The Forgotten Soldier

Sajer and his fellow soldiers wait impatiently beside a railroad convoy, frustrated by endless delays, cold weather, and dwindling food. Soldiers with different backgrounds and languages create a makeshift shelter from the rain before spending their first night on guard duty. They then guard the train as it goes to Minsk, much closer to the front, and are chewed out by a sergeant when they hide under the canvas to stay warm, blinding themselves to potential threats outside. Sajer does realize “that if we couldn’t stand a little cold and a vague, possible danger, we would never survive at the front. It certainly would be idiotic to get killed by some anarchist before we’d seen anything” (19). Shortly after, he sees a mysterious figure in the woods and deliberately shoots above his head. Later on, the train stops, and Sajer comes upon a train car of Russian prisoners who have stockpiled their own dead; Sajer helps to bury some of them. They arrive at the Minsk train station, taking inoculations at a local hospital and developing tenuous connections with local Russians. As autumn progresses, the suffering they sustain from cold “is almost beyond the powers of description” (23). By December 1942 the snow is overwhelming, his work as a truck driver practically impossible. Charged with guarding a large depot, he realizes one night that it is Christmas, “in its way, the most beautiful Christmas I had ever seen” (27), as he feels a profound sense of kinship with his fellow soldiers.

A few days later, Sajer and his fellows are roused out of bed early and told to prepare 15 trucks for departure to Minsk. Along the way, he stops and follows a feldwebel (lieutenant) in search of help in getting their vehicles through the snow. Suddenly gunfire erupts from a nearby cabin and a man near him falls dead. Sajer fires his first shots in anger, missing, but the Germans manage to catch a partisan alive, though badly wounded. They bring him to an officer, who shouts, “Do you really think I’m going to saddle myself with one of those bastards who’ll shoot you in the back any time?” (33), and soldiers shoot the prisoner. They return to the convoy, and though Sajer is desperate for rest, he is promptly ordered to go back on patrol in search of other partisans. He is paired with a much older soldier, and they begin chatting about their lives and their hopes for victory. The convoy continues on, passing relics of past battles, and during a brief stop in Kiev they hear a rousing speech from a Hauptmann (captain) on the importance of keeping troops at the front well-supplied. After a hearty meal, shower, and change of clothes, they resume traveling deeper into Russia, constantly digging themselves out of snow and trying to revive frozen engines. Eventually they hear artillery fire in the distance, and their convoy keeps driving straight toward it. Soon they catch sight of the enemy, and there is machine-gun fire and explosions. Tanks plunge ahead and clear the enemy, taking a few prisoners back with them, and Sajer strikes up a conversation with a more experienced soldier on tricks for avoiding guard duty. They take shelter in a relatively comfortable house, but it is being used as an operating room and so he is also tasked with helping a surgeon amputate a man’s leg, among other unpleasant tasks.

The convoy is on its way to Kharkov when they fall under attack from the air. Some of the munitions trucks explode, and afterward Sajer realizes “we hadn’t been prepared for anything like that” (52). As they approach the outskirts of Kharkov, they receive the stunning news that the Sixth Army fighting at Stalingrad has surrendered (leaving Sajer’s uncle likely dead or a prisoner), a devastating setback for the German war effort. Expecting to return to Poland, they instead receive orders to bring supplies even closer to the front.

Sajer continues to work on supply as winter grows increasingly harsh, and partisan attacks more frequent. They begin a difficult trek toward the city of Voronezh, made worse by the realization that their rations were either rotted or frozen. The cold is utterly miserable, and some die, but they finally arrive and receive orders to supply a unit even closer to the front. Traveling by sleigh, they realize that they are at long last in an actual combat zone. They move amid the exchange of artillery fire, and as Sajer converses with soldiers who have been holding the line against repeated Russian attacks, he realizes that “we seemed like children besides these Don veterans […] we seemed like nothing, like bundles of rags which each sheltered a small, trembling creature” (71). As night falls, the Russians commence another attack, but Sajer is able to leave before it begins in earnest. He goes to sleep thinking of how little he has done compared to the veterans he encountered, and fears that he has fallen short in his own efforts to help them keep up the fight. The situation is becoming ever more desperate when the German guns finally open up on the enemy. The line holds for now, but the relief will prove to be short-lived, as “beyond the cellar, beyond the hamlet and its trenches […] the Soviet mass was moving into action again, trampling on its own dead and on ours, more powerful than ever, with hundreds upon hundreds of guns wheel to wheel” (207).

Winter finally breaks, and the front grows unusually quiet. Then all of a sudden, the camp itself is under attack, and they scramble to collect explosives while fearing that a well-aimed shell could ignite it all. They spend days gathering the dead and wounded, and find out that the army stopped the Soviet assault, albeit at great cost. Even so, the Red Army is still on the offense, and so the High Command orders a retreat away from the Don before those troops can be surrounded. Eager not to be left behind, Sajer jumps into a truck without knowing how to drive it, taking on a group of wounded men in order to have priority in the convoy. Even after traveling westward, Sajer realizes he is still very much in danger from Soviet artillery and aircraft, and his friend Ernst is badly wounded. Sajer and his fellow survivors find shelter in a small hut alongside some Soviet collaborators, and then resume moving away from the Russian offensive while shedding large amounts of heavy equipment. Nonetheless, they are cut off from their line of retreat and are ordered to defend a vast swath of ground against a vastly superior force.

The unit soon falls under a barrage of artillery and mortar fire, but instead of withstanding the Russian onslaught, they counterattack and catch the enemy by surprise with the help of tanks. Artillery fire continues, and they receive orders to withdraw once again as the Soviets regroup and aerial attacks resume. No matter how far they go, the sound of enemy fire follows them and picks off more of their comrades. However, “in their haste to drive us out, [the Russians] had overextended their supply lines and underestimated the forces pitted against them. A hundred thousand Russians, of whom fifty thousand were killed, were caught for over a week in the Slaviansk-Kiniskov pocket” (111). They finally rejoin their company, including Sajer’s beloved friend Hals. Despite all the horror he has witnessed, Sajer feels the thrill and comradeship of having experienced combat alongside his fellow soldiers.