The Stalin Front

by Gert Ledig

  ‘There, that’s it,’ he sobbed. Suddenly he pushed his hand in the Runner’s face. ‘Here, take it off me, will you. I can’t stand to see it any more.’

  The Runner pulled the ring off. If anything, it cost him more than it had to bandage up the arm stump. He tried to put the ring in the wounded man’s breast pocket.

  ‘No!’ cried the wounded man in dismay. ‘I want you to throw it away!’

  With a reflex fear, the Runner tossed the ring in the direction of the entrance. He meant it to fly through the narrow passage, and out past the trench. However, he aimed too high, and the ring bounced against the ceiling over the steps, and rolled back.

  The Runner and the Captain looked at each other. Neither felt like getting up to try a second time. They didn’t move.

  ‘When I was hit, I just ran off,’ said the wounded man. ‘Was there something else I should have done?’

  No answer.

  ‘Was there something else I should have done?’

  ‘No!’ screamed the Captain. ‘No!’ He got a grip of himself. ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘What about the NCO?’ asked the Runner.

  The wounded man tried to smile.

  ‘He’s lying behind the machine gun, cursing. You know what he’s like. A shell hit the munitions crates.’

  ‘Anything in them?’

  ‘Was,’ said the wounded man.

  The Runner got to his feet. He bent down and fumbled in a corner for a box of machine-gun belts. He shut the lid on it, and gripped it by the rope handles. Almost ceremonially he moved towards the entry hole. When he saw the ring lying there, he stopped.

  ‘Leave it be,’ he heard the wounded man say.

  The Runner turned. The wounded man was still lying with his back to the entry. He hadn’t supposed he would have noticed anything, any more than before, when the ring bounced back.

  ‘Maybe it’s a sign,’ said the wounded man. ‘The ring wants to stay here, and so should I.’

  The Runner turned again, and crouched. With a single bound, no longer noticing the weight of the crate, he left the entry behind him. He raced along the sap. A six-foot trench was now no deeper than a furrow in a field. It was even level to the ground at times. In other places, the cover had been shorn away. He was running along a shallow stream bed, whose banks were bubbling with a mixture of steam and shrapnel. Stones rattled down. Earth spurted up. There was no point in throwing himself down for cover. There was only one thing: to get through it as fast as possible. The detonations seemed to be following him. At any moment, he thought he would feel his back being shredded. The crate got heavier by the second. Sweat and filth splashed into his face. On, on. The front line was under a white bank of fog. He ran towards it. The NCO must be lying there in the whiteness. He plunged into the fog where the skeleton of the tank lay. The firing here seemed to abate. He wheezed round the caterpillar tracks dangling into the trench – and found himself staring into a pistol’s mouth.

  ‘Are you crazy?!’ the Runner screamed at the sentry.

  Who dropped his weapon in shock. As if he had seen a ghost, he gawped after the Runner, who disappeared into the boiling white fogs. He ran on with his crate. Stumbled over some soft obstacle. Fell into sticky mess, and got up, feeling nauseated. Plunged on. Reached the front line. He could tell it was by the slimy boards he slithered along.

  An abandoned sentry point. Only a rifle left, leaning against the breastwork. Not until now did he realize there weren’t any more trench mortars chipping around like pickaxes. Damp mists looped slothfully over the position. Grim shell cavities. White froth. Smashed trench walls. Broken shelters. Ahead of him a heavy impact slammed into the wire entanglement. At his side, empty casings loomed out of the fog. Any moment now, he should be at the machine-gun emplacement. A darkish stain emerged in front of him.

  He slumped exhausted next to the NCO. All he could make out were his eyes. Everything else, his crooked steel helmet, the strings of hair, brow, cheeks, neck, his whole body was encrusted with mud.

  ‘So it’s you,’ he observed laconically when he recognized the Runner.

  ‘Here,’ called the Runner. He tugged the crate of munitions on to the breastwork.

  ‘I was just about to break off the firing-pin.’

  They lifted up the tripod, and reinserted the lock in the barrel.

  ‘How long have they stopped shooting?’

  ‘Just a couple of minutes.’ The NCO fed in an ammunition belt.

  ‘Who’s that?’ There was a dead man lying on the breastwork, next to the Runner. He wanted to pull him down into the trench.

  ‘Leave him there,’ said the NCO. ‘He’s not pretty to look at from the front.’

  ‘Gut-shot?’

  ‘Something like that. Only it was shrapnel.’

  In front of them, a shell ripped through the fog.

  ‘There!’ The NCO set the gun against his shoulder. The Runner stared at the gap in the fog. He couldn’t make out a thing. Beyond it, some low scraps of mist were drifting over the cratered field. There was swamp between the trench and the wire. The fog overhead had turned into a sprinkling of hot steam. Translucent as glass. The gap closed again, slowly growing shut. Up in the air were gurgling shells. Further and further behind them impacts drilled themselves madly into the mud at the foot of the hill.

  Captain Zostchenko crossed a wet meadow. In front of him was a dip in the ground. He gave the command to wait there. Their own batteries were behind them. Their detonations sounded deeper. The fire raged on with undiminished intensity, and the woods to the west were like a city in flames. He was continually tempted to believe that the attack would come off. He clung to the hope, like a naïve child. Afterwards, so the general had said, the battalion would be put in reserve on the hill. That too he put in the scales: afterwards. A word can be a temptation, whether one believes it or not.

  The German minefields were sent sky-high, their entanglements were ripped, their shelters crushed. And yet, Zostchenko didn’t feel any calmer. His instincts wouldn’t be allayed. He pushed his way through his Red Army men, heard them talking quietly to one another, and felt their warm breath on the night air. Someone brushed against his arm accidentally. But he remained alone. Alone with his knowledge, with his critical understanding, with his oppressive memories. He brooded to himself. He shuddered involuntarily. He could feel an unpleasant pressure against his forehead, and a slight fever. His feet stomped mechanically over the ground. The hand on his watch seemed to inch forward, infinitely slowly.

  As light began to break, he breathed a little more easily. On his command, a line of three hundred Red Army men moved forward. They vanished into saps, into a labyrinth of crumbling passageways and snipers’ nests full of filth and rubble. The shelters contained nothing but useless weapons and empty munitions crates. The trench company had already withdrawn. A cadaver dangled over the breastworks. A blood-soaked bandage coiled in a sandy hollow.

  Zostchenko trotted back, head down, to the middle of the sector, and looked at his watch again. Twenty minutes still. In twenty minutes, three hundred Siberians would rise out of the trenches and attack. In thirty minutes, the thing would be decided. The nearer the time, the more unreal the prospect seemed to him. Dozily, he grappled with the fact that his future would be decided in the next half an hour. It was like a dream. When I awake, he thought, it will all be over. He pulled himself up over the lip of the trench, and, pressed to the ground, surveyed the field. In the gloaming, he could make out the hill: a bare, lifeless form, subjected to an iron hail, and swathed in smoke and steam. The mortars were still pecking away at it. Spurting fountains of sand. Gunpowder clouds drifted over the trenches. The skeleton of the pylon still soared up into the sky. Even with all the explosions, there still seemed to be an eerie calm over the heights.

  Suddenly there was a light whining. Zostchenko turned round. The sound grew louder: engine noise, mingled with the rattle of chains: the tanks. Filthy steel turrets came floating out of the fog, crash
ing out of the underbrush. The commandants’ heads stuck out of the turrets. The earth shook. The monsters fanned out and stopped just in front of the occupied trench. In the grey light behind them, fire still quivered out of the muzzles of the artillery.

  Zostchenko crooked his elbow: nine minutes more.

  Lieutenant Trupikov came dashing along the trench.

  ‘I’ve given orders to the battalion, Captain!’ His face was impassive.

  ‘All right,’ said Zostchenko. He was struck by how level his voice sounded. He watched as Trupikov checked his submachine gun, pulled the strap of his helmet under his chin, adjusted the hand-grenades on his belt. Movements of a puppet-like stiffness, behind a misted pain of glass. The puppet was himself, crammed into a body that moved with infinite slowness. He lay down on his back, raised his arm, so that he kept both the tanks and his watch-face in view. Four minutes.

  ‘Get ready!’

  Trupikov passed the order on. The call hurried down the line, through the engine noise. Three minutes.

  He shuddered briefly. Green helmets surfaced beside him. Eyes fixed him. Two minutes.

  The second hand scuttled on like a little beast: hundred seconds, eighty, sixty . . .

  The tanks jerked forward as their tracks tensed. Slowly they crept over the edge of the trench, hung in the air, then flipped on to the breastwork and flattened it. A wall of steel trundled past Zostchenko. He started up and plunged forward. Behind him a pack of men. The tracks chewed up the earth. Mud flew in his face. He roared in pain and fury:

  ‘Hurrah, rah, rah!’

  It was as though a horde of beaters was charging towards them. The cries caught in the damp air, and echoed away. The NCO swung the muzzle of the machine gun. He saw nothing to aim at, only the thin strokes of the barbed-wire fence, hanging like ghostly threads in the white haze.

  ‘I’m going crazy,’ whispered the Runner. Suddenly a machine gun rattled left of them. At that same instant, a dark bulk broke through the fog in front. A black colossus bobbed up towards them like a ship. And the shouting once more, behind the protective wall of the tank.

  The NCO didn’t budge.

  ‘Let’s get out of here!’ screamed the Runner. He dropped on to his hands to scramble away.

  ‘You’re not going anywhere.’ The NCO hit him on the back. The Runner lurched. ‘It can only get as far as the wire entanglements. Up till now, none of them made it through the swamp.’

  ‘We’re the last. We can’t keep them out on our own.’ In his agitation, the Runner ran his hands over the belts, as though caressingly.

  ‘Are you frightened?’

  ‘Yes.’

  The NCO calmly replied: ‘So am I.’

  ‘Shoot!’

  The tank pushed into the wires ahead of the swamp. Stopped with a jolt.

  ‘Now,’ whispered the NCO. He aimed carefully. Left of him, rifle fire was clattering away. The machine gun was going too. Suddenly shapes spilled round the back of the tank. They pushed past it and advanced.

  ‘Shoot!’ panted the Runner.

  ‘Get the hand-grenades ready,’ ordered the NCO.

  With flying fingers, the Runner unscrewed the caps. Ahead of them, with jerky movements, the brown shapes piled into the wire. They cleared a way for themselves with the butts of their submachine guns. The cover lifted on the tank turret. A leather helmet came out. The NCO switched to single shot. Aimed at the helmet. A staggering blow. It slid back into the turret. The NCO moved the lever back to repeat. He lowered the muzzle and fired a burst into the figures in the wire. They froze and looked up. One of them threw his hands up into the sky. Others reeled drunkenly. The rest of them dropped to the floor. It had taken just a couple of seconds. The bunch of men was swept away. Occasional twitchings on the ground. The NCO aimed at them.

  Mud spurted up among the wire entanglements. Behind a low elevation, an arm flipped up. A hand-grenade spun through the air. It landed in the morass in front of them. The explosion died away. Brackish water splashed over their heads.

  The Runner reached into the bundle on the breastwork. He jammed a wire between his fingers, ready to pull. Before he could straighten up, the NCO struck him on the arm. The Runner slipped back down. A hand reached up out of the turret the helmet had disappeared into, reached for the cover, and shut it again. From behind the tank tracks, flashes of fire spurted in their direction. A burst of submachine-gun fire rattled into the ground just in front of them.

  ‘Damn!’ The NCO let go of his gun and ducked.

  ‘Throw, now,’ he ordered hoarsely. ‘Throw!’

  Mechanically, the Runner ripped at the wire and threw the grenade out of the hole.

  ‘Go on, more!’

  The Runner grabbed one stick after another without waiting for the detonations, and got through them all.

  ‘Enough,’ said the NCO. A couple of grenades were still in front of them. Cautiously, he lifted his head up. He saw the tank’s gun levelling exactly in their direction.

  ‘Take cover!!’

  But the shell was already on its way. It whistled just over their heads, and a boil of air brushed past them. An explosion behind them.

  ‘Out of here!’

  The NCO yanked the belt out of the gun. He took it from its tripod, and leaped into the trench.

  ‘Left,’ he yelled.

  The Runner banged the lid of the munitions crate down, and reached for the ropes. Then the hinges gave way, and the contents of the crate rattled into the trench.

  ‘Leave it!’ The NCO was already running – the machine gun cradled in his arms like a baby – along the sap. The Runner picked up the two hand-grenades and set off after him.

  The NCO stopped. One of the replacements was lying in front of him. He had his eyes closed, and seemed to be sleeping. A thin line of red ran out of his mouth like a silk thread. His fingers gripped his submachine gun.

  ‘Take it off him!’ ordered the NCO.

  The Runner bent down. The dead man’s fingers didn’t want to give up the weapon. He had to tread on his arm.

  ‘And the ammunition.’

  He rolled the dead man on his side, and pulled the ammunition clips out of the canvas pouches on his belt. Behind them, where they had just been, a flare went up.

  ‘They’re already in the trench.’ The NCO was in a hurry to be gone.

  ‘No,’ said the Runner. He stood up straight, looked at the NCO. ‘I’m going to surrender.’

  The NCO laughed sardonically in his face: ‘Idiot! You and your pass, eh?’

  ‘I don’t care.’

  The NCO dropped his gun. Before the Runner understood what was happening, he felt two slaps across his face, left, right.

  ‘By way of goodbye,’ the NCO explained pleasantly. He picked up the submachine gun, turned and ran on. The Runner watched his back. Hand-grenades were going off behind him. Then he started running too. In a little while, they both stopped.

  The sound of crying was coming out of a dugout in the trench wall. The NCO stooped, and pulled a soldier out by his boots. It was another of the replacements. The Runner identified him by his protruding teeth. His eyes were damp and puffy. In the night, by the light of flares, he hadn’t looked that different.

  ‘Wounded?’

  The question was redundant. There was a fist-sized hole in the hip of his field-tunic. A gauze dressing, scrunched into a ball, slid out of it.

  ‘Take me with you . . .’

  Without a word, the NCO picked him up. He left the machine gun lying there, and loaded the replacement over his shoulder. They ran on. The wounded man stopped crying. Only when the NCO stumbled did he groan.

  The hammering of the machine gun ahead of them got louder. The NCO started to call. It sounded monotonous, as though he was steering a boat through fog. ‘Don’t shoot – don’t shoot!’ Again and again, at short intervals.

  ‘Who’s there?’ they suddenly heard behind a corner.

  ‘Password?’ the NCO asked the Runner.

  ‘Dr
esden.’

  ‘OK, you can come in.’

  The man was standing behind a canvas-wrapped pile that blocked off the trench. A couple of others were leaning against a Russian machine gun mounted on the cover.

  ‘A mighty fortress is our God,’ said the NCO, while he pushed the wounded man across the pile.

  ‘Have they got into the trench yet?’

  ‘I think we’re the last,’ said the NCO, and got into the defensive position. He pointed behind him, where the machine gun was rattling away that they had heard before.

  ‘What’s happening up there?’

  ‘They’re mounting a frontal attack, under cover of fog. But they won’t make it. They’ll get stuck in the swamp and we’ll mow them down.’

  ‘OK,’ said the NCO. ‘I’ll take over command here.’ He watched as the Runner entered the position after him. He dislodged the canvas cover and shrank back in horror. A pile of inert forms slithered out. The corpses had been stacked up into a protective wall.

  ‘Jesus Christ,’ gasped the Runner.

  ‘Don’t worry about it,’ said the NCO. ‘The Almighty must approve, do you think He’d allow it otherwise?’ He awkwardly lit a cigarette. The ‘Almighty’ sounded unpleasantly cynical.

  The Runner said nothing.

  ‘Go and tend to the wounded, but don’t tell them we’re surrounded, or that there’s no chance of ferrying them back.’

  The Runner went into the sap.

  ‘Say: yes sir!’ the NCO called after him. He got no reply. The Runner disappeared into the haze. Suddenly the NCO felt a little sorry for him.

  4

  In the lee of the tank, Zostchenko was firing his submachine gun at the hammering machine gun in the haze. The explosions of the hand-grenades blinded him. Then he heard a rattle against the steel treads of the caterpillar tracks. He had to throw himself on the ground.

  He saw that the tank’s first shell was too high, but the second winged into the heart of the machine-gun nest. The tank commander had slumped back into his turret, with a wound to the head. To Zostchenko it was all like a bad dream. Ten or twelve of his Siberians were caught in the wire with contorted limbs. In front of him fog, next to him the tank. As from a great distance, he heard the hum of the motor. He was ringed by his Red Army men, but he was alone as always. Lieutenant Trupikov hunkered in a hollow, all set to leap out. Zostchenko failed to realize they were all waiting for him, for him to set an example. He wasn’t in the real world.