6. Februar 1942
6.2.42.[1] For ten days now the blizzard has been racing over the land without interruption. It has chased man and cattle into the houses, and is now beginning to cover them too. I stand in the parlour and look through the low window into the whirl outside. Whistling and roaring, the storm chases thick clouds of snow before it. The air is a fluffy, grainy white mass. At times the snow sweeps past the window almost horizontally, as if in long white threads and streaks. Then again, a gust of wind swirls the thick clouds, and at that moment the shadowy shade of the neighbouring house becomes visible for seconds, only to be immediately hidden again by the swirling snow clouds. The low farmhouses duck into the snow like frightened animals. Higher and higher the raging storm blows the white mountains against the houses. On the windward side, the snowdrifts already creep up over the thatched roofs and begin to bury the houses under their white cloak.
Those who do not absolutely have to go out stay indoors. The farmer feeds his cattle, which are under the same roof, shovels the snow away from his front door and then crawls back onto the warm stove. Darkness falls early. By early afternoon it is pitch black. The winter nights are long. Anyone who has experienced these endlessly long Russian winters with their endlessly long dark nights, who has experienced these months of enforced inactivity, can understand that melancholy sinks into the heart here, that passivity develops (as is said to be the case with the Russian nature) and that some bad habits creep in. Idleness is the beginning of all vice. This is certainly one of the reasons why - at least in earlier times - the father or grandfather used the daughter-in-law when the son was called up for military service. But perhaps it is also due to the different mentality of the Russians. In - old - Japan it was also the custom for the brother to take care of the sister-in-law with all the rights and duties of a husband if the brother had to be absent for a very long time. And a well-known writer reports from the First World War that German prisoners of war left children behind in Siberia. (That is understandable.) Then when the Siberian husbands released from German captivity returned home, they rejoiced over these children. (And that is incomprehensible to us.)
The storm rages on. Many houses look like mounds of snow. Only on their leeward side does a piece of roof or the gable wall with the window still peek out. On the morning of the eighth day, the neighbouring house is completely snowed in. The inhabitants can no longer get out. A troop of soldiers immediately starts digging a path through the snow from the outside with shovels and spades to clear the front door. When it finally opens again, there is a loud hello and laughter from Russians and soldiers alike.
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It is still snowing, day and night. I am already wondering with slight apprehension if we will ever be able to get out of these high masses of snow again. The simplest things are becoming a problem. In the gardens, the snow is two and a half metres high. But at the end of the gardens are our posts as quarter and local guards. So to reach them, paths have to be shovelled from the house to the post stand. These are hollow-ways with walls of snow over two metres high. The posts are now relieved every hour. One morning a night guard complains that he has had to stand for four hours. It turns out that his relief didn't find him in the snowstorm. Another soldier, who wanted to visit a comrade in the neighbouring house in the evening, missed the house in the darkness in the driving snow. But he couldn't find his way back to his quarters either and came to us. It happened several times that the post control service did not find the posts.
I have already gone to bed. The storm is howling outside, but it's cosy and warm in here. The mighty brick stove, which takes up almost a quarter of the room, radiates cosy warmth. My two roommates are not yet back from duty. I want to listen to the radio. The two signalmen have of course laid a line here to the quarters (so privately, naturally). I'm benefiting from that now. I put on the headphones and listen to the military radio station. It doesn't take long before it sounds in the earpiece: the song of Lili Marleen! You good Lale Andersen, how many thousands of German soldiers on the icy fronts of Russia have you sung some warmth and joy into their hearts with this song!
Another problem: The smallest rooms are at the end of the gardens, about 25 to 30 metres from the house. You would have to go there through a two to three metre high blanket of snow. But that was no use. The outhouses are also buried under snow.
A Russian woman comes to me crying and complains that a soldier with diarrhoea has done his business in her cow shed. She fears that her cow, all her wealth, might become infected. Since the cow - as is very often the case in Russian villages - is under the same roof in the small house, you can imagine the air inside. I go with her, look at the mess and snap at the Landser. But where, after all, was he to go in his pressing haste?
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- ↑ in the original erroneously 6.1.42.