Red Army

Past the old town hall, he turned right up another street of shops that led toward the hospital. Offhandedly, he considered the height of the old town hall, as well as its central location. This was where the battalion command post needed to be, in accordance with military logic. The hospital was too far north to allow firm control of the entire battalion.

And its use was contrary to the laws of war.

He stalked by a shop whose broken window featured women's clothing. The shock of a nearby blast had toppled one mannequin into the arms of another, as though she had been wounded and caught in her fall by a friend. It would be lovely, Levin thought, to bring Yelena here, after the peace, to show her the beauty of the place, and to buy her things in these shops. How much could he afford? he wondered. Then he laughed 197

at himself. After the peace, everything would be reordered. More would be available for all of the people. Once a great European peace had been established, military spending could be reduced significantly. The transition would take time, of course. . . .

In the meantime, there was a war to fight. Levin was proud of how well he had done in his first combat action. It was amazing how closely experience conformed to the texts over which he had labored. Envelopment was the preferred technique against a strong position . . . a well-organized defense could be remarkably strong. . . .

Why had the battalion commander called him back? Levin could think of nothing that he had done wrong militarily. And, despite their personal differences, Levin knew that Gordunov was an officer of very high technical capabilities. The Soviet military needed men such as Gordunov. It was important, however, to restrain their excesses. Levin saw no point in wanton destruction. It was not in the spirit of Socialist internationalism. The goal of the good communist was to preserve all that was good, but to surgically excise that which functioned to the detriment of the oppressed masses. Of course, you could not consider a man such as Gordunov a true communist.

Levin was familiar with the stories about Gordunov's adventures in Afghanistan. Gordunov was described as a survivor, one of the men with charmed lives who always emerged whole from the fire and smoke. But he was also renowned for his excessive violence. Reportedly, it was Gordunov's style to kill every living thing around him.

Levin had heard so many contradictory stories about the failed military assistance mission to Afghanistan that he tried to separate the tales from the main currents of his political thought. He was frankly embarrassed by his country's evident failure. But on a political level, he rationalized that the attempt to bring about a Socialist state had been premature in Afghanistan, since the inhabitants had not developed a sufficient level of political and social culture. The reports of brutality haunted his rationalizations, as well. But it had to be acknowledged that wars of that nature were always brutal. Professional officers excused the Soviet military failure in Afghanistan by pointing out that they had never been allowed an adequate level of troop strength, and that the Soviet military establishment had not been designed to fight such a war.

Overall, there seemed to be two major schools of thought among the officers Levin knew personally. Airborne and special-operations officers had sought assignments to the contingent of Soviet forces in Afghanistan, eager for the combat experience and the awards. Gordunov, for instance, was one of the most highly decorated officers of his generation, and he RED ARMY

was a very young lieutenant colonel. But officers from the other branches often had mixed feelings. Tank and most motorized rifle officers resented the difficulty of the circumstances under which mechanized forces had to operate and the lack of proportionate glamour for their branches, and support officers viewed many of their logistics tasks as verging on the impossible. The attitude of artillerymen had evolved over the years.

Initially, Levin had been told, there had been so many problems with fire support that artillery officers regarded an Afghan assignment as a quick way to end a career. But the situation improved as new fire-support techniques were developed and mastered. By the final stages of the involvement, many artillery officers had regarded Afghanistan as a marvelous place to experiment with their guns, multiple rocket launchers, and automated control mechanisms. Aviators grew to hate the place almost to a man.

Levin arrived at the broad street that fed into the northern bridge and separated the old town from the hospital complex. The burned-out hulks of automobiles in silhouette looked like obnoxious modern sculptures.