During the First World War, Yeromenko had served as a corporal and he liked to reminisce about those years—his aides could usually predict at what point in a conversation he would start to recount a bayonet attack during which he had stabbed twenty Germans.
Yeromenko knew a great deal about war—from the straightforward difficulties encountered by an ordinary soldier to the heights of generalship. War, for him, was everyday work, not an extraordinary event. He looked on his general’s uniform as a workman looks on his tarpaulin overalls. His adjutant, Parkhomenko, wanted his general to look smarter and more impressive than any other general, but in the end he had to admit defeat; Yeromenko’s chest and shoulders were always covered in cigarette ash and there was always ink and any number of other stains on his jacket.
He was massive yet stooping; his build did not make life easy for tailors.
He was both a man of the people and a highly experienced general.
In the early summer of 1941 Yeromenko had been in command of one of the sectors of the Western Front, and he had played an important part in the operation that, for some time, halted the German advance on Smolensk.
In August, he had been appointed commander of the Bryansk Front. In the course of several bitterly fought battles he had managed to prevent Guderian’s tanks from breaking through towards Oryol. In the winter of 1941, while in command of the Northwestern Front, he had broken through the German front line.
Yeromenko came to Stalingrad in the grimmest days of the long Soviet retreat and it might have seemed that this soldier of bog and forest, who had spent most of the war on relatively slow-moving fronts, would have felt out of place in the southern steppe. In the course of only a year, Southwestern Front HQ had moved all the way from Tarnopol, in western Ukraine, to the Volga. The Front had had to contend with particularly difficult conditions. The broad plains and steppes, crossed by countless roads and tracks, constituted ideal terrain for the highly mobilized warfare the Germans so favoured; on open steppe their tanks and motor artillery and infantry were free to carry out pincer movements and encirclements of unprecedented swiftness and power. Conditions for Yeromenko’s Northwestern Front could hardly have been more different. The swamps, the dense forest, the lack of roads—everything had combined to hinder the German advance, and for months on end the front line had barely moved.
Some staff officers, considering Yeromenko sadly inexperienced, took an absurd pleasure in recalling the many headlong retreats and disastrous encirclements.
They did not understand that Yeromenko’s lack of interest in their knowledge of steppe retreat—his refusal to learn this sad art—was a sign not of weakness but of strength.
They had not yet grasped that the war was entering a new phase. Much of the knowledge accumulated during the last year was to prove invaluable—but the experience of sudden night-time evacuations, emergency HQ relocations and long wanderings through the steppe was no longer relevant.
Yeromenko chose a deep and airless tunnel as the location for his HQ. To many this seemed absurd and eccentric. Why, when he could have enjoyed the comforts and convenience of one of the city’s large buildings, had Yeromenko chosen to hide away in a stifling horizontal shaft near the opening of a mine? Commanders would emerge from this tunnel out of breath, blinking for a long time in the brilliant daylight.
There was a strange contrast between this subterranean HQ and the city’s elegant southern charm, still tangibly present in spite of the troubles of war and the defences now hurriedly being erected. During the day groups of young boys gathered around the pale blue kiosks selling seltzer water. There was an open-air canteen where you could sit looking out over the Volga and drink cool beer; a breeze off the river ruffled the tablecloths and the waitresses’ white aprons. The Bright Path1 was being shown in the cinemas, and plywood advertising boards displayed a happily smiling, rosy-cheeked young woman in a colourful dress. Both schoolchildren and Red Army soldiers would visit the zoo to see the elephant evacuated from Moscow; during the last year it too had grown thinner. Bookshops sold novels about courageous, hard-working people leading peaceful and measured lives, and schoolchildren and students bought textbooks that allowed no room for doubt about anything—even the imaginary numbers of algebra. At night, though, a bright, troubling smoke rose from the factories, spreading everywhere and blotting out the stars.
The city was bursting with people. Not only were there individuals and families from Gomel, Dnepropetrovsk, Poltava, Kharkov and Leningrad—there were also entire refugee hospitals, orphanages and institutes of higher education.
The Front HQ lived its own peculiar life, separate from that of the city. The black cables of field telephone lines hung from the branches of trees carefully trimmed by gardeners. Commanders covered in dust emerged from Emkas caked in dried mud and with bulging cracks on their windscreens; they looked up and down the streets in the same intent yet distracted way as, earlier that day, they had looked up and down the high west bank of the Don. Despatch riders, ignoring all regulations and reducing traffic controllers to despair, tore down the streets on their motorcycles; behind them, like an invisible mist, trailed all the anguish of war. Soldiers from the HQ battalion rushed out to kitchens newly installed in courtyards, clattering their mess tins just as they had in the Bryansk forest and in villages around Kharkov.
When troops are stationed in a forest, it feels as if they are bringing the mechanical breath of the city into a kingdom of birds, beasts, beetles, leaves, berries and herbs. When troops and HQs are quartered in cities, they seem to bring with them a sense of space, of field and forest, of the free life of the steppe. In the end, however, both city streets and bright forest glades are torn apart; both become mere theatres for the fury of war.
Stalingrad could already sense the breath of the war. Slit trenches had been dug in courtyards and gardens in case of air raids. Water barrels and boxes of Volga sand had been placed in hallways and stairwells. In the daytime reconnaissance planes flew high in the sky; at night there was the sound of lone German bombers. In the evenings the streets were dark; every window was blacked out by dark paper, blankets and shawls. Searchlights swept through the clouds, and from the west came the sound of distant artillery.
Some people were already packing suitcases and mending haversacks. The inhabitants of wooden houses on the city’s outskirts were digging pits and burying trunks, nickel-plated bed frames and sewing machines wrapped in layers of bast matting. Some tried to acquire stores of flour, others were re-baking stale pieces of bread, making them into rusks they could pack into bags and take with them on journeys. Some slept badly, full of foreboding and frightened by the likelihood of air raids; others had total confidence in the Soviet anti-aircraft defences and felt certain that German bombers would never get through to the city. And yet life still went on as it always had, bound by all the usual ties of family, friendship and workplace.
4
A GROUP of journalists—from Moscow newspapers, the telegraph agency and the radio committee—had gathered in the airless reception room of Colonel General Yeromenko’s underground HQ. An adjutant told them that they would have to wait. Yeromenko, who had promised to brief them about the situation at the front, was being delayed by a meeting of the military soviet.
While they waited, the journalists joked about the constant squabbling between those of them who spent time on the front line and those who stayed at an Army or Front HQ. The former were often late with their articles. Their vehicles would get stuck in the sand or the mud; they would get trapped in encirclements; they would lose touch with their offices; supposedly unable to see the wood for the trees, they would fail to come up with the kind of article their editors considered appropriate. The HQ journalists provided a more general and balanced overview; they sent their articles off on time down reliable telephone lines and contemplated the hardships and misadventures of the front-line correspondents with philosophical detachment. The front-line journalists, naturally, felt resentful.
On one occasion, a repentant HQ journalist had visited an infantry company on the front line. A shell had burst nearby; he suffered severe concussion and was almost killed. In the end, he spent more than three days at the front, without sleeping. He described all this in an article—but this article, which he considered his best, was the only one of his articles never printed. His boss’s response was an angry telegram: “Grey and irrelevant, no vivid characters, and far too late.”
Zbavsky, from The Latest Radio News, began to talk about how he had interviewed Yeromenko when he was still in command of the Bryansk Front. Yeromenko had insisted Zbavsky stay for a meal, and then for the night.
But the others were not interested. Captain Bolokhin, the Red Star correspondent, brought the conversation back to the only question that really mattered: Would Stalingrad hold out?
Bolokhin was an unusual man. Wherever he went, he took with him a suitcase full of books by all his favourite poets. The books lay jumbled together with army maps, newspaper cuttings, dirty underwear, torn socks and foot cloths that were almost black. During some journeys, this suitcase got shaken about so badly that it seemed as if the socks, the poems by Blok and Annensky,2 the foot cloths and underwear might all be transformed into some ancient homogeneous material combining elements of both poetry and foot cloths. Nevertheless, when the suitcase was opened, both poetry and foot cloths would turn out to have remained themselves. At night, Bolokhin would lie on the floor of a village hut and read poems aloud, in a sing-song voice. The straw would rustle as he scratched desperately at his chest and sides.
Bolokhin was scrupulous in his dealings with others and, unlike the majority of writers, he took genuine pleasure in his colleagues’ successes. They, in turn, respected him for his ability to work without respite; they had grown used to waking up in the night in a village hut and seeing his large head—lit by an oil lamp—bent over an army map.
One pessimistic photojournalist said he had equipped himself with an inflated inner tube from a car tyre: another few days and they might all have to swim to the east bank of the Volga. He was also thinking of crossing the Volga now and finding a billet near Lake Elton. There he would buy a harness for a camel, since his car would need extra traction in order to cope with the desert sands. He made out that he had begun studying Kazakh and was already drafting a future article: “Over mounds of corpses the enemy is advancing in vain towards Tashkent.”
Most of those present, however, believed that Stalingrad would hold out.
“Stalingrad!” the Izvestia correspondent pronounced with reverence, before reminding everyone that the very first factory of the first Five Year Plan had been built there and that the defence of the city in 1919 was one of the most glorious chapters in Russian history.
“Yes,” said Bolokhin, “but do you all remember Tolstoy’s account of the council of war in Fili, in 1812?”
“Of course I do, it’s brilliant!” Zbavsky replied, though he did not remember it at all.
“Do you remember,” Bolokhin continued, “how someone asked, ‘Can we truly contemplate surrendering Moscow, Russia’s ancient and sacred capital?’ And how Kutuzov replied, ‘Moscow is indeed ancient and sacred, but I am obliged to ask a strictly military question: Is it possible for us, from our present position, to defend the city?’ And then Kutuzov answered his own question. ‘No,’ he said. ‘It can’t be done.’ So, do you all understand me?” Bolokhin gestured towards Yeromenko’s office—and everyone began to wonder if the current meeting really would come to the same decision as that council of war in 1812.
The generals then began to emerge from the office and the journalists got to their feet.
Yeromenko invited them all into his small, stuffy, brightly lit room. The journalists sat down, rather noisily, and began opening their map cases and taking out their notebooks.
“Do you remember me, comrade Colonel General?” asked Zbavsky.
“Wait a moment, where was it?” Yeromenko asked with a frown.
“In the Bryansk forest—not long ago. I ate at your table!”
“So have others,” said Yeromenko, shaking his head sadly. “No, I don’t remember.”
Zbavsky heard smothered laughs. His colleagues, he realized, would not let him forget this. He could already see the joyful mockery in their eyes.
Yeromenko walked over to the table with his usual limp. He sat down awkwardly, letting out a quiet groan. His wound from the previous winter was troubling him.
“How is your wound doing, comrade Commander?” asked the Pravda correspondent.
“A mortar splinter. My seventh wound—I should be used to them by now. But this one doesn’t like bad weather. That’s why I’ve come here. For a change of climate.”
“So you’re expecting to stay? You don’t think you’ll have to change climate again?” asked Bolokhin.
Yeromenko glared at Bolokhin over the top of his spectacles and said, “What makes you ask that? I’m certainly not leaving Stalingrad.” He thumped the table with his large palm and said sternly, addressing the room, “Your questions please—I don’t have much time.”
The journalists began asking questions.
Yeromenko outlined the military situation. The chaos of attacks and counter-attacks, of sudden thrusts and counter-thrusts, had seemed incomprehensible. But a few simple words from Yeromenko, a single gesture indicating on the map the path of the German advance, were enough to instil clarity. What had seemed most significant to an onlooker was often merely a diversionary manoeuvre; what had seemed like a German strategic success was, in reality, often a failure.
Bolokhin realized how mistaken he had been in his assessment of the major offensive launched by the Germans on 23 July. He had seen the concentric German attacks, which had led to several units of the 62nd Army being encircled, as a serious defeat for the Red Army. But Yeromenko and his staff saw this differently. Two weeks of fierce fighting on a battlefield of 70,000 square kilometres had indeed enabled the Germans to reach the Don, but the Germans had not expected such a protracted battle and they had not achieved their true aim. Numerical superiority had allowed them to break through the Soviet defences at several points, but these were only minor, tactical victories. What mattered was that their 700 tanks had failed to deliver the intended crushing blow.
Bolokhin now understood that he had been wrong to imagine a parallel between Kutuzov’s abandonment of Moscow and the coming battle for Stalingrad.
Yeromenko, however, was frowning; he still seemed annoyed by Bolokhin’s initial question. He had no intention whatsoever—he said crossly—of retreating or moving his HQ across the Volga. He was not, like some people, thinking about pontoon bridges, boats, rafts, boards, the inner tubes of car tyres or any other way of exchanging the west bank for the east bank.
Yeromenko had clearly had to repeat all this several times recently—and his thoughts could hardly have been more different from Kutuzov’s at Fili. During the first few minutes, however, his voice sounded thin, oddly out of keeping with his massive bulk. But then someone asked about the mood of the troops. Yeromenko smiled and began talking animatedly about the battles being fought to the south. “The 64th Army are proving real fighters! I think you all know about the battle being fought at Kilometre 74—some of you have even been there. Yes, the 64th are an example to us all. It’s them you should be having a word with—not me. You should be speaking to Colonel Bubnov, the commander of the heavy-tank brigade. And you should do more than just write a few articles—his tank men merit a full-length novel. And so do Colonel Utvenko and his infantry! The Germans sent 150 tanks against them—and they didn’t waver!”
“I’ve been with Bubnov’s brigade,” said one journalist. “They’re astonishing men, comrade General. They go to their death as if to a holiday.”
Yeromenko narrowed his eyes. “Enough of that nonsense,” he said. “Which of us really wants to die?” After a moment’s thought, still looking at the speaker, he added, “Death’s no holiday and no
ne of us are eager to die. Neither you, comrade writer, nor me, nor those Red Army foot soldiers.” And then, with still greater indignation, “No, nobody wants to die. Fighting the Germans, though, that’s another matter.”
Wanting to smooth over his colleague’s mistake, Bolokhin said, “Tank men, comrade Colonel General, are a young lot. They’re ardent and enthusiastic. The young make the best soldiers!”
“No, comrade reporter, you’re wrong. Young men the best soldiers? No, they’re too hot-headed. The old, then? No—wrong again. The old think too much about their homes, about their wives and families—it’s best to assign them to supplies and provisioning. The best soldiers of all are the middle-aged. War is work. And it’s like any other work. A man needs some experience, he needs to have thought about life, he needs to have been knocked about a bit by the world. Do you think soldiering’s just a matter of yelling ‘U-u-r-a-a!’ and rushing into the arms of death? As if death’s a holiday! No, there’s more to being a soldier than being in a hurry to die. The work of a soldier is hard, complicated work. Only if duty commands does a soldier say, ‘Well, dying’s not easy, but I’ll die if I have to.’”
Yeromenko looked Bolokhin in the eye and, as if concluding an argument with him, said, “So, comrade writer, we do not want to die, we do not see death as a holiday, and we will not surrender Stalingrad. That would put us to shame before the whole people.”
Leaning his hands on the table, he half got to his feet, glanced at his watch and shook his head.
As they made their way out, Bolokhin said quietly to his colleagues, “It seems history does not, after all, want to be repeated today.”
Zbavsky took Bolokhin’s arm and said, “Look, I know you’ve got more petrol coupons than you need. Please lend me a few. I give you my word to return them as soon as we get next month’s issue.”
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