Central Ukraine — July 1941
The silence broke with a roar of engines.
It was dawn, and the camp was already dissolving like a nomadic tent. Trucks loaded supplies, cables were reeled in, fuel drums vanished from makeshift depots. Few words were spoken. Gestures were enough.
Falk climbed into the Panzer IV without being told. His men were already inside, each in place, with the ease of men who knew the rehearsal was over. Now came the performance.
"Destination?" Lukas asked.
"Uman," Helmut replied from the radio. "Or what's left of it."
The landscape was vast. Vastly empty.
Wheat fields left unharvested, dirt roads that split like they were unsure of themselves, villages that looked abandoned before the war began. Every now and then, a smoking chimney, a charred wagon, or a loose helmet from a soldier who was no longer there.
"And the Russians?" Ernst asked, seated near the ammunition rack.
"For now, retreating," said Konrad. "But a wounded animal is the most dangerous."
They advanced in column, mixed with elements of motorized infantry. Allied units occasionally appeared on side roads: Hungarians, Romanians, even a small section of Spanish Falangists—poorly uniformed but marching with pride.
Falk barely glanced at them. The front was one. Death was one.
"You good?" Helmut asked through the intercom.
"I'm awake," Falk replied.
By midday, the first noise didn't come from a cannon, or the sky. It came from the radio.
"Forward contact," said Helmut, tuning the antenna. "Soviet troops in retreat… or what looks like retreat."
Konrad adjusted the gun without needing to be told.
"Do we stop?" Lukas asked.
"No," Falk ordered. "We move. Fire only if fired upon."
The Panzer rounded a bend in the road—and then they saw the first body.
Then another.
And another.
Not Germans. Not civilians. Soviets. Some half-uniformed, some barefoot, all with open eyes, as if they hadn't understood why they died.
"Bombing?" Ernst asked.
"Or execution," Konrad muttered.
Falk said nothing.
They kept moving until the air changed. It no longer smelled of fields. It smelled like old gunpowder. Like rusted metal. Like burnt oil.
The front was no longer a line. It was an atmosphere.
And in that atmosphere, Falk knew the first shot would come soon. What he had read in reports, heard in briefings, or been told in passing—would fall short.
The war was no longer on the map.
Now, it was in the noise.And that noise…had just begun.