The End of War - A Novel of the Race for Berlin - [World War II 02] (23 page)

Misha does not leave the circle. He stands fast. Ilya growls at him, “Come here. Misha, come here.”

“You know,” Misha proclaims to the group with a wave of his arms, “Comrade Shokhin was at Stalingrad.”

The crowd murmurs. Ilya’s head sinks.

Pushkov halts his stroll. He pivots and glares. He does not invite Misha to continue. The little soldier doesn’t wait.

“He’s an expert in house-to-house, close-in fighting. He knows everything about going after the Germans in fortresses. Just like the one here in Posen. You’ll see tomorrow.”

Misha grabs Ilya’s coat to pull him into the circle alongside him. He might as well tug on a tree trunk, Ilya doesn’t move.

“Anyway, if you have any questions, Ilya is very willing to talk to you. Anyone. Just feel free. Okay. Thank you.”

Misha steps back beside Ilya. He looks up into Ilya’s face.

“Stop it,” the little man says, grinning, “you’re seething.”

On the far side of the bonfire, Pushkov rubs his forehead, then resumes his political screed. Ilya yanks Misha away from the circle so fast, Misha’s legs tangle.

He demands, “What was that?”

“Calm down, Ilya.” Misha straightens his coat and tunic, all untucked by the force of Ilya’s pull.

“Misha.”

“I don’t like Pushkov. If I was his officer I’d stick him in the front line armed with a toothpick.”

“You’re not his officer. You’re not anyone’s officer.”

“No. But you watch. Tomorrow morning, when we take on the citadel, you and I will have our own platoon. Just wait and see.”

Misha is right. The only way to get back their positions of command is to lead these men, to constantly demonstrate that their value is far greater than just serving as cannon fodder. They must lead, even without the authority or blessing of their superiors.

“From now on, let’s try to do it without tweaking Pushkov.”

“Don’t worry about him, Ilyushka. He’ll catch his bullet long before he can do anything to us. You and me, we’re charmed.”

Misha smacks his big friend square on the back and steps off into the
night. Ilya
watches the gait of bluster in the
little
soldier and wonders what bantam he has set loose.

The two men walk from the bonfire to the trench where they’ll wait out the morning offensive. Since January 26, Chuikov’s Eighth Guards have held the city of Posen under siege. The city straddles a critical rail and highway junction in central Poland, including the main avenues from the East to Berlin. Posen cannot just be bypassed, surrounded, and throttled slowly; it has to be taken, the German garrison of over sixty thousand men eliminated, so that the Red troops moving to the east can be adequately supplied. Only half of Chuikov’s forces are here for the fight; four other divisions have pressed ahead to join the armies massing on the Oder. Posen lies a hundred miles in the rear, a dangerous canker, a vital crossroads.

The city has been determined by Hitler to be one of his “fortresses.” And a fortress it is. Posen, formerly a city of over a hundred thousand Poles, stippled with high cathedral towers, a college, green squares and parks, museums, fashionable shops, and artists’ alleys, has been girded by the Third Reich into a genuine stronghold. The outskirts of Posen are defended by a ring of eight massive forts, nineteenth-century relics from the days of Prussian occupation. At the center of the rings is the citadel.

The huge, pentagonal citadel sits on an elevation crowning the city. Its several forts and ramparts are reinforced by three-meter-thick bulwarks of earth. The approaches to the forts are protected by a deep and wide depression—a brick-lined moat without the water—every part of which can be put under intense fire from embrasures in the walls, dirt ramparts, and machine-gun nests concealed within. The citadel is manned by a corps of twelve thousand Germans who have been ordered by Hitler to delay the Russian advance, to defend their posts to the last man.

Over the past two weeks, Posen has been transformed again, this time by the Red Army, into a burning husk. With great effort Chuikov stormed the outer forts and defense rings, razing every obstacle with artillery and street fighting. Rows of public buildings and homes have been blown to the ground by tank fire, blackened by flamethrowers, riddled by sweeping machine guns. Hitler’s fortress Posen is now occupied by Eighth Guards, except for the citadel in the center. Now all weapons are turned towards the soldiers inside.

Into the night, huddled in their trench, Ilya and Misha talk. During the combat of February they’ve made each other pupils. Misha teaches Ilya broad strategy, not from the ground level where Ilya is a proven master, but operational tactics, military theory. Until his fall from grace, Misha claims he was being groomed for high command. Ilya, accustomed to killing a single man at a time, with bullet or thrust, listens in admiration. Misha’s expertise is apparent, his knowledge of military history the clear result of years of study and fascination. He visits not only Soviet strategies but classic generals, campaigns, and mistakes, Wellington, Patton, Thermopylae, Little Big Horn. Misha has even developed an acceptable facility with the German language.

In return, Ilya spins tales of his own battles. His recollections are vivid, imprinted in his memory by the most indelible inks, black fear and crimson scrawls. The stories are individual scenes and killings. He describes the setting, a basement, a hallway, a field, a street. He tells Misha what weapons he used, or how he did it with his bare hands. What he was feeling, how dry his mouth and skittish his nerves. How he approached, running, creeping, crawling, how he escaped. Misha listens and pulls his knees into an embrace, balling up and sometimes jerking at the crescendos of some of Ilya’s tales. Ilya doesn’t relate lessons. He lets clever Misha glean what he will.

During February, Ilya has watched Misha’s courage grow. The little man is no war hero yet, neither is he a coward. Misha is cautious, where Ilya is brazen, wanting to prove and reprove his mettle. Together, their instincts counterbalance. Ilya and Misha stay alive. Together, they refuse to die.

In the night around them, preparations are made for the final assault on the citadel. Ammo carts squeak when unloaded. Bundles of sticks— fascines—are tied with string and flung onto gigantic piles. These will be tossed into the moat so that men might run across to the inner ramparts. Assault ladders and walk bridges are lashed together from logs and leather. Flamethrowers are topped off with incendiary oil. Misha says if you took away the modern rifles and big cannons, you’d have an old-fashioned attack on a medieval castle.

They sleep against each other for warmth. Misha curls inside Ilya’s frame like a piglet, but neither feels embarrassment, men do what they must in war. There will be time to laugh about it and shrug, years later, if alive.

Two hours before dawn their company is assembled and fed. When the first tincture of morning lifts the citadel out of darkness, Ilya and Misha have crawled with their company to within one hundred meters of the edge of the moat. The three other companies of their battalion line up to their right, three hundred men total. The remainder of the infantry division waits in reserve. Behind the four companies inching forward are sapper squads, carrying explosive satchels and assault ladders.

Rising ahead is the long southwestern face of the citadel. All five sides of the fortress are besieged every day to keep the German garrison inside split and occupied. Ilya’s battalion is ordered to charge the moat at this spot, enter it, cross and climb the inner rampart on the far side, and establish a foothold on top. When they are secure there, the rest of the division will advance and an attempt will be made to insert the first Red troops inside.

Once down in the moat, Ilya’s company will face fire from slits in the moat walls and rampart, bunkered machine guns in the moat, and enfilading fire from both flanks out of redoubts at the corners of the citadel. Ilya does not say it to Misha, but he likens this dawn mission to sprinting into a hailstorm. The bullets will be so thick, you might run on them like stepping stones.

The first salvos from the heavy artillery two hundred meters to the rear rocket low over their heads. The men bury their chins in the dirt. The big guns don’t have their turrets elevated; they’re so close, they fire trajectories level with the ground. Ilya recognizes the reports, there’s an array of firepower pouring in:T-34 tanks, captured German 88s, even the big 203mm cannons. A five-minute barrage batters the inner walls of the moat and dirt rampart in a concentrated area. The earth under Ilya’s belly shivers like a cold woman. There’s nothing he can do to comfort her.

When the explosions abate, the smoke thins. Ilya’s spirit sinks seeing that the shelling did little but plow up the thick sheath of dirt above the rampart. Chunks have been chewed out of the citadel walls but the bastion stands marred only, not breached. Ilya spits. He wants to curse, but now is not the time to try one’s luck.

The battalion lies still. No orders have come forward to charge the moat. Ilya looks up to see it will be a clear day, a rarity in February over Poland.

Another roar issues from behind. More artillery screeches past, exploding into the rampart. Again the earth shivers. This time the bursts are even more narrowed against the wall. The big Russian guns hammer at some bull’s-eye on the rampart. The barrage sounds so low-flying, Ilya thinks if he stood he would have his head taken off.

For another five minutes, shells whomp into the citadel. The rising sun and the battered building, Misha beside him and the rest of the men, all of the morning, disappear from Ilya’s sight behind a shower of brick chips, vapor, and concussion. He closes his eyes and rests his face in the crook of his elbow.

He lifts his head when the bombardment halts. Echoes and smoke hold the morn, then depart.

A “hurrah!” issues from up and down the battalion line.

Misha points.”There’s a hole! In the rampart!”

Ilya sees it. The gap is no wider than two meters, but it is a black wound punched in the side of the citadel. Now there’s a goal to aim for in their dash through the moat.

Ilya readies to rise to his feet and charge. At that moment, on the parapet above the rampart in front of the company, a white flag emerges.

First, several cautious heads, then chests and arms, appear around the flag. More white flags step forward. At least forty German soldiers shout,
“Nicht schiessen!”
Don’t shoot.

Every man in Ilya’s company lifts his gun but no triggers are pulled. The Germans walk to the edge of the rampart, dropping their weapons as they come. With hands held high, the first soldier slides down its face.

He is the only man to reach the moat floor alive.

From behind, a machine gun chatters. The men are gunned down. They jerk as if kicked in the back, then roll like lost toys into the moat. The last standing soldiers twist to face the guns, to die with bullets not in the back. In moments, they too have crumpled to the bottom, an avalanche of murder.

Ilya is stunned. Some diehard Nazi inside the walls refuses to let these men choose life. When the final soldier is down, the citadel grows quiet. Along the line the fighting has stopped. All have turned their eyes to this terrible spectacle.

At the near crest of the moat, a white cloth rears. Even at a hundred meters Ilya sees it is blood-spattered. The surrender flag rises; beneath it is a scared and shaken man, the lone soldier who stood at the bottom of the moat, with the betrayed bodies of his comrades a high tide around his feet. He has no choice but to walk forward to the Russians, all eyes on him. He reaches the lip of the moat wall. He strides towards Ilya’s company. Ilya and the men shout to him, “Come on! Come on!” Behind the soldier a shot barks. The man stops. He turns to face the citadel, pitifully small, appealing his fate. Two more shots finish him and his banner.

Ilya growls, he hears it from his tongue before he knows what the sound is. He is the first to his feet.

He charges. The growl becomes a bellow. Like a beast the citadel howls its defiance. Taking a running leap forward, Ilya senses bullets thud into flesh behind him. The men who are slow to rise and run with him are the bodies who stay behind forever; once the guns see you they choose the best targets, the hesitant ones. Misha is on his feet too. He is smaller and quicker. He shouts at Ilya’s heels, ”Go, go, go, go!”