David Robbins - Last Citadel

‘Papa, I’ve got to ask you to stop this.’

So easy a trap I could lay for him, Dimitri thought. I could demand, Stop what? Make him say it. Stop being insubordinate, Papa. Stop being a danger. Stop being unpredictable. Then I can yell back.

‘Why am I so mad at you all the time, Valya?’

Valentin knew the answer, and he said it.

‘We’ve traded places, Papa. You weren’t ready for it. That’s all.’

Dimitri had seen a wife die. Comrades skewered or shot. A powerful father wasted to illness and gone too young. He’d seen a man’s life and knew he should not have this as his saddest moment. But there it was, and it seemed so wrong to be this crushed at something a boy said.

Is this what happens to every father, at war or not? Does this moment hurt all fathers this much? When did I do this to mine? Did I stare him down like a dog that got too old to hunt?

Dimitri gazed at the ground and waited for it, the notion to slap his son. Then he lifted his eyes to his son’s face.

Valentin had not moved or flinched. His son stood with the backdrop of a mural behind him, men and machines rushing to the defense of Russia, to bar the road to Prokhorovka; this Lieutenant Berko and his crew had fought in the worst of the battles for Kursk and now hurried to fight in another. Dimitri’s hands relaxed. He chuckled at himself. No matter how little else was left to him, either pride or time, he was the father of a Soviet hero. In a Soviet country, this was not so bad a thing.

When will he know me, Dimitri wondered? Never. The roads separated too soon, my son’s and mine, there was not enough time, the war and the Communists came too swiftly. This boy learned the sword and now the tank. But Valya does not know his father, as I did not know mine until now. Perhaps that’s just how it works. We do not know, that’s why wars are fought, great wars like the one in the river valley at the end of this road, infinitesimal wars like the one in the space between the locked eyes of father and son. And perhaps we will not know God the Father until too late also. Dimitri sighed for all this stumbling around blind. What a design, to make things this way, pieces that will never fit, what sort of machine is life to be like that? That’s why it runs so rough. Before his sigh was done it became a good laugh. This was Dimitri’s gift, the true Cossack’s gift, to switch sides nimbly, to pick the winner and go with him.

He eased beside Valentin, and laid his arm across the boy’s shoulders. He gave Valya’s frame a squeeze, pleased to feel muscle and grit there.

‘Have you heard from your sister?’

‘No. She hasn’t written in weeks.’

‘I’m sure she’s alright.’ Dimitri turned his son away from the free northern fields, back to the waiting tank and the clustered, diesel-choked road to Prokhorovka. ‘She doesn’t have me to deal with. Come on, Lieutenant. Put your arm around me. I’m just your father.’

Valentin’s hand did not go around Dimitri. The boy said, ‘Papa, let me go.’

Dimitri took down his arm, as ordered.

After the Psel river bridge at Voroshilov, the traffic thinned. They were all now within the lines of 5th Guards Tank Army. Vehicles and infantry scattered south into the fields to reinforce their assigned units. The sounds of combat batted in the air, rising on smoke. The Germans were trying hard to move up north of the Psel, to keep abreast of their advance on Prokhorovka south of the river. More soldiers Valentin had picked up jumped off the General after crossing the bridge. Open-bedded trucks waited for them. The soldiers packed themselves in and were jolted across the valley grasses to be set like pikes in the Germans’ way. Sasha, Pasha, and Valentin dropped back into their seats. Valentin stood in his turret. Dimitri kept the General stroking ahead southeast on the road, pushing them through a ground-hugging haze of artillery smoke. The guns were firing from a nearby hill into the alley of land west of Prokhorovka, where the battle with the SS waged.

Last night’s rains and high winds had given way to a morning of rising heat and humidity. Cloud cover clamped them down to the earth like a hen’s feathered rear . Dimitri’s goggles fogged on him but he couldn’t pull them down because of the dust he drove into. He refused to lower his hatch, that would make him too dependent on Valya’s directions or the boy lieutenant’s damned boots. Dimitri had accepted his place in the confusing schemes of life and war, but this did not mean he relished it.

At mid-morning Valya ordered him off the road. Ahead, a handful of T-34s did the same and led the way south. Dimitri got in behind them and finally let the General bolt. He shook Valya out of his turret hatch and made the boy settle his rear into the safety of his seat. Five tanks, all scarred T-34s, raced over the fields. Dimitri pulled even with them and they ran side by side, no one eating dust this way. They passed an immense concentration of weapons and men, all of them on the move or digging in. Trucks towed artillery pieces into long lines and tiers by caliber, tankers hollowed out trenches for hull-down firing positions, pyramids of artillery rounds waited to be stashed, soldiers shoveled out foxholes to stand their ground. Dimitri kept the throttle open. The five T-34s shot past rifle brigades, tank brigades, a regiment of airborne looking sharp and determined marching forward, every one of them fresh and unblooded. Every man they passed turned their way, to watch the five veteran tanks fly forward, trailing dust plumes like wild stallions.

One by one the tanks peeled away, finding their units, until only the General Platov was left. Valentin’s boot low on his neck told Dimitri to slow down. He shifted back reluctantly, clinging to the thrill of rushing over flat ground and rippling stalks of grass, carefree and racing alongside steely comrades. It felt good to fly.

The General passed a crossroads town. This was Prokhorovka. The place wasn’t much more than a collection of shanties and outbuildings, a handful of barns, a granary, a meeting hall. A railroad track ran atop an embankment into the center. The town, like every civilian area in the battle zone, was overtaken by guns. On all sides Prokhorovka was bracketed by armor and artillery facing west, a hundred tanks, twice that number in field pieces, a hundred times that in men and rifles. Dimitri couldn’t help but think if these machines of war had been tractors, if the host of soldiers digging the black steppe had been plowing, if this need to fight were instead a will to harvest, Prokhorovka would be a kingdom of plenty. Breaking things was always fun, but when the battles were over Dimitri rode away from the pieces and forgot them. What made him wistful now looking at Prokhorovka sliding behind him was the waste, for this town, for himself, for all these young men, because what will count in the end for them will be not what they destroyed but what they planted. Crops. Children. The things a man doesn’t ride away from.

When he was called to a halt, he shut the General down. The other three climbed out of the tank. Sasha leaned his head into the driver’s hatch and said, ‘Come on, Dima, let’s get some air,’ but Dimitri kept his seat. Freshly painted tanks moved on all sides, skidding to take up positions. The air Sasha wanted to breathe was clogged with metallic noise. This place was so far from where Dimitri wanted to be. He wanted nothing of these new comrades or this task.

Five kilometers ahead, an awful battle roiled, kicking up roars and billows of smoke, the smell on the breeze was explosives. The battle raged around a spot of high ground beside the Prokhorovka road, and for a small state farm below it. From the looks of things at this short distance, ample Soviet forces were keeping the Germans at bay for the morning. But this was the SS out there. Dimitri knew his time would be tomorrow, with the 32nd Tank Brigade around him and the four, five, six hundred other Russian tanks in more waiting units, when the SS broke through and came for Prokhorovka.