The Unwomanly Face of War Read online

  In the morning the whole battalion lined up, those cowards were brought out and placed before us. The order that they be shot was read. Seven men were needed to carry out the sentence…Three men stepped forward; the rest stood there. I took a submachine gun and stepped forward. Once I stepped forward…a young girl…everybody followed me…Those two could not be forgiven. Because of them such brave boys were killed!

  And we carried out the sentence…I lowered the submachine gun, and became frightened. I went up to them…they lay there…One had a living smile on his face…

  I don’t know, would I have forgiven them now? I can’t tell…I don’t want to lie. There are moments when I want to weep. But I can’t…

  I forgot everything in the war. My former life. Everything…And I forgot love…

  The commander of the scout company fell in love with me. He sent me little notes through his soldiers. I came to see him once. “No,” I said. “I love a man who was killed long ago.” He moved very close to me, looked straight into my eyes, turned, and went away. There was shooting, but he walked on and didn’t even duck his head…

  Later—this was already in Ukraine—we liberated a big village. I thought: “I’ll take a stroll, look around.” The weather was clear, the cottages white. And outside the village—graves, freshly dug earth…The graves of those who fought for this village. I didn’t know why, but I was drawn there. On each grave there was a photograph and a last name on a plank…Suddenly I saw a familiar face…The commander of the scout company who was in love with me. And his last name…And I felt so uneasy. Such great fear…as if he saw me, as if he was alive…And just then his men came to the grave, from his company. They all knew me; they had delivered his notes to me. Not one of them looked at me, as if I wasn’t there. Invisible. Later, too, whenever I met them, it seemed to me…so I think…They wanted me to die, too. It was hard for them to see that I was…alive…I sensed it…As if I was guilty before them…And before him…

  I came back from the war and fell gravely ill. For a long time I went from one hospital to another, until I happened upon an old professor. He began to treat me…He treated me more with words than with medications; he explained my illness to me. He said that if I had left for the front at eighteen or nineteen, my body would have been stronger, but since I had just turned sixteen—it was a very early age—I had been badly traumatized. “Of course, medications are one thing,” he explained. “They may treat you, but if you want to restore your health, if you want to live, my only advice is: you should get married and have as many children as possible. Only that can save you. With every child your body will be reborn.”

  How old were you?

  When the war ended, I was going on twenty. Of course I didn’t even think of getting married.

  Why?

  I felt very tired, much older than my peers, even simply old. My friends went to dances, had fun, and I couldn’t, I looked at life with old eyes. From another world…An old woman! Young fellows courted me. Mere boys. But they didn’t see my soul, what was inside me. Here I’ve told you about one day…The fighting at Sevsk. Just one day…After which I had blood flow out of my ears during the night. In the morning I woke up as if after a grave illness. A bloody pillow…

  And in the hospital? In the surgery room we had a big tub behind a screen where they put the amputated arms, legs…Once a captain came from the front and brought his wounded friend. I don’t know how he got behind there, but he saw that tub and…fainted.

  I can go on and on remembering. I can’t stop…But what is the most important thing?

  I remember the sounds of the war. Everything around booms and clangs, crackles from fire…In war your soul ages. After the war I was never young…That’s the most important thing. To my mind…

  Did you get married?

  I got married. I gave birth to five sons and raised them. Five boys. God didn’t give me girls. What surprises me most is that after such great fear and horror I could give birth to beautiful children. And I turned out to be a good mother and a good grandmother.

  I recall it all now and it seems that it wasn’t me, but some other girl…

  —

  I was on my way home, bringing four cassettes (two days of conversations) with “yet another war,” having various feelings: shock and fear, perplexity and admiration. Curiosity and bewilderment, and tenderness. At home I retold some episodes to my friends. Unexpectedly for me, the reactions were all similar: “Too frightening. How could she stand it? And not go out of her mind?” Or: “We’re used to reading about a different war. In that war there are clear distinctions: us and them, good and evil. But here?” But I noticed they all had tears in their eyes, and they all fell to thinking. Probably about the same things as I. There have been thousands of wars on earth (I read recently that they’ve counted up more than three thousand—big and small), but war remains, as it has always been, one of the chief human mysteries. Nothing has changed. I am trying to bring that great history down to human scale, in order to understand something. To find the words. Yet in this seemingly small and easily observable territory—the space of one human soul—everything is still less comprehensible, less predictable than in history. Because before me are living tears, living feelings. A living human face, which the shadows of pain and fear pass over as we talk. Occasionally a subversive hunch even creeps in of the barely perceptible beauty of human suffering. Then I get frightened of my own self…

  There is only one path—to love this human being. To understand through love.

  * * *

  * Russian tile stoves are elaborate structures that include “shelves” for sleeping.

  The search continues…But this time I don’t have far to go…

  The street I live on in Minsk is named after the Hero of the Soviet Union Vasily Zakharovich Korzh—participant in the Civil War, hero of battles in Spain, commander of a partisan brigade during the Great Patriotic War. Every Belorussian has read a book about him, at least in school, or seen a movie. He is a Belorussian legend. Having written his name hundreds of times on envelopes or telegram forms, I had never thought about him as a real man. The myth has long replaced the once-living person. Has become his double. But this time I walked down the familiar street with a new feeling: a half-hour trolleybus ride to the other end of the city, and I’ll see his daughters—they both fought at the front—and his wife. Before my eyes the legend will come alive and turn into a human life, descend to earth. The great will become small. However much I love to look at the sky or the sea, still I’m more fascinated by a grain of sand under a microscope. The world in a single drop. The great and incredible life I discover in it. How can I call the small small and the great great, when both are so boundless? I’ve long ceased to distinguish between them. For me one human being is so much. There is everything in him—you can get lost.

  I find the address I need—again a massive and unwieldy multistoried building. Here is entrance 3; in the elevator I press the button for the seventh floor…

  The door is opened by the younger sister—Zinaida Vasilyevna. The same wide dark eyebrows and the stubbornly open gaze as her father’s in the photographs.

  —

  “We’re all here…My sister Olya came from Moscow this morning. She lives there. Teaches at Patrice Lumumba University. And our mama is here. So, thanks to you, we’ve all gotten together.”

  —

  Both sisters, Olga Vasilyevna and Zinaida Vasilyevna Korzh, had been medical assistants in cavalry squadrons. They sat next to each other and looked at their mother, Feodosia Alexeevna.

  It was she who began:

  “Everything was burning…They told us to evacuate…We rode for a long time. We reached the Stalingrad region. Women with children moved to the rear, and men moved up. Combine drivers, tractor drivers, everybody went. Whole truckloads. One man, I remember, stood up and shouted, ‘Mothers, sisters!! Go to the rear, harvest bread, so we can defeat the enemy!’ And they all took their hats off and looked at us.
And all we had time to bring with us were our children. We held them. Some in our arms, some by the hand. He begged, ‘Mothers, sisters! Go to the rear, harvest bread…’ ”

  During the whole time of our conversation she did not utter another word. Her daughters would quietly stroke her hand every once in a while to calm her down.

  Zinaida Vasilyevna

  We lived in Pinsk. I was fourteen and a half, Olya was sixteen, our brother Lenya thirteen. Just during those days we sent Olya to a children’s sanatorium, and father wanted to go with us to the country. To his family…But in fact he didn’t spend that night at home. He worked in the regional party committee, was summoned during the night, and came home only in the morning. He stopped in the kitchen, grabbed something to eat, and said, “Children, war has begun. Don’t go anywhere. Wait for me.”

  We left by night. Father had a most precious souvenir from Spain—a hunting rifle, richly ornamented, with a cartridge belt. It was a reward for courage. He tossed the rifle to my brother. “You’re the eldest now, you’re a man, you must look after mama and your little sisters…”

  We kept that rifle all through the war. Whatever nice things we had, we sold or exchanged for bread, but we kept the rifle. We couldn’t part with it. It was our memory of father. He also threw a big sheepskin coat into the car with us. It was the warmest thing he had.

  At the station we got onto a train, but before we reached Gomel, we came under heavy shelling. The command: “Off the train, into the bushes, lie flat!” When the shelling was over…First silence, then shouting…everybody ran…Mama and my brother managed to jump back onto the train, but I stayed. I was very frightened…Very! I had never been alone before. And here I was—alone. It seems I even lost speech for a time…I went dumb…Somebody asked me something, and I was silent…Then I attached myself to some woman and helped her to bandage the wounded—she was a doctor. They addressed her as “Comrade Captain.” And I rode on with her medical unit. They were nice to me, fed me, but soon it occurred to them: “How old are you?”

  I realized that if I told the truth they would send me to some children’s home. I figured it out at once. But I no longer wanted to lose these strong people. I wanted to fight the way they did. It had been instilled in us—and my father had said—that we’d fight on foreign territory, that it was all temporary, that the war would soon end in victory. All that without me? Those were the childish thoughts I had. I told them I was sixteen, and they let me stay. Soon they sent me to training courses. I studied for about four months at these courses. I studied and at the same time took care of the wounded. Got used to the war…Of course we had to get used to it…I didn’t study at the school, but right there, in the medical battalion. We were retreating and taking the wounded with us.

  We didn’t follow the roads; the roads were being bombed, shelled. We moved across the swamps, along the waysides. We moved in a scattered way. Various units. Where they became concentrated, it meant they were giving battle. And so we went on, and on, and on. Went across the fields. What a harvest! We walked and trampled down the rye. And the harvest that year was unprecedented, the grain stood very tall. Green grass, bright sun, and dead men lying there, blood…Dead men and animals. Blackened trees…Destroyed train stations…Charred people hanging from black train cars…We went on like that as far as Rostov. I was wounded there during a bombardment. I regained consciousness on a train and heard an elderly soldier, a Ukrainian, barking at a young one, “Your wife didn’t cry so bad giving birth as you’re crying now.” When he saw me open my eyes, he said, “But you cry away, dear, cry away. It’ll make things easier. Go ahead.” I remembered mama and wept…

  After the hospital I was given a leave, and I tried to find my mama. And she was looking for me, and my sister Olya was looking for us both. Oh, miracle! We all found each other through some acquaintances in Moscow. We all wrote to their address, and so found each other. A miracle! Mama was living near Stalingrad in a kolkhoz. I went there.

  It was the end of 1941…

  How did they live? My brother worked on a tractor; he was still quite young, thirteen years old. First he was a trailer hand, and when all the tractor drivers were taken to the front, he became a driver. He worked day and night. Mama followed the tractor or sat next to him. She was afraid he would get sleepy and fall off. The two of them slept on someone’s floor…They didn’t undress, because there was nothing to cover themselves with. That was their life…Soon Olya came; they gave her a job as an accountant. She wrote to the recruiting office asking to be sent to the front, and kept being refused. And we decided—I was already a seasoned warrior—that we’d go to Stalingrad together and find some unit there. We set mama at ease, by deceiving her that we were going to Kuban, the rich parts, where father had acquaintances…

  I had an old uniform overcoat, an army shirt, two pairs of trousers. I gave one pair to Olya; she had nothing at all. We also had one pair of boots for the two of us. Mama knitted something like socks or slippers for us, out of sheep’s wool, something warm. We walked forty miles on foot all the way to Stalingrad. One of us wore the boots, the other mama’s slippers. Then we’d change. We walked through freezing cold. It was February; we were frozen, hungry. What did mama make for us for the road? She made a sort of aspic from boiled bones and several flatcakes. And we were so hungry…If we fell asleep and dreamed, it was only about food. Loaves of bread flew over me in my sleep.

  We made it to Stalingrad, and there nobody wanted us. Nobody wanted to listen to us. Then we decided to go to Kuban, where mama had sent us, to the address papa had given. We got on some freight train. I put on the overcoat and sat, and Olya hid under the seats. Then we’d change places: I’d get under the seats and Olya would sit. They didn’t touch the military. And we had no money at all…

  We got to Kuban…a sort of miracle…Found the acquaintances. And there we were told that a volunteer Cossack corps was being formed. This was the 4th Cossack Cavalry Corps; later on it became a Guards corps. It was formed entirely of volunteers. There were people of all ages: seasoned Cossacks that Budenny and Voroshilov had once led to the attack,* and young ones as well. They took us. To this day I don’t know why. Maybe because we asked so many times. And there was nothing else they could do with us. We were enlisted in the same squadron. Each of us was issued a uniform and a horse. Your horse had to be fed, watered, fully taken care of. Luckily when I was little we had a horse, and I got used to it and loved it. So when they gave me a horse, I mounted it—and wasn’t scared at all. I didn’t manage it right away, but I wasn’t afraid. My horse was small, tail down to the ground, but it was quick, obedient, and I somehow learned to ride it quickly. Even showed off…Later I rode Hungarian and Romanian horses. And I came to love horses so much, and to know them so well, that even now I can’t pass by a horse with indifference. I hug them. We slept under their feet. The horse would move its leg carefully, and would never step on a human being. It would never step on a dead man, and if a living man was only wounded, it would never go away and abandon him. Very intelligent animals. For a cavalryman, a horse is a friend. A faithful friend.

  The first baptism in combat…It was when our corps took part in repelling tanks at the Cossack village of Kushchevskaya. After the battle of Kushchevskaya—it was the famous cavalry attack of the Kuban Cossacks—the corps was raised to the rank of a Guards corps. It was a dreadful battle…And for Olya and me—the most dreadful, because we were still very afraid. Though I had already fought and knew how it was…But still…When the cavalrymen went it was like an avalanche—capes flying, sabers bared, horses snorting, and a horse when it races is so strong…This whole avalanche went against the tanks, the artillery—it was like in an otherworldly dream. Unreal…And there were lots of fascists, lots more than us. They walked with their submachine guns at the ready, walked beside the tanks—and they couldn’t hold out against it, you see, they couldn’t hold out against that avalanche. They abandoned their submachine guns…Abandoned their cannons and f
led…That was a picture…

  Olga Vasilyevna

  I was bandaging the wounded…There was a fascist lying there. I thought he was dead and paid no attention to him, but he was only wounded…And he wanted to kill me…I felt it, as if somebody nudged me, and turned around to him. I managed to knock the submachine gun away with my foot. I didn’t kill him, but I didn’t bandage him either, I left. He was wounded in the stomach…

  Zinaida Vasilyevna

  I was leading a wounded man and suddenly saw two Germans coming from behind a tankette. The tankette had been hit, but they must have had time to get out. A split second! If I hadn’t managed to give them a burst, they would have shot me and the wounded man. It happened so unexpectedly. After the battle I went to them; they lay with their eyes open. I remember those eyes even now…One was such a handsome young German. It was a pity, even though he was a fascist, all the same…That feeling didn’t leave me for a long time. You see, I didn’t want to kill. There was such hatred in my soul: why had they come to our land? But when you yourself kill, it’s frightening…There’s no other word…Very frightening. When you yourself…

  The battle was over. The Cossack hundreds were breaking camp, and Olya wasn’t there. I was the last one to leave, I rode at the end, I kept looking back. It was evening. Olya wasn’t there…I got word that she stayed to pick up the wounded. There was nothing I could do, I just waited for her. I’d lag behind my hundred, wait a little, then catch up with everybody. I wept: Can it be I lost my sister in the first battle? Where is she? What’s happened to her? Maybe she’s dying somewhere, calling me…