he had been given hurried instructions in the use of a .122-millimeter cannon, but with time running out, the exasperated instructor finally told him to teach himself. As best he could, Petrov mastered the techniques of firing the heavy weapon that had a range of nearly six miles.
The squat, wavy-haired sergeant had spent months as a construction worker in Kuibyshev before being drafted. There he unexpectedly met his brother, who told him the rest of his family— his mother, father, and sister—had been swallowed up in the Ukraine by the German advance. They had not been heard from in more than a year.
When ordered into Stalingrad, Petrov went to the dock and saw that the other shore of the Volga was a solid wall of flames. Though scared to death, he knew he would go across. But other Russians would not, and Petrov watched as NKVD guards fired in the air over the deserters, and then killed them when they ran from the landing. After Alexei climbed on board the barge, the NKVD took no further chances. Guards lined the rails to prevent anyone from jumping overboard.
Bombers came over, seeking out the steamers and tugs. German mortars behind Mamaev reached out for them, and Petrov cursed the slowness of the voyage as the river froze in a midday tableau. Feeling trapped and vulnerable, he crouched down to hide from shrapnel singing by his ears. Men slipped off the sides to drown. Bullets thudded into flesh and soldiers sagged against neighbors and died without a word. Petrov saw the Volga water clearly. It was a swirling mixture of water and bright red blood.
His boat took nearly two hours to reach a landing site under the cliff. While the dead covered the deck, the living scrambled off. Nearly half of Petrov’s regiment had died crossing the river.
Because most of his unit was already dead, he now had to fight as an infantryman. His baptism to war was brutal. Three scouts went ahead to gauge German strength. Two came back. Petrov picked up his field glasses and scanned no-man’s-land for the missing man.
He was out there, spread-eagled on the ground. The Germans had thrust a bayonetted rifle into his stomach and left him face up in the open. Petrov and his squad went berserk. Screaming hoarsely, they jumped from their holes and ran forward. Bursting into a line of houses, they killed anyone who rose before them. When several Germans raised their hands in surrender, Petrov squeezed the trigger of his tommy gun and killed them all.
He came to an elderly Russian soldier, bending over a woman. Her jet black hair streaming back in a carefully arranged way, she seemed to be sleeping. The man was moaning softly: “Dear girl, dear girl, why should a young person like you have to die in such a war?”
Alexei Petrov stood beside the couple and cried bitterly as he looked down at the beautiful woman. Then he ran off to kill her tormentors.
In the hallway of a house, he listened to a German wailing in one of the downstairs rooms. The soldier prayed: “Oh God, let me live after this war.” Petrov rammed the door open and saw a kneeling man who looked up at him pleadingly. Petrov fired into his face.
Wild-eyed, he went from floor to floor, smashing open doors, looking for gray green uniforms. The pounding brought Germans out of different rooms; Petrov shot three more as they ran down the stairs.
Exhausted, his anger eased. The house became very still. He stepped over the bodies on the stairway and went out the front door to find his own men.
During the afternoon of September 23, another contingent from the 284th Division set out from the far shore on barges. Twenty-year-old Tania Chernova found space at the edge of a barge and sat down with her knees against her chest for the grim ride. Some of the 150 soldiers on board pleaded with the perky blond to move into the middle of the group and share some vodka. But she tossed her head in reply and stayed where she was.
Tania had not wanted to be a soldier. As a child she had worn ballet slippers and practiced pirouettes; later, she had studied medicine. But when the Germans invaded Russia, Tania forgot her dreams of becoming a doctor, and embarked on a relentless war against the enemy, whom she always referred to as “sticks” that one broke because she refused to think of them as human beings.
As a partisan, she had broken several “sticks” in the forests of Byelorussia and the Ukraine. The experience had hardened her outlook on life, and she looked forward with enthusiasm to renewing her vendetta in Stalingrad.
The sky suddenly filled with red and orange balls of flame as the barge struggled laboriously through ugly water spouts toward a landing point somewhere near the Red October Plant. Tania started talking to two men, one about fifty and the other more her age, when a German plane dropped a bomb squarely in the center of the craft. Tania and her two comrades flew into the water and came up swimming for the Stalingrad shore. As they fought to stay afloat, the current carried them further downstream. Tania finally dragged herself onto a sandbar on the west bank of the river and ducked into a sewer outlet. The other two soldiers followed. They had no idea where they were or who controlled the land above them.
Hoping to find an exit in safe territory, the three walked on in the blackened sewer. Their footsteps echoed hollowly as they felt their way. The stench made them gag; excrement clung to their shoes and pants. When the old man fainted, Tania and her friend dragged him for a while, but exhausted and nauseous themselves, they left him lying in the filth.
Finally they climbed out of a manhole somewhere in the city. Tania saw a group of soldiers, mess tins in hand, lining up in front of a building. Famished, they got in line. A soldier turned around, his nose wrinkling in disgust, “What in God’s name is that smell?” He spoke in German. Tania decided to bluff her way through. Pretending not to hear him, she kept her place.
In the mess hall, Tania and her companion sat side by side with Germans who complained bitterly about the sickening aroma. Somebody shouted, “What is that rotten stench?” Tania wrinkled her nose, too. A German officer suddenly recognized her as a Russian. Before he could react, a Russian cook rushed over to assure him she worked for the German Army. The officer ordered the two out, but the friendly cook took them into the kitchen and fed them. The German came back again and demanded they leave because they stank so badly.
Still defiant, the two pariahs calmly walked out of the mess hall and searched for the Russian lines. At nightfall they crawled through no-man’s-land and met their countrymen, who gave them clean clothes, a drink, and new rifles.
The German 71st Division continued to advance slowly toward the main ferry. Only a few places like the Dragan strongpoint still held out, and they made the cost frightful. On the morning of September 25, at the intersection of Krasnopeterskoya Street, Dragan had ten men left. During the previous night, two of his twelve men had deserted. A lieutenant and a private slipped out, ran down to the river, and made off on a raft. Only the lieutenant reached headquarters on the other side. Anxious to cover his tracks and convinced that the 1st Battalion was doomed, he reported everyone dead and said he personally had buried Anton Dragan near the Volga.
But in his fortress, Anton Dragan was munching burned grain and waiting for the Germans to rush him. They came again and Dragan’s men threw their last grenades and heaved bricks through the windows. When the sound of a tank motor suddenly was heard, Dragan sent a soldier out with an antitank rifle and the last three shells. The Germans quickly seized him.
An hour later, an enemy platoon appeared directly in front of Dragan’s machine gun. Immediately assuming the captured man had told the Germans this was the defenders’ blindspot, Dragan fired his last 250 bullets at the enemy. Finally out of ammunition and wounded in the hand by return fire, he propped himself up and stared numbly at the rows of dead men in the street.
Shortly afterward, the nine Russian holdouts heard some Germans calling to them from outside. When they peeked out, they saw their captured comrade being pushed onto a pile of debris. While the First Battalion looked on, a German shot him in the head.
Shaking hands and embracing, the nine Russians in the house said good-bye to each other. Dragan’s orderly laboriously scratched on a wall, “Rodimtsev’s guardsmen fought and died for their country here.” German tanks, black and squat, came around a corner and fired directly into the building. Something hit Dragan in the head and he passed out. When he woke up it was dark and his orderly was grabbing at him.
The building had fallen down, but in the basement, the six survivors called each other’s names. Buried alive, the air going fast, their only hope was to dig their way out. Their wounds aching, and their teeth caked with accumulated dust and grime, they kept clawing at the rubble. Suddenly a cool breeze hit them and they saw stars in the autumn sky.
