it. Returning to the dugout, Pug encountered three big blank-faced Russians, marching with bayonets around Pamela, who looked vaguely embarrassed and amused.
Before they left, the lieutenant showed Pug and Tudsbury through the soldiers’ dugouts, obviously proud of the men’s workmanship. These freshly dug puddle-filled holes in the damp earth, smelling like graves, did have timbered roofs that might survive a shell hit, and the mud-caked, unshaven soldiers, crouched in their greatcoats in the gloom, appeared content enough to smoke and talk and wait for orders here. Pug saw some feeding themselves with torn chunks of gray bread and dollops of stew from a muddy tureen lugged by two muddy soldiers. Munching on their bread dragging at their cigarettes, these men placidly stared at the visitors, and slowly moved their heads to watch them walk through the trenches. Health-looking, well-nourished, they seemed as much at home in the red earth as earthworms, and they seemed almost as tough, abundant, and simple a form of life. Here Victor first got an ineradicable feeling that Yevlenko had told truth: that the Germans might gain the biggest victories, but that the Red Army would in time drive them out.
“Ye gods,” Tudsbury managed to mutter on the way back to the car, “Belgium in 1915 was nothing like this. They live like animals.”
“They can,” Henry replied, and said no more, for Amphiteatrov’s eye was on them in these brief asides.
“Well, we are not really far from our destination,” the Russian said, wiping rain from his face and helping Pamela into the back seat. “If not for the mud, we would have been there now.”
“The car bumped and slopped out of the woods. Cleared fields stretched for miles ahead, flat as a table, under gray low clouds. “There’s where we’re going.” Amphiteatrov pointed straight ahead to a distant line of forest. They came to a crossroads of mud churned up like water at a boil, and though the road ahead looked good, the driver slithered the car sharp right.
“Why don’t we drive straight on?” Pamela said. “Doesn’t the rod go through?”
“Oh, yes. It goes through. It’s mined. This whole area” — the colonel’s arm swept around the quiet stubbly fields — “is mined.”
Pug said, somewhat chilled, “Nice to know these things when you start out.”
Amphiteatrov gave him his infrequent wolfish, red-gummed smile, and wiped a clear drop from his thin bluish nose. “Well, yes, Captain. Your tourist guide in these parts should really know what is what. Otherwise your health could be affected.”
They jolted along the soupy track in rain that made it soupier, but in time the car sank with all four wheels into the mire, and halted amid long rows of yellow stubble stretching out of sight. No rescuers appeared; they could not have, without rising from the earth, but Pug half thought they might. The driver shovelled the wheels clear and laid planks to the back tires. When the passengers got out to lighten the car, Amphiteatrov warned them to stay in the road, for mines were planted everywhere under the stubble. Showering muck and splinters all over them, the car lurched free. On they went.
Pug gave up trying to guess the direction. They never passed a road marker or signpost. The low gray clouds showed no sun patch. In the forest of the earthworm soldiers, the artillery thumps had been fainter than in the village. Here they were considerably louder. But zigzags in the front line could cause that. Obviously they had stopped going west, because westward were the Germans. The car appeared to be meandering five miles or so behind the fire zone.
“Here we will go a bit out of the way,” the tank colonel said at another crossroads, “but you will see something interesting.” They entered fields where tall yellow-green stalks of grain stood unharvested and rotting. After a mile or so Amphiteatrov told the driver to stop. “Perhaps you won’t mind stretching your legs,” he said. “You all have nice thick boots.” He gave Pamela an odd look. “But you might find this walk boring. Perhaps you will stay with the driver here?”
“I’ll come, unless you tell me to stay.”
“Very well. Come.”
They went pushing in among the stalks. The wet quiet field of overripe grain smelled sweet, almost like an orchard. But the visitors, squelching along behind Amphiteatrov in a file, soon glanced at each other in revulsion as a rotten stench hit their noses. They broke into a clear space and saw why. They were looking at a battlefield.
In every direction, the grain was crushed flat in crisscrossing swathes of brown muck. Random patches of stalks still stood; and amid the long brown slashes and the green-yellow clumps, damaged tanks lay scattered on their sides, or turned clear over, or canted, their camouflage paint blistered and burned black, their caterpillar tracks torn, their armor plate blown open. Seven of the tanks bore German markings; two were light Russian T-26 tanks, such as Pug had often seen moving through Moscow. The stink rose from German corpses, sprawled in green forms here and there on the ground, and others slumped in blown-open tanks. Their dead purple faces were bloated disgustingly and covered with fat black flies, but one could see they had been youngsters. Pamela turned pale and clapped a handkerchief to her face.
“Well, I am sorry,” said the colonel, an ugly gleam lighting his face. “This happened only day before yesterday. These Fritzes were probing and got caught. Their comrades went away from here and wouldn’t stop to dig graves, being in a slight hurry.”
Helmets, papers, and broken bottles were littered among the tanks and the corpses, and the oddest sight was a mess of women’s underwear — pink, blue, and white drawers and petticoats — heaped soiled and sodden in the mud near an overturned tank. Pamela, eyebrows rising over the handkerchief, pointed to these.
“Well, funny, isn’t it? I suppose Fritz stole those from a village. The Germans steal everything they can lay their hands on. That is why they have come into our country, after — to steal. We had a tough tank fight around Vyazma a month ago. One tank we blew up had a large fine marble clock in it, and also a dead pig. The fire ruined that pig. That was a pity. It was a very good pig. Well, I thought this night interest you.”
Pictures of hocked-out panzers were common in Moscow, but before this Victor Henry had seen actual German tanks only in Berlin, clanking down boulevards lined with red swastika flags, to the blare of brass-band marches over the loudspeakers and the hurrahs of crowds giving Nazi salutes; or else massed factory-fresh on trains of flat cars chugging to the front. Seeing a few broken and overturned in a desolate Russian cornfield two thousand miles from Berlin, with their crewmen rotting beside them in the mud, was a hard jolt. He said to the tank colonel, “Aren’t these Mark Threes? How could your T-26’s knock them out? They don’t fire a shell that can penetrate the Mark Three.”
Amphiteatrov grinned. “Well, very good. For a seaman you know a bit about tank warfare. But you had better ask the battalion commander who won this battle, so let us be on our way.”
They backtracked to the crossroads, headed toward the forest, and arrived at what looked like an open-air machine shop for tank repairs, in a village of a dozen or so thatched log cabins straggling along the road through wild woods. Detached caterpillar tracks stretched long and straight on the ground under the trees; bogie wheels were off; guns were off; and on every side men in black or blue coveralls hammered, filed, greased, and welded, shouting in Russian and laughing at each other. Strolling down the street in an olive-colored greatcoat too large for him, a short, hook-nosed, swarthy officer broke into a trot when he saw the black automobile. He saluted the colonel, then the two embraced and kissed. Introducing the visitors, Amphiteatrov said, “Major Kaplan, I showed our friends those busted German tanks out there. Our American Navy friend asked a real tankist’s question. He asked, how could T-26’s knock out Panzer Mark Threes?”
The battalion commander grinned from ear to ear, clapped Victor Henry on the back, and said in Russian, “Good, come this way.” Beyond the last cabin, he led them into the woods, past two lines of light tanks ranged under the trees and draped with camouflage netting over their own green-and-sand blotches. “Here we are,” he said proudly. “This is how we knocked out the Mark Threes.”
Dispersed in the thickets, all but invisible under branches and nets, five armored monsters thrust heavy square turrets with giant guns high in the air. Tudsbury’s mouth fell open, as he stared up at them. He nervously brushed his moustaches with a knuckle. “My God! What are these things?”
“Our newest Russian tank,” said Amphiteatrov. “General Yevlenko thought it might interest President Roosevelt.”
“Fantastic!” said Talky. “Why, I’d heard you had these monsters, but — What do they weigh? A hundred tons?
The Russians smiled at each other. Amphiteatrov said, “It’s a good tank.”
Tudsbury asked if they might climb inside one and to Pug’s surprise the colonel agreed. Young tankists helped the lame fat Englishman to the hatch, as Pug scrambled up. Inside the command turret, despite the clutter
