The Accidental Anarchist (7 page)

Glasnik was the first to grasp that there was a small catch to these wonderful promises: to see them carried out, one merely had to get killed, first.

Our general had reassurances for skeptics like Glasnik. Our enemy, he said, was more monkey than man, so puny and primitive and so laughably unaccustomed to modern warfare or true Russian patriotic fervor that all we needed to do was scarcely more than throw our caps into the air to send him into headlong flight. I thought of the men who had passed us earlier today and wondered why they hadn’t thought of that.

With evening, it grew piercingly cold. We lined up at our soup wagons. The food did little more than warm our stomachs for a moment. The real hardship was that we couldn’t smoke because our lit matches might reveal our location to the enemy. I suspected, however, that the Japanese knew exactly where we were, probably better than we did.

Presently, we were issued bales of straw to spread on the muddy floor of the trench where we lay down to sleep.

By morning, all of us were furiously hungry, but nowhere was there so much as a glimpse of food. What I did see were hundreds of soldiers, roaming around in defiance of orders, collecting clean snow to boil for tea and to wash themselves. I ordered my men not to leave the trench, and to take just enough water from their canteens to rinse their mouths and eyes. So we waited and yawned and scratched ourselves, and cursed the bitter cold that knifed right through to our bones. By now the frost was so sharp that spittle turned to ice even before it dribbled down your chin.

After lying all night on the damp, muddy straw, my uniform and even my underwear were frozen stiff, as though they’d been heavily starched. I jumped around and thrashed my arms to work up some body heat. If the Japanese had attacked at that moment, I'm quite sure I would not have been able to hook a finger around the trigger. I could only hope that they were as uncomfortable as we were.

Toward noon, as an emaciated ray of sun broke through the grey, we heard shouts of joy. The soup wagons had arrived. Wild with eagerness, the men started to dance around in total abandonment. But, just as we lined up for the soup, without a thought for cover or concealment, our uncivilized enemy decided to open up with his heaviest artillery. In spite of General Zasulich’s aristocratic contempt for geography and terrain maps, the accommodating Japanese, whether out of Oriental courtesy or simple impatience, had come looking for us.

Before we knew it, we were in the midst of a formidably accurate barrage. I saw horses, wagons, and men flung through the air like toys. All around me, soldiers, torn by shrapnel, were screaming. We rushed back to our trenches, full of hatred for the Japanese. But they were too far away for us to reach with our rifles.

We were, however, consoled by the promise of an opportunity to make a bayonet charge on the enemy’s trenches, as soon as we knew where his main strength was concentrated. Meanwhile, far behind us, dispatch riders were hurrying in all directions to call for reinforcements, and our adjutant was telegraphing frantically for counter-battery fire. (This skirmish, I learned later, was known as the
Battle of Liao-Yang
, and it involved more men than any battle fought in modern times, including Waterloo. And yet, no one in America seemed to have heard of it, which, for the sake of Russian honor, may be just as well.)

Our artillery finally came to life, dropping its first rounds on our own forward positions. This was done, I was told, to help them find their range. The shelling continued sporadically until nightfall while we cowered, starved and useless, in our trenches. After dark, we received a small ration of
hardtack
that would barely sustain us for the night. With our stomachs feeling dry and shriveled, we huddled together and tried to sleep. Each squad had been issued a large straw torch and a bottle of kerosene. If attacked, we were to light the torch so the unit behind us would know to counterattack. That wouldn’t help us any, but at least there was the plan.

But the Japanese, as usual, didn’t wait for a formal invitation. At two o’clock in the morning on September 2, 1904, while I dreamed about sitting with a girlfriend in an ice cream parlor in Warsaw, someone shook me and yelled, “Brother, get up!” I jumped to my feet and immediately had to duck again. Machine guns were raking our position, and bursts of shrapnel squealed over our heads. Our batteries replied stingily and without much visible effect.

As the shelling grew steadily more intense and more accurate, I feared we wouldn’t survive the night. I’d never had any romantic notions of combat being anything other than terrible, but I had not expected it to be this frightening.

I prayed for daylight, although that offered no guarantee that the shelling would stop. Suddenly my lieutenant screamed, “Lord, have mercy!” and fell on top of me. Covered with his blood, and unable to support his weight, I grew dizzy and, within a moment, found myself lying pinned to the bottom of the trench.

Glasnik pulled me free and kept shouting in my ear, “Marateck, are you wounded?” I stood up and checked where my uniform was bloody, but it was all the lieutenant's blood.

The wounded man whimpered, “Mother! Mother!” None of us knew how to tie a bandage that would stop his bleeding. I tried to give him some water, but his mouth was tightly clenched from the pain. I knew if we didn’t get him to an aid-station at once, he’d die from loss of blood.

Above us, the bombardment was thicker than before. But four of us decided to risk it. Crawling on our bellies, we dragged our lieutenant toward the rear. After slithering like this for about an hour, we dropped into an empty trench to catch our breath. The sweat had congealed on our bodies, and we started to shiver from cold. I struck a match to see how the lieutenant was doing. He was without a head, and probably had been for some time. Two of the soldiers began to cry.

Returning with some stretcher-bearers to pick up wounded men, we saw that many no longer needed assistance. Too weak to keep warm by moving around, they had frozen to death.

Later, during a letup in the shelling, one of our regimental staff officers came by on horseback and told us that we had won a great victory. Despite heavy losses, we had held our position. I was too tired to point out to him that the hill belonged to China, not to us, and that the Japanese infantry had not as yet made an actual effort to take it. Further down the line, a cheer went up as the next platoon was informed of its “victory.” I sat on the damp straw and prayed to be spared any more such military triumphs.

In mid-afternoon, there was a fresh artillery duel, but the enemy had shifted its interest to another sector, and we were able to sleep. Toward evening, I crept out of the trench to see whether there was any soup left. With a shock, I discovered that all the nearby trenches were empty. Our battalion, it seemed, had been ordered to retreat while we slept, no doubt by the very same officers who had confirmed our “victory,” and no one had bothered to wake us. The wind and sleet had covered all tracks, and it was impossible to tell in which direction they had gone. As it was getting dark, we knew that if we went looking for them we could easily stumble into enemy hands.

There we were, alone on a huge sloping field, surrounded by the twisted bodies of men and horses, piles of empty ammunition boxes, boots, shovels, mess tins, broken carts, fur hats, blankets, and scraps of clothing. To my great disappointment, I saw that Pyotr, my devoted enemy, hadn’t fled and was, in fact, full of vigor. But he had the excellent idea of searching the dead for any hardtack, sugar, or tobacco they might have on them. Soon the rest of us were doing it. We found very little, until we searched the pack of an officer, which yielded a small bottle of vodka. It was quickly shared, no more than a lick for each man, but it left us somewhat more cheerful.

A machine gun suddenly opened up on us and we raced back to our trench, surprising a number of large rats that had been gnawing on a body we had been too tired to bury. One of our men got a bullet through his thigh, but he was so numb with cold he didn't even feel it.

Night fell, and we were not sure of what to do. Stay there, or try to find our battalion? It was a serious question, not only because we might, at any time, be overrun by the Japanese, but also because if we rejoined our unit after we had been officially listed as dead or missing, we would automatically be declared deserters. Which could mean the firing squad.

We decided to stay put, at least for the night. But it wasn’t safe to sleep. I don’t know which we dreaded more, the Japanese or the rats. To keep warm, we huddled together, helping one another stay awake. Sometime during the night, however, sleep won out.

By morning, snow had covered us with such a thick blanket that we might have been in a feather bed at the Hotel Bristol in Petersburg. My first thought was that I had died and been buried; it was a miracle that we hadn’t frozen to death. The only reason I knew I was alive was because I was hungry. And because I heard my comrades’ snoring.

It took all my strength to dig myself out. By now the snow had nearly filled the trenches. Above me, there was no sky, and almost no air. Around me, I saw not another living soul. Where had they all gone?

It was impossible to breathe without inhaling snow. The wind was like a dagger in my lungs.

I took a little of the crisp, dry snow and washed my eyes. My watch had stopped, and I didn’t know if it was morning or afternoon. Somewhere in the distance, cannons were booming. Apparently not even the Japanese were interested in our little group.

I envied my comrades who were still sleeping, and thought about burying myself once again in the snow. But with bloodstained clothes frozen to my body, I couldn’t loosen anything without tearing off patches of skin.

Fed up with being alone in my misery, I tried to awaken Glasnik. But even after I had removed his heavy covering of snow, he continued to snore. Finally, I had to pull his hair to get his attention.

It took him some time to recall where he was. Then he helped me dig out the others. The boy who had taken a bullet in his thigh absolutely refused to budge. I pressed my ear against his heart; it was silent as a stone. We managed to awaken only three more soldiers. As far as I could tell, the others had died during the night.

One of the live ones was Pyotr. He had a slightly insane glimmer in his eyes, the kind of a look you might see on a man who is ready to kill himself . . . or you. Meanwhile, the storm piled snow into our trench as fast as we could shovel it out. We finally decided to abandon the dead (they were as well protected as if we had buried them properly), and try to find the rest of our battalion.

I saw some faint indications of where the road our battalion must have taken had once been, but by now the snow was hip-deep and we couldn’t make much progress. If we didn’t move quickly enough, the snow would bury us, and our bodies would not be found until the Chinese farmers returned for the spring planting. We decided to return to our trench to share the night with our comrades, but we could no longer find it.

Glasnik suddenly refused to go on. He took out his
tefillin
, bared his left arm, which instantly turned as blue as skimmed milk, bound the leather straps around his arm and skull, and prayed by heart, saying the
shema
with all the fervor of someone bidding farewell to life. I watched him enviously. My own
tefillin
were in my pack, but my fingers were too frozen to unbuckle it.

Pyotr, who in Petersburg had, more than once, been known to tear the
tefillin
from the head of a Jewish recruit, stared at Glasnik like a cat ready to pounce. I braced myself for the showdown. Better to die this way than get a bullet in the back. But instead, Pyotr crossed himself. Was he trying to provoke me? But as Glasnik removed the
tefillin
and touched them to his lips, Pyotr suddenly lunged and seized them. Before I could intervene, he dropped to his knees, kissed the
tefillin
, and begged them to spare his life.

While I stood open-mouthed, he handed them back to Glasnik and insisted that, before he died, we must forgive him for the sins he had committed against Jews. I got fed up with his whimpering and threatened him. If I heard any more talk of dying, I said, I’d shoot him down like a dog. We had to think about surviving. Pyotr gave me a strange, frightened look, but calmed down.

We kept moving along what appeared to be the road, but the snow was falling so heavily that we could barely see one another. I ordered each man to hold onto his neighbor’s belt. Partly walking, partly crawling, we dragged ourselves through the waist-high snow. Surely, somewhere in this vast, empty country there must be some remnant of a Russian army.

Pyotr suddenly called my attention to a group of dark figures on the horizon just ahead of us. They were impossible to identify, but they didn’t move like Russian soldiers. We loaded our rifles and waited, but the dark figures seemed content to let us to make the first move. Half-blinded by the white steam pouring out of our mouths, we aimed our rifles, and I gave the order to fire. Our rifles exploded in a deafening volley. The recoil made my shoulder feel like a block of ice struck by a hammer. I motioned to the men to take cover, but there was no return fire. Nothing but a couple of high-pitched howls. Now we could see that the dark figures were wolves, feasting on our dead, and no doubt waiting to make a feast of us, as well.

It tore at my heart to think that, somewhere in this glacial wilderness, my brother’s body might be lying exposed to the hot, sharp jaws of such creatures. I was so incensed by the wolves’ disrespect for our fallen comrades that I began to fire. Whether or not my comrades understood my thinking, they began to fire, too, until we had killed most of the wolves.