THEY’D BEEN LIVING underneath Galechka for a week now. They’d found an empty house nearby with floorboards and a door that no one had been keeping an eye on so they’d dug the trench deeper, laid the tarpaulin on the ground beneath and used the floorboards and the door for walls. Galechka provided the roof. A small diesel stove hung from the tank’s belly – keeping them warm and Galechka’s engine from freezing. There was plenty of food – tinned meat from America and even chocolate, while the cooks brought hot food round twice a day in a jeep. They were happy enough. They played cards for twigs, listened to the radio and the occasional artillery shell passing overhead, polished the bullets and shells and turned over the tank’s engine from time to time. They waited.
Around them the forest was busy. There were thirty-two tanks in the battalion – all of them gone to ground the same as Galechka, dug in so only their turrets showed. It wasn’t only their battalion, however. There were Siberians, Cossacks, Ukrainians, Mongolians, Kazakhs, Georgians, Armenians and even Poles in the forest, each with a tank to call home. Every tree covered its own tank, as far as Polya could see. And each tank covered its crew. And each tank formation had infantry to go with it, and engineers were carving out new roads each day. More soldiers were arriving constantly. Who knew how many men, and women, were in the woods? Who knew how far the Front extended? Perhaps it was like this all the way to the sea in the north – and maybe even down to the southern sea as well.
It felt as though they were all tiny drops of water in a great ocean wave that was slowly growing in size – as though they were a part of something – something that grew larger with every passing hour. She was afraid of the battle to come, of course. Who wouldn’t be? But when you looked around the forest and saw the thousands of soldiers, tanks and pieces of artillery – well, what did one girl matter amongst so many?
The heavy curtain that served as their little bunker’s entrance – another item liberated from the abandoned house – was pushed aside and Lapshin looked in. Behind him she could see the early morning sun lighting the snow that bowed down the branches of the trees. The glare was startling and she shielded her eyes.
‘Don’t let the heat out.’
She thought she saw Lapshin smile. It was difficult to be certain with the sun behind him.
‘Come on, Little Polya,’ he whispered. ‘Let’s go for a walk.’
She thought, afterwards, that she should have been less enthusiastic. Maybe she could have yawned, or looked at her German watch. Instead she got to her feet so quickly she nearly split her head open on Galechka’s belly.
‘Where are we going?’ she asked when they had been walking for a little while. They were following a corrugated track that was slippery with ice. It was quiet, considering there were so many nearby. Every now and then she’d see the outline of a tank’s turret or the barrel of a cannon pointing out of a bush but she saw no humans. The soldiers were under orders to keep movement to a minimum during the daylight.
‘To look at the Front,’ Lapshin said. ‘To see what we’re getting ourselves into.’
They walked until the trees began to thin, when Lapshin put his hand on her arm to bring her to a halt. Ahead she could see open country.
‘Let’s take our time. There’s no point in taking unnecessary risks.’
They moved slowly, from tree to tree – almost stumbling into three staff officers who were doing the same as them – looking across the river at the enemy hills. In front of the forest, about fifty metres beyond where the trees ended, were their own trenches. A ruined bridge stood in between, the turgid river swirling around its broken spans. It looked as though it might freeze before long.
‘How do we get across?’ she whispered.
Lapshin pointed to the north.
‘We’re already on their side of the river further over – a few kilometres upstream. We’ll break out from there. In the meantime – here – our infantry will go over in rubber boats. We’ll have bridges across before they know what hit them.’
Polya didn’t like pontoon bridges. They had a habit of coming apart when hit by enemy shells or bombs. And tanks didn’t float. She strained her eyes looking for the Germans.
‘Where are their trenches?’
‘The snow is hiding them but they’re just down from the ridge.’
There was an explosion on the far hill – snow and earth flung into the air, leaving a black scar in the snow behind it. Then another further along the hill’s slope. They watched and waited and, sure enough, less than a minute later, there was the shriek of shells flying high overhead as the Germans returned the favour.
‘It’s New Year’s Eve, the artillery are exchanging pleasantries.’