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Hermann saved him. He stood in front of Erik and said: "Where are you going? Don't be a fool!" Erik kept moving, and tried to walk past him. Hermann punched him in the stomach, really hard, and Erik folded over and fell to his knees.
"Don't run away!" Hermann said urgently. "You'll be shot for desertion! Pull yourself together!"
While Erik was trying to catch his breath he came to his senses. He could not run away, he must not desert, he had to stay here, he realized. Slowly his willpower overcame his terror. Eventually he got to his feet.
Hermann looked at him warily.
"Sorry," said Erik. "I panicked. I'm all right now."
"Then pick up the stretcher and keep going."
Erik picked up the rolled stretcher, balanced it on his shoulder, turned around, and ran on.
Closer to the river, Erik and Hermann found themselves among infantry. Some were manhandling inflated rubber dinghies out of the backs of trucks and carrying them to the water's edge, while the tanks tried to cover them by firing at the French defenses. But Erik, rapidly recovering his mental powers, soon saw that it was a losing battle: the French were behind walls and inside buildings, while the German infantry were exposed on the bank of the river. As soon as they got a dinghy into the water, it came under intense machine-gun fire.
Upstream, the river turned a right-angled bend, so the infantry could not move out of range of the French without retreating a long distance.
There were already many dead and wounded men on the ground.
"Let's pick this one up," Hermann said decisively, and Erik bent to the task. They unrolled their stretcher on the ground next to a groaning infantryman. Erik gave him water from a flask, as he had learned in training. The man seemed to have numerous superficial wounds on his face and one limp arm. Erik guessed he had been hit by machine-gun fire that had luckily missed his vital areas. He saw no gush of blood, so they did not attempt to staunch his wounds. They lifted the man onto the stretcher, picked it up, and began to jog back to the dressing station.
The wounded man cried out in agony as they moved; then, when they stopped, he shouted: "Keep going, keep going!" and gritted his teeth.
Carrying a man on a stretcher was not as easy as it might seem. Erik thought his arms would fall off when they were only halfway. But he could see that the patient was in greater pain by far, and he just kept running.
Shells no longer fell around them, he noticed gratefully. The French were concentrating all their fire on the riverbank, trying to prevent the Germans crossing.
At last Erik and Hermann reached the farmhouse with their burden. Weiss had the place organized, the rooms cleared of superfluous furniture, places marked on the floor for patients, the kitchen table set up for operations. He showed Erik and Hermann where to put the wounded man. Then he sent them back for another.
The run back to the river was easier. They were unburdened and going slightly downhill. As they approached the bank Erik wondered fearfully whether he would panic again.
He saw with trepidation that the battle was going badly. There were several deflated vessels in midstream and many more bodies on the bank--and still no Germans on the far side.
Hermann said: "This is a catastrophe. We should have waited for our artillery!" His voice was shrill.
Erik said: "Then we would have lost the advantage of surprise, and the French would have had time to bring up reinforcements. There would have been no point in that long trek through the Ardennes."
"Well, this isn't working," said Hermann.
Deep in his heart Erik was beginning to wonder whether the Fuhrer's plans really were infallible. The thought undermined his resolution and threatened to throw him completely off balance. Fortunately there was no more time for reflection. They stopped beside a man with most of one leg blown off. He was about their age, twenty, with pale, freckled skin and copper red hair. His right leg ended at midthigh in a ragged stump. Amazingly, he was conscious, and he stared at them as if they were angels of mercy.
Erik found the pressure point in his groin and stopped the bleeding while Hermann got out a tourniquet and applied it. Then they put him on the stretcher and began the run back.
Hermann was a loyal German, but he sometimes allowed negative feelings to get the better of him. If Erik ever had such feelings he was careful not to voice them. That way he did not lower anyone else's morale--and he stayed out of trouble.
But he could not help thinking. It seemed the approach through the Ardennes had not given the Germans the expected walkover victory. The Meuse defenses were light but the French were fighting back fiercely. Surely, he thought, his first experience of battle was not going to destroy his faith in his Fuhrer? The idea made him feel panicky.
He wondered whether the German forces farther east were faring any better. The First Panzer and the Tenth Panzer had been alongside Erik's division, the Second, as they approached the border, and it must be they who were attacking upstream.
His arm muscles were now in constant agony.
They arrived back at the dressing station for the second time. The place was now frantically busy, the floor crowded with men groaning and crying, bloody bandages everywhere, Weiss and his assistants moving quickly from one maimed body to the next. Erik had never imagined there could be so much suffering in one small place. Somehow, when the Fuhrer spoke of war, Erik never thought of this kind of thing.
Then he noticed that his own patient's eyes were clo
sed.
Major Weiss felt for a pulse, then said harshly: "Put him in the barn--and for fuck's sake don't waste time bringing me corpses!"
