A break for lunch did little to revive them. Emil drifted off to sleep and began snoring, but Anton couldn’t do the same. Battle made him nervous. It was hard to sleep when death hung so near the horizon, where at any moment it might slip down and harvest a handful of legionnaires. Maybe more than a handful.
Blisters burned Anton’s feet as the afternoon went on. In the midst of their march, a whispered order came down the line calling for absolute silence. Anton crept closer to the road. Six wagons lumbered past with four Red Army cavalrymen acting as escort.
One of the mounted men pointed into the forest and shouted. He’d seen someone, and both sides reacted quickly. Legionnaires shot, and the cavalrymen bolted. Three fell, but one galloped away.
“So much for surprise.” Petr aimed at one of the fleeing wagon drivers, then let the man go. He was just a frightened peasant, no danger to the legion.
Kral and another officer went forward to examine the abandoned wagons. “Tothova!”
“Yes, Brother Captain?” Anton emerged from the woods.
“Shells. We can’t move them, so destroy them. Then join the rest of us. We’re attacking at once.”
Anton nodded. In other circumstances, they’d save the shells for their own use. But they were surrounded on all sides by Bolsheviks. If they tried to take the shells back, they might be recaptured by the enemy. And they couldn’t take them forward because it would slow their advance, and they’d brought no cannon with which to fire them.
Petr, Emil, and several of the others followed Anton onto the road. “Put all the carts together.” Anton wasn’t used to giving orders, but speed was vital, so he acted on his first idea. While the others maneuvered the wagons, he dragged the driest branches he could find from the forest. Kral ordered the rest of the men out of the woods and onto the road. The Bolsheviks knew they were coming, so there was no longer any point hiding in the trees. They’d move faster on the road.
Anton unharnessed a pair of horses, and others did the same. When only the wagons remained, they lit a fire underneath. It was a clumsy solution, but they had limited equipment and limited time. As the fire caught, they rushed to catch up with the rest of the column.
The increased pace was exhilarating, especially when the shells behind them began to burst, punctuating their movements. But when the trees along the side of the road thinned out, Anton stopped abruptly. A steep hill sprung from the ground. The road curved around it, and beyond that lay the station they’d been tasked with taking. On top of the hill, the Red Army had dug in. And along those steep slopes not a single bush or tree grew. There was only grass, and it wasn’t tall enough to hide in.
“We’ve got to take that hill.” Kral’s reasoning was clear. If the Bolsheviks kept the high ground, they could cut to pieces anyone trying to take Station 61. But they could also cut to pieces anyone trying to take the hill.
It wasn’t Anton’s decision, and the order had already been given. The men let out their war cry, “Hurrah,” and charged up the hill. The muscles of Anton’s calves burned on the steep incline, but he didn’t dare slow. Rifle fire rained down, and men fell to either side of him. Explosions continued in the distance—shells from the wagons he’d lit on fire.
Partway up the hill, the crack of rifle fire died down. Then white handkerchiefs appeared from the men in the trenches. Why on earth were they surrendering? They had the advantage in position, if not in numbers. Had the legion’s charge really been so intimidating?
A few shots whistled past them as Anton and Petr crested the hill. Anton shot an officer in a black uniform. As he fell, the fighting stopped completely.
Emil struck up a conversation with one of the prisoners, then told Anton his conclusion. “They’re conscripts, not Communists.”
Most of the Russians were more boy than man, and the commissars in black uniforms, one dead and the other wounded, were no longer able to command them. Perhaps the sound of shells exploding in the distance had helped. It sounded like the legion had powerful artillery at their backs.
Kral ordered a few legionnaires to guard the prisoners and man the captured trenches, then spoke to the rest of them. “Come on, this is only part of our objective. We need that train station.”
Anton hadn’t yet caught his breath, but he obeyed and ran down the opposite side of the hill with his brothers.
“Is that a . . . ? Get down!” Petr yelled. “Armored train!”
Anton dropped to the grass beside Emil as a shell plowed into the hill a few meters away. The exploding shells from the burning wagons had been loud, but they were a whisper compared to the roar of the armored train’s artillery.
“Keep moving!” Kral’s voice carried through everything else. “Don’t stop! Get off the open slope!”
Emil got to his feet first, then Anton. They both followed Kral. Did the captain ever experience fear, even a little? They raced into the trees at the bottom of the hill. The forest wasn’t as thick as the one they’d left, but it still slowed them. Anton would take the slower movements because it also hid them. To the right, the sound of battle echoed with a roaring intensity.
When they emerged from the woods, the station lay before them with more forest beyond it. The armored train was gone, but the Bolsheviks manning the depot quickly opened up with rifle fire.
Kral pointed to Anton, Petr, and Emil. “See if you can get close enough to throw grenades at them.”
Anton looked at Petr, who smiled grimly, and at Emil, who set his jaw in determination. They moved quickly. Anton fired at the Bolsheviks, trying to make them duck, while the others used first a bush, then a tree as shelter. Then Petr fired while Anton joined them and moved closer to the station, crawling through the thick, scratchy grass.
He was close enough to see the enemy clearly. Black-uniformed commissars led the Bolsheviks. Anton didn’t agree with their fanatic ideas, but he couldn’t deny their bravery.
Emil crawled to a bush beside him. “Now?”
Anton nodded, and they both lobbed their grenades. They ducked back to the ground and heard a satisfying blast.
“Move there.” Anton pointed to a group of bushes about five meters to the left and a few meters ahead. “Then we’ll do it again.”
They repeated the maneuver several times, with Petr doing something similar to their right. On their fourth—and last, given the state of their grenade supplies—hurl, Emil cried out and crashed to the ground. Anton dove toward him and looked at the damage.
“Just a scratch, right?” Emil forced a smile. “Nothing more than you’d get from smashing a mosquito.”
Blood gushed from multiple wounds on Emil’s right leg. Anton couldn’t tell how deep they were, nor could he spend much time probing because the Bolsheviks were still shooting at them.
“I think this will earn you a ticket to Vladivostok.” If Emil lived that long. There was so much blood. Anton grabbed a rag from his pocket and made it into a tourniquet. Then he bandaged the two gaping holes, one on Emil’s thigh and the other on his knee.
Petr threw his last grenade, and several of the enemy ceased moving. Two of the Bolsheviks, then four, then a dozen fled to the woods behind the train depot. They’d held out longer than most of their comrades who had fought in the east last summer. They were either more disciplined or were held under tighter control by their commissars. The men in black fought until Kral led the rest of his group in a bayonet charge. Then, at last, Station 61 fell to the legion.