Stalingrad - Antony Beevor [147]
Sometimes when Russian and German recce groups passed each other at night in no man’s land, they pretended not to see each other. Each had specific orders not to be deflected from their task by a firefight. If, however, small groups met head on, then the struggle was often conducted in deadly silence with knives or sharpened bayonets. ‘When I killed a German with a knife for the first time,’ a Russian recce platoon commander from the marine infantry remembered, ‘I saw him in my dreams for three weeks afterwards.’ One of the biggest dangers, however, was returning to your own lines away from where you were expected.
Fortunately for the Russian troops, the deficiencies in winter clothing, which had been serious, were made up after the successful completion of Operation Uranus. Almost all soldiers received rabbit-fur gloves, quilted jackets, sheepskin jerkins and a grey fur ushanka to which they transferred the red star from their summer cap.
A constant trickle of new arrivals brought divisions up to strength. For the ingénu, to join a platoon of battle-hardened soldiers was always daunting, but profiting from their experience offered a better chance of survival than joining an untested formation. Once the new soldier had accepted that survival was relative rather than absolute, and he learned to live minute by minute, the strain eased.
For a young Soviet citizen, the most shocking experience was not soldierly coarseness, but the frank speaking of frontoviki on political subjects. Many expressed themselves in a way that prompted new arrivals to glance over their shoulders in alarm. They declared that life after the war should be different. The terrible existence for those who worked on collective farms and in factories must be improved, and the privileges of the nomenklatura restricted.
At this stage of the war, the risk of being denounced at the front was really quite small. As one veteran put it: ‘A soldier felt that, having paid with his blood, he had the right to free speech.’ He had to be far more careful if evacuated to a field hospital, where informants and political officers were vigilant for any criticism of the regime. (Danger returned at the front towards the end of the war during the advance into Germany. The army’s task was almost over, and the NKVD Special Departments, by then SMERSH, wasted no time in reimposing the Stalinist terror.)
Soldiers tantalized themselves with talk of food at home, as well as daydreaming. Some platoons were fortunate enough to have a gifted storyteller inventing modern fairy tales. They played cards (although it was officially forbidden) and chess. Now that they were in fixed positions for a little time, it was worth carving proper pieces and fashioning a board. Most of all they reminisced. Muscovites talked constantly of their home city, not so much to impress comrades from the provinces, but out of a genuine homesickness in the emptiness of the steppe.
Writing home was ‘very difficult’, confessed the lieutenant of marine infantry. It was ‘impossible’ to tell the truth. ‘Soldiers at the front never sent bad news home.’ His parents kept all his letters, and when he reread them after the war, he found that they contained no information whatsoever. In general, a letter home usually started as an exercise in reassuring mothers – ‘I am alive and healthy, and we eat well’ – but the effect was rather dissipated by subsequent remarks to the effect that they were all ready to sacrifice their lives for the Motherland.
Within platoons, there were anecdotes and jokes and teasing, but this, apparently, was seldom cruel among those of equal rank. There was also a surprising lack of crudeness. They talked of girls ‘only when in a special mood’, which usually meant when sentimentality was stimulated by the vodka ration or certain songs. Each company was supposed to have at least one concertina