65

p In war, trees—like people—all have their own fate. 1 saw a large tract of forest cut down by our artillery fire. The Germans who had been forced to retreat from the village of S. wanted to make a stand in this forest, but they were mowed down together with the trees. Dead German soldiers lay under the crippled pines, their torn bodies rotted amid the green ferns, and the pitchy fragrance of the shell-split tree trunks was lost in the nauseatingly putrid, sweetish stench of rotting flesh. One fancied that the ground itself, pitted with shell holes whose edges looked scorched, grey and brittle, exhaled a noxious smell of death.

p Death ruled in silent arrogance over this clearing, created and dug up by our shells. In the very centre a birch tree had miraculously survived, and the wind swayed its wounded branches and rustled the new, glossy, sticky leaves.

p We started across this clearing. The soldier, walking ahead of me, lightly touched the birch tree and said with sincere and tender concern: “Poor dear, how did you manage to survive?”

p Pine trees are killed outright, they just fall dead when a shell hits them, and the severed top lies on the ground, bleeding pitch onto the needle-covered ground. Oaks, on the other hand, do not succumb to death so easily.

A German shell hit the trunk of an old oak tree, growing on the bank of a nameless little river. Half of the tree shrivelled up and died from the torn, gaping wound, but the other half, bent riverwards by the blast, revived wondrously in spring and sprouted new leaves. Till this day, I expect, the lower branches of the mutilated tree bathe in the water, while the top ones reach upward to the sun, turning their taut, chiselled leaves for its blessed warmth. . ..

p Lt. Gerasimov, a tall man with broad shoulders slightly hunched like a black kite’s, sat at the entrance into the dugout, and gave a detailed account of that dey’s battle and the German tank attack successfully repulsed by the battalion.

p The lieutenant’s thin face was calm, almost dispassionate, and his bloodshot eyes were wrinkled up from fatigue. He spoke in a deep, cracked voice, clasping his hands now and again with his big, large-jointed fingers intertwined, and this 66 gesture, so eloquently expressing silent grief or deep, painful reflection, seemed foreign to his strong figure and his energetic, manly face.

p Suddenly he fell silent, and his face became instantly transformed: his dark, weather-beaten cheeks turned pale, he clenched his teeth so hard that the jaw muscles moved up and down under the taut skin, and his eyes staring fixedly before him flared up with such unquenchable, fierce hatred, that involuntarily I followed the direction of his look and saw three German prisoners coming from the direction of the front line of our defence, escorted by a soldier wearing a faded, almost colourless tunic, and a side-cap pushed to the back of his head.

p Our soldier walked slowly. He swung the rifle in his hands in time with his measured stride, and the bayonet gleamed in the sun. The prisoners trudged as slowly, reluctantly moving their shuffling feet shod in low boots, smeared with yellow mud.

p On coming level with the dugout, the prisoner who headed the file—a middle-aged German whose hollow cheeks were overgrown with a thick brown bristle—darted a sidelong, wolfish look at us, and turned away to adjust the helmet strapped to his belt. At this, Lt. Gerasimov sprang to his feet and shouted to the escort in a shrill, barking voice:

p “Are you taking a stroll with them or something? Quick march! Get a move on, you hear?”

p Apparently he had more to say, but fury choked him and, swinging round on his heel, he ran down the steps of the dugout. The political instructor, who was present at this outburst, intercepted my surprised glance, and explained in a low voice:

“His nerves are shot, he can’t help it. He’s been a prisoner of the Germans, didn’t you know? Ask him about it some time. After what he had suffered there he can’t endure the sight of a living German, living ones I mean. He doesn’t mind looking at dead ones, but when he sees German prisoners he either shuts his eyes and sits there with sweat pouring down his ashen face, or just goes away.” He dropped his voice to a whisper and moving close to me said: “I went into attack with him twice. He’s as strong as a horse and you ought to see what he can do... . I’ve seen all kinds of things, but watching him wield his bayonet or rifle butt makes your flesh creep."

67

p That night, German heavy guns opened harassing fire. Methodically, they fired the shells at set intervals: first we heard the distant shot, a few seconds later came the metallic scream of the shell high above in the starlit sky, the wailing sound swelled in volume and faded away, and then somewhere behind us, in the direction of the road where all day long lorries moved in a dense stream bringing ammunition to the front, there was a burst of yellow flames and the thunderous crash of the explosion.

p In the intervals, when silence settled in the forest, we could hear the mosquitoes singing in their thin voices, and the startled frogs timidly calling to one another in the small pond nearby.

p We lay under a nut bush, and Lt. Gerasimov told me about himself, taking his time, and chasing away the bothersome mosquitoes with a broken twig. I shall render his story as accurately as I was able to memorise it.

p “Before the war I worked as a mechanic at a factory in Western Siberia. I was drafted on July 9th, last year. My family consists of my wife, two kids, and my invalid father. Well, when they were seeing me off the wife wept, of course, and said these parting words to me: ’Defend the country and us with all your might. Lay down your life if you must, but see that victory is ours.’ I remember, I laughed at her and said: ’Who d’you think you are, a wife or the family political instructor? I’m old enough myself, and as for victory, never you worry, we’ll get it if we have to tear it out of the Germans’ throats, gullet and all.’

p “My father, of course, is made of stronger stuff, he didn’t weep, but he also thought it necessary to admonish me. He said to me: ’Mind you, Victor, the name of Gerasimov is more than just a name. You’re a hereditary industrial worker, your great-grandfather was one of Stroganov’s  [67•*  workers, that’s how far back it goes. For hundreds of years our family has been making iron for Russia, and in this war you must be as strong as iron too. The state, your state remember, kept you as a reserve officer till the war, and now you’ve got to give the enemy a proper beating, see?’ And I said: ’So I shall.’

p “On my way to the railway station I dropped in at the district Party committee. Our secretary was quite a stick- inthe-mud, and I was thinking that if my wife and my father 68 had each their piece to say to me in parting, this chap would certainly want to deliver a long-winded speech. 1 was all wrong! ’Sit down, Gerasirnov,’ he said to me. ‘Let’s sit down for a minute before you start, according to the good old custom.’ We sat for a minute or two without speaking, then he got up and I noticed that his eye-glasses were sort of misted over. Well, well, I said to myself, what’s come over people! And now the secretary said: ‘It’s all so clear, there’s nothing much to say, Comrade Gerasirnov, I remember you as a lopeared kid wearing a red Young Pioneer tie, I remember you as a member of the Komsomol, and I’ve known you as a Communist for all of ten years. Go and kill the bastards without mercy. The Party organisation places its trust in you.’ The secretary hugged me, we kissed according to custom, and, dammit, he didn’t seem to me such a dry stick any more. . .. His sincerity was so heart-warming, that I came out of the office feeling really elated.

p “And then my wife gave me a good laugh. It’s not much fun, you know, seeing a husband off to war, and naturally enough my wife couldn’t get her wits together, she kept trying to say something important to me, but her thoughts were muddled and she couldn’t remember what it was. The train had already started off, she walked down the platform, close beside my window, holding on to my hand for dear life and saying very quickly over and over again: ’Mind you don’t catch cold there, Victor, take good care of yourself!’ And I said to her: ’Sure, Nadya, sure. I won’t catch cold for anything. The climate at the front is excellent, and really quite moderate.’ My wife’s sweet, silly words eased the bitter pain of parting for me, and God how mad I got at the Germans! All right, you traitorous neighbours, I said to myself, you started this so look out now! We’ll give you what’s coming to you, and more!”

p Gerasirnov fell silent, listening to the exchange of machinegun fire that had suddenly started in the distance, and as the firing ceased he abruptly resumed his story:

p “We used to get machines from Germany before the war. As we assembled these machines I’d feel each part over at least five times, and I’d examine it from all sides. Those machines were sure made by clever hands, I also liked books by German authors, and somehow I was accustomed to regarding the German people with respect. True, it disgusted me at times that a hard-working, gifted nation like that could tolerate Hitler’s lousy regime, but then, after all, it was their own business. And then war began in Western Europe....

69

p “And so I was on my way to the front, and I was thinking: the Germans have powerful machines, and their army’s not bad either. Dammit, I thought, it might be quite good fun coming to grips with an enemy like that and giving them a licking. We were nobody’s fools either, you know. To be sure, I didn’t expect them to fight a particularly honest battle—what honesty can there be when you’re dealing with fascism?—but I never thought we’d have to fight such vile scum as Hitler’s army turned out to be. Oh well, I won’t go on about this now....

p “Our unit arrived at the front at the end of July. We joined the fighting on the morning of the 27th. The first time it was a bit frightening. They gave us a lot of trouble with their mortars, but we found our bearings before the day was out, and knocked them out of the village they had occupied. In that battle we took some fifteen prisoners. I remember it as if it were yesterday: they looked scared and pale when they were brought in. My men had already cooled after the clash, and now each one of them wanted to give whatever he could to the Germans—a messtin of soup, tobacco, cigarettes, tea, or what not. They slapped the Germans on their backs, called them Kamerads and asked them what they were fighting for.

p “One old soldier looked on this touching scene for a while, and then he said to the men: ‘You’re drooling sentimental snivel over your Kamerads. Sure they’re all comrades here, but you ought to see these same comrades on their side of the frontline, you ought to see what they do to our wounded and to the civilian population!’ He went away, and we felt as though a bucket of icy water had been dashed in our faces.

p “Soon we went into the offensive and the sights I saw were really terrifying! Villages burnt down to the ground, women, children and old men executed in their hundreds, mutilated bodies of war prisoners—our own Soviet men, raped and brutally murdered women, young girls and mere children. ...

p “One of them I’ll never forget. She was a child of eleven or so and, apparently, she had been on her way to school. The Germans seized her, dragged her into someone’s kitchen garden, raped and killed her. She lay on a trampled potato patch, a little girl, hardly more than a child, and around her were scattered her school books, sodden with blood. They had hacked at her face with a broadsword, it was terribly mutilated. ... In her hand, the girl clutched her open schoolbag. We covered the body with a cape, and stood over it in silence. As silently my men went each his own way, and I still stood there, whispering in a frenzy: ’Barkov and Polovinkin. Physical 70 Geography. Textbook for Seven or Ten-Year Schools.’ I had read this on the cover of one of the books that had fallen out of the girl’s schoolbag. I knew that textbook well. My daughter also went to the fifth form.

p “This happened not far from Ruzhin. And not far from Skvira we happened upon a spot in a ravine where the Germans had tortured and murdered the Soviet soldiers they had taken prisoner. Have you ever been in a butchery? Well, that’s approximately how that place looked. Bodies without arms or legs and with the skin ripped off halfway hung on the branches of trees growing along the ravine. . . . Eight murdered soldiers were dumped together on the ground. You could not tell which part of the body belonged to whom. They were simply large chunks of meat, and neatly placed on top of the pile were eight Soviet side-caps, one pushed into the other like nest cups.

p “Do you think a person can describe in words all that he saw there? No, he can’t. There are no such words. This has to be seen with one’s own eyes. And anyway let’s drop the subject,” Gerasimov said brusquely, and fell silent for a long time.

p “May one smoke here?" I asked him.

p “Sure. Only into your cuff,” he replied in a husky voice.

p He, too, lit a cigarette and continued:

p “You understand we became savage seeing all those nazi atrocities, and it couldn’t have been otherwise, of course. It was clear to all of us that we were confronted not by humans but by some blood-crazed monsters. They tortured, raped and murdered our people with the same thoroughness with which they once manufactured their machine tools.

p “Afterwards we had to retreat again, but we fought like mad.

p “Practically all the men in my company were Siberians, but we put up a truly fierce defence for the soil of the Ukraine. Many of my countrymen were killed in the Ukraine, but even more Germans met their death there at our hands. Sure we were retreating, but we gave them the whatfor just the same.”

p Drawing greedily on his cigarette, Lt. Gerasimov now said in a different, mellowed tone:

p “The soil’s good in the Ukraine, and the scenery there is lovely! Each village, big or small, had the dearness of home for us maybe because we generously watered the ground there with our blood, and blood, so people say, makes men brothers. . . . And when we had to leave a village like that our hearts 71 fair broke, dammit. We were so sorry, and we felt so bad about it that we couldn’t look into each other’s eyes as we retreated.

p “... I never thought I’d ever have to know captivity, but it turned out that I was destined to. I was wounded the first time early in September, but I remained in the ranks. The second time was in the fighting at Denisovka, Poltava Region, on the 21st of September, and there I was taken prisoner.

p “The German tanks broke through on our left flank, and their infantry poured in after them. We were fighting our way out of encirclement. That day my company suffered heavy losses. We repelled their attacks twice, set fire to six of their tanks and one armoured car, and left about a hundred and twenty dead Hitlerites on the maize field, but then they pulled up their mortar batteries, and we were compelled to leave the height we had held from midday to 4 p.m. It had been sweltering hot from early morning, there wasn’t a cloud in the sky, and the sun beat down so fiercely that we were near suffocated. The shells dropped thick and fast, and I remember how terribly thirsty we were, the men’s lips turned black, and my own throat was so parched that I gave the orders in a strange, hoarse croak. We were running across a hollow when that shell burst in front of me. I believe I saw a column of black earth and dust in that split second before I passed out, and that was all. One shell splinter had pierced my helmet, and another one had got embedded in my right shoulder.

p I don’t know how long I lay there, but when I came to I heard the tramping of feet. I raised my head and saw that this was not the spot where I had fallen. Someone had pulled off my tunic and bandaged my shoulder. My helmet was gone, and whoever had bandaged my head must have been in a hurry because the end of the bandage was not secured and hung down my chest. In that first flash of consciousness I thought that my men had carried me here, dressing my wounds on the way, and it’s them I expected to see as I strained to lift my head. The men running towards me were Germans. I saw them very clearly as in a good film. I groped about me with my hands: not a weapon within reach. No pistol, no rifle, not even a hand grenade. Some of my own men must have removed my mapcase and my weapons.

p “ ’Here comes death,’ I thought. What else did I think of in that moment? Nothing. If you want to know this for your future novel, make up something because 1 really didn’t have 72 time to think of anything at all. The Germans were very close, and I did not want to die lying down. I simply did not want to die lying down, you understand? I collected all the strength I had and struggled up on all fours. By the time the Germans came I already stood on my feet. I stood and swayed, and was terribly afraid that I’d collapse and they’d stab me lying down. I don’t remember a single face. They stood around me, talking and laughing. I told them: ’Come on, kill me, bastards! Kill me before I fall down.’ One of them hit me on the neck with the butt of his rifle, I went down, but picked myself up again. They roared with laughter, and one of them waved his hand ordering me to walk. I went. My whole face was crusted with dried blood, a very warm, sticky trickle of blood still oozed from the wound in my head, my shoulder ached terribly and I could not lift my right arm. I remember how desperately I wanted to lie down on the ground, and not go anywhere, but still I went. ...

p “No, I did not at all want to die or, even less so, remain in captivity. Fighting down my giddiness and my nausea I walked on, and this meant that I was alive, I was still capable of action. Lord, how thirsty I was! My mouth was parched, and a black veil seemed to sway before my eyes all the time. I was almost unconscious, but I walked on, telling myself all the time, Til run away as soon as I’ve had some water and a little rest.’

p “All of us, prisoners, were assembled on the edge of the woods and drawn up. The men were mainly from another unit, and only two belonged to the third company of my regiment. Most of the prisoners were wounded. Speaking broken Russian, the German lieutenant asked whether there were any commissars or officers among us. None answered. Then he said: ’Commissars and officers, two paces forward!’ No one moved.

p “The lieutenant slowly walked down the line and picked out fifteen or sixteen men who looked like Jews. ’Jude?’ he asked stopping before each of these men, and without waiting to hear their answer ordered them to leave the line. The majority were Jews, but there were also several Armenians and Russians with dark hair and dark complexions. They were taken aside and shot before our very eyes. After that we were hastily searched. Our wallets and whatever else we had in our pockets were taken away. D’you know, I never carried my Party card in my wallet for fear of losing it. I kept it in my trouser pocket, and the Germans missed it when they searched me. Man is an amazing creature, I must say! I knew that my life hung by a thread, I knew that if I wasn’t killed when I 73 tried to escape I’d be killed on the road anyway, because I could hardly keep up with the rest, weak as I was from my loss of blood. And yet, I was so happy that my Party card was safe, that I even forgot how thirsty I was.

p “The lot of us were marched westward. There was quite a strong escort on either side of the road, and about ten men on motorcycles. We were forced to march at a brisk step, and my strength was dwindling fast. Twice I fell, got up and marched on, knowing that if I remained on the ground another minute and the column passed me I’d be shot right there on the road. That’s what happened to the sergeant in the row before me. He had a leg wound and could hardly walk. He moaned and even cried out when the pain became unbearable. After about a kilometre, he said in a loud voice: ’No, I can’t go on. Goodbye, comrades.’ And he just sat down in the middle of the road. Without stopping, people tried to lift him up and put him on his feet, but he sank down on the ground again. As in a dream, I can still see his very pale, young face, the eyebrows drawn together in a frown and the eyes filled with tears. .. . The column passed him. I turned round and saw one of the motorcycle escort ride up close to the sergeant, take his pistol out of its holster, jab it in the man’s ear and fire. He did not dismount to do it, you know. Before we got to the river, the Germans shot several other prisoners for falling behind.

p “I could already see the river, the blasted bridge across it, a lorry that got stuck at one end of it, and here I fell face down on the road. No, I didn’t pass out. I lay there, stretched out to my full length, my mouth was filled with dust, I gritted my teeth in a blind rage, but for the life of me I could not get up. The men were marching past me. One of them said in a low voice: ’Come on, get up, or else they’ll shoot you.’ I tore at my mouth with my fingers and all but gouged out my eyes so the pain would help me get up. . ..

p “The column had already passed, I could hear the motorcycle rolling up to me, and I got up. Without glancing back at my would-be executioner and swaying like a drunk I caught up with the column and fell in. The German tanks and cars which had just crossed the shallow little river had stirred up the silt, but we fell upon this warm, brown mud thirstily and to us it tasted sweeter than the sweetest spring water. I bathed my head and wounded shoulder in this water, and it refreshed me wonderfully. I now had the strength to go on, I could hope that I would not collapse and remain lying in the road.

74

p “We had just left the river behind us when we saw a formation of medium German tanks coming towards us down the road. The man in the front tank, correctly identifying us as prisoners, stepped on the gas and drove straight at our column, causing panic in the front rows and squashing our men with his tracks. The escort nearly split their sides watching this scene, waving their arms and yelling something to the tank men who had poked their heads out of the hatches. When they’d had their laugh, they lined us up again and marched us on along the side of the road. They certainly like a laugh, these Germans. . ..

p “That night I made no attempt to escape, realising that I was too weak to go far. Besides, we were so well guarded that any attempt to escape was doomed to failure. But you’ve no idea how I cursed myself afterwards for not making that attempt! Next morning we were marched through a village where a German infantry company was stationed. All the Germans poured out into the street to take a look at us. Our guards made us run through the whole village at a jog-trot, humiliating us to boost the morale of this infantry company which was on the way to the front. We ran. Anyone who tripped or fell behind was shot on the spot.

p “Before the day was out we found ourselves in a war prisoner camp. The yard of a Machine and Tractor Station had been surrounded with a thick barbed wire fence for the purpose, and inside the prisoners were packed like sardines. We were handed over to the camp guards who herded us into the enclosure, prodding and hitting us with their ride butts. It wasn’t hell, it was something far worse. There were no lavatories. The prisoners relieved themselves right there, and they were expected to stand or lie down in the stinking dungwash. The weaker ones did not get up at all. We were given food and water twice a day—a mug of water and a handful of uncooked millet or rotting sunflower seeds. Some days the guards forgot to feed the prisoners altogether.

p “On our third day there, rains began to pour. We waded knee-deep in mud. In the morning the men steamed like horses, and there seemed no hope that the downpour would ever stop. . . . Dozens of men died every night. We grew weaker and weaker from hunger with every day. On top of everything else, my wounds were giving me hell. On the sixth day I felt the pain in my shoulder and my head growing much worse. My wounds were beginning to fester. There was a bad smell too. 1 was told that gravely wounded Soviet soldiers were kept 75 in the collective-farm stables close to the camp, and they had a doctor to look after them. In the morning I asked the sergeant of the guard to let me go and see this doctor. He spoke Russian well. ’Go and see your doctor,’ he replied. ‘He’ll tend to you right away.’

p “I missed the sarcasm, and hopefully went along to the stables.

p “The surgeon met me at the door. This was a completely finished man. Frightfully emaciated and run down, he was already half-insane from all that he had gone through. The wounded lay on filthy straw gasping in the suffocating stench which filled the stable. The majority had maggots in their wounds and those of the wounded who were able to do so dug them out with their fingers or sticks. . . . The dead were also dumped there in a heap, which grew faster than it could be removed. . . .

p “ ’Well? What can I do to help you?’ the doctor asked me. T have not a scrap of gauze, I have nothing! Go away, for the love of God, go away from here! Tear off your bandages and sprinkle some ash on your wounds. There’s some fresh ash right here by the door.’

p “I did what he told me. When I came back to the camp, the sergeant of the guard said to me with a big grin: ’Well, how did it go? Oh, your soldiers have an excellent doctor! Did he help you?’ I wanted to go past him without speaking, but he crashed his fist into my face and yelled: ’So, you refuse to answer me, you dirty swine?’ I fell, and he went at me with his feet, aiming his kicks at my head and my chest. He only stopped when he was too tired to go on. I shall never forget that nazi as long as I live, never! I had many beatings from him afterwards, too. The minute he’d catch sight of me through the barbed wire, he’d order me to come out and he’d beat me in silent, concentration.

p “You’ll ask me how I came through alive?

p “You see, I was a stevedore on the Kama before I got to be a mechanic, and when we had a ship to unload I’d carry two bags of salt on my back—weighing a centner each. So physically I was pretty strong, my health was alright generally, but the main thing was that 1 did not want to die, I had a lot of resistance. I simply had to return to the ranks of fighters defending my country, and I did return to take my revenge on the enemy.

p “I was transferred to another camp, about a hundred kilometres away from the first one which was a sort of distributing 76 centre. The two cainps were very much alike: here, too, there was a tall barbed wire fence and no roof over our heads. The food was as lousy, except that sometimes instead of raw millet we were given a mugful of cooked rotten wheat, and occasionally dead horses were hauled into the yard and we were left to divide up the stinking flesh among us. We did eat it not to die from hunger, and died in our hundreds from poisoning. . .. The cold set in before the end of September, the rain poured without letup, and there was ground frost in the early morning. Life was sheer unmitigated misery, and I was lucky enough to get the tunic and greatcoat of one of those who died. But even so I couldn’t get the chill out of my bones. We were already used to hunger. ...

p “We were guarded by soldiers who had fattened on looting. In character, they were all made to a pattern, and were out and out scoundrels to a man. Here is what they did for amusement: in the morning, a lance corporal would come up to the barbed wire and have the interpreter tell us to line up for food, which would be handed out at the extreme left-hand corner of the camp.

p “We’d all crowd there, that is everyone who could still stand on his feet, and we’d wait for an hour, two hours, three hours. Hundreds of living skeletons shivering in the biting wind. We’d stand and wait.

p “Suddenly the guards would appear at the opposite end of the yard and start throwing chunks of horse-flesh over the barbed wire. The whole hungry crowd would rush there and scramble for the dirty hunks of meat, fighting over them like animals. . . . The guards would roar at the spectacle, and then suddenly there’d be a long volley of machine-gun fire. The crowd would dart in a panic to the left, leaving the dead and the wounded lying on the ground. The tall Ober-Leutnant, the chief warden of the camp, would then come up to the barbed wire and, barely controlling his laughter, say: ’Your behaviour during the handing out of the food was shocking! If this happens again I’ll have you Russian swine shot down without mercy. Remove the dead and the wounded.’ The soldiers, thronging behind their chief, nearly died laughing. They thought him a great wit, and this was fun after their own hearts.

p “We’d carry away the dead and bury them in the gully not far from the camp. ... In this camp, too, beatings were part of the routine. Fists, sticks and rifle butts were used. The guards beat us simply because they were bored and this made a nice, 77 amusing change for them. My wounds had healed, but then they opened again because of (he damp or the beatings, and ached terribly. But still I lived and did not lose hope. . . . We slept on the ground, in the mud, we weren’t even given any straw for bedding. We’d huddle together and lie down. The pile of us stirred restlessly all night, crawling about and shifting positions for it was as freezing cold for those lying in the mud as it was for those on top of the huddle. It was agony, not sleep.

p “And so the days dragged by as in a nightmare. I grew weaker and weaker. A child could have knocked me down. I looked in horror at my shrivelled arms—dry sticks with the skin stretched over them—and wondered how on earth would I ever be able to get away? I cursed myself for not attempting to escape in the very beginning. So what if they had killed me then? I would have been spared this torment.

p “Winter came. We shovelled the snow to clear a space and slept on the frozen ground. There were fewer and fewer of us left in the camp. ... At long last we were told that soon we’d be sent to work somewhere. Our spirits revived. It was a faint hope, but still each one of us began to hope again that maybe he’d manage to escape.

p “It was cold that night, but there was no wind. Just before daybreak we heard artillery fire. The whole huddled pile of us stirred awake. When the sound was repeated, someone said in a loud voice: ’Comrades, that’s our army advancing!’

p “Lord, the excitement that broke loose! We were all up on our feet at once, even the men who had not been able to rise for some days. People talked in excited whispers, and you could hear muffled sobbing too. . .. Someone near me was crying his heart out, sobbing like a woman. ... I too, I too. . . . The tears rolled down my cheeks and froze to ice. ... Someone started singing the Internationale in a feeble croak, and we joined in with our thin, creaky voices. The guards opened lire on us from machine guns and tommy guns, and the order was shouted: ’Lie down.’ I flattened my body against the snow, and cried like a baby. I wept from joy and also from pride in our people. The nazis could kill us, unarmed as we were and faint from hunger, they could torture us to death, but they could not break our spirit, that they could never do! And they’d better think again, if they think they can break us.”

78

p I was not to hear the rest of Lt. Gcrasimov’s story that night, as he was urgently called away to headquarters. We met again a few days later. The dugout smelt of mould and pine piteh. Lt. Gerasimov sat on the bench with his shoulders hunched and his huge clenched hands lying on his knees. Looking at him I could not help thinking that he must have got into the habit of sitting like that in camp for hours on end without speaking, thinking his bitter, futile thoughts—-

p “You want to know how f escaped? I’m coming to that,” he told me. “Soon after that night when we heard our gunfire, we were taken to work on fortifications. A thaw had set in and it rained. We were marched northward from the camp, and the same thing happened again: when someone collapsed from exhaustion, he was shot and left lying in the road. One man was shot for picking up a frozen potato. We were crossing a potato field, and this man—Gonchar his name was, he was a Ukrainian—picked up this damned potato and tried to hide it. The German guard saw him do it and, without uttering a word, came up to Gonchar and fired at the back of his head. The column was ordered to stop and line up. ’All this is the property of the Reich,’ said the guard, indicating the fields about us with a sweeping gesture. ’Whoever of you takes anything without permission will be shot.’

p “As we were marched through a village, the women there threw us pieces of bread and baked potatoes. Some of us managed to catch them or pick them up, the others were not so lucky because our guards opened fire on the windows and ordered us to quicken our step. The village children—- youngsters are a fearless lot, you know—ran far ahead of us and dropped the bread on the road so that we could pick it up as we came to it. I was one of the lucky few—I had caught a large potato, f gave half to the man on my right, and we ate it with the peel, f had never eaten tastier food in my life!

p “The fortifications were to be built in the forest. The guard was doubled and we were issued shovels. What I wanted was to destroy their fortifications and not build them!

p “I decided to make a dash for it that same day, before nightfall, f crawled out of the hole we were digging, took my shovel in rny left hand and went up to the sentry, the only one guarding our group as all the other Germans were watching the prisoners digging the trench.

p “ ’Look, my shovel’s broken,’ I mumbled. I realised that if I failed to knock him down with the first blow I was as good as dead. Apparently, he suspected something from the 79 expression on my face because he began to shrug off the shoulder strap of his submachine gun. It was then that I hit him across the face with my shovel. I couldn’t hit him on the head because he had his helmet on. Still, my blow was strong enough, and he dropped dead without a sound.

p “Now I had a submachine gun and three cartridge clips. I started running, and here I discovered that I could not run. I just didn’t have the strength, and that was that. I stopped to get my breath back, and then pushed on again, going at a snail’s pace. The forest grew thicker on the other side of the gully, and that’s where I was making for. There’s no remembering the times I fell, picked myself up again, and fell once more. Still, I was getting farther and farther away. I was crashing through the thickets on the other side of the rise, sobbing and gasping from exhaustion, when I heard the rattle of submachine-gun fire and shouts far behind me. I wasn’t easy to catch now.

p “It was growing dark. If the Germans had tracked me down I would have used all but the last cartridge on them. The last one I would have saved for myself. The thought gave me heart, and I moved on with greater caution.

p “I spent the night in the forest. I sighted a village not very far away, but I did not go there for fear that I’d run into the enemy.

p “The partisans picked me up on the following day. For a couple of weeks I stayed in bed in their dugout, getting back my strength. They treated me with a measure of suspicion at first, in spite of the fact that I had shown them my Party card which I had managed to sew into the lining of my greatcoat in camp. When I was well enough to take part in their operations, they changed their attitude towards me completely. It was there I started keeping a careful count of the nazis I killed, and the figure’s steadily nearing a round hundred.

“In February the partisans took me across the frontline. For about a month I stayed in hospital where the shell splinter was removed from my shoulder. The rheumatism I got in camp and my other ailments will have to keep until after the war. When I was discharged from hospital I was allowed to go home to recuperate. I stayed there a week, I couldn’t take any more. I was homesick for the army, because whatever you say my place is here till the end.”

80

p We said goobye at the dugout entrance. Gazing thoughtfully down the brightly sunlit clearing, Lt. Gcrasimov said:

p “We have learnt to fight properly, and we have learnt to hate and to love. War is an excellent touchstone lor sharpening all feelings. One would think that love and hatred could not possibly be placed side by side. You know the line where it says that a dray horse and a timid doe cannot be harnessed into the same cart. Well, we have done it and the two are pulling well together. 1 hate the nazis for what they did to my country and to me, and I love my countrymen with all my heart, and I don’t want them to suffer under the nazis. It’s these two feelings, love and hatred, which compel me, and all of us for that matter, to fight with such bitter fury, and it’s these two feelings that will secure victory for us. We carry the love for our country in our hearts, and while our hearts are beating it will stay there: our hatred we always carry on the tips of our bayonets. Forgive me the high-flown style, but that’s really how I feel,” he concluded and, for the first time since I’d known him, gave me a simple, sweet and childlike smile.

p Also for the first time 1 noticed that this thirty-two year old man who was still strong as an oak for all that he had gone through, had snow-white hair at the temples. This whiteness, acquired through untold suffering and pain, was so pure that a cobweb clinging to his side-cap vanished from view as soon as it touched his hair, and try though I might I could not discern it.

1942