scattered silently into the gloom, and Brianskaya Street suddenly was deserted except for the three children dangling in the wind and Mrs. Fillipov, who moved to her son’s body. She listened for a moment to the creaking rope, then reached up and stroked her boy’s leg and spoke softly, lovingly to him.
Darkness fell. Mrs. Fillipov continued her solitary vigil, standing dutifully beside the stiffening bare feet of her master cobbler, dead by hanging at the age of fifteen.
“
It was their salute to the Holy Season, a joyous time to every German, and for several days, German officers and men alike had prepared feverishly for the celebration. Capt. Gerhard Meunch even drafted a speech. At his command post in a cellar of the Red October Plant, he labored for hours to hone his message, then, in the early evening, he went to a nearby garage where a Christmas tree, carved from wood, adorned one corner of the cavernous room. In groups of thirty, his infantrymen appeared to sit around him as he welcomed them and distributed cigarettes, wine, or tea with rum, a piece of bread, and a slice of horse meat.
Relaxed by the liquor, the men listened attentively while Meunch spoke quietly of the need for keeping up the fight against the Russians. Still slightly unnerved by his recent brush with mutineers in the ranks, he took pains to underline a soldier’s duty to orders, especially in such a dreadful situation as at Stalingrad. The pep talk seemed to appeal to the troops, who all joined in singing “
After talking personally with every enlisted man, Meunch went back to the Red October Plant to drink with fellow officers. One of them, a forty-year-old captain, suddenly shouted, “What is this whole battle good for?” and pulled out his pistol.
“Let’s all shoot each other!” he roared. “This is all nonsense. None of us will ever get out of here.”
Stunned by the outburst, Meunch calmly replied, “Now take it easy.” But the other captain kept looking wildly about him. Continuing to speak in a soothing voice, Meunch sat down with his friend to argue the merits of suicide.
Sgt. Albert Pfluger’s broken arm hurt too much for him to care about the holiday. With his wound probed and dressed, and his arm in a sling, he wandered into a bunker where a rush of warm, sale air engulfed him. His head reeling, Pfluger stared at a crowd of thirteen other patients who were standing and sitting in a room meant for four. Seeing that Pfluger was about to faint, one man jumped down from a top bunk and gave his place to him.
After climbing laboriously into the cot, the sergeant promptly dozed off. Several hours later, he woke because of a terrible itch inside the cast on his right arm and, pulling back the covers, he saw a line of lice marching from the mattress over his hand, under the edge of the plaster mold. In shock and disgust, Pfluger jumped down from the bed and tore at the bugs. Grabbing a stick, he jabbed frantically at them, but they crawled deeper into the cast and hid. His arm was now a mass of gray parasites, feasting on the wound.
In thousands of bunkers in the sides of
At Ekkehart Brunnert’s party, his comrades outdid themselves. A beautifully carved wooden Christmas tree dominated a shaky table. Someone had brought a gramophone with records and amid riotous singing, Brunnert received a bag filled with delicacies: a small cake smeared with chocolate frosting, several bars of chocolate candy, bread, biscuits, coffee, cigarettes, even three cigars. Overwhelmed by the banquet, the starving private asked where all the food had been stored for so long. No one knew. Dismissing his suspicions, Brunnert gorged himself, then lit up a cigarette. Basking in the glow of improvised Advent wreaths sparkling with candles, he momentarily forgot his anguish over the truckload of warm clothing, burned in his presence just a few days before.
Several hours later, when his turn came to stand guard, he stared into the star-filled sky and tried to imagine his parents and wife, Irene, celebrating at home in Boblingen—the tree and the presents and Irene thinking of him and perhaps crying. Pacing up and down the trench, Brunnert wanted to cry himself.
On his way to a church service, Quartermaster Karl Binder had seen mounds of unburied bodies lining the road. Shocked by this breakdown of army organization, he brooded about it for hours until he wrote a letter to his family. Now filled with a sense of foreboding about his own fate, Binder sought to prepare his wife and children for the worst:
Christmas 1942
…During the past weeks all of us have begun to think about the end of everything. The insignificance of everyday life pales against this, and we have never been more grateful for the Christmas Gospel than in these hours of hardship. Deep in one’s heart one lives with the idea of Christmas, the meaning of Christmas. It is a feast of love, salvation and pity on mankind. We have nothing else here but the thought of Christmas. It must and will tide us over grievous hours…. However hard it may be, we shall do our utmost to master fate and try everything in our power to defeat the subhumanity that is wildly attacking us. Nothing can shake our belief in victory, for we must win, if Germany wants to live….
I have not received any mail from you for some time… there is a terrible longing for some dear words from home at Christmas, but there are more important things at present. We are men who know how to bear everything. The main thing is that you and the children are all right. Don’t worry about me; nothing can happen to me any longer. Today I have made my peace with God….
I give you all my love and a thousand kisses—I love you to my last breath.
Affectionate kisses for the children. Be dear children and remember your father….
Oblivious to the noise in his bunker, Lt. Emil Metzger sat reading a letter from his wife, Kaethe. It was the best Christmas present he had ever received, and at 10:00 P.M., he quietly withdrew from the celebration to go out—into the clear, frosty night, where a lonely sentry walked his post. Metzger relieved the shivering man of the responsibility and shouldered his rifle. He wanted this time alone.
Under a bower of brilliant stars he paced back and forth, ignoring the Russians and the war. Concentrating intensely on Kaethe, Emil relived their life together: the first dance when they fell in love, the exhilarating hikes through the cathedral hush of forests, the four brief days of honeymoon they shared before he rushed back to duty, the furlough he had given up in August because he believed the war was about to end.
For over an hour, Emil held a spiritual communion with Kaethe beneath a thousand miles of stars. It was the only gift he could give her.
While German soldiers sought escape in celebration, their generals were discussing the diminishing prospects of Sixth Army’s salvation.
Teletype: General Schmidt—General Schulz
