President Dewey looked at the great map with its display of the fighting going on around the world. “Yes, Eleanor, I guess we could.”
It had been a long, long road from Alexander Ignatievich Shulgin’s home, at Kineshma on the Volga, to the Kola Front. It began in August 1942 when he had been at work in his office. “They” had called him, telling him the fascists were coming and all civilians were being evacuated. He’d been given a notice telling him to pack as many of his things as he could carry in a suitcase. Everything else would be destroyed. There would be nothing left for the fascists, not food, not shelter, not clothes, nothing not even a piece of paper. While fascists remained on Russian soil, they would not even be able to ease their bowels in comfort.
The message had ordered him to be at the railway station the next morning. It had confused Shulgin. Weren’t the fascists attacking in the North, towards Moscow? There was no word of fascists attacking to the south, towards Stalingrad. Moscow was under siege and the fascists had more than they could handle there. The newspapers had been full of stories of the heroism of Moscow’s defenders, each being prepared to sell his life if doing so would add to the total of fascist dead. Comrade Stalin was there too, masterminding the resistance, cheering the people with his grim determination that Moscow would not fall.
The railway station had been a sight to behold. Crowds of people being herded onto trains heading East. It wasn’t like the first evacuation, the one last year when the fascists had first struck. That had been chaos. This was well-organized, the people being pushed onto trains as they arrived and were identified.
In the background, passing the trains full of people were other lines of railway cars, loaded down with industrial machinery. It wasn’t just the people who were going east; the factories were as well. The lines of people were labeled by initials. Shulgin found the row labeled S and stood there, waiting for his turn. Eventually, an NKVD man had looked at his notice, then at Shulgin. “Infantry Academy” had been his only comment. Then he’d been herded onto the train with the rest.
As the long train ride had ground on, the packed railway cars had become progressively more foul. Water had been in short supply, food even shorter. They’d been stopped, sometimes for hours, sometimes for a day or more, as higher-priority trains took up the track. Factory machinery heading east; Army units, supplies, armored vehicles on flatcars heading west. Whichever they were, the people on the trains waited until they’d gone. Then, the long journey started again. People had wept; others raged. In some of the packed cars, babies had been born. They were given special care for they were a sign that a future still existed.
Finally they had arrived at somewhere in the depths of Siberia, far to the east. Once again, NKVD men inspected the notices and this time Shulgin had been one of the younger men sent to one side. There were trucks waiting, Studebakers, and the men from the train were loaded into them. The trucks had taken them all to the Infantry Academy where the pre-war three months course had been compressed into two weeks. Then, they were made part of the 161st Rifle Division.
What had followed was a blur. A mixture of being sent to the front, assaults on fascist positions, beating back assaults on their own, fighting seemingly without end. Shulgin had felt as if he’d lived his whole life in that blur, without any past or future The 161st Rifle Division had been ground down to a shell, pulled from the line and rebuilt, then sent back. 1943 had faded into 1944. The 161st had been one of the divisions trapped in the Kola peninsula when the fascists had broken through to besiege Archangel’sk. Ground down to a shell again, rebuilt again. Somehow, without quite remembering how or when, Shulgin had advanced in rank and was now a Sergeant.
The warning came earlier in the day. One of the ski patrols, from the 78th Siberian, had spotted the fascists moving up to attack. They’d hit during the night, probably; perhaps at dawn the next day. So the 161st was going to pre-empt them. They would hit the fascists at dusk, hopefully catch them while they were moving into their jump-off positions. The company commanders had already visited their units and given their orders. The squads were to stay together in shallow trenches, covered with branches so that the fascists would not spot them. Shulgin took a tighter grip on his rifle. It was not the three-line Mosin Nagant he had trained with an age ago, but a Canadian-made Lee-Enfield supplied under Lend-Lease.
That wasn’t the only thing that was different from the way he had trained in the Infantry Academy. Today, there would be no cries of “Forward!” There would be no shouts of “Urrah.” Shulgin heard a quiet “Let’s go, bratischka” from his company commander and saw him climb out of his foxhole. Shulgin did the same and followed him automatically. The rest of the men rose up after him. They just quietly stood up; just as quietly, they walked forward. Darkness was closing in. A mist was rising where the freshly-fallen snow steamed slightly as the temperature rose in the wake of the storm. Shulgin felt the eeriness around him, the dead silence seeming to suffocate them. Then one of the newbies in the unit started quietly rattling with his improperly carried weapons. That changed the situation instantly. The Germans picked up the sound and opened fire. First a rifle, then machine-guns. The Russian infantry hunched up and started to run forward; praying their feet wouldn’t break the crust on the snow and leave them floundering. Shulgin could see only the back-pack of the man in front.
The cries of “Forward!” were already ringing through the trees. Shulgin had no idea how long he had been running forward. It could have been a second; it could have been an hour for all he knew.
He’d reached the German foxholes scraped in the snow and dropped flat into the largest of them. A firm grip on his rifle, butt tucked firmly into his shoulder. Bolt handle held between thumb and forefinger, little finger around the trigger. Not a grip taught by the Russian Army but a trick shown to them by the Canadian Sergeant-Major who’d instructed them in the workings of the Lee-Enfield. Shulgin flipped the bolt forward and back, one smooth action and squeezed the trigger with his little finger. Almost instantly he was operating the bolt again, blessing the smooth speed of the Lee action against the sticky roughness of the Mosin-Nagant. Ten aimed shots went out, then the magazine was empty. He pushed the catch that released it and inserted a loaded magazine for another ten shots.
All along the rifle line, the other infantrymen were doing the same. The rapid rifle fire cut down the fascists as they tried to counterattack their lost positions. The squad machine guns opened up, spraying the fascists and sending them tumbling over in chaos. “Forward!” Shulgin cried out, without even realizing it. They followed up the shattered fascist counter-attack. He and his men were drove through the woods, pushing the fascists back, faster and faster. The troops that were preparing for their own attack were caught out of position and at a disadvantage. Even if they recovered from this blow, any attack they launched would be a weak and feeble thing compared with the original plan.
Smoke filled the woods. The world seemed full of explosions, shooting, the crash of grenades going off. In Shulgin’s eyes, the whole battlefield was littered with people. Some were motionless, others convulsing from pain. Then, something hit him from the side, sending him flying through the air. He tried to get up but his foot turned under him. The agonizing wrench seemed to turn his whole leg to jelly. He couldn’t even move to get back to where the medical unit was. He started to crawl back but stopped. Why go back when I can go forward? He changed direction and found a wooden stump that offered some cover. He couldn’t remember what happened next; only a blaze of pain from his ankle when somebody tugged it. Shulgin rolled over, bayonet at the ready but held the thrust. One of the aid women was staring at him, contempt in her eyes.