After a month of retraining and recovery, Petr was reassigned to his old division. But now he was in a rifle battalion instead of a rocket-artillery battery. The Red Army was finally seeing some success against the seemingly invulnerable German war machine. The winter offensive outside of Moscow was pushing the Germans back, and it saved the capital. That, and the successful liberation of the Tikhvin railhead, convinced Stavka, the Russian high command, that the Germans simply didn’t know how to fight in the bitter cold. So they decided to extend the winter offensive and break the German siege of Leningrad. They reorganized the Leningrad front and called the new force the Second Shock Army. It was a name designed to give the soldiers confidence: they weren’t just an army; they were an elite Shock Army!
Already the first assaults had stalled. Petr’s unit was tasked with relieving them by opening a second front. But apart from the newly arrived veterans from Siberia, the Second Shock Army was still made up of the same terrified conscripts who had, to this point, retreated from combat. As Petr led Duck forward through the masses of marching infantry, he saw nothing in their frightened, downturned faces that gave him any hope. This February attack seemed likely to result in the same defeats he’d always experienced. At least the ground was frozen hard. That would make retreat much more manageable.
Negative-thirty-degree nights had frozen the ground so hard that digging trenches and foxholes was impossible. Petr and his comrades were barely kept warm by an ample supply of heating oil. But the Germans didn’t have even that. Already German supply lines were stretched long, and the winter made them seem longer. Petrol was in short supply, and it was required for the vehicles. So without the insulation of trenches and without proper heating, the Germans were forced to encamp in villages using homes abandoned by fleeing refugees as makeshift barracks. The fields in between them, and the forests, were a no-man’s-land. The winter front lines had none of the contiguous lines of bunkers and trenches that many had experienced in World War I.
The new winter offensive sought to take advantage of this. The Russian infantry was ordered to approach the German-held villages using gorges and “dead ground”—undulations in the landscape—to avoid detection. Then, with an order from their political officers and a shout from their commanders, the riflemen were to rush forward from the German rear and flanks, clearing each village house by house. That was the first wave. As antitank gunners and mine-dog handlers, Petr and Fyodor were part of the second wave. Once the riflemen had secured the village, Petr, Fyodor, and Duck were expected to rush in and defend the newly liberated town from the expected panzer counterattack.
Shortly before another frigid dawn in late February 1942, Petr, Fyodor, and Duck crawled to their start positions on the edge of a frozen, rolling wheat field. Once again Petr was impressed by Duck’s training and intelligence: the big wolf dog could crawl on his belly as well as any frontline rifleman. From their new position, Petr and Fyodor could peer over a crest in the field and witness the assault on the village firsthand.
Like everything in this war, it didn’t go according to plan.
At first the attack seemed like a success. The screaming infantry appeared as if from nowhere, rising up from the folds in the ground only fifty yards from the village cottages. But the Germans weren’t surprised. Rifle and machine-gun fire spat death at the Red Army. The muzzle flashes weren’t coming from the cottage windows and doors, as expected; they came from the bottom of the buildings’ walls where the Germans had cut out firing slits. They were standing in the cottage potato cellars, firing as if from a trench, as well protected as if they were in concrete bunkers.
Petr watched it all. The most courageous Russians were the first ones cut down, dancing with the impact of each German bullet before crashing headlong onto the hard ground. Now the first wave hesitated. But commanders and political officers urged the soldiers onward, and once again they lurched forward, trampling fallen comrades under foot. Already the wounded made a horrific clamor, their moans and screams for help rising above the sounds of gunfire. In this weather they would freeze to death before help could arrive.
The Germans continued to fire, taking a terrible toll on the Russians. But there were simply too many infantries. The Germans couldn’t kill them all. Soon the surviving Russians reached the buildings, kicked open the doors, and threw grenade after grenade into the perimeter cottages. A series of dull booms shook the buildings. And the Russian soldiers rushed inside.
Petr could not see the brutal hand-to-hand fighting occurring within. He only saw the results. Some Russian soldiers were repulsed, killed by German bayonets and dumped back outside to form barriers against further attacks. Other soldiers were victorious, liberally spraying their submachine guns into rooms and basements before firing off flares to indicate that their objectives were secure. Still others faced no fighting at all, as the German veterans escaped out the back of their cottages to take up prepared positions deeper in the village.
Petr couldn’t take his eyes off the spectacle of blood. He’d never been so close to the front line, apart from his own duel with the panzers. And he noticed he was shivering. It wasn’t from the cold. And it wasn’t from fear. It was from anticipation. His muscles tensed. He had to force himself to sit still; it took every ounce of willpower not to scramble to his feet and join the riflemen in their orgy of killing.
Petr noticed Duck reacting the exact same way. The dog straightened, half standing in a crouch, ears upright and alert and nose pointing forward, anxious for the slightest command to pounce into battle. Looking at the dog, Petr realized he was looking at himself. They were both warriors, he and Duck. They hadn’t really lived until now. Civilian life had been a waking dream. They were born to fight, and it had taken a German invasion for them to discover the truth about themselves.
An officer was blowing his whistle. It was the signal for the second wave.
“Come, Duck!” Petr yelled, and he and the dog were racing across the tundra. Duck was like a tan-and-black version of a Katyusha rocket, tearing across the field with incredible speed, his frozen breath trailing behind him like exhaust. Somehow Petr managed to keep up. Fyodor lagged somewhere behind them, but Petr didn’t look back. He only focused on his objective—a small cottage where he’d seen the all-clear flare fired by their infantry sergeant only moments ago.
Duck reached the cottage door first, leaping up and scratching at the wood planks. Petr hit the door an instant later, splintering it and crashing inside.
The cottage wasn’t cleared. Moments after their infantry sergeant fired his flare, German soldiers must have rushed him from the basement. They had him pinned to the wall with a bayonet, clubbing him with rifle butts.
Duck didn’t hesitate. With a flash of white teeth, he lunged at the first German, knocking him to the ground, snapping and ripping his clothes to get at the soft flesh beneath. Petr attacked the second German with his shovel. He didn’t remember yanking it from his belt, but it was in his hands. His first blow split the German’s helmet. His second split the German’s skull.