The Unwomanly Face of War

by Svetlana Alexievich

  Olya…Olya, too, was all in tears…She found me at night…All the Cossacks wept when they saw us meet. We hung on each other’s necks, unable to let go. And then we realized that it was impossible, it was unbearable for us to fight together. Better to separate. Our hearts wouldn’t be able to stand it if one of us was killed before the other’s eyes. We decided that I should ask to be transferred to another squadron. But how to part? How?

  Afterward we fought separately, first in different squadrons, later even in different divisions. We would just send greetings, if the chance came along, to find out whether the other was alive…Death watched our every step. Lay in wait…I remember it was near Ararat…We were camped in the sands. Ararat had been taken by the Germans. It was Christmas, and the Germans were celebrating. A squadron was chosen and a forty-millimeter battery. We set out at around five and kept moving all night. At dawn we met with our scouts, who had set out earlier.

  The village lay at the foot of a hill…As if in a bowl…The Germans never thought we could get through such sand, and they set up very little defense. We passed through their rear very quietly. We descended the hill, captured the sentries, and burst into this village, flew into it. The Germans came running out completely naked, only with submachine guns in their hands. There were Christmas trees standing around…they were all drunk…And in every yard there were no less than two or three tanks. Tankettes stood there, armored vehicles…All their machinery. We destroyed it on the spot, and there was such shooting, such noise, such panic…Everybody rushed about…The situation was such that each one was afraid of hitting his own men. Everything was on fire…The Christmas trees, too, were on fire…

  I had eight wounded men…I helped them up the hill…But we committed one blunder: we didn’t cut the enemy’s communications. And the German artillery blanketed us with both mortar and long-range fire. I quickly put my wounded on an ambulance wagon, and they drove off…And before my eyes a shell landed on the wagon, and it was blown to pieces. When I looked, there was only one man left alive there. And the Germans were already going up the hill…The wounded man begged, “Leave me, nurse…Leave me, nurse…I’m dying…” His stomach was ripped open…His guts…All that…He gathered them himself and stuffed them back in…

  I thought my horse was bloody because of this wounded man, but then I looked: he was also wounded in the side. I used up a whole individual kit on him. I had several pieces of sugar left; I gave him the sugar. There was shooting on all sides now; you couldn’t tell where the Germans were and where ours. You go ten yards and run into wounded men…I thought: I’ve got to find a wagon and pick them all up. So I rode on, and I saw the slope, and at the foot of it three roads: this way and that way and also straight. I was at a loss…Which way to go? I had been holding the bridle firmly; the horse went wherever I pointed him. Well, so here, I don’t know, some instinct told me, or I’d heard somewhere, that horses sense the road, so before that fork I let go of the bridle, and the horse went in a completely different direction from where I was going to go. He went on and on…

  I sit there with no strength left; I no longer care where he goes. What will be will be. So he goes on and on, and then more and more briskly, he wags his head, I’ve picked up the bridle again, I’m holding it. I bend down and put my hand to his wound. He goes more and more cheerfully, then: whinny-whinny-whinny…As if he’s heard somebody. I was worried it might be the Germans. I decided to set the horse free first, but then I saw a fresh trail: hoof prints, the wheels of a machine-gun cart; no less than fifty people had passed this way. Another two or three hundred meters and my horse ran smack into a wagon. There were wounded men in the wagon, and here I saw the remainder of our squadron.

  Aid was already arriving, wagons, machine-gun carts…The order was to pick up everybody. Under bullets, under artillery fire, we picked them all up to a man—the wounded and the dead. I also rode in the cart. Everybody was there, even the man wounded in the stomach. We took them all. Only the dead horses were left behind. It was already morning; we rode on and saw—a whole herd lying there. Beautiful, strong horses…The wind stirred their manes…

  —

  One wall of the big room we’re sitting in is all covered with enlarged prewar and wartime photos of the sisters. Here they are still schoolgirls—hats, flowers. The snapshot was taken two weeks before the start of the war. Ordinary childish faces, ready to laugh, slightly restrained by the importance of the moment and the wish to look adult. Now they are already in Cossack coats, cavalry capes. The picture was taken in 1942. A year’s difference, but the face is not the same, the person is not the same. And this snapshot Zinaida Vasilyevna sent to her mother from the front: on her army shirt the first medal “For Courage.” This one shows them both on Victory Day…I memorize the movement of the face: from soft, childish features to a confident woman’s gaze, even a certain toughness, severity. It is hard to believe that this change took place in a few months, or years. Ordinary time performs this task much more slowly and imperceptibly. A human face is molded over a long time. The soul is slowly traced on it.

  But the war quickly created its image of people. Painted its own portraits.

  Olga Vasilyevna

  We took a big village. Some three hundred houses. There was an abandoned German infirmary in the building of the local hospital. The first thing I saw was a big hole dug in the yard and some patients lying in it shot—before leaving, the Germans themselves shot their own wounded. They evidently decided that we would do it anyway. That we would do to their wounded what they did to ours. Only one ward was left, which they evidently didn’t get to, didn’t have time, or maybe they were abandoned because they all had no legs.

  When we entered this ward they looked at us with hatred: they evidently thought we came to kill them. The interpreter said that we don’t kill the wounded, we treat them. Then one of them even started to make demands: they’d had nothing to eat for three days, their bandages hadn’t been changed for three days. I looked—in fact, it was horrible. They hadn’t seen a doctor for a long time. The wounds were festering, the bandages were growing into the flesh.

  Did you pity them?

  I can’t call what I felt then pity. After all, pity is compassion. That I didn’t feel. It was something else…There was an incident with us…a soldier hit a prisoner…I found that intolerable, and I intervened, though I understood…It was a cry from his soul…He knew me, he was older, of course, he cursed. But he stopped hitting…He swore at me, “Have you forgotten, fuck it all! Have you forgotten how they, fuck it all…” I hadn’t forgotten anything. I remembered those boots…When they set up in front of their trenches a row of boots with cut-off legs in them. It was in winter, they stood there like stakes…Those boots…That was all we saw of our comrades…What was left of them…

  I remember some sailors coming to help us…Many of them were blown up by mines; we had stumbled into a big minefield. These sailors lay there for a long time. In the sun…The corpses puffed up, and because of their striped jerseys they looked like watermelons. Big watermelons on a big field. Giant ones.

  I hadn’t forgotten, I hadn’t forgotten anything. But I couldn’t hit a prisoner, if only because he was already defenseless. Everybody decided that for himself, and it was important.

  Zinaida Vasilyevna

  In battle near Budapest…It was winter…I was carrying a wounded sergeant, the commander of a machine-gun crew. I was wearing trousers and a warm jacket, a flap-eared cap on my head. I’m carrying him and I see this blackish snow…charred…I realize that it’s a deep shell hole, which is what I need. I go down into the hole and there’s someone alive—I sense he’s alive, and I hear a metallic scraping…I turn and there’s a wounded German officer, wounded in the legs, lying there and aiming his submachine gun at me…My hair had slipped from under my cap, and I also had a medical kit on my shoulder with a red cross…When I turned, he saw my face, realized I was a girl, and went, “Ha-a-ah!” His nerves relaxed, and he threw aside h
is submachine gun. He no longer cared…

  And so the three of us are in the same hole—our wounded man, me, and this German. The hole is small, our legs touch. I’m all covered with their blood; our blood mingles. The German has such huge eyes, and he looks at me with those eyes. What am I going to do? Cursed fascist! He threw the submachine gun aside at once, you see? That scene…Our wounded man doesn’t understand what’s going on, he clutches his pistol…reaches out and wants to strangle him…But the German just stares at me…I remember those eyes even now…I’m bandaging our man, and the other one’s lying in blood, he’s losing blood, one of his legs is completely smashed. A little longer and he’ll die. I see that very well. And, before I finished bandaging our man, I tore up the German’s clothes, twisted them into a tourniquet, bandaged him, and then went back to bandaging ours. The German says, “Gut…Gut…” He keeps repeating that word. Our wounded man, before he lost consciousness, shouted something at me…threatened…I caressed him, soothed him. When the ambulance came, I pulled them both out…and put them in. The German, too. You see?

  Olga Vasilyevna

  When men saw a woman at the front line, their faces became different; even the sound of a woman’s voice transformed them. Once during the night I sat by a dugout and began to sing softly. I thought everybody was asleep and no one would hear me, but in the morning the commander said to me, “We didn’t sleep. Such longing for a woman’s voice…”

  I was bandaging a tankman…The battle goes on, the pounding. He asked, “What’s your name, girl?” He even paid me some compliment. It felt so strange to pronounce my name, Olya, amid this pounding, this horror…I always tried to look neat, trim. People often said to me, “Lord, how can she have been in battle, she’s so clean.” I was very afraid that if I was killed, I’d lie there looking unattractive. I saw many girls killed…In mud, in water…Well…How shall I…I didn’t want to die like that. Sometimes I hid from shelling, not so much thinking they won’t kill me this way, but just to hide my face. My hands. I think all our girls thought about it. And the men laughed at us, they thought it was funny. Meaning, it’s not death they think about, but devil knows what, something stupid. Women’s nonsense.

  Zinaida Vasilyevna

  Death can’t be tamed…No…You can’t get used to it…We were retreating from the Germans into the mountains. We had to leave five men badly wounded in the stomach. These wounds were deadly, another day or two and they would all die. We couldn’t take them along, we had nothing to transport them in. They left me and another medical assistant, Oksanochka, with them in a shed, promising, “We’ll come back in two days and take you.” They came back in three days. We were with these wounded men for three days. They were fully conscious, robust men. They didn’t want to die…And we had only some powders, nothing else…They asked to drink all the time, but they weren’t allowed to drink. Some understood, but others cursed. There was all this foul language. One flung a mug at me, another a boot. Those were the most terrible days of my life. They were dying in front of our eyes, one after another, and we just looked on…

  The first award…They awarded me the medal “For Valor.” But I didn’t go to collect it. I was offended. By God, it was funny! You see why? My friend was awarded the medal “For Military Services” and I got the medal “For Valor.” She had only been in one battle, and I had already been at the battle of Kushchevskaya Station and several other operations. So I was offended: she got “Military Services” for one battle—a lot of service—and I only “For Valor,” as if I had showed myself only once. The commander came and laughed when he found out what was the matter. He explained that “For Valor” was the biggest medal, almost an order.

  Near Makeevka, in the Donbas region, I was wounded in the hip. A little fragment got in and sat there like a little stone. I felt blood, I folded an individual gauze pad and put it there. And I went on running around bandaging. I was embarrassed to tell anybody, a girl wounded, and where—in a buttock. In the behind…When you’re sixteen, it’s embarrassing to tell anybody. It’s awkward to admit it. So I ran all over, bandaging, until I fainted from loss of blood. My boots were full of blood…

  Our soldiers looked and evidently decided I had been killed. The orderlies would come and pick me up. The fighting moved on. A little longer, and I would have died. But some tankmen on reconnaissance came and saw a girl on the battlefield. I lay there without my cap, the cap had rolled off. They saw blood flowing from under me, meaning I was alive. They brought me to the medical battalion. From there to the hospital, first one, then another. Ahh…A quick end to my war…Six months later they transferred me to the reserves for reasons of health. I was eighteen…No longer in good health: wounded three times, plus a heavy concussion. But I was a young girl, and of course I concealed it. The wounds I talked about, but the concussion I concealed. Yet I did feel the aftereffects. I was hospitalized again. They gave me disability…And what did I do? I tore up those papers and threw them out; I didn’t even go to get some money. For that I’d have had to go through all kinds of commissions, tell about myself: when I got the concussion, when I got wounded. Where.

  In the hospital, the squadron commander and the sergeant major came to visit me. I liked the commander very much during the war, but at the time he didn’t notice me. A handsome man, the uniform suited him very well. All men looked good in uniform. And what did women look like? In trousers, braids weren’t allowed, we all had boys’ haircuts. Only toward the end of the war did they allow us to have some sort of hairstyle, and not to cut it short. In the hospital my hair grew back. I could braid it, I looked better, and they…My God, it’s so funny! They both fell in love with me…Just like that! We had gone through the whole war together, and there had been nothing of the sort, and now both of them, the squadron commander and the sergeant major, proposed to me. Love! Love…How we all wanted love! Happiness!

  That was the end of 1945…

  After the war we wanted to forget it as soon as possible. In this our father helped me and my sister. He was a wise man. He took our medals, decorations, official acknowledgments, put it all away, and said, “There was a war, you fought. Now forget it. There was a war, but now a new life is beginning. Put on some nice shoes. You’re both beautiful girls…You should study, you should get married.”

  Olya somehow couldn’t get used to this different life all at once. She was proud. She didn’t want to take off her soldier’s overcoat. And I remember how father said to mother, “It’s my fault that the girls went to war at such a young age. I hope it hasn’t broken them…Otherwise they’ll be at war all their lives.”

  They gave me some sort of special coupons for my decorations and medals, so that I could go to the military store and buy myself something. I bought a pair of rubber boots that were fashionable then, a coat, a dress, some ankle shoes. I decided to sell the overcoat. I went to the market…I came in a light-colored summer dress…With my hair pinned up…And what did I see there? Young fellows without arms, without legs…All fighting men…With orders, medals…Whoever has hands sells homemade spoons. Women’s bras, underpants. Another…without arms, without legs…sits bathed in tears. Begs for small change…There were no wheelchairs then; they rolled around on homemade platforms, pushing them with their hands, if they had them. Some are drunk. Singing about an orphan, “Forgotten, abandoned.” Such scenes. I left, I didn’t sell my overcoat. And all the while I lived in Moscow, probably five years, I couldn’t go to the market. I was afraid one of these cripples would recognize me and shout, “Why did you pull me out of the fire then? Why did you save me?” I remembered a young lieutenant…His legs…One was cut off by shrapnel, the other still hung on by something. I bandaged him…under the bombs…And he shouted at me, “Don’t drag it out! Finish me off! Finish me…I order you…” You see? I was always afraid of meeting that lieutenant…

  When I was in the hospital, there was a handsome young fellow. The tankman Misha…Nobody knew his last name, but everybody knew he was Misha�
��They amputated his legs and his right arm, all he had was the left one. They amputated high up by the hip, so he couldn’t have prostheses. They rolled him around in a wheelchair. They made a high wheelchair specially for him and rolled him around, anyone who could. Many civilians came to the hospital to help with the care, especially of such badly wounded men as Misha. Women and schoolchildren. Even young children. This Misha was carried in their arms. And he didn’t lose heart. He wanted so much to live! He was only nineteen, he hadn’t lived at all yet. I don’t remember whether he had any family, but he knew that he wouldn’t be abandoned in his plight; he believed that he wouldn’t be forgotten. Of course the war went all over our land, there was devastation everywhere. When we liberated villages, they were all burned down. All people had left was the land. Nothing but the land.

  My sister and I did not become doctors, though that had been our dream before the war. We could have gone to medical school without exams; we had the right to do that as war veterans. But we had seen so much human suffering, so many deaths. We couldn’t imagine seeing more of it again…Even thirty years later I talked my daughter out of studying medicine, though she wanted to very much. After decades…As soon as I close my eyes I see…Spring…We go around some field, just after a battle, looking for the wounded. The field is trampled all over. I come upon two dead men—a young soldier of ours and a young German. Lying in young wheat and looking into the sky…No signs of death on them yet. Just looking into the sky…I still remember those eyes…