“I don’t have any planes,” said Alexander. “And only one tank.”
“You need to move fifty kilometers south and cross the river at its narrowest point. There is a bridge there, though I’m sure it’s been mined—”
“How do you know this?”
She smiled. “First of all, I used to live in Tarnow, not too far from there. And second, the fucking Fritzes when they went out of here a month ago talked German as if I didn’t understand. They think we’re all idiots. I’m sure the short white-and-blue bridge there has been mined. Don’t take the bridge. But the river is shallow. You can build pontoons for the deepest point, but I bet all of you can swim. You’ll even get your tank across. The forest is not well defended: it’s too thick and mountainous. I’m not guaranteeing it’s undefended. Just not well defended. It’s mostly partisan groups over there—both German and Soviet. If you can get across, you’ll get right into the woods and past those woods is almost Germany! At least you’ll have a chance. But if you cross the Vistula at Pulawy or Dolny, you’re all dead.”
She stopped. “Well, here we are.” She pointed to a small residential house. The lights were all on. She smiled. “That’s how you know us sinners. Any time of night, the lights are always on.”
He smiled back.
“Thank you,” she said. “I’m glad I didn’t have to do one more tonight. I’m exhausted.” She touched his chest. “Though I wouldn’t have minded one more with you.”
Alexander adjusted her dress. “What’s your name?”
She smiled. “Vera,” she replied. “Means faith in Russian, right? And you?”
“I’m Alexander,” he said. “The white-and-blue bridge down near Tarnow…does it have a name?”
Vera kissed him lightly on the lips. “Most do Swietokryzst. The bridge to Holy Cross.”
The next morning Alexander sent five men north to Pulawy on a reconnaissance trip to the Vistula. The men did not come back. He sent another five men straight across to Dolny. The men did not come back.
It was the start of August and the reports coming from Warsaw were slow and grim. Despite much talk of pushing the Germans out of Warsaw, the Germans remained exactly as they were, reports of Soviet casualties were monumental and Poles, incited by the Soviets and spurred on by false promises of Soviet help had risen against the Germans by themselves and were now being massacred.
Alexander waited a few more days, but in the absence of good news, he took Ouspensky and they walked through the forest to the Vistula where they hid in the banks and watched the silent bulrushes on the other side. They were almost alone—if they looked straight ahead. Behind them were two NKGB troops, with slung rifles. No penal battalion officers were allowed to wander through Poland on their own even if it was ostensibly for a recon mission. The NKGB was the omnipresent police. They didn’t fight the Germans, they just guarded the Gulag prisoners. There had not been a single day during the past year when they were not in Alexander’s eyesight.
“I hate those bastards,” muttered Ouspensky.
“I don’t think about them.” Alexander ground his teeth. He did not stop thinking about them.
“You should. They want harm to come to you.”
“I don’t take it personally.” He took it personally.
They smoked. The morning was sunny and clear. The river reminded Alexander…He smoked, and lit up another and another—to poison his memory with nicotine. “Ouspensky, I need your advice.”
“Honored, sir.”
“I have been ordered to force the bridgehead at Dolny at sunrise tomorrow.”
“Looks quiet,” said Ouspensky.
“It looks it, doesn’t it? But what if”—he inhaled—“what if I told you that you were going to die tomorrow?”
“Captain, you’re describing to me my life for the last three years.”
Alexander continued. “What if I told you we could go downriver where the German defenses aren’t as heavy, and live? I don’t know for how long, and I don’t know if in the end it would make a bit of difference, but it certainly feels that the winds of destiny are at our heels this summer morning. Live or die, they whisper.”
“Commander, may I just ask what in fuck’s name you’re talking about?”
“I’m talking about your path in life, Ouspensky. One way lies the rest of it. The other way the rest of it too—but shorter.”
“What makes you think we’ll do better downriver?”
Alexander shrugged. He didn’t want to tell him about a soft-fleshed girl named Faith. “I know that Dolny is deceptively quiet.”
“Commander, you have a commander too, don’t you? I heard you on the horn this morning. General Konev was clearly giving you orders to take Dolny.”
Nodding, Alexander said, “Yes. He is sending us to our death. The river is too deep and wide, the bridge is exposed. The Germans don’t even mine the bridge, I bet. They just shoot us from Dolny across the Vistula.”
Ouspensky backed off into the woods and said, “I don’t think we have much choice, Captain. You are not General Konev. You have to go where he tells you. And even he has to go where Comrade Stalin tells him.”
Alexander was thoughtful. He did not move from the bank. “Look at that bridge. Look at that river. It’s carrying the bodies of thousands of Soviet men.” Alexander paused. “Tomorrow it’ll be carrying you and me.”
“I don’t see them,” Ouspensky said casually, squinting. “And someone must make it through.” That was less casual.
Alexander shook his head. “No. No one. All dead. Like us. Tomorrow.” He smiled. “Look at the Vistula carefully, Lieutenant. Come sunrise, this will be your grave. Enjoy your last day on this earth. God has made it a particularly beautiful one.”
Ouspensky chuckled. “Good thing then you had it off with that girl, isn’t it?”
Alexander got up and as they were walking ten kilometers back to Lublin, said, “I am going to call General Konev about changing our mission. But I need your full support, Lieutenant.”
“I’m with you till the day you die, sir, much to my infernal dismay.”
Alexander managed to convince Konev to let them travel fifty kilometers south down the Vistula. It wasn’t as difficult as he had anticipated. Konev was well aware of what was happening to the Soviets at Dolny, and the main divisions of the Ukrainian front were not at the Vistula yet. He was not averse to trying a new position.
As Alexander’s battalion set off for the woods, Ouspensky complained and whined the entire time he was breaking down Alexander’s tent and getting their gear together. He complained up until the time he hopped into the open tank and told Telikov to step on it. He complained when he saw that Alexander was walking behind the tank and not getting on.
Alexander walked behind, through the narrow trampled path that led through the summer fields to the forest stretching for fifty hilly kilometers along the Vistula. He turned around. A squadron of NKGB troops armed to their miserable gills marched doggedly behind him.
They broke camp three times, and fished in the river, and carried carrots and potatoes with them from Lublin and stories of warm potatoes and warmer Polish girls, they sang songs and shaved until no hair was left on their bodies and behaved like Cub Scouts, not like convicted felons on the way to a road with no hope. Alexander sang louder than most and was more cheerful than all and walked faster than his men with the wind at his back.
Ouspensky, however, continued to grumble each and every kilometer. At one point during a late afternoon, he jumped down from the tank and walked next to Alexander for a bit.
“Only if I don’t hear a breath of complaint from you.”
“I am allowed to use my soldier’s privilege,” Ouspensky said grumpily.
“Yes, but why do you have to use it so much?” Alexander was thinking of the river and listening with only one ear to Ouspensky. “Walk faster, you one-lunged malingerer.”
“Sir, the girl back in Lublin…Why didn’t you avail yourself of her kindness???
?
Alexander did not reply.
“You know, sir,” said Ouspensky, “I had to pay for her regardless. The least you could have done was have her. Just as a courtesy to me, dammit.”
“Next time I’ll remember to be more considerate.”
Ouspensky marched closer. “Captain, what is wrong with you? Didn’t you see her? Did you not see her tit-for-tats? The rest of her was just as succulent.”
“Oh?”
“Didn’t you find her—”
“She wasn’t my type.”
“What is your type, sir? If you don’t mind my asking. The canteen had all kinds—”
“I like the kind that haven’t been to a canteen.”
“Oh, dear God. It’s war!”
“I have plenty to keep my mind occupied, Lieutenant.”
“Do you want me to tell you about the Polish girl?” Ouspensky cleared his throat.
Smiling and looking straight ahead, Alexander said, “Tell me, Lieutenant. And you may not leave out any details. That’s an order.”
Ouspensky spoke for five minutes. When he was finished, Alexander was silent for a moment, taking in what he just heard, and then said, “That’s the best you can do?”
“The story took longer than the actual knock!” Ouspensky exclaimed. “Who am I, Cicero?”
“You’re not even a very good entertainer. Surely sex can’t be that boring, or have I just forgotten?”
“Have you?”
“I don’t think so.”
“You tell me a story then.”
Shaking his head, Alexander said, “The stories I can tell you, I’ve forgotten. The stories I remember, I can’t tell you.” Alexander felt Nikolai staring at him. “What?” He walked a little faster. “Go ahead, men!” he called to his formation. “Don’t fucking die right in front of me. Faster! Hip hop! We’ve got another twenty kilometers before our destination. Don’t dilly dally.” He glanced at Ouspensky. “What?” Alexander barked at his lieutenant who was still staring at him.
“Captain, who did you leave behind?”
“It’s not who I left behind,” replied Alexander, marching faster, holding his machine gun tighter. “It’s who left me behind.”
They got to the bridge by the third nightfall. Immediately the telephone stringer left to find an Army Group Ukraine division to run a wire from the high command to Alexander.
At pre-dawn, Alexander was up. He sat by the banks of the river, it was no more than 200 feet wide and looked onto the small innocuous bridge, an old, wooden, once-white bridge. “Most do Swietokryzst,” Alexander whispered. It was very early Sunday morning and there was no one on it, but beyond the bridge in the distance, across the river, were the church spires of the town of Swietokryzst and beyond them were the dense oaks of the Holy Cross mountains.
Alexander was going to wait for a division of Army Group Ukraine to catch up with him, but he reconsidered. He was going to stop at nothing to cross the river first.
It was peaceful. It was hard to believe that in one day, the next morning, the sky, the earth, the water was going to be filled with the blood of his men. Maybe there are no Germans on the other side at all, he thought, and then we can cross and then somehow hide in the woods. The Americans entered Europe two months ago. Eventually they will be in Germany. All I have to do is live long enough to fall into American hands…
At one of these bridges, a painter would sit and on another Sunday would perhaps paint families rowing down the river in little boats, the women in white hats, the men with oars, the young children in white dresses. In his painting perhaps the woman is wearing a blue hat. Perhaps the child is about one. She holds the child in her arms, and smiles, and the man smiles back and rows a little faster, as the wake behind him increases, the goldenrod hue gleams, and the painter catches it all.
What Alexander wanted this morning was his childhood back. He felt as if he were eighty. When was the last time he ran with a smile to anything? When was the last time he ran to something without a gun in his hand? When was the last time he crossed the street in stride?
He didn’t want to answer those questions, not before he crossed the bridge to Swietokryzst.
“OPEN FIRE! OPEN FIRE!”
The next day in the river they were dying under the oppressive popping din of enemy fire, and not slowly dying, either. His infantry ran in first, but they needed immediate help.
Their tank was stuck in the rocky bottom, immersed up to the treads in the water. Verenkov loaded a 100-millimeter shell into the cannon and fired. The explosion and resounding screams told Alexander that Verenkov did not miss. He reloaded with smaller ammunition, but didn’t have enough time to open fire.
The tank was a large target. Alexander knew that it was about to be blown apart. He didn’t want to lose his tank and his weapons, but he needed his men more. “Jump!” he shouted to his crew. “Live one coming!”
They all jumped—rather, they were thrown as the shell hit the tank nose and exploded on impact. With regret for his only piece of motorized artillery, Alexander began to wade through the water holding his machine gun above his head and shooting in short bursts at the small beachhead in front of him on the other side of the river. Ouspensky covered him from behind and to the side. Alexander heard Ouspensky yelling at him to MOVE BACK, to STEP BACK, to GET BEHIND, to HOLD, to DROP BACK, FIND COVER! FIND COVER! motioning at him, pulling him down, cursing, but all Alexander did was push Ouspensky off him, ignore him and continue forward. Telikov and Verenkov grabbed each other as they swam. Only Alexander was tall enough to wade through, water up to his neck. He was able to aim better than his men; swimming and shooting at the same time was inefficient at best.
All around him was machine-gun fire. He couldn’t tell where it was coming from. Every round felt as though it were hitting his helmet.
His men were floating.
The Vistula was turning red. Alexander had to get to the other side. Once they were on dry land anything was possible. And this is better than Dolny, better than Pulawy? he thought. Here the German defenses are down?
In the water nothing seemed possible.
Ouspensky continued to shout, as always. This time it wasn’t directed at Alexander. “Look at them all screaming like a bunch of pussies! Who are we fighting? Men or girls?”
Alexander spotted one of his own men clutching a corpse. It was Yermenko.
“Corporal!” Alexander yelled. “Where is your battle partner?”
Yermenko lifted the dead body. “Right here, sir!”
Alexander could see that Yermenko was struggling in the water. Quickly Alexander swam to him and yelled at him, but Yermenko was still struggling. He was using the body as a float. “What the fuck is wrong with you?” Alexander yelled. “Drop the soldier, and swim!”
“I can’t swim, sir!”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake!” Alexander got Ouspensky, Telikov and Verenkov to help Yermenko across. They were all ten meters from the shoreline when from the nearby bushes on the beach out jumped three Germans. Alexander didn’t spend a second thinking. He fired; through the air they flew.
Then three more came. Then three more. He fired again and again. Four Germans jumped in the river and headed straight for Alexander, raising their weapons at him. Yermenko lunged in front of Alexander, pointed his weapon at the Germans and mowed them down. Ouspensky, Telikov, and Verenkov formed a wall in front of Alexander. Ouspensky yelled, “Back, Captain! Stand back!” He shot from above the shoulder and missed.
Alexander lifted his Shpagin above Ouspensky’s head, shot from above the shoulder and did not miss. “If you miss, shoot again, Lieutenant!” he yelled.
But now five Germans were in the water, meters away, water up to their waists. Alexander kept shooting and trying to get closer to the beachhead. His men kept fighting off the Germans with the butts of their rifles and their bayonets, trying to get closer to shore, but they were having no luck. The wet band of them in the water were too exposed, and more and more Ger
mans kept coming.
In battle, three out of Alexander’s five senses were heightened. He saw danger like an owl in darkness, he smelled blood like a hyena, he heard noises like a wolf. He never got distracted, he never got confused, he never became uncertain, he saw and smelled and heard everything. He did not taste his own blood, he did not feel his own pain.
On his flank he saw a flash of light and had just enough time to lurch forward, the bullet missing him by half a meter. The German soldier was so livid at missing at point blank range, he stabbed Alexander with his bayonet. He was aiming for the neck, but Alexander’s neck was too high for the German. The bayonet pierced him in the lower left shoulder, cutting into his arm. Alexander swung his weapon and nearly sliced off the German’s head. The man went down, but now there were five of them on top of him, and he with his arm bleeding took out his knife and his bayonet and fought them until they went down and Ouspensky got their guns. Now that they had weapons in each hand, they became a wall of bullets moving to the shore and they weren’t stopped.
There were no more Germans coming from the bushes, and there was no more firing, either. And suddenly all was quiet except for the panting of the still breathing, except for the death throes of the still dying, except for the bubbling of the river burying the dead.
Alexander’s men crawled out onto the sand.
Alexander wanted a smoke, but his cigarettes were wet. He watched the NKGB troops cautiously swim across the river, holding their rifles and mortars above their heads.
“Fucking pussies,” Ouspensky whispered to Alexander, who sat between him and Yermenko. Alexander didn’t say anything to Ouspensky, but when the NKGB got to the beach, he stood up and without saluting said, “You should have taken the unmined bridge and walked across like the civilians you are.”
The NKGB man—not a scrape on him—stared coldly at Alexander and said, “Address me properly.”
“You should have taken the fucking bridge, comrade,” said Alexander, bloodied from the helmet down, holding on to his machine gun.