A Writer at War (17 page)

Kozlov told me how in 1941 he used to sing arias from operas at night in a forest near Bryansk in front of German trenches. Usually the Germans would listen to him for a little while and then start firing at the voice with machine guns. Probably they didn’t like his singing.

Kozlov told me that, in his opinion, Jews aren’t fighting well enough. He says that they fight like ordinary people, while in a war like this Jews should be fighting like fanatics.

The spike of racial hatred is directed against the Orthodox Jews, who in essence are racists and fanatics of racial purity. There are
two poles now: on one side are racists who suppress the world; on the other, Jewish racists, the most suppressed in the world.

One is afraid of things one isn’t used to. One can get used to anything but not death, probably because one only dies once.

War is an art. Within it elements of calculation, cool knowledge and experience are combined with inspiration, chance and something completely irrational (battle for Zaliman, Pesochin). These elements are compatible with one another, but sometimes they come into conflict. It’s like a musical improvisation which is unthinkable without a brilliant technique.

Moon over the snow-covered battlefield.

Grossman continued to collect character sketches together with his other vignettes.

The driver of a heavy tank: Krivorotov, Mikhail Pavlovich, twenty-two. (He is a huge, blue-eyed fellow.) Worked as a combine-harvester driver in a sovkhoz
¹
in Bashkiria, from the age of twenty. Joined the army in December 1940. ‘I had never seen tanks before that, and I liked them incredibly at first sight. Tanks are very beautiful. I was a mechanic-driver. This machine, with its firepower, is a golden machine, very strong.

‘They had guns and mortars, we crossed a gully and broke into the village. I shouted: “Gun on the left flank!” We destroyed this gun and some machine guns. Then, a shell hit the left side. The tank caught fire. The crew jumped out, and I stayed in the burning tank and knocked out the enemy battery. My back was feeling a little hot, everything was on fire. Such a fast machine it was. I was sorry to give it up. Very sorry. I clambered back into the hull and jumped out through the top hatch, just like a pike. The tank’s oil and paint were already on fire.’

Marusya, the telephone operator. Everyone praises her, everyone knows her. She addresses everyone by their first name and
patronymic. Everyone is calling her: ‘Marusya, Marusya!’ No one has ever seen her face.

Abashidze, a convivial fellow, member of Komsomol, battalion commander and vulgar person. His sickening, insolent, rude dialogue with the old landlady. When he asks for a light [from one’s cigarette, he says]: ‘May I touch the tip of your delight?’

One does not say now of somebody that they have been ‘killed’, but ‘he has covered himself’. ‘My friend has covered himself, he was such a great chap!’
²

A beautiful, bright day. Air battles are going on above the village houses. Terrible sights – birds with black crosses, birds with stars. All the terror, all thoughts, all the fear of a human mind and heart are in these last moments of a machine’s life, when its wings seem to express all that is in a pilot’s eyes, hands, forehead. They were fighting low, just above the tops of the roofs. One of them hit the ground. Five minutes later – another one. A man died in front of their eyes, a very young man, very strong, he so wanted to live. How he was flying, how he trembled, how frightening were the misfirings [of the engine]. They are the misfirings of a heart above the field of snow. The fox’s and wolf’s nature of yellow-tipped Messers.

Pilots say: ‘Our life is like a child’s shirt – it’s short and covered with shit all over.’
³

Strange paradox – the Messers are almost helpless against our seagulls, because the seagulls are so slow.

Joy of a cameraman who has managed to film a tragic air battle: ‘I’ll just need to retouch the crosses, that’s all!’

A dead pilot lay all night on a beautiful hill covered with snow: it was very cold and the stars were very bright. At dawn the hill became completely pink, and the pilot lay on a pink hill.

Grossman, not surprisingly, was fascinated by the unusual story of a commissar prepared to stick his neck out to prevent a terrible miscarriage of justice.

Senior
politruk
Mordukhovich, a small Jew from Mozyr, is the commissar of an artillery battalion. One of the soldiers in his battalion is a huge worker from Tula, called Ignatiev. He is extremely brave, one of the best soldiers in the battalion. The commissar had to go away for some time, and during his absence, Ignatiev lagged behind and joined up with another unit. They fought a defensive action. From there he was sent back to his unit during a lull. On his way he was stopped by an NKVD patrol. He was arrested as a deserter and sent to the military tribunal. He was sentenced to death. Meanwhile, Commissar Mordukhovich had returned to the unit and learned about his fate. Mordukhovich rushed to the divisional commissar and told him what a great soldier Ignatiev was. The commissar took his head [‘his ears’] in his hands. ‘There is nothing I can do to help now!’

Ignatiev was taken off to be executed by a representative of the Special Department, the commandant from headquarters, two soldiers and the deputy
politruk
. They led him to a little wood. The commandant took out his pistol, and pointed at the back of Ignatiev’s head. Misfire. Ignatiev turned to look back, cried out, and ran towards the forest. They fired at him, but missed. He disappeared. The Germans were only three kilometres away. Ignatiev spent three days wandering in the forest. Then he managed to return to the battalion unnoticed and came to Mordukhovich’s bunker. Mordukhovich said: ‘I will hide you, don’t worry.’ Mordukhovich gave him some food, but Ignatiev was trembling and crying so much that he couldn’t eat. Mordukhovich went to speak to the divisional commissar. By then he had been hiding Ignatiev for five days. ‘The man came back of his own accord. He said to me: “I’d rather die at the hands of my own people, than at the hands of the Germans.”’ The divisional commissar went to see the corps commissar, and the corps commissar went to see the [army] commander. The sentence was cancelled. Ignatiev now follows Mordukhovich around day and night.

‘Why are you following me?’

‘I am afraid that the Germans may kill you, Comrade Commissar. I am guarding you.’

Some stories, however, may have been little more than the front equivalent of an urban myth.

A soldier accused of desertion was being escorted to the tribunal when the Germans attacked. His guards hid in the bushes. The deserter grabbed one of their rifles and killed two Germans, and took the third one with him to the tribunal. ‘Who are you?’ [they demanded.]

‘I’ve come to be tried.’

Those sentenced to
shtrafroty
, or punishment companies, were known as ‘
smertniks
’, dead men, because none were expected to survive. They were being given the chance by the Soviet state to wipe out their shame with their blood. Many demonstrated exceptional bravery. One
smertnik
, Vladimir Karpov, even received the highest order, Hero of the Soviet Union. Evidently, he was not a political offender, because they, on Stalin’s order, could never receive any sort of decoration.

The company of
smertniks
consists of men whose sentences have been replaced with assignment to the front line. Its commander is a lieutenant with a self-inflicted wound who was sentenced to execution.

Men in this doomed company have skewbald, frostbitten faces, with pink traces from the cold of minus 40°, torn greatcoats, terrible coughs, as if coming from somewhere in the stomach, hoarse, barking, husky voices, and they all are overgrown with beards. Using the fire of their guns and also their tracks, tankists broke the line of fortifications and brought to Volobuevka a squad of tank infantry commanded by Senior Sergeant Tomilin. The battle lasted for eight hours. Tomilin’s tank infantry seized twelve houses. Tomilin himself killed ten fascists. The section of Sergeant Galkin killed thirty men, set on fire six houses with sub-machine-gunners and pillboxes, and destroyed a battalion headquarters with grenades. In the morning they joined up with our advancing troops in the southern outskirts of Volobuevka. When leading his soldiers into battle, Tomilin shouted: ‘Come on, bandits, forward!’

From the war diary of the 7th Guards Howitzer Artillery Regiment:

On 12 January, Junior Sergeant Ivanov and reconnaissance man Ofitserov saw seven men on a slope of a hill. They turned out to
be fascists who kept plunging a man into an ice hole. The fascists were frightened by our fire and fled, leaving a half-frozen medical assistant. He was paralysed with fear.

On 13 January, Junior Lieutenant Belousov was sent to establish communication with the infantry. He had to cross a gully overgrown with forest. While skiing through the forest, he noticed a cable connecting two German signals stations. The station closer to him was not guarded. Belousov took his skis off and cut the cable. Then he went into the forest, found an empty reel and wound seventy metres of telephone cable on to it.

Grossman continued to note down strange sayings and terms. Vodka was known as ‘Product 61’ because that was its place on the list of items issued.

A cook in a guards regiment [continually used the phrase] ‘put into shape’. ‘I’ll just put it into shape on the table.’ ‘I’ll put mutton into shape.’ ‘I’ll put soured cabbage into shape.’

A raid by twenty-eight aircraft. Not a single artillerist retreated. ‘They are wedded to their guns.’

A commissar in the 5th Guards went insane after an aviation raid and an attack by enemy tanks.

Large icons were used to make plotters for battery commanders.

A commissar cut bars from red rubber bands.
⁴

At night, Lieutenant Colonel Tarasov, the commander of a guards howitzer regiment, reads
Faust
lying on the floor of an
izba
. He wears a pince-nez which he cleans with a piece of suede.

A story told by Lieutenant Colonel Tarasov on how he had ‘dusted the Germans’ jackets’. The story shows the psyche of an artillerist. Infantry had reported that the Germans went to have lunch once
a bugle was blown. Field kitchens were detected by the smoke. Tarasov gave the order: ‘Collect data, load guns and report on readiness!’ The Germans were shelled with concentrated fire. The artillerists heard screams.

A captured German in a medical train. He needed a blood transfusion which would save his life. He shouted: ‘
Nein, nein!
’ (He didn’t want any Slav blood.) He died three hours later.

Soldiers started running away from the battlefield. A battalion commissar, armed with two revolvers, began shouting: ‘Where are you running, you whores, where? Go forward, for our Motherland, for Jesus Christ, motherfuckers! For Stalin, you whores!’ They turned round and occupied their defensive position again.

A soldier with curly hair, surname unknown, had been driving a sledge around in the German rear for twelve days. A mortar and bombs were hidden under the straw on the sledge. He would fire and then hide the mortar in the straw again. When he saw Germans, he would burst into song. They never suspected him. He would drive away from them, take out his mortar and fire at them.

Photographer Ryumkin was swearing at guards artillerists, who turned the wrong way (not photogenic) while firing their guns in earnest.

Lieutenant Matyushko commands a destroyer detachment, whose task is to annihilate Germans occupying the houses. The annihilators break into the village and rush into the houses. Matyushko said: ‘My men are all bandits. This war in villages is a bandit war.’ They sometimes strangle Germans with their hands.

A sergeant’s voice is heard coming out of smoke and flames: ‘Don’t fire in here, I’ve captured this house.’

A member of the destroyer detachment entered a house and swept the people sitting there with his quick dark glance. Everyone understood that this had become his habit, the habit of a man who breaks into a house and kills. Lieutenant Matyushko, too, interpreted his glance this way and said, laughing: ‘He could have done away with all of us on his own!’

We enter Malinovka with the battalion of motorised infantry
[commanded by Captain Kozlov]. The houses are ablaze. Germans are screaming, they are dying. One of them, all black and scorched, is smoking. Our soldiers haven’t eaten for two days and are chewing dry millet concentrate while they advance. They look into destroyed cellars and immediately get some potatoes, stuff snow into their kettles and put them on embers found in the burning
izbas
.

How could a dead horse have got into the cellar? It’s impossible to understand! In the same cellar there’s a broken barrel of [soured] cabbage. Soldiers are gobbling it up greedily. ‘It’s all right, it isn’t poisoned.’ In the same cellar someone is bandaging a wounded photo-correspondent leaning against the horse’s corpse.

‘Then our aircraft raided the place and bombed us [said a member of the motorised battalion]. The battalion commander Kozlov withstood an attack of tanks. He was on great form and completely drunk. The tanks were thrown back in a dashing fashion.’

III Guards Cossack Corps is leaving for the front. Men are putting the headquarters equipment on a truck, reeling in signal wire. The frosty evening is full of inexplicable beauty. It’s quiet and clear. Firewood is crackling in the field kitchens. Cavalrymen are leading horses. In the middle of the street, a girl is kissing a Cossack and crying. He has become her family over the last three days. For this girl from the village of Pogorelovo near Kursk, he has become her very own.

A wonderful gun-layer at the battery, who had been fighting from the first day of the war, was killed by a fragment of shell while he was laughing. And there he lay laughing, dead. He lay there for a day, and then another day. No one wanted to bury him. They are all lazy. The earth is as hard as granite from the cold. He had bad comrades. They don’t bury the corpses! They leave the killed men behind and go away. There are no burial detatchments. No one cares. I informed front headquarters about it with a coded message. What mad Asiatic heartlessness! How often one can see the reserves reaching the front line and reinforcements sent to the sites of recent battles, walking among unburied dead soldiers. Who can read what is going on in the souls of these men advancing to replace those lying around in the snow?