Status Updates From Stalingrad

The tall lieutenant who emerged from the zone of smoke staggering and gesticulating like a drunkard, and suddenly breaking out into peals of laughter—this was no longer a platoon com-mander; it was a madman.

The human figures that bounded out of a crater and moved over the ground like dry leaves swept before the wind, that stumbled over one another, fell and remained on the ground or stood up again, struggled on a little farther, only to fall again and run again—these figures were no longer members of a regiment; they were
"chaff."