48

SHE’D MISS the place, Polya thought, as they tore their shelter apart. It had been pleasant, living in their makeshift home. They’d been like a family for these last few days – a happy family. It made her eyes smart just thinking of it. They’d almost forgotten about the operation that was coming. Then, twenty minutes earlier, Lapshin had come back and reminded them that they were soldiers and that their fate would be decided in the morning.

It shouldn’t have come as any surprise. All day long staff officers had been driving back and forth in their American jeeps, couriers slipping and sliding on their motorbikes – and Lapshin had been as jumpy as she could remember. He’d gone over every centimetre of the tank with her. He’d made them check the ammunition two or three times until he was satisfied that each bullet, each shell, was perfect. He’d checked the radios, the tracks, the guns – everything.

‘We don’t want anything jamming, Polya. When I press the trigger, I want to see dead Germans. Not a live one pointing a Panzerfaust at me.’

And now he’d woken them – telling them the attack was in a few hours. And so they’d shaken themselves down, and set about getting ready to move off. No one spoke much. It was always like that before a big operation. You were nervous, of course you were, but that wasn’t something they were going to talk about. Anyway, they’d a good commander and they all knew their jobs. Most importantly, they had a lucky tank – one that had been through much more than most. With God’s will, they’d see the end of the next day. Maybe even the war.

When they were ready, the commander of the battalion, Raskov, called all the crews to a nearby clearing. They found him standing beside a cut-down oil drum in which a fire burned, staring at the burning rags it contained. They waited for the last of the tank crews to arrive.

Finally, she saw Raskov check his watch then raise his eyes to look around at the circle of men, and one woman, that surrounded him. He checked his watch again – his lips narrowing as he did so. A couple of hundred flame-lit soldiers surrounded him, so silent you could hear them breathing, and it was as if the battalion had stepped down from the wall of a church. Noble, serious men. And her. Raskov looked directly at her and she felt her stomach turn with fear, not of him but at the words he was about to speak. His eyes were coal black in the night’s shadow and his mouth a slash in his marble-still skin, stained red by the fire’s glow.

‘Well, men,’ he began. ‘And Polya, of course.’

She smiled at that – or tried to. No one laughed, and she was grateful to them.

‘War has not made us tender.’

For a moment she wondered if that was all he had to say. She could have told everyone that herself and been back sleeping under Galechka’s warmth. Then Raskov coughed, cleared his throat. It was difficult to be certain in the flickering light but it seemed he felt he’d started on the wrong foot.

‘War has made us hard,’ the major said after a moment – in a quieter voice now that carried all the more clearly for it. He raised an arm and pointed behind him. Towards the enemy.

‘Soon you won’t be able to hear me. There are thousands of guns behind us – they’re lined up wheel to wheel. Then there are the Katyushas, ready to send countless rockets down on to the enemy’s heads. In front of us, there are the infantry – packed into our trenches tighter than matches in a box – and in the woods behind them there are boats. When the guns start they will begin to move, they will cross the river under the cover of the bombardment and when the guns stop, they will take the forward enemy trenches. There is no question of that.’

He looked around him once more. The battalion waited to hear what their part was to be in all of this.

‘Once the first line of the enemy defences is secured, the guns will crush the second line. The infantry will go forward again. They will take the second line. We wait. But we won’t wait long. Our engineers will already be building bridges linking us to the other side. And attacks from the salient further up the river will have broken through and made any attempt to prevent us crossing impossible. And when we cross and take our place in the general attack, we won’t stop until we are in Germany itself.’

The battalion leaned forward like hounds scenting their quarry.

‘Remember, Comrades, when we face the Germans, that we represent the Court of the Soviet People’s justice. The people have judged the enemy’s crimes and have bestowed on us the honour of carrying out the people’s sentence. We will be fearless. We will be resolute. We will be merciless.’

Polya felt that they’d become one single entity, she and the others. Somewhere to the right, in the distance, men cheered – and she realized that all along the line, commanders were speaking to their soldiers just like this. She remembered that the battalion was but a handful among millions. Polya found that tears were once again itching at the corners of her eyes and she hoped no one was close enough to see. ‘Remember the dead, Comrades, remember the innocent citizens murdered by the aggressor. Remember we were a peaceful nation attacked by the fascist beast without provocation or warning. Remember what, under Comrade Stalin’s leadership, we have withstood. The enemy knows we are coming and they tremble. And they are right to tremble. We will not halt until we reach Berlin.’

And then the artillery started to fire and the noise of it drowned out any reaction that might have been possible to such a speech. Polya looked at her watch – it was as visible in the orange glow of the shells exploding to the west as if it were daylight.

It was five exactly. The twelfth of January. The year of Our Lord 1945.

And when they went back to the tanks, the way made easier by the burning sky, she saw the slogan on Galechka’s turret that they’d decided on, its black lettering clear on her white turret in the orange light:

To Berlin!

§

Far off to the west, Brandt felt the guns’ vibrations. His tiredness, momentarily, was forgotten and adrenaline flowed through him. And fear.

The dice were rolling and he had no idea how they might land.