Stalingrad

by Vasily Grossman

  Chuikov telephoned Yeromenko.

  “Chuikov reporting,” he began grimly. “The enemy, after aerial bombardment, has attacked my left flank, mobilizing artillery and mortars, and concentrating his tanks. His objective, I assume, is to isolate Rodimtsev and break through to the Volga.”

  “Don’t assume!” Yeromenko replied impatiently. “Act! Counterattack! And provide Rodimtsev with full artillery support.” Then came a strange noise—Chuikov realized that Yeromenko was eating an apple.

  “There’s smoke everywhere, you can hardly see a thing,” said Chuikov. “But I’ll call up the artillery straightaway.”

  “Don’t waste time!” Yeromenko snapped. Then came a moment of silence—Chuikov realized that Yeromenko was now lighting a cigarette. “But don’t fire on your own men—we don’t want a second front here in Stalingrad. As for Rodimtsev, if he cracks, you’re in trouble. On your right flank, there are two large divisions about to cross. And two more soon afterwards. So, get to work!”

  “Understood, comrade Colonel General,” said Chuikov. He put down the receiver and picked it up again straightaway. “Pozharsky!” he bellowed. “At once!” While Pozharsky, the artillery commander, made his way to the phone, Chuikov glanced at Gurov, who was sitting beside him, and said, “Fritz is giving the station one hell of a bombardment, no doubt about it. Round here, things have turned quieter. All the same, I’d rather it was us they were shelling.” Raising his voice, he said, “Pozharsky, got your map in front of you? Good. Note the following!”

  On the other side of the Volga, Yeromenko was also leaning over a map.

  The Germans had done nothing for two days. If only they’d waited a little longer . . . Was this an isolated operation or the beginning of a general offensive? If only he’d had time to complete the redeployment of Shumilov’s 64th Army. He’d wanted Shumilov to attack whenever the Germans attacked Chuikov, thus reducing the pressure on Chuikov’s left flank and centre. As for the reinforcements on their way from the Don front, they were still some distance away. . .

  “Why the hell did they have to attack today?” Yeromenko said to his chief of staff. “Even our artillery can provide little support. If only the bastards had waited till I’d got Gorishny safely across the water. What if they really go for it now?” The chief of staff remained silent. Yeromenko went on, “They’re pulling out all the stops. You can tell even from here.”

  A minute later Yeromenko was on the phone to his artillery commander, Colonel Ageyev, “Support the left flank and the centre. What’s that? Difficult to establish the enemy’s position? Yes, of course. But there’s no bloody choice. Step to it!”

  A report written on the page of a notebook went from a regimental command post to a divisional command post. From there it moved on to the army command post, where it was typed out. Next, a signals officer carried the report, along with three carbon copies, across the Volga to Front HQ. Another signals officer called Moscow by radio telephone. Teleprinters at the Front signals centre began to clatter. A thick packet with five seals was put ready for a special courier; he would leave at dawn, by Douglas, to deliver it to the General Staff.

  The burden of this report was very simple: after a brief lull, the Germans had resumed their offensive.

  Temporarily deafened by all the explosions, Yelin well understood the responsibility that had fallen to him. He shouted to the telephonist, “Get me Filyashkin! This minute!”

  The telephonist replied bleakly, “The line’s dead, stone dead.”

  Yelin’s adjutant came down into the bunker. Several pale, anxious messengers watched as he passed by.

  “Comrade Lieutenant Colonel, three messengers have been killed already. It’s impossible to get through to Filyashkin. The station’s surrounded. The battalion’s conducting a perimeter defence.”

  “Radio?” Yelin asked abruptly. “What about radio?”

  “No reply, comrade Lieutenant Colonel.”

  “So his transmitter’s broken,” said Yelin.

  The battalion was cut off. It had lost contact with the regiment, the division, the army, and the Front as a whole. For all Yelin knew, Filyashkin might already be dead.

  The Germans were clearly prepared to go to any lengths to eliminate the battalion. The mortar and artillery fire around the station was intense and unrelenting, and this was all the more apparent during the brief moments of respite elsewhere on the front. The rest of Rodimtsev’s division understood only too well what their surrounded comrades were now going through.

  Yelin said to his commissar, “Filyashkin, now—what do you think of him? We’ve repelled this last attack, but can he? We’ll give him all possible support. We’ll counter-attack, and we’ll provide supporting fire. But he’s only just been transferred to my command—I can’t be held accountable for him. I don’t think I’ve ever even seen the man.”

  The commissar replied, “I’d just sent Shvedkov back, with the parcel we’ve received from the women of America—and then the attack began. It’s good that Shvedkov will be with them—he’s a true Communist. In one company they’ve got men from a penal battalion serving along with the other soldiers—I gave Filyashkin a good dressing-down. I told him to draw up proper lists and have them transferred.”

  Yelin telephoned Matyushin, the commander of the neighbouring regiment. They agreed to reinforce the defences at the junction of their two sectors. Then Yelin asked, “What’s your opinion of Filyashkin’s battalion? I hardly know them. Really, they’re your men.”

  “Certainly not,” said Matyushin, realizing what Yelin was up to. “It’s your battalion—it’s nothing to do with me anymore. Anyway, they’re just men like any other men—what matters is how well they’re commanded.”

  38

  AFTER organizing his defences, Filyashkin had secretly cherished the hope that the Germans would not attack the railway station; like most people, he could not help wanting to stay alive.

  One scenario saw him withdrawing to the Volga—under orders, of course, since Yelin would realize the senselessness of trying to defend a position when both your flanks are wide open. The battalion would conduct a fighting retreat and then be withdrawn to the reserves. Another scenario saw him being taken to the east bank, slightly wounded, by medical instructor Lena Gnatyuk. There turned out to be no room in any of the hospitals and so he and Lena bivouacked in a fisherman’s hut. Lena took care of him and changed his dressings; they slept together on top of the stove and at dawn he went fishing in the River Akhtuba. In yet another scenario he was pronounced unfit for active service and sent to teach in the Ryazan Infantry Academy, eighteen kilometres from his home village; Lena, however, had to stay with the battalion, since Filyashkin had a wife and two children and taking her back home with him was out of the question.

  Each of the 300 men in the battalion created their own picture of a fortunate outcome to the war; their lives would be happy and fulfilling—happier, it went without saying, than in the past. Some thought about moving from their village to the district town, others about moving out to a village. Some thought about their wives, vowing to treat them more gently. Some wondered how their wives were managing now: if they were in difficulty, they should go to the market and sell a pair of trousers or a smart jacket. When the war was over, it would be easy to earn enough to replace them. Some thought about their children; one resolved to do all he could to help his young Masha qualify as a doctor.

  It was Filyashkin who was first to understand that his dreams were doomed to die with him. Everything was only too clear. He had lost telephone and radio contact with his regiment. Tanks, and then infantry, had broken into his rear. The German mortar and artillery fire was devastatingly accurate. It wasn’t just that you couldn’t run or even crawl anywhere—you couldn’t even poke your head out from behind a wall. Filyashkin loaded and cocked his pistol, releasing the safety catch. After that, he felt less heavy at heart.

  “We’ve been cut off,” shouted Igumnov. “They’ve severed our lines of
communication.”

  “Yes,” Filyashkin replied, “we’re our own masters now!” He glimpsed a smile on Igumnov’s usually tense, anxious face. He had turned pale, but this somehow made him look younger and fresher, as if he had just washed.

  Filyashkin then saw Igumnov take some letters from his tunic pocket, tear them into small pieces and scatter them on the floor. He understood at once: his chief of staff didn’t want the Germans to be fingering letters from his wife and children when they searched his dead body.

  Igumnov ran a comb over his grey crew cut.

  “Fuck it all!” Filyashkin yelled in sudden fury. “I’m a commander and there are commands to be given.”

  He sent a signaller to find the break in the cable connecting him with the regiment. He issued new orders to his company commanders. For the time being they were to keep their machine guns and anti-tank rifles hidden; he did not want to risk them being damaged before the Germans tried to storm the building, which was sure to be soon. They were to take care of their messengers, and to disperse their men over as wide an area as possible, so as not to sustain premature casualties. He asked about the soldiers’ morale and repeated once more that anyone who took to his heels would be shot.

  For a moment the telephone came to life. Filyashkin got through to Yelin, who again promised to provide the battalion with full artillery support, but their conversation was cut short; the line went dead once and for all, cut by either a shell burst or a German sapper.

  Filyashkin gave orders and explanations, licked his dry lips and slapped himself on the forehead and the back of his head to try and rid himself of his deafness. Everything he said was founded on one clear and simple resolve: no matter what, his battalion was not going to budge. It would stand its ground and it would fight to the bitter end. The battalion’s withdrawal, Filyashkin understood very well, would lead to the whole regiment being drowned in the Volga.

  His men had been held in reserve a long time and some had never seen combat at all. Nevertheless, Filyashkin felt certain that they all shared his sense of determination. He was no longer troubled by doubts and fears; retreat was impossible—behind him lay only a steep cliff and a deep river. He and his men had seized hold of this little corner of earth and dug themselves in. Nothing was going to dislodge them.

  All the same, when Shvedkov returned from the regimental command post, just before the artillery barrage began, Filyashkin called out to him, “Go and see how things are with Konanykin. He’s got men from a penal unit in his company. We need to keep an eye on their morale.”

  39

  THE FIRST mortar bomb fired at Konanykin’s company landed on the edge of a trench where three soldiers were sitting. All three were showered with earth. Two had been bending forward over their mess tins; they froze, as if gripped by some invisible hand. The third, who was thin and somewhat stooped, also remained where he was, leaning calmly against the wall of the trench.

  “The bastards won’t even let us have a bite to eat,” said one man, looking at the earth in his mess tin, as if the Geneva Conventions forbade mortar and artillery fire during mealtimes.

  The second shook the earth from his shoulders, lovingly wiped his spoon against the palm of one hand and muttered in bewilderment, “I thought that was it, I really did.”

  The third collapsed without a word. The full weight of his body and dead, blood-covered head landed on his comrades’ feet.

  Then came another quiet, terrifyingly tender and innocent whoosh as several more mortar bombs flew over the trench.

  Out of the smoke and the din of explosions emerged a piercing groan. Voices called, “Pull him out! . . . No . . . What’s the use?”

  Then—another whoosh, and more explosions.

  “Covered by enemy fire”—these words perfectly convey what it is like to be subjected to a sudden barrage of fire. The barrage covered the men, like a net or like sacking.

  Splinters flung against bricks gave birth to small clouds of red dust, then lost their lethal force and dropped quietly to the ground. As they flew through the air, each splinter made its own particular sound, depending on its weight, speed and shape. One, which must have had curly, jagged edges, sounded like someone playing a comb or a kazoo. Another howled, ripping through the air like a large steel claw. A third, probably tube-shaped, somersaulted along, as if puffing and splashing.

  As for the big-bellied mortar bombs themselves, they let out complex, constantly modulating whistles; they were like metal spindles, drilling a hole in the air, then deftly enlarging this hole with their broad, strong shoulders.

  And these sounds made by invisible pieces of iron—all these squeals and howls, all these lisps, whines and whispers—were the voice of death.

  Small, separate puffs of smoke, some grey, some reddish-brown, merged into a single huge cloud. Swirls of dust from bricks, earth and plaster merged into a dense grey fog. Blending together, the smoke and the dust hung between earth and sky, still further isolating the encircled battalion.

  The Germans were preparing to send in their tanks. They did not, however expect their artillery fire to liquidate the entire battalion—not even the fiercest barrage can kill hundreds of men who have dug themselves into the ground or taken shelter in deep trenches and stone burrows. The barrage was directed less against soldiers’ lives than against their souls, against their wills. No matter how deep a man has dug himself into the ground, an artillery barrage can penetrate his soul. It can drill into nerve ganglia that not even the deftest of surgeons can reach with a scalpel. It can invade a man’s inner being through the labyrinth of an ear, through nostrils or half-closed eyelids; it can grasp a man’s skull and shake up his brain.

  Hundreds of men lay there in the smoke and fog, each entirely alone, each conscious as never before of his body’s fragility, of how at any moment his body might be lost irrevocably. And this was indeed the aim of the barrage—to plunge each individual into his own solitude. Relentless thunder would prevent a soldier from hearing the words of his commissar; smoke would make him unable to see his commander; the soldier would feel isolated from his comrades, and in this awful isolation he would be conscious only of his own weakness. And this barrage lasted not for seconds, not for minutes, but for two whole hours, mangling men’s thoughts and destroying their memories.

  Now and then men would lift up their heads for a second, glimpse their comrades’ motionless bodies and wonder if they were alive or dead. And then they would lie down again with only one thought in their minds: “I’m still alive, but what’s this swishing sound I can hear? Is it my death?”

  The barrage broke off when, according to the enemy’s understanding of human nature and the laws of resistance of psychic material, overwhelming anxiety and tension should have yielded to depression and a resigned indifference.

  The ensuing silence was cruel and malign. It allowed the men to recollect their past and to feel a kind of timid relief: in spite of everything, they were still alive. The silence awoke hope, yet it also engendered a terrible despair. Its message was only too clear: that this was merely a fragile moment of respite—a swift ray of light on the blade of a drawn knife—and that the minutes to come would be still more merciless than those that had just passed. Their political instructors had evidently talked a load of baloney and now they were doomed; if they had any sense, they would run. Quick—before it was too late—they should crawl away and hide.

  Such thoughts need only a moment, and the enemy was too experienced to allow the silence to continue a moment longer than necessary. Silence, after all, can also engender resolve. The silence was quickly followed by the sound of metal grating on stone, by a sullen clanking and grinding and the sound of exhausts and revving engines. The German tanks were advancing. And from somewhere a little further off came the sound of wild, confident yells.

  The battalion remained silent. It seemed that the powerful, experienced enemy had achieved his aim, that he had broken the will of the Soviet soldiers, that he had stunned a
nd silenced them, that he had indeed crushed their souls.

  Suddenly there was the crack of a rifle shot, the blast of an anti-tank rifle, then a second anti-tank rifle, and then the explosions of hand grenades, long bursts of machine-gun fire and hundreds more rifle shots. The living—it appeared—were alive.

  The Germans had hoped to fragment the encircled battalion. They knew that a defensive position is like a living body; if it is cut apart, its life drains away. Confident that their artillery fire would have destroyed the resilience of the Soviet defence, deadening its living tissue and making it weak and anaemic, the Germans expected their attack to meet with rapid success. But their tanks were unable to slice into the battalion’s body. Like a lance point hitting a strong, ringing shield, they fell back, their incisive power blunted and weakened.

  Vavilov thought he had been the first to fire. Fifty or sixty other men, however, were equally certain that it was they, and no one else, who broke the battalion’s silence.

  Vavilov also believed that the first sound of all had been his furious yell. It was this, rather than his shot, that had broken the silence. His voice was at once picked up by hundreds of other voices—and everything around thundered and burst into flashes of fire. He saw German soldiers rushing about in confusion. Vavilov seldom cursed or swore, but the men beside him heard him let out a long volley of curses.

  He felt astonished that the tiny buzzing insects running after the tanks could have brought about so much destruction, grief and misery.

  There was an alarming, impossible discrepancy between the enormity of the tragedy and the small agitated creatures that had brought it about.

  40

  KONANYKIN was a seasoned fighter. When the Germans began to shell his company, he said aloud to himself, “Understand, comrade Lieutenant?”

  Along with an orderly, he crawled to the crate of hand grenades, now the most precious object in the world, and dragged it to his command post.