The attack was scheduled for 05:00 Moscow time or 03:00 Berlin time. Tadek itched to check his wristwatch “liberated” from one of the captured Germans but the strict order for “no lights” was still in effect. All around him, the same nervous fidgeting. Not a single infantryman could sleep that night. Countless pairs of eyes glistened in the pre-dawn darkness, trained on the frontline.
Something rustled ahead. All at once, several pairs of hands clutched at their rifles, breathless, fingers on triggers.
“Ne strelyat! Svoi!”
Don’t shoot. It’s us.
A collective breath of relief. The sappers were returning from their suicidal mission of clearing the no-man’s-land of mines in the middle of the night. Unlike their forcefully conscripted counterparts from the penal units who would have to clear the rest of the minefield with their own bodies, these men were revered and highly respected among the troops. Those were well-deserved laurels; not a single explosion broke the serene lull of the night. These sappers were professionals, valued by their commanders like gold. When one of them slipped into the trench, Tadek shook his hand with emotion. The sapper clapped him on his shoulder.
“Gotov?”
Ready?
The sapper’s job here was done. Now, it was Tadek’s job to obliterate what lay ahead of the no-man’s-land.
“Gotov,” he replied in Russian and turned back to the frontline, still concealed from his eyes by the wet mist and slowly dissolving darkness.
03:00 Berlin time. All at once, the deceivingly quiet front came alive with thousands of mortars and Katyushas. All around him, the earth trembled as the terrible thunder rolled forward like thousands of Jericho’s trumpets announcing the end of the world, no less. Tadek plugged his ears and opened his mouth to relieve the pressure on his eardrums. He almost pitied the artillerists manning those monstrosities behind him; he was certain they would all go deaf by the end of this bombardment. Of the Germans, who found themselves on the receiving end of this infernal assault, he didn’t even wish to think. Hardly anyone would survive such total obliteration that the 1st Belorussian Front’s commander Zhukov unleashed on their defense lines.
Just when Tadek had thought that the nightmare would never end, the guns had grown suddenly quiet. Through the ringing in his ears, he could still discern the frantic cawing of the birds flying in chaotic circles overhead, terrified out of their wits by not only the bombardment but by thousands of colorful flares that shot up into the sky at once – the signal for the main attack. They hung there for a few seconds like glowing, exotic jellyfish and all at once, it was suddenly daylight all around him, blinding and disorienting. The troops had been warned ahead of time of Zhukov’s recently conceived tactic of installing almost a hundred and fifty powerful searchlights trained on the German positions to stun them and render them defenseless. But even to the Soviet troops, the light had turned out to be so overpowering that it was impossible to look anywhere but straight ahead – ahead and ahead only, across the former no-man’s-land – to Berlin. The light urged them forward, toward the fountains of earth exploding in rapid succession, toward the smokescreen created by the exploded shells that had obscured everything from their sight, toward the trenches, where the torn bodies of their enemies now lay. There was no turning back now. Not a chance for desertion, not in this hellish madness. Perhaps, that was another part of Zhukov’s plan.
Not a single step back.
“Na Berlin!” – To Berlin! – A veritable roar of the charging infantry echoed all around him. And Tadek ran along with them, propelled forward by some inexplicable spirit of destructive delight, mad with a sudden fury and drunk with the desire for revenge.
On the border of Germany proper, next to the disabled carcasses of Wehrmacht vehicles, the very first troops that had crossed it installed a sign: “Here it is, accursed Germany.” The same hatred that they carried in themselves for this country, Tadek felt coursing in his own veins now. On his chest, a medal for courage was gleaming dimly in the smoke-stained morning. He shot and stabbed his way to Berlin along with the troops; first with Konev’s First Ukrainian Front, then with Zhukov’s First Belorussian but the further he went, the worse the withdrawal from such battles was growing. Almost like a hangover after a bad night of drinking, only there was no escaping the nauseating realization that the more lives he took, in revenge for what had been taken from him, the bigger the hole inside of him was growing, sucking the very life out of him with every new battle won.
With tanks rumbling on their heels, they finally reached the German positions. The very
