As the general straightened an overcoat that dangled from one of the carts, he touched the firm, oblong object that was holding the overcoat. It was a frozen soldier’s arm. It held the overcoat in a death grip. The general rode off abruptly and observed the overcoat trailing behind the cart for a while.
The field kitchens had no provisions. The general ordered that what little still remained be given to the wounded. But only thin soup remained. This soup could not satiate the wounded; it could not even warm them. They looked upward incessantly as they lay on the carts, feeling nothing but the cold. This was a cosmic cold, emanating from distant, indifferent stars.
It was the kind of cold that made the soldiers think they would never warm up now. Not warm up and not get a good sleep. Many wanted to die and the general knew that. He forbade his soldiers to daydream about death.
‘Whoever of you dies,’ said the general, ‘will end up in the grave unwarmed.’
There was no answer.
‘He will freeze eternally,’ said the general.
The soldiers walked in complete silence. They were afraid that their last remnants of warmth would leave, along with the words they uttered. All that sounded were the even clatter of horse hoofs, the creak of carts, and the crunch of frost under the gun carriages’ wheels. And the groans of the wounded. A while later (their sense of time was dulled, too) a quiet glass-like sound blended in with those other noises. The general rode off to the side and saw ice chafing against rocks by the water. They had retreated to the Sivash. The salt-water lake was covered with a thin icy crust.
An explosion rang out somewhere in the distance. And then closer. Again in the distance. This was the Reds’ artillery shelling. It created the impression that the Reds were shooting at random. The retreating troops did not slow their pace. Sometimes the shells landed a few dozen meters from the column. They raised pillars of water in the sea that flashed briefly and gloomily in the moonlight. At times they exploded with a deafening dry bang; the general understood then that the Sivash had frozen solid in places. This discovery made him feel uneasy.
‘General Winter,’ whispered General Larionov. ‘He’s made his appearance a month earlier than usual.’
They saw distant campfires at around two in the morning. This did not bode well at all for those retreating and the general knew it. Those campfires meant that isolated Red units had managed to go around his army from the east and enter the isthmus first. It was also possible that the Sivash had frozen so much in places that the Reds could cross from the side of the village of Stroganovka. Now they awaited the general’s troops along their retreat route. Movement continued, though those campfires meant death.
The general did not dismiss the idea that events could develop that way, though he considered it improbable. He surmised that the Reds would want to intercept him, but here he was counting on the Sivash, which did not usually freeze. His calculation did not hold true. He was left hoping that only the Reds’ vanguard had managed to cross.
The general could not imagine that the cavalry—particularly the artillery weapons—could have crossed the first thin ice. He could not imagine that much of any significant enemy force could have made its way here during the time the Whites were on their inhuman forced march. Even so—regardless of how many of them there were—the Reds had arrived on the isthmus first. Despite the cold. And the barely frozen Sivash. The general’s army was like a worn-out horse. He had worn it out in hopes of saving it. It was the first time in his life that the general had subjected soldiers to an ordeal like this. It was the first time in his life that he felt the inevitability of defeat.
He scrutinized the soldiers’ faces yet again, as if searching for clues. The cold had smoothed the features of those faces, depriving them of expression. Frost lay on their mustaches and eyebrows. There was nothing in his soldiers’ eyes but the campfires burning up ahead. Did they surmise what those campfires meant? Even if they did, the pull of that flame was so strong that it was already impossible to stop their motion toward it.
And the general did not even try. Stopping here would have been tantamount to death. On this bare and completely unprotected plain, his troops would be swept away by the Reds’ superior forces. Occupying positions on the well-fortified Perekop remained their only chance of salvation. For that, they now needed the impossible: an attack.
‘Prepare for battle,’ said the general, his words drowning in the beginnings of a blizzard.
The general said it loudly and nobody heard him. He knew it was useless to repeat. He spurred his horse and galloped off to the leading column.
Why had the Reds lit the campfires? Why did they not continue moving toward Perekop? Were they unable to? Had they made a quick stop to warm up? This will remain one of the war’s enigmas. In Solovyov’s opinion, the Reds also did not suppose the enemy was capable of ending up in this sector so early. According to all their mental calculations, the general and his army could not have turned up here until at least the next morning. It is possible the Reds did not expect the general to accomplish the unthinkable, so had calmly lit their campfires. Even if they had not lit them calmly, though, they simply could not have survived on a night like that without fires.
Solovyov attributed the Reds’ mind-boggling carelessness to their being completely frozen. To the narrowing of blood vessels in the brain as a result of hypothermia. This was how the historian explained the fact that the Reds did not even have an outpost. They glimpsed the White Army only when the figure of a horseman emerged in front of them, out of the blizzard, which was finally running wild.
‘Who goes there?’ they asked by a campfire.
‘Friend,’ answered the general.
He slowly rode up to the nearest campfire, where those sitting recognized him. It was impossible not to recognize him. Even in 1920, in the absence of television and glossy magazines, the general was one of several faces everyone knew. When seen from below, he seemed huge. He looked like a monument.
Nobody stirred by the fire. People hold their breath like this when lightning balls appear: they feign nonexistence, hoping it will disappear. But the general was not disappearing. He and his horse grew each time the fire blazed.
The Red commander emerged from the darkness. Stood still. His hand extended on its own to salute.
‘Your Excellency…’
‘At ease,’ said the general.
The general’s army was passing by behind his back but he was watching those seated at the campfires. For their part, they were still sitting motionlessly, watching the general. How his horse stamped its feet, how its flanks occasionally trembled. The bay horse was turning white before their eyes. The general was turning white: his military overcoat, his hood, and the reins in his hands. His face was also white. Never before had they seen such a white general. The cavalry was slowly floating past their very eyes in the drifting snow, as if it were surmounting sediment at the bottom of the sea. The infantry passed by. The heavy weaponry rode by. This went on for a long time, but nobody could grasp how long. Time had stopped. When the last infantryman had passed, the general nodded silently and vanished in the darkness.
They approached Perekop at dawn. The general ordered they demolish all remaining structures there and build campfires with them. A train with foodstuffs and firewood was already on its way from Dzhankoy. The general checked the condition of the fortifications and ordered they stretch barbed wire where there were breaks. At first he wanted to set up camp with tents but he knew that was already impossible. He commanded only that nobody lie in the snow. An instant later, everyone was sleeping but the posted sentinels.