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Is it really written all over my face? It's really not a long way to get into trouble if the first person I meet sees right into my mind…
“My father told me about World War I,” I carefully answered my interlocutor, who turned out to be overly perspicacious, “He did not go to war himself, but he talked to those who had been there. I wouldn't want to be in those trenches. Not many people came back from there.”
“So he was telling you about the imperialist war,” grinned Boris, “Well, that's another thing. The people there died for the interests of the bourgeoisie, and we are going to defend our socialist homeland. You have to understand the difference.”
“I'm not arguing,” I decided not to escalate the discussion. I have attracted too much attention to my modest person, it's time to change the delicate subject, “Do you know when we're going to get weapons? I feel uncomfortable – the front is coming soon, and my hands are empty. I grew up in the taiga, you can't do without a gun there. Even now I feel like I'm naked.”
“In the taiga, you say? A hunter?” Boris was interested. I noticed that the other neighbors in the van were beginning to listen to our conversation.
“Of course I'm a hunter. In the taiga, all men are hunters.”
“And you must be a pretty good shot, with all that practice?” asked the guy on the next bunk with the unruly frizz of hair which he kept trying unsuccessfully to smooth out.
“My father was pleased,” I answered evasively, “but it's hard for me to judge, I have no one to compare it to. My skills were enough for a successful hunt.”
“I don't know about weapons,” Boris remembered my question, “they'll give them to us, don't worry. When we arrive, we'll be assigned to a combat unit, and then we'll get weapons.”
“Okay, if so…” I yawned in a pointed manner and leaned against the swaying wall of the wagon, “I'm going to sleep for a while, I'm sleepy.”
I closed my eyes and lightly tensed the right facial muscles, activating the interactive mode with the contact lenses. To begin with, where are we? Thus, the nearest major station is Khristinovka. This is 300 kilometers south of Kiev and 20 kilometers northwest of Uman. We'll be there in a couple of hours if we don't get stuck passing someone again, or if the Germans don't bomb the way.
The situation on this section of the front is changing quite rapidly. Kiev is still holding on thanks to the fortifications built before the war, but the Germans are advancing stubbornly on the flanks, encircling the city from the north and south.
That's where they're taking us, to the south flank, only why are we still going forward? It's not like we're a regular unit with guns, ammunition, and a clear mission. We still need to form some units, at least to train those who are completely out of the loop, they have to give us weapons, finally. Where are we going? And why so careless? German planes should already be flying in even here, and a train going to the front in the middle of the day is not a target that Luftwaffe pilots would consider of secondary importance. But this is understandable to me, with my level of awareness, which no one else here has, including the leadership of the Red Army and Wehrmacht, although the Germans are better at it – no matter how you look at it, air supremacy greatly improves the quality of air reconnaissance.
So, what else don't the higher-ups know about? Or they know, but have not yet had time to react properly and give the necessary orders. The communication here and now… Let's not talk about sad things.
No one but me on this train knows that less than a couple of hundred kilometers west of our train, the Germans have thrown a fresh infantry division into battle, and the defense of the city of Gaisin, which seemed more or less stable, has collapsed, burying under it the hope of holding the front. Major General Volokh's 18th Mechanized Corps, which had held the 12th Army's defenses together a few days earlier, was dismembered, suffered heavy losses and was rapidly losing combat effectiveness, retreating chaotically to the east.
But that wasn't even the worst part. In the path of the Wehrmacht division that took Gaisin, there are still enough Red Army troops that, although retreating, put up a fierce resistance, regularly launching counterattacks. Much worse, Major General Hubert Lantz's First Mountain Division, taking advantage of the success of its neighbors, formed a strike motorized group that made a 70-kilometer dash southeast in one day and found itself deep in the rear of the Soviet forces, and more and more German 49 Corps units began to be rapidly drawn into the resulting gap. The Soviet defense near Uman was disorganized, and no one in the leadership of the southwestern front really knows what is really going on there. And so into this meat grinder we go, remaining in serene ignorance as to what fate awaits us in the near future.
I felt totally powerless. Here and now nothing depended on me. No one will listen to the ravings of an ordinary soldier, who is not even a soldier yet, but a green rookie, who hasn't even smelled powder and isn't even assigned to any military unit.
I opened my eyes, stretched out my shoulders and back, and stood up from my seat. There was surprisingly no one at the small window, so I looked out.
The train still waddled leisurely forward, disguising itself with a column of smoke from the chimney. At another bend in the track, I was able to get a closer look at our echelon. At the last station, where the steam locomotive was refueled with water and coal, someone clever or just responsible enough decided not to neglect air defense equipment in the front-line zone and hitched a platform to the train with an anti-aircraft machine-gun mount of Tokarev design. The barrels of the 1931 Model Maxim quadruple-mounted machine guns stared up into the sky, and the helmets of the crew could be seen above the sandbags.
M4 quadruple anti-aircraft machine-gun mount. Its basis – four machine guns designed by Maxim. Developed by the team of N.F. Tokarev in 1928–1931. The mobile version was mounted on railroad platforms and in the bodies of trucks. Caliber 7.62 mm. Used to fight air targets at altitudes up to 1400 m. It was also successfully used against infantry and unarmored vehicles.
The presence of at least such protection from air attack could not help but rejoice me, but I did not believe in its high efficiency. It was a pity that the machine-gun platform was four cars away from me – if anything happened, I wouldn't even have time to warn the anti-aircraft gunners of the danger.
“What are you looking at?” Boris was there again.
“I just felt stuffy, so I thought I'd get some fresh air.”
“You call this smoke from a steam locomotive fresh air?” my traveling companion, who was overly talkative, grinned, wincing slightly.
The wind regularly blew coal smoke over the vans, and the smell was indeed not pleasant – it was an integral component of travel on the local railroads. In fact, that wasn't the end of the world yet. If we were moving through a tunnel…
A slight itch behind my ear made me wary. Something bad and dangerous happened not far from here, and the computer left behind in the damaged escape pod sent me an alert through one of the satellites. I put my face to the rushing air and closed my eyes.
Now it was as if I was in low orbit myself. The cloudless sky made it possible to see every little detail on the ground. However, even dense cloud cover could not cause much interference to the equipment of scientific satellites. I saw our train continuing westward, saw the anti-aircraft gunners who still didn't notice anything, and saw the low-flying targets approaching us from the southwest, highlighted by flickering red frames.
Messerschmitts Bf.109 – two pairs, one just above the other. They flew confidently, obviously aware of our train and not wanting to attract the attention of the train's air defense. They were less than a minute away from us. Explanatory inscriptions next to the enemy aircraft markers suggested that it was an 'E' modification. It was not the latest modification, but here, on the eastern front, the Germans used it as a fighter-bomber. Just what they need to attack our train.
What am I supposed to do? I certainly won't have time to warn anyone but my van mates. Of course, the train should have started braking by now, but it was not going too fast as it was. 30 seconds…
“Air!” I shouted, turning away from the window, “Everyone out of the van quickly!”
I rushed to the wagon door, threw the latch aside, and rested my shoulder against it. The doorframe slowly moved to the side.
“Why are you yelling?” Boris asked in surprise, looking out the window, “Leave the door alone! There's nobody there!”
“Open your eyes!” I snapped angrily, wrestling with the door, “Messerschmitts! Four of them. Coming in from the southwest!”
The long whistle of the locomotive and the sharp jerk of the train, which began to slow down, served as a good confirmation of my words, but I wasted no time in continuing the discussion, picked a moment when the ground rushing by seemed flat enough for me, pushed off harder, and jumped into the grass.
I landed pretty well; I rolled over a couple of times on not too rocky ground and didn't even seem to bruise myself. No one seemed to be in a hurry to follow my example, and in vain. Each enemy plane carried four machine guns of about eight millimeters caliber, plus bombs – a quarter of a ton of deadly cargo. It will be more than enough to destroy our wooden train.
I had managed to run far enough and fall into a small ravine, overgrown with not too dense bushes, when the first explosions and the crack of machine gun fire came from the head of the train. That's right, the locomotive is the primary target. But only two narrow silhouettes flashed there, and two other planes came in from the tail of the train and were now treating the train with bombs and machine-gun fire. Slivers fanned out from the roofs and walls of the cars. I tried not to think about what was going on inside. There was nothing I could do to help my dying comrades. I've already done everything I could.
The first to react to the enemy attack were the anti-aircraft gunners and NKVD fighters who accompanied our train. The quadruple machine guns were firing somewhere in the sky, but even I could see from my cover that the crew had very little, if any, experience firing at low-flying, high-speed targets. They were not leading correctly, and just didn't have time to correct the sight on the tracers. The train did stop, and now people were jumping out of the burning cars. I did not see any system in their actions. Some immediately fell to the ground, either killed or just looking for cover. Others tried to run to a forest that wasn't too far away, but it could only seem close when you weren't being shot at…
The NKVD platoon left its wagon in relative order, though I only counted half of its fighters at a glance. The others must have been killed in the shelling and bombing, but the commander was alive, and obeying his orders, the privates and sergeants scattered along the train, trying to bring some order to the chaos everywhere.
My hiding place was about 30 meters from the last car – despite the low speed, the train managed to pass quite a considerable distance, before it stopped. German planes flew in pairs over the broken train. They must have run out of bombs, but they kept shooting at the fleeing men with machine guns. Our anti-aircraft platform hadn't shown any signs of life for a minute. Through the smoke of the fire we could see the motionless barrels of Maxim machine guns looking helplessly into the sky. No one fired on the Messerschmitts, and they came at the target, as in a training exercise.
A soldier in NKVD uniform who had reached the last car shouted something, but I couldn't make it out because of the crackling of the machine guns and the roar of the fire. He tried to look inside the car, but it smelled so hot that he recoiled and took two awkward steps backward.
“Hide behind the wagon!” I yelled as I saw a string of bullet trails in the dust run along the train toward him.
The soldier heard me, but apparently did not understand what I wanted him to do. He just turned in my direction, but then a burst of machine-gun fire crossed his back, and he twitched several times and fell forward, instinctively trying to grab onto the wall of the car, but his arms, suddenly weak, slipped, and the guy slid to the ground, dropping his rifle.
Most of those who managed to jump out of the cars and didn't die in the first minutes of the bombing had already covered almost half the distance to the forest, but the enemy pilots were not going to give them a chance to get away alive. Some tried to hide in the folds of the terrain or pretend to be killed, but it did not help much. A man lying on the ground is too convenient a target for an airplane.
I didn't want to get out of my lucky hiding place at all. Here no one paid any attention to me, and the sloping earth walls provided reliable cover from the splinters. But 30 meters from my position there was a rifle, quite serviceable as it looked, and I knew that in my hands this weapon could give the men running toward the woods a few extra seconds.
Closing my eyes, I began to look at the area from above. The computer processed the image coming from orbit, filtering out the smoke, so I saw everything clearly enough. Waiting until both pairs of enemy planes were in an awkward position for an attack, I jumped out of the ravine and ran to the dead soldier, or rather, to the weapon that had fallen out of his hands.
The butt of the Mosin rifle fit comfortably in my palm. The weapon was indeed undamaged, and I considered myself very lucky, twice. I was lucky not only that the rifle was not smashed by bullets, but also that it was the weapon I had in my hands. True, it didn't have sights for shooting at high-speed, low-flying targets, but I didn't need them. But Mosin rifle had excellent accuracy by the standards of that time. The trick was that its barrel had a conical shape, tapering slightly from the breech end to the muzzle end. This resulted in additional compression of the bullet when fired and did not allow it to 'walk' in the bore.
After checking my weapon and making sure it was loaded and ready to fire, I took another look around the battlefield. The men running toward the woods needed another 30 seconds to reach cover, but both pairs of Messerschmitts, were already coming in to attack one by one.
I put the rifle to my shoulder and activated the combat mode of the sighting and navigation system. Of course, originally, it was not intended at all for shooting handguns at airplanes, but it had a lot of flexibility in settings, and in the last month and a half I had enough time to adapt my micro-implants and contact lenses to local realities.
Instead of solid smoke from a burning train, I saw clear skies with clear target marks and aiming points, that took into account the necessary deflection. The first pair of Messerschmitts was about to fly over the cars. I chose the leader, and pointed my weapon at the translucent outline of an airplane moving ahead of my target. A slight tingling sensation in my palms told me that the hand tremor suppression system had kicked in. I did the rough aiming of the rifle myself, but the bio-implants, which used my own nervous system, helped me to aim accurately. The trigger pull was long and heavy, which I knew in theory, but I still wasn't quite prepared for the fact that I had to pull the trigger so hard.
Shot! I moved the bolt handle to the left, then backward to the full, then I pushed the bolt forward and the handle to the right. Change of target… pointing… Shot!
After the fifth push to the shoulder, the magazine was empty. None of the enemy planes exploded in midair or crashed to the ground, but only the leader of the second pair fired a short and kind of tentative burst at the men running toward the woods. The rest of the planes came out of the attack without firing their machine guns. A not too thick, but clearly visible dark plume stretched behind the two Messerschmitts. All four German fighters turned smoothly to the west and quickly disappeared behind the forest.
I cancelled the combat mode of the implants, put the rifle next to its dead owner and sank tiredly to the ground. The surviving soldiers were returning from the edge of the forest to the burning train. Some helped the wounded walk, while others waddled with difficulty. I felt a stare on me and turned around. A senior lieutenant of the NKVD, commander of the security platoon of our defeated train, was looking at me silently and very attentively from the neighboring car.
Chapter 4
We spent the rest of the day helping the wounded and burying the dead. We had no means of communication, and even if we had any, it was burned up in the bombed-out cars.
There was no movement on the railroad either from Uman or from the rear, but several times German bombers and fighter planes flew close to us. We heard explosions and the rumble of artillery cannonade. The situation on the front continued to deteriorate rapidly.
We had no means of transporting the wounded. Stretchers made from cape-tents and poles cut out in the nearby woods made things a little easier, but all the same our marching unit looked like a walking hospital. There were no medics among us, so there was nothing we could do to help the wounded except for primitive bandaging.
The NKVD platoon commander, with 12 men left, tried to hold on, but the defeat of the train was an unbearable burden on him. The First Lieutenant seemed to think that he was responsible for everything that had happened.
“Comrades Red Army men, if anyone else does not know, I’m First Lieutenant Fyodorov. I am assigned to accompany your military echelon, which means I am your commander. And if that's the case, everybody listen to the battle order!” he said it in a hoarse voice as he strode in front of our uneven line, “We are now moving in a marching column to the west along the railroad tracks. We'll take turns carrying the wounded. It's evening, but we can't stay here overnight – they're waiting for us in Uman. That's where you should all get your weapons and assignments to your units. We'll walk all night if we have to. Any questions?”
I was about to ask why we, unarmed and with wounded in our arms, should go into the trap into which the outskirts of Uman were turning, but after looking into the eyes of the First lieutenant, I changed my mind. People here thought in very different terms, and no amount of reasoning could shake this officer's determination to follow orders and get us to our prescribed destination. Besides, the First Lieutenant didn't know what was really going on around us right now, and I couldn't plausibly explain to him how I knew it.
Nevertheless, our temporary commander noticed something on my face. After the fight was over, he looked in my direction regularly, but he never asked me anything until then.
“Soldier, do you have a question?” The First Lieutenant turned his whole body toward me.
“Red Armyman Nagulin,” I introduced myself and took a step out of the ranks, “Comrade First Lieutenant, we are going to the front. The situation is not quite clear, but from the looks of it, it has deteriorated a lot in recent hours. We have the rifles of your dead fighters and the machine gun platform crew. Right now your people are carrying them, but maybe it makes sense to distribute these weapons to us?”
“If we have to, we will,” the First Lieutenant answered sharply, without explaining anything, “Get the stretchers up with the wounded! We're moving out.”
“Comrade First Lieutenant…”
“Follow your orders, soldier. Or should I repeat it?” The First Lieutenant squinted unkindly, and behind his shoulder a sergeant in NKVD uniform reached for his weapon.
Well, if I have to do it, I'll do it.
“Copy that,” I answered clearly, devouring the boss with my eyes, for I had absolutely no desire to see what would happen next if I began to insist.
“That's better,” the First Lieutenant mumbled in a completely hoarse voice and went in a wide stride toward the head of the column that had begun to move. The Sergeant looked at me unkindly for a while, but then turned around and ran after the commander.
Army discipline, especially in a combat situation, is undoubtedly a wonderful thing, but I had absolutely no intention of continuing to beg for a rifle from the commander. I just wanted to tell him that walking along the railroad tracks in the direction of the train to get to Uman is a futile matter. If we do that, after 40 kilometers, which is a lot for our column, we will be at the Khristinovka station. Only from there there is a branch to Uman, which goes almost in the opposite direction, to the southeast. Uman itself is now about 25 kilometers south of us, and if you go there, it is better to go straight through fields and woods, rather than along the railroad, which not only greatly lengthens the way, but also attracts the German air force like a magnet. The latter, of course, is not so scary right now, since it's already getting dark, and enemy planes won't appear over us until morning, but the fact that once we get to Khristinovka we will still find our troops there, and not the Germans, is highly doubtful.
“Well, Pyotr, have you got it?” I didn't notice Boris next to me as I pondered, “You talk a lot, and in all the wrong places. I also like to talk, but I always know where to do it and where not to do it. This is the NKVD, you have to understand. And you started discussing orders, and in a combat situation. Did you see how that sergeant was groping the rifle? No doubt he would have fired without hesitation, at one movement of the commander's eyebrow.”
“I don't doubt it,” I didn't argue, “I could see it in his face.”
“You've gone completely feral in your taiga, I see. Stick with me, or you'll get in trouble. Be thankful that nobody whispered to the First Lieutenant or his Sergeant about how you left the wagon without permission… Apparently, they've forgotten this episode out of fear. But now it seems calmer, so maybe someone will remember, if those who saw it are alive, of course.”
“It won't be for long,” I answered softly, and immediately regretted what I had said.
“What won't be for long? Have they forgotten that not for long? That's what I'm telling you.”
“No. That's not what I mean, I mean it's calmer now, but it'll be over soon.”
“What's going to be over?”
“The silence, if you can call it that. Do you have any idea where we're going?”
“Well, to Uman, the commander told you directly.”
“We're not going to Uman! Uman is over there!” I waved my hand to the south, perpendicular to the direction of our movement, “And these tracks lead to the Khristinovka station, which is 20 kilometers west of Uman. There will be a front line there any day now, or even by tomorrow morning! Do you hear that rumbling?”
“Does the commander know less than you?” There was a suspicious mistrust in Boris's voice, “He's got a map, too! Well, he should. And how do you know where Uman is? And about Khristinovka?”
“You just had to study well in school, Boris, not dream about girls in class. My father taught me – there was no school in the taiga. You live in the great country of victorious socialism, and you should know the geography of your immense motherland. Did you remember the names of the stations we passed?”
“Well…” Boris said in a lower tone, obviously not expecting such a rebuke from me, “it seems that we passed through Talnoye… And Yurkovka.”
“Do you have any idea where we are?”
“Not really, I'm from Voronezh…”
“Have you never seen a map of the USSR either? It's only 700 kilometers from here to your Voronezh, by the way. You can get there on foot.”
“Look, Pyotr, why are you picking on me? I realized that you know geography well.”
“Well, if you understand it, then there's no need to ask stupid questions. Let's better think about how to report to the commander that this railroad won't lead us to Uman.”
“It's no use,” Boris shook his head, “He won't listen to you, and he won't listen to me either. What are you suggesting? To turn into the fields and go straight ahead? But you can lose your way easily, as there are no landmarks. And the rails are right there, you can't get lost.”
“I'll show us out,” I said without proper confidence. I understood that, but I really didn't want to go where the First Lieutenant was leading us.
“Listen to me, Pyotr…” I could hardly make out Boris's grin in the darkness, “Do you believe yourself? At night, without a road, with the wounded in our arms, in unfamiliar terrain… It's not like you can drive your finger on a map of your home country in the warmth and comfort of your own home. No offense, but it's all nonsense. After all, we have an order, and it has to be obeyed.”
Then we walked in silence, gradually getting into the rhythm, and about 30 minutes later it was our turn to carry the wounded, and there was no time to talk.
* * *
No matter how hard the First Lieutenant tried to move quickly, but we still had to make three stops. The men were too exhausted for the day, and they were simply unable to endure the continuous march through the night while carrying the wounded. After the defeat of the echelon there were about 150 of us left. There were 27 wounded on stretchers, but by morning six of them had died, yet our losses did not end there. Apparently, I was not the only one who did not like the idea of walking blindly and unarmed toward the advancing Germans, and the fact that the front line was not far away could only be doubted by a deaf person.
At the last resting place just before dawn, the sergeant conducted a roll call on the orders of the commander. Our unit was 17 men short. I was beginning to understand why the First Lieutenant was so sour about my suggestion to give us the rifles of dead soldiers.
The morning greeted us unpleasantly. The indistinct roar that had sounded all night in the west had turned into a continuous rumble, in which individual violent explosions were already clearly distinguishable. But the worst thing was that it was now heard not only from the west, but also from the north and even from the northeast. It finally dawned on the First Lieutenant, too, that something wasn't going quite the way he wanted it to, despite all his unwavering determination to follow orders.
“Soldiers!” He looked at us with a frown, “Anybody here from these parts?”
The answer to the commander was silence. We were all mobilized in the eastern regions of the country. Boris, with his Voronezh, was probably the most western of us, so we couldn't please the First Lieutenant in any way. Well, almost.
“Red Army man Nagulin!” I went out of the line.
“You again?” The First Lieutenant's voice had a bad tone to it, “Are you from around here?”
“No, Comrade First Lieutenant. But I can draw a schematic map and roughly show you where we are.”
