Ralph Peters - Red Army

Shilko tossed the butt of his cigarette into the mud. One thing that he could say now that he was technically a veteran was that war was a noisy business, even by an artilleryman's standards. The earth lay under a constant low thunder. He remembered what he had been doing when he received the alert order. He had been at his desk, working with Romilinsky on the endless paperwork necessary to requisition materials to build a unit smokehouse. The unit's gardening and animal-raising efforts had been going extraordinarily well, and they were endeavors in 105

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which Shilko took great pride. In the weeks just before the order to prepare for war, the smokehouse question had seemed like one of the most important matters in the world to him. Now the project appeared trivial to the point of hilarity. Yet there was a part of Shilko that could not quite get used to the idea of being at war even now.

Captain Romilinsky stepped out of the busy vehicle complex and ducked under the tarpaulin with Shilko.

"Comrade Battalion Commander, Davidov's complaining about his ammunition situation again."

Shilko smiled, as much at the company of his chief of staff as at the thought of Davidov's endless entreaties. Shilko did not like to be alone, and he especially liked to be surrounded by his officers. But in the midst of the urgent efforts of his officers and men, he had suddenly experienced a sense of his own futility, a budding suspicion that he had only gone through the motions of his professional life for years, and he had felt the unaccustomed impulse to step outside and stand alone for a bit. Now Romilinsky offered relief from the unwelcome prospect of further solitude.

"Davidov always complains," Shilko said. "He complains until he tires me out and I give him what he wants." Shilko offered Romilinsky a cigarette, then drew another for himself. "But today he'll have to wait like the others." Romilinsky offered a light, and Shilko bent over the younger man's unspoiled staff officer's hands. In comparison, Shilko's hands looked like big knuckles of smoked pork. "Besides, Davidov's a clever one. He always has more than he admits to having. He knows how to play the system. He'd make a good factory manager, our David Sergeyevitch.

Or better yet, a farmer." Shilko chuckled at the thought of his battery commander swearing convincingly to the authorities that they had assigned his state farm totally unreasonable production quotas. "Well,"

Shilko concluded, "he'll come through. It's just his way."

Romilinsky nodded. He looked tired. They had been waiting or moving or setting up since the afternoon before, and they had all begun the war as tired men. Now, since the fighting had begun, it felt as though every hour counted for three or four in exhausting a man.

"Davidov's right, in a sense," Romilinsky said, temporarily putting aside his rivalry with the other officer. "Matching the number of missions assigned against the allocation of rounds prescribed by the effects norms, you can see that someone isn't thinking very far ahead."

Shilko suspected that Romilinsky was right, that the officers responsible for targeting were so overcome by the excitement of the moment that they were acting more on impulse than rigorous calculation. But he did 106

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not want to discourage the younger man, and he settled on a milder response.

"When you think about it," Shilko said, "it appears that the norms to achieve desired effects were developed by artillerymen like us, who wanted to make damned sure that the mission's objective was achieved, while our allocation of units of fire was designed by rear services officers out to make equally certain that we damned artillerymen don't get too carried away with ourselves. It's the way the system has of coming up with a compromise."

"Until now," Romilinsky said, "I always thought the units of fire were rather generous."

Shilko shrugged. "In some ways . . . it's a very generous system. The art lies in knowing when to be satisfied."

To Shilko, his chief of staff, standing unshaven and with dark circles ringing the moving targets of his eyes, looked exactly as an artillery officer should look. Shilko realized that he himself was far from the dashing type. But Romilinsky looked quietly heroic to him. Shilko was proud of the younger man, and he liked him. He liked all of his officers, although it was easier to feel affection for some than for others. They were good boys, his gunners. Russian gunners had outshot the cannon-eers of Frederick the Great. Why not the Bundeswehr as well?

Another volley tore into the sky, and thin smoke rose over the treeline a few hundred meters away.

"How would you like to be on the other end of that?" Shilko asked. The power of the guns continued to amaze him, even after twenty-odd years and long-ruined eardrums.

Romilinsky had positioned himself poorly, and the cascade of water from the tarpaulin caught him between the collar and his neck. He jumped as though touched by fire.

"Direct hit," Shilko said, grinning.

A lieutenant thrust his face out of the control post. "Comrade Battalion Commander. Orders. Our forces are across the Elbe-Seiten canal, and we're to prepare to displace."

"Now?" Shilko said, thinking of the rounds piled on the ground and of his trucks that had not yet returned.

"We're to be prepared for movement within two hours."

Shilko relaxed. Two hours was a long time. "Have they assigned us new fire positions?"

The lieutenant shook his head. "Division says things are moving very fast. Fire positions will be designated when we receive the order toexecute movement."

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"All right," Shilko said. According to the manuals, his batteries already should have displaced several times to avoid discovery by the enemy. But there was no place to go on the overcrowded terrain. "Good.

Vassili Rodionovitch, call down to the batteries and tell them we're going to fire everything we can't lift." He looked back at the lieutenant. "Son, get me the current gift list, and we'll see what presents we can send the enemy."

The lieutenant pulled his head back into the tentage like a turtle returning to its shell.

"Standard movement drill?" Romilinsky asked.

"No," Shilko said, suddenly adamant, thinking of the possibility of losing control of his battalion on the hectic roads. It was as bitter as the thought of abandoning his children. "The rules are off, Vassili Rodionovitch. We'll all move together. Or we won't see our batteries again until the war's over."

"But if we receive interim missions? And no one's in position to fire?"

"We can always say we ran out of ammunition," Shilko said, determined to maintain control of his unit, and delighted at the prospect of engrossing activities that would, at least temporarily, drown his self-doubts.

Another huge ripple of fire punched the sky. This time, the spillage off the tarpaulin caught Shilko. The water was cold and unwelcome. But Shilko shrugged it off.

"Direct hit," he said.

Major General Khrenov's divisional forward command post had been hastily composed around a liberated country inn. In the parking lot, communications vans hid halfheartedly under sagging camouflage nets, and command vehicles lurked under dripping trees. Windows had been smashed out of the building to admit cables, and handyman soldiers spliced and taped and carried boxes of staff clutter up the steps to the building's main entrance. Bad-tempered warrant officers supervised the physical activities, monitored, in turn, by staff officers who occasionally ventured out into the damp air to find out why everything was taking so long.

The scene was instantly familiar to Trimenko, and he didn't like it.