Petr barreled toward the barricade not long after. Was that why Emil had fired? To give Petr cover?
Petr gasped for breath. “The Bolsheviks are pulling back. Kral said we’re to pull back too.”
Filip nodded. He’d gotten little sleep since Bakhmach. He was unlikely to get any more if they withdrew, but at least he’d get a break from the German bullets screeching over his head. “Right. Help Emil get the Maxim. We’ll want it the next time we need to stall them.”
“We’re not going back to Bakhmach?” A frown pulled at Dalek’s lips.
Bakhmach meant evacuation to Russia and a temporary end to fighting an enemy that dramatically outnumbered them. “Not until the rest of the legion makes it through the train depot.”
Petr went to help Emil with the machine gun, but a burst of enemy fire ripped into the mud mere inches from his boots. Petr dove behind the Maxim’s sandbag barrier. If anyone on the gun crew tried to move beyond their shelters, the enemy gun would cut them to pieces.
Dalek swore. “Unless the Germans give up, we’ll have to leave behind our gun and half our squad.”
Filip didn’t want to accept losses like that. He motioned for Dalek and Anton to follow him along the trench toward a row of wooden buildings.
“We built this lovely barrier to stop all manner of German bullets.” Dalek raised an eyebrow. “And now you want to leave it?”
“We need to take out that German machine gun. And you two are among the few who have rifles.” Filip had his rifle and a pistol too, a compact Beholla they’d found on one of the dead Germans at Bakhmach. Filip couldn’t even get all his fingers on the grip, so he was holding out hope for a Luger P08 instead.
Dalek groaned but followed. Anton followed, too, in silence. Filip led them the length of the trench, keeping them sheltered. “I don’t want to leave Doch without Emil and the others. And there’s the matter of the Maxim. We earned it. So first we take out the German gun, then we gather our Maxim and the rest of our squad, and then we pull back. Follow me, but keep a few paces apart.”
Filip rushed behind the nearest building. He paused at the far edge and looked around the corner. He couldn’t see anyone, and between the building and the wide road was a hedge, so it was unlikely anyone could see him. He couldn’t let the Germans spot him, or they’d take better cover, so Filip got to his belly and slithered to the next building through cold, sticky mud. When he was safe behind the building, he stood and tried to scrape off as much of the goop as he could.
“Mud baths?” Dalek joined him, just as muddy as Filip. “This is turning into quite the adventure.”
“You never minded when we were boys.”
“Yes, but the prospects for a bath with clean water and soap weren’t quite so distant in Prague.”
Anton joined them, and Filip handed him his rifle. He looked from the roofline to Dalek. “Boost me up.”
Dalek threaded his hands together to make a foothold and practically threw Filip onto the building’s thatched roof. Filip motioned for his rifle, and once he had it, he crawled forward. The German machine gun would be to the south. He scanned the cluster of buildings that made up Doch. There. He could just make out the muzzle. A flash as the machine gun went into action confirmed it. But Filip didn’t have a clear shot. If he could get a little higher and a bit more to the east . . .
Doch was not a large town, and the Germans had already seized the tallest of the buildings. But a mature oak tree stood in about the right position.
Filip edged his way back, then dropped from the roof.
“Well?” Dalek asked. He and Anton stood guard at opposite ends of the house.
“I can see it, but I don’t have a clear shot. I’m going to try from that tree.”
They made their way to the oak by three separate routes. Dalek boosted Filip to one of the lower branches, and then Filip climbed. He moved slowly, not wanting his rifle to catch a tree limb or the Germans to see him. He was slightly behind the machine-gun nest, but the tree didn’t have its spring foliage yet. He’d be easy to spot if they looked.
Anton and Dalek kept vigil below. Their words drifted up.
“The two of you are either acrobats or monkeys,” Anton said.
Dalek chuckled. “Just avid members of a Prague Sokol club.”
“I thought the Sokols were just covers for Czech Nationalists to get together.”
“That’s what the imperial government said when they banned them in 1915, but we still learned gymnastics.”
Filip smiled to himself and reached for another tree limb. His arms weren’t as limber as they’d been during his Sokol days. The shrapnel that had torn into his shoulder at Zborov had seen to that. But of the three of them, he was the best shot, and he’d had time to sight in his Mosin-Nagant rifle. One more branch and the German machine gun crew would be within view. He removed a glove and held a finger out to test the wind. Barely there, blowing from the south. The range was just under 500 meters. He balanced, aimed, adjusted for wind and distance, and squeezed the trigger.
He ejected the casing and aimed again. His next target was a German soldier who had flung himself to the ground at the first shot. The man must not have known Filip’s position, or he would have found a better place to hide.
Filip had hit two of them, and enemy soldiers would now be looking for a sniper. Filip began the climb down. If Emil and Petr weren’t taking advantage of the distraction he’d caused, they deserved to be abandoned at Doch.
A pair of soldiers ran to the German gun and began turning it toward the tree.
“Get out of there!” Dalek shouted.
Filip tossed his rifle to his friend. He made it down one more branch, and then the machine gun was in position. He was still fifteen feet up.
He was a gymnast, accustomed to falls. He grabbed a branch and swung out, away from the bulk of the oak’s branches, then let go, falling, tucking, then splaying out in time to land hard. He stumbled back, then ran for cover as bullets tore into the branches of the oak tree and shards of wood pelted down all around him.
Behind the wall of a nearby home, Dalek slapped him on the shoulder and handed him his rifle. “Nice shooting. But I would have stuck the landing. Let’s collect our gun and the rest of our squad.”
The withdrawal fell into a pattern after Doch: retreat to cover, wait for the Germans, repulse the Germans, repulse them again, then tear up the tracks and retreat once more. And though the work was dangerous, it was also effective. The mighty German Army advanced but not nearly as fast as it wanted to.
They fought for five days, until the evacuation was almost complete. Then they tore up a few hundred feet of rail line and boarded trains at Bakhmach station. They pulled away at night, heading east.
Filip sincerely hoped that the next time he met the Germans, it would be in France.
Chapter Eight
When the men caught up to them, Nadia felt both relief and anxiety. She wanted Filip to be safe, but how did one act around a temporary husband? She was still learning how to braid Veronika’s hair and cooperate with the other women in the train. Adding Filip, and whatever expectations he might have, made everything more complicated. Would he want more from their relationship than she’d bargained on?
He greeted her with a smile. “How are you?”
“Well, thank you.” She still lived, and that was thanks to the Czechoslovak Legion and Filip Sedlák. What was more, they were on the Russian side of the border. The Cheka had even greater authority here, but local agents wouldn’t be looking for her.
“You’ve had enough food? A place to sleep?”
“Yes.”
He relaxed his stance slightly. “I’m sorry I couldn’t make sure you were taken care of myself. It just happened so fast and . . .”
“You’re a soldier. I understand. Both my brothers served in the Imperial Russian Army.” Of course, they’d been officers. In a similar situation, they could have asked an orderly to see to a temporary wife’s needs, but Filip didn’t have such resources. He was escaping too; the whole legion was, more than seventy trains of them. “I’m grateful for your help.”