Free The Cross of Iron by Willi Heinrich Page A

that?’ he asked sharply.
    ‘What I said,’ Kiesel replied easily. ‘The men no longer have any confidence.’
    ‘Confidence in whom?’
    ‘In us, of course. We misunderstand their psychology if we think that they put the blame primarily on the top leadership. If I hop into a cab which gets in an accident because the brakes fail, I blame the driver, not the company he works for. I’ll say that he should have refused to drive a cab with defective brakes.’
    ‘Just what are they blaming the leadership for?’
    Kiesel crossed his legs. ‘The morale of troops wears out after a time. The division has been on active duty for twenty -one months without a break. The men are fed up. You know yourself how often they’ve been promised they’d be taken out of line.’
    ‘Is that our fault?’
    ‘I’m no general,’ Kiesel replied evasively. ‘But the way things are now, the men consider every new commander a candidate for the Ritterkreuz who wants to earn his medal with their blood. Once he gets that Cross pinned on his chest, a new commander comes along. Within these twenty -one months they have changed their commanders, from general to company leader, as often as a man changes his shirt in peacetime.’
    ‘Yes, yes, I know.’ Brandt’s fingers drummed impatiently on the table. ‘We burn up replacements as fast as they arrive. On the other hand, the general staff know the situation better than we do, and what they say counts.’
    ‘I don’t agree. I think they make some big mistakes and that this is one of their biggest.’
    Brandt smiled briefly. ‘I wish you could come forward as advocate of the other ranks’ interests. Unfortunately there doesn’t happen to be any such post in the Tables of Organization.’ He slumped back in his chair. ‘I agree with you that our men absolutely must have a change of air. I’m beginning to feel the same way myself. This damned country! The men have been lured into these steppes and endless forests. At first it was all new and exciting for the troops, but the excitement didn’t last long. These frightful spaces, monotonous, repetitive; you can’t help feeling that one of these days they’ll swallow you up. You end up with a complex about it. We’re getting that now. Still, we’re here and here we have to stay. The men must be made to realize how hard it is to relieve them. Where would we get the transport? You know how much it takes to move a division from France to Russia, and vice versa. Then again, you talk of twenty -one months of uninterrupted duty. Let’s be honest, Kiesel—how many of the original personnel are left?’ He laughed mirthlessly. ‘In my former battalion I could count the survivors on my fingers. The regiment today consists 90 per cent, of replacements who have served no more than a few months in Russia. The general is right when he insists that relief of the division would not be justified for the sake of the few old hands. Don’t you see that?’
    ‘No.’
    ‘Why not, in the devil’s name?’
    Kiesel crushed out the remainder of his cigarette. Brandt’s words had impressed him, less by their logic than by their psychological penetration. He would not have expected such insight from the commander. Abstractedly, he gazed at the small window near the door. Tiny particles of dust danced in the band of sunlight that fell through the single pane.
    ‘It isn’t easy to explain,’ he began hesitantly. ‘You have to put yourself in the soldier’s place. Consider what the situation was just a few months ago. That was when the first defeats began. But the defeats were not enough to shake the men’s confidence.’ 
    ‘Why not?’
    ‘For various reasons. The most important probably is that our men have a certain sense of justice; after all those grand victories they’re willing to grant our top leadership the right to make a few mistakes.’
    ‘In other words they want to be fair.’
    ‘I think that’s about it. The soldier is far away from