'Perhaps he knew Oleg Koshevoi and his friends of the Young Guard underground organization?' I said, remembering that one of the Young Guards had been called Shulga.
. 'Yes, he may have been a relative of Matvei Shulga. Anything is possible,' Lazarev agreed. 'I must check that.
In any case, Stetsuk told me that Captain Shulga was a very brave officer...'
... I have seen many museums in my lifetime and listened to a good many museum guides, but none of them ever moved me so much as Valerian Dmitrievich. We had known every stone of the Old Fortress since childhood, every moss-covered wall; we had tapped and explored every tower in search of hidden treasure. Now the new history of this Podolian stronghold, as described by Lazarev, came to life in every detail. It was the history of how Soviet people had defended our native land. As we listened to Lazarev, we seemed to see the sturdy broad- shouldered commander of the fortress, Ivan Stetsuk.
Towards evening Stetsuk comes into the fortress. His face under the leather helmet of a tank soldier is grimed with dust and oil. He keeps his wounded hand behind his back. Blood is oozing from it. He shows no sign of the intense pain he is suffering, lit would be wrong for the garrison if it knew their commander was wounded.
Before him in the snow-damp yard surrounded by watch-towers his men have formed up—Siberians, men from Moscow, from Odessa. They are the remnants of the advanced detachment that staggered the Hitlerite rear on the line of the Zbruch and forced its way through the dark forests round the Dniester to the rocky banks of the Smotrich.
Senior Lieutenant Stetsuk regards his men and officers in silence. They scan his face hopefully. Tired and gaunt, they are wondering what reassurance their commander will bring them, cut off as they are from their own forces.
Stetsuk says simply:
'We are going to hold this fortress to the last shot. Understand? If necessary, we shall die for our great cause, but we shall not let the enemy through!'
.. . Before Stetsuk stood the last man of the garrison to receive his orders—Dima Bezverkhy.
Many of the men did not even know the surname of this bright blue-eyed lad, and simply called him Dima.
Dima had been with the brigade since its formation and had fought his way to the foot-hills of the Carpathians. Before the war he had planned to enter a mining institute when he left school. 'The only thing I want to be is a mining engineer,' he often said' to Stetsuk. 'I want to look for coal under the earth.'
That March evening Dima shifted from one foot to the other in the cold and looked up at his commander with clear boyish eyes—he was only just fourteen.
'What shall I do with you, Dima?' said Stetsuk. 'Perhaps you'll stay with me?' But seeing the disappointment in the boy's eyes, he said: 'You know what? See that tower over there, on the ledge? Take a machine-gun and get inside it.'
It was the round tower behind the museum. Dima picked up the light machine-gun and dashed across the yard.
A few minutes later Stetsuk noticed Dima's cheerful face in the top window of the tower. The boy had taken off his helmet and was waving it to attract the attention of his commander. Stetsuk pointed out the direction Dima was to cover—enemy tanks might approach the bridge from Orinin. Dima realized the meaning of his commander's gestures and took his machine-gun over to the loophole on the opposite side. . . Thus the young Siberian lad became defender of the Archbishop Tower.
... Artillery rumbled dully near the station. Up the line the village of Shatava was in flames. As darkness fell the glow spread across the horizon. But the old town still stood firm on its impregnable cliffs surrounded by the river Smotrich.
'... And in the morning it started!' Lazarev continued his story. 'Not only the Tigers and Panthers advancing from the road-fork kept the fortress under fire. It was bombarded by batteries in concealed positions that were out of range of Stetsuk's guns. The gun crews of the batteries mounted on Otter Bank could see the fortress perfectly. Several times the German tanks attempted to break through to the bridge, but every time the garrison barred their advance... And it was very difficult to fight mobile forces from towers. Quite often Stetsuk stationed his men on the walls and earthworks round the fortress and fought the enemy from there. The next day the Hitlerites tried to get into the town from the Karvasar side, but again they were thrown back...'
'By a counter-attack?' Petka asked. 'That's right,' said Lazarev. 'Part of the garrison left the fortress and mowed them down before they could reach that little bridge.'
Valerian Dmitrievich led us to the ruins of a tower near the guard-house.
'You see the remains of this tower?' he said. 'Still haven't forgotten its name?... This is the Commandant Tower. On the fourth day of the siege a direct hit on the tower killed soldier Krasnuk... That day the artillery bombardment was ceaseless. The position of the garrison had become very serious. They had no more bread, no more sugar and their water supply had run out. And suddenly at that critical moment, Dima came running up: 'Comrade Senior Lieutenant! There's a live goat up there in the attic!
Can I bring it down?' Stetsuk, of course, consented willingly and gave Dima his sheath-knife. A few minutes later, Dima climbed back down the drain-pipe, scared to death, and shouted: 'The place is full of animals but none of them move! They must be bewitched, or something!.. .' And you know, it was I who had hidden my zoological collection of stuffed animals in the tower when, the town was evacuated. . . You'd have thought the men would have been too tired to laugh at a thing like that, but the joke about Dima and the goat flashed round every post and raised their spirits. And then they found water...' 'In the Black Tower?' I asked.
'Yes, in the Black Tower,' Lazarev said. 'You see, it wouldn't have been difficult for us to find water here, we're natives of the place. But for them it was harder. The fit ones among them had given the last of their bread and sugar to the wounded. But that was not enough. The wounded men lay in one of the rooms of the museum, suffering terribly from thirst. You can imagine their joy when water was discovered!
'The Hitlerites had surrounded the fortress and would not allow any of the local population to approach it.
'But on the fifth day of the defence, one local man did manage to reach the fortress by climbing the almost sheer cliffs above Karvasar. He told Stetsuk that he could show him the exact positions of the enemy batteries bombarding the fortress. Stetsuk trusted the man as a Soviet patriot. He sent with him Corporal Myshlyaev and another soldier from the motorized infantry whose full name we still have not been able to discover. All we know is that people called him Sashko. He was nineteen and in spite of his youth he had already been decorated with the Order of Lenin.
'It was getting dark when they left the fortress. The local man borrowed Sashko's submachine-gun and disposed of an enemy sentry, thus providing himself with a weapon.
'The three of them made their way through the back yards to Orlovsky's Mill, where a German battery was stationed. They wiped out its crew and threw the breechblocks from the guns into the river. That happened half an hour after they had left the fortress. After that they put eight guns which had been shelling the fortress out of action. First they would deal with the crew, then smash the breech-blocks, and on they went!
'In one of the skirmishes the guide was wounded in the arm. Then the three made their way to a hut in the forest where this local man was living, bandaged his arm, picked up some food, and moved on... On the second of April all three of them were found dead near a shattered German machine-gun.'..'
''Did you find out the name of the guide, Valerian Dmitrievich?' Maremukha asked. 'He must have come from round here.'
'He certainly did, he was a pupil of mine... His name was Yosif Vikentievich Starodomsky!' Lazarev said proudly. 'I don't suppose you remember him. He was away from the town for a long time.'
'Not remember Starodomsky? Yuzik, Weasel!' I exclaimed.
'But Starodomsky was 'a sailor,' Maremukha put in, also surprised. 'How did he come to be here, so far from the sea, and in war-time too?'
'He was a sailor, you're right there,' Lazarev replied, 'perhaps I am in a better position than anyone else in this town to confirm that. Come into the museum for a minute. . .'
A clear smiling face looked down at us from a photograph draped with mourning. Yuzik wore a smart naval cap. His face had remained almost as thin and dark and stubborn as on that July morning twenty years ago when Yuzik and I stood on the captain's bridge as our ship steamed into Mariupol.
