"The road is clear of Russians as far as the village of Jamine," explained Tzschirner.
And then I saw the dead Russians. There was one who had fallen in a heap and you thought that his face, buried in the cold snow, had found solace there. I saw another who lay in a ditch, his waxy bearded face staring at the cheerless sky, his arms wide stretched as if impaled on a cross; and I noticed that his boots had been stripped from him, and that one foot was wound with a white stained cloth, as though bruised with the rush of retreating miles over the frozen roads ... and now he could rest.
And out of the gray drizzle down the road there emerged an old woman and a child. The old woman was a grotesque figure as she hobbled along in a vain attempt to run. The little girl at her heels looked incredibly old. She was carrying a schoolbag, bulging with hastily packed belongings. In the old woman's arms there was something covered with a red cloth. She had a way of staring at this bundle and breaking into sobs. And as I watched them fleeing down the road, a swarm of bullets sung overhead with a sucking sound and spattered among the trees. "They will see the dead men," I thought.
A grimy trooper was galloping down the road. "Halt!" ordered the Rittmeister.
"Where are the Russians?"
"In the woods, everywhere, in front and behind you," called the trooper, and galloped away. I heard Tzschirner ask the chauffeur how quickly he could turn round the car if we were attacked. The chauffeur stopped and tried. The result was painfully slow. "I must warn you," said Tzschirner, "it is very dangerous. Entire companies of Russians that have been cut off from their regiments are in the woods. They might easily surround us before help could come."
"Let's try it a little further," I suggested, for as yet we had seen no living Russian.
"Langsam Gelbricke," called Tzschirner to the chauffeur, and then the Rittmeister drew his pistol and sat with his hand on the trigger, a precaution which until now I had never seen a German officer take in the tensest situations of the Eastern or Western front. From Jamine, the roar of the guns broke through the cold rain in a monotone of clamor, but more distinct became the rattle of rifles among the pines. A bullet kicked up the dirty snow.
At that moment I glanced toward the edge of the trees at the left, where I saw a Russian lying on his back in the snow. He wore a brown army coat with red shoulder straps, sewed with the yellow numerals of his regiments. His gun was leaning against a tree and I thought that it had been torn from his hands or placed there. For with upraised arms, rigid in the struggle with death, his clawing hands seemed to have been turned to stone. At the same time, with odd irrelevance, there flashed into my mind the remembrance of the lead soldiers that I had played with as a boy—a soldier whose gun I had broken off and whose arms I had bent, to signify his death. And I thought of the lead soldier until we passed a yellow haired Finn, whose hands were folded on his great chest, as though a comrade had fixed him for burial before fleeing among the firs. Now the crack of the rifles came closer and with more frequency, and we began to see blood upon the snow, and then a big red hole around which fragments of clothing and fragments of stiff things were strewn. "A shell burst there," remarked Tzschirner.
A few paces on we came upon a dead horse from whose flanks a square chunk had been cut, presumably by a fugitive who, with this first food of days, had crept into the woods. All around we could never see the men who were shooting or the dim outlines of their human targets. And then, from out of the trees, a German soldier came stumbling, and fell limply into the snow. Jumping out while the car was in motion, our red haired mechanician ran toward him. "Dead," called Seyring, throwing up his hands. Tzschirner seemed to come to a decision.