Red Army

The war seemed thankfully far away, and Leonid had convinced himself that he had done his fair share. It was up to the others now. He shifted his position, staring out into the cool darkness without focusing on any object. His slight movement ticked and clattered with the sounds of colliding plastic. He had filled his pockets with cassette tapes in an adjacent bedroom, which appeared to belong to a teenage girl. Delighted with his find, he wasn't bothered by not being able to read the labels or recognize any of the groups from the small, colorful illustrations tucked inside the cassette cases. The high quality of the printing and the lively look of the performers in the photographs promised great things.

On the far horizon, beyond a palisade of darkened evergreens, the night sky shimmered and sparkled as though a vast celebration filled the distance. Occasionally, a sputter of closer brightness disturbed the perspective, and the kettle-drum noises roamed closer, only to recede again. Leonid thought that other soldiers were undergoing experiences similar to his own of the past afternoon. On one hand, he thought it might be even more frightening at night, but he also figured that it was easier to hide.

In the aftermath of the engagement, he had found his way to the remnants of his own unit with surprising ease. The firing had diminished to a trickle, then it shut off completely, as though a tap had been closed.

The barking of the officers soon replaced the noises of battle. The wounded made noises, too, but the officers seemed determined to shout them down, to bury their reality under the bullying noises of control.

Seryosha had made it through, and he told stories of machine-gunning countless numbers of the enemy. Leonid noticed that Seryosha was still laden with most of the ammunition he had carried into battle, but he accepted the tales, neither believing nor disbelieving. Their squad vehicle could not be identified, but Lieutenant Korchuk, their political officer, shepherded them to Junior Sergeant Kassabian, and they became part of a unit again. Korchuk praised their performance and asked them how they felt now that they were veterans of battle. But it was evident that Korchuk did not really listen to their responses. The politruk was upset because so many of the platoon group Komsomol organizers, his helpers in the political agitation effort, had been killed or wounded. It seemed apparent that the most active and enthusiastic Communists truly had led the way. When Korchuk left them, Seryosha ridiculed the fallen organizers, saying that maybe war wasn't such a bad thing if it killed off all of the RED ARMY

boot-lickers. Then he laughed and speculated broadly about where Korchuk himself had been during the battle.

Their unit remained behind as the others lined up and pulled off in the direction of the shifting battle noises. Korchuk returned and explained to them that they were to help gather the wounded who had fallen for the cause of international peace and socialist brotherhood. The young soldiers followed the wanderings of the medical orderlies, who were clearly at a loss confronted with such devastation. An orderly would bend over a helpless figure and seem to play with it. But Leonid did not believe that the orderlies really knew what they were doing.

In one respect, Leonid surprised himself. He did not mind helping to lift and carry the wounded. He wanted to make them feel better, although their miseries made no deep impression on him. He spoke a few comforting words, repeating himself frequently, promising the unlucky boys that they would be all right. The regimen called for gathering the wounded officers first. But they, too, now were just boys and young men, no longer radiant with power, but simply shocked into silence, or weeping at their misfortunes, or groaning with their unimaginable pains.

The soldiers loaded the officers into the little train of field ambulances, then they filled the few remaining spaces with badly burned other ranks.

As the ambulances pulled off they began the drudgery of packing the mass of the casualties into the beds of empty transport trucks. The few wounded enemy soldiers in evidence went carefully ignored until the last, then they were loaded onto the already crowded vehicles. Most of the trucks had no medical orderlies to attend their cargoes, and two officers had an argument that Leonid did not quite understand. Lieutenant Korchuk cautiously avoided touching any of the wounded at all.

After policing their fragment of the battlefield, the soldiers in Leonid's unit loaded up onto the combat vehicles that were still operable. Leonid, Seryosha, and Sergeant Kassabian rode with a reduced vehicle crew whose members Leonid half recognized from battalion parades. The atmosphere had changed now, and the soldiers grew loose and talkative.