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obstinately. The roads turned into sewers. Trucks, bogged down in the mud, ran out of fuel, and food supplies could not get through. At times Georg and his horses were almost a hundred kilometers ahead of the rest of their division. The month of October practically decided the fate of the war. It was soon clear that we could not take Moscow before December, when the terrible Russian winter would set in. The officers thought about the ill-fated French episode in 1812. The autumn had stalled our forward momentum, and winter would prevent any further advance.
    In any case, the Sixth Infantry succeeded in fulfilling its assignment. At the end of October, it descended the Volga, passed to the north of the capital, and reached Kalinin (now the city of Tver). Georg and his men crossed over to the east bank of the Volga in a sector infested with enemies. They pushed as far as the Tma, one of the great river’s tributaries. In a few hours, withoutlosing a single man or being observed, they explored dozens of square kilometers, wrote reports, and sent to their headquarters all the information that might be useful for a prospective penetration. By November 15, they had an impressive record in the field: they had covered more than 1,300 kilometers, and taken prizes that were considerable for a unit of 200 men: 700 prisoners, 175 horses, 60 horse-drawn vehicles, 10 trucks, and a tank! This record was transmitted with get-well wishes to all the squadron’s wounded, who were scattered in various military hospitals.
    The campaign had been just as brilliant for the division to which I belonged. As far as Smolensk, our losses had been minimal. The fighting around Smolensk lasted from July 10 to September 10. About three hundred thousand Soviet troops and three thousand tanks were surrounded; the Soviets were not about to get themselves killed for Joseph Stalin. We gave them back their churches, which had been closed or transformed into storage buildings years earlier. The sinister Commissar Order, which called for the execution of Soviet political commissars who had been taken prisoner, never reached my unit and was not applied in my area: under these conditions, whole battalions of Russians were surrendering without a fight. One day, I sent Second Lieutenant Nagel on patrol a little to the east of Vilnius, and he came back in the evening with about two thousand prisoners. They were still fully equipped, because the fifteen men inNagel’s detachment were not numerous enough to disarm them. His men were riding alongside the prisoners like shepherds amid a peaceful flock. It was an incredible sight, unparalleled so far as I know in recent military history.
    A few weeks after the fighting ended around Smolensk, the general in command of the division ordered me to scout out the possibilities for crossing the Volga at a ford. Because of the mud, horse-drawn vehicles could not be used, and all the motor vehicles had prudently been taken back to the main road to Moscow. Only horsemen could reconnoiter the area ahead. We started out toward Kalinin with provisions for a few days. Using a compass, and guided by the information provided by scouts, we rode for four or five hours and then stopped in a village to bake bread in a farm, surrounded by Russians, because the field canteen had remained with the vehicles. The days went by without any contact with our division. It was as if we had suddenly been transported to the age of the Thirty Years’ War. Our squadron encountered neither Russian nor German soldiers. When we arrived in Kalinin, the Volga was completely frozen over, and our search for a ford was no longer relevant. Moreover, armored divisions had just taken up positions nearby.
    Three days later, the division’s chaplains arrived in Kalinin. Like the missionaries in the time of Saints Boniface and Patrick, they had crossed the deserted expanse of the Russian plain without encountering a living soul.They hadn’t eaten for several days. We