The Town By The Sea tof-3
Page 39
A tank man jumped down and asked for a drink. He was covered with dust and grease.. . I kissed him as if he had been my own son..."
Lazarev started coughing and turned his thin face away, as if to look at the fortress gates, but we realized that he wished to hide the tears that had welled into his tired, old eyes.
". . . At the head of the brigade," Lazarev went on after a moment's pause, "in that lightning swoop from Dolzhok to Podzamche was a heavy tank called 'Suvorov.' The banner of the brigade flew from its turret. Its driver was Junior Lieutenant Kopeikin, later to become a Hero of the Soviet Union. And the commander of the forward detachment was Senior Lieutenant Ivan Stetsuk, an orphan brought up in a children's home in the town of Dnepropetrovsk. His detachment was given the task of taking the Old Fortress district at all costs and blocking the road out of town.
"After capturing Podzamche, Stetsuk and his men crossed the fortress bridge and stormed the town.
"The attack was so sudden that the Germans came running out of the houses in their underwear. Later they recovered their wits and started counter-attacking the town on all sides.
"Stetsuk was given the task of defending the Dolzhok and Podzamche approaches to the town. By that time he had only four tanks and sixty infantrymen left. The whole day he and his men held the road-fork near the tinning factory, while the Nazi Panthers and Tigers assailed him from all directions. Although the Soviet soldiers showed exceptional bravery, they were pressed back to the bridge. Just at that time, in the last days of March, General Katukov had forced the Dniester in the region of Zaleshchik and reached the northern approaches of Chernovitsy. When, the Hitlerites got word of this, they started attacking our town even more fiercely, to force a way of escape for themselves into Bukovina.
"The roads were jammed with troops and the Germans were making their way across country straight to the Dniester and the Zbruch. But the spring thaw held them up and forced them to abandon their heavy equipment and even their wounded. Over fifteen Hitlerite divisions tried to dislodge our brigade. Of course, the tank men could have retreated and let the enemy through, for what is one brigade against fifteen divisions!... Are you smiling again, Colonel? Have I made a mistake?"
"Not one, Valerian Dmitrievich! You're quite right about everything!" Maremukha assured our old teacher gently.
". . . The tank men decided to hold their defences here because they knew that if the Hitlerites recaptured our town the Soviet Army's offensive operations would be held up for several weeks,.." Lazarev continued. "And now kindly follow me."
On coming out of the fortress gates, Lazarev halted.
The cobbled road led steeply down to the bridge.
Lazarev tapped his stick on the big round cobbles and said triumphantly:
"This is where Stetsuk stationed his last tank commanded by Junior Lieutenant Kopeikin. You see where the stones have been torn up. That's where the tank swung round and faced the bridge. 'Do what you like, Kopeikin, but don't let a single Hitlerite reach the gates!' Stetsuk said to his second-in-command... "
Lazarev pointed his stick towards the bridge.
The entrance to the underground passage poked up out of the ground near the wooden bridge like a ship's hatchway. According to legend this passage led into Bessarabia, to another fortress like ours—the Khotin Fortress.
"In the underground passage," said Valerian Dmitrievich, "Stetsuk stored a supply of fire-bottles. His plan was simple. While the enemy tanks tried to force the bridge, our men stationed in the passage would throw fire-bottles at them. . . Captain Shulga mined the bridge under enemy fire and was killed in doing so. He was born in Krasnodon. . ."
"Perhaps he knew Oleg Koshevoi and his friends of the Young Guard underground organization?" I said, remembering that one of the Young Guards had been called Shulga.
. "Yes, he may have been a relative of Matvei Shulga. Anything is possible," Lazarev agreed. "I must check that.
In any case, Stetsuk told me that Captain Shulga was a very brave officer..."
... I have seen many museums in my lifetime and listened to a good many museum guides, but none of them ever moved me so much as Valerian Dmitrievich. We had known every stone of the Old Fortress since childhood, every moss-covered wall; we had tapped and explored every tower in search of hidden treasure. Now the new history of this Podolian stronghold, as described by Lazarev, came to life in every detail. It was the history of how Soviet people had defended our native land. As we listened to Lazarev, we seemed to see the sturdy broad-shouldered commander of the fortress, Ivan Stetsuk.
Towards evening Stetsuk comes into the fortress. His face under the leather helmet of a tank soldier is grimed with dust and oil. He keeps his wounded hand behind his back. Blood is oozing from it. He shows no sign of the intense pain he is suffering, lit would be wrong for the garrison if it knew their commander was wounded.
Before him in the snow-damp yard surrounded by watch-towers his men have formed up—Siberians, men from Moscow, from Odessa. They are the remnants of the advanced detachment that staggered the Hitlerite rear on the line of the Zbruch and forced its way through the dark forests round the Dniester to the rocky banks of the Smotrich.
Senior Lieutenant Stetsuk regards his men and officers in silence. They scan his face hopefully. Tired and gaunt, they are wondering what reassurance their commander will bring them, cut off as they are from their own forces.
Stetsuk says simply:
"We are going to hold this fortress to the last shot. Understand? If necessary, we shall die for our great cause, but we shall not let the enemy through!"
.. . Before Stetsuk stood the last man of the garrison to receive his orders—Dima Bezverkhy.
Many of the men did not even know the surname of this bright blue-eyed lad, and simply called him Dima.
Dima had been with the brigade since its formation and had fought his way to the foot-hills of the Carpathians. Before the war he had planned to enter a mining institute when he left school. "The only thing I want to be is a mining engineer," he often said" to Stetsuk. "I want to look for coal under the earth."
That March evening Dima shifted from one foot to the other in the cold and looked up at his commander with clear boyish eyes—he was only just fourteen.
"What shall I do with you, Dima?" said Stetsuk. "Perhaps you'll stay with me?" But seeing the disappointment in the boy's eyes, he said: "You know what? See that tower over there, on the ledge? Take a machine-gun and get inside it."
It was the round tower behind the museum. Dima picked up the light machine-gun and dashed across the yard.
A few minutes later Stetsuk noticed Dima's cheerful face in the top window of the tower. The boy had taken off his helmet and was waving it to attract the attention of his commander. Stetsuk pointed out the direction Dima was to cover—enemy tanks might approach the bridge from Orinin. Dima realized the meaning of his commander's gestures and took his machine-gun over to the loophole on the opposite side. . . Thus the young Siberian lad became defender of the Archbishop Tower.
... Artillery rumbled dully near the station. Up the line the village of Shatava was in flames. As darkness fell the glow spread across the horizon. But the old town still stood firm on its impregnable cliffs surrounded by the river Smotrich.
"... And in the morning it started!" Lazarev continued his story. "Not only the Tigers and Panthers advancing from the road-fork kept the fortress under fire. It was bombarded by batteries in concealed positions that were out of range of Stetsuk's guns. The gun crews of the batteries mounted on Otter Bank could see the fortress perfectly. Several times the German tanks attempted to break through to the bridge, but every time the garrison barred their advance... And it was very difficult to fight mobile forces from towers. Quite often Stetsuk stationed his men on the walls and earthworks round the fortress and fought the enemy from there. The next day the Hitlerites tried to get into the town from the Karvasar side, but again they were thrown back..."
"By a counter-attack?" P
etka asked. "That's right," said Lazarev. "Part of the garrison left the fortress and mowed them down before they could reach that little bridge."
Valerian Dmitrievich led us to the ruins of a tower near the guard-house.
"You see the remains of this tower?" he said. "Still haven't forgotten its name?... This is the Commandant Tower. On the fourth day of the siege a direct hit on the tower killed soldier Krasnuk... That day the artillery bombardment was ceaseless. The position of the garrison had become very serious. They had no more bread, no more sugar and their water supply had run out. And suddenly at that critical moment, Dima came running up: 'Comrade Senior Lieutenant! There's a live goat up there in the attic!
Can I bring it down?' Stetsuk, of course, consented willingly and gave Dima his sheath-knife. A few minutes later, Dima climbed back down the drain-pipe, scared to death, and shouted: 'The place is full of animals but none of them move! They must be bewitched, or something!.. .' And you know, it was I who had hidden my zoological collection of stuffed animals in the tower when, the town was evacuated. . . You'd have thought the men would have been too tired to laugh at a thing like that, but the joke about Dima and the goat flashed round every post and raised their spirits. And then they found water..." "In the Black Tower?" I asked.
"Yes, in the Black Tower," Lazarev said. "You see, it wouldn't have been difficult for us to find water here, we're natives of the place. But for them it was harder. The fit ones among them had given the last of their bread and sugar to the wounded. But that was not enough. The wounded men lay in one of the rooms of the museum, suffering terribly from thirst. You can imagine their joy when water was discovered!
"The Hitlerites had surrounded the fortress and would not allow any of the local population to approach it.
"But on the fifth day of the defence, one local man did manage to reach the fortress by climbing the almost sheer cliffs above Karvasar. He told Stetsuk that he could show him the exact positions of the enemy batteries bombarding the fortress. Stetsuk trusted the man as a Soviet patriot. He sent with him Corporal Myshlyaev and another soldier from the motorized infantry whose full name we still have not been able to discover. All we know is that people called him Sashko. He was nineteen and in spite of his youth he had already been decorated with the Order of Lenin.
"It was getting dark when they left the fortress. The local man borrowed Sashko's submachine-gun and disposed of an enemy sentry, thus providing himself with a weapon.
"The three of them made their way through the back yards to Orlovsky's Mill, where a German battery was stationed. They wiped out its crew and threw the breechblocks from the guns into the river. That happened half an hour after they had left the fortress. After that they put eight guns which had been shelling the fortress out of action. First they would deal with the crew, then smash the breech-blocks, and on they went!
"In one of the skirmishes the guide was wounded in the arm. Then the three made their way to a hut in the forest where this local man was living, bandaged his arm, picked up some food, and moved on... On the second of April all three of them were found dead near a shattered German machine-gun.'.."
'"Did you find out the name of the guide, Valerian Dmitrievich?" Maremukha asked. "He must have come from round here."
"He certainly did, he was a pupil of mine... His name was Yosif Vikentievich Starodomsky!" Lazarev said proudly. "I don't suppose you remember him. He was away from the town for a long time."
"Not remember Starodomsky? Yuzik, Weasel!" I exclaimed.
"But Starodomsky was 'a sailor," Maremukha put in, also surprised. "How did he come to be here, so far from the sea, and in war-time too?"
"He was a sailor, you're right there," Lazarev replied, "perhaps I am in a better position than anyone else in this town to confirm that. Come into the museum for a minute. . ."
A clear smiling face looked down at us from a photograph draped with mourning. Yuzik wore a smart naval cap. His face had remained almost as thin and dark and stubborn as on that July morning twenty years ago when Yuzik and I stood on the captain's bridge as our ship steamed into Mariupol.
In a glass case there were several exhibits. The first that caught my eye was a rusty Turkish dagger. Above it I read the same faded notice, written a quarter of a century ago: "Presented by a pupil of the Town School, Yosif Starodomsky."
I remember one cloudless Sunday when Yuzik and I were walking round the Old Fortress. Searching for the nest of a linnet that had flown up out of some hawthorn bushes under the Donna Tower, Yuzik poked about for a long time and at last came out of the bushes, beaming with pleasure and carrying in his hand this Turkish weapon —relic of a cruel and bloody age.
With what pride he afterwards watched Lazarev, our chief adviser on the history of the town, peer down at the rusty sheath of the curved dagger, almost touching it with his pince-nez. "This weapon dates from the second half of the seventeenth century," Lazarev said at last. "It is just possible that this dagger was dropped by one of the Turkish janissaries fleeing from Podolia as the Russian troops advanced."
Beside Starodomsky's dagger there now lay a long thick note-book in strong binding. The white label bore an inscription in Indian ink: "Log-book of the Slava."
"You know what a log-book is, don't you?" Lazarev asked, noticing that I was staring at this exibit in some surprise. "It's a document that every sea captain must bring ashore if his ship is sunk. It's the living history of the ship and its voyages. It records everything that happens on board."
"But how did it come to be here?" Petka asked.
"Starodomsky picked it up just before his ship was sunk and brought it ashore," Lazarev replied.
"And after that he brought it home with him."
"May I see what's written there?" I asked.
"Why not?" Lazarev replied, "You are close friends of the owner."
The director of the museum opened the case and handed me the thick note-book. It had been started in the winter of1939 and the first entries were made in an unfamiliar hand.
From the hurried entries made during the first days of the war we could picture the situation in the southern theatre of operations during the second half of1941.
"15.02. Enemy aircraft sighted in the North-East.
Maintaining course.
15.08. 80° to starboard German aircraft attacked one of our neighbours. Force composed of 10-15 torpedo aircraft and bombers.
15.17. Chief Engineer Voskoboinikov wounded.
15.20. Attack weakening. Bombing from high altitude. Guns still firing, I have ordered Kostenko to
take over from Voskoboinikov in the engine-room. Voskoboinikov has been put in the saloon and is being attended..."
I turned over several pages of the log and read an entry made in Yuzik's handwriting, but in very big, sprawling letters:
"It is getting light. I am on a spit of land. Surely it isn't the Belosaraiskaya Kosa? How I got here I don't know. Near me a life-boat is lying on the sand. There's a terrible row in my head all the time. Must be concussion. My hands are scalded. Did the boilers burst? I'm only writing down what I remember clearly.
"Yesterday, October 7, 1941, the market was still open at ten in the morning and I sent Grisha Gusenko there with all the cash we had. The other ships were taking wounded men and machinery on board. We were anchored in the bay waiting for our turn to go in for loading. At approximately 13.00 a column of enemy tanks and submachine-gunners suddenly broke through into the harbour itself.
"Seeing that the other ships had nearly finished loading, I started the engines at half speed to avoid running aground and engaged the enemy advance guard with all the fire power at my disposal. 'I wanted to draw enemy's fire and give our chaps a chance to get away. I saw several ships cast off and steam out into the bay. The Slava was hit eight times by fire from the enemy's tanks. We burnt two enemy tanks on the quay. I saw Nazi submachine-gunners falling under my machine-gun fire. Just as we were getting away, a direct hit in the engine-room put the ship out of ac
tion. I continued to engage the enemy while the ship sank.
"We didn't stop firing until our guns were under water. Then there was an explosion and I don't remember anything more..."
"The concussion was very serious," Lazarev said. "Starodomsky could scarcely hear anything even when he got here. And his face was scalded. His uncle, a forester, told me about that. It was his uncle who gave me this logbook. At the very end there is another remarkable entry. . ."
At the back of the log-book, separated from the official entries by a few clean pages, we read a passage scrawled in the unsteady hand of an old man.
"I curse myself for not being able to get through to the East because of this concussion. When I found myself in Yasinovataya I got a lift on a coal train and decided to hide with my family until I got better.
"The front is moving farther and farther away towards Moscow. Those dirty Hitlerite hirelings are trying to put the rumour round that we are beaten. It's not true! Russia can't be beaten. And neither can the Ukraine while she is with Russia! The gravestones of our ancestors will rise and fight if there are no Soviet people left alive.
"Whatever side you come from, you Hitlerites, you can't win! You'll drown in your own blood sooner or later..."
"Those lines were written in the winter of 1941-42," said Lazarev, and looked at the photograph from which our old friend smiled down on us.
In the glass case lay the mangled remains of the German machine-gun. There were dull spots on its black steel. Perhaps they were from the blood of Yuzik Starodomsky and his comrades who had been found dead beside the gun.
"When Starodomsky realized that he couldn't break through to the station," said Lazarev, "he and his friends mounted that machine-gun in the bushes by the fork and kept the enemy's motorized infantry back from the fortress. Think of it! Three of them alone, with hardly any cover, held up an avalanche of enemy troops! The people living round there say that the Germans had to use two batteries and their regimental mortars to crush them..."