They manage to go their separate ways without being caught. The war continues.

Late November events, 1942

…

“Was war das?” Graeber's voice came out awkwardly as he stumbled behind Schnieder. Schnieder was shaking, his nerves were all but gone, yet he maintained a sense of duty about his character.

“Das war unser Ausweg…” he replied.

Both men looked at each other. They were the last two remaining survivors of a vicious engagement. Graeber swallowed. “What does this mean?”

Schnieder leaned against the broken bricks and sighed, his eyes looking down at the debris of the building that once made Stalingrad into a mighty city. “It means we’re encircled.”

The distant fighting and engine roars fill the air. “Oh, mein Gott…”

Graeber wiggled his toes. The first person to mind was Katarzyna, but then Lukas and Emil. Even Felix. He swallowed and blinked away the panic. Lukas was wounded and rotated to the rear for recovery away from Stalingrad. Felix was also injured, but he wasn’t sure what had happened to him. Emil was somewhere with the Romanians, that retreated inside the city too. Paul, Hans, and Vitmann were killed about an hour ago. His eyes screwed up as he saw planes flying forward. “It’s not all lost,” he tries. “The Luftwaffe is coming in.”

Schnieder follows his gaze and nods slightly. “You’re right… supplied by air isn’t much of a fantasy, is it?”

“No,” Graeber grasped at straws. “I heard that it has been done already. And besides that, we’re the 6th Army!”

Schnieder nods, uncharacteristically equal to Graeber. Every time he exhaled, vapor covered his face, giving him a ghostly appearance, and Graeber shivered. “What shall we do?”

“I don’t know,” Schnieder accepts. “I had 30 men under my command in the outskirts of Stalingrad, then it was halved, and now it’s just you and me. It seems everything I’ve been doing hasn’t been the right thing to do.”

“Well,” Graeber becomes selfish and smiles briefly at his NCO. “You’ve kept me alive.”

“Tell that to Paul’s wife. Han’s kids. Tell your parents that your life was worth 28 others.”

Graeber retains his smile and collapses on the ground, crying, nearly insane with stress. Schnieder walks over and tries to help him to his feet but is struck by hopelessness, too; he joins him on the ground and sobs…

…

…

Emil and Graeber run down the street. The exertion of movement does not affect their numb bodies as adrenaline pulses through their veins. A bullet snaps near Graeber’s foot, narrowly missing him.

Emil crashes through a door and slams it shut as soon as Graeber is inside. He pulls a table and presses against the door.

“Das ist nicht gut,” Emil moans, looking around the little building. “Was ist mit den anderen passiert?”

“Ackerman wurde erschossen,” Graeber gasps for air. “Und dann haben wir uns verstreut.”

“Scheiße…Scheiße! Scheiße!” Emil yanks his empty bread bag from his webbing and throws it against the wall. “Where is Hitler?! Why are we still stuck here!? Why are we all dying!?”

Graeber rushes over and grabs Emil’s collar, shaking him. “We cannot afford to panic now!”

Emil pushes him away and puts his hands on his knees. “Es tut mir leid,“ he looks around the room and presses his index finger to his lips. “They probably didn’t see us come through here; let’s just wait until it’s dark and make it back to our lines.”

Graeber wanted to ask what made him think their lines wouldn’t have been breached by then but decided to keep that thought to himself. He instead slings his Mauser around his back and explores the interior. “This place hasn’t been looted yet,” he knows this because he spots unopened cabinets.

The man's stomach growls— a longing for substance. “Let’s see what there is then. Do you think it’s safe to make a fire?”

“Is there a basement?” Emil pokes around, his voice even lower now.

“We can look,” Graeber says. “We can pray.”

And pray they did. They discovered the building was bigger than suspected. They took cans of food out from the cabinets, finding it difficult to contain their sudden change of mood as they carefully took what they could and stacked it neatly in a pile, partaking the canned meat cold before searching for a basement or somewhere else dark to hide.

“It’s a church,” Graeber remarks when they pass through a door. Rows of dusty pews line a soiled brown carpet.

“Amazingly, it is still standing…” Emil looks up, spying Christ on the cross, and the windows remain intact. There are pictures on the floor and spent casings in the corners. Blood along the walls too. “But maybe it isn’t so empty.”

“Germans?” Graeber wonders aloud. “Russians?”

No answer is given, and both men ready their weapons. Graeber still has his K98, but Emil has his fingers around a PPSH, and he takes the risk of every doorway first, so he discovers the stairs before Graeber.

“Basement,” Emil announces quietly. “It’s dark.”

Graeber grunts and flips a switch, making Emil laugh slightly. “I had to try.”

“I’ll go first.”

“Are you sure?”

"I am the best equipped for it," Emil sighs.

“Shh,” Graeber holds his breath. “Listen.”

Spraying gunfire and heart-thumping artillery shreds Stalingrad somewhere away from their position, yet the men can translate the noises from the outside from their odd interior. Noises are coming from the basement. Graeber moistens his lips and opens his mouth to say something, but he stops himself. “What shall we do?”

Emil shakes his head, unsure of how to go after this problem. “They’re either German or Russian, but if they're Russian we’re dead.”

“I know,” Graeber says. “What then?”

“I’ll check it out,” Emil accepts. “Stay here.”

Emil descends the steps, his submachine gun waving wearily in front of him as the shadows enveloped him. Graeber felt the tension build in his body. However, not having the power to do anything relaxed him somewhat. Whatever happened next would happen.

Emil gasps slightly, prompting Graeber to call out. “What is it?”

“They’re all dead,” he says. “Oh, my God.”

“Who? Who’s dead?”

“Russians,” he moans. “The fucking rats— I’m— stay up there— going up again.”

Emil has gone pale and looks like he’s aged a decade. Graeber swallows. “What was down there?”

“Looks— I’m… talk about it later, alright? Let’s just…” Emil lets out a heavy sigh. “Let’s keep looking for a place to start a fire.”

…

…

Stomachs are full. Minds are warm. Weapons are clean. Emil and Graeber crawled to a window and set their eyes outside the Russian landscape. They were horrified and horribly transfixed on the nightmarish world set before them that was covered in the purest layer of snow. Beneath the snow were dead men in and out of uniform.

Emil sighed, humming to himself slightly as the mood set in. Both sides were silent that night. Neither cannon nor rifle cracked; it gave Stalingrad an eeriness it did not need.

“Damn this Russian cold,” Emil slithers down a slope and is followed by Graeber, who agrees silently as he feels snow touch his exposed wrist.

“Fuck the defenders that kept us here, too,” Graeber snarls, his stomach against the rubble.

The duo snake around, avoiding firefights and listening closely to the battered war zone around them. As they got closer to their defensive line, the sounds of rifle fire became frequent, as well the wailing from more war victims. Graeber already regarded this place as a nightmare, but it was akin to a personal hell in the dark away from the others.

Eventually, however, they stumble into the German lines, nearly torn in half by a pill box operated by a crew of skeletons. They are all armed with Russian firearms. One of them stopped Graeber as he tried to slip between their lines.

He hands a clip full of Mauser cartridges and pulls him close. “You ought to surrender next time. It’s hopeless here.”

Graeber pulls away and shakes his head. “Help is on the way.”

Emil waited for Graeber at the back of the pill box. “What would I do to feel the touch of a girl again?”

Graeber grunts.

“When Barbossa started, I spent a night with a tall Ukrainian girl with tits the size of a half-track,” he said longingly. “She was a farmer’s daughter, so she was strong too. Endurance for the whole night. She gave me eggs the next morning and made me promise to kill as many soviets as I could.”

Suddenly, Julia came to mind. The petite brunette in Poland who had asked Graeber to do the same thing when he was moving to the forward positions for Fall Blau. Being Polish, she also reminded him of Katarzyna. Katarzyna didn’t have that artificial love that Julia had or that Alicen girl Graeber met one time… one time that seemed so far and distant it seemed like a whole generation apart.

“Felix said we were killing Ukrainians and Jews all winter last year,” Graeber says. “Do you think that’s true?”

Emil stops and looks around before he walks over to Graeber. “Yes. I partook of some of… some of the cleansing.”

“What?”

“I’d rather not talk about it,” Emil sighs. “We have food and we’re back at our lines.”

“What did you see?”

“Things I hate. Things I can’t forgive myself for. Things that will backfire if we give up fighting now.”

…

…

“Graeber!!” A voice cried out behind the violent action of the MG34. “Ammo! We need more ammo!”

Graeber was patching a cut on his arm. “Where’s the deport? I’ll grab it!”

The corporal scrambled. He handed him an MP40 and began desperately unloading his K98. “Rear line— next to the supermarket! Hurry! Go, go, go!!”

Just as Graeber stepped out of the collapsed building, an artillery shell struck the frozen ground where two men were crawling. A shower of earth and bodies flew in the air. He hunched over and sent himself flying into a dugout. The smell of piss greeted him when he worked himself to his feet; he discovered another man was in the dugout with soiled trousers and a handless arm. Instead of helping, Graeber reached for the man’s webbing and found helpful things— ammo, bandages, gloves, and socks before crawling back out.

The supermarket was empty of all its original items and was replaced with tipped-over ammo cans and broken hardware. German and Russian weapons littered the floor, along with the empty brass and bloody bandages.

Eventually, when he reached the back of the once-store, he found the wounded. Most of the men had damage done to them before this battle but had to be rotated back up front to prevent a complete collapse of the defensive line. Past them, however, were some of the supplies from the airdrops from the Luftwaffe. He avoided the medics that were frantically working and desperately gathered the ammo belts. Some remained in his palms while others went around his neck.

By the time Graeber returned, it had looked like the attack would swallow their entire position. He saw several Russians jumping into the trenches, meeting insane Wehrmacht troops with sharpened spades and bayonets. Planes buzzed by bombing dug in panzer tanks, killing them and anything else around its position.

Panic rose sharply within Graeber’s chest, and he picked up his speed, wondering now whether or not anyone in the machine gun nest would still be alive. He scampered up through the rubble while cursing everything not German.

Finally, he saw only the corporal remained alive, shooting with a Walther at the advancing Russians. The MG had its tray open— waiting to be fed 8mm bullets.

Graeber loomed over the MG as it steamed— he rolled the belt of ammo over the tray and worked it to proper function. The corporal scrambled for his K98k, letting out broken panic gasps of air as he attempted to support the line by shooting the seemingly endless wave of Russians. Unfortunately, the ammo was too little to withstand the hammer and sickle's tide. Small groups of Soviets started to poke inside the defensive zone, and brutal hand-to-hand combat ensued.

The first Russian to stumble into Graeber’s position was promptly shot through the chest by the corporal, as was the second, but it wasn’t instant; he gurgled and spat for a time before finally going motionless. Graeber grabbed the machine gun and tried to retreat, but he was struck with what was like a rock hitting his helmet— Graeber looked down behind him and spotted something smoking slightly.

“Granate!!” He cried, tripping over the exhausted supplies of war material. The corporal jumped on the grenade and pressed it against his chest.

When the grenade exploded, parts of the nameless corporal went everywhere, along with the ice and debris of Stalingrad. Graeber’s face was dotted with gore. Although he blinked and swallowed, the sounds of war pushed him away from shock and he stepped back, gripping the MG34 awkwardly before running back out before he could be left behind.