The End of War - A Novel of the Race for Berlin - [World War II 02] (12 page)

Climbing down into their trench, Misha checks everything. He counts his rounds, attaches his four-sided bayonet to his rifle, tightens his bootlaces. His small white hands flutter about like nervous, lost chicks.

“Misha.”

Misha does not look up from his busyness. Ilya layers a great hand over his friend’s shoulder. Misha stops fidgeting.

“What?”

“You stay with me. All day. All night. Tomorrow, Misha. Stay three steps behind me.”

“I’m not a coward, Ilya.”

“All right.” Ilya grants a broad smile. “Four steps.”

Their laughter is buried beneath a sudden rise in the volume of the folk music blaring from the loudspeakers, there are tambourines and fiddles played by titans in the woods.

Ilya checks his watch. 0810 hours.

Eyes locked together, their faces turn grim. They both nod, and that is the seal.

At 0825, a metallic din rends the fog. This is the sound of artillery pieces of all sizes—mammoth 280mm’s down to mortars, stacked wheel to wheel—loading shells. Ilya and Misha stuff cigarette butts in their ears.

The fog begins to swirl over the westward Vistula valley. The earth of Poland seems to inhale, sucking in its breath, girding itself. The sun stays locked out behind dense low clouds. Ilya’s and Misha’s elbows touch where they watch over the top of the trench. Two million other men of varying nations, of different tongues and intent, also stare into the mist, from both sides of it.

The first salvos rollick the ground. There is no time for echoes, the damp air is whipped, becomes frothy with reports from long barrels and turrets. The racket increases, seeming against logic not to be hundreds or even the actual tens of thousands of detonations but one gargantuan explosion that throbs but never wanes. The blast issues from the rear; Ilya turns around, the forest is full of fire-belching mouths, the fog is shredded then regroups, to be sundered again and again by orange tongues from endless death’s-heads. The shells blister past over their helmets. Misha grips his pot with both hands and pulls down. Ilya returns his gaze to the west. He sees in the mist great deeds, destruction and redemption.

The smoke from the barrage adds its sheath to the fog until visibility is almost nil. The sulfurous powder stench waters Ilya’s eyes. He has hunkered beneath bombardments before; at Stalingrad in August of’42 the Germans razed the city with a two-day artillery and airborne assault. Buildings there crumbled into brick hills and twists of metal, flames scoured every inch. Ilya, like every infantryman, has sat out several artillery attacks. But neither he nor any Soviet soldier has ever found himself beneath the sort of concentration of shells the Germans endure right now.

If you’re not killed outright or sliced by shrapnel or whizzing debris, you’re dazed. If you can see at all, your vision is blurred. Perhaps your ears and nose bleed from pressure bursts. Without question you have lost men in your company; officers in targeted bunkers lie in clusters, their orders silenced. Confusion courses through the lines. With what vision and hearing you retain, you will soon see and hear the charging screams and raking gunfire of an attacking Russian horde. With what nerve you can summon, you must rise and defend your life.

The pounding of the guns and the explosions of shells plague the ground. Waiting for the break in the bombardment and the signal to charge, Ilya replays in his head his knowledge of General Zhukov’s strategies. The massive barrage will range up to seven kilometers deep into the enemy lines. Swaths of earth one hundred fifty meters wide are being left untrammeled by the artillery; these are lanes the infantry and their close support tanks will rush down in the initial attack to the Germans’ first line of defense. Once the infantry has engaged, they will punch holes in the enemy fortifications. Then the full tank armies will uncoil to drive through these breaches, fanning out into the German rear, disrupting communications and support and disorganizing reserves. If the Soviets move forward with enough speed, they’ll bar the paths by which the enemy’s forward forces might retire. With luck and momentum, they might also beat the Germans to their own prepared retreat bastions and prevent organized stands. The tank armies will continue to press ahead. The infantry will do its best to catch up, leaving the fearsome second echelon behind to solidify gains and silence further resistance.

The initial wave will not be the whole gathered force of the Soviet infantry but rather swarms of forward battalions in attack teams. Their job will be to overwhelm the outermost German defenses and reconnoiter. Engineers will clear mines. German strong points that survived the opening salvos will be sighted for more artillery. The fighting will be at close quarters.

The penal battalion of the Eighth Guards Army is in this vanguard.

At 0855 the guns rest. The barrage lasted for twenty-five minutes. It was shorter than Ilya expected. It’s the mist, he thinks. Why waste shells when you can’t see what you’re doing? Time to send in the men and rifles. Have them deliver their intimate brand of firepower.

Ilya’s legs and feet tense. The river valley in front of him seems choked, too packed for him to spring out of this trench and run into. The land is already welling with the thickest mist and smoke, echoes of the hot-barreled weapons behind him rumble like summer thunder. The fog bristles with hatred. There is blood to be spilled in there.

Needles prick Ilya’s skin. His stomach has something alive in it. It is always this way before the attack.

He stares ahead, does not look over to Misha. He will protect Misha, but he will not crawl into the man’s grave for him.

Life, Ilya thinks. Thank you, you are beautiful. I cherish you. Now, help me embrace you, and take you from others.

From somewhere, it doesn’t matter, an order is given. Charge.

Ilya fleers back his lips, baring his teeth. Now he turns to Misha. The little man startles at Ilya’s face only for a moment, then takes its tone for his own. He opens his mouth, scrunching his eyes and cheeks. Together they scream, “Urrahh!!”

Around them ten thousand soldiers shrill their courage. Ilya erupts from the trench in a bound, Misha seems to levitate beside him, and they gallop into the fog. Ilya carries a PPSh submachine gun, with a rate of fire of nine hundred rounds per minute. He is loaded like a mule with extra clips, grenades, a trenching tool, knives, binoculars, but he does not feel any of his burden. Across his back is strapped a Moisin-Nagant rifle, the same model rifle Misha points and fires at nothing. Ilya fires a burst too, just to feel the machine gun, to run behind the bullets, to be drawn into the vacuum of their plunge.

Ilya and Misha funnel with the rest of the battalion into one of the lanes left by the artillery. The ground to their left has been plowed and gouged, smoke billows up as though from hell. Tanks growl at their heels, urging them to hurry. Small arms fire erupts ahead; the lead troops have already found the enemy.

Ilya diverts off the smooth path, Misha in his steps. Two dozen or more others follow, to flank the German trenches ahead. Nothing but black water and earth is in the bottom of the craters they sidestep, but on the edges and mounds lie hundreds of shredded humans and bits of them. Some of the enemy crawl and moan, but none reach for their guns, so Ilya keeps running among them. The sounds of fighting mount ahead. Ilya leads the impromptu squad, circling to his right. He glimpses on several shoulders the black-and-orange patch of the First Guards Tank Army, won for them by Misha.

A bullet rips into one of the soldiers behind Ilya. The man goes down hard on his back, his heels flail in the dirt. Several men drop at the fire, another tends to the wounded man. Ilya is not these men’s officer. He cannot issue orders. He presses ahead, they will follow or not. Misha is solid behind him.

“Spread out, Mishushka. In this fog we’re easier to see if we lump up.”

Ilya strides ahead warily. The mist and battle haze halt his vision at no more than ten meters. He can tell from clashing sounds that just fifty meters ahead there is combat. He reaches to his belt to unsheathe a knife. He clenches it in his teeth. It is frigid, he lays his tongue with care beneath the blade, for he has whetted the steel to a keen edge. He growls around the dagger.

Ilya breaks into a zigzagging jog. His PPSh is leveled, searching. A shape darker than the fog moves against the ground. Ilya hardens his grip on the machine gun to keep it from rearing, and yanks the trigger. He runs at the figure, pouring bullets at it from the hip. The fog closes where the German was. Then another pops up, and another, three more. Ilya keeps running forward, the weapon in his hands roaring, growing hot. Two of the men twist under Ilya’s spray, the third ducks. Ilya is too close now to hit the ground and wait. The German will lob a grenade in another second. He hears nothing around him but the
unh-unh-unh
of his breathing, and his boots bring him to the brow of the trench the moment the German’s arm flings a potato masher grenade. The thing strikes Ilya in the chest and bounces back into the trench. Ilya looks down into the man’s flabbergasted face. Ilya takes two large steps back. The grenade interrupts the German’s howl.

Ilya drops into the trench, hunkering low. Three mangled bodies lie at his feet but he wastes no time and pushes forward. He drools from the knife in his teeth, he cannot close his mouth over it, but he imagines a vision of himself with the blade there, weapons barbing every inch of him stepping with purpose along the enemy trench, through smoke, saliva on his chin; it is fierce and he likes it. The skin prickles are gone now.

~ * ~

January
18
, 1945, 2:00
p.m.

The House of Commons

London

churchill tattoos his cane on the ground to give a meter to
his thoughts. He doesn’t like it when ideas duck him. The man sitting across the wide, decorative hall, Anthony Eden, his Foreign Secretary, watches in a composed fashion, with legs crossed at the ankles. Handsome devil, Churchill thinks. Lucky. Tall, lean, full moustache. Young. I was young once. But never the rest.

“What do the Americans call it, Anthony?” the Prime Minister asks, shifting in his chair to put both heels on the floor. “In these situations.”

Eden cocks his head. “I don’t follow.”

“Eating something. They call it eating something. It eludes me at the moment.”

“Yes. Yes, I’ve heard that. What is it?”

“I can’t recall, Anthony That’s why I’m asking you.”

“I see.” Eden mirrors Churchill’s erect posture in his seat.

The men glance together into the lofty and dark ceiling of the waiting chamber to the House. Churchill taps his cane more on the linoleum between his shiny black boots. Eden drums his fingers.

Eden speaks first. “Is it ‘crow,’ Winston? I believe it is.”

Churchill considers this response. “Eating crow. Yes. I believe you’ve got it. That’s it. Sounds unsavory. Thank you.”

The Prime Minister stops the light pounding of his cane. He layers both hands atop the gold knob and leans forward to prop his chin there, like a head on a pike. He is hungry and aggravated, the corner of his mouth wants a cigar to chomp. In the vast Parliament hall he can hear the MPs and his Cabinet members filing to their places on the benches.

Without lifting his head from his hands, he asks Eden, “Why crow?”

“Beg pardon?”

“Crow. It’s a raven. Why is eating it an act of humility? Feathers, do you think? Like being a chicken?”

“I’m sure I don’t know, Winston.” Eden shrugs, head held high, legs crossed again, fingers knitted in his lap, like a poster for suits. “The Americans.”

Churchill grinds his ample chin into the backs of his hands. “Yes, the Americans.”

He feels sweaty. Not nerves, he thinks; a fever, a cold coming. Some cool champagne after this session, a hot bath, and to bed. That’ll do the trick. Can’t get sick. Must KBO. Keep Buggering On.

He says, “Not as good as our humble pie, is it.”