Kutno is the setting of Hans Reiter’s first battle, an episode that makes his unusual composure under fire visible to both his comrades and the opposing soldiers. The brief engagement leaves German dead and wounded, while Reiter emerges unharmed; before long, the 79th Division moves on, carrying him from his first combat into a long pause on the western front.

The First Battle

On the outskirts of Kutno, Reiter’s assault group attacked a farm and a forest where Polish forces had concentrated the remnants of their artillery. The Poles were few and poorly armed, but at first appeared unwilling to surrender; the confusion, the account explains, was that they did not know how to do so. The encounter did not last long.

Reiter’s height made him seem an obvious target to Captain Gercke, who watched the assault group depart expecting that the young soldier would be killed. Gercke imagined him as an outsized figure exposed among predators. Yet the attack did not unfold as that expectation suggested: Reiter survived, while other members of the group did not.

Reiter Under Fire

Two German soldiers were killed and five wounded in the attack on the farm. At the forest, another German soldier was killed and three more were wounded. Reiter was untouched. The contrast prompted the sergeant commanding the group to report back to Gercke that Reiter had somehow frightened the enemy, who repeatedly shot at him without hitting him.

The men considered possible explanations—whether Reiter had shouted, cursed, or fought with exceptional ruthlessness—but the sergeant rejected the idea that he had become a different person or entered a trance. His account was more unsettlingly ordinary: Reiter had gone into combat as if he were not going into combat, as though the quarrel were not with him. He nevertheless followed orders. Kutno thus establishes neither a supernatural ability nor a simple transformation into a fearless warrior; it leaves Reiter’s peculiar relation to danger unexplained, while showing that even his opponents appeared to register it.

Departure from Kutno

The 79th Division continued fighting around Kutno, but Reiter took part in no further skirmish there. Before the end of September, the division was transferred by train to the western border, joining the rest of the 10th Infantry Corps. From October 1939 through June 1940, the soldiers remained in place, concealed in forests and orchards ahead of the Maginot Line.

That long interval of radio listening, meals, beer, letters, and sleep sharply contrasts with the compressed violence of Reiter’s first battle. Kutno is therefore a threshold rather than a prolonged setting in his wartime story: it gives the reader a first account of his conduct in combat, then yields to months of waiting before the next phase of the campaign.