‘How long will it last?’
‘A long time, a long time. Obviously.’
I was not prepared practically for the war at all, only emotionally, but we went to war believing it would be the most important thing we did in our lives. It would seem we were not mistaken. And something else: emotions have proved more durable than many practical things, certainly than my leaky boots.
People shoot, kill, bury, rush into the attack, go out on reconnaissance, and that is war. But the starving women with their bags, without proper boots, wandering God knows where with their hungry children, the old people, the refugees, the people burned out of their homes – they are the real horror of war.
We think it is right that the part of the people fighting the war should have everything; for us nothing is too much in comparison with the peaceful civilian population. But what kind of peaceful civilians are these people who have borne a heavier burden of war than many a soldier?
German soldiers, every last one of them, have packs of photographs of identical format, six by nine, with those pinked edges. Mutti, Vati, the muchloved sister. The righteous family having breakfast, the bike ride, the meal in the garden, the fat uncle with his big-boned wife and diminutive children, the tiled roof, the solidly built house covered with ivy. What an unimaginable level of comfort! Contentment, smugness, but above all – comfort. Why have they all come piling in here? Why have they been in such a rush to leave all that comfort behind?
My last entry in Zaimishche:
Genka jumps on to the running board of the truck and laughs with his mouth closed. I am already in the back. Matryona Nilovna comes running with Shura, wrapped in a cloth shawl. Nyurka is clinging to her skirt and hiding her face. Kostya stands to one side. I catch an expression in their eyes that makes my nose tingle. Or perhaps I’m imagining it. (In the margin of the diary I have written, ‘Perhaps I’m just making this up.’) The truck moves off. It is sunny, there is so much air. Goodbye, Zaimishche.
We get shaken about in the back of the truck after leaving the village limit of Zaimishche as the truck strains to climb a slope over snow compacted by wheels. We have hardly come any distance, but already the routine that was beginning to make sense of our life in Zaimishche has been broken and fallen away. There are six of us in the back of the truck, including Senior Lieutenant Thiel. Our group is holding on to him for now. He is deemed useful.
Two weeks ago our troops were ordered to complete the encirclement of the German Ninth Army but considerable enemy forces were moved towards Limestone Mountain and, from the north, blocked our breakthrough, in the process cutting off units of the army adjacent to us. The Germans are now furiously taking revenge. I translated an intercepted order from Hitler, which instructed that it was to be ‘communicated immediately to all units’.
Soldiers of the Ninth Army!
The breach on your sector of the front to the north-west of Rzhev has been closed. As a result, the enemy who had broken through in this direction are no longer able to communicate with their logistical base. If you continue in the coming days to do your duty as you have been, many Russian divisions will be destroyed.
The army next to us had been surrounded. Only a few troops had managed to break out. The army fought on in an encirclement about which there is not a word in the History of the Second World War, the official line being that there were no encirclements after 1941. This army, that perished or was taken prisoner in the forests of Rzhev, gave the lie to that line so no one mentioned it subsequently. Through to our sector, in random groups or individually, came soldiers traumatized by the suffering they had endured. They were very few. In our sector the fighting continued.
Our truck was following behind Commissar Bachurin’s Molotov saloon car. The sky darkened and it began to snow. That was all to the good; it made everything safer. From time to time we would get stuck. Soldiers passed by, their greatcoats rubbing the side of our truck. ‘Hey, would you believe that?’ They had noticed our Fritz and looked over as they passed, the steam of their breath hanging by the side of the truck. ‘What a scarecrow. Only fit to keep sparrows off the hemp.’
We drove into the village of Lyskovo in accordance with orders, on the first day of our ‘march’. We went into a log hut, where an oil lamp was flickering in the kitchen. The old woman who lived in the hut was stoking the stove. ‘Saints preserve us!’ she gasped at the sight of the German. She was old, poor and unkempt. ‘Why would you bring him in here?’ ‘Not up to us,’ Savelov said and, having worked out how to communicate without the need for an interpreter, gave Thiel’s shoulder a shove to move him away from the door. ‘Shift!’
Savelov propped his rifle up in a corner of the kitchen, hunched squarely over the table, spread out his elbows and ate. The old woman took her bowl of porridge off behind the stove, came back and walked over to the bench where the German was sitting. She leaned over to check whether he was really eating. ‘Eat, since you’re being fed, you parasite, while you’re alive. Hunger hollows out the soul.’ ‘You mean, they’ve got a soul?’ Savelov enquired with his mouth full. ‘Well, no,’ the old woman nodded. ‘Maybe they haven’t, you’re right.’
Captain Borisov came back from Commissar Bachurin and, passing through the kitchen, remarked, ‘Mind you remember which bowl that German ate from.’ It was true, no one was squeamish about sharing plates with someone else, but no one would want to drink out of a mug the Fritz had used.
I went through to the living room and pulled off my felt boots. Even if the chief of staff had forbidden taking them off at night, we did anyway. I put them by the bed and lay down, loosened my belt, pulled my greatcoat over myself, and was about to fall sleep when I heard Thiel sounding alarmed. What was going on? I went back to the kitchen.
The old lady was sitting quietly opposite the German in her tatty jacket, her arms folded, peering at him. She had pulled in her scrawny shoulders and was rocking to and fro, sighing and sniffling. Thiel, anxious, repeated his question straight to her face: ‘Mütterchen, was ist los? Fräulein Lieutenant, please be so kind, what is this woman saying?’ ‘Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear,’ the old woman lamented. ‘Oh, holy Mother of God.’ She went behind the stove, brought out her bowl of millet porridge that had long ago gone cold, put it on the table and moved it towards the German. ‘Here, take it, eat this,’ and, crumpling her fingers up against her mouth, she began to cry.
‘Listen,’ Thiel said, ‘Why is this old woman crying?’ ‘I have no idea.’ What was I to make of her? Heaven knows what she was thinking as she looked at our prisoner. Perhaps someone in her family was a prisoner too.
He ate a little. ‘If you may,’ he said in some agitation, running a hand over that wavy hair with the parting, then, manfully, continued, ‘If it is permissible, I would prefer to know the truth. Am I to be shot?’ ‘What are you doing, auntie. Here you are crying because you’re sorry for the German and you’ve scared him to death.’
The old woman sobbed, and blew her nose on the end of her headscarf. ‘It’s not him. No–o. I feel sorry for his ma. She gave birth to him. She nursed and raised him, such a young prince, and sent him out into the world, only to be a scourge to other people and himself.’
A dark column of people is coming our way along a country track at an angle to our main road. These are our soldiers who broke out of the encirclement. Some, using their rifles as crutches, hobble on frostbitten feet; others are supporting an exhausted comrade. They are escaping along a corridor our army has hewn out for them. Their sparse numbers soon pass. Is that all of them? Why so few? Have they been cut down by gunfire? Have they died of cold in the forest? Are there other tracks they are stumbling along?