“Where’s your house?”
She makes a graceful wave with her hand, as if she were dancing: “It’s the last one on that row, near the willows.”
“That’s a long way,” I say, taking her elbow.
“What else can I do?”
“Well, be careful. If anything comes over just drop to the ground. I’ll stop by later and check if you’re OK.”
She trips lightly up the stairs and disappears.
We’ve used up another roll of paper. The sky is filled with noise, from us and from the Germans. Airplane engines are roaring and whining up above as they wheel and dive. Someone’s going to get it. And they’re firing machine guns at one another.
I hear a wild shout from the entrance up above: “Where’s the battery commander?”
Our duty linesman runs down the steps: “Comrade Senior Lieutenant! Someone wants you outside.”
I go up the stairs and see a sergeant, well turned out and looking as if he’s from some headquarters. His submachine gun, muzzle down, is slung from his shoulder. He’s very brisk and in a great hurry: “Comrade Senior Lieutenant, the brigade commander wants you! Right away!”
“Where do I go?”
“It’s urgent! We have to run. I’ll take you there.”
And so off we run, at full speed. My pistol slaps against my thigh and I have to clap my hand over it. We run past all the potholes on the track leading to Zhelyabuga Village. Now I see a Willys jeep parked on the open road. Couldn’t he have driven up to meet me? Or is he trying to teach me a lesson? We keep running.
We come running up to the jeep, and I see the black-haired Colonel Ayrumetov sitting in it. I salute and report. He gives me a scorching glare meant to reduce me to ashes: “Senior Lieutenant! For the job you’re doing I’ll have you sent to a punishment battalion!”
He gives me a full blast. For what? And he can send me to a punishment battalion. Such things happen quickly with us.
I stand at attention, mumbling about the atmospheric inversion. (They’ll never accept that as an excuse. Why should they even try to understand ?) And it would be idiotic to complain about all the extraneous firing: there’s a war going on, and you can never eliminate all those noises. His fury abates, and he grins at me: “You need to shave, Senior Lieutenant, even in battle.”
Sure thing. Then, as if from nowhere, two single-engine Junkers appear over the rim of the forest. How can they miss the single Willys jeep on the road, a clear sign that there are senior officers about? They’ve spotted it! They turn and start their dive.
The sergeant who came for me is already sitting in the jeep behind me. But the sharp-eyed driver, not waiting for the brigade commander’s order, shouts, “Turn back! Turn back!” So the colonel never finishes his reprimand.
The first Junkers is already in his dive. As always, you can see his front wheels that seem to be reaching out for you like talons; he lets loose the bomb that falls like a droplet from his beak. (And then he comes out of his dive as if he’s bending his back and even giving a little shudder of rapture.)
Am I dismissed now? I run back toward my battery. Then I drop down flat in a little depression. Behind me I hear a massive, deafening explosion.
I raise my head and straighten up: the Willys has turned tail and disappeared in a cloud of dust!
What about the second Junkers? He’s going on with the turn he began and—is he heading straight for me? He must have realized that the man standing by the Willys was not just a private. Or is he just doing this for spite or revenge?
There’s no time to think, it’s too late to run, and I’ve no strength left to look up at the sky. I flop down in that little depression again, face to the earth. How can I protect my head? Even the palms of my hands might help. Is this really where it will happen, out here? And so stupidly, just by chance?
There’s a huge crash and I feel the scorching heat. I’m showered with earth. Am I still in one piece? They do miss quite often. There’s a terrible noise in my head, and I feel faint. I’ve got to run, and I do run, stumbling over those damned ruts and potholes. And it’s uphill all the way.
They don’t seem to have bombed Zhelyabuga Village, and all our lines are still fanned out around the cellar. But will the cellar itself hold out?
No, the Junkers have broken off their attack: they have their own lives to lead, up there in the sky, one racing after the other, and the sky now is no longer concerned with the earth below it.
With all the noise going on, we can’t make any recordings at all. So it’s off to a punishment battalion for me.
The battery of seventy-sixes next to us is being pulled out of Zhelyabuga and moved forward where things are hotter.
Lord, my head is still buzzing. It feels as if it’s swollen, filled with fluid. Things are bad enough even without that: all the stress of these last days—it seems as if there aren’t twenty-four hours in a day but two hundred and forty. Yet despite all these sleepless nights, you have an overwhelming sense of power; you even feel light on your feet, as if they had wings.
“Mikhail Longinych, give me all the ribbons from target 415; I’ll search through them myself, and you can look at the rest.”
I send him off to get my folding table—we have one extra. I set it up near the cellar, in the shade of a willow tree. “And get me a stool from one of the houses.” He brings me one immediately.
I sit there, searching through the strips of paper and thinking.
What the training manual said was to calculate the time differential from the beginning of the first oscillation from each listening post. But when these beginning points were indistinct we were taught to do various other things. The peaks of the oscillations could be compared—the first maximum, the second maximum. Or the reverse: compare the minimums. Or you could look at all five sets of oscillations to try to find places with similar characteristics, small squiggles, and calculate the differentials from them.
I try one method, then another one. Mitya takes the ribbons down to the cellar to work on them there. If they can get a smaller triangle among all the intersections, Nakapkin will call me down to look at the plotting table.
Meanwhile, Second Battalion is asking us to help them make corrections. The guns of Four and Five Batteries close on our right begin banging away. We try as best we can to isolate their bursts from all the other noise and send them the coordinates. They make their adjustments, and we check them once more. Myagkov from Five Battery contrives to make his corrections toward target 421. The advance post calls, quite satisfied: the target over there has gone silent.
I couldn’t be more grateful for the good work of the plotting platoon.
Lipsky’s soft white hands are on the ribbon of paper spread out across the table. He holds it down with his left, and, with his right, using a very sharp pencil like a needle, he goes on marking the proper places to prick the paper where a tiny, slender vertical line shows the beginning of an oscillation. (There are sometimes false results as well. They happen, and there’s no time to think about them in the few seconds available, yet the outcome of the operation—good or bad—depends on your results.)
Ushatov, shoulders slightly hunched, concentrates on running his viewer along his Chudnov slide rule, taking readings down to a thousandth.
Fenyushkin, the calculator, uses the tables to make corrections for wind, temperature, and humidity (we take our own measurements beside our station) and passes the adjusted figures to the plotter.
The plotter (the sharp-eyed Konchits has replaced Nakapkin), scarcely daring to breathe, is using these figures to adjust the goniometric rule along its grooved scale. And he transfers to the plotting board the angle of deviation from the perpendicular ahead of each of our posts. Now he’ll plot the straight lines, and we’ll see if they come together. The fate of those German guns, and the fate of our boys under fire, depends on the scrupulous work of each one of these men.
(When Nakapkin finishes his shift, he settles himself down to make a drawi
ng, using the ink from the apparatus and one of the self-sealing letter cards that front-line soldiers are given, of some Red Army soldiers striking down the enemy. He’ll send this home or to his girlfriend.)
Our listening posts are all still in one piece. There was some bombardment near Volkov’s, but they’ve all survived and are now dug in. Our cables suffered a few hits, but they’ve been repaired. One good thing about dry weather is that our cables, with their fabric insulation, don’t get wet. They’ve got only a weak rubber coating, and when it’s damp they will ground or short out. Making a continuity test on the lines when under fire is a lot more than just a hassle. The Germans don’t have this problem: their cables have thick red plastic insulation. A reel of captured German cable is worth its weight in gold.
Meanwhile, Konchits phones me: my 415 has produced quite a good intersection, almost a single point. I make up my mind and phone Tolochkov: “Vasya! Here’s the 415. Don’t try bracketing it. It’s best not to make corrections, just give it a volley and scare the shit out of them!”
That’s the Russian way! Tolochkov fires off a volley, twenty shells at once, five from each gun. So now what? We’ll keep checking.
Now we’re having some heavy fire along our slope. I take a look. Along the little ridge where the houses at the upper end of our street stand and where the spreading group of willows is—and where Iskiteya ran off—I see a row of about two dozen fountains of black earth flying up from the ground. They’re putting down some accurate fire! One-fifties, probably. Are any of our boys there? The Germans must have scouted out that area, or maybe it’s their aerial reconnaissance. There are more of our planes in the sky, though. That means we can walk around with our backs straight.
Back down in the cellar they tell me they’ve taken quite a shaking. The women had been talking amongst themselves: What are we doing sitting here? Better go and look after our belongings. But now they’re hiding their faces in their hands.
Then there’s another deep shudder in the earth. That means it’s even closer than the volley on that ridge. Dugin is yelling nervously, desperately up above: “The line to the second’s been hit . . . ! And the third! And the fourth!”
If they’re hitting the spot where the lines fan out, they’re very close. And if all three posts send out linesmen, it’ll be for nothing—they don’t know where the breaks are.
Someone pulls at me from behind. It’s the telephone man from brigade, and he seems almost horrified: “Somebody from the very top wants you!”
Oh-ho! That means even higher than brigade. It has to be the army artillery headquarters. I take the receiver: “Forty-second here.”
The connection is poor, coming from a long distance away, yet the voice is threatening: “Our tanks have been held up in square 74-41!”
I unfold my map case on my knee with a trembling left hand and look up the location: yes, of course, that’s near Podmaslovo.
“. . . We’re getting high explosive fire from Kozinka, 150-millimeter . . . Why can’t you give us the coordinates?”
What can I tell him? A man can only do what he can do. But we’ll try. (Should I explain about the inversion again? But these smart people in the staff up there should know that already.)
I tell him that we’ll do our best.
Once again, very close to us, an explosion, then another! Someone up above is shouting: “Andrey-a-shin!”
The voice on the telephone (I’ve got my hand clapped over my left ear so I can hear) says: “Listen, Forty-two. When we advance, we’ll send a commission to check the location of those German guns. And if you’ve got them in the wrong spot, you’ll be facing charges. I can do whatever I like with you.”
Who is this “I”? He hasn’t identified himself. Could it be the chief of artillery himself? My throat’s gone dry.
While this is going on, there’s a huge bustle around our station, with people shouting and running up and down the stairs.
I pass back the receiver and fix the map case that’s hanging open. Now, what’s going on out there?
Yenko and Dugin shout in one voice: “Andreyashin’s been hit!”
I run up the stairs and see Komyaga and Lundyshev running up the slope, carrying a groundsheet. Behind them, limping a little but following readily, comes the medic Cherneykin carrying his medical bag. Someone’s lying on the ground about 150 meters away. Lying there, not moving.
What if the Germans repeat that shot? All three of them will be hit.
“Find Pashanin! Get the truck ready!” I shout.
I count the seconds: Please, don’t shoot again! But there’s still no second shot.
Dugin, forgetting regulations, has abandoned his recorder. His face distorted, his hands spread, he says: “Com’ Lieutenant! We’ve only got the two outside posts left. We can’t do anything!”
The three have now run up to Andreyashin and are bending over him. For God’s sake, don’t shoot! Not now!
There’s something white in Cherneykin’s hands. He’s bandaging Andreyashin and Lundyshev is helping. Komyaga is spreading out the groundsheet. The seconds tick by so slowly.
Pashanin comes running up, sleepy-eyed, his face covered with black stubble.
“Pull out the truck and get ready to move.”
The three men are moving Andreyashin onto the groundsheet. Two of them carry him away. Cherneykin, behind them, is carrying something else. He’s holding it well away from himself so as not to soil his clothes.
Is that a leg he’s carrying?
It is a leg, from the knee down, still in a boot, with a tattered puttee flapping.
They carry him on, treading heavily. Galkin and Kropachov run to help. Mitya comes after them. The lad wants to get a close look at the blood.
The young local boy follows behind; he just won’t settle down.
Someone tells me about Galkin: “He was held up for a minute, otherwise he’d have been there. It was his line as well . . .”
So Andreyashin rushed off on his own. And he’d put in for leave to Oryol. People to visit there . . .
He’ll have to get by without his leg. And he’s got no mother and father to help him out . . .
As they carry him by, I hear him groan: “Just straighten my right leg for me, boys . . .”
His missing leg . . .
The bandage and cotton wool barely stop the flow of blood. Cherneykin applies another bandage.
Lundyshev says: “He’s got another wound. Look there, there’s some spots on the side of his chest.”
Shrapnel. Well, he’s got his leave . . .
His swarthy face is much darker than usual.
“Boys,” he pleads, “just straighten my leg . . .”
The one that’s been blown off.
The ground is uneven and soft, and it’s hard to keep him steady. And it’s hard getting him onto the bed of the truck. Blood drips down, on the ground and on the open gate of the truck.
“You’d best take it along,” I say, nodding at his leg. “Who knows, the doctors might need it.”
They take it with them.
“All right, Pashanin, go fast and go easy!”
Over those same ruts and potholes again. But Pashanin’s a skilled driver, and he’ll take him as if he himself were the wounded one.
There are two in the back with Andreyashin. They’ve closed the gate, and the truck drives off. And if he survives? We’ve still lost him. And we’re headed for his Oryol—straight there. Gloomily, we go back to our work.
And I remember: I may be facing charges.
Dugin is worried: “Comrade Senior Lieutenant! Should we get them busy repairing the lines?”
The linesmen are waiting, ready to go. They’re all afraid, particularly Galkin, who survived just by chance. And out there, our tanks are being shelled.
Who should be spared—the ones out there, or the ones here?
“Just hang on,” I say. “We’ll wait a bit longer.”
It was as if I’d sensed it! We barely hear the shot
s, what with all the noise and the heat, but they all come crashing down at once—half a dozen one-oh-fives, right in the same spot again, where Andreyashin was hit and a bit closer—a row of black bursts along the slope!
One of the houses is smoking; the roof has been blown off another.
“Don’t say anything to them down in the cellar.”
That was how the shells fell when Andreyashin was hit.
Mitya comes up from the cellar with a message from Dugin: “They’ve hit our advance post!” he shouts, as if pleased about it.
All the more reason to hold off.
As my granddad used to say, “Let them croak, the lot of them!” It’s one thing after another.
I’m not responsible for the whole army. Even the commander isn’t responsible for it all. What I have to worry about are these sixty men right here. As Ovsyannikov says, “We’ve gotta take care of our people, and take care of ’em well.”
We’ll wait a bit longer.
I smoke one cigarette after the other, without thinking, but they only make me feel worse. Some sort of dull stupor has taken complete possession of me; my brain has almost stopped working, and I can’t cope with even the simplest things.
Twenty minutes go by and there’s no more bombardment, so I send Galkin and Kropachov to repair the lines. If they’ve all been broken at once, then the breaks must be right here, by our station. The two men have telephones on their belts so they can call in and check the lines.
Then I’m called to the phone in the cellar again.
It’s the battery commander on our flank: his posts have been knocked out.
Tolochkov thinks that we’ve taken out 415; nothing’s coming from it. There’s still no bombardment. The lines have been repaired, at the spot where Andreyashin’s blood still lies.
The linesmen come back. Great job, lads!
The sound of the German guns is still indistinct, though. The sun is fierce and saps all our strength. Some cumulus clouds have appeared, but they don’t seem to be gathering.
Botnev has taken over the central station from me.
Ovsyannikov is back. He’s covered in sweat and his shirt has dark, wet spots on it. He’s heard about Andreyashin over the phone. On his way back, he came under some heavy fire. He was lying out on some level ground without any cover. Our forward observer has now found a spot behind some stones but is still having a heavy time of it and can’t even raise his head.
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