Forgotten Soldier by Guy Sajer Read Free Book Online Page A

automatic weapons. The road leaving the city was well ploughed, and we rolled along at a brisk pace. There must have been road gangs working around the clock. The snow banks on either side of the road were nearly twelve feet high. We passed a signpost bristling with pointers. On the sign indicating the road we took I read NACH PRIPET, KIEV, DNIEPER, KHARKOV, DNIEPROPETROVSK.
    Our troops had rounded up everyone capable of holding a shovel, and we were able to cover nearly one hundred miles in good time. We soon reached the summit of a hill from which we could see the immensity of the Ukraine stretching into the distance under a yellowish gray sky.
    The ten or twelve vehicles ahead of us had suffered a serious reduction in speed. Ahead of them, a company of soldiers were busily engaged in moving snow. A heavy truck was pushing a sled fitted with a kind of ventilator which blew out the snow in all directions. Beyond lay an infinity of immaculate snow nearly three feet deep. (Heavy snowfalls buried the road so completely after the passage of each convoy that we needed a compass to dig it out again.) Our commanding officer and his noncoms had walked a short distance out onto the upswept snow, sinking in over the tops of their boots, and were scanning the horizon, wondering how they could possibly proceed through all that soggy cotton. Inside our D.K.W., with all the windows shut, I and my traveling companion were relishing the warmth of our running engine.
    But soon they were ordering us out of our machines and distributing snow shovels. As there weren't enough to go round, our noncoms told us to use anything we could lay our hands on. I saw men digging with boards, helmets, big serving platters. . . .
    With two other fellows I was pushing against the tailgate of a truck which we had detached, hoping to use it as a crude sort of snow plough. The blast of a feldwebel's whistle interrupted our disorganized labor.
    "What do you think you're proving over there? Come along with me; we'll go and round up some manpower. Bring your guns."
    I felt a surge of jubilation, which I kept well-hidden, as I inwardly thanked the idiots who had devised our hopeless procedure. I preferred almost anything to shoveling snow. We followed the feldwebel. I had no idea where he hoped to find more manpower. We had only passed two deserted villages since leaving Minsk. With our guns slung, our little group split off from the track the trucks had traced in the snow, and headed north. We sank in over our knees with every step, which made progress extremely difficult.
    For ten minutes I did my best to follow the feldwebel, who was about fifteen feet ahead of me. I was gasping for breath, and I could feel the sweat beginning to trickle down my spine under the heavy cloth of my coat. My breath projected long streams of vapor, which vanished instantly in the icy air. I kept my eyes glued to the feldwebel's deep footprints, trying to step exactly into them, but as he was bigger than I, this meant that every step was a leap. I deliberately avoided looking at the horizon, which seemed so far away. A thin screen of birches soon hid the convoy from us.
    Ludicrous in our smallness, we continued forward into the immensity of white. I was beginning to wonder where our noncom thought he would find his famous manpower. We had been exhausting ourselves in this way for nearly an hour. Suddenly, in the absolute quiet, we heard a rumbling sound which was growing steadily louder. We stopped.
    Our sergeant limited himself to the observation that we hadn't much further to go, and then added that it was a pity we would miss this one.
    I didn't really understand what he was talking about, but the noise was becoming increasingly clear. To our left I caught sight of a black line stretching across the snow. A train! We were approaching a railway line. I still didn't see what a train could do for us. Would they take our cargoes on board?
    The train was going by very slowly about five