This exemplary pine forest, a masterpiece of Teutonic regularity – no one knows its origins. It might have been created especially for its current function, the work, possibly, of an unusually far-sighted German forester at the end of the nineteenth century. A tapering oblong shape, with wide, numbered roads driven through it (each one blocked off by a turnpike) and sight axes in every direction. Bordered by great oaks, evenly spaced, with hunting-stands now built into them. The
Sperrzone, the restricted area is in the eastern part of it, away from the road, and separated from the rest by a tall wire fence; a long spiral coil of barbed wire runs across the meadow. The pines are ten inches to a foot in diameter, many have been cut down, the cut stumps have been painted khaki. On the roof of the – unused – cubic bunker, and on the numerous barracks there are artful sylvan still lifes. Camouflage netting dotted with marram grass, that sort of thing. Black cinder paths, stout hydrants, hose boxes affixed to the barracks walls. The barracks of the Führer’s Escort Battalion are tricked out with stags’ horns and marquetry. The lawn laid – or planted – between the paths has failed to take, and great stretches of the grass have been scorched by the summer sun. Pine cones are collected up in wastepaper baskets by the clerical staffs and used to light fires. Fires are lit as early as September, and each one of the long work barracks sends dozens of thin vertical columns of smoke spinning up into the air, the blue looking strangely vivid against the dappled background of grey-green-brown. Winding air raid passages, their walls reinforced by fascines, always cool and cobwebby. Butter is kept fresh here in canteens (and is occasionally stolen). Rumour has it that the “site” was built over the winter by several thousand Jews, handily nearby is the mass grave they went on to afterwards. In actual fact, it was the work of convicts. Many suffered bad frostbite, as did the guards, who were prevented from lending a hand. Beginning in mid-September, there’s an unbroken trickle of browned pine needles. Old stagers from the
Organisation Todt, many with hunchbacks and crooked shoulders, are perpetually engaged in raking them away from the paths. Their long tobacco pipes dangle down to their breast pock-ets, they aren’t impressed by our generals; mostly they have thick accents. A water cart with two worn-out ponies, a strip of sacking does duty for a harness. Older Luftwaffe construction crews walk up and down with barrows full of fragrant beech logs. They come from an estate on the other side of the river, which has been doomed by the construction of a new road. The logs are stacked outside the urinals.
Vehicles are parked wherever there is denser tree cover. At the edge of the wood, tanks lurk under sun-bleached camouflage netting. Anti-tank guns bulk out tarpaulins. Near the heart of the site there is a constant clamour of geese and ducks. There are hundreds upon hundreds of fowl. From various daily orders of the commandant: “Keeping fowl in the camp has taken on dimensions that…” Dates by which all the birds will have to be slaughtered. The chief medical officer protests. Not until our departure date has been irrevocably fixed does one note a serious reduc-tion in numbers. The small nude bodies hang on window crosses and washing-lines, for the most part decidedly scrawny, the pointless stumps of wings sharp broadswords. The feet hacked off, making the carcasses easier to stuff into parcels. The half-closed eyes of the geese, the size of their heads. Even now, though, two men are continuously employed in herding, sorting and above all slaughtering the fowl. They rise before the sun, lie down in their boots on straw sacks for half an hour at midday, get a ration of vodka in the evening. In one place the pine-needled forest floor is littered with flat chicken heads, every step you take brings up clouds of buzzing flies. – Every junior officer owns several fowl – problems with ringing, frequent misi-dentification. To do the slaughtering and gutting, one hires one of the two official slaughterers – each owner does his own plucking. The knackery is right outside the mess hall windows. The sergeant-major and his cronies eat out of doors in the white heat of noon, brows and necks running with sweat. – The quartermaster’s bitch – a long-haired terrier – criss-crosses through the panicked fowl with misty, irresolute eyes. The ducks have got themselves a small pond on the lawn following a recent fire practice and are usually fast asleep, their beaks tucked inside their back plumage. The geese are on restless manoeuvre around the perimeter.
The long work barracks – the small gravel roundel at the back entrance – a desk with a phone connection and a few chairs. This is where the general works
al fresco, perched on the edge of his chair, the bulky but not fat torso nicely erect, the manicured hand stroking the smooth tan cheek. As thoroughly affected and taken with himself as some heraldic beast. The lacquered black carapace of hair, the crimson and gold, flat shade and white curlicues of sunlight; behind him, through the bars of the tree trunks, the flickering arable steppe. In the afternoons, tea and distinguished visitors, Axis, Japs, spooks, Special Division F., etc. The scribes catch glimpses of them down the white central aisle through the open French doors. – The adjutant and his notepad are summoned by whistle.
The edge of the wood, an overlook. At noon always the same strong gale out of the east, the same air blowing through the skinny scrofulous trees. The heat – 30 or 40 degrees – isn’t oppressive, doesn’t burn, comes mixed with wind, seems even intensified by the wind and yet remains bearable. The shadows of the trees swing slowly east, russet-brown stains on the slippery pine-needled floor, measuring the progress of one’s nap. Deckchairs and rugs; one has first had to clear away the pine cones underfoot. The breeze plays merry hell with one’s newspaper, the fierce white of one’s book slowly sinks into the lap of the man overcome by sleep. Fitness-loving officers strip off their trunks – the boyishly slender Luftwaffe general staffer with his wheedling Saxon accent, the assertive pot belly of the marine general, the well-toned youthful physique of the silver-haired, hook-nosed bank director. Until an order came down from the general, putting an end to all this nudism. The fact that at this hour he was generally in a bad mood returning to his blockhouse from briefing the Führer is surely a factor. It is better to feign sleep when he passes than run into him encumbered with deckchair, blanket, newspaper and no Hitler salute. He bawls out the sentry because the man doesn’t know who he is and demands to see his ID (“I’m only in charge of the whole bloody outfit”), bawls out the
Todt man for whipping his horse. Who he really has it in for, though, is his entire staff of sun-worshippers. The sentries in their thick uniforms stepping over the bare limbs. Whole squads of men are sometimes found lying around, spread out all over the ground, at a discreet distance practically out of earshot of the officer corps.
All around the wood, wheat and potato fields for miles and miles. Far to the east, the railway line marked by poplars. On the horizon, barely visible, the city, of which little can be made out for certain but a few shimmering asbestos roofs, a reddish chemical plant and the masts of the radio transmitter. Small, compact clumps of oaks. To the west the land shelves imperceptibly down to the river; the opposite bank is a little steeper. Gleaners approach the edge of the wood, the wheat is thinly sowed, in some places the fields look almost fallow – mostly scruffy wildflowers, cornflowers, daisies, shepherd’s purse. It’s harvest time: in many places next to the threshing machines great stacks of straw loom out of the plain, a steep cliff and a gentle incline, up which, as if by magic, the bales of straw glide (by means of a pulley powered by two pairs of ponies). Yellow dust clouds up above, swarms of labourers all around. Almost within earshot, but distanced by the flickering and blowing light, the long, low brick buildings of a collective farm, fitted out with wooden gunnery platforms and currently occupied by ack-ack recruits. In the evenings, when the sun sends its last flat golden rays over the wooded crest of the far bank of the Bug, one sees the occasional recruit sitting in the reddish stubble field, polishing his boots or cleaning his rifle, all alone with his vastly distended shadow. Past the river valley there are motor parks – once, a petrol fire spread its greasy black fumes low over the fields for hours. A snooze in a deckchair is tantamount to “sabotage, of course” but that’s not enough to get you up. – Twelve noon. The sentry keeps his binoculars levelled at a dark-green field dotted with white shapes: women at work. At around 4.30, the cattle follow the deeply rutted path widened by caterpillar tracks and lorry tyres back into the village, with boys swarming around them – all swaying horns, round, creaking barrels of pregnant bellies. Their dust settles after they have passed. Then something buzzing in myriad voices: the female inhabitants of the village – there are hardly any men left – coming home from the fields, they have been working somewhere miles away f rom very early in the morning. First the girls with big eyes, jabbering away, their long-handled rakes swung over their shoulders, dazzling white kerchiefs round their heads. A dog jumping around excitedly. Then, some way behind, the older ones, the little soldiers’ widows with soft arms and shoulders, Herculean maids with dully gleaming features, and a few wizened old ones. In among the women, the rare occasional man, a shrivelled, stubbly old fellow in a buff forage cap, or a drooling cretin. The big feet splay the velvet dust. At the collective farm they run into a half-naked pack of soldiers playing handball. Always the same muscular, red-brown torsos – the colour of a cigar box – blue tracksuit trousers, small blond heads – names and grunts fly here and there, the fat leather ball hangs in the sun. The advance guard of women laugh and crane their necks to watch – the soldiers carry on regardless.
Day after day, the same light, the same animated heat. The sun feels small, the heavens near, tinged with a fine gleaming haze. It isn’t until late autumn that the sky lifts and turns blue, and the sun burns more clearly and sharply.
In the evenings a strong wind sometimes stirs the crowns of the pines, a rush of air flows past, pushing a bank of clouds, then tomorrow the sky will be greyer, a little rain will fall in the morning, the wood will be foggy and aro-matic – and then the next day it will be back to the way it was before. A light layer of silvery sweat – you don’t even notice it. The peasants complain about the drought – and they’re right, their potatoes are as plump as tomatoes but very small. Every year it seems to be the same.
Between the wood and the river is a strip of unattrac-tive fallow ground. Cemented drainage ditches, a few sinister-looking farmhouses with iron blast-proof doors. Defensible; exposed. Light anti-aircraft guns out in the open, small heads of the human forms working on them. Some of the houses from an earlier epoch, sent over the river by the village, now evacuated and lived in by troops, numbered and whitewashed from top to bottom, little flower beds in front, a smell of sugar-soaped barracks furniture, the back gardens smell of calcium chloride. Two ochre-coloured Russian tanks, which are frequently moved around. A column of lads in bathing trunks with stools on their shoulders, marching home f rom lessons, which were held in the thin shade of a tree somewhere.
The road, rough cobbles – Jewish paving, says General von Unruh – leads north to Kozyatyn and Berdychiv. A second, smoothly mirroring asphalted road branches off it in the direction of the wood, then runs along its perim-eter. Turnpike, long thatched guardhouse. There’s also a single-engine Fieseler Stork, parked on a narrow, scorched triangle of meadow. It clatters over the road to welcome distinguished visitors, loops over the village huts, frightens the cows with its shadow.
Copyright © 2026 by Felix Hartlaub. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
