3
Dear Tania,
I haven’t heard from you. What are you doing? Is everything all right? Oleg told me he has not seen you in days. I cannot worry about you, too. I’ve got enough craziness on my hands.
They’re getting better, by the way.
Write to me immediately. I don’t care if your own hands have fallen off. I forgave you once for not writing to me. I don’t know if I can be so charitable again.
As you know, it’s almost time. I need your advice — we’re sending out a reconnaissance force of 600 men. It’s actually more than a reconnaissance force, it’s a stealth attack with the rest of us waiting to see what kind of defense the Germans put up. If things go well, we will follow them.
I have to decide which battalion goes.
Any ideas?
Alexander
P.S. You haven’t told me what happened to Stan.
Dear Shura,
Don’t send your friend Marazov.
Can you send any supply units? Ah, a bad joke.
On that note, we must bear in mind that our own righteous Alexander Pushkin challenged Baron George d’Anthes to a duel and did not live to write a poem about it. So instead of seeking revenge, we will simply stay away from those who can hurt us, all right?
I’m fine. I’m very busy at the hospital. I’m hardly ever home. I’m not needed there. Shura, dear, please don’t go insane worrying about me. I’m here, and I’m waiting — impatiently — until I can see you again. That’s all I do, Alexander — wait until I can see you again.
It’s dark from morning until night with an hour off in the afternoon. Thinking of you is my sunshine, so my days are perpetually sunny. And hot.
Tatiana
P.S. The Soviet Union happened to Stan.
Dear Tania,
Pushkin never needed to write again after The Bronze Horseman — and never did, having died so young. But you’re right — the righteous do not always forge a path to glory. But often they do.
I don’t care how busy you are, you need to write me more than a couple of lines a week.
Alexander
P.S. And you wanted to have what Inga and Stan have.
Dearest Tatiasha,
How was your New Year? I hope you had something delicious. Have you been to see Oleg?
I’m not happy. My New Year was spent in the mess tent with a number of people, none of whom was you. I miss you. I dream sometimes of a life in which you and I can clink our glasses on New Year’s. We had a little vodka and many cigarettes. We hoped maybe 1943 would be better than 1942.
I nodded, but thought about the summer of 1942.
Alexander
P.S. We lost all 600. I did not send Tolya. He said he will thank me after this war is over.
P.S.S. Where are you, damn it? I haven’t heard from you in ten days. You haven’t gone back to Lazarevo, have you, now that I’ve finally grown accustomed to your strengthening spirit from only seventy kilometers away? Please send me a letter in the next few days. You know we’re going and we’re not coming back until the Leningrad front and the Volkhov front shake hands. I need to hear from you. I need one word. Don’t send me out on the ice without a single word from you, Tatiana.
Darling Shura!
I’m here, I’m here, can’t you feel me, soldier?
I myself spent New Year at the hospital, and I just want you to know that I clink my glass against yours every day.
I’ve been working I cannot tell you how many hours, how many nights I sleep in the hospital and don’t come home at all.
Shura! As soon as you’re back, you must come and see me instantly. Other than for the obvious reasons, I’ve got the most amazing wonderful fantastic thing I desperately need to talk to you about — and soon. You wanted a word from me? I leave you with one — the word is HOPE.
Yours,
Tania
IN STORIED BATTLES
ALEXANDER looked at his watch. It was the early morning of January 12, 1943, and Operation Spark — the Battle for Leningrad — was about to begin. There was going to be no further attempt. This was it. On the orders of Comrade Stalin, they were going to break the German blockade, and they weren’t returning until they did.
Alexander had spent the last three days and nights hidden in the wooden bunker on the banks of the Neva with Marazov and six corporals. The artillery encampment was right outside, hiding from view their two 120-millimeter breech-loading mortars, two portable 81-millimeter muzzle-loading mortars, one Zenith antiaircraft heavy machine gun, a Katyusha rocket launcher, and two portable 76-millimeter field guns. On the morning of the attack Alexander was not just ready to fight, he would have fought Marazov if it meant getting out of the confinement of the bunker. They played cards, they smoked, they talked about the war, they told jokes, they slept — he was done with it all after six hours, and they had stayed in it for seventy-two. Alexander thought about Tatiana’s last letter. What the hell did she mean by “HOPE”? How was that going to help him? Obviously she couldn’t tell him in the letter, but he wished she wouldn’t go firing up his imagination when he didn’t know when he would be able to get to her.
He needed to get to her.
Wearing white camouflage, he peeked out of the encampment. The river was disguised like Alexander, the south shore barely visible in the gray light. He was on the northern bank of the Neva just west of Shlisselburg. Alexander’s artillery unit was covering the outermost flank of the river crossing and the most dangerous — the Germans were extremely well entrenched and defended in Shlisselburg. Alexander could see the fortress Oreshek a kilometer in the distance at the mouth of Lake Ladoga. A few hundred meters before Oreshek lay the bodies of 600 men, who had made a surprise attack six days ago and failed. Alexander wanted to know if they had failed gloriously or vainly. Bravely and without support, they went across the ice and were laid down one by bloody one. Will history remember them? wondered Alexander as he turned his gaze straight ahead.
He was on air detail today. Marazov was launching Katyusha’s solid-fuel rockets. Alexander knew this was it. He felt it. They were going to break the blockade or die in the process. The 67th Army was forcing the river along an eight-kilometer stretch at whatever the cost. The strategy for the attack was to close ranks with Meretskov’s 2nd Army in Volkhov that was simultaneously attacking Manstein’s Army Group Nord from the rear. The plan was for the rifle guard divisions and some light tanks to cross the river, four guard divisions in all. Two hours later three more rifle divisions with heavy and medium tanks would follow, including six of the men under Alexander’s immediate command. He would remain behind the Zenith on the Neva. He would cross in the third wave, with another heavily armored platoon, commanding a T-34, a medium tank that had a chance of crossing the river without sinking.
It was just before nine, barely sunrise, the morning sky a dark lavender.
“Major,” said Marazov, “is your phone working?” He put out his cigarette and stepped up to Alexander.
“Phone’s working fine, Lieutenant. Back to your post.” He smiled. Marazov smiled back.
“How many miles of field phone wire did Stalin demand from the Americans?” Marazov asked.
“Sixty-two thousand,” replied Alexander, taking the last deep drag of his cigarette.
“And your phone is not working already.”
“Lieutenant!”
Marazov saluted Alexander. “I’m ready, Major.” He stepped aside to the Katyusha. “I’ve been ready. Sixty-two thousand miles is a bit excessive, don’t you think?”
Alexander threw his cigarette butt in the snow, wondering if he had time to light another one. “It’s not nearly enough. The Americans will supply us with five times that much before this war is over.”
“You’d think they could supply you with a working telephone,” Marazov mumbled, looking away from Alexander.
“Patience, soldier,” said Alexander. “Phone is working fine.” He was trying to figure out if the Neva was wider than the Kama. He decided it was, but not by much. He had swum the Kama to the other shore and back in heavy current in about twenty-five minutes. How long would it take him to cross the 600 meters of the Neva ice under German fire?
Alexander concluded he would have to take less than twenty-five minutes.
The phone rang. Alexander smiled. Marazov smiled. “Finally,” he said.
“All good things come to those who wait,” said Alexander, his heart soaring to Tatiana and away. “All right, men,” he called. “This is it. Be ready,” he said, standing slightly behind them, his arms positioning the barrel of the Zenith upward. “And be brave.”
He picked up the phone and flagged the go-ahead command to the corporals on the mortars. The men fired three slow-emission smoke bombs that flew across the river and exploded, temporarily obscuring the Nazi line of sight. Instantly Red Army soldiers poured out onto the ice in long, snakelike formations, one right in front of Alexander, and ran across.
For two hours the heavy fire from 4,500 rifles did not cease. The mortars were deafening. Alexander thought the Soviet soldiers did better than expected — remarkably better. With his binoculars he spotted a number of downed men on the other shore, but he also spotted many running up the bank and hiding in the trees.
Three German planes flew low overhead, firing at the Soviet soldiers and breaking holes in the ice — more danger zones for trucks and men to avoid. A little lower, a little lower, Alexander thought, opening machine-gun fire on the aircraft. One plane exploded; the other two quickly gained altitude to avoid being hit. Alexander loaded a high-explosive shell into the Zenith and fired. Another of the planes burst into flames. The last one gained more altitude and was now unable to fire at the ice; it flew back to the German side of the Neva. Alexander nodded and lit a cigarette. “You’re doing well,” he yelled to his men, who were so busy loading the shells and firing they didn’t hear him. He hardly heard himself: his ears were muffled to prevent hearing loss.
At 11:30 A.M. a green flash went off as a signal for the motorized division to move across the Neva in the second wave of attack.
The go-ahead was too early, but Alexander hoped the element of surprise would work in their favor — it might if they could move across the ice quickly. Alexander motioned for Marazov to take his men and run. “Go,” Alexander yelled. “Stay covered! Corporal Smirnoff!” One of the men turned around. “Take your weapons,” said Alexander.
Marazov saluted Alexander, grabbed the handles of the 76-millimeter field gun, yelled to his men, and they started down the short slope and onto the ice. Two other corporals were running holding the 81-millimeter mortars. The 120-millimeter guns were left behind. They were too heavy to transport without a truck. Three soldiers in the front were running with their Shpagins.
Alexander watched Marazov knocked down by fire, barely thirty meters onto the ice. “God, Tolya!” he shouted and looked up. The German plane was making one pass over the Neva, firing at the men on the ice. Marazov’s soldiers dropped. Before the plane had a chance to reverse and return, Alexander swung the barrel of the Zenith, aimed, and fired a high-explosive impact shell. He did not miss. The plane was low enough; it burst into flames and dead-spiraled into the river.
Marazov continued to lie motionless on the ice. Watching him helplessly, Marazov’s men hovered by the field gun. The river was being pummeled by shell fire. “Oh, for f*ck’s sake!” Alexander ordered Ivanov — the remaining corporal — to man the Zenith, grabbed his machine gun, jumped off the slope, and ran to Marazov, yelling for the rest of the soldiers to continue across the river. “Go! Go!” They grabbed the field gun and the mortars and ran.
Marazov was splayed on his stomach. Alexander saw why his men had watched him with such helplessness. Kneeling by him, Alexander wanted to turn him over, but the soldier was breathing so painfully that Alexander was afraid to touch him. “Tolya,” he said, panting. “Tolya, hang on.” Marazov had been hit in the neck. His helmet had fallen off. Alexander desperately looked around to see if he could find a medic to give him some morphine.
Alexander saw a man appear on the ice, carrying not a weapon but a doctor’s bag. The man wore a heavy woolen overcoat and a woolen hat — not even a helmet! He was running to the right of Alexander to a group of downed men near a hole in the ice. Alexander had just enough time to think, what a fool, a doctor on the ice, he is insane, when he heard soldiers behind him screaming at the doctor, “Get down! Get down!” But the gunfire was too loud, black smoke was clouding all, and the doctor, standing erect, turned around and yelled in English, “What? What are they saying? What?”
It took Alexander an instant. He saw the doctor on the ice, in the middle of enemy fire but — more important — on the edge of the trajectory path of shells from the German side. Alexander knew he had one quarter second, a splinter of time to think. He jumped up and screamed at the top of his lungs in English, “GET THE F*ck DOWN!”
The doctor heard immediately and dropped. Just in time. The conical shell flew a meter over the man’s head and exploded on impact just behind him. The doctor was propelled like a projectile across the ice and landed head first in the water hole.
With clear eyes Alexander glanced at Marazov, who, with fixated pupils, was spurting blood from his mouth. Making the sign of the cross on him, Alexander picked up his machine gun and ran twenty meters across the ice, fell on his stomach, and crawled another ten to the water hole.
The doctor was unconscious, floating in the water. Alexander tried to reach him, but the man was facedown and too far away. Alexander threw his weapons, ammo, and ruck down onto the ice and jumped in. The water was a piercing, frozen deluge and then an instant whole-body anesthetic, numbing him like morphine. Grabbing the doctor by the neck, Alexander pulled him to the edge of the hole and with all his strength hurled him out with one hand while holding on to the ice with the other. Crawling out himself, he lay breathing heavily on top of the doctor, who came to and groaned. “God, what happened?” In English.
“Quiet,” said Alexander in English. “Stay down. We have to get you to that armored truck on the wooden boards, do you see it? It’s twenty meters. If we can get behind it, we’ll be safer. We’re out in the open here.”
“I can’t move,” said the doctor. “The water is freezing me from the outside in.”
Feeling the wet bitter cold himself, Alexander knew what the doctor meant. He scanned the immediate ice. The only cover was the three bodies near the water hole. Crawling across on his stomach, he pulled one body to the doctor and lay it on top of him. “Now, just lie still, keep the body on you, and don’t move.”
Then he crawled and retrieved another body, throwing it over his back, and picked up his ruck and his weapons. “You ready?” he said to the doctor, in English.
“Yes, sir.”
“Hold on to the bottom of my coat for your life. Don’t let go. You’re going for an ice skate.”
As quickly as he could with one dead man on top of him, Alexander dragged the doctor and the additional corpse twenty meters to the armored truck.
Alexander felt as though he were losing his hearing, the bursting noise around him filtering in and out in fits through his helmet and his conscious mind. He had to make it. Tatiana made it through the blockade, and she didn’t have a dead man covering her. I can do this, he thought, pulling the doctor faster, faster, faster amid the black, snarling clatter. He thought he heard the whiz of a low plane and wondered when Ivanov was going to shoot the f*cker down.
The last thing Alexander remembered was a whistling noise closer than he’d ever heard before, an explosion, then painless but severe impact, as he was propelled with frightening force helmet first into the side of an armored truck. Lucky I have a dead man on top of me, thought Alexander.