Hardship and Courage

IT HAD NOT BEEN easy for Karin to leave home, because Beate, now fifteen, was left alone to cope with the entire household. Understanding her reluctance, Ute had offered to take Beate under her wing, helping her with advice and a pair of hands when needed. Her daughter, Annelis, was close in age to Beate and could benefit from added responsibility. For Kurt Halberstamm the wedding had been bittersweet. As the German saying goes: “He had been crying with one eye, sad to see his daughter go, but his other eye had been smiling, for his daughter had made a good match with the man she had closely watched since she was a small girl.”

In the old country a wedding would have been celebrated for days, sometimes even a week, but here, so early in their colonization, not an extra hour could be spared. Next day, after the wedding, the village awoke as usual before sunrise, spinning its thread of existence. If anything, they worked harder than before to make up for lost time.

In August, with the men in the fields, the Kirghiz, allied with marauding groups of Kalmyks, came again. Since their previous foray had proved successful with good, material yield, they came with great expectations. Their scouts had reported the exodus of the men, leaving the village presumably unprotected and open for the picking. They rode up the hill to the church early one morning, as in the previous attack, thinking themselves unobserved. This time, however, they had been spotted. From the church’s steeple a stationed lookout saw their advance and rang the church bell furiously before leaving his post, running to his appointed station by Christoph’s house.

Upon hearing the bell, all the women and children fled toward the middle of the village, where they hid in previously appointed places. A few of the childless women, with courage to match their men, had chosen to arm themselves. As the women gathered in the middle of town, the defense contingent of men left behind ran up toward the church, clutching their odd, assorted weapons.

Then the Muslim horde came riding in. Their mouths, opened wide like maws, echoed with fierce, bloodcurdling ancient war screams. In their colorful clothes, shining brightly in the sun, their line of riders was reminiscent of a poisonous, iridescent snake ready to strike. They rode with fury way past Christoph’s house and then, as if cut down by a sword, the horses of the advance fell, stumbling, unable to stay on their feet. Most of their riders, carried forward by the mad charge, flew over their mounts’ heads, landing in the dirt, their struggling mounts often falling on top of their bodies.

The moment they were down, Norka men beset them with hammers, homemade spears and scythes. Their mad attack foiled, those raiders who had managed to turn their mounts from the melee, regrouped for a second charge. When they came, the defenders were ready. However, the earlier momentum had been lost for the Norka men, and the fight became a horrible combat.

Unable to rape and plunder at will, a group of riders forced their way through the line of defenders and raced screaming into the village. Controlling the horses with their legs only, having tied the reins to their bodies, they stormed on. In their sword hands they swung the fiendishly curved scimitars, the other fist gripped the long, straight knife that often delivered the killing stab to the neck, when the sword failed to dispatch the victim.

In mid-village they received another surprise, for closed doors opened and women hurled boiling water and oil at the vulnerable horses, which reared in surprise from the agonizing pain. Women threw hammers and large stones at those men who fell, and others stabbed with pitchforks at horses and riders. The tactic of the women was to attack and retreat quickly behind their doors.

The men of Norka arrived just in time, for the invaders began to overwhelm the women, laying about furiously with their swords, wounding some and pursuing those fleeing. Once more the battle raged. However, the attackers had sustained serious losses and so far had not reached any of their objectives.

Suddenly their leader, with a huge black pointed fur-crowned hat above his pockmarked face, a giant man on a large gray horse, shouted a command. They drew their mounts into a tight knot, picking up their injured and horseless as best they could and, many of them riding double, they left the village through the lower part, riding as fast as they had come.

It seemed, when talked about later, that the marauders ran because their hit-and- run approach had failed. An organized resistance had met them firmly, causing serious damage. Therefore they had cut their losses and left.

For a moment everyone felt relief, even felt victorious; then, grim reality showed that the battle had been won only by the loss of considerable blood. Eight of the strongest men, among them Kurt Halberstamm, had been severely wounded and needed instant attention. Five women suffered from gaping sword cuts, and one had been scalded with hot oil when she hurled it at the invaders. The stabs and slashes had been deep and painful. Yet, when the women began bandaging the victims’ cuts, amazingly they dealt mostly with flesh wounds.

Albert Brunner, the deacon, so mild looking that the first impression brought a milksop to mind, had proven himself a good leader and intelligent fighter. Fortunate for the injured in the village, he also possessed healing knowledge and advised ably, when not laying on hands himself.

Having looked after their own, they went back to the site of the first battle. In the dry dust of the road lay several horses groaning in agony. They’d broken their legs in that first fall, caused by a cleverly concealed trip wire which two men had pulled taut at the proper moment. The men walked from horse to horse, assessing the damage. Three were in need of being dispatched, for their misery was great and their damaged legs would never carry them again. Two had severely pulled ligaments, an injury that might heal itself. The farmers, for whom the work of horses and oxen were the source of life, tried to help the traumatized animals to rise, but the horses kicked, tried to bite and were otherwise hostile.

“It’s our smell they react to,” said Michael Hergert, Carolina’s brother. “Let them lie in their pain a little. When they get thirsty, they won’t mind our smell so much, especially if we come with water.”

As he was speaking, they heard a woman’s scream coming from behind Christoph’s house. When the men ran to her aid, they found Karin standing before a fallen body. Apparently one of the Muslims, fatally gored with a spear, had hidden himself so he could die in peace, away from the melee.

Awed by his death, they stood around him. His fierce, bronzed features were relaxed in death; his mouth was slightly open and so were his dark eyes, looking almost surprised into the blue sky. They discussed the expensive fabric and texture of his clothes, noting the fine workmanship of his boots. It was obvious that he was young, which dismayed the good people, until Karin resolutely reminded them that her mother had been young too, and so had been the women who died with her. “And they did not invade his village,” she added grimly.

A lively discussion arose as to where to bury him. Of course, he could not be buried in their own consecrated cemetery. For the moment, they covered him with a sheet and went about the necessary business of tending to the living. The day went by so fast they hardly noticed its passing. The sun was soon to set when the lookout in the bell tower called out that three riders were approaching. Thinking of treachery, the men gathered their weapons and readied themselves for a confrontation.

To everyone’s surprise, the leader of the three, a powerful-looking man, his head bare, was not a Kirghiz. He carried a long pole with a white rag, flying like a wimple, tied to the top. When they approached the church he left the other two behind and rode up alone. Kurt Halberstamm, limping and bandaged, together with the deacon, met the man with the white flag halfway.

Using sign language and many Russian words, he gave them to understand that he was here to collect the body. To add incentive to his request, he pressed a pouch filled with coins into Halberstamm’s hand, whom he presumed to be, arm and chest bandaged, the leader of this village.

Kurt said, “They don’t have to pay us for a body. Christian duty demands that we treat him respectfully, for he too is a creation of God.”

To which the deacon replied sourly, “That is true. However, he shed our blood, and that is what they must pay for. They cannot pay enough for our dead.”

At the deacon’s command a group of men went and brought the desired body. They had respectfully wrapped him in a shroud. The Cossack carried him in his arms as if he were a mere sleeping child. When he reached the men waiting on horseback, he laid the body across a horse in front of one of the riders; he mounted and, waving the flag, the three set off into the descending darkness.

Many months later they were to find out that the dead man had been the son of the Kirghiz leader, who looked at his son’s death as God’s punishment, and never took up arms against the Germans again.

Time passed inexorably, sometimes at a crawl, sometimes breathtakingly fast. A few years went by, seemingly only punctuated by births and deaths. For the moment the Muslim attacks on Norka had stopped. From what they heard, that was not the case in other villages, where the plunder was easier to come by.

To the God-fearing, brother-loving Christians the ferocity of the Kalmyks and Kirghiz made no sense. They understood theft, understood how a man could come to rob another because of need. However, the savage killing, slashing and stabbing of innocent women and children was so foreign to their souls that they could not comprehend the minds of such men.

“What kind of God are they worshipping, these Mohammedans?” Christoph asked his father one night when they talked about the horrors their poor brethren on the meadowside of the Volga were put through.

“It seems their God fills them with hate against any man not of their faith. We have come to Russia so we would not have to go to war and fight other men, and yet, for the preservation of our families, we must turn savage and fight the Muslims as we fought the wolves.”

“Yes, it seems strange that they believe in any God at all. Perhaps it is an angry figment of their minds, giving them leave to kill and loot at will. Nothing mild and ennobling is in their nature. They are just wild.”

Little did the Norka people know that their troubles with Kirghiz tribesmen would soon be over, for they had been facing only a remnant of the tribes. The main population roamed the vast grasslands on the east side of the river. When confronted vigorously by a contingent of the Tsarina’s army, these small bands of a few hundred retreated across the river to join the main tribes. However, as the west bank was relieved of their threatening presence, the new settlers on the east bank found themselves in greatest peril. Meanwhile the Kalmyks, belonging to the area, remained a lesser, yet constant evil.