Maurice put some straw into his own hole as Old Stepan came to the fourth hole, sighed and settled into the water without bothering to put any straw into it, as if he were too resigned to suffering to bother alleviating it even a little.
Maurice peered into the grey, damp night. The only sounds were the slow, soggy wind rattling the dead branches on the trees and the occasional shifting of his fellow sentries. There weren’t even any insects at this time of year, no owls or other night creatures.
He shifted to stay awake, pressed his rifle butt against his shoulder, took deep breaths and shook his head when he felt his eyelids closing.
The night dragged on and the four men got wetter and wetter until their relief came, two hours later. Stepan went to find a corner of the barn to sleep in. Maurice, Serhiy Koval and Young Olesh made a tent of their greatcoats, their rifles forming the posts, and lay down for a few hours of fitful sleep. Every hour, they would rotate their positions, so each one had at least some time in the warmest place, between the other two.
Morning came bright and cold. Maurice chafed his arm, which had been on the outside of the trio of sleepers for the last shift of the night.
The quartermaster’s men were distributing breakfast, tea and bread. Maurice pulled on his coat, watching a teenaged private carrying a big jug across what had been a farmer’s field. He heard the shot a split second after he saw the back of the boy’s head explode. Maurice hit the ground before the poor teenager’s body did.
The air filled with the chatter of gunfire. An explosion showered mud and twigs on him and bullets ripped holes in the side of the truck near the barn.
Soviet machine guns chattered back. Maurice lifted his head enough to see men scrambling and falling. More shells hit, one blowing the ruined barn to splinters. Someone screamed as the walls fell.
Borys and Mykhailo loaded and fired the Maxim. Maurice crawled on his belly to the berm. A man sprawled over it. An explosion had crushed the side of his head, but Maurice could still recognize Evhen, the scared student from Kalush. The body still clutched the Shpagin submachine gun. Maurice pulled it from the body’s grasp and pointed it southwest, in the same direction that Borys was firing the heavy gun.
That was when he saw the Germans. Small groups of men, dashing from cover to cover: trees, mounds and holes in the ground, rocks. In the middle, two tanks headed straight at him, full speed, machine guns firing continuously. Soldiers clung to the deck behind the turrets, each armed with a submachine gun. Behind them were two self-propelled field guns, their crews loading, aiming and firing smoothly and efficiently. The shells burst in the camp every few seconds.
Maurice fired at the men riding the closer tank, but billowing smoke prevented him from seeing whether he hit anything.
Maurice could hear shouting in Russian behind him and all at once men lined the berm, firing rifles over it. From behind him, Maurice heard the whoosh of a mortar, and an explosion burst in the midst of a group of German soldiers.
Then a shell hit directly on the machine gun. Borys and Young Olesh vanished in smoke, dust and flame. The rifleman beside Maurice jerked back and fell, but Maurice was too busy firing Evhen’s submachine gun into the smoke to see who it was.
More shouting and a deep boom from behind, and the lead Panzer seemed to skip sideways. Flames leapt up, followed by smoke and its treads stopped. The soldiers riding on it fell or jumped off, and then were cut down by bullets.
Still, the Germans kept coming. A shell hit the front of the berm and a metre of its length collapsed, killing three men. Maurice kept firing in bursts and watched men in grey uniforms fall.
Maurice fired the submachine in spurts until it jammed. He threw it down and picked up his own rifle, aiming and firing as fast as he could.
He heard a growling roar, and from beyond the barn emerged two Soviet tanks, T-34s, both firing their cannons. One hit the second Panzer and almost simultaneously the other hit one of the German self-propelled cannons.
“Keep firing! Kill the bastards!” someone yelled, in Russian. It was Lieutenant Vasilyev, standing amidst the shredded bodies of Borys and Olesh. He brandished his gun and screamed at his men. “With me, men! For Russia!” A shell hit a few metres away and the explosion tore his right arm off above the elbow. Vasilyev fell, screaming and clutching his shoulder with his remaining hand.
A T-34 blasted the second German cannon, and the few soldiers remaining on the field turned and ran. A commissar behind Maurice leapt over the fallen lieutenant, calling the troop to charge. Six men climbed onto the back of one of the tanks, which roared after the retreating Germans.
“Bury, Ivanyuk, Chorny, come on boys,” said Sergeant Nikolaev, running over the berm with a submachine gun in his hands. The other men followed, and Maurice wondered whether the other four men in his odalenye were still alive. But he didn’t have time to think about it as he followed the sergeant to the other T-34. The others helped him climb onto the deck as the tank roared across the burned fields.
He looked left, then right and saw more T-34s moving with them, followed by groups of soldiers running from cover to cover, using the tanks themselves, the occasional trees, small rises in the ground. They dropped to the ground and fired single shots, got up and moved forward.
Once again, Maurice was astounded by the size of the Red Army. As far as he could see in either direction: tanks, men, guns, horses. Smoke rose, thinning into the bright blue sky. The noise of the engines, the gunfire, the exploding shells made it impossible to think about anything but attacking their attackers.
The tank he rode on followed the other by a few metres. They passed through an opening in another tree windbreak and over a rise, and then they saw they had forced themselves into a trap.
An explosion rocked the front tank in the same moment that Maurice saw more German field guns, the dreaded Stug tank destroyers and an Elefant a hundred metres to their left, between an abandoned farmhouse and another ruined barn, perfectly placed to hit the Soviet tanks on their more vulnerable flanks as they crested the ridge. The T-34 lurched to the right, its turret knocked out of place. Flame and smoke rose from a hole in the side plating.
The German guns opened up. A shell hit Maurice’s tank, but the sloping armour deflected it. It flew off and exploded almost harmlessly, but the force threw Maurice from the tank. He hit the ground face down, ashy soil filling his mouth and nose.
Maurice lay as flat as he could on the ground, not moving even though his rifle dug into his chest. He craned his head up to see ahead, still trying not to present any profile that a bullet could hit.
Shells pounded without pause. Ahead, the tank rolled on, its cannon firing, but there were no men riding on it anymore. Where is Sergeant Nikolaev? Maurice crawled on his belly back up the slope, his ears aching from the force of the explosion that had knocked him off the tank. The smell of soil, ash and smoke filled his nostrils.
He reached the crest of the low ridge again, rolled behind it and turned around. He could see other Soviet soldiers hunkering down, taking cover where they could. He could not see any German soldiers. Then he saw another ruined farm behind the line of cannons. They’re hiding in there.
A screaming buzz cut through the din. Maurice and all the other Red soldiers looked up and dismayed at the sight of German planes, flashing silver in the blue sky. They dove on the Red Army, strafing parallel lines of torn soil and bodies, dropping bombs on the tanks. Maurice saw one plane burst into black smoke and veer into the ground behind the Germans’ line, and then he had to hide his face as another explosion tore into the Soviet line.