He choses to look around.

Graeber stands up and slings his rifle over his shoulder. Dieter stumbles and mimics his movements. “Where are we going?”

“What?”

“Where are we going?” Dieter asks.

Graeber didn’t consider Dieter for some reason. “I was going to look around and see how bad the situation is. This place could give us a vague outline for what it’s like everywhere else.”

Dieter smiles. “I like that idea.”

Without being adequately assigned to any unit in particular, Graeber felt he had the freedom to walk around this defensive position without worrying about orders. He met several men. They had purposely messy uniforms with white helmets to blend into the winterized debris. He learned that the Romanian and Italian presence had significantly been reduced in the eastern front now, and on top of that, the mood of the troop was bitter. Morale is low, and the willingness to fight doesn’t match that of 1942.

There’s a trench line just outside the town filled with healthy infantry. This is where he finds most of the SS here. They give both Dieter and Graeber hollow glances as they march down the area. One of them stops Graeber before he can pass him, however.

“Bist du Gaeber?”

“Ich bin Graeber.”

“I saw you during Operation Fall Blau,” he says, flashing yellow teeth, which ruin his otherwise handsome face. “In the early stages of the op, you helped us take out that factory.”

Graeber blinked, thinking that it was the other way around. “Oh, yeah, that’s right. With Lukas, Felix, Schneider–” his throat goes dry. “And Emil.”

The SS man nods. “Ja! Ja! Stimmt! Stimmt!”

“How many of your guys are left from those days?”

The man’s expression turns sour. “Not a lot. Eric, Joan– these names mean nothing to you, but they’ve all been killed or injured.”

When news came that not everyone had been killed at Stalingrad, Graeber held onto the hope that Emil was still alive, along with Schneider and some of the others he got to know while he was trapped there. He still wondered about Lukas and, on occasion, Felix. He heard very little about Rommel and the rest of the Afrika Kor, so he wasn’t sure what to think about Gerhard, but he hadn’t heard of him in nearly two years now. He shrugs. “We were all injured. I don’t know where we all go sent after that happened. It’s been ****.”

The man squints. “****?”

Remembering he wasn’t with his close friends, he stammers. “Yeah, **** to get back out here.”

“Oh,” he then chuckles. “Right, yeah.”

“Right,” Graeber awkwardly chuckles, followed by another one from Dieter, who hasn’t picked up on the tension of the circle now. “So, what’s happening here?”

“Well,” The soldier turns around, now facing outward. “Retook this place not long ago. Now we’re waiting for the Russians to come back to retake it.”

“How long has it been since they last attacked?” Graeber asks.

“A while now,” the SS man says, grimacing outside the trench. “They’re out there though.”

Everything outside the trench is still. The snow is unmoving, and the air is stale. Beneath the pinch of the cold is the stink of ****. How long has it been lingering around Graeber? He shifts his weight and looks around, unnerved by the silence of the world around him. “Where did all you guys come from? There’s a lot more of you than what was suggested.”

He grunts expressively. “Everywhere. All the scattered units are rallying here. Our lines are more patchy than some of you reservists think. We’ve been fighting like hell and regrouping for the next attack– waiting for supplies and new orders.”

Graeber perks at this, thinking only briefly that maybe not all was lost after all. But, when he considers the losses and the hellish fighting the Russians have been giving them, he realizes that this is only delaying what is inevitable. The 6th Army was the best the Nazi Regime could muster in 1942. It had the experience, the material, the willingness– what Graeber was seeing in this wartorn village was all that remained…

Dieter pokes his head over the trench. “It’s a kill zone out there.”

The SS man grabs Dieter and hisses at him. "Snipers, you fool! SNIPERS! Keep your head down. And get some white wrap around your helmet, for Hitler's sake!"

“Oh, I’m sorry,” Dieter looks down, red-faced and boyish. “What’s your name.”

“Karl,” he says.

“I’m Dieter,” Dieter says.

Karl snarls. “You’ll just die if you keep acting like you’re in training. Why don’t you stay here with us until you’re told to leave? We need able-bodied men to maintain the line here anyway. We’ve got more wounded than not right now. Not to mention, you'll let your pup learn something about fighting these Russians. Better here with the rest of than in the open in a real firefight.”

Graeber protests this request quickly. “It’s unlikely we’ll be here for long. We’re moving supplies all over the line.”

“Are you moving now?” Karl asks. “If not, then stay here. It’s quiet anyway, don’t be a girl about war.”