Read Online A Writer at War by Vasily Grossman - Free Book Online
Authors: Vasily Grossman
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don’t know why. People with sacks and suitcases are running past in the street, some carrying children. The major, ‘the great strategist’, and the captain scurry past me, their faces sheepish. We go to the headquarters of the military district, but they won’t let us in without passes. Clerks and lower-ranking officials are completely calm. We are told that passes can be issued only after 10 a.m. We have to wait for an hour, and the chiefs will not turn up before 11. Oh, how I know this unshakeable calmness that originates from ignorance and which can in no time turn into a hysterical fear and panic. I have seen all this before – in Gomel, Bezhitsk, Shchors, Mena, Chernigov, Glukhov.
We come across a colonel we know. ‘Is it possible to get to Front headquarters by the Bryansk highway?’
‘Maybe,’ he says, ‘but most likely German tanks have already reached that sector.’
After that we visit the banya [for a steam bath] and then set off on the Bryansk highway. Never say die! A female military doctor of Georgian origin comes with us. She also needs to reach the rear echelon of Front headquarters. She sings love songs all the way in an extremely artificial voice. She recently arrived from the rear areas and hasn’t the slightest idea of the danger we are in. All of us, her audience, are all the time looking over to the left, as if twisted. The road is empty, there isn’t a single vehicle, not a single pedestrian, no peasant carts, everything is dead! There is a dreadful air about these deserted roads along which our last units have just passed andthe first enemy ones may appear at any minute. The empty road is like an abandoned no man’s land between our lines and the Germans.
We make it safely [to] Bryansk forest, which seems to us almost like the family home. German tanks were following us on the very same highway just two hours behind. The Germans entered Orel at six in the evening by the Kromy road [from the south]. Perhaps they washed in the same banya which had been heated for us that morning.
In our izba that night, I suddenly remember the interrogation, by the light of a wick lamp, of the Austrian in the luxurious leather coat. It was these very tanks that he had been talking about!
Grossman, on this evening of 3 October 1941, still did not know that one of Guderian’s panzer columns was cutting off General Yeremenko’s Bryansk Front from the rear and that they were far from safe where they were in the forest. Within two days the Bryansk Front was virtually demolished. Yeremenko spent most of the night of 5 October waiting for a telephone call from Stalin authorising a more ‘mobile defence’ – a euphemism for withdrawal. And in the early hours of 6 October, his own headquarters realised that it too was under threat. The Germans had nearly sealed the last escape route.
The staff commissar summoned us and said: ‘At 4 a.m., not a minute later, you must set off on the following route.’ He didn’t bother to give us any explanation, but it wasn’t necessary anyway. It was all clear, particularly after we looked at the map. Our headquarters was caught in a sack. Germans were advancing on the right to Sukhinichi and on the left to Bolkhov from Orel, and we were sitting in a forest near Bryansk. We went back to our lodge and started packing: mattresses, chairs, lamp, sacks. Thrifty Petlyura even fetched a supply of cranberries from the attic. We loaded everything on to the truck given to us by General Yeremenko and set off precisely at 4 a.m. under a clear cold sky by the light of autumn stars. We were in a race. Either we had to get out of the sack first, or the Germans would tie it up while we were still inside.
The 50th Army, with whom Grossman had been earlier, tried to fight its way out of the Bryansk forest. Brigade Commissar Shlyapin, like General Petrov, was caught in the encirclement. Petrov died from gangrenein a woodcutter’s hut deep in the forest near Belev. The manner of
We come across a colonel we know. ‘Is it possible to get to Front headquarters by the Bryansk highway?’
‘Maybe,’ he says, ‘but most likely German tanks have already reached that sector.’
After that we visit the banya [for a steam bath] and then set off on the Bryansk highway. Never say die! A female military doctor of Georgian origin comes with us. She also needs to reach the rear echelon of Front headquarters. She sings love songs all the way in an extremely artificial voice. She recently arrived from the rear areas and hasn’t the slightest idea of the danger we are in. All of us, her audience, are all the time looking over to the left, as if twisted. The road is empty, there isn’t a single vehicle, not a single pedestrian, no peasant carts, everything is dead! There is a dreadful air about these deserted roads along which our last units have just passed andthe first enemy ones may appear at any minute. The empty road is like an abandoned no man’s land between our lines and the Germans.
We make it safely [to] Bryansk forest, which seems to us almost like the family home. German tanks were following us on the very same highway just two hours behind. The Germans entered Orel at six in the evening by the Kromy road [from the south]. Perhaps they washed in the same banya which had been heated for us that morning.
In our izba that night, I suddenly remember the interrogation, by the light of a wick lamp, of the Austrian in the luxurious leather coat. It was these very tanks that he had been talking about!
Grossman, on this evening of 3 October 1941, still did not know that one of Guderian’s panzer columns was cutting off General Yeremenko’s Bryansk Front from the rear and that they were far from safe where they were in the forest. Within two days the Bryansk Front was virtually demolished. Yeremenko spent most of the night of 5 October waiting for a telephone call from Stalin authorising a more ‘mobile defence’ – a euphemism for withdrawal. And in the early hours of 6 October, his own headquarters realised that it too was under threat. The Germans had nearly sealed the last escape route.
The staff commissar summoned us and said: ‘At 4 a.m., not a minute later, you must set off on the following route.’ He didn’t bother to give us any explanation, but it wasn’t necessary anyway. It was all clear, particularly after we looked at the map. Our headquarters was caught in a sack. Germans were advancing on the right to Sukhinichi and on the left to Bolkhov from Orel, and we were sitting in a forest near Bryansk. We went back to our lodge and started packing: mattresses, chairs, lamp, sacks. Thrifty Petlyura even fetched a supply of cranberries from the attic. We loaded everything on to the truck given to us by General Yeremenko and set off precisely at 4 a.m. under a clear cold sky by the light of autumn stars. We were in a race. Either we had to get out of the sack first, or the Germans would tie it up while we were still inside.
The 50th Army, with whom Grossman had been earlier, tried to fight its way out of the Bryansk forest. Brigade Commissar Shlyapin, like General Petrov, was caught in the encirclement. Petrov died from gangrenein a woodcutter’s hut deep in the forest near Belev. The manner of
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