Apricot Jam

by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

  Then, on the road from Dietrichsdorf on the left, they spotted the sidelights of tanks and APCs. The Germans are on the way! Sometimes the full headlights would flash, the drivers unable to resist turning them on. It was a whole mechanized column on the move. And the rumble of its engines grew louder and louder through the last bursts of machine gun fire.

  There it was—the ugly snout of the first tank! Time to fire.

  “Gun to the ready!” Kandalintsev’s voice barely carried across the road.

  “Open sights!” Oleg roared at his crew. “Fire!”

  Petya Nikolaev was aiming. Our gun belched. Koltsov’s gun belched.

  Oleg rushed to help his crew with their next shell. Now we had to move fast!

  The Germans weren’t expecting any fire from this spot. They began moving to the roadsides.

  We weren’t going to let them pass. Fountains of sparks showered from the tank’s armor! The HE-fragmentation shell had done its job!

  The tank stopped. Something behind it caught fire—probably the personnel carrier.

  The column was still moving along the road. But we kept up our fire, almost two rounds a minute! We put a shell right into the ugly mug of a King Tiger tank. And what a stroke of luck! We knocked out one tank on the approach to the bridge, another right on it, and they blocked the whole bridge. It was amazing that the bridge itself survived.

  The German tanks fired at us, but because our side of the river was so much higher than theirs, their shells ricocheted and passed over us. Our crews would dive down into the ditches along the road and then jump back to reload. Nikolaev and Koltsov never left their guns, and they came through it all unharmed.

  At a time like that you don’t think of yourself or anyone or anything else, only how to keep pouring fire at them.

  The Germans were mixing solid and regular shot, as they’d been doing since autumn. They must be very short of ammunition. Their solid shot didn’t cause any wounds from shrapnel, though a direct hit was fatal, of course. Still, young Yursh was wounded, along with two of Koltsov’s crew. A shot from one of the tanks cut the equalizing column on Nikolaev’s gun.

  So that was how they all reconstructed it later; but just who had done what and to whom, that no one could determine.

  A NUMBER OF things happened later. Our infantry platoon finally showed up from out of nowhere and took up positions along the river. The bridge was under fire. The Germans tried to squeeze past the knocked-out tanks one by one, but they were mowed down as they came. They tried crossing the ice and clambering up the steep slope while wallowing in the snow, but they couldn’t manage it. Then we ran out of shells and had nothing more to fire at the column across the river.

  Then, along the road behind us that was still open, one of our own tanks rolled up, a new IS-3 with an angular prow and very heavy armor, sent here from our division. Enemy shells would bounce off it like sunflower seeds. It took up a position between our guns and banged off a few shots at the armored column and two more along the road to Adlig. No more Germans tried to poke their noses out of that place. They pulled their armor back into the forest. Two more IS-3s arrived. That was when things eased up for us.

  Still later, more of our boys made their way out of the German encirclement and came back, crossing on the ice and clambering up the snowy bank both upstream and down. Among them was our battery commander, Kasyanov, with a wounded arm. Four and Five Batteries had been captured by the Germans, but some of the crews, those who could still walk, made it back. There weren’t many of them.

  Captain Toplev had come back, not wounded. All he knew about our battalion commander was that he had been surrounded. We could only hope he hadn’t been killed.

  When Oleg looked at his watch, he couldn’t believe it: How could three hours have passed? How many things had been packed into them; how they had flashed by! They seemed to have disappeared into the battle.

  It was already beginning to grow light.

  24

  THE FIELD KITCHEN fed those who were left.

  Captain Toplev was embarrassed and ashamed when he met the platoon commanders. But how could he have done anything better? He concealed nothing and explained to Kasyanov how it had all happened, how unexpectedly the Germans had crept up to them, and how it had been impossible to save the guns. And Captain Kasyanov, who could not be blamed for anything, still felt somehow guilty.

  About an hour later two light trucks drove up from Liebstadt in their rear. The first one, an Opel Blitz captured from the Germans, held the deputy chief of staff of the brigade, a major; the head of brigade reconnaissance, another major; and a few lower ranks from headquarters. They could not believe what they saw: This, after only a few hours? After that utterly quiet evening yesterday? And something like this happened? They hurried off to radio brigade headquarters.

  The second truck held the deputy political officer of Second Battalion, Konopchuk, and the party organizer, Gubaydulin, who had obviously slept well and was quite sober.

  There was also the head of the brigade’s SMERSH, Major Tarasov.

  They huddled together with the officers: What happened and how? They were furious with Toplev and Kasyanov and heaped abuse on them: How could they allow a shambles like this?

  Tarasov gave them a severe dressing down: “I don’t want to hear about ‘surprise.’ We always have to be ready for anything . . .”

  But Toplev, utterly worn out, completely forgot himself: “But we did know. We were warned.”

  “What? How?”

  Toplev told them about the deserter.

  The full significance of what Toplev said struck Tarasov like a bolt of lightning:

  “Where is he now?”

  He’d been taken to the landowner’s house, over there.

  The others who had come with him looked at each other and realized: “Uh-oh, someone’s about to get burned. Time to get out of here.”

  And brigade headquarters had already been informed, from above, about a major German offensive in the north during the night, on a broader front than this one. Third Battalion was completely surrounded. They were ordered to pull their survivors out immediately, through Liebstadt to Herzogenwald.

  They brought the deserter to Tarasov.

  Despite the battle during the night, it seemed that he had been able to get some sleep. He tried to smile. Inoffensively. Anxiously. Expectantly.

  “Kom!” said Tarasov, pointing ahead with an abrupt wave of his hand.

  He took him behind the barn.

  He walked behind him, and on the way pulled his TT pistol from its holster.

  From behind the barn came two quick shots.

  After all the din of the past night they sounded rather quiet.

  EPILOG

  AFTER THE EVENING of January 25, when the first Soviet tanks broke through to the gulf of Frisches Haff and cut East Prussia off from Germany, the Germans prepared their counterattack in a single day and set it for the following evening. Their tank division, two infantry divisions, and a brigade of Jaeger troops began a westward offensive toward Elbing. During the night of January 26–27, three infantry divisions and the tanks of the Großdeutschland Division were added to this force, whose left flank had now seized Wormditt and Liebstadt.

  Given that the wedge our tanks had driven into East Prussia stretched for some hundred kilometers, our infantry divisions had not yet managed to establish even a basis for a front line, and one of their three divisions had been surrounded and cut off. But Elbing, through which our Fifth Guards Tank Army had passed, remained beyond the Germans’ grasp. They succeeded only in holding the territory from Mülhausen to Liebstadt for four days. Their advance was checked in the south by our tank brigade and a corps of cavalry that was brought up from Allenstein—even the horsemen were, at last, of use in moving across the snowy ground.

  On February 2 we again captured Liebstadt and the area to the west of it, and reconnaissance troops from our artillery brigade entered Adlig Schwenkitten. The guns of our two c
aptured batteries stood in their former positions at the edge of the village, but all the breeches of all the guns and, in some cases, the barrels as well, had been damaged by TNT charges. They could not be repaired. The bodies of the gun crews, a few dozen of them, still lay unburied among the guns and back toward Adlig. A few had been stabbed to death: the Germans were saving their bullets.

  We searched for the bodies of Major Boyev and his battery commanders. A few soldiers and battery commander Myagkov lay dead near Boyev. He had been shot through the head and through the jaw; he lay on his back. His fur jacket had been taken from him, along with his felt boots, and his cap was missing. As well, one of the Germans had taken a liking to his medals and wanted them to prove the success of their attack. He had used his knife to cut out the large piece of the tunic on which Boyev wore all his medals, and the congealed blood of the knife wounds could still be seen on his chest.

  He was buried in the central square in Liebstadt, where a monument to Hindenburg stood.

  A day earlier the command of the artillery brigade had submitted to the army artillery headquarters a list of those recommended for the Order of the Red Banner for the operation of January 27. At the top of the list were the names of political officer Vyzhlevsky, chief of staff Veresovoy, and the head of brigade reconnaissance; at the end of the list were the names of Toplev, Kandalintsev, Gusev, and the commander of the sound-ranging battery.

  The commander of the army artillery, a tall, thin, and tough lieutenant general, realized full well the rashness of his decision to allow a completely undefended brigade of heavy artillery to deploy so early in a place that was an operational void. But when he saw the list his blood boiled. With a thick slash of his pen he struck out all the names of the senior officers of the brigade that stood at the top of the list. And then he added his own instructions in language not normally found in official documents.

  Many days later, in March, an official citation was issued for Major Boyev as well: he was awarded the Order of the Patriotic War, First Class. Everyone was satisfied. But no one ever saw this golden medal, and his sister Praskovya never received it.

  And, to be sure, did it add much to what some German soldier had cut away with his knife?

  IN HIS POSTWAR memoirs, the commander of the infantry division made no mention of his one-day regimental commander, Major Baluev.

  He simply disappeared, as if he had never existed.

  1998

  ZHELYABUGA VILLAGE

  1

  THREE DAYS AGO our troops moved through the breach on the River Neruch. For these past days, my central station had been located inside a smokestack by the railway embankment. The brickwork was solid and gave good protection from enemy shelling. Some peasant women with their little ones had crowded in with us, and a couple of dozen gypsies who had popped up from somewhere had also settled in. After two months in areas occupied only by troops, it was odd now to see civilians about. At three that morning my battery got the signal to stand down: we were to pack up and move. By the time we had pulled in all the listening posts, it was already getting light. We rolled in to Zhelyabuga Village before there was enough light for aircraft.

  Rolled in isn’t quite the right expression. A sound-ranging battery is supposed to have as many as six specially equipped buses; what we had was a battered three-ton truck and a one-and-a-halfer. They could haul only our equipment and supplies along with a small crew, so the rest of the battery had to chase after them on foot. Lieutenant Ovsyannikov, the commander of the line-laying platoon, normally took charge of the battery, while Botnev, who ran the instrumentation and plotting platoon, and I rode in the trucks, hurrying ahead to find a site for our central station.

  This was a critical job: the whole setup of the battery depends on the location of the central station. The more quickly it can be sited, the more quickly and safely the battery can be deployed. But it has to be sited absolutely correctly: a shell fragment in this heart of the battery means the whole battery is knocked out. There were times when we had to dig in our station in the middle of a rye field and cover it with a tarp, but this was asking for trouble.

  I was nearly burned out after the pressure of the last four days and the lack of sleep. Yet it was a joyous exhaustion. We were making our general offensive, approaching the Kursk salient and taking some giant steps forward.

  What a keen feeling we had for the places in this area and for the names of the towns and villages! Though we had never spent much time here, we had been here many times, registering targets from behind the Neruch as we devoured the maps with our eyes and imprinted them on our retinas—every patch of woods, every little ravine and ridge, the stream called Beryozovets, the village of Setukha (we had stayed in it the day before yesterday), the village of Blagodatnoe (we were now passing it on our left but couldn’t see it); then Zhelyabuga, and then here was Zhelyabuga Village. We already knew where the houses were situated in every little village.

  It’s just as the maps show: Zhelyabuga Village is on a gentle slope down toward Panikovets Creek. And here we are, after rocking and jarring along the rutted track from the main road. So long as there are no aircraft we can move about openly. I yell to the boys in the back of the truck: “Dugin! Petyrkin! Kropachov! Scout around and see if you can find a cellar somewhere.”

  They tumble out of the truck and run off to search. There are already a few troops in the village—trucks here and there, sitting tilted downward with their noses dug in. The mortars have moved on ahead. The divisional artillery is on our right, across the hollow. I’m still searching the map to find sites for the listening posts. In front of us to the west is Mokhovoe, a sizeable place. Just last week the trains were still coming here, offloading supplies for the Germans. They’ll try to hang on to Mokhovoe, so we’ll probably be here for a while.

  I pick out some approximate sites for the listening posts. (Ovsyannikov is the one who’ll site them precisely.) They should cover about five kilometers of frontage (the book says as much as seven kilometers, but we’ve long modified what the book says: we never deploy six posts, and if we’re really pushed we’ll put out just four; now we’ll use five). Ahead of our posts we have to find a place for our forward observer and the warning post. It has to be in a place (and often it’s in the infantry trenches) where the observer can hear each sound from the enemy before any of our posts on the flanks can. Then—and this was where the whole art of the thing was—he has to decide for which sounds he has to press the button to turn on a station and which sounds to ignore.

  “Found one!” someone is shouting as he comes running. Who is it? Our “regimental mascot,” the fourteen-year-old Mitka Petrykin, a lad we picked up from Novosil, a town completely flattened by the war. Once it was a district town, but now it is a pile of white stone that stands as a silent sentry over the spot where the Neruch and the Zusha join. “Comrade Senior Lieutenant! Over he-e-ere! A cellar! A good one!”

  Botnev and I walk quickly over to it. Here the cellars aren’t under the houses; they are built separately, with bricked roofs and a dozen steps leading down. This cellar isn’t cool and stuffy: people have been living in it for the past few days—the owners, perhaps, or some neighbors. They’re hiding out here and have brought in their belongings. The brick roof is vaulted, though, and you couldn’t ask for anything better.

  It’s very odd and very cheering for us to see living Russian peasants, to see gardens planted near the houses and grain growing in the fields. On the Soviet side of the front line, all the peasants have been sent some twenty kilometers farther back out of fear of treachery. This is now the third year that area has been without a living soul, no crops planted, and the fields overgrown with weeds as in the time of the Polovtsians.

  (And yet your heart still contracts with love for this unworked and unpeopled land. It is clear: You could die without regrets for this Russian heartland. Especially after the swamps of the Northwest.)

  But as soon as we crossed to the German side, we saw that people
were still living there!

  The people in the cellar look at us fearfully. No, we’re not going to drive them out, they’re our own folk: “Listen, friends, you’re going to have to crowd in toward the back. We need to use the front of the cellar.”

  The women—there are no young men, just one very old fellow and some kids—heave a quiet sigh: How can they squeeze back any farther? But all their faces seem so familiar—our own folk. And they’re happy we aren’t chasing them out altogether.

  “Now my lads are going to stack your baskets and sacks up a bit higher. Let’s go, boys!”

  We can squeeze in ourselves, but we still need a good bit of space for our equipment and our four small folding tables. But it looks as if we have enough room.

  Choosing a place for the central station was the first urgent thing that had to be done. Now there is the second: we have to set up the station in the cellar as quickly as possible. But we have the men here to do it: Dugin and Blokhin, the two who work in shifts at the central instruments, along with some people from the plotting platoon.

  I go up the stairs. An ominous rosy glow has covered half the sky in the east, revealing a few small cirrus clouds that weren’t visible before.

  But then there is also the ominous throbbing of airplane engines. We were absolutely fed up with those damned things. Why can’t they leave us alone?

  Wait, now. It’s all right. They’re our planes!

  Since the spring we’ve seen many more of our own planes in the sky. We can stop crouching now. When we were in our defensive positions we’d seen more and more large groups of our long-range bombers, engines roaring under their heavy loads, flying off on some bombing mission far away. (And what were we so glad about? Their loads were being dumped on our own Russian cities, after all.) As we neared Oryol we could see it happening sixty kilometers beyond: the intersecting searchlight beams, the silver bursts of the antiaircraft guns, the red trails of the rockets, and the lightning flashes of the bursting bombs. And just in these last days we could recognize the triumphant waves of Ilyushins and their fighter escorts, flying low as they came back from some mission quite near to us. We’d give a cheer as their wings passed over: this was direct help to us, right nearby.