One
Stalingrad. January 28, 1943. Hell frozen over. Pavel rode his motorcycle across the icy fields, avoiding the treacherous roads.
Every trip ran a risk of being taken in a German counterattack.
His sub-machinegun was strapped across his back for reassurance. The films they showed the troops back in Voronezh about what the fascists did to prisoners of war scared the shit out of him. The way they were starved to the point where they needed no guards but were pointed in the direction of the nearest field kitchen. There had been talk of prisoners eating their dead comrades to stay alive. He hoped it was just that…talk.
He pulled up at the top of the next hill, rear wheel skidding under
him. There were no Krauts waiting for him, just a few trees next to vehicle
tracks that had churned the ice. He knew the field post he was looking for was
a little further on. A possible hot mug of tea, and, if he was lucky, a shot of vodka might be on offer.
Pavel parked and dismounted his bike on the edge of the first group of tents housed beneath a huge, white tarpaulin stretched amongst the trees. The post was a short distance from the river Volga and it formed a vital link for the troops that now surrounded the city. It was part of a rifle division. Pavel saw food being prepared but no fires were allowed yet in daylight. The communications tent buzzed with the static of radio talk. Soldiers sat around talking while cleaning their weapons. A sergeant wiped his hands on an oily rag while he worked under the bonnet of a truck. Pavel propped up his motorbike, nodded at the sergeant who shook his head at the engine. An officer stood at the entrance to the first tent and Pavel snapped to, then grabbed the two canvas satchels strapped to his pillion.
“Peaceful trip, comrade?”
“Yes, comrade Lieutenant,” Pavel said. “Getting better by the day. Pretty quiet around here too.”
“That’ll all change in about twenty minutes from now. The next barrage is
due.”
“Ours or theirs?”
“Ours, of course. You don’t think the fascist dogs in there have
anything heavy to throw at us, do you? They’ll be running out of earth to dig
into.” The officer smiled as he took the satchels.
Pavel followed him into the tent where the radio operators looked up at him then got on with their work. The officer emptied the first then the second satchel into a large basket by a desk where the despatches would be registered.
Pavel took a letter from inside his tunic: “Comrade Lieutenant, could you register this one first? It’s a ‘deliver by hand’.” The officer frowned and looked at the envelope.
“Major N. Solov. Fine.” He laid it on the desk, stamped it and handed it back without looking up.
“Do you know where I might find the comrade Major?” Pavel looked
at a steaming mug of tea on the officer’s desk.
“He’s at sector HQ, last I heard. But that place is a madhouse. There’s a
pontoon bridge down the road. You can ask the way there. It’s easy.”
Pavel stuffed the letter back and buttoned his tunic. He looked again at the tea and saluted the officer. On his motorbike again, he regained the road.
Ahead, he saw what he thought was a dark sky, but realised it was black smoke. He began to make out the crumbled skyline of the Stalingrad suburbs. The bridge was guarded by some infantry. Trucks crossed from the east bank of the Volga. Curving away to the right, shrouded in mist and smoke, was the rubble of the city that looked like nothing on earth. The trucks cut up the ice and snow near the river bank as they struggled to find the road.
“Comrade.” Pavel pulled up to a corporal directing traffic. “Where’s the
command post?”
The corporal looked at him.
“There’s only one direction. Follow the trucks.” He gestured with a gloved
hand.
Five minutes down the road, alongside the river, Pavel weaved carefully
between the trucks that snaked along, bumper to bumper. Some of them carried
troops. They stared at him. They were from the east, Pavel thought, Tartars or Mongols. One or two managed a wave and a smile.
Pavel passed by four checkpoints that waved him through and he was glad
to get away from the convoy. It slowed him down. He pulled up again near an artillery unit dug in deep away from the road under camouflage nets. He counted around twenty guns or so. A sergeant told him sector HQ was right here, behind them. He dismounted. The sergeant asked him for a cigarette and looked disappointed and puzzled when the despatch rider told him he didn’t smoke.
“Old enough to shave but you don’t smoke?”
He followed him through the battery toward a half-destroyed farmhouse
invisible from the road. The half of the building that was destroyed had more
netting over it and served as the entrance, again more banks of radios, tables
with maps. Pavel was ushered inside where another officer looked at the letter
then at him.
“Major Solov is in the city, not far. He’s due to return…” he looked down at a pocket watch…”soon, I think.” He looked at one of the maps. “He’s
on the edge. You’ll see an old tram station as you follow the road down the hill,
past the main crossroads. There’ll be men down there. Ask them.”
Pavel could see the city now, or at least what was left of it. He could
hear the distant rattling of gunfire. He rode downhill toward the remains of the tram station. One of the trams had been hauled out into the middle of the
street and filled with bricks, twisted girders and masonry. Ripped electric cables
sprouted out of the shell craters in the street. He passed some soldiers as they
walked alongside him. Troops from the east again, used to the Siberian winter.
One of them laughed, raised his rifle in the air and shouted: “Stalin!” His
fellow soldiers laughed with him. Further along, by the doorway of a shattered
garage, he spotted two white Russian soldiers.
“Never mind them, comrade, they only know how to laugh and kill.”
“They know how to die too,” said the other.
“Got any post for us?”
“You know where I can find Major Solov?”
“Solov? Sure. He’s about three hundred metres ahead of us. He should be
back soon. See those three apartments with no roof? He’s somewhere across the
street on the other side.”
“Thanks. I’ll go see.”
“Wait, soldier. You better wait. We’ve got another salvo in a few
minutes.”
“Comrade,” Pavel said. “I need to deliver a letter to him, then I’m
out of this shithole.”
“Oh, here it comes…” and the rest of the man’s words were drowned as artillery let loose behind them. Pavel steered into the garage with the others. Behind him, the other troops had already left the street and taken cover in the tram station. He felt the ground shake as dust fell in streams from the ceiling. Chunks of masonry tumbled down. His motorcycle fell on its side. Its front wheel still turning. The explosions began to move away towards the city centre where the fascist pockets of resistance were receiving their latest pounding. In the darkness of the garage, Pavel could hear cursing in between the explosions.
“Someone should tell those fuckin’ gunners to stop using our own men
for target practice!”
Outside, the troops were back on the street, glad they were alive and
calling to each other. Nobody was hurt.
“If you want to find Solov, you’d better go now.”
Another explosion sounded not too far away.
“That’s a mine! Someone’s stepped on a fuckin’ booby trap,” said one of
the soldiers in the garage. He grabbed a pair of binoculars from his companion.
Pavel struggled to pick up his heavy machine.
“It’s Major Solov’s party. I think he’s got trouble. Let’s get over there.
You can come too, son,” he said to Pavel. “Leave your bike, it’ll never make it
over the rubble.”
Pavel let his motorbike fall again. He followed the soldiers out of the garage and saw the eastern troops follow them. Pavel paused to slide his sub-machinegun from his back. He fumbled with it as he ran in a crouch behind the others. Pavel wasn’t used to this. He’d relied on his bike for too long. The
others left him behind. They reached the shelled out apartment block and made
their way to the front windows that faced the street on the other side. They
looked on as they saw three men stood still in the middle of the roadway. A
short distance from them was the crumpled body of a soldier, his uniform still
smoking, the one who had stepped on the mine.
“Major Solov!” someone yelled.
“Stay back!” another ordered.
“Stay where you are! We’ve lost one man already!”
“That’s Major Solov,” one of the soldiers from the garage told Pavel.
Solov was a metre or so from their side of the street. Behind him, his three
men were on the other side. The dead soldier was between them.
Solov called to them: “I’ll retrace my steps. Stay still.”
Solov turned and placed a foot on his last footprints and made his way toward his men. He unstrapped his steel helmet, revealing a clean-shaven head. He leaned forward and threw the helmet somewhere between them.
“You do the same so you’ll have some stepping stones,” said Solov. As
the other men’s helmets hit the ground, they all faced away expecting an
explosion. None came.
“Alright, Litinov,” said Solov, “You first.”
The first soldier crept forward and stepped onto the helmets - one, two,
three - and grabbed Solov’s hand to safety. He followed Solov’s steps to the
apartment block. The next soldier advanced. He stepped onto the helmets, almost lost his balance, but landed onto Solov’s footprints as his major grabbed his hand… in time to meet a sniper’s bullet that tore into his back and exited his chest.
Solov held his arm to stop him from falling backward.
“Hold on!” Solov yelled.
The soldier’s legs were buckling. Solov fell backwards as the man’s body
hit the ground. No explosion came. The dead body now formed a better bridge.
It was useless to try to locate the sniper. They all knew that.
“Covering fire!” someone called. A volley peppered where the shot had come from as the third soldier skipped across the helmets, his dead comrade’s body, and ran to the apartment block with Solov. They made their way back toward the tram station.
***
“Major Solov, I think this is for you.” A soldier handed him an envelope.
“What’s this?” said Solov, noticing blood stains on the letter.
“Young lad over there. Despatch rider. Caught one of the sniper’s shots.”
Solov looked over to where two men were dragging Pavel’s limp body by his arms across the rubble. The young man’s eyes were staring at nothing.
“Leave him there,” Solov said. “Let him rest where he fell. He’s got plenty of company.”