War of The Rats - A Novel of Stalingrad - [World War II 01]

by David Robbins

  “Yes, sir.” I am not, Zaitsev thought, still a clerk.

  Batyuk pointed to Zaitsev’s neck. “I see you still wear your sailor’s shirt under your tunic.”

  Zaitsev tugged at the blue-and-white striped jersey beneath his outer shirt.

  “Yes, sir. In the navy we say the blue is the ocean’s waters and the white is the foam.”

  Batyuk smiled. “I’ve never seen the Pacific. I hear it’s beautiful. Perhaps one day.”

  The two sat silently. Both wore thin, faraway smiles across their faces. Batyuk blinked and cleared his throat.

  “Let me see your sniper journal.”

  Zaitsev handed the black leather booklet across the desk.

  The colonel flipped through the pages. Without looking up, he said, “As you know, in the last two weeks the Germans have kicked us out of the Tractor Factory in all but the northeast corner. They’re also threatening our positions in the Barricades and Red October plants.”

  Batyuk laid the journal on the desk. “Our bridgehead is dwindling. I’m going to tell you a few things you may not know. Then again, since you’re one of the men who makes those lines on that map come and go”—he motioned to his staffers drawing and erasing at their table— “you might know a great deal.”

  Zaitsev looked hard at his colonel. Batyuk reached under the desk and produced a bottle of vodka and two glasses. He poured.

  The two raised their drinks in toast. They gulped, then inhaled deeply through their shirtsleeves, the Russian ritual to make the sting of the vodka last a moment longer.

  Batyuk exhaled. “I’m sorry I can’t offer you any cabbage.”

  Zaitsev smiled. “Another time, Comrade Colonel.”

  Batyuk leaned across his desk. “Something’s up. I’m sure you’ve noticed that we’ve had our ammunition cut every day for a week. That means it’s being diverted somewhere else.” The colonel picked up a penknife and tapped it in his palm. “We have to hold out, Vasily. We’ve got to keep the Germans’ feet to the fire. I can’t tell you why, because I don’t know why. But something very big is up.”

  Batyuk motioned Zaitsev to follow him to the map table. He indicated the row of three giant factories, red and black lines mingled in a tangle of battle activity. Zaitsev thought how little the lines told of the destruction and terror inside those buildings.

  “We have forty thousand men in place,” Batyuk began. “We can stay at that level so long as we continue to get reinforcements. Whenever the Germans reduce our bridgehead, we just pack the men in more densely. Even though our positions are getting smaller, they’re not getting weaker. The Germans have been slow to catch on to this. In fact, Zhukov and the rest of the generals who know what’s going on aren’t concerned with space. If we can keep that number of men fighting somewhere in the city, the Nazis can’t pull out. Hitler won’t let them. He’s already announced to the world he controls Stalingrad. I think Hitler’s just mad because the city is named after Stalin.” Batyuk chuckled. “Who knows. Anyway, as long as they can’t leave, you and I are doing our jobs.”

  The colonel moved his hand to an open area between the city center and the factory district. His finger came to rest over a black circle. “This is Hill 102.8,” he said, referring to the hill’s height in meters above sea level. Its real name was Mamayev Kurgan, the burial mound of Mamay, an ancient Tatar king. “The Germans control this hill. From here they can see every damned thing going on . . . here.” Batyuk drew a ring around the city center. “Here . . .” He motioned to a five-kilometer stretch of the ruins of three huge factories: on the eve of war, these plants had produced 40 percent of the Soviet Union’s tractors and 30 percent of its high-grade steel; the bombings of August and September had reduced them to gargantuan tangles of steel, twisted rails, and forlorn brick facades.

  “And worst of all, here.” Batyuk stabbed his finger three times along the Volga at the landing stages: the Skudri crossing, behind the Tractor Factory; Crossing No. 62, at the rear of the Barricades; and the moorings south of the Banny Gully, directly across from Krasnaya Sloboda, the Red Army’s main embarkation point on the east bank.

  “From 102.8, German spotters are directing artillery and air strikes against our supplies and reinforcements on the river.” Batyuk moved back to his desk. “With supplies already being cut, we could be in serious trouble if we don’t maximize use of what we do get from the east bank.”

  Zaitsev sat again on the keg. “Do you want me to hunt on Mamayev Kurgan? I know it pretty well.”

  Batyuk waved his hand. “Not yet.” He opened Zaitsev’s sniper journal to the first page. “Tell me about your introduction to being a sniper.”

  Zaitsev had seen his first snipers during the battle for the Tractor Factory only eighteen days before, two lithe men crawling in the direction of the bullets while others dug their way to cover. Zaitsev had admired their courage, how well they seemed to work on their own.

  “Do you like working on your own?” Batyuk inquired.

  “I am not unaccustomed to it. It’s how I hunt.”

  “Who commissioned you a sniper? When did it happen?”

  “On October eighth. We were in a shop of the Tractor Factory, pinned down under a machine gun. I don’t know—I just crawled to a spot, aimed, and fired.”

  “Distance?”

  “One hundred and seventy-five meters.”

  “You took out the machine gunner?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you shot the next two Nazis who got behind the gun.”

  “I did.” Zaitsev was surprised Batyuk knew this.

  “Lieutenant Deriabyn approached you and told you to report to the sniper unit of my division, yes? You, along with your Siberian friend Viktor Medvedev—another crack shot, I hear—began as snipers with your telescopic sights the next day.”

  Zaitsev nodded. Batyuk was not inviting comment.

  “What kind of training did you get?”

  Zaitsev said nothing.

  “Hmmm?” Batyuk took up the penknife. He tapped it on the table. It said, quietly, Answer me, Chief Master Sergeant.

  Zaitsev’s first days as a freshman sniper had been marked by a funereal silence. The nine other snipers in the squad did not speak often. No one seemed sure how long any of them would live. Camaraderie did not exist. The snipers were fresh-scrubbed boys and weasel-eyed men, long-limbed athletes and stocky pugs, all volunteers. They had been recommended for sniper duty by their platoon commanders, each for his ability to kill one target at a time from a distance. It seemed they were all resolute to survive the same way, one at a time, alone, at a distance.

  The unit lived in a dirt cave, a bunker dug by a heavy artillery round and then covered with rafters and debris to disguise it from Nazi dive-bombers. At night, when Zaitsev and Viktor returned to the snipers’ bunker, they alone talked by the glow of the lantern of strategies and their similar childhoods in the Urals. They spoke of hunting the enemy in Stalingrad as if the Nazis were animals in the wild, driven by instinct more than intellect. War, they agreed, scoured away man’s humanness to reveal the beast inside. The beast was what Zaitsev and Viktor tracked and killed.

  There was neither structure nor training in place for the snipers; experience was their teacher, the battle gave them their orders. Some of the men were sullen; others shone brightly, ready to prove their worth. Many had strength; others had patience; some had brains. Few combined all three, and Zaitsev and Viktor watched the faces come and go, disappearing into the giant meat grinder of war in the decimated streets, cellars, rusted metal, and pockmarked walls.

  “None, sir,” Zaitsev answered. “No training.”

  Batyuk turned back to the opening page in the journal. “Tell me about your first sniper kill.” He found a place on the page with his finger. “October eighth. You had two kills near the railway behind the chemical factory.”

  On Zaitsev’s initial dawn as a sniper, he’d spotted an enemy unit digging a trench to connect two shattered rail cars. That even
ing he’d asked the sniper squad’s leader, a corporal, for permission to return and hunt them. Since he was a chief master sergeant, the rank he brought with him from his years as a naval clerk, and the highest-ranking soldier in the bunker, he was told to do what he wanted. Before dawn, he and Viktor crawled out to take up positions three hundred meters from the trench.

  Zaitsev and Viktor watched the Nazis through binoculars under the rising sun. The two snipers let the Germans show themselves above the trench a few times to give them confidence that the area was secure. They would wait for one of the digging soldiers to finish his labor and thrust the shovel into the dirt or lean on it. That would be the time for a chest shot.

  “Why in the chest?” Batyuk interrupted.

  A chest shot, Zaitsev explained, would more likely cause the target to drop the shovel and leave it on top of the breastwork when he fell. A shot in the back would increase the odds of him taking the shovel back down into the trench. Just as planned, the first soldier to die— with Medvedev’s bullet in his heart—let the shovel fly from his grasp before he tumbled backward into the trench. Viktor and Zaitsev trained their sights on the tool left lying in full view. In minutes a head and an arm appeared above the dirt wall to retrieve it.

  Viktor whispered, “You.”

  Zaitsev’s bullet pierced the Nazi’s cheek.

  “Where did you learn this tactic?” Batyuk sat forward, his fingers playing under his chin.

  “It’s a simple ploy for a hunter from the Urals, sir. Wolves and other animals in the taiga mate for life. You bait one with the body of the other.”

  Batyuk opened his hands. “Ah, yes, of course. In Siberia. I fear we’re out of wolves in my home, the Ukraine.” He turned more pages in the journal. “And this one? Last week you were on the southern slope of Mamayev Kurgan, hunting enemy snipers.” Batyuk held the book closer to his eyes. “What is the ‘mortar shell trick’?”

  Again Zaitsev explained to his colonel. He’d picked up this ploy from a German sniper who’d feasted on Russian wounded during their evacuation through a ravine near Mamayev Kurgan. Zaitsev had crawled to a position high above the ravine. He lay behind cover for hours, watching with his artillery periscope. The periscope was an excellent tool, allowing him to stay out of sight and observe a wide range at four power, the same as his sniper scope. It was precise to 250 meters. Looking near the crest of the hill, Zaitsev saw a heap of empty brass mortar shells. He counted twenty-three shells. He noted that one among the pile had no bottom.

  “You counted the shells?” Batyuk tapped his pocketknife in his palm. “I marvel at your attention to detail. That’s fantastic.”

  “Not really, sir. Noticing details is a more important skill than shooting for distance. Movements in the terrain, even the smallest shift in a rock or a new hole in a wall, are the only clues you may get to the location of a sniper. These are the tracks we read, just like footprints in the snow or animal scat on the forest floor.”

  Batyuk nodded. Zaitsev knew he was telling his colonel things the man did not, could not, know. Oh, well, he thought, Batyuk asked me. What can I do but tell him? Zaitsev reminded himself to try not to boast. You’re just a hunter, hunting. It’s what you do well. Let it speak for itself.

  “When I saw the bottomless mortar shell, I realized it would make a perfect shooting tube. It could be buried inside a trench mound or hidden among other shells, as this sniper had done. It would make him almost invisible.”

  Zaitsev had focused his periscope on the shell. With his free hand, he raised his helmet on his bayonet. A flash appeared inside the shell. The helmet sprang off the bayonet, dented in the front. Zaitsev gave the sniper credit for his patience and cunning. He’d had the first shot. The next belonged to the Hare.

  The following dawn Zaitsev crawled to the same spot and located the shell pile. He counted again. This time he found only twenty-two shells. The shooting tube was gone. This sniper was no freshman; he knew to shoot and move. He’d taken the open shell with him. Where? Using the periscope, Zaitsev looked in every pit in the ground, along every mound. After three exhausting hours he found the brass shell buried near the top of a trench a hundred meters east of its original site. The camouflage was sloppy; part of the tube was left sticking out of the trench. A yellow reflection glistened in the rising sun, enough for Zaitsev to zero in on.

  He crawled to a new position, one where the sun was directly over his shoulder and shining into the eyes of the German. He laid his rifle between two rocks and focused his scope on the mouth of the tube. Leaving the rifle, he slithered three meters to a pile of bricks. Again he raised his helmet on the bayonet Again the Nazi stung the helmet with a bullet. Zaitsev scrambled back to his rifle. He stared down his scope into the open shell two hundred meters away. At the other end of the brass tube, the sniper leaned down just for a second to pick the spent casing from the trench floor. Still following the rules, Zaitsev thought, like all good snipers. Leave no trace behind.

  Zaitsev waited for him to straighten. When he did, he split the Germans brow with his crosshairs. The bullet, Zaitsev’s lone offering in this one-on-one battle, struck between the eyes. He saw the rifle, lying ownerless now, in the gleaming shell.

  “Between the eyes?” Batyuk repeated. He seemed doubtful.

  “Yes, sir.”

  Zaitsev held the colonel’s gaze. It had been his shot, his kill. One bullet, one Nazi. That was Zaitsev’s creed, his special gift. He did not doubt. He raised his finger. He put it between his own eyebrows. “Right here,” he said.

  Batyuk returned his attention to Zaitsev’s journal. He read through the final entries, then laid the booklet on the desk.

  “This morning you shot an officer near the Tractor Factory.”

  Zaitsev stretched his back. He’d been sitting for almost an hour. “The Germans change shifts at dawn. The ones coming on watch often light a cigarette or do something stupid like stretch. The sleepy ones get careless.”

  “What did this one do?”

  “He took a drink from a canteen. His head popped up like a cork.”

  Batyuk waited.

  Zaitsev shrugged. “And I blew it off. Sir.”

  Batyuk patted the journal. “It says here you’ve killed forty-two Germans in twelve days’ work. How many bullets have you used in those twelve days?”

  “Forty-three, sir.”

  Batyuk smiled. “What went wrong?”

  “I was hunting some officers on Mamayev Kurgan. I crawled above them on the slope. They were bathing in a pool of rainwater in a crater. I forgot to take into account that I was firing downhill.”

  “And?”

  “And I was tired and did not add one eighth of the distance to the total. I undershot. The officers jumped out of the pool.”

  Batyuk continued to smile. “What did you do then, Vasily?”

  “I saw my mistake and I left.”

  Batyuk leaned forward, his fingers steepled above his palms. “You didn’t shoot more at the officers? I assume they were visible long enough for you to get off another shot.”

  “Yes, sir, I could have fired. But it’s not the good way. A sniper should not shoot after he’s revealed his position. One or two officers in return for a sniper is not a good trade.”

  Batyuk stood up. He nodded in small bobs, then clapped his hands once. “Vasily, I have a job for you.”

  * * * *

  VIKTOR MEDVEDEV FOLDED HIS RED STAR NEWSPAPER IN the middle.

  “He wants you to do what?”

  The two were alone in the snipers’ bunker in late afternoon.

  Viktor’s custom was to prowl from sunset until noon, then rest during the day.

  Zaitsev replied, “He wants me to start a sniper school.”

  “You?” Viktor tossed the Red Star at Zaitsev’s chest.

  Zaitsev crumpled a page into a ball and bounced it off his fellow Siberian’s forehead. “Batyuk says he needs heroes.”

  “I’m going to be sick.” Viktor lifted his girth o
ff the floor to pace and raise his arms in mock exasperation. “He wants heroes. What’s he got now? Sheep? Children?”

  He bent to pick up the wadded news page. “Don’t do this to my paper. I read this. You may not think what’s in here matters,” he said holding up the ball, “but I do.”

  The big man’s peevishness amused Zaitsev. He watched his friend uncrumple the paper and smooth it on the table. He looks like a giant woman doing her ironing, Zaitsev thought.

  “You’ll need my help, of course,” Viktor said.

  “Of course. There are so many things I don’t know.”

  Viktor folded the wrinkled page carefully. “These damn freshmen they send us are too fast, too hot. They last about a week before they get their dicks shot off.”