Victory: a Soldier's Lament (633 hits)
Category: NoneRating: 1.26 on 28 reviews (Rate this item) (V)
Submitted by conrad <ball0395.at.rogers.com> (View user info) at 2004-05-16 15:34:35 EDT
"Before leaving for the horrors of Stalingrad, my tearful mother had attempted to tell my fortune, but the cast of dry bones foretold nothing, forebade everything, and the waxen debris floating in the water dish wrought only chaos. Of course, the eyes of a mother picked out glory, a homecoming, a wife and hearth, but I saw also, and with eyes wizened in a moment by the prescience of what would come I discerned the webbed, winter streets and bombed-out carcasses of deathly homes in which I would scurry and butcher for the coming age. I parted from her embrace, which would have lasted forever, in a second: parting is not the sweetest sorrow, and the welling tears of parting are bitter and numberless, but only if one lets them come. Only the return is sweet, but the singularity at the core of blackness permits few escapees. So it was that we reservists, we runts, weaklings, we poets and painters, trudged off into the Russian winter at the will of Stalin, forging, four by four, through waist-deep snow to ease the passage of tanks and artillery pieces.
As I sit in this factory district cellar that has become my home, victory finally assured, it occurs to me that only a victory that comes of free will, of one's own volition, is a true victory. With the military police at our rear, shooting all those who would retreat, and the enemy always to the fore, a ravening wolf always famished, there were but two choices, neither glorious; fight with a bayonet at one's back, or fall on one's sword. Soldiery had forced us to confront the spectre of death on too many occasions to tally, of men bleeding out, unreachable for snipers, in empty streets, or blown to pieces, never to be found or interred, mothers weeping, never to know. We began to dream of happy deaths, in bed before a fire, one's last breath exhaled in the presence of loved ones; or the Russian way, to be delirious on vodka we could never afford - the exalted Stolichnaya - and crawl into a snow drift to sleep forever, or, like Erofeev, to simply lie down under the table in a warm tavern, smiling, never more to move.
Mere survival seemed inglorious to us, though historians would have it otherwise, so when we emerged, barely alive from our craters and doorways to see grim Chuikov parade Paulus and his Generals through the wreckage of the city, our world had shrunk so small that it could be swallowed in a bite. I had secreted two bottles of zakuski at the beginning of hostilities behind a brick, and when the news of victory came, I shared these Caspian herring and Caucasus mushrooms amongst my comrades in arms, measuring out this bounty gram by gram 'til none was left, and we drank the flavoured vinegar as if it were ichor. Cold comfort indeed, but compared to raw, stringy dog and, as rumour would have it, man, this was a treasure worthy of Midas: we would not eat so well again until Berlin when, having traversed the wastes of scorched earth that were Western Russia, we met the Americans with their divine white bread and barrels of machine grease. We would scoop this up as if it were honey, pile it upon great white loaves, and it would soak into our parched bodies so completely that we didn't shit for weeks, no matter how much we gorged: this was the world for us.
The world is what one wishes to comprehend, and I no longer wish to comprehend killing. The aerial bombardment of Stalingrad that preceded the street battles created a maelstrom of rubble that splintered and frayed the German phalanxes, and from this maelstrom rose a chimera, that of vagrant butchers, killing and hiding, killing and hiding, always. The fearsome Panzers could no longer move with impunity, and so it was that they fell to the mercy of ragged partisans with Molotov cocktails: though we fought for doorways, windows and cellars, too close for rifles, with trenching shovels, knives, broken vodka bottles and bare hands, I will never forget one thing. A tank once rolled down Bhukarin Prospekt with its hatch open, quite unheard of, and I approached it from behind: before dropping the flaming bottle onto the soldiers within, I had time to look over their startled faces, and they had time to look at mine: though I had looked into the eyes of many a dying man, close enough to taste his last breath, that was different, as he had been trying to kill me, in the immediate, in the now. These 'men', young enough to have been my little brother, or my students at the Academy, were just sitting there, and as the backdraft blew me from the tank and a burning man was thrown forth, I wondered at what I had become. One can never go home; the beast lies in us all, and once summoned, he can neither be satiated nor returned to sleep. There is not enough blood in the world for some appetites.
Those who wonder at brutality may as well wonder at their own hands.
The leaflets dropped over us declared this the "Great Patriotic War", but one's country is a mere speck when one is cowering in a cellar, knowing that every second could be one's last. Give me vodka, give me mushrooms, give me the pleasures of the now, because there is not the tomorrow, and there is certainly not the nation: give me those things for the rest of my life, because I now understand the nature of it. Those who sit in Moscow feasting on advance, on the cause, may well think of the 'then', but they are the fools: what is Bolshevism one one's deathbed, what is conquest, what is victory?"
User Reviews
Submitted by PeopleAreStrange (user info) at 2004-07-29 16:01:32 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Have you been to Russia Conrad? I liked this piece. Although I feel you need to get a little bit more down and dirty in your writing. You are intelligent therefore all your narrators are intelligent. Have you tried writing about someone who was stupid or of average intelligence, and therefore used colloquialisms for their speech, etc. I'd been interested to see you write something like that.
Submitted by MrPrickle (user info) at 2004-06-16 20:32:32 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
i liked this bit best:
I had secreted two bottles of zakuski at the beginning of hostilities behind a brick, and when the news of victory came, I shared these Caspian herring and Caucasus mushrooms amongst my comrades in arms, measuring out this bounty gram by gram 'til none was left, and we drank the flavoured vinegar as if it were ichor. Cold comfort indeed, but compared to raw, stringy dog and, as rumour would have it, man, this was a treasure worthy of Midas: we would not eat so well again until Berlin when, having traversed the wastes of scorched earth that were Western Russia, we met the Americans with their divine white bread and barrels of machine grease. We would scoop this up as if it were honey, pile it upon great white loaves, and it would soak into our parched bodies so completely that we didn't shit for weeks, no matter how much we gorged: this was the world for us.
Submitted by shitfuck (user info) at 2004-05-30 16:05:16 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
conrad, you're really gifted.
Submitted by conrad (user info) at 2004-05-23 18:33:15 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
Mikethescottish, where in Scotland d'ye hail from?
Submitted by conrad (user info) at 2004-05-23 18:30:43 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
Cheers
Submitted by Sideburns (user info) at 2004-05-23 18:29:59 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
I wonder if my buddy bart would ban me for spamming with +2s.
Submitted by Sideburns (user info) at 2004-05-23 18:29:25 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
my last one, uber menz.
have some dessert.
Submitted by mikethescottish (user info) at 2004-05-23 18:29:24 EDT (#)
Ranking: 1
A little bit dense... otherwise a damn fine piece of writing.
Submitted by Sideburns (user info) at 2004-05-23 18:28:58 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
i've got some more 2s in the fridge, just help yourself.
Submitted by conrad (user info) at 2004-05-23 18:28:50 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
Did I? Which one - I rarely do?
Submitted by Sideburns (user info) at 2004-05-23 18:28:33 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Mmmmmm, good +2s huh?
Submitted by Sideburns (user info) at 2004-05-23 18:27:40 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
full yet?
Submitted by Sideburns (user info) at 2004-05-23 18:27:14 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
here ya go.
Submitted by Sideburns (user info) at 2004-05-23 18:26:59 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
more, you say?
Submitted by Sideburns (user info) at 2004-05-23 18:26:45 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
have some more.
Submitted by Sideburns (user info) at 2004-05-23 18:26:30 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Seems Nigga is bringing down the rating of a good post. Here's a boost, conrad, even though you did give me a negative rating on my last post.
I still love ya though.
Submitted by conrad (user info) at 2004-05-23 18:18:17 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Yeah, well, give ONE -2 - don't spam with two or more.
Submitted by Nigga (user info) at 2004-05-23 18:13:27 EDT (#)
Ranking: -2
i wasn't feelin dis dawg.
Submitted by Nigga (user info) at 2004-05-23 18:09:45 EDT (#)
Ranking: -2
No Comment
Submitted by mystiamoon (user info) at 2004-05-21 23:42:27 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
oops
Submitted by mystiamoon (user info) at 2004-05-21 23:41:56 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
Do I know you?
Submitted by mystiamoon (user info) at 2004-05-21 22:33:48 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by smokymtcsw (user info) at 2004-05-21 17:16:43 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
This is awesome. Hope you have been able to enjoy the movie Stalingrad written by the German people who made Das Boot.
Submitted by youarsoghey (user info) at 2004-05-19 13:29:10 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
I liked this. Euripides is a fucking virus on Ubersite right now.
Submitted by SausageKing (user info) at 2004-05-18 01:36:20 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
I loved the movie 'Enemy at the Gates'.
Submitted by Fixer (user info) at 2004-05-17 13:12:45 EDT (#)
Ranking: 1
A bit thick for a soldier, but I liked it.
Submitted by euripidestrousers (user info) at 2004-05-17 12:26:09 EDT (#)
Ranking: -1
No Comment
Submitted by zakalwe (user info) at 2004-05-16 16:44:57 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Good.
Long.. but good.