David Robbins - War of the Rats - A Novel of Stalingrad

After a half hour, he reached the lip of the trench, not knowing what he would find. He pulled his rifle sack to him quickly and put the weapons in his hands.

He stopped to cast his senses out into the yard and enveloping buildings. He was certain he’d arrived unseen. The German assault had moved behind him; he felt the emptiness of the rail yard. Here, less than a kilometer from the action, the buildings were quiet, spitting out only echoes of the fighting from the northeast Volga cliffs and the bowels of the factory.

He slipped into the trench, hoping he would not find the two hares. In the quiet of the yard, he admitted to himself he held little hope of finding Kulikov and Baugderis alive. If they’re still in the trench, he thought, they’re dead. Before dawn, this trench was on the very edge of the front line. The German advance would have swept right over them at full, sudden speed before anything could slow it down. They might’ve been able to retreat across the open yard, but only at a dead run, and that would have gotten them cut down by a hundred guns.

He realized that he’d followed an unspoken command to come to Kulikov and Baugderis. Even if he would only find corpses, he understood consciously now that he could not have left his friends to stiffen and blister under the winter sky. He knew also he could not expect to evacuate the bodies for a proper burial; that must wait until the Germans were run out of Stalingrad. But in order to write to their mothers to tell how their sons had died, he knew he had to come here. It was, in his secret way, what he wanted done for himself should he, too, be trapped and killed.

Honor for the dead; loyalty from the living. No man can desire these things and justly deserve them if he does not give them. This was fair. This was one of the rules of life and death.

Zaitsev moved fifty meters through the trench before he saw them. He hurried to the bodies slumped on the trench floor, and his heart began the quick descent into anger.

The first body was Baugderis. The Georgian lay against the trench wall, his arms spread, with his legs twisted under him. His posture seemed joyful, as if he’d leaped into the air to wave his arms and kick his heels. His face gave the lie to that. The right eye socket was a mass of dull color and flesh. Black blood cloaked his shoulder and right arm, spilled from the cavity Zaitsev knew was in the back of the man’s head.

On Baugderis’s right, a meter away, was Kulikov. Beside him was his helmet, a bullet hole punched in the side of it. Near his hand lay his artillery periscope.

Zaitsev stepped over Baugderis’s body to kneel beside Kulikov. Blood had clotted over half of his friend’s face and neck. A dark pool rested in his ear.

Zaitsev bent close to inspect the gash across the side of Kulikov’s forehead. At the center of the wound, in the heart of the dried blood, a bright red cleft beat like a tiny tongue sticking out, pulling back. A trickle gathered into a drop, then ran a crimson ribbon down the crust. It stopped, but it had run far enough to tell Zaitsev that Kulikov was alive.

His hands flew to his friend’s neck, his thumbs on his cheeks. He shook them hard. “Nikolay! Open your eyes!”

Kulikov exhaled and swayed his head. His eyelids fluttered, showing Zaitsev the whites.

Zaitsev patted Kulikov’s cheek, harder each time until the eyes opened and focused. Zaitsev reached for his pack and canteen. He pulled open the man’s mouth and poured water in. Most of it dribbled down Kulikov’s neck until he began to swallow.

“Slowly. Slowly, Nikolay. It’s all right.”

Kulikov pushed away the canteen and coughed. He squinted and groaned. He brought his hand to his head but could not bring himself to touch the wound.

“Wha… what?…” Kulikov turned toward Baugderis. His eyes took in the pulp of his friend’s face. “Oh. Oh, shit,” he muttered, fear popping in his eyes.

“You’re all right, Nikolay,” Zaitsev said reassuringly. “You’ve just got a flesh wound on your head. You’re not going to die. I’ll get you back.”

Kulikov closed his lids. He drew a deep breath. “The attack. Where?…” he said in a voice searching for strength.

Zaitsev interrupted. “It’s all right. They’re behind us now. It moved past you.”

Kulikov leaned his head back to look into the morning sky.

A grimace creased his lips. “I don’t remember. More water.”

Zaitsev handed him the canteen. What does he mean, he doesn’t remember the attack? Yes, he’s been unconscious for over two hours. But isn’t that how Baugderis got killed, how Kulikov took his wound? The German attack ran over them, their retreat was cut off; they put up resistance and drew fire.

“Nikolay,” he asked, “how did you get hit?”

Kulikov looked again at Baugderis. “Sniper.”

Zaitsev’s jaw tightened.

Kulikov struggled to sit up. “The attack came just after dawn. No way we could stay here. But…” He snorted, almost in a somber laugh. “I guess we did anyway.”

Zaitsev waited for Kulikov to gather himself.

“We figured we’d head out from this end of the trench. Maybe we could make it to the icehouses if we ran. We moved this way, tugging on the strings one last time. We didn’t wait long, just enough to see what we could flush out. We got one more.”

Nikolay touched his cheek. His fingers trembled over the lumps of blood built up like gathered wax. He brushed his hair at the temple and found it packed hard.

He grunted when his fingertips neared the wound.

“Leave it,” Zaitsev told him. “We’ll get it fixed soon.”

Kulikov dropped his hand and chuckled painfully, nervously, at his good luck.

He continued. “Once we got here, I pulled the string and spotted. We were in a hurry at this point. Nothing happened, and we were about to move to the last position. Then, and I can’t tell you why, I saw a German poke his head up. I called Zviad into the shot. He fired, and just like that he got hit.”

On the top of the trench, lying in the dirt where it had been when the bullet struck, was Baugderis’s Moisin-Nagant. Zaitsev pulled the rifle down and gasped.

The telescopic sight was shattered. A bullet had gone into it, smashing through the tube into Baugderis’s right eye.

Baugderis had not had even the two seconds it took to fire and look away from the scope before the German killed him.

Zaitsev pulled back the rifle’s bolt to pop out the spent casing. He hadn’t had a chance to move a muscle, he thought. Baugderis fired, watched his bullet hit, and died on his feet.

“I didn’t see where it came from,” Kulikov said, shaking his head. “I… I was so… when he got hit, it came out of nowhere. It scared the shit out of me, Vasha. I guess I must have stood up.”

Zaitsev nodded. “Just for a second,” he mumbled, more to himself than to Kulikov.

Thorvald. He was here. And the bastard wants me to know it.

“Just for a second,” Kulikov echoed. “There must have been two or three of them. We… we stayed too long.”

Kulikov’s eyes grew shiny. He looked again at Baugderis. A tear dripped a glossy trail over his bloody cheek.

“We were making a game out of it, Vasha,” he whispered. “There was no reason. We should have left last night. But we stayed. Just for the fucking kills.”

Zaitsev nodded. He understood. This was Nikolay Kulikov crying, one of the best and cleverest hares. This was a sniper, a trained and focused assassin, in tears, lamenting the killing. Zaitsev knew what Kulikov had witnessed: he’d seen his own soul. He’d caught the stain of murder on it and recoiled in horror. This was what the charnel house had done to Kulikov and was doing to the men of both armies. It turned them first into righteous killers for their country, then into predators for sport and entertainment, or for vengeance. How many times can you pull a trigger and destroy a life before the realities switch on you, until the thing you are doing is killing your own spirit?