He noticed a gap in the bottom of the door and asked, “And where’s the man of the house?”
The boy whispered, “Don’t ask. You’ll upset Mama.”
But the woman said calmly, “He was killed in February, near Moscow. Not long ago they brought a German prisoner here. I asked him, ‘When did you get to the front?’ ‘In January,’ he answered. ‘So it was you killed my husband,’ I said. I wanted to hit the man, but the guard said it was against the law. ‘Let me hit him against the law,’ I said. But the guard didn’t let me.”
“Do you have an axe?” asked Vavilov.
“Yes.”
“Give it to me then. I must mend your door. Come winter, there’ll be an icy draught.”
His sharp eyes noticed a board lying by the wall. The woman handed him an axe, and everything about it that reminded him of his own axe made him feel sad. And everything that was different—this axe was far lighter, and the handle was thinner and longer—made him no less sad, since it reminded him how far he was from his home.
The woman guessed what he was thinking. “Don’t worry,” she said, “you’ll get back home in the end.”
“I don’t think so,” he answered. “It’s not far from a man’s home to the front, but it’s a long way from the front to his home.”
Vavilov began trimming the board.
“I don’t have any nails,” the woman said.
“I’ll manage,” he answered. “I’ll make a peg.”
As he worked, she filled the basket with tomatoes and said, “I’m counting on staying here with little Seryozha till winter. Then the Volga will freeze over. If the Germans get across to this bank, we’ll leave home and make for Kazakhstan. Seryozha’s all I have now. Under Soviet power, he’ll make his way in the world, but under the Germans he’ll never be anything more than a shepherd.”
Vavilov thought he could hear Kovalyov approaching. He put down the axe and straightened up. It was galling, even humiliating, to realize that he could get into trouble simply for carrying out necessary work.
“Yes, the Germans really have turned everything upside down,” he said to himself. After a quick look round, he picked up his axe again.
•
A few minutes later, as he was walking back, he felt anxious again. And the lieutenant did indeed say, “Had a quick snooze, did you?”
And Sergeant Major Marchenko came out with a dirty joke, to which no one responded.
As Kovalyov ordered his company to resume their march, a man on horseback appeared. It was the adjutant to the regimental chief of staff, draped in map cases.
“Who ordered this halt? It’s only another eighteen kilometres.”
“My battalion commander gave the order,” Kovalyov lied. He wanted to say that his men were tired, but he was afraid of being thought lacking in resolve.
“I shall report to the lieutenant colonel,” shouted the adjutant. “He’ll give you hell for this. Well, now you’ll have to march fast. You’re to reach your destination by ten hundred hours, without fail.”
The adjutant then shifted to an entirely peaceable tone; he was, in fact, an old friend of Kovalyov. He said that they’d spent the night in peasant huts and had fried eggs with fatback for supper. His only regret was that he had been woken at two in the morning; the divisional commander had ordered him to round up the laggards.
“I had to call on Filyashkin to check on your route. Guess who was spending the night in his hut? Medical instructor Lena Gnatyuk!”
Kovalyov shrugged.
And once again dust rose over the steppe. Grey and yellow clouds appeared here and there, eventually forming a veil that enveloped all space, as if a new fire from beyond the Volga was on its way to meet the fire of Stalingrad.
The earth, impregnated with salt, was hard and dry. The sun blazed down and a harsh dry wind whipped dust into everyone’s eyes. It was like powdered glass.
Vavilov looked around at his comrades, at the steppe, at the smoke over Stalingrad, and said aloud to himself, as if coming to some clear and simple understanding, “Still, we’ll send them packing.”
By ten in the morning Kovalyov’s company was approaching Srednaya Akhtuba, a small town built entirely from wood. They had long ago drained every last drop from their flasks and bottles. And suddenly they received new orders—the entire division was to proceed straight to the Volga.
Two cars sped past the dense columns of infantry. The soldiers glimpsed the frowning faces of senior commanders. Sitting beside the driver of the leading Emka was a young general, his right hand raised to his peaked cap in a continuous salute to the men he was passing.
A motorcycle tore past—a signals officer in blue overalls and a leather helmet with dangling earflaps. Next came Filyashkin, the battalion commander, in a light cart. “Kovalyov,” he called out. “Forced march! Proceed along your new route!”
And it was as if a chill wind had passed down the ranks, a premonition of the fighting to come.
People often express surprise at the ability of ordinary soldiers to keep up with the overall military situation. These men did not, of course, know that a signals officer in an armoured car had just brought General Rodimtsev, the divisional commander, a sealed envelope containing new battle orders from Yeromenko. They did not know that they were to proceed, via Srednaya Akhtuba and Burkovsky Hamlet, to Krasnaya Sloboda, and then cross the Volga forthwith, to Stalingrad.
Nevertheless, they knew very well that, during the night, the Germans had broken through into the centre of the city, that they had reached the Volga at two points, and that their artillery was now firing across the river, shelling the embarkation point at Krasnaya Sloboda.
If 10,000 soldiers are marching along the same road, nothing will escape them. They will question everyone: women with bundles who have just crossed the river; a worker walking along a sandy track, pushing a handcart on which a boy with a bandaged head sits among piles of parcels; an HQ signals officer repairing his motorcycle engine by the side of the road; wounded soldiers with sticks, greatcoats flung over their shoulders, plodding slowly east, away from the Volga; children standing beside the road and watching. And there is nothing the soldiers will fail to notice: the look on the face of the general speeding by; which way the signallers are taking the telephone cable; where exactly the truck with crates of soft drinks and a cageful of hens turned off from the main road; where the German dive-bombers now high in the air are heading; what kind of bombs the Germans dropped during the night; why a bomb hit a particular truck (the driver must have switched on his headlights as he was crossing a damaged bridge); and which side of the road had the deeper ruts—going towards the Volga, or away from it.
In short, there is no reason for surprise. If soldiers want to know something, they can certainly find it out.
“Pick up the pace!” commanders shouted, feeling the same grim anxiety as their men. But somehow it no longer felt so difficult to keep on marching. Shoulders ached less; rigid boots no longer rubbed so harshly against blisters. Exhaustion was blotted out by the fear of death.
A woman in a kerchief stood by the side of the road, a mug in her hand and a bucket of water by her feet. Soldiers were slipping out of the column or jumping down from their trucks and running up to her.
But no one was drinking her water. Men were merely exchanging a few words with her, then hurrying back.
The woman’s face was tense, unmoving, stone-like. Someone from the rear of the column shouted out to a mate, “Hey, what’s up? Why didn’t you drink?”
A sour, angry voice answered, “’Cos she’s charging ten fucking roubles a mug.”
A tall soldier ran out from the column. He had several days of dust-covered beard on his face.
“A fine time to be trading!” he shouted, kicking the bucket so hard that it flew into the air and landed upside down on the far side of the roadside ditch.
“Who’ll feed my children?” cried the woman.
“Filthy parasite!” yelled the soldie
r. “I’ll murder you!”
The woman let out a scream and fled, without so much as a backward look.
“Vavilov! And he always seemed so quiet and gentle,” said Rysev. “He shouldn’t have done that. She was doing it for her children.”
Zaichenkov, who was walking beside Rysev, replied, “And who do you think we’ll be dying for? For everyone’s children.”
•
Major General Rodimtsev’s Guards division was moving swiftly towards Stalingrad.
Their initial orders had been to follow a longer route, reaching the Volga only some distance to the south of Stalingrad. But in the last few hours the situation within the city had become critical and these orders had been countermanded. The division was to head instead for Krasnaya Sloboda, the embarkation point directly opposite the city.
For Rodimtsev and his staff, this change of plan—the second in only a few days—was exasperating. Men longing to rest, exhausted by the heat and dust of a long march, now had to march north. Only a few hours earlier, they had been marching south along the same road.
No one, neither commander nor rank-and-file soldier, foresaw that the name of their division would remain forever associated with the city into which they were about to cross.
16
FRONT HQ had been withdrawn to the east bank. It was now located in the small village of Yama, eight kilometres from Stalingrad.
Yama was within range of the German heavy mortars, and all sections of the HQ were under constant fire. It seemed a senseless place to have chosen.
Once the decision had been taken to withdraw to the east bank, there might indeed seem to be little advantage in being eight, rather than twenty, kilometres from the Volga. And there were certainly disadvantages. The most serious was that German shells and mortar bombs were as deadly on the east bank as on the west bank. One day a shell landed in the HQ canteen during lunch, killing and wounding several commanders.
Telephone lines were frequently severed. There were occasions when generals summoned subordinates and the latter failed to appear. One mistrustful general assumed that a commander was simply being fearful, waiting for the shelling to quieten down. Vowing to give the man hell, he sent out his adjutant. The adjutant came back with the news that the commander had been wounded just outside the general’s dugout and taken off to the aid station.
Even the most conscientious and level-headed members of the staff wasted a great deal of time in discussion: Who had been wounded? When and where? What were the effects of such and such an explosion? How much damage had been caused by shrapnel?
Some of the staff dwelt on the more amusing side of these dramas: generals who had farted when a shell exploded, or who had cursed and sworn in the presence of a woman doctor; the chef who directed his kitchen from a distance and seasoned the dishes for the HQ canteen without leaving his trench; the waitress who flinched at the whistle of a shell and emptied a bowl of soup on some major; the fire-breathing colonel who had always insisted that his section should be a part of advance HQ but who now wanted it further back.
Others complained bitterly: Why were they being exposed to enemy fire? Why were men being killed and wounded for no reason? And look at the Germans—their HQs were always several hundred kilometres from the front line!
Nevertheless, Yeromenko, the Front commander, had not acted without reason. There was logic behind his choice of this village as the location for a large military establishment, with all its sections and subsections, with its typists, clerks, topographers, stenographers, quartermasters, waitresses, messengers and secretaries.
Yeromenko had been reluctant to relocate his HQ. He had stayed in Stalingrad as long as he possibly could.
There had been fighting in the suburbs. The Volga crossings were being bombed day and night; they were being strafed by Messerschmitts. The war was entering the city, but Yeromenko had refused to move.
German storm troopers with sub-machine guns were infiltrating the streets at night. HQ staff regularly heard the sound of machine-gun fire. One evening, Colonel Sytin, whom Yeromenko had recently appointed commandant of the Stalingrad fortified area, reported the presence of German sub-machine-gunners 250 metres from Front HQ.
“How many?” Yeromenko asked.
“Could be 200.”
“Count precisely and report back!”
Sytin clicked his heels, said, “Report back, Colonel General,” and left.
Soon afterwards Sytin returned, composed as ever, and confirmed his original figure.
“I see,” said Yeromenko.
And Front HQ had stayed put.
Communications between Front HQ and Shumilov’s 64th Army, deployed further south to defend Sarepta, became increasingly difficult.
Yeromenko had been placed in command not only of the Stalingrad Front but also of the Southeastern Front. Communications with the latter had become hard to maintain. Nevertheless, Yeromenko stayed in Stalingrad.
Only when it became physically impossible for Front HQ to remain on the west bank did Yeromenko give the order to relocate to Yama.
Ordinary logic suggested that there was no reason not to move another nine or ten kilometres further east. But the logic of this harsh time—the most difficult months of the entire war—dictated otherwise.
Yeromenko withdrew to the east bank not because he wished to retreat but in order to organize the defence of Stalingrad. And Yama afforded a clear view of the city—its blazing buildings could be seen from every bunker and dugout.
There was, perhaps, even an advantage in being exposed to German shells and mortar bombs.
When divisional commanders and commissars returned to the west bank after visiting Front HQ, their comrades and subordinates would ask, “Well, how’s life on the east bank? Was it nice and comfy at HQ? Had a good rest?” Battalion commanders and regimental commissars would say this with a smile—the mocking smile with which those on the front line, those closest to death, speak and think about those at a greater distance from death.
And the commanders just returned from the east bank would reply, “Far from it! While I was walking from operations to admin, the Germans landed four mortar bombs on HQ. And HQ really is very close—they can see everything that happens here.”
It is possible, surely, that those responsible for the location of Front HQ—for keeping it in the city as long as possible and then moving only as far as Yama—were aware of the effect their decision might have on their forces’ morale. There may, in addition, have been more personal motives; they may have wanted to guard against accusations of cowardice. But then they also wanted to prove their lack of cowardice to themselves. The personal feelings and anxieties of most individuals were now aligned with the interests of the country as a whole; instead of contradicting them, they gave expression to them.
17
YEROMENKO’S two adjutants, talking quietly to each other, were working at a desk in a spacious bunker, its walls boarded with fresh, almost white pine. A sullen-looking general with three stars on his collar was sitting in a distant corner, waiting to be received.
One of the adjutants, a tall, pink-faced young man with two orders pinned to his tunic and a new peaked cap with a bright red band, was looking through a file of yellow telegraph forms; this was Major Parkhomenko, Yeromenko’s favourite. The other, a fair-haired man by the name of Dubrovin, was sitting under a bright electric lamp, bent over a large-scale map on which he was entering the latest developments. There were two points—to the north of the Tractor Factory and in the city centre, near the River Tsaritsa—where the blue pencil marking the German front line now merged with the blue of the Volga. Dubrovin was smiling; he had just sharpened his blue pencil and the line he had drawn was fine and accurate.
Dubrovin half got to his feet, peered over his comrade’s shoulder as if to look at the telegrams and whispered, “Who is it?”
“Chuikov—he was one of Shumilov’s senior commanders. Now he’s being posted to Stalingrad, to command the 62nd Army,�
� Parkhomenko said in a whisper, continuing to sort through the telegrams.
Sensing that he was being talked about, Chuikov cleared his throat and brushed the dust off the sleeve of his tunic. He slowly turned his large head, and then, no less slowly, looked the adjutants up and down.
Like any commander accustomed to unquestioning obedience from his subordinates, Chuikov looked at the insolent adjutants of his superiors in a very particular way. His look contained not only a hint of mockery but also a certain philosophical sadness, as if to say, “A pity you’re being corrupted here. In my hands, you’d soon be the perfect adjutant—prompt and obedient.”
From behind the wooden door, a thin, hoarse voice called out, “Parkhomenko!”
Parkhomenko went through the low door into Yeromenko’s office. A minute later he came back, clicked his heels and said respectfully, though perhaps not quite respectfully enough, “Comrade Lieutenant General, please go through.”
With a twitch of his massive shoulders, Chuikov got to his feet. Then he walked quickly and quietly through.
Yeromenko was at his desk. In front of him were a nickel-plated teapot, a half-drunk glass of tea, an empty fruit bowl and an opened, but otherwise untouched packet of biscuits. On the other half of the desk was a map of the city, covered with arrows, circles, triangles, numbers and abbreviations.
Chuikov went in. Standing to attention by the door, he reported in a deep bass, “Comrade Front Commander—Lieutenant General Chuikov, at your command.”
“That’ll do,” Yeromenko said with a chuckle. “Think I didn’t recognize you?”
Chuikov smiled and said more quietly, “Hello!”
“Sit down, Chuikov, please sit down,” said Yeromenko.
He leaned over towards Chuikov and cleared some space on the desk, pushing away an ashtray filled with cigarette butts and a few apple cores. He then blew on the tablecloth to remove the ash.
Yeromenko had first encountered Chuikov before the war, during exercises in the Belorussian Military District. He was well aware of his brusqueness, of his swift, sometimes impetuous decisiveness.
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