The Unwomanly Face of War

by Svetlana Alexievich

  September…It was a warm September, I remember a lot of sun. I remember the fruit. A lot of fruit. They sold bucketloads of Antonovka apples at the market. And that day…I was hanging the laundry on the balcony…I remember everything in detail, because from that day, everything changed in my life. Everything was shattered. Turned upside down. I was hanging the laundry…White bedsheets—I always had white sheets. My mother taught me how to wash them with sand instead of soap. We would go to the river to get sand, I knew a spot there. And so…The laundry…My neighbor called me from downstairs, shouting in a voice not her own, “Valya!! Valya!!” I rushed downstairs. My first thought was: where is my son? Back then, you know, the boys ran around in the ruins, played war and found real grenades, real mines. They blew up…They were left with no hands, no legs…I remember how we wouldn’t let them go away from us, but they were young boys, they were curious. We yelled: stay home—five minutes later they were gone. They were attracted by weapons…Especially after the war…I rushed downstairs. I went out to the yard, and there was my husband…My Ivan…My dearest little husband…Vanechka!! He had come back…He had come back from the front! Alive! I kiss him, I touch him. I stroke his shirt, his hands. He had come back…My legs were weak…But he…He stands as if turned to stone. Well, he stands stiff as cardboard. He doesn’t smile, he doesn’t hug me. As if frozen. I got scared: he was probably shell-shocked, I thought. Maybe he’s deaf. But never mind, the main thing is he’s back. I’ll look after him, I’ll nurse him. I’ve seen so many other women living with such husbands, but everyone still envied them. All this flashed through my head in a second. My legs were weak from happiness. They trembled. He’s alive! Oh, my dear, our women’s lot…

  The neighbors gathered at once. They were all happy, they all hugged each other. And he—a stone figure. Silent. They all noticed.

  I said, “Vanya…Vanechka…”

  “Let’s go inside.”

  All right, let’s go. I clung to his shoulder…Happy! I was full of joy and happiness. And proud! He sat down on a stool and remained silent.

  “Vanya…Vanechka…”

  “You know…” And he couldn’t speak. He wept.

  “Vanya…”

  We had one night. Just one night.

  The next day they came for him, knocking on the door in the morning. He was smoking and waiting; he already knew they would come. He told me very little…He didn’t have time…He had gone through Romania, Czechoslovakia. He brought back honors, but he came in fear. He had already been questioned, had been through two government interrogations. He had been marked, because he had been a prisoner. In the first weeks of the war…He was captured near Smolensk, and was supposed to shoot himself. He wanted to, I know he wanted to…They had run out of bullets—not only to shoot, he had no bullets to kill himself. He was wounded in the leg, and was captured wounded. Before his very eyes, the commissar smashed his own head with a stone…The last bullet misfired…Before his very eyes…A Soviet officer doesn’t surrender, we don’t have captives, we have traitors. Thus spoke Comrade Stalin, who renounced his own son who had been captured. My husband…Mine…The interrogators yelled at him, “Why are you alive? Why did you stay alive?” He escaped from captivity…He escaped to the woods, to the Ukrainian partisans, and when Ukraine was liberated, he asked to go to the front. He was in Czechoslovakia on Victory Day. He was recommended for a decoration…

  We had one night…If only I had known…I wanted to have another child, I wanted a daughter…

  In the morning he was taken away…They took him out of bed…I sat down at the table in the kitchen and waited for our son to wake up. Our son had just turned eleven. I knew he would wake up, and the first thing he would ask would be, “Where is our papa?” What answer could I give him? How was I to explain to the neighbors? To my mother?

  My husband came home seven years later…My son and I waited for him, through four years of war, and after the Victory, through another seven years of Kolyma.*2 Labor camp. Eleven years we waited. Our son grew up…

  I learned to keep silent…Where is your husband? Who is your father? In every questionnaire there was this question: were any of your relatives in captivity? The school didn’t accept me as a cleaning woman when I applied, they didn’t trust me to clean the floors. I became an enemy of the people, the wife of an enemy of the people. A traitor. My entire life was a waste…Before the war I was a teacher, I graduated from teachers’ college, but after the war I carried bricks at construction sites. Eh, my life…If this comes out incoherent, confused, forgive me. I rush…Sometimes, at night…How many nights I spent lying alone and telling someone my story over and over. But in the daytime I kept silent.

  Nowadays we can talk about everything. I want to…I want to ask: who is to blame that in the first months of the war millions of soldiers and officers were captured? I want to know…Who beheaded the army before the war, shooting and slandering the Red commanders—as German spies, as Japanese spies. I want to…Who trusted in the Budenny Cavalry back then, when Hitler was armed with tanks and planes? Who assured us, “Our border is secure…” Yet in the very first days, the army was counting its bullets…

  I want…I can ask now…Where is my life? Our life? But I keep silent, and my husband keeps silent. We’re afraid even now. We’re frightened…And so we’ll die scared. Bitter and ashamed…

  * * *

  *1 The rural French underground resistance forces during the German occupation, from the word for “bush” or “scrubland.”

  *2 The Kolyma region in far eastern Siberia, a vast, unsettled, subarctic territory, was made into a system of forced labor camps during the early 1930s. The prisoners were engaged in gold mining.

  And finally—Victory…

  If life for them used to be divided into peace and war, now it was into war and Victory.

  Again two different worlds, two different lives. After learning to hate, they now had to learn to love again. To recall forgotten feelings. Forgotten words.

  The person shaped by war had to be shaped by something that was not war.

  * * *

  OF THE LAST DAYS OF THE WAR, WHEN KILLING WAS REPUGNANT

  * * *

  Sofya Adamovna Kuntsevich

  MEDICAL ASSISTANT

  We were happy…

  We crossed the border—the Motherland was free. Our land…I didn’t recognize the soldiers, they were changed people. Everybody smiled. They put on clean shirts. They found flowers somewhere. I had never known such happy people. I had never seen it. I thought that when we entered Germany, I would have no pity for them, they would be shown no mercy. We had so much hatred stored up in our breasts! And hurt! Why should I feel sorry for his child? Why should I feel sorry for his mother? Why shouldn’t I destroy his house? He didn’t feel sorry…He killed…Burned…But I? I…I…I…Why? Why-y-y? I wanted to see their wives, their mothers, who had given birth to such sons. How would they look us in the eye? I wanted to look them in the eye…

  I wondered: What will become of me? Of our soldiers? We all remember…How are we going to stand it? How much strength does it take to stand it? We came to some village; children were running around, hungry, miserable. Afraid of us…They hid…I, who swore I hated them all…I gathered from our soldiers all they had left of their rations, any piece of sugar, and gave it to the German children. Of course, I didn’t forget…I remembered everything…But I couldn’t calmly look into their hungry children’s eyes. Early in the morning, German children stood in line near our kitchens, we gave them firsts and seconds.

  Every child had a bag for bread slung over one shoulder, a can for soup at their belts, and something for seconds—kasha, peas. We fed them, treated them. We even caressed them…The first time I caressed one…I got scared…Me…Me! Caressing a German child…

  My mouth went dry from agitation. But soon I got used to it. And they did too…

  Nina Petrovna Sakova

  LIEUTENANT, PARAMEDIC

  I got to German
y…All the way from Moscow…

  I was a senior paramedic in a tank regiment. We had T-34 tanks; they burned up quickly. Very scary. Before the war I had never even heard a gunshot. Once, when we were driving to the front, they were bombing some place very far away, and it felt to me as if all the ground was shaking. I was seventeen, I had just graduated from nursing school. And so it turned out, I just came and went straight into battle.

  I got out of the tank…Fire…The sky was burning…The earth was burning…The metal was burning…Here were corpses, and there someone shouted, “Save me…Help me”…Such horror gripped me! I don’t know how I didn’t run away. How did I not flee the battlefield? It’s so scary, there are no words, only feelings. Before I couldn’t stand it, but now I can watch war movies, though I still cry.

  I got to Germany…

  The first thing I saw on German soil was a handmade sign, right by the road: “Here she is—accursed Germany!”

  We entered a village…The shutters were all closed. They had dropped everything and fled on bicycles. Goebbels had persuaded them that the Russians would come and would hack, stab, slaughter. We opened the doors of the houses; there was no one, or they all lay killed or poisoned. Children lay there. Shot, poisoned…What did we feel? Joy, that we had defeated them, and that now they were suffering the way we did. A feeling of vengeance. But we felt sorry for the children…

  We found an old woman.

  I say to her, “We won.”

  She starts to cry: “I have two sons who died in Russia.”

  “And who is to blame? So many of us died!”

  She answers, “Hitler…”

  “Hitler didn’t decide by himself. It’s your children, husbands…”

  Then she fell silent.

  I got to Germany…

  I wanted to tell my mother…But my mother died of starvation during the war. They had no bread, no salt, they had nothing. And my brother was lying in the hospital badly wounded. Only my sister waited for me at home. She wrote that when our troops entered Orel, she grabbed all the soldier girls by the overcoat. She thought I would surely be there. I had to come back…

  Anastasia Vasilyevna Voropaeva

  CORPORAL, SEARCHLIGHT OPERATOR

  The roads of Victory…

  You can’t imagine the roads of Victory! Freed prisoners went with carts, bundles, national flags. Russians, Poles, French, Czechs…They all intermingled, each going his own way. They all embraced us. Kissed us.

  I met some young Russian girls. I started talking to them, and they told me…One of them was pregnant. The prettiest one. She had been raped by the boss they worked for. He had forced her to live with him. She went along crying and beating her own stomach: “I won’t bring a Fritz home! I won’t!” They tried to reason with her…But she hanged herself…Along with her little Fritz…

  It was back then that you should have listened to us—listened and recorded it. It’s a pity that no one thought of hearing us out then; everyone just repeated the word “Victory,” and the rest seemed unimportant.

  One day a friend and I were riding bikes. A German woman was walking along; I believe she had three children—two in a baby carriage, one by her side, holding on to her skirt. She was so exhausted. And so, you see, she walks up to us, goes on her knees and bows. Like this…To the ground…We didn’t understand what she said. And she puts her hand to her heart, and points at her children. We more or less understood, she was crying, bowing, and thanking us that her children had stayed alive…

  She was somebody’s wife. Her husband probably fought on the eastern front…In Russia…

  A. Ratkina

  JUNIOR SERGEANT, TELEPHONE OPERATOR

  One of our officers fell in love with a German girl…

  Our superiors heard about it…He was demoted and sent to the rear. If he had raped her…That…Of course, it happened…Not many write about it, but that’s the law of war. The men spent so many years without women, and of course, there was hatred. When we entered a town or a village, for the first three days there was looting and…Well, in secret, naturally…You understand…After three days you could wind up in court. But in the heat of the moment…For three days they drank and…And here—love. The officer himself admitted it before the special section—love. Of course, that was treason…To fall in love with a German—the daughter or wife of the enemy? That’s…And…Well, in short, they took away the photographs, her address. Of course…

  I remember…Of course, I remember a German woman who had been raped. She was lying naked, with a grenade stuck between her legs…Now I feel ashamed, but then I didn’t. Feelings change, of course. In the first days we had one feeling, and afterward another…After several months…Five German girls came to our battalion…To our commander. They were weeping…The gynecologist examined them: they had wounds. Jagged wounds. Their underwear was all bloody…They had been raped all night long. The soldiers stood in line…

  Don’t record this…Switch off the tape recorder…It’s true! It’s all true!…We formed up our battalion…We told those German girls: go and look, and if you recognize someone, we’ll shoot him on the spot. We won’t consider his rank. We’re ashamed! But they sat there and wept. They didn’t want to…They didn’t want more blood. So they said…Then each one got a loaf of bread. Of course, all of this is war…Of course…

  You think it was easy to forgive? To see intact…white…houses with tiled roofs. With roses…I myself wanted to hurt them…Of course…I wanted to see their tears…It was impossible to become good all at once. Fair and kind. As good as you are now. To pity them. That would take me dozens of years…

  Aglaia Borisovna Nesteruk

  SERGEANT, LIAISON

  Our native land was liberated…Dying became totally unbearable, burials became totally unbearable. People died for a foreign land, were buried in a foreign land. They explained to us that the enemy had to be finished off. The enemy was still dangerous…We all understood…But it was such a pity to die…Nobody wanted to…

  I remembered many signs along the road. They looked like crosses: “Here she is—accursed Germany!” Everybody remembered that sign…

  And everybody was waiting for that moment…Now we’ll understand…Now we’ll see…Where do they come from? What is their land like, their houses? Could it be that they are ordinary people? That they lived ordinary lives? At the front, I couldn’t imagine ever being able to read Heine’s poems again. My beloved Goethe. I could never again listen to Wagner…Before the war, I grew up in a family of musicians, I loved German music—Bach, Beethoven. The great Bach! I crossed all of this out of my world. Then we saw, they showed us the crematoriums…Auschwitz…Heaps of women’s clothing, children’s shoes…Gray ash…They spread it on the fields, under the cabbage. Under the lettuce…I couldn’t listen to German music anymore…A lot of time passed before I went back to Bach. Began to play Mozart.

  Finally, we were on their land…The first thing that struck us was the good roads. The big farmhouses…Flowerpots, pretty curtains in the windows, even in the barns. White tablecloths in the houses. Expensive tableware. Porcelain. There I saw a washing machine for the first time…We couldn’t understand why they had to fight if they lived so well. Our people huddled in dugouts, while they had white tablecloths. Coffee in small cups…I had only seen them in the museum. Those small cups…I forgot to tell you about one shocking thing, we were all shocked…We were attacking, and took the first German trenches…We jumped in, and there was still warm coffee in thermos bottles. The smell of coffee…Biscuits. White sheets. Clean towels. Toilet paper…We didn’t have any of that. What sheets? We slept on straw, on sticks. Other times we went for two or three days without warm food. And our soldiers shot at those thermos bottles…At that coffee…

  In German houses I saw coffee sets shattered by bullets. Flowerpots. Pillows…Baby carriages…But still we couldn’t do to them what they had done to us. Force them to suffer the way we suffered.

  It was hard for us
to understand where their hatred came from. Ours was understandable. But theirs?

  We got permission to send packages home. Soap, sugar…Someone sent shoes. Germans have sturdy shoes, watches, leather goods. Everybody looked for watches. I couldn’t, I was disgusted. I didn’t want to take anything from them, though I knew that my mother and my sisters were living with strangers. Our house had been burned down. When I returned home, I told my mother, and she hugged me: “I, too, couldn’t have taken anything from them. They killed our papa.”

  Only dozens of years after the war did I take a small volume of Heine in my hands. And the recordings of German composers that I had loved before the war…

  Albina Alexandrovna Gantimurova

  SERGEANT MAJOR, SCOUT

  This was already in Berlin…This incident happened to me: I was walking down the street, and a boy came running toward me with a submachine gun—a Volkssturm.*1 The war was already over. The last days. My hand was on my submachine gun. Ready. He looked at me, blinked, and burst into tears. I couldn’t believe it—I was in tears, too. I felt so sorry for him; there was this kid standing with his stupid submachine gun. And I shoved him toward a wrecked building, under the gateway: “Hide,” I said. He was afraid I was going to shoot him right then—I was wearing a hat, it wasn’t clear if I was a girl or a man. He took my hand. He cried! I patted his head. He was dumbstruck. It was war after all…I was dumbstruck myself! I had hated them for the entire war! Fair or unfair, it’s still disgusting to kill, especially in the last days of the war…