Splinters from the handle of the pick I held above my shoulder bore their way into my callus laden palms. My teeth rattled as the cold iron collided with the unforgiving, broken asphalt surrounding what was left of the Barrikady gun factory. The distant, red gloom of death and destruction on the horizon reflected off the black sky to illuminate the our division. We had arrived at the ruins of the gun factory earlier that night to find isolated, rusted railroad tracks scattered amongst a barren asphalt yard — pock marked with bomb craters and wrecked goods wagons that had been destroyed by enemy shells. With each ragged breath I took through pursed, chapped lips my chest trembled as if rattled by a Nazi Mortar shell. My nostrils stung with the stench of smoke, human excretion and body odor. My legs, my weak, worn legs, felt flacid in my boots and wobbled under the weight of our responsibility — hold our position at the Barrikady factory on the west bank of the Volga River or allow Russia to fall. Yet when I felt too drained to dig this ditch amidst the rubble, I took a deep breath; when I felt sick at the thought of cutting another embrasier in the walls of the factory, I took a deep breath; and when I wondered how my wife would learn of my death I lifted my head from the beaten ground, looked to my fellow soldiers of the Siberian 308th Rifle Division and took a deep breath, swallowing my angst. The unrelenting breeze from the Volga behind us stabbed my skin through the quilted, Telogreika combat jacket on my back, and through the leather exterior of my boots I could feel my toes rotting underneath a blanket of bacteria. Above our heads black smoke billowed in the sky and settled amidst the fog like the ceiling of a nightmare. This smoke had lingered in the sky since we had arrived at the plant on the night of September 10th, 1942. I only knew of the date because Colonel Lieontiy Gurtiev, whom had led us on our march from Kumulga to Stalingrad, had engrained it in my mind. He had stood before us with overbearing stoicism in his dirty brown, M-43 officer’s tunic and said, ” Remember this date, and the dates that follow, as any of them can and will be the day you die.” He knew he need not remind us that retreat and surrender had both been outlawed by Joseph Stalin, or that both were punishable by exile or death. For against our backs was the fate of Russia, struggling to stay afloat amidst the current of the icy Volga River, and before us was our irrefutable demise. Retreat was hopeless and surrender was suicide. In grim silence and with the aid of the red horizon I gazed upon our division, composed of hard working Siberian men who had proven tough and sturdy, reticent and gruff, unfazed to cold and privation and fond of discipline. Men who did not regret their position or responsibility and felt no fear. I settled my pick on the rubble before me for as I turned to watch my fellow soldiers dig into the stony earth, fashioning dugouts and building communication barriers amidst piles of fallen steel girders and heaps of coal and concrete. I watched the men with whom I had chosen to die turn a ruined gun factory into a fortress, a fortress from which we would face that death. I took a deep breath. Each man’s face was weary and crusted with raw, black stubble. I turned back around to grab my pick but closed my eyes instead. From underneath my cumbersom helmet I listened to the flap of the icy Volga and the continuous cry of sirens from what remained of Stalingrad behind us. I knew that once the Luftwaffe commenced with bombing the city I would be able to hear nothing. I would be deaf until the guns fell silent, the planes dropped back to refuel and the bombs lost inspiration. And by then the Nazi infantry, accompanied by hundreds of tanks and high artillery weapons, would eclipse the horizon in reinforcement to reaffirm this relentless nightmare. Suddenly, without the monotony of marching to occupy my mind, I realized that my duty, in protecting my country, was to delay death and bestow it upon every enemy soldier I could until my dog tag, engrained with the name, Commissar A. M. Svirin, fell to the mud. So, clenching the handle of my pick, I grit what was left of my teeth, accepted my duty as my fellow soldiers already had and took a deep breath of acquiescence.
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