Armageddon - Max Hastings [99]
In 1944, she fell passionately in love with a gunner officer: “I met hundreds of nice men, but he was the best.” Dmitry Kalafati first caught her attention when, in an idle moment, he told the fortunes of some of the girls with a pack of cards. She told him mischievously that, if he made a wish, it would be granted. He immediately leaned over and kissed her. They began a passionate affair. When the chief of staff heard about it, he said to her: “Well, you must have been the one who made the running, because Dmitry wouldn’t have had the nerve.” In battle or out of it, the couple found time together. She sometimes scrounged a jeep and driver, and followed him to the front. Once, she was forcefully reprimanded by the head of operations, Viktor Grinyushin, when Dmitry was roused in the night at the Hungarian castle where he was billeted, and Natalia was found with him. The couple didn’t care, not least because the head of operations was in a weak position to complain, himself enjoying a passionate affair with another girl soldier named Lida, whom he married in 1945. But senior officers drew the line when Natalia was found to be sending cipher messages to Dmitry at his unit. This, they said not unreasonably, was an abuse of military communications. Natalia and Dmitry Kalafati were married after the war ended.
By September 1944, so desperate was the Red Army’s demand for manpower that 1,030,494 prisoners from the Gulag had been released for military service. Most of these men were, however, mere thieves and minor malefactors. Serious political criminals remained ineligible even for the privilege of dying for their country. Among the most savage manifestations of Soviet ruthlessness were the Red Army’s “penal battalions.” These punishment units rendered all those assigned to them players in a deadly roulette game. A man possessed perhaps one chance in thirty or forty of escaping death. Men were customarily posted to penal battalions as an alternative to execution. “[These units] are intended,” said Zhukov in his order No. 258 of 28 September 1942, “to enable senior officers and political officers to make use of men who are found guilty of cowardice, indiscipline, instability, to compound for their crimes towards the motherland by shedding their blood in the most difficult engagements with the enemy.” They were employed to clear minefields under fire, to probe enemy positions and to spearhead desperate advances in the manner of a “forlorn hope” in the wars of Napoleon.
An officer unfortunate enough to be posted to lead such units was expected to serve with them for only one to three months, each month counting sixfold for pension purposes, in the unlikely event that he survived to enjoy old age. Officers sent to penal battalions because they were themselves being punished were stripped of rank and decorations. Any breach of discipline in these battalions was punished by summary execution. “A soldier who distinguishes himself in action can receive remission of sentence . . . All those released from penal battalions are assumed to have completed their sentences. Any man wounded is automatically deemed to have served his sentence.”
“I once watched a penal battalion go into an attack,” said Major Yury Ryakhovsky with uncomplicated respect. “I have never seen infantry so brave. They were wearing blue tunics and black caps, and boots made from tree bark. They advanced shoulder to shoulder, with a rifle between three men.” The commander of