Ten metres from the shore was the dark mouth of a sewer. “Here we are,” said Vavilov. “Our new home.”
The west bank of the Volga must have seemed a terrible place indeed on this radiant day. As they said goodbye to the sun, the clear sky and the splendour of the river, as they entered a black pipe where the walls were covered in mould and the air was stale and musty, Rodimtsev’s staff began to look calmer and to breathe more freely.
Soldiers from the commandant’s company were carrying in tables, stools, lamps and boxes of documents; signallers were sorting out telephone cables.
“You’ve got a magnificent command post, comrade General,” said an elderly signals officer, who had been passing on Rodimtsev’s orders to his battalion commanders ever since the defence of Kiev. “We’ve made a special place for you, a kind of office, here on these boxes. There’s even some hay, in case you want to lie down.”
In reply, Rodimtsev nodded sullenly.
He walked along the pipe, tapped on the wall and listened to the murmur of the water underfoot. Then he turned towards Belsky and said, “Why bother with telephone cables? Here we all are in our bathing huts—we can just call out to one another.”
Belsky understood that something was troubling Rodimtsev, but he kept respectfully silent; it was not for him to ask questions of his commander.
Seeing the grim look on Rodimtsev’s face, Vavilov began to frown too.
Nobody in the division knew more than Vavilov about men’s strengths and weaknesses. He knew that many people were watching Rodimtsev. He could imagine only too easily what signallers, telephonists, messengers and adjutants would soon be saying in regimental and battalion command posts: “The general just keeps pacing about. He hasn’t sat down once.” “He’s in a rage with everyone—he’s even given Belsky an earful. He’s on edge, well and truly on edge.”
All this made Vavilov angry. Rodimtsev should have been more careful. He should have known that his subordinates would now be whispering, “Things are looking bad. We’re done for—no doubt about it.” But then Rodimtsev was clearly not blind to such matters. Vavilov had often admired his ability to respond to anxious looks with a casual smile. On one occasion, when a messenger reported, “German tanks are advancing towards the command post,” he had calmly replied, “Prepare the howitzers for direct fire. And now let’s get on with our dinner!”
Once the field telephone was in order, Rodimtsev called Chuikov and reported that the division had crossed.
“You must understand,” said Chuikov, “that we have to attack. There’s no time for the division to rest.”
Thinking there wasn’t much chance of anyone resting at a time and place like this, Rodimtsev replied, “Understood, comrade General!”
Rodimtsev went out into the fresh air, sat down on a stone, lit a cigarette, looked at the faraway east bank, and fell into thought. As at earlier critical moments in the war, he felt both calm and burdened.
In a soldier’s side cap, with a green quilted jacket thrown over his shoulders, he was sitting at a distance from the general bustle of the human anthill. Aged thirty-seven, though he looked a great deal younger, he appeared to be gazing at the world around him with a kind of absent-minded sadness. Few people would have taken this lean, good-looking, fair-haired soldier for the major general in command of the first division of reinforcements to enter the half-occupied city.
During the hours that Rodimtsev had been out of contact with his division, the life of thousands of men, like water seeking the easiest path downhill, had followed its own, entirely natural course.
Wherever they are—waiting for a train at a railway junction, sitting on an ice floe in the Arctic Ocean, or even when they are fighting a war—people do what they can to make themselves warm and comfortable.
This is everyone’s natural desire. Much of the time, this natural desire and military necessity are in harmony. Soldiers dig pits and ditches to shelter their bodies from splinters of steel, and then they lie down in them to shoot at the enemy. Sometimes, however, this life instinct—this instinct for self-preservation—crowds out all other concerns. A man digs a pit or a trench, lies down in it for protection and forgets about his rifle. In his simplicity he imagines that he has been given a sapper’s spade for only one purpose: to protect himself from bullets and shrapnel.
Sitting on a large stone, Rodimtsev took a cursory look at the reports from the regiments about the successful construction of their defensive positions.
From the perspective of the self-preservation of the division, of the self-preservation of individual regiments and battalions, these measures were entirely rational. But even a man as clever as Belsky appeared not to have grasped that, at a time like this, the self-preservation of an individual division, deployed a few metres from the edge of the water, was not what really mattered.
“Belsky!” Rodimtsev called out. A moment later, he said, “This position you’ve taken up here on the shore—we need to give it a bit more thought.” He paused, to give Belsky time to think, then continued, “What can we do? One regiment’s completely cut off from us. We’ve no communications with them worth speaking of. And here we are, five metres from the water. What’ll happen if we have to defend ourselves? Can’t you see? We’ll be drowned—drowned in the river like a litter of puppies. First the Germans will flatten us with their mortars, then they’ll drown us.”
“What are we to do, comrade General? What’s your decision?” Belsky asked in his calm, quiet manner.
“What are we to do?” Rodimtsev asked quietly, as if infected by Belsky’s habitual calm. Then, loudly and emphatically, he went on, “We must attack! We must break into the city! We’ve no other option. They’re stronger than us in every way. We have only one advantage—surprise. We must make the most of it.”
“Absolutely!” Vavilov joined in, already imagining that this was what he had been thinking himself. “They didn’t send us across the Volga just to dig pits!”
Rodimtsev looked at his watch.
“Two hours from now I shall report to the army commander that I’m ready to advance. Summon the regimental commanders. I need to prepare them for their new task: to advance at dawn! Our reconnaissance data is non-existent. Set divisional intelligence to work immediately. Contact army intelligence. Where’s the enemy front line? Where are their artillery pieces? Check communications with our artillery on the east bank. Prepare every unit to attack, not to defend. Distribute plans of the city to every commander and commissar. In a few hours they’ll be fighting in the streets. There’s no time to waste.”
He was speaking quietly yet authoritatively, as if pushing Belsky gently in the chest.
Vavilov shouted to his orderly, “Call the regimental commissars. They’re to report immediately.”
Rodimtsev and Vavilov caught each other’s eye. They both smiled. “Not long ago,” said Rodimtsev, “we used to go for a quiet walk in the steppe at this time of day.”
All the human activity round about at once began to change direction. Rodimtsev had put in place the first stones of a dam intended to divert his men’s energies down a different channel. A few minutes ago he had been sitting alone on the shore, apart from the general bustle. Now he was imposing his will all around him—and not only on his own staff and his regimental and battalion commanders. There was no one—no platoon commander, no rank-and-file soldier—whose actions Rodimtsev had not redirected. Bunkers and trenches were no longer a matter of urgent concern.
More and more often, in regimental and battalion command posts, men were repeating, “The general confirmed”; “The general countermanded”; “The general forbade”; “Number one says we must act fast”; “Number one will be coming to check.”
And the soldiers were working things out for themselves. It was only too clear that, in the course of the last hour, something important had changed.
“You can put down that spade—we’re done with digging. Now we’re all being given more ammo.”
�
��Have you lot been given Molotov cocktails? We’re getting two grenades each. And the guns are being moved forward.”
“Rodimtsev’s here now. We’re to storm the city.”
“Know what Rodimtsev just said to our major? I heard from a signaller. He yelled, ‘Think I brought you all this way just to dig pits?’”
“The first platoon are all getting their hundred grams—and two bars of chocolate.”
“Hmm. If they’re doling out chocolate, we’re in trouble. We must be about to attack.”
“Fifty extra cartridges each.”
“Seems we’ll be attacking at night. I don’t like it. How’ll we know where we’re going?”
At twilight, Rodimtsev, accompanied by two sub-machine-gunners, set off along the shore, right by the water’s edge, to report to Chuikov.
It was quiet, with only the occasional sound of a few rifle shots—probably sentries afraid of the gathering dark, wanting to drown out the sound of falling stones and the repeated creak of sheets of tin.
An hour and a half later Rodimtsev returned, with Chuikov’s signature on the order for the offensive. By then the darkness was total.
Silence set in. Night spread out over the Volga in all its splendour: with the deep blue-black of the sky; with gently lapping waves; and with swift breezes that brought in turn the steppe’s dry heat, the stifling air of the streets and the moist, living breath of the river.
Millions of stars gazed down at the city and at the river, listening to the murmur of water against the shore, listening to people’s grunts, sighs and whispers.
Rodimtsev’s staff left their huge sewer. They looked at the river, at the sky, and at the silhouettes of Belsky, Vavilov and Rodimtsev himself. The three men were sitting by the water on a log half covered in sand.
All three were thinking similar anxious thoughts, glancing at the broad barrier of water and trying to make out the Transvolga steppe beyond it.
Rodimtsev took out a cigarette, lit it and took several drags.
Belsky asked quietly, “How was it, comrade General, with our new commander?”
Rodimtsev appeared not to hear, and Belsky did not repeat his question.
Rodimtsev drew a few more times on his cigarette, then tossed it into the water. Vavilov said quietly, “Here’s to our housewarming party!”
Seemingly lost in thought, Rodimtsev said, “Yes, precisely. And so life goes on.”
One might have thought that each man was in a world of his own, not taking in what the others were saying, but they did, in fact, understand one another very well.
All three had been fighting since June 1941. Together they had been through countless hardships and looked death in the face many times. Together they had seen cold autumn rain, hot July dust and winter snowstorms. They had talked about so many things that now they barely needed to speak. A word, half a word, even a brief silence was enough.
Then Rodimtsev answered Belsky’s question: “Well, there’s no doubting he’s a commander. Maybe it’s because they’ve been bombing him all day, but he certainly has a temper on him.”
They listened for a long time to the silence, perhaps sensing that it was the last silence they would hear in this city.
Still gazing out at the river, Rodimtsev then said something very surprising—the last thing a subordinate expects to hear from his commander immediately before an offensive: “I feel sad, Belsky. I’ve never felt so sad before. No, not even when we lost Kiev, or at Kursk. We’ve come here to die, it’s only too clear.”
Some dark object slid down the river, painfully slowly, and there was no knowing whether it was a boat without oars, the swollen corpse of a horse or part of a barge destroyed by a bomb.
Behind them the burned-down city was silent. The men gazing at the Volga looked round every now and then, as if sensing some oppressive presence observing them out of the darkness.
26
CHUIKOV had been informed about the crossing by early evening. Rodimtsev had reported in person at twenty-two hundred hours, and Chuikov had signed the order for the attack. Then, at midnight, he received the head of the special department and the chairman of the army tribunal. They had come with reports on two commanders who, in spite of the “Not One Step Back” Order, had transferred their HQs to Zaitsevsky and Sarpinsky islands. Breathing heavily, Chuikov took a pencil and pulled the documents towards him.
“That’s all for now,” he said. “You are dismissed.”
He paced grimly about his bunker for some time, then sat down in a chair, ruffled his hair and, sticking out his lower lip, stared intently at the pencil with which he had signed the papers. He sighed, paced about a bit longer, unbuttoned his collar, pinched his neck and ran one hand over his chest and the back of his head.
The bunker was airless and full of smoke. Chuikov made his way towards the exit, through the tunnel where his adjutant lay asleep. The greatcoat covering the man had slipped off onto the floor. Chuikov turned on his flashlight. The man’s lips were half-open and his childish face looked very pale. Chuikov wondered if he was ill.
Chuikov picked up the greatcoat and laid it back over the sleeping lieutenant’s thin shoulders.
“Mama, Mama,” the lieutenant called out in a strangled voice.
Chuikov stifled a sob and walked quickly out of the bunker.
27
MEN’S SHADOWS flickered uncertainly in the dark before dawn. There was the occasional clank of weapons. Rodimtsev’s Guards division was getting ready to move forward. The political instructors were quietly calling to their men, bringing them together for a short meeting, pointing out the way with their flashlights.
Soldiers sitting on heaps of bricks were listening to Regimental Commissar Kolushkin. He was speaking in a low voice and the men at the back had to strain to hear. There was something important and moving about this meeting amid rubble and ruins, on the slope just above the Volga. A faint band of light to the east heralded the arrival of a cruel day.
Instead of keeping to the speech he had planned, Kolushkin was telling the soldiers about his own life in Stalingrad. He talked about how he had worked on the construction site of one of the factories and how, shortly before the war, he had been given an apartment not far from where he was now sitting on a charred log. His old mother had fallen ill and she had insisted they move her bed to the window, so that she could see the Volga. The soldiers listened in silence.
When Kolushkin finished, he suddenly made out the imposing figure of Vavilov, leaning against a brick wall.
“Damn it,” he said to himself. “Why did I ramble on like that? Now I’ll get it in the neck. Vavilov will ask what all that had to do with today’s offensive.”
Vavilov shook him by the hand and said, “Thank you, comrade Kolushkin. You spoke well.”
28
WHEN THE German High Command announced on the radio that Stalingrad had been captured by German troops and that the Red Army was continuing to resist only in the factory district to the north, they fully believed this to be the objective truth.
The city’s entire administrative centre, the railway station, the theatre, the bank, the central department store, the obkom building, the city soviet, the Stalingrad Pravda editorial office, most of the schools, hundreds of half-destroyed multistorey residential buildings—all this, the heart of the new city, was in German hands. In central Stalingrad the Soviet troops still held only a narrow strip of land beside the river.
As for Soviet resistance in the giant northern factories and in the southern suburb of Beketovka—the Germans had no doubt they would soon snuff it out.
The Soviet line of defence had been broken. Their centre was cut off from their left and right flanks. There was no liaison between them and it was impossible for them to undertake any joint action.
All the German officers and soldiers were confident of victory. No one even thought it necessary to secure the ground already taken. Many senior officers saw it as a foregone conclusion that the Red Army would withdr
aw from Stalingrad in the next few days, or even hours.
Rodimtsev’s attack was, therefore, unexpected. This was one of the reasons for its success.
His right-flank regiment first attempted to regain Mamaev Kurgan, the height that dominated the city, then fought its way through to the positions held by the other two regiments and succeeded in restoring an unbroken front line.
Dozens of large buildings were recaptured. Rodimtsev’s central regiment advanced furthest of all. One of its battalions took the railway station and the adjoining buildings. And the German advance in the southern part of the city was halted.
Rodimtsev then ordered his men to take up defensive positions and to keep fighting. Half-surrounded or entirely surrounded, they were to fight to the last bullet.
He made it clear to his commanders that he would look on the slightest hint of a withdrawal as the gravest of crimes. Chuikov had said the same to him, and Yeromenko had said the same to Chuikov.
The order had come down from above, yet it was also an expression of the soldiers’ own state of mind, born of their own determination. And the success of Rodimtsev’s attack, though certainly facilitated by surprise, was a natural consequence of the logic of events.
29
IT WAS Senior Lieutenant Filyashkin’s battalion that did best of all.
Moving through narrow streets and patches of wasteland, the battalion advanced 1,400 metres west. Meeting almost no resistance as it reached the railway station, it captured coal sheds and switchmen’s booths, bombed-out warehouses carpeted with flour and grains of maize, and the half-ruined buildings of the station itself.
Filyashkin, a man of about thirty, with reddish hair and small eyes now bloodshot from lack of sleep, set up a temporary command post by the railway embankment, in a concrete booth with smashed windows.
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