Fall of Giants

He asked the sergeant which part of the army they were in. Grigori knew they were the Narva Regiment, but no one had told them how they fitted into the overall picture. Gavrik said: “None of your fucking business. Just go where you’re sent and do as you’re told.” Grigori guessed he did not know the answer.

After a day and a half the train stopped at a town called Ostrolenka. Grigori had never heard of it, but he could see that it was the end of the railway line, and he guessed it must be near the German border. Here hundreds of railway wagons were being unloaded. Men and horses sweated and heaved to maneuver huge guns off the trains. Thousands of troops milled around as bad-tempered officers attempted to muster them in platoons and companies. At the same time tons of supplies had to be transferred to horse-drawn carts: sides of meat, sacks of flour, barrels of beer, crates of bullets, artillery shells in packing cases, and tons of oats for all the horses.

At one point Grigori saw the loathed face of Prince Andrei. He wore a gorgeous uniform-Grigori was not sufficiently familiar with badges and stripes to identify the regiment or rank-and rode on a tall chestnut horse. Behind him walked a corporal carrying a canary in a cage. I could shoot him now, Grigori thought, and avenge my father. It was a stupid idea, of course, but he stroked the trigger of his rifle as the prince and his cage bird disappeared into the crowd.

The weather was hot and dry. That night Grigori slept on the ground with the rest of the men from his wagon. He realized that they constituted a platoon, and would be together for the foreseeable future. The next morning they met their officer, an unnervingly young second lieutenant called Tomchak. He led them out of Ostrolenka on a road that headed northwest.

Lieutenant Tomchak told Grigori they were in 13 Corps, commanded by General Klyuev, which was part of the Second Army under General Samsonov. When Grigori relayed this information to the other men they were spooked, because the number thirteen was unlucky, and Sergeant Gavrik said: “I told you it was none of your business, Peshkov, you cocksucking homo.”

They were not far out of town when the metaled road ran out and became a sand track through a forest. The supply carts got stuck, and the drivers soon found out that a single horse could not pull a loaded army wagon through sand. All the horses had to be unhitched and reharnessed two to a cart, and every second wagon had to be abandoned at the roadside.

They marched all day and slept under the stars again. Each night when he went to bed Grigori said to himself: Another day, and I’m still alive to take care of Katerina and the baby.

That evening Tomchak received no orders, so they sat under the trees all the next morning. Grigori was glad: his legs ached from yesterday’s march, and his feet hurt in the new boots. The peasants were used to walking all day, and they laughed at the weakness of the city dwellers.

At midday a runner brought orders commanding them to set out at eight A.M., four hours earlier.

There was no provision for supplying the marching men with water, so they had to drink from wells and streams they came across on the way. They soon learned to drink their fill at every opportunity, and keep their standard-issue water bottles topped up. There was no means of cooking, either, and the only food they got was the dry biscuits called hardtack. Every few miles they would be called upon to help pull a wheeled cannon out of a swamp or sandpit.

They marched until sundown and slept under the trees again.

Halfway through the third day they emerged from a wood to see a fine farmhouse set amid fields of ripening oats and wheat. It was a two-story building with a steeply pitched roof. In the yard was a concrete wellhead, and there was a low stone structure that seemed to be a pigsty, except that it was clean. The place looked like the home of a prosperous land captain, or perhaps the younger son of a nobleman. It was locked up and deserted.

A mile farther on, to everyone’s astonishment, the road passed through an entire village of such places, all abandoned. The realization began to dawn on Grigori that he had crossed the border into Germany, and these luxurious houses were the homes of German farmers who had fled, with their families and livestock, to escape the oncoming Russian army. But where were the hovels of the poor peasants? What had been done with the filth of the pigs and cows? Why were there no tumbledown wooden cowsheds with patched walls and holes in the roofs?

The soldiers were jubilant. “They’re running away from us!” said a peasant. “They’re scared of us Russians. We’ll take Germany without firing a shot!”