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Yurii Koriakin

The Flip Side of Victory

...The difference in impressions from the frontline environment was huge for us who came from the polar regions. The absence of human life, boulders, woods, and bogs were replaced by smoking ruins, bomb craters, cities with burning streets, corpses lying here and there, dense habitation, unaccustomed to us nice sturdy houses, tiled roofs of manicured estates and churches and excellent autobahns, never before seen by us...

...On top of all that, having just arrived from frost-bitten, snow-covered, and starved Vologda, we suddenly entered an early spring, bright sun. Against this backdrop our sheepskin jackets, fur hats, and valenki (felt boots for extremely cold temperatures) plopping in the puddles looked absurd, weird, scared the local Germans and caused laughter and ridicule from the soldiers of other units...

...A courier runs by, waving his hand at me, shouting: "Sergeant Major, to the company commander!" I hurry. The company commander, buckling the map case, interrupts my report: "See that sign? A road leads from it to a group of houses, see that? You will deploy your radio transmitter there and return quickly. The headquarters" - he nodded in the direction of a building - "will be accommodated here. Got it?" In several minutes my partner Dimka and I were already approaching a streetsign that said "Aikfir". We come to the first house in the village. I look around. It seems there isn't a single soul in the village. The house is sturdy, two storied, with an attic. A large tree grows next to it, which you can reach by standing up on the roof. If you climb higher in the tree, fix an antenna there and run it into the attic room, that will be exactly what's required, reliable communications. But we need to get inside the house. Three years at the front had taught us to be careful. With the submachine guns readied, following each others footsteps (since the valenki are wet) we climb onto the porch, tie a cord to the door knob, retreat, and after hiding behind a tree, pull. The door flies open. Already more confident we look inside: a small hall, empty, a door to the left. Again we pull the door knob. And finally, thudding with our wet valenki with sand and soil stuck to our soles, we appear at the doorstep in all our beauty from beyond the Polar Circle, with submachine guns at the ready.

For the rest of my life I won't forget the wild, piercing shriek of a short girl of 15-16 years, who threw herself at us with raised hands from behind a table standing in the middle of a large, well-furnished room. An instant, and she's pounding my chest with her fist, hitting the fur lapels of my greasy sheepskin jacket, repeating: "Ich bin krank! Ich bin syphilis!" Grabbing the girl by the hand and pushing her to the side, I turn to Dimka: "What's with her, huh? You get it?" Dimka grinned: "Sure I do". And I understood everything myself, rather I was asking stupidly. Holding the hysterically weeping girl by the hand, I'm reflecting: "Why the hell would I need her with her sobbing when we need to go upstairs, to the attic? If I let go of her - only devil knows what she'll do." Talk to her - neither I nor Dimka speak German in the least. Slap her, so she won't get tangled under our feet - can't get myself to do it: she's just a stupid girl. Perplexed, I look around, searching for the stairs. Can't see them. Dimka is ahead of me: "The door!" It's behind my back, next to the one through which we entered. I make a step towards it; the girl breaks my grip and runs to get in front of me, presses her back to the door and again screams in despair: "Nicht, nicht" And starts up her: "Ich bin..." Now this looks suspicious to me. I throw her to the side, shout to Dimka: "Hold her!" - and with the submachine gun readied kick the door open, having previously noted that it opens inward. From the semidarkness of the storeroom with a small window I hear moaning, lamentations, and children crying. I look inside. Mother of God! Several people are sitting on a bench and on the floor. I look closely: an old man, three women, and four children. All of them are wailing, all have full baskets of belongings on their knees and next to them. Looks like they're going somewhere. Well, and what if I fired a burst there? Oh, man!..

Literally dumbfounded I turn to my partner, who's holding the girl. At that moment we hear the noise of an approaching car. We both shout: "Germans, get down!" I fall at the doorstep, Dimka throws the girl down and holding her mouth closed, looks in the direction of the window where the noise is coming from. The family in the storeroom quiets down. The engine shuts off, voices can be heard, whose we can't tell. Silence settles, we keep down. Like on Judgement Day, suddenly one chime of an old floor clock struck. I search my hand near the belt, take out grenades. The girl, seeing them, starts up wailing again. Cursing, Dimka presses her nose to the carpet. Then he crawls to the window, not letting go of her arm. Sniveling, she crawls next to him. From behind the corner of the window, her "cavalier" carefully looks outside and uncertainly mumbles: "Looks like ours." I tell him: "Looks like! What if they're not?" "No" - he says, continuing to observe, - "definitely Slavs" - and gets up. She does too. The voices come closer, we hear an order "Get in position, fix bayonets". Phew, we felt relieved... Dimka turns the girl to face the storeroom, knees her in the behind, saying: "Go back to your folks, dummy, where did you come from." She runs: she'd suffered enough.

We come out to the porch. Several soldiers immediately notice us. They shout: "Who are you? Hands up!" At that point we, hanging up our guns on the shoulder, unloaded from the soul, in the Russian manner, for everything at once. Including their foppish stupid rifles with affixed bayonets which went out of military fashion, for brand new uniforms of the soldiers clearly from NKVD forces: caps with bands, long greatcoats of Canadian gray-blue cloth (they were very valuable at the front) with smooth, foppish, shiny clean shoulder boards, with brand new boots and not puttees like us ground pounders wore. A captain jumps out from behind the truck: "As you were! Who are you?" We explain. He approaches us, lighting up "Belomor", extends us the pack. That buys us, looks like he's from the frontline, talks on our level: "Here's how it is, guys, more trucks will come soon, we'll be evicting the villagers. We'll start from that end. You have two hours if you need anything". He smirks a little. "But I don't advise you to remain here for long, you won't care for what you'll see. Have you heard about the Yalta coference? There. They're giving this region to the Poles." He nodded at the houses, inhaled: "But they lived well here, wish we'd have the same in Riazan' oblast". As if suddenly coming awake, he snaps strictly: "Better get out of here and report this to your superiors". We nod in unison: "Yessir!", - and away we go...

NVO May 7-13 1999