"At noon on 2 February 1943, Army Group Don received a radio message, 'Cloud ceiling five thousand meters. Visibility twelve kilometres. Clear sky, scattered cloud. Temperature 30 degrees below. Above Stalingrad fog and red dust. Weather station closing down'. And then, as a last sentence, a simple, poignant farewell, 'Greeting to all at home'. The last curtain over the tragedy at Stalingrad had fallen."
Something about the final message from the defeated Sixth Army at Stalingrad just being this lonely weather station in a sea of enemies giving its final report and a sombre farewell got me having some kind of abstract feel.