally arrived in our sector. It was decided that at 
daybreak on Friday, 9 February 1945, a counter-attack would take place 
between Lake Madue and the Ihna River. 

Our mission was to cross the lazy Ihna, to send one of our battalions in a 
southwesterly direction, and to take by assault first the hills, then the 
crossroads of Lindenberg through which the columns of enemy tanks 
regularly passed. 

At five thirty in the morning, in an absolute silence, we set out. 

Lindenberg 

The Soviet hordes which swept across Pomerania and tried to force the 
passage of Stargard had powerful arms and thousands of courageous 
soldiers, inspired by incessant victories. 

The counterattack of 9 February 1945 had only a limited objective—to 
break the Reds’ momentum, to regain a few kilometers of terrain, and to 
retake the crossroads at Lindenberg. 

We had to cross ploughed fields near the village of Strebelow. As for the 
German tanks, going from Lake Madue to the northwest, they would take 
several villages by assault before rejoining us at the crossroads. 

Protected by little groups of machine-gunners who, according to our 
method, had infiltrated into the enemy lines before dawn, we could climb 
fairly easily up a long clay cliff from which we could see the fir woods 
covering the crossroads of Lindenberg two kilometers ahead. 

The enemy was hidden in the copses to the left, but the lightning style of 
the Walloons had always been a decisive element in an attack. Our artillery 
roared. Our young company commanders plunged ahead of their units, 
deployed as in the charges of yesteryear. I was armed only with a baton. Out 
of bravado, my officers imitated me. The work didn’t lag. Despite the mud, 
we were masters of the traffic circle by nine thirty-five. The Soviet tanks, 
hammered by our anti-tank weapons, disengaged and fled to the south. 

I led the first assault wave at the extremity of the pine woods. I sent two 
combat groups on beyond the crossing and hastily posted my anti-tank 
guns. The enemy would be contained and we would be protected from a 
Soviet tank thrust if the German Panzers, victorious, drove them back in 
our direction. 

The patrols came back promptly. Some thickets eight hundred meters 
away from us concealed a park full of enemy tanks. Our men had noticed 
an intense activity. That didn’t presage anything particularly peaceful. 

The crossroads wasn’t badly situated. The roads crossed behind us and 
ended near a quarry. The terrain was raised, bordered on the west by a steep 
ravine. The entire knoll was covered with firs. To the southeast, the ground 
was marshy. 

Unluckily, apart from this wooded knoll there was no cover. Everything 



282 


CAMPAIGN IN RUSSIA 


around was bone bare. If we were pushed out of the pine woods our only 
path of retreat would be the four kilometers of muddy plain by which we 
had come. 

Such a withdrawal, in daylight, followed by enemy tanks, would be im¬ 
possible. Now that we were there we had to stick to the Lindenberg knoll 
and wait for the German tanks to arrive. 

***** 

We had taken the terrain very early. We followed excitedly the bitter 
combat of the Reich’s panzers coming from the north. 

They had reached the village nearest to our crossroads. The Stukas were 
diving in screaming ranks onto the Soviet tanks and artillery. These felt 
themselves to be in terrible danger. They were cut off from the normal 
retreat by the southeast. They didn’t try to go back in our direction. The 
tanks were already ranging themselves on a route straight to the south, 
snorting, firing. The Stukas pounded the village with fantastic violence. 
Everything was burning. 

There were two or three pauses of several minutes, during which we 
thought that the Germans had finally crushed the resistance. Each time the 
combat started up anew. 

At noon the fighting raged with the same fury. With our binoculars we 
could see the tanks moving about in the red and gold storm of the village on 
fire. The enemy anti-tank guns never stopped firing. The column of Soviet 
tanks, outside the village, gave us immoderate hopes by retreating, then 
returned to the attack. 

At eleven o’clock in the morning two enemy tanks came out of a grove in 
the southwest and fired on us. One of our men stole up with a panzerfaust 
and hit one of the tanks. The skirmish ended. 

One hour later we heard the ever-distressing rumble of treads. Between 
the firs we saw five tanks rushing toward us, quickly followed by three 
more. At the same time some “Stalin’s organs” began to pour a rain of 
rockets onto our little woods, mowing down branches by the hundreds with 
their explosions. Wounded men were moaning. The tanks were shelling us 
point blank. It was almost impossible to raise our heads, but we had to fire 
just the same and fight back with panzerfausts. Otherwise the tanks would 
go around or through the grove and surround us. 

I ran from one group to another to pull up from the ground those who 
had flattened themselves nose to earth, terrified by the deluge, or who were 
huddled in trenches rolled up like hedgehogs. 

The firs, strong and densely packed, partially protected us. Thanks to 
them the tanks couldn’t come right up to us and crush us under their weight. 
Our anti-tank guns fired continuously. 

Four times the enemy tanks arrived within a few meters of our holes at 



Fight to the Death in Pomerania 


283 


the edge of the firs. Four times they had to go back. Two Soviet tanks took 
direct hits. One of our anti-tank guns was demolished. Numerous dead and 
wounded lay about, but we had been neither cut off nor surrounded. 

We had to keep calm. To the left stretched the muck of the marshes. To 
the right the cliff dropped away twenty meters. To fall back was to die. 

At three o’clock in the afternoon the noises died away in the direction of 
Lake Madue. The village, two kilometers northwest of our Y crossing, 
hadn’t been taken. The German Panzers had occupied the station and part 
of the town, but the Reds were resisting fanatically and blocking the road. 
Our link-up was becoming more and more problematical. 

Our success was of consequence only if the whole front advanced with the 
tank victory and secured a new line. But if we had to remain in a vacuum, 
left to ourselves on our solitary knoll, we would sooner or later be sur¬ 
rounded and annihilated. 

A fine rain was falling, freezing us to the bone, and night was coming. 
The field telephone crackled. It was the general at Stargard. Their attack 
having failed, the German tanks would be unable to meet us, and were go¬ 
ing to withdraw under cover of darkness. At 11 P.M. we were silently to 
regain our positions of the morning. 

We had scarcely effected this return after struggling through the sticky 
fields when I received the order to send one of my companies to the village 
of Kruessow, situated on our right flank and occupied by a few meager 
Volkssturm units. 

This town straddled the Lindenberg-Stargard road. A thrust was to be ex¬ 
pected there. The enemy was emboldened by the previous day’s victorious 
resistance. Our boys arrived at Kruessow just at the same time as the Soviet 
tanks, who knocked them about, then threw them across the Ihna river. It 
was an unfortunate affair. 

The company commander organized the defense on the right bank. He 
couldn’t help it if he had been sent to Kruessow much too late. 

The village was important, though. Our officers didn’t take failure 
lightly. They were proud. Without much ado, but with a heavy heart, our 
young company commander put his formation in order. He telephoned his 
plan to me, then alone he ran along the road to Kruessow and died before its 
walls. 

A gratuitous death, but a death for the glory and honor of his flag. 

***** 

With a dozen tanks and all available Stukas the German command tried 
in vain to retake Kruessow the next day. All attempts failed. The castle 
burned. The village blew up. And the enemy stayed glued to their anti-tank 
guns, near their tanks, hidden in the ruins. 

In the meantime the important town of Dammitz fell. The news was get- 



284 


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ting worse. I was called to Panke, to the train where the Army staff office 
was. Its commanding general was none other than Colonel-General Steiner, 
our former chief at the Estonian front of Narva and Dorpat. 

In confidence he told me of an impending attempt to turn the situation 
around. A huge German offensive in the East was ready. On the appointed 
day two enormous pincers would advance, one from Pomerania, the other 
coming up from the Slovakian border. Sepp Dietrich was ready and waiting 
below Breslau. As for the army group to which we belonged, they would be 
under the personal command of Himmler. 

Several armored divisions were going to arrive at our sector. Their first 
objective would be to make a daring thrust from Stargard to Landsberg. A 
second operation was to take us from Landsberg to join the offensive from 
the Slovakian border. 

I left devoured by a burning ardor. Certainly, we were going to risk 
everything. But our High Command was reacting with such will power! 
Harassed from every direction by overwhelming fire it replied with military 
science and iron will. How sensational if the coordinating armies in the 
north and south could link quickly and succeed in surrounding and wiping 
out the main Soviet force just as in the summer of 1941. 

The move was kept as well hushed up as the Ardennes offensive. 

Goering came to visit the advanced positions in the capacity of an en¬ 
thusiast—not without some daring. He made a big hit with our soldiers, 
whom he addressed with a truculent geniality. He was quite voluminous, 
covered in layers of coats of an astonishing yellow-brown, and looked like 
an enormous wet-nurse dressed up as a Serbian general. He drew forth from 
his bosom cigars as big as baby bottles. 

Everyone stocked up from this illustrious source. 

On the night of 15-16 February 1945, it became suddenly obvious that 
great operations were imminent. Three armored divisions arrived on our 
narrow launching pad in an uninterrupted flow of tanks, guns, and trucks. 

Until that moment our Wallonian regiments had known nothing of the 
offensive plan. The soldiers looked at one another at first, tongue-tied and 
goggling. What was going on? Then, soon, a happy fervor animated all of 
them. At dawn the tanks went on ahead. It was an offensive! 

The Last Offensive 

The German High Command sent all that was left of its mobile forces, 
notably its tanks, into the counteroffensive of 16 February 1945 on the 
Eastern Front. 

Himmler addressed a dazzling proclamation to the troops, in which he 
repeated forcefully, “Forward! Forward through the mud! Forward 
through the snow! Forward by day! Forward by night! Forward to free the 
soil of the Reich!” 



Fight to the Death in Pomerania 


285 


Upon reaching Landsberg we were going to take the enormous Soviet 
army, which had already reached and crossed the Oder opposite Berlin, 
from behind. If Sepp Dietrich’s offensive behind Breslau were to succeed, 
if, to make a long story short, all of us made our junction in Poland near 
Lodz, the repercussions of this winter victory would be incalculable. 

Himmler wanted to succeed here with the operation which had failed on 
the western front at the end of December, 1944. In place of the Ardennes- 
Alsace pincers, this would be the Pomerania-Slovakia pincers. 

General Steiner, whose army was to deliver the most powerful battering- 
ram blow, was exultant on the eve of combat. “This year we will be on the 
Dnieper again!” he kept repeating to me, while giving me great affectionate 
thumps. 

The difficulties could be better glimpsed in the staff offices. The at¬ 
mosphere was that of Montmirail 2 when Napoleon hurled his last thunder¬ 
bolts, the most thrilling, but also the most ephemeral. The technicians 
didn’t dwell too much on such reflections. But everyone, specialist or not, 
felt that we had to throw our last cards on the blood-smeared table. 

No longer motorized, the Walloons were not to participate in the initial 
shock. We were to let the assault wave pass by and give a hand in case of a 
lateral counterattack by the enemy. 

On the western flank of the jumping-off point the German High Com¬ 
mand feared a Soviet reaction aiming to cut off the Reich’s armored divi¬ 
sions after they started their attack at the southern end of the corridor. To 
ward off this danger, on the night of the great attack we received orders to 
enlarge the security zone and in particular to reoccupy the ridge at 
Lindenberg, which we had taken by assault at dawn on 9 February and 
evacuated the following night. 

The operation succeeded a second time. A reinforced company installed 
itself firmly on the knolls. It was commanded by a hero of the Estonian 
front, First Lieutenant Capelle, a young giant with a ruddy complexion, 
tenacious, modest, radiating the highest ideals. 

Our flank guards too had moved to the southwestern end of the roadbed 
and retaken a strategic point from the enemy two kilometers beyond our 
main line. 

Our objectives had been speedily attained by ten o’clock in the morning. I 
could then go south to Repplin, where the motorized divisions were to have 
started. 

I had a bad impression right from the start. The assault hadn’t taken 
place at 5:00 P.M., as the orders specified: only at ten o’clock had the tanks 
started off. 

I was installed in one of our machine-gun nests, and I didn’t miss a single 
detail. The German tanks still had great style. They were more sparing of 
their equipment, but magnificent in the harmony in which they worked. 

The enemy had an enormous number of anti-tank guns. Several of our 



286 


CAMPAIGN IN RUSSIA 


tanks burned, looking like flowering fruit trees, before they reached the 
woods covering the opposite slope. But other Panzers were advancing on 
the flanks. They crossed the forest. The moment had come for the infantry 
to move forward with the same vigor. 

The infantry proved soft. These were no longer the crack troops of the 
past. Several million men had fallen in the East. We had had to fill holes in 
divisions that had been bled white, not very satisfactorily, by dumping in 
streams of barracks wardens and reserves who didn’t have the health, the 
vigor, the faith, the technical training of the victors of the first summers. 
The outstanding noncoms of 1941 and 1942 were no longer there to com¬ 
mand and lead the newcomers. 

We had to wait until two o’clock in the afternoon for the first village to 
fall, Brallentin, which should normally have been taken by storm as early as 
dawn. Due to such dithering we lost the effect of surprise. 

Ever since the middle of the night, rumbling with the noise of the German 
tanks under way, we had been intercepting Russian radio messages urgently 
asking for help. Homs had passed, permitting the enemy to regroup. 

***** 

Interrogating the prisoners also gave us something to think about. 
According to them the first Soviet barrier at Brallentin was backed by two 
other equally powerful tank barriers spaced twenty kilometers apart. The 
whole country in front of us was bristling with Soviet tanks. “There are 
hundreds of them,” said the prisoners. They gave the names of the villages 
where they were concentrated and supplied precise details which confirmed 
their truthfulness. 

I couldn’t very well see the reserves of this morning manhandling all that. 

We had numerous Panzers. Sixty of them had left in the general advance 
from our sector. In Pomerania another two hundred and fifty German 
Panzers had penetrated through the Soviet lines at the same time. But the 
Soviets were going to bring two or three times as many against them if they 
were given the time to recover. 

They were the strongest in terms of equipment by a long way. They could 
be beaten only by speed, and this battle was beginning badly. 

Two more villages fell before night. The thrust thus penetrated about ten 
kilometers to the south. It was an achievement. 

But already the headquarters was reporting very sharp enemy counter¬ 
attacks. The Reds had entered the third village in force, where a furious 
duel was taking place. 

As soon as it got dark the Soviet Air Force was sent to the center of the 
offensive, to Stargard. At 2200 hours, by the light of dazzling parachute 
flares, the pounding began. Soon huge fires were breaking out. A 
warehouse containing eight hundred thousand bottles of schnapps, the 



Fight to the Death in Pomerania 


287 


famous Mampe schnapps, burned. Then a stock of a hundred million 
cigarettes caught fire. Then all the streets. The aerial bombardment con¬ 
tinued without letup, wave upon wave, for hours. 

We could feel the earth under our little posts, ten kilometers to the south 
of the town, vibrating like a drumhead. The sky was red above our heads to 
the right. The whole countryside was lit up. 

At two o’clock in the morning I was called to the command post of the 
Army Corps and had to drive through the roaring blaze in my Volkswagen. 
The general was established in a villa above Stargard. I received my orders. 

I went out by way of the garden. Beneath me the city was like an immense 
ship in flames. The ancient square towers of the medieval churches stood 
out dark and straight above the gigantic torches. They held out in the this 
hurricane as though wanting to send up one more appeal toward the sky 
from the civilized centuries that were dying in the fire. 

They were pathetic, black against a red and gold background. Never had 
they been so beautiful. Never had they borne such solemn testimony. Poor 
towers of Stargard, blackened masts of the burning ship which for five hun¬ 
dred years had flown the noble flag of Christian Europe. 

This Europe which was being burned alive was the country of every one 
of us. These austere square towers of the East were sisters to the great grey 
towers of Saint-Rombaut of Malines and the belfry of Bruges. All our coun¬ 
tries of Europe answered to one another, as did the clock towers. I could 
hear the great dirge of these disasters resounding in my heart. And I 
couldn’t keep myself from crying, alone on the reddening terrace, facing 
that ancient city being engulfed, facing those proud towers still standing so 
black and strong in their misfortune. 

ft ft ft ft ft 

The day of 17 February 1945 would be decisive. If the Soviet retort had 
been so quick and savage in the sky, we dared not lose another minute on 
the ground. Either we would exploit our half-success immediately and to the 
limit, or we would get a shock in return. 

The German tanks which had attacked from Lake Madue had also 
achieved some progress. According to the plan of the offensive, the tanks 
from the northwest should have made their junction with the Reich’s tanks 
coming from the southeast on the first evening. Thus all the Communist 
forces between the Ihna and Lake Madue would have been surrounded 
without having had the time to react. 

In fact the partial success of the day before had been a failure, since the 
maneuver of encirclement had been telegraphed before completion. The 
enemy had had the whole night to set up a barrier in both directions. 

The tardy attack would certainly be more difficult, but the game wasn’t 
lost yet. The order to make the junction at whatever price was given to the 
units. 



288 


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Dawn was breaking when the duel reached its apogee. Dozens of tanks 
were flaming on the battlefield. The Stukas were passing in great 
squadrons, then diving in front of us like arrows from the sky. 

Defeat 

Normally the Soviet troops and equipment, threatened by the two enor¬ 
mous armed paws closing in behind them, must immediately have 
withdrawn from the Stargard pocket, which was already almost closed. 

The Soviets’ exit corridor had been cut in half the day before. It was now 
less than twenty kilometers wide at the maximum. These twenty kilometers 
would doubtless be cut off by the morning of the second day of the 
offensive. 

Throughout the night our watchmen had strained their ears to catch any 
indications of an enemy retreat. The Soviet tanks that had been engaged at 
Kruessow as well as the heavy equipment would certainly go back under 
cover of darkness. 

In fact, the nocturnal traffic was very heavy, but the noises that we heard 
indicated intentions which were the exact opposite of our expectations and 
our desires. The traffic was moving from the south toward the east. Instead 
of pulling out, the Soviets were bringing reinforcements into the near- 
Kessel. 

They were going to reply to the German threat at their rear by threatening 
the Germans to their own rear. By the end of the night they attacked, with 
terrible violence, fifteen kilometers behind the assault divisions of the 
Reich. It was our unfortunate base at Lindenberg which would receive the 
hardest blow. 


* * * * * 

That was to be expected. Whoever held the ridges of Lindenberg held 
several of the region’s lines of communication under control. The Reds, 
dislodged from this hill, must have been thinking that it would soon serve as 
a point of departure for a second attack, whose objective would be to slice 
up the Kessel once it had been closed off in the south. 

The two adversaries were both running the very greatest risks as though 
for the pleasure of it: the attackers, in concentrating all their efforts on the 
southern extremity; and the defenders, in reinforcing to the east, right in the 
middle of a sector three-quarters surrounded. 

This Soviet display would not have been displeasing to the German com¬ 
mand had they felt certain of success. What they wanted was to destroy and 
capture a maximum of troops and equipment. At dawn the Soviet troops 
and equipment were still in the bslf-Kessel, to such a degree that we could 
see them driving down on us, thundering and screaming. 



Fight to the Death in Pomerania 


289 


There was no question of giving up. Russians and Germans both gave 
their utmost throughout the day. The winner would be the one who could 
send forth the last tank and the last man. 

The German Command of Stargard realized that the fate awaiting our 
hundred and seventy boys stuck on the Lindenberg ridge would be par¬ 
ticularly cruel. There were no Panzers to back them up. All the tanks, all the 
anti-tank guns, and all the artillery were in the south. To bring back equip¬ 
ment for defensive operations on the flanks would be to reduce the chances 
of closing the Kessel and to play the enemy’s game. 

On 17 February I had by way of heavy weapons only two armored trains 
of the Luftwaffe. They couldn’t go any farther to the south, for the railroad 
line was cut. They had been put at our service. They helped us very effec¬ 
tively, even though they were marked and plastered with hundreds of 
rockets by the “Stalin’s organs.” But they couldn’t stop the inevitable. 

The Soviet tanks hounded our comrades from every direction. At the end 
of a few hours it was impossible to supply them. Huge mud-holes stretched 
out behind them and on their flank. The rare practicable passageways were 
totally dominated by Stalin tanks. The morning’s wounded were brought in 
only with great difficulty, dragged through the muck under a ceaseless 
machine-gun fire. 

We tried to send reinforcements. Only half a dozen men were able to get 
past the barrage of Soviet fire. The rest were cut down or pinned in the 
swamps. 

Lieutenant Capelle maintained a perfect calm. Every fifteen minutes he 
radioed a brief picture of the situation to us. The Soviet tanks were skillfully 
keeping out of range of the panzerfausts. They were pulverizing our posi¬ 
tions meter by meter. There were a great many deaths, but the resistance of 
our comrades was incredible. 

Capelle had received orders to stay on the ridge for twenty-four hours, 
the twenty-four horns that must decide the success or failure of the general 
operation of encirclement. 

The Soviet tanks caused so much destruction that volunteers had to leave 
the marksmen’s holes and crawl along out in the open, armed with panzer¬ 
fausts, to face the enemy tanks. 

One of our young officers gave a sublime example to the troops. Twice 
wounded and knowing himself lost, he preferred to sacrifice himself rather 
than to wait for death. He dragged himself, streaming with blood, right up 
to a Joseph Stalin and fired his panzerfaust, but the projectile didn’t pierce 
the armor of the tank, which in turn blasted our hero down. 

Come night, Capelle was holding unshakeably. Two enemy tanks had 
been hit. But the other tanks had crushed and occupied several of our 
positions. 

In the south the German pincers had still not closed. 

The Reich’s Panzers had made some progress. But the Joseph Stalins 
were almost invulnerable. 



290 


CAMPAIGN IN RUSSIA 


One as big as a baobab tree, all by itself, stayed for an hour barring the 
way out of a conquered village. It took its stand right inside a building and 
no one managed to dislodge it. 

The Stukas had to intervene. The whole road out of the village was 
bombed. Everyone was certain that this time the score had been settled with 
the Joseph Stalin. The cloud of dust fell back to earth. And what did we 
see? The ruins quivered, and the Stalin extricated itself and snorted. 
Covered with the debris of walls and roofs, it advanced along the route. We 
poured shells onto it. It continued on its way unharmed and disappeared 
into a grove to the south. 

By night there were still four kilometers remaining to cross. 

Only four kilometers. 

But four kilometers just the same. 

The German tanks took up the assault ten times, twenty times, coming 
from the east and from the west. The Soviet tanks, anti-tank guns, and in¬ 
fantry didn’t yield an inch. We had to stop and once again put off the final 
skewering until the next day. The German tanks were not going to help. 

The day of the eighteenth passed in desperate striving. 

Instead of crossing the last four kilometers and finally closing the circle, 
the two German spearheads lost ground from dawn. 

The enemy reinforcements had had enough time to hasten up. In forty- 
eight hours the Soviet tanks and anti-tank guns had arrived in force. They 
overwhelmed the exhausted Germans and pushed them out of several of the 
villages they had taken at great cost. 

Not only did we have to give up the assault on Landsberg, but even the 
Erst phase of the attack, the initial Kessel, hadn’t materialized. The vise was 
coming unscrewed. Henceforth the operation was doomed to failure. 

***** 

On their muddy spur at Lindenberg, our unfortunate companions had 
grimly obeyed orders. Not one among them would have tolerated anybody’s 
being able to say someday that they had failed to make the extreme sacrifice 
in order to allow their German comrades, struggling in the south, to have 
one more try. 

Our wounded fought like the others, bleeding, but preferring to die in 
combat rather than be assassinated with blows from a rifle butt or spade. 

Lieutenant Capelle still had seventy men. They were slaughtered where 
they stood from dawn until three o’clock in the afternoon. Capelle calmly 
notified us by radio of the last phases of the death agony. The Soviet tanks 
were everywhere. Little islands of men were fighting obstinately. Finally 
only the islet of the command post was left, surrounded by a screaming 
horde of butchers. 

When the hand-to-hand combat was ended, Capelle, grievously wounded 



Fight to the Death in Pomerania 


291 


but still firing his revolver, stood up as best he could, facing the Reds who 
were driving down upon him. When they were one and a half meters 
straight ahead of him, he blew his brains out. 

Four wounded men only, sunk up to their necks in the slime, watched the 
last minutes of the drama. They dragged themselves through the horrible 
mud during the night. Two of them died of exhaustion. The other two were 
found by a patrol, almost dead. 

This total sacrifice by the Walloons at Lindenberg aroused great feelings 
among the German divisions of Pomerania. An order of the day praising 
their heroic act was read to the troops of the whole army. They were cited in 
the communique of the Main Headquarters. 

Capelle was proposed for a posthumous Knight’s Cross. 

Modestly, obscurely, like the six hundred Franchimontois of Belgian 
history, 3 they let themselves be cut down where they stood for the honor of 
obeying and being faithful. 

* * * * * 

In the south the defeat proved irreparable. The last German attempt to 
re-establish the Eastern Front had failed. Nevertheless, we could always 
hope that the enemy’s losses of equipment would slow his attack against 
Stargard. 

This hope proved fallacious. The destroyed Soviet tanks were replaced by 
an even greater number of tanks. They would quickly overwhelm our 
muddy positions. 

On the other hand the armored divisions of the Reich left as quickly as 
they had come. The plan to penetrate toward Landsberg having been aban¬ 
doned, the trucks and tanks disappeared the following night. They were 
needed at Kuestrin. They left us with deep ruts, empty artillery 
emplacements, and a gaping menace to the south. 

The German communique scarcely alluded to this failed offensive which 
had been the last hope of the Eastern Front. It was vaguely reported in a few 
lines like a local counterattack. 

We resumed our former trenches. In our rear, the ravaged and mangled 
town of Stargard was as gloomy as a cemetery in ruins. 

The Flood 

The only prize remaining from the German offensive of 16 February 1945 
in the direction of Landsberg, from the procession of tanks, trucks, and 
cannon which we had witnessed for days, was the modest village of Brallen- 
tin and a few hamlets. 

Practically speaking, the war had become untenable. In the west the great 
Ardennes-Alsace endeavor had failed. No other possibility of recouping 



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was even envisaged on the western front. In the east the counteroffensive 
conceived by Himmler experienced an identical defeat. The definitive proof 
had been made that any project to cut off the Soviet forces was vain. 

The Communists were ten times stronger than we in men, and especially 
in equipment. Henceforth, barring the use at the very last minute of a 
superweapon, the victory had been won by the Communists and their 
Anglo-American backers. 

The Reich was now holding a tiger by the tail. The west had been emptied 
of troops. The east had been completely dismantled. A few armored divi¬ 
sions were still running about here and there from Stettin to Kuestrin and 
from Kuestrin to Dresden, risking everything. Apart from them, the front 
was no longer made up of anything but troops that had been bled white, 
knocked about every day, with no tanks or ammunition to speak of. 

An extremely stringent telegraphic order forbade me, like all the division 
commanders of the Pomeranian front, to use more than six shells a day, or 
ten, depending on the caliber of the weapons. In the case of a Soviet attack 
our cannon would fire for a few minutes, and then would have to be silent 
until the next day. 

The troops, cut to pieces by incredible machine-gun fire, had to endure 
the blows of enemy troops that were almost at full strength and surrounded 
by tanks five times, ten times, or twenty times as numerous as ours. 

In every sector the duel was fought in the same conditions. A few hun¬ 
dred men, deprived of everything, exhausted, in the mud, had to face an 
avalanche of adversaries clambering on countless tanks, roaring, smashing, 
crushing everything in their way. 

* * * * * 

After the defeat of the last offensive, we found ourselves more alone than 
ever. 

Our sector was shaped like a long fishbone. The tail was at Stargard, the 
head in the villages of Kremzow and Repplin in the south. Our left flank 
(east) was bordered by the main Ihna and the highway from Stargard to 
Schoeneberg. The right flank (west) was bounded by the Lazy Ihna, the 
villages of Strebelow, and the hamlet of Kollin. 

Both these last towns had been pounded constantly since the ridges of 
Lindenberg had fallen back into the hands of the Soviets. The roofs were 
smashed in, the last animals dead in the stables. 

The liaison roads were almost impassible. They were starred by hundreds 
of craters. We had to race our Volkswagens at ridiculous speeds when firing 
riddled the road. 

The Reds were reinforcing more and more. We could see it. We could feel 
it, but we knew nothing precise. We hadn’t taken a single prisoner in a 
week. The Reds, spurred on by their successes, well protected by their tank 
columns, had become uncatchable. 



Fight to the Death in Pomerania 


293 


During the last weeks of the war in the East in 1945, we had to lose more 
soldiers to capture a Mongol than it took to conquer a province of the 
USSR in 1941, but each round-cheeked Mongol, each sallow Kalmuk, or 
each Siberian convict was indispensable to the command. 

So it was we received orders from the army corps to mount a large-scale 
expedition in complete darkness in which two hundred of our men would be 
engaged with no other aim than to seize a single Red. 

A large farm called Carlsburg, situated to the west of Strebelow, was 
assigned as our objective, a vast quadrilateral brick building with long 
stables and outbuildings where the enemy was strongly entrenched. 

We were to take the Reds from behind and drive them out in hand-to- 
hand combat, losing ten or twenty men if necessary, in order that one or 
two dazed, shaggy prisoners, stinking like martens, might come and tell 
headquarters what plots were hatching across the way. 

***** 

The operation took place one evening at nine o’clock. One part of our 
troops at Kollin got underway with the coming of darkness. They crawled 
through the marshes. West of Carlsburg, that is to say in the enemy’s rear, 
they had to move in complete silence. By this time the rest of the forces par¬ 
ticipating in the assault would have completed a similar movement by way 
of the north. 

Our anti-aircraft guns would first fire directly at the farm, with the aim of 
setting it on fire and panicking the enemy. Ten minutes before nine o’clock 
one of our companies, which was before Kruessow, started a diversionary 
operation. 

The Walloons were without peers anywhere on the eastern front for these 
impossible strikes. They threw themselves at the enemy, as quick as cats. 
Success was almost inevitable. 

At 2045 hours our anti-aircraft weapons opened fire on the Carlsburg 
horde. A barn caught fire. The wind was extremely strong that evening. The 
storehouses, which contained enormous quantities of wool, began to glow a 
fabulous red. The wind sent millions of golden sparks flying high into the 
sky. 

Then our men charged from the north and west to drive the enemy 
toward our lines. He defended himself fanatically in the furnace. The bright 
bursts from the submachine guns could be seen flashing all around the 
buildings. Silhouettes were running, leaping, and falling. 

At 9:45 a green flare went up, announcing that some prisoners had been 
taken and that our men were going to return to our lines. 

We had suffered relatively high losses. Then again we could have taken 
nothing at all and seen our attacks break before the enemy position. Only 
the ardor of our men and their irresistible momentum had permitted us to 



294 


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bring it off. As well as a funny incident. Two Mongols, despite the fire, the 
noise of the anti-aircraft weapons, and the volleys of shots, were still 
soundly sleeping at their guard post in front of the farm. We had to wake 
them up to start them off toward our positions. 

Carlsburg burned the whole night long, as a storm swept across the 
horizon. 


* * * * * 

I went to the commanding general of the Army Corps to deliver the 
prisoners he needed so badly. The interrogations were conclusive. They in¬ 
formed the German Command that the assault on the town of Stargard was 
ready and the blow would be struck mainly to the east of the Ihna. 

The very next day in fact the Reds overwhelmed Brallentin and Repplin, 
which were defended by German and Dutch SS. They crossed the main Ihna 
and approached near Schoeneberg, about twenty kilometers southwest of 
Stargard. 

How could the front have held, deprived of any heavy defense? 
Scheoneberg fell. A few German Panzers, lost in this thirty kilometer 
breach, tried in vain to stem the flood. It poured through. The Soviet tanks 
ripped open the entire sector to the east of our positions and set off on the 
Schoeneberg-Stargard highway as if they were at an auto rallye. 

We were separated from them only by the main Ihna and a gentle slope. 
The muddy enemy tanks deployed themselves before out eyes and reached 
the same height as our command post, one after another. 

From the second day, the fight was waged behind us. We had to turn 
back toward the northwest to follow the progress of the Soviet tanks. Our 
fortifications at Kollin, in the southwestern comer, had held out despite the 
storm. The battered village, the deserted streets strewn with heaps of debris 
smelled of disaster and death. But our men hadn’t let themselves be pushed 
out of the demolished houses, nor from their machine-gun nests. 

All the same, it was wishful to think we might be able to retrieve the situa¬ 
tion. We received orders to evacuate Kollin and Strebelow and to bring the 
forces from behind these villages back to Kremzow, the bridgehead which 
protected the second Stargard road. 

I put the defense of the position into the hands of one of our most 
popular veterans of the Donets and the Caucasus, Commander Jules 
Mathieu. Against all odds he held out with his regiment in this large town, 
so severely choked off. 

The enemy wanted to go around Kremzow by way of the fields to the 
west. We dug our positions there in great haste, completely out in the open. 
Ten times they were overrun, broken up, and sliced to pieces. Ten times 
they were retaken in hand-to-hand fighting. Corpses were lying everywhere 
in the mire, shapeless and heavy as lead. 



Fight to the Death in Pomerania 


295 


Only tanks could have relieved us. 

I finally arranged with the Army Corps that four German Panzers—four! 
—would come to lend a hand. We had to furnish all the gas we still had left 
beforehand. They were scarcely in position at Kremzow when two were 
taken away again. The other two had four shells apiece. 

As it happened they didn’t have occasion to use them, as they too were 
recalled, along with their meager ammunition, leaving us to manage on our 
own. 

They were withdrawn because the gap on the Schoeneberg road was 
hourly becoming more dangerous. Everything was falling apart. From our 
command post, we didn’t miss a single detail of the show. The Soviet tanks 
were advancing past some houses and a cemetery. 

When they were several kilometers beyond our sector we were given the 
order to abandon Kremzow and to more or less align ourselves. Illusory 
alignment. .. . For not only were the Soviet tanks thundering in our rear, 
but shots also were crackling. The infantry accompanying the enemy tanks 
had just crossed the main Ihna by night. 

There was hardly any more doubt that we would be surrounded in a very 
short time. 

Stargard in the Hands of the Soviets 

Saturday, 3 March 1943 saw the collapse of Stargard. Between the an¬ 
cient Pomeranian city and our makeshift line there was nothing left but a 
large village, Vittichow, and the crossroads at Klutzow, where a sugar fac¬ 
tory stood. 

Two weeks earlier the courtyards and storehouses of this factory had 
been swarming with German tanks that were there for the offensive. Now it 
was just an empty space, crossed only by my little Volkswagen, racing from 
one place to another according to the situation. 

That morning the enemy tanks started off toward the southeastern 
suburbs of Stargard. The Soviet infantry crossed the Ihna a second time, 
very close to the city, and cut off the gravel road to Vittichow in our rear. 

I sent a company immediately. Too late. The road was lost. Bullets by the 
hundreds whistled about us. One of them passed through the collar of my 
overcoat and grazed my neck. Everywhere we fought in close combat. 

Our men’s faces were gray and lined with exhaustion and worry. They 
machine-gunned the enemy, braced against the sticky banks or the gravel of 
the road or half buried in the musty-smelling yellow and gray beetroot silos. 

The enemy swarmed out of the mud wallows by the hundreds, like clouds 
of croaking brown and violet amphibians. 

The soul of the resistance at Vittichow was a former officer of the Belgian 
Army, Major Hellebaut, then head of the staff office of our division, brave 
and totally dedicated. 



296 


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Son and grandson of two Belgian generals who were both Ministers of 
War, he wore the Military Cross, which he had won at the Yser in 1918, 
beside the Iron Cross First Class on his grey uniform. 

Inspired by his bravery, our soldiers to the south of Vittichow didn’t 
flinch, although they were only eight kilometers away from the walls of 
Stargard, which the enemy tanks had been battering since morning. The last 
ones left in the southern and southeastern sector, they clung to the terrain, 
which was totally overrun to the east and incessantly threatened in the 
southwest. 

Stoically the companies endured extermination, one by one. Hit in the 
belly by an exploding grenade, the second prdvost of the Rexist Youth suf¬ 
fered in the mud. He was 2nd Lieutenant Paul Mezetta, poet, passionate 
soul who gave of himself like a true knight and who, despite terrible wounds 
received in the Caucasus, had again wanted to take his place in the fight. 

Of the Dierickx Battalion, barely a hundred men were left in all. They 
cursed, fired, counterattacked, rolled in the bloody muck with the Kirghiz 
and the Mongols. Nothing could make them give in. 

* * * * * 

From the noises of tank combat, we realized that the Reds must be 
fighting now at the very gates of Stargard. 

Our situation was unbelievable. Here we were, an isolated defensive unit 
in the south, under a more and more direct threat of encirclement, and we 
hadn’t received any information or any orders from the division command 
post since the beginning of the afternoon. 

Five o’clock came. We could hardly fail to fall into the hands of the 
Soviets. I couldn’t imagine that we would be abandoned this way. I jumped 
into my Volkswagen to go find the general. 

Never imagining for a single minute that everything was over, I entered 
Stargard. I had just the time to jerk my steering wheel around and race for 
the suburbs. Soviet tanks had just forced their way into the streets. Clusters 
of dead women lay amid their suitcases near the station bridge, mowed 
down by the tank fire. To the northwest of the city the Soviet tanks were ar¬ 
rayed in battle formation on both sides of the Stettin road. 

I learned at Army Corps, several kilometers from there, that the Stargard 
headquarters, to which we were subordinate, had been submerged by the 
enemy wave during the afternoon. The general had disappeared as though 
into thin air. Corps had sent us late orders to withdraw, but the motorcyclist 
must have been kidnapped on the way. 

I dashed back across the countryside in the direction of Vittichow. I was 
lucky enough to locate one of our telephone wires. I cut in, hooked up a 
portable phone, and was thus able to direct the retreat of my forces in time. 

Starting from the southwest, they would perform a huge circular move- 



Fight to the Death in Pomerania 


297 


ment by the west and northwest along Lake Madue in order to escape the 
enemy grasp. From there they would turn back in the direction of Stargard 
and take up positions to the northwest of the city. 

Worn out by these ten days and nights of fighting, the poor fellows would 
have to march twenty-five kilometers in the darkness, through sticky mud 
or quicksand, threatened with being cut off or caught by the stalking enemy 
at any minute. 


***** 

One of the platoons, which had struggled with the sandy Vittichow road 
until nightfall, hadn’t quite understood the verbal order or realized the 
situation. Preferring to take a shortcut, they naively headed for Stargard 
itself, just as I had done at the end of the afternoon. They marched in 
ranks, their weapons on their shoulder straps, through the town, which had 
been in the hands of the Soviets for several hours. 

It was rainy, and the darkness was opaque. Red soldiers were posted 
above the railroad bridge. They took our men for Soviet troops. Ours took 
them for Germans. They went through the entire city and out again on the 
northwest without anyone’s questioning them. Then they saw the line of 
flames from the enemy tanks’ exhaust. They went around them by compass 
bearings through the black fields of mud. 

***** 

I arrived in our new sector at nine o’clock in the evening to find the whole 
region in a state of anarchy. Two battalions of the Todt Corps, sent to the 
site to construct a new line, fell back, violently agitated. “The Russians are 
here! The Russians are here!” the shovelers cried at the top of their lungs. 

A German Panzer, returning from the east, had been taken for a Soviet 
tank. It was the target of massive firing. Getting information was very com¬ 
plicated. The Soviets must indeed have overrun a wide area northwest of 
Stargard. 

I had two men with me in all, plus a motorcycle messenger. I set up my 
command post according to the orders I had received and posted my motor¬ 
cyclist on the deserted route three kilometers before the village so that he 
could hide, belly to the ground, and notify me of the arrival of any enemy 
tanks. 

At dawn the road was still deserted. Our men were arriving from the west 
in unrecognizable groups, filthy from head to toe, swaying like 
metronomes, no longer knowing anything or understanding anything. 
Army Corps insisted that I put them in position within the hour. 

I might just as well have lined up pebbles atop the knolls. 

These men weren’t capable of fighting even for a minute any more. I 



298 


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settled them in the empty farms. “Eat, drink, sleep, and don’t worry!” 
Soon the entire legion was snoring, sounding like a squadron of Junkers. I 
placed several non-commissioned officers facing the southeast as a symbolic 
measure. 

The enemy must have been dead-tired too, since until nightfall nothing 
moved. 

The next day at eight o’clock in the morning, I pushed our men toward 
their watch posts somewhat refreshed. They didn’t have any time to grow 
bored. A wave of fifteen Soviet tanks, then another twenty-one, stormed 
down upon us. 

Pursued by the Tanks 

On 5 March 1945 we were thus still on the Ihna. Instead of being south of 
Stargard on the muddy moor that separated the two arms of the river, we 
were now posted to the north of the lost city astride the reunited Ihna. A 
chilly sunshine had returned. 

Two villages, Luebow and Saarow, faced each other on either side of the 
water. The left bank, partially tree-covered, dominated the river. The right 
bank was bare. Only a railroad embankment beyond the houses of Luebow 
cut the monotony of the brown, gently rolling land. 

The first wave of Soviet tanks appeared at the threshold of this town. I 
was in the process of checking our positions at Saarow when all hell broke 
out. We had only a skeleton battalion on each bank. There was not a single 
German tank in our sector. 

The fifteen big enemy tanks immediately charged across Luebow. Our 
men defended themselves from house to house. A hundred meters away 
from them on the other side of the water, I had all our mortars at Saarow 
start firing to contain the Soviet infantry which followed the tanks. 

After half an hour our men had been thrown back into the plain beyond 
the farms. We could see them running, trying to reach the railroad embank¬ 
ment to organize a new line of resistance. But the tank shells blasted the ter¬ 
rain all around them. Two or three men would be left behind every time, 
green splotches stretched out on the reddish earth. 

Some other Walloons, cornered at the edge of the water, embarked as a 
last resort in some washerwomen’s tubs. Their improvised flotilla managed 
to come ashore on our side. 

* * * * * 

Now twenty-one Soviet tanks suddenly appeared at the entry to Saarow. 
In the time it took to watch the walls tumbling down around us, the 
monsters were in the center of town. 

One of our men, hidden in the partially open door of the church, saved 



Fight to the Death in Pomerania 


299 


the situation for a few seconds by blowing up the lead tank with a 
panzerfaust. 

But what could we do? Only those who lived through those frightful 
weeks at the end of the war in the East can imagine the butchery that took 
place. There wasn’t any more armored equipment worth talking about. Our 
Army Corps, the 3rd Panzer Corps, once famous for its hundreds of tanks, 
had thirty and would end up with only a dozen. Day and night these few 
Panzers had to cover a sector of more than seventy kilometers. 

In contrast, the Soviets were preceded by four thousand tanks on the 
Pomeranian front alone. That Monday, just for our two hamlets, thirty-six 
came. And to stop them, nothing—nothing, that is, except panzerfausts and 
human chests. 

Panzerfaust duels are all very well in the movies. In actual fact, however, 
successes are rare. You have to wait until the tank is at point-blank range 
before pulling the trigger. 

If the tank is alone and the projectile hits it by chance at a vital spot, it’s 
perfect, but often the tank doesn’t blow up. 

Besides, tanks almost always come in waves and sweep the terrain 
beforehand. The five-meter-long flame betrays the presence of the 
marksman. Even if he gets one tank, another tank will machine-gun him 
into little bits half a minute later. 

Every unit had magnificent heroes who struck down Soviet tanks with 
panzerfausts up until the last day. They had to, for we no longer had 
anything else. But the man who risked himself at this duel was almost cer¬ 
tain to die. 


* * * * * 

The orders were of a draconian severity. They took no account of any 
sentimental, psychological, or political considerations. All that counted was 
the brutal fact: hold out. 

We couldn’t give in. Even if we were overrun from every direction we had 
to hold the field, cling to it, get massacred. A general who gave ground was 
demoted or even arrested. In one month of battle in Pomerania the com¬ 
mand was changed eighteen times. 

Commanders of armies, army corps, and divisions flew through the air 
like tennis balls. We ended up losing our bearings, no longer knowing 
whom to depend on. But every general, feeling the instability of his posi¬ 
tion, sent implacable orders, whether they were feasible or not. 

My battalion at Luebow, chased by tanks and half exterminated, was 
blockaded on the right bank of the Ihna. I had no more than a hundred and 
fifty men who had retreated from Saarow and not a single tank in support. 

My command post was in a village immediately to the northwest of the 
two invaded towns. This village was indefensible with the handful of 
soldiers I had left. The orders nevertheless were to defend it. 



300 


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The plain was littered with our wounded. We watched their slaughter, 
livid with sorrow and fury. The Soviet footsoldiers advanced between the 
tanks and smashed in the heads of our unfortunate comrades with trench 
shovels. One of them waved a white handkerchief above his head in vain. 
He had his face bashed in like the others by the slaughterers. 

There were still a few German cannon in my sector. I put them in position 
at the entry to the village and, according to my old custom, ordered them to 
wait until the very last minute to unleash their fire at point-blank range into 
the enemy tanks. 

Under this tornado of iron, the Reds’ tanks scurried back to cover in an 
oak grove and started pounding the town. The houses fell in on my staff of¬ 
ficers and telephone operators. 

Our men built a makeshift barrier at the southeastern entry to the village. 
Their morale was unbelievable, despite the gravity of their condition. They 
kidded one another and joked when I sent them all the sluggards in the area, 
whatever their nationality. They adopted them and shared them among 
themselves. 

I regularly informed the new staff officer of the march of events. He was 
a rather cunning man to whom we had just been linked—-probably for a few 
hours. He jealously hung on to the twelve tanks allocated to the 
southeastern and southern sector. He gratified us with magnificent and 
categorical assurances over the field telephone: “There are no more Soviet 
tanks across from us. Everything is fine.” 

But while he was talking I could see our wounded men with my own eyes 
being pursued ferociously by tank shells. They threw themselves onto the 
ground and tried to crawl, but the shelling wouldn’t let up. If the enemy 
could waste so much ammunition at these cruel games, what would happen 
later? 

To the staff officer in question I sent one of my young aides-de-camp, the 
severely disabled and very sharp-witted Lieutenant Tony Gombert. 
Theoretically he was to serve as liaison agent, but in fact he would mainly 
listen and keep his eyes open. 

As I was receiving a telephone message that we didn’t have to worry, the 
German observation planes had just notified the staff officer that a column 
of forty-one tanks was rumbling toward us. 

Forty-one! Our officer jumped onto his motorcycle and hurried to warn 
me. But we were already fighting amidst the rubble of fallen houses. The 
tanks were on us from all sides. 

We had just been overwhelmed by another surprise. Trying to establish 
liaison with our right wing, one of our patrols had found nothing left but an 
empty space. Our neighbors had vanished. The Reds were breaking through 
this gap in the southwestern front. 

To the east, our left wing, too, had been completely overrun by a bat¬ 
talion of Soviet infantry which had crossed the Ihna River fairly far behind 
our line at the fall of night. 



Fight to the Death in Pomerania 


301 


It was in these conditions that we received the rumbling mass of the forty- 
one enemy tanks. In ten minutes they had broken our barrier in twenty 
places. Split into lots of small groups, our men fired their last panzerfausts 
while trying to reach the western part of the forest amid the firing. 

The Reds charged through the streets of the town. On the telephone, the 
staff officer kept endlessly repeating, “You are responsible for the village! 
You’ve got to hold on!” 

With the coming of darkness we witnessed an amazing spectacle. The 
Soviet tanks switched on headlights, just like cars on the highways before 
the war. They started straight for the forest to which the German artillery 
batteries had fallen back several hours earlier. 

The enemy conducted a demons’ dance in the village. They had occupied 
all the farms. There was only fifteen of us left. We were clinging to the 
northern exit of the village at the edge of the woods. Somehow I managed to 
save my telephone. 

I called amid the ruckus. “The Soviet infantry is flooding in from every 
direction. The front has broken completely. Believe it or not, but there are 
forty-one tanks here, and we have only one cannon left to bar entry to the 
forest. The tanks are going to come through whenever they like. Do you 
realize this?” 

The only words I got in reply were, “Hold on!” 

Hold on! And stop forty-one heavy tanks with a puff of air! 

***** 

At eight o’clock in the evening there were still four of us. My telephone, 
too, had just died. All contact had been completely cut off. 

Several tanks rushed at us to be first across the barrier to the forest road. 
We sacrificed the last panzerfaust we had left. We were hit right back. A 
shell felled one of my survivors and wounded another. 

I had to make every effort to regroup my soldiers, who had been driven 
under the pines. My driver dragged the wounded man and the dead one to 
my Volkswagen, which was hidden in a copse. I rejoined them, firing as I 
came. Through the forest, crackling with gunfire, we reached a village in a 
large clearing five kilometers to the northwest. 

We didn’t see any military post at any of the anti-tank barriers along the 
route. There were no defenders, nothing to block the gaps. 

The village extended one or two kilometers in length. It was full of the 
field-hospital and staff equipment of units which had been dispersed or 
wiped out. No one seemed to be the least bit worried. 

At each farm everybody ate with an excellent appetite. The soup was 
steaming on the table. I still wanted to hope that the Soviet tanks wouldn’t 
undertake the crossing of this vast unknown forest in the middle of the 
night. 



302 


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Outside, snow had begun to fall in thick flakes. What was happening to 
my soldiers? How would they escape the hunters? Would they reach the 
town of Augustenwalde, on the other side of the forest, in time? I had given 
orders to my officers to regroup their men there if we were cut off by the 
tanks in the darkness. I imagined them stealing through the maze of fir 
trees, several dozen kilometers deep, by compass bearings. 

Then I saw the tanks again in my mind with their enormous headlights. 

Where were they? 

Augustenwalde 

It was 11 P.M. The battle was making a tremendous racket, but it was 
hardly the first busy night we had ever had. 

We wanted to rest for a few hours before reaching Augustenwalde at 
dawn, then Altdamm, where according to the orders I had just received 
from Army Corps, we were to re-form the debris of our division. 

Snow fell thicker and thicker. The driver came in several times to say that 
bullets were bouncing off the wall. 

Suddenly a frightful rumbling broke out right near our house. How well 
we knew this roar! Only tanks made these short raucous clatters. I leaped to 
the door. At the road into the village flames were spurting like red tongues 
from the muzzles. The tanks had already crossed the five kilometers of 
forest. 

Nocturnal floral bouquets could be seen sprouting everywhere. The coun¬ 
try was in flames. Hundreds of trucks were rushing in both directions. A 
German transport column coming from the highway was advancing straight 
into the enemy tanks. Another column was trying desperately to go against 
the stream of traffic. The road was narrow. Bullets were slamming or 
richocheting against the walls or the metal panels of the trucks. The lights 
from fires and explosions made it almost as bright as day. 

The whole caravan was going to be cut to pieces, there wasn’t a shadow 
of a doubt. The Soviet tanks were driving right into us. Terrible screams 
arose. 

We managed to push my battered Volkswagen into the snowy fields. 
Rolling through everything, we reached the highway before the Soviets. 
Behind us was nothing but red torches, screams, the crash of Soviet tank 
fire, and explosions. What kind of opposition could there be from this con¬ 
fused horde of doctors, truckers, mess orderlies, and clerks, all running 
about helter-skelter in the night? 

The big trucks from Army Corps Headquarters had felt which way the 
wind was blowing and disappeared a quarter of an hour earlier. The rest 
were hopelessly lost. I wouldn’t have given a red cent for the hundreds of 
vehicles piled up in the basin with the Soviet tanks pouring in on them 
furiously. 



Fight to the Death in Pomerania 


303 


The procession of woe spread out on the highway, more and more horri¬ 
ble. Tens of thousands of women and children had come to a standstill in 
their small carts, covered with fresh snow. Haggard, some watched the 
flaming sky. They were waiting. The enemy tanks were going to overtake 
them, but they seemed no longer to understand. Their eyes were empty. The 
horses, their eyes half-closed, stood still. 

I lay down in an abandoned house a few kilometers away amidst an in¬ 
choate swarm of soldiers. At dawn I went back as far as I could toward the 
enemy in order to help any of my soldiers who might have had an accident. 
Everything was quiet on the highway. Surely the Soviets must have turned 
aside and continued their advance by a shortcut through the forest. 

But the forest paths were certainly impassable. I had a hard time imagin¬ 
ing that tanks would have dared to advance under the trees along narrow, 
sandy paths that a few anti-tank guns could block off. 

The Soviet tanks had to be somewhere, however, and they weren’t on the 
highway. 

At ten o'clock in the morning I arrived at Augustenwalde. This large 
village was at the northwestern extremity of the forest about a dozen 
kilometers east of Stettin. It seemed so well protected by the woods that the 
officers from Army Corps had withdrawn to it the preceding evening. 

I stopped by the general’s. His chief of staff, Colonel von Bockelsberg, 
made despairing signs to me as he hunched over his telephone. As he re¬ 
ceived the reports he pointed out on the map, “Twenty tanks here! Fifteen 
tanks here! Thirty tanks here!” He wiped his forehead for a minute. 
“They’re everywhere, they’re coming from everywhere.” 

Since the Dnieper, we were familiar with days when everything falls 
apart. The Army Corps trucks were there, so it wasn’t particularly 
catastrophic. I regrouped part of our men and their officers in the village. 
Poultry, carefully trussed, was already stewing in the best military tradition. 
We cheerfully set ourselves to its enjoyment. 

* * * * * 

A few bullets bounced off the building’s facade. 

Another broke a windowpane and landed in the partition. “They’re kill¬ 
ing chickens,” Major Hellebaut remarked imperturbably. 

Thirty or forty bullets later I added: “I think they’re killing a lot of 
chickens.” 

Everyone went on chewing. 

Now volleys of shells shook the whole building. 

I pressed my point. “They’re even killing the chickens with tanks.” And I 
passed my neighbor a platter of delicious fruits taken from a jar found in 
the fugitive proprietor’s cellar. 

I looked outside. Men were running about everywhere. We went to the 



304 


CAMPAIGN IN RUSSIA 


doorstep where we saw a phenomenal uproar. The big Army Corps radio 
trucks were leaving without even taking down their ten-meter-high aerials. 
People were shooting every which way. Soldiers yelled to us as they passed, 
“They’re here! There are forty tanks!” 

To tell the truth, they had run right through the forest. The Soviet tanks 
hadn’t met a single obstacle across thirty kilometers. 

As quick as squirrels our men leaped onto the trucks of the army corps. 
The enemy had already reached the station to the southwest. They were 
sweeping the road on which all the equipment stored at Augustenwalde was 
being rushed up. The automobiles kept stopping suddenly, throwing the 
staff officers clinging to the roofs headfirst into the muddy snow. 

It was impossible to improvise a resistance. There wasn’t a German tank, 
anti-tank, or anti-aircraft gun around. The whole region had been overrun. 
The Augustenwalde-Stettin road itself had been cut. We had to go south to 
the Stargard road. From there we went to Altdamm, where the greater part 
of our soldiers were waiting for us. 

The retreat was skillfully accomplished. Few were lost in the course of the 
night. 

Our division was in a lamentable state. Already at Stargard our two in¬ 
fantry regiments had had to be combined. Now the two battalions of this 
combined regiment didn’t number more than about four hundred men. 
Many officers had been killed. Not one company was still operative. 

The enemy had achieved an impressive breakthrough. Now it would take 
a few days before their equipment could cross the forest. Counterattacks 
were starting from Altdamm. Thus, there would be a little respite. 

I obtained a week to reorganize my crippled forces and amalgamate them 
with the reinforcements that had just arrived at the Stettin station. I wanted 
to keep only the tough ones with me. I assembled all the men and thanked 
them for their magnificent conduct. Bluntly I told them of the situation and 
the grave combats still awaiting them. “Everyone is free either to return to 
the firing line or to stay with a safer company.” All had come to the Legion 
as volunteers. There was almost no hope left. I wasn’t going to accept their 
blood unless it was offered freely. It would not be said that in the final 
struggle a single Walloon fell against his wish. 

Eighty men preferred not to return to combat. I treated them with as 
much affection as before. I wasn’t a slave trader. Besides, most of these 
boys were at the end of their strength. I had them lodged and fed with care 
thirty kilometers northwest of the Oder. 

With the other six hundred, the survivors of this terrible month and the 
newcomers, I re-formed an assault battalion. Before dawn on the sixth day 
we started off, singing, toward the docks and bridges of Stettin. 

The commander of this battalion of heroes was Major Dierickx, an ex¬ 
traordinary man who had come from the virgin forest of the Congo to the 
snows of the steppe. His kepi on the nape of the neck, after the fashion of 



Fight to the Death in Pomerania 


305 


the pioneers, he was the bravest of the brave, a kind of “Captain Conan” 4 
by way of Katanga. He had the heart of a child and gave his loyalty with a 
sincerity and emotion which often brought tears to his eyes. 

The front where I led his battalion had shrunk singularly in the last week. 

The front guarded part of the Stettiner Haff northeast of Stettin, running 
along the highway west of Augustenwalde, covering Altdamm and extend¬ 
ing beyond the big concrete bridge of the autobahn. 

We took position in about the center of the front before Finkenwalde, a 
long cluster of houses which prolonged the suburbs of Altdamm toward the 
south. 

The enemy occupied numerous ridges on the right bank of the Oder, 
overlooking our line. They had set up more than a thousand pieces of artil¬ 
lery there, which crushed the positions, the houses, and the streets of 
Altdamm and Finkenwalde, as well as the three bridges, with a continuous 
fire. Never since 1941 had we witnessed such a pounding. 

The Bridge of Stettin 

In mid-March 1945 life had become absolutely untenable at the 
bridgehead of Stettin on the right bank of the Oder. The houses of 
Altdamm and Finkenwalde had collapsed and crumbled all over the streets. 
The poles for the tramway lines had fallen. The trees were hacked to pieces 
or lopped off to mere stalks. We were stopped by shell-holes everywhere. 
The Soviet artillery pounded every street and followed our every move. 

To get to our positions we had to cross the air Held, where there was 
nothing left but the blackened carcasses of planes. We could still climb a 
staircase littered with broken glass to the terrace of the terminal building, 
from which we could look out over an incredible panorama. We could see 
each of the Red tanks lined up at the edge of the woods to the east, each of 
the enemy batteries perched on the ridges. 

The European forces no longer occupied any of the area north of 
Altdamm at the highway bridge except for a long ribbon of terrain only 
three or four kilometers wide. The Reds attacked frantically in order to cut 
us off and push us into the Oder. 

Even at night contact with the troops was practically impossible due to 
the thousands of falling shells. Every company command post, quickly 
spotted by all the coming and going, was the object of an unbelievable 
pounding. The streets were strewn with the bodies of soldiers. 

The orders were incredibly strict. Runaways were hanged on the spot. 
They were strung up at the entry to the bridge joining Altdamm and Stettin 
by the Feldgendarmes. 

It was horrible to see the stiffened corpses of these handsome German 
boys who, physically crushed by these weeks of horror, had had a momen¬ 
tary weakness. Their bodies dangled with a placard around their necks say- 



306 


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ing: “Coward.” Pallid, their tongues hard and blue, they did a sinister 
dance at the end of their ropes, shaken by the innumerable explosions which 
brought down the cables of the tramway lines on them. 

Every soldier knew what was waiting for him if he balked. It was better to 
stay out in front under the machine-gun fire and amid the roaring of the 
tanks. 


* * * * * 

The losses were frightening. In three days, sixty percent of the defenders 
of our sector were killed or wounded. Entrenched in their foxholes with 
only the head and arms protruding, they would be wounded, most likely in 
the face, by the bursts of shells and grenades. 

They would run up to my little post with a monstrous bloody hole instead 
of a jawbone. Often their tongues would still be panting, feverishly pink 
and hanging from the wound. 

Twenty-five or thirty wounded would arrive at once. Some who had been 
hit while running had steel shrapnel buried in their sex-ual organs. They 
shivered horribly, their complexions blue. 

I still had to command and see to everything, amid the smells of 
coagulated blood and smeared excrement among all the sweaty linens. 

The shelters were flattened one by one. On the very first day, my com¬ 
mand post was hit head on and reduced to dust only two minutes after I had 
left it. The freezing cellar at Finkenwalde where I passed the last night 
directing the combat by the light of a candle was hit by a shell which went 
right through the ceiling and landed in the middle of the onlookers without 
exploding. 

I hurried to our little forward posts, for at one o’clock in the morning the 
Soviets had just broken the line on our right wing. Our men were fighting 
admirably, clinging to the bank of the railroad line. They wouldn’t give up. 
Three German tanks of a very old model, but operated by heroic crews, hur¬ 
ried along beside us. Only the muzzle of their cannon protruded above the 
bank. In half an hour they demolished five of the Soviet tanks which had 
come from the other side of the railway line. A person could have shouted 
from one tank to another. We were utterly blinded by the silver lights of the 
muzzle flash. 


* * * * * 

At the end of that night the general who commanded the defense assigned 
me another cellar in Finkenwalde as a command post, closer to his, but 
situated right at the southern end of the Walloon positions. Nose to nose 
with the Reds, I would have lots of complications making contact with my 
other company command posts. 



Fight to the Death in Pomerania 


307 


I immediately sent messengers to find a staff office, telephone operators, 
and a radio. Bullets were coming from every direction. First I saw the 
autobahn bridge blow up. Then the Soviets stole through Finkenwalde to 
my right. They got as far as the Oder. Their machine guns, their anti-tank 
guns, and their tanks were holding our line of retreat under their fire. 

The general who had his post five hundred meters behind mine an hour 
earlier was no longer exhibiting any signs of life. He was no longer answer¬ 
ing his telephone. I was left alone and inoperative, wondering what was go¬ 
ing on. I stuck to my orders, but they very nearly cost me my life. 

I was saved at the last minute only by the presence of mind of a Flemish 
motorcyclist. Passing the general, who was withdrawing, he boldly re¬ 
minded him that I still had to man my outpost. The general exclaimed 
loudly. He had forgotten me in all the tumult. The motorcyclist pushed 
back through it all and took me up behind him. Numerous German soldiers 
were lying face down in the sand on the little road, shot down as they 
withdrew. Under machine gun and cannon fire from the tanks, we reached 
the general’s refuge in the nick of time to learn that he had just been relieved 
of his command. 


ft ft ft $ ft 

That morning it seemed that all was lost. Nevertheless we received orders 
from our new chief to hold on to the remaining terrain. 

He was wise. A massive withdrawal under an open sky and under that 
kind of pounding would only have brought on a massacre. The 
commander’s posts were all to remain on the right bank. The general 
himself remained there. 

The railroad bridge blew up in its turn. Now only the bridge to the city of 
Stettin itself was left. The Soviet artillery blasted it and swept it without 
letup. Shells ricocheted on the road across the bridge. Others sent up enor¬ 
mous sprays around the arches or shook the hanged men as if they were 
mannequins. 

The Soviet air force plastered us with hundreds of bombs. The squadrons 
dove, come back, and grazed the roofs. Whole sides of buildings collapsed. 
Behind us the Red Cross field post caved in. The horrible screams of the 
wounded, who had been buried alive, rose from the heaps of rubble. 

At the crest of the Finkenwalde railway line our soldiers, supported by 
several tanks, were holding out with a heroism comparable to that of their 
German comrades clinging to the ruins of Altdamm. 

As always when the game was desperate, the Walloons distinguished 
themselves by their determination and their good humor. They stole past 
the sheds in the enemy sector. Some had been taken prisoner, taken by the 
Communists to some wooded hills. They took advantage of a violent bom¬ 
bardment by the German artillery to get away. They all made it back to our 
lines, all except one who was killed on the way. 



308 


CAMPAIGN IN RUSSIA 


The NCO’s gave the most extraordinary examples. 

We had a pale and slender young officer in the Dierickx Battalion, 
Lieutenant Leroy, from Binche, a volunteer at sixteen years old, who had 
lost his right arm and his left eye a year earlier at the time of the Cherkassy 
combats. He had absolutely insisted on coming back to the anti-Soviet 
front. He fulfilled the functions of liaison officer. The presence of this 
severely disabled soldier among the troops was as moving as could be. 

One of Leroy's brothers was a platoon leader. He was killed on the bank 
at Finkenwalde three days before the end of the battle of Oder. Our young 
amputee, instead of letting himself be overwhelmed with grief, immediately 
asked to take the place of the dead man. I accepted. And we saw the ad¬ 
mirable spectable of this terribly disabled man, his torso all twisted, fighting 
hand-to-hand battles for three days and three nights, shooting a sub¬ 
machine gun which he handled quite skillfully with his left hand. 

One of our Belgian nurses, an admirable widow, had her three sons on 
combat duty. They all died with equal heroism. The mother, stabbed by 
such sorrow, never for an instant accepted the idea of abandoning her 
work. On the contrary, wanting to dedicate herself on the very spot where 
her boys had fallen, she begged me to let her carry on her apostolate in the 
front lines. In the hurricane of machine-gun fire, she helped our wounded 
with such extraordinary courage that she earned the Iron Cross. 

* * * * * 

The tenacity of our men was such that when the right bank of the Oder 
was evacuated it was the Wallonian volunteers who had the honor of ensur¬ 
ing the safety of Finkenwalde during the last night. They had to hold on 
three hours after everyone else along the railroad embankment, while the 
three divisions withdrew. These divisions no longer numbered more than a 
thousand men in all. 

The struggle for Stargard and the Oder had lasted five weeks. During 
those thirty-five days the Reds had had to launch a hundred attacks, lose an 
enormous amount of equipment, and sacrifice more than four hundred 
tanks in order to cross the thirty-five kilometers which separated them from 
Stettin. 

The night of the retreat was especially pathetic. Helped by two tanks, our 
volunteers feigned a particularly aggressive action. The counterbatteries of 
the Reich sent a hurricane of shells into the enemy from the left bank of the 
river. 

Under this protection the survivors of the three divisions, with all their 
equipment and all their weapons, slipped toward the Oder and reached the 
first bridge in silence. They took up their positions on the other side of the 
water, hidden among the enormous wooden storehouses which covered the 
first peninsula. 



Fight to the Death in Pomerania 


309 


Lighted by the fires, the eight- or ten-story concrete docks of the great 
port were still standing, studded in vain by Soviet shell holes. In their dusky 
cellars, where the command post was set up, thousands of Russian and 
Polish civilians were sprawled on old rucksacks, men and women all 
jumbled together. 

The Oder divided into five arms upon entering Stettin. Only the bridge 
over the first arm, the widest, was going to be blown up at the end of the 
night. 

At 3:00 A.M. every unit was in place in its new sector. Our last platoon of 
volunteers, who until that moment had maintained contact three kilometers 
beyond the river, climbed onto the two tanks which had stayed shoulder-to- 
shoulder with them until the last, and disengaged at top speed. They burst 
across the great steel bridge, which fell into the seething water behind them 
with a terrible crash. 


♦ * * * * 

It was dawn. Nearby the sturdy rust-colored hulls of large ships which 
had been burned were lying in dry-dock. On the other side of the gulf, 
several lovely brick clock towers were still standing in Altdamm. Clouds of 
smoke were rising. 

Some German latecomers who had slept in the ruins of Finkenwalde and 
didn’t know about the retreat showed up on the other bank, shouting 
loudly. The Soviets were following close behind them. They threw 
themselves into the water. Some managed to swim over to us, but the others 
were swept away by the current. 

We could see the Reds approach the Oder in little groups, as though they 
were afraid of an ambush. Nevertheless the battle was all over. A few hours 
later the artillery on both sides ceased fire. It was sunny. 

The Haff brought us the aroma of the sea. 

At the entry to the bridge, three hanged men that the explosion hadn’t 
dislodged were still outlined at the end of their steel beams, green and 
sinister in the glaring light. 

Between the enemy and us, they alone remained, with their white 
placards, their glazed eyes, and their distorted, bloated purple tongues. 




Chapter Ten 

THE AGONY OF 
THE BALTIC 


The end of March 1945 saw the final break-up of the Western Front. 

At that time the divisions in Pomerania were re-forming between Stettin 
and Pasewalk, sheltered by the Oder, a mass of mighty waters already 
stirred by the tides. The two armies were temporarily still. 

We listened to the radio with growing anxiety. The Rhineland had fallen; 
the Rhine had been crossed; the Ruhr had been overrun; the American 
tanks were driving toward Kassel. 

We still had numerous Walloon soldiers in Hanover, recruits under in¬ 
struction and convalescent wounded. Moreover, seven hundred men from 
our artillery regiment and two hundred men from our battalion of engineers 
under instruction in the Prague area had apparently been set en route 
toward our depot. 

I wanted to gather all these men together promptly. I left my men to rest 
and hurried to look over our base in Hanover. I didn’t find the region in 
much of a fever. 

The coming of the Allies seemed to the population to be only a distant 
possibility about which, furthermore, it would have been indecent to speak. 
The Kreisleiter of Springen was tranquilly preparing for his marriage, set 
for Saturday, 31 March. But on the 29th the American tanks made a spring 
of a hundred and ten kilometers. That evening they were forty kilometers 
from the Weser. Another leap and they would be hammering the streets of 
the villages of Hanover. 

At Gronau, an industrial city where our regimental barracks was located, 
it proved impossible to evacuate our wounded. I took it on myself to 
demobilize all the convalescents without delay. 

From there I hurried southward near Holzminden where, on an order 
from the Kommandantur of Hanover, two hundred young Walloon recruits 
had been put in position armed with panzerfausts. These boys had enlisted 
to fight against Communism and didn’t have to be sent out to meet the 
Americans. 

Their withdrawal was decided only after an entire day of discussion. I was 



312 


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able to put them on the train which at the very last minute had just brought 
my two hundred engineers and my seven hundred artillery men into the 
Gronau station. I immediately dispatched the complete convoy to Stettin. 

Already the roar of the Allied tanks, trying to force a passage over the 
Weser, could be heard. We could no longer expect the Reich to hold out in 
the West. 

Between the Americans and Berlin everything was totally deserted. The 
front had vanished. Nothing came out to meet the Yankees any longer. The 
highways were empty. 

On the other hand, the Eastern Front would be defended right up to the 
very end. The German High Command had decided to fight there with grim 
resolution. 

I hastily rejoined my soldiers near Stettin. The Oder glistened in the sun 
like a great sleeping serpent. The front was quiet. The farms had been 
evacuated. The game ran in the beautiful brown fields. The air was soft and 
warm, filled with the songs of birds. 

The death struggle was approaching in a moist perfume of China asters, 
cowslips, and ranunculi. 

The Allied tanks flooded Bavaria at the beginning of April, 1945. They 
reached the Elbe and turned up toward Bremen and Hamburg. 

Across from us the Red Army lay low. The battle of Pomerania had cost 
the Soviets dearly. They had had to take all their men out of the Kuestrin 
sector to the south of Stargard at the time of the German counteroffensive 
in mid-February, 1945. For five weeks they had waged very hard battles to 
dig us out and take the right bank of the Oder around Altdamm. At present 
they were licking their wounds and getting their equipment ready for action. 

Stettin had been organized as an autonomous bridgehead eighteen bat¬ 
talions strong. The 3rd Germanic Corps, to which we belonged, had been 
given the Penkun region as its zone of action. The sector that we would have 
to defend was as always far too long. 

But the High Command hadn’t given up daydreaming. In mid-April, 
1945, three weeks before the capitulation, Colonel-General Steiner an¬ 
nounced the complete reorganization of my division. I was going to receive 
as reinforcements an artillery regiment and an infantry regiment ap¬ 
propriated from German units. My division would attain its maximum 
strength. 

Furthermore it had been decided for the near future to form an Army 
Corps, the “Occident,” comprising the Charlemagne (France), Wallonia, 
and Flanders divisions. I would receive the general command. 

I remained skeptical. I liked to stick to realities. With my survivors from 
Pomerania, my cannoneers without cannons, and my engineers without 
pontoons, I still had just barely enough men to re-form a serious infantry 
regiment. 

I integrated the rest of my division into a second regiment, a depot regi- 



The Agony of the Baltic 


313 


ment composed of the sick, the temporarily disabled, and old legionnaries 
who couldn’t be used on the front lines. 

This unit also temporarily took in about a hundred compatriots who had 
been working in the factories of the Reich and whom a sullen bureaucrat 
had sent to us in a moment of lunacy, all dressed in field grey, their wishes 
in the matter not having been consulted. 

We were a legion of volunteers. At no price would I have wanted to send 
decent fellows into the fray, or even keep them in uniform, if they didn’t 
share our beliefs and hadn’t come of their own free will. I made them a little 
speech and told them they were free to go. 

I had them all given provisions for three days and some cigarettes. One of 
my officers conducted them back to the rear provided with demobilization 
orders. 

A bit later I decided to evacuate the sick and those with minor wounds. 
The Reich’s resistance was nearing the end of its rope. It was better to save 
those who could only weigh us down during the final battles and take them 
out of the way of the Soviet abyss in time. It wasn’t in the regulations, but I 
disregarded that and signed a sheaf of marching orders. Two hundred unfit 
men thus took the road to Rostock, the ancient port on the Baltic Sea. 

Discreetly, but in every way possible, I discarded dead weight and tried to 
limit the final casualties. 

Berlin, 20 April 

I trembled to think of the fate which awaited the division’s thousand or 
more survivors who, fit for combat, stayed at my side near the Oder. We 
were at the far end of the Eastern Front. In a couple of days of unlucky 
fighting, we could be crushed or surrounded by the Soviets. 

The Americans and the British, moreover, were coming closer and closer 
to our rear. The German command in our sector watched their progress 
with a sympathetic eye. It even thought they were too slow. They still had 
the most astonishing illusions, and more than one German general imagined 
with touching faith that the Anglo-Americans were going to make war 
against the USSR at any minute. When the Allies arrived on the Oder 
everything would work out magnificently for sure. 

At any rate, the High Command made no provisions at all for covering 
itself. Colonel-General Steiner even talked about setting up huge placards 
behind our lines facing to the west bearing the inscription: “Anti-Soviet 
Front!” 

I was not as sanguine as these German officers. Taking advantage of the 
sector’s temporary tranquillity, I hurried to Berlin one morning to badger 
the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Ribbentrop, into asking through a neutral 
state or the International Red Cross for particulars about the fate intended 
for our volunteers, should they fall into the hands of the Anglo-American 
armies as they pushed eastward. 



314 


CAMPAIGN IN RUSSIA 


I received the official response at my command post one week later. It 
was clear. If our soldiers were taken prisoner by the British or the 
Americans, they would be treated exactly like prisoners of war. That would 
be true for Vlassov’s troops and for all European volunteers of the Eastern 
Front. 1 

That was normal. This news reassured our boys. 

Thus, at the time of the disaster a certain number among them relied in all 
good faith upon the honesty of the Anglo-American Military Command. 
Alas! They weren’t treated like soldiers at all. These heroes of the Russian 
front, most of whom had been wounded one or several times in combat, 
were all delivered up to the terrible Belgian political police, held up to public 
scorn, thrown into dungeons or into concentration camps like international 
common criminals. 

Hundreds were condemned to death and several thousand to dozens of 
years in prison by emergency tribunals whose imbecility and blatant pre¬ 
judice amounted to madness. 

They had been heroic soldiers. They had been only soldiers. Almost all 
wore war decorations which they had gloriously and painfully earned. They 
had fought cleanly and honorably for a pure ideal with total lack of self- 
interest. The Allies’ delivery of these heroes to political torturers was 
morally base and militarily dishonest. 

On the eve of the final Soviet assault our legion received a double mis¬ 
sion. Our first battalion, six hundred and fifty men strong, had been tem¬ 
porarily removed from my command and put in a flanking line six 
kilometers west of the bombed highway bridge over the Oder. It occupied a 
little village lying between the hills. If required it would support a German 
regiment posted on the left bank of the river. 

I had been given the command of the second line of defense fifteen 
kilometers to the west of the Oder. This line ran for four leagues above a 
wide swampy hollow. To occupy it I only had my second infantry battalion 
and a regiment of Flemish volunteers detached from their division and 
placed under my orders. 

Toward mid-April the Soviets threw themselves into the final assault. 

The northern sector—ours—from Stettin to the Hohenzollem Canal re¬ 
mained strangely silent for several days yet. 

But Saxony had been penetrated, and the breakthrough was widening 
before Berlin. 

On the Army Corps’s maps at Colonel-General Steiner’s I saw the Soviet 
progess toward the capital of the Reich. If the barrier were broken—and it 
was—how could the thousands of Soviet tanks be prevented from forcing 
their way into Berlin? 



The Agony of the Baltic 


31S 


On the evening of 19 April 1945, General Steiner showed me the extent of 
the disaster. The Red tanks had nearly reached the Ring, the famous 
highway which circled the city. 

A certain number of our comrades were on mission in Berlin. There, on 
the very eve of the encirclement, with extraordinary coolness, they were still 
publishing our daily French language newspaper, L‘'Avenir. I jumped into 
my Volkswagen to let them know just how grave the danger was. Berlin was 
an hour and a half away from my command post. Going back past the 
wretched columns of refugees who were fleeing in every direction, I entered 
the ancient Prussian metropolis at nine o’clock in the evening. 

The Hotel Adlon was still operating in spite of the bombs and the shells 
falling right in the streets. In the brilliantly lighted restaurant tuxedoed 
waiters and maitres d’hotel in tails continued solemnly and impassively to 
serve purple slices of kohlrabi in the huge silver platters for state occasions. 
Everything was ordered, distinguished, without a strident word or a sign of 
haste. 

Tomorrow or the day after the building would probably go up in flames. 
Or else some large-pawed barbarian would burst into the gilded hall. But 
bon ton was still bon ton. 

It was impressive. The German people’s comportment, their self-mastery, 
and their self-discipline right down to the most minor details and until the 
last moment will be a noble memory of mankind for all those who lived the 
end of the Third Reich. 

No least sign of panic was shown in Berlin dining the collapse. 

Nevertheless, who could still have doubted the outcome of the combat? 
The defensive fortifications in the suburbs were ridiculous. The infantry 
forces were tiny. The number of tanks was insignificant. 

The real bulwark had been built opposite Kuestrin. It had been broken. 
The road was open. 

I drove around the bombed city that night. I even went as far as Potsdam. 
Not a trace of pillaging. Not a shout of panic. The old men of the 
Volkssturm and file boys of the Hitler Youth were waiting for the enemy, 
panzerfausts in their hands, as solemn as the great Teutonic Knights. 

In the morning the electrical current was cut off and the telephones 
stopped working. Hundreds of enemy planes flew over the roofs, tracing 
multiple white streaks. Shells were falling from everywhere. The thousands 
of Soviet artillery weapons were creating a mad din. The tanks roared at the 
gateway to the dty. 

I got my comrades underway. 

At one o’clock in the afternoon I left the Adlon. One of my German 
friends, a man severely disabled, who had taken twenty-one bullets in the 
body at Moscow in 1941, had come to make his adieus under the machine- 
gun fire. He was accompanied by some ravishing girls from Berlin, loaded 
with the poetic harvests of spring. They decorated the whole front of my lit- 



316 


CAMPAIGN IN RUSSIA 


tie Volkswagen with red tulips and hundreds of golden-centered purple pan¬ 
sies. They smiled, simple and courageous. The Reich was disintegrating; 
Berlin was falling; the worst humiliations lay in wait for every one of them, 
but fervent, delicate, and beautiful, they were still bearing flowers. 

I reached the ancient route from Prenzlau to Stettin only with great dif¬ 
ficulty. The highway had already been cut off by the Soviets. The enemy 
tanks were hitting hard. The confusion of the thousands of carts of refugees 
was indescribable. They were lost. The Russians were hastening up. 

When I approached Bruessow, where my command post was located, I 
saw great clouds of smoke rising toward the sky across an area thirty kilo¬ 
meters wide. The last intact sector of the Eastern Front had just received the 
final blow. 

Just across from our marshes the Russians were coming out across the 
sands of the left bank of the Oder. 

Good-Bye to the Oder 

On 20 April 1945, Hitler’s birthday, at six o’clock in the morning, the 
Soviet artillery opened up an unprecedented fire on the German positions 
defending the ruins of the old highway bridge to the south of Stettin. 

For the last three days we had been noticing an extraordinary activity on 
the right bank of the Oder. The Soviets had set themselves up on an island 
around the first arch of the destroyed bridge. They had brought heavy 
equipment there with the help of boats, pontoons, and old mud-lighters. An 
attack was certain. 

The troops defending this especially threatened sector were composed of 
nothing but policemen. More than a thousand enemy weapons suddenly 
concentrated their fire at them. They just couldn’t hold off the powerful 
Soviet commandos who, exploiting their initial advantage, sent several 
shock battalions to the other side of the water in little boats. 

Since it was unhealthy to announce defeats, the police commander felt it 
preferable not to make the defeat of his forces known any sooner than 
necessary. The result: by the time the division was informed of the tragedy 
the Communists were already well to the west of the river and had made 
several more landings. 

The disaster occurred before seven o’clock in the morning. Many infantry 
battalions, which formed the divisional reserves, were called only at two 
o’clock in the afternoon. At three o’clock they were sent to the counter¬ 
attack. 


* * * * * 

Studying the terrain before April 20th, my officers and I had arrived at 
the conclusion that if the left bank of the Oder were lost, a counterattack 



The Agony of the Baltic 


317 


would almost certainly be doomed to failure if it weren’t organized ex¬ 
tremely promptly. 

Indeed, beyond the hills of the Oder’s left bank, the terrain descended 
toward the west in wide, sandy moors without folds or natural obstacles. 
Charging across this wasteland to drive out the enemy posted on the ridges 
would be rushing into a massacre. 

Then, by three o’clock on the afternoon of 20 April 1945, several thou¬ 
sand Reds had settled on the left bank, crossed the sandy zone, and reached 
the foothills six kilometers to the west. 

Tactically, this battalion of Walloons no longer belonged to my division. 
It received very hard orders from whitewashes who didn’t have my reasons 
for being sparing of the men. They were to go to the attack of these lost 
kilometers in mid-afternoon across the bare terrain and re-occupy the left 
bank of the Oder. 

Our brave boys, without a word of discouragement, obeyed with their 
customary fidelity. Until the last day it would be seen that their oath had 
not been mere empty words. 

The counterthrust should at least have been facilitated by a preparation 
of heavy artillery fire. But how could they fire? With what ammunition? 

At Stargard, two months earlier, we could no longer fire more than six to 
ten rounds per weapon per day. For this last battle of the Oder the orders 
that we had just received were even more draconian. Firing was limited to 
one shell per day per muzzle. 

One shell! Only one! 

The restrictions were almost as severe for the heavy mortars: two shots a 
day! For the light mortars: one shot per day! 

In actual fact: zero. 

The enemy opposite possessed a thousand pieces of artillery and an 
unlimited quantity of munitions. The front zone was absolutely drowned by 
the cataclysmic Soviet machine-gun fire. We had nothing left to oppose to it 
but a few lifeless heavy weapons. 

Our battalion had to wage its battles with personal arms alone. At the 
beginning of the action only a half dozen friendly tanks supported the 
thrust—but at a distance and cautiously. 

That didn’t prevent the enemy from being dislodged. Three kilometers of 
terrain were retaken in hand-to-hand fighting in less than an hour. 

Our losses were already extremely high. 

Our battalion approached the dunes of the Oder. The combat lasted until 
night. The Soviets had had time to place machine-gunners’ nests on every 
knoll. Our comrades were crushed by the full brunt of their artillery fire. 

I hurried to the battalion command post just to encourage our men. Alas! 
They had been removed from our unit. During the course of the evening I 
saw more than a hundred wounded men drag themselves to us. Many of our 
non-commissioned officers had perished. In spite of that the attack con¬ 
tinued with a furious determination. 



318 


CAMPAIGN IN RUSSIA 


One of our companies finally reached the village overlooking the Oder. 
Our soldiers were able to hang on atop the sandy ridges two hundred meters 
from the water. They had reached the river just the same, fanatically carry¬ 
ing out their orders. 

But what could the poor fellows do alone near this steep river bank? 
Several thousand men would have had to be brought up behind them and, 
above all, the enemy batteries, as well as the new Soviet troops which were 
continually landing, would have had to be pounded by artillery and aircraft. 

On the sandy trails to their rear several Latvian companies were coming 
along toward the river. But what could these meager reinforcements do? 
For that matter, the Soviet planes were harrassing them. All the crossroads 
were blazing. Gray and red torches rose up in the twilight from every village 
in the area. The machine-gun fire was failing like a hailstorm. 

We no longer even knew where to shelter the wounded. 

Every street was smashed by shell holes. Every house was riddled with 
shrapnel as far away as six or seven kilometers from the battlefield. 

* * * * * 

That night the enemy crossed a huge mass of troops and discharged 
boatloads of supplies and equipment. They had virtually free passage of the 
river. Our artillery without munitions and our aircraft without fuel could 
react no longer. 

When dawn came up the Soviet tanks, long as alligators, were on our side 
of the water, still cautious, not yet advancing, but forming a frightening 
barrier in front of the abutments of the wrecked highway bridge. 

During the night’s combats the company that had climbed to the ridges 
above the Oder had lost four-fifths of its forces. Every meter of sand had 
received a shell or a grenade. 

The orders were nevertheless implacable. They must counterattack again! 

It was madness! 

In order to succeed in that way, out in the open, the support of powerful 
artillery fire. Panzers, Stukas, and a half dozen shock battalions would 
have been more necessary than ever. 

But we weren’t going to disobey after four years of obediance. 

Our companies charged once again and were horribly decimated each 
time. Captain Thyssen, the unforgettable Thyssen of the Cherkassy Kessel, 
one of our most outstanding specialists in hand-to-hand combat, was hit by 
three bullets. He succumbed atop a pile of Soviet corpses. Lieutenant 
Regibeau, already wounded seven times on the Eastern Front, was wounded 
numerous times by exploding shells. His whole body streamed with blood. 
Lieutenant Albert Verpoorten, a dynamic young writer full of humor, was 
stopped cold in mid-leap. His forehead was wounded but he didn’t realize 
the rest. He wanted to sponge it off. “I don’t have an arm any more!” he 
screamed, horrified. Then he collapsed. 



The Agony of the Baltic 


319 


Six times in the course of this terrible day of 21 April 1945 the Walloons 
received orders to remount their attack against the left bank of the Oder. 
Six times they charged into the inferno. 

Nothing will tell their heroism better than this frightful figure: Out of the 
six hundred fifty men engaged since the day before in the hand-to-hand 
fighting in these dunes, only thirty-five remained unhurt on the evening of 
21 April. 

The other six hundred fifteen who were killed or wounded—in other 
words ninety-four percent of the battalion—were struck down for a cause 
that all then knew to be essentially lost. 

But they believed in the immortality of their ideal. They wanted to obey 
right up to the end, to be faithful to the end—and the last fighters, if 
necessary, on ground that wasn’t even theirs. 

* * * * * 

I had passed the day trying to maintain the second line, twenty kilometers 
wide, that I had to defend to the east of Bruessow, but the sector was soon 
pretty well empty. Company by company, all our comrades in the Flemish 
regiment were taken from me to be thrown in their turn onto the corpses of 
our Walloon soldiers near the Oder. 

Thus a second line of defense became absolutely illusory. All we had left 
to close off twenty kilometers of terrain to an enemy that was now landing 
in fleets was one last battalion of battleworthy Wallonian volunteers. 

A bridge had been thrown up over the Oder by the Russian engineers. 
Hundreds of tanks and pieces of artillery, as well as entire divisions, were 
passing over like a hurricane. Furthermore, several kilometers upstream the 
Soviets had established two other bridgeheads even wider than that of the 
autobahn. 

Who now could stop the cataclysm? 

The German command was still sticking to the stringent orders: hold on! 

But tens of thousands of Russians were overrunning our marshes! The 
whole country was in flames around us! 

We maintained our position unshakeably on the Bruessow line on the 
22nd, 23rd, 24th, and 25th of April, since those were the orders. 

The Soviet Air Force exercised an absolute dictatorship in the sky. Cleav¬ 
ing the ash-filled air, the starred planes dove crackling down upon us, 
smashing walls, partitions, and doors. The command post was continually 
riddled with gunfire. On the 25th an entire wing of the building went up in 
flames. Then the center of Bruessow went up in flames. The animals 
screamed. Women shot through by long incendiary bullets writhed on the 
ground, their fingers yellow, their nails clenched like cock’s spurs. Every 
quarter hour the machine-gun fire would begin again. 

At five o’clock in the evening a motorcycle messenger arrived. The Army 



320 


CAMPAIGN IN RUSSIA 


Corps was relinquishing any further use of the Bruessow defense line, which 
the enemy had passed by a long way on both wings. We were to fall back to 
new positions to the northwest of the city of Prenzlau. 

I immediately put my men on the march, but life had become untenable. 
A plane fired on my Volkswagen and burst three tires. I repaired it hastily, 
while crazed pigs from some burning sties ran in all directions. 

The Soviets were swarming everywhere, like lemmings. 

The flood-gates were wide open. 

How would we keep from being drowned in the final maelstrom? 

Toward Luebeck 

Prenzlau was an ancient city with brick churches as massive as dungeons, 
but made light and airy by admirable slender Gothic arches. When we 
crossed through it on 25 April 1945, the death agony had just begun for it, 
too. For several days the Soviet air force had been battering the streets. 
Crumbled houses blocked traffic. Flocks of haggard civilians were fleeing. 

Three thousand officers of the Belgian Army had just left the Prenzlau 
barracks, where they had been interned following the capitulation of 28 
May 1940. They puffed and sweated on the road. Rubicund generals with 
their kepis askew would sponge themselves on the embankments or, like fat, 
flushed nannies, would push baby-buggies over-filled with belongings. 
Great feats of endurance were not to be expected of them. The Russians 
would soon pluck them up. 

We were to take position several kilometers to the northwest of Prenzlau. 
I set up my command post in the Holzendorf castle, where flocks of shiver¬ 
ing refugees swarmed. Most of them had been evacuated from the 
Rhineland toward the east. Now the Communists were attacking and chas¬ 
ing them back toward the west. 

They were exhausted by so much emotion. The expressions of many of 
the women were disturbing. One of them had three little blond kids clinging 
to her skirts. She was expecting a fourth baby, and was being jostled about. 
That evening she went mad. Lying flat on her back, she cried and gasped, 
refusing all attention. The Soviet planes would drive her out at dawn, 
dazed, joining the terrified human flood that was expanding indefinitely 
toward the north and west. 

***** 

From then on Flemish volunteers were jumbled with Walloons in the final 
venture. The next day I tried to rejoin the German staff officer to whom we 
were, one and all, tactically subordinate. I found him far to the west in an 
ugly brick castle hidden in the depths of a forest. 

The orders, apparently, were to hold on. That was all I could find out. I 



The Agony of the Baltic 


321 


got back to my command post at Holzendorf by going alongside flaming 
Prenzlau. Immense pale gray columns of smoke were rising straight up 
against the golden twilight. 

At nine o’clock in the evening the noise of the battle in the southwest 
became particularly violent. Our window panes fell out. The Soviet tanks 
were baying at the entrance to Prenzlau. The city was barely defended. It 
didn’t hold out more than an hour. 

In the morning our observers notified me that enemy tanks were driving 
about far to the southwest, several kilometers beyond our line. 

I had been promised a van that could receive and transmit by radio. It 
hadn’t come. I didn’t know any of the decisions of the High Command. 
Finally at eleven o’clock in the morning a German motorcyclist brought me 
an order to withdraw dated the evening before at 2000 hours. The 
messenger had wandered behind enemy lines and gotten lost. He had 
arrived fifteen hours late. We had been well and truly outflanked since last 
night. It wouldn’t be easy to extricate ourselves from the wasps’ nest now. 

Our people had fought since daylight with a marvelous heroism once 
again. They had made desperate counterattacks to get free from the enemy 
thrust. One of our young officers had charged into a house which the 
Soviets had converted into a bunker all by himself with his submachine gun. 
He caused a terrible massacre there and in the end had one of his arms cut 
all to pieces. 

Rather than persisting against this stubborn resistance, the Reds side¬ 
stepped and advanced deep on both wings. It was no longer possible to fall 
back to the west. The enemy was ten kilometers west of Prenzlau. 

We took a northerly direction, which seemed the least threatened. 
Already the towns had filled the anti-tank barriers. So much the worse for 
the wretches who, like us, were fighting as rear guards. We had a terrible 
time getting around the heaps of rubble to get our last Volkswagens 
through, our only means of liaison amid the enemy tanks roaring at our 
heels. 

The German commander notified me in his order for retreat that he was 
moving his command post to the edge of a forest twenty kilometers west of 
Prenzlau. I arrived there at three o’clock in the afternoon, after endless 
detours and adventures. 

Naturally there was no one left at the appointed place except the Soviet 
tanks advancing along the outskirts of the forest. The motor of my little 
automobile was hot enough to burst from having toiled through fields and 
embankments for hours. We hadn’t received a drop of gas for the last week. 
I could go on only by emptying cans of potato alcohol obtained in the 
region into my tank, a poor and asphyxiating fuel. Hidden behind a thicket, 
we had to wait for a quarter of an hour to repair the fan belt while the 
motor cooled off. 

The Soviet tanks were coming on straight and fast. 



322 


CAMPAIGN IN RUSSIA 


We reached the Scarpin intersection by little dirt roads. There, five hun¬ 
dred French volunteers with beautiful blue, white, and red badges were 
standing firm, in very high spirits although they had nothing but rifles to 
oppose the waves of tanks of the USSR. 

The staff office for which I was looking seemed to be nearby. I found it 
that night after great difficulty. New withdrawal orders were waiting for 
me. This time we had to cross fifty kilometers in a single jump to the north 
of the Neustrelitz-Neubrandenburg line. 

I knew that my men were worn out, but we would have to gather all our 
strength. North! North! Escape from the Soviets! My liaison officers didn’t 
need to have the problem explained to them twice. 

Groups of young women in flight stayed with us. What could we do! 
There was no longer anything to keep them from falling into the hands of 
the Bolsheviks. Their youngsters were exhausted. They were dying of 
hunger and thirst. The young mothers, still beautiful in their ordeal, knew 
what awaited them. 


* # * * * 

It was 28 April 1945. The crowds on the road had become prodigious. 
Thousands of political deportees mingled their blue and white striped 
uniforms with the throng of trucks and carts, the hundreds of thousands of 
women and children, and the columns of soldiers with the most diverse 
weapons. 

Our two last infantry battalions went forward with difficulty. But they 
passed nevertheless through the gigantic scramble. 

At eight o’clock in the evening the town of Neustrelitz exploded in huge 
orange flames across a sky of bedlam behind us. In four years we thought 
we had seen the greatest in the way of catastrophes. But Neustrelitz broke 
all the records that night. No expense was spared for the final fireworks of 
the war. Stupendous explosions burst forth amidst a din like the end of the 
world. 

We went out onto the jetty of a little gray lake, streaked by the burning 
reflections of the spectacle. A black bark was drifting there. The darkness 
smelled of moss, of forget-me-nots, and of new leaves. It was an admirable 
spot, just made for murmuring poetry to a lady with silken hair. But this 
was a universe on fire that was spewing its life to the skies, to fall back in 
vertiginous cataracts, shaking this spring evening to infinity. 

The enemy would be here in the morning. 

Our orders came. We were to draw back still more towards the northwest 
and cross sixty more kilometers in a single march. Our limbs were heavy 
with exhaustion. But danger gave everyone enough strength to manage 
another effort. 

We shook our old Volkswagens into life, though they had been hit twenty 
times over by shrapnel. 



The Agony of the Baltic 


323 


In the southwest the whole sky was afire and getting redder and redder. 

We had to reach the town of Waren in Mecklenburg the very next day, 
pass beyond the big lakes of the region, and temporarily take up position in 
the Tottiner Huette sector. 

Many refugees collapsed for the night on both sides of the pavement. 
Tens of thousands of women, children, and wretched old men rolled up in 
blankets were huddled one against another in the fog under the firs. 

Three lines of vehicles hurried along in tight ranks, often led by very 
dedicated French prisoners who visibly felt themselves to be a part of the 
German families crowded onto the carts. 

My soldiers were in a good position. They lost no time as they slipped 
nimbly among the bottlenecked teams, keeping perfect good humor. 

I advised everyone to step along in double time. I hadn’t any illusions at 
all. I held a little battery-operated radio between my legs in my Volkswagen. 
The British transmissions obligingly announced from hour to hour what the 
situation was. 

Now, the British front in Germany had started moving again two days 
ago. The Tommies had crossed the Elbe to the southwest of Hamburg. 
There wasn’t a shadow of a doubt that they were heading for Luebeck. If 
they reached this Baltic port first, we would be throttled by the Soviets. 

We had to extricate the troops at any price, keep our eyes open, and get to 
Luebeck in time. Afterwards, we would see. We had to be careful not to 
give up in despair, to surrender spinelessly like the dull flocks who were col¬ 
lapsing all along the roads and waiting with ashen faces for the uncondi¬ 
tional law of the conqueror. 

From Luebeck we might perhaps be able to move up further to the north. 
I pushed my men as much as I could, but we were still far from the Baltic 
and events were rushing forward. 

On 30 April 1945, at eight o’clock in the morning, I heard some amazing 
news from Radio London: “Himmler is negotiating an armistice!” The 
talks were taking place, it seemed, in the area of Luebeck. 

The commander of the Flemish division rejoined me at Tottiner Huette. 
He and I had been trying to re-establish contact with the Army Corps for 
two days, in vain. The retreat was rushing headlong at such a speed and on 
roads so choked that liaisons had become impossible for the first time in the 
war, despite all the calm of the High Command. It was absolutely impos¬ 
sible to know what our divisions should do, or even where the Army Corps 
staff officer was to found. The radio trucks had disappeared. Not a 
messenger could return against this flood of carts and refugees. We had 
been left entirely to our fate. 

Fascist Italy had just been disintegrated. Mussolini had been assassinated 
with abominable sadism. His corpse was hanging in the middle of the city of 
Milan, fastened by the feet like a dead animal. 

I made careful preparations, to give maximum help to my endangered 



324 


CAMPAIGN IN RUSSIA 


soldiers. Before leaving Berlin on 20 April, I had had several thousand 
foreign workers' cards delivered to me in case the worst should happen. The 
time had come to act for our survival. 

On the morning of 30 April, I had the cards confidentially distributed to 
my unit commanders. Thus if certain companies found themselves scattered 
at the time of the final blow, those men who didn’t want to surrender could 
still slip on old clothes,disguise themselves as transported workers, avoid 
the military internment camps, and, thanks to those providential papers, get 
back to the house of a friend either in Belgium or in the Reich or find refuge 
abroad, as more than three thousand of them did. 

♦ * ♦ ♦ * 

For the last hundred hours our volunteers had marched day and night. I 
gave them no respite. It was essential not to yield, not to lose our heads, but 
on the contrary to cling to the possibilities for survival, to try to reach Den¬ 
mark, then the Norwegian glacis, where perhaps the struggle might con¬ 
tinue—in any case to try everything possible to spare our soldiers a gloomy 
collapse into the anonymity of defeat. 

We could no longer hope that a miracle might stem the Soviet flood. Our 
resistance had finally come to an end. To hang on anymore would be 
suicide. 

I drew up orders for withdrawal to Luebeck for my regiment and bat¬ 
talion commanders. They were to use every means of transport to carry the 
troops. 

I set up my Wallonian Feldgendarmes at all the crossroads to guide our 
comrades from stage to stage, spur on the loafers, and save them from any 
complications. 

I had decided to see Himmler whatever the cost, to obtain clear orders 
from him for my division and for the Flanders Division, to remind him of 
the existence of tens of thousands of foreign volunteers, the bravest of the 
brave. Would they still be remembered in the discussions at Luebeck? Or 
would they be left to sink into the abyss? 

As long as there was a chance of saving my boys, I wanted to take it. Cut¬ 
ting through the fields, speedily overtaking everyone in front of me, I raced 
my Volkswagen toward Luebeck and Himmler. 

“Hitler is Dead” 

The Luebeck road gave an exact picture of the situation on 30 April 1945. 

As far as Schwerin the flood of civilians and armies from the east flowed 
on, immense, tumultuous. 

The fatal confluence was at Schwerin. Solitary above slate-colored 
waters, the castle of the dukes envinced the serenity of stones which have 



The Agony of the Baltic 


325 


seen men and centuries pass. The rest of the town was swamped by the 
throngs from east and west. 

It was there that the imminence of the end of the war in Germany became 
a blinding reality for us. A human river descending from Waren gathered 
momentum as it fled the Soviet tanks. Another human river poured down 
from the Elbe, fleeing the British. The two Allied offensives were coming 
closer and closer together, like double doors closing. 

The proximity of the British was being written in the sky. From Schwerin 
on, squadrons of Tiefflieger patrolled all the roads with savage determina¬ 
tion. The British planes would dive onto the columns, and instantly ten or 
fifteen clouds of thick smoke would rise from them. Hie fuel tanks burned. 
The tires burned. The baggage burned. 

Fire was everywhere, thick, almost opaque, stitched by explosions. 

The clothing of fleeing women lay about the broken carts. Endless col¬ 
umns had been abandoned. My Volkswagen and that of my chief of staff 
picked their way with extreme difficulty among the heaps of debris and the 
fires. We had to dive down the embankments every five minutes while the 
guns of the Tiefflieger rattled above our heads. 

The wounded soldiers made the most tragic spectacle. The hospitals of 
the region had been evacuated in haste, but there weren’t any more am¬ 
bulances. Hundreds of men with casts on their arms or chests had been put 
out on the roads, their heads covered with bandages. 

Many walked on crutches. 

They had to get to the Baltic that way on foot, under the machine-gun 
fire, through the flaming trucks and the general panic. 

I finally arrived in Luebeck in the afternoon, at the staff office of Grand 
Admiral Doenitz. 

One of his close associates took me into a comer of the office—it was 30 
April 1945, at five thirty in the evening—and whispered a secret which made 
my blood run cold. 

“Listen, the death of the Fuehrer will be announced tomorrow.” 

Was Hitler really dead? Were they trying to gain time before announcing 
this terrible news? Or was something else being prepared? 

In any case, one whole day before the historic declaration of Grand Ad¬ 
miral Doenitz: “Today, May 1st, at two-thirty in the afternoon, the Fuehrer 
died a hero in the course of the battle of Berlin,” the news of the death of 
Hitler was whispered in my ear right in the staff office of the Grand 
Admi r al. 

I was even more convinced that the end was near when I reached the Waf- 
fen SS staff office to the north of Luebeck on the shore of the rain-streaked 
gulf. “Hurry and see Himmler,” I was told. “It’s only a matter of hours 
now.” But no one knew exactly where the Reichsfuehrer SS was to be 
found. 

They could only show me on the map the castle where his command post 



326 


CAMPAIGN IN RUSSIA 


was supposed to be. To reach it I had first to come back to Luebeck, then go 
back up the eastern road along the Baltic for about forty kilometers in the 
direction of Wismar. 

In the inky night it was very difficult to make progress against the flow of 
the thousands of trucks pressing toward the northwest. We were constantly 
in danger of being crushed by these monsters. 

At two o’clock in the morning, when we were coming into the Kladow 
region, I was struck by an astonishing phenomenon. The long white gleams 
of a searchlight were lighting the neighboring slope and sky. It had to be 
Himmler’s airfield. But if they were displaying lights like that, it had to be 
because the enemy tolerated them. 

I imagined Himmler flying at this hour in the dark night. Which he was, 
in fact. 

The castle was almost deserted when I reached it. It was a gloomy 
building in imitation Gothic, circa 1900, perfect decor for a suspense movie. 
The dimly lighted corridors and stairs were sinister. Hanseatic flags hung, 
drawn tightly, as in a funeral chapel. In the refectory were modern paintings 
showing all the categories of eaters, involuntarily caricatured in the style of 
Picasso. All along the red-brick battlements and under the aspens in the 
park, police were on guard, their faces long, ravaged and ashen. 

I found no one in the depths of the buildings but the head of Himmler’s 
special train, an ever-obliging bon vivant, his face speckled with hundreds 
of little gray spots, as if a colony of flies had used it for a testing bench. He 
conducted me to the office of a colonel with pale tired eyes. 

I saluted him with the habitual “Heil Hitler! ” No “Heil Hitler!” came in 
reply. I thought this omission bizarre. Cautiously, I inquired. Everyone 
seemed quite embarrassed. From all the evidence Hitler had become a for¬ 
bidden subject of conversation in these cavernous halls. No one could tell 
me when Himmler would come back. He had left by plane “for the north.” 

He reappeared in the morning like a whirlwind, but he stayed for only a 
few minutes. We didn’t even have time to see him. When we arrived at the 
staircase he had already left again, pallid and unshaven. All we saw were 
three automobiles jolting down the sandy road. 

In any event, Himmler had unhesitatingly signed the order which I had 
had drawn up that night for the withdrawal of the Wallonia and the 
Flanders Divisions toward Bad Sedeberg, a town in Schleswig-Holstein, to 
the northwest of Luebeck. He had said he wanted to see me. I was to look 
for lodgings in the area and wait for his return. 

I immediately sent my chief of staff off in one of our two Volkswagens, 
carrying the official order, to meet the Walloon and Flemish troops on the 
Schwerin road. At the same time I sent my second aide-de-camp to Bad 
Sedeberg with the second car so that suitable quarters would be ready to 
welcome our exhausted soldiers. In addition this officer was to inform the 
posts of the Feldgendarmes and the commandant of Luebeck of Himmler’s 
orders. 



The Agony of the Baltic 


327 


I found myself alone once again. I took lodgings in a blacksmith’s little 
house on the Wismar road. I got a chair and went out onto the doorstep as I 
used to do in the evenings when I was young and living with my parents in 
the town of my birth. 

Hundreds of trucks were passing by. More than ever, the Tiefflieger 
dominated the roads. Gunfire would crackle to the east, north, and west 
above endless lines of red and gray fires. 

I fell to daydreaming. My eyes wandered in space as if the world in which 
I had so intensely lived had already stopped breathing and was dissolving 
into melancholy puffs of smoke. 

The Baltic Sea was half an hour away, at the end of some ploughed fields 
where the April wheat was sprouting. At dusk I went out there and sat on a 
big brown rock. The evening was tinged with pink. Nothing could be heard 
of the tumultuous traffic. From time to time a German plane would fly 
along the sea, skimming the waves to avoid detection. 

Was my dream, too, dying like this pale sky invaded by the night? 

I stood up and came back through the sown fields. At the house I lay 
down fully clothed in the darkness. 

At 2:00 A.M. there was a terrible racket at the door. I hurried to open it 
up. 

The modest room was lighted in big patches by a candle. 

A young German colonel sent by Himmler was holding himself stiffly 
erect before me, his features drawn. 

I understood before he said a word. 

I stood to attention. 

“The Fuehrer is dead,” he whispered. 

Neither of us said anything. The blacksmith, too, was silent. 

Then two tears, the tears of a pure heart, ran down his old tanned cheeks. 

Malente 

The German colonel who told me of the death of Hitler added that 
Himmler would leave the area that same night and establish himself north 
of Luebeck in the direction of Kiel, at Malente. This sticky name had all the 
flabbiness of fever. Himmler asked that I go to him there at three o’clock oh 
the afternoon of 2 May. 

I spent the rest of the night thinking about Hitler. 

I didn’t know the terms of Admiral Doenitz’s declaration, which was 
largely false. Thus no doubt about the death of the Fuehrer could have oc¬ 
curred to me then. 

I saw him again, a simple, sensitive heart, full of genius and power. His 
people had loved him and followed him until the end. During the entire war, 
no blow had shaken the admirable fidelity of the German masses to a man 
whose honesty, unselfishness, public spirit, and sense of Gerniamc 
greatness they all knew. 



328 


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It was a fact almost unique in the history of the world. Bruised, crushed, 
delivered up to the most frightful suffering that a people has ever had to en¬ 
dure, this people didn’t make a murmur against the leader who had started 
and kept them on this terrible path. 

I was sure that in every house and in every cart on the roads people were 
crying or praying at this moment. But I was certain that none was breathing 
a word of reproach. No one felt sorry for himself. It was for Hitler that they 
felt sorry. 

He disappeared in an apotheosis of vanquished gods, amid an uproar like 
the end of the world, which seemed to burst forth in a Wagnerian chorus. 
To end thus was to be resuscitated already in the imagination of the peoples, 
with a superhuman intensity, cast in an epic which would never be 
extinguished. 


'* * * * # 

But what would happen tomorrow? What would the first day affected by 
such a void be like? 

The Fuehrer gone, Berlin was lost. 

In the south, the Reich was on its knees. 

The north was swept by a prodigious tidal wave. 

The armies were no longer lighting, not because they lacked courage or 
discipline, but because there was no longer any front, any Panzers, any am¬ 
munition, or any liaison. The roads were kilometers of suffering, hunger, 
and blood. The death of Hitler meant the end of the struggle in Germany. 

At five o’clock in the morning my little Volkswagen stopped in front of 
the sign of the forge. Back at Bad Sedeberg, my second aide-de-camp had 
heard the announcement of the death of Hitler on the radio. Instantly he 
had understood that everything was about to fall to pieces. He had turned 
back and, for a second time, had gone against the tide of retreat through the 
night to save me. After eight hours of striving he succeeded in making the 
forty kilometers. 

I started out immediately. 

Thousands of trucks had collided on the roads. 

The closer we came to Luebeck, the harder it was to move. The Allied 
tanks were pushing at our backs like madmen. 

Ten kilometers from Luebeck the road went through a forest before com¬ 
ing to the town. Everything was snarled up. Columns of huge blue and 
white Swedish Red Cross trucks were trying to move toward the east to help 
the freed political prisoners who were hurrying away from Waren and 
Schwerin. They, too, were fleeing the troops of the USSR. 

With everyone wanting to get through, no one could get through any 
longer. I took extraordinary measures and hoisted my Volkswagen to the 
top of a local tramway embankment which passed nearby. Thus we crossed 



The Agony of the Baltic 


329 


the last kilometer like tightrope walkers, bumpety-bump along the ties and 
the rails. 


***** 

The sun shone in Luebeck. The proud Hanseatic city had suffered 
relatively little from the bombardments. 2 Its noble houses of weathered 
brick and its Gothic buildings from the glorious centuries when the ocean¬ 
going ships of the Teutonic Hansa whitened the waters of the Baltic and the 
North Sea were still standing against the brilliant sky. 

At every crossroads my Feldgettdarmes awaited the Wallonian and 
Flemish volunteers to direct them toward Bad Sedeberg. I found a first con¬ 
tingent of them at the Luebeck barracks. As soon as the greater part of the 
troops rejoined us, we would form a solid square at Bad Sedeberg for 
whatever purpose it might be needed. 

For I had made a firm resolution. Either the fate of the anti-Bolshevik 
volunteers would be precisely settled at the time of the armistice or, as a 
foreign unit, we would not consider ourselves bound by the German 
negotiators. We would fight like hell as long as possible until we had been 
guaranteed a humane and honorable surrender. To help toward this solu¬ 
tion, since I was the founder of the Legion, I decided to give myself up to 
the Belgian political police—but on the condition that my blood, offered as 
a tribute to hatred, would buy the salvation of my companions of the 
Eastern Front. Otherwise we would continue to fight with all we had after 
the armistice. 

My soldiers weren’t ciphers. Our last stand would be memorable. 

Alas! A few hours later the gathering storm smashed my plans. I tried to 
achieve them again at Copenhagen and even at Oslo, but a typhoon was 
now blowing us all away. 

***** 

I stayed at the Luebeck barracks until the beginning of the afternoon. 

I sent a first detachment of officers and soldiers to Bad Sedeberg. I would 
join them later after my meeting with Himmler. Then I left for Malente. 

The softly rolling countryside was cool and harmonious: pine groves, 
birch woods, broad deep green pastures, blue and black lakes bordered by 
villas and hotels. I went first through the lovely little town of Eutin. I found 
Himmler’s command post in a farm at a distance from Malente. 

Himmler wasn’t there. The news was particularly catastrophic. The 
British had taken Schwerin and cut off the army returning from Mecklen¬ 
burg. The atmosphere of the house was macabre. 

High police officials, their backs bent, were pacing and whispering in the 
rooms of the farm. They gravely explained to me that Himmler had gone, 
no one knew where, and that no one knew whether he would ever return. 



330 


CAMPAIGN IN RUSSIA 


I got back into my Volkswagen. We Walloons were now on our own. And 
I started off again toward the south by the Luebeck and Bad Sedeberg 
roads. 


* * * * * 

It was four o’clock in the afternoon. 

I had just come through the thickets at Malente and reached the Eutin 
highway when I saw more problems. Every kilometer had been blasted with 
orgiastic fury by the British Tiefflieger. Wretched women and little girls 
with their legs twisted, tibias broken by horrible incendiary cartridges, lay in 
the embankments and at the thresholds of the houses vainly waiting for 
help. 

It was an apocalypse from Luebeck to Eutin. Hundreds of refugees’ carts 
and hundreds of military trucks were in flames. There was nothing left of 
the highway but a column of fire. All the drivers of vehicles were flat in the 
embankments or running in the fields. 

You could read the area’s roadmaps just by looking at the sky. The Tief¬ 
flieger were diving in ranks of six at a time, firing, making a wide turn, and 
beginning their devil’s work once more. 

I went forward until the minute the Tiefflieger began their dive. Then I 
drove my Volkswagen between two trucks on fire. It was the best place. The 
vehicle was more or less hidden in the whirlwind of flames and smoke. Once 
the firing stopped I jumped into the car again and gained five hundred 
meters before the new attack swooped down. 

A German driver told me that the British were at Luebeck. I didn’t 
believe him. The German troops were still occupying Hamburg that morn¬ 
ing. No, it was nonsense. It wasn’t possible. 

We came to the fork of the Bad Sedeberg road. The machine gun fire 
there was terrifying. Soldiers were coming from the side roads running like 
madmen. 

I moved up close to a major who was questioning them. They all had 
trucks on fire nearby. They all reported the same news. Luebeck had sur¬ 
rendered at four o’clock in the afternoon without a single shot being fired. 
There were more than twenty thousand wounded in the hospitals of the 
town. The bridges had fallen intact. The British tanks were coming, just 
ahead of us. 

“And Bad Sedeberg?” 

That was the final blow. Bad Sedeberg too had fallen. 

Hamburg had been declared an open city that very morning. The British 
tanks had crossed through it immediately and gone on to the north for more 
than a hundred kilometers without any fighting. The Tiefflieger were 
devastating everything in front of them. Bad Sedeberg had been occupied 
during the course of the afternoon. 



The Agony of the Baltic 


331 


I was stunned. At noon I had been with my comrades who had escaped 
from Mecklenburg. Within hours we were torn apart. I could not save them 
or endure these hours of anguish with them. I had no one left except two of¬ 
ficers and a soldier. Everything had fallen in. The catastrophe had hit me 
like a tower collapsing on a passer-by. There was nothing left but to escape 
the advancing storm. 


* * * * * 

In spite of everything I hoped to find some of my boys in Denmark. 

Two hundred of our men had been sent to Rostock in time. Surely they 
had been able to take to the sea from there. 

Others who hadn’t been able to get to Luebeck in time must also have 
reached the coast. My men had become masters of resourcefulness. Where 
no one else got through, they always got through. But I was four hundred 
kilometers from Copenhagen. The Volkswagen was shaky, with only thirty 
liters of potato alcohol in reserve, and the road was ablaze. 

As long as I was alive I resolved to hope and fight. I headed north. 

The gunfire of the Tieffliger threatened to destroy my little car. Several 
bullets had passed through it already without damaging anything vital. 

Hundreds of burning trucks blocked the road. Speer, the minister, whose 
automobile was caught in the confusion, was trying to clear the way 
himself. He was surrounded by the members of the Todt staff office, all 
wearing stunning pistachio and gosling green uniforms, like Mardi Gras 
revellers. A weird touch in a chaotic scene. 

I drove along the side field and made a few kilometers through the fur¬ 
rows. Suddenly a long black car came out of a side road. A very pale man 
with intense features wearing a leather helmet was at the wheel. I recognized 
him. It was Himmler. 

I raced after him. 

Kiel-Copenbagen 

I wouldn’t have been able to stay with Himmler’s powerful car, but I had 
spotted his direction. He was going to Malente. My wobbly Volkswageh 
made it to the courtyard of the SS Reichsfuehrer’s villa just as some police 
officials were getting into their cars. 

Himmler was giving orders to two SS generals. I recognized one of them 
as a very good friend, the famous Professor Gebhart, doctor to the Belgian 
king, Leopold III. As I approached, Himmler behaved in the most friendly 
manner toward me. 

His self-control was impressive. Everything was lost, especially for him, 
but he showed remarkable calm. I asked him what he planned to do. “I am 
German,” he replied. “I will not leave German soil.” He kept his word. 



332 


CAMPAIGN IN RUSSIA 


Somewhere along a road near Lueneburg his body lies in the embrace of 
that German earth today. 

He advised me to get to Copenhagen immediately and to regroup my 
soldiers there. The German governor of Denmark, Dr. Best, was close to 
him. He had given him all instructions on this matter. 

His bright little eyes blinked in the half-light of the dusk. He, who had 
always been so curt and so discreet about his feelings, took my hands 
forcefully. “You have been among the faithful, you and your Walloons,” 
he said. “You were the last to stay by our side through the fighting and the 
misfortune. One day Germany will remember.” 

He gave some brief orders and took the wheel. Just as he was starting he 
suddenly rolled down the window and hammered out these words, 
“Degrelle, you will be needed one day. Everything will change quickly. 
Gain yourself six months. You must live.” 

He started off. Some fifteen big cars fell in behind his, going north. 

***** 

One hour later I caught up with his entourage again. The road was 
broken by a hundred shell holes. People were turning back toward the 
south. Four kilometers in front of us a large aerial fleet was over Kiel. 

Himmler directed the cars to a little side road. Bombs poured down on 
the harbor. 

There was a halt. The column started off again. A new wave of Allied 
bombers appeared. We were at the threshold of the town. We had to leave 
the cars on the pavement and throw ourselves into the muddy gardens. 
Himmler’s two secretaries, one a lanky dark-haired girl with thin legs, and 
the other small and heavyset, were scurrying about among the generals and 
the police. The poor girls had apparently lost their shoes in the muck. To 
restore some order into the expedition Himmler exhorted, “Discipline, 
men, discipline!” 

He ordered his people back into the big cars. They left once again in 
search of shelter. They didn’t return. I had parted with Himmler forever. 

***** 

The pounding of Kiel went on for several horns. Bombs fell by the hun¬ 
dreds very close to us. The earth resounded like a raging sea. Gigantic 
flashes lit the sky. Finally we were able to slip through the heaps of rubble, 
the torn-up tram lines, and the crowd coming out of the shelters in 
sepulchral silence. 

We crossed the great bridge of Kiel. My Volkswagen began to backfire 
repeatedly. It had seen too much and done too much. In the end it stopped, 
in dead earnest, its rods seized. It was about three o’clock in the morning. 



The Agony of the Baltic 


333 


The Allies had to be advancing on all the roads. Would we be beaten by a 
breakdown? 

Lacking a map of the region, we had gone astray in the darkness. We 
found ourselves on a little deserted road. Luckily an automobile passed at 
daybreak. We climbed up on the fenders. My poor Volkswagen stayed sadly 
on the road, having lost the war, waiting for the British. 

During the morning we arrived at Flensburg, where a general gave me 
another Volkswagen. By one o’clock in the afternoon we were in Denmark, 
among rich and golden pastures with clumps of trees, mills, and white farms 
with little blue, green, and bright red shutters outlined in the distance. 

* * • • • 

In Denmark, as well, we could sense that the end had come. 

The retreating German troops were absolutely forbidden to cross the 
German-Danish border. We had been blocked for an hour by the customs 
officers. It had taken a telephone call from Marshall Keitel to convince the 
officers to let us continue on our way. 

In front of us a line of Swedish Red Cross cars were transporting hun¬ 
dreds of political prisoners freed from the German concentration camps. In 
every town an enormous crowd pushed forward to cheer them. Our little SS 
automobile, at the tail of the procession, didn’t exactly enjoy such brilliant 
success. The men showed us their fists and the women flipped up the back 
of their skirts. 

We were the only ones in uniform, mingling quite involuntarily with these 
continuing demonstrations. It was impossible to pass the convoy. We had to 
pass through grassy Jutland that way, cross the little Belt over the magnifi¬ 
cent bridge of Fredericia and then go across the whole island of Fyn as far 
as the port of Nyborg. 

The town of Nyborg was already virtually in a state of siege. The German 
troops were keeping themselves behind thick curtains of barbed wire, as if 
they wanted to intern themselves. 

We now had to cross the Great Belt by boat. The atmosphere was terribly 
electric. Numerous German ships loaded with tens of thousands of refugees 
from the Reich were waiting in the port, but didn’t risk disembarking their 
people. 

They began by loading the Swedish Red Cross trucks onto a first ferry. 
The freed prisoners were cheered and covered with flowers. The crowd sang 
hymns. We ourselves expected to be chucked into the Great Belt from one 
minute to the next. 

The wait lasted four hours. Finally we made the crossing. The crewmen 
were extremely surly. The night was very dark when we disembarked at the 
island of Sjaelland. 

The countryside was infested with guerillas. We still had more than a 



334 


CAMPAIGN IN RUSSIA 


hundred kilometers to cross before reaching Copenhagen. It was two 
o’clock in the morning when we passed by the barbed wire fences which 
prevented access to the German buildings of the town square. 

My calculations had proved exact. A group of Walloon soldiers who had 
come by sea were already in Copenhagen. We met one another with great 
shouts of joy. 

We had an understanding with General Panke, commandant of the SS in 
Denmark, that as our men arrived they would be sent to Norway, where we 
would regroup and face events. 

There the last anti-Communist front was to be found. The three hundred 
thousand German soldiers who were massed there were well armed and sup¬ 
plied. They would be able to fight for a long time. Their surrender would be 
the last and would probably have the benefit of better conditions. 

I fixed all the details for the transfer of my men. It was understood that 
the departure of the Walloons for Oslo would begin the very next day. 

These preparations calmed us. The sun was hot. We leaned on our elbows 
in the windows. The town square of Copenhagen swarmed with activity. It 
was market day. Jugglers were circulating, clowning. We watched the color¬ 
ful spectable with the amused eyes of tourists. 

* * * # * 

The SS general had offered to put me up at his country house, Viking 
House, by the sea on the way out of town. The house was vacant. I would 
be able to rest a bit. The next morning a plane would take me to Oslo. 

The afternoon was marvelous. The villa was in perfect taste. At the end 
of the lawn the sea stretched out blue-gray and peaceful, with tiny wavelets. 

That evening we were served a copious dinner. In spite of the war Den¬ 
mark lived well: pastries, butter, cream, eggs, bacon, the most diverse 
delicacies were all plentiful. 

My mind was on alert, however. I listened to the radio. It was perhaps 
nine-thirty. In a German transmission there was talk about the capitulation 
of Denmark. I rushed from set to set and finally heard the fateful sentence, 
“The Armies of Denmark have surrendered unconditionally. They will lay 
down their weapons tomorrow morning at eight o’clock.” 

I tried to telephone the SS Office. I could hear nothing on the phone ex¬ 
cept the howling of a delirious crowd assaulting the buildings. All the bells 
in town were ringing. 

A lot of good it had done us to run! 

The mousetrap had shut. 



The Agony of the Baltic 


335 


Partisans and English 

It was the evening of Friday, 4 May 1945. 

We drew up the balance sheet, my two aides-de-camp, the driver, and I. 
rhe surrender of the armies of the northern Reich and Denmark was a fact. 
We were alone at the far end of Copenhagen in an absolutely unknown 
district. We were occupying the villa of the SS general, which would cer¬ 
tainly not better our situation. 

The youngest of my officers was jumpy. 

“Tomorrow,” he kept repeating, “it will be too late. We have to find a 
solution immediately. I’m going to the German staff office.” 

He took the driver and planted a submachine gun between his knees. A 
quarter of an hour later in the center of the town, he fell into a frenzy of 
riots. They were attacking isolated soldiers who hadn’t got out of the way in 
time. The officer, the driver, and the automobile were struck down in this 
obscure tragedy. 

At eleven o’clock in the evening the balance sheet was even clearer. There 
were only two of us. We didn’t have a car any more. We didn’t have 
anyone’s address. 


***** 

A key grated in the lock. The door opened. A man entered. 

It was a German civilian in convalescence at Copenhagen. He was lodg¬ 
ing—we hadn’t known it at all—in the same villa as we were. 

This fellow had been gone since noon to take a walk along the sea. He 
was coming back in to sleep. The war was over? That was none of his 
business. He was no soldier. Therefore he would await events philosoph¬ 
ically. 

He got undressed, put on some pale green pajama pants and went on to 
eat the hors d’oeuvres we had left. 

We brought him back to reality. Our case seemed to him a bit more com¬ 
plicated than his own. 

“Don’t you know a single person who might live in the area?” we asked 
him. 

He slowly chewed an egg with mayonnaise, pausing again. “Yes,” he 
said, “the German governor of Denmark lives five minutes from here.” 

We didn’t make him repeat it. My last aide-de-camp put on civilian 
clothing and immediately left for Dr. Best’s property. We found him 
slouched in his kitchen behind nineteen suitcases and quite desperate. He 
couldn’t see a single way left for getting us out of the wasp’s nest of 
Copenhagen. 

“I’m going to try everything,” he said. “If it’s still possible, a naval of¬ 
ficer will come for you in an hour and try to put you on a boat.” 



336 


CAMPAIGN IN RUSSIA 


We waited all night lying in the vestibule. No one came. 

In the morning red and white flags were flying at the tops of poles on all 
the villas in the neighborhood. A motor boat was patrolling in front of our 
terrace a hundred meters out to sea. Trucks packed with helmeted “par¬ 
tisans” with machine guns in their hands were passing like whirlwinds down 
the boulevard. Everyone pointed out Viking House. 

We would certainly be attacked before too long. 

***** 

The servants had gone for information. The town was in full-fledged riot. 
Germans had been murdered by the populace. Several thousand guerrillas 
were masters of the streets. The German offices at the center of 
Copenhagen had been surrounded by a furious mob. 

We almost envied our comrades who were besieged back there. They at 
least were together and could unite until the arrival of the British troops. 
We two were liable to be lynched at any moment. 

From the town came violent noises of combat. There was machine gun 
fire and even cannon fire. It was a rather noisy surrender. We asked 
ourselves when and how we would be engulfed. 

Suddenly a blue limousine with Danish plates stopped in front of the 
door. A man hastened up. 

“Get into civilian clothes right away and jump into my car.” 

In a few seconds we had put a pair of trousers and a civilian jacket on 
over our uniforms. 

“We’re going to try to go through town,” the driver, a very stylishly 
dressed gentleman two meters tall, said to us. 

“And if we’re attacked?” 

“Then there’s nothing to be done. You’ll have to leave all your weapons 
here, even your revolvers. The troops of Denmark have capitulated. We 
have to respect the word of the Reich.” 

We emptied our pockets. 

The car started off down the avenue. 

* * ♦ * * 

Our driver was an officer in civilian dress. Dr. Best had loyally done 
everything to save us. He was risking a lot. Some German ships were still oc¬ 
cupying a corner of the Copenhagen harbor. We were going to try to get to 
them. We would have to drive through the entire town before reaching 
them. 

We had scarcely started into the boulevards when we encountered the 
first barriers. Six partisans with leveled machine guns were cutting off the 
way from one crossroads to the next. 



The Agony of the Baltic 


337 


Our guide pretended to stop, then gave a friendly wave of his hand to the 
sentinels. These thought they had to do with one or another of the big chiefs 
of the partisans. Taking advantage of their surprise, our German officer im¬ 
mediately stepped on the accelerator. We passed a half dozen barriers that 
way. 

The further we went into the center of town, the more intense was the 
congestion. All Copenhagen was in the streets. The car went forward only 
with great difficulty. People gave us strange stares. 

We veered off on several side streets and ended up coming back to the 
boulevard fifty meters away from a snarling crowd which was attacking a 
building. They were dragging civilians out onto the ground. Groups of par¬ 
tisans were blocking the way. 

We had only a second to rush into a side alley. When the car had swung 
into it, it was too late to go back. We had entered right into the courtyard of 
a barracks occupied by the “Resistance.” 

Our driver, unflappable, drove straight in, made a dazzling turn, scaled a 
concrete tank trap, and exited the lair with perfect ease. We passed near the 
delirious crowd and headed into the neighboring lanes at full throttle. 

♦ * ♦ ♦ * 

Our driver knew Copenhagen admirably. He succeeded in nearing the 
harbor district, driving from side to side street. 

From time to time we would find ourselves confronted by a huge throng 
pillaging the house of a “collaborator.” They would load the half-stunned 
civilians into vans. Each time we had to swerve suddenly to avoid falling 
into the middle of the pack. 

Unfortunately we had to pass over a Copenhagen station to reach the har¬ 
bor. How would we keep from being trapped when we tried to cross one of 
the long guarded bridges which straddled the lines? 

It was then that my former good luck once more ruled my destiny. Heavy 
machine-gun Are had broken out just that minute. The Danish Communists 
had tried to seize the harbor petroleum depot a few hundred meters away. 
The Germans had violently resisted with all the weapons at their disposal, 
including anti-aircraft guns. There was a desperate scramble. Civilians, ter¬ 
rorists, and partisan sentinels fled, rushing into the houses. God’s second! 
Our automobile raced forward, crossed the thirty or forty meters of narrow 
bridge like an arrow, made a wide curve, came down again, and stopped in 
front of a gate. We were saved. We were at the entrance to the harbor. 

***** 

Even there Danish partisans with revolvers in their hands and disarmed 
German soldiers mingled one with another. Discreetly I showed my decora- 



338 


CAMPAIGN IN RUSSIA 


tion, with its Oak Leaves, which I held hidden in the palm of my hand, to a 
naval officer. With an innocent air, he had me sit down in a boat which 
took us, my aide-de-camp and I, to the ship of a commander of eighteen 
minesweepers. 

The Copenhagen anchorage was a moving spectacle. Facing this town 
gone mad, a whole German fleet, comprising magnificent ships like the 
PrinzEugen, was moored in the blue bay. The flags of the Kriegsmarine still 
flew proudly atop the masts. Twenty thousand men were aboard. 

But these splendid boats, already chained to fixed moorings, would be 
prey for the Allies this evening or tomorrow. Had I escaped the terrorists to 
be swept up now at the anchorage by the British? 

The commander of the minesweepers was a determined officer. 

“Our Norwegian armies weren’t included in the capitulation,” he 
repeated. ‘‘Perhaps there is a chance to get there.” 

But the admiral, consulted, replied that any idea of leaving for Norway 
had to be abandoned. 


***** 

The town glittered in the sun. At three o’clock in the afternoon the com¬ 
mander showed me a radio-telegram. A British airborne division was going 
to land. A quarter of an hour later a British airplane passed above our 
masts, turned, and landed before our eyes at the Copenhagen airport. 

At five o’clock in the evening the sky was filled with an immense rumbl¬ 
ing. Hundreds of British transport planes were landing at the airport a few 
kilometers away from us. 

Six o’clock in the evening. 

Motorcycles and jeeps were unloaded from the vast cabins. The Tommies 
took off toward the town. The crowd cheered them deliriously. Any minute 
we would see them come out onto the quays. 

My commander’s eyes were glittering. He took me fraternally by the 
shoulders. 

“No, no,” he exclaimed, “It will not be said that Germany abandoned 
you.” 

He hailed the young commander of a minesweeper. 

“You’re going to break a passage through,” he said to him. “I want you 
to get to Oslo with Degrelle.” 

A handsome warship approached, as grey as the water and as narrow and 
slender as a hare. I put on a big sheepskin coat and passed to starboard. 

At six-thirty in the evening, right in front of the British, who were show¬ 
ing off on the streets and docks, we set sail at full speed toward the coast of 
Sweden, then straight north. 



The Agony of the Baltic 

Oslo, 7 May 1945 


339 


On the bow of the warship on which I was escaping from Copenhagen in 
extremis, I found a reviving balm in the sharp aroma of the sea. 

On the Swedish coast the reflections of twilight were dying out. The shore 
was very close. I looked at the whitewashed walls, the tall pink chimneys, 
and the darkening hills. On the Danish coast the green roofs of Elsinore 3 
were outlined against the twilight, more romantic than ever. 

The sea was nothing but a wide river now. I was in a hurry to get out of 
this bottleneck and reach the Kattegat, to see the colors of the hostile sky 
melt away. 

Evening came without our having been caught by British planes. The 
breeze was brisk. I leaned on my elbows right at the bow to dream, to catch 
the rough caress of the north wind and the spray, and to watch the lights of 
a million stars. The sea shimmered, glimmered, and shone to infinity. It was 
tranquil and soothing. 

Our warship was fast. If we wanted to escape a massive air attack we had 
to reach the fjords of Norway early in the morning. 

No one on board was authorized to sleep, for we might run into some 
mines at any minute. But the sea was wide. There was enough room for 
both the mines and us. We didn’t hit a single one. 

Three times during the night Allied planes came prowling above the 
masts. The sailors told us the harrassment at sea was as fierce as on land. 

The night was clear. 

The British planes contended themselves with coming down quite low, 
almost to the water level. We carefully refrained from showing any reac¬ 
tion. They must have been wondering what we were doing in the Kattegat 
when the war in Denmark was over, but they didn’t insist. We were polite 
and imitated their discretion. 

At eight o’clock in the morning we saw the big brown and black rocks of 
Norway. We came into the dazzling Oslo fjord. Not a boat on the horizon. 
The water was icy blue and smooth as metal. On the banks villas built of 
wood and painted blue, brown, white, or dark green were half hidden in the 
firs. I thought about the Reich’s landing fleet, advancing on an equally 
luminous morning in April 1940, as the fjord’s black rocks glistened in the 
shining water. 

We advanced for two hours. 

Past the harbor entrance, roofs, church towers, docks, cranes, and 
elevators emerged. 

Oslo. 

It was ten o’clock in the morning. A siren answered us. We drew up 
alongside two pocket submarines, hardly bigger than canoes and yellow like 
drying tobacco leaves. 

The city of Oslo is set at the end of one of the most radiant inlets in 



340 


CAMPAIGN IN RUSSIA 


Europe. The town was still sleeping. It was Sunday. An occasional tram 
would pass. We telephoned, and an automobile came for us. It took us 
toward the mountains which lined the Oslo fjord on the southwest. 

The weather was perfect. 

Thousands of girls with splendid figures outlined by light pajamas in 
shimmering colors were riding bicycles along the creeks, the grey and brown 
rocks, and the black firs. They were heading toward the wooded hills. 

We stopped twice to ask the way. The bicyclists stared at us. Every head 
shook “no.” In spite of the countryside, the blond locks, the coquettish red 
or blue trousers of these charmers, in spite of the sun and the brilliance of 
the spring, the war and its surliness came through first. 

We came to Crown Prince Olaf’s castle on top of a mountain, where I 
was to meet the German governor of Norway, Dr. Terboven. He received 
me immediately, his face non-committal, his little eyes blinking like those of 
Himmler. 

I explained my plan to him. I wanted to join the northern front of Nor¬ 
way promptly. As long as the war against Communism continued, we 
wanted to affirm the presence of our Legion in the struggle. Other Walloons 
would rejoin us without delay. 

Dr. Terboven must have received particularly discouraging news. He 
shook his head. He talked to me of Sweden and Japan. I had been thinking 
in terms of Narvik and the North Cape. 

He had an old French cognac brought out and offered me some very 
satisfying sandwiches. From the castle terrace the view extended over the 
gulf, an immense, unforgettable symphony of dark blues, whites, browns, 
and greens. With the world so beautiful why did so much fury ravage the 
hearts of men? 

Dr. Terboven had reserved an apartment for me in Oslo. He would keep 
me informed of events. I went back down into the iridescent valley. I could 
no longer see how I was going to get out of it. 

$ 41 41 

I took a bath and listened to the radio. The Allies were exultant, but I was 
exhausted and fell asleep. 

The next day, Monday, 7 May 1945,1 heard the warriors of Radio Lon¬ 
don baying. They trumpeted the end of the hunt. The general surrender of 
the Reich was arranged. It was no longer a matter of hours, maybe only of 
minutes. 

The Norwegian Prime Minister, Quisling, whom I hadn’t yet met, had in¬ 
vited me to the Royal Palace. 

I arrived at eleven-thirty, after a stroll in the streets. The palace was 
nothing much. Two large and attractive tapestries hung in the white marble 
grand staircase. The royal furniture was worn. In front of the palace a 



The Agony of the Baltic 


341 


classic thundering monarch, speckled with bird droppings, was riding a 
massive green bronze stallion. 

Quisling seemed crushed by fate. We made small talk for half an hour. 
Terboven had asked me to calm him, which eliminated most subjects of 
conversation. He gave the impression of being devoured from within. His 
face was puffy, his eyes wandered in every direction, his fingers tapped the 
table. The man felt lost. 

I was his last visitor. That afternoon he hurried to the Swedish border, 
was turned back, and returned to Oslo that night, no longer knowing into 
which fjord to throw himself. He was shot a few months later. 

♦ * * # * 

These events hadn’t shaken the hotel’s burgundy. I drank a delectable 
bottle of it at lunch, but the radio kept me from fully enjoying it. At two 
o’clock in the afternoon it announced a statement from the Reich’s new 
Minister of Foreign Affairs. 

A speech by this man in such circumstances? I guessed every paragraph of 
it before a single word had been spoken. The surrender outside the Reich 
was complete: in Bohemia, in Lithuania, in Crete, at the French ports of the 
Atlantic Ocean. The three hundred thousand men of Norway were giving 
themselves up like the others. Why should Germany have gone on righting 
and have sacrificed German lives now that the last meters of her soil were 
conquered from Schleswig to the Sudetes? 

The troops of the Reich in Scandinavia were treated cor¬ 

rectly-repatriated and liberated. The German forces in Crete even ob¬ 
tained the honors of war. They went back to their country armed. 

But for us, the last foreign volunteers, it was the abyss. 

I stayed at the window the whole afternoon. What was the good of feeling 
sad? I had done what I could. I had held on right to the end, obstinately, 
without flinching. There was no point in going north again. The North 
Cape, too, had capitulated. 

The crowd was massing in the streets, more dignified than in 

Copenhagen. The girls were waving flags. German soldiers were still mov¬ 
ing about without any Norwegian attacking them. The brawls, executions, 
and suicides began only with the arrival of the partisans, who came down 
from the neighboring mountains the next day. 

I waited for news from Dr. Terboven. At six o’clock in the evening he had 
me called to the palace of Prince Olaf. 

* * * * * 

Dr. Terboven welcomed me in company with his friend, General Reedis. 

They were heroically calm. Nevertheless they would both be found the next 



342 


CAMPAIGN IN RUSSIA 


morning, exsanguinated, revolvers in their icy hands, neither one having 
wanted to turn Norway over to the victors. 

We gazed again, together, at the dazzling landscape. A headwaiter in tails 
served drinks as if we were at a garden party on an innocent spring 
afternoon. 

Dr. Terboven then said to me in a grave voice, “I have asked Sweden to 
give you asylum. She has refused. A submarine could perhaps have taken 
you as far as Japan, but the capitulation is absolute. Submarines can no 
longer leave.” 

“At the airport at the foot of the mountain there is still a private plane. It 
belongs to Minister Speer. Do you want to take your chances and try to 
reach Spain tonight?” 

We made some calculations. From Oslo to the Pyrenees was about 
twenty-one hundred and fifty kilometers in a direct line. In theory the plane 
had a range of twenty-one hundred kilometers. 

By flying very high to save fuel it wasn’t impossible to get there. 

I had no choice. 

I accepted. 

I had risked my life every day for two weeks. I would risk it one last time. 

* * # * * 

Once more I went back to Oslo, swarming with a huge multitude. 

The hotel had completely emptied. All the doors were wide open. Even 
the staff had disappeared. 

I had to wait; we couldn’t take off before it was completely dark. I would 
have to get into the airfield secretly. 

At eleven o’clock in the evening a magnificent frizzy-haired pilot with 
hands as big as flippers, decorated with the German Gold Cross, brought a 
little automobile up in front of the hotel. Together with my last officer I got 
in. 

The crowd was demonstrating everywhere in the streets. I was still in the 
uniform of a Waffen SS colonel, and I was wearing the Oak Leaves and the 
Knight’s Cross ribbon around my neck. Tens of thousands of tall blond 
boys and girls with perfect features crowded the streets, but they moved 
aside smiling to let the car pass. 

Not a single anti-tank barrier had been constructed outside of Oslo. Our 
pilot brought us up under the wings of the plane in the darkness without 
anyone’s noticing us. 

The aides took their places. 

One minute later we were in the sky. 



Chapter Eleven 
“ALEA JACTA EST.” 


My first feeling when the airplane left Norwegian soil was one of relief. In 
taking off we had cut the last mooring ropes of uncertainty. Now everything 
was clear. When the airplane landed either we would have succeeded or we 
would be irremediably lost. 

A lea jacta est . 1 Life or death! We would soon know which definitively. 
We didn’t have to do any more thinking, planning, and weighing. 

It was almost midnight. The war had in fact been over since the German 
radio transmission at 1400 hours. Nonetheless the capitulation would not be 
officially in force until the next day, 8 May 1945. 

We were between weir and peace, as between earth and sky. We flew for a 
time above the Skagerrak. From this time on, only the compass on our in¬ 
strument panel and the marvelous skill of the pilot would guide us in the 
storm. Naturally we couldn’t take our bearings from the radio. We didn’t 
even have a map of Europe. 

All in all our aviators had a magnificent map ... of Norway. 

One of them had in addition a minuscule map of France which came from 
a pocket atlas. It lavishly displayed three rivers: the Seine, the Loire, and 
the Rhone. 

We climbed to 4,000 meters in order to save fuel, but a storm quickly 
forced us to fly fairly low. 

$ & ♦ ♦ ♦ 

Obviously an isolated plane launched thus across 2,000 kilometers of oc¬ 
cupied territory without any protection would run twenty times the risk of 
being brought down. Our only chance of salvation lay in the monster 
celebration which had been going on all afternoon in the Allied camp. 

On all the airfields in the West the victors were in the process of swilling 
rivers of champagne and whiskey. Thousands of British and American com¬ 
bat pilots, freed from the worry of nocturnal missions, would be on the 
edge—or in the depths—of inebriation at the hour our Heinkel was crossing 



344 


CAMPAIGN IN RUSSIA 


their surveillance zones. Of all nights, this was the one to pull it off. 

Besides, who would imagine that a solitary plane still proudly bearing its 
swastikas would dare fly over Holland, Belgium, and the whole of France, 
now that the war was over? Above all, who would imagine that one of the 
Reich’s planes would come out of the North Sea from along the coast of 
Scotland? We had taken care, in truth, to use this stratagem, heading first 
straight toward England, then approaching the European continent as if we 
were coming from British shores. 

I watched the dark lands beneath. Automobiles were hurrying along with 
their headlights on. Little towns shone like boxes of burning matches. 
Everywhere people would be singing and drinking. 

It was perhaps one-thirty in the morning when I noticed a disturbing 
phenomenon. A big searchlight had been turned on behind us and was scan¬ 
ning the sky. 

My heart began to beat faster. 

* # # # * 

In spite of the celebrations on the ground, we had been spotted. Search¬ 
lights were now probing at out altitude. Others were lighting up far in front 
of us. The airfields were outlined in great squares of light. The runways 
shone like white sheets. 

Our machine flew as fast as it could to escape those accursed lights, but 
always other searchlights lit up and rose toward us as though to seize us. 

Glimmers of light spattered our wings. 

The radio began to crackle. The Allied observers called us: “Who are 
you? What are you doing?” 

We didn’t reply. We fled, pushing harder and harder. 

♦ * # ♦ * 

Belgium was below me. Antwerp was there, shining in the first night of 
the return of peace. I thought about our rivers, our roads, about all the 
towns where I had spoken, the plains, the hills, the ancient houses that I 
loved so much. These people who were there under the plane, these people I 
had wanted to raise, to ennoble, to bring back to the paths of glory. To my 
left I saw the lights of Brussels, the big black splash of the Soignes forest 
which had long been my beloved home. 

Ah! The wretchedness of being beaten and seeing one’s dream die! I 
gritted my teeth to keep from shedding tears. It was in the night and the 
wind, pursued by a bitter fate, that I had my last rendezvous with the sky of 
my homeland. 

We had not passed Lille. Always the airfield searchlights harassed us. 

But the further south we penetrated, the more hope we had of cheating 
death. 



"AleaJactaEst.” 345 

We approached Paris, which our Heinkel flew over at a very low altitude. 
I could make out the streets and the squares, silvery as doves. 

We were still alive. We flew over the Beauce, the Loire, the Vendee. Soon 
we would reach the Atlantic. 

The pilots, however, were exchanging worried looks. Certainly we now 
ran less risk of being brought down by the Allied anti-aircraft guns or night 
fighters. But the fuel was running low. 

The night was terribly dark. 

I searched the ground anxiously. The luminous hands showed five 
o’clock in the morning. An ephemeral glow eased the darkness. I recognized 
it instantly. It was the Gironde estuary. We were on the right route. 

We followed along the sea. 

We could just make out the leaping line of the waves at the edge of the 
beach. To the east, at the very end of the sky, the horizon shimmered almost 
imperceptibly. 

We were running lower and lower on fuel. 

By the bluish lights on the instrument panel I scrutinized the drawn 
features of the pilots. 

The plane slowed and descended. 

We passed opposite Arcachon. I had once lived there under the aromatic 
pines. The harbor was lit up as if for Bastille Day. 

From a distance we followed the black mass of the Landes, broken by the 
gleaming lake of Biscarosse. 

The Heinkel misfired a number of times. 

One of the pilots brought us life jackets. The fuel gauge showed empty. 
We might fall into the sea at any moment. 

With a tension that ate at my nerves I studied the probable line of the 
Pyrenees. Daybreak was glimmering feebly. 

The peaks of the mountains ought to be visible. We couldn’t see them. 

The plane was misfiring more and more loudly. 

To the southeast a distant blued curve hemmed the sky. The chain of the 
Pyrenees was there. 

But could we stay in the air as far as the Spanish coast? 

Because of the storm we had flown almost twenty-three hundred 
kilometers. We had to list the airplane onto the left wing, then onto the 
right wing, to make the last liters of fuel from the tanks flow into the 
motors. 

I knew the region of Biarritz and Saint-Jean-de-Luz. I could barely make 
out the whitening bend of the Pyrennes at the mouth of the Bidassoa. 

But the plane wanted no more of it and had come down almost to water 
level. We were going to die twenty kilometers from the Iberian coast. 

We had to shoot the red shipwreck flares. Two military patrol boats 
headed towards us, coming from the French coast. 

What a tragedy! And to think that a searchlight was now blinking in the 
distance, a Spanish searchlight! 



346 


CAMPAIGN IN RUSSIA 


It was strange to see the white-capped crests of the waves and the sea lap¬ 
ping close beneath us, ready to swallow us up. We still hadn’t fallen in. The 
coast was coming closer, pushing its reefs and rocks toward us and its green 
and black peaks, barely detached from the shadows. 

Suddenly the pilot stood the plane up vertically, almost turning it com¬ 
pletely over, and revving the motor so as to catch the last drops of benzine. 
Then he charged over a rocky hill and, with an awful racket, grazed several 
red roofs. 

We no longer had the time to think. 

We had seen a short ribbon of sand in a clearing. The Heinkel, which 
hadn’t lowered its landing gear, slid on its fuselage at two hundred and fifty 
kilometers an hour. I saw the right motor explode, glowing like a ball of 
fire. The machine turned, lunged toward the sea, went into the waves, and 
crashed. 

The water flooded into the back cabin and rose up to our waists. I had 
five fractures. On the beach at San Sebastian the civil guards with black 
two-cornered hats rushed back and forth in agitation. Some Spaniards as 
naked as Tahitians swam out to our wrecked plane. 

They pulled us up onto a wing of the twin-engine, then into a canoe. An 
ambulance came alongside. 

This time the war was really over. 

We were alive. God had saved us. 

My injuries themselves were a blessing. 

I spent months in a hospital bed, but I had kept my strength and my faith. 

I hadn’t experienced the bitterness of falling uselessly into the hands of 
my enemies. 

I remained, a witness to my soldiers’ deeds. I could defend them from the 
lies of adversaries insensible to heroism. I could tell of their epic on the 
Donets and the Don, in the Caucasus and at Cherkassy, in Estonia, at 
Stargard, on the Oder. 

One day the sacred names of our dead would be repeated with pride. Our 
people, hearing these tales of glory, would feel their blood quicken. And 
they would know their sons. 

Certainly we had been beaten. We had been dispersed and pursued to the 
four comers of the world. 

But we could look to the future with heads held high. History weighs the 
merit of men. Above worldly baseness, we had offered our youth against 
total immolation. We had fought for Europe, its faith, its civilization. We 
had reached the very height of sincerity and sacrifice. Sooner or later 
Europe and the world would have to recognize the justice of our cause and 
the purity of our gift. 

For hate dies, dies suffocated by its own stupidity and mediocrity, but 
grandeur is eternal. 

And we lived in grandeur. 



GLOSSARY 


Abteilungen: Government bureaus, or sections. 

bashibazouks: 19th century Ottoman irregulars, notorious for their brutal¬ 
ity. 

cheval-de-frise: Originally a spiked obstacle for horses; here it denotes a 
close-knit formation for defense on all sides. 

Dienststelle : In the German Army, an office or department. 

droshky: An open, four-wheeled, horse-drawn carriage. 

Feldgendarmes : The military police of the Prussian, then German, Army, 
from 1866-1945. 

Feldpost : The German Army postal service. 

isba: a Russian or Ukrainian peasant’s cottage. 

Intourist : The Soviet organization which controls tourism and tourists. 

Kessel: A pocket resulting from complete encirclement. 

kolkhoz: Abbreviation for Russian kollektivnoye khozyaynstvo, Soviet- 
controlled agricultural community and enterprise, nominally a collective. 
Produce belonged to the state, as did capital; pay was supposed to be based 
on labor; small garden plots were allowed the collectivized fanners. 

Landsknecht (pi. -e): A type of professional soldier, first recruited by the 
emperor Maximilian I in the late 15th century, which flourished in the 16th 
century. Until the foundation of a standing imperial army around 1620 the 
Landsknechte formed the backbone of the forces of the Reich, and became 
celebrated for their military exploits and lusty way of life. 

mamka : “Little mother”; affectionate Ukrainian diminutive. 

muzhik: A Russian peasant. 



348 


CAMPAIGN IN RUSSIA 


Pak: Abbreviation for Panzerabwehrkanone, German for an anti-tank gun, 
which typically was long-barreled, with a high muzzle velocity, and fired 
armor-piercing shells. 

pan: Ukrainian for “Mr.” or “Sir.” 

panzerfaust: The light panzerfaust (“mailed fist”) used as an anti-tank 
weapon by the Walloons and the Germans was an individually fired tube 
which discharged a rocket-propelled hollow-charge projectile. The tube was 
discarded after use. 

politruk (pi. -y): Soviet political officer, charged with a number of func¬ 
tions among the troops, including political supervision and agitation. Com¬ 
monly translated as “commisar.” 

shapska: Variant of Russian, Ukrainian shapka, “cap.” 

sovkhoz: Soviet state farm, similar to the kolkhoz , but generally originating 
in the Soviet seizure of a single large estate. 

Stabsfeldwebel: German non-commissioned officer corresponding roughly 
to a U.S. Army Sergeant or Major. Usually a career soldier. 

Stuka: Abbreviation of Sturzkampfflugzeug, “dive bomber.” The most 
famous, and most effective, was the Junkers 87. 

Sturmgeschuetz (pi. -e): Cannon or howitzer used for infantry support, 
primarily against armor. Originally drawn by horses or a truck, it was later 
mounted as a “self-propelled gun” on an armored, treaded vehicle. 

telega: A crude Russian cart, lacking springs. 

Tiefflieger: German for “strafing plane.” 

uhlans: Heavy cavalry, or lancers. The word, from the Turkish for “boy, 
lad,” was first used to denote Polish cavalry units in the 16th century. From 
1734 there were Prussian uhlan regiments; after 1918 the division of the 
German cavalry into light (dragoons, hussars, mounted rangers) and heavy 
(curassiers, uhlans) units was abolished. Cavalry units were employed by 
many nations in World War II. 

Volapuek: An “international” language invented by the German preacher 
J.M. Schleyer in 1879 under the delusion that a common language for 
humanity would foster peace and tolerance. 

Volksdeutsche: Name for persons of German stock, language, and culture 
outside the boundaries of the German Reich, for the most part living in 
communities in Eastern and Central Europe. They made an immeasurable 
contribution to the culture and economy of the lands in which they dwelt. In 


Glossary and Footnotes 


349 


the 20th century the great majority of the Volksdeutschen were driven from 
their adopted homelands, either into exile in the Central Asiatic 
“republics” of the Soviet Union or back to the western rump of the German 
Reich (the German Federal Republic.). 


FOOTNOTES 


Foreword 

1. Berchtesgaden was the site of Hitler’s mountain chalet, the Berghof, 
1,700 feet high in the Alps, near Salzburg and the Austrian border. 

2. Wallonian is the dialect spoken in most of the French-speaking parts of 
Belgium. The word came from a Germanic word designating 
foreigners, originally the Celts, later the more or less Romanized 
population of countries from Dacia (now roughly Romania) to Britain. 
The designation of a territory as Wallonia occurs no earlier than 1858. 

Chapter 1 

1. Although Degrelle underscores the Russian role in the plot against the 
lawful government of Yugoslavia, there is now no doubt that Great Bri¬ 
tain’s and the United States’s secret and not so secret agents, including 
“Wild Bill” Donovan, first head of the U.S. Office of Strategic Ser¬ 
vices (OSS), played a more important role in organizing the putsch. See 
The Last European War, John Lukacs; The Shadow Warriors, Bradley 
F. Smith; The Fall of Yugoslavia, Iliya Jukic; etc. 

2. Lemberg is the German name of the great city, capital of Galicia, 
variously known as Lvov (Russian), Lviv (Ukrainian), and Lwow 
(Polish). 

3. The kulaks, the farmers of Russia and the Ukraine who owned their 
own farms and were able to employ farm laborers, were systematically 
“liquidated” (that is, deprived of their property, deported to forced 
labor camps, and starved to death) in huge numbers at Stalin’s order in 
the early 1930’s. The details of this crime, and the massive famine 
which resulted from it (deaths are estimated at several millions) have 
received little attention in the West. 


350 


CAMPAIGN IN RUSSIA 


Chapter 2 

1. Abbreviation for Gosudarstvennoye Polititsheskoye Upravleniye, or 
“State Political Administration.” The literal meaning expresses the key 
function of this organization in the USSR far better than the usual 
over-quick designation as the Soviet secret police; it fulfills that role 
and much more. At the time of the Second World War, it had become 
known as the NKVD. Several more name changes and reorganizations 
have resulted in its present designation as the KGB; its role and func¬ 
tion remain unchanged. 

2. Hungarians and Romanians have nursed a centuries-old rivalry over 
Transylvania, a large area, now in Romania, flanked to the north, east, 
and south by the sweeping curve of the Carpathians. The pusztas are 
the great steppes of Hungary. 

3. The Borinage was formerly an important mining area of Hainaut, on 
the French border of Belgium. Its coal mining has been rendered un¬ 
competitive by unfavorable geological conditions, and the Borinage has 
been economically depressed for decades. 

4. Rosa Luxemburg was a Jewess born to a wealthy merchant’s family in 
Zamosc, Poland, in 1870. A Marxist revolutionary who harbored a 
general contempt for the European nations, and for the Germans in 
particular, her revolutionary peregrinations brought her at length to the 
Reich. While attempting to subject a prostrate Germany to Bolshevist 
terror and revolution after the First World War, she was captured and 
shot by German nationalists during the anarchy reigning in Berlin in 
1919. 

Chapter 3 

1. The reader will remember that these events took place at around 49 
degrees of latitude north. There was no “daylight saving” in the Soviet 
Union. 

2. The Brandenburg Gate was designed and built by Carl Langhans in 
1788-1791 at the entrance to the great avenue Unter den Linden in 
Berlin. Langhans imitated the Propylaea, the great gate to the Athenian 
Acropolis. The massive quadriga, or four-horse chariot, on top of the 
gate was modeled by Georg von Schadow after the vehicles in which 
Roman generals were drawn in triumph through Rome. The approach 
to the Brandenburg Gate is now mockingly barred by the wall con¬ 
structed by the regime of the “German Democratic Republic.” 

3. The Iron Cross, established as a decoration for bravery during the Ger¬ 
man War of Liberation by King Frederick William III of Prussia in 



Glossary and Footnotes 


351 


1813, was renewed in the Franco-Prussian War, the First World War, 
and the Second World War. When Adolf Hitler, who was awarded 
both the Iron Cross 1st and 2nd Class in the First World War, re¬ 
established the medal in 1939, it was divided into four grades, the third 
of which had five levels: the Knight’s Cross of the Iron Cross; the 
Knight’s Cross of the Iron Cross with Oak Leaf; the Knight’s Cross of 
the Iron Cross with Oak Leaf with Swords; the Knight’s Cross of the 
Iron Cross with Golden Leaf with Swords and Diamonds. The last was 
awarded to one man only, the intrepid Stuka pilot Hans-Ulrich Rudel. 
Degrelle, who was eventually to be awarded the Knight’s Cross with 
Oak Leaf, was the only non-German so honored. 

Chapter 4 

1. ‘ ‘Capuan’ ’ for Capua, the Etruscan-founded city in Campania, prover¬ 
bial in classical antiquity for its luxury. 

2. Artaban was a character in the Gascon La Calprenide’s novel Cliopatre 
(1647), famous for his hauteur. 

3. Vatel was a celebrated French chef, the great aristocrat Conde’s maitre 
d’hotel, who became legendary by his suicide after several minor lapses 
at a banquet he had prepared at his master’s request for King Louis 
XIV in 1671. 

4. The Vieux grognards (“old grumblers”) were the veterans forming the 
core of Napoleon’s armies, including the Imperial Guard. 

Chapter 5 

1. Meant are the blancs bees (literally “white beaks”), very young troops 
who served as dragoons in the regiment of Prince Charles Joseph de la 
Ligne in the Seven Years* War. They particularly distinguished 
themselves at Prague, Kolin, and Leuthen in 1757 against Frederick the 
Great’s Prussians, and were styled blancs bees by the Austrian marshal 
Daun for their lack of moustaches. They received a banner from Em¬ 
press Maria Teresia embroidered with a tender rose ringed by thorns 
and the device “Qui s’y frotte s’y pique ” (“Who vexes me pricks 
himself’). 

Chapter 6 

1. The Leo belgicus (“Belgian lion”), like the Lion of Flanders, is a 
heraldic symbol of the nation. 

2. Napoleon’s embattled crossing of the Beresina, 27-28 November 1812, 



352 


CAMPAIGN IN RUSSIA 


while dogged by three different Russian armies, with 10,000 stragglers 
and wounded left behind to be butchered by Cossacks, encapsules the 
disaster of his Russian campaign. 

Chapter 7 

1. Several hundred thousand workers from Belgium were employed in 
German industry. Many had come voluntarily before the war to take 
advantage of the Hitler boom; many more were drafted to work in the 
mines and factories of the Reich after the conquest and occupation of 
Belgium. 

2. The ancient capital of Estonia is called Tallinn (“Danish fortress”) by 
the Estonians, Reval by the Germans. 

3. The German Hansa (. Hatise ), or Hanseatic League, was the great Ger¬ 
manic trading confederation of the High Middle Ages, with member 
cities radiating from Luebeck up the Baltic to Reval, down into the 
Rhineland and as far east as Cracow. The Hansa flourished until finally 
superseded by England and the Netherlands in the seventeenth century. 

Chapter 8 

1. Le Moniteur (The Monitor) was a war-time Rexist newspaper. 

Chapter 9 

1. The Volkssturm was raised by the last military draft in Germany during 
the Second World War, and formed in late 1944 from all able-bodied 
men aged sixteen to sixty. Most fought as well as they could. 

2 The reference is to the Battle of Montmirail, 11 February 1814, in 
which Napoleon, fighting brilliantly but hopelessly in the Campaign of 
France, defeated two numerically superior armies, one Prussian, one 
Russian. 

3. The six hundred men of Franchimont, castle and headquarters of the 
prince-bishops of LiSge, sallied forth in 1468 to defend their ancient 
liberties against King Charles XI of France and Charles the Bold of 
Burgundy, who were dickering over the annexation of their country. 
They were captured and slaughtered to a man. LiSge fell to Burgundy 
but their example lived on as an inspiration to Lowlands patriots. 

4. Indeed Robert E. Howard’s Conan, whose adventures were as avidly 
read by the American and European youth of the 1930’s as they are 
seen by today’s teenagers at the movies. 



Glossary and Footnotes 


353 


Chapter 10 

1. General Andrei Andreievich Vlassov, commander of the 2nd Soviet 
Shock Army, was captured by the Germans in 1942. Leader of a 
German-sponsored “Russian Committee” from 1942, Vlassov was able 
to raise two divisions from Russian POWs in German captivity in 1945. 
He and his troops were captured by the Americans at the end of the war 
and handed over to the Soviets shortly thereafter. Vlassov and 
doubtless most of his men were executed. 

2. Although Luebeck was heavily damaged by a British incendiary attack 
on 24 March 1942 its characteristic skyline with its seven church towers 
and its massive gate was relatively unscathed, preserving a good deal of 
the city’s traditional aspect. 

3. Hamlet’s Elsinore is called Helsingor in modern Danish. 

Chapter 11 

1. “The die is cast.” Gaius Julius Caesar’s famous dictum as he led his 
legions across the Rubicon River, the dividing line between the Roman 
province of Cisalpine Gaul and the territory of the Republic proper, in 
violation of the Republic’s laws, in his quest for imperium. Now a tag 
for any decision momentous and irrevocable. 



CAMPAIGN 
IN RUSSIA 

The Waffen SS 
On the Eastern Front 


THE EPIC OF THE VOLUNTEER WALLONIAN LEGION, A 
UNIT OF THE PAN-EUROPEAN WAFFEN SS, AS TOLD BY 

ITS LEADER, LEON DEGRELLE 



The Russians came al dawn, the better part of two regiments, 
men and tanks silhouetted against the blood-red sun as they 
moved forward across the steppe. Huddled among the peasants' 
huts of Gromovaya-Balka, the men of the Wallonian Legion 
awaited them, silently cursing the frozen earth, which had of¬ 
fered implacable res stance to their entrenching tools. 

Aga nst the oncoming Soviet troops—4,000 of them—and the 
14 tanks which accompanied them, the 500 Belgian volunteers 
who held the village disposed of no weapons heavier than 
machine guns. Their only hope was to hold on until the German 
command, hard pressed all along the Samara front, could rush 
them reinforcements badly needed in other sectors. 

Corporal Leon Degrelle crouched behind the frozen carcass 
of a horse, sighting down the barrel of his MG34. He gave no 
heed to the bitter cold or to his injured foot, painfully broken 
two weeks before. 

The Russian artillery shells were already landing in the village, 
inflicting terrible casualties when they were on target. Now the 
Soviet infantry broke into a run, their blood-curdling battle cry, 
“Ourrah pobieda!, ” “Hurrah for victory!,” ringing in the ears 
of the French-speaking Walloons, drowning out the cries of the 
wounded and dying. Degrelle and his comrades began to fire, 
tearing big gaps in the ranks of the advancing Russians. . . 






CIV 1 (Rev. 10/82) 


SUMMONS IN A CIVIL ACTION 


ffinitzb States jBistrtci (Enurt 

DISTRICT 

CENTRAL DISTRICT OF CALIFORNIA 


DOCKET NO. 

General Leon Degrelle 

TOi (NAME AND ADDRESS OF DEFENDANT) 

V. 

Simon Wiesenthal Center 

9760 West Pico Blvd. 

Simon Wiesenthal Center 

Los Angeles, California 90035 

YOU ARE HEREBY SUMMONED and required to serve upon 


PLAINTIFF’S ATTORNEY (NAME AND ADDRESS) 


General Leon Degrelle 
37 Santa Engracia 
Madrid 10 
Spain 


an answer to the complaint which is herewith served upon you, within 20 

days after service of this summons upon you, exclusive of the day of service. If you fail to do so, 

judgment by default will be taken against you for the relief demanded in the complaint. 



(BY) DEPUTY CLERK 






RETURN OF SERVICE 


DATE 

Service of the Summons and Complaint was made by me 1 

NAME OF SERVER TITLE 

Check one box below to indicate appropriate method of service _ 

□ Served personally upon the defendant. Place where served _ 

□ Left copies thereof at the defendant's dwelling house or usual place of abode with a person of suitable age and 
discretion then residing therein. 

Name of person with whom the summons and complaint were left: - 


□ Other (specify) 



TRAVEL SERVICES TOTAL 


^ - DECLARATION OF SERVER _ -- _ 

I declare under penalty of perjury under the laws of the United States of America that the foregoing information 
contained in the Return of Service and Statement of Service Fees is true and correct. 


Executed on_ _ 

Date Signature of Server 


Address of Server 


1) As to who may serve a summons see Rule 4 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. 









3 


1 

2 

3 

4 

5 

6 

7 

8 
9 

10 

11 

12 

13 

14 

15 

16 

17 

18 

19 

20 
21 
22 

23 

24 

25 

26 

27 

28 






De fe ndant has labeled the plaintiff as "NAZI WAR CRIMINAL", an 
information, along with the reward offered, conveyed to numerous 
European newspapers. 

Plaintiff is severlv restricted in his movements and business 

'\#V 

dealings due to all the nuisances attempting to collect s&id 

• * 

"reward". 


LEGAL CLAIMS 

The actions of the defendant constitute the torts of; 

Defamation (libel and slander). 

Harrasment. 

Nuisance. 

Assault. 

False imprisonment. 

Invasion of Privacy (intrusion, false light in the public eye). 

Plaintiff also states that defendant and its agents are subject to 
criminal prosecution for conspiracy (18 U.3.C. sec. 371) to corait 
kidnapping (13 U.3.C. sec. 1201). 

RELIEF REQUESTED 

1. Compensatory damages in the amount of #1,000,000.00 from the 
defendant, Simon Wiesenthal Center. 

2. Treble damages in the amount of #3,000,000.00 from defendant. 
Simpn WiesenthalCenter, pursuant to the provisions of 18 U.S.C. 
sec. 1964(c). 

3. Punitive damages in the amount of #10,000,000.00 from defendant, 
Simon Wiesenthal Center. 




Trial by jury on all issues triable by jury. 
Plaintiff's cost of this action. 



General Leon Degrelle 
Santa Engracia 
Madrid 10 
Spain 


t 


CIVIL COVER SHEET 


JS44C 
(Rqv. 12/84) 

The JS-44 civil cover sheet arid the information contained herein neither replace nor supplement the filing and service of pleadings or other papers as required by 
law, except as provided by local rules of court. This form, approved by the Judicial Conference of the United States in September 1974, is required for the use of the 
Clerk of Court for the purpose of initiating the civil docket sheet. (SEE INSTRUCTIONS ON THE REVERSE OF THE FORM.) 


I (a) PLAINTIFFS 

General Leon Degrelle 
37 Santa Engracia 
Madrid 10. 

Spain 

(b) COUNTY OF RESIDENCE OF FIRST LISTED PLAINTIFF 

(EXCEPT IN U.S. PLAINTIFF CASES) 


(C) ATTORNEYS (FIRM NAME, ADDRESS, AND TELEPHONE NUMBER) 


DEFENDANTS 

Simon Wiesenthal Center 
9760 West Pico Blvd. 

Los Angeles, California 90035 

COUNTY OF RESIDENCE OF FIRST LISTED DEFENDANT_ 

(IN U.S. PLAINTIFF CASES ONLY) 

NOTE: IN LAND CONDEMNATION CASES, USE THE LOCATION OF THE 
TRACT OF LAND INVOLVED 


ATTORNEYS (IF KNOWN) 


General Leon Degrelle 
37 Santa Engracia 
Madrid 10 
Spain 

II. BASIS OF JURISDICTION (PLACE AN x IN ONE BOX ONLY) I III. CITIZENSHIP OF PRINCIPAL PARTIES (placean x IN ONE BOX 

(For Diversity Cases Only) F0R plaintiff and one box for defendant) 


□ 1 U.S. Government □ 3 Federal Question 


Plaintiff 

(U.S. Government Not a Party) 


PTF 

DEF 


PTF 

D|F 


/ ~ . 

Citizen of This State 

□ 1 

□ 1 

Incorporated or Principal Place 

□ 4 

14 

□ 2 U.S. Government 

SI 4 Diversity 




of Business'll! This State 



Defendant 

(Indicate Citizenship of 

Citizen of Another State 

□ 2 

□ 2 

Incorporated and Principal Place 

□ 5 

□ 5 


Parties in Item ill) 


hi 3 


of Business in Another State 





Citizen or Subject of a 

□ 3 

Foreign Nation 

□ 6 

□ 6 


Foreign Country 


IV. CAUSE OF ACTION (CITE THE U.S. CIVIL STATUTE UNDER WHICH YOU ARE FILING AND WRITE A BRIEF STATEMENT OF CAUSE. DO NOT CITE JURISDICTIONAL STATUTES UNLESS DIVERSITY.) 

28 U.S.C. sec. 1332(a)(2) 

Harrassment. False Imprisonment. 

Mui sance. Invasion -of Privacy (intrusion, false light in 

Assault. ___ public eve) . _ 

V. NATURE OF SUIT (PLACE AN x IN ONE BOX ONLY) 


CONTRACT 

TORTS 

FORFEITURE/PENALTY 

BANKRUPTCY 

OTHER STATUTES 

□ 110 Insurance 

□ 120 Marine 

□ 130 Mliter Act 

□ 140 Negotiable Instrument 

□ 150 Recovery of Overpayment 

& Enforcement of 

Judgment 

□ 151 Medicare Act 

□ 152 Recovery of Defaulted 

Student Loans 
(Exci. Veterans) 

□ 153 Recovery of Overpayment 

of Veteran's Benefits 

□ 160 Stockholders' Suits 

□ 100 Other Contract 

□ 195 Contract Product 

Liability 

PERSONAL INJURY PERSONAL INJURY 

□ 310 Airplane □ 362 Personal Injury* 

□ 315 Airplane Product Med Malpractice 

/ Liability □ 365 Personal Injury 

9320 Assault, Libel & Product Liability 

Slander □ 368 Asbestos Persona) 

□ 330 Federal Employers' Injury Product 

Liability Liability 

1 1 340 Marine 

□ 345 Marine Product PERSONAL PROPERTY 

Liability ^ ^ _ 

□ 350 Motor Vehicle □ 370 Other Fraud 

□ 355 Motor Vehicle R Son I~ th Lend ‘? 9 

Product Liability D 380 other Phonal 

□ 360 Other Personal ooc Pr °P ert V V*™* 

i n i urv U 385 Property Damage 

Product Liability 

□ 610 Agriculture 

□ 620 Food & Drug 

□ 630 Liquor Laws 

□ 640 R.R.& Truck 

□ 650 Airline Regs 

□ 660 Occupational 

Safety/Health 

□ 690 Other 

□ 422 Appeal 

28 USC 158 

□ 423 Withdrawal 

28 USC 157 

PROPERTY RIGHTS 

□ 820 Copyrights 

□ 830 Patent 

□ 840 Trademark 

□ 400 State 

Reapportionment 

□ 410 Antitrust 

□ 430 Banks and Banking 

□ 450 Commerce/ICC Rates/etc. 

□ 460 Deportation 

□ 810 Selective Service 

□ 850 Securities/Commodities/ 

Exchange 

□ 891 Agricultural Acts 

□ 892 Economic Stabilization 

Act 

□ 893 Environmental Matters 

□ 894 Energy Allocation 

Act 

□ 895 Freedom of 

Information Act 

□ 900 Appeal of Fee 

Determination 

Under Equal 

Access to Justice 

□ 950 Constitutionality 

of State Statutes 

□ 890 Other Statutory 

Actions 

LABOR 

SOCIAL SECURITY 

□ 710 Fair Labor Standards 

Act 

□ 720 Labor/M gmt. 

Relations 

□ 730 Labor/Mgmt. 

Reporting & 

Disclosure Act 

□ 740 Railway Labor 

Act 

□ 790 Other Labor 

Litigation 

G 791 Empi. Ret. Inc. 

Security Act 

□ 861 HIA (1395ff) 

□ 862 Black Lung (923) 

□ 863 DIWC (405(g)) 

□ 863 DiWW (405(g)) 

□ 864 SSID Title XVI 

□ 865 RSI (405(g)) 

REAL PROPERTY 

CIVIL RIGHTS 

PRISONER PETITIONS 

□ 210 Land Condemnation 

□ 220 Foreclosure 

□ 230 Rent Lease & Ejectment 

□ 240 Torts to Land 

□ 245 Tort Product Liability 

□ 290 All Other Real Property 

FEDERAL TAX SUITS 

□ 870 Taxes 

□ 871 IRS-Third Party 

26 USC 7609 

□ 875 Customer Challenge 

12 USC 3410 

□ 441 Voting 

□ 442 Employment 

□ 443 Accommodations 
□444 Welfare 
□440 Other Civil 

Rights 

□ 510 Motions to Vacate 

Sentence 

28 USC 2255 

□ 530 Habeas Corpus 

□ 540 Mandamus & Other 

□ 550 Civil Rights 


VI. ORIGIN 


l/l 


1 Original 
Proceeding 


□2 Removed from 
State Court 


(PLACE AN X IN ONE BOX ONLY) 

Transferred from 

□ 3 Remanded from □ 4 Reinstated or □ 5 another district 
Appellate Court Reopened (specify) 


□ 6 Multidistrict 
Litigation 


Appeal to District 
□ 7 Judge from 
Magistrate 
Judgment 


VII. REQUESTED IN 
COMPLAINT: 

CHECK IF THIS IS A CLASS ACTION 
□ UNDER F.R.C.P. 23 

DEMAND $ 

,, , oo 

iH ooo oco . 

_i_i_ 

Check YES only if demanded in complaint: 

JURY DEMAND: of yes □ no 

VIII. RELATED CASE(S) (See instructions): 

IF ANY . £ Al^ ' A judge 

DOCKET NUMBER 

' 1 ■_ 





JL\ 

SIGNATURE OF ATTORNEY OF RECORD 


- 


UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT 































INSTRUCTIONS FOR ATTORNEYS COMPLETING CIVIL COVER SHEET FORM JS-44A, B or C 

Authority For Civil Cover Sheet 


The JS-44 civil cover sheet and the information contained herein neither replaces nor supplements the filings and service of pleadings or 
other papers as required by law, except as provided by local rules of court. This form, approved by the Judicial Conference of the United States in 
September 1974, is required for the use of the Clerk of Court for the purpose of initiating the civil docket sheet. Consequently a civil cover sheet is 
submitted to the Clerk of Court for each civil complaint filed. The attorney filing a case should complete the form as follows: 

I. (a) Plaintiffs - Defendants. Enter names (last, first, middle initial) of plaintiff and defendant. If the plaintiff or defendant is a Govern¬ 
ment Agency, using only the full name or standard abbreviations. If the plaintiff or defendant is an official within a government agency, identify first 
the agency and then the official, giving both name and title. 

(b) County of Residence. For each civil case filed, except U.S. plaintiff cases, enter the name of the county where the first listed 
plaintiff resides at the time of filing. In U.S. plaintiff cases, enter the name of the county in which the first listed defendant resides at the time of fil¬ 
ing. (NOTE: In land condemnation cases, the county of residence of the “defendant” is the location of the tract of land involved). 

(c) Attorneys. Enter firm name, address, telephone number, and attorney of record. If there are several attorneys list them on the 
reverse side, noting in this section “(see reverse)”. 

II. Jurisdiction. The basis of jurisdiction is set forth under Rule 8 (a), F.R.C.P. which requires that jurisdiction be shown in pleadings. 
Place an “X” in one of the boxes. If there is more than one basis of jurisdiction, precedence is given in the order shown below. 

United States plaintiff. (1) Jurisdiction is based on 28 U.S.C. 1345 and 1348. Suits by agencies and officers of the United States are includ¬ 
ed here. 

United States defendant. (2) When the plaintiff is suing the United States, its officers or agencies, place an X in this box. 

Federal question. (3) This refers to suits under 28 U.S.C. 1331 where jurisdiction arises under the Constitution of the United States, an 
amendment to the Constitution, and act of Congress or a treaty of the United States. In cases where the U.S. is a party, the U.S. plaintiff 
or defendant code takes precedence and box 1 or 2 should be marked. 

Diversity of citizenship, (4) (JS-44A, or C only) This refers to suits under 28 U.S.C. 1332 where parties are citizens of different states. When 
Box 4 is checked, the citizenship of the different parties must be checked. (See Section III below). (Federal question actions take precedence 
over diversity cases.) 

Local Question. (5) (JS-44B only) Check this box for proceedings under local civil law. 

III. Residence (citizenship) of Principal Parties (JS-44A and C only) or Remarks. (JS-44B only) This section of the JS-44A or JS-44C is to be 
completed if diversity of citizenship was indicated above. Mark this section for each principal party. This section of form JS-44B may be used 
for remarks. 

IV. Cause of Action. Report the civil statute under which you are filing and give a brief description of the cause. 

V. Nature of Suit. Place an “X” in the appropriate box. If the nature of suit cannot be determined, be sure the cause of action descrip¬ 
tion, in Section 5 above, is sufficient to enable the deputy clerk or the statistical clerks in the Administrative Office to determine the nature of suit. If 
the cause fits more than one nature of suit, select the most definitive. 

VI. Origin. Place an “X” in one of the seven boxes. 

Original Proceedings. (1) Cases which originate in the United States district courts. 

Removed from State Court. (2) Proceedings initiated in state courts may be removed to the district courts under Title 28 U.S.C., Section 
1441. When the petition for removal is granted, check this box. 

Remanded from Appellate Court (3) Check this box for cases remanded to the district court for further action. Use the date of remand and 
the filing date. 

Reinstated or Reopened. (4) Check this box for cases reopened or reinstated in the district court. Use the reopening date as the filing date. 

Transferred from Another district. (5) For cases transferred under Title 28 U.S.C. Section 1404(a). Do not use this for within district 
transfers or multidistrict litigation transfers. 

Multidistrict Litigation. (6) Check this box when a multidistrict case is transferred into the district under authority of Title 28 U.S.C. Sec¬ 
tion 1407. When this box is checked do not check (5) above. 

Appeal to District Judge from Magistrate Judgment. (7) Check this box for an appeal from a magistrate’s decision. 

VII. Requested in Complaint: Class Action. Place an “X” in this box if you are filing a class action under Rule 23 F.R.Cv.P. 

Demand. In this space enter the dollar amount (in thousands of dollars) being demanded or indicate other demand such as a preliminary in¬ 
junction. 

Jury Demand. Check the appropriate box to indicate whether or not a jury is being demanded. 

VIII. Remarks (JS-44A only) or Related Cases. (JS-44c only). This section of form JS-44A may be used for remarks. This section of the 
JS-44C is used to reference relating pending cases if any. If there are related pending cases, insert the docket numbers and the corresponding judge 
names for such cases. 

Date and Attorney Signature. Date and sign the civil cover sheet. 


» 




* 


(10/84)