As for the men and women at work at this early hour, they felt not only the emptiness of the autumn spaces and the chill wind of approaching winter—they also felt all the sorrow of war.
Young girls, mothers of families and old women with kerchiefs around their heads were now reaping the summer wheat. Nearby, on a field already harvested, old men were stacking the dry sheaves on carts, shouting at the small boys who were helping them.
This picture of harvesting in the mild morning sun, beneath the spacious clarity of the autumn sky, seemed to breathe peace and tranquillity. The threshing machine sounded the same as always. The cool, slippery, heavy grain made the same quiet rustle. The young girls’ sweating faces had the same animated look. The dry smell of the warm sheaves, the grey-blue dust, the crunch of straw underfoot, the pearly sheen of wisps and flakes of straw floating about in the air—all seemed normal and familiar.
But Marya knew only too well that everything here spoke of war. Women in men’s boots, an elderly man in army trousers and an army tunic, a fourteen-year-old boy in a side cap still bearing the faint shadow of a five-pointed star, two younger boys in overalls sewn from old camouflage cloth—each was the wife, mother, sister, father or child of a soldier. Their clothes were a sign of the enduring link between those on the front line and those who remained in the villages.
In peacetime, a wife sometimes wore her husband’s jacket and a son sometimes took over his father’s felt boots. It was no different now; if they were issued with new uniforms, those whose work was the war would pass on their old uniforms to their family.
And were it not for the war, would there have been so many old men and women working out in the fields and on the threshing floor? Many of them should have retired long ago. And there were boys and girls who should have been sitting in classrooms. Because of the war, the school term was beginning a month late for children in their last two years at a village school. And there were no tractors humming away. Nor were there any of the trucks that usually came to the fields at this time of year. Trucks and tractors alike had also left for the war.
And Vasya Belov, a bold, self-confident mechanic, was no longer standing beside the threshing machine. He was now a turret gunner and his place had been taken by Klava, his seventeen-year-old sister, who had a child’s thin white neck and clumsy, fumbling fingers discoloured by engine oil. At this moment there was a frown on her face and she was shouting at her grey-haired assistant, “Kozlov, have you dozed off, or what? Give me the key!”
It was because of the war that Degtyarova had stood for hours by her gate, hoping for letters from her husband and sons. And it was because of the war that Degtyarova had just slowly straightened her back, wiped the sweat from her forehead and looked with anguish at all the mown wheat still lying helplessly on the ground.
Weep, Degtyarova, weep—you have loved ones to weep for.
Could Marya have guessed how much responsibility she would take on in the course of a mere four months?
When her husband left for the war, she had been racked by anxiety about her home and her children. Would she be able to support them? Would she manage to feed them properly?
But she had soon become responsible for more than her family, her hut and her supply of firewood.
How had this happened? Had it begun during the kolkhoz meeting when, for the first time in her life, she spoke in front of dozens of people? They had all listened intently. She had watched with a sudden, calm confidence as their changing expressions bore out the importance and truth of her words.
Or had it been out in the fields, the day she argued with the kolkhoz chairman? He had come to criticize the work of the women’s brigade and she, speaking with slow, deliberate emphasis, had pulled no punches in setting him straight.
The last months had been difficult, but she had worked harder than anyone and there was nothing anyone could reproach her for.
Kozlov came up to her and said, “A shame you don’t have more help, Bombardier Brigade Leader. If our sons and younger brothers were here, if we had drivers and mechanics, and tractors and trucks, we’d be done with the harvest and threshing in no time at all, before the end of the month. You and your women make a deal of noise, but you might as well be ploughing the air. You’ll still be reaping and threshing when the first snows fall!”
Marya looked at Kozlov. He had narrow eyes and a prominent Adam’s apple. She wanted to come out with a sharp retort, but she restrained herself. She knew he resented having to work as an assistant to a young girl. When he got back home in the evening, his wife sometimes greeted him with the words, “So, Mister Assistant Thresher, has your Klava said you can come back home?”
And once, when he started carping at his wife and grandchildren, little cross-eyed Luba, the youngest of the girls, said to him in a quiet, low voice, “Careful, Grandad—or we’ll tell Klava!”
And so Marya merely smiled and said gently, “We’ve done what we can—and we can’t do more.”
But they had done a remarkable amount. A tractor had broken down in the middle of ploughing. The kolkhoz mechanic was now at the front and someone else, a man recovering from wounds, had been sent to them as a substitute. He overdid it, reopened his wound—and failed to repair the tractor. But they finished the ploughing all the same. Some days they used cows, and some days the women pulled the plough themselves.
And the winter wheat had already come through—they certainly weren’t letting the land lie empty and idle.
Now, though, there was the harvest to attend to. And they would have to work hard to complete the threshing before the first snows.
Marya gripped some of the crackly stems of ripe wheat, bent them against her sickle, sliced through them and laid them on the ground. Her quick, measured movements, both generous and spare, seemed one with the wheat’s harsh rustle. As if echoing this monotonous sound, a single thought was circling round in her head: “You sowed, and now here I am, reaping what you sowed. You sowed, you sowed, and here I am, gathering in your harvest. You sowed, you . . .” This sense of a living connection with her husband made Marya feel quietly sad.
“Will Pyotr come back? We didn’t hear from Alyosha for months on end, but now we get letters regularly. Alyosha’s alive, thank God, and he’s well. One day there’ll be a letter from Pyotr too. He’ll come back! He’ll come back!”
The wheat rustled, whispered, looked agitated, then quietened down again, waiting and thinking.
The ring of the sickle, and the rustle of the wheat.
The sun had climbed higher, warming Marya’s neck and the back of her head just as in summer. Even beneath her jacket, she could feel the sun’s warmth on her shoulders. And she could hear the thin, high voice of a swift September fly.
“You’ll come back and you’ll want to know everything. I worked hard, I didn’t spare myself. I didn’t spare Nastya either. No one can reproach me. There were times when the poor girl cried and asked to be transferred to another brigade. We lived honestly with you and we live honestly without you. I can look you straight in the eye—I’ve nothing to be ashamed of.”
The quiet clink of her sickle—and a spark of joy flaring up in her heart, scorching her with hope, with faith in a happy future.
Once again, echoing the rustle of wheat—wheat clutched in her hand, wheat sliding down to the ground: “It was you, you who sowed this field . . .”
Still bent down, shading her eyes with her hand, Marya looked at the winter wheat shining green in the distance. “And you will come back, you, you will reap what I have sown.” Her whole being was filled with faith in this simple, natural, enduring connection, a connection strong enough to outlast life and death. She could, it seemed, have kept on reaping until evening, not once straightening her spine, not noticing the ache in her back and shoulders, not noticing the blood pounding against her temples.
Scattered about the field she could see the white kerchiefs of the other reapers. They had fallen behind. Only Degtyarova was still keeping up with her.
&nbs
p; Weep, Degtyarova, Degtyarova, weep—life has proved hard for you . . .
A cold wind began to blow. The wheat made more noise. It rippled and swayed, as if in anguish.
“He wrote to me all the time. He was always writing. And now it’s over three weeks without a single letter.”
Marya straightened up and looked about her—at the fields, some already harvested and some not, and at the broad strip of dark forest in the distance. The grey-blue space around her was cold and transparent, and the bright sun on the fields and copses brought neither warmth nor peace to the soul.
“Who can I ask? Who’s going to answer? Who can turn this blade away from my heart?”
Degtyarova was standing a few yards away, frowning thoughtfully as she looked at the swaying ears of grain.
“Why do you keep crying?” Marya asked.
Degtyarova looked round at her, said nothing for a few moments, as if she hadn’t heard or understood, then said quietly, “I think you’re crying too.”
49
NO ONE would ever again cross paths with any member of Filyashkin’s battalion. All were dead and can play no further part in this narrative. Nevertheless, they constitute one of its longest threads.
The dead—most of whose names are forgotten—lived on during the Battle of Stalingrad.
They were among the founders of a Stalingrad tradition that was transmitted from heart to heart, without words.
The fighting around the station had continued for three days and nights. The grim, unrelenting rumble was a clear message to the other Soviet soldiers, spelling out what lay in store for them.
Reinforcements went on crossing the Volga at night. There on the bank, without anyone looking at any lists, without administrative formalities of any kind, they were immediately assigned to one regiment or another. Sometimes these soldiers died in battle almost immediately. During their few hours in Stalingrad, however, they came to understand as much as Khrushchev, Yeromenko and Chuikov, and they fought in accord with a strict but unwritten law that had matured in the consciousness of the nation and been proclaimed to the world at large by the Red Army soldiers who died at the railway station.
50
REGIMENTAL Commander Yelin reported to Rodimtsev that his battalion had carried on fighting for three days after being encircled, had not retreated one step and had been annihilated to the last man.
Yelin forgot that only a few days earlier he had referred to “the battalion recently placed under my command, formerly part of Matyushin’s regiment.” Now, as he reported how they had fought to the death, he called them simply “my battalion.” He used this phrase three times.
While Filyashkin’s battalion was still fighting, Colonel Gorishny’s division had crossed the Volga and taken up position on Rodimtsev’s right flank. One of Rodimtsev’s regiments was transferred to Gorishny’s command. It then took part in an attack on Height 102—Mamaev Kurgan.
Initially the regiment suffered heavy losses and failed to gain any ground. Angered by this apparent failure, Gorishny said that the regiment was insufficiently prepared for the challenges of urban warfare.
“It happens again and again,” his chief of staff replied. “You’re handed a regiment at the last minute—and then you have to answer for it straightaway.”
Gorishny was a tall, stout man with a strong Ukrainian accent. He seemed slow and calm, but his family had disappeared without trace and this had left him in a state of constant anguish. Later that day, he said to his chief of staff, “You can’t capture a height like that with a mere regiment. It’s sheer hell on those slopes. It would be hard enough with an entire corps.”
Meanwhile, in the sewer that served as the command post for the 13th Guards Division, Belsky was saying to Rodimtsev, “Gorishny’s regiment has lost a lot of men, and he’s failed to establish proper liaison with the artillery.”
In spite of a hurricane of fire, the regiment in question had, in fact, just launched another attack and reached the crest of Mamaev Kurgan. Had they known this, the divisional commanders and their chiefs of staff would have spoken differently.
In general, however, issues of personal vanity—and disagreements about who was responsible for a particular unit’s successes or failures—were of little concern during these first weeks. The fighting was too intense; it required all the commanders’ mental powers, all their will, all their time and—only too often—their lives.
Only some time afterwards, in late November and early December, as the tension began to ease, did such matters come to the fore. Every mealtime then became an opportunity to debate who had been exposed to most enemy fire, who had defended the most critical sector, who had yielded a metre and who had not, whether it was Gorokhov or Ludnikov who had been pushed back into the tightest little corner, and when and for how long a particular regiment or battalion had been transferred to someone’s command.
This was when the arguments about who first recaptured Mamaev Kurgan began in earnest.
Rodimtsev’s men considered, not without reason, that it had been one of their regiments.
Gorishny’s men considered, with no less reason, that it had been their division, since the regiment in question was, at that time, under Gorishny’s command.
Those who regained the height had no need to discuss anything; they knew very well that they, and they alone, had recaptured Mamaev Kurgan—they had not seen any other Soviet forces on the crest. As for the many dead, they had all played their part and might well have had something to say, but the dead had no voice in these debates; all that concerned anyone was how the glory should be shared among the living.
Another dispute—although this only flared up after the war was over—was about the relative importance of the infantry on the west bank and the artillery on the east bank. Those who had been on the west bank made out that the architects of the victory were the storm groups, the rank-and-file soldiers with hand grenades, the machine-gunners, snipers, sappers and mortarmen. The artillery may have provided support—albeit not always in time, not always accurately, and even, now and again, firing on their own men—but they did not play a decisive role.
Those who had been on the east bank argued that the infantry, for all its courage, could never have fought off the monstrous onslaught of the German army. Especially towards the end of the defensive battle, the Soviet infantry was a spent force. The Soviet front had become a line drawn on a map rather than a material reality, and what halted the Germans was the power and concentration of the Soviet artillery.
But for the Volga, lying between the infantry and the artillery, this dispute could never have assumed such apparent importance. Similar disputes arose at other stages of the war but, in the absence of any such clear demarcation line, they died down; neither side could easily find evidence to back up its case. Here, though, the demarcation line was only too clear. On one bank stood Stalingrad—and the infantry. On the other bank stood a new, fire-breathing city, so densely packed that battery commanders argued with one another over a few square metres of sand, over a small patch of ground sheltered by willows.
The long barrels of the anti-aircraft guns were like a forest of steel. Camouflaged in shallow creeks lay ships from the Volga naval flotilla, armed with large-calibre cannon. Huge aerodromes had appeared, providing secure bases for the hundreds of Yak and LaGG fighters flying across the Volga, for the P-8 light bombers whose role was to attack the German support services and communication lines, and the Tupolev TB-3 heavy bombers that roared into the night sky. And this concentration of the most advanced military technology was located in a small area; it was well organized and under effective central control. A radio report about a German attack would be followed, only a few seconds later, by the command “Fire at square X!” The whole fire-breathing city would then come to life. Thousands of shells would crash down, a minute later, on a small area designated by the same grid reference on the maps of the commanders of artillery, mortar and rocket regiments. Everything there, animate and ina
nimate, would be blown into the air or pounded into the ground.
The Volga’s great breadth has confused matters. The river may have looked like a dividing line, but in reality it marked a perfect joint, welding together the two halves of the Soviet forces, uniting the firepower of the east bank with the west bank’s unflagging courage. The Volga enabled gunners and foot soldiers to co-operate with unusual effectiveness.
Were it not for the infantry’s courage, the artillery could have done nothing. It was because the infantry held its ground that the artillery was able to manifest its monstrous concentration of firepower.
But it is equally true that, without the shield provided by the artillery, the infantry could never have withstood the countless German attacks. Without artillery support, the infantry’s extraordinary courage—and their determination not to retreat—would have led simply to their annihilation.
Neither the artillery’s material might nor the infantry’s fighting spirit could have achieved anything on its own. It was the union between them that led to the Soviet victory.
51
IN THE middle of September, the Germans began shelling the Stalgres power station. The station was, at the time, operating normally—it was a fine day, and the white clouds of steam from the boiler room and the smoke from the chimney were clearly visible.
When the first 103-millimetre shells hit the cooling towers and exploded in the yard, and when one of the shells smashed through the engine-room wall, someone phoned from the boiler room to ask Spiridonov if they should stop work. Spiridonov, who was standing by the central control panel, ordered them to continue as usual. Stalgres supplied power to Beketovka, to the command post and signals centre of Shumilov’s 64th Army and to the front-line radios. It recharged the batteries of trucks and other vehicles and it also supplied the Stalgres workshops now being used for the repair of tanks and Katyusha rocket launchers.
Spiridonov then telephoned his daughter and said, “Vera, go to the underground shelter at once.”
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