Author's note: I intend to continue this series, for several further chapters, to its natural end, but I cannot promise you a specific publication cadence. Enjoy, N. Yakovlevna.
First Battle
The night Vladimir raped me, Heinrich Stauffen, his Baltic-German lieutenant, sabotaged a bridge on the Mogilev-Gomel rail line.
The next morning, German warplanes bombed an old location of the camp and Polizei units set out to hunt us.
We fled along pre-planned routes of retreat, but one-eyed Yuri's section ran into a Polizei patrol accompanied by several Nazis. The gun battle cost Yuri his life and alerted the Fascists to our presence. They tried to push our columns into close areas so they could shower us with artillery and mortar fire. We fought to break their encirclements.
From the afternoon of that day to dusk the following, the woods were full of crackling rifle fire, screaming mortar shells and the rumble of the Nazi motorcycle couriers on the dirt paths. The fights came so suddenly that there was no time for fear, only for flight and the dull taste of adrenaline in the back of my mouth.
At first, I could keep up easily enough, ignoring the ache between my legs and the loss of my dinner because I had so little to carry. But on the second day, one of Kiril's men was disemboweled by a shell. His guts shone purple in the ragged tatters of his peasant tunic, his blood pooled slow in the shattered stones around him, glistening in the heat of a dying summer.
"Yakovlevna," Kiril shouted from his post. "Get that gun and get his pack!"
I retrieved the rifle, a bolt action piece that predated the revolution, and his pack, which contained most of the section's meat ration. It took us all afternoon to fight from that hill to the opposite stream and a broader tract of forest, hours of crawling in the leaflitter and dragging two packs and a four foot rifle. Sweat soaked my shirt and jacket, and the pain of my injuries grew worse as I lost strength.
By the time we reached the shelter of the woods I'd re-entered the absent state I'd achieved when Vladimir fucked me: I could see everything, I was acting and moving, I was aware of my physical pain, but the world was distant, like images projected on the wall of a dark room. I staggered as though wounded.
My condition was so bad that when we encountered the other detachments in the woods Vladimir reproached Kiril.
"I told you, Commissar, but you did not listen!"
Kiril stared back at him with a look of naked hate.
But it was Heinrich's words that cut: "Maybe they're after her," he said. "Bad luck to have Jews when we're fighting these bastards. They're not Finns or Poles. They're out for blood. They can smell it, I tell you."
"She stays," Kiril said. "All the Jewish soldiers stay."
Heinrich spat, and I felt his eyes burrow into me.
Finally, during a pause in the shooting, Kiril redistributed the dead man's goods among the men. As we stood paused on the path, an uncontrollable tremor started in my legs and I shook so bad I could no longer stand. One of the Red Army fugitives grabbed me by the waist to keep me from falling.
"You're pale as death," he said to me.
"I've never been shot at before," I said.
"It's better when you do some shooting too," he said. He told me his name then, Lev Edelman, a Jew from Kiev. He offered his canteen and I drank a few gulps of it. He pushed a hunk of bread into my hand.
"I can't take food from another," I said.
"It's our food," he said. "You're one of us."
By nightfall, we'd evaded the Fascist cordon. But we kept moving, away from the Gomel front and the promise of the Red Army, deeper into the maelstrom of Byelorussia and the uncertainty of occupation. At last, in the deep black of a clouded night, the columns set camp, men slept almost where they stood.
That night I dreamt of my sweet Lazar, with his olive skin and dark eyes and his features as delicate as a prince's. But when he came to touch me, Vladimir burst into the dream-room, and Lazar's hands turned to the blackened rot of a corpse.
When I woke, the bruises on my wrists and thighs had reached their deepest blue and as we ate meager kasha under the gray dawn, I felt like crying.
A week passed. We moved further, dug in a stronger camp. Yuri's men were redistributed among the other detachments. News came that the Fascists had crossed the Dnieper. The fighting would rage for Kiev now. The summer heat peaked, then ebbed. And every night I was plagued by dreams of dying Lazar, and the crushing weight of my rapist.
My detachment was sent to raid a Polizei post for ammunition and basic medicine. During the raid, Lev and I and two others were detailed to requisition food from the village that hosted the post.
I proved adept, in part because I was undemanding. The old women trusted me, and the few men left were intimidated by a girl with a rifle. So began my career as a village liaison.
We returned to camp at dawn with more than our target of grain and vegetables and meat, and were welcomed like Suvorov.
As a reward, we were allowed to sleep through two of the morning watches. I slept again in the evening and drew the second to last watch.
It was still dark when I woke and took my gun down to the perimeter to keep watch along one of the tracks towards our camp. When the next watchman, Lev Edelman, came to relieve me, a faint gray had crept into the sky and the birds were calling soft in the bushes.
Vladimir Sergeyivich waited by the entrance of the section dugout. He was in his shirtsleeve, white cotton rolled to the forearms, a foul smelling cigarette smoldered in his left hand. I struggled to control my breathing, I hadn't been alone with him since he'd taken my virginity, and the pain of that hour was still fresh in my bruised thighs and wrists.
"Come," he said, taking me by the wrist.
I pleaded fatigue.
"Everyone is tired," Vladimir said. "But I can't sleep for the thought of you." From another man, it might've been charming.
He led me away towards his personal dugout, a half-timber structure in the side of a low hill, primitive, but close and more finished than any of the section sleeping quarters.
"You did well," he said. "Even if you can't shoot worth a ruble."
"Thank you, Comrade."
My skin prickled with anxiety and my breathing was ragged, I knew he would take me and the fear of it set me on edge. The muscles of my right leg shook. I smoothed my hair.
He poured a bit of vodka into a tin cup and passed it to me.
