NIKOLAI OSTROVSKY - How the Steel Was Tempered 

PART ONE

Chapter Eight

The river gleams dully through the early morning haze; softly its waters gurgle against the smooth pebbles of the banks. In the shallows by the banks the river is calm, its silvery surface almost unruffled; but out in midstream it is dark and restless, hurrying swiftly onward. The majestic Dnieper, the river immortalised by Gogol. The tall right bank drops steeply down to the water, like a mountain halted in its advance by the broad sweep of the waters. The flat left bank below is covered with sandy spots left when the water receded after the spring floods.

Five men lay beside a snub-nosed Maxim gun in a tiny trench dug into the river bank. This was a forward outpost of the Seventh Rifle Division. Nearest the gun and facing the river lay Sergei Bruzzhak.

The day before, worn out by the endless battles and swept back by a hurricane of Polish artillery fire, they had given up Kiev, withdrawn to the left bank of the river, and dug in there.

The retreat, the heavy losses and finally the surrender of Kiev to the enemy had been a bitter blow to the men. The Seventh Division had heroically fought its way through enemy encirclement and, advancing through the forests, had emerged on the railway line at Malin Station, and with one furious blow had hurled back the Polish forces and cleared the road to Kiev.

But the lovely city had been given up and the Red Army men were downcast.

The Poles, having driven the Red units out of Darnitsa, now occupied a small bridgehead on the left bank of the river beside the railway bridge. But furious counterattacks had frustrated all their efforts to advance beyond that point.

As he watched the river flowing past, Sergei thought of what had happened the previous day.

Yesterday, at noon, his unit had given battle to the Poles; yesterday he had had his first hand-to-hand engagement with the enemy. A young Polish legionary had come swooping down upon him, his rifle with its long, sabre-like French bayonet thrust forward; he bounded towards Sergei like a hare, shouting something unintelligible. For a fraction of a second Sergei saw his eyes dilated with frenzy. The next instant Sergei's bayonet clashed with the Pole's, and the shining French blade was thrust aside. The Pole fell. . . .

Sergei's hand did not falter. He knew that he would have to go on killing, he, Sergei, who was capable of such tender love, such steadfast friendship. He was not vicious or cruel by nature, but he knew that he must fight these misguided soldiers whom the world's parasites had whipped up into a frenzy of bestial hatred and sent against his native land. And he, Sergei, would kill in order to hasten the day when men would kill one another no longer.

Paramonov tapped him on the shoulder. "We'd better be moving on, Sergei, or they'll spot us."

For a year now Pavel Korchagin had travelled up and down his native land, riding on machine-gun carriages and gun caissons or astride a small grey mare with a nick in her ear. He was a grown man now, matured and hardened by suffering and privation. The tender skin chafed to the raw by the heavy cartridge belt had long since healed and a hard callus had formed under the rifle strap on his shoulder.

Pavel had seen much that was terrible in that year. Together with thousands of other fighting men as ragged and ill-clad as himself but afire with the indomitable determination to fight for the power of their class, he had marched over the length and breadth of his native land and only twice had the storm swept on without him: the first time when he was wounded in the hip, and the second, when in the bitterly cold February of 1920 he sweltered in the sticky heat of typhus.

The typhus took a more fearful toll of the regiments and divisions of the Twelfth Army than Polish machine guns. By that time the Twelfth Army was operating over a vast territory stretching across nearly the whole of the Northern Ukraine blocking the advance of the Poles.

Pavel had barely recovered from his illness when he returned to his unit which was now holding the station of Frontovka, on the Kazatin-Uman branch line. Frontovka stood in the forest and consisted of a small station building with a few wrecked and abandoned cottages around it. Three years of intermittent battles had made civilian life in these parts impossible. Frontovka had changed hands times without number.

Big events were brewing again. At the time when the Twelfth Army, its ranks fearfully depleted and partly disorganised, was falling back to Kiev under the pressure of the Polish armies, the proletarian republic was mustering its forces to strike a crushing blow at the victory-drunk Polish Whites.

The battle-seasoned divisions of the First Cavalry Army were being transferred to the Ukraine all the way from the North Caucasus in a campaign unparalleled in military history. The Fourth, Sixth, Eleventh and Fourteenth Cavalry divisions moved up one after another to the Uman area, concentrating in the rear of the front and sweeping away the Makhno bandits on their way to the scene of decisive battles.

Sixteen and a half thousand sabres, sixteen and a half thousand fighting men scorched by the blazing steppe sun.

To prevent this decisive blow from being thwarted by the enemy was the primary concern of the Supreme Command of the Red Army and the Command of the Southwestern Front at this juncture. Everything was done to ensure the successful concentration of this huge mounted force. Active operations were suspended on the Uman sector. The direct telegraph lines from Moscow to the front headquarters in Kharkov and thence to the headquarters of the Fourteenth and Twelfth armies hummed incessantly. Telegraph operators tapped out coded orders: "Divert attention Poles from concentration cavalry army." The enemy was actively engaged only when the Polish advance threatened to involve the Budyonny cavalry divisions.

The campfire shot up red tongues of flame. Dark spirals of smoke curled up from the fire, driving off the swarms of restless buzzing midges. The men lay in a semicircle around the fire whose reflection cast a coppery glow on their faces. The water bubbled in messtins set in the bluish-grey ashes.

A stray tongue of flame leaped out suddenly from beneath a burning log and licked at someone's tousled head. The head was jerked away with a growl: "Damnation!" And a gust of laughter rose from the men grouped around the fire.

"The lad's so full of book-learning he don't feel the heat of the fire," boomed a middle-aged soldier with a clipped moustache, who had just been examining the barrel of his rifle against the firelight.

"You might tell the rest of us what you're reading there, Korchagin?" someone suggested.

The young Red Army man fingered his singed locks and smiled.

"A real good book, Comrade Androshchuk. Just can't tear myself away from it."

"What's it about?" inquired a snub-nosed lad sitting next to Korchagin, laboriously repairing the strap of his pouch. He bit off the coarse thread, wound the remainder round the needle and stuck it inside his helmet. "If it's about love I'm your man."

A loud guffaw greeted this remark. Matveichuk raised his close-cropped head and winked slyly at the snub-nosed lad: "Love's a fine thing, Sereda," he said. "And you're such a handsome lad, a regular picture. Wherever we go the girls fairly wear their shoes out running after you. Too bad a handsome phiz like yours should be spoiled by one little defect: you've got a five-kopek piece instead of a nose. But that's easily remedied. Just hang a Novitsky 10-pounder ( The Novitsky grenade weighing about four kilograms and used to demolish barbed-wire entanglements.) on the end of it overnight and in the morning it'll be all right."

The roar of laughter that followed this sally caused the horses tethered to the machine-gun carriers to whinny in fright.

Sereda glanced nonchalantly over his shoulder. "It's not your face but what you've got in here that counts." He tapped himself on the forehead expressively. "Take you, you've got a tongue like a stinging nettle but you're no better than a donkey, and your ears are cold."

"Now then, lads, what's the sense in getting riled?" Tatarinov, the Section Commander, admonished the two who were about to fly at each other. "Better let Korchagin read to us if he's got something worth listening to."

"That's right. Go to it, Pavlushka!" the men urged from all sides.

Pavel moved a saddle closer to the fire, settled himself on it and opened the small thick volume resting on his knees.

"It's called The Gadfly, Comrades. The Battalion Commissar gave it to me. Wonderful book, Comrades. If you'll sit quietly I'll read it to you."

"Fire away! We're all listening."

When some time later Comrade Puzyrevsky, the Regimental Commander, rode up unnoticed to the campfire with his Commissar he saw eleven pairs of eyes glued to the reader. He turned to the Commissar:

"There you have half of the regiment's scouts," he said, pointing to the group of men. "Four of them are raw young Komsomols, but they're good soldiers all of them. The one who's reading is Korchagin, and that one there with eyes like a wolfcub is Zharky. They're friends, but they're always competing with each other on the quiet. Korchagin used to be my best scout. Now he has a very serious rival. What they're doing just now is political work, and very effective it is too. I hear these youngsters are called 'the young guard'. Most appropriate, in my opinion."

"Is that the political instructor reading?" the Commissar asked.

"No. Kramer is the political instructor." Puzyrevsky spurred his horse forward.

"Greetings, Comrades!" he called.

All heads turned toward the commander as he sprang lightly from the saddle and went up to the group.

"Warming yourselves, friends?" he said with a broad smile and his strong face with the narrow, slightly Mongolian eyes lost its severity. The men greeted their commander warmly as they would a good comrade and friend. The Commissar did not dismount.

Pushing aside his pistol in its holster, Puzyrevsky sat down next to Korchagin.

"Shall we have a smoke?" he suggested. "I have some first-rate tobacco here."

He rolled a cigarette, lit it and turned to the Commissar: "You go ahead, Doronin. I'll stay here for a while. If I'm needed at headquarters you can let me know."

"Go on reading, I'll listen too," Puzyrevsky said to Korchagin when Doronin had gone.

Pavel read to the end, laid the book down on his knees and gazed pensively at the fire. For a few moments no one spoke. All brooded on the tragic fate of the Gadfly. Puzyrevsky puffed on his cigarette, waiting for the discussion to begin.

"A grim story that," said Sereda, breaking the silence. "I suppose there are people like that in the world. It's not many who could stand what he did. But when a man has an idea to fight for he can stand anything," Sereda was-visibly moved. The book had made a deep impression on him.

"If I could lay my hands on that priest who tried to shove a cross down his throat I'd finish the swine off on the spot!" Andryusha Fomichev, a shoemaker's apprentice from Belaya Tserkov, cried wrathfully.

"A man doesn't mind dying if he has something to die for," Androshchuk, pushing one of the messtins closer to the, fire with a stick, said in a tone of conviction. "That's what gives a man strength. You can die without regrets if you know you're in the right. That's how heroes are made. I knew a lad once, Poraika was his name. When the Whites cornered him in Odessa, he tackled a whole platoon singlehanded and before they could get at him with their bayonets he blew himself and the whole lot of them up with a grenade. And he wasn't anything much to look at. Not the kind of a fellow you read about in books, though he'd be well worth writing about. There's plenty of fine lads to be found among our kind."

He stirred the contents of the messtin with a spoon, tasted it with pursed-up lips and continued:

"There are some who die a dog's death, a mean, dishonourable death. I'll tell you something that happened during the fighting at Izyaslav. That's an old town on the Goryn River built back in the time of the princes. There was a Polish church there, built like a fortress. Well, we entered that town and advanced single file along the crooked alleys. A company of Letts were holding our right flank. When we get to the highway what do we see but three saddled horses tied to the fence of one of the houses. Aha, we think, here's where we bag some Poles! About ten of us rushed into the yard. In front of us ran the commander of that Lettish company, waving his Mauser.

"The front door was open and we ran in. But instead of Poles we found our own men in there. A mounted patrol it was. They'd got in ahead of us. It wasn't a pretty sight we laid eyes on there. They were abusing a woman, the wife of the Polish officer who lived there. When the Lett saw what was going on he shouted something in his own language. His men grabbed the three and dragged them outside. There were only two of us Russians, the rest were Letts. Their commander was a man by the name of Bredis. I don't understand their language but I could see he'd given orders to finish those fellows off. They're a tough lot those Letts, unflinching. They dragged those three out to the stables. I could see their goose was cooked. One of them, a great hulking fellow with a mug that just asked for a brick, was kicking and struggling for all he was worth. They couldn't put him up against the wall just because of a wench, he yelped. The others were begging for mercy too.

"I broke out into a cold sweat. I ran over to Bredis and said: 'Comrade Company Commander,' I said, 'let the tribunal try them. What do you want to dirty your hands with their blood for? The fighting isn't over in the town and here we are wasting time with this here scum.' He turned on me with eyes blazing like a tiger's. Believe me, I was sorry I spoke. He points his gun at me. I've been fighting for seven years but I admit I was properly scared that minute. I see he's ready to shoot first and ask questions afterwards. He yells at me in bad Russian so I could hardly understand what he was saying: 'Our banner is dyed with our blood,' he says. 'These men are a disgrace to the whole army. The penalty for banditry is death.'

"I couldn't stand it any more and I ran out of that yard into the street as fast as I could and behind me I heard them shooting. I knew those three were done for. By the time we got back to the others the town was already ours.

"That's what I mean by a dog's death, the way those fellows died. The patrol was one of those that'd joined us at Melitopol. They'd been with Makhno at one time. Riffraff, that's what they were."

Androshchuk drew his messtin toward him and proceeded to untie his bread bag.

"Yes, you find scum like that on our side too sometimes. You can't account for everyone. On the face of it they're all for the revolution. And through them we all get a bad name. But that was a nasty business, I tell you. I shan't forget it so soon," he wound up, sipping his tea.

Night was well advanced by the time the camp was asleep. Sereda's whistling snores could be heard in the silence. Puzyrevsky slept with his head resting on the saddle. Kramer, the political instructor, sat scribbling in his notebook.

Returning the next day from a scouting detail, Pavel tethered his horse to a tree and called over Kramer, who had just finished drinking tea.

"Look, Kramer, what would you say if I switched over to the First Cavalry Army? There's going to be big doings there by the looks of it. They're not being massed in such numbers just for fun, are they? And we here won't be seeing much of it."

Kramer looked at him in surprise.

"Switch over? Do you think you can change units in the army the way you change seats in a cinema?"

"But what difference does it make where a man fights?" Pavel interposed. "I'm not deserting to the rear, am I?"

But Kramer was categorically opposed to the idea.

"What about discipline? You're not a bad youngster, Pavel, on the whole, but in some things you're a bit of an anarchist. You think you can do as you please? You forget, my lad, that the Party and the Komsomol are founded on iron discipline. The Party must come first. And each one of us must be where he is most needed and not where he wants to be. Puzyrevsky turned down your application for a transfer, didn't he? Well, there's your answer."

Kramer spoke with such agitation that he was seized with a fit of coughing. This tall, gaunt man was a printer by profession and the lead dust had lodged itself firmly in his lungs and often a hectic flush would appear on his waxen cheeks.

When he had calmed down, Pavel said in a low but firm voice:

"All that is quite correct but I'm going over to the Budyonny army just the same."

The next evening Pavel was missing at the campfire.

In the neighbouring village a group of Budyonny cavalrymen had formed a wide circle on a hill outside the schoolhouse. One giant of a fellow, seated on the back of a machine-gun carrier, his cap pushed to the back of his head, was playing an accordion. The instrument wailed and blared under his inept fingers like a thing in torment, confusing the dashing cavalryman in unbelievably wide red riding breeches who was dancing a mad hopak in the centre of the ring.

Eager-eyed village lads and lasses clambered onto the gun carrier and fences to watch the antics of these troopers whose brigade had just entered their village.

"Go it, Toptalo! Kick up the earth! Ekh, that's the stuff, brother! Come on there, you with the accordion, make it hot!"

But the player's huge fingers that could bend an iron horseshoe with the utmost ease sprawled clumsily over the keys.

"Too bad Makhno got Afanasi Kulyabko," remarked one bronzed cavalryman regretfully. "That lad was a first-class hand at the accordion. He rode on the right flank of our squadron. Too bad he was killed. A good soldier, and the best accordion player we ever had!"

Pavel, who was standing in the circle, overheard this last remark. He pushed his way over to the machine-gun carrier and laid his hand on the accordion bellows. The music subsided.

"What d'you want?" the accordionist demanded with a scowl.

Toptalo stopped short and an angry murmur rose from the crowd: "What's the trouble there?"

Pavel reached out for the instrument. "Let's have a try," he said.

The Budyonny cavalryman looked at the Red infantryman with some mistrust and reluctantly slipped the accordion strap off his shoulder.

With an accustomed gesture Pavel laid the instrument on his knee, spread the sinuous bellows out fanwise and let go with a rollicking melody that poured forth with all the lusty vigour of which the accordion is capable:

Toptalo caught up the familiar tune and swinging his arms like some great bird he swept into the ring, executing the most incredible twists and turns, and slapping himself smartly on the thighs, knees, head, forehead, the shoe soles, and finally on the mouth in time with the music.

Faster and faster played the accordion in a mad intoxicating rhythm, and Toptalo, kicking his legs out wildly, spun around the circle like a top until he was quite out of breath.

On June 5, 1920, after a few brief but furious encounters Budyonny's First Cavalry Army broke through the Polish front between the Third and Fourth Polish armies, smashed a cavalry brigade under General Sawicki en route and swept on toward Ruzhiny.

The Polish command hastily formed a striking force and threw it into the breach. Five tanks were rushed from Pogrebishche Station to the scene of the fighting. But the Cavalry Army bypassed Zarudnitsy from where the Poles planned to strike and came out in the Polish rear.

General Kornicki's Cavalry Division was dispatched in pursuit of the First Cavalry Army with orders to strike at the rear of the force, which the Polish command believed to be headed for Kazatin, one of the most important strategic points in the Polish rear. This move, however, did not improve the position of the Poles. Although they succeeded in closing the breach and cutting off the Cavalry Army, the presence of a strong mounted force behind their lines which threatened to destroy their rear bases and swoop down on their army group at Kiev, was far from reassuring. As they advanced, the Red cavalry divisions destroyed small railway bridges and tore up railway track to hamper the Polish retreat. On learning from prisoners that the Poles had an army headquarters in Zhitomir (actually the headquarters of the whole front was located there), the commander of the First Cavalry Army decided to take Zhitomir and Berdichev, both important railway junctions and administrative centres. At dawn on June 7 the Fourth Cavalry Division was already on its way at full speed to Zhitomir.

Korchagin now rode on the right flank of one of the squadrons in place of Kulyabko, the lamented accordionist. He had been enrolled in the squadron on the collective request of the men, who had refused to part with such an excellent accordion player.

Without checking their foam-flecked horses they fanned out at Zhitomir and bore down on the city with naked steel flashing in the sun.

The earth groaned under the pounding hoofs, the mounts breathed hoarsely, and the men rose in their stirrups.

Underfoot the ground sped past and ahead the large city with its gardens and parks hurried to meet the division. The mounted avalanche flashed by the gardens and poured into the centre of the city, and the air was rent by a fear-inspiring battle-cry as inexorable as death itself.

The Poles were so stunned that they offered little resistance. The local garrison was crushed.

Bending low over the neck of his mount, Pavel Korchagin sped along side by side with Toptalo astride his thin-shanked black. Pavel saw the dashing cavalryman cut down with an unerring blow a Polish legionary before the man had time to raise his rifle to his shoulder.

The iron-shod hoofs grated on the paving stones as they careered down the street. Then at an intersection they found themselves face to face with a machine gun planted in the very middle of the road and three men in blue uniforms and rectangular Polish caps bending over it. There was also a fourth, with coils of gold braid on his collar, who levelled a Mauser at the mounted men.

Neither Toptalo nor Pavel could check their horses and they galloped toward the machine gun, straight into the jaws of death. The officer fired at Korchagin, but missed. The bullet whanged past Pavel's cheek, and the next moment the Lieutenant had struck his head against the paving stones and was lying limp on his back, thrown off his feet by the horse's onrush.

That very moment the machine gun spat out in savage frenzy, and stung by a dozen bullets, Toptalo and his black crumpled to the ground.

Pavel's mount reared up on its hind legs, snorting with terror, and leapt with its rider over the prone bodies to the men at the machine gun. His sabre described a flashing arc in the air and sank into the blue rectangle of one of the army caps.

Again the sabre flashed upwards ready to descend upon a second head, but the frantic horse leapt aside.

Like a mountain torrent the squadron poured into the streets and scores of sabres flashed in the air.

The long narrow corridors of the prison echoed with cries.

The cells packed with gaunt, hollow-eyed men and women were in a turmoil. They could hear the battle raging in the town—could this mean liberation? Could it be that this force that had swept suddenly into the town had come to set them free?

The shooting reached the prison yard. Men came running down the corridors. And then the cherished, long-awaited words: "You are free, Comrades!"

Pavel ran to a locked door with a tiny window, from which stared dozens of pairs of eyes, and brought his rifle butt down fiercely against the lock again and again.

"Wait, let me crack it with a bomb," cried Mironov. He pushed Pavel aside and produced a hand grenade from a pocket.

Platoon commander Tsygarchenko tore the grenade from his hands.

"Stop, you fool, are you mad! They'll bring the keys in a jiffy. What we can't break down we'll open with keys."

The prison guards were already being led down the corridor, prodded along with revolvers, when the ragged and unwashed prisoners, wild with joy, poured out of their cells.

Throwing a cell door wide open, Pavel ran inside.

"Comrades, you're free! We're Budyonny's men—our division's taken the town!"

A woman ran weeping to Pavel and throwing her arms around him broke into sobs.

The liberation of five thousand and seventy-one Bolsheviks and of two thousand Red Army political workers, whom the Polish Whites had driven into these stone dungeons to await shooting or the gallows, was more important to the division's fighting men than all the trophies they had captured, a greater reward than victory itself. For seven thousand revolutionaries the impenetrable gloom of night had been supplanted by the bright sun of a hot June day.

One of the prisoners, with skin as yellow as a lemon, rushed at Pavel in a transport of joy. It was Samuel Lekher, one of the compositors from the Shepetovka printshop.

Pavel's face turned grey as he listened to Samuel's account of the bloody tragedy enacted in his native town and the words seared his heart like drops of molten metal.

"They took us at night, all of us at once. Some scoundrel had betrayed us to the military gendarmes. And once they had us in their clutches they showed no mercy. They beat us terribly, Pavel. I suffered less than the others because after the first blows I lost consciousness. But the others were stronger than me.

"We had nothing to hide. The gendarmes knew everything better than we did. They knew every step we had taken, and no wonder, for there had been a traitor among us. I can't talk about those days, Pavel. You know many of those who were taken. Valya Bruzzhak, and Rosa Gritsman, a fine girl just turned seventeen—such trusting eyes she had, Pavel! Then there was Sasha Bunshaft, you know him, one of our typesetters, a merry lad, always drawing caricatures of the boss. They took him and two Gymnasium students, Novoselsky and Tuzhits—you remember them too most likely. The others too were local people or from the district centre. Altogether twenty-nine were arrested, six of them women. They were all brutally tortured. Valya and Rosa were raped the first day. Those swine outraged the poor things in every possible way, then dragged them back to the cell more dead than alive. Soon after that Rosa began to rave and a few days later she was completely out of her mind.

"They didn't believe that she was insane, they said she was shamming and beat her unmercifully every time they questioned her. She was a terrible sight when they finally shot her. Her face was black with bruises, her eyes were wild, she looked like an old woman.

"Valya Bruzzhak was splendid to the very end. They all died like real fighters. I don't know how they had the strength to endure it all. Ah, Pavel, how can I describe their death to you? It was too horrible.

"Valya had been doing the most dangerous kind of work: she was the one who had contact with the wireless operators at the Polish headquarters and with our people in the district centre, besides which they found two grenades and a pistol when they searched her place. The grenades had been given to her by the provocateur. Everything had been framed so as to charge them with intending to blow up the headquarters.

"Ah, Pavel, it is painful for me to speak of those last days, but since you insist I shall tell you. The military court sentenced Valya and two others to be hanged, the rest to be shot. The Polish soldiers who had worked with us were tried two days earlier. Corporal Snegurko, a young wireless operator who had worked in Lodz as an electrician before the war, was charged with treason and with conducting Communist propaganda among the soldiers and sentenced to be shot. He did not appeal, and was shot twenty-four hours after the sentence.

"Valya was called in to give evidence at his trial. She told us afterwards that Snegurko pleaded guilty to the charge of conducting Communist propaganda but vigorously denied that he had betrayed his country. 'My fatherland,' he said, 'is the Polish Soviet Socialist Republic. Yes, I am a member of the Communist Party of Poland. I was drafted into the army against my will, and once there I did my best to open the eyes of other men like myself who had been driven off to the front. You may hang me for that, but not for being a traitor to my fatherland, for that I never was and never will be. Your fatherland is not my fatherland. Yours is the fatherland of the gentry, mine is the workers' and peasants' fatherland. And in my fatherland, which will come—of that I am deeply convinced—no one will ever call me a traitor.'

"After the trial we were all kept together. Just before the execution we were transferred to the jail. During the night they set up the gallows opposite the prison beside the hospital. For the shooting they chose a place near a big ditch over by the forest not far from the road. A common grave was dug for us.

"The sentence was posted up all over town so that everyone should know of it. The Poles decided to hold a public execution to frighten the population. From early morning they began driving the townsfolk to the place of execution. Some went out of curiosity, terrible though it was. Before long they had a big crowd collected outside the prison wall. From our cell we could hear the hum of voices. They had stationed machine guns on the street behind the crowd, and brought up mounted and foot gendarmes from all parts of the area. A whole battalion of them surrounded the streets and vegetable fields beyond. A pit had been dug beside the gallows for those who were to be hanged.

"We waited silently for the end, now and then exchanging a few words. We had talked everything over the night before and said our good-byes. Only Rosa kept whispering to herself over in one corner of the cell. Valya, after all the beatings and outrages she had endured, was too weak to move and lay still most of the time. Two local Communist girls, sisters they were, could not keep back the tears as they clung to one another in their last farewell. Stepanov, a young man from the country, a strapping lad who had knocked out two gendarmes when they came to arrest him, told them to stop. 'No tears, Comrades! You may weep here, but not out there. We don't want to give those bloody swine a chance to gloat. There won't be any mercy anyway. We've got to die, so we might as well die decently. We won't crawl on our knees. Remember, Comrades, we must meet death bravely.'

"Then they came for us. In the lead was Szwarkowski, the Intelligence Chief, a mad dog of a sadist if there ever was one. When he didn't do the raping himself he enjoyed watching his gendarmes do it. We were marched to the gallows across the road between two rows of gendarmes, 'canaries' we called them on account of their yellow shoulder-knots. They stood there with their sabres bared.

"They hurried us through the prison yard with their rifle butts and made us form fours. Then they opened the gates and led us out into the street and stood us up facing the gallows so that we should see our comrades die as we waited for our turn to come. It was a tall gallows made of thick logs. Three nooses of heavy rope hung down from the crosspiece and under each noose was a platform with steps supported by a block of wood that could be kicked aside. A faint murmur rose from the sea of people which rocked and swayed. All eyes were fixed on us. We recognised some of our people in the crowd.

"On a porch some distance away stood a group of Polish gentry and officers with binoculars. They had come to see the Bolsheviks hanged.

"The snow was soft underfoot. The forest was white with it, and it lay thick on the trees like cotton fluff. The whirling snowflakes fell slowly, melting on our burning faces, and the steps of the gallows were carpeted with snow. We were scantily dressed but none of us felt the cold. Stepanov did not even notice that he was walking in his stockinged feet.

"Beside the gallows stood the military prosecutor and senior officers. At last Valya and the two other comrades who were to be hanged were led out of the jail. They walked all three arm-in-arm, Valya was in the middle supported by the other two for she had no strength to walk alone. But she did her best to hold herself erect, remembering Stepanov's words: 'We must meet death bravely, Comrades!' She wore a woollen jacket but no coat.

"Szwarkowski evidently didn't like the idea of them walking arm-in-arm for he pushed them from behind. Valya said something and one of the mounted gendarmes slashed her full force across the face with his whip. A woman in the crowd let out a frightful shriek and began struggling madly in an effort to break through the cordon and reach the prisoners, but she was seized and dragged away. It must have been Valya's mother. When they were close to the gallows Valya began to sing. Never have I heard a voice like that—only a person going to his death could sing with such feeling. She sang the Warszawianka, and the other two joined in. The mounted guards lashed out in a blind fury with their whips, but the three did not seem to feel the blows. They were knocked down and dragged to the gallows like sacks. The sentence was quickly read and the nooses were slipped over their heads. At that point we began to sing:

Arise, ye prisoners of starvation. . . .

"Guards rushed at us from all sides and I just had time to see the blocks knocked out from under the platforms with rifle butts and the three bodies jerking in the nooses. .. .

"The rest of us had already been put to the wall when it was announced that ten of us had had our sentences commuted to 20 years' imprisonment. The other sixteen were shot."

Samuel clutched convulsively at the collar of his shirt as if he were choking.

"For three days the bodies hung there in the nooses. The gallows were guarded day and night. After that a new batch of prisoners was brought to jail and they told us that on the fourth day the rope that held the corpse of Comrade Toboldin, the heaviest of the three, had given way. After that they removed the other two and buried them all.

"But the gallows was not taken down. It was still standing when we were brought to this place. It stood there with the nooses waiting for fresh victims."

Samuel fell silent staring with unseeing eyes before him, but Pavel was unaware that the story had ended. The three bodies with the heads twisted horribly to one side swayed silently before his eyes.

The bugle sounding the assembly outside brought Pavel to himself with a start.

"Let's go, Samuel," he said in a barely audible voice.

A column of Polish prisoners was being marched down the street lined with cavalry. At the prison gates stood the Regimental Commissar writing an order on his notepad.

"Comrade Antipov," he said, handing the slip of paper to a stalwart squadron commander, "take this, and have all the prisoners taken under cavalry escort to Novograd-Volynsky. See that the wounded are given medical attention. Then put them on carts, drive them about twenty versts from the town and let them go. We have no time to bother with them. But there must be no maltreatment of prisoners."

Mounting his horse, Pavel turned to Samuel. "Hear that?" he said. "They hang our people, but we have to escort them back to their own side and treat them nicely besides. How can we do it?"

The Regimental Commissar turned and looked sternly at the speaker. "Cruelty to unarmed prisoners," Pavel heard him say as if speaking to himself, "will be punished by death. We are not Whites!"

As he rode off, Pavel recalled the final words of the order of the Revolutionary Military Council which had been read out to the regiment:

"The land of the workers and peasants loves its Red Army. It is proud of it. And on that Army's banners there shall not be a single stain."

"Not a single stain," Pavel whispered.

At the time the Fourth Cavalry Division took Zhitomir, the 20th Brigade of the Seventh Rifle Division forming part of a shock corps under Comrade Golikov was crossing the Dnieper River in the area of Okuninovo village.

Another corps, which consisted of the 25th Rifle Division and a Bashkir Cavalry brigade, had orders to cross the Dnieper and straddle the Kiev-Korosten railway at Irsha Station. This manoeuvre would cut off the Poles' last avenue of retreat from Kiev.

It was during the crossing of the river that Misha Levchukov of the Shepetovka Komsomol organisation perished. They were running over the shaky pontoon bridge when a shell fired from somewhere beyond the steep bank opposite whined viciously overhead and plunged into the water, ripping it to shreds. The same instant Misha disappeared under one of the pontoons. The river swallowed him up and did not give him back. Yakimenko, a fair-haired soldier in a battered cap, cried out: "Mishka! Hell, that was Mishka! Went down like a stone, poor lad!" For a moment he stared horrified into the dark water, but the men running up from behind pushed him on: "What're you gaping there for, you fool. Get on with you!" There was no time to stop for anyone. The brigade had fallen behind the others who had already occupied the right bank of the river.

It was not until four days later that Sergei learned of Misha's death. By that time the brigade had captured Bucha Station, and turning in the direction of Kiev, was repulsing furious attacks by the Poles who were attempting to break through to Korosten.

Yakimenko threw himself down beside Sergei in the firing line. He had been firing steadily for some time and now he had difficulty forcing back the bolt of his overheated rifle. Keeping his head carefully lowered he turned to Sergei and said: "Got to give her a rest. She's red hot!"

Sergei barely heard him above the din of the shooting.

When the noise subsided somewhat, Yakimenko remarked as if casually: "Your comrade got drowned in the Dnieper. He was gone before I could do anything." That was all he said. He tried the bolt of his rifle, took out another clip and applied himself to the task of reloading.

 The Eleventh Division sent to take Berdichev encountered fierce resistance from the Poles. A bloody battle was fought in the streets of the town. The Red Cavalry advanced through a squall of machine-gun fire. The town was captured and the remnants of the routed Polish forces fled. Trains were seized intact in the railway yards. But the most terrible disaster for the Poles was the exploding of an ammunition dump which served the whole front. A million shells went up in the air. The explosion shattered window panes into tiny fragments and caused the houses to tremble as if they were made of cardboard.

The capture of Zhitomir and Berdichev took the Poles in the rear and they came pouring out of Kiev in two streams, fighting desperately to make their way out of the steel ring encircling them.

Swept along by the maelstrom of battle, Pavel lost all sense of self these days. His individuality merged with the mass and for him, as for every fighting man, the word "I" was forgotten; only the word "we" remained: our regiment, our squadron, our brigade.

Events developed with the speed of a hurricane. Each day brought something new.

Budyonny's Cavalry Army swept forward like an avalanche, striking blow after blow until the entire Polish rear was smashed to pieces. Drunk with the excitement of their victories, the mounted divisions hurled themselves with passionate fury at Novograd-Volynsky, the heart of the Polish rear. As the ocean wave dashes itself against the rockbound shore, recedes and rushes on again, so they fell back only to press on again and again with awesome shouts of "Forward! Forward!"

Nothing could save the Poles—neither the barbed-wire entanglements, nor the desperate resistance put up by the garrison entrenched in the city. And on the morning of June 27 Budyonny's cavalry forded the Sluch River without dismounting, entered Novograd-Volynsky and drove the Poles out of the city in the direction of Korets. At the same time the Forty-Fifth Division crossed the Sluch at Novy Miropol, and the Kotovsky Cavalry Brigade swooped down upon the settlement of Lyubar.

The radio station of the First Cavalry Army received an order from the commander-in-chief of the front to concentrate the entire cavalry force for the capture of Rovno. The irresistible onslaught of the Red divisions sent the Poles scattering in demoralised panic-stricken groups.

It was in these hectic days that Pavel Korchagin had a most unexpected encounter. He had been sent by the Brigade Commander to the station where an armoured train was standing. Pavel took the steep railway embankment at a canter and reined in at the steel-grey head carriage. With the black muzzles of guns protruding from the turrets, the armoured train looked grim and formidable. Several men in oil-stained clothes were at work beside it raising the heavy steel armour plating that protected the wheels.

"Where can I find the commander of the train?" Pavel inquired of a leather-jacketed Red Army man carrying a pail of water.

"Over there," the man replied pointing to the engine.

Pavel rode up to the engine. "I want to see the commander!" he said. A man with a pockmarked face, clad in leather from head to foot, turned. "I'm the commander."

Pavel pulled an envelope from his pocket.

"Here is an order from the Brigade Commander. Sign on the envelope."

The commander rested the envelope on his knee and scribbled his signature on it. Down on the tracks a man with an oil can was working on the middle wheel of the engine. Pavel could only see his broad back and the pistol-butt sticking out of the pocket of his leather trousers.

The commander handed the envelope back to Pavel who picked up the reins and was about to set off when the man with the oil can straightened up and turned round. The next moment Pavel had leapt off his horse as though swept down by a violent gust of wind.

"Artem!"

The man dropped his oil can and caught the young Red Army man in a bear's embrace.

"Pavka! You rascal! It's you!" he cried unable to believe his eyes.

The commander of the armoured train looked puzzled, and several gunners standing by smiled broadly at the joy of the two brothers in this chance meeting.

It happened on August 19 during a battle in the Lvov area. Pavel had lost his cap in the fighting and had reined in his horse. The squadrons ahead had already cut into the Polish positions. At that moment Demidov came galloping through the bushes on his way down to the river. As he flew past Pavel he shouted:

"The Division Commander's been killed!"

Pavel started. Letunov, his heroic commander, that man of sterling courage, dead! A savage fury seized Pavel.

With the blunt edge of his sabre he urged on his exhausted Gnedko, whose bit dripped with a bloody foam, and tore into the thick of the battle.

"Kill the vermin, kill 'em! Cut down the Polish szlachtal They've killed Letunov!" And blindly he slashed at a figure in a green uniform. Enraged at the death of their Division Commander, the cavalrymen wiped out a whole platoon of Polish legionaries.

They galloped headlong over the battlefield in pursuit of the enemy, but now a Polish battery went into action. Shrapnel rent the air spattering death on all sides.

Suddenly there was a blinding green flash before Pavel's eyes, thunder smote his ears and red-hot iron seared into his skull. The earth spun strangely and horribly about him and began to turn slowly upside down.

Pavel was thrown from the saddle like a straw. He flew right over Gnedko's head and fell heavily to the ground.

Instantly black night descended.

PART ONE

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