THE SOUL OF A RED ARMY MAN

THE ANTI-TANK rifle always reminds me of the old-fashionedarquebus. It is as big and unwieldy and is manned by two soldiers.Number one carries the gun when the 'Unit is on the march ; numbertwo hauls the bulky armour-piercing shells that resemble the shellsof a small-calibre gun, thirty of them in all, a rifle with a hundred 'bullets; two anti-tank grenades, in addition, of course, to his coat

'and kit-bag. All this together weighs about as much as the rifle.Carrying the rifle on the march gives number one an aching shoulderand makes his arm swell. It hampers, his movements,makes itawkward for him to jump or walk on slippery ground and he hasa hard time keeping his balance. The anti-tank rifleman walks witha slow shuffle, leaning slightly on the leg that supports the weightof the rifle. His walk is easily distinguishable from the light walkof the commander, from the measured tramp of the rifleman, fromthe swagger of the tommy-gunners and from the brisk step of therunner who is always on the go. .

In appearance too it is easy to spot .an anti-tank gunner by hisbroad shoulders and tough physique. These men belong to the hardybreed of Russian hunters who used to track down bears with spearsin the dense forest. And it must be said that the ugliest grizzly isharmless compared to a heavy German panzer armed with rapid-firecannon and machine guns.

Anyone with any experience in the iron and steel industry or min-ing will nearly always he able to tell by just looking at a workerwhether he mans an open hearth or a blast furnace, whether he ,tsa timberman or a miner. There issomethirug about the gait, about the,clothing, bheway he talks and swings his arms when he walks thatbetrays a man's profession. Everyone seeks the occupation best suitedto his nature and an arduous and noble profession complements thecharacter of the worker ,sha'pes him in its own image. In the army toothe men tend to gravitate together according to age, physical strength,' ,intellect, character and temperament. And it is the duty of every goodcommander, every efficient commissar to aid this natuTal selection, to'help men to find their profession in the grim and arduous jobof war.

For me Private Gromov was the typical anti-tank gunner, althoughthere were other .men in the company broader in' the shoulder and

more resolute of movement; men like sallow-faced Yevtikhov, forinstance, who had' ,give~ the. Germans plenty ofheadeohes, or Se~iorSergeant Ignatiev, a man with huge hands, a heavy chin and a habitof jerking his thick sunburned neck this way and that.

Gromov was a man of about thirty-seven. Before the war he hadtilled the soil on a collective farm in il:iheNarofominsk District ofMoscow Region. Little did he suspect on that June morning a yearago when he .went to the coilective-farm stables to .hamess the horseto the clumsy .farm cart that a year later he would be fighting heavyGerman tanks.

Looking at his greyish face free of sun tan, lined by long yearsof hard work, you could not help wondering whether it was reallymere chance that had made this man an anti-tank gunner, No. 1 ofan anti-tank rifle crew; might he ·not tby the same token have foundhimself in the supply (train, or despatch rider at Headquarters or assentry for the quartermaster service? .

No, not him. His curt irritated manner of speaking, his light,hard, hwwnish-green eyes, his movements and gestures, his hesitantspeech, and' his condescending attitude to the world, all gave a keyto -his character and made it obvious that it wars no mere chance thathad: brought him to the anti-tank company. !The frank challenge inhis eyes, his hard, unforgiving attitude to human frailties, his hitter-ness about life's imperfections, betrayed a strong uncompromising andobstinate nature. .

W:hen the company was on the march Gromov had suffered fromsome stomach ailment, but he had stubbornly refused to go to hospital.He walked along slowly under ,the pitiless .steppe eun, with the gunover his shoulder. Chigarev, the section commander, had urged himto go to the medical unit.

"You'd better go and see a doctor," he said, "you're looking paleabout the gills."

"What do I want doctors for ?" Gromov retorted <angrily. "Justlet me keep going and I'll be all right."

"You'd better give me that gun to carry,": said Valkin, No. 2 ofthe gun crew. "Your shoulder must be pretty sore by now."

"Don't Y0lt worry about my shoulder," growled' Gromov. "Youjust mind younown business."

And he tru~g~d on. through the scorching white dust, now andagain licking hisparched lips and sighing heavily, his breath coming

in sobbing gasps. He was having a hard time. At night, exhaustedthough he was, he .slept badly. He was restless and feverish. "A hel-luva war," he thought. "In the daytime you're toritured with the heatand at night you shiver with cold." .

He had never heen to the Volga Region before. With his keenglance that took in everything he studied the rolling steppeland,looked at the large fluffy kites clinging with their strong talons to thewhite slippery insulators on the telegraph poles. He gazed throughnarrowed! eyelids at the river covered with little white flecks of foamraised by the strong wind from the lowlands. When they came tovillages he chatted with the tall old Volga women and the greybeardedfishermen, and sighed as he listened to the tales of the wealth of thisvast river and the rich harvests of wheat, melons and grapes that hadgrown on its banks.

"So they've come all the way to Mother Volga, the skunks!" he'reflected bitterly as he listened at night to the thumler 0.£ the gunsthat reverberated loudly over the plains. Sombre, anguished thoughtstormented him day and night, they gave him no peace,. they filled himwitJh a dull ,bitter resentment and hardened his heart against all whocommitted blunders and evinced' signs of weakness.

He was possessed by the burning anger of a man uprooted bythe war from his home, his fields, the wife that had borne his chil-dren, his was the bitterness of one who had seen with his own eyesthe terrible disasters caused by the German incursion. He had seenthe razed villages, the cartloads of refugees trailing along the dustyroads, he had seen old men and women, peasant women with in~antsin their arms sleeping under the open sky in gullies, he had seeninnocent blood spilt, had heard terrible stories told with the un-emotional simplicity that left no doubt as to their veracity.

And so neither illness nor rthe misery of marching along thehot dusty roads could break his will, could swerve him from hisresolve to destroy German tanks .... Th.at resolve grew and maturedin Cromov's heart, the heart of a man who never forgave a wrong.The anger smouldered in his heavy heart, like a red-hot coal in thebowels of a blast furnace. Nothing could extinguish that fire now.He looked with contempt aJt the riflemen, at the crews of lightmachine guns. He believed implicitly in 1!hepower of his huge anti-

. tank rifle, he forgave it its weight and when, after the day's marchW:lS over, he removed, it from 'his aehing shoulder 'he never tr~ted if

with irritation or disgust. With painstaking care he wiped the dustoff the h'arrelwifh a Il'ag, slowly and lovingly oiled the lock, testedthe powerful 'spring of the trigger mechanism, examined the dark-grey steel gleaming through the grease. Before lying xiown to resthe would make sure that his gun was .protected from dampness anddust, th~t no earth could get into the muzzle and that no one wouldstep on it by mistake in the dark. He respected that big rifle of his,he 'believed in it a'S in peacetime he had: believed in the stout steel'of his ploughshares. He had been a skilled hand at ploughing inpeacetime, and now in war Gromov had taken a firm grasp on therifle .that piercedfhe armour of German tanks. This rifle suited hisnature, his turbulent soul, his lowering green eyes, the whole spirit .

.of a man who never forgave a wrong and who remembered tihe goodand the evil' done unto him and: his to his last breath.

Life had noli: 'been a bed of roses for :him before the war. Hehad known the hardship of unremitting lsbour, he had kn-own want.But nothing could compare with the wrong the enemy had done tohis country. And so he marched '~gi:tinst the enemy leaning heavilyon the side weighted down by the burden of the rifle, licking hisdry lips, breathing the hot, dusty air, a gloomy, taciturn fellowwhose comrades gave him a wide herth. Thus in ancient times didwarriors march with their cumbersome muskets,and everyone .must

have gazed at them with respect and hope not unmixed with fear.And his manner, hisai~ of proud and faintly sardonic independencebetrayed the soul of a man wlho had thrown himself body and soulinto the grim ,business of war. He could, with a wry smile, give awayhis last cigarette, carelessly throw his only box of matches to asoldier in need of a Iiglht, he did not spare his anguished body, paidno heed to the suffocating throbs of his overburdened heart, neverthought of death although he was advancing towards it with his slow,heavy tread.

"Say, Cromov," Senior Sergeant Ignatiev urged him, "you reallyought to go 11:0 the medical unit."

"No," Gromov replied curtly.It WBS hard for him. llhe whole weight o-f this oruel war seemed

to be bearing down on his 'shoulders, he shivered at night and some-times as he marched over the plains during the day B white mistobscured his vision and he did not know whether it was the d.ustor weakness that dimmed his eyes.

And he marched! on and on,a sick soldier, stubborn and wrath-Iul, expecting no praise for his great exploit-c-petience.

They took up positions during the night. They had' to crawlforward on their bellies, pausing now and' again to hug the earthas the' fascist planes came roaring over the forward positions drop-ping flares to pick targets for their small-calibre bombs. These planesdid not cause much damage but they made a lot of noise and dis-turhed the men's rest.

<;romovcould not fall asleep. He lay at the bottom of a trenchshaped so that the crew and the ;gun could be concealed if the Gel'-man tankists succeeded in reaching our forward positions. Valkindozed; leaning against the wall of the trench. He was cold and nowand again he would tuck his coat around his thighs. Crornov satnext to him, his tooth chattering. The German plane dropped a flare'directly over their heads and the unpleasant glare that lit up thetrench woke Valkin. He looked at Cromov, yawned and saidsoftly:

"See here, take my coat, I don't need it any more, honest to God..I can sit up for a bit. Had a bit of sleep already."

"Go ahead and' sleep," Cromov replied,He was always [brusque with his buddy but in his heart he re-

membered these little tokens of comradeship. As for Valkin he oftenthought as he looked at the gloomy Gromov: "That guy will neverlet me down, he'll never let the Germans get me even if he [has todrag' me away wi~ his teeth."

"Where's the Volga?" Gromovasked."Over to the left, I guess," said Valkin,"And on those hills over there on the right are the Germans,

I suppose," observed Gromov. "Got the shells where, you can layyour 'hands on them in a hurry?" he asked.

"I've got the whole shooting match laid out," replied No. 2,"shells, grenades.thread and herring, anything you want."

He laughed hut Gromovdid! not even smile.As soon as the sun rose the fighting began, It was set ofIhy

our artillery and the German trench mortars. They drowned out allthe other sounds of battle-the rattle of machine guns, the crackleof the automatic rifles and the brief howl of the hand: grenades.The' anti-tank riflem·en·were stationed ahead of our infantry on noman's land: Soviet shells whined over their heads, German mines

rending the air with a snake-Iike hiss exploded behind them sendinga 'hail of splinters and chunks ofearth beating a tattoo againstthedry earth. Walls of white and black smoke and greyish-yellow dustrose in front of the anti-tank riflemen and behind! them. All this iswhat is generally known as "hell." In the midst of this hell Gromovlay stretched out at the bottom of his trench, dozing. A. strangefeeling of calm filled his being. He had made it, he had n:otgivenup. He had got t:here with his rifle, he had gone on urged forwardby the same frenzy of impatience with which the' sick traveller hur-ries home fearing all delays, obsessed by the sole desire to see hisnear ones. So many times en route he had been afraid that his strengthwould fail him. But he had got there. He lay at the bottom ~f thetrench and hell howled and raged in a tJhousand voices, while Gro·mov dozed, his aching limbs stretched out in the brief austere reposeof the fighting man.

'Valkin sat on hi~ haunches beside him and, cursing under. hisbreath, watched the battle rage. Sometimes mines hissed so close bythat Valkin drew in his head glancing quickly at Gromov to see.whether No. 1 had noticed his timidity. But Gromov was staringup at the sky with half-open eyes, and a calm, thoughtful expressiononliis face. Several times the Germans attacked and each time with-drew in the face of the Soviet infantry fire. Valkin grew increasinglynervous, he felt sure that in another few 'minutes the Cerman tanksmust 'appear. He glanced ai Gromov and wondered anxiously whethei-his sick buddy would be able to hold out in an encounter with theGerman machines. ",

"Why don't you eat something?" he asked, then in the hopeof getting a rise out of Gromov, he added: "I told the Sergeant-Major you ougtht to be getting vodka. Marvellous remedy for belly-aches, vodka is. But he wouldn't give any, the louse." , .

. But even this interesting topic failed to rouse Gromov. He con.tinued to lie on' his back without speaking.

Suddenly Valkin gripped> the edge of the 'trench in excitement."They're coming!" he yelled at the top of his voice. "They're coming,Gromov! Get up!"

Grom1)v got up.Through the smoke and dust raised by exploding shells moved

the tanks, huge, swift and cautious; heavy 'and mobile, they cameon. The Germans had resolved to break a path for their infantry.

Gromov breathed loudly and rapidly; he gazed eagerly. at thetanks as they approached in deployed formation from Ibehind thehillock.

I asked him afterwards what he felt at that first moment. Hadhe been afraid?

"Afraid? No, not afraid except that they might not come myway. Otherwise not .... Four tanks came in our direction. I let themcome up close and took aim at one of them. He moved forwardslowly like an animal sniffing the air. Never mind, I thought, sniffaway. He was 80 close I could see him quite clearly. So I let himhave it. Our rifle makes a helluva noise, even if you keep' yourmouth open it deafens you. But there's less recoil than with 'anordinary rifle. It makes such a row though, that the earth trembles.Powerful thing!" And he paused to stroke the barrel of his riflelovingly. "Well, of course, I missed that time. And the tanks movedforward. I took aim again. I felt happy and sore at the same time,and more excited than I had ever heen in my life. No, says I, YOlU

can't let the damn Germans get the better of you. And some innervoice seemed to say: 'And what if you fail, eh?' Nothing doing,says I. And I let him have it a second time. This time I got him, .I saw a blue flame leap out over the armour like a spark. And Iknewthat my little shell had gone home. The tank began smoking andI could, hear the Gemnans inside shouting. Never heard such yellingin my life. Then there came a tearing sound from inside. That wastheir 'Shells exploding. A huge tongue of flame leapt up skywards.That was one tank out of the runrsing, I turned to tJhe next one.I got that with the first shot. Again the blue flame licked the ar-mour, then the smok~and the shouting and again the yellow flameand the smoke. I thought I would burst with joy, all my sicknessvanished and I felt wonderful. I had' never felt so proud and happy'before. I felt I could look vhe whole world in the face now. I hadshown that I was stronger than they. For weeks I'd been torturedday and night with the thought that I might not be able to' do it .... "

Our conversation took place in a gully, The sun had' alreadyset and twilight descended on the gully where we sat. blurring thecontours of the anti-tank rifles.

His account of his first encounter with tanks had stirred Cro-mov. His eyes seemed to shine in the gleaming. they were largeand bright, green .and hard.

And I sat next to him and gazed in silence at this sick soldierwho had overcome the Germans, this man for whom fighting camehard, this ploughman who had turned to fighting tanks not by merechance, not by command of his superior officers, but of his own freewiil, with all his soul.

September 20,. 1942