souls torn to shreds by screeching bombs.
To hell with morals. To-morrow you are dead.
Our half-open mouths were pressed together. Our tongues met like snakes in their mating-dance. We stiffened and relaxed in endless desire. Every frustration was sublimated. The cup of love overflowed. Our lips found themselves again and again in hungry longing. Her breasts were bare. Her turquoise coloured brassiere and slip lay on the floor. She was both an overwhelming need and a shining fulfilment as she lay naked, yet clothed. A completely naked woman disappoints a man. He always wishes for a tiny, fluffy fragment to remove.
A button became a frustration. She lifted her fevered hands to help. Her fingers played over my back, warm, soft, yet hard and wildly demanding.
The sirens hooted, but we were far away from war. We had crossed the last threshold. We gave ourselves to the age-old love's contest, the embrace which calls for eternity. We were insatiable. Heavy sleep overcame us. The sofa seemed too small. We slept on the thick carpet.
When we woke, we were tired but content. We had had a night which would have to last a long time. She dressed and kissed me as only a woman in love can kiss.
'Stay, Sven, stay. Nobody will look for you here. Oh, stay.'
She burst into tears.
'The war will soon be over, it's madness to go back!'
I freed myself from her clinging embrace.
'No, that sort of thing is done only once. Don't forget him in France. He too will be back. And then where do I go? Torgau - Fagen - Buchenwald - Gross Rosen - Lengries? No, call me a coward, I dare not.'
'Sven, if you stay, I'll divorce him. I'll get you false papers!'
I shook my head and wrote my field postal number on a piece of paper: 23645. She pressed the scrap of paper against her breast. Dumbly her stare followed me as I left. Quickly, without turning, I disappeared from her eyes into the morning mist.
8
We stopped at many stations. We stood for many hours queueing to get a little thin soup, made of nettles.
Many times we sat crouched by the railway trucks in rain and snow to ease our bowels.
The journey was slow. For twenty-six days we trundled along, and were far into Russia when we left our cattle-trucks.
Return to the Eastern Front
For fourteen days we limped along in a troop-transport train of thirty or so cattle-trucks for the troops and two old-fashioned third-class passenger carriages for the officers. In front of the engine we pushed an open goods-truck filled with sand in case the partisans had laid mines on the track.
Our troops could easily have been trailed by the excrement we left between the rails at the stations where we stopped.
On the long journey between Poland and the Ukraine many peculiar events befell us before we were unloaded on the dilapidated station at Roslavl.
We were marched along dusty, sandy roads rutted by thousands of heavy vehicles to reach the 27th (Penal) Panzer Regiment's positions at Branovaskaja. Here we were received like long-lost friends by Captain von Barring. He looked deathly pale and exhausted. Rumours had it he suffered from an incurable stomach disease. He had spent a short time in hospital, but they had quickly bundled him off to the front again cured, at any rate on paper. Then followed jaundice and that did not improve matters.
It cut us to the quick to see our beloved company commander in such a state.
If it hadn't been for Porta and Pluto and the former Foreign Legionnaire who had joined us, we would still have been sitting safely back at the depot. As it was, these three had made life impossible for one and all in a mile's radius.
It had started really with the fight between Tiny and the legionnaire in the canteen. The former landed in our mixed marching company, a fact which did not please him. But it was Porta who tipped the balance by going to town illegally in civilian clothes. He, of course, became drunk, and all but raped a girl he had stumbled on in the back-room of the 'Red Cat'. We
To hell with morals. To-morrow you are dead.
Our half-open mouths were pressed together. Our tongues met like snakes in their mating-dance. We stiffened and relaxed in endless desire. Every frustration was sublimated. The cup of love overflowed. Our lips found themselves again and again in hungry longing. Her breasts were bare. Her turquoise coloured brassiere and slip lay on the floor. She was both an overwhelming need and a shining fulfilment as she lay naked, yet clothed. A completely naked woman disappoints a man. He always wishes for a tiny, fluffy fragment to remove.
A button became a frustration. She lifted her fevered hands to help. Her fingers played over my back, warm, soft, yet hard and wildly demanding.
The sirens hooted, but we were far away from war. We had crossed the last threshold. We gave ourselves to the age-old love's contest, the embrace which calls for eternity. We were insatiable. Heavy sleep overcame us. The sofa seemed too small. We slept on the thick carpet.
When we woke, we were tired but content. We had had a night which would have to last a long time. She dressed and kissed me as only a woman in love can kiss.
'Stay, Sven, stay. Nobody will look for you here. Oh, stay.'
She burst into tears.
'The war will soon be over, it's madness to go back!'
I freed myself from her clinging embrace.
'No, that sort of thing is done only once. Don't forget him in France. He too will be back. And then where do I go? Torgau - Fagen - Buchenwald - Gross Rosen - Lengries? No, call me a coward, I dare not.'
'Sven, if you stay, I'll divorce him. I'll get you false papers!'
I shook my head and wrote my field postal number on a piece of paper: 23645. She pressed the scrap of paper against her breast. Dumbly her stare followed me as I left. Quickly, without turning, I disappeared from her eyes into the morning mist.
8
We stopped at many stations. We stood for many hours queueing to get a little thin soup, made of nettles.
Many times we sat crouched by the railway trucks in rain and snow to ease our bowels.
The journey was slow. For twenty-six days we trundled along, and were far into Russia when we left our cattle-trucks.
Return to the Eastern Front
For fourteen days we limped along in a troop-transport train of thirty or so cattle-trucks for the troops and two old-fashioned third-class passenger carriages for the officers. In front of the engine we pushed an open goods-truck filled with sand in case the partisans had laid mines on the track.
Our troops could easily have been trailed by the excrement we left between the rails at the stations where we stopped.
On the long journey between Poland and the Ukraine many peculiar events befell us before we were unloaded on the dilapidated station at Roslavl.
We were marched along dusty, sandy roads rutted by thousands of heavy vehicles to reach the 27th (Penal) Panzer Regiment's positions at Branovaskaja. Here we were received like long-lost friends by Captain von Barring. He looked deathly pale and exhausted. Rumours had it he suffered from an incurable stomach disease. He had spent a short time in hospital, but they had quickly bundled him off to the front again cured, at any rate on paper. Then followed jaundice and that did not improve matters.
It cut us to the quick to see our beloved company commander in such a state.
If it hadn't been for Porta and Pluto and the former Foreign Legionnaire who had joined us, we would still have been sitting safely back at the depot. As it was, these three had made life impossible for one and all in a mile's radius.
It had started really with the fight between Tiny and the legionnaire in the canteen. The former landed in our mixed marching company, a fact which did not please him. But it was Porta who tipped the balance by going to town illegally in civilian clothes. He, of course, became drunk, and all but raped a girl he had stumbled on in the back-room of the 'Red Cat'. We
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