November 1916

by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

  “Three minutes,” he said.

  “Two, no more. You’ve got to stun them. Get all the orders worked out and pass them to the battery in advance. The first shells will be in the breech beforehand and all we have to do is to correct for range and angle.”

  Lazhenitsyn was surprised.

  “Am I doing all the firing?”

  “Yes. How many shells do you need?”

  Again the reply was slow and cautious.

  “Forty.”

  “We’ve got to do a thorough clearing job. Take sixty.”

  Shells were coming up from the rear these days with the words “Bang away regardless” on the boxes. It wasn’t like 1915.

  Moreover, the lieutenant colonel had patiently trained his whole battery, dealing with each gunlayer individually, to “shoot into the fire.” There was nothing about this in standing regulations. Boyer had picked it up in courses from one or two generals, who had not succeeded in converting the War Ministry, but had acquired followers in the batteries. Instead of platoon commanders standing by their guns and directing the firing from right to left—"Number two! Number three! Number four!”—which was the general practice in the Russian artillery, each gunlayer stood holding the string, with one eye on the gunlayer to his right. The battery fired in unison and all the platoon commanders were freed for more useful work.

  Lazhenitsyn immersed himself in calculations, resting the duty observer’s notebook on a smooth part of the board to jot them down. There was no great hurry, but he might well have been a little quicker. His judgment was not at all bad, but there was too much of the civilian in his habit of checking and rechecking his reasoning over and over again. All the same, Boyer was hopeful that the lad would get the knack of it in time. He believed that an enthusiasm for war was a natural masculine characteristic and that it could be awakened and developed in any man.

  The second lieutenant ordered the duty telephone operator, a Tartar with a receiver dangling at his ear from a cord tucked under his cap, to ring up Blagodarev, the bombardier on No. 1 gun, and spoke to him squatting by the instrument. Then he spoke to the other platoons. Then Boyer got on the infantry telephone and obtained the regimental commander’s permission to begin the bombardment.

  Lazhenitsyn was excited, and anxious not to make a mistake. Responsibility for this unexpectedly heavy bombardment rested entirely on him, though the battery commander hovered like an examiner, eyeing him skeptically. But the lieutenant colonel did not countermand a single order once it was issued. Lazhenitsyn’s calculations determined and drove the pace. Three spacing shots to a strike, not forgetting to switch one gun onto the new structure by the graveyard. What a thrilling moment it was when your own small voice, which nonetheless has in it something of the metal of those gun barrels, cries, “Raking shot! Fire!” and is magnified a thousand times in that great roar, when the weakness of your arms and their short reach is superseded by the far-ranging sweep and thump of shells and, surprised to find yourself a hurler of thunderbolts, you have only to look through your field glasses to see the shaggy gray sheaf rear up as each round explodes, the twisted scraps of barbed wire, the fragments of mangled birch stakes mingle with the dust and smoke—the whole ingenious fabric which so many men had taken so many nights to contrive blown sky high by you in the space of three minutes. When shells are spent as freely as they were that day, you feel a strength far beyond the limits of any individual man, and feel … proud?

  Surely not. Pride? Well, the lieutenant colonel said, “Not bad,” in a voice gratifyingly free of censure. What a pity that it was only a maneuver and that no one would advance through those breaches.

  On his chest under his greatcoat was a medal—the order of St. Stanislav, third class, but with swords—in whose modest story the battery commander had also played a part. More inspiring still was a St. George’s Cross for bravery during a fire at a battery position. The light touch of this brand-new medal on his chest seemed to concentrate and reorient all his ideas on man’s aims and his duty.

  It not only commemorated the past but implied an obligation for the future.

  The day’s work had been well done. The rules of artillery fire had been intelligently applied. It had cost sixty shells but they must have killed and wounded quite a few people in the German trenches that day.

  Yet somehow it made no impression.

  Two shells overshot their mark and landed on the Orthodox graveyard, raising black clouds there. And violating graves.

  When he had duly noted the number of shells fired, their objectives, and the results, Lazhenitsyn was ready for his next job. This was going to be even more interesting. The lieutenant colonel intended to try out the new thirty-six-second fuses of which he had so far received only a small consignment. The brigade had been fighting for two years with twenty-two-second fuses, and the range of a shrapnel shell was five versts. In terrain like this, where it was impossible to find cover for guns closer than Dryagovets, their shrapnel fire was concentrated entirely on the forward edge of the German defenses. Thirty-six-second fuses would extend the range two versts deeper into enemy territory.

  The new data were worked out on a two-verst map spread out on the breastwork. The second lieutenant gave his orders and watched intently the distant puffs of white smoke which were shrapnel bursts. There was a mathematical beauty, and nothing at all sinister, about this exercise. They compared their impressions of its results.

  Not that this bombardment did much to disturb the peace of the enemy’s fighting day. Occasional single rounds, with no attempt to concentrate them on any definite target, were just a routine disturbance of the air over the front. It would have taken a clever observer to realize that shells were exploding so deep in German territory not because the Russians had changed their position but because they had acquired new fuses.

  One shrapnel burst caught a cart and bowled it over, horses and all. Another time they landed their shells as close as they could to the church at Stwolowicze, where the Germans undoubtedly had an observation post.

  Sharing his work equally with the lieutenant colonel was something for Sanya to be proud of. They stood resting their elbows on the boarded patch of breastwork which had become home away from home to them, busy with their diagrams, calculations, and conjectures, not like commander and subordinate but almost like friends, except that the peculiarly icy politeness of the lieutenant colonel’s voice, as always, forbade intimacy. Nonetheless, to have been singled out from the other officers, to be able to show his ready grasp and his proficiency, boosted Sanya’s morale.

  The shrapnel bursts were whiter, more brilliant, and more beautiful every time. It was only toward the end that the lieutenant colonel and the second lieutenant realized why: during their three or four hours at work the weather had changed—there were no more gleams of subdued sunlight, clouds were blotting out the sky and getting darker. The distant steep slope down to Lake Koldyczew was hidden in mist.

  Lieutenant Colonel Boyer had done all that he meant to do and was ready to move on. Sanya decided that this was a good time to approach him once more about Bombardier Blagodarev’s promised leave. This although the lieutenant colonel had trained his subordinates not to raise the same question twice: a single yes or no must be the end of it. Still, the way Sanya felt that day, he thought it worth trying.

  They had meant to send Blagodarev on leave a month earlier, but it was rumored that an imperial decree had canceled leave for soldiers in the ranks, and permits were held up in consequence. Then came an order from General Evert, commander of their Army Group—no leave to be given to soldiers as of 14 October. Like all orders from high up, this one seemed absurd to those in the depths. If there had been any signs of major shifts on the front, preparations either by the Russians or by the Germans to take the offensive … but there was no hint of it, and it was not something that could happen without warning. They would most probably be staying put throughout the winter, not advancing at all, and there would be no serious fighting.
If there had been a shortage of men, and no one to replace those on leave, it would be understandable, but although the corps was short of many things, numbers was not one of them. Men could perfectly well have gone off for a time to their families and farms, and there were some who had distinguished themselves. But no! The Army Group commander, who had never been near the place, and of whom nothing was known except his German name—and that only to the officers—had from afar and on high smashed the dearest hopes of tens of thousands. It would have been different if they had lined the men up and told them clearly and frankly, so that everybody could hear and understand. But once again—they didn’t. The order was treated as a military secret. Battery commanders read it, and signed an undertaking not to divulge it. Platoon commanders then had the embarrassing task of refusing uncomprehending soldiers their promised and eagerly awaited leave.

  Sanya, of course, invoked none of the broader arguments, knowing that the lieutenant colonel would not listen to doubts about the wisdom of Evert’s orders. He spoke only of Blagodarev, who always took adversity so lightly, and instruction so readily. Most impressively, he had knowingly put himself in danger to drag shells away from that fire, but his commendation had got lost in the bureaucratic maze, and Blagodarev had received his medal only recently, later than the others. He was entitled to leave twice over—ordinary leave and special leave—but now all leave had been suspended.

  Diving after the lieutenant colonel under the canvas curtain between the dugout and the communication trench, no longer within hearing of the telephone operators, Sanya spoke up.

  “Please, sir, Colonel, dare I mention once again … It’s Blagodarev. It’s very upsetting, I feel ashamed. If we do this sort of thing, the army will go to pieces. After his George medal got mislaid for so long … Couldn’t we do something—just for him?”

  It was lighter than in the dugout, but here too the gloom had gathered. The lieutenant colonel was still without his pince-nez, and the peak of his cap was pulled down so far over his brow that his mustache would have needed only a slight additional twist to reach it. He was symmetrical, solid, rock hard. All at once he seemed to have decided to make the second lieutenant his accomplice.

  “Let me tell you confidentially,” he said, lowering his voice, “that Major General Belkovich has recently moved out, and is to be replaced by Colonel Smyslovsky. He might release the man, on his own responsibility. I could, perhaps”—he paused to think for a moment—"approach him. Or I’ll send for you at a convenient moment.”

  Sanya was as pleased as if he himself was being given leave.

  “Thank you, thank you, you’ve saved the day, Colonel, sir!”

  The unsmiling lieutenant colonel’s unbending manner made it clear that army regulations made no provision for thank-yous.

  They set out with the lieutenant colonel’s orderly on the long journey through the communication trenches.

  They had made a pretty good job of it. It was really work for a senior officer, a regular—but someone with crossed cannons on his epaulets, and a poor gunner, could shame and disgrace them all by winging shells heaven knows where. In fact, Boyer supervised all operations in person. Suppose he was put out of action tomorrow—who would direct the main bombardments in the hours that followed? The lieutenant colonel was preparing Lazhenitsyn for just that, without telling him anything. The battery was short of the signals officer and the reconnaissance officer who should, according to regulations, have been on its roster. Noncommissioned officers deputized for them. There was moreover a shortage of experienced bombardiers throughout the Grenadier Brigade—too many of them had been crammed into other units, even infantry units, in the period of administrative chaos at the beginning of the war, and killed off.

  In the present sector, near Kroszyn, the Germans had only one division, and that merely a Landwehr division, second class, facing the Grenadier Corps, but the grenadiers still did not feel that they had the upper hand and could pound the enemy. They were, of course, held in check not by the Landwehr troops but by the technical superiority of the Germans in so many respects—their heavy artillery, their abundant supply of shells, their ability to correct aim and range by means of aerial reconnaissance, and a succession of novelties which struck awe into Russian soldiers: bomb throwers, mortars, armored cars, gas attacks, and most recently trench mortars and flame throwers. Then just the other day the 22nd Landwehr Regiment, which had been stationed on that very spot, left of Dubrowna, had been sighted—in Romania, although its disappearance from its previous station had passed unnoticed by the grenadiers. The enemy was making it obvious what he thought of them. To face a Russian Grenadier Corps and the Polish Rifle Brigade he had left only a thinly stretched Landwehr division, minus one regiment. Boyer had taken this as a personal insult.

  But trench warfare had reached such an impasse that neither side could exploit local superiority. In whole Army sectors there was deadlock and paralysis. All military decisions had become so complicated, and were referred to such remote heights, that nothing smaller than an Army Group could bestir itself. All that was left was raids and maneuvers.

  A raid had been attempted three days earlier to their left, in the 2nd Grenadier Division’s sector. Gas was discharged in the direction of the enemy after midnight, on the calculation that a sufficiently steady wind was blowing from east of Kroszyn, and the Germans would all be gassed while they slept in their trenches. But when the gas had dispersed, and a battalion of the Samogitian Regiment advanced toward the German wire, they were suddenly illuminated by searchlights, caught in a hurricane of shots, and forced to retreat in disorder, losing fifty-five grenadiers and two officers.

  It was indeed a long time since the Grenadier Corps, which had fought at Borodino and taken part in the capture of Paris, had done anything to add to the glory it had earned in its hundred-year history. By now the reputation of the corps did not stand very high, and few could have explained what distinction, or what special feature of its past, the soldiers’ yellow epaulets, the yellow flashes on officers’ epaulets, and the grenade with a flame on their buttons were intended to represent. The corps had not distinguished itself in the Turkish war and had played no part in Manchuria. The Rostov Regiment had even sided with the insurgents in 1905, whereas the 1st Artillery Brigade had opened fire on them. The corps had been stationed in Moscow for many years, and so its officers included not only the best graduates of the military schools but also useless drones with influential connections. In addition to this the corps gave interim appointments to Guards and General Staff officers who were not in the Grenadier Division long enough to take root even if they had wished to. There were, moreover, sudden disruptive changes in the style of leadership: at times it was unpardonably easygoing, at others inordinately harsh, as under Mrozovsky, a man whose inability to distinguish between authority and tyranny sapped the self-confidence of his regular officers and made them dread their commander more than defeat in battle.

  The corps was involved in heavy fighting in 1914 and 1915. Only one of its engagements had ended in victory (that at Ternawka), and some of its defeats (those at Goraje and on the Vistula, for instance) were costly. If particular regiments won victories of their own it was usually when attached to other units and under different command. The commander of the 1st Grenadier Division, Postovsky, had no victories to his credit at all. Mrozovsky, as corps commander, squandered his men in disastrous engagements, mishandled the distribution of equipment and horses at regimental and battery level, and was then promoted and transferred to command the Moscow Military District. The Most August will of the Supreme Commander of the Russian army was exempt from criticism—even when, as Mrozovsky’s replacement, Kuropatkin was retrieved from ignominious oblivion, now seventy years old, but tireless in his efforts to vindicate his honor as a commander in the field. What he was really good at was making the rounds of the men’s dugouts, peering into their cooking pots, arranging bath days and mail deliveries, and all this improved the well-being of the co
rps. But Kuropatkin again pushed the grenadiers into futile offensives without working out the routes carefully, sending them with no cover into lethal fire, after which he too was promoted, and transferred to command the Northern Army Group. In two years of war the Grenadier Corps had spent a total of five days in reserve, and had now been stationed for more than a year in the marshy lowlands, carrying out endless trenching operations, handing over each sector once dug to the unit nearest to them, then digging and digging night after night to get within striking distance of the enemy.

  In those two years Boyer and his like, grenadiers through and through, had been denied an officer’s chief joy—pride in his unit. They were given no occasion to hear their old colors flapping in the breeze and all they could do was keep up a bold front and try through daily drudgery to drag all these surrogate officers and soldiers into the musty shade of the nineteenth century.

  Meanwhile proud Pecherzewski had relieved the taciturn Zanigatdinov at the observation post, and was testing the telephone lines in a strong Polish accent. The relief observer, an ensign, had not yet arrived. And although the second lieutenant was not duty-bound to wait for him, etiquette demanded that he stay behind a little after the battery commander’s departure. He went over again to the observation slot and stood looking through it, making occasional notes.

  1510 No. 2 machine-gun nest more active than the others. Fired at any sign of movement in No. 3 Battalion.

  1536 Heavy mine bombardment of No. 1 Battalion’s trenches from Torczyc Heights. Perhaps forty mines.

  The day had been a good one. Sanya had worked well and distinguished himself in his commander’s eyes, and his fresh hope for Blagodarev added to his satisfaction. Good.

  Good. Along the breastwork he scribbled with a long, jagged splinter that had flown through the observation slit when shells were bursting nearby that morning.