Christmas 1945
Christmas Eve! Even in our position the thought exhilarates the heart. In our working bunker I eat toast with sugar. I never leave the saved servings in the barrack. Yesterday Leo Schorf were stolen his. We share.
In the evening, it is getting dark already around four, assembles Hutterichs choir. The snow trickles really quietly. The barracks are dark, there is no electric light, at most, that a kerosene dim light of forbidden way blakt, diesel, exchanged from an outside worker. Everything lies on the fool's wands, silently, musty. Not only the fug day and night of carried clothes confronts us; one means almost the defence to feel, to let approach the determination, nothing and nobody in the today.
Hutterich hums tone: " Quietly there trickles the snow, quietly and stiffly there lies the lake... " " Rest! " For Christmas shine the wood... " Skin from! What do you want, actually? " " Vantage point only... " " Out! " - " see ` infant Jesus soon comes! " The first felt boot comes flown. " In the hearts becomes ` see warm. Quiet grief and injury is quiet... " No boot more? Everything remains quiet. More courageously we sing " Listens only how delightfully it resounds: Vantage point only, ` see infant Jesus soon comes! " Has none cohummed there? When Maria went by the thorn wood, no objection comes. In the silence between the stanzas the fool's wand wood hardly cracks. When we begin singing " quiet night, holy night ", here it clears the throat and there and over there in the darkness, rough and unskilled a few voices occur, several arrive, a breath Christmas awakes in the barrack darkness. " Christian, the rescuer is there! " already sings half a lodging.
After we have ended, it is quiet a moment. Then a voice from the darkness says " to thanks! " " In spite of all ", Hutterich wishes a party of hope in the memory of our loves which it goes maybe bad as us, and that peace becomes on earth, fair and lasting peace.
By the open bunker door white steam flows around the feet, the snow crunches under the wooden soles. Everybody gives to everybody the hand. We separate in silence. The star splendour glitters through the birch branches. I find three stars of Orion at which my parents looked up if they my brother and me looked during the war. The peace if he was only already...
In the barrack Fritz Handleger whispers to me, he just comes from the sick person's district. Captain Habtmann from Tyrol is dying - heart dropsy. Now where it is too late, the Russians create all possible in drugs near.
A Hindenburg's light lightens flickering the corner of the sick-room a little. His face is gedunsen, the eyes deeply lie in the caves. Has he always had a so sharp nose? Habtmann hard breathes. Laboriously he turns the head to me. In the white bed stuff he lies as if he is already laid out. " Greet to me everything ... everything ... at home... " He searches my hand. To me is to the howl. Silently I sit beside him. A long while. Still he holds my hand. The eyes have closed to him. He sleeps, I think, and want to take away from him warily the hand. There he looks at me suddenly with big eyes, however, says no word, follows me with the look to the door. I stop, he tries to lift the hand, to the greeting, how to the blessing.
To me is so wretched; also after the years of the war I have not grown to the death. Hutterich is quoted to the antifa. How he can have the audacity to organise ecclesiastical celebrations. When he comes back of the political officer, he reports, the Jew has been raised far less than the German; such plans must be announced, if everything has been what he has said.
About midday of the Christmas Day comes Dr. Handleger from the sick person's district. Captain Habtmann is dead. 55 years, how my father. In the forest quarter they also pray for that who will follow as the next the dead so probably also in Tyrol. Habtmann was first from us. How many of us will follow him? Among the teams have already died a whole row. They are mostly collected on disengaging to the work by the fool's wands and are carried from the camp. The catering becomes worse and worse. The soup exists of water and black potato skin.
Movement in the barrack, it gives post! The runner of the blue reads out the receivers of the Red Cross reply cards. At the moment everything is dead still. Tension oppresses the heart. " Boog! " - a foreign name. Once again " Boog! " Am I? Fritz pushes me. " You are in it! " " Here! " As if I had had to pull blind a lot, black or know, I sit on the fool's wand, the map in the hand. The text stands on the underside. My woman. Not more the waldviertler address where it had been evacuated with the boy they is in Vienna. " Read, nevertheless, finally! " Dieter and them healthy. Power with my brother Heimarbeit. So no return in her occupation as a teacher. Nothing of her parents, no word from mine. " If only, finally, rest was... " The day also does not pass undisturbed, the night probably not... " Spot to you, nevertheless, not the worst from! Do not think immediately the worst. " if Fritz comforts. He has got no post, woman and child, a boy, how I also has. One endures a lot. It depends not on the way, but on the point of view, the disposition which masters him. At home we begin at the beginning. The love whitewashes everything...
Our position becomes worse and worse, the hunger unbearably. I weigh 65 kilos, Dr. Wenzel, our regimental doctor whom I visit in the German barrack, 58 kilos. With the same size and similar stature like I, but without bummerl'schen strength subsidy. " Still no danger ", he means. He has no post, his family is in the east zone. How it likes Oblt. Hans go who came supposedly to an Estonian oil skew break? In the banja, in the scrum under the trickling shower, my golden cervical small chain with the Aries, present of my woman gets lost to me with the last resignation. We raise the duckboards, nothing. Should there be skilful long fingers among us? This time I have not held it in the fist...
It means that new should come to the camp, others want to know that a homecomer's transport is put together. The slogans come almost always from the team's barracks. There are people who eat the Russian soap and drink Machorkatee because only Dystrophiker - also a word, knew earlier nobody - home are sent. Besides, this first winter in captivity demands anyway his victims. Daily almost become on stretchers, covered with a tent square, which hinausgetragen which have not climbed down any more from the fool's wand. Some have not stretched themselves in the death, but have cramped, then this looks as if the tent square covers an unwieldy pine branch.