Awakenings
The first thing he remembered was noise.
Not the sharp crack of a rifle or the single heartbeat of a shell, but a solid wall of sound that pressed against his ribs until his lungs refused to move. The air itself seemed to convulse. Somewhere in that thunder, trees splintered and steel screamed. When it stopped for half a breath, the silence felt wrong—too clean, too empty—before the next concussion filled it again.
He opened his eyes to gray light and smoke. A burned tree leaned above him, its branches stripped bare, its bark blown away in long black ribbons. Frosted grass clung to his coat. He tasted dust, metal, something chemical that stung his throat.
For a moment he thought he was back on the Narva line—the retreat, the endless noise, the fog rolling over the snow. He waited to hear the priest’s voice or the woman’s song, but only the dull percussion of distant guns answered. He tried to sit up. Pain folded through his shoulder, warm and sharp.
Where am I?
The question came before fear could. The last thing he remembered was walking east from the river. Snow. Footprints. Then the world had folded in on itself like a tent collapsing.
He forced his eyes to focus. The soil was not the black loam of Norway but a lighter, drier brown, the color of bread crust. Summer grass lay crushed under ash. And the heat—he hadn’t felt heat in months.
He stood, unsteady. The tree’s shadow lay wrong against the sun; the light had a different weight. A kilometer away, something flared orange, followed by the muffled roll of artillery. The smell came next: diesel, cordite, scorched rubber. The smell of machines.
To his right, a tank lay on its side, one track torn loose and hanging like a broken chain. The red star on the turret was half hidden beneath soot. Steam pulsed from the engine deck. Inside, a voice moaned once, faint and wet, then quieted.
A T-34. Russian.
He had seen one once, long ago, when photographs of them reached Norway—ugly, blunt, beautiful in their simplicity. He took a slow step closer, hand brushing the hull. It was still warm.
“How—?”
The word drifted away in the wind.
He blinked against the light. His jacket was the dark green of the old Norwegian reserves, sleeves trimmed with oil-black fur. The insignia on his shoulder—NORGE stitched over a faint Union Jack—was caked in dirt but still legible. His pistol holster was empty; his gloves, British-made. None of it should have survived the march from Narva, and yet here it was, as though time itself had chosen what to keep.
He tried to stand. Pain ran down his leg, quick and white. The concussion of a near strike dropped him back to his knees. Soil rained down from the oak. When the smoke cleared, shadows moved through it—men shouting in Russian, advancing low and fast between the wrecks.
He turned in a slow circle. The field stretched wide and flat, horizon blurred by smoke. He saw rows of craters, the twisted frames of other tanks, the faint shimmer of heat rising from the plain. The light was summer’s light. Too harsh. Too near the equator. Not Narva. Not Norway.
Farther downslope, three more tanks moved through smoke, guns elevated, the red stars on their turrets barely visible beneath soot.
A thought crawled through the haze of his mind: Steppe country. Ukraine?
A shell landed nearby. The concussion threw him forward. When the dust settled, he found himself face-to-face with a dead soldier whose tunic bore the hammer and sickle. The man’s hand still clutched a wrench. Bargideon stared at it until the ground began to move under his knees again.
One of the Russian voices spotted him…
He looked up to see a squad running toward him through the smoke—five men, uniforms blackened, rifles ready. They slid to a halt when they saw him. One raised his weapon, then hesitated.
“Stoy! Hands up!” The voice cracked with youth but carried command. Three rifles leveled in his direction.
“Svoi ili nemets? Ours or German?”
The words rang clear, undeniable. He understood them.
Bargideon raised his hands slowly, palms open. “Ya ne nemets! Not German!” The words came out hoarse, wrapped in an accent he hadn’t used in years.
He blinked, and repeated with his mouth dry “Not German, Norwegian. Allied.”
The soldiers exchanged quick looks. A sergeant with a torn earflap cap approached studying his uniform, eyes flicking from Bargideon’s patch to his face. “Norwegian? You speak Russian like a peasant from Novgorod.”
“Who are you?” he demanded in Russian.
“Captain Bargideon. Norwegian Reserve Armor,” he said before his mind caught up with his tongue. “Attached to Soviet forces… Allied liaison.”
The sergeant frowned, glancing at his men. “Allied? Here?” He nudged the shoulder patch with the muzzle of his rifle. “Norwegian?”
Bargideon nodded. “Yes. London sent observers—to study German armor tactics. I was with the 5th Guards… until the line broke.”
“I’ve been walking a long time,” Bargideon murmured. “I… lost my transport north of Archangel. Was attached to Soviet armor for observation. Allied mission.”
He wasn’t sure where the lie came from. It felt half true.
Another explosion hammered the ridge. The sergeant flinched, then waved him forward. “If you’re lying, you’ll dig your own grave. Move!”
“You’re far from Archangel, tovarishch. Come, before the Panzers find you.”
They half-ran, half-slid down the slope into a shallow depression where more soldiers huddled behind the smoking remains of a self-propelled gun. They guided him down toward a shallow trench filled with smoke and shouting. Tanks idled nearby, engines rumbling like chained beasts. Men ran between them with crates of ammunition, shouting coordinates. The smell of oil and sweat thickened the air until it was almost sweet.
Bargideon stumbled once; the sergeant caught his arm. “You hit your head?”
“I think so.”
“You’ll fit right in,” the man said grimly and pointed ahead. “Colonel Voronov’s command post. He’ll decide if you’re real.”
They reached a low earthen dugout reinforced with railroad ties. Inside, an officer stood over a map spread across a makeshift table, pencil moving in quick, hard lines. He was tall, lean, the corners of his mouth black with soot. He didn’t look up as they entered.
“Comrade Sergeant?” he asked without turning.
“Found this one near the ridge, Comrade Colonel. Claims he’s Norwegian. Allied mission.”
The officer turned, and Bargideon saw eyes the color of flint. “Norwegian?” he repeated. “You’re a long way from Oslo, Captain.”
“Yes, sir.” Bargideon saluted reflexively, the gesture surprising even him. “I was detached from the British liaison group in Archangel. Transport lost contact during the retreat. I heard your guns and followed the sound.”
Voronov looked up then—gray eyes sharp even through the grime. “London sent you to hell, Captain?”
“I seem to find it easily, sir,” Bargideon said.
The colonel’s expression didn’t soften. He stepped closer, studying the uniform—the British buttons, the Norwegian patch, the tank badge tarnished but real.
Voronov’s gaze dropped to the NORGE patch, then the tank badge.
“Name?”
“Commander Friedrich Bargideon.”
“Commander?” The colonel raised an eyebrow. “You command tanks?”
“Yes, sir. Mechanized experience. Pre-war and under occupation.”
“Good. You’ll do it again.” He jabbed the pencil at a point on the map. “The Germans are moving here. Tigers. You know them?”
“Too well.”
Voronov grunted. “Then stay close. You’ll tell me how they think.”
He gestured toward the horizon. “Kursk. The Germans come now.”
A distant line of armor advanced through the smoke—black silhouettes, cannon barrels glinting in the morning light. The earth trembled with their approach. Bargideon recognized the formation instantly: heavy Panzers in echelon, Tigers by the slow discipline of their pace. He felt his heart tighten in an old, familiar rhythm.
“Colonel Voronov?” he asked, guessing the name from the map case.
The officer nodded, eyes still on the horizon. “You’ve heard of me?”
“In briefings,” Bargideon lied smoothly. “Soviet armored command. Prokhorovka sector.”
Voronov studied him again, then gave a short, humorless laugh. “Then welcome to hell, Captain Bargideon of Norway. If you can tell me how to kill Tigers faster, I’ll believe in miracles.”
The next salvo came closer, the wind of it knocking their helmets together. Bargideon crouched beside Voronov, tracing a rough line in the dirt where the ridge curved south. His voice found its old command tone before he could stop it.
“They’ll press here first—open ground, good visibility. But they don’t know the marsh behind that rise. If your tanks anchor there and draw them in—”
Voronov’s eyes flicked up. “You speak like a man who’s seen their manuals.”
“I have,” Bargideon said. “Too many.”
The colonel’s grin was brief but real. “Then stay close, Norwegian. Today you fight with wolves.”
He waved a hand, curt as a blade, and the dugout emptied like a fist unclenching. Men hustled, straps creaking, boots slipping in the churned earth. The map lay open between two tins of black tea, and the pencil markings were already smeared where a thumb had been dragged across them.
___________________________________________________________________________
Bargideon moved with them because the motion told him how to be. He had been a tanker long enough that the cadence of an armored regiment felt like a second pulse. Near the dugout a crew fussed over a battered T-34; one man crawled beneath the belly and tightened a bolt that rang like a bell. Another stood on the turret with a rag, wiping soot from the sight with care as if cleaning a relic.
“Petrov!” a corporal called. A broad-shouldered man with a chin scar and hands the size of small mallets stepped forward. He carried himself with the careful impatience of someone who had been given tasks and learned to finish them on the run. When he saw Bargideon he paused, then came closer, interest sharpening his face.
“You are the Norwegian?” Petrov said in Russian, and his voice was a low thing that smelled of oil. He ran a hand down Bargideon’s sleeve as if checking for hidden insignia. “Mechanic’s hands,” he observed, thumb worrying the frayed cuff. “You know torque. You know the smell of a seized bearing.”
“I know enough,” Bargideon said. He surprised himself by speaking in Russian with steady vowels; the word shapes came like old tools pulled from a box. “I can read the enemy’s tracks. I can help you keep your machines alive.”
Petrov snorted, but the sound held the merest respect. “Good. We have killed many Tigers today. Machines learn, and men die with them. You will sit with us on the benches while we ready the guns. Help pass the rounds. See how they move.”
Around them, the men carried talismans clipped to dashboards—small Orthodox icons, braided rosary beads, a cigarette lighter with a faded photograph tucked beneath the metal. Petrov tapped the lighter and grinned at Bargideon in the way men grin when they offer you a life that cannot be explained by words. “These keep watch,” he said.
Bargideon nodded and found himself smiling back. It was an involuntary alliance. The men looked at him as if he had been given to them by the field itself: odd, useful, perhaps luck.
Voronov walked the line, stopping to bark an order—shift left, hold, withdraw the second echelon—and Bargideon watched how the colonel’s hands moved. There was no grand flourish; the motions were all practical, curt anatomical instructions that translated a map into men. Bargideon felt the old thrill of command—the small, terrible clarity when the world compresses to a segment of time and choice: point, move, fire.
Near the broken T-34 a woman worked in the makeshift aid station. She dressed wounds with a steady hand, her hair tied back so no stray locks could soil the bandages. Her name was Nadya, someone whispered—she was a medic who swore like a sailor and laughed like a child. When she glanced at Bargideon, there was the quick recognition of shared work. She did not ask his name. Instead she handed him a strip of gauze and a snapped smile.
“Here,” she said. “You’ll help. Hold this while I cut—don’t be that foreigner who faints when the blood comes.”
He did not mince the gauze. Up close, he smelled medicinal alcohol and the metallic tang of blood, and for a moment the world receded into tasks: staunch the wound, press the bandage, hand the syringe. The simple utility of it steadied him. When Nadya’s eyes met his, there was neither pity nor inquiry—only the quick acceptance of someone who needed hands.
“You moved well,” she said when they had finished. “Where did you come from?”
“From the north,” he answered. “A long way.” It felt like the truth.
The men prepared ammunition with mechanical choreography: belts of rounds fed into crates, shells tipped with the measured hands of bread bakers. Bargideon shifted beside them, feeling the familiar calluses form in his palms as he hefted shells and passed them along. His arms remembered the exact pressure a round required to seat into a breach without jam. A corporal clapped him on the shoulder—petrol grease on his palm like a benediction.
“You are of use,” the corporal said simply.
Between tasks Bargideon drifted toward the map, toward the place Voronov had marked. The colonel noticed and allowed him near, as if watching a man finding his feet. “Tell me what you see,” Voronov said. “Not theoretics; tell me what you would do with these men.”
Bargideon knelt and dragged a finger through the dirt, sketching a line, a marsh, the slope of an unseen ravine. He spoke in short, confident bursts: anchor a group in the marsh, use the elevation for an ambush, mask the assault with smoke and leave the heavy armor in reserve to counter the Tigers’ lanes. With each suggestion his voice steadied; with each plan the colonel’s eyebrows lowered in concentration.
“And the losses?” Voronov asked.
“Acceptable,” Bargideon said. He hated the word as soon as it passed his mouth. Petrov glanced at him, a question in the tilt of his head. Bargideon met it with no answers—not yet—but the men around him took his words and filed them into the work of living.
When a scout rode up with news that the German formation would crest the ridge in less than an hour, a hush fell. The camp tightened to the single task at hand: prepare the guns; keep the tracks clear; pray as you must. Men kissed icons, spat on palms, checked sights and treads. The lull was not peace—it was the concentrated breath before a punch.
Left alone for a breath, Bargideon let his palms rest against the cold of the map table. The paper had the brittle smell of damp and ink. He closed his eyes and the image of the woman at Narva—her shawl, the bowl—came unbidden, as if two rivers had braided in his head. Where had he been taken? How had the crossing put him here, in sun and mud instead of snow and river?
The answer did not arrive as a revelation. It arrived as a weight settling into place, a new limb learned by a body that had been practiced into motion: he was a witness. Memory would be his instrument; the world his ledger. He had no say in the matter, but he was learning the contours of the obligation.
Tanks fired once: a long, warning staccato that rolled like the flick of a whip. Bargideon felt the rhythm he had first recognized at Narva—footsteps across snow, lullabies in a fog—echo now in the rolling cadence of treads and the precise, terrible heartbeat of a gun being fired. He had not chosen this path. He had been set upon it. But as the first shell left with a thunderous peel, something like acceptance slid into his chest.
Voronov’s voice cut through the thought. “Places!” he barked. “We hold. We do not give ground. We will show them that men who dig can make iron fall.”
The Norwegian would remember. He would record. He would stand at the edge of each moment and take note, because the world had decided that someone must.
____________________________________________________________________________
The command dugout smelled of wet wool and kerosene. Maps were pinned to the timber wall, corners curling in the damp.
Colonel Yoronov stood over them, tracing the pencil line of the railway embankment with a gloved finger.
“The Germans will try to cross here,” he said. “When they do, Petrov’s engineers collapse the culvert and trap the lead element.”
He turned to me. His eyes were gray as spent cartridges. “You said you’ve commanded armor before.”
I nodded. “Norwegian armored liaison, British equipment, 1940.”
He studied me for a long moment, then pointed to a name scrawled on the map: 3rd Tank Group, Section B.
“Fine. You’ll take one of ours. T-34 number 217. Crew’s green—their commander died yesterday. You speak enough Russian to keep them alive?”
“I’ll learn faster than they die.”
That earned a faint smile. “Fine words. You move with Petrov’s line. He cuts the bridge, you plug the gap.” He tore a slip from the operations pad and pushed it across the table.
“Welcome to the Red Army, Comrade Bargideon. Try not to get killed before we can write you into the roster.”
I folded the paper into my breast pocket and went to find the tank.
Outside, rain fell in thin needles. I walked toward the line of waiting armor, their engines ticking softly in the cold, and thought of the strange providence that put a Norwegian in command of a Russian tank on Russian soil.
They had been digging since dawn.
The rain turned the soil to soup, and every spadeful slurped like death rattles. Sergeant Petrov kept his men working by rhythm rather than courage; rhythm was the only thing that kept men from thinking.
“Depth one meter, width half,” he muttered. “Enough to seat two bundles.”
Corporal Leshkov slid beside him, hands shaking as he pulled the canvas satchel open. Inside were the charges—thin bricks of TNT wrapped in waxed paper, smelling faintly like sweet almonds.
Petrov glanced at him. “Steady, Kolya. You’ve done this before.”
“Never with Tigers watching,” Leshkov whispered.
Above them, on the far ridge, the German armor idled—three shapes, black against the horizon, waiting for the infantry to clear the path. The vibration of their engines came through the ground like a heartbeat.
Petrov checked his watch. Twenty minutes until scheduled detonation. He crawled out of the gully and scanned the field. Through the drizzle he saw movement—Soviet armor taking position two ridges back. One of the T-34s bore a foreign marking, a Norwegian tankers jacket clinging to the man who climbed into it.
“New blood,” Petrov murmured. “Let’s hope he’s not cursed.”
The wind carried the smell of rain and cordite across the steppe. From the ridge, I could see the culvert—thin, almost delicate, where the road sagged over it. Petrov’s men were already ghosts in the mist, crouched along the embankment, their shapes half-swallowed by reeds and smoke.
The hatch of 217 slammed shut above me with a familiar metallic thud that always felt like sealing a coffin.
Inside was oil, iron, and the human smell of nerves.
“Charges set,” I heard Petrov say through the tanks comms, his voice low but calm. “Timing fuses three minutes.”
I remembered his face from earlier. I had seen his hands—scarred, nails black with oil and mud. He was a sapper, born for this sort of quiet suicide.
“Three minutes,” I repeated to the nervous, eager crew, “And then the wolves come”
Levin gave a tight smile. “Better the wolves than the Tigers.”
“Engines start,” I said.
Levin coaxed the diesel to life; the hull shuddered and began to breathe.
Gunner Yaroshenko peered through his sight, murmuring numbers.
“Still there. Three Tigers, maybe four. The big ones.”
I leaned closer to the periscope. The German armor was moving—slow, deliberate and confident in the mist. Too confident to be careful. Somewhere beyond them, Petrov’s men waited under the earth.
“Fuse lines clear,” Petrov said, crouching by the charge pit.
Leshkov nodded, rain streaming off his helmet. “Timed to three minutes, Sergeant.”
Petrov looked toward the ridge. Through the drizzle he caught movement—Soviet armor forming up two ridges back.
Ten minutes until the trap would spring.
The smoke was lowering now, heavy and mean. We moved along its edge, engines throttled down to a crawl.
Yaroshenko kept whispering—distances, bearings, small prayers wrapped in numbers.
The loader hummed tunelessly to keep his hands from shaking.
I said nothing. My thoughts were back in Narvik—ice instead of mud, silence instead of the iron chorus of war. I remembered the first tank I’d ever seen die: the way the heat bent the air, how the smell clung to your clothes for days. It never leaves you; it only waits for the next one.
Petrov’s hand rose, signaling his men to ready. The Tigers were moving now—tracks grinding, timbers protesting under the weight. He could see their commander standing in the open hatch, binoculars steady, certain of his superiority.
He waited until the first crossed the midpoint of the culvert. Then he raised his arm high.
Leshkov struck the flare. The line hissed white through the rain.
“Run!”
They dove for the ditch as the world split open.
The blast swallowed sound, air, and prayer alike. Mud and timbers leapt skyward; water turned to steam. When Petrov lifted his head, the lead Tiger was listing into the pit, its engine howling like a trapped creature. Its wingman had stopped short, grinding to a halt. For an instant, there was silence. Even the rain stopped.
Through the periscope I saw it—an eruption of earth and steel like a buried god’s heartbeat—timbers and soil flying high, vapor rising, and the Tiger—so proud, so indestructible—lurching sideways into the pit. Mud and steel folded together like broken bones. ahead, fire blooming where the culvert should have been.
“Detonation!” Levin said, awe in his voice.
“Forward, thirty degrees right,” I ordered. ““We close the gap before they recover.”
Our engine roared, tracks clawing through the muck. The hull rocked as we hit the uneven ground. We lurched ahead. Mud churned under the tracks; smoke blurred the world into grays and blacks.
Yaroshenko’s tone sharpened. “Range four hundred. Tiger number one crippled but turret active.”
I leaned over his shoulder, peering through the sight. The German gunner was alive—already turning the barrel our direction.
“Fire.”
The shell struck low—too low—throwing mud over the German’s glacis. The Tiger fired back. Its shell tore into the ridge behind us, shaking the whole steppe.
Levin swore and backed us into a depression. The world narrowed to thunder and heat.
“Calm,” I said quietly. “They’ll waste their second shot on smoke. Flank left when I say.”
Yaroshenko grinned without humor. “You think we’ll live to flank?”
“Until we die, we maneuver,” I replied.
He laughed once—sharp, nervous—and sighted again.
The crippled Tiger fired blind into the smoke. Its second shell ricocheted wide, screaming like an animal.
Bargideon ordered “Now!”
Levin jerked the tiller; the tank lunged forward and left. We bounced hard, nearly throwing the loader against the wall. Through the periscope I saw the second Tiger moving—trying to cover its partner.
“They’re calling for infantry,” Levin said, eyes fixed ahead. “Dust rising near the treeline.”
He was right. German grenadiers were advancing in staggered formation, hunched low, rifles glinting.
“Machine gun, suppress!”
The bow gunner rattled off a burst. The chatter filled the cabin, deafening. Tracers cut orange lines through the fog.
“AP ready,” Yaroshenko said.
“Fire.”
The round hit home this time—side armor, near the turret ring. The Tiger shuddered, hissed steam, then froze.
For a long second, it stayed upright, its barrel pointing skyward, like a monument to arrogance. Then it began to burn from within, slow and deliberate.
Petrov’s men cheered from the ridge. The sound was thin but it carried.
“Hold fire,” I ordered. “Let them finish it.”
The flames spread fast. The German crew’s hatches opened; one man crawled out, half his uniform melted to him. He didn’t scream, only looked at the horizon as if he’d misplaced something there.
Levin exhaled. “My brother burned like that outside Minsk,” he said quietly.
No one answered, then the loader wiped soot from his face and said, “Then let it be even.”
We were moving again before the sentence finished. The second Tiger had regained traction. It reversed from the embankment, tracks throwing mud like shrapnel.
Petrov had crawled up the bank, ears ringing. The German gun fired once, blindly, and the shell tore overhead with a scream that seemed to peel the sky. He saw the Norwegian’s T-34 pivot left, using the smoke as cover. Its turret flared once, then twice, then the Tiger burned.
He grinned despite himself. “That foreigner’s got teeth,” he said.
Behind him, Leshkov was shaking, his mouth full of mud.
“Is it over?”
Petrov shook his head. “It’s never over. We dig again tomorrow.”
The third Tiger appeared through the fog, reversing off the ridge, gun swinging toward us.
“Two o’clock!” Yaroshenko shouted. “Coming about! He’s trying to hull down!”
“Close distance, make it personal!” I said. “Two hundred. Flank left. Use the smoke.”
Levin threw the tank into gear, the tank groaned as we accelerated, mud spraying in arcs. The Tiger fired—short, the shell punching dirt in front of us. We disappeared behind the plume.
“Loader!”
“AP in!”
“AP loaded,” Yaroshenko said, voice steady again.
““Steady… Wait for his turret to turn… now!”
We broke from the smoke and fired.
The shell hit the Tiger’s side plate, ripped through the armor and burst inside. Flames erupted from its vents, black first, then orange. The turret rocked, lifted slightly, then slammed down crooked. Smoke, then flame. It halted, rocking gently as if uncertain how to die.
A hatch opened; a man climbed halfway out burning, fell to the dirt, and did not move again.
“Target neutralized,” Yaroshenko said.
He didn’t sound triumphant—only tired.
Outside, Petrov’s men were waving, signaling the all-clear. A few ran toward the wreck, their shapes small against the burning hulk. They would strip what they could: radios, optics, rations—war reduced to scavenging.
“Cease advance,” I said.
Levin pulled us to a stop near the culvert. The water there had turned black with oil.
From the ridge, Petrov saw the flare of the fires paint the clouds orange. He felt both pride and weariness.
His men began to cheer while rummaging the flaming hulks; he silenced them with a gesture.
“Collect the spare wire,” he said. “And keep your heads down. The next barrage will be theirs.”
He limped toward the culvert to see the damage firsthand. The bridge was gone, the road a wound of mud and smoke. In the distance, the Soviet tanks were regrouping, their silhouettes black against the firelight.
We began to advance again slowly. Heat shimmered off the wreck. Petrov’s men were tiny shadows amid the debris, scavenging whatever war would leave them.
Levin halted the T-34 and stopped the engine. The world seemed to exhale.
We climbed out onto the hull. Rain hissed on the hot steel. The smell of oil and burned paint hung thick.The horizon flickered with distant flashes—artillery still arguing somewhere far away.
Petrov came down the slope, helmet tucked under his arm, his face streaked with mud and ash and fighting through exhaustion.
“Good timing, Commander, you’ve still got a wolf’s nose for it.”” he called. “Your aim makes my bridges worth breaking.”
I looked at the ruined Tigers, the shattered culvert, the bodies half-buried in mud. “You baited them well.”
He shrugged. “Men are better bait than bridges.”
I didn’t laugh. He hadn’t meant it as a joke.
That one line stayed with me longer than the sound of the explosions.
That night we bivouacked in the shell of a farmhouse.
The roof leaked; the walls sweated soot. The men ate without appetite.
Levin finally spoke. “You think they ever saw us, those in the second Tiger?”
“No,” Yaroshenko said. “They saw smoke, then light, then nothing. That’s all war is—light and nothing.”
The loader chuckled bitterly. “Then we’re all nothing, eh?”
I didn’t answer. I was writing in my journal by the dim light of a candle stub. My hand trembled—not from fear, but from memory. There had been a time, years before, when I’d believed courage could wash away guilt. But every fight only made the ledger longer.
Outside, Petrov’s men dug in, stringing wire, resetting mines, preparing for the next wave. They moved with the weary rhythm of men who understood that surviving one day only meant being present for the next.
The earth never rests; it only waits for the next set of fools to disturb it.
At midnight, I stepped outside. The steppe was silver under the rain. The burning Tigers were still visible on the horizon, their fires stubborn against the weather.—two suns set in the wrong sky.
I thought of the German gunner—whoever he was—his face turned to the sky as the fire took him. Somewhere, he had written letters home. Somewhere, his mother still waited for news.
I took off my cap and let the rain strike my face.
“War has no victory,” I said again, though this time it wasn’t to my crew. “Only witnesses.”
To Be Continued