The Unwomanly Face of War Read online

  There were quite a few girl tankmen of medium-sized tanks, but I was the only one who worked on a heavy tank. I sometimes think it would be good if some writer wrote about my life. I do not know how to do it myself…

  I. A. Levitsky

  COMMANDER OF THE 5TH SECTION OF THE 784TH ANTIAIRCRAFT ARTILLERY REGIMENT

  1942…I was made commander of a section. The regimental commissar warned me, “Bear in mind, Captain, you are taking charge not of an ordinary section, but a ‘girls’ section. It is half made up of girls, and they require a special approach, special attention and care.” I knew, of course, that girls served in the army, but I could not picture it very well to myself. We career officers were apprehensive of “the weaker sex” being involved in military affairs, which from time immemorial had been considered men’s work. Well, nurses, let’s say—that was a usual thing. They had already proved themselves in World War I, then in the Civil War. But what would girls do in the antiaircraft artillery, where they would have to carry very heavy shells? How to place them in a battery where there is only one dugout, and there are men in the crew? They have to sit for hours at the controls, and they are metal, and the seats are also metal, and that’s not good for girls. Where, finally, would they wash and dry their hair? A mass of questions arose, it was such an unusual thing…

  I started going around the batteries, taking a closer look. I confess, I felt a little out of sorts. A girl is standing guard with a rifle, a girl is on the watchtower with binoculars—and here I’ve come from the front, from the front line. And they were so different—bashful, timorous, mincing, or resolute, fired up. Not all of them knew how to submit to military discipline; women’s nature resists army rules. She would forget what she had been ordered to do, or else she would receive a letter from home and spend the whole morning weeping. You punish them, and another time you cancel the punishment—out of pity. I kept thinking, “These people will be the end of me!” But soon I had to abandon all my doubts. The girls became real soldiers. We walked a hard path together. Do come. We’ll have a long talk…

  —

  The most diverse addresses—Moscow, Kiev, the town of Apsheronsk in the Krasnodar region, Vitebsk, Volgograd, Yalutorovsk, Suzdal, Galich, Smolensk…How can I include them all? The country is enormous. And here chance comes to my aid. An unexpected prompting. One day the mail brings me an invitation from the veterans of the 65th Army of General P. I. Batov:* “We usually gather on May 16 and 17 in Moscow on Red Square. A tradition, and a ritual. Everyone who is still strong enough turns up. They come from Murmansk and Karaganda, from Alma-Ata and Omsk. From everywhere. From all over our boundless Motherland…In short, we’ll be waiting…”

  …The Hotel Moscow. The month of May—the month of the Victory. Everywhere people embrace, weep, take pictures. I can’t tell the flowers pressed to people’s breasts from the medals and decorations pinned to them. I enter this stream, and it bears me up and carries me, draws me in irresistibly, and soon I find myself in an almost unfamiliar world. On an unfamiliar island. Among people I recognize or don’t recognize, but I know one thing—I love them all. Usually they are lost among us and invisible, because they are already departing, there are fewer and fewer of them, and more of us, but once a year they gather together, in order to go back if only for a moment to their time. And their time is their memories.

  On the seventh floor, room 52, Hospital No. 5257 has gathered. At the head of the table—Alexandra Ivanovna Zaitseva, military doctor, captain. She is glad to see me and happily introduces me to everybody as if she and I had known each other for a long time. Yet I had knocked on this door completely by chance. At random.

  I write down: Galina Ivanovna Sazonova, surgeon; Elizaveta Mikhailovna Aizenstein, doctor; Valentina Vasilyevna Lukina, surgery nurse; Anna Ignatyevna Gorelik, senior surgery nurse; Nadezhda Fyodorovna Potuzhnaya, Klavdia Prokhorovna Borodulina, Elena Pavlovna Yakovleva, Angelina Nikolaevna Timofeeva, Sofya Kamaldinovna Motrenko, Tamara Dmitrievna Morozova, Sofya Filimonovna Semeniuk, Larissa Tikhonovna Deikun, nurses.

  * * *

  OF DOLLS AND RIFLES

  * * *

  —Ehh, girls, how vile it was, this war…When you look at it with our eyes. Simple women’s eyes…As frightful as can be. That’s why they don’t ask us…

  —

  —Do you remember, girls, we were riding in the freight cars…And the soldiers laughed at how we held our rifles. We didn’t hold them the way you hold a weapon, but like this…Now I can’t even show it…The way you hold a doll…

  —

  —People wept, shouted…I hear the word “War!” And I think, “What war, if we have an exam tomorrow at the institute? An exam—it’s so important. What kind of war can there be?”

  A week later the bombings began; we were already saving people. Three courses in medical school meant something at such a time. But in the first days I saw so much blood that I began to be afraid of it. There’s a half-doctor for you, there’s “honors” in practical courses. But people behaved exceptionally well. And that was encouraging.

  I told you, girls…The bombing was over, and I see the ground in front of me stirring. I run there and begin to dig. With my hands I felt a face, hair…It was a woman…I dug her out and began to weep over her. But she, when she opened her eyes, didn’t ask what happened to her, she started worrying, “Where’s my purse?”

  “What do you want with your purse now? You’ll find it.”

  “My papers are in it.”

  Her thoughts were not about how she was, whether she was hurt, but where her party card and military ID were. I immediately started looking for her purse. Found it. She laid it on her breast and closed her eyes. Soon the ambulance came, and we put her in. I checked once more whether the purse was there.

  In the evening I came home, told my mother about it, and said I had decided to go to the front…

  —

  —Our troops were retreating…We all came out to the road…An elderly soldier walks by, stops at our house and bows very low before my mother. “Forgive me, mother…Try to save your girl! Aie, save your girl!” I was sixteen then, I had a very long braid…And black eyelashes—like this!

  —

  —I remember how we went to the front…A truckload of girls, a big covered truck. It was night, dark, and the branches brushed against the canvas, and we were so tense, it seemed like it was bullets, that we were under fire…The war brought about a change in words and sounds…The war…Ah, it’s always right next to us now! You say “mama” and it’s quite a different word; you say “home” and it’s also quite different. Something was added to them. More love was added, more fear. Something else…

  But from the first day I was convinced that they wouldn’t defeat us. Our country is so big. Endless…

  —

  —Mama’s girl…I had never left our town, never slept in anyone else’s house, and I wound up as a junior doctor in a mortar battery. What it did to me! The mortars would begin to shoot—and I would go deaf at once. It was as if I was burned all over. I’d sit down and whisper, “Mama, dear mama…Dear mama…” We were stationed in the forest. I’d get up in the morning—it was quiet, dewdrops hanging. Can this be war? When it’s so beautiful and so good…

  They told us to wear uniforms, and I was five feet tall. I put the trousers on and the girls pulled them all the way up to my shoulders. So I wore my own clothes and tried to hide from the superiors. They put me in the guardhouse for violating army discipline…

  —

  —I would never have believed…I didn’t know I could sleep while I walked. You march in a column and you sleep. You bump into the one marching ahead of you, wake up for a second, and fall asleep again. A soldier’s sleep is sweet everywhere. Once, in the dark, instead of going straight I swerved to the side and walked into a field. I walked and slept, until I fell into some kind of ditch. Then I woke up and ran to overtake the others.

  Soldiers sit during a halt—they have one hand-rolled
cigarette for the three of them. One smokes, the other two sleep. Even snore…

  —

  —I’ll never forget it: they brought a wounded man, took him off the stretcher…Someone felt his pulse, “No, he’s dead.” We stepped aside. And then the wounded man breathed. I knelt in front of him and heard him breathing. I sobbed and shouted, “Doctor! Doctor!” They roused the doctor, shook him, and he fell like a sheaf of wheat, he was so fast asleep. They couldn’t rouse him even with sal ammoniac. He hadn’t slept for three days before then.

  And how heavy the wounded are in winter…The army shirts get stiff from blood and melted snow, the tarpaulin boots from blood and ice—impossible to cut. They’re all cold, like the dead.

  You look out the window—winter, indescribably beautiful. Magic white firs. You forget everything for a moment…Then again…

  —

  —It was a ski battalion…All tenth-graders…They were mowed down by machine guns…One of them was brought in; he was crying. And we’re the same age, but already older from experience. You embrace him, “Dear child.” And he: “If you’d been there, you wouldn’t say ‘child’…” He was dying and screaming all night long: “Mama! Mama!” There were two fellows there from Kursk; we called them “the Kursk nightingales.” You come to wake him up, he’s sound asleep, his lips wet with spittle. They were like little children…

  —

  —We stood at the operating table around the clock…You stand there, and your arms drop by themselves. Once my head sank down right onto the man I was operating on. Sleep! Sleep! Sleep! Our feet were swollen; they wouldn’t get into the tarpaulin boots. Our eyes were so tired it was hard to close them…

  My war has three smells: blood, chloroform, and iodine…

  —

  —Ohh! And the wounds…Big, deep, jagged…You could lose your mind…Fragments of bullets, grenades, shells in the head, in the guts—all over the body. Along with metal we take out uniform buttons, pieces of overcoats and shirts, leather straps. I remember one, his whole chest was turned inside out, you could see his heart…Still beating, but he was dying…I’m bandaging him for the last time and can barely hold back my tears. I must finish quickly, I think, and go to some corner and cry my fill. He says, “Thank you, dear nurse…” and he hands me some small metal object. I look: it’s a crossed saber and rifle. “Why are you giving it to me?” I ask. “Mama said this talisman would save me. But I don’t need it anymore. Maybe you’re luckier than me?” He said it and turned to the wall.

  By evening we had blood in our hair, it had soaked through the gown to our bodies, was on our caps and masks. Black, sticky, mixed with everything there is in a man. With urine, with excrement…

  Another time one of them would call me, “Nurse, my leg hurts.” But there was no leg…Most of all I was afraid of carrying the dead. The wind lifts the sheet, and he looks at you. If his eyes were open, I couldn’t carry him, I had to close them…

  —

  —A wounded man was brought…He lay all bandaged on the stretcher; the wound was to the head, you could see almost nothing of him. Just a little. But I obviously reminded him of someone, and he addressed me, “Larissa…Larissa…Larochka…” Apparently a girl he loved. And that is my name, but I knew I’d never met this man before. Yet he was calling me. I went to him, didn’t know what to think, kept looking at him. “You’ve come? You’ve come?” I took his hands, bent down…“I knew you’d come…” He whispered something, but I didn’t understand what he whispered. Even now I can’t talk about it calmly; when I remember it, tears come to my eyes. “When I was leaving for the front,” he said, “I didn’t have time to kiss you. Kiss me…”

  So I bent down and kissed him. A tear welled up, ran off into the bandages, and vanished. And that was all. He died…

  * * *

  OF DEATH AND ASTONISHMENT IN THE FACE OF DEATH

  * * *

  —People didn’t want to die…We responded to every moan, every cry. One wounded man, when he felt he was dying, seized me by the shoulder, embraced me, and wouldn’t let go. It seemed to him that if someone was next to him, if the nurse was there, life wouldn’t leave him. He asked, “Just five more minutes of life. Just two more minutes…” Some died inaudibly, quietly; others cried out, “I don’t want to die!” Men cursed: “Fuck it all…” One man started to sing…A Moldavian song…A man is dying, but he still doesn’t think, doesn’t believe he’s dying. But you see this yellow, yellow color coming from under the hairline, you see the shadow moving first over the face, then down under the clothes…He lies dead, and on his face there’s some sort of astonishment, as if he’s lying there thinking, “How is it I’m dead? Can it be I’m dead?”

  As long as he can hear…Till the last moment you tell him, no, no, how could you die? You kiss him, embrace him. There now, there now. He’s already dead, eyes fixed on the ceiling, but I still whisper something…soothing him…The names are erased, gone from my memory, but the faces are still there…

  —

  —They bring the wounded…They’re crying…Crying not from pain, but from impotence. It was their first day at the front; some of them hadn’t fired a single shot. They weren’t given any rifles, because in the first year of the war weapons cost their weight in gold. And the Germans had tanks, mortars, airplanes. Their comrades fell, they picked up their rifles. Grenades. They went into combat barehanded…Like into a fistfight…

  And ran straight into tanks…

  —

  —When they were dying…The way they looked around…The way they…

  —

  —My first wounded man…A bullet had hit him in the throat. He lived for several more days, but he couldn’t speak…

  When an arm or a leg is amputated, there is no blood. There is clean white flesh; the blood comes later. To this day I can’t cut up a chicken, if it’s clean white flesh. It makes my mouth taste very salty…

  —

  —The Germans didn’t take women soldiers prisoner…They shot them at once. Or led them before their lined-up soldiers and showed them off: look, they’re not women, they’re monsters. We always kept two bullets for ourselves, two—in case one misfired.

  One of our nurses was captured…A day later we took back that village. There were dead horses lying about, motorcycles, armored vehicles. We found her: eyes put out, breasts cut off. They had impaled her on a stake…It was freezing cold, and she was white as could be, and her hair was all gray…She was nineteen years old.

  In her knapsack we found letters from home and a green rubber bird. A child’s toy…

  —

  —We retreat…They shell us. During the first year we kept retreating. The fascist planes flew very low, hunting down each person. It always seemed it was you he was after. I’m running…I see and hear that the plane is aiming at me. I see the pilot, his face, and he sees that we’re young girls…It’s a hospital train…He rattles away along the wagons, and even smiles. He’s having fun…Such an insolent, terrible smile…A handsome face…

  I can’t stand it…I shout…I run into a cornfield—he’s there; I turn toward the forest—he presses me to the ground. I reach the underbrush…I ran into the forest and hid in some old leaves. My nose bled from fear, I didn’t know whether I was alive or not. I was alive…Since then I’ve been very afraid of planes. It’s still far away, but I’m already afraid; I don’t think of anything anymore, except that it’s flying, where can I hide, where can I huddle, so as not to see and hear. To this day I can’t stand the sound of planes. I never fly…

  —

  —Ehh, girls…

  —

  —Before the war I wanted to get married…to my music teacher. It was a crazy story. I was seriously in love…So was he…Mama didn’t allow it: “You’re too young!”

  Soon the war began. I asked to be sent to the front. I wanted to leave home, to become an adult. At home they wept as they got me ready for the road. Warm socks, underwear…

  I saw my firs
t dead man on the first day…A stray fragment happened to fly into the schoolyard where our hospital was and mortally wounded our paramedic. And I thought: my mother decided I was too young to marry, but I’m not too young for the war…My beloved mama…

  —

  —We’ve just arrived…We set up the hospital, fill it with the wounded, and then the order: evacuate. We put some of the wounded in trucks, not all. There aren’t enough trucks. They hurry us: “Leave them…Go without them…” You’re getting ready to go, they look at you. Follow you with their eyes. There’s everything in their look: humility, hurt…They ask, “Brothers! Dear sisters! Don’t leave us to the Germans. Finish us off.” So sad! So sad! Whoever can walk leaves with us. Those who can’t—lie there. And you have no strength left to help any of them, you’re afraid to raise your eyes…I was young, I cried all the time…

  When we began to advance we didn’t leave a single one of our wounded. We even picked up the German wounded. And for a while I worked with them. I got used to it, I bandaged them, it was all right. Then I’d remember 1941, when we had to leave our wounded, and what they did to them…How they treated them…We saw…It seemed I’d never be able to go near them…The next day I’d go and bandage them…

  —

  —We saved lives…But many were sorry they were medics and could only bandage, and hadn’t taken up arms. Didn’t shoot. I remember…I remember that feeling. I remember that the smell of blood on the snow was especially strong…The dead…They lay in the fields. Birds tore their eyes out, pecked their faces, their hands. Aie, an impossible life…

  —

  —Toward the end of the war…I was afraid to write letters home. I won’t write, I thought, because what if I’m suddenly killed, and mama will weep that the war was over, and I died just before the Victory. Nobody talked about it, but everybody thought about it. We already sensed that we’d soon be victorious. The spring had already begun.