Bessarabia is a region traversed by Reiter’s 79th Division during its advance into the Soviet Union in 1941. In the novel, it is not a static backdrop: the division crosses it on foot, moving through a campaign that leaves burned villages and granaries in its wake, while the unexplained fires in the surrounding woods expose the soldiers’ limited grasp of the violence unfolding around them.

The Division’s Advance

After crossing the Prut, the 79th Division fights its way across the steppes and hills of Bessarabia. Its advance is slower than that of the larger formations of Army Group South: the division has fewer human and material resources, faces difficult terrain and scarce roads, and cannot count on the element of surprise. As a light infantry division, it depends on soldiers and mules rather than motorized transport; its men walk and fight through repeated forced marches.

A Landscape of Fire

The route continues beyond Bessarabia as the division crosses the Dniester and reaches the outskirts of Odessa, then crosses the Bug and advances farther into Ukraine. Along this progress, villages and granaries burn, and woods catch fire amid broad fields. The marching soldiers deny responsibility for setting the woods alight, even as they acknowledge having burned or bombed villages. They speculate that other German units may have started the fires, but they have seen no one who can account for them. The cause remains unresolved.

Narrative Significance

Bessarabia belongs to a sequence of river crossings and forced movement that makes the invasion legible as both military advance and devastation of inhabited land. The distinction the soldiers draw between fires they admit causing and fires they cannot explain leaves responsibility unsettled without making the destruction disappear. The burning woods, described as dark islands in fields of wheat, turn the landscape into an image of violence that the marching men witness but cannot fully interpret.