And now there will be a story about love…
Love is the only personal event in wartime. All the rest is common—even death.
What came unexpectedly for me? The fact that they spoke about love less candidly than about death. There was always this reticence, as if they were protecting themselves, stopping each time at a certain line. Guarding it vigilantly. There was an unspoken agreement among them—no further. The curtain fell. I understood what they were protecting themselves against: postwar insults and slander. And there was plenty of it! After the war they had to fight another war, no less terrible than the one they had returned from. If one of them resolved to be totally sincere, if a desperate confession escaped them, there was always a request at the end: “Change my last name,” or “In our time it wasn’t acceptable to talk about it aloud…indecent…” I heard more about the romantic and the tragic.
Of course, it is not the whole of life and not the whole truth. But it is their truth. As one of the writers of the war generation admitted honestly: “Cursed be the war—our stellar hour!” That is the watchword, the general epigraph to their lives.
But all the same, what was love like there? Near death…
OF A DAMNED WENCH AND THE ROSES OF MAY
Efrosinya Grigoryevna Breus
CAPTAIN, DOCTOR
The war took my love from me…My only love…
The city was being bombed. My sister Nina came running to say goodbye. We thought we weren’t going to see each other again. She said to me, “I’ll join the medical volunteers, if only I can find them.” I remember looking at her. It was summertime, she was wearing a light dress, and I saw a small birthmark on her left shoulder, here, by the neck. She was my sister, but it was the first time I noticed it. I looked and thought, “I’ll recognize you anywhere.”
And such a keen feeling…Such love…Heartrending…
Everybody was leaving Minsk. The roads were being shelled; we went through the forests…Somewhere a girl cried, “Mama, it’s war!” Our unit was in retreat. We marched past a vast, wide field, the rye had come into ear, and there was a low peasant cottage by the road. It was already the Smolensk region…A woman was standing by the road, and it seemed as if this woman was taller than her house. She was wearing a linen dress embroidered with a national Russian pattern. Her arms were crossed on her chest; she kept bowing low. The soldiers marched past her, and she bowed to them and repeated, “May the Lord bring you home.” She bowed to each of them and said the same thing. Everybody had tears in their eyes…
I remembered her all through the war…And another thing, this was in Germany, when we drove the Germans back. In some village…Two German women wearing bonnets were sitting in a courtyard having coffee…It looked as if there was no war…And I thought, “My God, our country is in ruins, our people live in dugouts and eat grass, and you sit here having coffee.” Our trucks drive by, carrying our soldiers…And they drink coffee…
Then I rode through our land. And what did I see? All that remains of a village is a single stove. An old man sits there and three grandchildren stand behind him. He has evidently lost his son and daughter-in-law. The old woman collects dead coals to start the stove. She has hung up her coat, meaning she came from the forest. And there is nothing cooking in this stove…
And such a keen feeling…Such love…
…Our train stopped. I don’t remember what it was—railroad repairs, or they changed the engine. I sit there with a nurse and next to us two soldiers are cooking kasha. From somewhere two German prisoners come to us and ask for food. We had some bread. We took a loaf, divided it and gave them some. I hear the soldiers who are cooking say, “Look how much bread our doctors gave to the enemy!” And then something like, “Ah, as if they know what real war is, they sit in their hospitals, how would they know…”
Some time later other prisoners came to those same soldiers who were cooking kasha. And the same soldier who disapproved of us just before says to a German, “What—want some grub?”
The man stands there…Waits. Our other soldier gives a loaf to his friend and says, “All right, cut him some.”
The other cut them a slice each. The Germans take the bread and stand there—they see that there’s kasha cooking.
“Well, all right,” the one soldier says, “give him some kasha.”
“It’s not ready yet.”
“You hear?”
And the Germans stand there as if they understand the language. Waiting. The soldiers added some lard to the kasha and gave it to them in empty tin cans.
There’s the soul of a Russian soldier for you. First they denounced us, then they themselves gave the Germans bread and kasha as well, and only after adding some lard. I remember that…
And such a keen feeling…So strong…
The war was long over…I was going to a resort…Just then came the Caribbean crisis.*1 Again the world was uneasy. Everything became unstable. I packed my suitcase, put in dresses, blouses. So, did I forget anything? I fetched a folder with my papers in it and took out my army card. I thought, “If anything happens, I’ll go straight to the recruiting office.”
I was already on the seashore, resting, and I happened to tell someone at the table in the dining room that, in preparing to come here, I took along my army card. I said it without any ulterior motive or wish to show off. But a man at our table got all excited: “No, only a Russian woman can take her army card with her as she leaves for a resort, and think that if anything happens she’ll go straight to the recruiting office.”
I remember the man’s ecstasy. His admiration. He looked at me the way my husband used to. With the same eyes…
Forgive me the long introduction…I don’t know how to tell it in good order. My thoughts always jump, my feelings burst out…
My husband and I went to the front. The two of us together.
There’s a lot I’ve forgotten. Though I think about it every day…
The end of a battle…It was so quiet, we could hardly believe it. He caressed the grass with his hands, it was so soft…and he looked at me. Looked…With those eyes…
He left with a reconnaissance team. We waited two days for them…I didn’t sleep for two days…I dozed off. I woke up because he was sitting next to me and looking at me. “Go to sleep.”
“It’s a pity to sleep.”
And such a keen feeling…Such love…Heartrending…
I’ve forgotten a lot, almost everything. I thought I wouldn’t forget. Not for anything.
We were already passing through East Prussia, everybody was already talking about Victory. He was killed…killed instantly…by shrapnel…An instant death. In a second. I was told they had all been brought, I came running…I put my arms around him, I wouldn’t let them take him away. To be buried. They buried quickly during the war: the battle is over, they gather all those who were killed and dig a big hole. They cover them with earth. Another time it was just dry sand. And if you look at this sand for a long time, you think it’s moving. Quivering. The sand heaves. Because there…For me they’re alive, these people had just been alive…I see them, I talk with them…I don’t believe…We go on walking, and don’t believe yet that they’re there…Where?
So I didn’t allow them to bury him at once. I wanted us to have one more night. To sit next to him. To look…To caress…
Morning…I decided I would take him home. To Belarus. Several thousand miles away. War roads…Confusion…Everybody thought I’d lost my mind from grief. “You must calm down. Get some sleep.” No! No! I went from one general to another and got as far as Rokossovsky, the commander in chief of the front.*2 At first he refused…Some sort of abnormal creature! So many men had been buried in common graves, in foreign lands…
I managed to obtain another meeting with him.
“Do you want me to kneel before you?”
“I understand you…But he’s already dead…”
“We had no children. Our house burned down. No photographs are left. There’s nothing. If I bring him home, there will at least be a grave. And I’ll have somewhere to go back to after the war.”
He said nothing. Paced the office. Paced.
“Have you ever loved, Comrade Marshal? I’m not burying my husband, I’m burying my love.”
He said nothing.
“Then I, too, want to die here. Why should I live without him?”
He said nothing for a long time. Then came up to me and kissed my hand.
I was given a special plane for one night. I boarded the plane…Put my arms around the coffin…And fainted…
Liubov Fominichna Fedosenko
PRIVATE, NURSE-AIDE
We were separated by the war…My husband was at the front. I was evacuated first to Kharkov, then to Tataria. Found a job there. Once I discovered they were looking for me. My maiden name was Lisovskaya. Everybody was shouting, “Sovskaya! Sovskaya!” I shouted, “It’s me!” They told me, “Go to the NKVD, take a pass and go to Moscow.” Why? Nobody told me anything, and I knew nothing. It was wartime…I thought maybe my husband had been wounded and they were summoning me to see him. I hadn’t had any letters from him for four months. I was determined that if I found him crippled, without arms, without legs, I’d take him and go back home. We’d live somehow.
I arrived in Moscow and went to the appointed address. It says: CCCPB (Central Committee of the Communist Party of Belorussia)…That is, it was our Belorussian government, and there were many women there like myself. We asked, “What? Why? What had they summoned us for?” They said, “You’ll find everything out.” We were gathered in a big auditorium. Ponomarenko, the secretary of our Central Committee, is there, and other leaders. They ask me, “Do you want to go back where you come from?” Well, where I come from is Belorussia. Of course I want to. And they send me to a special school. To prepare me for going to the enemy’s rear.
Today we finish training, tomorrow they put us in trucks and drive us to the front line. Then we walk. I didn’t know what the front was and what “no-man’s-land” meant. The order: “Ready! Fire number one.” Bang! Flares were fired off. I saw the snow, very, very white, and then a row of people—it was us all suddenly lying down. There were lots of us. The flares died out, there was no shooting. A new command: “Run!” and we ran…And so we went through…
While I was in the partisan unit, I received a letter from my husband by some miracle. This was such a joy, so unexpected, because for two years I had heard nothing from him. And then a plane dropped some food, ammunition…And the mail…And in the mail, in this canvas bag, there was a letter—for me. Then I wrote a letter to the Central Committee. I wrote that I would do anything so long as my husband and I were together. I gave this letter to a pilot in secret from the commander of our unit. Soon there was news, sent by radio—once our mission was accomplished, our group was expected in Moscow. Our entire special group. We’d be sent to another place…Everybody must be on the flight, and especially Fedosenko.
We waited for the plane, it was nighttime and pitch-dark. And some sort of plane was circling over us, and then it dumped bombs on us. It was a Messerschmitt. The German had spotted our camp and circled back again. And at the same time our plane, a U-2, arrived and landed just by the fir tree where I was standing. The pilot barely landed and immediately began to take off again, because he saw that the German was circling back and would start shooting again. I took hold of the wing and shouted, “I must go to Moscow, I have permission.” He even swore: “Get in!” And we flew together, just the two of us. There were no wounded…Nobody.
I was in Moscow in May and I went around in felt boots. I came to a theater in felt boots. It was wonderful anyway. I wrote to my husband: How are we going to meet? I’m in the reserves for now…But they promise…I ask everywhere: send me where my husband is, give me at least two days, just to look at him once, and then I’ll come back, and you can send me wherever you like. Everybody shrugs. Still, I figured out from the postal code where my husband was fighting, and I went to him. First I go to the regional party committee, show my husband’s address, the papers showing I’m his wife, and say that I want to see him. They tell me it’s impossible, he’s on the front line, go back, but I was so beaten down, so hungry, what was this—go back? I went to the military commandant. He looked at me and gave an order to issue me some sort of clothes. They gave me an army shirt, put a belt on me. And he began to talk me out of it.
“You know, it’s very dangerous where your husband is…”
I sat there and wept, so he took pity on me and gave me the pass.
“Go out to the highway,” he said. “There’ll be a traffic controller, he’ll tell you how to go.”
I found the highway, found the traffic controller. He put me on a truck, and I went. I arrive at the unit, everybody’s surprised, they’re all military. “Who are you?” they ask. I couldn’t say I was a wife. How could I say it? There were bombs exploding…I tell them—his sister. I don’t even know why I said it. “Wait,” they tell me, “it’s a four-mile walk there.” How could I wait, since I’d already traveled so far. Just then a car came from there to pick up food. There was a sergeant major with them, red-haired, freckled. He says, “Oh, I know Fedosenko. But he’s in the trenches.”
Well, I insisted and he took me. We drive, I can’t see anything anywhere…There’s a forest…A forest road…A new thing for me: the front line. But nobody anywhere. Only some shooting somewhere from time to time. We arrive. The sergeant asks, “Where’s Fedosenko?”
They reply, “They went on a scouting mission yesterday. They stayed till daylight, and now they’re waiting it out.”
But they had communications. They told him that his sister had arrived. What sister? They say, “The redhead.” His sister had black hair. So he figured out at once what sister. I don’t know how he managed to crawl out of there, but he came soon, and he and I met. What joy…
I stayed one day, then two, and then decided: “Go to headquarters and report. I’m staying here with you.”
He went to the superiors, and I held my breath: what if they tell me to clear out within twenty-four hours? It’s the front, I know that. Suddenly I see the superiors coming to the dugout: the major, the colonel. Everybody shakes my hand. Then, of course, we sat down in the dugout, drank, and each of them said something about a wife finding her husband in the trenches. That’s a real wife, she has papers. What a woman! Let me set eyes on such a woman! They said things like that, and they all wept. I’ll remember that evening all my life…What else have I got left?
They enlisted me as a nurse-aide. I went on scouting missions with him. A mortar fires, I see him fall down. “Killed or wounded?” I think. I run there, the mortar goes on firing, and the commander shouts, “Where do you think you’re going, you damned wench!” I crawled to him—he was alive…Alive!
By the Dnieper, on a moonlit night, they gave me the Order of the Red Banner. The next day my husband was wounded, badly wounded. We ran together, we waded together through some swamp, we crawled together. The machine guns kept rattling, and we kept crawling, and he got wounded in the hip. With an exploding bullet, and try bandaging that—it was in the buttock. It was all torn open, and mud and dirt all over. We were encircled and tried to break out. There was nowhere to take the wounded, and there were no medications. When we did break through, I took my husband to the hospital. By the time we got there, he had a general blood infection. It was the New Year…1944 was beginning. He was dying…I knew he was dying…He had many decorations; I took all his medals and put them next to him. The doctor was making his rounds, and he was asleep.
The doctor came up. “You should leave here. He’s already dead.”
I reply, “Quiet, he’s still alive.”
My husband opened his eyes just then and said, “The ceiling has turned blue.”
I looked: “No, it’s not blue, Vasya. The ceiling’s white.” But he thought it was blue.
His neighbor says to him, “Well, Fedosenko, if you survive, you’ll have to carry your wife in your arms.”
“And so I will,” he agrees.
I don’t know, he probably felt he was dying, because he took me by the hands, pulled me to him and kissed me. The way one kisses for the last time.
“Liubochka, what a pity, everybody’s celebrating the New Year, and you and I are here…But don’t be sorry, we’ll still have everything…”
And when he had only a few hours left to live…He had an accident, and I had to change his bed…I gave him a clean sheet, bandaged his leg, but I had to pull him up to lay him on the pillow, and he was a man, he was heavy. I was pulling him up, I bent very low, and I felt that that was it, another minute or two and he’d be no more…It was in the evening. A quarter past ten…I remember it to the minute. I wanted to die myself…But I was carrying our child under my heart, and only that held me back. I survived those days. I buried him on January 1, and thirty-eight days later I gave birth to a son. He was born in 1944; he has children himself now. My husband’s name was Vassily, my son is Vassily Vassilyevich, and I have a grandson, Vasya…Vassilek…
Vera Vladimirovna Shevaldysheva
FIRST LIEUTENANT, SURGEON
I saw…Every day…But I couldn’t be reconciled to that. A young, handsome man dies…I wanted to hurry up and, well…and kiss him. To do something feminine, since I couldn’t do anything as a doctor. At least to smile. To caress him. To take his hand…
Many years after the war a man confessed to me that he remembered my young smile. For me he was an ordinary wounded man, I didn’t even remember him. He told me that my smile brought him back to life, from the other world, as they say…A woman’s smile…
Sofya Krigel
SERGEANT MAJOR, SNIPER
We arrived at the 1st Belorussian Front…Twenty-seven girls. Men looked at us with admiration: “Not laundresses, not telephone operators, but sniper girls. It’s the first time we’ve seen such girls. What girls!” The sergeant major composed a poem in our honor. The sense of it was that girls should be delicate, like roses in May, and the war shouldn’t cripple their souls.
As we were leaving for the front, each of us gave an oath: there will be no romances there. It would all happen, if we survived, after the war. Before the war we didn’t have time even to kiss. We looked at these things more strictly than young people nowadays. For us to kiss meant love for the rest of your life. At the front, love was forbidden. If the superiors found out about it, one of the couple as a rule was transferred to another unit. They were simply separated.
We cherished our love and kept it secret. We didn’t keep our childish oaths…We loved…
I think that if I hadn’t fallen in love at the war, I wouldn’t have survived. Love saved us. It saved me…
Sofya K—vich
MEDICAL ASSISTANT
You ask about love? I’m not afraid of telling the truth…I was what’s called a field campaign wife. A war wife…A second one. An unlawful one.
The first commander of the battalion…
I didn’t love him. He was a good man, but I didn’t love him. But I went to his dugout after several months. What else could I do? There were only men around, so it’s better to live with one than to be afraid of them all. It was less frightening in battle than after battle, especially if we pulled back for a rest or re-formation. When there’s shooting, gunfire, they call out, “Nurse! Dear nurse!” But after the battle each of them lies in wait for you…You can’t get out of the dugout at night…Did other girls talk to you about that or did they not confess? They were ashamed, I think…Kept quiet. Proud! All sorts of things happened, because we didn’t want to die. It’s too bad to die when you’re young…And for men it was hard to live for four years without women…There were no bordellos in our army, and there weren’t any pills. Maybe somewhere they took care of those things. Not here. Four years…Commanders could allow themselves something, but not simple soldiers. Discipline. But no one talks about it…It’s not done…I, for instance, was the only woman in the battalion. I lived in a common dugout with the men. They gave me a separate space, but what kind of space was it, if the whole dugout was twenty square feet. I used to wake up at night because I waved my arms—I’d slap one on the cheek, or the hands, then another. I was wounded and got into a hospital. I waved my arms there, too. A floor attendant woke me up in the night: “What’s the matter?” How could I tell her?
The first commander was killed by a mine fragment.
The second commander of the battalion…
I loved him. I went into combat with him, I wanted to be near him. I loved him, and he had a beloved wife, two children. He showed me their photographs. And I knew that after the war, if he stayed alive, he would go back to them. To Kaluga. So what? We had such happy moments! We lived such happiness! Once we came back…A terrible battle…And we were alive. He wouldn’t have had the same thing with anyone else! It wouldn’t have worked! I knew it…I knew that without me he wouldn’t be happy. He wouldn’t be happy with anyone as we were happy together in the war. He wouldn’t…Never!
At the end of the war I got pregnant. I wanted it…But I raised our daughter by myself, he didn’t help me. Didn’t lift a finger. Not a single present or letter…or postcard. The war ended, and love ended. Like a song…He went to his lawful wife and the children. He left me his photo as a memento. I didn’t want the war to end…It’s a terrible thing to say…to open my heart…I’m crazy. I was in love! I knew that love would end together with the war. His love…But even so I’m grateful to him for the feeling he gave me, and that I had known with him. I’ve loved him all my life, I’ve kept my feeling through the years. I have no need to lie. I’m an old woman. Yes, through my whole life! And I don’t regret it.
My daughter reproached me: “Mama, why do you love him?” Yet I love him…I recently found out that he died. I wept a lot. Because of it I even quarreled with my daughter: “Why do you weep? He’s been long dead for you.” But I love him even now. I remember the war as the best time of my life, I was happy then…
Only, please, don’t give my last name. For my daughter’s sake…
Ekaterina Nikitichna Sannikova
SERGEANT, RIFLEMAN
During the war…
I was brought to the unit…To the front line. The commander met me with the words, “Take your hat off, please.” I was surprised…I took it off…In the recruiting office we were given crew cuts, but while we were in the army camps, while we were going to the front, my hair grew back a bit. It began to curl, I had curly hair. Tight curls…You can’t tell now, I’m already old…And so he looks and looks at me: “I haven’t seen a woman for two years. I just want to look.”
After the war…
I lived in a communal apartment. My neighbors were all married, and they insulted me. They taunted me: “Ha-ha-ha…Tell us how you whored around there with the men…” They used to put vinegar into my pot of boiled potatoes. Or add a tablespoon of salt…Ha-ha-ha…
My commander was demobilized. He came to me and we got married. We went and got registered, that’s all. Without a wedding. And a year later he left me for another woman, the director of our factory canteen: “She wears perfume, and you smell of army boots and footwraps.”
So I live alone. I don’t have anybody in the whole wide world. Thank you for coming…
Anastasia Leonidovna Zhardetskaya
CORPORAL, MEDICAL ASSISTANT
And my husband…It’s good he isn’t here, he’s at work. He told me strictly…He knows I like to talk about our love…How I made my wedding dress out of bandages overnight. By myself. My friends and I spent a month collecting bandages. Trophy bandages…I had a real wedding dress! I still have a picture: I’m in this dress and boots, only you can’t see the boots. But I remember I wore boots. I concocted a belt out of an old forage cap…An excellent little belt. But what am I…going on about my own things…My husband told me not to say a word about love—no, no, but to talk about the war. He’s strict. He taught me with a map…For two days he taught me where each front was…Where our unit was…I’ll tell you, I wrote it down. I’ll read it…
Why are you laughing? What a nice laugh you have. I also laughed…What kind of historian am I! I’d better show you that photo, where I’m in that dress made of bandages.
I like myself so much in it…In a white dress…
OF A STRANGE SILENCE FACING THE SKY AND A LOST RING
Maria Selivestrovna Bozhok
NURSE
I left Kazan for the front as a nineteen-year-old girl…
Six months later I wrote my mother that people thought I was twenty-five or twenty-seven. Every day is spent in fear, in terror. Shrapnel flies, you think your skin is torn off. And people die. They die every day, every hour, it feels like every minute. We didn’t have enough sheets to cover them. We laid them out in their underwear. There was a strange silence in the wards. I don’t remember such silence anywhere. When a man dies he always looks up, never to the side or at you, if you’re next to him. Only up…At the ceiling…But as if he’s looking into the sky…
And I kept telling myself that I wouldn’t hear a single word of love in that hell. I wouldn’t believe it. The war went on for so many years, and I don’t even remember a single song. Not even the famous “Dugout.” Not a single one…I only remember: when I was leaving home for the front, there were cherry trees blossoming in the garden. I walked and kept looking back…Later I probably came across gardens along the way, they must have blossomed during the war. But I don’t remember…In school I was such a laugher, but here I never smiled. If I saw a girl pluck her eyebrows or use lipstick, I was indignant. I was categorically against it: how was it possible, how could she want to be attractive at such a time?
There were wounded around, there was moaning…Dead people have such yellow-green faces. How could I think of joy? Of my happiness? I didn’t want to combine love with that. With those things…It seemed to me that there, in those surroundings, love would perish instantly. What love can there be without festivity, without beauty? Once the war ends, there’ll be a beautiful life. And love. But here…Here, no. What if I suddenly die, and the man who loves me suffers? Such a pity. That’s how I felt…
My present husband courted me there; we met at the front. I didn’t want to hear him: “No, no, when the war’s over, only then will we be able to talk about it.” I’ll never forget how once, on returning from a battle, he asked me, “Do you have some nice little blouse? Please put it on. Let me see you in a blouse.” But all I had was an army shirt.
I used to tell my girlfriend who got married at the front, “He didn’t bring you flowers. Didn’t court you. And suddenly—marriage. What kind of love is that?” I didn’t approve of her feelings.
The war ended…We looked at each other and didn’t believe that the war had ended and we were still alive. Now we were going to live…We were going to love…But we had forgotten all that, we didn’t know how to do it. I came home, I went with mama to have a dress made. My first postwar dress.
My turn came and they asked me, “What kind of dress do you want?”
“I don’t know.”
“You come to a dressmaker, and you don’t know what kind of a dress you want?”
“No, I don’t…”
I hadn’t seen a single dress in five years. I’d even forgotten how a dress is made. That there are all sorts of tucks, slits…Low waist, high waist…Incomprehensible to me. I bought a pair of high-heeled shoes, walked up and down the room, and took them off. I put them in the corner, thinking, “I’ll never learn to walk in them…”
Elena Viktorovna Klenovskaya
PARTISAN
I want to remember…I want to tell what an extraordinarily beautiful feeling I brought away from the war. Almost no words can convey with what rapture and admiration men regarded us. I lived in the same dugouts with them, slept on the same bunks, went on the same missions, and when I froze so that I felt my spleen freeze in me, my tongue freeze in my mouth, a little longer and I’d faint, I begged, “Misha, undo your coat, warm me up.” He’d do it: “Well, is that better?” “It is.”
I’ve never met with anything like it in my life. But it was impossible to think of anything personal when the Motherland was in danger.
But there was love?
Yes, there was. I encountered it…But you must forgive me, maybe I’m not right, and this isn’t quite natural, but in my heart I disapproved of those people. I thought that it wasn’t the time to be concerned with love. Around us was evil. Hatred. It seems many thought the same way…
And how were you before the war?
I liked to sing. To laugh. I wanted to be a pilot. I didn’t even think about love! It wasn’t the main thing in my life. The main thing was—the Motherland. Now I think we were naïve…
Svetlana Nikolaevna Liubich
MEDICAL VOLUNTEER
In the hospital…They were all happy. They were happy because they were still alive. There was a twenty-year-old lieutenant who was upset that he had lost a leg. But then, in the midst of universal grief, it seemed like happiness: he was alive, and, just think, he was only missing one leg. The main thing was—he was alive. He’d have love, and he’d have a wife, and everything. Nowadays it’s an awful thing to find yourself without a leg, but then they all hopped around, and smoked, and laughed. They were heroes and all that! Just think!
Did you fall in love there?
Of course, we were so young. As soon as the new wounded arrived, we always fell in love with somebody. My girlfriend fell in love with a first lieutenant, he was wounded all over. She pointed him out—there he is. So I, too, decided to fall in love with him. When he was taken away, he asked me for a photo. I had one photo taken somewhere at a train station. I took this photo to give to him, but then I thought: what if this isn’t love, and I’ve given him the photo? They were already taking him away. I gave him my hand in which I clutched the photo, but I couldn’t bring myself to open my fist. That’s the whole of my love…
Then there was Pavlik, also a lieutenant. He was in great pain, so I put a chocolate under his pillow. And when we met, this was after the war, already twenty years after, he began to thank my friend, Lilya Drozdova, for this chocolate. Lilya said, “What chocolate?” Then I confessed that it was me…And he kissed me…After twenty years he kissed me…
Lilya Alexandrovskaya
ART SINGER
Once after a concert…In a big evacuation hospital…The head doctor came up to me and asked, “We have a badly wounded tankman here in a separate room. He reacts to almost nothing, maybe your singing will help him.” I went to the ward. As long as I live, I’ll never forget this man, who by some miracle got out of a burning tank, burned from head to foot. He lay motionless, stretched out on the bed, his face black, eyeless. My throat was seized with a spasm, and for a few moments I couldn’t get hold of myself. Then I began to sing quietly…I saw the man’s face stir slightly. He whispered something. I bent over and heard, “Sing more.” I sang for him more and more, all my repertoire, till the doctor said, “It seems he’s fallen asleep…”
Nina Leonidovna Mikhai
SERGEANT MAJOR, NURSE
Our battalion commander and the nurse Liuba Silina…They loved each other! Everybody could see that. He went to battle and she…She said she wouldn’t forgive herself if he didn’t die before her eyes, and she didn’t see him in his last moment. “Let them kill us together. With the same shell.” They wanted to die together or to live together. Our love was not divided into today and tomorrow, there was only today. Each of us knew that you love now, and the next moment either you or this man would be no more. In war everything happens more quickly: both life and death. In those few years we lived a whole life. I’ve never been able to explain it to anybody. Time is different there…
In one battle the commander was badly wounded, and Liuba lightly, just a scratch on a shoulder. He was sent to the rear, and she stayed on. She was pregnant, and he gave her a letter, “Go to my parents. Whatever happens to me, you’re my wife. And we’ll have our son or our daughter.”
Later Liuba wrote to me that his parents didn’t accept her and didn’t recognize the child. And the commander died.
For many years I’ve been meaning…I wanted to go and visit her, but it didn’t work out. We had been bosom friends. But to go so far—to the Altai. Recently a letter came telling me she had died. Now her son invites me to come and visit her grave…
I’d like to go…
Lilya Mikhailovna Butko
SURGICAL NURSE
Victory Day…
We gathered for our traditional reunion. I came out of the hotel, and the girls said to me, “Where have you been, Lilya? We cried our eyes out.”
It turned out that a man had approached them, a Kazakh, and asked, “Where are you from, girls? What hospital?”
“Who are you looking for?”
“I come here every year looking for a nurse. She saved my life. I fell in love with her. I want to find her.”
My girls laughed.
“You’re looking for a nurse, but she’s a granny by now.”
“No…”
“You must have a wife? Children?”
“I have grandchildren, and I have children, and I have a wife. I’ve lost my soul…I have no soul…”
The girls told me that, and together we recalled: might he be that Kazakh of mine?
…They brought a young Kazakh boy. Really very young. We operated on him. He had seven or eight intestinal ruptures and was considered hopeless. He lay there so indifferently that I noticed him at once. Each time I had a spare moment I’d run to see him: “How are you doing?” I gave him intravenous injections, took his temperature, and he made it. He began to recover. Our hospital was on the front line, we didn’t keep the wounded for long. We rendered first aid, tore them from the clutches of death, and sent them on. He was supposed to be taken away with the next party.
He lay on a stretcher, and they told me he had asked for me.
“Nurse, come closer to me.”
“What is it? What do you want? You’re fine. They’re sending you to the rear. Everything will be all right. Count yourself among the living.”
He says, “I beg you. I’m an only son. You’ve saved me.” And he gave me a present—a ring, a small ring.
I didn’t wear rings, for some reason I didn’t like them. So I refused.
“I can’t. I really can’t.”
He insisted. The wounded men supported him.
“Take it, it’s from a pure heart.”
“It’s just my duty, don’t you see?”
They persuaded me. To tell the truth, I lost that ring later on. It was too big for me, and once I fell asleep in a car, there was a jolt, and it fell off somewhere. I was very sorry.
Did you find that man?
No, we didn’t meet. I don’t know whether it was the same one. But the girls and I spent the whole day looking for him.
…In 1946 I returned home. They asked me, “Will you wear army clothes or civilian?” Army clothes, of course. It never even occurred to me to take them off. One evening I went to the Officers’ House to a dance. Now you’re going to hear what the attitude toward army girls was.
I put on shoes and a dress, and left the overcoat and boots at the cloakroom.
An officer comes up to me and invites me to dance.
“You must be from other parts,” he says. “You’re a very cultivated girl.”
He spent the whole evening with me. Didn’t let me get away. The dances were over, he says to me, “Give me your token.”
He goes on ahead. They give him the boots and the overcoat from the cloakroom.
“These aren’t mine…”
I come up: “No, they’re mine.”
“You didn’t tell me you were at the front.”
“Did you ask me?”
He was at a loss. Couldn’t raise his eyes to me. He himself had just come back from the war…
“Why are you so surprised?”
“I couldn’t imagine you had been in the army. You see, a girl at the front…”
“You’re surprised that I was alone? Without a husband and not pregnant? Not wearing a padded jacket, not blowing strong cigarette smoke, and not using foul language?”
I didn’t allow him to take me home.
I was always proud that I had been at the front. Defending the Motherland…
Liubov Mikhailovna Grozd
MEDICAL ASSISTANT
My first kiss…
Second Lieutenant Nikolai Belokhvostik…Ah, see, I’m blushing all over, and I’m already a grandmother. We were young then. Very young. I thought…I was sure…That…I didn’t confess even to my girlfriend that I was in love with him. Head over heels. My first love…Maybe my only love? Who knows…I thought no one in our company had guessed. I had never liked anyone like that before! If I liked someone, it was not so much. But he…I walked around and thought about him all the time, every minute. That…It was real love. I felt it. By all the signs…Ah, see, I’m blushing…
We were burying him…He was lying on a tarpaulin; he had just been killed. The Germans were shelling us. We had to bury him quickly…Right away…We found some old birches; we chose one that stood a short way from an old oak. The biggest one. Next to it…I tried to remember, so I could come back and find this place afterward. The village ended there, there was a fork in the road…How to remember? How to remember if one of those birches was already burning right in front of our eyes…How? We began to take leave of him…They told me, “You go first.” My heart leaped, I realized…That…It turned out everybody knew about my love. Everybody…The thought struck me: maybe he knew, too? See…He’s lying here…They’ll put him into the ground now…a hole. They’ll cover him with sand…But I was terribly glad at the thought that maybe he knew, too. And what if he liked me? As if he were alive and would now answer me…I remembered how he gave me a German chocolate bar for the New Year. I didn’t eat it, I spent a month carrying it around in my pocket.
I’ve remembered it all my life…That moment…There were bombs falling around…He lay on a tarpaulin…That moment…I was happy…I stood smiling to myself. Crazy. I was happy that maybe he knew about my love…
I went up and kissed him. I’d never kissed a man before…That was the first time…
OF THE LONELINESS OF A BULLET AND A HUMAN BEING
Klavdia S—va
SNIPER
My story is a particular one…Prayers console me. I pray for my daughter…
I remember a saying of mama’s. Mama liked to say, “A bullet’s a fool; fate is a villain.” She had this saying for all sorts of troubles. A bullet is alone, and man is alone; a bullet flies wherever it likes, and fate twists a man however it likes. This way and that, this way and that. A man is a feather, a sparrow’s feather. You can never know your future. It’s not given to us…We can’t penetrate this mystery. When we were returning from the war, a Gypsy told me my future. She came up to me at the train station, called me aside…She predicted I would have a great love…I had a German watch; I took it off and gave it to her for this great love. I believed her.
And now I can’t weep enough over that love…
I was going to the war happily. As a Komsomol girl. Along with everybody else. We traveled in freight cars. There were inscriptions on them in black mazut: “Forty persons/eight horses.” There were a hundred of us stuffed in each car.
I became a sniper. I could have been a radio operator. It’s a useful profession—both in the army and in peacetime. A woman’s profession. But they told me they needed people to shoot, so I shot. I did it well. I have two Orders of Glory and four medals. For three years of war.
They shouted to us—Victory! They announced—Victory! I remember my first feeling—joy. And at once, that same moment—fear! Panic! Panic! How to live from here on? Papa had been killed at Stalingrad. My two older brothers had been missing in action since the beginning of the war. Mama and I were left. Two women. How were we to live? All our girls fell to thinking…We’d get together in the evening in a dugout…We discussed how our lives were only beginning. There was joy and fear. Before we had been afraid of death, and now—of life…It was equally frightening. It’s true! We talked and talked, then sat and said nothing.
Will we get married or won’t we? For love or without love? We told fortunes with daisies…We threw flower wreaths into the river, we melted wax…I remember in one village they showed us where a sorceress lived. We all rushed to her, even several officers. And all the girls. She told fortunes in water. By palm reading. Another time an organ-grinder had us draw paper lots. Tickets. I used to have lucky tickets…Where is that luck of mine?
How did the Motherland meet us? I can’t speak without sobbing…It was forty years ago, but my cheeks still burn. The men said nothing, but the women…They shouted to us, “We know what you did there! You lured our men with your young c——! Army whores…Military bitches…” They insulted us in all possible ways…The Russian vocabulary is rich…
A fellow took me home from a dance; I suddenly felt really bad, my heart started fluttering. I walked and walked and then sat down in a snowdrift. “What’s the matter?” “Never mind. Too much dancing.” It was because of my two wounds. Because of the war…I had to learn to be tender. To be weak and fragile. But my feet were used to size ten boots. I wasn’t used to being embraced. I was used to being responsible for myself. I waited for tender words, but I didn’t understand them. To me they seemed childish. Among men at the front there were foul Russian curses. I was used to that. My girlfriend who worked in the library kept telling me, “Read poetry. Read Esenin.”*3
I quickly got married. A year later. To our factory engineer. I dreamed of love. I wanted to have a home and a family. I wanted my home to smell of small children. I smelled my first baby’s diapers and was happy. The smell of happiness…A woman’s happiness…In war there are no women’s smells, they’re all men’s. War smells of men.
I have two children…A boy and a girl. First I had a boy. A good, intelligent boy. He finished university. An architect. But the girl…My girl…She began to walk when she was five, said her first word, “mama,” at seven. Even now it comes out not “mama” but “moomo,” not “papa” but “poopo.” She…To this day I think it can’t be true. It’s some kind of a mistake. She’s been in an insane asylum…For forty years. Since I retired, I go there every day. It’s my sin…
For many years now, at the beginning of the school year I buy her a new primer. We spend a whole day reading the primer. Sometimes I come home from her, and it feels as if I’ve lost the ability to read and write. To talk. I don’t need any of that. What for?
I’ve been punished…For what? Maybe for having killed people? I sometimes think so…You have a lot of time when you’re old…I think and think. In the morning I go on my knees, I look out the window. And I pray to God…I pray for everybody…I don’t have a grudge against my husband, I forgave him long ago. The girl was born…He looked at us…He stayed for a while and left. Left with a reproach: “Would a normal woman have gone to the war? Learned to shoot? That’s why you’re unable to give birth to a normal child.” I pray for him…
Maybe he’s right? I sometimes think so…It’s my sin…
I loved the Motherland more than anything in the world. I loved…Who can I tell it to now? To my girl…To her alone…I recall the war, and she thinks I’m telling her fairy tales. Children’s fairy tales. Scary children’s fairy tales…
Don’t write my last name. No need to…