by Amber Lough
Bam! The force jammed the stock into my shoulder, but I’d had lots of practice recently and the bruising there had turned hard. I barely noticed the pressure anymore.
I blinked, looked down the range, and saw that I had nicked the outer ring. Our shots had to be inside the ring to count. With a quiet curse, I reloaded. As I did so, I looked at the other recruits. Masha was two people down from me, loading her third shot. Alsu had already done this test and had moved on to the next one.
Again, I aimed. This time, I waited for the wind to die down and then pulled the trigger. The rifle hit me in the shoulder, and the bullet tore through the edge of the target again. I had one more bullet left.
The third time, I hit inside the outer ring.
“You’ll have to do better if you want your platoon to follow you in battle.” Bochkareva’s deep voice rumbled over my shoulder blades.
“Yes, Sergeant.”
Next came throwing grenades, and this I enjoyed more. I was good at it. Better than I’d been at filling them, even. The first time we’d come to the beach and thrown dummy grenades at barrels, I let the handle roll off my finger and it flew end over end and hit the outlined spot in the dirt. Every single barrel I aimed at, I dented. I could throw them twenty, thirty meters with accuracy. As children, Maxim and I had thrown rocks at the Neva, skipping them over the surface till they plunked into the water. There was a trick to it, letting the smooth stone slide over your fingers, slipping just so. In my fingers the grenade became a stone, the land between me and the barrel a river. And Maxim’s laughter echoed in my ears.
When we finished with the dummies, our trainers led us to the dunes. Dozens of metal crates lined up along one edge of the field, dull gray in the cloud-covered sky. Masha sucked in her breath, and I grimaced. These were crates she had packed. They were from our factory.
Sergeant Zapilov stood in front of the crates, his legs spread wide and his arms crossed in front of him. He scowled, but by this point we all knew he was soft in the center.
“These are real. There’s no point in throwing wooden grenades any longer if you plan to graduate. We waited as long as we could. You need to know how to pull the pin, how long to count, and then what to do once you’ve got a live grenade in your hands. I’ll take you five at a time, at first.” He paused. “Anyone got any experience with the M1914?”
Masha smiled at me, but neither of us said anything.
“Well then, you five in front, come up here.” That was Masha, Alsu, Muravyeva, a woman named Pul’khova whom I had barely spoken with, and me. He picked up a container of grenades—a six-pack—and carried it away from the others.
We followed him to an embankment made of sandbags and logs. It was dug into the sand chest-deep, and we went in, suddenly closed off from the world. I could barely hear the waves of the sea down here, and the sky was only a narrow strip of blue.
A trench.
Sergeant Zapilov popped open the container to reveal the six grenades nestled inside like eggs.
My heart beat with the characteristics. Weight: 580 grams. Length: 235 milimeters. Filling: 320 grams of TNT. Timing delay: 3.5-4 seconds. Effective range: 15 meters. It was like a poem I’d had to memorize in school, but one with a deadly cadence. 235mm was about the length of my forearm, and 580 grams was about the weight of a half-empty bottle of wine. Amazing that something so small could be so destructive.
The sergeant pulled a rolled-up sheet of paper out of the container and passed it around. I laughed when it reached me, and when his mouth quirked in response, I said, “Gubina probably packed this box.”
He looked to Masha, who tapped the bottom of the paper over a smudged bit of ink. “Did you?”
Her cheek dimpled. “It has a line from a Pushkin poem at the bottom, so yes.”
“You two worked at the factory?” he asked. When we nodded, he took the paper and handed it to the other three recruits. “And you added poetry to the sheets?”
“Something else for the soldiers to read. Those that could.”
The sergeant shook his head, but he was smiling. “What did you do, Pavlova?”
“I poured the TNT.” I waggled my fingers at him because they still bore a faint trace of gold.
“No wonder you can throw it like a mother—” he paused, and his teeth flashed between cracked lips. “Ever thrown a live one?”
I shook my head. He pulled a grenade out, and the other women stepped back. We’d been shooting for weeks, hitting each other with our fists and crawling beneath barbed wire, but the moment a real grenade was handed over, everyone got scared.
I took the grenade. The pin was still in.
“You know what to do?” he asked.
“In theory.” I held it close and looked up out of the trench. “Who are we supposed to throw it at?”
“You murderous girl,” he said, still grinning. He pointed at a small hillock of sand, halfway between the trench and the water’s edge. No one was around for at least fifty meters, so if my throw went wide, no one would be harmed. Not that my throws ever went wide. “Know how long you’ve got? And the effective range?”
Muravyeva spoke up. “Three and a half seconds, about. And . . . fifteen meters. If you’re twenty meters away, you’ll be unharmed.”
The sergeant snorted. “I wouldn’t say you’d be ‘unharmed,’ exactly, but you might not be dead.”
I lifted the grenade. It was time. “Take cover.” The others moved backward to a spot where the trench curved sharply. Masha stayed.
“Get back,” I told Masha. When she shook her head, I saw the confident girl from the factory courtyard, holding court with her paper girls.
“I want to watch.”
Behind her, Muravyeva peeked from around the corner, her dark eyes assessing everything.
If anything happened to Masha, it would be my fault. If she didn’t listen to me now, how would she react during battle? Not to mention the rest of my platoon—I had to consider how I looked to them, whether they’d see me as weak or indecisive.
“Gubina,” I snapped. “Take cover.”
Her eyes widened with hurt for a fraction of a second before she gave me a nod and joined the others behind the corner of the trench.
Holding the grenade tight against my chest, I pulled the pin. As long as I didn’t let go of the lever, it’d stay inert, but once the lever lifted, it would start the firing mechanism, which set off an unstoppable chain reaction that funneled its way down to the charge at the base of the grenade. I knew all this, but the reality of it in my bare hands made my heart race.
I stood up straight, took aim, and lobbed the grenade at the sandy hill. One. The sergeant yanked me down into the trench. Two. I held my breath. Three. Any moment now. Four—boom! The grenade exploded, sending a cloud of sand ten meters high. When I popped up to see the result, I couldn’t suppress a triumphant whoop. I pulled myself out of the trench and ran over to the newly formed pit in the ground.
Bits of scrap metal lay scattered across the sand and half of the hillock was dented. Tiny craters lay all around the area where the shrapnel had fallen. If there’d been anyone there, they would’ve been minced.
The others stayed in the trench, but Sergeant Zapilov came up behind me. “It’s one thing to make one, and another to make one go boom, right?”
“Yes.” I might have made that exact grenade. Maybe it was still winter then, and my fingers were frozen and caked with explosive, and I’d thought it would save a Russian life. Or it might have been a rainy day, and this was one of the grenades I’d filled quickly, thinking only of my quota, or thinking of the revolution. It didn’t matter now. My heart was racing, my mind running and stumbling over the months I’d spent making grenades. None of it compared to this.
“You got that down, I think. Let’s teach the others.”
We each got one throw with a live grenade before the sergeant took another group. Everyone did well, although Alsu was visibly more nervous than the rest. When we moved to the next sta
tion, she whispered, “That was the scariest thing I’ve ever done. All I could think about was how I’d kill us all if I dropped it by accident.”
“I was afraid of that too. I’m sure we all were. Fortunately, we won’t be doing that all the time. Just when it’s needed. You’re fine with a rifle, and that’s more important.”
While I marched my platoon back to the barracks, I caught Masha’s gaze. Her mouth curved up on one side, and she shrugged the tiniest bit, and I knew that although she hadn’t liked doing what I said, she understood. At least for now.
—
June 17, 1917
Dinner that night was boiled. All of it: the potatoes, the chicken, and the cabbage. I shoveled it into my mouth with one eye on Bochkareva, who ate with the officers on the other side of the dining hall, and one eye on my own soldiers.
“This is the best meal I’ve ever had,” moaned Masha beside me.
“You say that every meal,” said Korlova, on her other side.
“When you’re starving, everything tastes good.” This came from Pul’khova, who rarely spoke up. Most of those sitting around me had been truly hungry at one point recently, and they all nodded in agreement.
“Hey, Pavlova,” asked Korlova, leaning forward so she could see me around Masha. “What do you think about Avilova’s platoon? They lost three more soldiers today.”
“I guess they weren’t really soldiers,” I said after I swallowed.
“But why are they leaving now? It hasn’t gotten any harder the past few days. Not really.”
“The ones who are leaving are from Avilova’s Women’s Rights Committee,” Masha said. “Maybe they’ve decided this isn’t the best way to convince men we should have the same rights as them.”
I laughed. “It’s not the easiest way, for sure.”
“They’re fools,” Masha said quietly.
“You don’t agree with them?” asked Pul’khova.
“No, I do,” she answered, “but I don’t like how they’re using the battalion to get what they want. Proving we can fight won’t do the rest of the country’s women any good. Also, I doubt any of them come from poor families. They aren’t fighting for all women’s rights, but for their rights.”
I thought of how Sergeant Bochkareva couldn’t read, and how Muravyeva, thorn of my side, had traded her only civilian dress for a stack of postcards so she could write to her mother, whom she’d left behind. Muravyeva was farther down the table, but she was close enough to hear us. She looked to be focusing on her plate, but I could tell by the way she slowed her fork that she’d understood Masha’s point.
“Do you think they are fighting for Tatar women?” asked Alsu, although judging by the way she eyed Avilova, she knew the answer to that.
“They’re fighting for Russia like we are,” I said. “If they want to fight for more, that’s fine with me.”
“But why are some of them leaving?” asked Korlova again. “That’s what I don’t understand.”
Then Muravyeva looked up at us. “It’s because of General Order Number One. The army is supposed to let the recruits form committees to make decisions now, but Bochkareva said she won’t allow it. Avilova and Bochkareva were arguing about it yesterday.” She shrugged. “Seemed like Avilova lost.”
“Well, a little humility might do her good,” said Masha. “She’s always looking down her nose at me. Ever since I told her not to include me in her group.”
“She’s a little snotty,” I admitted, “but I think it’s because she feels like she has to be strong for her women.” As I said this, I looked at the table behind ours, where Avilova ate with her platoon. She still had over forty soldiers, and they looked at her like she was a grand duchess. “I mean, she hasn’t quit, so she must have accepted whatever Bochkareva said about Order Number One.”
“I think,” added Alsu, “it can be difficult for women who already have some power to understand those who’ve never had it. And then to give it up . . . is not easy. But I think for our Avilova, it is something she can do.”
“I still don’t know why they quit,” mumbled Korlova. “The food’s good.”
—
After an evening of rifle drills in the courtyard, we were finally released to our barracks. It had been one of those days that’d flown by but also felt like it had been a century since breakfast. As we were heading inside, I yanked off my cap and tucked it under an arm, grateful for the chance to scratch at my itchy scalp.
Masha reached up to brush her hair off her shoulder like she used to and found nothing there. She laughed. “I feel like I’ve given up a magical power I once had.”
“Nonsense,” snapped Alsu. She took the both of us by our arms and brought us to the door. “You’ve only traded it temporarily for a gun.” She swung her bright gray eyes on me. “Did you see those targets Masha destroyed earlier?”
Masha had a natural talent with her rifle. She was so good, in fact, I was worried Bochkareva would have her transferred to a sniper platoon. “How did this happen, you being such a good shot?”
“You’re just jealous,” she said. We’d reached our benches and were setting the rifles onto the gun rack. She took mine and set it beside hers, then Alsu’s.
“Well, it’s surprising! You never fired a gun in your life before we came here.”
“Yes I have.”
“When?”
“At my uncle’s dacha. He taught me to shoot ducks. What I want to know, however, is how Katya got good at throwing things. Grenades, in particular. She doesn’t have a family dacha—”
“Yes, I do.” A memory came to me then, of the wooden cabin, of soft, filtered sunlight warming up the kitchen, of mint and dill growing wild amongst the strawberries. Of my mother singing as she snipped roses off the trellis to put on the table. “I just haven’t been there in a long, long time.”
I couldn’t look up at them as I spoke. I hadn’t been to the dacha since my mother left, since my father stopped tucking me in to bed, since we’d stopped being a family that went to the countryside together in the summer.
Liddikova’s platoon walked past us then, laughing, and we were forced onto our benches to give them room to pass. The dark memory, the moment of my mother running out the front door and into a carriage with the man in the blue scarf—it was gone.
I peeled my boots and trousers off like a scab.
“Olga told Prince Mal that she was feeling merciful, and would not require such an expensive tribute after all. Instead, as a token of goodwill between their people—”
“She had to be beautiful if they still believed this woman.”
“As I said, she was very intelligent.”
“What sort of token did she ask for?”
“Birds.”
13
June 18, 1917
We marched as four separate platoons with our men’s boots slapping into the pavement and our fists swishing against our hips. Each of us carried her rifle nestled against an aching shoulder, some marked beneath her blouse with plum-colored bruises. My soldiers kept in line, watching the person to her side out of the corner of her eye and stomping just a little louder on her left foot. After an hour of this, we reached the shore and the pine-scented obstacle course.
While Sergeant Bochkareva split us apart and went to report to the officer there for our review, I watched how my platoon readied itself. Muravyeva stood in the thick of them all, making sure pants’ hems were securely tucked into boots or puttees. Alsu spoke with one of the girls who had sprained her ankle a few days ago. Masha—Gubina—was squatting down and stretching her legs, a position she would never have tried in skirts. Every few moments, each of them glanced my way and made eye contact. They carefully stacked their rifles into one another, making cones, and then made their way to the starting line.
We were ready.
Bochkareva belted out the instructions. “Get through it as fast as you can, and don’t leave anyone behind! Platoon leaders, that means you! You have fifteen minutes!”
The officers from headquarters stood off to the side, arms crossed and eyebrows ticked. One of them swung a stopwatch from a chain and lifted a whistle to his lips.
With a rush of boots and flying sand, we ran together to the first obstacle: the wall. It didn’t matter if any of us were tired. I decided to go ahead of my platoon so that I could help them across, so I clenched my fists around one of the three ropes and pulled, grunting like an old man. My boots scrabbled at the wooden planks, but there weren’t any footholds, so I pulled, harder. My elbow popped, unleashing a torrent of pain, but in the back of my mind I heard Ilya yelling at me when I was fourteen years old, “Pain is only a weakness!”
I would not allow myself to be weak. I couldn’t.
Gritting my teeth, I put everything I had into my arms and tugged myself up until I could take hold of the top plank. It dug into my palms, but the pain was nothing. It was weakness. I pulled myself higher, my knees pushed into the narrow ledge, and then I was there. I was breathless, but I was three meters feet off the ground, straddling a narrow plank of pine. Next came the women of my platoon. As each one climbed up and over, I patted her shoulder and urged her on. Then it was Alsu’s turn. With each foot she climbed, her lips got paler and thinner.
“Almost there,” I said.
“I don’t,” she gasped, “know why. We have. To climb. So high.” I yanked her by the shoulders, helped her over the plank, and slapped the rope over the other side so she could climb down.
“Hard part’s over!” I yelled after her.
“Five minutes!” a man shouted.
When Muravyeva climbed over, she took the rope farthest from me. Looking directly at her hands, she clambered up like a squirrel, cocked an eyebrow at me, and dropped to the other side.
“Beat you there!” she called at me over her shoulder. Coming from Muravyeva, this was downright friendly.
When the last from my platoon made it over, I dropped down the other side and ran. All around us the trainers shouted, taunting us, encouraging us, screaming out the ticking seconds. Over them all came Bochkareva’s voice, weaving through the sand-thick air like a hawk after a knot of sparrows.
