I found it odd how they spoke about me as if I weren’t there, as if I were gone already. Or dead.
“But I don’t want a cushy desk job,” I interjected. “I want to stay here and fight.”
You see, Zoya was right—they did want it both ways. The higher-ups, the military brass and the Party big shots, liked the propaganda value attached to my success as a sniper, but they didn’t want me to get hurt again. They considered me too important to morale for anything to happen to me. The captain had heard rumors that they had “plans” for me, whatever that meant. With my growing reputation as a sniper, I’d become something of a poster girl for the Soviet military, a figure to rally our countrymen around. However, I didn’t want all the fuss and attention, didn’t want to be pulled away from my job of killing Germans. I wanted to reach my goal of 300.
I’d been pulled from the front once already, back when I’d reached two hundred kills during the early siege of Sevastopol the previous winter. From the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet, I was awarded the Order of the Red Banner, one of the country’s highest military honors, and one conferred on only a handful of women. I was drawing notice, making a name for myself, something for which I was proud but which also made me a little uncomfortable. They were going to send me off for a few days to Stalingrad; this, of course, was before the Germans had arrived and turned it into hell. I didn’t want to go, but Zoya had told me, “Tat’yana, do you know how many would give their right arm to sleep in a soft bed and be able to take a warm bath.” In Stalingrad, I was paraded around, placed on display like a ballerina for the Bolshoi. I was gawked at and fawned over, patronized by elderly Party officials smoking expensive cigars and eating caviar, and drinking Belaya Bashnya vodka simply because that’s the brand Stalin drank, and carrying on as if there wasn’t a war on at all. I had to put up with toadying sycophants and sleazy opportunists who knew nothing of battle, who would trivialize the bravery and sacrifice of our soldiers for their own ends. “Comrade Levchenko,” they would ask of me, “how does one so lovely become such an accomplished killer?” One reporter from Izvestiya called me “The Ukrainian Lion,” after the famous thirteenth-century prince Lev Danilovich, known for his ferocity. They interviewed me and took pictures of me with Party officials and high-ranking generals of the Red Army. There I met Chairman Kalinin, whom as children we had been taught by our teachers to call Dedushka—grandfather—as well as Foreign Secretary Molotov, and General Zhukov, who was at the moment preparing for the defense of the city. They had me tour the Red October steelworks and the Barrikady armaments factory, places that in just a few short months would be the stage for the infamous “War of the Rats.”
Just before dawn that day, the Germans attacked, the big offensive we’d been expecting for weeks. It was preceded by a massive artillery barrage, which lasted two hours. Luckily Zoya and I had been able to crawl back to our lines. The krauts had unleashed their huge 800 mm Big Dora, lobbing its massive five-thousand-kilo shells at us. Each one that stuck within a kilometer deafened you for several minutes. In its wake, all sound seemed to have been sucked away, the remaining silence as profound as that underwater. This was followed by heavy aerial bombing from their Junkers and Heinkels. Our own antiaircraft guns lit up the early morning sky, while offshore, the Black Sea Fleet responded with its own guns. With my head pressed against the dirt of the trench, I felt the earth shudder.
“They’re coming this time,” Captain Petrenko warned all along the line. “Fix bayonets.”
And he was right. When daylight came, the ground attack commenced.
Though we fought bravely that day, outnumbered and outgunned, we ultimately had to retreat down the heights toward the outskirts of the city. I saw firsthand some of our troops shot by our own blocking detachments, machine-gunning those retreating from the German advance. Still, over the next several days, the Germans pressed the attack, slowly forcing us to fall back into Sevastopol itself. The enemy advanced on all fronts, supported by its Panzers and artillery. However, we made them pay heavily for each inch of ground we relinquished. We fought savagely along the entire front, from Balaklava in the south to Bel’bek and Kamyshi in the north. The staunch resistance we put up was partly due to the fact that we were fighting in defense of our own soil. Most of us were Ukrainians, and many came from Sevastopol itself. We fought for our homes, for our families, for our pride. But we fought also because of the fear we had for the chekisty, who shot those falling back.
I hardly recognized Sevastopol, which lay in ruins from the nine months’ seige. Save for the post office and a handful of other structures that had somehow miraculously been spared during the bombing, everything had been reduced to rubble. Entire blocks were little more than charred and empty shells. The roads were pitted with bomb craters and strewn with debris from collapsed buildings. The smoke from fires hung above the city, raining a gritty ash down on everything. The grand old buildings along Grafskaya Quay, the House of the Pioneers, the Seaside Parkway, Nahimova Square—all the places I had once visited on holiday were utterly demolished. The sight saddened me, no doubt because of all the memories I’d had of the city, coming here first as a child with my parents, then after I was married with Kolya and Masha.
The city’s remaining inhabitants scurried through the bombed-out streets, pallid figures, lifeless as ghosts. For months, those Sevastopolians who hadn’t been lucky enough to escape or die had eked out an existence in the cellars and sewers. They’d lived on scraps of food, on the garbage dumps of the troops, on dead fish that the bombing had washed up on shore, on pigeons and seagulls and crows, on rats, even on dogs. The summer temperatures had hit one hundred degrees, forcing people out into the open in search of water. As our unit moved through the city, several emaciated children emerged from a sewer and came running up, begging for food and something to drink. As it turned out, they were from an orphanage that had been bombed, and they had been huddled together underground for weeks without an adult’s supervision. We gave what we could spare, which wasn’t much, as we’d been on half rations ourselves. I saw the bodies of the dead lying where they’d been killed, rotting in the streets or alleyways or left among the wreckage of buildings. An old and emaciated man pushing a wheelbarrow passed by with a pair of shapes wrapped in winding clothes. He paused for a moment when he saw us. “Look what those whores did to my children,” he cried. My heart, of course, went out to him. “We will make them pay, dedushka,” I offered to him.
Down at the harbor we saw them frantically loading ships with vehicles and munitions and other matériel. It was obvious now that the higher-ups considered the battle for Sevastopol utterly lost. Most of us hoped that he or she would be one of the lucky few to get a spot on a ship leaving this hellhole. There were some who even purposely wounded themselves so they could get transferred out on a hospital ship. Though even that wasn’t entirely without risk. Fewer and fewer ships were getting through the heavy bombing by the Luftwaffe over the Black Sea. We’d all heard of the sinking of the Armenia, a Red Cross ship carrying wounded and civilians, near Gurzuf. Over five thousand went to a watery grave.
Rumors, as they always do in war, circulated as to what would happen to those left behind. The optimists said there would be reinforcements coming from the Soviet Forty-fourth or Forty-seventh up north, and that we just had to hold out until they could reach us. Others said that the navy was sending transport ships to evacuate the remaining troops. After all, they couldn’t just sacrifice the hundred thousand remaining troops, could they, this despite the fact that we knew that in Kiev they had let six hundred thousand troops fall into German hands? Everyone wondered how long we could hold out, with supplies and ammunition and food growing short. Despite hearing about units fighting to the last man, word also spread of entire battalions, sometimes even regiment or brigade levels, surrendering to the Germans. Soldiers debated whether it was better to die fighting or to take their chances as prisoners, and many had already written letters home saying their good-byes to lo
ved ones.
After an intense day of fighting, what remained of my company had pulled back yet again and taken up position in the wreckage of a marine engine factory down near the quay. Though the roof had caved in, most of the walls were still relatively intact, providing us with enough cover to dig in and make a last-ditch defense. Not fifty meters behind us was the sea. The stench of burning oil hung heavily in the air from a tanker ship that the Luftwaffe had hit out in the harbor. Dense black smoke drifted in, stinging our eyes.
A half-dozen soldiers from my unit had dug in behind what had once been a loading dock of the factory. From there, two hundred meters to the east we could see where the Germans had taken refuge in a bombed-out building, and beyond along the hills overlooking the water.
To our rear, several four-wheel GAZ vehicles drove past, bouncing over the craters in the road. They passed close enough that we could see the officers inside. They avoided our gazes. All were being chauffeured down toward the docks and rescue.
“Sons of bitches,” Drubich complained, waving a fist in the air. He was crumbling cigarette butts he’d scrounged from off the ground and using the tobacco to roll himself a cigarette. For paper he used propaganda leaflets the Germans had begun dropping from the skies, telling us in bad Russian that if we surrendered we would be treated fairly, be given food and vodka.
“If you could save your neck, wouldn’t you do the same?” replied a soldier named Ivanchuk, a big man with a pink, swollen face like the udder of an unmilked cow. He was loading a captured Maschinengewehr.
“We have to stay and die, while those bastards get evacuated,” said Drubich.
“They could give a shit about us,” Ivanchuk scoffed.
“I heard the old man wouldn’t even ransom his own son,” said another soldier named Polevoi, a signalman.
The old man, of course, was Stalin. His son had been captured by the Germans, and Stalin had refused to trade a captured German soldier for him.
“So why would he care what happens to us?” added Ivanchuk.
Drubich glanced over his shoulder, then in an undertone said, “We could surrender.”
“Do you know what the krauts do to those they capture?” replied Ivanchuk. He made his right index finger into the barrel of a gun, put it to his temple, and said, “Bang!”
“Kill all of us? I don’t believe it,” countered Drubich.
“Believe it.”
“I have a wife and baby. I want to see them again. Even the krauts can’t be such monsters.”
“They’re worse than monsters,” scoffed Ivanchuk. “And if you’re not afraid of them, you’d better be afraid of our own side. At least for your family’s sake.”
“What’re you talking about?”
“Those that surrender, their families fttt,” he said, making a slashing motion across his throat.
“What?” cried Drubich.
“They’re sent to the camps. Or worse.”
“That’s bullshit.”
“It’s true. So before you go surrendering, Drubich, you ought to think about that wife and kid of yours.”
“Let Roskov catch you talking like that, Drubich,” said Polevoi, “he’ll shoot you even before the Nazis have a chance.”
Several of the soldiers laughed nervously, that sort of hollow gallows laughter.
Lowering his voice and glancing over his shoulder, Drubich said, “And where the hell is Roskov, anyway? Has anybody seen him lately?”
“Maybe he was shot,” Polevoi joked.
“We should be so lucky,” replied Ivanchuk.
“Why should we be sacrificed?” said Drubich, his tone that of a petulant child. “Besides, how could the krauts kill a hundred thousand prisoners. They couldn’t kill that many. Not if we surrendered.” He turned toward me. “What do you think, Sergeant?”
“Nothing the Germans do anymore surprises me,” I replied.
“So we are to fight and die for those bastards?” he said, flicking his thumb toward the road where the officers had just passed.
“No, not for them,” I replied. “We fight for ourselves.”
“Why the hell should we?”
“Because no one else will, that’s why.”
“So they can give you more medals, Sergeant?” Drubich said bitterly to me.
“I never wanted any medals,” I replied.
“The rest of us fight and die, and she’s the one who gets the credit.”
“All right, Drubich,” said the captain, “that’ll be enough.” He glanced over at me.
“I don’t mind fighting,” Drubich offered. “But this is crazy.”
“It’s all crazy,” said Ivanchuk. “The whole fuckin’ mess.”
“I have a family,” Drubich continued. “I don’t want to die like this.”
“Stop your fucking bellyaching,” said the Wild Boar, who had been sitting quietly a short distance away smoking a cigarette.
“I didn’t sign up to be slaughtered like cattle.”
“I told you to shut the fuck up,” grunted the Wild Boar. He pulled his Tokarev from his holster and pointed it at Drubich. “I should shoot you myself and save the krauts a bullet.”
Drubich looked warily at the Wild Boar, then at Captain Petrenko. “I was just talking.”
The Wild Boar didn’t say anything but kept the gun trained on Drubich. He had a crazed look in his eyes. For a moment I wasn’t sure whether he would do it or not.
Then Captain Petrenko said, “Put it away, Sergeant.”
Finally, the Wild Boar lowered the gun and stuffed it into his holster.
Thousands of our troops, though, had already made the choice to surrender as the Germans tightened the noose around the city. I certainly didn’t want to die, but the thought of surrendering was even more abhorrent. I’d heard what the Germans did to those who surrendered, especially to women. I wasn’t sure I wanted to take the chance. Still, like the others, I felt betrayed by the Soviet high command. That they were so willing to let us all die here. And for what?
During a quiet moment, I scribbled a note to Kolya, more words tossed into the howling storm.
My Dearest Kolya,
We have fought hard and with great determination in the defense of Sevastopol. But it is now quite apparent that we shall soon be forced to admit defeat. I do not know what will become of us, or if I shall ever see you again, but you are in my thoughts. If I die, at least I can hope we will all be reunited in heaven.
I pray you are safe. Take care of yourself. Please remember me always.
I remain your loving wife,
Tat’yana
As I wrote these words, the distance that I felt toward Kolya seemed suddenly unimportant, even trivial. My heart welled up with emotion. I felt very much the loving wife I’d portrayed in the letter, a wife who, if the war had ended right then, would gladly have returned to her husband, would have considered myself fortunate to be able to live the rest of my days with him, sleeping beside him, reading to each other, growing old in his company. With death looming so close, everything appeared suddenly very clear. All the details of my past with Kolya came rushing back to me—his gentleness of spirit, his quiet intelligence, the way his blond hair fell into his face, the pale blueness of his eyes. How, as he left for work in the morning, he’d gently cup my face as I slept and say, “I love you, Tat’yana.” His love was something I’d taken for granted in the past. Can love sit dormant in a heart like a seed, I mused, until a moment like this, when it breaks out of its shell and begins to grow? I recall thinking then that it had taken a war for me to realize this. Of course, the irony was that I realized this only when it was too late.
I managed to give the letter to a wounded comrade who was being evacuated by submarine.
As night fell, Captain Petrenko gathered the company together.
“I don’t have to tell you the fix we’re in, comrades,” he said in his usual even tone. “But I’ve got orders to hold this position.”
“For how long?” asked
the Wild Boar.
“We are to hold it, period.”
A low grumbling began among the troops.
Finally the Wild Boar said what was on everyone’s mind. “So those fuckin’ predateli can sneak out in the middle of the night.”
Another soldier said, “Yes, they are traitors to leave us while they scatter like chickens.”
“General Petrov should be held accountable,” a third cried.
Petrov was the general in charge of Sevastopol’s defense.
“All right, shut up,” Petrenko said. “It doesn’t do any good to whine about any of this now.”
“When can we expect reinforcements?” I asked the captain.
“There won’t be any.”
“None?”
“That’s right. Look, I don’t like this any more than you do.”
“We could attempt to break through the German lines,” offered a corporal named Timoshenko, a slight man who had the dark glossy hair of a crow.
“To where?” Petrenko replied. “The entire Crimea has fallen into German hands.”
“The only option then is surrender,” Drubich called out. There was a momentary silence, the startled sort, like that after a plate crashes to the floor while people are eating dinner. Then several soldiers followed this up with “he’s right” and “why not?” One man shouted, “Why should we just sit here and wait to be slaughtered by their Panzers?”
Petrenko looked around at the troops. “I have my orders,” he said.
“Where’s Major Roskov anyway?” one soldier shouted tentatively.
Another chimed in with “Yes, where the hell is he?”
“He’s already been evacuated,” the captain replied.
“Wouldn’t you know it,” Timoshenko cried.
Growing bolder, someone else cursed, “The gutless prick.” Then a chorus of taunts ridiculed the once-feared chekist officer.
“I’m in charge now,” Petrenko explained.
“Maybe Drubich’s right,” said another soldier. “To continue fighting is crazy.”
A few shouted out in agreement, while others called the group advocating surrender traitors. They went back and forth, their voices growing heated.
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