Valkyrie: The Story of the Plot to Kill Hitler, by Its Last Member Read Online Free PDF Page B

enveloping those behind it. The horses moved forward almost imperturbably, caring little about the marshes or the dust so long as the cavalry detachments were separated from each other by at least a hundred meters. They went briskly around obstacles, plunged up to their chests in the sticky water of the marshes, galloped … and always arrived at the rendezvous on time. But the cavalry couldn’t advance alone.It was mobile, but not invulnerable. The strikes it attempted resulted in casualties every time its troops were not properly covered by the artillery.
    Until late July, the advance of the units to which Georg and I belonged was extremely rapid. We were on the road to Moscow, taking Napoléon’s route, more or less. The enemy’s resistance was weak, and his morale was failing. In view of the collapse of the Russian army, which was, moreover, practicing scorched-earth tactics, opinion in the Soviet Union was on the whole very favorable toward us. 2 So we were optimistic about the outcome of the operations. We thought Russia’s fate would be decided within six weeks. But Russia wasn’t France. A blitzkrieg was impossible in a country of several tens of millions of square kilometers. At the end of July, our advance halted. On this terrain, the enemy had recovered. The threat to Moscow was too direct not to elicit a response, and the Sixth Infantry Division had to adopt a defensive position around Borki on the Mesha.
    The month of August was difficult. There were daily skirmishes with the enemy. Placed under the authority of the Fifty-eighth Infantry Regiment, Georg’s unit was being used for reconnaissance missions on the left flank, which the Russians had penetrated by crossing the Dvina. On August 1, the cavalry repelled an enemy battalion, which outnumbered them four to one, back onto the far bank of the river. On August 2, the reconnaissance battalion found itself surrounded after a coordinated attack bytwo Russian cavalry divisions. My brother’s squadron was quickly brought back to the battalion to which it was attached. There was no time to lose. Although it was seven p.m. and getting dark, Georg surprised the attacking forces by striking their southern flank, between Agejeva and Shichova. Supported by artillery, he inflicted severe losses on the adversary. The fighting went on all night and the following day. The day after that, the Russian attack was over, and the connection between the division and its reconnaissance battalion was restored.
    However, these missions soon took a tragic turn. On the evening of August 4, Tonio, who had been put under Georg’s direct command in one of the skirmishes in which the squadron was regularly engaged, was hit by a bullet and fell from his mount. He remained on the battlefield while Georg and his cavalrymen, carried forward by their momentum, pursued the scattered Russians. The medics ran to help Tonio and discovered that he had a wound in his abdomen—a serious one, according to a preliminary diagnosis carried out in the twilight, but not mortal. His intestines and spleen had been damaged. He was taken to the field hospital, but died the next day from an embolism after an operation that seemed to have gone well. He was buried in a nearby cemetery, near an old church that the Soviets had converted into a wheat barn. Georg and I were shattered. Fortunately, we were able to see each other on August 26 and 27, because my division was in a neighboring sector. These moments spenttogether provided us with a little consolation and a way to share our suffering as brothers. This was, alas, not the only sacrifice that year was to impose on us, because on November 30 we would lose our youngest brother as well.
    In early October we began offensive operations again. Georg’s division moved forward into a marshy area that was impracticable for motorized vehicles. The autumn, which was warm, hampered the armies’ advance: the freeze was late in coming. It rained constantly,