The Red Army halted, bracing itself against the Germans’ savage counterattack to retake Latvia.
The shelling slowed and halted, replaced by the whirring chatter of the high-speed German heavy machine guns. Maurice tried to press himself into the soil. There was no use trying to shoot back—that would just give away his position.
With one cheek on the ground, he could just see the Red Army executing its classic move: overwhelming the enemy with massive force. A line of T-34s advanced, firing machine guns almost continuously and their cannons as fast as the gunners could load them. Men rode behind the turrets, firing rifles and submachine guns, and others advanced between and behind them, finding cover where they could, falling to German fire when they couldn’t.
There were Soviet planes in the air now, banking and turning like angry hawks, three to every German plane. Nothing could withstand the flood of the Red Army, pressing its way down the shallow slope.
A tank shell hit one of the German cannons, and a Red Army plane took out another’s crew. So many shells were exploding, Maurice could hardly see the field anymore for all the soil, ash and smoke in the air.
The German self-propelled guns began to withdraw, and the ground troops began taking rear-guard action, firing to protect the guns. When he saw a German machine gun crew running, pulling their gun behind them, he raised himself and his borrowed gun. He aimed at two Germans who were firing their own submachine guns toward the advancing Red Army. He felt a little spasm of satisfaction when one fell sideways, knocking his companion down, and then he hit the dirt again before he drew fire himself.
He saw something moving behind the disabled T-34 and slithered closer to it. Black smoke poured from a hole in its turret. As he neared the tank, Maurice could see a Red soldier, covered in mud, waving him to come closer.
It was Sergeant Nikolaev. A trickle of blood has cleared a path through the dirt on his face, from above his left eye to his jaw. But his hazel eyes were clear and determined.
“Sergeant? Are you hurt?” Maurice asked.
Nikolaev shook his head. “Come with me, Bury. There’s a nest of them over there, just ahead of the other tank.” He turned and crawled around the dead tank, and Maurice wondered for a second about its crew. But then he had to follow his sergeant, flattening himself on the ground again to look beyond it.
His mouth fell open when he saw the remainder of his odalenye sheltering behind the tank: the corporal Ostap Shewchuk, Taras Kuchnir, Old Stepan Chorny, Mykhailo Boyko, Serhi Koval and Oleh Vohk. Evhen, Borys, young Olesh, dead, three from our unit lost within minutes. And the lieutenant—is he alive or dead? Did he bleed out?
The sergeant interrupted his stream of thought. “We’re going to get to those bushes over there,” he waved at a small stand of dead trees fifty metres ahead of the tank. “We’ll use the trees as cover to that shed over there, and from there we’ll be able to fire on the trench Fritz is using in front of the farm.”
“We’ll never make it,” Maurice said.
Nikolaev turned on him like an angry dog. “Don’t question my orders, you kokhol coward,” he snarled.
“It’s not cowardice, Sergeant.” Maurice pointed to the left. “There’s another trench fifty or sixty metres that way, to cut off any retreat. They’ll shoot us all from the flank if we run across fifty metres of open ground.”
Nikolaev crouched and peered around the rear corner of the tank to where Maurice was pointing. Sixty metres away, between the farm and the windbreak, was another trench he hadn’t seen. He could count at least eight flared German helmets above the lip, which seemed to be watching the action between the dueling T-34s and Panzers.
“Right. Okay, boys, that’s our target. Fix bayonets and we’ll rush it on my count.”
Maurice felt cold in his bowels. Bayonets meant up-close fighting. But there was no time to think, no time to react other than to follow the other boys in fixing the long bayonet to the barrel of his rifle.
The Red Army was advancing and the Germans fleeing, but the men in the trench were covering their retreat with flanking fire. They concentrated on the men riding on the tanks, now ahead of Maurice’s group and to their left.
Sergeant Nikolaev crouched at the back corner of the tank, intent on the trench. He held up one hand. “One, two…” When the Germans seemed to be focused away from them, he sprang to his feet without finishing the count. He ran toward the trench.
The men jumped after him, running flat out. Maurice could only hope one of his own men wouldn’t stab him accidentally, and they closed the fifty metres to the trench before one of the German soldiers turned toward them.
Nikolaev shot him immediately with a short burst from his Shpagin, then leaped over the trench. Shewchuk and Kuchnir leapt over the edge, impaling Germans before they had a chance to scream.
Maurice stepped on the lip of the trench and paused. It was enough for the grey-uniformed private below him to grab the barrel of his rifle. The stock smashed into Maurice’s face and his mouth filled with blood. His vision swam, but he held tighter to the rifle. He looked at the German soldier and thrust his rifle forward and down.
The bayonet penetrated the German’s throat as easily as if it were made of bread. He looked up, blood spurting bright red from his neck and his mouth. Then Maurice made a mistake. He looked down into his victim’s eyes and saw them fade from bright blue to dull grey.
Maurice yanked the bayonet out of the body. It toppled onto the bottom of the trench, its helmet falling to reveal cropped blond hair. He could not have even been twenty years old.
Maurice felt something solid in his mouth and spat it out, and only then realized three of his front teeth were now lying in his own blood on the ground.
Nikolaev crouched on the far side of the trench and fired single shots with his submachine gun, making certain the German men were dead. He jumped down into the trench, and his men followed, trampling and stumbling over the bodies.
“Get down, Maurice!” someone said, and Taras Kuchnir pulled him into the trench. He landed on the body he had just killed.
Maurice began to tremble. He closed his eyes, only to see the German soldier’s eyes fade again. He fell to his knees and vomited onto some body, splattering his knees.
No one else seemed to care. The fighting was nearly over. The German tank destroyers and Panzers burned on the fields. The farmhouse burned, too, and a T-34 had driven over the barn, knocking it into splinters. Bodies lay everywhere, German and Soviet. Farther off, the Soviet tanks kept going, chasing down Germans, their machine guns and the men riding on the rear decks firing occasionally.
It was less than two hours since Maurice had woken up, and he had lost his front teeth, a third of his unit were dead, his commander was maimed, who knew how many more young Russians and Ukrainians killed, how many Germans.
He spat blood out again and ran his teeth against his aching gums. His mouth felt so strange, now.
Mykhailo gave him a dirty kerchief, and he dabbed at his mouth. “Put it in your mouth to soak up the blood. Bite down as hard as you can bear,” said Corporal Shewchuk. “We can’t afford to have you bleed out from a lost tooth.”
Maurice tried to reply, but his jaw hurt too much. He gingerly pushed the kerchief into his mouth, just a little, and closed his jaws as much as he could stand.
Even though he knew he had been lucky to have lost only teeth, some part of him mourned them. He did not allow himself to mourn Evhen, Borys or Young Olesh.
Not yet. Not until this is over. I won’t survive if I weep while I should be fighting.
Into Lithuania
July 1944