by Ralph Peters
As Shilko listened it seemed as though the sounds of battle diminished, responding to the wishes in his heart. The distance to the discharges and impacts did not recede, but the volume of fires slackened. After a few minutes, the difference was unmistakable even to Shilko’s career-damaged ears.
His pulse quickened. Perhaps the counterattack had been defeated. He had remained perfectly calm under the threat of an enemy breakthrough. But the possibility of some end to the fighting, however temporary and for whatever reason, made his heart race.
The sound of the guns stopped completely.
Romilinsky hurried out from under the canvas wall of the control post, visibly excited.
“Comrade Commander,” he shouted, absolutely exuberant, almost dancing out of his controlled staff-officer persona, “Comrade Commander, the West Germans have requested a cease-fire.”
Epilogue
Chibisov emerged from the bunker into the light of day. The sight of the splintered forest, with its ashen wounds, shocked him. Throughout the period of hostilities, he had heard and felt the impacts of the enemy’s weaponry hunting over the surface. Yet unseen was somehow unimagined. Beyond the pockmarked outer door, large bomb craters and black scars marked the landscape, and the acridity of explosives lingered in the air. Yet a blue sky blessed the living and the dead, and even this pungent air tasted gorgeously fresh after the staleness of the bunker.
Soon, he would need to visit a good doctor, perhaps even take a cure at the sanatorium. His breathing never came normally to him anymore, and despite his determination, Chibisov had begun to doubt that he could continue to shoulder serious responsibilities much longer.
Aircraft still cut the heavens, and vehicular traffic continued on the roads. But the volume, the noise of it all, was far less than it had been. The sounds of combat had stopped.
Shtein, the revolting creature from the General Staff with his little movies, had been right in the end, as had Dudorov. The Germans caved in. Chibisov remained unpersuaded that Shtein’s unpleasant films and broadcasts had played as grand a role as Shtein himself readily declared. Even the best propaganda had its limits. But there would be adequate time for the chroniclers to argue about whose contributions had been the most important. For Chibisov, it was all part of an indivisible whole in the end. Examined in detail, one saw appalling failures and incompetence. Yet the sum of the Soviet way of war had proved greater than its individual parts. Finally, the result was what mattered.
Assailed militarily, politically, emotionally… the West German government had broken down over the issue of nuclear release. The Americans and British had demanded it, and the French made their own unilateral preparations. But the West Germans had experienced a failure of the will, of nerve. Paralyzed by the speed of their apparent collapse and the unanticipated level of destruction, they had refused to turn their country into a nuclear battlefield. The Germans had decreed NATO’s military policy in peacetime, and they reaped their harvest in war.
Chibisov realized, as did only a few of the privileged, how close the battlefield outcome had been. The American counterattack, really the centerpiece of a counteroffensive, had nearly broken them. Perhaps the follow-on forces would have contained them, but the Americans and the surprisingly resilient forces of the Northern Army Group had hit hard. Not even Dudorov had correctly estimated how much fight the battered NATO corps had left in them. The counterblow had stormed to within a dozen kilometers of the Weser crossing site at Bad Oeynhausen when the German plea for a cease-fire halted them.
The West German government had declared a unilateral cease-fire and had demanded that all NATO forces halt offensive actions on German soil in a bid to conciliate the Soviets. All NATO combat forces were to withdraw west of the Rhine within ninety-six hours, and to leave German soil entirely within fifteen days. Intact Bundeswehr units would also withdraw west of the Rhine. Numerous Bundeswehr commanders had resisted the cease-fire, but their rank and file had proved unwilling to follow them. And as the NATO armies withdrew, Soviet tanks closed the rest of the distance to the Rhine without firing a shot.
And that was it, Chibisov believed. There was no point in going any further. The Rhine was the natural Soviet western frontier, and the control of Germany meant the control of the rest of Europe. The French would ultimately accommodate themselves to the new order. An occupation of France would have been far more trouble than it was worth. And the British could remain an American outpost, for all the effect that would have on the new Europe.
Some high-ranking officers within the Soviet military wanted to drive on. Most of them had not experienced the war firsthand, and they spoke more blithely of resuming the offensive than did those who had gotten a good taste of the battlefield. The most worrisome estimate making the rounds prophesied that the Americans did not regard the war as finished but were preparing to strike elsewhere. And there were clouds on the eastern horizon. Would the war enter an Asian or Pacific phase? Personally, Chibisov hoped it was over. He hoped the Americans would have the good sense to turn their backs on a Europe that took their lives and money and gave them nothing in return. He could not quite believe the Americans would find any of this worth fighting over any more. But he wondered. The Americans remained an enigma.
Intellectually, Chibisov appreciated that the Soviet way of war was scientifically correct, integrating the military and political elements into one overwhelming program. Unity of effort at the highest levels. But in the end, it was not so much the Soviet tanks that had defeated NATO, but NATO’s own foolishness. Watching the progress of the war from his unique perspective convinced Chibisov that the issue could very easily have gone the other way. For instance, the surrounded German operational grouping northeast of Hannover was currently being disarmed, with its soldiers and limited support equipment allowed to move west of the Rhine. But the Germans might easily have been the captors. NATO had the combat power but lacked unity of purpose and strength of will. On a practical level, their lack of a cogent and unified military doctrine had destroyed them. The tools and the workers had been available, but everyone had insisted on using his own blueprint. Chibisov was grateful.
A black bird settled into a splintered tree, and Chibisov thought of Malinsky’s son. The remnants of his brigade reported that Guards Colonel Malinsky had been killed by an air strike. But no body had been recovered, and the old man refused to accept his son’s death. The general went forward in person to conduct the search.
Chibisov felt deeply sorry for his protector and comrade. It seemed stupidly ironic that he, of all men, should lose so much at such an hour. Chibisov did not know the young colonel well enough to feel much sorrow for the fallen officer. The elder Malinsky drew all of his emotion. In a way, he knew, the loss of his son would be harder for Malinsky to bear than defeat on the battlefield would have been.
Of course, plenty of sons had died. Chibisov tried to rationalize the old man’s misfortune away. But the image of Malinsky would not leave him. He pictured the old man stepping over the blackened waste that had once been a forest, peering into the gutted shells of command vehicles. Blinking his eyes to control any sign of the intensity of his feelings, Chibisov realized, helplessly, how much he loved the old man. How much better if an asthmatic renegade Jew, who could not find a home in any camp, had died in place of the cherished son.
Chibisov remembered his mother. His father, a determined communist, had tolerated no mention of religion in their home. But his mother had wrapped her child in the wonder of fairy tales and remembrances. Chibisov had not realized until much later that some of the fairy tales had been stories from the Old Testament. He smiled the smile of middle age at this bit of maternal deviousness, recalling how he had been terrified by the story of Abraham and Isaac. As a boy, Chibisov had had no doubt that his father would have sacrificed him, had the modern gods demanded it.
His thoughts returned to Malinsky and his son. A perverse twist on an old tale, in which God does not relent, or forgive, or show merc
y. A god for the world as it is, rather than as it was supposed to be.
Of course, it did no good to romanticize death. Chibisov looked up at the crow on the broken limb. The bird immediately spread its wings and rose skyward, as though Chibisov’s gaze made it uncomfortable. Chibisov took a deep breath, filling his withered lungs. And he turned back to the bunker to sort out the combat statistics.
“They cut us off,” Seryosha told the little crowd of soldiers gathered around his bunk. “We were entirely cut off. Enemy tanks everywhere. You can’t imagine it. But we held out. We held our assigned position for two days, and we killed every German soldier who came near us.”
Leonid accepted the tale. Seryosha had told it so many times now that it had acquired a truth of its own. He and Seryosha never exchanged a word about the incident in the basement in the little German town. When they left the house, it was as if they had signed a compact never to speak of it. And really, there was nothing to say that would change anything. They had simply hidden in a barn until Soviet forces returned. The unit had been a fresh organization from the Soviet Union and had not arrived in time to see any combat. The unit sent the two veterans to the rear, to a holding facility for soldiers who had become separated from their units. They were quartered in a large barracks near the town of Bergen. The barracks had been hit by shells a few times during the fighting, but the quality of everything, from bunks to plumbing, remained amazingly good. Leonid did not mind the arrangement at all.
Two separate groups of soldiers existed within the holding area. The larger group, containing Leonid and Seryosha, was assigned to crowded barracks where they underwent nearly constant roll calls whenever they were not out in the countryside on work details to recover military equipment or to load or unload trucks. Every day, shipments of soldiers left to rejoin their units, while fresh herds of lost privates arrived. The food was not bad, and the officers stayed so busy doing whatever officers had to do that there was even a little bit of free time to sit around the barracks and swap war stories.
The smaller group of soldiers lived in barracks behind barbed wire. Armed guards patrolled the perimeter. These soldiers, the political officer warned the more fortunate, were deserters, men who had thrown down their arms or fled from battle, who had betrayed the sacred trust of the Soviet soldier. They were all to be charged under Article this or Article that. Every time the topic came up, Leonid went cold inside. He suspected that the difference between deserters and soldiers such as he and Seryosha was perilously slight. One rumor held that the difference was whether or not you still had your weapon when you were picked up, but Leonid trusted there was a little more to it than that.
“Anyway,” Seryosha went on, “we finally ran out of bullets. There was nothing to do but go to ground and be prepared to fight with our fists, if it came to that. We thought it was all over. Then our troops came back up, late as usual. They told us we held the farthest point inside the enemy lines. No one else had been able to hold out.”
Most of the war stories received challenges from the more cynical listeners. But Seryosha retained his gift for convincing others. It was remarkable to Leonid. Seryosha had already ingratiated himself with the facility’s political officer, and he had begun to draw away from Leonid once again.
Leonid didn’t mind. He wanted to put the events of the war behind him. He wanted to go home, and he listened avidly to rumors that all combat veterans would receive home leave, while those who had not fought would remain behind with the occupation forces. Yet Leonid suspected that, if anyone received a leave, it would be Seryosha. Well, that was all right, too. Sooner or later, they would all be discharged. The army couldn’t keep you forever. And he would go home and play his guitar. He had managed to rescue two looted cassette tapes from destruction, half-surprised when they were not confiscated upon his arrival at the holding facility. It turned out that nearly everyone had a souvenir or two to show for his battle experience.
A voice loudly called the barracks to attention. It was almost time for the political officer’s daily world-events class, and Leonid assumed that either the lecture would be a bit early today or this was yet another of the endless roll calls.
He was wrong. Instead of the political officer, the warrant officer in charge of work details appeared beside a new captain. The warrant officer announced that a very sensitive mission, one of great honor, required a platoon of soldiers for its immediate execution. They were all familiar with this particular litany. It meant that more bodies had been located. It was the worst detail imaginable.
Leonid knew he would be selected. It was just his luck.
Bezarin sat on a concrete slab at the water’s edge, watching the withdrawal of the last American forces across the Rhine. His new medal dangled from the blouse of the fresh uniform he had been issued for the presentation ceremony. General Malinsky, the front commander, had flown in to present several dozen awards at a gathering hosted by General Starukhin, commander of the Third Shock Army and of all occupation forces in the Ruhr. The banquet undoubtedly continued, with passionate drinking of cognac, back at the Japanese luxury hotel that served as the provisional Soviet headquarters in Dusseldorf. But Bezarin had no thirst for alcohol at the moment, and he had slipped away to think about Anna and the rest of his life.
Between daydreams, he watched the Americans passing in the distance. Ugly, venomous-looking attack helicopters covered the crossing from midriver and from the urban industrial tangle of the far bank. Tanks crossed the big bridge with their main guns at the ready, swiveling around to cover the eastern bank behind them. The Americans moved very well, with superb march discipline. They did not look like a beaten army to Bezarin.
But they had been beaten. If not on the field of battle, then at the greater level of political decision. Bezarin remembered waiting on the heights at Bad Oeynhausen, surrounded by his surviving tanks, out of ammunition, as the American spearheads slashed up through the forwardmost Soviet formations. Their advance had been halted by a miracle, a few kilometers from his position.
Bezarin inspected his opponents. He figured he could beat them all right. But he had not particularly wanted to face them without any main-gun ammunition. The big, solid-looking tanks rolled smoothly over the roadway of the bridge, partially obscured by its sidewalls. The Americans, the great enemy. Now they were leaving, and it seemed as if a lifelong nightmare had finally come to an end.
He had attempted to report honestly on the tragedy that had occurred along the highway behind Hildesheim. But no one wanted to hear it. As far as his chain of command was concerned, it was all history — regrettable but, viewed from the grand perspective, unavoidable. The Soviet Union needed war heroes, not war criminals.
And Bezarin became a hero. One of the brilliant heroes of the Weser crossing operation. And in his own mind, the horror of the massacre along the highway had already begun to undergo a subtle change, receding in importance in comparison to the already codified achievements of his battalion. He tried to write to Anna about the tragedy, expecting that she would somehow understand and help him. But he could not put the words on paper. The incident seemed to demand forgetting. To be buried, like the dead themselves. Bezarin knew that certain images would remain with him, below the surface, occasionally rising to remind him of what he and his soldiers had done. But now he spent more time thinking of Anna, remembering the fragrance of the sparse Galician spring, and the smell of the woman he had held in his arms. Instead of writing his confession to her, he had found the strength, at last, to write and say he loved her.
He had no idea how long a response would be in arriving, if one were to come at all. He feared that his letter or her reply would go astray in the disruption of events, and he had decided that, if no response came within a month, he would write again. And again. He would not be defeated now by his fears of a little Polish girl.
At the same time, he felt haunted. His mind filled with terrible images of Anna in another’s bed, of her special admissions spoken to an
other man. He worried that he had already become no more than a bit of finished personal history to her. But he was determined not to surrender without a fight.
A vehicle pulled up on the quay. Bezarin stood. He was not supposed to be off on his own; there were reports of violent assaults against Soviet officers and men throughout the occupation zone. At a minimum, two officers were always to go together, and it was much preferred that officers remain near their place of work or assigned quarters unless official matters called them elsewhere. The soldiers and sergeants were closely restricted.
Bezarin touched his holster.
The sight of the major surprised Malinsky. He had neither wanted nor expected company. He simply wanted to see the Rhine up close, to savor his moment in history as best he could. To confirm the value of his sacrifice. And this nervous major appeared, reaching for his pistol. Malinsky decided to make the best of it.
“I would be grateful, Comrade Major, if you didn’t shoot me.”
The major reddened, embarrassed. He stammered out a barely intelligible apology.
“Don’t worry,” Malinsky told him. “It’s always a good thing to be on your guard.” He recognized the major as one of the men on whom he had pinned a medal not an hour before, and he offered him a cigarette, which the major clumsily declined. It struck Malinsky as odd that this fresh-baked hero would be alone, when Starukhin was holding court for all of his heroes at what promised to be one of the great parties of the century. Malinsky had excused himself so that Starukhin and his boys could relax and drink themselves sick. Starukhin seemed to Malinsky to embody much that was eternally Russian — big, loud, vainglorious, generous, abusive of his personal power, desperate for comradeship, alternately slothful and passionate, and capable of great cruelty.
