Free Forgotten Soldier by Guy Sajer Page B

bothering us. They appeared to outnumber us by three or four to one. Our convoy consisted of a hundred trucks with a hundred armed drivers, and sixty accompanying troops whose sole function was defense. In addition, there were ten officers and noncoms, a doctor, and two medical orderlies.
    Each explosion created clouds of powdered snow. From the wooded hill in the near distance, plumes of smoke synchronized with the increasingly frequent sounds of explosion rose into the air. The heavy machine gun to my right burst into sound for a moment, and then fell silent.
    Stupidly, instead of crouching down in my hole, I lifted my head. I could see little white clouds puffing out among the numerous silhouettes of the partisans. There was a sound of dry detonation, with an answer in kind from the Russians.
    My eardrums had begun to feel as though they would burst from the noise of the machine gun, which was joined by another on the slope opposite. Everywhere, soldiers were firing their Mausers. Over in the Russian sector, the black silhouettes were running in all directions, faster and faster, through the puffs of white smoke. Some of them fell and lay motionless. The sun went on shining. None of it seemed really serious. Here and there, Russian bullets whistled through the air. The noise was deafening. With my slow reflexes, I hadn't yet fired.
    To my right, someone cried out. The sound of firing was almost continuous. The Bolsheviks were running as fast as they could toward the shelter of the snowy thickets. Our tanks were rolling toward them with sharp bursts of gunfire.
    Three or four Russian bullets landed in the snow in front of me, and I began to fire blindly, like everyone else. Seven or eight other tanks had arrived and were harassing the partisans. The whole episode lasted about twenty minutes, and when it was over, I had fired about a dozen cartridges.
    A short time later, our tanks and armored cars returned. Three of them were driving prisoners ahead of them, in groups of about fifteen men, who all looked deeply humiliated. Three German soldiers supported by their comrades climbed down from one of the cars. One of them seemed almost unconscious, and the other two were grimacing with pain. Three wounded Russians and two Germans were lying inert on the back of one of the tanks, one of them moaning. A short distance off a German soldier, leaning against a snowbank, was gesturing to us and holding his head, which was red with blood.
    "The road is clear," announced the commanding officer of the Mark 4 nearest us. "You can go ahead."
    We helped carry the wounded to the hospital truck. I went back to my Renault. Lensen passed by close to me, and shook his head in perplexity.
    "Did you see that?" he asked.
    "Yes. Do you know if anyone was killed?"
    "Of course."
    The convoy started off again. The idea of death troubled me, and suddenly I felt afraid. The sunshine of a moment ago had been pale, and the cold had become more intense. Bodies in long brown coats were lying along the sides of the road. One of them gestured as we passed.
    "Hey," I nudged my driver. "There's a wounded man waving at us.
    "Poor fellow. Let's hope his side takes care of him. War is hard that way. Tomorrow it may be our turn."
    "Yes, but we've got a doctor. He could do something for him."
    "You can talk. We've got two truckloads of wounded already, and the doctor has more than enough to keep him busy. You mustn't be upset by all this, you know. You'll see plenty more of it."
    "I already have."
    "I have too," he said, without believing me.
    "Especially, I've seen my own knee. The whole kneecap was taken out by a shell in Poland. I thought they were going to send me home again. But they stuck me into the drivers' corps instead, along with the old men, the boys, and the infirm. It's no joke you know; a wound like that really hurts, especially if you have to wait for hours before they give you any morphine."
    He launched into the history of the Polish campaign as he