At dawn, Sturmer went back to his cabin. The Germans had used their best technology and every skill at their command and blown up a few trees and possibly the odd skunk. The Americans had used their best technology and skills and pounded a sunken wreck. All that effort, all that skill wasted, all that expenditure for nothing. It struck Sturmer that the night hunt had been a pretty good metaphor for the war as a whole.
“The sentries are out Tovarish Lieutenant. I have a rota set up. They will be relieved at 20 minute intervals. The storm out there is getting worse.”
The arctic storm hit hard and without warning. The winds picked up, the skies clouded over then the snow started coming down. The wind blending the fall with the loose covering already on the ground to create a white-out that reduced visibility to near zero. Outside was just a white mass. There was no way of knowing what was ground, what was sky, what was solid, anything. In the white-out, a man could walk into a tree never having seen it.
The Siberians knew these conditions well. They’d grown up with them, and they’d seen the storm coming. They’d parked their snowmobiles and the three captured Kettenkrads in a hollow where they’d be sheltered from the biting wind. Then they had built themselves a “Zemlyanka,” a ground-house. They’d dug a cave in the deep snow, then continued to dig for another 2 meters into the ground. Fortunately, on Kola, the ground wasn’t permafrost so it could be dug out easily. They’d covered the pit in the snow with wooden sticks broken off from nearby woods, put more snow over it, leaving just a small entrance. They’d taken care to see that entrance looked no more than a simple dark hole under a rotten tree. They’d even built a dummy zemlyanka close to their vehicles, maskirovka, always maskirovka.
Sergeant Pietr Ivanovitch Batov had arranged the sentry roster with care. A man who spent more than twenty minutes outside would freeze to death. He’d arranged for them to be relieved before that could happen. The men had been divided into three teams of six. Every twenty minutes, two men would come in and spend the rest of the hour warming up again while two more went out to keep watch. Each team of six men would rotate that way, 20 minutes on duty and 40 minutes warming up, for three hours before another team of six relieved them. There were 18 men in the unit; each group of six would have six whole hours to rest. The storm could last at least that long.
Lieutenant Stanislav Knyaginichev looked around the zemlyanka. It was cramped, not from necessity although that had played a part, but from design. Men grouped together shared warmth, those apart wasted it. Warmth was the key to life. There was another reason as well, morale. Keeping men’s spirits up was as important as food and warmth in surviving the arctic. Knyaz had something to help him with that.
“Bratya listen. So, you want to hear some new stuff from the papers?”
“Yeah, sure.” The voice from the back of the zemlyanka was only marginally interested.
Another voice cut in. “Anything new from Tovarish Ehrenburg?”
“As a matter of fact, yes.” Knyaz reached into a pocket. “I have his latest speech. This is one called ‘Kill’.” That did it, there was a stir of interest and approval. Ehrenburg knew what the Frontniki thought and his pamphlets found ready acceptance with them. “Now listen. Here it is.” Knyaz shone his dim torch on the dog-eared paper and started to read.
“Germany is dying slowly and miserably without pathos or dignity. Let us remember the pompous parades, the Sportsplast in Berlin where Hitler used to roar that he would conquer the world. There, he showed us the truth. Germany does not exist, there is only a colossal gang of murdering rapists. The Germans are not human beings. From now on the word German means to use the most terrible oath. From now on the word German strikes us to the quick. We shall not speak any more. We shall not get excited. We shall kill. If you have not killed at least one German a day, you have wasted that day. If you cannot kill your German with a bullet, kill him with your bayonet. If there is calm on your part of the front, or if you are waiting for the fighting, kill a German in the meantime. If you leave a German alive, the German will hang a Russian man and rape a Russian woman. If you kill one German, then kill another — there is nothing more amusing for us than a heap of German corpses. Do not count days, do not count kilometers. Count only the number of Germans killed by you. Kill the German — that is your grandmother’s plea. Kill the German — that is your wife’s demand. Kill the German — that is your child’s prayer. Kill the German—that is your motherland’s loud request. Do not miss. Do not let through. Kill.
There was a mutter of approval around the crowded snow house. Knyaz could sense the men nodding. “But not everybody feels this way. In Pravda, Tovarish Georgy Aleksandrov replies to ‘Kill’ with an article entitled ‘Tovarish Ehrenburg Oversimplifies’. I have not got the full text here, but Grazhdanin Aleksandrov says that the fact the Gestapo hunt for opponents of the regime and appeal to Germans to denounce them proves that all Germans are not the same. He says it is the Nazi Government that has brought about this calamity in the name of national unity and that very act proves how little unity there is. He says that we should punish the enemy correctly for all his evil deeds and that the slogan of ‘kill them all’ oversimplifies. What do you think.”
“Grazhdanin Ilya doesn’t oversimplify!’ The voice was belligerent and the outburst met with another mutter of approval.
“Tovarish Aleksandrov needs to spend a few weeks out here. Then we’d hear him speak of ‘oversimplifying.’“ Another voice, another mutter of approval.
Knyaz smiled slightly in the gloom of the zemlyanka. There had been a time when an article in Pravda had been the epitome of truth; that was after all what Pravda meant. Woe betide anybody who argued with it. Those days had gone at last. “So bratya, we capture some Fascists.” There was a chuckle of grim, cynical laughter at that idea. “Hypothetically speaking of course. One of them produces his Communist party card and claims to have been a Member since 1920. What should we do with him?”
There was a pause while the soldiers thought it over. Then their new brat, Kabanov, spoke up, hesitantly. He was still uncertain of his new-found status and whether it gave him the right to speak up. Before being conscripted, Kabanov had won prizes for dialectic in his school and had been picked to go to one of the Moscow universities. After the war of course. He didn’t want the men around him to think he was posturing or trying to curry favor with their officer. He knew he’d won a little respect in the ambush a few days before and he was afraid they’d think it had gone to his head. “The others we kill straight away. That one, we should beat him before we kill him.”
“And why should we do that bratishka?”
“Because he should have known better. When a wolf takes a baby from its cradle it is not because the wolf is evil, it is because he is a wolf. It is his nature to prey upon the helpless. We kill him for his act but that is all. When an evil man does evil things it is because it is in his nature and he knows no better. But we expect better of a communist. He should know that these things are evil and refuse to take part. If he knows better but takes part anyway, then his blame is all the greater. Tovarish Aleksandrov forgets that. He is right, there may be good Germans, but if there are, then their blame is all the greater. They deserve death; not less, but more. For they knew good and evil and chose the evil.”
There was a swell of appreciation and Knyaz heard somebody give Kabanov an approving swat on the back. Now, the tricky bit. “But, bratischkas, bad things happened in the Rodina as well. What do we make of that?”