Lilya Mikhailovna Butko
SURGICAL NURSE
I regret…I didn’t fulfill one request…
They brought a wounded German to our hospital. I think he was a pilot. His thigh was crushed, and gangrene had set in. Some kind of pity took hold of me. He lay there and kept silent.
I understood a little German. I asked him, “Do you want to drink?”
“No.”
The other wounded men knew there was a wounded German in the ward. He was lying separately. I went to him, and they got indignant: “So you bring water to the enemy?”
“He’s dying…I have to help him…”
His leg was all blue, nothing could be done. Infection devours a man in no time; the man burns out overnight.
I gave him water, and he looked at me and suddenly said, “Hitler kaputt!”
That was in 1942. We were encircled near Kharkov.
I asked, “Why?”
“Hitler kaputt!”
Then I answered, “That’s what you say and think now, because you’re lying here. But there you were killing…”
He: “I didn’t shoot, I didn’t kill. They made me. But I didn’t shoot…”
“Everybody makes excuses like that when they’re captured.”
And suddenly he asks me, “I really…really…beg of you, Frau…” and he hands me a packet of photographs. He shows me: there is his mother, himself, his brother, sisters…A beautiful picture. He writes down an address on the other side. “You will get there. You will!” This was a German speaking, in 1942, near Kharkov. “So please drop this in the mailbox.”
He wrote the address on one photograph, but he had an envelope full of them. And I carried those photographs around for a long time. I was upset when I lost them during a heavy bombardment. By the time we got to Germany, the envelope was gone…
Nina Vasilyevna Ilinskaya
NURSE
I remember a battle…
In that battle we captured many Germans. Some of them were wounded. We bandaged their wounds; they moaned like our lads did. And it was hot…Scorching hot! We found a teapot and gave them water. In the open. We were under fire. An order: quickly entrench and camouflage yourselves.
We started digging trenches. The Germans stared. We explained to them: so, help us dig, get to work. When they understood what we wanted from them, they looked at us with horror; they took it that once they dug those pits, we would stand them by those pits and shoot them. They expected…You should have seen their horrified looks as they dug…Their faces…
And when they saw that we bandaged them, gave them water, and told them to hide in the trenches they had dug, they couldn’t come to their senses, they were at a loss…One German started crying…He was an older man. He cried and didn’t hide his tears from anyone…
* * *
OF A COMPOSITION WITH CHILDISH MISTAKES AND COMIC MOVIES
* * *
Vera Iosifovna Khoreva
ARMY SURGEON
The war was ending…
The political commissar called me. “Vera Iosifovna, you will have to work with the German wounded.”
By that time my two brothers had already been killed. “I won’t.”
“But, you understand, it’s necessary.”
“I’m unable. I lost two brothers. I can’t stand them, I’m ready to kill them, not treat them. Try to understand me…”
“It’s an order.”
“If it’s an order, I’ll obey. I’m a soldier.”
I treated those wounded, did everything I had to, but it was hard for me. To touch them, to ease their pain. That’s when I got my first gray hair. Right then. I did everything with them: operated, fed, anesthetized—everything I was supposed to. One thing only I couldn’t do—that was the evening rounds. In the morning you had to bandage the wounded, take their pulse—in short, you proceeded like a doctor—but during the evening rounds you had to talk to the patients, ask how they felt. That I couldn’t do. Bandage, operate—that I could do, but talk with them—no. I warned the commissar straight off: “I won’t do the evening rounds for them…”
Ekaterina Petrovna Shalygina
NURSE
In Germany…In our hospitals we already had many wounded Germans…
I remember my first wounded German. He had gangrene; we amputated his leg…And he lay in my ward…
In the evening, they said to me, “Katya, go check on your German.”
I went. Maybe a hemorrhage, or something. He lay there, awake. He had no temperature, nothing. He just stared and stared, and then pulled out such a tiny pistol: “Here…”
He spoke German. I don’t remember now, but back then I understood as much as I’d kept from my school lessons.
“Here…” he said. “I wanted to kill you, but now you kill me.”
Meaning that we had saved him. He killed us, and we saved him. But I couldn’t tell him the truth, that he was dying…
I left the ward and noticed unexpectedly that I was in tears…
Maria Anatolyevna Flerovskaya
POLITICAL WORKER
I might have had an encounter…I was afraid of that encounter…
When I was in school…I studied in a school with a German orientation…German school children would come to visit us. In Moscow. We went with them to the theater, we sang together. One of those German boys…He sang so well. We became friends. I even fell in love with him…And so, all through the war I thought: what if I meet him and recognize him? Could he also be among them? I’m very emotional, ever since I was a child, I’m very impressionable. Terribly!
One day I was walking in the field, the battle had just ended…We picked up our dead, only Germans were left…It seemed to me he was lying there…A similar-looking young man…On our land…I stood over him for a while…
A. C—va
ANTIAIRCRAFT GUNNER
You want to know the truth? I’m scared of it myself…
One of our soldiers…How can I explain this to you? His whole family had died. He…Nerves…Maybe he was drunk? The closer victory came, the more they drank. There was always wine to be found in the houses and basements. Schnapps. They drank and drank. He grabbed a submachine gun and ran into a German house…He unloaded the entire magazine…Nobody had time to stop him. We ran…But in the house, only corpses were left…Children lay there…They took away his submachine gun and tied him up. He cursed his head off: “Let me shoot myself!”
He was arrested and tried—and shot. I felt sorry for him. Everybody felt sorry for him. He had fought the entire war. As far as Berlin…
Are you allowed to write about this? Before, you weren’t…
Xenia Klimentyevna Belko
LABOR-FRONT FIGHTER
The war waited for me…
Just as I turned eighteen…They brought me a written notice: present yourself to the district committee, bring three days’ worth of food, a set of underwear, a mug, a spoon. It was called mobilization for the labor front.
They brought us to the town of Novotroitsk, in the Orenburg region. We started working in a factory. It was so freezing cold that my coat would freeze in our room; you took it and it was heavy as a log. We worked for four years without a vacation, without holidays.
We waited and waited for the war to end. Full stop. At three o’clock in the morning, there was noise in the dormitory; the director of the factory came, along with the other superiors. “Victory!” I didn’t have the strength to get up from my bunk. They sat me up, but I fell back. For the whole day they couldn’t get me up. I was paralyzed from joy, from strong emotions. I only stood up the next day…I went outside, I wanted to hug and kiss each and every one…
Elena Pavlovna Shalova
KOMSOMOL LEADER OF AN INFANTRY BATTALION
What a beautiful word—victory…
I wrote my name on the Reichstag…I wrote with charcoal, with what was at hand: “You were defeated by a Russian girl from Saratov.” Everybody left something on the wall, some wo
rds. Confessions and curses…
Victory! My girlfriends asked me, “What do you want to be?” And we were so hungry during the war…Unbearably…We wanted to eat our fill at least once. I had a dream—when I got my first postwar salary, I would buy a big box of cookies. What do I want to be after the war? A cook, of course. I still work in the public food industry.
A second question: “When will you get married?” As soon as possible…I dreamed of kissing. I wanted terribly to kiss…I also wanted to sing. To sing! There…
Tamara Ustinovna Vorobeykova
UNDERGROUND FIGHTER
I learned how to shoot, throw grenades…Lay mines. Give first aid…
But in four years…During the war I forgot all the rules of grammar. The entire school program. I could disassemble a submachine gun with my eyes closed, but I wrote my application essay to the institute with childish mistakes and barely any commas. I was saved by my military decorations; I was accepted at the institute. I began to study. I read books and didn’t understand them, read poems and didn’t understand them. I’d forgotten those words…
At night I had nightmares: SS officers, dogs barking, cries of agony. When dying, men often whisper something, and that is even more frightening than their cries. Everything came back to me…A man was being led out to execution…In his eyes there was fear. You could see that he didn’t believe it, until the last moment he didn’t believe it. And curiosity, there was curiosity as well. He stood facing the submachine gun, and at the last moment he covered himself with his hands. He covered his face…In the mornings, my head was swollen from the shouting…
During the war I never thought about anything, but after it I began to think.
Going over it all…It all came back again and again…I couldn’t sleep…The doctors forbade me to study. But the girls—my roommates in the dormitory—told me to forget about the doctors, and took me under their patronage. Every night they took turns dragging me to the movies to watch a comedy. “You have to learn to laugh. To laugh a lot.” Whether I wanted or not, they dragged me. There weren’t many comedies, and I watched each one a hundred times, a hundred times at a minimum. At first when I laughed it was like crying…
But the nightmares went away. I was able to study…
* * *
OF THE MOTHERLAND, STALIN, AND RED CLOTH
* * *
Tamara Ivanovna Kuraeva
NURSE
It was spring…
Young boys died, they died in the spring…In March, in April…
I remember that in spring, at the time when the gardens were in bloom and everyone was waiting for victory, burying people was harder than ever. Even if others have already said it, write it down again. I remember it so well…
For two and a half years I was at the front. My hands bandaged and washed thousands of wounds…Bandages and more bandages…Once, as I went to change my headscarf, I leaned against the window frame and dozed off. I came to myself feeling refreshed. I ran into the doctor, and he started scolding me. I didn’t understand anything…He went off, after giving me two extra assignments, and my workmate explained to me what it was about: I had been absent for over an hour. It turned out I had fallen asleep.
Nowadays I’m in poor health, my nerves are weak. When someone asks me, “What decorations did you receive?” I’m embarrassed to admit I don’t have any decorations; there was no time to give me decorations. Maybe there was no time because many of us fought in the war and we each did what we could…We each did our best…How could everyone receive decorations? But we all received the greatest decoration of all—the ninth of May. Victory Day!
I remember an unusual death…At the time, no one could figure it out. We were busy with other things…But I remember…One of our captains died on the first day we set foot on German soil. We knew that his entire family had died during the occupation. He was a brave man, he was so looking forward to…He was afraid to die before that. Not to live till the day when he would see their land, their misery, their sorrow. See them cry, see them suffer…See broken stones in place of their homes…He died just like that, not wounded, nothing. He got there, looked—and died.
Even now, when I remember it, I wonder: why did he die?
Maria Yakovlevna Yezhova
LIEUTENANT OF THE GUARDS, COMMANDER OF A MEDICAL PLATOON
I asked to go to the front straight from the train…At once…A unit was leaving—I joined it. At the time, I figured that from the front, I would come home sooner, if only by a day, than from the rear. I left my mother at home. Even now, our girls remember: “She wouldn’t stay at the medical platoon.” And it’s true, I would come to the medical platoon, wash up, grab some clean clothes—and go back to my trench. At the front line. I didn’t think about myself. You crawl, you run…Only the smell of blood…I couldn’t get used to the smell of blood…
After the war, I became a midwife in a maternity ward—but I didn’t stay there for long. Not for long…For a short while…I’m allergic to the smell of blood; my body simply wouldn’t accept it…I had seen so much blood during the war that I couldn’t stand it anymore. My body wouldn’t accept it anymore. I left Maternity and went to Emergency Aid. I got nettle rash, I was suffocating.
I sewed a blouse from a piece of red cloth, and by the next day some sort of red spots had spread all over my hands. Blisters. No red cloth, no red flowers—roses or carnations, my body wouldn’t accept it. Nothing red, nothing that had the color of blood…Even now I have nothing red in my house. You won’t find anything. Human blood is very bright, I have never seen such a bright color, not in nature, not in any painting. Pomegranate juice is somewhat similar, but not entirely. Ripe pomegranate…
Elena Borisovna Zvyagintseva
PRIVATE, ARMORER
Oh, oh, oh…Ah, ah, ah…Everybody oh’d and ah’d at how colorful I was. Jewelry all over. Even during the war I was like that. Not warlike. I wore all kinds of baubles…It’s a good thing our commander was, as we’d say now, a democrat. Not from the barracks, but from the university. Just imagine, an assistant professor. With good manners. At that time…A rare bird…A rare bird had flown to us…
I love wearing rings, even cheap ones, so long as there are lots of them, on both hands. I like good perfume. Fashionable. All kinds of trinkets. Various and many. In our family they always laughed, “What should we give to our crazy Lenka for her birthday? A ring, of course.” After the war, my brother made me my first ring out of a tin can. And a pendant out of a piece of green bottle glass that he polished. And another one of light brown glass.
I hang everything shiny on myself, like a magpie. Nobody believes that I was in the war. I myself can’t believe it anymore. At this very moment, as we sit and talk, I don’t believe it. But in that box lies the Order of the Red Star…The most elegant medal…Isn’t it pretty? They gave it to me on purpose. Ha, ha, ha…To be serious…For history, right? This thing of yours is recording…So, it’s for history…I’ll say this: if you’re not a woman, you can’t survive war. I never envied men. Not in my childhood, not in my youth. Not during the war. I was always glad to be a woman. People say that weapons—submachine guns, pistols—are beautiful, that they conceal many human thoughts, passions, but I never found them beautiful. I’ve seen the admiration of men looking at a fine pistol; I find it incomprehensible. I’m a woman.
Why did I stay single? I had wooers. Wooers enough…But here I am single. I have fun by myself. All my friends are young. I love youth. I’m afraid of growing old more than of the war. You came too late…I think about old age now, not about the war…
So that thing of yours is recording? For history?
Rita Mikhailovna Okunevskaya
PRIVATE, SAPPER-MINER
I’m home…At home everybody is alive…Mama saved everybody: grandpa and grandma, my little sister and my brother. And I came back…
A year later our papa came back. Papa returned with great decorations; I brought back a decoration and two medals. But in ou
r family we agree on this: the greatest hero was mama. She saved everybody. She saved our family, saved our home. She fought the most terrible war. Papa never wore his decorations and ribbons; he considered it shameful to show off in front of mama. Embarrassing. Mama doesn’t have any awards…
Never in my life did I love anyone as I did my mama…
Bella Isaakovna Epstein
SERGEANT, SNIPER
I came back different…For a long time I had an abnormal relation with death. Strange, I would say…
They were inaugurating the first streetcar in Minsk, and I rode on that streetcar. Suddenly the streetcar stopped, everybody shouted, women cried, “A man’s been killed! A man’s been killed!” And I sat alone in the car. I couldn’t understand why everybody was crying. I didn’t feel it was terrible. I had seen so many people killed at the front…I didn’t react. I got used to living among them. The dead were always nearby…We smoked near them, we ate. We talked. They were not somewhere out there, not in the ground, like in peacetime, but always right here. With us.
And then that feeling returned, again I felt frightened when I saw a dead man. In a coffin. After several years, that feeling returned. I became normal…Like the others…
Natalia Alexandrovna Kupriyanova
SURGICAL NURSE
This happened before the war…
I was at the theater. During the intermission, when the lights went on, I saw…Everyone saw him…There was a burst of applause. Thunder! Stalin was sitting in the government loge. My father had been arrested, my elder brother had disappeared in the camps, but despite that I felt so ecstatic that tears poured from my eyes. I was swooning with happiness! The whole room…The whole room stood up! We stood and applauded for ten minutes.
The Unwomanly Face of War Page 33