Tatiana and Alexander: A Novel(81)

"I don't know what you mean, Captain."

"Well, just this morning, he cheerfully informed me that the tank had been fixed." Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

Ouspensky beamed. "It has been, Captain."

"This surprises me, Lieutenant."

"Why, sir?"

"Well, for one," Alexander said patiently, "I didn't know the tank needed fixing."

"Badly, sir. The diesel pistons were misfiring. They needed to be aligned."

Nodding, Alexander said, "That's very good, Lieutenant, but it does bring me to my second point of surprise."

"And that is, sir?"

"We don'thave a f*cking tank!"

Ouspensky smiled. "Oh, yes, we do, sir. We do. Come with me."

Outside near the woods, Alexander saw a green light battle tank with the Red Star and the emblem "For Stalin!" emblazoned on the side. Like the ones Tania used to make at Kirov. Only this one was smaller. A T-34. Alexander walked around the tank. It was battle-weary but generally in good condition. The treads were intact. He liked the number on the tank: 623. The turret was large. The cannon was larger. "A 100-millimeter!" said Ouspensky.

Alexander glanced at him. "What the f*ck are you so proud of? You built this yourself?"

"No. I stole it myself."

Alexander could not help laughing. "Where from?"

"Fished it out of the pond over there."

"Was it completely covered with water? Is all the ammo soggy?"

"No, no, just the wheels and the tread were in the water. It had stalled; they couldn't get it started."

"How didyou get it started?"

"I didn't. I had thirty men help me push it out. That's when Verenkov fixed it. Now it works like a music box."

"Where did it come from?"

"Who the f*ck cares? From the battalion before us?"

"There is no battalion before us. You haven't figured out yet that we're the first in the line of fire?"

"Well, maybe they were retreating from the woods. I don't know. I saw a corpse floating in the pond. Maybe it was the gunner." Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

"Not a very good one," commented Alexander.

"Isn't it fantastic?"

"Yes, it's great. They're going to take it away from us. Does it have much ammo?"

"It's loaded. I think that's why it sank. It's supposed to store only three thousand 7.62-millimeter rounds, and it's got six thousand!"

"Any 100-millimeter?"

"Yes." Ouspensky grinned. "Thirty. Five hundred of the 11.63-millimeter rounds--for the mortars. It's got fifteen rockets, and look, a fixed heavy-machine-gun. We're set, Captain."

"It'll all be taken away from us."

"They'll have to get past you first." Ouspensky saluted him. "You'll be our tank commander."

"It's always a pleasure when a lieutenant assigns duties to the captain, you bastard," said Alexander.

With Ouspensky as his driver, and Telikov as his gunner, and Verenkov as his loader, he was able to protect his men with the tank in skirmishes from spring to summer 1944 for three hundred kilometers from Byelorussia to eastern Poland. The fighting in Byelorussia was the worst. The Germans did not want to leave. Alexander did not blame them. With his helmet on, he plowed through the Byelorussian countryside, not stopping at ponds, or woods, or loss of men, or villages, or women, or even sleep. The tread wearing out on his tank, Alexander forged ahead, keeping only one thought in front--Germany.

Field after field, forest after forest, marsh, mud, mines, rains. They would set up their tents and catch fish in rivers, cook it in steel bowls over fires, eat two to a bowl--Ouspensky always ate with Alexander--and then restless sleep, and then onward again into German bullets and German arms. There were three Soviet armies pushing the Germans out of Russia, Army Group Ukraine, the most southern, Army Group Center and Army Group North, of which Alexander was part, under General Rokossovsky. The Soviets were not content to merely push the Germans out of Russia. There was going to be retribution on German soil for the evil inflicted on Russia the past two and a half years and for that, millions of men had to plow through Lithuania, Latvia, Byelorussia, and Poland. Stalin wanted to be in Berlin by fall. Alexander did not think that was possible but even so, it was not because of a lack of effort on his part. Onward field after mined field, and the men lay afterward dead and unburied in the fields that once grew potatoes. The remaining men took their rifles and went on. There were a dozen engineers in Alexander's battalion who could find and de-prime mines. They kept getting killed, and Alexander kept getting new engineers. Finally he trained everyone in his battalion how to find a mine and how to pull out the fuse. After crossing the un-primed field, they would come to a wood, and in the wood the Germans awaited them. Five penal battalions would push their way through the wood first, through the rivers first, through the marsh first, to clear the way for the regular divisions. And then more woods, more fields.

It was good that it wasn't winter, but it was still cold and wet at night. The rivers weren't frozen, and the men could clean themselves, thus avoiding typhus--just barely. Alexander knew: typhus meant death by firing squad--the army could not afford an epidemic. The penal battalions were the first to be killed, but also the first to be replenished: there seemed to be no shortage of political convicts sent to die for Mother Russia. To boost sagging morale, Stalin decided to put honor and dignity back into the Red Army by introducing new uniforms--new after a fashion. Following Stalin's directive in 1943, even the officers in Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html