Dimitri stepped forward before Valentin could make any more formal pronouncements. He held out his hand to each. Neither was out of his teens. More sons, Dimitri thought; Christ, more children to take into battle.
‘Dimitri Konstantinovich Berko,’ he said with each handshake. The boys had acne and nervous clasps. Dimitri felt expansive after his day in the trench with the woman, the digging made him tired in the good, old way of the farm. ‘Call me Dima. Tell me your names.’
Both were short, the way tankers must be. One was thick, the other lean. Dimitri guessed the chunky one was the loader, he had to be strong to sling the shells around inside the tank, out of the bins and into the breech.
The other would be the hull machine-gunner and radioman, if the General had a radio.
‘Pyotr Semyonovich Belyayev,’ said the stumpy one. His eyes were close-set. Beneath broad shoulders hung short arms. ‘I am…’
‘The loader, yes, I guessed. Of course. Look at you. Strong as an ox, I’ll bet. Good, good. And you?’
The thinner of the two was the edgy, pinched one. Both boys had buzzed haircuts but this one looked like a match head, there was something incendiary about him.
‘Private Frolov.’ His name had to escape his mouth as though words were prisoners in this boy’s head.
‘Private Frolov? I’m not going to call out “Hey, Private Frolov, shoot those Nazi fuckers for me!” in the middle of a battle. What’s your name, boy?’
‘Urn… um…’
‘Yes?’
‘Alexander Mikhailovich Frolov.’
This one will be fun, thought Dimitri. The quiet ones always are after you put some vodka in them. He guessed the skinny one would be the harder fighter of the two when the time came. Life for the quiet ones is a fight all the time. Good. He’ll keep his head.
‘Gunner extraordinaire, da!’ Dimitri clapped Frolov on the back to see how he’d take it. The boy wavered under the smack but looked up and grinned.
‘Good, very good. Sergeant, these look like good fighters. Well done.’
Valentin eyed his father.
Dimitri spread his arms, pushing the two boys together, tucking both inside his span as though measuring their collective width and worth.
‘Alright! Pasha and Sasha. Yes. And Dima.’ He looked back at Valentin. ‘And the sergeant.’
Dimitri took up the lantern and carried it to the General. He set it on the ground and folded next to it, resting his tired back against the T-34’s tread.
‘Gather ‘round.’
Pyotr and Alexander came to sit about the lantern. Valentin stood apart. This was the third crew they’d had in a year, and Dimitri had gone through this exercise with each. Dimitri walked over to his son and took the boy’s arm, leading him away to speak privately.
‘Come on, Valya. They’re children.’
‘They’re soldiers.’
‘They’re fighters, yes. And who are the best fighters in all of Russia?
Hmm?’
‘Cossacks,’ Valentin said with rolling eyes. The answer was their ritual.
‘Yes! So, you see. We have to do this, every time. Yes? Come on.’
Dimitri steered Valentin by their linked arms back to the lantern, the General
, and the two waiting crewmen.
‘Good. All together,’ he said, grunting a bit while descending to the ground again. Valentin took a place up on the tank, close but above the three privates. ‘Pasha. Tell me where you’re from.’
The broad one said, ‘Lesogorsk. Near Bratsk.’
‘Ah,’ Dimitri clapped, ‘a Siberian. Are you a hunter, then? You must be.’
‘I grew up shooting ducks on the Bratskoye reservoir. And foxes in the taiga. My father and I…’
‘Excellent, wonderful. You’ll tell us more sometime. Sasha, you.
Where is your home?’
The boy licked his lips. ‘Odessa.’
Dimitri looked up at Valentin. ‘You hear that! He’s from the other side of the Black Sea from us. Splendid.’
‘Did you two know the sergeant and I are Kuban Cossacks?’
The boys shook their heads and looked at each other.
‘What do you know about Cossacks? Anything?’
Pasha the stump said, ‘My mother used to scare us when we were bad. She’d say if we didn’t behave, she was going to call the Cossack and let him get us.’
‘What would the Cossack do?’
‘I don’t know. Eat us, I guess.’
Dimitri chuckled. ‘Your mother was a wise woman, Pasha. I might have eaten you and grown very fat myself. But as you can see, I’m skinny, so I never ate any children. Alright?’
Pasha nodded, like a child being assured a scary campfire story was just that, a story.
Dimitri reached to the lantern to turn up the wick. ‘Did you notice the name of your new tank? Sasha?’
Valentin, seated on the tank, sighed and this made Sasha take a moment longer.
‘General Platov.’
‘Yes. Good. I suppose you don’t know who General Platov was, so I’ll tell you.’
‘Yes,’ said Pasha, cupping his chin in his hands and digging his elbows into his bent knees. Sasha nodded. This boy did not ever seem to blink.
‘Before the War of 1812, Napoleon knew he would invade Russia. He set out to learn everything he could about the Motherland before attacking.
One of the things he found out was that the Cossacks of the Don and Kuban regions were the finest riders and fighters in the world. Better than the Mongols, the British, and better than the French, of course. Napoleon needed good cavalry if he was going to build an empire, and who better than the Cossacks?’
Dimitri slapped the tank tread behind him. ‘Good old General Platov here was the hetman of the Don Cossacks. He got a letter from Bonaparte himself, inviting him to visit Paris to be His Majesty’s guest. When Platov got to France, Napoleon and all of his generals kissed his ass like he was a king himself. They showed him all the wonders of Paris, held fancy balls in his honor, even a parade! All this to get their hands on General Platov’s Cossacks. And Platov, you see, was no dummy. He knew what Bonaparte was up to.’
The lantern light reached high enough on the tank for Dimitri to see his son listening, knowing the story well but allowing the father’s gift of the telling.
‘Finally, Napoleon made his move on the General. He sat Platov down in a giant parlor of gold and silk, and said to him, “General, such a man as you should be a prince in your country. You command thousands of fighters, but you are treated with no honor by your own king. France can offer you this honor, for you and your Cossacks. Side with us, General. It would do you and your people good to become acquainted with the cultures of France and Europe.” The General kept his opinion to himself, that Napoleon had spoken as though, without French culture, his Cossacks were savages!’
Pasha and Sasha laughed. Even Valentin snickered, this was a new line Dimitri threw into the tale.