WAR OF THIRST

Auckland Star, Volume LXXII, Issue 212, 8 September 1941, Page 5

WAR OF THIRST

NAZIS IN RUSSIA

MARCH OF TORMENT

WATERLESS WELLS ALWAYS

(By HANS HUFFZKY) The following article from the New Yorfc Sun WfiKgn D y a German journalist drafted as a •oidier and assigned to one of the German Army's propaganda companies. EASTERN FRONT, Aug. 19. This war is the driest of all wars, because it leads past too few water mains—fewer than in Poland and fewer than in France. Flap down your dust-coated eyelashes, comrade, and think back. Think of France. Wasn't that one vast water fountain compared with this country?

Yesterday we passed a village as we rc'led along the marching route °f our panzers. Four hours before ye had located it on our map; now it must be still 10 kilometres away, now only five, now just one more— tnere it was, the village. There was ine first house and there, too, was the first bucket-well. Down went tne pail—up it came with mire and! nuicl. On to the next well! Thisl yielded only a brownish broth. |

lon Can't Reach M Any More , The wells had already been drawn dry by our comiades. So once again JY. e cannot wash ourselves to-night. Wash? Why, we haven't the faintest mtention of washing. There] isn t any water for that. All wej want is to just dip our hands once,| just to cool our burned brows andi necks a bit.

This morning we were to drive xnrough the city of M (obviously Minsk). We figured it out: Therei must be so and so many hydrants—l < i rin s^ n S. cooking, for washing, for filling our field flasks. When a - e d M we didn't come to M— or it is something that doesn't existi y more and you c«".n't come to .

We reached M only according to our maps—for M was in reality nothing but a bit of smouldering landscape. I say landscape because the chimneys which remained standing between the wooden houses looked from afar like trees. The fleeing Soviet had with his artillery shot M into the ground and burned it down carefully.

Just Three Gulps Asked

Back home in our German garri-' isons a field flask of water isn't worth a straw. There it merely weighs down I the belt from which so many other: • things are already hanging. But a field flask with drinking water, tea, or coffee to-day in the east is vwth more than anything that can happen to you.

That comrade begs as though he wanted to borrow 100 marks from you. Or he offers you other luxuries jin exchange—a whole frying pan full of butter, a dozen eggs, 100 cigarettes—whatever he just hapipens to have.

The other day one lad offered for one field flask full of tea a pair of boots which he had found abandoned in Soviet barracks and which he really intended as a substitute for his own, which were already dilapidated.

The loveliest vehicles in this war| are those from whose tops protrudej little stovepipes—the field kitchens. Not on account of the pork roastl which they offer you, and not onl account of the pea soup, but solely! on account of their tea. Whether the field kitchens are standing or moving they are always surrounded. And if it be only three swallows, comrade! Two Cups to Wash 111 In peace time the field kitchens usually heat their kettles with drinkables twice daily, once for the morning, once for the evening coffee. In this war they haven't become cold for a single hour. They boil 10 and ;12 times during the day and night. One can come to them of mornings at four, or nights at eleven, during the pause between skirmishes, or in the midst of the din of battle—their chimneys invariably exuding smoke, and their kettles will grow cold for ] the first time only after the last! shots of this campaign have beenj j fired. i

How was It, anyway, at home? How many metres of waterspout did one need every morning for washing a face that after all was

really quite clean? Yesterday for the first time in a long while I was privileged really to wash and shave myself. It was a veritable dissipation I indulged in with that water. Why, I had two whole drinking cups ifull of water for it!

The other day in an abandoned villa of high Soviet Commissars we ran into a tremendous booty. Wei didn't take the phonograph, nor thel books and cut glass candelabra, but| five empty wine bottles. Then onej comrade panhandled his way up and down our materials avenue and "touched" the field kitchens. Each one filled one bo:tle for him. Unfortunately the fifth bottle sustained a crack from hot tea. The comrade was roundly blamed for acting so carelessly—why didn't he warm up the bottle slowly? Wants Water Above Peace The saddest soldiers' eyes I have encountered anywhere were on the bridges across the large rivers, across the Berezina, the Dnieper. Eyes of men who for days hadn't come off their dirty, grimy vehicles and out of their hot, dust-covered jackets and trousers and who now— the burning sun on a sweaty military cap—were crossing the cool water. Never have there been such sad, thirsty eyes during so proud a ride, during their ride across the great streams of an opponent who is for ever retreating further eastward.

We yearn for so much—for ex-' ample, for one hour without the din of battle; for one stretch of summer landscape that doesn't smell of conflagration and death; for one walk through a street of peace with children's laughter and the clinking of glasses reaching your ear from a jolly window. Yet all this becomes threadbare and infinitesimal compared with the yearning for the great water, for water for drinking, for bathing, for nonsensical wallowing. For this is the driest of all wars!