Life And Fate (Orange Inheritance)
59
The silence was suddenly broken by an explosion to Darensky’s right. ‘A hundred and three millimetres,’ he said to himself at once. All the usual thoughts immediately went through his mind: ‘Was that a stray shot? Are they registering? I hope they haven’t already bracketed us. Is it going to be a full-scale barrage? Are they preparing the ground for a tank-attack?’
Every experienced soldier was asking the same questions.
An experienced soldier can distinguish one genuinely alarming sound from among a hundred others. Whatever he’s doing – eating, cleaning his rifle, writing a letter, scratching his nose, reading a newspaper; even if his mind is as empty as only that of an off-duty soldier can be – he cocks his head and listens intently and avidly.
The answer came straight away. There were explosions to the right of them, then to the left of them – and suddenly everything began shaking, smoking and thundering.
A full-scale barrage.
The flames of the explosions pierced the clouds of smoke, dust and sand; at the same time, smoke poured out of the flames. Everywhere people were running for cover, dropping to the ground.
The desert was filled by a terrible howl. Mortar-bombs had begun falling near the camels; they were running wild, upsetting their carts and dragging their broken harnesses along the ground. Darensky just stood there, forgetting the whistling shells, gazing in horror at the appalling spectacle.
He couldn’t rid himself of the thought that these were the last days of his motherland. He felt a sense of doom. The terrible howl of maddened camels, the anxious Russian voices, the men running for shelter! Russia was dying! Here she was, driven into the cold sands of Asia, dying under a sullen, indifferent moon. The Russian language he so cherished had become mingled with the terrified screams of wounded camels.
What he felt at this bitter moment was not anger or hatred, but a feeling of brotherhood towards everything poor and weak. For some reason he glimpsed the dark face of the old Kalmyk he had met in the steppe; he seemed very close – as though they had known one another for a long time.
‘We’re in the hands of Fate,’ he thought, realizing that he’d rather not stay alive if Russia was defeated.
He looked round at the soldiers; they were lying prone in whatever hollows they had been able to find. He drew himself up to his full height, ready to take command of the battery, and called out:
‘Where’s the telephonist? Quick! I want you right here.’
At that very moment the thunder of explosions ceased.
That night, on Stalin’s orders, the commanders of three Fronts, Vatutin, Rokossovsky and Yeremenko, launched the offensive that, within a hundred hours, was to decide the battle of Stalingrad and the fate of Paulus’s 330,000-strong army, the offensive that was to mark a turning-point in the war.
A telegram was waiting for Darensky at headquarters. He was to attach himself to Colonel Novikov’s tank corps and keep the General Staff informed of its operations.