13 kilometers east of Suwalki
May 4, 1942
Nikifor felt like a veteran already. He had survived the fighting around the outpost, which had inflicted several casualties upon the battalion before it was finally overrun. Fortunately, no one from his squad was hit and the battalion had gone to sleep in and around the German outpost in high spirits. The high morale continued into the next morning, when they resumed their advance. The battalion’s morning was spent as the vanguard of the brigade, brushing past other German outposts that had been flung out and slowly pushing until they hit the main German outpost line. Nikifor had seen dozens of men killed and wounded by that time, most of them Germans. By the early afternoon, they were forcing a break-in of the outpost line, around a tiny town whose name nobody knew.
Nikifor was crouching down in a ditch he had slithered in to, finally joining the squad with extra ammunition from the rear. The artillery preparation was just about to cease and they had to be ready to attack. Distributing what he had picked up, everyone steeled themselves for action. It was known that the Germans were holding the village in force as it occupied a vital road junction; there was certainly at least two full platoons of panzer grenadiers and possibly tanks as well. The thought made Nikifor nervous, they had not yet faced any armor and the prospect did not comfort him. Bessonov was speaking in a low voice, telling them of the general plan of assault. It seemed impressive enough to Nikifor; it would involve one company—his company—hitting the village head-on as the other maneuvered onto its flank. The third company would wait as a reserve in case its employment was necessary. And then the artillery preparation ended. Bessonov’s whistle was to his mouth at once and it shrilly announced the attackers’ intentions, along with dozens of other whistles. With a loud ‘urrah’ they were clambering out of the ditch and rushing across a short field meant to graze cattle toward the town.
They were halfway over when an MG42 opened up on them. And then another. Martial bellows turned to screams as men were hit and tumbled down into the grass. Nikifor felt as if every single machine gun was aiming directly at him, though it was the men around him that were being flailed by the bullets. And then, mere gasps of breath later, the soldiers were running across the hard-packed dirt road and grenades were hurtling through the air to enter fortified houses through windows and doors. The men of the battalion were compacting, pouring through the few streets leading deeper into the town. Doors and windows flashed by Nikifor as the soldiers surged forward. Out of the corner of his eye, unremarked upon by his mind in any deliberate manner, he saw a German face framed by a high window, shocked at the deluge of men down the road, before bullet ended his surprise and, indeed, his life. Suddenly, they were on the other side of the town and halted unwillingly against an abyss of empty fields between the village and the nearby forest. The two German platoons had been utterly swept away by the tide of men, their broken remnants fleeing across the fields. The whistles sounded again. They had to reach that forest.
Nikifor could see the company mass of the flanking force pushing forward as well, having turned at the last moment to prevent it from counter-charging its own comrades. It all seemed too easy as the men stretched their legs to attempt to cover as much ground as possible in each single bound. Occasionally a sharp-eyed soldier would kneel, aim and fire, dropping one of the fleeing Germans. They were dwindling in number; Soviet bullets were just as deadly as German ones. Nikifor could make out German officers gesticulating at unseen men at the edges of the forest, framed by the oak boughs and birch branches. Nikifor’s mind had no time to comprehend this before the earth erupted all up and down the company onrushing line. Men, or their parts, were thrown about as rag dolls as a vehicle trundled out of the forest, a half-track of some sort. Its machine gun was blazing.
Bursts of small arms fire discharged from the woods, decimating the Soviet frontrunners. A handful of German infantry sallied out from the safety of the trees, singing the Panzerlied as they charged forward against the wavering Soviet infantry. Suvorin, next to Nikifor, dropped to one knee and began firing off shots at the Germans. Nikifor uncertainly emulated him, but as bullets came his way he dropped further onto his stomach. The Germans were leading a charmed life; the fire of dozens of men was striking all about them but none of them fell. The half-track furiously spat bullets toward the Soviets, scything down those who were unlucky enough to have been chosen as targets. Suvorin bellowed. “Talenskij! Chafirov! Shoot that bastard half-track machine gunner! He’s traversing his gun this way!”
Both desperately adjusted their aiming, but the man was revealing too little of his body to danger. Neither could hit him, though they were sure that they saw him flinch as bullets ricocheted off of the half-track near him. And then the storm of lead enveloped their area, Nikifor pressed himself down into the grass as much as possible as bullets whined overhead. Then he heard a heart-rending scream, and saw out of the corner of his eye Dima Kafelnikov clutching his shoulder. And then Dima simply began jerking back and forth as the machine gunner found his vulnerable target. Nikifor could only watch in horror, only dimly aware that the singing handful of German infantry was getting closer with every moment. Out of the forest lurched a tank of some sort, its own coaxial machine gun blazing and its main gun thundering a warning of high explosive toward the Soviet infantry.
The company was melting away. Arsenij Chafirov had vanished from Nikifor’s side, Suvorin’s bellowing was becoming more distant as well. Nikifor pulled himself up and stumbled away, back towards the village. The Soviet soldiers were flowing through it as precipitously as they had been just minutes before, but going the other way. Germans who had hidden away during the storming of the village were manning their weapons, taking a vengeance on their attackers. The field they had crossed so easily attacking the village had become a trap of glowing tracers and mortar rounds whose deadly intersection devastated the fleeing men. Sliding into the ditch where they had started the attack, many paused to regroup and catch their breath before ascertaining quickly who had been left behind and who was still whole. Amazingly, out of Nikifor’s squad mates, only Dima was missing. Nikifor’s breathing was ragged with more than simply the exertion of the past ten minutes.
Unfortunately, they could not stay. Detonations around the ditch began as mortar rounds felt their way forward. Tired, heartbroken and shattered men clambered out of the ditch and kept retreating. A mortar round then dropped directly into the trench, exploding just behind Vadim Radek. He cried out in surprise and pain and fell back into the trench. Nikifor hesitated a moment, then he shouted for Arsenij and they dashed back and dived into the ditch. Worried that the German counterattack would reach the ditch any moment, they bodily threw Vadim’s shuddering body out of the ditch and climbed out again themselves. Holding him between them, they attempted to make up for lost time, dashing forward as quickly as they could.
In the end, it was only after the third company of the battalion had been committed to stemming the localized German counterattack that they even regained their jump-off positions along the ditch. Only later would they realize that the Germans had launched a counterattack all along the line, completely wrecking the corps’ chances at penetrating into Suwalki that day. At the end of the day, however, there were two images that had burned themselves into Nikifor’s mind. The first was that of Dima’s deadly jerking body. The second was the handful of singing Germans who launched into a hopeless, hopeless counterattack against a hundred times their number. And succeeding in it.
Nikifor was too tired and too shocked to reflect upon it.
