At the end of July, Chuikov had been in command of the Southern Operational Group. This group had met with little success, and on 2 August it was incorporated into Shumilov’s 64th Army. This setback, however, did not trouble Yeromenko. He knew that no long military career consists only of victories.
The two men’s lives had followed similar paths. Each had regularly heard news of the other even though several years went by without them meeting. Yeromenko heard about Chuikov’s successes and failures during the war against Finland and he knew about his work as a diplomat in China. He found it hard to imagine Chuikov as a diplomat. Chuikov seemed, rather, to be a man born for the trials of war, endowed with courage, endurance, will power and unshakable determination. In the grim days of early September 1942, Yeromenko had proposed Chuikov for the command of the 62nd Army—and the Stavka had ratified this appointment.
“Well,” said Yeromenko, “it seems the two of us have a little work to do. And this,” he added, laying his large palm on the map of the city, “is your domain.” And then, with a smile, “I know of your experience as a diplomat, but we won’t need diplomacy here. Here are the Germans, and here are our own men. Simple as that.”
Yeromenko looked at the map, then at Chuikov. In a cross voice he suddenly asked, “Afraid of getting fat, are you? Do you do gymnastics every morning?”
“I don’t think the Front commander does,” smiled Chuikov, putting his hand on his belly.
“Not much I can do about it,” Yeromenko said sadly. “First, I’m not a worrier. Second, I’m getting older. Third, I spend all day and night underground. And then there’s my leg wounds.”
Yeromenko told Chuikov what resources he would have at his disposal and what was being asked of him. From his tone of voice, he could have been an elderly kolkhoz chairman going over the tasks for the coming month.
“You’ll know what’s what soon enough,” he said, tracing one finger over the map as he outlined the position at the front. “You’ll see for yourself. But you’ll be fighting in the city, not in the steppe. Keep that in mind. And you can forget that the Volga has two banks. The Volga has only one bank—a west bank. Understand? There’s no longer any such thing as an east bank!”
Yeromenko disliked grand words. He knew that men did not leave their usual concerns behind them just because they were on the front line. This straightforwardness made him popular with the soldiers. At a critical moment, addressing hundreds of men standing anxiously to attention, when the young captains and majors expected him to come out with high-flown oratory, his face would soften and he would talk to the soldiers about boots, tobacco, and their faraway wives, faithful or unfaithful.
Yeromenko looked at Chuikov intently and said, “So, do you understand? You know what’s expected of you? As for me, I don’t doubt your courage. You’re not a man to give way to panic.”
Chuikov sat very erect, looking straight in front of him. The blood mounted to his strong neck, his cheeks and his slightly weather-beaten forehead. He knew what was at stake. Thinking about how 62nd Army HQ had already been on the verge of crossing to the east bank, he smiled a little. Had he been chosen for this command because someone thought he was the man for the task—or was it simply that he was considered expendable?
With a nod of the head, Chuikov said, “I assure the Front military soviet and the entire Soviet people that I am ready to die honourably!”
Yeromenko took off his glasses, frowned and said crossly, “We’re at war—dying’s easy enough. As you well know. You’ve been brought here to fight, not to show how well you can die.”
With another emphatic nod of his curly head, Chuikov repeated doggedly, “I shall hold Stalingrad—but if it comes to it, I shall die honourably.”
When it came to saying goodbye, both men felt awkward. Yeromenko got to his feet and said slowly, “Listen, Chuikov. . .”
It seemed he was about to embrace Chuikov, as if in blessing, before sending him on this terrible mission. But in reality Yeromenko felt irritated. He was thinking, “Anyone else would be doing their damnedest to squeeze more out of me. They’d be asking for more men, for tanks, for artillery . . . But this fellow doesn’t ask for anything.”
Yeromenko continued, “And I must warn you. No recklessness. Look before you leap.”
Chuikov grinned, which made his face look still more severe, and replied, “I’ll do my best, but I can’t change my spots.”
He went back through the underground waiting room. As if to an unspoken command, the two adjutants jumped to attention.
Chuikov walked past them without turning his head and climbed up the steep wooden steps, his shoulders sometimes brushing the earthen walls.
It took him some time to get used to the bright daylight. Screwing up his eyes, he looked around him—at the oak groves, at the grey wooden houses, at the fields of the Akhtuba floodplain.
The Volga gleamed in the sun. Beyond it, Stalingrad appeared strangely white—the destroyed city looked elegant, festive and alive. It might have been built from marble.
But Chuikov knew very well that the city was dead.
Shading his eyes with one hand, Chuikov continued to look at the city. Why did these ruins seem so alive? Was it a mirage? A vision of the past? Could it even be a vision of the future? What awaited him among these ruins? How would the coming weeks and months turn out?
Looking round to the east, he bellowed to his adjutant, “Fyodor, the car!”
They could hear his bellow even down in the bunker.
Dubrovin said gravely, “That Fyodor must have a hard time of it. And people say adjutants don’t see real combat.”
18
LIEUTENANT Colonel Darensky arrived at Southeastern Front HQ, in the village of Yama.
His former colleagues, however, were nearly all in the village of Olkhovka, to the north-west of Stalingrad. A new Front was being formed there—the Stalingrad Front.
Only towards evening did Darensky meet someone he already knew—a lieutenant colonel he had worked beside not long ago. This lieutenant colonel explained that, although Yeromenko was now commanding both the Southeastern and the Stalingrad Fronts, it was only the former that was to remain under his command. This Southeastern Front comprised Shumilov’s 64th and Chuikov’s 62nd Armies, both directly assigned to the defence of the city, and also several armies deployed in the southern steppe, in the area of salt lakes between Stalingrad and Astrakhan. The new Front—comprising the armies to the north of the city—would probably soon be under the command of Rokossovsky, who in the winter of 1941 had commanded an army near Moscow.12
When Darensky asked about the military situation, the lieutenant colonel shrugged and said, “Bad, very bad indeed.”
He went on to say that he wished he’d been posted to the HQ of the new Front, in Olkhovka. “From there you can get to Kamyshin, maybe even Saratov. But here in the Transvolga it’s just camels and thorns. And I don’t much like the people here. Everyone’s somehow . . . Well, you’ll see for yourself. Where we were before, I knew everyone and everyone knew me.”
Darensky asked about Novikov, and the lieutenant colonel answered, “I heard he was summoned to Moscow.” He winked and added, “But you’ll still be able to find Bykov.”
After asking where Darensky was sleeping, he found him a billet in a hut with a group of signals officers. The junior commanders were living in huts, and the more senior commanders in dugouts. After his first night in the hut, it was agreed that Darensky should stay there until he received his new posting.
The signals officers (the most senior was a major, the others were lieutenants and junior lieutenants) were decent fellows—and they treated Darensky with respect. When he first arrived, they brought him hot water so he could wash, made him some tea and gave him the best bed. One of them took him outside with a flashlight and pointed out the spot they used as a latrine.
Some months later, when he happened to look through a list of signals officers no longer working in the operations sect
ion, Darensky noted that every one of these officers had been killed in the line of duty. At the time, however, he had felt nothing but irritation with them. He had arrived full of enthusiasm and lofty ideals and had felt shocked by the signallers’ apparent dullness and pettiness. This had upset him more, even, than the stench, the fleas and bedbugs, the lack of space in the hut, and the danger from shell bursts.
The signallers seemed to lead strangely empty lives. There was one lieutenant who, after completing a job, could sleep for fourteen hours on end. His hair all matted, he would occasionally go out into the yard, then come back in and return to bed. The others spent their free time playing cards or dominoes, bashing the dominoes down on the table in a way that enraged Darensky. They spent an extraordinarily long time trying to divine whether it would be rice or millet kasha for supper, and whether they would be given tea with or without milk. They argued incessantly, accusing one another of stealing soap, toothpaste and boot polish. And when one of them was sent on a mortally dangerous mission to the burning city, he would remind the others to be sure to collect his breakfast ration of sugar and butter—and then set off as if this trip were the most ordinary task in the world.
While he was putting on his boots and his belt, his comrades just carried on with whatever game they were playing: “You don’t much like clubs, do you, but you’ll be getting one now. . . We won’t be seeing any more trouble from those pesky knaves. And here’s an ace of spades for you to pick up—how do you like that?”
To Darensky they seemed like passengers on a long-distance train. If the lights suddenly go out, there are a few sighs—and everyone lies down to sleep. If they come on again—people sit up, open their little suitcases and go through their belongings. One man will feel the blade of his razor; another will sharpen his penknife. And then they return to their cards or dominoes.
The signals officers read the newspapers carefully and at length, but Darensky was annoyed by the casualness with which they referred to important essays as “notes,” and half-page articles as “a few lines.”
They barely talked about their work, even though every night-time crossing of the Volga, under almost constant fire, must have been full of terrifying moments.
Darensky would ask, “How was it?”
And they would reply, “Bad. No let-up.”13
Conversations were equally dull when friends dropped by: “How are things?”
“All right. The colonel’s off on a mission today. Be sure to go round to the quartermaster’s. They’ve just received an issue of fur waistcoats, and the major says that operations-section staff are first in the queue.”
“Any news of the supplementary ration?”
“Seems it’s not here yet.”
One of the lieutenants, a strong, handsome young man by the name of Savinov, was strangely envious of front-line company and battalion commanders. “The division or army commander hands out orders and medals the moment the fighting’s over. It’s not like that for us. A recommendation has to be passed by the Front decorations section. Then the commander must sign, and then the member of the Military Council. Up on the front line, you have your own hair-dresser. The cook will give you whatever you ask for. Jellied meat, fried liver—you name it . . . You can get a trench coat made to measure. And as for the pay you get in the Guards . . .”
Savinov appeared not to realize that all these advantages, imaginary and real, came at a price: long marches; superhuman exertions; having to endure extreme cold and heat; blood; wounds; death.
Darensky also found it irritating that these officers said so little about women, and that what they did say was so boring. Darensky, for his part, was always ready to admire women, to be astonished by them or to condemn their frivolity and cunning. Like all true womanizers, he could feel excited by the greyest, plainest and dullest of women. The presence of any woman was enough to bring him to life, to make him witty and animated.
And in male company there was no topic of conversation he found more interesting than that of women.
Even in his depressed state, he had already been twice to the signals section to admire the sweet faces of the telegraph and telephone operators and the girls who handled the post. Whereas the handsome Savinov, when he was at leisure, could think of nothing better to do than take some tinned fish from his suitcase, twiddle the tin about in his hands, let out a sigh, open the tin with his penknife, use this same penknife to harpoon small morsels of fish and keep eating till he’d polished off the whole tin. He would then crush the jagged lid, exclaim, “Not bad at all!” place a sheet of newspaper at the end of his bunk and lie down with his boots on.
Darensky was aware that his irritation with the signallers was unwarranted. He did, after all, only see them when they were resting after risking their lives on some dangerous mission. And more importantly, he was feeling low; his excitement and thirst for activity had yielded to apathy.
His interview with the plump, red-haired colonel in charge of the Front HQ cadres section had upset him.
The colonel had small, attentive eyes with flecks of red-brown, and a slow, singing Ukrainian manner of speech. As they talked, he went methodically through the large file in front of him, which had notes and underlinings, in blue and red pencil, on every page. The man sitting only a few feet away appeared not to interest him; it was as if his voice got lost in the half-darkness and never reached him. What mattered, what he studied with something close to reverence, were the typed lines of Darensky’s service record, the neatly handwritten additional notes, Darensky’s responses to questionnaires and the details of his personal biography.
Now and again he would raise an eyebrow, frown thoughtfully or give a little shake of the head. Darensky would wonder anxiously which page of his service life was evoking such doubt or perplexity.
The colonel asked him all the questions that are customary at such interviews.
Darensky felt angry and overwrought. He wanted to say to the colonel that there were more important things than these petty details. Why he had been excluded from such and such a list, why he had not been entrusted with such and such a mission, why there were minor inconsistencies in his responses to questionnaires—none of this really mattered. Why did this man not take more interest in Darensky’s true self, in his desire to give all his strength to his work?
It looked as if he would be offered administrative work in the rear—not the operations posting he so longed for.
“And your wife?” asked the colonel, tapping some document with his finger. “Why isn’t she mentioned here?”
“Because we separated before the war. At the time of that—what people call—unpleasantness. When I was in the camp. That, really, was when our marriage broke down.” And then, with a little smile, “Not my initiative, needless to say.”
This conversation about matters of little military import took place to the accompaniment of shell bursts, the rumble of long-range artillery, quick bursts of anti-aircraft fire and the heavier, deeper sound of exploding bombs.
When the colonel asked the date of Darensky’s reinstatement in the Red Army, there was such a loud explosion somewhere close by that both men involuntarily ducked and looked up at the ceiling, wondering whether loose earth and oak logs were about to crash down on them. But the ceiling remained in place, and they went on talking.
“You’ll have to wait a little,” said the colonel.
“Why?” asked Darensky.
“Just a few points I need to clarify.”
“Very well,” said Darensky. “Only I beg you—please don’t post me somewhere in the rear. I’m an operations officer, a combat officer. And please don’t drag all this out for weeks.”
“Your request will be taken into account,” said the colonel, in a tone that filled Darensky with despair.
“So,” asked Darensky, “shall I come back tomorrow?”
“No, no. Don’t bother. Where are you billeted?”
“With the signals officers.”
“I
’ll send someone round in due course. Otherwise, is everything in order? Do you have a pass for the canteen?”
“Yes,” said Darensky. “No difficulties there.”
He went back to his hut and looked at the hazy city on the far side of the Volga. Things could hardly be going worse. He would be stuck in the rear for months. The signals officers would cease to notice him; soon he would be begging to join in their card games and their attempts to divine what kind of kasha would be served that day and whether or not they would get milk with their tea. The waitresses would say behind his back, “Ah, our poor out-of-work lieutenant colonel again.”
Back in the hut, he lay down on his bunk. Without taking his boots off, and without looking at anyone, he turned to the wall and closed his eyes, clenching his teeth so tight it seemed they would splinter.
In his mind, he went slowly over every word of the interview. He remembered the look on the colonel’s face. It was all very unfortunate. There was no one here who knew him, no one who knew his abilities. The colonel had only his papers—and the picture they presented was far from perfect.
Someone gave him a gentle nudge on the shoulder.
“Comrade Lieutenant Colonel, go and have your supper,” said a quiet voice. “There’s rice pudding with sugar today, and the canteen will be closing soon.”
Darensky lay there without moving.
A second voice said crossly, “Leave the comrade lieutenant colonel alone. Can’t you see he’s resting? And if he looks ill in the morning, go to the medical unit and find him a doctor.” And then the same voice added very quietly, “Better still, go and fetch the lieutenant colonel his dinner. Maybe he’s in a bad way. It’s 600 metres to the canteen, and that’s quite a distance. I’d go myself, but I have to cross to the other bank. A package for Chuikov. You can pick up my dinner too—dry rations, and don’t forget the sugar.”
Darensky recognized the voice—Savinov’s. He let out a sigh and felt sudden tears behind his tight-shut eyelids.
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