The Sniper's Kiss

Chapter Seventeen

Unusually, STAVKA allowed the newly formed division to remain a day at Ostrov to permit supplies, the medical station, and the field kitchen to catch up. Mia’s relief was tainted by the discovery that her period had started.

It was a problem she should have anticipated and felt stupid that she hadn’t. As soon as she was able, she got permission to cross the square to the snipers’ quarters again.

“How do you deal with this,” she asked Alexia. “Surely every woman in the Red Army has the same problem.”

“Not all,” Sasha interjected. “I stopped months ago, when my weight dropped. It’s probably because of the constant hardship. As long as it’s not permanent, I’m glad about it. Just one thing less to worry about when you’re in the field.”

“That’s nice for you, Sasha, but Mia’s not so lucky,” Alexia chided her. “Come on. I’ll take you to the medics. They’ll have bandages or rags you can use.”

“Bandages or rags. Charming,” Mia said, following her.

“Don’t complain, my friend,” Alexia said. “It used to be worse. Some of the women who’ve been here longer tell stories about marching for hours with blood running down their legs. If they could, they cut off the sleeves of their winter underwear and rolled them up. It seems the Red Army, along with having no small uniforms for women, also never thought of that detail. Ah, here we are.”

The medical station was another slightly less damaged shop front on the square of Ostrov. It had some ten canvas folding cots laid out side by side, all holding wounded, and another dozen men sat on the floor leaning against the wall. Two nurses in regular field uniforms but with white armbands were moving among them tending to their needs. A third woman, in a white smock, dried her hands and marched past them into another room.

One of the medics who was bandaging a stump at the end of a soldier’s hand looked up as they came in.

“Galina, hello,” Alexia said. “We won’t stay long. Can you spare some bandages for my friend Mia? She is having her days and never got a woman’s field kit.”

“You can take some of those. Over there, in the crate next to the alcohol bottles,” Galina said, pointing with her head. “But no more than one package. We’re short ourselves, and even those have been reboiled and used several times.”

Alexia lifted out one of the bundles of grayish-yellow gauze and handed it to Mia. “Thanks, Galina. When do you get off duty? Can you come by later for a smoke? We’re in the building with the wagon in front.”

Galina replied without looking up from her work. “Tonight, maybe. After the ambulances come and cart these guys to the rear.” A scream of pain came from the other room. “Can’t talk now, though. They’re tying down one of the men for an amputation, and I have to help with the surgery.” She pinned the end of the bandage, helped the soldier lie down again, and hurried past them into the back room.

Mia was glad to escape the purgatory of the medical station and deal with her own trivial problem. She glanced down at the bundle in her hand. “So, how do you manage with just this?”

“Cut it in half. Use one until it’s dirty, and then change and rinse out the soiled one.”

“That makes sense, but what do you do when the washed one isn’t dry?”

Alexia shrugged, and her silence was the answer.

The snipers’ quarters had the additional luxury of a sheltered toilet that still flushed, though the pipe that fed in water to the overhead tank had broken. “Easy solution,” Kalya said, and fetched in a bucket of water, which she poured into the tank. “Now you can flush to your heart’s content. But only once.”

“Once will do,” Mia said, and closed the door, enjoying her first moment of privacy in weeks. She quickly tore the strip of yellowish bandage in two, wondering whose blood still remained embedded in the gauze she was about to clean herself with. She hoped the person had survived the wound. Surely it would be bad luck to walk around wearing the blood of a dead man.

She wiped herself clean with one half and tied the other inside her underwear, the last vestige of her American civilian clothing. She washed the now-soiled half in the bucket, squeezed out the water, and left the toilet cubicle with the damp bundle in her hand.

“This is going to be awkward,” she said. “Where do I hang this to dry?”

Kalya laughed. “Don’t go all fussy on us. This is a battlefield and there’s blood everywhere. No one’s going to know where yours came from.”

Mia joined the women in the corner they had claimed and, like them, began to clean her rifle. She had no idea how to dismantle the weapon but watched the others and saw how logical the process was.

They had no sooner finished than a young corporal announced from the doorway, “4th platoon, you’re up.” They all grabbed their mess tins and hurried out to line up next to the field kitchen.

Breakfast was bread, a thick cereal of various grains boiled in water, and tea. It was at least filling and significantly superior to the hard bread they’d had to consume the previous night. With her mess tin and cup filled, Mia returned to her friends.

“Hmm. Could use a little sugar,” Mia remarked.

Kalya laughed. “And butter, and caviar, and meat, come to think of it. And some of my grandmother’s marmalade.”

“All right. I know I’m spoiled.”

“We’re spoiled, too, actually,” Sasha said sympathetically. “I always had marmalade at home, from apples and pears. I didn’t realize how bad most people ate until I became a soldier.”

“Is that what you miss? The food?” Mia asked. She liked Sasha and could so easily imagine her in civilian life: coquettish, flirtatious, effervescent.

“I miss ordinariness. Cooking, setting my hair in curlers, singing, putting on dresses and heels, falling in love.”

“Did you have an admirer? A gentleman, I mean?”

Kalya snorted. “I bet she had a dozen of them, didn’t you, Sasha?”

“Don’t be silly, Kalya. It wasn’t like that. Okay. Maybe a couple of boys at school. Okay, maybe a lot of boys at school. But what about you, Marina? What was life like for you back in America?”

Mia blinked first at being called Marina. She felt certain she could trust these women but had had probably already divulged too much information about her past.

“I worked in an office, doing accounting. Yes, I liked the dresses, but the more daring women already wore pants, fashionable ones, not like these.” She tugged at the knees of her baggy trousers. “But we had lots of marmalade.”

“Do you still have family? Are they worried about you?” Fatima asked, and Mia remembered that Fatima had lost everyone in Leningrad.

“Um, well, I have only a brother, but I think my boss worries more about me than he does.” She thought of Harry Hopkins, who surely imagined she was dead.

“Alexia said you worked in Washington, with the government. Did you ever see President Roosevelt?”

Mia wasn’t sure what to reply. She’d already told them enough to endanger them.

Alexia came to her rescue. “I think it’s best not to ask Marina too many questions. You know what they say. Ears are everywhere.”

“Yes, and besides, I have to report back to my unit or the commissar will have my hide. She seems to hold some sort of grudge against me. That’s all I need.”

Mia stood up, collected her rifle and mess kit, and, with a small wave, threaded her way among the groups of soldiers to the door.

The next morning at five, the order came to fall in. Sitnya was eight kilometers due south, and they were ordered to take it before nightfall. The commissar reminded the infantrymen of the “not one step back” policy that prohibited surrender or retreat, and the troops nodded silently to an order they hated.

Mia let her gaze sweep around the square of Ostrov but saw no sign of her friends.

After the morning ration of porridge, the troops began the march. The land was uncontested for most of the way, and the abandoned artillery pieces they passed told them that the Germans were in full retreat. Nonetheless, a cornered beast is most dangerous, and Mia, trudging in their midst, knew not to be cocky.

And indeed, outside of Sitnya, the Germans had dug in and set up a formidable defense. Indifferent to the cost, the colonel ordered them to attack, and once again Mia charged amidst a group of men, firing her rifle blindly ahead of her. The roaring of the Russian troops around her was soon drowned out by the sounds of exploding grenades. The Germans were throwing them just ahead of their own advancing troops, creating a line of pits between the armies. But soon the space between them closed.

Just ahead of her, the bright light of a grenade explosion revealed two silhouettes thrown into the pit, one from the German side, and the other—oh God—was Sasha.

Mia screamed “Medic,” ran toward the still-smoking pit, and slid down into it.

Sasha lay on her back, blood pouring from the ragged hole that once had been her lower right arm. On the other side of the pit was the German, who had also been struck by the blast and had slid upright into the hole. He too bled profusely, from the stump below his knee. Spontaneously, both Mia and the German aimed their rifles at each other, but the German was too weak to hold his upright, and it dropped to the side. Mia turned her attention to Sasha, called out “Medic” a second time, and seized the mutilated arm, squeezing it above the hemorrhaging wound. “Medic, Medic!” she kept screaming, glancing over her shoulder.

The German was still alive, and now he simply moaned, in a German that even she could understand, “Hilf mir, O Gott. Hilf mir.” She saw now that the front of his tunic was sodden with blood, so he must have also had a stomach wound. He stared at her and lifted one hand weakly, pointing a limp finger toward his pistol, still in its holster at his belt. “Hilf mir,” he repeated. “Töte mich, Kamarad. Bitte.”

But at that moment she cared only about Sasha, who was panting through clenched teeth, obviously in agony. She stared at Mia with huge eyes, as if she knew something terrible.

“Medic!” Mia screamed again, watching the blood still trickle from the ruined arm that she could not grip tightly enough. It poured in a constant stream to the bottom of the pit and joined the pool of blood from the hemorrhaging German. Even in the terror and excitement of the moment, she saw the irony of the two bloods mixing.

“Hang on, my friend. Just a little longer.” Just then the medic arrived and crawled in next to her to tie off Sasha’s arm. “Help me lift her onto the stretcher,” the medic ordered, and Mia obeyed, clambering next to her with the quivering form of Sasha between them. When they slid her onto the stretcher, she went limp.

Behind Mia the German had begun to sob. “Hilf mir, Mama, bitte.”

As she stood up to sprint with the stretcher bearers to the rear, she still heard him behind her in the pit. “Mama… Mama…”

Deeply shaken, holding Sasha’s good hand, Mia ran with the stretcher some fifty yards until the captain-commissar blocked her and aimed her pistol squarely at Mia’s chest. “Get back on the line, right now.”

Mia came to her senses, and with a last look at Sasha, she spun around and jogged back to the front line that still advanced under fire into the town.

She charged forward with renewed frenzy, sensing her comrades around her. They stormed past the remains of buildings, and she crouched sometimes, taking aim and picking off soldiers in green. The battle raged, it seemed, for hours, and she had just leaped up for another sprint when an enemy shell hit behind her, blasting mountains of dirt and debris into the air. The dust stung her eyes, and she coughed as she glanced over her shoulder toward the comrades coming up behind her.

All she could see in the smoke was the heap of rubble that had just fallen behind her and something pale that jutted out from the bottom of it. A hand that scratched the ground.

She scrambled toward it, tore away dirt and powdered brick, clawed doglike at the suffocating pile. An arm became visible, the sleeve torn but bloodless. Then a shoulder, and finally a head, a dirt-smeared face that gasped for air and coughed out filthy mucus.

“Comrade Commissar? Are you all right?” Mia continued brushing away debris.

Captain Semenova sat up panting and wiped dirt from her eyes. Then she seemed to remember something and twisted away from Mia to claw through the rubble. “My pouch! We must find my pouch. My party membership card…” A leather strap appeared close by her hand, and she snatched it up, pulling the pouch out from under the dirt. “I’m fine now,” she finally answered, staggering to her feet. “Continue the attack, soldier.”

The rescue had taken only a few minutes, and in that time, the front line had moved into the town. She caught up to them, advancing cautiously, although the defending Germans seemed to have melted away. Skirmishes took place in front of her as clusters of men were uncovered, but it was clear, the main group had retreated. They had taken the town.

By early evening, the troops amassed in an open square, each platoon reporting to its leader, waiting for the sappers to search for mines and traps. It had started to rain, and Mia crouched, somber, with her own group, her arms around herself. Her only thought was Sasha.

Her mind drifted to the mortally wounded German, injured by the same grenade that struck Sasha. Was he still alive in his pit, still calling for his mother while the rain poured down on him? The thought made her physically sick.

She squatted under a tarp with the men until, two hours later, they were assigned buildings to quarter in. Field rations were only dry biscuits, so she postponed eating. She needed to find out about Sasha. And about the others, for that matter.

She approached the platoon leader. “Request permission to look for a friend, Comrade Sergeant.”

But Commissar Semenova, who seemed to be everywhere, had overheard. “No one’s to leave their assigned bivouac. Understood?”

Cowed, she backed away and returned to her spot. She sat, frustrated and worried, but finally exhaustion overcame anxiety, and she dropped off to sleep leaning against her pack. But a few hours later, someone shook her by the shoulder.

“You, Zhurova, are you wounded?” The platoon leader pointed to her left leg that was soaked with blood. She realized with disgust that her blood had seeped down into her trousers.

“Do you need to go to the medical station?” he asked impatiently.

Medical station. A way to find out about Sasha. “Yes, Comrade Sergeant. Shrapnel wound.”

“Go on over then, and get yourself bandaged. It’s the building at the corner, where the lights are. Then report back here for orders.”

“Yes, Comrade Sergeant.” Still carrying her rifle, she lurched toward the spot where lanterns were hanging, the first floor of a building whose upper floor had been blasted by artillery. Stretcher bearers were plodding toward it carrying a wounded man between them.

As she strode into the medical station a figure turned around to face her. It was Alexia. And just behind her, Kalya. The relief she felt seeing them drained when she registered their drawn expressions.

“Sasha?”

“Dead. Fatima, too.” Alexia pulled her out of the way of the stretcher bearers.

The two women who’d saved her from torture and death. Gone. The news hit her like a stone. She stood awhile with her friends, staring vacantly at the medics, nurses, stretcher bearers, moving in and out of the station. There was no point in asking what happened. War happened.

“Where are you quartered?” she asked the others numbly, not wanting to leave them.

“Never mind that,” Alexia said. “Are you wounded?” Like the captain, she pointed at Mia’s pant leg.

“No. Menstrual blood. I need to wash, but how? Where?”

Obviously relieved to have another task to tend to, Kalya took her by the arm and pivoted her around. “There’s a well over there. Come on. We’ll get some water, and you can clean up in the latrine.” She snatched up a bucket from outside the medics’ station.

It was a good solution that took their minds off their dead comrades. Setting her full bucket on the ground in a corner of the latrine, with her friends standing guard, Mia wiped down the top of her trousers, then dropped them to wash herself. The second half of the original bandage was still in her pocket and she tied it in place, rinsing out the blood-soaked portion with the last of the water. She would have found the whole procedure disgusting at home, but she recalled the blood pool in the grenade pit, the blood of the dying. This, at least was “living” blood, and cleaning it was a mere inconvenience.

“Come back with us for a while. Your sergeant won’t be looking for you just yet.”

“Yeah, I’d like that.” She followed them to a shed close by the medical station. They leaned their three rifles against the wall and squatted on the ground. Kalya began to roll another cigarette, and Mia now understood the value of the habit. It might scorch your throat, but it soothed the mind to have something to do.

“At least the Fritzes have cleared out,” Mia said weakly, just to break the silence.

“Yeah, but they make us pay for every kilometer they concede,” Alexia said.

A woman came through the door and dropped down onto the floor next to them.

“Galina, finally off duty?” Kalya asked, and offered her a puff of her cigarette.

“Just for a few minutes.” She took a long draw and handed it back. “Sorry about your sniper friends. If it’s any comfort, Sasha went right after they brought her in, and Fatima was gone when she came in. Not much pain for either one. Be glad of that. I’ve also got a couple of burn patients. They’re not going to make it either, but they’ve got some bad hours ahead before they’re free.”

“Yes. I guess I should be glad for small things. Burning. Uff. My worst fear.” Kalya winced. “Anything but that.”

Galina nodded. “Goes for animals, too. A few weeks ago, we’d set up a first-aid station next to some stables. The attack planes dropped incendiaries, and everything caught fire. The medics, even the walking wounded, ran to the stables to pull out the horses. Bad enough to watch our men die, but it seemed even worse to hear the screaming of the horses. Anyhow, we got ’em out. Every one of them.”

Mia was faintly cheered by the story. Some small rescue of the innocent. A temporary one, of course.

Galina stood up. “Time to go back on duty. I’m also going to give blood. It gets you an extra ration of sugar and meat. Did you know that?” Without waiting for an answer, she strode from the room.

Mia stood up as well. “I’d better return to my unit,” she said glumly. “The commissar is watching me, and I have to be in place when the orders come. Bye, then.”

“Yeah, bye. See you in the next shit spot on the map,” Kalya said.

Mia wandered back across the square to her own bivouac, brooding, feeling the warmth of her own blood between her legs, hoping her flow would taper off the next day.

Blood. Given and lost. Galina’s, hers, Sasha’s, Fatima’s and the dying German’s. The war in microcosm.