Chapter 55 Chapter Fifty-Five

It was a leaden day, and the snow was falling heavily, and the car drove across the white and empty plain.The driver drove on in a bumpy, rocking, skidding car, but Pug couldn't see the road ahead.What about mines?Pug believed that Anfidyetrov would not want to be bombed as much as he did, so he said nothing.After walking for about an hour, through the snow, I saw a bell tower with a yellow brick dome just ahead.They drove into a small town with hordes of soldiers coming and going and army trucks lurching up and down the muddy streets between the white-wood houses.From some trucks, blue-faced soldiers in bloodstained bandages stared out gloomily.The common people, mostly old women and children, stood in front of the house with snowflakes on their bodies, looking seriously at the passing vehicles.At the steps of a yellow-brick church Pug parted from the rest.An instructor came up and took him into a small British jeep. The officer wore a white leather jacket with a belt, with slanted Tatar eyes and a Lenin mustache.Talkey Tudsbury happily pointed to the jeep's trademark and said in Russian: "Ah, the British aid has finally reached the front!" The instructor replied in broken English that people and guns are needed to stop the Germans from advancing , instead of cars, British cars are weak and not up to heavy duty.

Pamela looked at Victor Henry seriously with wide eyes.Despite the weariness and dust of the journey, she looked charming, with the sheepskin hat tilted majestically on one side. "Be careful yourself," was the only thing she said. The jeep left the noisy town and headed west into the snow-covered silent forest.It seemed that they were firing directly in the direction of the front, but the gunfire was all coming from the left and going south.Perhaps, Pug thought, the sound of the guns ahead was being muffled by the snow.He saw lots of freshly fallen trees and bomb craters, covered in fresh snow.The instructor said that the Germans had bombed the place the day before yesterday, trying to lure the Russian artillery hidden in the woods to fire, but without success.The jeep jolted past some artillery units: large horse-drawn howitzers parked among evergreens and ready shells, manned by tired-faced, unshaven soldiers.

They came to a rough ditch between the blown trees, with high soil on both sides and a snow cover on it.The instructor said that these were fake trenches, and the soil had been raised on purpose so that they could be seen.There were a lot of shells here yesterday.The real trench was safe and sound a few hundred yards away.The real trench was dug along the bank, and its wooden top was level with the ground, covered with snow so that it could not be seen at all.The instructor parked the jeep in the woods, and he and Victor Henry crawled among the groves for the rest of the journey. "Our actions should be observed by the Germans as little as possible," said the Russian.

Here, in a deep mud hole—a machine-gun post manned by three soldiers—Victor Henry saw the Germans through sandbagged emplacements.They were working across the river with bulldozers, punts, dinghies and trucks, all clearly visible.Some were digging with shovels, others were patrolling with submachine guns.Unlike the Russians, who hide like underground wild animals, the Germans make no attempt to conceal their activities.If it weren't for the helmets, guns, and long gray overcoats, they would really look like a large number of people engaged in construction work in peacetime.Through a telescope handed to him by a soldier—the German telescope—Victor Henry was able to see the purple noses and faces of Hitler's frozen soldiers and the glasses they wore. "You can shoot them like birds," he said in Russian.It was as close as he could get to the American saying, "They're ducks that sit down."

The soldier muttered, "Yes, then we have exposed our target and attracted them to bombard us! No, thank you, Mr. America." "If they do fix the bridge," said the instructor, "we'll have plenty of time to put a lot of bullets in their heads when they start to cross the river." "That's what we're waiting for," said a pipe-smoking, bearded soldier who appeared to be the head of the burrow.Pug said, "Do you really think you'll hold if they come across?" The three soldiers looked up at each other to weigh the weight of the foreigner's broken Russian question.They had deflated looks on their lips.For the first time in this place where the Germans were already in sight, Pug saw an expression of terror on the faces of the Red Army. "Well, if then," said the pipe-smoker, "everyone has his day, a Russian soldier knows how to die."

The instructor said briskly: "The soldier's duty is to live, comrade, not to die - to fight alive. They can't cross the river. Our cannons are for them to cross the river. We only need to waste their time to repair the bridge and start crossing the river." Now, we're going to bomb these Hitlerites! Oh, Polikov? How about it?" "That's right," said the bearded, snotty-nosed soldier, crouching in a corner, breathing into frozen red hands. "Exactly, Comrade Instructor." Victor Henry and the trainer crawled through the trees and among the trees along the bunkers, bunkers, ditches, and military posts on this thinly defended line.The instructor said that a battalion of 900 men was deployed on a front five miles along the river to prevent the Germans from entering an important road. "This campaign is literally a race," the instructor gasped as they crawled between the bunkers. "The Germans want to run into Moscow before Grandpa Ice. That's what's going on there. They're going ahead with a lot of blood, but don't worry, Grandpa Ice is an old friend of the Russians and he'll freeze them all Die on the ice. You'll see, they'll never make it to the front."

The trainer is clearly on a morale-boosting mission.Wherever they went, if they met a leader in high spirits in the trenches, the soldiers seemed ready for battle, but elsewhere, from their sad eyes, slumped shoulders, shabby uniforms, Dirty weapons and leftovers litter the cavern, and there's a certain resignation to it.The instructor addressed them at length, cheering them up with the strange presence of an American, but the long-haired Slavs mostly looked at Henry with ironic suspicion, as if to say: "If you're really an American , why are you so stupid to come here? There is nothing we can do, our lives are bad."

The Germans could be seen all along the river, calmly and methodically preparing to cross the river.Pug thought that their seriousness was worse than the hail of bullets.The sheer number of them is also worth noting, where did they come from? After the instructor and Victor Henry emerged from the largest hole, they lay on the snow on their arms. "Well, Colonel, we're done with this part of the line. Maybe now you're going back to your fellows." "Let's go." The trainer struggled to stand up with a cold smile. "Walk in the shade." They got back in the jeep, and Pug asked, "How far are we from Moscow?"

"Oh, it's far enough." The instructor started the engine. "I hope you've seen what you wanted to see." "Saw a lot," Victor Henry said. The instructor turned the Lenin-like face to the American, who eyed him suspiciously. "It's not easy to understand the front line just by looking at it." "I understand that you need a second battlefield." The trainer grunted gruffly. "Then you understand the main thing. But even without a second front, Colonel Henry, we ourselves will wipe out these German plague gods if necessary."

When they returned to the town's central square, the snow had stopped.Pieces of blue sky pass through the clouds, as if they are moving rapidly.It was cold and windy, and the chaos of trucks, carts, horses, and soldiers was worse than ever.There were strong curses and arguments in Russian everywhere.Old women and wrinkled children still watched the chaos with wide, melancholy eyes.Two horses fell to the ground, as did the ammunition wagon, where the jeep and the black sedan met.A large number of vehicles crowded around, nearly forty soldiers and officers yelled loudly and watched the horses kicking and struggling in the messy mud ruts. Tacit Tudsbury stood aside excitedly.Some soldiers gathered the brass-colored cannonballs that fell out of the broken boxes and put them on the snow to shine. "Ah! Come back? What a mess! Strange how the whole wagon didn't blow up with a bang, didn't it? Just a big crater a hundred feet in diameter."

"Where's Pamela?" Tudsbury flicked his fingers over the shoulder. "In the church at the back, there is an enemy aircraft surveillance station for artillery in the bell tower. You can see it from there, but I can't go up this ghost tower. She records some situations there. How is the situation on the front line? You must take the whole situation Tell me all about it. Uh, freezing to death? You think the Germans are starting to get a little choked up? Oh, they got the horses up." Anfidyetrov said he was about to take Tudsbury to a nearby battlefield to see a downed Junker 88.Pug told him that he had seen quite a few Junkers 88s and that he would go to church and wait for them with Pamela.Anfidyetrov had a look of anger on his face. "All right, but wait there, Colonel. We'll be back in twenty minutes." Pug bid farewell to the bearded instructor, who was sitting behind the wheel of a jeep, shouting at a lanky soldier clutching a live white goose, who turned back and shouted, the goose turned orange. The mouth is open, and the two small eyes look at this person and then at that person, as if trying to figure out their own destiny.Pug skirted the tangle of vehicles and crunched his way to the church on dry snow.Being without an escort - even for just a few minutes - gave him a strangely pleasant feeling.Inside the church, the air was filled with an unpleasant smell of strong medicines and disinfectants that shouldn't be in a church.The grimy walls were peeling frescoes of ikons with big blue eyes looking at bandaged soldiers lying on straw mats, smoking, talking to each other, or staring sadly.Inside the clock tower, the winding narrow stone stairs without handrails made Pug feel a little dizzy, but he walked up the rough walls and reached a floored landing level with the large rusty bells, wind There was a sudden blow from the brick arches that were open on all sides.He breathed a sigh of relief and climbed a rickety wooden staircase. "Victor!" Pam called to him, waving, as he emerged on the brick walkway on the top floor. On closer inspection, the huge dome was roughly made, nailed to a curved frame with iron sheets, and covered with rust.Surrounded by yellow-brick walks and short walls, Pamela crouched in a corner sheltered from the wind.The Artillery Enemy Spotter wore a knee-length brown overcoat, fingerless gloves, goggles, and earflaps draped tightly, so he couldn't see his face, and he didn't know what he looked like.A huge telescope on a tripod is facing west.On the edge of where Pamela was squatting, a black tomcat was licking a bowl of soup, seemed to find it unpalatable, shook its head, and started licking again.Both Pamela and the watcher smiled at the cat. "Too much pepper, Mimi?" Pamela's cheerful playfulness made it clear that she was happy to be here.Below the bell tower, the open plain stretched far to the east and south with forests, and to the west and north were black winding rivers and sparse trees.In the small town below the bell tower, people and horses huddled together, bringing vague noises to the empty silver-white world. "Are you an American military officer?" The monitor showed neat teeth on a piece of his hairy face exposed. "yes." "Do you want to see it?" The hand in the mitt gently patted the telescope. "Can you see the Germans?" Pug asked. "Too many." "One is enough!" said Pug. The monitor nodded seriously, smiled slightly, and left the telescope.Pug's eyes were blown to tears by the wind, and he leaned over the eyepiece, and at once the Germans by the river were in sight, but dim and small, still doing their old work. "Don't you feel a little uneasy about that?" said Pam, patting the kitten. "They're really taking it easy." Victor Henry walked to the corner of the short brick wall, stuffed his hands into his blue coat, and observed the distant scenery of the snowy field from various angles.The watchman turned his binoculars from south to north, scanned slowly along the river, and spoke into the dry-cell telephone, whose black telephone wires crossed the short wall. "Tell me about the front. Mimi, don't forget to wash behind the ears." The cat was licking and Pamela was tickling its head. As Pug told her about going to the front, he watched the horizon as carefully as if he were standing on the bridge of a ship.Some strange movement in the distant snow-covered forest caught his attention.With his back turned to the monitor, he covered his eyes with a rough red hand and stared intently at the east. "Give me that." She handed him a small telescope from an open case next to the telescope stand.Pug glanced at it, patted the monitor on the shoulder, and pointed to the east.The monitor turned the large binoculars on the tripod half a circle, was startled, took off the goggles and hat and looked again.He had blond curly hair and freckles, and looked to be twenty at the most.He grabbed the phone, rang the bell, talked for a while, and rang again, but there was no answer. He looked very angry, put on his hat, and stepped down the stairs. "What's the matter?" Pamela asked. "Come and see." Through the watcher's large binoculars, Pamela saw a train of vehicles emerge from the woods. "Is it a tank?" "There are some trucks and armored vehicles with people. However, it is a tank unit." Victor Henry said while holding up his binoculars, as if watching a parade. "Are they Russians?" "No." "But that's where we're headed." "yes." They glanced at each other.There was terror on her rosy-cheeked face, but also a hint of excited joy. "Aren't we stuck, then? Shall we go downstairs and get out of here to find Anfidyetrov?" With the naked eye, the armored convoy was about five or six miles away, like a small black bug on a white ground.Pug stared eastward, wondering.The possible consequences of this sudden change were too bad to describe.He was a little offended that Tudsbury had selfishly risked his daughter here.Of course, no one expected a sudden German attack in the rear; but they had come!At worst, he felt that if captured, he would be able to handle his German captors, although the soldiers would embarrass him a little before he saw his officer, but the Tudsburys were Germany's enemies. "I'm telling you, Pam," he said, watching the little bug have clearly moved slowly toward town from the woods, trailing a black tail. "The colonel knows we're here now, let's stay here a little longer." "Okay. God knows, how did the Germans turn out from behind?" "Anfidyetrov said there was a problem in the south. They must have broken through the river and then rounded the woods. Not a large force, a tentative move." The upper end of the stairs was shaken by heavy footsteps. A fair-haired young man came up, grabbed the surveying device and aimed it at the Germans, pushed the ruler back and forth, and quickly spread out a small black and white map with grids on his lap. He shouted into the telephone: "Five six! One two four! r seven m twelve! Yes, yes!" He grinned excitedly and excitedly at the guests. "Our batteries are aiming at them, and when they get close to the proper position, we'll blow them to pieces. So you might see something." He put on the goggles, and from a bright-eyed lad to A serious watcher who couldn't see his face.Victor Henry said, "They're watching your battery fire from across the river." The watcher waved his heavily clothed arms. "Okay, but we can't let these sons of a bitch take over this town from behind, can we?" "I heard the plane." Pug turned his telescope to the western sky. "airplane!" "Yes!" The monitor turned the binoculars and pointed upwards, and began to shout into the phone. "And the plane?" Pamela's voice trembled. "Well, I'm more used to airplanes." "It was a German exercise," said Victor Henry, "a combination of tanks and planes." The three Sturgas that flew in grew larger and larger in Pug's telescope.The watcher turned his binoculars back on the tank and started cheering.Pug looked in the direction he was looking. "Huh! Now I can say I'm doing military observation, Pam." Halfway between the Germans and the town, another column of tanks came out of the woods and moved in a line almost at right angles to the armored convoy.He handed her the binoculars, his eyes still on the plane. "Ah! ah!" cried Pamela. "our?" "Yes!" shouted the monitor, grinning at her. "Ours! Ours!" A hand hit her hard on the shoulder, knocking her to the ground. "They're swooping," said Victor Henry. "Climb over and lie down close to the dome, and don't move." He knelt beside her, his hat already off and rolling away, and he swept away the blackness in front of his eyes. Hair, watching the plane.The planes had turned and dived, and when they were nearly as high as the clock tower, they dropped their bombs.With the roar of the engine and the harsh howl of the wind, the plane rose steeply again.Pug could see the plane's black cross, the letter A, and the cabin with its yellow bulletproof glass.Bombs began to explode around the church, the bell tower shook, and flames, dust, and smoke rose from beyond the short walls, but Pug remained conscious, noticing the poor technique of flying.Three lumbering black planes flew up and down in a tangle, nearly colliding with each other as they swooped down.The Luftwaffe either lost most of their old pilots, he thought, or didn't use them to fly in the area.The town's anti-aircraft guns fired into the sky with a short thud.Pamela took his hand.She cowered behind him, leaning against the dome. "Just lie down, this will pass in a while." When Pug was speaking, he saw a Stugar leaving the other two and swooping down directly towards the clock tower.He shouted to the monitors, but the sound of planes, anti-aircraft guns, howling wind and the crying of the town drowned out his voice.The tracer bullets traced a dashed red line from the gray sky to the bell tower, and the leaden dome made a regular sound from the strafing.Victor Henry pushed Pamela to the ground violently, and lay on top of her himself.When the plane came down from the sky, a rather large fuselage could already be seen.Victor Henry kept staring back at the plane. He saw the blurred pilot behind the bulletproof glass, a young man with fair hair and no helmet, grinning.He thought the young man was going to hit the dome, and he had barely ducked down when he felt something torn off his left shoulder.The plane flew over the sky with a piercing howl and roar, flew away and disappeared.The whoosh whoosh of bullets also stopped. Pug stood up and touched his shoulder. The top of his sleeve was torn, and the epaulettes were still there, but there was no blood.The monitor lay on the brick floor next to the overturned telescope.The bomb exploded below, and the other two planes were screaming and roaring over the town, one belching smoke.The watcher's head was bleeding, and Pug felt a pang of terror at the sight of a white skull in the battered hat.Under the light yellow hair, red-gray plasma is still flowing slowly.Pug walked up to the monitor and carefully took off his goggles. His blue eyes were open and motionless, no longer looking.Head wounds are fatal.Pug picked up the phone and rang the bell. Someone answered, and he shouted in Russian, "I'm an American guest here, do you understand?" He saw the smoking plane, struggling to fly upwards, suddenly exploded, turned into a ball of flames, and fell. "Understood, where is Constantine?" The voice sounded excited. "Blown up by a plane." "Okay, send someone right away." Pamela crawled to the side of the monitor, looking at the dead man's face and blown head. "Oh my God, my God," she cried, covering her face with her hands. The two remaining planes flew away out of sight.The town fire was billowing with smoke, and one could smell burning straw.To the east, across the plain, two lines of tanks formed a black V for several miles.Pug held up the binoculars.Through the billows of smoke in his vision, he saw tanks circling in a frantic yellow swirl on the vast snowy plain.Among the Russian light tanks, there were five huge kv tanks jostling around.Several German tanks were already on fire, and the tankers were running around like ants in the snow.Some German tanks and trucks turned back and headed into the woods.Pug saw only smoke from a Russian light tank.But when he was observing, a KV tank exploded, and a group of brilliant purple-yellow flames appeared, forming a field of bright colors on the snow.At this time, the rest of the German tanks began to turn around. "Mimi! Oh my God, my God, no, stop it!" The cat was lying on top of the dead man, and Pam grabbed it.She walked up to Pug with the cat in her arms, her tear-stained face looked haggard and dull.The cat's nose and whiskers were stained with blood, and its tongue stuck out."The animals can't be blamed," she said, choked up. "The Russians won the battle there," Victor Henry said. She looked at him with wide, frightened eyes, and held the black cat tightly.Her hand felt the crack in his shoulder. "Dearest, are you hurt?" "No, not at all. The shrapnel just passed." "Thank God! Thank God!" There was a sound of vibrations on the stairs, and the excited and flushed face of Afidyetrov appeared. "Okay, you're all safe. Well, I'm happy. It's best to stay here. The town was bombed very hard and killed a lot of people. Come on! You two, please come with me." And then he made eye contact to the corpse lying in a pool of blood. "Ah yo!" "We got bombed," said Pug, "and he's dead." The colonel shook his head, and went down, saying, "Well, come on, please." "You go first, Pam." Pamela looked at the dead Watcher lying in a pool of snow and blood on the brick floor, and again I looked at the iron dome, I also looked at the tank battle outside, and the distant view of the pressed black "V". "I've been here for like a week. I can't get down the stairs with the cat. We can't keep him here." "Give me the cat." Pug Henry stuffed the cat in his coat pocket, held her down with one arm, and followed her awkwardly down the stairs and the spiral steps.Once the cat moved, biting and scratching, and he nearly fell.Outside the church, he let the cat go, but whether it was frightened by the passing vehicles or the billowing smoke, it ran back and disappeared among the wounded. At the open door of the black sedan, Tudsbury waved his stick at them. "How are you guys! There's a huge tank battle just outside of town! They say there's at least a hundred tanks milling around at this hour! Horrible as hell. Hey, your coat is torn, you do you know?" "Yes, I know." Although Victor Henry had lost all energy, he could still smile when he thought of the gap between the actual war and the news reports, and took off his epaulets and put them in his pocket.Compared with Tudsbury's depiction, the actual situation of two small groups of tanks shooting at each other on the snow-covered plain seems to be a less vivid skirmish. "We saw it too," he said.Pamela got into the car, sat in the corner of the back seat, and closed her eyes. "Did you read it? Well, Pam should help write this story! Ah, Pam, you're all right, aren't you?" "I'm fine, Talkey, thank you," Pam replied, softly but clearly.Pug said to the colonel, "We watched as the Germans started to flee." "Okay, yeah, Gaplan's battalion was informed by the southern line. It's a good battalion." Anfidyetrov closed the car door. "Please sit down, we're going straight back to Moscow now." "Oh, no!" Tudsbury's fat face wrinkled like a baby's. "After the battle, I want to go and have a look. And talk to the tanker." Amphidyetrov turned to them, grinning, showing his gums and teeth, but not smiling.Through the frosted windshield behind him, they could vaguely see smoke, fire, a horse slumped forward on the main street of the town, soldiers running around, green army trucks huddled together slowly March. "Well, there's a big breakthrough in the north. Moscow is at stake. Alas, all foreign missions are retreating to the Caucasus. We must slip away at once." There was no humor in his blunt slang for "slip." , and then said to the driver: "Go!" Beneath the blanket that covered the passenger's lap, Pamela Tudsbury's gloved hand took Victor Henry's.She took off her gloves, wrapped her cold fingers around his, and leaned her face against the ragged shoulder of his long overcoat.His rough hands held tightly against hers.