Shadows of Vengeance, page 4
What Larisa Alushta would never comprehend at the age of six was that the railroad station just outside the village was on the Orel-Kursk line. Both General Rokossovsky and the German General Model considered possession of the station and the tracks critical to the battle. Model hurled his forces into a line that ran north and south with Ponyri at its center. Infantry followed the tanks—and to the rear were the SS insuring that there was no retreat. Rokossovsky intended to hold the line at the tracks. He ordered his tanks buried with only their turrets above the ground. They would neither retreat, nor would they stop firing until their crews were dead.
This massive exchange created carnage beyond anything ever before imagined—even by military men. When the dug-in tanks succeeded in slowing the German advance, then their speedier comrades would attempt to race down upon the Germans from the flanks. At close range, the Soviet tanks were the equal of the more heavily armed Germans. And when a Tiger or Panther tank was disabled or halted for ‘a moment, Russian sapper units rose from their trenches to swarm over them and finish off the crews.
The battle raged for hours around Ponyri. Larisa and her mother lost count of the number of tanks that rolled by their cellar shelter heading for the battlefield beyond the village. Shells would land near them in an attempt to halt the advance, but apparently the Red Army was concentrating on the more immediate threat. They could sense that the lines were getting closer as the sound and the shock waves battered their little hovel.
What it all meant was that the Germans were being driven back. It also guaranteed they would retreat through Ponyri!
The battle did not sweep back through Ponyri nearly as soon as either Larisa’s mother or General Rokossovsky anticipated. For months, Hitler had determined that retrenchment on the Russian front would be simply a preliminary to pushing east once again. German factories had been pushed to the limits to provide every possible unit of armor for the battle. The Luftwaffe made every fighter and bomber available that wasn’t absolutely required for the European front. Hundreds of thousands of troops were sent to reinforce those already dug in.
The result was a battle of unimaginable proportions swirling around the tiny village. The Russians commanded the heights to the north and south. As successive waves of armor and troops swarmed toward their lines, the Red Army pounded them with a concentration of firepower beyond even that employed at Stalingrad the previous winter. When battered Nazi elements withdrew each time to be joined by reserve forces hurriedly rushed forward, then the skies filled with aircraft.—dogfighting, bombing, strafing, crashing—all adding to the chaos along the Orel-Kursk railroad line. Man had never been meant to inflict such carnage.
The sun was never more than a pale disk that day, even at its apex, and there was no color on the horizon when it seemed to set prematurely.
But once again, the sky was brilliant with the flash of guns. And there was a new color added to the darkness—the brilliant, oily flames of hundreds of tanks burning across the battlefield. There were also the sad, small fires wherever a stand of trees had survived.
At times, the smoke that drifted into their shelter nearly suffocated Larisa and her mother. Settling over the area like a thick fog, it sank into each depression as the dampness of night fell. Their cellar remained covered through the constant bombardment, serving them well as clods of earth from nearby blasts fell noisily on the wood and earthen roof. Time was unimportant—it meant nothing. There was no sense of its passing as the din of each charging tank and each bursting shell seemed to merge with an unending thunder. At one point in the interminable day, there had been a series of explosions so close to them that Larisa was sure her life was about to end.
When the sounds of battle appeared to lessen for awhile, her mother crept to the trapdoor and lifted it slightly. Larisa could not see all that her mother did, but the opening was large enough to show her a still-burning tank down the street—and beyond … beyond there was nothing where the previous day a few thatched hovels had stood. What had been Ponyri—or more aptly, the remnants of that village—no longer existed except for a point on the map. Smoke curled skyward from the rubble.
Food consisted of black bread. It bore no similarity to the wonderful breads that the women of the village had been capable of until a few years ago, but it was food. Larisa was hungry. When her mother took only a few bites of her share, then offered the remainder to her daughter, that also disappeared quickly. A six-year-old stomach was never full.
Sleep that night was fitful. The thump of artillery shells settled into a pattern, and there were occasional voices outside the cellar that frightened them. Each time they heard someone, Larisa could feel her mother’s body tense. But the earthen covering over their cellar blended into the landscape. There was no reason for foraging troops to give it a second look.
First light brought renewed battle, and this time the din seemed louder than the previous day. Larisa noticed that her mother was somehow different. Only hours before she had held her daughter closely, talking to fill the void created by their dark existence. Now, she leaned against the dirt wall in one corner breathing shallowly, responding to Larisa’s questions with monosyllables. When the little girl crept next to her, snuggling under her mother’s arm, there was no reaction, no extra squeeze. When she grew older, Larisa understood that sometime during the night the older woman’s will to survive had slipped through the chinks in the trapdoor.
As smoky dawn oozed through the cracks, and the rumble toward the railroad line increased, her mother said without emotion, “We need more bread. I tried to get more yesterday … but there wasn’t enough to go around. They said … maybe today.” Her words came in shallow phrases in concert with her breathing. “There must be so many more dead today … perhaps there will be more for us.”
“Please don’t go.” Larisa could, tell that the sounds of battle were again drawing nearer. “Wait until it’s over. We can survive. They can’t fight forever. …” Her voice drifted off to a whisper as a violent shudder surged through her mother’s body.
Slowly, mechanically, the older woman crept over to the trapdoor and raised it slightly to peer outside. She turned for a moment and, as she stared back at her daughter, Larisa could see the tears streaming down her dust-caked face. Then she was gone. The trapdoor fell back into place and the cellar was once again engulfed in eerie darkness.
Larisa had been kneeling. Now she sat back on her heels. Even a six-year-old knew that it was sure death to venture outside now. Somehow, the tears that streaked her mother’s face did not appear on her own cheeks. She had cried so much the past few days, the emotion seemed to have been drained from her body.
She lifted the trapdoor gingerly. There was no movement outside. The tank and the nearby buildings were simply smoking. To the southeast, where the sun would have been if it had been able to penetrate the pall of smoke, a battle raged. She dropped the trapdoor involuntarily, clapping her hands over her ears. She was alone … and she was sure she would be alone as long as her young life lasted.
Larisa crept into the far corner of the cellar, searching with her fingers in the darkness for any leftover pieces of the bread. There was nothing. She lay back against the dirt wall and closed her eyes.
Though she was sure she hadn’t slept, the dreams of Uncle Mikhail’s farm seemed distinctly real until she was jolted back to reality. Tanks rumbled by outside at such a speed that she was sure they might roar right into her cellar. And all around was the thunder of shells. These had come from the direction of the sun, so the Germans must be retreating! Perhaps her own people would be back in Ponyri soon.
Yet as rapidly and noisily as they had come, a pall of quiet again settled outside. Larisa crept over to the trapdoor and lifted it an inch. There was nothing but dust settling back to the dirt road. She lifted it higher. Still nothing. She could relax once again.
She never heard anything—no whistle, no warning—of the shell that fell on the Street near the dead tank an instant later. The concussion hurled her backward. Her head cracked against one of the roof supports. Though there was pain, she never lost consciousness. She was aware that something was now lodged against the trapdoor so that it would not fall back into place. Lying on the dirt floor, her head aching, Larisa was resigned, waiting for the next shell—they always seemed to come in groups—but there was nothing. Moving slowly and carefully, she realized gratefully that she was not hurt. But she must still close the trapdoor, even though she couldn’t see whatever held it in place!
Then came the soldiers, running, cursing, peering back over their shoulders. They were Germans, but they were unlike any she had seen before. These had fear etched on their faces. Some were without helmets. Most carried no weapons. They were running away from the battle!
And they were shouting at each other in Russian!
Then there were guns firing in the street. One of the men fell. She heard a man shouting, “Cowards … cowards …” Then a second was hit. “You will all die with a bullet in the back if you don’t stop.”
There was more shooting. A third man fell near the tank, screaming in agony. The others halted, as if his twisting body somehow had formed a line they could not cross. Some huddled in terror behind the rubble across the street; the rest crawled behind the tank. None resembled soldiers.
Then the man who had been shouting came into view, followed closely by a second. Both still carried their guns and, after peering carefully over their shoulders, the first ordered the others into the open. They came slowly, shoulders hunched, fear engraved in their exhausted faces. Their destinies were controlled now by the fates. It made little difference whether they died on the battlefield or were shot in the back by their officers—as long as the Red Army didn’t get them first.
“Fall in over there,” the second man ordered, waving his free hand in the direction of the wrecked tank.
A tiny warning bell jarred Larisa’s memory. That voice … the sound of that voice! She was unable to move, her body suddenly rigid. Her eyes were glued to the man who was gesturing impatiently to this rabble in Nazi uniforms. “Do you want the SS to catch you running like dogs?”
The voice—that very same voice from Uncle Mikhail’s—was ordering these men in a language she understood clearly. Each word he spoke was in her very own language, and each word came to her clearly as if the battle raging close by was a hundred miles away. It was the same man! He was a traitor—her mother had used that word—a man who had turned against his own country.
What Larisa saw next was a vision of the hell she had only briefly heard about in her short life. She would never remember it any other way than the slow-motion scene that followed. The first shot was fired by the one whose voice she recognized, the one named Sikorski—that was the name that came back to her as his first shot rang out. The second man joined in within a split second. The face of the initial victim was a mirror of bewilderment as he fell. The others, stark terror etched in their faces, accepted a death they could not escape with a weary resignation. It must have been over within seconds, but to the little girl each shot was suspended in time. Each victim’s face was burned into her memory as their bodies jerked with the impact of the bullets. Only one turned to escape. His body spun in circles before it crumpled to the ground. No ending was the same. Each man’s last moments gave new meaning to Larisa’s understanding of death.
Shots continued to echo in her mind long after it was over. The one called Sikorski moved quickly among the bodies, bending over to put a bullet in the head of anyone he thought might still be alive. Then, without a word, he turned to the remaining man and shot him four times.
Though the world around Ponyri was exploding in a fury unknown to mankind, the world of Larisa Alushta was centered on the dirt street that passed before her cellar hovel. There was a burned-out relic of a tank within her vision, along with a dozen freshly murdered men. She had witnessed the carnage of war swirling about, but until that moment had never understood cold-blooded murder. Having seen it, she remained immoveable, seemingly catatonic.
“Larisa. Larisa.” Her mother’s voice came to her like a bell through the hell of Ponyri and the horror before her. She was running down the street, her arms open as if to sweep up her daughter. Over and over she called Larisa’s name, even after Sikorski’s gun swung around and opened fire. The woman staggered momentarily, but regained her balance. First one red spot, then another appeared on her clothes, but none seemed to impede her headlong dash toward the cellar where Larisa remained transfixed. Then Sikorski raised the gun, took aim, and fired two separate and distinct shots. Larisa saw her mother’s feet leave the ground. The legs were still pumping until a third bullet slammed into her head, throwing her sideways into the ditch. Then he walked calmly over to her mother’s inert form and fired a final shot into the unmoving body.
Larisa had heard a strange voice the night before at Uncle Mikhail’s, and today she had been able to put a face to it. Not once as he fired his rifle did the expression change on that face … nor would Larisa ever forget it.
She would never know how much time passed that day. Seconds? Minutes? It would make no difference. The images had been imprinted on her mind for eternity. She had yet to blink her eyes or even to move a muscle.
The one called Sikorski then stripped off his clothes, replacing them with a blood-stained Red Army officer’s uniform. His German clothing was thrown into the tank’s turret. Then he looked about him, as if he knew someone was watching.
Neither of them heard the next shell. There was no warning, no time for the man to throw himself to the ground, no time for the little girl to shield her face. It landed just beyond the carcass of the tank. Perhaps that was what saved Larisa. It certainly saved Sikorski.
The concussion from the blast hurled the man to the base of the trapdoor. To Larisa, it appeared that the devil was flinging himself into the one place on earth she felt safe. She saw his face grow large as it came closer, still expressionless, eyes wide open as if he could discern Larisa clearly. Then the force of the blast clouded her line of vision with clots of dirt.
She ground her fists into her eyes, digging at the dirt that covered her face—she must see where the devil was! The reality of combat swirled suddenly into the cellar as a tank raced down the street, followed by running German soldiers. The battle was instantly upon them!
Larisa saw the devil move. For once his features recorded an emotion—abject fear. Retreating Nazis were almost on top of him—and he was now in a Red Army uniform. His eyes opened wide as he saw the trapdoor directly in front of him. Instinctively he launched himself at the opening, tearing at the earth with his hands and feet as he wriggled into the cellar.
When the trapdoor rose momentarily and allowed the light of day to fall on Larisa’s pale features, a look of surprise came over Sikorski’s face. Then the trapdoor fell shut as the man collapsed into the cellar. The only words he said were, “Larisa? Larisa?” just as he had heard that woman call the name. Then a groan, and silence.
Larisa waited in fear, terrified, unable to move, waiting for the devil to murder her too. But there was nothing. She could hear the man’s breathing, smell him, feel his presence—but for some impossible reason she did not die.
There were no other memories for Larisa. She had no idea how much time passed until the trapdoor was raised. She looked up and saw only rifle barrels pointing at her. Those who aimed them were invisible against the bright background.
“Look at this—a little princess!” The booming voice was in her own language. Then she felt herself being lifted into the powerful arms of a Red Army officer. Her last memory was of looking back down at the unconscious form of Sikorski. She was sure she heard him call, “Larisa … Larisa,” even though his lips never moved.
STALBO’S STORY
While Russia’s marshal Zhukov considered the infantry so much cannon fodder—he once explained to Eisenhower, “if we come to a minefield, our infantry attack exactly as if it were not there”—the generals who had to do the fighting at Kursk insisted that there was a limited supply of combat-hardened officers. So a special field hospital was established without consulting Zhukov. It was located in Livny, a town well east of the battle that raged for the now-nonexistent village of Ponyri. It had been established on General Rokossovsky’s orders, and was limited to the care of officers who would be able to return to duty on the front lines within a reasonable length of time.
Victor Stalbo returned to full consciousness at Livny. There were other moments he remembered vaguely—the men who dragged him so roughly from the cellar hole that had been his only shelter as the escaping Nazis raced by him, the horse cart that had been used to move him away from the front lines, the doctor who had pushed and probed at him until he screamed in agony, and finally the pronouncement that he was worth saving—but there was little more during those initial days of recovery.
There was something else nagging at the back of his mind … almost a dream, something about a little girl … but the drugs robbed him of that memory. They said he was full of shrapnel, yet there were no critical injuries. Somehow, there had been no broken bones, no vital organs damaged. The doctors were amazed he could have been so close to the shell burst and survived with only a concussion and an amazing collection of metal fragments that would take weeks to remove. But he would fight again!
