by Herman Wouk
“Then don’t disclose anything the Germans can use. A general statement will suffice. Lend-Lease is very costly, you see, and our President needs popular support if it is to continue.
“But haven’t victories like Stalingrad gained enough American public support for Lend-Lease?” Yevlenko passed his good hand over his nearly bald close-barbered head. “We have smashed several German army groups. We have turned the tide of the war. When you open your long-delayed second front in Europe, your soldiers will face greatly weakened opposition, and will take far smaller losses than we have. The American people are clever. They understand these plain facts. Therefore they will support Lend-Lease. Not because of some ‘general statement.’
Since this was exactly what Pug thought, he found it hard to respond. A rotten job, shooting at Standley’s gnats! He poured his soft drink and sipped the sickly-sweet red concoction. General Yevlenko went to his desk, brought back a thick file folder, and opened it on the table. With his good hand, he riffled gray clippings glued to sheets of paper. “Besides, are your Moscow correspondents asleep? Here are just a few recent articles from Pravda, Trud, and Red Star. Here are general statements. Read them yourself.” He took a final puff at the clipped stub, and ground it out in practiced motions of the lifeless hand.
“General, in Mr. Stalin’s recent Order of the Day, he said the Red Army is bearing the brunt of the war, with no help from its allies.”
“He was speaking after Stalingrad.” The retort came sharp and unabashed. “Wasn’t he telling the truth? The Hitlerites stripped the Atlantic coast to throw everything they had against us. Still, Churchill would not move. Even your great President could not budge him. We had to win all by ourselves.”
This was getting nowhere, and a riposte about North Africa would not help. Since Pug would have to report back to Standley, he decided he might as well fire at all gnats. “It’s not just a question of Lend-Lease. The Red Cross and the Russian Relief Society have made generous contributions to the Soviet people, which have not been acknowledged.”
Grimacing incredulously, Yevlenko said, “Are you talking about a few million dollars in gifts? We are a grateful people, and we show it by fighting. What else would you have us do?”
“My ambassador feels that there has been insufficient publicity for the gifts here.”
“Your ambassador? Surely he is speaking for your government, not for himself?”
Less and less comfortable, Pug replied, “The request for a statement on battlefield use of Lend-Lease comes from the State Department. Renewal of Lend-Lease is before Congress, you know.”
Yevlenko inserted another cigarette into the clip. His lighter failed, and he muttered till he struck a flame. “But our Washington embassy has told us that Lend-Lease renewal will pass Congress easily. Therefore Admiral Standley’s outburst is most disturbing. Does it signal a shift in Mr. Roosevelt’s policy?”
“I can’t speak for President Roosevelt.”
“And what about Mr. Hopkins?” Yevlenko gave him a hard wise look through wreathing smoke.
“Harry Hopkins is a great friend of the Soviet Union.”
“We know that. In fact,” said Yevlenko, reaching for the vodka and turning very jolly all at once, “I would like to drink to Harry Hopkins’s health with you. Will you join me?”
Here we go, Pug thought. He nodded. The vodka streaked down inside him, leaving a warm tingling trail. Yevlenko smacked thick lips, and startled Pug by winking. “What is your rank, may I ask?”
Pointing to the shoulder bars on his bridge coat — the room was cold and he still wore it — Pug said, “Four stripes. Captain, U.S. Navy.”
Yevlenko knowingly smiled. “Yes. That I see. I’ll tell you a true story. When your country first recognized the USSR in 1933, we sent as military attaches an admiral and a vice admiral. Your government complained that their high rank created protocol difficulties. Next day they were reduced in rank to captain and commander, and everything was fine.”
“I’m nothing but a captain.”
“Yet Harry Hopkins, next to your President, is the most powerful man in your country.”
“Not at all. In any case, that has nothing to do with me.”
“Your embassy is already fully staffed with military attaches, isn’t it? Then what is your position, may I ask? Aren’t you representing Harry Hopkins?”
“No.” Pug figured there was no harm, and there might be some good, in adding, “As a matter of fact, I’m here by direct personal order of President Roosevelt. Nevertheless I’m just a Navy captain, I assure you.”
General Yevlenko gravely stared at him. Pug endured the stare with a solemn face. Let the Russians try to figure us out for a change, he thought. “I see. Well, since you are an emissary of the President, please clarify his misgivings on Lend-Lease,” said Yevlenko, “which led to your ambassador’s disturbing outburst.”
“I have no authority to do that.”
“Captain Henry, as a courtesy granted to Harry Hopkins, you toured the Moscow front at a bad moment in 1941. Also at your request, a British journalist and his daughter, who acted as his secretary, accompanied you.”
“Yes, and I remember well your hospitality within sound of the guns.”
“Well, by a pleasant coincidence, I can offer you another such trip. I am about to leave Moscow to inspect the Lend-Lease situation in the field. I will visit active fronts. I won’t enter any zones of fire” — briefly the big-toothed grin —“not intentionally, but there may be hazards. If you wish to accompany me and render an eyewitness report to Mr. Hopkins and to your President on battlefield usage of Lend-Lease, that can be arranged. And perhaps we can then agree on a ‘general statement’ as well.”
“I accept. When will we start?” Though surprised, Pug seized the chance. Let Standley veto it, if he had some objection.
“So? American style.” Yevlenko stood up and offered his left hand. “I’ll let you know. We’ll probably go first to Leningrad, where — I may say — no correspondent, and I believe no foreigner, has been for over a year. It is still under siege, as you know, but the blockade has been broken. There are ways through that are not too dangerous. It is my birthplace, so I welcome a chance to go there. I have not been there since my mother died in the siege.”
“I’m sorry,” Pug said awkwardly. “Was she killed in the bombardment?”
“No. She starved.”
61
STARVED.
It may have been the worst siege in the history of the world. It was a siege of Biblical horror; a siege like the siege of Jerusalem, when, as the Book of Lamentations tells, women boiled and ate their children. When the war began, Leningrad was a city of close to three million. By the time Victor Henry visited it, there were about six hundred thousand people left. Half of those who were gone had been evacuated; the other half had died. Gruesome tales persist that not a few were eaten. But at the time there was little outside awareness of the siege and the famine, and to this day much of the story remains untold, the records sealed in the Soviet archives or destroyed. Probably nobody knows, within a hundred thousand people, how many died of hunger, or the diseases of hunger, in Leningrad. The figure falls between a million and a million and a half.
Soviet historians are caught in an embarrassment over Leningrad. On the one hand, in the city’s successful three-year resistance lie the makings of a world epic. On the other hand, the Germans rolled over the Red Army and arrived at the city in a matter of weeks, thus setting the stage for the drama. How does the infallible Communist Party explain that? And how explain that this great water-locked city was not mobilized for siege by rapid evacuation of the useless mouths, and by stockpiling of necessities for the garrison facing huge powerful armies drawing near?
Western historians are free and quick to blame their leaders and their governments for defeats and disasters. The Soviet Union, however, is governed by a party which has the invariably correct approach to all situations. This creates a certain awkwardness
for its historians. The Party alone decides the allotment of paper for the printing of histories. The siege of Leningrad is something of a bone in the throat of Soviet historians who want to see their work in print. Thus a magnificent Russian feat of heroism goes half-told in its grim and great truth.
Lately, these historians have in gingerly fashion touched things that went wrong in the Great Patriotic War, including the total surprise of the Red Army in 1941, its near-collapse, and its failure for nearly three years to free half of Russia from the Germans, a much smaller people at war on other fronts as well. The explanation is that blunders were made by Stalin. Yet this too is a hazy business. As the years pass, and obscure shifts in high Soviet policy come and go, Stalin’s stock as a wartime leader falls and rises again. He has yet to be blamed directly for what happened at Leningrad. The Party is by dogma blameless.
What is undeniable is that the Germans of Army Group North, some four hundred thousand strong, drove to the outskirts of the city in a quick summer campaign, and cut it off by land from the “Great Earth,” the unconquered Soviet mainland. Hitler decided against an immediate grand assault. His orders were to blockade the city into submission, starve the defenders or wipe them out, and level it stone by stone to an extinct waste.
The people of Leningrad knew they could expect little more than that. Declaring it an open city like Paris, as showers of enemy leaflets kept urging, was out of the question. As winter drew on, the people started bringing in supplies under the German guns, across the frozen surface of Lake Ladoga. The invaders tried to smash the ice with artillery shells, but ice seven feet thick is tough stuff. Convoys kept running on the ice road through the winter, through darkness, blizzards, and artillery barrages; and Leningrad did not fall. As food came in, useless mouths departed on the empty trucks. By the time the ice melted in the spring there was something like a balance between mouths and food.
In January 1943, shortly before Victor Henry’s visit, Red Army units defending Leningrad pushed back the German lines a short distance, at terrible cost, and freed a key railroad junction. This broke the blockade. Under the invaders’ artillery pounding, rail supply resumed along a strip of roadbed called the “corridor of death,” cut by the German shelling over and over, and always reopened. Most cargoes and travellers got through safely, and that was how Victor Henry entered the city. General Yevlenko’s ski plane landed near the freed rail depot, where Pug saw immense stacks of food cartons, with U.S.A. stencillings; also arrays of American jeeps and Army trucks marked with red stars. They took the train into Leningrad at night in an absolute blackout. Outside the train windows on the left, German guns flared and muttered.
The breakfast in the chilly barracks was black bread, powdered eggs, and reconstituted milk. Yevlenko and Pug ate with a crowd of young soldiers at long metal tables. Gesturing at the eggs, Yevlenko said, “Lend-Lease.”
“I recognize the stuff” Pug had eaten a lot of it aboard the Northampton when the cold-storage eggs ran out.
The artificial hand waved around at the soldiers. “Also the uniforms and boots of this battalion.”
“Do they know what they’re wearing?”
Yevlenko asked the soldier beside him, “Is that a new uniform?”
“Yes, General.” Quick reply, the young ruddy face alert and serious. “American-made. Good material, good uniform, General.”
Yevlenko glanced at Pug, who nodded his satisfaction.
“Russian body,” observed Yevlenko, eliciting a rueful laugh from Pug.
Outside it was growing light. A Studebaker command car drove up, its massive tires showering snow, and the driver saluted. “Well, we will see what has happened to my hometown,” said Yevlenko, turning up the collar of his long brown greatcoat and securing his fur cap.
Victor Henry did not know what to expect: another dreary Moscow, perhaps, only burned, battered, and scarred like London. The reality struck him dumb.
Except for silvery barrage balloons serenely floating in the still air, Leningrad scarcely seemed to be inhabited. Clean untracked snow covered the avenues lined with imposing old buildings. No people and no vehicles were moving. It was like Sunday morning back home, but in his life Pug had never seen a Sabbath peace like this. An eerie blue silence reigned; blue rather than white, the blue of the brightening sky caught and reflected by the pristine snow. Pug had not known of the charming canals and bridges; he had not imagined magnificent cathedrals, or splendid wide thoroughfares rivalling the Champs-Elysees, white-mantled in crystalline air; or noble houses ranged along granite embankments of a frozen river grander than the Seine. All the breadth, strength, history, and glory of Russia seemed to burst on him at a glance when the command car drove out on the stupendous square before the facade of the Winter Palace, a sight more extravagantly majestic than Versailles. Pug remembered this square from films of the revolution, roaring with mobs and czarist horse guards. It was deserted. There was not one track in the acres of snow.
The car halted.
“Quiet,” said Yevlenko, speaking for the first time in a quarter of an hour.
“This is the most beautiful city I have ever seen,” said Pug.
“Paris is more beautiful, they say. And Washington.”
“No place is more beautiful.” Impulsively Pug added, “Moscow is a village.”
Yevlenko gave him a very peculiar look.
“Is that an offensive remark? I just said what I think.”
“Very undiplomatic,” Yevlenko growled. The growl came out rather like a purr.
As the day went on Pug saw much shell damage: broken buildings, barricaded streets, hundreds of windows patched with scrap wood. The sun rose, making a blinding dazzle of the thoroughfares. The city came to life, especially in the southern sector nearer the German lines, where the factories were. Here the artillery scars were worse; whole blocks were burned out. Pedestrians trudged in the cleared streets, an occasional trolley car bumped by, and there was heavy traffic of army trucks and personnel vehicles. Pug heard the intermittent thump of German guns, and saw stencilled on buildings, CITIZENS! DURING ARTILLERY SHELLING, THIS SIDE OF THE STREET IS MORE DANGEROUS. Yet the sense of an almost empty, almost peaceful great city persisted even here; and these later and more mundane impressions did not erase — nothing ever erased — Pug Henrys vivid morning vision of wartime Leningrad as a sleeping beauty, an enchanted blue frosty metropolis of the dead.
Even the Kirov Works, which Yevlenko said would be very busy, had a desolate air. In one big bombed-out building, half-assembled tanks stood in rows under the burned rubble from the cave-in, and dozens of shawled women were patiently clearing away the debris. One place was very busy: an immense open-air depot of trucks under an elaborate camouflage netting that stretched for blocks. Here maintenance work was proceeding at a hot pace in a tumult of clanking tools and shouting workmen, and here was Lend-Lease come to life: an outpouring from Detroit, seven thousand miles away beyond the U-boat gauntlet; uncountable American trucks showing heavy wear. Yevlenko said most of these had been running on the ice road through the winter. Now the ice was getting soft, the rail line was open, and that route was probably finished. After reconditioning, the trucks would go to the central and southern fronts, where great counterattacks were beating back the Germans. Yevlenko then took him to an airdrome ringed with antiaircraft batteries that looked like U.S. Navy stuff. Russian Yak fighters and Russian-marked Airacobras were dispersed under camouflage all over the bomb-plowed field.
“My son flies this airplane,” said Yevlenko, slapping the cowl of an Airacobra. “It is a good airplane. You will meet him when we go to Kharkov.”
Near sundown they picked up Yevlenko’s daughter-in-law, a volunteer nurse coming off duty at a hospital. The car wound through silent streets that looked as though a tornado had swept them clean of houses, leaving block after block of shallow foundations and no rubble. All the wooden houses here, Yevlenko explained, had been pulled down and burned as fuel. At a flat waste where rows of t
ombstones stuck out of the snow, the car stopped. Much of the graveyard was randomly marked with bits of debris — a piece of broken pipe, a stick, a slat from a chair — or crude crosses of wood or tin. Yevlenko and his daughter-in-law left the car, and searched among the crosses. Far off, the general knelt in the snow.
“Well, she was almost eighty,” he said to Pug, as the car drove away from the cemetery. His face was calm, his mouth a bitter line. “She had a hard life. Before the revolution she was a parlor maid. She was not very educated. Still, she wrote poetry, nice poetry. Vera has some poems she wrote just before she died. We can go back to the barracks now, but Vera invites us to her apartment. What do you say? The food will be better at the barracks. The soldiers get the best we have.”
“The food doesn’t matter,” said Pug. An invitation to a Russian home was an extraordinary thing.
“Well, then, you’ll see how a Leningrader lives nowadays.”
Vera smiled at Pug, and despite poor teeth she all at once seemed less ugly. Her eyes were a pretty green-blue, and charming warmth brightened her face, which might once have been plump. The skin hung in folds, the nose was very sharp, and the eye sockets were dark holes.
In an almost undamaged neighborhood they entered a gloomy hallway smelling of clogged toilets and frying oil, and went up four narrow flights of a black-dark staircase. A key grated in a lock. Vera lit an oil lamp, and by the greenish glow, Pug saw one tiny room jammed with a bed, a table, two chairs, and a pile of broken wood around a tiled stove, with a tin flue wandering to a boarded-up window. It was colder here than outside, where the sun had just gone down. Vera lit the stove, broke a skin of ice in a pail, and poured water into a kettle. The general set out a bottle of vodka from a canvas bag he had carried up the stairs. Frozen through, despite heavy underwear and bulky boots, gloves, and a sweater, Pug was glad to toss off several glassfuls with the general.
Yevlenko pointed to the bed where he sat. “Here she died, and lay for two weeks. Vera couldn’t get her a coffin. There were no coffins. No wood. Vera would not put her in the ground like a dog. It was very cold, much below zero, so it was not a health problem. Still, you would think it was horrible. But Vera says she just looked asleep and peaceful all that long time. Naturally the old people went first, they didn’t have the stamina.”