Opening Moves

If it had been the other way round things might have been different, for Gurundov was a bear of a man and Yarishlov was slender. Swept up on the shoulder, Yarishlov was carried from the field like a roll of carpet, with the safety of the wood reached just before enemy infantry stormed the now abandoned command post. One sharp-eyed SS trooper put a few shots after the pair but nothing came really close and Yarishlov was hauled up on top of the tank by willing hands.

The T-34 set off along the track once more.

Eventually the tank made it back to the next defensive position and the crew took a break, not before they placed their wounded comrade in the hands of the medical service.

Arkady was very weak from loss of blood but had regained consciousness during the escape, not enough to talk but enough to listen and certainly enough to drink thirstily from the proffered canteen.  He had remained laid on the top of the turret being held in place by Gurundov as the tank had bounced along in its search for safety.

As Gurundov laid Arkady on the stretcher their eyes met, held and unspoken words went between them. Unspoken words of comradeship, love, thanks, fear, hope, and warning.

The only words that came were Alexei’s.

“Take care old friend,” as he touched Arkady’s shoulder and stepped back to let the medic’s do their work.

Within three hours, Alexei Gurundov and his crew were statistics, another tank crew immolated in the pursuit of victory. In their case, destroyed by the arrival of a large calibre artillery shell which landed in their laps as they sat at rest, away from the front line. Their tank was found flipped over, decorated with a grisly mulch of human remains, but was soon recovered and fought on later. The men were never found; four more sons of the Rodina forever lost.

The verbal report given by the departed Gurundov and corroboration by the Starshina of the Mortar Company and Kapitan of the anti-tank unit were enough to ensure Arkady received one of his country’s most meaningful bravery awards.

Gurundov’s death was not known to Yarishlov until the day Major Petrenko visited him in hospital to inform him of his award. Had it been done more sensitively then perhaps, just possibly, Yarishlov would have taken it better but Petrenko threw the titbit of information at Arkady as he started to leave, turning the pride at the recognition of his actions into the abyss of sadness associated with the loss of a close comrade. Petrenko was never one to endear himself to those around him and under him but he excelled himself that day, and would have paled had he read Arkady’s mind as he walked out of the hospital.

One week later to the hour, Captain Yarishlov was presented with his award by no lesser person than the Bryansk Front Commander, General Maks Andreevich Reiter. He was one of a number of soldiers honoured at the ceremony, some front line swine like himself, others rear-echelon personnel who got their piece of metal for who they knew, not what they had achieved. That was and is the same in armies all over the world and will never change.

Of Arkady’s rearguard force, only four men were left alive. Himself and the Starshina of mortars who would never fight again, leastways not until the Rodina needed one legged-soldiers desperately. The gunner’s Kapitan and one seventeen year old anti-tank soldier were also on the line of recipients.

The Latvian Starshina, Artur Gaudins, got his in hospital just outside Belgorod and he felt it was a fair exchange all said and done. His leg for a shiny award and the promise of continued life with his family away from the horrors of the front.

Anti-tank gunner Kapitan Yuri Lapanski proudly received his award from his Corps Commander and posed for Pravda photographs looking every bit the Soviet Model soldier the day before he coughed his life out, struck in both lungs by fragments from a short round fired by friendly artillery.

The younger man, one Boris Orlov, revelled in his award and the celebrity status which accompanied it, for few anti-tank gunners survived after killing a German tank or two, and certainly a gunner who had been the sole server of his weapon and still managed to slay seven armoured vehicles was unheard of. He rode his luck for most of the war, strangely failing to destroy another enemy vehicle despite being in numerous actions, and died impaled on the bayonet of a teenage paratrooper during a vigorous German counter attack in East Prussia in ‘45.

Arkady mused; all those thoughts inspired by the simplest gaze at a piece of treasured metal.

So, many dead comrades later, Arkady and his troops now rested on the quiet outskirts of sleepy Springe in Lower Saxony, directly opposite their erstwhile American allies, enjoying their occupation duties in the homeland of those that had done so much harm on their own native soil.