somewhere in Poland
Our reputation with local women precedes us. We’ve been forbidden to have anything to do with Jewish women, who we recognize by the yellow star they have to wear, or the Polish women (panienkas). We heard that 10 Company of 262 marched with blown-up condoms attached to their rifles as a protest.
2nd September 1941, Grodno
First signs of battle on the march to Grodno … outskirts of the town have been levelled. The centre is full of rubble, which the Jews have been put to work cleaning up. They are exhausted as their rations are meagre. Pablito’s attitude to the Germans is hardening by the day. He now finds them sinister. We’re to be toughened up by being marched to the front. Pablito has fallen for a blonde, green-eyed panienka called Anna.
12th September 1941, Ozmiana
Colonel Esperanza’s Studebaker has taken a beating on the roads. It won’t be long before he’s marching like the rest of us. A black Mercedes pulled up alongside the other day and General Munoz Grandes got out and had lunch with us. Pablito and the guripas were in an uproar. He inspires us, as he is one of the few commanders who understand what it’s like to be an ordinary soldier.
16th September 1941, Minsk
Pablito says there’s a compound outside town where the Russian prisoners are kept. They ‘re given no food. The locals throw what they can over the fence and are shot at for their trouble. Pablito is happy — his panienka has turned up in Minsk. I’m happy because the chickpeas and olive oil arrived yesterday.
Already cold. Autumn chill in the air.
9th October 1941, Novo Sokol’niki
We’re stalled outside Velikje Luki — rail lines blown up by partisans. We forage in town and end up roasting dead horses over charcoal pits in the rail yard, singing songs, drinking potato vodka. Pablito, lovesick for Anna, sings very well. Flamenco on the steppe.
10th October 1941, Dno
Off-loaded here on to different gauge trains. Old woman hanging from a lamppost. Partisan. Guripas shocked. ‘What is this war?’ one of them asks, as if he didn’t know what had happened in his own country three years ago.
Next stop Novgorod and the front. We’re on combat pay from now on. Reds rule the skies. Supplies low. Few spares. Partisans. No Pablito — he didn’t show up for evening Mass.
11 October 1941, Dno
Occupation measures in force here so I have to accompany the German patrol on a house-to- house search for Pablito. We don’t find him. In one house I’m astonished to see Anna, his panienka, working with some Russian civilians. I can’t think how she could have got so far. Outside in the street I tell the German NCO and two men go in and haul her out. The other women start screaming and the Germans beat them down with rifle butts. They force Anna to her knees in the street and ask about Pablito. She denies everything but knows why she’s been chosen. The NCO, a colossal brute, takes his glove off and gives her four savage slaps to her face that leave her head hanging like a torn doll. They take her to a burnt-out building across the street. Anna’s scarf comes loose and her blonde hair falls down. The men murmur. The NCO has a face like tank armour plates. The grey afternoon turns bleaker. The temperature drops. More questions asked, more denials follow. They strip her naked. She is blue white underneath. She sobs from the cold and fear. They twist her arms up behind her back and lift her off the floor. She screams. The NCO asks for a bayonet and uses the blade to flick her hardened nipples and that does it. The terror of cold steel. She tells how she was forced to lead Pablito into a trap for the partisans. They let her dress again. The patrol takes all the women away. I return and make my report to Major Perez Perez.
12th October 1941, Dno
In the morning Lt Martinez orders me to put together an eleven-man firing squad. Two male communist partisans and Pablito’s panienka have been delivered to us for execution. We put them against the wall in the freight yard. The girl cannot stand and there are no posts to tie her to. Lt Martinez tells the two men to hold her up between them. They arrange themselves like a family photograph. Lt. Martinez walks back to our line and shouts ‘Carguen!’, ‘Apunten’, and on the word ‘Fuego’ she looks up. I shoot her in the mouth.
A patrol found Pablito later that day, hanging by some wire from a tree. He’d been stripped naked, his eyes had been gouged out and his genitals cut off. We had a funeral Mass for him, our first casualty. Pablito, the anti-communist, who died without firing a shot.
13th October 1941, Podberez’e
We left the train under heavy artillery fire and deployed south of the town along the river Volkhov. There’s thick forest behind us, full of partisans. Across the Volkhov are the Russians. Thick mud all around, known as the rasputitsa, difficult to move. Frost at night.
30th October 1941, Sitno
We’ve been withdrawn after a fierce week and some bad losses. This war is less understandable by the moment. We attacked Dubrovka the other day. We thought to outflank the Russian defences and come at them from behind. As soon as we reformed south of the town we were hit by artillery and in getting out of the sector found ourselves in a minefield. What was a minefield doing there? There were bodies everywhere. Garcia with his left leg missing and holding his crotch, shouting, ‘A mi la Legion!’ We closed ranks and attacked the Russians. We went mad when we got to them and would have hacked them all to death if we had not been so exhausted. Lt Martinez tells us that the Russian units all have political officers whose job it is to maintain discipline. They sow mines behind their front-line troops to stop them from retreating. Who are we fighting here? Not the local people. As soon as we take prisoners they become as useful to us as our own men.
1st November 1941, Sitno
I know heat. I understand heat. I’ve seen what it does to men. I’ve seen men die from drinking water. But cold, I don’t know cold. The landscape has hardened around us. The trees are brittle with frost. The ground beneath the drifting powdery snow is like iron. Our boots ring against it. A pick makes no impression. We have to use explosives to dig ourselves in. My piss turns instantly to ice as it hits the ground. And our Russian prisoners tell us that it is not yet cold.
8th November 1941
There’s ice on the Volkhov. It’s difficult to believe that it will freeze one-metre solid and completely change the strategy of this little war. Already soldiers can cross the river on planks. They tried to move horses as well, but one came off the planks and fell through the ice. In its frenzy it tore the reins from its handler, who watched as the terrified animal tried to clamber out. It was surprising how short a time it took for such a large beast to succumb to the cold. Within a minute its back legs ceased to operate. In two minutes its forelegs were still. By afternoon ice had formed around its middle and the animal was frozen solid, still with the terror moment alive in its eyes. It has become a monument to horror. No sculptor could have done better given the task by some mad municipality. The guripas new to the front can’t take their eyes off it. Some look back to the west bank of the river and realize that civilization is behind them and that beyond the Ice Horse there won’t be the expected glory,
