Winds of War (125 page)

“The car bumped and slopped out of the woods. Cleared fields stretched for miles ahead, flat as a table, under gray low clouds. “There’s where we’re going.” Amphiteatrov pointed straight ahead to a distant line of forest. They came to a crossroads of mud churned up like water at a boil, and though the road ahead looked good, the driver slithered the car sharp right.

“Why don’t we drive straight on?” Pamela said. “Doesn’t the rod go through?”

“Oh, yes. It goes through. It’s mined. This whole area” - the colonel’s arm swept around the quiet stubbly fields – “is mined.”

Pug said, somewhat chilled, “Nice to know these things when you start out.”

Amphiteatrov gave him his infrequent wolfish, red-gummed smile, and wiped a clear drop from his thin bluish nose. “Well, yes, Captain. Your tourist guide in these parts should really know what is what. Otherwise your health could be affected.”

They jolted along the soupy track in rain that made it soupier, but in time the car sank with all four wheels into the mire, and halted amid long rows of yellow stubble stretching out of sight. No rescuers appeared; they could not have, without rising from the earth, but Pug half thought they might. The driver shovelled the wheels clear and laid planks to the back tires. When the passengers got out to lighten the car, Amphiteatrov warned them to stay in the road, for mines were planted everywhere under the stubble. Showering muck and splinters all over them, the car lurched free. On they went.

Pug gave up trying to guess the direction. They never passed a road marker or signpost. The low gray clouds showed no sun patch. In the forest of the earthworm soldiers, the artillery thumps had been fainter than in the village. Here they were considerably louder. But zigzags in the front line could cause that. Obviously they had stopped going west, because westward were the Germans. The car appeared to be meandering five miles or so behind the fire zone.

“Here we will go a bit out of the way,” the tank colonel said at another crossroads, “but you will see something interesting.” They entered fields where tall yellow-green stalks of grain stood unharvested and rotting. After a mile or so Amphiteatrov told the driver to stop. “Perhaps you won’t mind stretching your legs,” he said. “You all have nice thick boots.” He gave Pamela an odd look. “But you might find this walk boring. Perhaps you will stay with the driver here?”

“I’ll come, unless you tell me to stay.”

“Very well. Come.”

They went pushing in among the stalks. The wet quiet field of overripe grain smelled sweet, almost like an orchard. But the visitors, squelching along behind Amphiteatrov in a file, soon glanced at each other in revulsion as a rotten stench hit their noses. They broke into a clear space and saw why. They were looking at a battlefield.

In every direction, the grain was crushed flat in crisscrossing swathes of brown muck. Random patches of stalks still stood; and amid the long brown slashes and the green-yellow clumps, damaged tanks lay scattered on their sides, or turned clear over, or canted, their camouflage paint blistered and burned black, their caterpillar tracks torn, their armor plate blown open. Seven of the tanks bore German markings; two were light Russian T-26 tanks, such as Pug had often seen moving through Moscow. The stink rose from German corpses, sprawled in green forms here and there on the ground, and others slumped in blown-open tanks. Their dead purple faces were bloated disgustingly and covered with fat black flies, but one could see they had been youngsters. Pamela turned pale and clapped a handkerchief to her face.

“Well, I am sorry,” said the colonel, an ugly gleam lighting his face. “This happened only day before yesterday. These Fritzes were probing and got caught. Their comrades went away from here and wouldn’t stop to dig graves, being in a slight hurry.”

Helmets, papers, and broken bottles were littered among the tanks and the corpses, and the oddest sight was a mess of women’s underwear – pink, blue, and white drawers and petticoats – heaped soiled and sodden in the mud near an overturned tank. Pamela, eyebrows rising over the handkerchief, pointed to these.

“Well, funny, isn’t it? I suppose Fritz stole those from a village. The Germans steal everything they can lay their hands on. That is why they have come into our country, after – to steal. We had a tough tank fight around Vyazma a month ago. One tank we blew up had a large fine marble clock in it, and also a dead pig. The fire ruined that pig. That was a pity. It was a very good pig. Well, I thought this night interest you.”

Pictures of hocked-out panzers were common in Moscow, but before this Victor Henry had seen actual German tanks only in Berlin, clanking down boulevards lined with red swastika flags, to the blare of brass-band marches over the loudspeakers and the hurrahs of crowds giving Nazi salutes; or else massed factory-fresh on trains of flat cars chugging to the front. Seeing a few broken and overturned in a desolate Russian cornfield two thousand miles from Berlin, with their crewmen rotting beside them in the mud, was a hard jolt. He said to the tank colonel, “Aren’t these Mark Threes? How could your T-26’s knock them out? They don’t fire a shell that can penetrate the Mark Three.”

Amphiteatrov grinned. “Well, very good. For a seaman you know a bit about tank warfare. But you had better ask the battalion commander who won this battle, so let us be on our way.”

They backtracked to the crossroads, headed toward the forest, and arrived at what looked like an open-air machine shop for tank repairs, in a village of a dozen or so thatched log cabins straggling along the road through wild woods. Detached caterpillar tracks stretched long and straight on the ground under the trees; bogie wheels were off; guns were off; and on every side men in black or blue coveralls hammered, filed, greased, and welded, shouting in Russian and laughing at each other. Strolling down the street in an olive-colored greatcoat too large for him, a short, hook-nosed, swarthy officer broke into a trot when he saw the black automobile. He saluted the colonel, then the two embraced and kissed. Introducing the visitors, Amphiteatrov said, “Major Kaplan, I showed our friends those busted German tanks out there. Our American Navy friend asked a real tankist’s question. He asked, how could T-26’s knock out Panzer Mark Threes?”

The battalion commander grinned from ear to ear, clapped Victor Henry on the back, and said in Russian, “Good, come this way.” Beyond the last cabin, he led them into the woods, past two lines of light tanks ranged under the trees and draped with camouflage netting over their own green-and-sand blotches. “Here we are,” he said proudly. “This is how we knocked out the Mark Threes.”

Dispersed in the thickets, all but invisible under branches and nets, five armored monsters thrust heavy square turrets with giant guns high in the air. Tudsbury’s mouth fell open, as he stared up at them. He nervously brushed his moustaches with a knuckle. “My God! What are these things?”

“Our newest Russian tank,” said Amphiteatrov. “General Yevlenko thought it might interest President Roosevelt.”

“Fantastic!” said Talky. “Why, I’d heard you had these monsters, but - What do they weigh? A hundred tons?
Look
at that gun!”

The Russians smiled at each other. Amphiteatrov said, “It’s a good tank.”

Tudsbury asked if they might climb inside one and to Pug’s surprise the colonel agreed. Young tankists helped the lame fat Englishman to the hatch, as Pug scrambled up. Inside the command turret, despite the clutter of machinery and instruments and the bulky gun breech, there was a lot of elbowroom. This machine smelled startlingly like a new car; Pug guessed this came from the heavy leather seats for the gunner and the commander. He knew very little about tanks, but the workmanship of the raw metal interior seemed good, despite some crude instrument brackets and wiring. The dials, valves, and controls had an old-fashioned German look.

“Great God, Henry, it’s a land battleship,” Tudsbury said. “When I think of the tiny tin cans we rode in! Why, the best German tanks today are eggshells to this. Bloody eggshells! What a surprise!”

When they climbed out, soldiers were clustering around the tank, perhaps a hundred or more, with others coming through the trees. On the flat hull stood Pamela, embarrassed and amused under the male stares. Bundled in mud-caked lambskin, Pamela was not a glamorous object, but her presence seemed to thrill and hypnotize the tankists. A pale moonfaced officer with glasses and long yellow teeth stood beside her. Major Kaplan introduced him as the political officer. “The commissar would like to present all of you to the troops,” said Amphiteatrov to Victor Henry, “as he feels this is a serious occasion that can be used to bolster their fighting spirit.”

“By all means,” Victor Henry said.

He could understand only fragments of the strident quick-tumbling harangue of the moonfaced commissar, but the earnest tones, the waving fist, the Communist slogans, the innocent, attentive faces of the handsome young tankists, made a clear enough picture. The commissar’s speech was half a revivalist sermon and half a football coach’s pep talk. Suddenly the soldiers applauded, and Amphiteatrov began to translate, in bursts of three or four sentences at a time, during which the moon face beamed at him:

“In the name of the Red Army, I now welcome the American naval captain, Genry, the British war correspondent, Tudsbury, and especially the brave English newspaperwoman, Pamela, to our front. It is always good for a fighting man’s morale to see a pretty face.” (
Laughter among the men
.) “But we have no evil thoughts, Miss Tudsbury, we think only of our own little sweethearts back home, naturally. Besides, you father has wisely come along to protect you from the romantic and virile young Russian tankists.” (
Laughter and handclaps
.) “You have showed us that the British and American peoples have not forgotten us in our struggle against the Fascist hyenas.

Comrade Stalin has said that the side which has more petroleum engines will win this war. Why is the petroleum engine so important? Because petroleum is the biggest source of energy today, and energy wins wars. We tankists know that! Hitler and the Germans thought they would make a lot of petroleum engines in a hurry, put them in tanks and aircraft, and steal a march on the world. Hitler even hoped that certain ruling circles in America and England would help him once he decided to attack the peaceful Soviet people. Well, he miscalculated. These two great nations have formed an unshakable front with the Soviet peoples. That is what the presence of our visitors shows us. We three countries possess many more petroleum engines than the Germans, and since we can manufacture still more engines faster than they can, because we have much larger industries, we will win this war.

“We will win it faster if our fiends will hasten to send us plentiful war supplies, because the Nazi bandits will not quit until we have killed a great many of them. Above all, we will win much faster if our British allies will open a second front at once and kill some German soldiers too. Certain people think it is impossible to beat Germans. So let me ask this battalion: have you fought Germans?”

Twilight had fallen during the harangue, and Pug could barely see the nearest soldiers’ faces. A roar came from the darkness: “DA!”

“Have you beaten them?”

“DA!”

“Are you afraid of Germans?”

“NYET!” - and barking male laughter.

“Do you think the British should be afraid to open a second front against them?”

“NYET!” - and more laughter, and another bellow, a college cheer, in Russian, “
Second front now! Second front now
!”

“Thank you, my comrades. And now to dinner, and then back to our tanks, in which we have won many victories and will win more, for our socialist motherland, our sweethearts, our mothers, our wives, and our children, and for Comrade Stalin!”

A tremendous college cheer in the gloom: “WE SERVE THE SOVIET UNION!”

“The meeting is over,” hoarsely cried the commissar, as the moon rose over the trees.

* * *

Pug came awake from restless sleep on a straw pallet, on the dirt floor of a log cabin. Beside him in blackness Talky Tudsbury liquidly snored. Groping for a cigarette and lighting it, he saw Pamela as the match flared upright on the only bed, her back to the plastered log wall, her eyes glittering. “Pam?”

“Hello there. I still feel as though we’re bumping and sliding in mud. D’you suppose if I stepped outside, a sentry would shoot me?”

“Let’s try. I’ll step out first. If I get shot, you go back to bed.”

“Oh, that’s a fine plan. Thank you.”

Pug pulled on the cigarette, and in the red glow Pamela came over and clasped hands. Moving along the rough wall, Pug found the door and opened a blue rectangle in the dark. “I’ll be damned. Moon. Stars.”

A high moon, partly veiled by swift-rolling clouds, dusted the thatched huts and the rutted empty road blue-gray. Across the road in the woods, soldiers were sadly singing to an accordion. Victor Henry and Pamela Tudsbury sat down on a rough bench, hands clasped, huddling close in the frigid wind which blew straight up the road.

Underfoot the mud was ridged hard.

“Dear God,” Pamela said, “it’s a long long way to Tipperary, isn’t it?”

“Washington, D.C.’s even further.”

“Thanks for bringing me out, Victor. I was sitting there not daring to move. I love the smell of the countryside, but lord, that wind cuts you!”

Yellow flashes ran along the sky and loud thumps followed fast. Pamela winced against him, with a little gasp, “Oh, oh! Look at that. Talky was a pig to drag me out here, wasn’t he? Of course it suits him. He dictated two hours by candlelight tonight, and he couldn’t have written a line himself. It’s quite a story, I’ll say that. Are those tanks as startling as he claims? He says in his last sentence that if the Soviet Union can mass-produce them, the war’s as good as over.”

“Well, that’s journalism. Size isn’t everything. Any tank, no matter how big, can be an incinerator for crews if it’s built wrong. How maneuverable is it? How vulnerable is it? The Germans’ll find the weak spots. They’ll rush out a new gun that can penetrate these things. They’re good at that. Still, it’s quite a tank.”