Brasch was gathering his strength, trying to shake off the lassitude that threatened to overwhelm him, when the vague horizon that blurred between white ground and gray sky was unexpectedly thrown into sharp definition. A solid black line appeared, extending as far as he could see. His balls had just started to climb into his body when the Soviet war cry reached him.

Ooooouuuuurrraaaahhhhh . . .

Brasch wrenched the phone from the claws of the white-haired sergeant and began cranking the handle to generate a charge. When a small, impossibly distant voice answered, he screamed into the mouthpiece, demanding artillery support. The connection was poor, and the line crackled and hissed with static so that he began to suspect they could not even hear him on the other end. That faraway, tinny, nearly nonhuman voice repeated the same senseless mantra, again and again.

“Wo sind sie? Wo sind sie? Was ist los? Wo sind sie?”

Brasch called out his identity and demanded an artillery barrage.

“Wo sind sie? Wo sind sie?”

The boy screamed for his mother, reminding Brasch for one insane moment of his own son Manfred, just turned four years old. The soldier’s grief and rage sounded just like Manny when, as a toddler, he ran into the sharp corner of a table, splitting open his head.

“MUTTI! MUTTI! NEIN NEIN NEIN!”

The sergeant and the last man, a displaced driver from a transport company, wrestled frantically with the Spandau, attempting to thread a new belt of cartridges with stiff, shaking hands. The black line on the horizon grew thicker as more and more Communists poured over the gentle rise.

“God, there are millions of them,” cried the Feldwebel, his voice cracking with terror. “We must go, Major, we have to run now, before they get here.”

Ooooouuuuurrraaaahhhhh . . .

“We need artillery,” Brasch shouted stubbornly as he leaned over to place a firm hand on the shoulder of the truck driver, who was quite obviously seconds from fleeing the post. The man’s trembling hands still fumbled with the ammunition belt. He bounced up and down at the knees, and his head snapped back and forth between the awful spectacle of the approaching human wave and the beckoning safety of the tree line, some three hundred yards behind them. A low keening sound, like an animal that it knows it is being led to slaughter, emanated from deep within him.

“Fire!” ordered Brasch, pointing at the Soviets, who rushed on like a surging black tide. The machine-gun crew began to fire, the harsh industrial hammering coming in short bursts that did nothing to halt the advancing horde. They must have killed a hundred men in less than ten seconds, but Brasch would swear another hundred thousand simply trampled down the corpses.

“Where is the artillery?” he roared into the phone.

“Was ist los? Wo sind sie?”

Ooooouuuuurrraaaahhhhh . . .

“M-m-m-m-mutti . . .”