Chapter I  The thin White Line

The order to hold the line was not unexpected.The previous day, during a brief lull in the blizzard which had been sweeping the entire front, Captain Georg Zahn had detailed  eight men to mine the bank of the river. Now, shivering in the sudden chill after stepping from the comparative warmth of the dug-out, he wrapped himself closer in his thick greatcoat and the stared dismally accross the white and stared dismally across thye white expanse of snow which separated their lines from those of the russians. in the grey half-light, under the leaden clouds which only gave a hint of dawn to the east, the shell-blasted farmhouses which the enemy had captured from them during a fierce attack two days earlier, seemed like insubstantial ghosts on the white landscape, more often than not completely hidden by sweeping, heavy flurries of snow. Even in the relatively clear spells, which were growing progressively less frequent now, they were difficult to locate. They blended too well with their background, lacked solidity and definition of outline. He lifted his binoculars wearily, awaere of the coldness and the exhaustion in his body, twisted the focusing screw slowly with fingers which were numbed and without feeling even in the leather gloves, blinked as the scene came into sudden clarity.

There was a movement behind him. Fischer crwaled from the entrance of the dug-out. With an obvious effort, he pushed himself against the wind; a cold, biting wind that blew from the north-east, full of tiny flying daggers of ice and frozen snow and the strange scent of all winds that blow off the great steppes whenever the temperatures falls so far below zero.