"I suppose he has a shovel," Pug said.
"Yes, I suppose so." The colonel was looking around. He walked off into the woods some yards ahead-to relieve himself, Pug imagined, before getting to work. Pug heard voices, then hoarse engine snorts.
The bushes began to move. Out of the shrubbery a light tank appeared, covered with boughs, its cannon pointed at Pug. Behind it walked the colonel and three muddy men in greatcoats. The American had been looking straight at the mottled, camouflaged cannon, yet had not noticed it until it started toward him. The tank chugged out of the trees, swerved, and backed on the road. Soldiers quickly attached a chain and the car was pulled loose in a moment, with the passengers inside. Then the bough-festooned turret opened, and two bristly, boyish Slav heads poked out.
Pamela jumped from the car, smiled and stumbled to the tank, and kissed the tankists, to their embarrassed pleasure. The turret closed, the tank backed into the wood to its former place, and the black automobile went lurching on into the forest. Thus they were bogged and rescued several times, and so discovered that the wet silent forest was swarming with the Red Army.
They arrived at a washout that severed the road like a creek in flood.
The ully's sides bore gouge marks of caterpillar treads and thick truck tires, 9 but obviously the auto could not struggle across. Here soldiers emerged from the woods and laid split logs across the gash, smooth side up, lashing them together into a shaky but adequate bridge.
This was a sizable crew, and their leader, a fat squinting lieutenant, invited the party to stop and refresh themselves. There was no way of telling him from his men, except that he gave the orders and they obeyed. They were all dressed alike and they were all a red earth color. He led the visitors through the trees and down into an icy, mucky dugout roofed with timbers, and so masked by brush and shrubs that Victor Henry did not see an entrance until the ofncer began to sink into the earth. The dugout was ari underground cabin of tarred logs, crisscrossed with telephone cables, lit by an oil lamp and heated by an old open iron stove burning chopped branches. The' officer, squinting proudly at a brass samovar on the raw plank table, offered them tea. While water boiled, a soldier conducted the men to a latrine so primitive and foul-though Tudsbury and the Russians happily used it-that Pug went stumbling off into the trees, only to be halted by a sentry who appeared like a forest spirit. While the American attended to nature, the soldier stood guard, observing with some interest how a foreigner did it. Returning to the dugout, Pug encountered three big blank-faced Russians, marching with fixed bayonets around Pamela, who looked vaguely embarrassed and amused.
Before they left, the lieutenant showed Pug and Tudsbury through the soldiers' dugouts, obviously proud of his men's workmanship. These freshly dug puddle-filled holes in the damp earth, smelling like graves, did have heavy timbered roofs that might survive a shell hit, and the mudcaked, unshaven soldiers, crouched in their greatcoats in the gloom, appeared content enough to smoke and talk and wait for orders here. Pug saw some feeding themselves with torn chunks of gray bread and dollops of stew from a muddy tureen lugged by two muddy soldiers. Munching on their bread, dragging at their cigarettes, these men placidly stared at the visitors, and slowly moved their heads to watch them walk through the trenches. Healthy-looking, well-nourished, they seemed as much at home in the red earth as earthworms, and they seemed almost as tough, abundant, and simple a form of life. Here Victor Henry first got an ineradicable feeling that Yevlenko had told the truth: that the Germans might gain the biggest victories, but that the Red Army would in time drive them out.
"Ye gods," Tudsbury managed to mutter on the way back to the car, "Belgium in 1915 was nothing like this. They live like animals."
"They can," Henry replied, and said no more, for Amphiteatrov's eye was on them in these brief asides.
"Well, we are not really far from our destination," the Russian said, wiping rain from his face and helping Pamela into the back seat.
"If not for the mud, we would have been there now."
The car bumped and skipped out of the woods. Cleared fields stretched for miles ahead, flat as a table, under gray low clouds.
"There's where we're going." Amphiteatrov pointed straight ahead to a distant line of forest. They came to a crossroads of mud churned up like water at a boil, and though the road ahead looked good, the driver slithered the car sharp right.
"Why don't we drive straight on?" Pamela said. "Doesn't the road go through?"
"Oh, yes. It goes through. it's mined. This whole area"-the colonel's arm swept around the quiet stubbly fields-"is mined."
Pug said, somewhat chilled, "Nice to know these things when you start out."
Amphiteatrov gave him his infrequent, wolfish, red-gummed smile, and wiped a dear drop from his thin bluish nose. "Well, yes, Captain.
Your Intourist guide in these parts should really know what is what.
Otherwise your health could be affected." I They jolted along the soupy track in rain that made it soupier, but in time the car sank with all four wheels into the mire, and halted amid long rows of yellow stubble stretching out of sight. No rescuers appeared; they could not have, without rising from the earth, but Pug half thought they might.
The driver shovelled the wheels clear and laid planks to the back tires. When the passengers got out to lighten the car, Amphiteatrov warned them to stay in the road, for mines were planted everywhere under the stubble. Showering muck and splinters all over them, the car lurched free. On they went.
Pug gave up trying to guess the direction. They never passed a road marker or signpost. The low gray clouds showed no sun patch. In the forest of the earthworm sol(tiers, the artillery thumps had been fainter than in the village. Here they were considerably louder. But zigzags in the front line could cause that. Obviously they had stopped going west, because westward were the Germans. The car appeared to be meandering five miles or so behind the fire zone.
"Here we will go a bit out of the way," the tank colonel said at another crossroads, "but you Will See something interesting.yp They entered fields where tall Yellow-green stalks of grain stood unharvested and rotting. After a mile or so Amphiteatrov told the driver to stop. "Perhaps you won't mind stretching your legs," he said. "You all have nice thick boots."
He gave Pamela an odd look. "But you might find this walk boring.
Perhaps you will stay with the driver here?"
"I'll come, unless you tell me to stay." "Very well. Come."
They went pushing in among the stalks. The wet quiet field of overripe grain smelled sweet, almost like an orchard. But the visitors, squelching along behind Amphiteatrov in a file, soon glanced at each other in revulsion as a rotten stench hit their noses. They broke into a clear space and saw why. They were looking at a battlefield.
In every direction, the grain was crushed Hat in great crisscrossing swathes of brovm muck. Random patches of stalks still stood; and amid the long brown slashes and the green-yellow clumps, damaged tanks lay scattered on their sides, or turned clear over, or canted, their camou age fl paint blistered and burned black, their caterpillar tracks torn, their armor plate blown open. Seven of the tanks bore German markings; two were light Russian T-z6 tanks, such as Pug had often seen moving through Moscow. The stink rose from German corpses, sprawled in green uniforms here and there on the ground, and others slumped in blown-open tanks.
Their dead purple faces were bloated disgustingly and covered %with fat black flies, but one could see they had been youngsters.
Pamela turned pale and clapped a handkerchief to her face.
"Well, I am sorry,- said the colonel, an ugly gleam lighting his face.
"This happened only day before yesterday- These Fritzes were probing and got caught. Their comrades went away from here and wouldn't stop to dig proper graves, being in a slight hurry."
Helmets, papers, and broken bottles were littered among the tanks and the corpses, and the oddest sight was a mess of women's underwear pink, blue, and white
drawers and petticoats-heaped soiled and sodden in the mud near an overturned tank. Pamela, eyebrows rising over the handkerchief, pointed to these.
"Well, funny, isn't it? I suppose Fritz stole those from a village. The Germans steal everything they can lay their hands on.
That is why they have come into our country, after all-to steal.
We had a tough tank fight around Vyazma a month ago. One tank we blew up had a large fine marble clock in it, and also a dead pig. The fire ruined that pig. That was a pity. It was a very good pig. Well, I thought this might interest you."
Pictures of knocked-out panzers were common in Moscow, but before this Victor Henry had seen actual German tanks only in Berlin, clanking down boulevards lined with red swastika flags, to the blare of brass-band marches over the loudspeakers and the hurrahs of crowds giving Nazi salutes; or else massed factory-fresh on trains of flat cars, chugging to the front. Seeing a few broken and overturned in a desolate Russian cornfield two thousand miles from Berlin, with their crewmen rotting beside them in the mud, was a hard jolt. He said to the tank colonel, "Aren't these Mark Threes? Haw could your T-26's knock them out? They don't fire a shell that can penetrate the Mark Three."
Amphiteatrov grinned. "Well, very good. For a seaman you know a bit about tank warfare. But you had better ask the battalion commander who won this battle, so let us be on our way."
They backtracked to the crossroads, headed toward the forest, and arrived at what looked like an open-air machine shop for tank repairs, in a village of a dozen or so thatched log cabins straggling along the road through wild woods. Detached caterpillar tracks stretched long and straight on the ground under the trees; bogie wheels were off; guns were off; and on every side men in black or blue coveralls hammered, filed, greased, and welded, shouting in Russian and laughing at each other.
Strolling down the street in an olive-colored greatcoat too large for him, a short, hook-nosed, swarthy officer broke into a trot when he saw the black automobile. He saluted the colonel, then the two embraced and kissed.
Introducing the visitors, Amphiteatrov said, "Major Kaplan, I showed our friends those busted German tanks out there. Our American Navy friend asked a real tankist's question. He asked, how could T-26's knock out Panzer Mark Threes?"
The battalion commander grinned from ear to ear, clapped Victor Henry on the back, and said in Russian, 'Good, come this way." Beyond the last cabin, he led them into the woods, past two lines of light tanks ranged under the trees and draped with camouflage netting over their own green-and-sand blotches. 'Here we are," he said proudly.
'This is how we knocked out the Mark Threes."
Dispersed in the thickets, all but invisible under branches and nets, five armored monsters thrust heavy square turrets with giant guns high in the air. Tudsbury's mouth fell open, as he stared up at them.
He ner -A vously brushed his moustaches with a knuckle. "My God!
What are these things?"
"Our newest Russian tank," said Amphiteatrov. "C'eneral Ycvlenko thought it might interest President Roosevelt."
"Fantastic!" said Talky. "Why, I'd heard you had these monsters, butWhat do they weigh? A hundred tons? Look at that gun!"
The Russians smiled at each other. Amphiteatrov said, "It's a good tank." Tudsbury asked if they might climb inside one and to Pug's surprise the colonel agreed. Young tankists helped the lame fat Englishman to the batch, as Pug scrambled up. Inside the command turret, despite the clutter of machinery and instruments and the bulky gun breech, there was a lot of elbowroom. The machine smelled startlingly like a new car; Pug guessed this came from the heavy leather seats for the gunner and the commander. He knew very little about tanks, but the workmanship of the raw metal interior seemed good, despite some crude instrument brackets and wiring. The dials, valves, and controls had an old-fashioned German look.
"Great God, Henry, it's a land battleship," Tudsbury said. "When I think of the tiny tin cans we rode in! Why, the best German tanks today are eggshells to this. Bloody eggshells! What a surprise!"
When they climbed out, soldiers were clustering around the tank, perhaps a hundred or more, with others coming through the trees. On the flat hull stood'Pamela, embarrassed and amused under the male stares.
Bundled in mud-caked lambskin, Pamela was not a glamorous object, but her presence seemed to thrill and hypnotize the tankists. A pale moonfaced officer with glasses and long yellow teeth stood beside her.
Major Kaplan introduced him as the political officer. "The commissar would like to present all of you to the troops," said Amphiteatrov to Victor Henry, "as he feels this visit is a serious occasion that can be used to bolster their fighting spirit."
"By all means," Victor Henry said.
He could understand only fragments of the strident, quick-tumbling harangue of the moonfaced commissar, but the earnest tones, the waving fist, the Communist slogans, the innocent, attentive faces of the handsome young tankists, made a clear enough picture. The commissar's speech was half a revivalist sermon and half a football coach's pep talk. Suddenly the soldiers applauded, and Amphiteatrov began to translate, in bursts o'f three or four sentences at a time, during which the moon face beamed at him: "In the name of the Red Army, I now welcome the American naval captain, Genry, the British war correspondent, Tudsbury, and especially the brave English newspaperwoman, Pamela, to our front. It is always good for a fighting man's morale to see a pretty face." (Laughter among the men.) "But we have no evil thoughts, Miss Tudsbury, we think only of our own little sweethearts back home, naturally. Besides, your father has wisely come along to protect you from the romantic and virile young Russian tankists." (Laughter and handclaps.) "You have showed us that the British and American peoples have not forgotten us in our struggle against.
the Fascist hyenas.
"Comrade Stalin has said that the side which has more petroleum engines will win this war. Why is the petroleum engine so important?
Because petroleum is the biggest source of energy today, and energy wins wars. We tankists know that! Hitler and the Germans thought they would make a lot of petroleum engines in a hurry, put them in tanks and aircraft, and steal a march on the world. Hitler even hoped that certain ruling circles in America and England would help him once he decided to attack the peaceful Soviet people. Well, he miscalculated.
These two great nations have formed an unshakable front with the Soviet peoples. That is what the presence of our visitors shows us.
We three countries possess many more petroleum engines than the Germans, and since we can manufacture still more engines faster than they can, because we have much larger industries, we will win this war.
"We will win it faster if our friends wig hasten to send us plenum war supplies, because the Nazi bandits will not quit until we have killed a great many of them. Above all, we will win much faster if our British allies will open a second front at once and kill some German soldiers too.
Certain people think it is impossible to beat Germans. So let me ask this battalion: have you fought Germans?"
Twilight had fallen during the harangue, and Pug could barely see the nearest soldiers' faces. A roar came from the darkness: 'DAI' "Have you beaten them?"
'(DAd) "Are you afraid of Germans?"
'NYETI'-and barking male laughter.
"Do you think the British should be afraid to open a second front against them?"
"NYETI'-and more laughter, and another bellow, like a college cheer, in Russian, "Second front now! Second front now!' "Thank you, my comrades. And now to dinner, and then back to our tanks, in which we have won many victories and will win more, for our socialist motherland, our sweethearts, our mothers, our Wives, and our children, and for Comrade Stalin!"
A tremendous college cheer in the gloom: "WE SERVE THE SOVIET UNION!" "The meeting is over," hoarsely cried the commissar, as the moon rose over the trees.
Pug came awake from restless sleep on a straw pallet, on the dirt floor of a log cabin. Beside him in blackness
Talky Tudsbury liquidly snored.
Groping for a cigarette and lighting it, he saw Pamela as the match flared upright on the only bed, her back to the plastered log wall, her eyes glittaring. "Pam?" "Hello there. I still feel as though we're bumping and sliding in mud.
"Do you suppose if I stepped outside, a sentry would shoot me?"
'Let's try. I'll step out first. If I get shot, you go back to bed."
"Oh, that's a fine plan. Thank you."
Pug pulled on the cigarette, and in the red glow Pamela came over and clasped hands. Moving along the rough wall, Pug found the door and opened a blue rectangle in the dark. "I'll be damned. Moon. Stars."
Herman Wouk - The Winds Of War Page 104
