Life And Fate (Orange Inheritance)
7
General Chuykov, the commander of the 62nd Army,fn1 had lost all contact with his troops. Most of the wireless sets had gone dead and the telephone cables had all been severed.
Sometimes it seemed as though the gently rippling Volga was something fixed and stable, and that the quaking earth was huddling against its still margins. From the left bank, hundreds of pieces of Soviet heavy artillery kept up a constant barrage. Round the German positions on the southern slopes of Mamayev Kurgan, the earth whirled into the air like smoke. These clouds of earth then passed through the sieve of gravity, the heavier lumps falling straight to the ground, the dust rising into the sky.
Several times during the day the soldiers had fought off attacks by German tanks and infantry. Their eyes were bloodshot and their ears deafened.
To the senior officers cut off from their troops the day seemed interminable. Chuykov, Krylov and Gurov had tried everything under the sun to fill in the time: they had invented work for themselves, written letters, argued about what the enemy might do next, drunk vodka with and without something to eat, and had listened in silence to the roar of the guns. An iron whirlwind howled over the bunker, slicing through anything living that raised its head above the earth’s surface. The Army Headquarters was paralysed.
‘Let’s have a game of fool!’ said Chuykov, pushing aside a large ashtray full of cigarette-ends.
Even Krylov, the chief of staff, had lost his composure. Drumming his fingers on the table, he said: ‘I can’t imagine anything worse. We’re just sitting here – waiting to be eaten!’
Chuykov dealt, announced, ‘Hearts are trumps,’ and then suddenly scattered the cards. ‘I can’t bear it!’ he exclaimed. ‘We’re just sitting in our holes like rabbits.’ He sat there in silence. His face was agonized and full of hatred.
As though predicting his own end, Gurov murmured thoughtfully: ‘Another day like this and I’ll have a heart attack!’
He suddenly burst out laughing and said: ‘At the divisional command-post it’s impossible even to go to the bog during the day. I heard that Lyudnikov’s chief of staff once jumped down into the bunker and shouted out: “Hurrah! I’ve been for a shi . . . !” He looked round and there was the lady-doctor he was in love with.’
The German air-raids stopped at dusk. A man arriving in Stalingrad at night, deafened by the guns, might well imagine that some cruel fate had brought him there just as a major offensive was being launched. For the veterans, however, this was the time to shave, to wash clothes and write letters; for the turners, mechanics, solderers and watchmakers this was the time to repair clocks, cigarette-lighters, cigarette-holders, and the oil-lamps made from old shellcases with strips of greatcoat as wicks.
In the flickering light from the shell-bursts you could see the banks of the river, the oil-tanks and factory-chimneys, the ruins of the city itself. The view was sullen and sinister.
In the dark the signals centre came to life again. Typewriters clattered away as they copied dispatches, motors hummed, orders were tapped out in Morse code, telephonists exchanged messages as the command-posts of divisions, regiments, batteries and companies were once again connected up . . . Signals officers who had just arrived gave measured coughs as they waited to give their reports to the duty-officer.
Pozharsky, the elderly artillery commander; General Tkachenko, the sapper in charge of the dangerous river-crossing; Guryev, the newly-arrived commander of the Siberian division; and Lieutenant-Colonel Batyuk, the Stalingrad veteran whose division was disposed below Mamayev Kurgan, all hurried to report to Chuykov and Krylov. At the front line itself, letters folded into triangles were handed to postmen . . . And the dead were buried – to spend the first night of their eternal rest beside the dug-outs and trenches where their comrades were writing letters, shaving, eating bread, drinking tea and washing in improvised baths.