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

On the fifth day the train stopped in a treeless vista of quivering wheat. The sailors set up tents. They were addressed by Batyuk and ordered to spend three more days on the steppe preparing for battle while waiting for the trucks to carry them onward.

Dusk settled over the flat, featureless land; a trembling orb of orange appeared low in the western sky. Silence blew like a fog through the men. Standing beside the train and their tents, one by one, they held up hands to quiet each other and listen. In the gloaming, a barely audible boom and howl came from the flashing dome of light in the west, its source still well below the horizon. Zaitsev heard the sailors around him, and himself, breathe the word: Stalingrad.

For three days and nights the company practiced street-fighting skills. The men learned to crawl and run, to kill with bayonets and rifles, knives, shovels, and fists. Grenades with pins pulled to make them live were tossed and caught, then thrown into trenches to explode. Straw dummies were sliced or blown open, and many real noses were bloodied.

The morning of September 20, a dust plume rose out on the dirt road. A staff car came and stopped beside the train. Out stepped Division Commander Konstantinovich Zhukov. He’d ridden from Stalingrad to watch the sailors of the 284th pursue their drills.

The men threw themselves into their training, putting on their most ferocious show for the general. During a hand-to-hand exercise, one of the sailors tripped over his bell-bottom trouser legs. Zhukov slapped his thigh to stop the action.

“Why aren’t you men in army uniforms?” he demanded.

Lieutenant Bolshoshapov stepped forward and came to attention.

“Commander, we are sailors and are proud to fight as sailors.” Bolshoshapov shouted the words over Zhukov’s head.

“Have you been issued your army uniforms, Lieutenant?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Change into them immediately. These damned things,” Zhukov said pointing at the billowing pants legs, “will get you killed. Where is your navy discipline?”

Zhukov whirled to return to his staff car. Bolshoshapov called out, “Commander, sir. With your permission, we would like to remain in our navy shirts under our uniforms.”

Zhukov turned back and saluted Bolshoshapov.

“On behalf of the Red Army and the Party, I gladly consent. Of course, sailor. And fight bravely in your navy shirts.”

The Siberians let out a cheer and stripped down to their skivvies and striped navy shirts. Orderlies ran to the train to fetch the drab green uniforms of the Soviet army.

That evening dozens of American Studebaker trucks arrived to ferry the division to the Volga. For two hours the men bumped down the road in the open backs of the lorries. Every soldier watched the spreading glow in the west. The distant thumps of explosions swelled in their ears while the horizon rolled to them.

The trucks stopped on the threshold of a forest, and the thousand-plus men of the 284th lined up on a path that disappeared into a thick stand of poplars. The soldiers marched two by two, burdened with rifles and packs. Zaitsev resisted the urge to look up through the leaves into the flaring sky. He focused instead on the back of the man in front of him. As he walked under the canopy of trees the sounds and lights grew muffled, as if the forest, ever his friend, were soothing him and his company, quieting the conflict for their restive ears.

Along the road, posters and slogans were nailed to the poplar trunks. If you don’t stop the enemy in Stalingrad, he will enter your home and destroy your village! one read. The enemy must be crushed and destroyed at Stalingrad! and Soldier, your country will not forget your courage!

Three kilometers into the forest, the march was stopped. Batyuk ordered the men off the path to darken their faces and hands with grease and dirt. While they handed around the greasepaint pots, a hundred wounded soldiers shuffled past on the road away from the battle.

Every one of the bandaged and bloodied soldiers held on to another; the able-legged helped others limp along, the sighted led the blind. Those who had both hands carried stretchers. It seemed the searing heat of battle had melded these men together, so they moved and bled as one giant mangled creature.

The Siberians gaped at the marching soldiers’ misery. They spotted a sailor among the wounded, still in his bell-bottoms. They beckoned him to the side of the road, where he saw the navy shirts showing at their necks beneath their Red Army tunics.

“Comrade sailor! Come, sit down!” they called.

The sailor, grimacing in pain, stepped off the path and was seated on a backpack. Several hands stretched out with cigarettes and matches. The weary man accepted a smoke. He asked to have it lit and held up his right arm. It was cut short, without a hand.

A flask of vodka shot from the crowd.

The sailor dragged heavily on the cigarette. He looked up into the camouflaged faces around him.

“Na zdorovye,” he said, and threw back a large gulp. Then he held up his truncated arm. “Don’t worry about this. I sold it for a very high price.” He looked at the heads around him. “Where are you from?”

“We’re Siberians. We’ve come a long way to fight.”

The man blinked. “So have the Germans.”

His head sank to his chest. Hands shot out to catch him as if he might collapse.

The sailor pulled himself to his feet. He turned to rejoin the shambling line of wounded. The men parted to let him through. They offered him more cigarettes.

The sailor passed Zaitsev and stopped to look into the broad Siberian face. He tapped himself on the chest with the fingers that clutched the cigarette. Glowing ashes tumbled down his torn navy shirt. He put the cigarette in the corner of his mouth and pressed his thumb against Zaitsev’s chest.

“Do some killing.”

THE SIBERIANS EMERGED FROM THE TREES ON THE EAST bank of the Volga. Two kilometers away, on the far side of the river, they saw a volcanic city. Stalingrad, once home to half a million people, appeared now as if not a single person could be alive there.

The city was lit by a thousand fires. Above the limestone river cliffs, charred roofless walls stood along avenues clotted with smoking rubble. Red pillars of dust and brick erupted into the air. Buildings swayed and crumbled as if the quaking city were nothing but a jagged shell and something huge and determined below the ground was kicking its way to the surface.

Lying on the sand, staring at the firestorm across the black, oily Volga, Zaitsev thought of his babushka Dunia’s descriptions of the underworld. A gust blew warm against his cheek. It carried the heat and carbon smell of a furnace. How can men be fighting in that perdition? he wondered.

Captain Ion Lebedev, a political commissar, settled in the sand next to him.

“Are you ready, Comrade Chief Master Sergeant?” he asked.

Zaitsev looked at the zampolit. The man’s black eyes flickered red. His face was split by a gap-toothed smile.

Zaitsev asked, “Has anyone actually said, ‘No, I am not ready,’ Comrade Lebedev?”

“We have two hundred men on this shore. A few need prodding to enter that.” Lebedev jutted his nose at the blazing city.

Zaitsev held no love for the commissars. He’d been subjected to their speeches, their “prodding,” for weeks. He’d listened with less than rapt attention for hours without end, it seemed—on the train, on the steppe, and now, here, in the sand on the cusp of battle. He did not need simple advice on courage, did not like feeling he wasn’t trusted to fight well and die for the Rodina. Zaitsev had been a good Komsomol member and hoped to become a member of the Communist Party. But the Germans had not invaded the Party. Their strike was at Russia. It was for the Motherland he would fight.